Time Unknown
A hillside
The French countryside
She lay on her back in the darkness, staring up at the sky.
Somewhere nearby, the helicopter was on fire. She could see the orange flow of it in the corner of her eye, hear the crackling of the flames, and feel the heat on her face. It was like a giant bonfire on an autumn night. It was burning with intense energy. They used to call a fire like that a “rager.” It was nice to think of it that way.
She must have been thrown clear of it in the crash. That was the only way to explain why she was here, and it was over there. She didn’t know if anyone else had survived. She doubted it. She seemed to survive everything, again and again, while the people around her died.
Probably not this time, though.
She wasn’t in pain. Outside of the heat from the fire warming her cheeks, she couldn’t feel anything at all. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t get up and keep moving away from this disaster. She couldn’t even turn her head to look at the downed helicopter. She couldn’t breathe very well, either. There was something building up in her throat, some kind of fluid. She felt like she had to puke.
She remembered, just a few moments ago, the helicopter spinning, moving at dizzying speed. The bald man, Viktor, had been shouting orders at the pilot. He had been speaking Russian or some other Slavic language. His shouts were guttural barks. She didn’t understand a word of it.
Somewhere in the helicopter, an alarm was sounding. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. It wasn’t even very loud. They spun faster and faster, and they dropped out of the sky. There was an instant of nothing, just perfect spinning, terrible and horrible like it was never going to end.
Then there was darkness. And now this.
A man was standing over her now. No. There were two men. One was a big man and broad. The other was smaller, maybe older. She stared at them. They were both wearing those black jumpsuits. They both had the word INTERPOL across their chests.
Good Lord. More cops.
“Who are you?” the smaller man said. He spoke English with an accent.
She tried to speak, and found that with effort, she could manage it. “My name is Kendra.”
“What were you doing here?”
“Nothing.”
It sounded like the croak of a frog. It was the truest thing she ever said. She had done nothing here. She had accomplished nothing. A lot of people had died. The secrets, whatever they were, were on fire inside the helicopter.
And now?
Things got very dark for a long moment. The two men above her were no longer there.
There was a lake in Wisconsin where they used to go in the summers when she was a child. She was very small and had just learned to swim. She stood on the dock behind the old house where they stayed.
Her father, who she loved very much, was in the water. He was a funny man who wore his glasses all the time, even when he went swimming.
For an instant, the image was frozen. There was the water of the giant lake, the greenery all along the coastline, and the vast spread of pale blue sky above her.
“Come on, Kendra,” her father said. He waved her on.
She looked at him. She stepped up to the edge of the dock. She was a little bit afraid because the water seemed so dark.
“Come on, sweetie,” he said. “You can do it. Jump.”
There was nothing left to do.
She jumped.