The Defective Soldier || Newt

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝟐𝟕

𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕝𝕒𝕕𝕖

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Darkness and more darkness. That was all he had been staring at for twenty long minutes.

The cold engulfed his entire being. Even as he blinked his poor sleep away, nothing else came to mind. There was something familiar about the rocky metal surface and the mechanic sounds, like gears spinning to bring a machine to life. It was distant, yet very much present. Nobody could ever ignore the shaky surface pressed against their cheek, or the water dripping from their hair. And what he certainly couldn't ignore was the weapon laying in his trembling hand. A gun, for sure. The touch and form were just like one.

He remembered having learned about how to use them a long time ago, though not where, or who had taught him. In that aspect, his memories were oddly blank. Just a white page with spaces left to fill in. Although one spot had been scrawled, providing such a basic piece of information that it almost offended him that it wasn't even real.

William was his name, or the one intended for him to accept as such.

Despite how perfectly it had been implanted in his head, he couldn't accept it as his name. It wasn't. He couldn't really tell how he knew. It was almost like he could feel it. As if the real one was on the tip of his tongue, but could never get to decipher it. A riddle that he had mulled over for so long that it no longer made any sense.

Questions swarmed his mind. Many of which he knew that he would never receive an answer for. They were chaotic, occupying a space in his mind that he could not spare. He was in the dark, at the mercy of unknown individuals, and shaking like a leaf. Any credibility or fierce facade had long ago been washed away. With the gun in a trembling grip, he could look no better than a frightened child.

As the machine came to a halt, he opted to accept William as his name for the time being. Fake or not, knowing something was better than nothing at all. Although, it didn't quite make sense. Why did the unknown individuals bother in taking all his memories away, just to provide him with a fake name? Would it be important? Or did they just see it as a form of entertainment?

He waited, curled up in the corner of the cage. His hands were rigid, pointing at the darkness in front of him with the gun. A useless thing to do. He wouldn't see the danger coming his way and, even if he pulled the trigger in a moment of desperation, there was no guarantee that he would hit the target. It would be better to steady his breathing or stop the continuous trembling that was giving away his position. If danger couldn't find him, it couldn't kill him.

A minute passed. Then two. Yet nothing happened.

No doors opened. No threats appeared. Five minutes had passed since the machine stopped, and the thought of being attacked became harder to believe. He pressed his back against the cage's wall just in case, pushing himself up to his feet. His confusion took a significant part of his focus; the questions appeared in his mind faster than he could process them.

Up on the cage's ceiling, the tiniest of cracks let a ray of light shine through. It was a warning easy to overlook. The next second, the doors flew at the sides, stunning him just as the sudden bath of light blinded him. His hand rose to protect his eyes, but nothing changed. The cage was just that, a cage, and whatever lay over it was out of sight.

Between steadier breaths, William pulled himself together and patted his clothes. Somehow, it didn't surprise him to find a holster strapped to his right leg. In the long minutes that he had been in the dark, not once had he realised that he carried it. And, even at that moment, the slight pressure or the weight of the gun being guarded in it made no difference to him. He was used to having it. Perhaps as much as he was used to holding a gun.