NICOLE
Consciousness returns like a sickness. It's not the soft, slow waking in Kenji's bed, wrapped in silken sheets that smell of him and us. This is a violent jolt back into a reality I'd prayed was just a bad dream.
My eyes fly open to near-total darkness. The air is the first thing that hits me—a thick, suffocating soup of smells. The coppery tang of old blood, so strong I can almost taste it on my tongue.
The sharp, acrid stink of piss, both fresh and stale. And underneath it all, the sour, yeasty ghost of spilled beer, soaked into the concrete floor beneath me.
It's cold, a damp, creeping cold that seeps through the thin fabric of my emerald gown, and the ground is gritty with grime.
I'm in a warehouse. A different one, but a warehouse all the same. The memory is a sledgehammer to my soul. The cold concrete, the distant dripping of water, the fear. It's all the same.
