by Shamim Sarif
Paulina strolls back into the ward, through the double doors at the end. Composed and calm, she comes and sits down on my bed. She even takes a moment to straighten my hospital gown, which has gotten twisted in my vain attempts to break free. A regular Florence Nightingale. I keep my eyes fixed on the mildew patch on the ceiling. Prettier to look at than her eyes.
“Who do you work for?” she asks.
Seriously, does she expect me to just tell her? I ignore her and, for the tenth time, look around the place for any sign of a weapon I could use, in the unlikely event I can figure out a way to get my four tied-up limbs free. There’s still nothing in sight.
“Is it British Intelligence?” Paulina says.
Now I look at her, scornfully. Like, could she have made a dumber guess?
Her right hand is closed in a fist. She lifts it up to my face and slowly opens her fingers. There, on her palm, sits my blue pill.
“Then why do you carry this?” she asks. “If not to avoid breaking under torture?”
She’s so proud of herself and her genius deduction, I could throw up. But I make my eyes meet hers as if she’s rumbled me.
“You’re so clever,” I say admiringly.
And before she knows what’s happening, I thrust my head forward and bite down on her hand, swallowing up the pill into my mouth. It’s down my throat before she can even react.
Paulina screams and jumps up from the bed, holding her hand. I seem to have drawn a lot of blood and I wipe my mouth on the shoulder of my robe while I watch her hop around the room, yelling for help. An alarmed nurse rushes in from the operating room and goes straight back for antiseptic and a bandage. Paulina glares at me, incandescent with rage.
“However long you have left, I’m going to make it painful,” she says.
I believe her. Terror hits me again, and I feel the contents of my stomach rising. But I breathe, almost panting. Anything not to throw up. I need that blue capsule to work. And fast.
23
THE UPSIDE OF WORKING FOR a team of socially conscious women is that they take invasion of privacy seriously, even for their agents. It’s why they never wanted to tag us with permanent trackers. They didn’t want us to feel like criminals, or to feel that they owned us. So all I can do now is rely on that blue capsule.
I imagine it floating inside me. The coating wearing away in my stomach acid, just enough for the tracker that it contains to be activated. I visualize Amber, in London, getting a notification. Alerting the entire Athena team. I picture Hala jumping on her motorbike, Caitlin joining her. But here’s the thing. They’re focused on Peggy. They think the mission here is over. They think I’m off somewhere feeling sorry for myself. Who knows if they’ll even be on the Athena comms system?
The doors to the operating room are propped open now. There are two teams of doctors waiting. None of them look over at me. At the foot of my bed, Paulina’s hand is being carefully bandaged by a nurse, and Kristof has a hand grasping my scalp, gripping my hair, like the caveman that he is, presumably to stop me from biting his boss again.
For a moment I imagine my funeral. You know when you’re young, you do that sometimes, when everyone’s on your case. I used to do it so I could enjoy how sorry Kit would be that she was on tour when I died, but now that my demise is looking more imminent, I actually feel bad at the idea of my mother in so much pain.
A crashing noise in the operating room makes us all look up. Another “patient” is being wheeled in, screaming, a patient I recognize—Dasha. I jerk my head away from Kristof and call her name, struggling harder with my restraints, every ounce of frustration coming out in a desperate attempt to get free.
Dasha looks over at me, and our eyes meet for just a moment before Paulina instructs Kristof to close the door between us. He kicks away the doorstop, and it swings shut with a shudder. I can hear Dasha calling out to me, terrified, from the operating room. Except she’s calling me “Daisy,” which is the fake name I gave her. It would be comical, if it weren’t so mixed up with impending death.
Paulina’s watching me with a small smile.
“I heard you made a friend, when you broke in here,” she says.
“You said I would be the first donor,” I say fiercely.
“We have two medical teams. Because time is money. Don’t worry. You’ll be right beside her.”
The door of the operating room opens again and two nurses come in. They release the brakes on my bed and turn it around to wheel me inside. Paulina watches as the doors swing shut behind me, and just before they do, she raises her bandaged hand to wave goodbye.
Inside the operating room, nobody pays me much attention, because Dasha is going nuts. She’s clearly kept her spirit, because she’s fighting, kicking, screaming, giving it everything. The nurses assigned to me have to rush over to Dasha and help restrain her.
I know that I’m next. As long as I’m conscious, there’s some scrap of a chance I can survive. While they all crowd around Dasha, I look at the tray of surgical instruments beside me. I can’t reach them with my hands. But with a small twist of my upper body I can grasp a scalpel with my mouth. But I have to be careful and just take hold of the handle. It slips precariously between my teeth as I try to grip it, and so I have to drop it onto my chest, in full view of anyone who cares to look in my direction. But Dasha is still keeping them busy; she’s moaning now, weeping. The sound of it breaks my heart, but it also helps me push down my own fear. I jerk my body to get the scalpel off my chest. It slides down to my side, where it’s out of sight, but also out of my reach. Great.
I glance over to the other table. One of the doctors is prepping a syringe of something to calm Dasha down and now they are holding her arms, trying to get the sedative into her. I feel the cold metal of the scalpel against the underside of my arm. I keep working my hand, but gently, trying to ease that blade into my palm without slicing open my own veins in the process.
Dasha goes quiet suddenly, and there’s a general muttering of relief from the doctors. I feel sweat start to form on my forehead. Poor Dasha. I can hear them firing up a small bone saw. Tears of frustration touch my eyes as I think about how badly I’m failing here. The team standing over Dasha start swabbing her, ready to operate.
In the meantime, my lot of doctors come back to me. I arch my back, desperate to move the scalpel within reach. It helps, a bit, and they all just think I’m trying to escape. Another one of those anesthetics is being prepared, and a nurse swabs my arm. She says something to the doctor, and they both tap my elbow, looking for a vein. They ask me to make a fist. Really, like I’m going to make my own murder easier for them? I don’t oblige, of course, and so they start looking for a vein in my hand—but I keep moving my hand, so much that the needle scratches me a few times. But at last, I feel the cool metal of the scalpel touch my other palm. Is it the blade or the handle?
Outside, something is happening. We all look up. I can hear Kristof’s walkie-talkie and a couple of cracks in the distance that I wish might be gunfire. But it’s far away, and not only is that needle going to hit me very soon, but over on the other table, the so-called medical team is starting the operation that will end Dasha’s life.
I move my other forearm back and forth, and the blade scrapes against the ties holding me down. It’s a beautiful sensation. But now the doctor looks over his instruments and notices the scalpel is missing. He makes eye contact for the first time, suspicious, and I pull my left arm free—the scalpel has cut through enough of my restraint for me to rip it open. I stab the doctor with the scalpel, right in the bicep. He yells and retreats.
I cut through the restraint on my right hand and use my fist to slam into the face of the approaching anesthesiologist.
“Stop!” I yell at Dasha’s medics, as I cut through the belt across my ankles.
I’m up and on my feet, scalpel out, ready to take on the room, but they’re not fighters. They drop back, and a couple of them even seem relieved. Outside, I can hear Kristof grun
ting, and someone crashes against the door, falling into the operating room. It’s Caitlin. Her head has taken a bad crack on the door, and she’s sprawled on the floor, stunned. I run to help her, but Kristof gets to her before me and kicks her so hard that she is lifted six inches off the ground, landing farther inside the operating theater. Kind, brave Caitlin, attacked by a monster twice her size.
I lunge at him with the scalpel, hooking it into his leg and yanking it down. He roars, but he shakes me off. I feel like a fly attacking an elephant, and he’s over by Caitlin again in a heartbeat. She’s still dazed, still lying there, and he’s so much stronger. He lifts her head to smash it onto the floor, as the skylight above us breaks. A shower of glass shatters into the room like a lethal hailstorm and, with it, the black outline of Hala descends.
She uses the momentum of her fall to land on Kristof and knock him over. With four well-placed swings of her gun she knocks him senseless and turns to me, breathless. She takes in my hospital gown, the scalpel in my hand, the gurney behind me. But she doesn’t move. Her eyes go to something behind me.
On instinct, I freeze, even before I hear the click of a gun safety releasing. Followed by the touch of cool metal against my head. Behind me, Paulina breathes into my ear.
“Don’t move, Jessie.”
Hala glares at Paulina. I swear, she almost bares her teeth.
“Drop the gun,” Paulina instructs Hala.
Hala’s eyes move to mine, a look to assure me that I’ll be fine. She starts to lower the gun toward the floor, but I hold her gaze and she stops, understanding what I’m thinking. She takes firmer hold of the gun.
“Just shoot her,” I say, for Paulina’s benefit. “It’s worth it.”
That freaks Paulina out, because Hala nods, like maybe she would sacrifice me for the greater good.
“Are you sure?” Hala asks, completely deadpan.
“Yeah.”
Hala raises her gun at Paulina, who now thinks that even shooting me is not going to save her. She has no choice but to turn her gun toward Hala, which gives me the split second I need to knock my fist backward into Paulina’s face, elbow her in the stomach, and twist her arm till she’s kneeling on the ground. Her gun hits the floor, and I go to kick it away, but someone gets there before me. Hala’s boot smashes ferociously into the gun, sending it skidding into the corner of the room. Then she grabs Paulina by the back of the neck and yanks her up and away from me, pushing her forward to the gurney that I was so recently strapped to.
Paulina whimpers under the force of Hala’s rage. Hala holds her down with one arm while she reaches for a scalpel with the other.
“No!” I yell, but she can’t hear me. She can’t hear anyone right at this moment. I know, because I’ve been there.
I run forward just as the scalpel pierces the side of Paulina’s throat. I pull Hala’s hand back.
“Get off me!” Hala shouts. She’s panting with the exertion of subduing Paulina, but I keep my hand on her own. Not fighting with her but calming her down. Gripping the hand with the scalpel firmly enough that Hala can’t make a sudden move.
Hala looks at me, angrily, but I keep my hand over her fingers.
“She would’ve killed you,” Hala says, and when her eyes meet mine, they are moist with tears. It takes me a moment to realize that Hala’s not doing this because she’s full of rage but because she’s full of fear. Fear of losing me. Under the blade, Paulina’s throat is exposed and a trickle of dark blood makes its way down her pale neck, where the scalpel has punctured the skin.
“I’m fine,” I tell her, and Hala’s other hand comes up to grasp mine in a moment that tells me how much she cares; a moment she’d probably deny for the rest of her life if I ever mentioned it again. Which I won’t.
“She isn’t worth it,” I say. “Trust me.”
A long moment. Hala pulls away, tossing the scalpel back onto the tray. Then it’s like she’s back on track suddenly. Following protocol. She uses a cord from her jacket to tie Paulina’s wrists together, pulling the knot too tightly; but I figure I can let her have that much.
Caitlin is coming round, trying to get up, and I reach her in time for her to lean on me as she pulls herself upright. She is badly bruised from the fight, bleeding and limping as well. But she looks at me with a flicker of a smile.
“Peggy’s okay,” she whispers.
I take a breath, and it catches in my throat, like a gulp. For the first time in a while I can breathe properly, and it feels good. I take a last look at Paulina’s angry eyes, and then I turn away. Caitlin needs my help, and so does Hala. And Paulina was right, in the end. Family is the most important thing.
24
“I KNOW WHAT YOU THINK of me,” Li says. “You think that I cannot really know what it is to be under pressure, the way you do. The fear of death that takes a year off your life every time you survive it; the depression of waiting alone in an apartment in a place that smells like nowhere you’ve been before.”
I listen. I’m sort of intrigued, to tell you the truth. I’ve never had this much time with Li. During my first interviews here, she fired questions and I did the talking. Since then, we’ve only communicated through briefings. Other than that small interaction at the hospital in Belgrade.
Earlier this evening, Li and I bumped into each other at Peggy’s bedside. We all arrived back in London three days ago. Since then we’ve unpacked, debriefed, taken turns visiting Peggy at the private clinic that Li transferred her to, and mostly, we’ve slept. Peggy is doing well—sitting up, reading newspapers, talking a lot. And when we left her to rest, Li asked me to join her for a drink at her apartment. It’s not the kind of thing you refuse.
And, actually, I don’t mind listening now that Li is talking. She is eloquent, and speaks in long sentences, with a precise and formal way of describing things that feels almost old-fashioned. We are sitting alone in her kitchen, which is very clean and white, with stainless-steel appliances and ice-colored cabinets and not much sign of food. Above our heads, high on the wall, a round, mahogany clock with Roman numerals and Chinese symbols ticks. Maybe it’s an antique, or a family heirloom. But it’s a strange timepiece for a woman who deals in the most futuristic technology.
“And yet,” Li continues, “I have survived a lot, from the time I was a small girl. I grew up in the Chinese countryside. In the early years of the Cultural Revolution. I watched my father die. He died of illness but, truly, he was broken by unjust rules, rules that men with more pliant characters learned to bend to their own needs.”
Li pauses, and I nod. The ticking of the clock is the only sound touching the silence between us.
“A year later, I was separated from my mother. I was fourteen and sent with hundreds of other children from my district to serve my country. I was a soft, shy child, attached to my mother, kept safe by her like a flower bud protected in green leaves. My heart screamed for years.”
It’s a devastating image. A heart screaming. Up until now, I hadn’t really considered whether Li even had a heart. Or feelings. I look down at the polished wooden floor. A long pause ensues, as if Li is waiting for me to respond.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.
“Because you have a right to know. You have risked your life many times for Athena, and you should know why we ask that of you. Why we will continue to ask it. I don’t believe any government wants to help the people we want to help.”
“So Athena will continue?” I sit forward in my chair, eager.
Li nods. “I was so busy trying to teach you lessons, Jessie, that I made the mistake of arrogance. Of thinking there was nothing I could learn from you.”
“What did you learn from me?” I ask, surprised.
“That, whatever the experiences that Peggy and Kit and I have had in our lives, we cannot quite comprehend what you three endure. But we want to help you endure it. And become better because of it. There is a Chinese saying—that precious stones need sculpting before they become gems.
”
That kind of touches something in me, and I feel a lump rise to my throat. I look down and wait, not sure of what happens next. Li sits erect on the chair opposite, watching me.
“I owe you an apology,” she says.
Well, that’s a shocker. I shake my head and try to shrug it off. Li gives me a glimmer of a smile and says nothing more.
Still, the clock marks off the changing seconds. I glance up at it.
“It troubles you, the ticking?”
I nod.
“Time is passing,” Li says. “I’ve always felt it.”
She nods at me, releasing me from my chair. And so I get up to leave.
While I’ve appreciated the talk with Li, it’s a relief to be back in my own home. The lamplight is warm, and Kit comes out of her bedroom in a blue silk robe and a towel wrapped around her just-washed hair and asks me about Peggy. I fill her in, but I’m sketchy about the meeting with Li because I don’t know how to describe it. But it did sound to me as if Athena would continue and, when I ask her, Kit confirms it.
While we talk, Kit brings over a bottle of antiseptic and some new bandages. I cut my wrists and ankles trying to get free in the hospital, and I think it makes Kit feel better to do a bit of the old mothering routine. There’s a short silence while she unwraps the bandage, and I feel like she’s working up to something.
“Listen, about Paulina,” Kit says, dabbing at me with cotton wool.
I’m wary. “What about her?”
“You felt something for her.”
I look down, say nothing, and try to ignore the warmth in my cheeks.
Kit tries again. “I didn’t know you were attracted to . . .”
“Human traffickers?” I ask, still not meeting her eyes.
Kit smiles. “Well, I was going to say, attracted to women.”
My face is burning. I don’t know why. Not being heterosexual is probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done as far as Kit is concerned. I think it’s just talking to my mother about this stuff that makes me uncomfortable. I want her to know everything about me and be okay with it and yet, what if it’s just another thing about me that she doesn’t get? I wait, in a sort of agony. But she doesn’t say anything else. My head is down, and I can feel her looking at me. And, suddenly, her arms are around me and she’s pulling me close to her and hanging on tightly—
