An Ounce of Prevention
My heart is beating so hard I expect Jim to come barreling down the stairs any moment, gun in hand. As I shake away the last vestiges of sleep, I cling desperately to the remnants of the dream that has so shaken me.
Dream, nightmare…or vision?
Thank you, Incacha, for blurring the lines between the three.
That's not fair. Not really. The shaman only awakened what was already there, lurking inside me. But sometimes…sometimes…I curse that awakening. It was so much simpler before, when a dream was a dream and a vision was…well, something other people had.
I stretch in the darkness and examine what remains of the dream/nightmare/vision. Imagination or portent, it doesn't matter. The result is the same. A strong sense of foreboding washes over me, and I know what I have to do.
Years of experience have taught me to move through the night with a silent ease that won't wake even a sentinel. It only takes a few minutes to power up my laptop, even less time to make the necessary adjustments to my security system, changing my passwords and moving my files around to hide the most precious one.
I'm just about to shut it down and slip back into bed, when I have second thoughts. The nightmare was too vivid, too real. I don't want to take any chances. I slip a disk into the slot and hit a few keys, copying the sensitive data in seconds. A few more key strokes, and all traces of its existence are erased from the computer's memory.
As the laptop shuts down and goes dark, I stare at the disk in my hand, all too well aware -- thanks to the dream/nightmare/vision -- of what would happen should it fall into the wrong hands.
It'll never happen. Not as long as there's a breath in my body.
I crawl back into bed, sliding the disk under my pillow. My fingers stay there, drawing comfort from the hard plastic beneath them. First thing tomorrow morning, I'll go down to the bank and look into getting a safety deposit box.
And after that…
After that, I'm going to call Naomi and have a long, long talk with her about the importance of respecting my privacy.