CHAPTER 8

I wake up to a sudden pain in my spine. It travels throughout my body like a tourist in the summer. But unlike a tourist, it's decided to take up permanent residence and has even paid a few of its taxes straight to my lower back.

I'm staring upward at a giant hole of rusted metal. All around me I see a familiar room. It's the large expanse I had just seen before with the dip down in the center. A thin layer of water remains and soaks the back of my clothes and backpack. I sit up quickly, moving to a standing position but nearly topple over. My right arm is pretty fucked up. I think something's sprained, but I can't really tell what, it all kind of hurts. I'm the only one in the room, Grace and Tom must have woken up and left me, fucking cowards.

Just like them to leave me to die. Just like everybody else.

—Makes me want a drink—

I look up again at the giant hole and I walk around the room more trying to see a better angle of it. By the looks of the shape it looks entirely to have been the ship we were in. It sits safely in what seems to be a gigantic storage room. I came out of a hole that's been torn out of the hull. What this actually reminds me of is this one television show I watched when I was younger, it detailed the inside of this one museum that had a full on replica of the Titanic built inside of it. It in of itself was this whole other interactive display.

Heh, maybe it's my good old friend Jack Adata here. I reach into my pockets and grab at the papers I'd stuffed away, they're completely soaked and the ink begins to run.

Hold on….just a fucking second. Didn't that one voice in that dream say the name Jay? I mean, this is definitely the room I saw, so maybe that voice with the western accent is the worker that was supposed to come in a bit later? And was that really a dream? I suppose not. I've been feeling weird ever since that woman stared me down I've been having these like, flashes. I guess it could explain that something within her made something within me like, start? React?

I don't know, I'm just trying to find out why I knew what this room looked like before I even entered it. I do know one thing, though, I have to find that woman. She's the key to all of this, it seems.

I look around me and find myself standing where the girl named Kate had been standing in the flash I'd seen. I turn to where the Western-Man, Kate's father, would have been standing. There's a ramp that forks off behind a railing leading up towards a sealed door, right beside the door lies an electronic keypad similar to the one we had encountered earlier. I begin to walk towards it, but I hear a sort of sloshing around me. I turn and it seems to follow, I feel its weight upon my back. I take my backpack off of my shoulders and unzip the main pouch. It seems during my fall my last water bottle burst open and soaked everything in my bag.

I pull out the box of Cheez-Its and set it on the floor, the lower level seems to be the only part covered in water. It seems that it's source was from that sort of crevice in the ship and it must have just busted through the hole into this room. That doesn't explain how the ship got here in the first place, though.

After the Cheez-Its I grab down at the box of condoms and toss them aside. No use in having those now, all they'll do is take up space. Then I grab at the soaked shorts and shirt from inside and take them out, wringing the water out as much as I possibly can. Finally, I grab down at the box buried at the very bottom, the thing I am worried most about getting wet. The box itself is damaged almost beyond use, the fall didn't do it any favors alongside being soaked. I slide off the top and rejoice at the papers inside still dry.

I haven't looked at this paper. Well, that's a lie, by poor detail. Of course I've looked at it, seen it. But I've never read it. Because what it contains is information that I, for up to this point in my life, have not wanted to know. Do you remember me mentioning about me visiting a doctor while at the orphanage I used to be at?

Well, of course, you may have been wondering, "Well, don't they usually give you like, a physical diagnosis or medical report or something?"

Yes, yes they do...did, rather, and this is it. I didn't want to know what was wrong with me, by giving it a name I gave it power, I gave it something over me, control. That is something that I can never give up, if you lose control you lose everything. But ever since I woke up here I have to admit that these rampant thoughts have become more troublesome. They're becoming more than thoughts and Tom was so close to seeing it. But at the same time...he's a med student, he might be able to help me with this. Something's wrong with me, something that makes me have these thoughts.

Something that obviously drove my parents away and something that made them never want to come back to their son while he was waiting so very patiently for them and-