The Healer, The Thief, and the Painter. Act 1 The Healer

I didn't know how many hours had passed since Alexander and I were taken. As I woke up for the first time I only saw blackness and felt scratchy feel of wool around my entire head. I didn't know why they had taken us, we had no secrets and we had no military intelligence. We were only two soldiers looking out for one another. I heard the sound of a door open and close slowly and slow footsteps approaching. A wave of cold water flowed over me, soaking through my camouflage and chilling me to the bone. I cried out which was muffled by the wool sack. When the ice water stopped I sat shivering for at least a minute until the covering was pulled off of my head. I was staring back into the grey eyes that had kidnapped me. He had changed clothes and was now sporting a black buttoned shirt with matching pants and red suit jacket. "Hello sir." he slurred. "Welcome to my humble abode."

That's when I tried to head butt him. My head was about halfway to his nose before he grabbed my nose with one hand and jerked it too the right and pulled a small box out of his pants pocket and jammed it towards my neck. It was black and had two metal prongs sticking out of it and for some reason it had a small neon lit battery like object on the side. Before I could register stun gun, he depressed the button on the side and excruciating amounts of electricity racked through my body disabling the electrical impulses in my body, the water only allowing the electricity to run rampant through my system. I sat there convulsing until the electricity wore off and the smell of singed flesh filled my nostrils. He let go of my head and it hung loosely on my chest. "As I was saying," he continued, "I hope you enjoy your stay and all of my little toys. You can get out of here alive you know?" he asked.

"Highly unlikely you sad sack of shit." I snarled

"Oh but you can Mr..."

"Like I would tell you my name, you underestimate me sir."

"Do I ?" he asked and jammed the stun gun back into my neck again. Once I had stopped shaking he grabbed my chin and jerked my head so I could see his eyes. The grin he wore a second ago was now replaced with a snarl. "Since I do not know your name, I will give you a nickname until we can dig up information about you. How does Doctor sound? Based by the cross on your armor you must be a medic of some kind." He grinned at his own wit and then focused back on me. "I do know one thing about you though."

"What is that?" I groaned.

He slugged me in the face, fracturing my nose and sending blood from my mouth. "I know that you...", he said slowly, "have my weapon."

"I have never seen you before," I said to the floor, "So how could I steal your damn weapon!?"

"October twenty second 7:50 PM Mission Quickstrike. Does that ring any bells? he stated.

I froze,those specifics did mean something. That date was only two months ago. A small team including me, were sent to investigate a disturbance at a local laboratory. The townsfolk said that the plant had become despite being shut down for violating health regulations that had killed several children. Over a span of two weeks passed and armored trucks were carrying who knows what into the labs depth. We went at night and pried the doors open, gaining access into the quarantine area where the most disturbance was reported. What we found was horrifying at least. Areas had been isolated with cages with thick glass walls, and in those areas were corpses in varying stages of decomposition, yet every group of bodies was different. One group would be bloated beyond recognition, while another would be be basically skeletons covered in skin.

Then someone opened fire. The bullet only grazed one of our squad member's calves, but we all pulled out our weapons and shot to kill. Somehow we missed all of the quarantine tanks. The shot had originated from a small office in the back of the lab. What we found was high end medical equipment along with distillers, centrifuges, and what appeared to be the baby of a Tesla coil and a wind turbine. A huge steel cylinder lying on its side, with arcs of lightning bounding inside. We found the shooter.

He was in a bright yellow haz mat suit and a Glock in his right hand. His suit was stained red with blood. The only other thing in the room was a desk with a small rack for holding vials of liquid on the surface. There were ten slots and they were all full of vials with white liquid inside. Commander Leonard Polonski, aka Bulletime, walked over to the rack slowly and picked it up as if he was holding a pair of nuclear warheads instead of chemistry vials. "Take this to the vehicle," he said walking over and handing the rack to me. "Make sure it is safe, we don't know what the hell this is. The techies at base might be able to figure out why he was so diligent to protect these."

"Yes sir" I said saluting him. I walked quickly through the nightmare daring not to look at any of the corpses. I gasped in relief as I reached our line of Humvees and the fresh night air. I made a beeline towards the heavily armored one in the center. I fetched the keys from my left breast pocket and fitted into the passenger door keyhole. It popped open and the small overhead light dinged on. There were two rows of seats and a small panel with a keypad in between the row. I tapped the combination, 9372 and the door swung open with a pull. There was nothing inside, but a small .45 caliber colt pistol in case of an emergency. I pulled the gun out and slotted it in my hip holster opposite my other identical pistol. I had just fitted in the vials when I felt the cold barrel of a gun press against the base of my skull. I froze and I heard a man's voice behind me. "Open safe now." he said in broken English.

"Give me a second," I said, "The safe a a thirty second cool down period before it can be opened again."

"That man you kill in there," he continued "That man was my brother. He getting married in a week. Not anymore, you kill him, now when I get stuff back in my possession, I kill you." That was all that I could take. I flipped around suddenly and pinned his gun arm between his body and mine. I grabbed the fingers surrounding the hilt of the gun with my left hand and pulled them back with a satisfying breaking noise. He screamed and pulled away from me clutching his disabled hand with the uninjured one. He dropped the silver weapon onto the sandy ground, and at the same time, I pulled both pistols from my holsters, pointed them at his head, and switched off the safety. I looked into his eyes and I saw only sadness, a brother mourning for his lost sibling. But then it was consumed by the fire of hate and revenge for that person who had cut down one of his loved ones. He lunged at his fallen weapon and I pulled the trigger. He moved no more.

The corpse flopped onto the sand and started bleeding, infusing the grit with the life water of another human. I was holstering the weapons when I heard yelling coming from the laboratory. I looked and saw my entire squad except for Bullettime and some redhead new kid who were on my side, yelling and pounding against the thick set glass panes of the door. I didn't know what the matter was until I approached closer, and I saw that somehow the doors had shut, and thin titanium bars had sealed off the lab from the cars. "What happened!?" I yelled at Leo.

"Trap system!" he yelled back, "we were heading back to regroup when we heard the gunshot, when Jenkins here and I stepped over the threshold, the doors sealed tighter than the General's wallet!"

He and Jenkins stopped pounding at the glass when they heard one of the trapped soldiers yell. "Sirs! Get out of here! A countdown has been announced over the audio. This place is rigged to blow in thirty seconds!" Leo's face became white as the blood fled from his upper body. "I'm sorry..." he started.

"Don't be," the soldier replied, "We all signed up for this. Take the Humvee and get out of here!"

"Goodbye soldiers." he cried, and put his palm against the glass. The doomed personnel copied his movement, then pulled away back into the death laboratory. I grabbed Leo's arm and Jenkins and I had to drag him from the doors. We stuffed him in the back row where he curled in a fetal position. Jenkins took the passenger seat as I fit the key in and turned over the engine. I drove like a maniac until the lab was a small building in the distance. Then the explosion went off completely obliterating the lab and the squad inside. The shock wave rattled us like peas in a tumble dryer. We didn't dare look back until we reached our base two hours away. By that time Leo had fallen asleep in the back of the vehicle. When we arrived at the base, Leo was put on a stretcher and was carted away.

As Jenkins and I exited the vehicle, I felt heavy footsteps approach us, and even though I knew who it was, I turned around anyway and was left staring into the face of our General Ash Kenwood. He was only a couple inches taller than me and was a portly man with a thin mustache that jutted out from his upper lip like two brown razors. He opened his mouth and his voice boomed over me like a tidal wave on a field mouse. "Now what the hell is going on!?" he boomed, "I send you out with a full squad of some of my finest men to investigate a laboratory! And you come back only with their mentally challenged commander, and the communications boy!?" At this point we had gathered a crowd, Ash was spitting all over me, and his face looked like a ripe grape with veins. "Excuse me sir..." Alex started, but was stopped by one of Ash's massive hands. "Not now boy! I am teaching this soldier what happens when he loses my best men!" Then he started hitting me with his free hand. Welts formed on my flesh obscuring one of my eyes and forcing me to the sand.

The other soldiers just stood there, watching it happen, and I felt the fire of rage building with every blow. But fire can also strengthen as well as destroy and what happened in the next moments forged the chains of friendship and loyalty between the communications boy and I. With my one good eye, I saw Alex as an orange blur jab forward with both hands and seized Ash's huge palm, and before anyone could stop him, he opened his mouth and dug his teeth into the General's palm. The obese man cried in pain and pulled his hand from Alex's mouth, leaving a fine trail of saliva and blood, then slammed his uninjured palm into the kid's face. He only hit him once, but it sent Alex sprawled on the ground with blood pouring from his mouth and nostrils. Ash did not beat him like he did me though. Instead he gripped his wounded palm and hissed. "You're dead soldier, do you hear me?! Dead!" He then limped away with his pride tucked between his legs to the medical tent. He would never tell the truth of what happened. He would make it seem like he had fought a lion with one hand and was shooting terrorists with a LMG in the other hand.

The crowd slowly dissipated and I picked myself off of the ground and gingerly touched the area of bruises where the right side of my face used to be, and looked where the kid was. He had sat up and was cupping his nose. "You ok?" I slurred as I helped him up with one hand.

"Yeah..." he answered, "has he always been like that?"

"What a douchebag? Always." I replied, as we started to walked to Leo's "hospital".

"Wait..." he started and moved back to our Humvee. "We forgot the vials." He pulled them out and I mentally slapped myself.

"Good thinking." I said, "Though you do know that now we have to watch out for each other right? Ash is going to make our lives a living hell now. So friends to the end?" I stuck out my hand and it was only a split second before he shook it.

"Friends to the end." he answered.

We then went to check on Leo and the memory faded to black. I was still looking into the kidnapper's face and his lips were moving but I couldn't hear. He pressed the gun against my neck and shocked me again, but nothing could stop my body shutting down for repairs. My head slumped and I passed out.