The Unknown - Chapter 1

It was the sweetest dream.

He stood in the center of a busy plaza, lined with stalls and vendors. It was a cool evening, and a light breeze blew across the plaza. His eyes took in the scene around him. Tourists haggling with eccentric vendors, couples laughing over a romantic dinner, a young man singing a beautiful melody while a slender girl accompanied him on the guitar.

The crowd in front of him parted and there she was. He looked into her hazel eyes, as he had so many times before. She smiled, and the whole plaza seemed to glow with a faint yellow light. He began to walk towards her, yet as he did something changed. What was once a gentle breeze suddenly became a powerful gale. Terror seized him, and he watched as the winds uprooted the stalls and buildings that surrounded the plaza. He could only stare as powerful gusts carried the people around him high into the sky. He could see screams forming on their lips, but the only sound that filled his ears was the wail of the ferocious storm. The sound was like nothing else he had ever heard, fierce enough to consume any other sound for miles around. He stood rooted to the spot, as did the girl before him.

And then, it was just the two of them.

She had changed too. Her hazel eyes, once warm and understanding, were now filled with fear, and perhaps something worse than that too. They truly were windows to the soul, and behind those windows something evil lurked. Something that changed what her once beautiful eyes saw. Something that changed him from a loving father to the very person that had destroyed her and made her this way.

Something that ravaged and corrupted her mind, and filled it to the brim with chaos, turning friends and family into enemies, good to evil and joy to suffering.

And suddenly, she too was gone and he lay awake, the dream already beginning to fade from his memory. It would return that night, and the next morning it would once again fade, and the cycle would continue, each night bringing fresh horrors disguised as sweet dreams.

His dream long since forgotten, Richard Morrison made his way to Saint Mary’s hospital, where he worked. It did not take him long to make his way through the town, as these days the streets were clear of traffic, especially at such an early hour. Before he knew it, he was cruising down the highway that lead out of the city towards the hospital.

The bleak weather had once again aligned itself with Richard’s mood, and as he turned right onto the driveway that led up to Saint Mary’s, he reflected that he still could not understand what exactly the old loony bin meant to him, and why he continued to come back to the place. He was no closer to what his objective than he had been those 12 years ago when his little girl had been taken away from him.

He pulled up to the security checkpoint, where several stone-faced guards were waiting for him. Many more heavily armed guards watched him carefully from the towering walls that encircled the asylum. He exited his car so that two of them could search it for anything that wasn’t approved by the St. Mary’s Administration. He handed his ID to the third guard an opened his suitcase so it too could be searched. Lastly he stepped to the side so that the guard, could scan him with a complex device that could detect not only any objects on his person, but also the level of alcohol or other substances present in his body.

This practice had become routine due to the widespread availability of Warp, an illegal and extremely undetectable drug that was feared by almost everyone Richard knew, and for good reason too. It heightened one’s senses and perception, but destroyed their moral compass, effectively turning one into a psychopath, capable of manipulating people to pursue their own evil ends.

At last, he finally got back into his car and made his way toward the main entrance. He stared up at the immense structure that lay before him. It never ceased to amaze him how not a single person truly knew all that went on inside St Mary’s many wards and laboratories, with the exception of the board of course. He was patted down once more at the doors of the hospital before he was allowed enter.

Richard then made his way towards the ward he was assigned to which happened to be devoted to children exposed to trauma, aptly named “The Child Trauma Ward”. It was one of the more cheery parts of the hospital, and one of the few parts where the word hospital accurately described what went on there. There were parts of Mary’s, where prison would be a more suitable descriptor, and the “patients” kept there were one of the reasons why the walls surrounding Mary’s were topped with barbed wire and why the guards carried semi-automatic rifles.

When he entered his office, Jose, his energetic new secretary leaped to his feet and reminded him that he was scheduled for a Therapy session with Arnold, a boy who had experienced more horrors and abuse in 8 years than most adults would experience in his lifetime. He stepped into the boys room and gave him a war smile. Arnold’s smile was empty, as if he knew he was supposed to smile but had never experienced real happiness in his life. He saw the same vacant look in his eyes as he had seen in the eyes of so many kids before him. How Richard managed to look into those eyes he could not explain. Even though Arnold's eye’s were bright blue, they reminded him so much of his little girl that it was painful. Tears almost reached his eyes. Richard breathed in deeply, and upon breathing out he released that immobilizing feeling.

Time to get to work.