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  That strategy only lasted for a fraction of a second before he was hit in the head again and he was knocked completely unconscious.

  Chapter 6 – Log In

  Matt sat naked and bound on the cold tile floor in the empty room, and tried his best to understand what they wanted from him. It was hard to concentrate and think about it given how hungry and thirsty he was getting. He felt like he’d do anything for a drink of water at this point, after having been locked up in the room now for what felt like several days. His mouth was sticky and dry, and the hunger was giving him constant cramps. It felt like he had been there a little more than two days, but with no light from outside, it was hard to say for sure.

  Earlier, about what felt like a day after being abducted, his captors had come into the room for the first time. They turned the lights on before they entered, which blinded Matt. Of course, Matt was terrified of what might happen when they came in, and he felt utterly defenseless given that his hands and feet were bound and he was completely naked. He did what he could to back into the corner and curl up into a ball.

  There were two men that entered, and both were wearing the more traditional Syrian clothing - didashahs and kuffiyahs. One was younger and had a full, dark black beard and was carrying a gun, and obviously wanted to make sure Matt didn’t try anything stupid. The other one was older and had a longer beard with two pronounced streaks of white running through it. He was carrying Matt’s laptop.

  Matt’s heart beat furiously from the fear of what they might do, and he would have been crying, but the dehydration and bright light made his eyes just sting instead. His imagination ran wild with the horrible things that were going to happen to him. He would give anything to not have come to Syria at this point.

  But as he sat, curled up in a ball in the corner of the room, trembling, the two men did nothing for a moment. Matt ventured a furtive glance at them to see what they were doing, but they just seemed to be looking at him. He also finally could see the room he was in. It was just a small room, about ten by ten, with a bare, brown tile floor and plain beige walls. There was nothing else in the room and no other door or window. The man with the streaked beard studied him silently for a moment. It might have been just his eyes stinging him, but he felt sure the look on the man’s face was that of a deep, burning hatred.

  Finally, the older one spoke and held out Matt’s laptop to him. It was in English, but through a very thick Arabic accent that made it difficult to understand what he was saying. He held out Matt’s laptop to him and said, “Log in.”

  Matt didn’t understand why they wanted this. What could they possibly want with his laptop? There couldn’t be anything of value on it that they’d want.

  Unfortunately, his confusion made him pause long enough that the one holding the laptop said something in Arabic to the other one with the gun. The younger one leaped forward and struck Matt on the side of his head with the butt of the gun, hard.

  The older man shouted at him, “Log in!”

  Matt didn’t hesitate this time, despite the horrible ringing in his ear and shooting pain in the side of his head. He reached out to the laptop and tried to still his shaking hands and fingers so he could type. It was difficult, and he had to move slowly given that his hands were tied together, but he logged in and quickly resumed his semi-fetal position in the corner of the room. He prayed they would just go away.

  But rather than leave immediately, the bearded man started looking at his laptop and browsing around on it, searching for something. Matt wanted desperately to ask for something to drink, but didn’t dare. His ear continued to ring and felt like it might be bleeding, too. He was starting to not care how this nightmare ended. As long as it ended.

  The man wasn’t done with Matt yet, though.

  He held the laptop back out to Matt and said to him a word that didn’t make any sense. The man said, “Ayeedeentel!” and tried to push the laptop back into Matt’s hands. He repeated “Ayeedeentel!” more angrily when Matt didn’t seem to understand.

  Before Matt could make it clear that he didn’t understand, another younger captor came into the room from outside and called out to them. The older one that had been getting angry at Matt for not understanding turned back and said something to the new man standing in the doorway, who then held out a cell phone to him.

  The man with the white-streaked beard looked back at Matt with piercing, furious eyes while he listened on the cell phone for a few moments. He hung up the cell phone, stood up quickly and swept out of the room with Matt’s laptop, followed by the other captors. As they left Matt alone in the room, they locked the door behind them, and then the light went out again.

  Matt’s eyes stung and he was developing a terrible headache from where he had been hit in the head. If he could understand what they wanted from he would have given it to them instantly. He would have done anything at that point to make this all end.

  Since that point, his captors had not come back in the room, but he did hear what he thought was the older captor yelling at the others outside the room a few minutes after they had left. Then it had gotten quiet again. All he could figure was that the person that had come into the room and made Matt give him access to his laptop must be the one in charge. But beyond that, he couldn’t understand what they wanted from him or why they had kidnapped him.

  What felt like five or six hours later, Matt heard some more noises from outside the room. There was more yelling in Arabic, but it didn’t sound quite like the guy in charge. Matt decided that maybe it was the others instead of the leader. And this time, he thought he heard another voice. A new voice. A voice speaking in clear English. And this voice sounded like he was pleading. Through the door, it was hard to make it out, but it sounded like he was pleading with the kidnappers.

  Matt wondered if they were conducting a series of kidnappings of Americans for some reason. Was it a new terror tactic, now spreading to Syria? Was it a for-profit kidnapping? That didn’t quite make sense to Matt since they were clearly interested in something on his laptop.

  After the brief burst of voices outside the room, it grew quiet again and he didn’t hear anything else for a while. Matt wanted Brian so much it hurt. He’d never take sunlight or friends or food and water for granted ever again. But he’d definitely never take Brian for granted.

  Please just get me back to Brian.

  Eventually, even with the ringing in his ears and the headache and the hunger cramps, the exhaustion in his body from being on edge for so long took over. He dozed off for a little bit in a fitful sleep of horrible dreams, and then jerked awake at some point after that when his body realized it had fallen asleep. The ringing in his ear was now less, and he could faintly hear something else now. He heard what sounded like shouting again, but it was farther away and fainter than when it had been just outside the door. He wasn’t sure if it involved what he thought of as the new victim or not.

  And very suddenly, with the faint shouting still going on, Matt heard the sound that made his blood turn ice cold.

  He heard a single, clear gunshot from another room in the building, followed by perfect silence.

  Chapter 7 - Incursion

  Matt stayed locked up in the empty room, in the dark, for a long period after the gunshot. His immediate fear that he would be next to be shot didn’t seem to be what was going to happen to him, though. In fact, nothing had happened since he heard the gunshot. Hours and hours had dragged by in a slow, repetitive parade of fear and exhaustion in the dark. If he had to guess, he would say at least two days had passed after hearing it. None of the people keeping him locked up came in the room, and no one brought him any food or water, which was quickly becoming a far bigger fear than a gunshot. No one asked him any more about his laptop.

  He still occasionally heard faint voices outside, so he knew they were there. At one point, when it was quiet for an extended period, he did get up and try the door, only to find that it was a very solid door and was locked from the outside. I
n his weakened state, he knew that throwing himself against the door to try and knock it down would do no good.

  Matt had not had to use the bucket in over a day now to relieve himself. With no food or water for at least three days, there was nothing to go into it.

  The headaches from the dehydration were getting bad, his mouth was dry and sticky, and his tongue felt like it was swelling. Even more worrisome than that, he had had a few spells where he had woken up, but felt more like he had lost consciousness rather than fallen asleep. His abdomen was cramping constantly now and the thirst was maddening.

  Matt, finding few other options and with almost nothing to lose, had tried another tactic. He chose a moment when he heard the men talking somewhere outside the room. He went to the door, knocked on it, and yelled as best he could through a very weak and cracked voice that he wanted some water. He literally begged for even just a sip of water.

  Almost immediately, the light in the room came on, blinding and burning his eyes and making him step back, and one of the men burst in and waved a gun at him angrily. It wasn’t the man in charge, but one of the other captors. The man yelled at him in some incomprehensible Arabic language, but clearly wanted Matt to be quiet and to get away from the door. He tried to indicate to the man that he just wanted something to drink, making drinking motions with his bound hands while standing naked before him. When the captor raised the butt of the gun to beat Matt with it, Matt shrunk back and cowered in the corner again. Worse, the captor stepped into the room next to Matt and spat on him before laughing as he walked back out. He was once again left with nothing when the door was closed and locked.

  He tried to take his mind off of things, to focus on something hopeful. Surely someone had noticed he was missing. His friends at Tishreen University, maybe. Or maybe Brian had realized he hadn’t emailed and was calling people to look for him. He thought about getting home to Brian, holding onto him and never letting him go. Never doubting him again and never ever taking him for granted again, not even for a moment. God, what he wouldn’t give to see Brian’s handsome face again, just one more time.

  But the thirst continued to get worse, and it eventually drove all other thoughts from his mind. The thing that started making him feel truly hopeless, that he was just waiting for an inevitable finish, was that he felt like maybe a gunshot would be better than the slow, tortuous agony of dying of thirst. He managed to wonder just how much longer he’d last before he would welcome a gunshot to the head to make the burning, rabid, all-consuming thirst go away.

  ~~~~~

  Matt awoke with a start, looking straight up into the dark, blank nothing that was the ceiling of the small room he was in. The thirst and cramps hit him immediately and he wished he had just stayed asleep or unconscious – he didn’t care which any more. And for just a second that’s all he focused on.

  But then something caught his attention that drove even the thoughts of his thirst from his mind. He heard noises outside the room. Noises completely unlike those he had heard before. There was yelling again. But while he had heard what felt like angry yelling before the gunshot earlier, this time sounded more like panicked yelling, coming from multiple people at the same time. But there was a new noise, too. An occasional, odd, thud-like punching sound.

  He heard it a few times and things immediately got very quiet outside the room. The silence made Matt very nervous. Nervous enough to almost forget about his body’s cries for water. He forced himself to sit up, dragging his bound feet around him across the cold floor so he could put his bound wrists around his knees and wrap himself up into a ball.

  Without warning, there was shouting again somewhere outside. But this time it was a single person shouting in Arabic, and farther away. Like before, it only lasted a brief moment. He heard one sudden loud gunshot, followed by another couple of the faint punching sounds, ending in an utter, terminal silence. In his delirious state, Matt would not have thought he could be any more afraid than he had been in the last few days. But there was something about the silence that made his dehydrated blood run ice cold. He pushed himself with his feet back farther in the room, into the far corner, as far away from the door as he could get. He didn’t want to be anywhere near the door now.

  He waited and concentrated all of his strength into his hearing, listening for anything outside the door. But he heard nothing. Matt kept his eyes glued to the strip of light under the door for any sign of what might be happening, but he could see no movement.

  A few moments later, and silently, causing a dread in Matt that made him want to crawl through the wall, he saw something moving. A shadow moved across the crack along the bottom of the door, but there was no sound to go with it. There was still only the harrowing silence. Matt started shaking uncontrollably and crouched into the corner of the room, now even facing away from the door.

  Matt closed his eyes in the dark and thought of Brian. He thought of the night Brian had asked him out the first time. He thought of the time he and Brian had gone to Sky Meadow State Park and had a picnic out in the middle of a field with no one around for what felt like miles, just the two of them. He thought of the weekend trip they had taken up to DC back in January to see the museums, the trip where they got locked out of the car and Brian got so pissed off. He thought about the last time Brian had kissed him and looked into his eyes, brushing Matt’s unruly shock of hair out of his face and back to where it was supposed to be. He wished he could be a better boyfriend for Brian. He wished he had been. There were so many things he could have done better.

  Finally, what he knew was going to happen, happened. The door to his room burst open with a deafening crack, making him jerk reflexively and try to push into the corner even farther than he already was. He didn’t dare look. He just wanted it to be over.

  In the moments of silence that followed, he couldn’t help himself. He held out his bound hands towards the light pouring in from the open doorway and sobbed in abject fear of whatever horrifying violence was about to come down on him.

  “Please… no…” he begged.

  He waited for a moment, for the gunshot, for the blade, for whatever had forced its way into the room was going to do. But nothing happened. He started to turn to face whatever had forced its way into the room just as the overhead light came on, blinding him and burning his eyes. He blinked and squinted anyway and tried to see whatever was now in the room with him.

  Matt saw a person squatting in the doorway, pointing a large handgun directly at him. He turned away again, his body shaking violently. He pleaded again, his voice dry and barely more than a parched whisper, “Don’t…”

  Matt waited, trembling, for whatever would happen. But what happened was that he heard a voice, low and deep, like thunder in the distance.

  It asked, “Are you American?”

  The voice disoriented Matt. He wondered where it had come from. Was someone actually speaking in English?

  Matt turned nervously to face the person in the room pointing the gun at him. He ventured a terrified glance through his stinging eyes and said shakily, “Yes… American.”

  What Matt could see was a man – he thought it was a man – squatting, but no longer pointing the gun at him. He was covered in tan and brown. But he had no face. There was just a helmet, and goggles over his eyes and a black nothing where the bottom half of his face should be. At least he wasn’t pointing the gun at Matt anymore. He suddenly realized the man wasn’t alone, though. There was now another, dressed just like him and also with no face, standing in the doorway behind him. He was holding a much larger gun, a rifle, in front of him, and it was pointed at Matt.

  Matt blinked a few times, trying to get the image to clear. His mind tried to understand. Why didn’t they have faces? It was terrifying, not being able to see any part of the actual person in the room with him. He wanted to look away, but couldn’t. He’d be looking at the rifle when it was fired, finally killing him, ending all of this.

  Matt watched as the one squatting hols
tered his handgun and pulled a large knife instead, rolling it very deftly in his hand. Matt’s breath hitched in his throat. In his fear, he turned away and faced into the corner again. Why did it have to be a knife? Why couldn’t it be quick and painless with the rifle instead?

  He heard the voice again. The voice said carefully, “It’s ok. It’s ok. I’m just going to cut the zip ties off your hands and feet, alright?”

  Matt looked back over at the figure squatting in the door and blinked again, trying to get his eyes used to the light.

  The figure with no face nodded at Matt and said, “Hold out your hands, ok?”

  Matt wasn’t sure what to believe any more, so he did as he was told. The man stood up and stepped over to Matt slowly before crouching back down. Matt’s hands were shaking, and he felt a gloved hand grab them to hold them steady, pause for a moment, and then in a split second, the zip tie that had bound his hands since he had been in that room was gone.

  The voice asked, “What’s your name?”

  After what he had been through, it felt like he had to remember who he was in a past life. “M… Matt…” he said, almost more as a question than a statement.

  “Ok, Matt, let me get your feet for you, too. Hold steady.” In a flash of the large knife, Matt’s feet were free as well.

  For the first time, Matt dared to hope that maybe he would leave the room alive.

  “Where you from, Matt?” said the deep voice.

  “From… from Richmond. Virginia.”

  The figure put his hand gently on Matt’s shoulder for a moment. He glanced back over his shoulder briefly, and the other faceless man that was standing there lowered his rifle and left the room.

  As Matt’s eyes adjusted more, he got a closer look. But even with the person right next to him, he still couldn’t see any of the man that was squatting there with his hand on his shoulder. The man was covered in a desert camouflage uniform, loaded up with packs, pockets, and gear all over it. He had a helmet on his head and peculiar goggles perched on the brim, plus goggles over his eyes. And there was the strange black void where his nose and mouth should be. There was just nothing there.