The 34th Degree

LOS ANGELES, PRESENT DAY
6

Sam Deker awoke from his nightmare, gasping for air in the dark. He felt his bare chest for burns but found only electrodes. The polysomnogram monitor on the nightstand beeped loudly. He lunged wildly for a switch with a free hand until it finally shut up. Then he sat up in bed and blinked.

Slowly, his eyes began to adjust to reveal what appeared to be a small hotel room. Besides his bed and nightstand, there was a dresser with a TV on top, and a chair with his clothes and leather gym bag. He noted the single door to his left and the heavy drapes to his right. Only the surveillance camera in the corner gave away his location, bringing him back to the present.

He grabbed his Krav Maga watch from the nightstand. The glowing dial told him it was 5:24 a.m. He hadn’t even made it to six this time. He picked up his military dog tag with the engraved Star of David and slipped it around his neck. Then he stood up and pulled back the window curtains. The glass towers of Century City still reflected only stars in the predawn light.

Deker stepped outside his room into the deserted suite of doctors’ offices at Advanced Sleep Labs. He blinked under the bright fluorescent lights as the sole nurse on duty stood up from her computer station and walked over to the checkout counter. Her name tag read giselle. Deker remembered she was still a student at UCLA Medical School.

“Good morning, Sam,” she said. “Did you get any sleep this time?”

Blinking in the harsh office light, he wasn’t in the mood to report on the jumbled images of ancient texts, Greek monks, and a Nazi monster slowly fading from his head. “You tell me, Giselle,” he said as he signed out.

She hesitated. “Dr. Prestwick will interpret the data and call you in a couple of days,” she said, referring to the sleep specialist he had never met but to whom his own ENT physician had referred him. “But your spikes are off the charts.” She leaned closer with a conspiratorial smile. “Either your nightmares are so real that your body thinks it’s being skinned alive, or you’re still dreaming about me.”

It wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but he smiled and said, “That must be it.”