Ten years working for the Agency had prepared Astrid for all eventualities, including escape from the building where they’d trained her. She’d welcomed their interest in her, what they offered, and the opportunity they presented to step away from her criminal career, but she’d never trusted them. Her suspicion of authority possessed every part of her, originating from her father’s thick knuckles and emanating from the fibres of the blue uniform he loved to wear. She searched her mind, inside her map room, and discovered what she needed, knowing where Laurel was taking her.
Agent Lee strode towards the door. Astrid had a choice between standing her ground until reinforcements arrived to overpower her or following. Her chances of escape lessened the longer she waited.
‘I hope you have a premium room for me.’
There was no need to panic yet. Agency policy for people like her, for the prisoner she was, followed a strict procedure she knew by heart. There would be a chink of light somewhere, an opportunity to escape, and she just had to be ready for it. Now it was imperative to stay focused.
‘I need your mobile,’ Laurel said.
She was the same height as Astrid, with a similar physical build. Apart from that, she was younger, a lot paler and, now, more nervous, which Astrid found curious since she wasn’t the one about to be locked up.
Astrid handed her the phone. Laurel strode from the room, and she followed like a good prisoner. The ceiling lights illuminated the windowless space, flickering at strobe-like intervals to give it a hazy feel, reminding her of a desperate nightclub she’d visited recently. All that was missing was the throbbing head music, weak alcohol and aroma of cheap perfume.
‘Are you going to cuff me?’
Astrid held her hands out in front of her, arms outstretched in mock supplication. Laurel glanced across the room at the agents working at their desks and the others looking busy.
‘I don’t think you’re a danger to anyone here.’
‘Even with my reputation?’ She scrutinised the room and her former colleagues. You didn’t make friends at the Agency, but she was hard-pressed to think of anyone here who would go to such lengths to hurt her. ‘I’m no danger even though you believe I’ve murdered four people?’
‘I don’t believe you killed any of them.’
They took a right along the corridor, and Laurel swiped her security key at the door to enter the lift. She hit the button for the bottom floor. Astrid slumped against the cold metal, staring at the silver walls as the container descended.
‘So why am I here?’
‘Not my decision, but you know more than you’re letting on.’
‘That’s ironic because I get the same feeling about you, Agent Lee.’
‘I’ve killed no one.’ Lee’s face simmered with resentment.
Astrid inched closer to Laurel, pushing her legs as near to her as possible. She moved close to her face, wondering if she could get the crucifix away from her. Any bit of metal or plastic she acquired would be useful for an escape. She dismissed the idea as stupidity.
Lee was unmoving. ‘We all have secrets, Snow.’
There were small red spots on the lift behind Laurel’s head, dotted around as if flicked out in one swift movement. Astrid swallowed the air to gather as much of Laurel’s delicate fragrance as possible. Ostentatious trappings of personal grooming were frowned upon inside the Agency, but she tasted the faint hint of the orange blossom in Laurel’s hair.
‘Do you recognise what connects the people in this building, Agent Lee?’
She thought Laurel was ignoring her question until she replied.
‘No. What connects them?’
Astrid placed one hand above Laurel’s shoulder, her fingers pressed into the metal.
‘They’re impervious to the lessons of experience. Mistakes are repeated constantly, like drunks returning to their favourite bar even though they understand it’ll eventually kill them. If you’ve read my files, you’ll know of the many mistakes this organisation has made over the years: blunders and errors left unaddressed; faults which are never made public. The Agency is a law unto itself, and its operatives are allowed to work unchecked with no accountability.’
‘That’s everybody apart from you?’
Astrid found the sarcasm enchanting. ‘Well, you said you admired me for my work.’ She moved to the rear of the lift.
‘And it’s not just me. There are a few others.’
Astrid thought of George again.
He wouldn’t have let this happen.
‘What’s your fake job?’ Astrid asked.
Each agent had a false identity created for them by the Agency. It included every scrap of personal information you could dream of, from a place of birth, parentage, and upbringing, to the smallest of details such as taste in music, first kiss and fantasy holiday. If you were detained in a foreign place, accidentally caught doing something you shouldn’t in your own country, or found dead anywhere you shouldn’t be, then nothing would come back to the Agency.
‘I work in financial services.’
I should’ve guessed.
‘You have a pet, a black Labrador,’ Astrid said.
‘What gave it away?’
‘There are dog hairs under your fingernails.’
‘Your eyesight is that good?’
‘Everything about me is that good.’
‘They might have come from a dog I’d stroked on the street.’
‘You picked them up coming here? No, you drove to work. Perhaps they’re from yesterday. I doubt it. Your skin is perfect, and you smell like fresh orange petals. Your hygiene is too good to have stray dog hairs under your nails for too long. Those are from before you left your home today.’
‘Impressive,’ Laurel said.
‘So, you’ll let me stew here for a while?’
The drama upstairs was the warm-up, letting the POI know what the Agency had on them, hoping they’d break straight away and confess to everything. Suspects rarely did, so the next step was to confine them in a cramped cell for an indiscriminate amount of days, festering inside a compartment which only contained a bed, a toilet and a table; not even a chair to sit on.
The lift hit the ground with a thump.
‘I don’t know what will happen to you now.’
There was sadness in Lee’s voice which dropped little melting ice cubes around Astrid’s heart. Laurel exited first, walking without waiting for her to follow. To return to the top floor and out, Astrid needed Laurel’s Agency card, to get past everyone on that floor, and then through the central security in the building’s lobby. She calculated the odds, and they weren’t good. She followed Laurel down the corridor. Inside her head, a tiny version of herself was setting fire to a lot of outdated maps.
‘Why do you think they left you with me, Laurel? You’re a rookie, a devoted fundamentalist, babysitting a sinner like me, a dangerous killer.’
She stopped halfway down, opened the thick metal door with her security card, and waited for Astrid to enter. Astrid walked up and peered inside. Her last chance of escape would be gone once the door closed behind her; until they came for her again.
‘Because once you finished your Vacation, I asked for this assignment.’
‘I didn’t end my Vacation. I had no intention of returning, but I was asked, or tricked.’
Laurel stood in the doorway, obscuring Astrid’s new residence.
‘No intention of returning? Everyone comes back. There’s no leaving the Agency; we all know that. You had no choice but to return.’
There was something only Astrid and one other person knew.
‘Director Cross signed off on it. No higher authority than that.’ That was when Cross was the director. ‘What happened to him?’
Laurel Lee’s eyes were half-closed when she spoke.
‘I’m unsure. Director Davis was in charge when I arrived at the Agency.’
‘You must have heard rumours or whispers?’
Laurel moved to the side and gestured for Astrid to go inside as she answered the question without answering it.
‘I’ll save those details for another time, after you’ve settled here.’
Astrid frowned: nobody ever settled into an isolation cell. She stepped into the room and stared at the table, looking at the half dozen colourful pens laid on top of it. Laurel moved next to her, as close as they’d been all this time, a slight gap between them. Astrid picked up a pen.
‘This is a nice touch.’
‘These were your idea,’ Laurel said.
‘The whole point of the isolation cells is to make the occupants focus on why they’re there: to simmer in their solitary confinement of mind and body. They’re given nothing to stimulate the brain, a form of sensory deprivation to force an unbarring of the soul.’
Lee smiled at her. ‘It doesn’t sound like too much of a hardship.’
‘One day, I checked on a visitor we’d had for three weeks, a period in which he had no contact with another human being. I found him lying face down on the bed, sobbing into the pillow. He’d used his blood to write on the walls, telling us everything we wanted. He scratched into his arms to find the ink he needed for his story. He couldn’t just tell us; he had to bleed and suffer for his redemption, which is when I suggested the Isolation Protocol to Director Cross. Leave our visitors in seclusion for a long time, and then drop the pens in the room for them. Sure, some of them doodle or scribble nonsense, a lot scrawl obscenities, but after six to eight weeks of loneliness, enough of them give the Agency what it wants.’ She’d stopped using the word us when referring to the Agency.
‘That’s just one of your many achievements.’
‘But it looks like they don’t want to wait around for me to crack.’ Astrid rolled the pen between her fingers. ‘You’ve read my files, so I’ll assume you’ve seen my psych profile. You’re aware of my ADHD, of my hyperactivity, about my lack of sleep. There’s no need to isolate me for weeks because my brain will start the process as soon as you leave. Considering how easily I get bored, how long before I begin on the wall?’
Laurel didn’t answer, leaving in silence. Astrid sat on the bed, stared at the blank walls, and pondered her question.
Will I go mad before I get a chance to escape?
What is madness? My life was serene and wonderful until she came along. At first, I thought it was a good thing, to share my existence with another, with someone like me, but then it changed to one of an unbearable lightness of being. Was it her smile that drove my sadness, her strength that created my weakness and her popularity which made me feel so alone? With her around, there wasn’t enough love for me.
It all started with her, which meant it could only end with her.
The falling Snow.