GWOT III - Helping
Dec. 4th, 2023 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT III - Helping
"And whoever saves one - it is as if he had saved mankind entirely." - Surah 5, Verse 32, The Holy Quran
The process of removing me from the rolling stretcher was as non-trivial as the process of putting me into it had been.
The designated safety officer watched, less than benignly, from as far away as the geometry of the corridor would allow given his two duties. 1) To closely observe what everyone else did. 2) To draw his handgun and put multiple rounds in my happy ass if it looked like I was going to break free.
I knew he was the safety officer because he had a (huge) vest that read SAFETY in yellow letters on Homeland baby blue.
The other members of the cell extraction team were wearing riot armor. Helmets, neck guards, armatures, leggings, torso armor, elbow pads and knee pads. Their gloves were a compromise between dexterity and protecting the backs of the hands.
Helmet visors were down. I suppose in case I spat.
They opened my cell door, made sure the cell was empty and clear (as if it wouldn't be...) and locked the wheels on the stretcher.
On the command, each of my four limbs would be grabbed by one of four team members in a two handed opposing grip.
Only then would a sixth officer, a team leader, unfasten first my leg restraints then my arm restraints.
Once the restraints were DC'd (disconnected), the two on my arms would pick me up off the stretcher by my arms while the other two first lifted my legs, then slammed me forward with one hand on my butt and the other hand on my shoulder blade.
This allowed them to propel me bodily into the cell.
Bouncing off the concrete bunk was my problem.
Slamming the door right after me in case I decided to get back up and fight them, was theirs.
THey didn't bother with handcuffs or leg restraints any more. If I left the cell, I was in the grip of four burly Homeland guards or I was strapped down to the rolling stretcher.
There was a reason for that.
I'd seen it.
At some point, likely soon, they would take me out, strap me to that stretcher, roll me to the elevator, and take me to the theater.
The surgical theater. With gleaming instruments and the smell of blood and rust. And screams. Oh, there would be screams.
The challenge would be keeping me alive as they cut into me. Battle surgeons of the Age of Sail raced pain and shock to do good to their patients, usually high amputations because shattered limbs would rot off and take the patient with them.
They would use certain drugs, carefully, and nerve blockers and cutting nerves I would never need again. They would use hemostats and retractors to minimize blood loss. I hadn't smelled burning flesh in my one visit to the surgical interrogation, but cautery has a time honored tradition in torture. Stops blood loss and hurts intensely, what's not to love?
There was another reason.
They had a method of body disposal.
Imagine, if you will, an oversize rotisserie oven.
Now imagine that you can roll a gurney into it.
With a body attached to it.
Dead. Or living. Or in between.
Mine, soon enough.
Oh, how I longed to take one or more of these mo-fos with me into the valley of the shadow of death.
That was why the procedures. They also were initiates of the mysteries of death. They knew, and were bored with, the superhuman strength and desperation that any person can put forward at the end of their life. But they wanted to go home, presumably to their loving family but more likely their harem of lesbian sheep and he goats and bitch-dogs, without being injured.
So yeah. I could talk, or die screaming. Or go mad. I was well on the way to that last.
This pause, between a bored grave shift showing me the ropes, and the day shift applying them, was my last chance to change my mind.
I wouldn't.
Over 800 reasons I wouldn't. The H1Bs I refused to murder but claimed I had.
They were safely far away.
I hadn't seen a single living soul here, who wasn't a Homeland employee and therefore criminal conspirator, murderer, traitor to America and all she has ever held dear, etc. etc.
Except the one person I had just not met.
The surgical victim they had rolled into a furnace in front of me, to prove they were serious. This wasn't a fake, this wasn't a bluff. This was a place where they cut people up for steaks and chops and put them in the grill until they were well done and beyond.
They had taken only one action in my presence.
Hadn't said a word. Likely couldn't.
When the team leader had asked us, jokingly, which of us wanted to go first, we had both raised our hands. Easy for me, I was only somewhat exhausted and terrified. Incredibly difficult for them. But they had done it.
How I wished I could have helped them somehow.
The most obvious way in which I could help them would have been to kill them. Hard to do while tied to a stretcher. If I could get a hand free, I knew where to apply pressure to end a life. They were likely too injured to resist, and likely smart enough not to try.
Doing first aid on them would be cruelty. They might live longer.
It made me realize something.
The eight hundred people were far away, I had already helped them as much as I could, and any further contact would have been hideously dangerous to them for no benefit.
This one person, this one surgical victim, had been less than ten feet from me. And I had done nothing to help them.
I could have said something. Said that I'm not with Homeland. Said that I'm a fellow human being, a presence in a room full of all too human monsters.
Yet another person I had failed.
###
The world was bright and dull shades of pain.
No eating any more. No drinking either. The occasional needle prick and cold rush of fluid told of IV fluids. Staving off the natural dehydration that was usually a dying person's last friend.
Only rarely did words intrude.
There was no reason to leave the stretcher. No food meant no defecation. Urination took place in place.
The stretcher would be wheeled from here to there, from time to time.
At first the trips to the furnace had been torture. The fear of being burned alive.
Then each had been a last shred of hope. This time might be the end. The last time. The end of the pain that was otherwise the world.
This trip was different. Hearing is the last sense to go, and although sight was gone, the squeak of a second stretcher was as good as a shout.
Mockery. The usual.
But a question. An important one.
"Who goes first? Volunteers?"
Oh my God. Me me me me me me.
Couldn't speak. Mouth too dry, teeth and tongue too damaged.
Put all the fading effort into putting up the less injured hand.
More pain. But success!
"I should make you two flip for it. Or maybe fight for it? No matter. We'll get to you both. In good time."
Us both.
I'm not alone.
I wish I were alone. No one should have to go through this. I would save them if I could.
My friend. My brother whom I had never met and never would.
"Sir. Excuse me, sir?" the tenor voice spoke. It was not respect. It was mockery for mockery.
"Yes," the Homeland torturer replied.
"I'm not sure how this works. Can you go first and show us?"
My brother. The fearless one.
My God, what a man he must be, to dare that much pain.
From two of the torturers, laughter. So out of place in a torture room. Even if from the torturers. A piece of goodness in a world of horrors.
Silently I laughed too.
I stopped hearing. But my stretcher rolled forward and I felt the wave of heat, as I had felt it before.
It was so good not to be alone anymore.
To die amid defiance, hearing joking.
God bless my brother, my soulmate at the last minute of the last hour of the last day.
It was a glimpse of heaven.
A sudden flash of white light. A true end.
"And whoever saves one - it is as if he had saved mankind entirely." - Surah 5, Verse 32, The Holy Quran
The process of removing me from the rolling stretcher was as non-trivial as the process of putting me into it had been.
The designated safety officer watched, less than benignly, from as far away as the geometry of the corridor would allow given his two duties. 1) To closely observe what everyone else did. 2) To draw his handgun and put multiple rounds in my happy ass if it looked like I was going to break free.
I knew he was the safety officer because he had a (huge) vest that read SAFETY in yellow letters on Homeland baby blue.
The other members of the cell extraction team were wearing riot armor. Helmets, neck guards, armatures, leggings, torso armor, elbow pads and knee pads. Their gloves were a compromise between dexterity and protecting the backs of the hands.
Helmet visors were down. I suppose in case I spat.
They opened my cell door, made sure the cell was empty and clear (as if it wouldn't be...) and locked the wheels on the stretcher.
On the command, each of my four limbs would be grabbed by one of four team members in a two handed opposing grip.
Only then would a sixth officer, a team leader, unfasten first my leg restraints then my arm restraints.
Once the restraints were DC'd (disconnected), the two on my arms would pick me up off the stretcher by my arms while the other two first lifted my legs, then slammed me forward with one hand on my butt and the other hand on my shoulder blade.
This allowed them to propel me bodily into the cell.
Bouncing off the concrete bunk was my problem.
Slamming the door right after me in case I decided to get back up and fight them, was theirs.
THey didn't bother with handcuffs or leg restraints any more. If I left the cell, I was in the grip of four burly Homeland guards or I was strapped down to the rolling stretcher.
There was a reason for that.
I'd seen it.
At some point, likely soon, they would take me out, strap me to that stretcher, roll me to the elevator, and take me to the theater.
The surgical theater. With gleaming instruments and the smell of blood and rust. And screams. Oh, there would be screams.
The challenge would be keeping me alive as they cut into me. Battle surgeons of the Age of Sail raced pain and shock to do good to their patients, usually high amputations because shattered limbs would rot off and take the patient with them.
They would use certain drugs, carefully, and nerve blockers and cutting nerves I would never need again. They would use hemostats and retractors to minimize blood loss. I hadn't smelled burning flesh in my one visit to the surgical interrogation, but cautery has a time honored tradition in torture. Stops blood loss and hurts intensely, what's not to love?
There was another reason.
They had a method of body disposal.
Imagine, if you will, an oversize rotisserie oven.
Now imagine that you can roll a gurney into it.
With a body attached to it.
Dead. Or living. Or in between.
Mine, soon enough.
Oh, how I longed to take one or more of these mo-fos with me into the valley of the shadow of death.
That was why the procedures. They also were initiates of the mysteries of death. They knew, and were bored with, the superhuman strength and desperation that any person can put forward at the end of their life. But they wanted to go home, presumably to their loving family but more likely their harem of lesbian sheep and he goats and bitch-dogs, without being injured.
So yeah. I could talk, or die screaming. Or go mad. I was well on the way to that last.
This pause, between a bored grave shift showing me the ropes, and the day shift applying them, was my last chance to change my mind.
I wouldn't.
Over 800 reasons I wouldn't. The H1Bs I refused to murder but claimed I had.
They were safely far away.
I hadn't seen a single living soul here, who wasn't a Homeland employee and therefore criminal conspirator, murderer, traitor to America and all she has ever held dear, etc. etc.
Except the one person I had just not met.
The surgical victim they had rolled into a furnace in front of me, to prove they were serious. This wasn't a fake, this wasn't a bluff. This was a place where they cut people up for steaks and chops and put them in the grill until they were well done and beyond.
They had taken only one action in my presence.
Hadn't said a word. Likely couldn't.
When the team leader had asked us, jokingly, which of us wanted to go first, we had both raised our hands. Easy for me, I was only somewhat exhausted and terrified. Incredibly difficult for them. But they had done it.
How I wished I could have helped them somehow.
The most obvious way in which I could help them would have been to kill them. Hard to do while tied to a stretcher. If I could get a hand free, I knew where to apply pressure to end a life. They were likely too injured to resist, and likely smart enough not to try.
Doing first aid on them would be cruelty. They might live longer.
It made me realize something.
The eight hundred people were far away, I had already helped them as much as I could, and any further contact would have been hideously dangerous to them for no benefit.
This one person, this one surgical victim, had been less than ten feet from me. And I had done nothing to help them.
I could have said something. Said that I'm not with Homeland. Said that I'm a fellow human being, a presence in a room full of all too human monsters.
Yet another person I had failed.
###
The world was bright and dull shades of pain.
No eating any more. No drinking either. The occasional needle prick and cold rush of fluid told of IV fluids. Staving off the natural dehydration that was usually a dying person's last friend.
Only rarely did words intrude.
There was no reason to leave the stretcher. No food meant no defecation. Urination took place in place.
The stretcher would be wheeled from here to there, from time to time.
At first the trips to the furnace had been torture. The fear of being burned alive.
Then each had been a last shred of hope. This time might be the end. The last time. The end of the pain that was otherwise the world.
This trip was different. Hearing is the last sense to go, and although sight was gone, the squeak of a second stretcher was as good as a shout.
Mockery. The usual.
But a question. An important one.
"Who goes first? Volunteers?"
Oh my God. Me me me me me me.
Couldn't speak. Mouth too dry, teeth and tongue too damaged.
Put all the fading effort into putting up the less injured hand.
More pain. But success!
"I should make you two flip for it. Or maybe fight for it? No matter. We'll get to you both. In good time."
Us both.
I'm not alone.
I wish I were alone. No one should have to go through this. I would save them if I could.
My friend. My brother whom I had never met and never would.
"Sir. Excuse me, sir?" the tenor voice spoke. It was not respect. It was mockery for mockery.
"Yes," the Homeland torturer replied.
"I'm not sure how this works. Can you go first and show us?"
My brother. The fearless one.
My God, what a man he must be, to dare that much pain.
From two of the torturers, laughter. So out of place in a torture room. Even if from the torturers. A piece of goodness in a world of horrors.
Silently I laughed too.
I stopped hearing. But my stretcher rolled forward and I felt the wave of heat, as I had felt it before.
It was so good not to be alone anymore.
To die amid defiance, hearing joking.
God bless my brother, my soulmate at the last minute of the last hour of the last day.
It was a glimpse of heaven.
A sudden flash of white light. A true end.
