Black Marion

1

She became aware first of her thighs, because a cold touch dragged along that skin. Next her eyes, because they burned from the sudden piercing light. A foreign hand jolted away from her body.

Awareness was painful. Dry throat. Skullache. Dead bones. Air clawing inside her stomach. Her lashes dragged down her eyelids like each hair was grown from metal. Her vision seemed to bleed until she realized it was simply a canopy overhead, red satin. A soft blanket laid over her torso, twisted around a leg. She had two legs. She had two arms, two hands, fingers. The air smelled like lavender and white tea. The temperature was faintly cold.

Something clacked against a hard floor. Furniture screeched. In the lower corner of her vision, a figure rose suddenly.

A man. He was middle-aged, one scarred eye on a cinnamon face. Odd. Thin body, clothed simply, but the fabric didn't look cheap. His one good eye was wide, an open mouth trying to form words. But no sound. As she looked toward that man's offending hand—the fingers were coated in a viscous blue sheen—the man stumbled back. His hands made stilted motions as if trying to communicate a frantic apology. His feet pivoted toward the exit.

"Wait—"

Too soft, too rasped. The man glanced back. She swallowed and meant to try again, but the man was gone before another word could form. The door closed with a heavy click.

Alone, she became distinctly aware of her breaths.

She looked toward the sunlight. It was coming from the left side of a rounded wall, framing a panel of spotless, spanning clear glass. Outside was midday, with hundreds of flying falcon vehicles and winding skylanes cluttering the high view of an unfamiliar city. Wrong—far to the west—it was west, it was definitely west—was the Barcase Bridge, so low on the horizon that she must be well within the Skyworld, many hundred floors above the Ground. She knew this landscape.

She didn't know this building. Across the window view was a neighboring tower's roof, and hoisted like a beacon upon its peak, the logo of a luxury residence. Inside here were rosemary wood walls, maybe real, maybe a holographed decoration. There were red silk curtains. Red silk sheets for the wide, round bed, which could fit four of her. Four of—

Who?

She lifted her hand. This was heavy. Her muscles ached. Her veined skin was as foreign as the room—the long, slender, groomed hand of a pampered adult. She pressed at her face and found a nose, lips, both eyebrows above her eyes. She pulled at her hair and lifted a dark overgrown sprawl, glossy and recently cleaned.

Then she dropped her hand and stared at the window again, and the disjointed panic began to set in.

She remembered nothing.

She closed her eyes. Heart fluttered. Chest pain from the onslaught. Breathed. Swallowed. Opened her eyes once more. She moved her leg where the pressure had woken her. It was bare up to the sheets that pooled over the upper end of her thigh. An old yellow bruise and a scar colored the side, and where the air touched, her skin was chilled with a fresh coating of gel. She pressed these unfamiliar fingers into the bruise. Vision flickered. Pulled those fingers back and cradled them, as if that would somehow claim ownership. At least they felt as cold as her skull.

Down across the bed, holographs of the moving nightscape hung in sculpted frames along the curving wall. A drawer supported a half dozen framed photos, a mirror angled away from her face, and a small bamboo plant. None of these looked familiar. When she turned right, she saw the shut door, handleless. A cushioned chair beside the bed. Beside the chair, a wide stand. On the stand, marked bottles. Medication? Syringes, too.

She tried to sit up. Dragging her body upright seemed a submerged and viscous process, and her pounding head made nothing easier. Drugs, maybe. Medication?