She Who Knows Tomorrow: a sci-fi novella (displaced shadows #1)

VIII

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**** Third ****
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Third blinked, and she wasn't in the warehouse anymore. She was surrounded by the default grayish-blue ceiling and walls of a standard residence bedroom. No personalization.

Her first thought was that she'd been Jumped out.

Her second thought was that Second was dead, so who would've Jumped her?

Her third thought was that blackouts were one of the reasons she'd had the governor chip in the first place.

She sat up slowly, unsure where she was and how she'd been treated. She didn't feel woozy, so she likely hadn't been taken to a hospital, but...

She carefully touched her leg, moved it. It ached a bit, but there wasn't nearly as much pain as there should've been. Even her wrist was healed over, without so much as a scar. Whoever had dressed her wounds had also put her back in her street clothes—which was normal for Nameless, but who would've known that, kept her out of a hospital, and left her in a nondescript bedroom to wake up?

Third stood up. The regen patch on her leg buzzed in an alert that she was interfering with the injury's healing, but she ignored it and checked the little trash can by the room's clothes storage unit. Only item in it was a used-up regen patch—probably the one that had been on her arm.

Third looked around again, but even from that angle, she saw nothing that gave her a clue where she was, or who was hosting her.

On a whim, she opened the clothes storage unit...and found her weapons. Third donned the basics, then tapped the door panel. It slid open.

The hall was as default nondescript as the rest, except for a scent that made her nostrils tingle and a small table along the wall. Atop the table was a console—locked—and a stylus.

The table also had a drawer, which was where Third got her first hint regarding where she was: various high-grade narcotics and—if the packaging were correct—all procured legally, which meant her host had money. And liked his drugs.

She riffled through the various offerings in the drawer and found a package of jolt tabs. Third glanced around again, but she still didn't even hear anyone nearby, so she risked opening the package and seeing if they could easily hide in a palm, like she'd seen TamLin do earlier with something he'd taken.

That confirmed, she put everything else back how she'd found it and took the newly opened package with her as she continued down the hall, away from the scent. The regen patch on her leg gave a little prick, protesting her use of the limb. Something else to be ignored.

Kitchen, washroom, relief room. The room with the DNA-encoded lock would be an office. The two doors at the end were the entrance and outerwear closet.

That left one more door that she hadn't checked, and she followed the scent back to it. Cloves, she thought, and more. Third knocked on the doorjamb.

Silence answered her.

She frowned and knocked again.

Still no response.

Third keyed up her mods, and the spiderweb-like glow startled her as it crawled over her flesh. She'd had the governor chip for so long, she'd forgotten that she naturally had the netting.

She took the easy route of tripping the door's safeguards in case of fire, and she stepped in as the door opened. "TamLin?"

The room was hazy with smoke, but not so much that she couldn't see him—seated on the floor, his back against his bed in a room as bland as the one she'd woken up in. He was idly smoking a cigarillo that she assumed used cloves, but she thought she also smelled nutmeg in there, and possibly something else. Perhaps it was homemade.