Caldwell awoke to the smell of hospital disiant and a searing headache. His mouth was dry and his head felt like it was about to explode. Every part of his body ached unbearably. There was something in his nostrils making it hard to breath. He reached out a his nostrils. Plastic tubes. Drips. He tried to open his eyes but the room was tht and the light burned into his retina like sunlight through a magnifying glass. His eyes hurt. There was stant throbbing on the front, bad sides of his head, like his skull was about to disie. He tried to lift his head but was hit with pain so intehat he passed out.
He dreamed of Fouler. The HYDRA man had e to visit him with the Ameri girl, the girl called Diane Joplin and she had said something to him, wished that he got better soon. Fouler had gratulated him on a job well done and told him about some assassin that had been shot by Agent Jo the Keio Plaza Hotel. The assassin had tried to kill Agent Ja. Fouler had possession of the assassin』s remote module, which had allowed him to ect remotely to the majeneral』s work in Beijing. He wao tell Fouler that he had seen the assassin, the face that had appeared before him and Li Jin, the ghost in the clouds.
Caldwell had attempted to speak in his dream but he couldn』t. His mouth opened but the words wouldn』t e out. Mei Lin was there too in his dreams. She had a cast on her leg. She sat on the side of the bed and stared at him for a long time. Then she brushed his hair bad kissed him on his forehead. She said something about them never being separated again and Caldwell smiled and everythi black, like somebody had turhe lights out.
Then there were the nightmares, endless hours of gruesome images. The Omnipotence chasing after him, dragon robe alight with fire. Then he had witnessed his parents』 car crash in Xian, the twisted metal of it captured in gruesome blad white images below the screaming neer headlines.
And Kat had beeoo in his dreams. Standing beside the hospital bed and looking at him with those vat blue eyes of hers. She』d held his hand and told him that everything would be OK and she roud of him. And behiood Ms. Seven Levin, Agent Jones and Agent Ja, the latter with his hand in a sling. They had smiled at him and Agent Ja had said 「you』re the man.」 But Caldwell hadn』t uood what they meant. They had gone away and Caldwell had dreamed again of Virtual Shanghai and The Bund, the solitary figure of Li Jin reg in the distance. And Li Jin had stood on the pavement on Zhongshan Lu and waved at him and then he had vanished.
Caldwell dreamed another dream. Fouler, Mei Lin and the Joplin girl were standing by his bed. o them a hospital trolley with a white and silver der on it. The der looked like an elaborate rice cooker. And Fouler had said that this der was Akio Ihe Japanese man who had created the soles. And Caldwell had watched as a hologram of this Inoue had emerged from the top of the der and started speaking. What he was saying wasn』t making much sense and seemed to be more like jumbled up thoughts in Inoue』s head than real speech. It was just these fragments of thoughts spoken at high speed, the words spilling out in a torrent. Caldwell didn』t uand a word the Japanese man was saying but he kept hearing sumimasen a lot and he figured that probably meant sorry.
In his dreams Caldwell saw his childhood for the first time and it had a distinct timeline. His mother was there with him, those sensitive amber eyes full