Waking Up to the First Day...

Chapter IX: Sand in the Breeze

Andy woke before the sun. He hadn’t set an alarm, but his body had learned long ago the specific kind of insomnia that strikes when the world is new and unknown and the only way to survive is to keep moving. He opened his eyes to the pale hush of pre-dawn and, for a moment, just listened—to the hush of the fading night, to the ocean’s low, relentless growl behind the windows, to the empty air that filled the Master’s Suite.

He sat up slowly, taking inventory. Nothing in his body hurt, exactly, but his muscles had the echo of a day spent tensed and braced. His skin felt faintly tight from the salt in the air, the afterglow of an anxiety that had failed to wear him out but left him slightly hollow. He rolled his neck, then his shoulders, and padded barefoot to the edge of the living room, where the painting of Katherine sat in eternal vigilance over the embers of last night’s fire.

Her painted eyes held him for a second—green, luminous, bemused—and she waved with a smile. He gave her a mock salute before moving on. He walked to the breakfast table.

He hadn’t expected breakfast, but there it was: thick slices of toast still warm, a bowl of berries, perfectly cubed mango and pineapple, a little glass jar of blueberry jam. No eggs, no bacon, nothing that might offend the gods of health or remorse. He took a seat, poured himself coffee from the waiting carafe, and chewed his way through a piece of toast, butterless. The first taste of food in this new world, and it was—fine. Better than fine, probably, but Andy didn’t trust luxury. He never had. Ironic, considering the position he had just acquired in the real world.

On the table, someone—Arabella, he guessed, or the world’s most discreet invisible servant—had left a small slip of paper under the rim of the coffee cup. It was printed in an elegant serif font, all-caps:

TODAY IS A NEW DAY.
REMEMBER: YOU ARE THE AXIS.
EVERYTHING TURNS ON YOU.
—A

He considered the note, then crumpled it in one hand. If Arabella thought flattery would make this easier, she didn’t know him at all.

He carried the coffee to the bedroom, where yesterday’s clothes had been somehow laundered and hung back on their hangers. The closet was a capsule collection of expensive denim and chinos, crisp shirts, muted sweaters, all in his size, all in his style, as if a stylist had shadowed him for months, learning the most minuscule aspects of his preferences. Andy reached for the softest tee he could find—heather gray, tagless—then a pair of loose jeans. He dressed quickly, not wanting to see his reflection in the floor-length mirror, and then lifted the pillow.

The bracelet was still there. He took it up, rubbed the faded letters between thumb and forefinger, and then cinched it back around his wrist. It looked oddly juvenile, a friendship token on a grown man, but Andy felt the small thrill of certainty every time he touched it. It was the only item he had left from the real world, since even his original pajamas had vanished. He didn’t know what he would do if it ever disappeared.

He left the suite quietly, not sure if the hotel itself would be awake. The elevator dinged as soon as he pressed the button, the doors opening to a faint scent of lemon and ozone. He half-expected the corridors to be full of cameras or lurking staff, but the place was deserted, the carpet so thick it seemed to swallow up the sound of his steps. He found the side exit and slipped out into the humid predawn.

The sky was still more navy than blue, with only a crack of orange at the far rim of the ocean. Andy cut across the resort’s lawn, ignoring the gravel paths in favor of the grass, dew soaking through his jeans at the ankle. He followed the sound of the surf to a stretch of beach that had been landscaped to look wild—dunes, a few wind-twisted shrubs, the sand littered with fragments of shell and glass worn smooth. The scent of the ocean filled his nostrils.

He reached the edge of the beach, slipped out of his shoes, and walked toward the water, every step colder and finer than the last. There was no one else in sight, just the whirling gulls and a few pale crabs darting sideways into their burrows. He walked until the sea air pinched his cheeks, then stood ankle-deep as the first foamy wavelet ran up to greet him.

He stood there, feeling the undertow pull at his toes, and for a few minutes he let himself forget the hotel, the girls, the game. He watched the moon, thin as a fingernail, and the horizon, still shy of the sun, and the way the water reflected it all: flat, infinite, uncaring.

It wasn’t until his feet went numb that he noticed his hands had found the bracelet again. He didn’t even remember raising his wrist, but there it was, woven thread against skin. He thought of Laura, and the familiar pang squeezed his heart. He wondered what she would have thought of this place, of Arabella, of the transformations. Would she have been furious, or would she have laughed herself sick at the sight of him, the big bad Master, who had once been a kid unable to tie his own shoes without screwing it up?

Would he even have been here, if she had lived? Would any of the women?

Andy let out a slow breath, then waded further in. The water was cold, but not sharp. He walked until the next wave ran over his knees, then turned and let the tide push him back toward land.

He walked the shore for a while, watching the hotel recede behind the dunes, then stopping when the first streaks of pink tore through the blue. He thought of the women, each with their own hell to adapt to: Norah with her new center of gravity, Sam **** to hug or suffer, Marissa trying to intellectualize her own body, Emi growing more arms than she had reasons to need, Claire struck silent but more alive than ever. Erin, too, though Andy doubted she would ever forgive him, or herself. And Liesa, whose transformation seemed trivial but whose absence still hurt.

He wondered what they would do with the day. He wondered if they would ever trust him, if he would ever trust himself. The girls had been right, last night. Arabella was trying to give him power over them. Undoubtly she hoped he would exploit it, become a Master in truth as well as in title. The thought made him shiver.

He stopped at a bend in the beach, where the sandbar curled back toward the land, and dug his toes in. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt awake—not in the coffee-addled sense, but in the way of someone standing at the edge of a new world, ready to see what waited on the other side.

He looked out over the water, bracelet warm against his pulse, and waited for the sun to rise.

——

The Suite was never really empty, not even with Andy gone.

Katherine, in her painted world, shifted positions as soon as the door closed behind him. her eyelids fluttered, she gasped silently, but the moment the echo of his shoes vanished, she leaned forward—just a fraction, as far as she could go, just enough for anyone watching to notice—and fixed her gaze on the elevator door.

It was her favorite part of the room: the bright metal doors, the tidy panel with the row of names. She watched it obsessively. The elevator was her window on the world, a clock with no hands but plenty of surprises. Sometimes hours went by with nothing at all, and she imagined she could see dust falling through the sunlight. Since yesterday, though, people had been using it. Dawn with her hopeful smile and her oversized T-shirt, Sam with her wild blue curls, Claire with her neat, leather notebook, Marissa with her clipped speech. Katherine could not move to greet them, and an instinct born of neglect and hurt led her to pretend she was a simple painting when anyone but Andy was in the Suite, but she watched each with the hungry patience of someone who had nothing but time.

Today, the elevator stayed closed.

The light in the room shifted from blue to white, thin morning rays slicing in across the carpet. Katherine waited. She watched the elevator, then the living room, then the breakfast table, where toast crumbs and a bruised berry sat abandoned. She let her eyes linger on the chair where Andy had draped his shirt last night, before going to the bedroom. It was the kind of detail she’d once lived for—signs that the world was still in motion, even if she could not be. She missed him. The first man in fourteen years who had seen her… truly seen her, that is, as a person and not as a piece of art. The first man who had bothered to try and talk with her since she had been trapped in this eternal purgatory.

She sighed, breasts bouncing. Sitting was complicated, due to the transformation that **** her to expose her groin and breasts at all times. Instead, she leaned her shoulder against the edge of the canvas—a slow, careful motion, almost regal—and let her painted arms cross beneath her breasts. She watched the elevator, waiting for him to come back.

The room was not empty, though.

She knew it long before she saw the shadow. There was a change in the light, a new depth in the corner by the fireplace. She watched it for a long time, feigning indifference, until the shape resolved itself into something—someone—lurking just beyond the edge of sight. A figure, lean and motionless. Its eyes were invisible, but Katherine felt them on her, like a cold hand pressed to her cheek.

The figure didn’t move, didn’t step into the room. Katherine couldn’t see it well enough to even guess at its silhouette. It simply stood and watched her, and Katherine, who had spent years being ignored or overlooked, found the scrutiny oddly electric. She blinked, but she met the gaze as best she could, refusing to flinch. She realized who it must be. She nodded slowly.

Minutes passed. Maybe hours. She measured the time by the movement of the light across the carpet, the slow burn of the fireplace, the invisible clockwork of the elevator doors. The figure in the shadow never came closer, never retreated.

Then, as the sun climbed high enough to cast a glare onto the painting’s glass, the watcher was gone. Vanished as quietly as it had arrived.

Katherine, left alone, stood taller before her painted field of flowers. She let her eyes track the empty room, then return to the elevator, where the red LED above the door still glowed, waiting for a name to be called.

She settled in, as ready as ever for what would come next.