dreams

She thought of the other one. She could have saved him. Could she have? No. There was no use worrying about the past. But she couldn’t help from worrying about the now. She thought about the other one. Strung up, upside down. Ropes on his legs, his arms. A reverse da Vinci man. No signs of blood or open wounds. Cold as if all the blood that rushed through the veins of a vibrant person had just stopped. Body temperature lowering. The paleness, and morbid stillness that comes with death. She wasn’t worried about whether or not she could have saved him. This was her life. The game they played was brutal. She was concerned about her sister. Her sister was involved in it too, now.

She closed her eyes and winced hard as she tried to shake away the thought of her sister strung up. Upside down. She grimaced. She needed to protect her. But how.

She got up from her cross-legged stance and left the dark room, the sunlight outside was immediate and harsh. The air was moist and smelled of sweat. The time for thinking was done. It was time for action. If she could prevent this, she would. If she could avenge it, she wo- no, better not think about that as a possibility at all. The gravel was soft under her bare feet. Bare feet were not so uncommon in this part of the world. Street cameras were not so frequently placed. The small place she had found to reside in, they did not exist. Even so, she knew there was a huge likelihood that they knew where she was. They were probably just waiting for the moment to strike, coiled up like cobras. Her sister, she had to protect her sister. But if she went to her sister, they would know. No one, not even her handler knew that she had a sister. The records were destroyed, black and ashy in a fireplace. That was one of the first things she had done when she had visited home many years ago. At the onset of this thing. When her sister had been born, computers were not a thing. Government records were kept in filing cabinets. She had found that singular copy of the records and destroyed it too. Her mother was already dead. Her father, she had barely known him, before he had left them. Her sister was the only family she had left. And she couldn’t see her sister often. Or enough. Or at all. She needed to know if she were alive though. She made her way past the elephants slowly thumping along, tourists in thatched straw hats gazing around curiously, past the rickshaws buzzing past, careening wildly through traffic, past the throngs of people in the middle of the roads. Somehow, the roads did not get as clogged as they should. Traffic always kept moving. She found the man with whom she had stored her key. In a different market, she found the spot with the chest. Hiding behind a pillar, in the shadows, she opened her satellite phone. And began to make a call.

In a different part of the world, a room lit by the green glow of computer screens, they saw the red blip on the map, along with her name. They found out she had a sister. Their boss smiled with uncontrollable glee.