The Differents | ✓

T H I R T Y - N I N E

The following morning, I woke up to rosy beams of sunlight falling on the blankets. Neither of us had closed the curtains during the night and I didn't want to disturb Sniper, who had his head resting in the crook of my neck and was still asleep. My mind ran over yesterday's events and what kind of plan we could form for today. We still had enough food for a couple more days, and the cans Sniper had found in the cupboards would last us a bit longer. We also had the guns, which I had put on the bedside table nearest the window so they could charge their solar panels when the sun rose. With food, weapons, and enough energy, we could last quite a while. The challenge, though, was figuring out what we were looking for.

I tried to remember if we had passed any buildings of significance on our way into the city. Of course, there was the big fancy one with the lawn, but was there anything else? Maybe we could spend the day looking around, seeing if we could find any sort of clues to where we could find other people.

Deciding it would be best to start looking for clues via the TV, I pried one of Sniper's arms off of me as gently as I could so that I could go get the remote. He must've been sleeping very lightly because he stirred and woke up as soon as I let go of him.

"Good morning," I said. "Did I wake you up?"

"Not really," he replied groggily, raising a hand to block the sunlight from his eyes. "Is that my shirt you're wearing?"

I looked down to find it was, and tried not to turn red remembering what had happened. Sometime during the night we had both woken up -- him from nightmares, me from just not being able to sleep properly -- and had gotten tangled in each other again. I don't completely remember what happened, but I had fallen back asleep shortly after and didn't wake up again for the rest of the night.

He noticed my face, which had most likely turned red regardless, and just laughed. "Can I have it back? I'm getting a bit cold."

I made him close his eyes while I changed into my own clothes and reluctantly gave him back the shirt. Then I went to get the TV remote so that I could stop thinking about him and the previous night.

Still half asleep, Sniper waved his hand at the window. "Did you see the sunrise?"

I didn't, so I turned to look. It was beautiful, and since we were high up, the view wasn't obstructed by many other buildings. The sky was adorned with streaks of red, pink, orange, and yellow that faded into a light blue scattered with clouds. The rain had completely stopped and the clouds had parted enough for the sun to shine through the gaps and spill rosy light onto anything it could reach.

Taking the remote with me, I sat down on the bed and pressed the power button. Except this time, the screen didn't light up with video footage like it had done yesterday. I pressed it a few more times, thinking maybe it was slow, then threw it across the room in frustration.

"Great. The power's still gone. Where do we start now?" I asked.

"We go into the city," Sniper said. "There's so much we can find just from looking around. I say we see what we can find around here and especially that big fancy building, because these ones are the most intact. And if someone's keeping them intact, then there's most likely a reason for that."

In half an hour, we had eaten, repacked our bags, cleaned up, and made sure the room was back to how we had found it. I had suggested we take all our bags with us in case we didn't return to the room, so we had taken the cans of food that were in the cupboards as well. Even though I wanted to find other people, part of me wanted to stay in the building and live there. It was so different from anything I had ever known, and after spending the night on a soft bed and a beautiful view out the window, I wasn't looking forward to going back to sleeping in the forest.