In Days Gone By Chapter Two

Day: Thursday
Date: 13 September
Time: 10:15 am
Location: Currently Unknown
Time Remaining: 69 hours 45 minutes

It can’t be possible.  There is no way that I could have killed my own President.  How can they even think that?  The thoughts that flowed through my mind made me uneasy as I lay on the bed.  There’s just no way I could do that.  I’m not a Russian spy.  I just couldn’t kill my own President.  The bed that I was on seemed to become more uncomfortable as the thoughts shook through my mind.  The President was dead.  My President?  How is it possible?  A brief recollection of what Professor Schwarz had told me flashed through my mind.  “Geoffrey Cooper is dead.  There was an explosion, inside the White House, at 0200 hours this morning.”  He was dead.  The President of the United States was dead.  But, how was it possible?  I pushed myself up on the bed and swung my legs over the side of it.  I slid off the bed and landed on the floor with a gentle thud.  I was barefoot and the ground was cold to touch, but it was a relief to finally place my feet down on something solid.  I flexed my toes and stretched my back, trying to shake the thoughts away.  Cooper dead.  Trying to find a way to make the thoughts stop, I paced slowly along the cold floor.  I tried to stretch my muscles out and loosen some of the tension that had lodged in each and every one.  Each individual muscle ached as I moved.  I have been out for a while, I observed.  More likely unconscious than asleep.  That would enforce the Professor’s story of me being found, unconscious, outside the Oval Office.  But it’s not possible!  I cursed out loud, stamping my foot down on the ground like a little child having a tantrum.  “No,” I stated.  “No, no, no.  It wasn’t me.  I know it wasn’t me.  There’s no way I would kill my own President.  No.  It’s not possible.”  Pleased with my admission of innocence, I resumed my pacing over the cold floor.  Why was I here?  Schwarz had said that this place was a military facility called Westfield.  Why was I being held in a military facility if I had been in the vicinity of an explosion?  Surely I should be in a hospital.  I might have even been able to break out of the hospital, but not here.  No way out from here.  What are they going to do with me?  Interrogate me, perhaps.  Torture me, even.  Who were these people?  I had no way of knowing; I was trapped inside a highly guarded military facility with people that I had no idea who they were.  My pacing across the floor involuntarily ceased as a dark realization struck me.  “They think I’m a terrorist,” I whispered.  The realization began to overcome me and I felt weakened by its strength and viability.  It was a possible outcome of the whole situation.  It happened in the world; it was hushed up, but it still happened.  “They’re going to execute me,” I breathed.