He was sucked from his dream by the sound of his alarm clock; the irritating noise attacked his ear drums like a scream. He rolled over, slammed his hand on the device, and let his arm drop over the side of the creaky mattress.
But the alarm was just one of the noises: the cars, trains, subways, crying babies, telephones, and televisions were constant, if not in his apartment then in the one next door, the one above, the one across the street. Everywhere: noise. There was no escaping it; turning off the alarm just allowed the next loudest to take center stage.
The city was a beehive, just as it had always been. Except now the beehive was much bigger. And there were things here now that didn't used to be, things that hadn't even been dreams in his head.
He slowly rolled onto his back, feeling the springs through the worn mattress top, and he heard the others in the kitchen, laughing and shouting at the TV. It was Sunday, their day off. They were watching the preshow for the Giants game.
He rubbed his face, irritated that he had forgotten to turn off his alarm; they had stayed out too late again and now he felt the dullness of a hangover. But he was up; he could never go back to sleep after that wake up call.
And he didn't want to. He never liked what he dreamt about: Too many familiar places that were long gone now, too many familiar faces. The smells, the sounds, the sites of the city…only a dream now.
And a face that he couldn't get out of his head, no matter if he was asleep or awake. Sometimes he was eager to see it, to see those icy depths. But mostly now it only broke him further, and those icy depths turned his dreams into scream-filled nightmares.
He pulled on the gray sweats on the floor and shuffled across his matchbox bedroom to the matching bathroom, the white tiles cold beneath his feet. The florescent light hummed and he squinted at the face in the mirror. He needed to shave.
Five years ago, this face was just another man's face; a man who grew up in Queens with the name "John", and had a runaway mother and a father who worked in a rundown garage. And then July 15, 2011 happened, and John's face was no longer John's. He woke up and remembered…everything.
Everything. Memories he'd forgotten but memories John had never had…John knew how to work the iPhone in his pocket but he had no fucking idea what an iPhone was. Let alone the radio, car, TV, microwave…a whole new world filled with nothing but confusing things, noise, and more people.
It took a while for him to come to grips with what happened: it was like two people with their own stories living in the same head. Constant headaches. He left John's house in Queens and never went back. He felt no remorse. The father, Ralph, didn't even come looking for him.
He looked the same as he did in 1901; same brown hair that hung over his eyes, same dark eyes, full lips and high cheeks, same body…. All his mannerisms came back to him, sweeping his hair from his eyes with his hand.
He was 23 now. Young, strong. And the others were the same age.
He'd found the others gradually. They had the same thing happen to them. David said they had "woken up", because it felt like waking from a long sleep, a sleep you don't even remember lying down for. And even though they "knew" the new world around them, they still couldn't believe it, still woke up confused and bewildered.
They all looked the same too. They were still looking for Kid Blink. And New York in 2015 was the craziest thing any of them had ever seen. But they were determined to find him.
He splashed his face with cold water, pushing his hair back as he looked up in the mirror.
He didn't know how it happened. Couldn't even remember what had happened back in 1901. But he remembered what he had been doing, who he had been looking for.
New York City in 2016. It was noisy, bright, and big.
And he knew she was somewhere in it.
