Chapter One
Adam
The present day
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THE INSISTENT BEEPING vibrating through the darkness was the only sign that I was still alive.
Beyond that one, discernible sound, nothing else was familiar.
I didn’t recognize the dark place I’d tumbled into.
I simply awoke there, amidst the circling mists, and seemed to have been doomed to wander through it ever since; a silent march through the endless gloom.
I didn’t know how long that journey had gone on for.
Days, maybe? But I supposed it could have only been an hour.
There was no way to quantify time in the hazy neverland.
All that was apparent as I stumbled forward in the shadows was that, wherever I was, it was a place between the living and the dead.
I was alive, or at least, I hoped I was, but nothing else there appeared to share my good fortune.
The occasional specter passed me on my trudge—ghosts both of my past, and of souls I’d never met—all seemingly on their own futile journeys.
No words were exchanged between us, only fleeting glances through the cloud, but there was solace in knowing I wasn’t entirely on my own there.
There were other characters lost in the black.
Beep.
I turned my head at the sound, its resonance recognizable. Deep in the pit of sleep I seemed to have fallen into, its incessant noise was less of an irritant and more of a salvation, a link to wherever I’d come from.
A link to who I was.
Whatever was making that noise, and wherever it originated from, that was where I needed to get back to.
Beep.
Lifting my hand in front of my face, I could just make out my palm in the gray mists. The fog in those barren parts had a life of its own, a malevolent and encroaching beast that grasped for my ankles and tried to trip me, but even its intensity wasn’t sufficient to blind me.
“I’m still alive, then.” My fingers grazed my temples, the deed comforting as I wandered on. “Not gone forever.”
Alive.
The word jarred.
I had reasons to be alive, didn’t I?
Someone was supposed to be with me.
Someone important. But who?
Beep.
“Adam.”
My name echoed from somewhere far away in the guise of a female’s voice, and though I spun to greet its owner, there was no evidence of her in the shifting shadows.
“Adam, konnen Sie mich horen? Can you hear me?”
“Yes!” I called out, hoping my voice would travel through the thick fog to whatever lay beyond its insidious reach.
“Adam!” The cry was shriller that time, melding into the next beep as it came. “Adam, wake up.”
“I’m trying to.” Turning in a circle, I thrust my fist through the gloom, reaching for anything I could sense there, but there was nothing. Nothing but the low-level panic stirring inside me. If there was help waiting in the murk, then why the hell couldn’t they hear me? “I’m here!”
Beep.
“Lass uns Englisch sprechen.” Her voice came in German again, but her instruction that they speak English was wasted. I was managing the translation with ease. “Maybe English will help to rouse him.”
“Vitals are good.” Another voice that time, another woman; the sound of her voice whipped around me like a cold breeze. “Some response to painful stimulus.”
Pain? I straightened at that idea, cognizant that discomfort had played some part in bringing me to that dark place.
“Reduce the dosage of sedative.” The first voice was contemplative. “Let’s see how he responds.”
Beep.
How I respond?
Looking to the smoggy sky, I wanted to scream with frustration. I’d been staggering around in the haze, aware of no one except the occasional phantom, yet abruptly, there were people apparently willing to pull me from the gloom. However loudly I called out, though, they didn’t seem to hear me.
Dread rose within me, ballooning from my stomach and traveling north, threatening to cut off my air supply. If they couldn’t hear me, what did that mean?
Would I be trapped in the desolate wasteland for eternity?
“No!” I screamed that time, falling to my knees as the simple task of holding up my own head became suddenly intolerable.
If I couldn’t make them acknowledge me, I’d be destined to wander in the hopelessness for all time, and I wouldn’t be able to cope.
I was a man of action, not of faith, and I’d rarely given any thought to what came after life.
While I clung to the idea that death hadn’t yet seized me, I couldn’t believe the fate awaiting me once its icy grasp had caught me, was an eternity of bleak nothingness.
“Heart rate accelerating.”
“Adam!” The first voice was terser. “I know you can hear us, Adam. Wake. Up!”
My fingers slipped into the fog by my feet, my head heavy and insisting I sought somewhere to rest, and soon.
“I think we’re losing him, Doctor.”
Swallowing back the alarm surging through me, I lifted my face and gasped for fresh air. Anything but the thick, dank mist, whose tendrils snaked past my nostrils and down my throat as though its mission was to suffocate the life from me.
Beep, beep, beep.
The rhythm that had always been so regular sped up to match my panic.
In one last-ditch attempt to catapult myself from the mysterious ditch I’d been flung into, I rose higher on my knees, stretching my neck past the fog’s reach to take in a lungful of air.
Forcing the remaining oxygen from my throat, I let out a loud, guttural shout, the noise bouncing back to me in the dark.
“Adam.”
I opened my eyes, the intensity of the light shining around me ensuring I immediately blinked them closed again.
“He’s back.” The woman leaning over me sounded relieved, her satisfied smile the first thing I acknowledged when my eyes fluttered free from the blackness that had held me for so long.
Staring up at her, I took in the shape of her face. Her long, dark hair reminded me of somebody I used to know, but frustratingly, the name of the woman escaped me.
“Willkommen zurück, Mr. Harper. Welcome back.”
Intending to reply, I parted my lips to ask, but there was no power in my voice.
“No, do not speak.” She wagged a stern finger at me. “You need to rest.”
Beep.
I turned my head against the mountain of pillows I was propped up on, finally able to identify the machine responsible for the noise that had guided me in the gloom.
Taking in its size and shape, I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.
The sounds, it seemed, were associated with a graphical representation of my heart rate.
Cables streamed from the contraption, the labyrinth of their wires attached to various points on my chest.
Hospital.
Peering around the white room, my location suddenly made sense. I must have been in hospital. But why? My gaze traveled between the two women at either side of my bedside. They were deep in conversation about my condition, but I struggled to keep up with their discourse.
“Was ist passiert?”
I forced the words out, needing to know what had happened to land me in a hospital bed. The last thing I recalled was being in charge at Fortorus, but that was in Britain. How on Earth had I ended up in a German hospital bed?
The doctor’s focus fell back on me in a heartbeat, her finger pressing to her lips as she responded. “Shhh.”
My eyes blinked wider at her chastisement. Didn’t she know who I was? Even if I wasn’t on British soil, it took a bold woman to tell the commander general to be quiet.
“Your elevated hypertension caused you to lose consciousness, Adam, and we were told you recently received a blow to the back of the head.” She presented the assertions as statements, but they didn’t make sense. What hypertension? I’d always been as fit as a fiddle.
“Do you remember these things?” Her attention drilled into me. “You can simply nod or gently shake your head to let us know.”
A blow to the back of the head?
My brows knitted at the confusing concept. Who would have had the audacity to attack me?
“His expression says he does not recall.” The other woman’s voice was softer, and when I glanced her way, her face seemed more sympathetic to my plight.
“Temporary amnesia, perhaps, but his vitals seem steady now.” The doctor’s gaze shifted from the beeping machine to me. “Your memory should return, Adam, and when it does, the police will want to see you. Rest now. Elsa will bring you a drink of water.”
She nodded to the other woman, who turned and walked from the room.
“The police?” I swallowed, wishing I could wash away my dry throat as well as the stale taste in my mouth. “Why do the police want to see me?”
It was only when I went to lift my hand and wipe at my eyes that I realized my left wrist was cuffed to the side of the bed. Blinking at the metal bracelet, my mind reeled.
“W-why am I handcuffed?”
“I said, rest.” She emphasized the final word and encouraged my hand to lie on the sheets. Fortunately, the length of the metal chain between the cuffs meant the deed was easily achieved. “No more questions for now. You might be used to having power, but in this place, Adam, my word is law.”