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Left Behind

Chapter 3

-Jack-

I had been falling for a long time. That's what I could remember before terror and pain caused me to black out. That should have been it as well. A fade to black and to never wake up again. I suppose that there were better ways to go such as in a bed, just waiting for old age to take me peacefully or even just a quick bullet to the head in a firefight. Then again, there were worse ways as well. Craddock was an individual with an imagination that no one wanted to explore with him.

Even so, it was beyond the point because I felt very much not dead. Don't get me wrong, there was an intense pain in my back where I had been stuck and part of my waking brain wished that I had died instead.

My eyes were still closed, but I could begun to hear things as my senses came back. There was a low hum of some sort of machine and a low rhythmic beeping as well. On the background, I could tell there was activity, a thrum of people somewhere, their talking, walking and general business creating a familiar white noise. I next smelled the bite of sterilizer, a strong chemical smell that masked any other smell that may have existed. Then it was touch, I was on my back. My fingers brushed against a rough fabric and something of similar material was draped over me. My head was on a pillow as well as I felt the sides of the cushion caress the side of my head.

From all that, I guessed I was in a hospital of sort. In a way, not taking into account that I had been tossed into a seemingly bottomless pit, it made sense. Anyone who was found hurt in the street would have been brought to a medical center. There were dozens across the city and ran mostly autonomously to cater to the millions of citizens at heavily subsidized and socialized rates since health had been deemed a basic right decades ago.

I opened my eyes then and was glad I was right. The walls were white, mostly, and glass paneled cabinets with all kinds of medical symbols lined the walls. An EKG was next to me and tracking my vitals and it gave off an electrical hum as well. It looked ancient as well, using an led screen versus the projection screens most centers would have. There was an IV attached to my arm as well, leading to a drip bag that hung on an archaic metal pole. Everything had an aged and very used feeling to it.

Must have been dragged to a slum, I mused to myself.

Trying to sit up wasn't an option, the moment I even thought a out engaging any muscle in my back caused a spasm of pain that paralyzed me for several moments. Where ever I was, I was going to stay for a little while.

It must have been a while because I woke up again to the sound of the door leading to my small room closing.

I first saw the white coat of the doctor and that brought some comfort because my last thoughts had been on the potential of Craddock's men coming to finish me off. Though, I doubt Craddock even remembered who I was, people died all the time and I doubt he cared enough to remember those who worked for him when faces changed all the time.

The next thing that I saw was the fur. It was tan and mixed with random black splotches. All that cumulated to the dog face that looked at me.

"You're awake, that's good," she said. It's voice sounded like a she. Sounded very human despite coming from a being that was very much not human.

She walked over to the foot of my bed and picked up a clipboard, an actual clipboard, not a slate. She read over it and jotted down some notes that I could not see from my angle.

I was petrified, but not in a scared way. I was just at a loss of words. The description Craddock had given to me of what he had found under the city came to mind. He hadn't been lying at all. There were animal like people down here. I had fallen down that hole and somehow survived to wake up in that underworld.

"You're looking a lot better now," the doctor said and walked over to the side of my bed. She pulled the stethoscope from around her neck, fitting the ear pieces into the large ears of her and held the metal end to my chest.

I held still, sense coming back to my mind. If she was going to hurt me, there would have been plenty of opportunity when I had been out. So, when she told me to take a deep breath, I did and winced when my wound made itself known.

"I'm sorry for the discomfort," the doctor said and removed the stethoscope. "But I need to make sure your lungs are good. Your left lung looked like it had been punctured a little, but it seems to be healing well enough."

"I was stabbed," I said, uttering my first words.

The doctor nodded. "I figured as much. The wound had a clean edge and went deep. No infection, which is a blessing. It'll be uncomfortable for a time, but you'll make a full recovery."

Hearing the words definitely helped me build the courage to speak some more. "Where am I?"

The doctor gave me a smile and pulled a wheeled stool from a corner of the room and sat on it next to me.

"You're in Sanctuary. I'm not sure where you yourself came from or how it was up there, but there's some things I do need to explain."

I was told about the city, Sanctuary. It was deep underground, I knew that, the doctor had figured as much, but beyond that, not much was known about how deep or how the city came to be. She explained about how I had fallen from one of the holes on the ceiling and been caught by one of the 'nets' and brought here. She told me that I had been smuggled in since there was a price to enter and live in the city and how I had to stay where I was or risk discovery before a plan could be put into place about what to do next. She went on about debt and how a good part of the city's inhabitants lived and toiled to pay it off.

There was some more to what she explained, but in the end, I knew that I wasn't even supposed to be here. I was being hidden and discovery meant an uncertain future.

"How do they track who has a debt?" I asked the doctor. "What's stopping me from just going out and pretending to not have it. I mean, technically, I don't."

She, Doctor Badat, chuckled. "You could and probably get away with it for a short time, but if there's one thing that this city is good at besides keeping old machines running, is administration. Each and every person living here has a file, it will keep track of how much debt they have and when it would be paid off. It also tracks what kind of work they're good at and other things like that. Eventually, someone would discover that you don't have a file and that would be it."

I mused that over for a bit. "What happens then?"

She shrugged and offered a weak smile. "Most who sneak in are tossed back into the waste beyond the city, however because someone else smuggled you in, they would probably be tossed out with you or worse."

She didn't need to explain what worse was. Capital punishment was very much a thing in what I guess was my new Above.

"So," she patted my hand with her strange paws with all too human like fingers. "I can't let you leave and jeopardize me and Tanis and Tobie. I'll ask you to just stay here for now until something is figured out."

As much as I was itching to do something since I had never been one to just sit around and be vulnerable, I agreed to this. I may have worked as muscle for a drug lord, but it was more out of necessity for a job than a pleasure in killing. In reality, I had hoped to grow up and work in one of the sky scrapers as a security guard or something along the lines of that, to be up Above. Now, I was far below.

The worst thing was just boredom. It was days and days of sitting around with my only reprieve being whenever Doctor Badat came with food, or took me out to a room next door where I could relieve myself and scrub myself down with a strange powder that left me clean, but left a bit of a residue on my skin, or just to chat. I quickly began to look forward to her small visits. At first it was just to have interaction with someone, but eventually it was because I did enjoy talking to her.

She was interesting and I came to know much about her. She had grown up in the city, but had inherited her family debt, which was immense, but worked it all off quickly through her medical practice. She now owned the clinic and took a lot of pride in her work. I also learned that she took me in as a way to pay pack this Tanis for work he had done for her in the past.

Tanis' name came up several times and I eventually asked when I would meet my rescuer.

"To be honest," she said, scratching behind her long ear. "I was expecting him back by now with some sort of update. I should send one of my people to check in on him."

Fear crept into my mind. The doctor hadn't been able to give a truly concise answer of what would happen upon my discovery and all sorts of scenarios played in my mind, seasoned by knowledge of what my old boss would do to unwanted guests. I was healed enough to sit up and even make small walks around my small room and thoughts of trying to leave had come to my mind, but I had given my word to Doctor Badat that I would stay put. I really was some dog in the end, loyal, stupidly so at times. The thought made me chuckle.

So, like the loyal dog I had discovered I was, I stayed through boredom for a few more days until events decided to unfold for themselves.

It was later in the day, or what I thought was later in day since there was no clock in the room, when Doctor Badat came in. I had been reading over labels on various bottles on the shelves to pass the boredom when the wild dog came into the room, a particular flustered look on her that put me on guard.

She was carrying, in her arms, my clothes, which I had pretty much given up for lost.

"Put these on," she said as he held them out to me.

I took them and did not fail to notice that my stub-nosed pistol was there, still in the holder built into the inside of the jacket.

"What's going on?" I asked as I donned my old clothes, the familiar feeling like a hug from an old friend. I didn't shy when I had to strip naked for a moment. I had long stopped seeing the doctor as some strange walking dog. I would even caution to say that she was a friend. Even so, I was never really shy of my body. I was moderately built, as was necessary for the kind of work I was used to, though being bed ridden had rounded me out a little.

"They know about you now," she said and sat on the stool, looking away politely for the few moments it took for me to cover myself decently. "They're coming, but don't be looking to fight," she quickly added when I tensed a bit, fingers itching for the contoured grip of the pistol.

"What's going to happen, then?" I asked as slid on the last of my clothes. I tugged at the collar of my jacket and let it settle and then shook out my arms and kicked my legs. There was only slight discomfort now and I felt pretty good.

"Mathias, the administrator for this part of Sanctum is coming. I'm not sure what he intends, but the weasel would never come if there was going to be violence," she explained.

"Well, that's a relief," I said and sat on the edge of my bed.

"I think that you'll be given debt," Doctor Badat said. "If that's it, it won't be bad. You'll just have to live with it."

Of course, I would haven preferred to be a free man, but of all the little scenarios that I had been aging out in my head, this was the best outcome.

"I guess I'll have to wait and see."

Doctor Badat agreed and then led me out, to my surprise. With the cat out of the bag, there was no reason for me to stay hidden away, so I got to see my first glimpse of Sanctum and it both did and did not dissapoint. It was like a mad parody of the city I had a grown up in. Skyscrapers, red with rust and with tons of added supports welded on to them, stretched up and met the impossibly immense metal ceiling above. The city that existed at the base of the towers was a hodgepodge of shacks of any number of stories tall. Lights and lamps were strung all over the place, keeping the darkness that would otherwise engulf everything, at bay.

The little waiting area of the clinic where I was directed to wait at after I was done looking out at the city was probably the cleanest part of the entire place. Slightly dirty linoleum lined the floors and scavenged and repaired chairs lined the walls. A desk sat on the far side where some sort of cat sat and attended to those coming in.

What really got my attention was the diversity of the beings that were here in the room with me or walking down the sidewalks just outside. Every animal I knew of and then some existed. All of them standing and walking like humans. There were some humans, but very clearly a minority, but enough that I didn't garner more attention than a glance.

Doctor Badat left me to wait after I reaffirmed that I wasn't going anywhere. She flitted in and out of the back rooms, seeing and attending to patients who paid with little stamped coins or even bartered with food or what appeared to be junk. I came to realize, after watching just how busy the doctor was, that she had invested a huge sum of her precious time to me and I knew that I owed her immensely. Whether this weasel, Mathias was here to assign me with debt or not, I knew that I would have to find a way to repay Badat.

Unlike my previous few weeks, I didn't have to wait very long. Mathias showed up only about half an hour later. He was in fact a weasel, just as I had been told, but I had somehow mistaken it for a greasy type of character. He stood maybe just over four feet tall and wore a cleaner set of clothes than those around me. He had brought two guards as well, a bull and a wolf who wore a collection of body armor that had been stitched with blue fabric to make it look as closely to a security guards uniform as possible. They did not carry guns though, instead they kept their paws? Hooves? on batons that were looped into their belts.

The conversation was formal and quite pleasant. I was asked about my health and even about my weapon, which I did not hide the fact that it was on my person. This seemed to excite Mathias some and not in a bad way. He did not ask about how I ended up here or my life before. I figured that it wasn't important anymore for either of us in the future. He only asked if I knew how to use my gun and how to keep it repair and even how to make more bullets, all of which I knew.

I did end up with debt, which was explained through much paperwork, all done right there in the clinic's waiting area, ten years worth as I was told. However, I was also offered a job, am interesting one that was promised with payment of several months of my debt removed. I may have been a bit rash in taking it without too many details.