Instinct

16. It Never Sleeps, and Neither Will You

The New York City skyline didn’t fail to impress. The tightly pressed, skyscraping buildings loomed closer with every passing mile, glinting towers of glass against the blue sky tinted with smog. New York brought back memories, a blurred, misremembered mosaic shattered once and never really the same again.

 Eastwood already felt so far away, and Vermont a distant nightmare. The clean edges of the dog tags pressed into her fingers as she toyed with it around her neck. With this weightlessness in her head, she almost felt like she’d float away or pass out. But that cold metal told her it had all been real.

It was a double edge sword, that knowledge, but oddly comforting in itself.

Then she could no longer see the tall buildings like art on the horizon- the bus entered the belly of the beast, the bustle of the city. There were so many people, everywhere, a constant stream. So many buildings packed onto avenues and streets. It was hard not to feel like a rat in a maze, even encased in the metal structure of the bus.

She remembered the innards of the Facility and then banished the thought.

After all, she could almost taste the fresh air beyond the stuffy heated air in the bus, and daylight reflected off of every surface not touched by shadows. And if she craned her neck in just the right position, she could see the sky. Stuck in endless traffic, she closed her eyes and burrowed down in the warmth of her coat. No one else seemed to feel the cold, but maybe it was coming from inside of her, in the place that felt all lost and at sea, cut loose from anything and everything she used to love.

She hated cities.

When she’d taken refuge in that little town outside of Eastwood at seventeen, she’d vowed off of them. They were too high profile, too claustrophobic, too grey, too much. Anonymity was easy, no one really cared, too caught up in the rush and noise of their own busy lives, but high cost and low opportunities made them almost certainly a disaster in the making. That dislike hadn’t faded with time. True to form, destiny had led her mother and her childhood best friend to one of the most iconic, busy cities of all. Stephanie had long tired of any sense of irony.

Finally, the bus found its way to the depot and everyone piled off, luggage in hand. Stephanie shouldered her bag and stepped out of the bus into the brisk winter air and took in a deep breath.

So used to the thin air of the wilderness, or clinical cleanliness, it was a shock to end up breathing in a mixture of exhaust and steam. She cast her eyes skyward but the towering buildings were choking and they were pressing closer.

She resolved to keep her eyes grounded from then on.

Standing in the midst of people, she tried to collect her thoughts. Everyone seemed to have somewhere to go, immediately setting off for one destination or another. She’d finally arrived, with no idea what she was doing or where she was going. A bag, a winter coat and three-year-old fake IDs were all she had. It sounded like the start of a bad song.

A bus passed by her standing there in a daze. She caught her reflection again, annoyingly familiar and scarily strange. What better way to start again in New York than to get rid of the blue contacts? She slipped them out of her eyes and felt more like herself, whatever that meant, already. She couldn’t tie her hair up, as short as it was, so that’d have to stay.

She figured that it was a good thing she was in the city that never slept, because she didn’t have anywhere to sleep. Being so completely cut loose felt terrifying in a distantly familiar way- the way it had felt before she had the Camaro, or even when she did have it at times. For so long that car had been home, and now she had to redefine home. Home was now the coat she wore and the bag on her back.