Ages in Oblivion Thrown: Book One of the Sleep Trilogy Read Online Free

come out of the water, time to leave . Back to a
landlocked existence. She ignored the calls a while longer,
exchanging grins with chirping dolphins, tickling painted fish that
were almost tame. Even so, air runs out. Her head bobbed above the
surface, and that dream of childhood faded. Something unknown
tugged on her again from above, then yanked...hard.
    The young woman lay on an examination bed.
She started to move slightly, and startled everyone with a sudden
cry. Tark questioned Doctor Hawke with a gesture; she shook her
head in response. They waited, anticipating the woman's next
motion, sound, or response. It seemed to span an eternity before
finally her eyes flew open to blink away tears from the assault of
light.
    Their patient gasped, feeling her
heart protest after the flood of chemicals and electric stimuli had
caused it to resume its normal function. Oh, it...hurt? Yes,
hurt . Things inside her began to move, and she knew
somehow that they hadn’t moved in a very long while. Her lungs
filled with air again, carrying a familiar scent. Sanity and
civilization. She couldn’t think whether she belonged to either of
those or not.
    The fabric of her memory was ragged and
moth-eaten. Squeezing eyes shut, she concentrated so painfully she
thought her ears might start oozing blood. Her brain struggled to
respond to these internal pleadings. Thoughts jostled into place;
years, months, days, until she began to slide down an unmarked
crevasse. There was something missing in her mind, hidden just out
of reach. Every time she thought she had a glimpse, it would dart
away into the shadows.
    Tark watched her face change expressions,
wishing he knew what was going on inside her head. It was almost
excruciating to witness this silence. She opened her eyes again
after about ten minutes, and the look she gave him crushed him like
the gravity of dying stars. She was living across time and space,
not yet aware of the darkness of the vacuum just outside, trying to
find familiar territory. It was time to ask questions, to sort out
this tangled mess.
    “ Hello there. Good to see you awake.
I’m Colonel Jorge Tarkington. Can you tell me your name?” His voice
echoed back to him, while he realized that he’d addressed her as
one would a child. Hawke was in the background, after he’d firmly
told her to stand aside. This was not something he trusted her to
handle.
    “ What is this? Am I in a hospital?”
Faces gazed at her, unreadable, refusing to offer even a crumb of
comfort. Someone say something.
Please . The colonel person continued to watch her
expectantly. “Maeve.” She finally offered this while stubbornly
withholding a surname. He smiled.
    “ What’s the last date you remember?"
He continued to watch her carefully. 0 What
kind of a question was that? Come to it, what kind of a hospital
was this supposed to be ? She put a trembly hand to her
forehead, hoping that she was having some sort of
hallucination.
    “ I don’t know. A lot of guys want to
buy me dinner. You might have to be more specific.” Was she playing
around with him? Or was she really that out of sorts? Tark wasn’t
looking to force her cooperation. It was up to him to set a tone,
clearly. Tark tried to squelch his impatience. All the excitement
of what was going on had gotten to him more than he’d realized, but
that wasn’t going to bring answers. Serenity, on the other hand,
might. He drew in a deep breath and plunged in, trying to imagine
how he might react what she was about to hear.
    “ There’s no way to sugar-coat this,
but there is something you should know about where you are.” Not to
mention when . “As far as we
can tell, you have been in some sort of stasis for an indeterminate
period of time." It had to be a joke, but the face of the colonel
belied only seriousness. She struggled with emotion. Even worse,
her brain still felt like it was running on quarter
speed.
    It was an effort to follow what this person
was saying to her. There