The Nephilim Protocol

Confinement

I wake up in bed. A bed, anyway. It's soft and white and definitely not mine. The room is dimly lit, but you can see it's a lot of hard surfaces. Very clinical.

Hospital. Must be the clinic on camp.

I look around, though, and I revise that. One entire wall is the thick glass I've seen before. There's cameras and a few devices I don't recognize hanging from the ceiling. And my left arm is attached by a very solid-feeling handcuff to the bed.

Some sort of cell. But if they wanted me dead, they'd hardly have me in a hospital bed with—I check my left—an IV drip. So, good news, I guess.

I sit up and look out the glass wall. It's similar to the cell in Pittsburgh, with a room exactly the same on the opposite wall. Actually, it looks like a hallway, with a lot of these cells lining the walls. Is this Detention? How many people do they think they'll need to lock up?

That's when I notice that there's already someone in the other cell. Doc Schaefer.

"Ah, Dickson, you're awake," he says. His voice is remarkably clear.

"Yeah," I say, looking around. "Guess I am."

"The helicopter fell on you after your friend threw you into it," he says. Doc's sitting in a chair in the opposite cell. It looks as though his hands are chained to the chair, but in the dim light it's hard to tell. He's just got them hanging loosely from the arm rest, like he's talking philosophy or something. "Crushed a number of your bones. And your rib cage was stove in, so that also had to be attended to."

"Oh. I ... healed from all that?"

"Well, I had to set your bones and do emergency surgery for the rib cage. But yes."

"So ... why are you in a cell?"

"I'm a Nephil." He shrugs. "Worse, they believe I'm a Nephil spy, as I've been employed here for the past three years."

"You lifted the desk off Headmistress Wolfe. And ... you healed her, didn't you? She had all sorts of glass shards stuck in her. You used your powers for that?"

"Yes. It's all on tape, but she was conscious for much of it, also." He purses his lips. "Amazing constitution, that woman. Not hard to believe she was in special forces."

"And they locked you up? For saving her?"

"They locked me up for spying on them for three years and for being exactly the sort of fallen monster they've sworn to contain." He wags his head at me. "Headmistress Wolfe is not one to let personal favors override security concerns."

It still doesn't seem fair, but I sense he isn't interested in talking about it. I look around. "Where's Dolphin? Is he locked up down here too?"

"No," says Doc. "He's dead."

The news doesn't have the punch I'd expect. It feels more like a side detail of this world I've woken up in. The whole thing seems surreal and bizarre, and even though I tell myself I ought to be really shaken up about his death, it doesn't really hit home. And also, he turned out to be a psycho. "Huh," I say.

"They shot him after you pushed the hostage out of the way," he says. "He was hit forty-three times with lead bullets, enough to incapacitate him so they could put a cold-iron spike between his eyes."

That feels more real. "Fuck."

"Language."

I stare at him. "We're locked up in a prison hospital, probably facing death, my friend just got a spike put through his brain, and you're scolding me about my language?"