Prologue

Waking up was never easy. Swimming up through visions of he didn’t know what into the gray area between consciousness and sleep, he found himself trapped, as though a web was stretched out between the outside and him. Though his eyes were closed, he had a misty, indistinct idea of the world around him. Shapes were warped and color was skewed, but he could recognize it. It was like floating just beneath the surface of a pool and knowing that what you were seeing was the ceiling and other people, even though they swirled and wavered like smoke from guttering flames.

In that misty place, he felt trapped, but in the complacent way a dog caged for the night by its beloved owner. He didn’t like it, but somehow it seemed to him that it was just the way that things were—that it was right somehow, even if he didn’t, couldn’t understand. It was so right that even when it released him, he struggled to stay, now an abandoned dog trying to find its way home.

He floated there for several moments, resisting the pull of full awareness. Cobwebs lined his eyes and ghost-thoughts flitted in the back of his mind, trying to divulge and conceal simultaneously.

It wasn’t until he tired of chasing them that he woke up. Opening his eyes, that in-between place where he’d been, first captive and then fighting to stay, melted out of his memory as he took in his clean, uncluttered room. He was slow to sit up, but once upright, he shook of the last vestiges of sleep and stood, padding to the bathroom to brush his teeth and splash water into his face. He’d fallen asleep in his clothes again, and he didn’t feel any pressing need to undress and shower.

As he dried his face off, he caught sight of a new marking behind his ear, just below his hairline. Dropping the towel on the bathroom floor, he turned his head and tried to make out the pattern. He gave up after a moment—his ear and its piercings were too in the way to make anything out—and left the bathroom to slip his shoes on before grabbing his keys from the bedside table and leaving the apartment. He was sure someone would mention the new mark to him, and he’d find out what it was then.

For now, it was time to go to work.