Black Marion

31

A shaking at her shoulder woke her. A foreign voice, nervous.

She opened her eyes to the edge of a polished oakwood table and the shadow of a man at her side, the ceiling light a piercing ache, a terrible memory. Mid-Sky, little cafe. Evening time, September 25th, 2586.

It was suffocating to be awake.

"...on the table. Are you feeling alright?"

Alex looked at the man's face and registered nothing. She looked past him, toward the corner television screen displaying idle news. Numbers in the corner. "It's 6:52," she said, as if the time would ground her again.

It almost did. She remembered she was short on it and stumbled upright. Her leg bones felt hollow, eardrums deflecting the cafe worker's concerned words as she knelt by the table. She could not dissect her new memories without being swallowed by them, so she shoved them aside as she searched for the dropped burner. There, in the back corner—her fingers lost their grip twice before retrieving the device. Its line was dead.

"Ma'am," said the man, "if you need me to call the hospital..."

"No," she said, voice hoarse.

"Then—"

She stumbled past him and went for the door. Out the cafe, into the streets. As soon as the air hit, acidic vomit heaved up her gut, and she clamped a hand over her mouth and grabbed for the wall. She shut her stinging eyes. Swallowed, gave the nausea two seconds to fade, and then kept walking. Slowly, the rhythm of her footsteps pulled out her old logic. It was surrounded by a clutter in her head, but out of desperation or survival instinct, she made enough sense of it.

She knew where she needed to go now. She had no other choice. On June 16th, 2586, the sting operation must have hit the Sector 11 clinic. Maria was gone. No doubt others had been captured, likely killed by now. And Jacques...

They had Tagged him.

Muted him.

Paraded him before an unknowing Alex, called him a housekeeper named Neiman. Brandished him as a hostage, precisely for a situation like this. She'd miscalculated. God, she was so close—a walk away from where MM waited in lower East Central. Minutes away from freedom, from Haneul. Haneul.

But she couldn't let them kill Jacques.

Fingers shaking, she flicked open the screen of her new connector. She found a shadowed street corner and opened the dial log. What were the first three digits again? 378, or 738? 387? Or 9? She couldn't remember it. Never thought she would need it. Switching to the network search screen instead, she looked up the number online before plugging it in hastily. Time was ticking. Haneul and the others—they couldn't be sitting patiently right now. And Vaughn—that madman, god knew what he was thinking.

"Hello?"

Alex shut her eyes. There was nothing else she could do, but this. Nothing but bend to save Jacques, and hope that this one message would reach Haneul before it was too late.

"Sir, it's me. I need your help."

---

7:42, Alex arrived back upon the 999th floor of Arleon Tower.

Vaughn's falcon was parked patiently in its usual place, the hood of the engine cool upon her passing touch. The lights of the apartment were on. The front door, when Alex turned the handle, was unlocked. She had a disjointed memory of spring 2585, coming here that first time after Regina Kalengar's death. But this time, when she stepped through the frame of the entrance, the door locked with a foreboding click.