Chapter 27 - Who Am I?

Craig shot up in bed, gasping for breath. He clutched his chest, as his heart seemed primed to shoot out like a bottle rocket. He’d relived his most common and hated recurring dream ... which was also the worst memory of his life: the car crash. He swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stood up, the adrenaline insisting on action, movement.

“Fuck,” a voice mumbled, “What are you doing?”

He glanced down to see Paige lying in bed. Her hair a disheveled mess. she hadn’t opened her eyes. Shit, had they slept together? Looking around, he didn’t recognize the space, nor did it appear to be a personal one for her. It looked like a hotel room. He racked his brain over the events of the night prior: he remembered Milton’s, he remembered taking the accelutate, and then the burn. He shuddered as he recalled the pain of that moment. A pain unlike anything he’d ever felt, like every single molecule of his body had been coated in acid. He glanced back down to Paige, sleeping.

“Hey!” he called loudly, shaking her arm and willing his immediattire to clothe himself, “Where are we?”

“Hotel,” she mumbled.

“No shit,” he scoffed quietly, “We still in Madrid?”

“Yes,” she grumbled, “What time is it?”

“I don’t know...” the neural band provided him with the answer immediately, “It’s like ... eight...” He paused as he took that in, and glanced out the window to see the sun barely peeking up through the high rises.

“Ugh, come back to bed,” she groaned, “How are you even alive right now?”

Craig was about to retort, to berate her over the misery he had endured, but the question gave him pause. At first, he’d chalked it up to simply the adrenaline rush from the nightmare, but that had settled and the hangover he was expecting didn’t fill the space left behind. No headache, no nausea ... no lingering drunkenness to speak of. He went to the restroom and glanced at himself in the mirror. Aside from his messy hair, he looked well rested. No rings under his eyes, no bruises or other blemishes from his collapse to the ground.

“Huh,” he mused, raising his arm and flexing. Nothing felt sore. This must be the first time he’d managed to avoid a hangover in over a decade. Did this have something to do with the burn? Maybe it had burned away his hangover? He went back to the moment he collapsed to the ground, and the fire that had engulfed his entire body, and he shuddered again. He’d rather have the hangover next time.

He checked his neural band to see if there had been any response yet from Kayla or Glyph. Nothing. He hadn’t heard from her in over a day now. He frowned. Her silence officially worried him, now. Kayla went off grid a lot, isolating herself during bad bouts of dysphoria and depression. He grimaced, remembering how she had reacted after learning about the fate of the Earth and humanity. The look on her face when he’d suggested she go home without him.

“Fuck, I think I screwed up here, “ he admitted to himself.

He went back into the bedroom and checked to make sure he had everything. There wasn’t much to account for, considering most of what he’d been carrying all week was his immediattire and neural band. He picked up his wallet from the bedside table and put it in his pocket. Nothing in it would help him or matter much in the future, but the habit of having it on him was a small comfort. He glanced again at Paige in bed, and a surge of guilt washed over him. He couldn’t even remember if they’d had sex, though given his final memories of the night before, he couldn’t imagine he’d had the capacity for it.

He sighed and rubbed his temples. Last night had been such a mixed bag with her. His anger with her for giving him the accelutate in the first place mixed unpleasantly with the memory of the burn. However, he also felt a twinge of gratitude. She’d helped him out of that situation and apparently helped him get safely to this hotel. He owed it to her to at least say goodbye. He reached out gently to wake her and his heart skipped a beat. His watch was gone!

“No! No, no, no, no!” He panicked, looking around the room in distress. He pulled the bedsheets up and checked the side he’d slept in. It wasn’t there but this action woke Paige, who groggily sat up and yawned.

“Craig?” she asked, then noticed his panic, “What are you doing?”

“My watch!” He urged, pointing to his bare wrist, “It ain’t here? Did you see it?”

“Um ... yeah...” she groaned, “It fell off your arm when the bouncers dropped you. I picked it up. It’s on the dresser over there.” She lazily pointed across the room, and he saw it. Relief washed over him and his gratitude to her officially outweighed his anger now.