Daniel certainly didn't feel like he was at home, or that he was receiving any fair justice at all. In fact, he was being treated more like an animal than a human being.

His memories were swampy; the last thing he remembered was being electrocuted by some taser in a Chinese airport and blacking out. Apparently the gig was up. U.S. Federal agents had caught up to him. Daniel thought he would at least be safe in China since they weren't always the best of friends. The U.S. and China were coworkers—friendly only because they served some use towards a common goal. Once that goal was achieved, or was disrupted in some way, the friendship was neutralized and all hell would break loose.

Apparently, the Chinese wanted no part of Daniel since they were willing to allow some foreign country's agents to enter into their land, tase someone in their airport, and haul him out of their country, without the Chinese so much as batting an eyelash.

Either way, Daniel was in some deep trouble. What woke him up were drops of water that eventually accumulated enough to drench his face. It took awhile for his eyes to stop seeing double, and eventually he recognized he was in some sort of dark hell. He was shackled to a cage by the ankle of his right foot and when he attempted to stand he realized he wasn't just shackled to the cage, he was basically crippled. As he placed the slightest weight on his left foot, his whole leg bursted with pain rising up from his left ankle. He checked to see if there was a shackle attached to his left leg as well, but sadly there was none...

Because he would've taken a shackle over what he had stuck through his foot any day. He reached down his left leg and felt something sprouting out from both sides of his ankle. They were two giant metal bolts on each side of where his ankle should be. They drilled some type of metal into him. It looked like his foot was a dumbbell with two bulky 25-pound weights attached to each side of the base.

But that was not all. He felt relieved that it was only one foot that had been mutilated; the other one was only shackled—or so he thought. When he examined the other foot closely he realized it had suffered the same fate as his left foot. The only difference was that: one, his eyes were still adjusting when he woke up, and thus they fooled him into thinking he was only chained to the cage; two, his foot was so numb from pain that he practically couldn't feel anything anymore. Daniel was freaking out now. He knew that pain meant you were alive. Lack of pain in his right foot meant it could probably be infected from whatever procedure they had done to him, and that meant soon he'd have to hop everywhere.

Daniel's heart was about to leap out of his chest and commit suicide. The water on his face was now mixing with sweat and blood. He reached up to pat the top of his head and realized two things: one, he was bald. His beautiful blond hair that used to get him the ladies in high school was gone. Two, he had a two inch gash on the top of his head that was tender to the touch and made a weird squishy noise when he touched it.

Oh God, Daniel thought. What have I gotten myself into? Who are these people?

They're you're countrymen, a part of him was telling him.

No, they can't be. This is illegal.

So was spilling the beans on the NSA.

But what they were doing was illegal in the first place.

Yeah, but you knew that signing up—didn't you?

The question wasn't really a sincere question—it was more like an attack on Daniel's guilt. He had to have known, when he started working for the NSA over six years ago, that what they were doing was somehow deeply wrong. Spying on a country's civilians as a justification for keeping them safe—it wasn't democracy, it was a totalitarian state cloaked in the suit of a democratic-republic. The United States was no better than its enemies.

It took Daniel until now, as he sat basically crippled in a cage treated like an animal out in the pouring rain on some coastline, to realize that he wasn't working for an entity bent on protecting its people—but a conspiracy built to keep its people in check. And once he had figured all of this out, it was only a matter of time before they erased the problem, like a bad file that poses a threat to an entire computer system. Daniel was a virus—a virus to a system of keeping Americans under control.

No, Daniel was more than that. He was a cure to a country that suffered from paranoia. He was the alarm clock that woke up the nation from its slumber of ignorance. He had to go down believing that. If not, then they have already won.

A crackle of thunder exploded amongst the sky. It sounded like firebombs were simultaneously going off across the dark void above him. Next he heard the crashing of waves against a rocky shore. He was most definitely on some coast, maybe even an island. It had to be a tropical island. Even amidst the pouring rain, the air felt muggy and sticky. He could spot some palm trees struggling to hold steady against a raging wind. The metal in his cage was even having problems, as it creaked and trembled from the mighty forces of nature.

Another flash of lighting went off and Daniel happened to be looking around him when that happened. In the split second of sufficient light provided by the stirring of the clouds, he spotted multiple cages, some empty, others with people lying practically dead on the cold cage floor. He spotted that they too had some type of metal bolts jolted onto their ankles. No one was tied up. Whoever their oppressors were, they were not afraid of the prisoners escaping on foot whatsoever.

The weather continued on through the night and stopped just short of sunrise. The sun gently peaked across the sky, casting an orange hue that would've been a beautiful sight to enjoy had Daniel not been incarcerated in some cage like an animal, or crippled by metal bolts as if his enemies stopped prematurely from making him into a machine.

Then Daniel thought, if this was how I was meant to die, then I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful sight. The ocean, once violent moments ago, was calm and whispered across the shore. The water, once a dark pool of congealed blood, was now a sparkling blue and white. The sky, once a void controlled by dark clouds, was now clear and illuminated by a sun fighting to join the sky. The air, once muggy and damp, was now cool with a nice soft breeze.

Maybe this was the perfect way to die—in nature. The cage had already made him feel like he was an animal, now he was to die like one.

But they couldn't even give him that.

Daniel was pulled out of his fantasy by a loud series of clangs across the iron bars of his cage. When he turned his attention towards the cage door, he spotted a man gliding a baton across the cage carelessly. Once he reached the lock he took out a ring full of hundreds of keys and took his time looking for the right one. The man whistled an ominous tune, almost like a screeching cry with a melody to it. Once he found the key, he opened up the cage, continuously whistling that ominous tune. With the cage open, he went inside, grabbed Daniel by the arm, and dragged him towards the back of an old military Humvee that went out of style seven years ago. These things weren't even in use in the Syrian war after the release of the new versatile Terrarovers that could traverse nearly any landscape: from deserts to rocky surfaces and snowy mounds. Terrarovers were also practically bulletproof and came mounted with auto-assisted MG turrets.

The vehicle in front of Daniel was a simple, old-fashioned Humvee, covered in mud and dirt from frequent use. Once at the back of the Humvee, the man dropped Daniel's right hand and reached into the back seat to grab a rope, still whistling that eerie tune. Then he tied a knot painfully around Daniel's legs, making sure to wrap it above the ankle so that the two metal bolts that stuck out from the sides of his ankles would stop any slippage. Then the man tied the other end of the rope to the back of his Humvee.

Daniel did not like where this was going.

Once the man was done tying off the opposite end, he went into the driver's seat and started up the Humvee. He put the car in drive and proceeded up the small inclines and rocky roads, dragging Daniel's body behind him. The good news, if there was any good news in this situation, was that he was not speeding like a new car commercial around a mountain side—the man was driving about ten to twenty miles an hour at max speed. The road was too cluttered with natural debris to be traversed quickly.

That was where the bad news came in, or worse news depending on how you looked at it. The debris literally tore holes and scrapped Daniel's back and head. His shirt was being torn off his body, and so were pieces of his skin. His butt was being nicked by thousands of rocks as Daniel attempted to sit up in order to avoid hurting his bald head anymore then he needed to. But that only led to some painful sodomizing by the larger rocks that managed to find the natural opening in his body.

He eventually had to give up, not because he wanted to, but because his body forced him to cave in. Daniel was in so much pain he couldn't help but laugh. He always knew that men had their rectums resized in prison, which he was most certainly in. He only wished it had been something softer than an Earthly stone.

After about ten minutes of being dragged against the Earth, the truck transitioned onto a paved concrete road. He wasn't sure if this was any better. The road provided an constant tearing of his epidermis, revealing the pinkish dermis below. His back was on fire against the concrete. The constant pain on his back began to cancel out the pain being endured by his ankles, which acted as a towing foundation for the rope. Luckily, the time spent on the concrete wasn't long, about two minutes. But those two minutes were probably the worst of his life.

Yet, it was only about to get much worse. Once the car was put into park the man came out of the car again, still whistling the same damn tune. He clearly had no diversity in music. Once he untied Daniel he continued to drag him across the concrete, only by the arm this time. Daniel examined his surroundings and found that he was not in some regular prison. He was in a military base. The Humvee should've given it away, but now classic Blackhawks were stationed on about five different helipads across the base, and there was a freaking tank too. Anti-air gun turrets were stationed around the base, and giant satellite radars occupied much of the space on the base as well.

The man, who was dressed in a green jacket with black slacks and shiny, polished black shoes, led Daniel inside a towering, desaturated red, gated perimeter that surrounded the base. Attached to the gate was a watchtower with over three heavily armed men stationed inside. Once inside the gated base, he led Daniel down some steps into a tunnel that opened up into a cargo storage area. Towards the back of the area was a fenced area that held some giant steam pipe on the inside.

Until now, the thought never crossed his mind to try speaking to the person. His captor/jailer never really bothered to even say hello or taunt him in any way—besides that annoying whistling. Once the man dropped Daniel inside his new prison cell, he tied him to the steaming pipe that hissed inside Daniel's ear.

At that point Daniel could only manage to mouth out the word. "Why?"

The man stopped whistling and looked down at Daniel with such an evil smirk, it looked like he was extremely happy to have finally gotten the question. His face was pristine. It had no scars, no acne, no freckles, nothing but green eyes and shiny white teeth. The only flaw he had, was some jagged design across the top of his head. Around the haphazard, upside-down, lightening bolt design scar on his head, sprouted out blond hair—blond hair that seemed strangely similar to the hair Daniel had lost.

The man smirked and spoke. "Why to make an example of course."

Then he left the room and would only return later with two men that simply did not belong. Both had a rich brown skin tone, and spoke nothing close to English. In fact, it sounded like they were constantly hurling up phlegm to spit at each other. Then the distinguished man in green and black unlocked the door, released Daniel of his chains and handed him over to the two foreign men.

The man in the green suit made sure Daniel heard the next sentence in English: "Now go make an example of him." [15]

Footnote:

[15] This is the last bit of information available on Daniel Mason's arrest. Salvador wrote the following footnote in the first draft of his paper, "The media at the time believed that Daniel Mason was still alive in Russia and/or China. However, the Freedom of Information Act allowed for the acquisition of this information on the arrest of Mr. Mason. Most of it has been blacked out. Considering that a lot of information was still communicated through Daniel Mason's file, it shows that the blacked out sections must be something truly evil. However, I have acquired the information before it was listed as top secret. For all I know, I can be the only human being who has a copy of this transcript on the arrest and torture of Daniel Mason." After years of mystery, it is now partially known what happened to Daniel Mason (see the FOS news article: "Spilt Beans Leads to Spilt Guts").