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Everything hurt.
I'd heard people talk about splitting headaches. Now I know what they meant. There was a nasty little man in my head, with a sledgehammer, driving a wedge deep into my brain. I wondered if I was dead because I felt like shit.
I groaned and tried to sit up. My muscles felt like they were melting. I forced myself up, ignoring the throbbing pain in my head. There was something course and grainy between my fingers.
I wasn't dead.
My eyes widened. Where I should have seen the pealing navy wallpaper of my room, I saw nothing but sand, and the rising sun in the horizon.
Okay... I'd exceeded my daily quota of bizarre. I needed to get out of here.
But where was here? Was I even on earth?
Dune Sea? Tatooine? Jakku? Arrakis? Si Wong Desert?
Was there a krayt dragon out there looking for and easy meal? I definitely didn't want to fall into the Pit of Carkoon where the sarlacc lived. Or maybe there was a Shai-Hulud, the giant sandworms of Arrakis that could feel your vibrations in the sand.
Ok, so I was definitely dehydrated and delusional. My throat felt like I had swallowed a cheese grater.
I could at least tell from the sky and the smell of the air that I wasn't in the United States. The hot dry air smelt familiar somehow. So if I had to make an educated guess to where I was, I'd say somewhere in the Middle East.
I staggered to my feet, only for my legs to turn to jelly, causing me to collapse. My head was spinning, and my vision split. I pushed myself onto my hands and knees, and dry heaved. I spat out bile and beat back the oncoming black out with a stick.
I pushed myself up again, feeling pretty dead, at least on the inside. An endless sea of dunes as far as I could see, not even a shrived tree to give it any change in feature. Behind me, there were a series of rocky plateau's a couple miles to the – I looked at the rising sun – northwest?
What had happened this time?
Did I get kidnapped again?
I told myself to deal with that later. It could wait and I started walking toward the rocks. I remembered what one of my New Zealand cousins said about surviving in the bush: find high ground, and don't get naked.
As I wiped the sweat from my face, my fingers ran over something lumpy on forehead. I pulled it off, finding that it was a white mask that covered the top half of my face with orange tinted goggles.
I'd been a vigilante for a week and a half, I didn't even have a codename, let alone a suit. Looking down I saw it was black and blue trench coat with a yellow accented hood, and cargo pants. I wore combat boots instead of my taped-up feet. The was a holster strapped to my get with a metal cylinder in it. A utility belt around my waist as well.
