Prologue

A Chapter by Confidential

Prologue

"S...we need to get ou......st, sir!"

"Voices...what are those voices?" I thought.

".........wn! I repeat, POTUS is down!"

The voices were getting slightly louder now, yet still muffled, and my ears were ringing horribly...I tried to move around some now that I was regaining consciousness, but once I tried to move my left leg, a violent explosion of sharp, throbbing pain surged through it and ran all the way up my body.

"Wh...where am I?" I mumbled, not even fully aware of what I was doing. I felt someone grab me by the shoulder and was suddenly being led (though 'dragged' would be a more accurate term) away somewhere. My vision was starting to come back now, and I had realized that the ringing sound I had been hearing was the symphony of gunfire being conducted in every direction around me. "It's okay, sir, we're going to get you out of here in no time!" the man who had grabbed me said. He was dressed in a formal suit, and wore heavily tinted black glasses. I saw in the hand that wasn't leading me God knows where, he held a gun. "What do you mean, 'sir'?" I said, "Who are you, what's going on?"

We approached a roadside; crowds of people were running in the same direction the man was leading me- away from whatever was happening behind us. People were getting in to their cars and speeding off, the sound of their collective panic almost as loud as the sound of all the gunfire. "Who are you!" I repeated, agitated at the whole situation I had awoken to. Several bullets hit a car the man was attempting to break into; the first bullet missed me by inches. We both jumped in surprise and the man raised his gun and started to fire in the direction the shots had come from. He stepped in front of me to prevent me from being hit, like I just so nearly had been. He kept on shooting until his clip was empty. He continued his efforts to hijack the car (a white Toyota) once the incoming fire had ceased. I got a chance to take a good look at the building we had been running away from now. It was several hundred yards away, but I could see it well enough to know it looked horribly familiar. It had several large columns and a long staircase with a podium at the top, flags billowing in the wind on either side of it. In the middle of the building was a rather large statue of man sitting down, a passive look on his stone face. Even from back here, it too looked oddly familiar.

The man's efforts to break in to the car finally made progress; he pushed a button on the inside of the front door and all the rest of the doors unlocked. He opened the back door to the car and practically shoved me inside. "Get inside, and whatever you do, stay down!" He jumped in the driver's seat and removed a cover under the steering wheel. As he began hotwiring the car, the front passenger door opened and another man, dressed identically to the one I had been with since waking up started getting in. The first man pointed his gun at the man automatically and pulled the trigger multiple times, forgetting the magazine was empty. "Jesus, Dale, it's just me!"

"Sorry," said Dale, resuming his attempt to hotwire the car. "What's our status?" he said. The new man closed the passenger door as he took a seat and said, "We don't know how many others there are, or if there are any." When he got no response from Dale, who was clearly having a difficult time hotwiring the car, he pointed at the mess of wires spilling out of the underside of the steering column. "You have to twist the two red wires together, and then touch them to the brown one to start the engine!" Dale did as instructed and the car engine roared to life. "Thanks," he said to the other man shortly. A moment later we were speeding off, and I was still lying down in the back, more confused than ever.

The second man started talking through the earpiece he wore, "This is Agents Cooper and Preston calling in; POTUS is in our custody, repeat, POTUS is in our custody. Heading to safe point Alpha now in improvised vehicle, look for a white Toyota with two bullet holes, I repeat, a white Toyota, two bullet holes, out." The agent, whichever one he was, looked back and down at me. "Everything's under control, Mr. President. Just stay down."

"Mr. President!?" I thought, "What in God's name is going on? Where are these people taking me!?"

All questions which, unbeknownst to me, would be answered in due time. But as it all happened, things were rather confusing and simply put: terrifying. I had no idea where I was, who I was, where I was going or who I was with, though, oddly, they seemed to know me. Yet, before waking up to all this madness, the last thing I could remember was getting ready to go to the airport for a business trip. I couldn't help but wonder how the hell I got where I was, or how long it took me to get there.