Who: Oliver and Kate When: Early morning! Where: Oliver's room What: Freaking the fuck out
Kate first thought she was having a nightmare. Wasn't that a common theme, being unable to move while awake? Horror films had been made with that as a gimmick, she knew. And there couldn't really be a seven foot tall person dressed as a plague doctor in their room, could there?
Well, given the situation they were all in, there probably could.
It had taken her a moment or two to notice him at the foot of the bed; she was preoccupied with her inability to move, the strange disconnect between her body's calm resting state and the tiny knot of panic that was beginning to tighten at the back of her mind. She could just see the doctor figure from her peripheral vision as he set up instruments and jars on the nightstand, bent over a sleeping Oliver taking swabs from his nose and mouth, slicing off a lock of hair. It was a hallucination. It wasn't real.
Then the doctor turned to look at her. He touched her. You couldn't feel touch in a dream, could you? Physical sensation meant it was real, and Kate felt her panic spike, though there was no change in her body's responses. She was screaming in her head, mind racing, struggling to get some sort of signal through to her body to move, get out of the way, call for help, anything, as the doc fiddled with where she assumed her implant was. She hardly had time to realize what he was doing with the cloth and the liquid before it was over her face and then nothing.
*****
Kate woke when Oliver did; they tended to wake up around the same time normally, but it was more pronounced in the same bed - Kate slept lightly and almost always woke at unexpected movement. She elected to stay in bed, however, letting him get started on his morning routine while she dozed a minute or so longer. She stood up and stretched; she wasn't as disciplined as Oliver was to have a morning bedside exercise routine, but there were a few yoga stretches she did to get the kinks out.
It was then that it hit her, the memory of their bedroom intruder and the nightmare she'd had. Her breath caught and she straightened from her stretch, staring over at Oliver's head through the open bathroom door as if to make sure it hadn't been real. But it wasn't hard to see the spot where the lock of hair had been removed. It hadn't been a nightmare. It had been real.
Her first thought was for Oliver, one of the few she could have around the weight of last night's memory - she didn't want to freak him out when there was nothing that could be done about it... but she was barely clinging onto a mask of calm herself. The panic and fear from last night was hitting her hard, her body playing catch up with her mind, and Kate's vision grew dark and blurry around the edges. She wrapped both arms around her middle and sat down on the bed with a quiet, shuddering breath.