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One word. One choice. There was more to it, of course, both before and after, but that single moment marked the end of one life and the start of another. Everest. Not ruby. The choice easy yet also monumental.
Nicky Parsons couldn’t help but reflect on that fateful night as she tossed clothes from her dresser into the duffle bag. It was already half packed, staying that way under her bed at all times. She had three other go bags hidden around the city, but there had been enough warning this time to be a bit more thorough.
Joining the clothes were a few mementos, meaningless to anyone else who happened upon them, but important to her. None, however, provided any evidence that she’d lived the past eight months in Cologne, Germany. It had been a good time, mostly quiet despite, or perhaps because of, the size of the city. This stay had been longer than most, not as long as some. It was always destined to end, but she couldn’t help but think she was leaving a piece of herself behind, that she did every time a threat appeared that forced a hasty departure, often under the cover of night.
Would she one day run out of pieces? What would be left of her then? Maybe it would be better to forget. That thought sent a jolt of anger and regret through her body, and she forced it away as she emphatically zipped the duffle bag closed.
“It was difficult for me. With you.”
Looking across the diner’s table at him, no recognition in his eyes, was one of the hardest things she’d done in her life up to that point. It was the first, prolonged time she’d spent with him since his accident where he wasn’t pointing a gun at her. That was an improvement, she thought wryly, but it didn’t little to settle the emotions roiling within her.
Did your past still exist if you had no memory of it? If not, then where did that leave the people from your past. Where did that leave her? After the fight with Desh, he put her on a bus, telling her it would get easier. In a way, it had. But she couldn’t help but wonder if that made it worse somehow. Through it all, however, she didn’t regret the choice.
Nicky shouldered the duffle and carried it into the main room, glancing at the tell-tale signs of a life, one that had been fiction but infused with enough of herself to be playable. This time she’d been a writer, as she was getting too old to play the student. She had her unfinished novel on a flash drive hidden in the lining of the duffle. She could never publish it, but one day, if she managed to stay far enough ahead of those looking to tie up the particular loose thread she represented, she might just finish it.
She thought of the owner of the small cafe two blocks from the apartment where she often spent her mornings. The owner had been encouraging of her work once she assured the older woman that the book wouldn’t be all sex and violence. No need for more violence than she’d already endured, she thought. She would miss the woman, but then, she missed the others she’d left behind with the pieces of herself scattered around the world, often wondering if they missed her in return, the young woman who arrived, stayed a little while, and then left. They didn’t know that the woman they knew would cease to exist the moment she stepped out of their lives, arriving somewhere else with a different name, a different look, and a past that didn’t include them.
“You really don’t remember anything?”
Nicky had never been a religious person, but she sometimes wondered if he had been different from the others because more of his soul survived the Treadstone training, if you could even call it that. It didn’t affect his performance, at least not until Wombosi, so she kept it from her reports out of fear that they would recall him and stomp out the remainders of his humanity.
The first time she saw him outside of the station house was an accident. She was passing a cafe and was startled to see him sitting at an outdoor table, noting despite her surprise that it was the only one which allowed him to put his back to a solid stone wall while providing line of sight both directions down the narrow street. Procedure dictated she ignore his presence and keep walking, which was her intention until he called out, inviting her to join him.
The second time was also not planned, at least not by her. The third, however, was, beginning with her following directions he’d given her via a dead drop. They still had their scheduled sessions, the routine interrupted irregularly when she had to deliver mission packets, after which he would disappear for as long as it took to complete the kill. In between, however, they met in secret, both knowing that they weren’t just risking their careers for whatever it was they now had. She had to admit that it started as a fling for her, enjoying the thrill of the situation as much as encounters themselves. By the time she realized her underlying feelings for him, she was in too deep, and despite his almost impenetrable facade, she believed, hoped, that he felt the same for her.
Conversation never came easy for him, but they started one over the course of several covert meetings that began to define their situation more concretely, but before they could finish weaving the sentences together, Wombosi happened and he was dead. Until he wasn’t and he was pointing a gun at her head, no longer recognizing her, either as his handler or as his lover. Then he was gone, this time taking another woman with him, until he was back, yet again with the gun, looking for revenge. And finally Madrid, another gun, but this time he lowered it, and she had a choice. Everest. Ruby. And one life ended and another began.
“Got everything?” the voice called from the kitchen.
“Yeah,” she answered, looking up as he entered, carrying his own duffle. They were traveling a bit heavy for them, but they’d been in Cologne for eight months. This stay had been longer than most, not as long as some.
“Do you ever think they’ll stop looking for us?” she asked, already knowing the answer. Landry had done what she could, but an agency built on secrets didn’t stay standing by letting one, or in this case two, disappear into the wind.
“For you? Maybe one day. For me, never.”
He gave her a look and she regretted asking the question, knowing the path it would set him on. Regret came easy to him, but she was working on that. It took him awhile to find her after New York. Longer still for his memories to truly return. They’d been together ever since, sharing this never ending journey from one life to the next.
“I made my choice, remember?” she said firmly.
He nodded, the hint of a smile on his face. “And so did I.”
“On to the next life, then?” she asked.
“Lead the way.”
And so she did, walking out the door and to their compact, tossing the duffle into the trunk. He followed, closing and locking the door behind him as if they would be back in a few hours, or perhaps considering the duffles, a few days. Neither was true, but nobody but them knew that now.
She got in the passenger side and felt the car shift slightly as he put his duffle in next to hers. Then he got behind the wheel, and away they went.
When their pursuers arrived, they’d find a home belonging to a young writer and her live-in boyfriend. They two had been there about eight months, until one day they left and never came back. Wherever they were headed, they never arrived. Two other people, however, with different names, different looks, and a past that didn’t include Cologne or a old woman who ran a streetside cafe that once catered to an aspiring writer, arrived in a different city, signalling the beginning of a new life, temporary as all the others.