It had taken mere seconds to decode the message. The familiar penstrokes and the formula that had been used could only have been from one person: Pedro. It was what they used to do to lock mentors out of certain private messages.
Once the password had been keyed in, he was greeted with a list of files. He read the first, and it left him much to think about. As he clicked through the others, skimming through their content, his mind kept wandering back to that first file:
What did he remember?
What did he forget?
How would he know?
After what seemed like hours, he pushed the tablet aside threw his head back and rubbed his eyes and then reached for the rest of the water. How thirsty he was! He drained most of the tepid liquid and, for the first time since he had woken up, took a good look around at his surroundings.
His bed was pushed against the wall, and besides the bedside table, the only other room furnishings consisted of a multicoloured rug that lay in the centre of the remaining floorspace and a watercolour beach scene, which hung on the wall across from the bed – the sun was just about to set and a couple strolled arm in arm along the seafront, beneath an explosion of reds, oranges, purples, greens and whites. An idyllic scene. Other than that, the room was bare. There was no clock, no communication device other than the table, which appeared to be a static device. The walls were unusually high, and light entered the room through two windows above him, both out of reach.
The fire is warm and he is comfortable where he is, for the moment. He reached for his glass and polished off the water. Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he decided to go through some more files before he had to think about food.