CODE ELDRITCH

Chapter III

The Base

Whoever ever said they sometimes enjoy their hangovers in that masochistic kind of "Wow, that was a crazy night"-kind of way was full of what cows deposit.

I woke up not initially realizing I had woken up, staring at the blank-white ceiling while giants pounded on the inside of my skull with hammers. It was like staring into brain static, so immense as to drown me in it.

Eventually I got to the plastic bottle of water by the bedside stand and tried to get some of it down. Don't remember if I threw up. Went back to sleep. Woke up feeling a little better, went into the toilet and definitely threw up. Back to bed, headache, gathering messy thoughts.

It was all coming back to me in disorganized droves.

I knew what Stockholm Syndrome was. Why, why, why had I opened the door? I guess I can forgive drowsy me for being dumb, but I couldn't wrap my head around the turn of events that saw me get back in, close the door with the goons outside, and not call the police or try to barricade myself in. At no point had it felt so surreal that I'd thought I was dreaming, I just hadn't questioned what was going on at all.

In fact, I'd almost felt enticed by the ragtag team of definitely-not-government-agents.

I remembered The Official's little lecture on the organization he worked for. I thought it was some hot bullshit, let me tell you. I'm not a lawyer or particularly well-read, but I felt pretty sure there was nothing in the realm of legality that would let anyone operate with impunity like that. Waltzing around killing people off the cuff, I could see the CIA pulling off. But unless the man was simply suffering delusions of grandeur, I didn't really buy that they were doing the same overseas no matter how many agencies they cooperated with.

More likely it was a smokescreen, a ruse, and he wanted my consent in writing for something else. With a gun in one hand and an army of other guys-with-guns outside in the rest of the building, though, he hadn't really needed to lie.

Curiosity still had me in its grips. I'd sized up the room twice already, done the whole movie-shtick of looking for recording equipments under the lamps or cameras hidden in the bottles lining the walls, even tapped and given the glass pane a good shake, just in case someone was hiding on the other side. I'd pressed my ear to the wall, held breath ballooning in my chest, listening for a sound out of place. But the space was silent as a tomb.

The analog phone on the bedside table burst to light with that shrill '90s tone.

Seeing as the door was locked from the outside, I figured this was what I'd been waiting for. Still groggy, I picked up the phone.

"Monroe."

On the other end of the line, The Official's voice was an octave deeper than I remembered it. Angrier, somehow. "Monroe. I must begin by apologizing for drugging you."

"For what now?"

"The food you ordered from the Cantonese restaurant that you frequent was, as my colleagues would put it, spiked. Given the urban terrain it was considered prudent to subdue you before making ourselves known. The estimates for how much food you would consume relative to your body mass were... off, by a factor of almost ten. Therefore I apologize on behalf of my team for how you must be feeling."

What do you even say to that?

"We offer generous hazard pay and injury compensation. They are normally reserved for active employees, but I would like to make an exception."

"Sure." I managed, "Listen, I've got to—"

Bathroom again.

My diaphragm leveraged bile from the deepest and dankest recesses of my chest. Things I'd rather not describe for fear of offending crept over my lips in choppy, uneven movements like molten and disgusting rock.