A tiny steady pulse of sound was all that tied him to the reality outside of himself, and it was that sound that he focused on as he drifted slowly towards consciousness.

tick tick tick tick

Sometimes it seemed quieter or louder, but it was always there, and when he came close enough to himself to attempt to open his eyes, it had long since stabilized into a very quiet and steady rhythym somewhere to his right. The struggle to move his eyelids, to move anything, sapped his strength more than once, and it wasn't until his third round of consciousness that he was successful.

He was immediately rewarded by a searingly painful room of bright light, and the next few moments he spent undoing the work he had done and closing the eyes he had so rashly opened. In the splotched darkness behind the safety of his eyelids, his pupils attempted to dilate, the burning sensation slowly fading as he attempted to take stock of his surroundings without sight.

He became aware of his breathing, the expansion and contraction of his chest muscles rhythymic and even. Though his voluntary musculature appeared to be sadly out of commission, his lungs appeared to be working without effort. He focused on this and quietly tested himself, tensing alternating muscle groups. Things were not as grim as the initial report had indicated; he was weak, but most likely mobile, if he took it slowly.

Summoning his strength, he made a supreme effort and moved his right arm. He immediately encountered resistance not of his illness' manufacture. Restraints. He was bound. He relaxed slowly, and was rewarded with a silent return of his arm to the bed. Unless someone had been actively watching him, he had probably escaped detection.

...where am I?

He remembered the first dart. He remembered plucking it from himself, and looking up and seeing the two snipers. He remembered the second dart, and making Sol's face out in one of those helmets, a stray lock of hair over her forehead as proof that she'd refused his advice. He remembered looking down at himself and seeing the array of darts, the silken feel of Katera's cheek under his fingertips, the terrified love in her eyes before everything went dark.

He did not remember falling.

Alone in the red world of his closed lids, trying his best to remain untense for whoever might be observing him, the ticking worked itself back into his awareness, and desperate for distraction from Katera to keep himself calm, his mind attached to that sound and identified it. Clock. There were no clocks in the Command School infirmary - not the kind that ticked.

There were no clocks in Charybdis.

...where?