Page 202 of Phantom Mine

It’s neither deep, nor shallow. Wide, or narrow.

Light, or dark.

It’s simply empty. A sensory deprivation chamber in my mind, of sorts.

Then, slowly, the faintest of sounds start to bleed through. The soft whir of machines, the scuffling of shoes on linoleum, the steady beeping of a computerized heartbeat.

Muffled, unrecognizable voices.

Life.

I’m in a hospital room.

The blackness encroaches. It gains weight and pulls me under before I can open my eyes.

The next time I’m mentally reawakened, there aren’t any voices and there are no sounds of footsteps. The machine continues to beep, but other than that, there’s eerie silence.

My mind feels like it’s trapped in a prison made of my body. There’s a disconnect between the two that means true consciousness is just out of reach. I’m a voice in my head, but I don’t yet have control or function of my limbs.

The sticky fingers of the blackness grasp at me, trying to take me under once more.

A moment of clarity flashes through my thoughts, and I remember.

The fire.

Being trapped.

Valentina.

Valentina.

My ears search for what Ineedto hear. They yearn to make out the lilt of her voice, the clear bell of her laugh.

It isn’t there.

Internally, I shake from exertion trying to resist the pull of that nothingness. I can’t go back to it, I need to find Valentina.

I need to make sure she’s okay.

Finally, I feel myself break through. I feel my body turn on.

A tingle starts in my toes, drawing my awareness to that part of my body first. It spreads quickly from my extremities to my core, and I do a quick scan to see how I’m feeling. I realize that I’m laying on my stomach and my back is tender.

The skin prickles like it needs to be itched.

My limbs feel stiff and wooden. Creaky from lack of use. How many days have I been unconscious?

Opening my eyes takes multiple attempts. My lids are heavy. It feels like I have to lift physical weights to get them up.

It takes a gargantuan effort to open my eyes but I slam them almost immediately back shut when the first person I see is none other than Thiago da Silva.

I must be in the middle of a nightmare.

Sporting his usual all-black suit, he sits comfortably in one of the two chairs next to my bed, legs spread like he owns the place, reading something on his phone.

He wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t something very wrong. Something very wrong withher.

“Where is she?”

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