Espionage? Teenage spy? Sounds bonkers. That kind of thing only happens in movies.
Normal teenagers wake up every morning and go to school, come home, do homework, do their chores, go to sleep - then wake up and do it all over again.
Ariella Alder...
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𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚝𝚎𝚎𝚗 | 𝚗𝚎𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠
Two days of searching through warehouses and abandoned buildings have led to nothing but dead ends. Literally. Some of the buildings on Grayson's list don't exist anymore. Burned down years ago, sold to the highest bidder, and some were too far from Archer's apartment.
With the remaining buildings left on Grayson's list, I decided to go through cognitive reenactments of my escape. My journey from the building to Archer's apartment on the night that I thought I saw Maya Hawthorne.
Sneaking into these buildings in the middle of the day is harder than it looks. Civilians walking around watching. Anyone of them could report suspicious teenage girl behavior to the authorities. Most of these buildings are private property, and there's no trespassing signs on all of them.
"Okay, here we go," I muttered to myself.
My nearly incapacitated body stumbled down the steps towards the subway. I had no bearing on my current location, but I know that I had one location in mind.
Archer's apartment.
My brain knew where I was going. My body took me there. My conscious and subconscious took me to the place where I knew I'd be safe. I may not have made the same decision if I was completely lucid.
My brain calculates all possible outcomes that the universe has to offer. It's similar to a chess game. Calculating strategy. Remembering all possible moves in every game that can be played. I guess that's why my parents taught me to play chess as a kid.
"My body shifted only a few meters away from the building. That shift ... that shift in weight made me feel like I was going downstairs," I whispered to myself. Attempting to reconstruct everything I did earlier this month.
The downtown trains include the blue A, C, E lines, and the orange D and F lines, and also the yellow N, Q, R lines. New York City needs to stop having so many subway lines. It's really fucking with my life.
I continued going through the events. "Express trains are the easiest transportation route in New York City. For the love of my country, I hate the subway. I covered my face from all the civilians. Why would I do that? Unless- Unless the train was populated," I muttered.
"After midnight on a Sunday night. No one would be stupid enough to be sitting on a local train going through the heart of Manhattan," I whispered.
Talking to myself is helpful. Most people see it as crazy; however, my crazy saves lives.
I stupidly didn't count my steps from the building to the subway. If I had done that then I'd be able to easily find the building I was held in. I counted my steps inside the room, but I didn't count them outside.
How could I have been that stupid?
My mother trained me to count out all of my steps.
When I was eight my mother lost me in one of the most populated areas of London. She attached a note to my backpack saying that to find her, I needed to recalculate the last hour of my life. Eight year old me needed to retrace all my steps.
