Something He Can't Quite Remember

London Taxis

LONDON, ENGLAND

Hero watched James, simply too tired to argue, as he asked the taxi driver to take them to one of the most expensive hotels in London.

"I admit Jones won't guess we're there, but how do you expect to pay for that?" she asked cynically.

"With money, young Padawan," he replied, giving what was probably a trademark smile. He delivered it cockily, as if he knew that every time he smiled like that, he'd get the girl. It was so different from his old sheepish grin, the look of the naughty schoolboy, the one that had always made Hero smile, albeit sometimes exasperatedly, in return. 

"My sides are splitting. Honestly." James gave her his best "whatever" look, and promptly fell asleep. She studied him closely. Blonde, casually untidy hair, and under his now-closed eyelids, misty blue-grey eyes. He had been good-looking, she thought. She had been rather flattered by his infatuation. Now, he was beautiful. Utterly. She wasn't quite sure how it had happened, but she wondered if she had persuaded herself that she was in love with him. Trying to convince herself that she was a better person, that she hadn't only cared that he'd gone because of what he had taken with him.

Looking at him now, in his bizarre new perfection, she decided that she had never, ever, been in love with him. She could see how easy it would be to fall in love with this beautiful idiot her best friend had turned into, but even clearer than that, she could see that she had never felt anything towards him.

She was a cold-hearted monster. Hero smiled. She could do that. That would be the part she played, and she would take back what was rightfully hers.

*******

I am in a small room, with cream painted walls and a single bed in the corner. There is little noise from outside the room. Looking outside, I see I am in a tower block. It is not very high. I am, perhaps, ten floors up, looking onto a council estate. I am sat at a desk, covered in sheets of lined paper, scrawled with formulae and algebra. I am working on further formulae on a desktop from the dark ages. I hear a knock at the door.

"Hello?" 

"Come in," I call.

"Hey," a soft voice says as I turn around. I swell with sudden, uncontrollable longing. It is her.

" What is it? I'm rather busy. Paul wanted me to calculate these codes... remember?"

She smiles, her perfect lips curling into a crooked bow. "Of course, of course. Can't have our human calculator distracted just before the big day."

I laugh at that, and wave my scientific calculator at her. "What was it you wanted?" I ask.

"I have a question," she begins. Then she is walking towards me, closer, closer, too close. My breath quickens. "How much do you want this?"

"What?" I ask, bemused.

"How much do you want Saturday to work?"  she murmurs. She is still coming closer. It is all I can do to keep still, and stop myself trembling. I steel myself. I don't know why I am shaking, if it is her, or how close she seems to have come to finding me out. As if she can read my thoughts, I focus on her. If anything betrays what I am about to do...

"It's just another job, right? Paul makes such a huge fuss over all of them."

"Oh, I guess. Just another job."

I am slightly confused. There is something she is keeping from me, about Saturday. I need to know all I can, or everthing could go wrong. If Paul finds out, he will kill me. And if he doesn't, and I don't get the stuff, they will. Even if they say they are trying to help me.

"Well, then, what do you want?" I ask again, letting my impatience slip into my voice. Even though I want her, more than anything I've ever wanted, I want Saturday more. So I push her away.