Playing God (Helford #2)

(3) Power

That was where I found myself this morning—after a long, hard look back at my memories. The fall, New York City and Jonathon, the long nights staying up and training, becoming a new person—it all haunted me in the dark, when I was all alone. I would start awake with a harsh gasp and roll out of bed, trying to shake it off, dropping and doing one hundred push-ups just to pump blood through my veins, to wake me up. And then I would wander in here, to my mirror, and I would stand here and wonder.

I looked into my own eyes, not a lie yet, and could still barely understand how I had made it here.

My face looked fatter, or perhaps rounder, due to a change in diet—gaining a healthy one—and a change in exercising regiments. My familiar and reliable eyes would soon be hidden under a pair of hazel eyes heavily shielded with mascara; my hair was jet black and cut short, the tips barely brushing my shoulders, the strands completely straight by the time I left the house, and bangs hanging down past my eyebrows; I had even grown two inches. I wore pencil skirts and blouses out of the house and shoes with just the most respectable amount of heel, and I carried an expensive, and designer, briefcase, which somehow made me feel more confident than I truly am. I looked over my face, at the change there, and thought back to New York City, three years ago.

I thought to myself how Jonathon would never recognize me now, definitely not now. Not when my face was in newspapers, when I had speeches broadcasted on CNN, when the proof of my life was a paper trail impossible to prove false. Not when Caitie Alastair was pronounced dead, four years ago.

Jonathon may have his suspicions about that—the paper crane event had been foolish, a folly we hadn’t thought adequately enough about—but, for the most part, he was willing to accept that I had disappeared off of the grid. Parker fed him enough propaganda, enough reassurances that I would have been heard from by now and that there was nothing, and I think Jonathon eventually stopped looking for me.

Jonathon DuPont was working for Woodburn’s Underground, as he had since being put in the protection program. Parker was his supervisor, and he occasionally called me to tell me Jonathon was doing alright. After all of this time, though, the calls were few and far between, and I think they were all forgetting that I was alive.

I leaned forward, gripping the porcelain sides of the sink, staring up into my reflection desperately, searching for the slightest flicker of recognition. I was buried deep, the only familiarity in my eyes, but my mask would come up over that soon enough, and I would be buried underneath, losing the air I needed to breathe.

But I knew that when I accepted this life. I knew that when Woodburn looked into my eyes and told me I would have to die.

I laid my head against the cold surface of mirror, hoping that the chill would calm the pounding, if only slightly. We had taken the chance that something lasting would happen to me when they sent me falling toward the dangerous ice, even death, but we just needed proof enough to show the company upstairs that I had drowned. I could remember only flickers of being dragged out of the water, freezing cold, through my bones, and I remember looking toward the white snow and seeing nothing but splashes of red. It looked like an abstract painting, an exceptional artistic vision.

I lost consciousness not long after that, and I would resurface as Nina.

I took a deep breath in and let it out, my breath fogging up the mirror, and I forced myself to smile.

One more day.

Just one more day closer to when it would all be over.

I turned away from the stranger in the mirror.

~*~

I shuffled past the pedestrians of central London, visitors and natives alike, hearing languages and accents and seeing faces that came from all over the globe as I ducked in and out between groups, rushing through the wet chill of the morning. Some were pausing to gawk or take pictures of a building or establishment while others just kept walking straight, part of their own little world, moving at their own pace.