Story code: ST-000726
Part 2: Hostile Territory
The heavier of the two hostiles lunged first. David dropped his center of gravity, the razor-sharp crease of his wool trousers pulling taut before the fabric failed with a loud, tearing rip. He did not register the ruined clothing. He registered the heavy hand reaching for his collar. Muscle memory, drilled into his nervous system a decade ago and buried under years of corporate board meetings, ignited.
David stepped inside the hostile’s reach. He seized the thick forearm, pivoted his hips, and used the man’s own momentum to throw him. The guard crashed into a row of plastic waiting room chairs, shattering them in a cascade of sharp cracks that sounded terrifyingly like small-arms fire.
“Cover the flank!” David roared, his voice cracking. He spun toward the second threat.
Before he could brace, the second guard hit him at waist height. The impact drove the breath from David’s lungs. They slammed onto the hard linoleum. The back of David’s skull bounced against the floor, sending a spray of white-hot sparks across his vision. The buzzing fluorescent lights above morphed into the blinding sun glaring through the canopy of the Korengal. The smell of stale coffee vanished, replaced by the phantom stench of cordite and copper.
David thrashed, bucking his hips to throw the weight off him. His expensive navy silk tie wrapped around his own throat in the scramble, choking him. He tore at it with bloodied fingers, ripping the silk. His pristine white collar tore open, popping the top button across the room. He needed to get to the radio. He needed to call in air support. If they lost this elevation, the whole squad was dead.
“Hold him down! Get his legs!” a voice shouted from the periphery.
A third mass of weight slammed onto David’s calves. Hands grabbed his wrists. He fought with the desperate, feral strength of a man fighting for his life, kicking, twisting, and snarling. A heavy knee dropped squarely between his shoulder blades, pinning his chest to the floor. The pressure was immense.
“Stop resisting! VA Police! Stop resisting!”
The words penetrated the fog, sharp and metallic. A thick plastic zip-tie ratcheted tightly around David’s left wrist. They wrenched his arm painfully behind his back, smearing the blood from his torn cuticles across the back of his ruined suit jacket. The second zip-tie clicked into place, binding his right wrist to his left.
The cold linoleum pressed against David’s cheek. The frigid surface, combined with the lack of oxygen from the crushing weight on his back, acted like a bucket of ice water. The phantom scent of cordite evaporated. The blinding sun dissolved back into flickering, buzzing fluorescent tubes.
David blinked, his chest heaving as he gasped for air. The delusion fractured, leaving him suddenly and horrifyingly aware of his surroundings.
He was not on a ridge. He was pinned to the floor of the VA waiting room.
To his left, his leather folio lay upended. His meticulously organized medical records, printed on heavy-stock paper, were scattered through puddles of spilled coffee and droplets of his own blood. His tailored wool trousers were torn from the knee to the thigh. The cuffs of his shirt were soaked in crimson.
He slowly raised his eyes. The waiting room was dead silent. The veterans who had been slouching in their chairs were now standing against the far walls, staring at him with a mixture of horror and pity.
“Is everyone okay?” a new voice demanded.
A man wearing a white coat over a blue button-down shirt jogged into David’s line of sight. He carried a tablet and wore a clip-on badge that identified him as the clinic’s attending administrator.
“He attacked us, Dr. Evans,” the guard kneeling on David’s back panted. “Just went completely berserk. Threw Jenkins into the chairs.”
Dr. Evans looked down at David. He took in the shredded Italian wool, the expensive pomade now failing to hold David’s disheveled hair, and the polished oxfords scuffed and smeared with dirt. The doctor’s expression hardened into one of deep disgust.
“Susan, did he say what he was here for?” Dr. Evans asked, stepping over David’s bound legs to look at the clerk, who was still trembling behind the bowed plexiglass.
“He demanded to skip the line,” Susan’s voice drifted through the speaker, shaking. “He said he was an emergency walk-in. But look at him, Doctor. He’s dressed like a banker. I told him to wait, and he just… he exploded.”
Dr. Evans shook his head, crouching slightly to inspect David’s dilated eyes. “Pupils are blown. Sweating profusely. Erratic violence.” He stood back up, addressing the guards. “He’s not a psych emergency. He’s tweaking. Probably synthetic stimulants or cocaine. We get these corporate guys coming down here thinking they can score cheap meds or jump the queue when their private docs cut them off.”
Panic, cold and absolute, pierced through David’s exhaustion. The system wasn’t just dismissing his sanity anymore; it was rewriting his reality.
“No,” David croaked. His throat felt like shredded paper. He struggled to lift his head off the cold floor. “No drugs. Nineteen days. No sleep. I need… trauma consult. Sector four…”
“Keep him pinned,” Dr. Evans interrupted, not even looking at David as he tapped furiously on his tablet. “Don’t bother with the psych ward. Call the metro police. He assaulted federal security officers while under the influence. Let them put him in the county drunk tank.”
“Please,” David begged, his voice dropping to a raw, pathetic whisper that humiliated him. The last shred of his perfect armor dissolved into nothing. “I am… I am losing my mind. Please look at my file. Just read the file.”
Dr. Evans stepped firmly on one of the scattered pieces of David’s medical record, his rubber-soled shoe leaving a dirty print over David’s honorable discharge summary. “Read him his rights and get him out of my clinic. He’s a liability.”