Iglesia ………………………..Episode 11

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(Last Saturday’s Episode ………..you can read all the past episodes by clicking on the tag!)

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The first thing she saw was clouds. Clouds against a sky of a deeper and darker blue than she had ever seen before.

But there was something funny about the clouds. And come to think of it, there was something funny about waking up and seeing clouds. And come to think about it even more there was something funny about waking up at all since she didn’t remember going to sleep. The last thing she remembered….well, she couldn’t remember the last thing she remembered. So she concentrated on figuring out why the clouds looked funny and why the sky was such a deep dark blue…and so oddly shaped. She thought she had it figured out for a second, it was right on the tip of her consciousness, something about the edges of the clouds being made up of little squares. But instead of figuring it out, she faded back out…

He and his partner both managed to squeeze of exactly one round as the alarm bells sounded in his head…Of course it was actually more of a buzzer, who uses bells any more? But his mind called it an alarm bell anyway, what are ya gonna do?

The foam had already enclosed his arm and stiffened, so he couldn’t aim a shot, nor had he seen anything to aim at any way. But the instinct to pull the trigger was apparently shared, since his partner had done it too. And then his arm went painfully numb as something struck his elbow right at the nerve center and then levered his gun out of his now cold dead fingers.  His mind ran through all the options of hidden weapons and escape systems he could use to either strike back or to neutralize the foam or…or….or, but by that time the foam had hardened and he was completely immobilized. He tried sending an SOS out over his comm system, but all he got was static. They had been under radio silence of course, would The Center notice? Could they get here in time if they did? Whoever had done this had jammed all his systems, apparently.  Even the electric charge that was supposed to run through his suit to dissolve foam, on the off-chance that he should ever be immobilized in foam.  That set off the second alarm bell.

If his captors could jam ALL his systems…something was seriously wrong. That meant that they knew about the backup frequencies too.

Not good.

Not good at all.

He actually got scared. It had been a long time since he had been really afraid. He didn’t like it, much.

His head was immobilized just like the rest of his body, so he couldn’t even look around, all he could see were the starts shining down on him through the hole in the trains roof that they had just dropped through. That they had dropped in to some serious trouble through.  There was a strange buzzing in his head and he realized that they were using sonics to trigger his fear responses. In just a few seconds, he had transformed from one of the baddest motherfuckers on the planet into a big blob of immobile, terrified foam. He felt helpless and without options, which was by far the worst feeling extant in this fucking world, as far as he was concerned.

I will not surrender to despair.

He was instinctively wiggling his toes when his boots were ripped roughly off his feet. Apparently they had dissolved the faom around his feet. And it felt like someone was digging the lock pick out of the deep callous on his foot that he had, over time, carefully cultivated for the purpose of concealing the pick there. He had read that Houdini did that. When he wiggled his now free feet to try to stop them, the bottoms of his feet exploded in pain. As if someone had whacked them with a crowbar, which they probably had. When he recovered his senses a moment later he could feel his tormentor cutting his pants legs away and removing the commando stilettos he had strapped to each of his calves …then removing the high powered taser that he had strapped to his thigh, and the shaped plastique charge from his other thigh… and then he had the distinctly uncomfortable feeling…on oh so many levels…of having the snub nosed hammerless .38 he kept in his crotch removed. By someone with cold hands.

His feet were cuffed together right after that, so there were at least two tormentors, who kept dissolving the foam as they worked their way up his body, removing all of his weapons and clothes as they went. Pretty slick. He was incredibly dangerous and this was one of the few ways possible to neutralize and capture him. His gloves and sleeves were cut off and removed next, and various dangerous and deadly accoutrement with them He felt cuffs snap around one wrist after the other after.

The foam was cut away from his lower back and approximately ten pounds of lethal hardware in various forms were removed from the web harness there. And it was all happening very quickly and professionally. He was just getting his breathing under control, then he could start working against the fear….but with his shoulders and head still encased in just enough of the steel hard foam to immobilze his torso, he was hauled up to his now naked knees just in time to stare into the 1000 watt halogen light that was suddenly being shone in his eyes. Even without power the filter in his visor cut the brightness of the light, and he was just able to make out forms and almost faces…….but then the crowbar smashed into his visor, the point striking at exactly the angle they were taught at The Center was the only weak spot of their armor. It stopped right between his eyes, having just penetrated the skin and the capillaries there. Blood instantly sputed copiously into his eyes. It was terrifying. Intentionally so.

These guys were really good, he thought in a sort of distant professional way, after all they had successfully captured him, which was truly impossible…well almost apparently, and he was now, he had to grudgingly admit, completely stunned and terrified. Good technique, nice form.

As the full brightness of the light flooded in, blinding him through the blood he was just able to pull into focus the face of the man pulling the crowbar back after having cracked him so efficient in the face. It was his Yoga instructor.

“Howdy Ralph” he said as he spit blood as bravely as possible under the circumstances, into Ralph’s face with as much feeling as he could muster, all things considered. “How ya been?”