Chapter 11

Carol looked at me, concern written all over her face. “Let’s head back to the refuge, and see what we can figure out.” She said. We drove back to the refuge as fast as we could. As we were pulling up to the front of the house, I noticed that the front door was wide open. This was unusual - the door was never left open. My anxiety increased.

We raced inside, and found the house empty. A kitchen chair was lying sideways on the floor, and it looks as if there had been a struggle. I saw a single white sheet of paper on the table. There was a short, hand-written message on it. It read:

I have your precious girlfriend. If you want to see her alive, come to the farm alone. You know what will happen if you don’t do as I say...

It was signed “Witherand”. Looking closely at the paper, I thought I could see a bloodstain - it seemed that Anita didn’t go easily.

Carol took the paper from my hands and read it. “You can’t go alone - you know it’s a trap!” She exclaimed.

“Yeah, I know. But I have to go - I can’t risk Anita being hurt.” I replied. I reached out with my senses to her. It was like I could feel she was there, but she wasn’t responding to me. She must be unconscious, I thought.

“I’m calling the crew,” Carol said, “I won’t let you go there alone.”

I knew I had to act quickly. I couldn’t risk Anita’s safety on this - Witherand was so unstable, he could just as easily kill us all if it suited his plans. We were just part of his “experiment”, his quest for eternal life.

I turned to Carol and placed my hand on her arm. “I’m sorry sweetheart,” I said, and I concentrated on her sleeping. She looked up in alarm at me, then slumped forward as she fell unconscious. I quickly grabbed her, and carried her to the couch and laid her down. I knew she would be out for a while, and headed out the door to the farm, alone.

When I got to the farm, I saw a strange car parked by the shed. I pulled up alongside it, and cautiously walked through the doorway into the building.

In one of the bays where the tractor was normally parked, space had been cleared. There was a hospital bed in the middle, with floodlights setup around it in a circle. There were sheets of plastic outside that, and it was made to look like an operating theatre. It looked like a scene out of some kind of horror movie or thriller, where the psycho murderer had their victim, helpless and unable to fight whatever sick and twisted torture they might devise. I felt sick to my stomach - this wasn’t a movie, this was my life! It was really happening, and now I was in the middle of it.

Anita was laying on the bed, naked. There were leather straps around her ankles, arms and waist. Her head was shaved, and electrodes were placed all around, a harness of wires leading from her head to a nearby machine. The screen of the device showed multiple waveforms, all moving to some degree.

Witherand was standing by the machines, adjusting dials and making notes in a book. He was wearing a white labcoat, and if we were in a laboratory instead of a farm shed, he wouldn’t look out of place as a scientific researcher, performing an experiment.

Without looking up from his work, he waved one hand and said to me “Ah, how nice of you to join us. I won’t be a minute, just preparing for the next stage of the proceedings.” He paused for a moment, and then said “Oh, by the way, sorry about this.”

I was about to say “Sorry about what?” When I felt a stinging sensation on the side of my neck, like an insect bite. I swatted it, and felt a tiny dart in my skin. I pulled it out, and tried to focus on it, but my eyes wouldn’t respond to my command. I started to feel faint, and then collapsed to the ground, tranquillised by the dart that had hit me.

When I came to, I found that I was sitting in a chair. My wrists were handcuffed to the arms of the chair. There was a chain around my waist, pinning me to the backrest. I tried to move my legs and found that there were chains around my ankles too.

I could see that I was in the shed, but separated from where Anita lay. Her head was rolled to the side facing me, her eyes open. She made eye contact with me, and I could feel the sense of relief that washed over her as she realised that I was unharmed. Her lips didn’t move, but somehow I could hear her voice in my head say “Thank God, you’re OK!”

Just then the psycho doctor came into view. “Ok, you’ve decided to join the land of the living again. Good, good. We’re ready to proceed to the next stage.”

“You won’t get away with this!” I said, struggling against the bindings.

“Oh, but I am getting away with this,” he replied, the look of smugness and superiority on his face. “And I will continue to get away with this. But for now, why don’t we focus on the experiment at hand...”

I started to focus on the doctor, to make him pass out. He started to slump, but before he passed out he said “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. See this deadman’s switch in my hand? If I pass out, your precious girlfriend will die. You wouldn’t want that now, would you?”

It was only then that I noticed that the doctor seemed to be clutching something in his hand, and there were wires that led to some kind of device attached to Anita’s arm, where there was some kind of sinister green liquid held in an intravenous pump. I imagined that it was some kind of lethal dose of drugs, maybe an anaesthetic or something. I stopped contentrating on the doctor. He brightened considerably. My shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Ah, that’s better. Let’s not do that again, for Anita’s sake, ok?” He replied, moving over to a tray of implements that was near Anita’s bed.

And so he began a series of tests, somewhat like what we did to work out my abilities. Witherand was methodical in his process, repeatedly making notes, recording entries in a voice recorder, performing a test and then making a note of the results. First pain, increasing in strength, and increasing in distance. After each test he moved Anita’s bed further away from me. Each time it took more and more effort to take Anita’s pain and prevent her suffering. As the distance increased, the amount of concentration needed to help Anita increased, until I was covered in sweat and panting almost constantly as if I’d run a marathon.

It was a no-win situation - Witherand kept turning up the pressure until Anita was screaming in agony and I was barely conscious. There was no way I could disable him and protect her at the same time. “I’m sorry...” I whispered as consciousness finally departed from me.

When I came to, I was still chained to the chair. I didn’t open my eyes, but I reached out with my senses and discovered Anita was nearby. I could tell that she was awake, and I “thought” out to her to be still. I concentrated on the leather straps that were holding her down, to get them to weaken and dissolve. I could hear her talking to Witherand, trying to keep him distracted.

“Why are you doing this?” She pleaded with him. “Why are you hurting me? I’ve never done anything to you!”

“It’s nothing personal, my dear” he replied. “Every advance in medicine requires effort and sacrifice, and this one is no exception. It’s just that you get to make the sacrifice, and I get the rewards. That’s just how life is. Do you think that people mourn over the loss of a few lab animals? Some pain is necessary to get the breakthrough that I want.”

“You murderer!” She spat at him. “You bastard! You f...”

He slapped her face sharply, and she stopped abruptly. “That’s enough from you!” He said. “I demand respect! What you want or care doesn’t matter. You’re expendable. Now, behave or else I’ll dispose of you and pick another subject.”

I used that moment to contentrate on the doctor and make him pass out. He staggered away from the table where Anita lay, and then collapsed to the floor. His hand opened, and the deadman’s switch rolled out onto the floor.

The intravenous pump activated and the terrible green-looking liquid started flowing down the tubing to Antia’s arm. She looked at it in horror as it started to flow into the cannula on her arm. I opened my eyes and looked at her.

“Quick! Pull it out!” I yelled. She flexed her arms and the leather straps broke free. Quickly reaching over with her left hand, she shakily pulled the terrible looking needle from her right arm. As it came out, green liquid poured from the tip. She held the needle away from her, dropped it to the floor and then fainted.

I still couldn’t get out of the chair, because I had no influence over the metal chains. I concentrated on Anita, and I could feel her heart rate dropping and all her muscles start to go slack. Whatever was in that machine was some kind of muscle relaxant, so I focussed on her heart. Thump thump, breathe in, thump thump, breathe out, thump thump, breathe in, thump thump, breathe out. I could picture this drug flowing through her body, and any muscle that the drug touched went limp. I concentrated on her breathing and her heart, trying to keep her alive and remove the drug from her body. I could feel my strength waning, but I knew I couldn’t give up. I could sense her heart trying to beat on it’s own, and I knew that she would survive. Once I knew she would be OK, I passed out.

When I came to, I was lying on the floor of the shed. The rest of the crew were surrounding me, and Anita was kneeling by my head, her hands were stroking my hair.

I sat up suddenly, looking around. “Witherand!” I said, panic on my face.

“It’s ok!” Frank said, “he’s gone, for now. Carol raised the alarm as soon as she could, and we came to the farm to rescue you. That was a stupid thing to do - you played right into his hands!”

I looked down into my hands. He was right. It could’ve ended badly.

“Don’t ever do that to me again!” Carol yelled. “You idiot, how can we protect you if you won’t let us? You can’t beat this guy by yourself - he’s smart and not a little unhinged. If it comes down to just you and him, he’ll beat you every time.”