Obsidian

Chapter Six

This about gets you caught up to where I pre-emptively started my tale. Surrounded by the deepest, darkness I had ever been submerged in, I was pressing above my brow where a lump had started to form after assuming there was space for me to sit up. I felt a drop of blood trickle where I had removed the sliver that had dug into my forehead moments ago. Disoriented and distraught, a man can only review his past actions so long, starting with the seed that planted my quest for knowledge during the Kevin Neill incident, to the recruitment back in Southmoor, to stumbling on the most unexpected alien invasion I could have hypothesized. The last thing that flashed in my thoughts before dealing with the present situation was how Stone had cold-cocked me.

"How could you have been so stupid, Davis?" I said aloud. My voice sounded stifled by the small quarters I was in. Spreading my appendages to see how large the diameter of this wooden prison was, I realized I was in one of two things: A transport crate, or a coffin. Neither option instilled much faith that I was going to come out of this on the right side. Getting out of my thoughts, I realized there was a low murmur outside of the box. While focusing on the inaudible words, I was surprised as the vessel I was compacted into was now starting to move. It threw me off guard because not only could I not see mere inches in front of me, but now I was jolting from left to right, as unequally sized parties had been tasked with moving me from wherever I was located to a new spot, hopefully outside of this wooden tomb.

The bottom bedding of the crate pressed into my back, as my chauffeurs violently stopped. I looked from side to side, lost in the onyx palette of nothingness. Silence loomed from my surroundings and after the longest minute of my life, I heard the sharp crack of splintering wood. It wasn't until the second crack that the light I had taken for granted most of my life, started to seep into my dark habitat. I stared at the line of blinding color. One last crack, the loudest of the three, led to an explosion of light, causing my eyes to water and tears to escape before my eyelids could press hard enough to shield my retinas.

I was able to slowly, I mean really slowly, open my eyes. The tears that couldn't free themselves before clamping my lids shut now ran down my face as I tried to focus on what was in front of me. Laying down still, I could see not the shining stars that were above me before being knocked out, but a ceiling made of steel or aluminum. I could not see them in my peripheral but some lighting had been set up as well. I could see the contrast between the sides of the box I was in and the material creating the walls of the structure I had been delivered to.

"Russell?" I heard the pompous, British accent call out for me to stand up.

I slowly sat up, feeling my brain shaking against the wall of my skull as I did so. To my left I saw a row of computer monitors, to the right were microscopes, and to the far right, at the end of the rectangular room, were three tanks that took up the entire space from the floor to the roof of the structure. The only tank that had anything in it was the first tank on the left. There, I saw the shadow of a body, but I could not see more defining features than that. The other two tanks were empty except for a slightly murky liquid that filled up three-quarters of the visible glass viewing panel.

"Russell?" Stone called out from behind me again.

I was mad, furious that I had let him get the jump on me. "Stone, you sonofabitch. Just wait until this headache goes away and—"

I turned to confront the cocky and arrogant man with the intention of punching him in the mouth. As I shakily recaptured my footing, I saw Stone fifteen feet away. I should say, I saw some of him. A large, organic-looking wall, bubbling with movement and slime coating it, held the man I knew as Wendall Stone in an organic prison. Only exposing his face, I could see branches of the black goop extending over his entire six-foot-two frame, barely allowing him to resemble a human being.