Caleb blinked at the man. He saw him. He saw him, but he didn't know him, he recognized him as a fellow human being - but he wasn't. He was something else, something pathetic and small that was not worth living in this world, but also something that could not be killed, and more importantly, would not be killed by any mortal man. He was something immortal and ancient, despite the fact that he was only thirty something years old. Was he even that old? He could not remember his age, despite having made marks on the wall, in order to try to categorize his time here, in order to try to ensure that he survived, that he was in his proper place, and that he was alive and real. But real was so far away. It seemed though, that Van Vuuren recognized him as a person, as a something. He was real and tangible to the doctor's eyes, and that gave his life renewed purpose and meaning. It almost made him happy - but happiness was just as far away as reality, if not farther away. He was never happy. He was content - he could be appeased, but he was never happy. Happy was for somebody else. Happiness was for July 4th fireworks and American dreams. It was for Mission Accomplished strung between war-ships, it wasn't meant for grey-walled asylums. It wasn't meant for the insane. And so, it wasn't meant for Caleb Norwill.
Caleb Norwill looked back at Van Vuuren - but the more appropriate term would be looked through him. He looked beyond him into something else. He saw the Other behind him, standing confidently and smiling, and his teeth were suddenly everywhere, filling the room. The teeth became a beach, fractured molars that a sea-tide washed up against. The waves were the colour of freshly spilt blood. Arthur Prince stood at the prow of a boat-without a bottom, and his eyes were filled with smiles. His blonde hair - shortly shorn, standing up like feathers on his head, moved in a stray breeze. Caleb approached him, and he could smell sea and surf filling his nose. There was a horse's body strewn on the beach, the organs pulled out and the viscera tangled around the hull of the boat, lashing it to the jawline of the shore. Arthur smiled at Caleb, and reached out a hand to him. His fingers were white and manicured - the fingertips were not rotten away like Caleb's. His wrists were clean and clear of scars. From him, Caleb could smell something, wet ashes and forgotten forest fires. He had gone three years without sight, but he could see this, he could see the boat on the shore, he could see his Other - and in his boat without a bottom he could hear the voices of a thousand different sea creatures who had risen up from the depths to sing him a song of worthiness. Worthy, worthy, worthy. He was worthy. He had been chosen. The President had said so.
Caleb reached out his hand to touch Arthur's, and when they touched, there was an unbearable sense of coldness that slithered up his spine, resulting in a spark of pain between his temples. He swallowed hard, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his hand was on Van Vuuren's elbow, grasping the protrusion of the joint like it was the only thing keeping him from drowning. Perhaps it was - but such things were not things that Caleb could speculate on. He swallowed again. There was a bitter taste in his mouth, a putrefaction. His teeth hadn't rotted yet, but there was something sick inside of him. He suspected that he was rotting from the inside out, and by this time in three years, his exterior would be as ruined as his interior. He was filled with cancers and tumours, and this infection was not simply of the flesh, it was something poisonous and wrong to the very core of his being. But maybe, just maybe, this strange foreign doctor could help him. Maybe there would finally be peace in his head. He found himself, strangely, absurdly, and wrongly, filled with hope. This small, sad patient smiled in the smallest, most fractured of ways, but the broken and scared smile did not last.
Names, names, names. They always wanted names. And he could never remember his. 'Caleb' didn't belong to him - it belonged to somebody else, who had died on an operating table in Thailand. Or was it Hong Kong? He couldn't recall. But they had died cloaked in blood and gore, and Caleb was not that person. But he wasn't Arthur Prince either. Arthur had died in a firefight, with bullets ripping through lungs and shoulders. The entire United States had celebrated his death, just like they would celebrate the death of Saddam Hussein, or Osama Bin Laden. The traitor Prince was dead, and so the man who stood before Van Vuuren was a ghost. Unreal, and unknowable. He had no name. But he had told the girl he was Caleb, hadn't he? He supposed that was right. But was it really? He wouldn't want to mislead his new ally in his crusade against evil. That would not have been worthy of him. He did not want to lie.
And so he reached to tug at the bracelet around his wrist. "Eight-three-ninety-eight." He said mechanically. His tone was utterly flat, deprived of emotion of guidance. Caleb's voice was as hollow and empty as the interior of his chest cavity, where there were no lungs, and no air either. Just blood and dead memories. "I... I think I was somebody." He mumbled. "Once."