It went across his brain like a shattering bolt of lightning, that word. He did not know what the word was or what it meant but it found an echo somewhere and his brain screamed it.
"Kieran!"
Not his brain alone, his voice was gasping it, harshly and croakingly, his lungs seeming on fire as they expelled the word.
He was shaking. He had a body that could shake, that could feel pain, that was feeling pain now. He tried to move, to break the nightmare, to get back again to the vague dreams, and the soothing whisper.
He moved. His limbs thrashed leadenly, his chest heaved and panted, his eyes opened.
He lay in a narrow bunk in a very small metal room.
He looked slowly around. He did not know this place. The gleaming white metal of walls and ceiling was unfamiliar. There was a slight, persistent tingling vibration in everything that was unfamiliar, too.
He was not in Wheel Five. He had seen every cell in it and none of them were like this. Also, there lacked the persistent susurrant sound of the ventilation pumps. Where—
You're in a ship, Kieran. A starship.