Breakaway: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel by Joel Shepherd

Author:Joel Shepherd
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Published: 2010-05-10T15:27:00+00:00

he awoke. Lay for a moment, in the darkened room, listening. Distant air traffic. Bustling city sound, faint and dreamy. Omnipresent. Like the sigh of a gentle breeze through forest leaves. A lazy, reflex hearing-shift, to finer detail. The whine of a maglev line. An aircar, a gentle throbbing pulse on some nearby skylane. Nearer sound ... music, and drums. From somewhere outside, neither close nor distant. The suggestion of laughter, and cheering voices, rising in faint waves above the city's gentle murmur.

She blinked her eyes open more fully. She was lying on her back in a darkened room, gazing at the ceiling. That was distinctly strange. How did she get here?

Faint snatches of memory swam to her recall. Ari. Ari had brought her here. Remembered being assisted up some steps. Remembered pain. Some people, strangers, in their house. Nothing more.

House. She was in a house. She blinked lazy, uncoop erative vision into some kind of focus, shading into UV in the dim glow of street light that fell through broad, nearby windows. Turned her head, over toward the windows. It was a broad, open floor, of tiles or ... slate, she guessed dreamily. Plastered walls. An arched brickwork doorway. The broad windows led out onto a balcony, with many plants and decorative railings.

Aestheticisms. One could not go anywhere, in Tanusha, without running into aestheticisms. This one was European, perhaps Mediterranean. Stone, brick, plaster, glazed patterns and trimming, plants and paintings ... God, she shut her eyes tightly, feeling her head spinning, a slow and unpleasant disorientation. She was not sure where she was. It seemed a fitting predicament, here in Tanusha, among old cultures and old things that should not have held meaning for her, but somehow evoked ... whatever they evoked, she was not sure. Music, drifting faintly through the room. She listened for a long moment, with dazed curiosity.

A door opened across the room, artificial light spilling briefly through the doorway. Sandy glanced, and saw a man. Instinctively, she knew he was no threat, and she lay still, naked beneath the bed covers, as the man approached across the hard slate floor with light, careful steps. Listening to the music drifting from down the street.

"Hello, Cassandra." A tall man, lightly wringing his hands. A blue turban and a handsome, trimmed beard. "The machine told me you were awake." She blinked at him for a moment. Then looked left, at the portable monitoring equipment there, on top of a wooden bedside table. And realised the connector plug was attached to the insert socket at the back of her head.

"How are you feeling?"

"Where am I?" Her voice was clear and strong, if a little dazed. That relieved her. Another time, she vaguely remembered, she'd awoken much the same as this to find it hardly working at all.

"You're at my house in Nagpur, Cassandra." A mild, congenial voice. Comfortingly so. "I'm a friend of Ari's, my name is Amitraj Singh, I'm a doctor. He brought you here for my assistance. You were shot.

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