Extraordinary Rendition

Moving beyond "He Remains Aground," into the illicit string of underground Black Sites, which lay outside of the mainland United States and legal jurisdiction.

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Silence. It wrapped itself around him. It was the first thing he heard. He laid there for a while, vacantly, suspended without thought. Only as his mind began to struggle to the surface, and the veil began to lift, did he realize that he had a body. The silence was met with a rush of blood in his ears, which kept time with a part of him he did not yet know existed. His head began to swim. Next he became aware of the short, labored, half-breaths which his body forced down his nose and across his clammed upper lip. Each exhalation was accompanied by a dull pain, first along his left breast and then increasing with intensity as it passed across the whole of his rib cage. The cadence of his breath and the tenderness in his chest struggled to be rid of each other. The harder either of them worked, the closer the two of them ultimately became. He coughed until his lungs burned and the pressure inside of him reverberated as they tried to regain the air they had lost. The veil continued to raise. He knew that he had legs now. He could not move them, but he could tell that they were there. It was the quiet numbness of his flesh and the sharp aching in his bones that assured him. His right hip and his right shoulder came together and told him that he was laying on his side. The importunate sincerity with which they begged let him know that he was laying on concrete. Languidly, he forced himself to roll over. By now, the initial silence had passed over him, and the quiet of unconsciousness was replaced by the roar of his own body. He fought against the swollen weight of his flickering eyelids, and the world flashed, out of focus, before his eyes. Having not the will to move his head, his sight fell upon his own body as it materialized into resolution. His legs were still there, tucked up towards his chest. They were sheathed in a tatter of brown fabric, which would have at one time passed as clothing. It was the only garment he wore: his only remaining effect. Next, his arms came into focus. They were bare and bruised and married at the wrists, bound by what appeared to be wire, palm to palm in mock prayer. The strictures were held painfully tight, and his wrists bled in protest.
An idea seeped into his thoughts: Have I been moved again?
Vision then fell past his tired body while his mind tried to cling to the environment surrounding him. Beyond the horizon of his arms he tried to construct what he could from the dim void in which he found himself. His eyes met first with the damp grey concrete on which his body lay. The ground was stained with watermarks, puddles, circumnavigated by crusted saline rings of yellowwhite filth, and other congregates which he could not decipher. The window wells, of which there were two that he could make out, had either been blackened, boarded up, or bricked shut. The only light in the room came from a deep crack somewhere in the ceiling, which threw its blade against the wall opposite from where he lay. It cast itself upon a network of pipes, which ran up and away with the shadows, into which he could follow. Three faucets intermingled with the maze of piping, showing what they could of their empty luster through a thick of lime and rust. The faucet on the left dripped steadily, softly, to the concrete below. There the water was collected, and slipped down an open grate, to whatever lay underneath.
His eyes began to convulse from exhaustion. They had moved him. The world, it seemed, was room, and he was its only citizen. Cold and pained, he recoiled into himself, submitting to his eyelids as his mind shut off that which was outside of his control. Sleep then fell upon him as a warm leaden blanket. It was sleep without dreaming, sleep without feeling, but more importantly, it was sleep without himself.
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