?George, if you don?t wake up right now, I?m going to pour ice water over your head.? The statement was made in an entirely matter-of-fact manner. It wasn?t a threat, merely a comment. ?You won?t like that. I won?t care.?
I licked my lips to moisten them and croaked, ?I hate you.?
?Where?s the love? There?s the love. Now get out of bed. Senator Ryman called. You slept through me talking to him for, like, the whole time I was getting dressed. How late were you up last night??
I opened my eyes and squinted at Shaun. He was wearing one of his bulkier shirts, the ones he puts on only when he needs to cover body armor. I pushed myself unsteadily into a sitting position, holding out my left hand. He dropped my sunglasses into it. ?Sometime around four. What time is it??
?Almost nine.?
?Oh, my God, kill me now,? I moaned, and rose, shuffling toward the bathroom. The hotel had been happy to switch our standard light bulbs for lower-wattage soft lights that wouldn?t hurt my eyes, but management didn?t have a way to swap out the built-in bathroom fluorescents. ?What time will he be here? Or are we going to him??
?You?ve got fifteen minutes. Steve?s picking us up.? There was a distinctly amused note in Shaun?s voice as he relayed this piece of information. ?Buffy?s pissed. She and Chuck are already with the Rymans, and she didn?t have spare clothes with her. I got the world?s angriest text message while I was on the phone.?
?She wants to have her night on the town, she can take the walk of shame the day after.? The bathroom lights were searingly bright, even through my sunglasses. I looked in the mirror and groaned. ?I look like death.?
?Cute journalistic death??
?Just plain death.? I was washed-out and sallow, and it had been too long since I had my hair trimmed; it was getting long enough to tangle. My head wasn?t throbbing, but it would be soon. The light seeping in around the edges of my glasses was telling me that. There was a way I could avoid that, if I was willing to deal with the inconvenience. Muttering under my breath, I grabbed my contact case off the sink and clicked the bathroom lights off. Even with as little as I voluntarily wear my contacts, the nature of my medical condition means I need to be able to put them in despite near or total darkness. Doing otherwise means risking retinal scarring, and I have things to do that require having eyes.
Shaun?s feet shuffled on the carpet as he crossed to the bathroom door. ?George? What are you doing in there in the dark??
?Putting in my contacts.? I blinked, and felt the first slide into place. ?Find me clean clothes.?
?What do I look like, your maid??
?Nah, she?s way better looking.? I blinked my second lens into place before clicking the bathroom lights back on. Harsh white light flooded the room. I squinted slightly, studying my blue-eyed reflection before I turned to the important matter of brushing my hair and teeth. ?Any time now, Shaun. I can?t go see the senator in my undies.?
?Hunter S. Thompson would go see a senator in his undies. Or your undies, for that matter.?
?Hunter S. Thompson was too stoned to know what undies were.? The bathroom door opened. I turned, catching the clothes Shaun pitched in my direction. ?There, now, was that so hard? Go grab our gear. I?ll be there in a second.?
?Next time, I?ll let you sleep in,? he grumbled, backing up. ?And those contacts make you look like an alien!?
?I know,? I said, and shut the bathroom door.
Ten minutes later, Shaun and I were back in the elevator. I was running the final diagnostic checks on my equipment, and Shaun was doing the same, fingers tapping over the screen of his PDA in a series of increasingly complex patterns. This wasn?t a field op, and odds were that Senator Ryman would request a privacy screen on anything we recorded, but that didn?t matter. Leaving the hotel without our cameras and recorders set and primed to go would have been like leaving naked, and neither of us was up for that.
Some of my cameras were starting to show signs of misalignment, and the memory in my watch was almost full. Making a note to have Buffy take a look at things, I stepped out into the lobby with Shaun half a beat behind.
?Thank you for choosing the Parrish Weston Suites as your home away from home,? the hotel chirped as we approached the air lock. ?We know you have many choices, and we are grateful for your business. Please place your right hand??
?That?s enough,? I said, slamming my palm down on the test panel as soon as it finished opening. Getting out of the hotel requires nothing but a clean blood test. They don?t care if you want to go into massive viral amplification as long as you have the common courtesy to do it outside, preferably after you?ve paid your bills.