The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 04: Enigma

Eric jerked awake.

He yelled sharply in pain as he banged his head on the bunk above his own and fell back, grasping his forehead. For a long moment he lay there in confusion and pain. Where the hell was he? What had happened? He knew something had happened, the sense of urgency he was feeling couldn't have come from nowhere.

"You're finally up."

Eric jerked again and looked around...he was in his cell. At The Hole. And his cellmate was in the bunk above him. He remembered that at least...

"What happened?" he groaned, his head throbbing.

"That's what I was going to ask you," V replied. "They dragged you in, unconscious, about six hours ago, smelling of death and...something chemical. What happened after they took you away?"

Eric remained still for a long time. "...I can't remember."

"Hmm. What's the last thing you do remember?"

"...working out. Gauge was there. He spotted for me."

"That was today, at least. I think they hit you with some kind of short term memory eraser. I know they sometimes test medicines and bioweapons on us, they don't bother to hide that, but I've heard they've got some kind of experimental memory wiping gas. Try to focus. Are there any clues? What hurts?"

Eric took stock of himself. Besides his cloudy, throbbing skull, he realized that his elbow hurt.

"My striking elbow," he replied. "Hurts like I used it on something damn hard."

"So you fought someone."

"Maybe..."

"If it had been Johns, I think they wouldn't have dragged you back. And if it had been a prisoner, I think we would've heard about it by now..." V muttered.

"Let me get some sleep, maybe it'll get sorted and I'll remember something when I wake up...how long until morning?"

"About seven hours."

"All right." After a moment, he said, "whatever happened, it was bad."

V was silent for awhile, and then finally he just grunted. Eric pulled his blanket over himself and rolled over, facing the wall, trying to remember.

As he drifted off into a fitful sleep, he thought briefly of a gray chamber and a blank-faced horror.

* * *

The memories didn't return.

Or, if they did, not in any recognizable form. Eric woke up the next day sore and paranoid. He stuck to the routine that he had been establishing. Wake up. Take a leak. Brush his teeth. Grab a shower. Then breakfast. Then working out. He kept expecting something to happen, something to go wrong, anything different.

But there was nothing, save for the fact that the guards seemed to be watching him more closely now, when he could see them. They seemed content to leave the prisoners to themselves. During lunch, they came and called another prisoner away, apparently in the same fashion that they had him (he still didn't remember that part).

The guy never came back.

The day passed. Time came and time went, and still nothing happened.

The next day passed in much the same manner.

Then, the day after that, it happened again. He was working out, and then suddenly he was waking up back in his cell, almost exactly as he had the first time. V told him that basically the same thing had happened, they'd dragged him back to the cell while he was out. Only this time there was even more evidence that something had happened.