Against My Will 1

He woke to nothing under him.

Nothing around him either.

The world was simply empty for a good six or seven seconds while his brain kept trying to understand why he was in such a dark room. For another second, he wondered if the power was out, a dead breaker or a thunderstorm taking out an important powerline.

No… Except a dark room still had ceilings and walls, and this darkness had depth to it, so wide it felt like the darkness just didn’t stop as far back as it seemed to go. Another second later, he realized it wasn’t all that dark at all — the little specks of white he thought were floaters or something suddenly stood out as his eyes adjusted.

Stars…

What? Stars all around him stared back, a new confusion deep in his chest as he tried to think if he had ever seen so many, so clearly and so bright before. How the hell…

Then he turned and a curve came in underneath him, the curve stretching and stretching and refusing to stop as Orin Hunter Kelly took in something bigger than he’d ever thought big could be. His stomach dropped lower than his knees as he saw so much blue and white and a brown shoulder of something that was probably Africa.

Earth.

He raised a hand, finger pointing out in front of him.

That was Earth, the whole of a pale blue not-so-dot spinning under him — under him — when things shouldn’t work like that because down was a direction he knew and that direction usually involved gravity and a fuckin’ planet he walked on.

His chest started moving as fast as the earth rotated, his breath coming i—

Breath. Green eyes blinked slow. Wait, hold up. I’m breathing. He was breathing, and that couldn’t be possible, right? There’s no air in space.

The second he realized that much — a clear inconsistency clocked — he couldn’t stop realizing it, dragging air in through his nose like he was nine and drinking straight from the tap again. As if trying to challenge his hypothesis, something wrapped tighter around his chest as he took a second deep breath, Orin stilling again. Wha-

That something pressed in again, a pressure all over that wasn’t hands or anything crushing at all but still tight around him like a wetsuit.

A wetsuit with a color to it.

Orin stared at a green brighter than his or his eyes sitting close to his skin, forearms and his chest surrounded by an emerald heat shimmer. Oh.

His breath stilled, the pressure pausing as his chest refused to compress or expand so much as an inch either way. Okay. Not even a blink managed to escape the boy as he forced himself to simply think. Okay. Okay. Explanations. So…

[BEARER.]

All that effort at control was nearly tossed out the window as his neck whipped up, just for nothing to be there to whip toward. Unless you count the…

His eye twitched. That’s the sun.

All of a sudden, the earth was downgraded into the second biggest thing he’d ever seen, and there was no contest. That’s the sun.

And he somehow wasn’t going blind. I…

Staring at it like this, massive and majestic, Orin could understand exactly how people worshipped something like this. Jesu-

[BEARER.]

That voice boomed again, Orin almost flinching before he realized it hadn’t come in through his ears at all. No, it was just there, showing up and echoing through his skull — loud enough to almost crowd out his own thoughts.

Almost. “Who i-”

[BEARER]

His attention snapped forward to the hand still pointing out in front of him and through the green haze around him, something shone brighter.

A ring on his right hand, the middle finger for some reason, flared as he looked at it; green metal with a symbol etched on it that he’d seen in a hundred t-shirts and so much more. A circle with two bars made him stop, what panic that had been building up a thick head of steam stopped flat and vanished to nothing.

Nahhhhhh…

Because he knew that.

A power ring.

The power ring of the Green Lantern Corps — make and model Vol 2, Issue 1 — sitting on his actual hand as he floated around in space. Orin turned himself around, a lean to one side enough to force the motion, and caught something else over his shoulder keeping pace and pattern with his body.

Something just a few feet away, caught in the same soft green and orbiting him like an emerald-colored moon. Lantern-shaped with the light in the middle steady as a pilot light, it was either exactly what he thought it was or the best recreation ever.

At a certain point, there was no difference. Nahhhh… A snort burst free from him, the nineteen-year-old just shaking his head. I’m dreaming.

Because, obviously, right?

No doubt this was a dream, and not even a good one or a creative one. What else would he expect after two weeks of nothing but comic cramming and DC animated movies and that one podcast where that guy went on and about the Yellow Lantern War — still not calling them the Sinestro Corps — for almost two flat hours?

It was either that or an aneurysm, or something.

He snorted again, the sound loud in the emptiness of space.

Either way, dream or death dream, his brain had taken the whole pile and run it through a blender until it was all he could think about. Good work, Kelly. You always wanted to lucid dream, right? He shook his head. Subconscious stepped up.

A smile tore across his face as he took in the dream and looked down at his shining finger again, that middle digit beaming back at him. “Let’s see wh—”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

“—AT IS YOUR NAME?!”

Stars and space vanished as water flooded his nose and mouth, all of it up and in, his body trying to fold in on itself. He spasmed under the wet cloth on his face, the feel of his chest fluttering like a bird as his wrists and ankles tugged at the straps and got nothing.

Nothing but water in his lungs, water cold enough to hurt his teeth.

A hand gripped the back of his head, fingers deep and tight in his curls as they pulled with no give at all — hard enough to make his scalp bleed.

He tried to breathe again and got more water for his efforts, chest and throat burning as he tried again because not-trying was impossible. He suffered for that too.

The world came back to him as the cloth was torn off his face, damp rag gone as the whole room slammed back into focus — flickering fluorescents, wet tile and several pairs of boots squishing around him.

Orin couldn’t care, though, too busy coughing and coughing until something thick and ugly came out of him and splattered against his bare chest.

“Name.”

“Or-Or-r-r”

Water splashed him again, a cold shock that had him splutter and gasp. Air came this time, no cloth over his face to force him into the sensation of drowning on land.

“O-Orin!” He coughed out his own name, the same way he’d done tens — hundreds(?) — of times already in the same stupid game. “Orin Hunter K-Kelly, man, that’s—” He sucked in a sweet mouthful of air. “I already sai—”

“Affiliation.”

“I don’t—” Every time they asked and every single time, the question felt brand new under a brain scaped raw from hunger, pain, and a lack of sleep. “I d-don’t know.”

“Affiliation.”

“I…” A laugh burst free, ragged and raw and tasting a little like the blood in the back of his throat. “C-Catholic Church?” A part of him wanted to say RoboTeam just for the fun of it, but he still had the bruises from the last time he mentioned MIT. Not a big fan of the Engineers?

He laughed out loud again, unable to help himself and the world sunk away as the rag dropped back onto his face.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Stars stared back as he blinked down at the ring, the question still in his mind as he got no answer from it. What can you do?

The ring stayed silent even as he tried thinking the question at it, no helpful AI voice in his head with a litany of answers ready.

Huh. He almost frowned at it. …I guess the dream ring doesn’t come with tool-tips. Whatever.

If it was a dream, better to test it. Lucid dreaming let you do a lot of stuff anyway, pushing the limits of what your mind could do or whatever. And there was one thing he always wanted to do and the power for that was now in the palm of his hand — literally.

Green Lanterns could fly.

He glanced down at the planet below him, eyes landing on a spot somewhere in the blue and tipped forward like he was leaning on a door.

For a solid half-second, nothing happened.

Then it all happened at once.

The planet rushed up at him, curve flattening and that big brown shoulder suddenly getting texture as it was closer than ever. His own yell sounded weird in his head, sound suddenly too much. “No, no, nononono, hold up—!”

He thought back as he leaned back and the universe took that opportunity to grab him by the spine and launch him so hard his vision smeared as stars pulled out into lines. His heart pounded harder and faster in his chest, simple instinct threatening panic as he screamed down in his head again.

Down is what he got.

As fast as he went back.

[DANGER]

“No shiiiiiiiiiit!”

The planet was bigger than ever, weather and white swirl visible shapes over an ocean as the edge of the atmosphere met him straight up with a thickness as he punched through it, arms out in front of hi—

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

A scream went through him, the sound unable to get out fully past the gag keeping him from biting his tongue clean off. Another current forced more sound from him, body spasming against a new set of restraints as every muscle he owned reported in at once.

Soon enough, his mouth was free again and, under all the pain and haze, a voice was asking where the technology came from.

“I—” His tongue was thick in his mouth, too heavy and almost unfamiliar. “I d-don’t know.”

The gag entered his mouth, another jolt passing through him. It was shorter this time, and somehow worse for it.

No time to get used to it.

The question repeated.

“L-l-look, I woke up with i-”

“What. Is. It.”

“I f-f…” He almost laughed again, the taste of blood familiar and somehow hilarious. “I told you a hundred times. It’s a Green Lantern ring. A p-power ring.”

“What is Green Lantern.”

The question was repeated again as it had been over a half-dozen times over the last who knew how long and every time he had a new answer. None of them were inaccurate, exactly, but after so long of this, they’d definitely shifted in relation to relevance.

“A guilty pleasure by Ryan Reynolds.”

That shock ran long.

New questions came from the same and different voices; hard to tell when they all used the same flat tone and waited until they got bored and decided his pain was punctuation.

Where did you launch from.

Who sent you.

Which country developed the devices.

What are your intentions inside the United States.

Spoken the way they did, no rise at the end, they felt like orders more than questions and he couldn’t hear them any other way after a while.

He kept answering, though, tongue moving before he could bite down on the impulse that eighteen solid months of therapy had helped his stupid ass with.

He kept answering, of course, because somewhere inside of him was still the same kid who found out that if you said enough words in the right order, you could talk your way out of almost anything.

Almost.

Name. Hunter. Orin Hunter Kelly. Friends call me Hunter. Are we friends, Mr. Shadow Man?

A shock.

Age. Nineteen and three-quarters.

Origin. Born at Sibley in Washington, DC. You could call Washington, you know. My dad works for the Agency and Lockheed. Trust me, just call him. I’m begging you, call him. Or call my mom or… she’s in Boston. She’s a psych nurse. She’ll vouch. I’m a good kid, man. I’m in therapy. I don’t burn shit anymore even. I got a scholarship, fucking MIT. Please listenlistenlist-

Another shock, without the gag this time, made his tongue spark with pain as the taste of copper, fresh and red, filled his mouth and trailed its way out.

MIT? C-CompSci, full ride. Machine Learning. Bit late to get into OpenAI but d-d-dreams are dreams, right? Do government spooks have dreams or did you want to be a fucking fascist since you came out screami-

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

He came down screaming as the atmosphere caught fire.

The whole front of the world was orange and red and then white against the hardening field of green around him; the light already past wetsuit and already into shell as he left the sound barrier behind long ago.

[IMPACT]

Impact?!!!

[PROTECT]

Wh- Before he could even question the ring, green flared bright and hard — so much of it everywhere that the rest of the world vanished in front of him.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Spit and blood flew from his lips, a hit to the stomach folding him over a fist.

The restraints didn’t let him fold far, but that wasn’t much of a blessing— tight as they already were. The questions started again, spit and blood not slowing anything down more than the mouthful of throw-up he stood in.

Where did the ring come from.

“O…”

“What?”

“Oa. I don’t fucking know, man, Oa, it’s a planet!”

“Aliens.”

“Yes.”

“Names.”

“Blue.” A mouth that tasted like a penny and a tongue that felt heavy as lead made it hard to get words out. “They’re little and blue and they got big fuckin’ heads, man… heh. Space… Space Smurfs, I just noticed th-”

The next hit took him under the ribs.

Honestly, the pain wasn’t even the worst part; the sedative or stimulant or whichever new one they put into his bruised body had taken the walls down — present or past, what he knew or what he read, or what was real and not — and all of it was just in the here and now. He got six seconds into John Stewart before they asked if aliens had infiltrated the armed forces and if Stewart was his commanding officer.

He couldn’t help that laugh, not as it came out of him wet and stupid and loud.

Sure, he paid for it a couple seconds later, but it was worth it.

“What are your intentions.”

“I w-w—” His jaw clicked, lips smacking with his mouth dry and face screwed up from whatever was currently fucking up his system. A simple word wouldn’t take this long otherwise.  “I was going to class.”

Another hit.

“Build an AI overlord.”

Another.

“Blow up brown people for oil i-in a country I can’t pronounce?”

For some reason, that one got them to stop.

He found himself in the same room again, glass walls all around him and everything bolted to the ground. Vein opened up, a new line went in with tape pulling at the hair on his arms and his elbows stiff from sleeping on it wrong.

It was always a new IV.

It was how they fed him.

How they watered him.

How they kept him from doing too much; drugs in them that made his heart run like he’d just been forced in a forty meter dash at gunpoint, mouth dry and no idea to understand what time even was half the time.

Not like it mattered, four hours or twenty, he still woke up with the inside of both arms as purple as his chest. New marks layered over old ones, he wasn’t even sure his skin had a normal color to go back to.

Time came off its rails as he kept going back to orbit, the stars all around and green up and down him as that lantern hung there a few feet off and shining bright in the middle.

He didn’t remember landing, though, a hole where it should’ve been like the last second before you fell asleep. What he had was after, where he was lying flat on his back in bowl of scorched earth and dirt walls going up and away from him tall and high.

The green flickered and faltered, his body refusing to work with him even for the simplest things as he heard people coming. Rotors chopped the air, forcing dirt to scrape his face, as men came down on lines; rifles in hand.

Orin blinked and realized someone was crouched next to him, someone tall and black and wearing a long coat that moved under the spinning helicopter blades. Hands took his wrist, heavy but careful, and the ring pulsed one more time.

[BEARER]

The green went out all at once, dying completely as he felt the cold of the night all at once where the field had been holding it off. In the same second, the ring slid off over the knuckle in one motion, and the man simply pocketed it as he stared down at the boy in the hole with one good eye.

Orin blinked, the world going black, and opened his eyes again back on the cot.

Days. Weeks.

It could’ve been either, considering some stretches between blinks felt like hours and he had no idea how to tell with no sunlight or clock anywhere to be found. 

Eventually, in the hours when there was nobody in the room to speak to, he started saying something else instead. “…brightest day…”

He knew the words, one complete thing seared in his memory from pure repetition. “…in blackest night…”

Barely moving his mouth, he’d lose it in the middle sometimes and come back up out of the darkness with no idea how long he’d been gone. “In b-bright…”