He gasped for breath as he came back to life, panicking as he struggled to inhale through his mouth. Had he come back to life only to suffocate and die again? His tongue brushed against something hard and round. He pushed against it, but it refused to budge. He tried to work his tongue around it, but as his lips shifted, something bit painfully into the corner of his mouth. A faint memory drifted up through his consciousness, a gag? That thought opened a floodgate in his mind and everything came back to him with excruciating clarity.

The string of murders. Bodies dumped unceremoniously in secluded places around the city. Walking around one of the crime scenes. The smell of decay and rot. The bright lights of the morgue. The smell of chemical preservatives and disinfectant.

He was a police officer?

Yes, that was it.

The memory felt so distant in comparison to that of his death.

He had been investigating the murders, but the case had been frustrating. All of the bodies had been scrubbed clean and there were no visible injuries on any of the victims. It had felt like a brick wall from the moment he was assigned. The bodies kept piling up, but the evidence remained virtually non-existent. None of the autopsies had shown up anything useful. All of the victims had died from either strokes or cardiac arrest. The only evidence that pointed to foul play was the bruising on their wrists, ankles and mouths. They had all been restrained and gagged.

He had been banging his head against that wall for weeks. Interviewing family members, tracking down acquaintances and last known contacts. If there was a connection, then he had failed to see one. The victims had ranged from businessmen and bankers, to teachers, bartenders, university students and known criminals. There had been no links between any of them, even after his team had finished their extensive background checks.

Then there had been a break in the case.

Someone had made a mistake and the last two bodies had yielded the first trace evidence. A small trace of fluorescent ink, the kind used in nightclubs, designed to glow in black light. The samples were small, but one of his team had discovered something when looking at the two pieces of evidence side-by-side. There was a slight overlap between the two smudges. There wasn’t much to go on, but they had found a match in their database.

That had led him to the nightclub. His memory grew fuzzy after that.

A few vague flashes of crossing the main floor and being led up a flight of stairs into an office. They felt more like afterimages from the strobe lighting rather than real memories. He had met the owner. Then…nothing.

There was only one conclusion he could draw. He had been captured.

But where was he?

The darkness around him was complete and he had no sense of his surroundings beyond a feeling of claustrophobia.

A small storage room maybe?

Whatever he was lying on was soft and yielding, but he couldn’t move a muscle. He tried to talk through the gag, struggling to make enough noise to gauge the size of the space he was in. But the sound was muffled and felt flat to his ears.

Insulated? It must be.

He took a deep breath through his nose, trying to steady his nerves and found himself fighting hard against the sudden urge to retch. With the gag in his mouth, if he gave into the urge he would choke on his own vomit. The room stank of death, mixed in with stench of stale sweat, urine and loosed bowels.

Where the hell was he? Where was his backup?

He had checked in before entering the club, surely HQ had flagged his disappearance and sent a team over to investigate.

He struggled again, but it was a token effort. The memory of dying was still sharp in his mind and he felt drained and defeated.

Had he really died?

It had certainly felt like it.

————

He remembered flashing his lights at the car ahead of him, signalling for it to pull over. He had called in the stop to HQ and then approached the other vehicle from the side.

He had been reaching to rap on the window when the door had opened and the muzzle of the automatic rifle had poked through the door.

His reflexes had kicked in and he had immediately started to move towards cover, but he was too late. A three-round burst had hit it in the lower stomach, just below the Kevlar vest.

Shock had flooded his body, numbing his senses as he had hit the hard concrete. He had seen the car drive off in slow motion, watched it speed off into the traffic.

There had been shouts, distant and muffled, as if under water. Someone had leaned over him, but there features were vague and undefined. The sun, shone brightly down somewhere to his right, briefly passing out from behind a cloud.

There had been the cold. A hard wave that had swept over him. He had been chilled to the bone, but for some reason his body wasn’t shivering. He felt something let go, and a warmth spread underneath him, mingling with the pool of blood he was lying in. Everything had felt so numb. So peaceful.

And just before he finally let go, there had been a brief moment of utter clarity and understanding. It had rocked him harder that the bullets, or the shock that followed. It was like plunging into an ice bath after a session in the steam room. Everything had suddenly made sense to him.

————

Then he had woken up and that feeling of clarity had vanished, leaving him feeling empty inside. He was pulled from his thoughts as a crack appeared in the darkness above him.

A narrow slit that expanded with a hiss as the the ceiling swung back. Not a ceiling though, he realised with a surge of terror. That was the lid of a Neuropod. Those things had been a miracle when they were first created. Essentially a sensory isolation pod, they used a series of electrodes to send images directly into the brain. The original application had been therapeutic, used to treat various mental health conditions. As the technology had advanced, so had their uses. They were now used for training surgeons and pilots, and even in some high-end driving schools. The result was an experience essentially indistinguishable from reality.

He had heard rumours that some of the units had found their way into less reputable hands. Being repurposed in underground clubs for everything from satisfying illicit sexual proclivities to torture. They had just been rumours, and to date, there had been no conclusive evidence that such places really existed.

Now he was lying in one.

————

Another flood of memories.

He remembered being subdued by the club owner’s goons, and dragged through a door at the back of the office.

The stairs beyond the door had led down to a damp basement, thick with the cloying smell of death and excrement.

The basement had contained a row of three pods, two of them already sealed. One of the sealed units had a green light, flashing rhythmically on the control panel at the end. The other had a single steady red light.

He was dragged towards the empty pod and thrown onto the foam surface.

He tried to struggle, but the burly men restrained him, pushing him further into the foam. One of them reached across and pulled a strap from the base of the pod.

Securing it tight around his chest and locking it into place. His legs had received the same treatment, and secured, the men had stepped away from the pod. The door had closed over him with the faint hum of electric motors.

Then the pain had begun.

————

He closed his eyes to the light as the pod finished opening and sound rushed back into the world.

Someone was retching nearby, someone else laughing. As he blinked his eyes, trying to become accustomed to the bright light, he saw a blurred figure standing over him.

The man stood impassively, staring down at him while his body readjusted to the light and noise. The isolation pods had a disorienting effect on the users.

His world shifted as the hydraulic arms on the pod engaged and he was tilted upright.

His pulse quickened, and his heart pounded, the rhythm strange, and erratic. Confused. He tried struggling again, but he was held securely to the foam by the straps across his chest and legs. The room came into view behind the figure, bare concrete walls and floor, dark stains and splatters breaking up the bare gray. He forced himself to take it all in, despite the screaming in his head urging him to ignore them. If he survived this, he needed to gather as much information as he could.

A solid steel door was the only exit, so little hope of escape even if he could break free. And he didn’t think he was in any shape to do much of anything. Ventilation shafts, set high in the walls, although the lack of background noise suggested they weren’t in operation. Two other pods were installed next to his, both closed. He couldn’t see the status lights from where he lay.

Another man he vaguely remembered seeing before, stood in a dirty lab-coat near a table to one side. He was looking over the scene impatiently, as if he had somewhere more important to be and this was just a waste of his time. An array of stainless steel surgical instruments lay on a metal tray in the center of the table. They didn’t look sterile, even from where lay. Many of them had dirty brown stains, and there was a long, dried-in smear on the tray. It looked liked someone had wiped it down hurriedly, but made no attempt to really clean it.

He pulled his attention from the table and returned his focus to the man standing over him. The man smiled down at him, a sickening, smug twist of his lips. More a sneer than a smile, and another memory flashed through his mind.

————

A knife, serrated along one edge, plunging into his gut, twisting viciously as it cut through his flesh. Searing pain, turning the world white.

A line of traffic snaking across the city below him. Wind pulling at his hair. A heavy hand planted in the middle of his back.

An abrupt shove and the world below suddenly rushed up to meet him. Blackness.

He was sitting in a cafe, reading through some reports. Something cold against his throat. A brief pressure and a hot line of pain. Something warm and wet flowed down his chest. It was hard to breathe. His breath gurgled in his chest.

Walking down the street with his wife. He spun as a gunshot rang out nearby, reaching for the gun at his waist.

People were screaming, running in all directions, obscuring his view. Something pulled at his leg. He looked down to see tears and terror in his wife’s eyes. Then nothing. She was gone, a gaping wound in her chest.

————

He struggled against the gag and his restraints again, but nothing gave. Tears streamed down his face.

How many times? How many times had it been?

His resolve shattered under the pain and anguish as more memories flooded in.

————

Thrashing, struggling as someone held his head under water.

Burning pain as high voltage current passed into his body.

Car tires screeching following by a sickening thud.

A chair toppling as the rope pulled tight around his neck.

A simple fall in the bath, the back of his neck striking the faucet as he fell.

————

How many times?

He had lost count.

He tried desperately to hold onto his resolve, stay true to his mission. He needed to find a way out. But he could barely remember his name.

His whole world consisted of those flashes of memories and the distant voices calling to him as he fell into blackness.

He looked the man in the eye, trying to meet the easy gaze of his captor. But he couldn’t hold it for more than a few seconds now. Before. Before all the deaths and torture. Even for the first few times after they strapped him into the pod. He had challenged his captor, met his gaze. It had little effect. Each time the man just smiled. And waited.

He could feel his will giving way. He had hoped he would die first, but they seemed to know just how much he could take. Just how far they could push him each session. How close to the edge they could bring him before pulling back. He could feel his resistance slipping, they would break him soon.

The man grinned as if he could read his thoughts. He knew he was getting close now.

He watched as the man traced his finger along the monitor next to the bed, his eyes flitting between the vital signs, interpreting the mass of data.

One more, just one more.

He knew somewhere deep down that one more dive would kill him. He could feel it in the ragged beating of his heart, the way the world swam around him. One more and he would be free. If he could just convince him to put him under one more time.

The smile widened on the man’s face. When he spoke, the world fell apart.

‘Take him back to his cell. I will risk no further damage tonight.’ his smile turned wicked, ‘I think we need to give him a break for a few days.‘

He screamed on the inside, his ragged cries mixing with the voices that called out for him. He wanted to join them. To be free from the pain.

He struggled again. Straining against the straps, the veins and tendons in his neck and arms popping. He watched helplessly as the man in white approached, tapping a syringe.

The man was still laughing as he dropped into oblivion.