Chapter 38. Sitting Duck

Carlos woke up to darkness and a woozy feeling. It took him a good few minutes to get his bearings. He was on a flat surface, and as he tried to move, he realized that he was strapped down.

The place was dark and smelled of many things: the powdery, industrial smell of a house under demolition, the smell of hard and caustic chemicals, but most of these smells hid under the scent of disinfectant. You could hardly notice the others if you weren’t paying attention, but even though it was barely present, he couldn’t miss the unmistakable, metallic smell of blood.

He was grasping for anything that would tell him where he was. His ears strained and picked up nothing that was of use. His sense of smell was getting dulled by the pungent scent of the disinfectant, and he could barely see anything, his eyes taking their time to adjust to the pitch-black darkness. To top it off, he could hardly move his head to look around.

There seemed to be a curved pillow under his head,