Chapter 59 – The Awakening

“Alright, relax!” I shouted, backing off at the SWAT team member’s request.

Only after I retreated more than a meter away from my original spot did the two masked special forces operators lower their weapons.

I breathed a sigh of relief once the SMGs were no longer pointed straight at my face. Why was I being treated like a war criminal? What the hell was going on here? I was the victim here, wasn’t I… Didn’t I just suffer a seizure?

I repeated my intentions again, slowly and clearly. “I just need to use the bathroom. Please.”

The SWAT member to the left tapped the radio on his chest and spoke into it.

Subject requires restroom services. Over.

The response came instantaneously. Copy that.

Restroom… services…

Something about that line didn’t sit too well with me. Ah well. In a situation where I was completely unarmed, it was best to listen to whatever instructions the nice men with automatic weapons had for me.

I sat down on the hospital bed again, being extra cautious to not make any sudden movements or show that I was a threat to them in any shape or form. With that in mind, I lied down and began to contemplate my existence.

The fact that a few catchy sound bytes from that popular short video app were playing in my head when I decided to contemplate my existence meant that my life was probably not worth shit, huh. Here I was, lying here in complete police custody for some reason, with all the time in the world in my hands. Someone like Plato or Aristotle could draw meaning from this situation, but not me. All that was in my head at this moment was a catchy song playing to a stupid cat video.

Was that video the meaning of life? After all, the cat did fall over after chasing a bait toy across a sofa. In its pursuit of glory, it failed to see that the ground ceased to exist past the parameters of the sofa, and so it fell straight onto the carpet face first.

Maybe that was the meaning of life… where I was the cat, and life was that attractive piece of bait, fluttering enticingly just above the dead space in front of the sofa…

Creak.

The door to the ICU opened less than ten centimeters, and a brown paper bag was passed from someone on the other side to the masked SWAT member on the right.

Then, the door closed. The SWAT member raised his hand with the paper bag in it. “Do not move.” His voice was garbled by the respirator mask he was wearing… it almost sounded as if he was Darth Vader from Star Wars.

He walked forward and placed the brown paper bag carefully on the floor.

“Retrieve the bag with one hand, and keep your other hand behind your head.”

I wordlessly complied with the strangely specific instructions, and took the paper bag from the floor.

After moving back to a ‘safe distance’ as per the SWAT team member’s continued instructions, I was then free to open the paper bag and see what was inside.

It was just a jar. A big one, to be fair, but still… just a fucking glass jar.

…

Restroom services, huh…

I unscrewed the lid of the jar.

“Hey, can you guys look away so I can take a piss in peace?” I said in an exasperated tone to the SWAT team members. Neither of them responded, or even showed any indication that I was even alive.

Cursing under my breath, I walked behind a patient curtain.

“Please remain within our line of sight,” the SWAT team member ordered. “Failure to comply with instructions will result in use of deadly force.”

Jesus christ… these guys really needed to loosen up a bit.

“Alright, here. I’ll stand right here where you can see me, but just not enough to see the jar, is that okay?” I asked while positioning myself so the curtain was only visually obstructing my lower area. It wasn’t that it mattered that much, but as a citizen of this country, I expected at least my basic human right to some degree of privacy.

The two SWAT members didn’t respond. I took that as an okay sign.

Psssssssssss.

I let loose a stream of yellow liquid right into the jar, as it swirled and began to fill up the container. Yellow meant that I was a bit dehydrated. Figured, since the only liquid going into my system was from that IV drip.

After I finished my business, I screwed the lid back on the jar and just held the warm glass container in my hand for a moment, taking in the absurdity of this whole situation. Why the hell was I being kept hostage here like a fucking animal? I was a law abiding citizen of the Republic of Korea. At least give me the dignity of being treated like a human being… The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that there was no legal justification for this kind of treatment. I was starting to feel a bit angry.

Setting the jar on the floor, I walked right to the line that I was asked to stop before. As I approached, the SWAT team members once again held up their SMGs, pointing the muzzles right at my face.

“I want to speak with my lawyer,” I said adamantly. “Give me my phone.”

I already had someone in mind to call.

“Negative,” the SWAT team member replied. “We were given instructions to keep the subject here until further notice.”

“I have rights,” I declared, my tone of voice getting harsher. “As a law abiding citizen of this country, and as a human being, if you do not let me talk to my lawyer right now, I’ll make sure both of you are properly prosecuted after this is all over.”

“How will the media react to this, huh?” I continued. “You think you’ll be able to get away with this without anyone else knowing?”

I noticed the SWAT team member shift in place, just a little bit, betraying a slight bit of discomfort that he felt. He paused for a moment before answering.

“The national government has declared martial law upon the hospital and its parameters until further notice,” the SWAT member said through his respirator.

Martial law?

…

Martial law????

What in the actual fuck was going on here now?

The SWAT team member pulled out a slip of paper from his chest pocket and read from it in a deliberate and clear fashion.

“Please do not panic. You will be compensated a total of $350,000 from the South Korean government for the inconvenience. We will contact you shortly, when things are made more clear. Signed, Chancellor Lee.”

Alright. Now that… that was a lot of money. Three hundred and fifty THOUSAND dollars. Holy shit, that was more than I made in several years of work. And seeing as how it came from the executive branch of the government, it would be a nontaxable sum.

$350,000 made the message loud and clear. This was shut up money. Given my financial circumstances, I had no choice but to take it. Actually, given the fact that martial law was in place and these two thugs in SWAT uniforms had the legal authority to kill me for any minor transgression, I had no choice but to take this deal.

I nodded, and continued to probe for a bit more information. “How long am I expected to stay here?”

The answer came swiftly. “Indeterminate.”

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It was the second day since the Kim Taek-yong or ‘Spoon’ incident, and two other seizure cases occurred. Rumors were abound about the cause of the seemingly isolated incidents, and possible theories were growing more wild by the day. The original rumor was that it had to do with the popular Eclipse Online game. However, the government continued to insist as these incidents popped up that it was simply a result of an unforeseen chemical leak.

Public opinion of the government was beginning to erode, as the rumor mill began to circulate some wild theories. One of these rumor factions, nicknamed the Aliens in Korea faction, postulated that the South Korean government was covering up the existence of aliens on Earth, and that these seizures were the product of failed underground experiments with alien biomaterial. This was in response to a recently published study that found that it was highly likely for there to be around 36 different intelligent alien species in the Milky Way galaxy alone. Which was fair, and probably true, but a more in depth understanding of the research and assumptions used would reveal that even the closest of these species was thousands of light years away.

Other rumors ranged from restaurant beef suppliers with tainted product, poisoning people with lead contaminated beef, to an American military testing of a secret prototype weapon that had a side effect of causing seizures on the general populace.

Euphemia heard about Spoon’s seizure from the news yesterday. Yesterday she was supposed to clean up his apartment, but she was too busy following the news coverage of the event to get a chance to do so.

So she decided to fulfill her side of the promise today. With a brisk walk in slippers, Euphemia left her apartment and headed over to Spoon’s apartment, with a copy of his apartment key in hand that he gave her last week.

Click.

“Let’s see how messy his room is now~”

Euphemia unlocked the door and stepped into Spoon’s apartment with a smile on her face. Spoon would probably be very happy with her if he came back after his hospitalization to a spotless apartment.

“Oh, it’s already so clean~”

The entire apartment was already in pretty good shape. There were some dishes in the sink and a few t-shirts and boxers on the ground here or there, but otherwise it was more or less clean.

As Euphemia headed towards the sofa to collect a dirty boxer that Spoon must have thrown there, she noticed that the compartment under his kitchen sink was wide open.

She remembered that she heard about that on the news. The government sent health inspectors to evaluate the pipework for all seizure victims due to the chemical leak. They must have been working on the sink in Spoon’s apartment yesterday.

They should’ve at least had the decency of closing the sink, at least…

Euphemia walked over to close the sink.

At that moment, she noticed a glint coming from behind the toaster on the kitchen counter. She got closer to see what it was, before stopping in her tracks when she realized what she was looking at.

It was a small hidden camera sticky, the size of her thumb and wedged right behind the toaster. She pretended not to see it, but still looked at it from the corner of her eye. In fact, she started to do the dishes while simultaneously sneaking glances at the camera every time she bent over to get another dirty dish, or put a washed one back in the cabinet.

When she was watching tv and reading all the crazy articles from yesterday, it didn’t even cross her mind that the ridiculous conspiracy theory articles about the incidents and the government’s involvement her friends were sending her had any validity. But here was actual, concrete proof that something suspicious was going on.

“Oh, I need to make the apartment spotlessly clean for my husband~”

Now that she knew she had an audience, Euphemia cleaned the rest of Spoon’s apartment enthusiastically while continuously dropping verbal hints about her intimate relationship with her dear husband Spoon.

Even a friendly ghost spectating this series of events unfold nearby would’ve thought, this girl has a few screws loose in her head.

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There was a knock on the door of the hospital room, and the SWAT team members guarding the entrance nodded to each other before opening it.

I rubbed my eyes and looked over, interested in what was disturbing my seventy hour long captivity in this intensive care unit.

A smiling middle aged doctor wearing glasses stepped into the room past the two guards.

“You may go,” he said to the two SWAT team members cheerfully.

“Sir, we have orders that–”

“And I have authority from the Chancellor himself to relieve you two of your post,” the doctor replied without a hint of hesitation. “Do not make me repeat myself. Go.”

The SWAT team member bowed his head respectfully. “Yes, sir.”

Both SWAT guards exited the hospital room through the door, leaving me alone in the room with this strange doctor figure.

“Hello, Mr. Kim Taek-yong,” the bespectacled doctor said to me with a strange grin on his face. “I’d like to ask you some questions, which you should answer as truthfully as you can.”

I stared at him without responding. This man was giving me a seriously bad feeling.

The doctor continued without paying much attention to my reaction. “Have you experienced anything strange recently? Any out of body feeling, or something of that sort?”

The doctor’s teeth glinted in the harsh white lighting of the intensive care unit. “Please answer truthfully,” he said with an unnerving smile.