The First Horseman (Spy Thriller-Area 51)

Chapter 9

9

I awoke feeling oddly well rested. The constant nausea I had felt seemed to have faded away almost entirely. My eyes were foggy as I opened them, but my clarity of mind was back; my thoughts were my own as before. I remembered everything up unto this point. I could tell I hadn't been 'refreshed,' yet. I was back inside the holding cells for the Horsemen after they came in from assignments in the underground labs at 51. To my right was a stainless-steel sink. Behind it, a toilet with a small brick wall that jutted out just enough for privacy. It was the holding room I had been in countless times before after an assignment was completed. Every other time I had been in a holding cell like this though, I had already been refreshed. Except when the old German Von-Kleist had freed me so recently, and now. For some reason Ashcroft wasn't here like the Horseman had said he would be when he's tortured me in Texas. Looking down at my cut-up forearms I could see someone had already stitched up the one deep cut that had been inflicted upon me when I had endured the torture. They had also applied a kind of healing surgical glue to the minor ones. I waited there, sitting for hours until a soldier wearing thick black body armor stepped in front of the clear thick glass wall of the cell. She was a fit Latina woman of average height with a curvy, but toned frame. She wore her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. If she'd worn it down, it was clear they would be long flowing curls. Through the small air holes in the clear cell wall she spoke to me.

"Are you hungry?"

"I am." I responded.

She left as quickly as she'd asked down the grey brick corridor disappearing down a trail of florescent lights. I sat on the edge of the steel bed frame. Two thick chains suspended it from the cell wall. There I waited for her return. Was she just a kind soul who felt pity for me? I didn't know. Did she know anything of project Horsemen, and who did she believe she was guarding down here? Had they told her she was guarding one of the most treasonous infidels against the American institution? My stomach turned with pains of hunger from my prior state, but the side effects of the serum I knew were finally gone. I was for the first time in years, myself, both body and mind united once again.

What must have been a quarter of an hour passed. The guard returned with a tray. On it was soup with a sandwich and what smelled like a hot coffee. She opened the clear panel and slid the tray through a flat tunnel section inside the multi inch thick clear cell wall. I opened the panel on my side and was able to pull the tray all the way through.

"The coffee is hot. Be careful when you lift it off the tray, do it slowly, understand?"

Her disclaimer for the hot beverage seemed peculiar. Her brown eyes grew wide as she enunciated the word 'slowly' in two distinct syllables.

Sitting on the edge of the bed with only a thin mattress to rest on, I ate. The guard stood with her back to my cell.

She faced one of four cameras positioned to peer inside each of the four holding cells. I finished the tuna sandwich she'd brought to me. I'd been starving more than I knew and washed down the sandwich with the tomato soup placed on the tray.

I noticed out of the corner of my eyes she stood now in the direct line of sight of the surveillance camera, obscuring me from its view. As she had commanded, I lifted the thick plastic mug of coffee slowly. Under it, a folded note lifted. I opened it right then and there seeing the guard maintain her position obscuring the camera's line of sight. I suspected she was a person of good intent, and now I knew it.

"I know who you are. We had a mutual friend, a man of truth. Someone who has stirred up a small resistance among a few of us here in the underground. I know what you are trying to do, I know what Dr. Von-Kleist did for you, and I won't be letting them, 'Refresh' you again. You were quite a distraction for the other Horsemen, according to what I overheard through eavesdropping. You played your part, but Von-Kleist told me before he died, we will still need your help.