Cold War: Aftermath

Chapter 7: A False Reality

Daniel Folten: Die Landebahn" CIA Safe House E9, West Berlin
March 15, 1981
0400 Hours
He was in and out of consciousness as Adler helped him off the plane. He could feel his legs wobble beneath him, over the past 24 hours his body had been through it and back, it just so happened to be his mind that served as his breaking point.
"Come on kid, we're almost there. Just a few steps further." He heard Adler say as felt his legs failed him. He collapsed, landing on his hands.
When he opened his eyes next, he saw Berlin's night sky. Seconds later Berlin's stars turned into the safehouses metal roofing that Adler had dragged him inside of.
"Sims get the gurney." He said as he dropped Bell's feet.
Adler and Sims hoisted Bell's limp body onto the gurney and walked away to go prep his soon to be interrogation room.
As he began to maintain consciousness, he looked around him to find Park leaning against Sims' desk, bandaging the last of her own wounds.
"Forgive me, I never should've gotten mad with you for your decision back in Cuba, I should have expected you to do what you did. And for that, I owe you one." She said, approaching his side.
"Who put this pain in my head?" Bell asked with a hoarse voice. He was amazed he even had enough strength to even form a sentence.
"We need you to hang in there for one more assignment. I'm counting on you again Dan." She dodged his question, offering him a weak smile.
"What's happening to me? Where's Woods and Mason?" Panic was the only thing she could see his face. Before she could feel any more guilty, Adler had returned.
"Sims get the dosages ready."
"Which ones?"
"All of them." Adler said as he and Park began to push the gurney into Adler's office. There was a sudden opening of a door. Hudson came around the corner, clearly not happy.
"Adler stop wasting our valuable time! He's of no use to us anymore!" Hudson said.
"So they were just using me?! For a tool.... why?" Bell thought to himself hopelessly.
He saw Hudson watching them before the man stormed out of the safe door he came in.
"Stay alert Dan. You're the key to stopping Perseus." Adler said as he brought the gurney to a stop and picked up a needle. He didn't need to know what was about to happen to him to understand that they had done something to his mind. Hudson had practically confirmed that just a few moments ago.
"It's all or nothing at this point. We're doing an intracerebral injection." Adler said giving the needle a small push, causing some sort of yellow liquid to spew out.
Park shut the door as Sims turned the large overhead dome light on. The light shone right into Bell's eyes. Unfortunate for him, his arms and legs had been strapped down, preventing him from using his hand to block out any light.
"Injecting directly into the brain could provoke seizures, or worse." Park informed Adler. He simply looked over and ignored her comment, before returning his attention back to Bell was in a current state of terror at those words.
"Don't fight us kid." Adler said trying to hold Bell still as he aimed the needle directly into his eye.
"Damn. Through the eye socket. You sure about this, Doc?" Sims said.
Bell looked over to Sims and Park with fear painted all over his face. "Help me..." was all he managed to say before Adler injected the needle into his eye. Bell let out cries of pain as his eye began to slowly drip blood.
"The memories should begin almost immediately." Park said, watching.
With his head already pounding, the pain in his body was nothing compared to his current torment. He tried to move, but he was only straining his muscles. Moments later his vision became unclear. Everywhere he looked he saw in waves of gold.
"Bell, listen to me. I need you to remember. Think back to our time in Vietnam. One more time. We need to finish what we started." He listened to Adler through his cries of pain, trying to calm himself.
"We had a job to do." It was with those words that he began to hear ringing throughout his head. Perhaps it was just adrenaline, but he felt a wave of energy overtake him, as he shut his eyes, taking himself back to 1968.
"Think, Bell. Perseus. Do you remember coming face to face with Perseus in Vietnam." Adler tried to set Bell's mind on the right track.
As he shut his eyes, everything he saw was in blood red. Flashes of a jungle, his own eye dilating it's pupil, seeing the picture of a young Perseus all of it happened within seconds.
"EKG is spiking!" He faintly heard Sims say.
All the flashing images became overwhelming and heavy breathing started to set in again.
"Heart rate is off the charts." He heard Sims again. He noticed that Adler's voice was significantly louder and more clear than anyone else's.
Bell felt like his heart was about to burst out of his body, he was struggling to keep his breathing under control.
"I need you to relax and focus, Bell." Adler said gently. "Your helicopter crashed. You made your way through the jungle, alone. You found a bunker. Do you remember the bunker Bell?"
"What bunker? We didn't find one!" Bell managed to say through clenched teeth.
"We need to know what's inside that bunker." Adler said.
"The bunker..." Bell muttered as he began to remember. He began to gain control of his breathing patterns and calm himself enough to focus.
"Do not trust Adler. Adler is lying to you, do not trust him. Do not listen to Adler, he is lying to you. He is lying to you! Don't trust Adler!" Bell heard the same Soviet man from his previous episodes of "Déjà Vu". Part of him knew he should listen, but he wanted to know more. What had Adler done to him? Why was he being made to endure all this pain?
Script 1:
Daniel "Bell" Folten, MI6
Central Highlands, South Vietnam
July 16, 1968
Intterogation: Daniel "Bell" Folten, MI6
Die Landebahn" CIA Safe House E9, West Berlin
March 15, 1981
0400 Hours
"During a mission to investigate reports of a Soviet bunker, your chopper was hit by ground fire." He heard Adler say from the outside of his conscious.
"We're going down!" The pilot screamed. Bell held on with everything he had as they crashed. When he woke up he looked to see the two pilots inside the chopper, bloodied and lifeless. He undid the strap on his seat and moved one of the dead bodies out of his way as he crawled to the edge of the aircraft, to see the other friendly soldiers fighting off the Viatnamese.
"According to your debrief you woke up in the middle of a firefight." Adler said, trying to guide him. "The crash survivors were defending off a VC attack."
Bell looked outside to see the bloodshed. Vehicles exploding, enemies and friendlies dying. All of it happening in the middle of a large rice plantation. He tried to find a way down but in the process slipped, falling out the tree, landing hands and knees first onto the ground.
"You ran forward and picked up an M16." Adler said.
Bell ran forward, picking up an MP5, and immediately began shooting enemies down. As he began shooting he cleared enough enemies to make a path for himself, leaving the others behind. He just wanted to be out of this mind bending situation and get some answers.
"So you just ran away? That doesn't sound like you, Bell." Adler said, harshly.
He continued his way until he came across an old stone structure.
"The path split near a ruin, so you took the right forth, not the trail to the left." However, Bell had other plans. If there was a reason Adler didn't want Bell going down certain paths, he was determined to find out why.
Bell strolled down the path to the left, which led him to a familiar environment.
"No Bell, turn around you're going the wrong way." Adler said, trying to stay on script.
"The streaming water... and the bridge..." Bell muttered, his eyes still shut.
"He must have already seen this...." Bell heard Park say, faintly.
Adler sighed, realizing this might become even more difficult over time. Yet he remained to keep his calm and gentle tone. "The zipline was the best way back to the cave. You wanted to get to that bunker as soon as possible."
Bell approached the zipline, and thought about obeying Adler's commands. However he knew that if he took the zipline then he could never see what was beyond this bridge. Knowing he could always come back he stepped away from the zipline and crossed the bridge.
"Bell, turn back around and use the zipline to reach the bunker."
"I can't...not yet." Bell whispered. He could hear his heart beating, louder than before.
As he crossed the bridge he came to another intersection of two paths and without hesitation took the left path, leading uphill.
"What the hell? Why is Bell on scenario 11?" Adler said, confused. Bell could hear his own heart beating loud again. It seems as if every time he didn't follow Adler's guidance, he began to hear his heart pounding.
"He's defiant." Park chimed in.
Adler had no choice but to go along with Bell's choices. "A few allies were pinned down on a ridge. You readied your sniper rifle to assist." As Adler gave him his orders his vision became obstructed by another wave of a blurred tint of gold before returning back to normal.
"Hey Bell, give us a hand, will you?" He looked to his right to see one of his allies reloading.
"Who are you? Tell me where I can find Perseus!" Bell demanded.
"Who's Perseus?" The soldier asked, bewildered. Before Bell could say anything else he was cut off.
"Command says we need to clear that house." The soldier said. Bell decided to finally comply and lend an assist.
"Command, this is Big Duke 4. We've got a possible Soviet outpost in sight and VC all over us, requesting a napalm strike." Bell heard another soldier say over comms as he continued to help fight off the enemies.
"Big Duke 4, roger. Diverting air power to your area, thirty seconds out." The Base Commander responded.
The pilot connected to the radio line. "Big Duke 4, this is Phantom 2-1. We've got eyes in the sky, ready to deliver."
"Bell, mark the target area!" The soldier to his right commanded. Bell pulled out his binoculars and once he sighted in the target, the pilot spoke through the comms.
"Roger here we come. Get your people back and heads down." Bell found it odd that he didn't even call in the coordinates, yet somehow they were referred back to command. He peeked from behind a rock as he saw the house in front of him go up in flames along with the enemies defending it. He heard all the soldiers around him give shouts of accomplishment and amazement at the destruction before them.
"Inside the house hit by napalm, you would find a hidden bunker door." Bell heard Adler narrate, forgetting he was there.
He made his way down the cliffside and approached the house, covered in flames.
"Go through the red door Bell." Adler said.
"I.. I can't. He said not to!" Bell said, raising his voice.
"Who did?"
He ignored Adler's question and forced himself to put his hand on the door handle. Before he opened it, he heard the Soviet man again.
"He is lying to you." The man's voice was faint as it echoed. Was this his conscious? Or was it actually someone?
As he slowly opened the door he stepped through to find a white room. It looked to be infinite, with no walls on any sides. In the center was a chair and a TV directly in front of it. At this moment he became unaware of his physical being going into a seizure and turned his conscious state back to the room. He recognized this chair and TV from his "dreams". With no choice left, he decided to have a seat in the chair he was already familiar with.
"What's happening to him?" He could hear Adler ask the others as they watched his body go into what he could only figure, some sort of fatal failure. The thought of it made him want to cry out for help. It was too late and his consciousness began to wander elsewhere.
No longer was he in the familiar white room, rather he was experiencing flashing red images similar to how it was previously, only now he saw documents flying, needles being prepped and some sort of hallway. His heart was pounding sporadically. He could hear Park's voice over all of it, along with Adler's, both clearer than ever.
"The CIA's mind control program has had a great deal of success with implanted memories." Park said
"We've got a job to do." He heard Adler repeat that phrase, which took him back to Vietnam.

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"Lets up the dosage and run 1B this time." Adler spoke, now in real time.
"Ok ready." Park responded, injecting the needle as Adler looked over to Bell, reading off the script.
"According to your debrief, you woke up and the rest of your crew was missing. The VC were on the ground, searching for survivors."
Bell realized he found himself right back in the crashed aircraft, in the same tree, wearing the same brown military uniform as before.
"You're lying to me..." Bell whispered, loud enough for the others to hear.