I wake up half-dead.
I don’t recognize the room I’m sitting in, the table in front of me, the things on the walls. I can barely even see it all through the tears. The tears. I was crying?
God, it feels like someone put a sledgehammer through my head. My arms are lead, but I let myself slump backward, feel the thick, humid heat across my skin, and eventually I raise a hand up to my face. It’s shaking so bad I barely manage it, but I wipe my eyes, and the skin of my hand comes back wet and streaked with pink. There’s a pounding in the back of my head, an ever-present point of blazing light at the edge of my vision stabbing me through the optic nerve. As I blink away more tears I realize half my vision is still blurred. Dim and foggy.
I’m wearing a jacket that’s too big for me, the collar and kerchief around my neck stained crimson. I can’t tell if they’re supposed to be. The table is covered with scattered manila folders, yellowed papers and schematics strewn around and below it like a hurricane dropped me here. There are guns, too; big ones. Half-full magazines. Butterfly knives.
I’m not alone at the table, though. There are four other people here; all dressed about the same as I am, slumped over, faces twisted and streaked with rivulets of blood from the eyes and nose and mouth. Every single one of them is dead. I don’t recognize any of them.
The headache gets worse.
I suppress an urge I can’t identify and stagger to my feet, backing away. My left arm still isn’t working right but I wipe a trickle of blood from my own nose and look around, panic rising in my chest under the searing ache, trying to make sense of what the fuck is happening to me.
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