Chapter 3

A hand covered hers briefly, the powdering on the gloves standing out sharply to her freshly opened eyes. Gaps. There were definitely gaps. She drummed her fingers on the tile as the hand moved up and out of her field of vision, which seemed to be the closest her reflexes would let her get to reaching for those vanishing gloves.

Listen, muscles, she said to herself, I have got a problem here and you are not helping. They didn't bother answering, just as they hadn't … earlier … when she was trying to get up in the dark.

Voices murmured behind her, and she gave up on her muscles to zero in. There were tones of deadpan, high chirps, and a swishing side current of sarcasm. These did not interest her so much; their words were indistinct, their voices known oddities. Instead, she strained to focus on the even tones coming from a new source, an older man, and the respondent deep bass.

"Reflexes seem normal, from what I can tell," said the man's voice. "Obviously we'll know more later. It's messy, but not irreparable."

"Well, the car's irreparable," thumped the bass. Old Blue, rest in peace, she thought automatically, and then wondered where that thought had come from. Her mind seemed oddly empty, come to think of it. She probed her awareness and went back to her original assessment: gaps. Really, really big gaps.

There was a hallway, sun slanting through the windows. Roses were just outside. Then a big blue lake … the ocean? She felt bigger lying next to it, but fuzzy, as though the memory were coming through a fog. She saw Old Blue when it was new and Old Blue when it was old, in the rain, and she was bending over to pick something up. Then she just saw the tile, and her hand.

Gaps, right. More like islands in a sea of nothing doing. This was going to be a problem the next time she was standing at the ATM. If your PIN number's your birthday but you don't remember your birthday, who helps you?

"So the plan is to just keep her here on my work table until when, exactly?" Ms. Sarcasm had interrupted. There was an awkward pause, and she realized her fingers were rolling on the tile again. Ms. Sarcasm asked petulantly, "How sentient is that thing, anyway?"

There was a long sigh from Mr. Even Tone. "We'll ask her when her throat heals, Rosalie. Until then it's just guesswork and speculation. Hit the lights, Alice, we're through here."

She tried to tell Alice to wait, that she didn't like the dark, but it closed in on her quickly before she could make a sound. Questions rattled around in her brain as she tried to slot this experience in between her sparse memories. Who were these people, and what was wrong with her throat? Why didn't anything work properly, and why couldn't she remember?

Without the light, she couldn't see to tell if her fingers drummed along with her thoughts. There was no feeling anywhere. It was like her consciousness simply floated free, with no anchoring body to hold it down to the tile. I think, therefore I am, she intoned, appreciating the philosophical surety even as the darkness took over.

Thanks for reading ... and reviewing! Also, my sincere thanks to the team at Project Team Beta for their editing!