3
SOMEONE BANGED on the door, hard.
I raised myself on my elbows, the sound still reverberating in the woolly space between my ears and my brain. Darkness.
Green letters on the bedside clock glared 6:59. Last time I had seen those numbers they said 5:31.
Bloody hell. Nich’?
The eerie silence echoed inside me. No chatter, no garbled curses from Nicha’s thoughts. The room control must have noticed me move, because the annoying male voice asked me if I wanted lights on. I swore at the man-in-the-box, and to my great surprise he turned on the bedside light.
The banging had moved further down the hall, a muffled sound, accompanied by a male voice.
I scrambled out of bed, and as I told the room control to open the door, I realised what the man had shouted: breakfast. Two lots of breakfast
