runningred | The mark on the wall that you kick when you fight in the dead of the night ’til the voices are still

The tiny computer part rattled across the bench and Jay looked down at his hands. His fingers shook ever so slightly. Just enough to make it hard to keep splicing the wires.

Three days. Three days without sleep and he had started to loss it. There was a time he could go for a week on only a few hours sleep but that was before.

Before he died.

Before he woke up in his own coffin.

Before the madness and the nightmares.

He put the wire-strippers down. There’s no point trying to keep going tonight. He’d only managed to salvage one uplink from the batbike he found. If he could get it to work, he could hack the computer back home and get a better idea of where things stood. It wasn’t worth pushing it and damaging the electronics.

He scrubbed at his eyes and looked around the space he called his own. Three walls made of heavy canvas, two bikes and a claimed Winnebago. Granted that’s more than he had a week ago but it was still sad.

His eyes closed for a moment and he jerked himself awake. No. That can’t happen. He knew the nightmares were waiting, just there, behind his eyes. Ready to pounce.

He picked up his impromptu bo staff and starts working through combat kata. Anything to keep himself awake for just a little while longer.