The Return Of Captain Thunderbird (part one)

I don't want to go, Father.

It is destiny, my child. Destiny is not to be questioned. Your spirit, all spirits have a path. This is yours.

When can I come home again?

When you are ready to rejoin us. When your new destiny is fulfilled.

Father, I...

White light. Pain. Rushing air. The sensation of rising... rising... soaring into the sun...

Isn't this what it's like to die?

The rushing noise subsides, softens, becomes more regular. The light coalesces into blobs, objects, vague at first... one that moves. One that smiles.

"I'll go and tell the doctors you're awake. And..."

She looked away nervously... possibly in wonder... possibly in terror...

"...you have a visitor."

You blink in the light, eyes wide like a newborn, drinking in everything around you. Your fingers feel... not numb, but clumsy, untrained.
White light. White sheets. Charts. Numbers. Rushing sound... oxygen mask. Hospital.

This can't be good.

The woman reappears, and you take a second to study her. You remember nurses from the frontline hospitals, working feverishly on the troops who took those accursed isles. Iwo Jima. You snatched men from the jaws of death, bringing them home, and the nurses brought them back to life. Heroes all, and yet they called you Hero.
She doesn't look like those nurses. The starched white uniform that you remember fondly is gone, replaced by workaday green overalls like the surgeons wore. Strange. You told Jane they'd never go out of style as you held her...

Who's Jane?

Your mind feels like shattered ice on the great river... cold shards of knowledge that seem to provide a solid surface, but threatening to slip aside at any moment.
The incessant notes, repetitive, G sharp, keep harping on at you and you track them to their source. A cathode ray tube of some sort, but in many different colours, with numbers and patterns. You examine them, and on a thought take your pulse... the noise and the pattern match. Ingenious... a heart monitor.

You stumble to your feet and examine it... yes, blood pressure, body temperature, everything a doctor could need to know. You'd thought of something like that at PCU, but never... You shake your head. Where am I?

Your fascination with the blinking, beeping box distracted you from the soft click of the door. A polite cough makes you turn.

"Miss me? I missed you, young fox."

Nobody calls you that.

The man is huge. Towering, even. Kind eyes look out from under a helm, burnished bright like the sun, bright like the water where the paddles cut.

Nobody calls you that except...

"Marcus?"

The man breaks into a smile, which most would pass without notice. But for this man, you know that that smile means joy that few could ever comprehend. And his hand on your shoulder means you're a friend...

"I'm... not sure... I know you're Marcus, but..."

"They told me you were having trouble with your memory. I understand that. You've been through quite a bit, you know."

"Through what?"

You sit back on the bed heavily, lost amidst your memories.

"I had to pull a few strings at the Museum to take this out, but maybe it'll help."

The man hands you a package. It's a newspaper with yesterday's date on it, but it's been through the mill - aged and wrinkled and torn. There, in the second column, is your picture, and that of your visitor... Marcus. And the words:

CAPTAIN THUNDERBIRD MISSING IN ACTION
Word has come from Supreme Allied Command Pacific that Captain Floyd Thunderbird Westerman, USMC Hero Support Section, better known to Paragon citizens as Captain Thunderbird, has been reported missing in action.

Early reports suggest that Westerman was lost in an explosion during a daring raid on an Axis scientific facility...

You push the paper aside and look at the clock on the monitor.

10:30am. 11/17/2005.
Sixty years.

"How the HELL...?"

"Got time for a story? I think I need to fill you in."

To Be Continued