Sam Fisher wakes at 3AM with a gun to his head. It’s his gun; the one that he keeps beneath his pillow. The barrel keeps a sheen of cold sweat against his eyebrow. He grabs the thing and sets it on the bedside table. This has been happening a lot more recently, his gun rustling out from beneath its hiding place. It’s a sign that he hasn’t been sleeping well. He’s fidgeting through the night. Thinking of the men he’s killed.

He’s had a weird week. Let’s not get into the details. Too Byzantine. Too spoilerific. The fact of the matter is that since the whole thing with his dead or not dead daughter, Sam is feeling a hell of a lot mopier than usual, and it doesn’t take much to irritate him, especially this early in the morning.

TAKE A LEAK. That’s what the wall says. Ah, that’s helpful, he thinks. It’s like he wouldn’t know what to do if he didn’t have these goddamn light-up walls that only he can see. He’s stumbling past the remnants of last night’s encounter and leaning against the door frame, searching the bathroom wall for the light switch and finding only the tile. Goddamn hotels, just put the light switch by the door. TURN ON THE LIGHT. The wall flickers. He tries to ignore it.

He pisses in the dark, which is where he does his best work anyway. He pisses on the bathtub a little before correcting himself, then flushes and listens to the water move through the pipes in the walls. He leans against the counter and curses the morning. He’s in town to snap some necks and needs to buff up on a few hours worth of dossiers before the sun rises. It’s time to greet the fucking day.

WASH YOUR FACE. That’s what the wall behind him reads. He does it, gasping in the frigid cold. DRY OFF. He does and tosses the washcloth into a wicker basket beneath the sink. BRUSH YOUR TEETH.

FLOSS. Sam hates when the wall tells him to floss. He never liked flossing when he was a kid. He’s seen a lot of blood in his lifetime, but something about blood coming out of his own gumline gives him a case of the shivers. The walls never hounded him about it until last June, when his dentist, Dr. Mettso, gave him shit about the number of root canals he’d need. FLOSS, it says, but he ignores it and walks back into the bedroom.

Sam pulls on his pants. He crosses towards an easy chair set in the corner, with a few magazines about local restaurants set out before it like a magician’s cards. He collapses into it, making a louder sound than he expected.

“Mark…?”

Sam leaps back to his feet. He stares at the bed, his eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness. There’s a form there, a slim mound beneath white sheets, with a brunette mop of hair laid across the pillow. “Mark, come back to bed.”

Sam doesn’t remember much of what he did last night. He thought he went straight from the lobby to his room , but obviously he made a short stop at the hotel bar along the way and picked up whoever this is.

GET RID OF THE GIRL.

Sam walks to the foot of the bed with his hands out, ready to snap her neck. He stops short. That seems excessive.

NOT KILL HER, YOU IDIOT. JUST… YOU KNOW… GET RID OF HER. TELL HER THAT YOU HAVE TO GO TO WORK OR SOMETHING.

At four in the morning? Where would I have to go at four in the morning?

A CONFERENCE OR SOMETHING.

Why can’t I just let her–

“Mark…?” she asks again. She reaches up and turns on the light. She’s a good looking girl, Japanese or Korean with thin lips and pink cheeks from rubbing up against Sam’s scruff. She stares at him. He lets his arms hang limply at his side. “Is something wrong?”

Of course something is wrong, Sam thinks, but she wouldn’t understand. He wants to tell her that the walls are talking to him, more now than they ever had in his life. And that he can’t go anywhere without being talked down to like a brainless child.

Having walls that tell him what to do and where to go are great in the field, but they’re terribly annoying anywhere else. When you’re buying clothes at Ross, or playing a game of touch football with your old war buddies, or when you’re standing in your hotel room with a beautiful girl looking at you like a crazy person.

Sam walks over to the girl and crouches down next to her. He smiles sweetly and touches the side of her face. “Is everything okay?” she asks, the writing on her forehead glowing with numerous indescribable acts.