Entanglements: The Atharrais Sequence, #3

By Don Harrison

In the aftermath of the events in Symmetry Violations, Atharrais must now discover what really happened.

 

Several strands of research merge with a series of unexpected events to throw new light on reality.  The truth that emerges is even stranger and more concerning than Atharrais had imagined.  As usual, actions put in place to achieve their goals lead to unexpected and unwanted side-effects.

 

Harry is trying to recover as much of his life as he can, but nothing seems to be as it was any more.  A web of seemingly unrelated events threaten to overwhelm him as well as push Atharrais into desperate measures.

This third novel in the of the Atharrais Sequence takes earlier events and stands them on their heads, forcing complete re-evaluation.  Everything so far known or suspected is called into question.  In the end, only the must human of emotions appear relevant as paradoxes emerge to challenge everything.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don Harrison
• Release date: Aug 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223909743

Don Harrison

I always wanted to write a book but did not get around to finishing one until I retired from full-time work in the UK Chemical industry. Having completed my first novel, Harry’s Lattice, I found I had become addicted to the process, so dived straight into this one. I expect to now experience immediate withdrawal symptoms, requiring the writing of a third instalment of this series. I’m an amateur musician; playing drums, keyboards and saxophone in various bands. I’m also a father, a stepfather, a grandfather, a prolific cutter of grass (although not otherwise a gardener) and of course a husband.

Book preview

Chapter 1: Mark

Silence. Darkness. Mark drifted towards consciousness as if it were a grimy window, dimly illuminated by a streetlamp outside his bedroom.  It was not as if he were swimming upward, like a diver seeking the surface. He felt no overwhelming sense of urgency to break through. It was more like he was forming from a billion atoms into a coherent whole and becoming increasingly aware of the light glittering outside.

But this was not his bedroom, nor was the faint gleaming coming in through a window, whether grimy or not. As his senses gradually re-formed he realised the grubby window was the inside of his closed eyelids; the bedroom in which he slept was only a rather firm and narrow cot with nothing covering him. He was not uncomfortable but neither was he feeling particularly cosy.  He lay and waited for memories of where he was to coalesce in his mind. They did not.

Mark’s left hand was underneath his ear, supporting his head. He occasionally awoke like that and routinely suffered pins and needles in the fingers. He moved his hand from under his head and felt nothing. No discomfort of any kind. He stirred, with his eyes still closed, and rolled onto his back, hands now clasped across his chest like a corpse.  Judith used to laugh at him when he lay like that, saying he looked like he was dead. Mark suspected she would be somewhat relieved if he were indeed residing in a coffin in some funeral home instead of taking up space in the marital bed.

He opened his eyes.  A grey ceiling covered with fibrous tiles stretched over him. The kind used in offices or some cheap hotels. The ones that conceal a maze of pipes and cables which can be moved aside for maintenance with gentle pressure. He blinked twice and again tried to recall where he was and what he might be doing there. No sounds or smells or overt sensations were detected. He moved his head to look around, taking in his immediate surroundings.

Indeed he was on a low cot. It was covered in a rough blue woollen material stretched between the rails of an alloy frame. The head end was raised slightly to accommodate a recumbent body but there was no pillow. The room in which he lay was large and dimly lit and filled with other identical cots.  A quick and startled check revealed that no other sleepers were present; all the cots were empty except his.

The room looked like an oversized cheaply-furnished and decorated lounge. Maybe the reception area of an office building. It was something like thirty to forty metres square and apart from the rows of cots was bare. The walls were grey, like the ceiling. The floor was the same type of hard-wearing wiry carpet used in commercial premises. It was all rather odd. What was this place and how did Mark arrive here?

On the wall furthest from his makeshift bed there were many monitor screens, each displaying rows of information that Mark could not quite make out, due to their distance.  A doorway was on the adjacent wall, where light was flooding into the gloomy sleeping area from a better-lit exterior.  Mark unclasped his corpse grip and pushed himself upright. He blinked several more times as the additional height gave him a better view of his surroundings. From this angle, he appeared to have awoken in a transport terminal rest area.  He had been to airports boasting this kind of facility where passengers could attempt to catch a couple of hours' rest between flights.

He swung his legs off the recliner onto the floor, noticing that he was wearing brown laced shoes which he did not recognise. Come to that, the dark blue dungarees also were unfamiliar.  Looked like prison attire of some variety. He stood and walked towards the illuminated screens, weaving through the loose rows of identical recliners.

Sure enough, they were the kind of screens seen in airports, announcing flight times and gates, departures and arrivals.  But no information was shown, just empty spaces where the flight numbers and cities and departure times should have been.   It was as if he was in a disused airport that had long since ceased operating.  Except that it was all immaculately, sparkling clean and looked recently constructed.

Mark frowned, going from screen to screen and finding no information. Finally, he turned and surveyed the area from his new vantage point. Definitely an airport rest area, despite the lack of people with all their customary bustle and busyness.

He stretched a little, expecting some tension in his lower back and upper legs from waking on such a flimsy bed. But he felt better than he had in years.

Shaking his head fractionally, he walked towards the exit. Where he stood looking out at a long, wide-tiled corridor that stretched away into the distance. He saw shop-fronts, all shuttered and empty, lining the walls.  Uncomfortable-looking metal benches with mesh backs were in the centre of the corridor. A further collection of illuminated monitor screens hung at irregular intervals as far as his eyes could see.

An airport, without a doubt. Similar to Manchester airport, where he had been employed in Security before being arrested for involvement in smuggling and spending the last few months in prison.

A part of Mark’s mind registered that his more recent memories were starting to slowly spill back to him.

But this was not Manchester airport. It was all too new. Pristine even. And empty.  Even in the middle of the night, there was activity there, with cleaners, janitors, Security staff and airline workers making sure all was ready for the next day’s flights.  Here though, nothing moved. Nobody appeared.

There was not even any natural daylight. The walls were blank and featureless, which was unheard of in commercial buildings, where construction costs could be mitigated by adding large glazed areas. He could be underground for all he could see.  That made him grin slightly; an underground airport would be an interesting concept.  He walked to the nearest of the monitor screens and looked up at it.

Flight, Destination, Flight number, Gate, Departure time. The headings were all there, as expected, but the rows of data were empty. He turned left and began to walk down the corridor rather aimlessly. After a while he ceased looking up at the screens he passed; all were identical. In the absence of a better idea, he resolved to walk this corridor until he found something that might explain his situation.

After several minutes he paused and took stock, hands on hips, growing increasingly frustrated.

What the hell is all this shit? he mumbled. Ahead of him stretched a seemingly endless corridor, identical to the one stretching seemingly endlessly behind him. He looked at one of the shops. Newspapers read a sign over the shuttered front.  It looked rather familiar actually, but Mark could not imagine where he might have seen it before. He shook his head again and marched onwards.

After another half hour, he thought he may just be able to make out something different in the distance. Different lighting perhaps, or a larger open area. That at least was positive. He had started to become, in his opinion, paranoid that this may be some sort of Hell in which he was trapped.

At which point he looked across at the shop opposite as he started moving again.  Newspapers read the sign above the shuttered shop front.  Mark felt his stomach lurch as the shock of recognition set in.  It was either the same shop he had passed earlier or another identical one. Both were unreasonably ridiculous possibilities.

He went over to the shop and hammered on the steel shutter, making a loud rattling noise that reverberated down the resonating corridor.  Nothing happened except the reverberations died away.  He kicked it hard and hammered again, shouting at the top of his voice for someone to come out and talk to him.

After a couple of minutes of this, he stopped and stood back, panting and nursing a raw red hand where he had pummelled the unrelenting metal.  Again the reverberations died away and the concourse was quiet again. He went over and sat on one of the uncomfortable-looking mesh-backed benches and placed his head in his hands.

Where am I? Where is this place? Answers seemed out of his grasp so he tried again to piece together his recent history.

The last thing he remembered was being in the prison hospital wing after his bungled attempt to take his own life.  His throat had been burning and his stomach filled with nausea and heartburn from the medication they had given him after the overdose had been pumped from his system. This time he had meant it too. No cry for help, like all the other occasions.   This time he meant it. All the hate and anger and self-pity had conspired to make him put together a concerted attempt to die. But he had awoken in the hospital wing instead. A failure at that too.

They had given him some soup and some boiled eggs and tea then left him alone with his thoughts and he had fallen asleep again.

A prison guard had abruptly awoken him.

Taylor!  Wakey-up time. Got a visitor. Give us your arm.

Mark had proffered his hand and winced as a steel handcuff was snapped around his wrist, connecting him to the officer.

OK Doc he’s all yours, the officer called towards the door.

A tall, distinguished-looking man in a long greatcoat entered and offered a brief hello before setting his bag down on a table by Mark’s bed.

Now then, what have you been up to today?  Look it’s not the done thing to examine patients when they’re in manacles, you know.  This was addressed to the guard, who remarked in reply that this was a potentially dangerous prisoner and he was uncomfortable leaving him alone with a doctor.

Mark raised his eyebrows but said nothing.  After some to-ing and fro-ing, the guard unlocked the handcuff from his wrist, fastening it instead to the metal bed frame and retreating, grumbling to join his colleague outside.

The doc was unfortunately the talkative, lecturing type.  After some unhelpful advice and a healthy dose of patronising down-talk, he had produced a hypodermic syringe and announced he would be injecting Mark with the contents, to help him sleep better. Mark had shrugged and let him get on with it – anything to get him out of the room so he could have the handcuff removed and go back to staring disconsolately at the wall.

Ow, careful mate. I’m not a bloody pincushion you know!  The Doc smiled slightly as he pressed the plunger to inject the syringe contents into Mark’s upper arm.  Sharp scratch indeed, thought Mark in disgust. More like being stabbed with a spear.

The doc had stuck cotton wool on the injection site, held it in place with sticky tape then smartly returned the empty syringe to his bag.  Then he was gone.

The guard came back in and they exchanged a moment of raised eyebrows at the medic’s manner. He removed the handcuff from Mark’s wrist and left him alone again.

That was the extent of Mark’s recollections.  He had a faint memory of being in pain – like a toothache but spreading slowly up his back towards his shoulders.  But that was all until he woke up in the small blue cot.

He stood and looked around again, casting another suspicious glance at the newspaper store and trying to memorise as many details as possible in case he ran across another one.  Resuming his original direction he headed towards the subtly different area he had identified.  Maintaining a steady pace now because he had a goal to reach, he arrived at the new place after about ten minutes. It was a gate area.  Eight airline boarding gates were set around a much more open area, about twice as wide as the corridor he had come from.  There was additional seating in the centre and the various facilities which airline staff needed to co-ordinate boarding operations.

It was all empty, new-looking and completely blank.

He walked towards a gate at random and inspected it closely. There was a telephone! He picked it up but heard no dial tone, then frantically pressed buttons. No response.  He slammed the receiver down in frustration before moving to another gate.  Same there.

There were doors at the back of each gate, presumably leading out to jetways for access to parked aircraft. Without any glass panels, the only way to check this was to get one open. Of course, each one was locked, so Mark began to vigorously pull and tug at the nearest candidate. It did not move a millimetre and may as well have been part of the wall. Putting his eye to the gap between the door and its’ jamb, Mark could see no chinks of light.

He looked around for something he could use as a pry-bar. No obvious candidates but he spied a bar-stool near one of the check-in desks, grabbed it and started hammering on the door with it, in an attempt to break it down or at least damage it enough to get it open.

After ten or so minutes of work, he was exhausted and his forearms and shoulders ached from the unaccustomed exercise.  Both the door and the stool bore signs of damage but the door’s integrity was unchanged.  It looked increasingly as if the door was indeed simply a part of the wall that had been made to resemble a door.

Mark sat back down in one of the chairs and wept. Hugging himself into a foetal position he lamented his situation and cried out for someone to rescue him from this weird form of torture.  After a while, he mopped his face on his sleeve and decided he needed to freshen up a bit.  He did not recall seeing any bathrooms on his walk, but scanning the locale revealed a WC sign just outside the gate atrium.  He rose and walked towards it.

He headed through the opening into the men’s section and saw the familiar row of urinals against one tiled wall, with wash hand basins opposite. He went to a tap and opened it, expecting it to be dry. But no, a steady stream of water splashed and gurgled into the sink. It was a welcome dash of normality in an inexplicable situation.  He ran his hands under the water and then splashed his face, adjusting the tap to try to get the right temperature, but the water remained cold. There was a soap dispenser but it was empty.  He felt marginally better as he shook his hands and looked around for a hand drier.  It did not operate, of course, but there was a stack of paper towels on one of the sinks.

One his way out, Mark looked over at the urinals and frowned. He had not felt the urge to use one, but neither had he drunk anything since awakening. He returned to the sink and ran the tap cold, ducking his head to get his lips around the water stream and sucking in some water.  It was utterly tasteless and felt like it would not slake a thirst.  But he wasn’t remotely thirsty anyway, so that was probably the reason.

On the way out he also looked in the WC stalls, which looked entirely regular and were stocked with tissues and, as usual, were pristine and new. He waved his hand towards the flush sensor on a whim. Nothing happened.  Repeated waves and gestures elicited no response.

Glad I don’t need a shit then, he muttered as he exited the stall.

Outside, in the corridor again, he decided to continue walking in the same direction. Leaving the gate atrium behind he made progress along the featureless corridor. He was starting to take a little more notice now and spotted a red fire alarm call-point adjacent to a fire exit door.  The door was as inoperable as the gate exit, of course, so he smashed the glass of the call-point with the heel of his hand. Nothing.  No alarms sounded.

He carried on walking. He came to a sign marked Baggage reclaim and followed it to the left down a short corridor off the main concourse. He must have been walking for at least two hours now since awakening.  But he did not feel hungry or thirsty or in any way fatigued.  Even the normal desire for a cigarette was absent, for the first time in about thirty years.

The baggage area was huge – Mark estimated something like two hundred metres by about half that. It contained baggage belts numbered one to seventeen, all of which were silent and still.  Logically, if there was a way into the baggage reclaim there must also be a way out, so he went hunting for it.  Sure enough, there was a Customs channel, but it was shuttered by the same type of closure as the shops he had seen in the concourse.

Returning to the nearest baggage belt, he clambered on the conveyor and tried to climb down the chute that leads the bags up from the underground processing facility.  Shuttered-off, as expected.

After a further hour of aimless wandering along the concourse, he came upon yet another Newspapers shop, identical to the others he had passed.  Seriously alarmed now, he looked around wildly, in case he had inadvertently turned around and was going back the way he came.  It was hard to tell, due to the featureless nature of the concourse.  Calming himself with an effort of will, he reminded himself that all the Newsagents had been on the left as he passed them, so this one would have been on his right if he had been going back. He continued.

Another hour passed and a sign above the concourse read Rest area and pointed off to the left.  Another one?  Mark supposed that a very large airport such as this may well have several, but he decided to take a look anyway.  That made him consider the shape of the concourse.  He had not noticed any curvature on his travels, it seemed to be completely straight.

Wow must be an enormous place.  He attempted a little mental arithmetic to estimate the size based on elapsed time and rate of travel, but without a watch, it was too difficult.

The rest area was completely identical to the one in which he had awoken. When he went towards the equivalent cot to the one where he had regained consciousness, it was slightly out of line with the others in the room. As if this was the same rest area.

But... That means ... No, can’t be, I must be cracking up. Jesus, I gotta understand this.  He sat back down on his cot and held his head in both hands, thinking furiously.  He knew he had to resolve this enigma urgently.

Right, let’s check, he said, standing and grasping the cot frame with both hands. He turned it through forty-five degrees, repositioning it like a marker. Satisfied he would be able to identify it amongst all the other cots, he quickly left the rest area, turned right and marched down the concourse, back the way he had come.

He passed the Newsagent store on his left, as expected.  Tick that one off as complete.  Then the baggage reclaim area on the right after some time had passed. Tick.

And here were the bathrooms.

Hmm, have I missed something? Mark ruminated, racking his brains.  He snapped his fingers and turned around, heading back towards the fire alarm call-point he had previously smashed.

It was whole again. The glass was unbroken.  But was it the same call-point? Mark felt dizzy as he attempted to understand the reality of his situation. He again smashed the glass and then watched it for a few minutes. It stayed smashed.

He spun on his heel and walked rapidly towards the bathrooms. Inside there was no sign he had been here before. The basket into which he had tossed his crumpled used paper towel was empty. It was mad; who was cleaning the place up after him?

Hello!  Where are you? Who’s there!  He repeated the shouts at the top of his lungs and carried out screaming the words as he left the bathroom again, turning first to the right to continue his direction of travel but then stopping and running back towards the call-point.

Arriving, panting and sweaty he found the call-point still broken, as he had left it.

OK, time to calm down a bit Marky-boy. There must be some explanation here, I’m just not seeing it.

Resuming his travels he passed the bathroom again and came to the gate atrium. He checked all the gates but none of the doors showed any signs of damage and none of the bar-stools looked like they had ever been moved. Just when something seemed logical and continuous, something else turned logic on its head. He judiciously turned one of the bar-stools upside down and set it on the counter as another marker.

Eventually, he came back to the rest area, went in and looked for his cot. It was at a forty-five-degree angle to the other cots, exactly as he had left the one in the Other rest area.

Mark’s eyes went wide and his breathing quickened until he was gasping in shock. He sat on an adjacent recliner and waited for the panic attack to pass.

Eventually, he sat upright again and began to think about how he could map his surroundings and begin the process of understanding them.  It seemed that if he destroyed something, like the fire alarm call-point, then it would be repaired if he left it long enough, but just adjusting things, like the cot positions, did not trigger repairs.  He imagined maintenance staff fixing items he broke or, recalling the used towel basket, used up in some way. They would tolerate adjustments but step in if he did something that would impact the structure of the facility.

Paranoia of course. But what else could produce the effects he had witnessed? They must be watching him.  He had not seen any CCTV cameras, but perhaps he simply had not looked for them.  He stood and walked to the entrance, then turned and went back to push one of the recliners entirely out of the rest area into the main concourse.

Let’s see if the janitors put that one back, he said out loud as he turned to retrace his steps from earlier in the day.

Walking away from the rest area again, he kept stopping and looking back over his shoulder at the blue cot standing in the middle of the concourse. Still there – no sign of activity.

He headed directly for the gate atrium, where he found the bar-stool sitting inverted on the counter top, as he had left it. But the fire alarm call-point was whole again, unbroken.  Smashing it for a third time he collected the glass fragments in his hand and set off for the baggage reclaim.

Ouch, bugger! His palm was damp with warm blood as a jagged shard scratched him.  He rearranged his grip to avoid that happening again but then had an idea.  He went to the nearest wall and wiped his bloodied hand against it, leaving a red streak. Let’s see if that gets cleaned up, he thought.

He could just make out the blue recliner still out in the concourse behind him if he squinted into the distance.

Arriving at the baggage area again he daubed some more blood on the wall at the entrance and left some glass shards on baggage conveyor number one.  Carrying on, he began to leave glass shards outside every Newspapers store he passed.  One shard outside the first, two outside the second and so on.

He had run out of shards when he came at last to the other rest area. He could see that blue recliner standing outside, just where he had left it. So that was conclusive – the concourse was circular, despite appearing completely straight.  Must be just an optical illusion, Mark thought.  He went in to check his cot was as he had left it, nodding as he saw it had not been disturbed.

Time for another circuit of the concourse. He had little else to do and the physical effort was helping distract him from thinking about the craziness of his situation.

Thinking hard was never one of Mark’s strongest personality traits. He had survived so far in life by relegating mental effort to those with little else to do;  concentrating mainly on acceding to his momentary desires and whims. This was different. He needed to create a mental map to protect himself from going crazy. Anyway, he now had little else to do himself.

So he stood a moment and leaned on a wall and frowned. The optical illusion of the concourse’s lack of curvature was bothering him, so how could he confirm it?

He went back into the rest area and dragged two more recliners into the concourse. They were fairly light and easy to move, although his plan would involve a lot of moving them about.  He left them and moved the originally displaced recliner to the left side, near the wall, then took the other two and continued walking along the concourse, dragging them behind him.

This was quite arduous work, despite the recliners being lightweight. He was sweating with effort after ten minutes, when he stopped, took a deep breath and looked back. He could still see the one standing outside the rest area even if he moved near to the same wall. No obvious curvature there, then, to the left at least.  If he were walking clockwise around a circle the recliner would probably have vanished around the bend by now.  He postponed considering the possibility that he was walking clockwise around a circle until later.

Positioning one of the two recliners against the same wall as the original, he set off again with the other one.  After another ten sweaty minutes, he looked back and again confirmed the earlier cot was visible. If he squinted he could just make out the original one outside the rest area.  He left his remaining cot against the wall and then continued onwards towards the other rest area.

On the way he checked the gate atrium, where the inverted bar-stool still sat on the counter top, but the call point break glass was again in one piece and the bloody hand-print had been erased from the wall, as expected.

Who’s doing this? Mark ruminated. Invisible Gremlins?  The thought caused him to look nervously around, but no furtive supernatural janitors were in view.  The paradoxical action of looking for something invisible never crossed Mark’s mind.

The shards of broken glass were all missing from outside the Newspaper stores too. The Gremlins’ attention to detail was impressive.

In the bathroom, he ventilated some of his growing annoyance by taking wads of paper towels and blocking all the sink drains, then turning the taps full on. He looked around and noticed some drain holes in the floor, so he blocked those too. He left the bathroom with a small thin smile on his lips. Let’s give these Gremlins some work to do, he thought.  The sound of splashing water accompanied him as he passed baggage reclaim and, in the middle distance, spied a blue recliner against the left wall outside the rest area.

Once there, he selected another two cots and began to tow them back towards baggage reclaim, depositing one against the right wall just as he arrived.  He could still see the one outside the rest area and realised the circularity or otherwise of the concourse could be proven by merely being able to see cots on either side. He did not need to laboriously space them all around or along the concourse.  With a Hmph comprising annoyance and relief in equal measure he dumped the second cot too then carried on walking.  He would arrive again at the rest area eventually but for now, he wanted to see what was happening in the flooded bathroom. A rather alarming vision of the whole concourse slowly flooding and drowning him had begun to take shape in his mind, so he quickened his steps.

The taps were still running but all the towel wads had been removed, allowing the basins to remain empty.  He turned them all off and left without a backward glance.

Standing again by the cot at the rest area he turned both ways and was able to discern blue cots in the distance on both sides, each at about the limit of vision.  So this was a straight corridor that nevertheless encompassed a single spatial area.  A wacky concept that Mark could simply not wrap his head around.  Unless it curved the other way, of course.

Doggedly, he dragged the cot to the opposite wall then walked all around the concourse again, moving the other recliners to the opposite wall too. An hour or so later he stood again and noted that the three cots in sight at the rest area were in a perfectly straight line.

Feeling defeated, Mark went back to his bed, where he had awoken some unknown time earlier, and moved it to line up with the remaining ones in the room. It seemed the right thing to do, somehow.  He lay down and stared at the ceiling tiles.

How long had he been here? It felt like at least a full day had elapsed, in which he had walked for miles and carried out some serious physical activity.  Nothing ached or felt tight, however. He had sweated but his collar did not feel gritty.  His eyes went wide and he sat up in a momentary panic.

He had not eaten all day.  He had not drunk anything except to taste the flat water from a tap.  He had not needed to urinate or defecate.  Even now he felt neither thirsty nor hungry. It seemed he had no unmet bodily needs at all.  He was not even gasping for a smoke.  Impossible!  Mark seemed to recall that some clever person once said when you eliminate the impossible then whatever remains must be the truth.  Or something like that.  This made him feel a little calmer since it was growing increasingly certain that this must be a nightmare. Maybe that stuff the Doc had injected him with was causing him to experience a bad dream?  That was the only possible solution, so he laid back and closed his eyes and waited to wake up.

It only seemed moments later when he was rudely roused by the sound of a distant alarm.  It sounded like Wooo Wooo Wooo! and seemed to be coming from outside in the concourse.  He leapt up, ran outside and cocked his head.  It seemed to be coming from all around, so he set off at a run to check all the places he now knew so well.  His heart was thumping in his chest as he realised that it was getting louder as he moved.  He was closing the distance.

It was the baggage reclaim area and it was the sound made by a luggage belt just before it starts up, accompanied by a yellow rotaflash. Belt seven was active!  He saw movement just as the alarm sound stopped. The conveyor was trundling around, conveying a small brown suitcase, which Mark chased and grabbed, dragging it onto the floor.

The belt and the rotaflash stopped at that moment, while the echoes of the klaxon finished their reverberation, leaving the area silent again.  Apart from Mark’s panting of course.  But he had it!  Not much more than briefcase-sized; chocolate brown grainy leather with a handle and two fasteners. Mark dumped it back on the stationary conveyor belt and thumbed the clasps, popping the lid ajar.

He opened it and looked in. Neatly folded inside the case was a set of dark blue dungarees, identical to the ones he was wearing, a pair of white cotton briefs, dark grey socks and a plain grey t-shirt.

He goggled at them, trying to understand their meaning.  Why had he been sent a change of clothing? Where had they come from?  He tried to remember this was undoubtedly a nightmare he was experiencing, so applying logic was unlikely to be useful.  The sense of anti-climax was almost devastating though.

Clothes!  Come on guys, give me a break, who are you?!

There was no reply.

Chapter 2: Mason

Aclatter and the roar of an outboard motor split the silence along the tropical coastline on the normally calm and velvety Cuban night. Soldiers hugged their CQBR carbines like their babies, protecting them from the salt spray that splashed irregularly up over the low gunwhales of the Riverine attack boats, five of which whirred and growled their way across the bay towards an isthmus tipped by a silvery beach. The occupants were grim-faced, tight-lipped and daubed with camouflage paint, their eyes searching through the darkness for any sign their presence had been detected.  In the bow of each boat, one of them scanned the beach through the night-sight of his weapon. Above each crew, a targeting radar scanner swept the area for movement.

Crew-members sat at ease at their GAU-17 miniguns, carefully listening for any words of alarm from the lookout, ready to deploy a hail of fire at his indication Nothing seemed to be stirring ashore, though.  The four assault troops in each Riverine were prepared for combat with the bandits, on whom they had been briefed extensively back on the assault ship from which they embarked the attack boats.  Massive resistance was not expected, but the terrorists were known to be capable, well-armed and resilient.  It was thought they had been able to bring down a spacecraft last year in