In Icarus' Shadow Read online

  Chapter Three

  Thomas woke with a stretch and a yawn, pausing in the middle of both actions as he saw an unfamiliar ceiling above him. An immaculately white ceiling, no less. Sitting up, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he got his bearings. The walls were the same colour as the ceiling, an endless expanse of white running to the light grey carpet. The room's furniture was, in a word, sparse. A television sat on a three-legged stool instead of a stand of its own and the dining room table was a card table with folding legs, accompanied by a single chair. Thomas found that he currently occupied the couch; a long three-cushion sort of a thing with an only slightly scratchy surface and a floral pattern. Still, the room avoided looking dull or poor through decoration. The card table had been clothed in a blue cloth with a simple silver design on its border, giving it a certain stroke of class as long as one did not notice the scrawny metal legs. The walls sported a healthy complement of pictures, some of a smiling individual, others of a posed family and still others showing flowers or summer-time scenes. Thomas smiled as he recognized the smiling individual in most of the pictures, relaxing as he remembered where he was.

  He could hear nothing from elsewhere in the apartment, which almost guaranteed that Nadia was still asleep. He took a moment to do a few limbering stretches and to smooth the wrinkles in his clothes before heading into the kitchen. Hunting through the cupboards as quietly as he could, he found a cast-iron frying pan of serviceable size. Setting it on the stove he then searched the fridge, which was as sparsely filled with food as the living room had been with furniture. He found a carton of eggs, along with a brick of cheddar cheese, and set about making himself something to eat.