Sometime back I read a review of the Final Fantasy movie. I recall it complaining about how the movie was “cheerless”. Now, while the Final Fantasy movie was not, say, very good… The idea of complaining about something for being too “cheerless” makes me flinch. A lot of good movies, books, and even games have been “cheerless” titles. Frankly, I’m not too fond of happy-luvy-duvy-bunny-hoppy-skippy-save-the-trees stories.
Twist is a very cheerless story. Twist has a lot to do with sanity, whether keeping or losing it. It has a lot to do with the line drawn between human and machine, and crossing that line, and seeing what the mind can handle, and all the twisted things in between... But it all boils down to sanity.
Needless to say, I’m trying my best to make Twist as stimulating as possible, intellectually and emotionally. You guys have been giving me great feedback so far, and you’re all practically the reason for this feature even existing in the first place. Keep sending me your thoughts. I really do appreciate it.
Remember; Nothing is as it seems. This chapter is a bit unorthodox.
--- --- --- --- CHAPTER FOUR
--- --- --- ---
“He’s gone, sir.” Corporal Collins stepped into Manderley’s office, with less than welcome. Manderley was startled - he swiveled in his chair, paused a moment, then snapped his attention back to the holographic man hovering over the stout generator tucked into a small nook in the wall. It was a device used for communication - A visual telephone. Collins noticed the figure and tried to make out who it was, but the image flickered and disappeared before he had the chance. “I’m, uh, sorry, sir.”
A vain in Manderley’s head began to pulsate. “Corporal. Make this quick.”
Collins swallowed. Manderley had a reputation for his anger fits. “Dr. Reyes, sir. He’s gone.”
Manderley looked at him for a moment. “What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
“He was supposed to be in his office today, sir. He’s been gone the whole day. I’ve looked around the entire compound. Nothing, sir. Nobody knows where he is. It’s like he just… vanished.”
Manderley blinked. There was an awkward pause.
“Collins,” he said finally, “You know damn well we’ve already taken care of this. Employees don’t just vanish. We’ve taken precautions. Put them to use. And if you’re still too inept to find him, then search the building again, search the island, hell, search the entire city of New York. Just find him and bring him back. But don’t come bursting in on me like this ever again. You hear me, Corporal? I have important business to attend to. More important than your problems, or your job, or your life. Don’t come pestering me every time you can’t find Dr. Reyes because he’s taking a leak in the restroom.”
Collins didn’t know what to say. He made a mental note to try to stay as far away from Manderley as possible from now on. “Yes, sir.”
He lingered in the doorway a moment before moving.
“Out!”
“Sir.” Collins immediately slipped out into the hall.
Manderley sighed. He lifted a tissue and wiped his forehead. Surrounded by incompetence, he thought. I’m completely surrounded. He turned his chair back to the holographic display and re-activated it. The figure popped back into view.
“Sorry about that, Simons,” he commented.
--- --- --- ---
Jaime Reyes sat nervously in his seat on the 747, row 7, seat A, near the window. Departing for Hong Kong. And twitchy as hell.
The coffee hadn’t helped. Neither did his unspoken fear of flying.
Neither did his worries about getting his equipment through customs in Hong Kong.
A flight attendant rolled a cart stacked with drinks up to his side, and looked at him, querying silently. If Jaime drank alcohol, he wouldn’t even hesitate to demand a glass brim-full of it. But he didn’t drink alcohol. Not ever. Canned beer was disgusting to him. No scotch, no vodka, not even wine. Soda, to him, was almost worse. It didn’t quench your thirst. It just further dehydrated you.
Water. He asked for water. Healthiest drink on the planet, he thought.
It cooled him down, but nonetheless, sweat still rolled down the sides of his head. The plane had started to move. He watched the cement and city and water roll slowly by outside the window. He listened as the roar of the engines deafened all other sound. He watched as the Earth itself began to slowly shrink, people degrading to ants, less than ants, little dots, and eventually become so distant they couldn’t be seen. Cars became streaks of red and white light on the highways. Everything darkened.
Jaime became suddenly aware that he was sweating more profusely than before. He felt warm. He pulled his collar out with one finger.
Reyes leaned back to the window. The world was getting smaller, still. Things blackened. The planet got impossibly far away. Stars glimmered in view. The world vanished. Gone, lost in space. Higher than imaginable.
It got hotter still.
The plane sagged. Colors slid down the walls like wet paint. Everything moved in impossibly slow motion. A stewardess walked by, each step amplified to a tremendous, booming crash. Every tick of Jaime’s watch pierced the air like nails in the back of his neck.
And hotter still.
The hulls of the plane began to suck themselves in. Walls were stretched towards each other like chunks of elastic rubber. The ceiling drooped. Pools of dripping color formed on the floor. People were frozen in place. Somewhere in the back of the plane, a baby cried.
Darkness out the windows.
Hotter still.
His watch boomed.
Jaime had one last thought before blacking out.
I’m hallucinating.
--- --- --- ---
Gunther glared inside the holding cells from the shadows.
Two of them.
Alex Jacobson and the pilot, Jock. Both unconscious in one of the cells.
A troop walked over to Gunther. “Figures they’d try something stupid, huh, Agent?”
Gunther only acknowledged the statement with a stiff tightening of muscles. He didn’t change his fixated glance. He didn’t speak. Just stood and stared, breathing heavily in the shadows.
“Word is we just got the third one. Reyes. Caught him on a plane departing from the airport. Almost missed him, too. Right on time. Those bugs we planted really worked.”
Gunther did not move.
The guard looked at the agent, raised one eyebrow, shrugged, and then walked away.
Gunther Hermann was losing himself.
--- --- --- ---
Static. For a long while, there was nothing but static. After a moment, Dominic thought he heard rustling in the background. Then voices. Finally, the man on the other end of the line returned.
“What’s your current status?” the guy asked over the relative noise of the radio. He sounded rushed. As if he didn’t want to deal with this.
Dominic didn’t really know how to respond to that. “Status is… Crew is in tact. One casualty… our commander. He was shot in the escape. I was left in charge. We’ve been hiding ourselves in warehouses since. Anywhere we can get away from UNATCO.”
The NSF man on the other end sighed. “Like beaten dogs,” he remarked. Dominic flinched. Of all the NSF out there he could’ve contacted, he had to end up with this guy. People with the it-has-no-direct-impact-on-my-life-and-therefore-does-not-matter point of view irritated him infinitely.
Suddenly, the static interfered. The noise spurted up over the other guy’s voice.
Whatever the guy was trying to say wasn’t coming through. Bishop swore under his breath and adjusted the radio. It just made it worse.
“Damnit,” he said, giving the radio a forlorn glance. Then he just lowered his brow and stared at it like it would respond.
It continued to resonate null noises.
Dom started to push himself up out of his chair and go back to the main room of the warehouse, where the rest of the squad resided. But the radio spouted a clumsy noise. It was difficultly distant, and barely recognizable, but it was there.
Dom blinked. He looked at the radio a moment.
Nothing.
But then, again, it made the noise. It sounded like the guy on the other end was starting to clear up again. It was a voice. A chattering voice.
The voice slowly grew distinct.
It was not the same voice.
This voice was shifting, was robotic, was skipping and fluttering and changing pitch and speed and tune. It sounded electronic. It was babbling incoherently, trying to separate word from word, an odd process, twitchy and inhuman. Like a child learning to speak all at once. It slowly formed a sentence, chattering mechanically, syllables into words.
“D-D-D-D-Dominic… Bisho-o-p,” it sang. The voice fluttered again, the static re-emerged, then was quieted… The voice struggled. Struggled furiously. It almost seemed desperate.
“Dominic,” it said, shaky and uncertain. Then “Dominic,” again, in a much lower pitch.
Bishop stood. Stunned.
“Dominic Bishop,” it said again, now more of a statement than a question.
“Hello?” was the first thing to slip out of Dom’s mouth.
“I require you to perform a task.”
Silence. It seemed to wait for an answer.
“What?”
“I r-require you to perform a task,” it repeated, voice glitching, pitch jumping. This was not a human voice.
“Who are you?”
“Not important. The task.”
Dominic didn’t know if his confusion could be measured. “Who are you?” he asked again.
“You are going to break into UNATC-C-CO headquarters.”
Bishop’s heart thudded in his chest for a split second. What the hell? he thought. Break into UNATCO? …Jesus… What the hell? Who the hell?
Silence.
The faint sound of a confused breeze, confused breathing, and remote static.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Dominic insisted. He didn’t know what was going on, but he didn’t want to be left out in this thing’s little game.
The voice was quiet for a moment. The static sputtered. Then it faded completely.
Nothing but the breeze.
And then the most terrible sensation hit Dominic Bishop square in the forehead. A tremendous, blinding pain, his ears rang like mad, his head felt like it was going to explode and paint the walls crimson. He uncontrollably dropped to his knees before he could even think, act, do anything. He grabbed at his head, desperately. He clenched his teeth. Terrible sensation! The ringing proceeded. God!
No change. Pain. Surging pain. Explicit and raw. No breaks. He lost his vision. Everything blared bright white. His senses flooded with an unstopping, unforgiving, unimaginable hurting.
The voice eventually began again. It was louder than the ringing. It shook Dom’s body with every syllable, every word causing his body to flinch. Every sound pronounced, another violent, aching shiver of pain spread through his body.
“This is not your game,” the machine monster boomed, hissed, tremored. “You are in my game, my w-w-woRLD. DO NOt ignore mE. You are merely a pawn. You will not disobey. You will c-cOMPLete your task or your mind will be TORn from your body.”
Dominic was suddenly brutally tossed to the wall, slammed against it, hard, bone snapped, he screamed, the blinding light continued, the noise, the suffering, no end, no escape, no control, helpless.
He was tossed again. Hit a wall. His ribs snapped.
“There is no escape from my demands.”
Thrown again. Smashed the table, the radio. His knee shattered. Blinding brightness. Noise. Pain. Boiling down to basics. Sensation. Instinct. Reaction.
“I cannot be ignored. Do not think I have no control.”
Thrown again. He couldn’t see. He felt his head hit a ledge, or a doorway, or something. He didn’t feel anything else, because his neck broke with an audible snap.
He crumpled to the floor.
And instantly, the blinding was gone.
The pain was gone. He couldn’t feel anything anymore. His spine was severed.
Completely broken.
He could see. Everything returned to normal. Everything disturbingly peaceful. The sound of a light wind. No voices. No more voices.
The moon shone serenely through a window.
Broken and beaten and bloody, beyond any hope of recognition. Unmoving in a growing puddle of blood and tears. Staring. Mind ripped from his body. Torn apart.
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