In the pitch blackness of his hotel room, Derrick White opened his eyes wide. But why? What had so swiftly and decisively roused him from his sleep? He searched his mind for memories of a possible nightmare, but no such recollection could be found. All he knew was that he had just been asleep, but now he was awake.
There was no hint of light in his room. Even the digital clock had been covered with a towel. He couldn’t sleep unless every light source was switched off or otherwise obscured, so it was no surprise to him that he couldn’t see anything. Dismissing the incident as nerves stemming from the Spurs’ first regular-season contest in four months, which was scheduled to happen the next day, he snuggled into his pillow and prepared to return to sleep.
That was when he heard it. A single, ragged breath. Coming from right next to his bed. Derrick thought he could feel the warmth of it wash across his face.
“Who’s there?” he shouted.
There was no answer. Heart beating out of his chest, Derrick reached over to turn on the bedside lamp while also gripping it tightly in his hand, preparing to use its heavy marble base as a weapon if necessary.
The room was suddenly awash with light, and the new illumination revealed a very tall, very pale man standing there. A man who Derrick recognized instantly, despite their never having been teammates. “Ersan Ilyasova?”
“That’s me,” Ersan replied with a lopsided grin.
A million questions, coalesced into a single blob of confusion, swirled through Derrick’s mind. “You’re breaking quarantine, you know,” he scolded before realizing that his accusation wasn’t quite true. Players had been allowed to intermingle with players from other teams for several days. “And it’s really quite rude to sneak into other players’ rooms while they’re sleeping.”
“I didn’t have to sneak,” Ersan replied. “I have ways of traversing undetected through physical space that make the concept of stealth unnecessary.”
Derrick didn’t know how to make sense out of Ersan’s cryptic comment. “What are you doing here?”
“There is a lot of power in this mortal body of mine. I was not using all of it. So I gave some to you.”
Derrick recoiled and pulled his sheets over his body which was only clothed in a pair of boxer briefs. “I don’t want any of your power!” He wondered what the supposed “power transfer” had entailed. For some reason his mind kept thinking of stories about alien abductions and invasive probes. Whatever Ersan had been doing must have been what had awoken him.
“Too late, you got a big chunk of it,” Ersan said. “Enjoy, my friend. Carry on my legacy.”
“What legacy? What are you talking about? WE’RE NOT FRIENDS!!” Derrick shouted, but, Ersan had turned and was walking directly towards the wall which separated the room from the humid Florida night. As he got closer to it, it was like his body faded out, becoming transparent and ethereal. In this state, Ersan passed easily through the wall as if it didn’t exist at all. He was gone.
Derrick looked down at his naked chest as if he could discern the new power in him just by sight. What had just happened? Uneasily, he turned off the light and settled back into bed. Surely, just a stress-induced dream…it had to be…