Niko woke up disoriented for a moment the drab grey walls did in no way resemble the brightly colored wallpaper of her hotel room. Then it all came back to her, the helicopter crash, the rescue, the amateur surgery and the removal of her id chip.
She lay beside Ben on the mattress, on her stomach of course; to have anything heavy pressing against her stitches was simple agony. She slept in a button down shirt borrowed from Lo using her own shredded shirt as a makeshift pillow.
Ben was asleep on his back with his injured leg propped up. His mouth hung open slightly and a fine layer of sweat covered his forehead, in fact under his golden brown coloring he appeared flushed and the arm that pressed against hers was hot.
Someone coughed.
It wasn’t the hack of someone half asleep but a deliberate cough designed to catch someone else’s attention and since the sound was so near it was probably supposed to be hers. Niko carefully turned her head despite the complaints her back brought up about the movement.
There was only one lamp on near the edge of the hallway; it was a solar lamp near the end of its charge, more suitable for throwing shadows than actually illuminating anything. The woman crouching by the side of the mattress appeared to be more shadows than anything else. Niko could barely make out her features, only a pair of eyes and the medium length pole in her hands. She wasn’t holding it threateningly but it was a weapon and Niko’s hand began to creep toward the pocketknife stashed beneath her pillow.
“Who are you?” She asked.
“Gretchen.” The woman answered. “You’re in my bed.”
“Uh.” Niko said, she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do about it. Surely the woman didn’t intend to beat her over the head because of a mistakenly appropriated mattress. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” The woman said keeping her voice low like Niko’s. “I just thought you should know.” She backed away blending into the shadows like an apparition and Niko heard a faint shuffle as the woman wrapped a blanket around herself.
Niko’s hand finally closed around the pocketknife, its cold oval shape comforting beneath her palm.