If only she had just listened to him, she wouldn’t be here! Hell, if only she had just never raised the attentions of him in the first place! If only, if only… the tantalizing premise of long-gone possibilities stung just as bad as the thought of the future. She could have done any number of things differently, but she hadn’t. Somehow, against all odds, she had made every possible bad decision that she had needed to in order to end up where she was right now. Now, no matter how fair or unfair, deserved or undeserved, wanted or unwanted, the reality was ironclad: she was now a girl in a dingy alleyway kneeling in equal parts dirt and blood, staring at a dumpster—a dumpster that may as well have been filled with her hopes and dreams.
Awareness began to dawn like radioactive fallout. With that newfound awareness, the world began spinning—slowly at first, then faster and faster. Questions mounted like a dizzying sick, both in the pit of her stomach and a stomach-sized pit in her throat. Her heart pounded erratically and sweat began dripping out of her pores to signify that the contents of her stomach were no longer content where they were. She fought it at first, before realizing that the time for fighting had long since passed. Leave it to her own body to amplify her misery.
“Get it over with.” she consoled herself as best she could, “Just throw up all over the place. Fuck it.”
As the rivulets of hot, soggy curds spewed out, coming to rest on the ground in front of her, she realized that it actually felt better to just let it all happen. It wasn’t like things were going to get much worse, and it felt good to just give in to however her body felt like dealing with things. After a few minutes of unearthing the contents of her guts, however, she rested her forehead against the soggy ground, spitting out tainted saliva and sweating profusely.
“How…?”, she whimpered to herself, “How in the hell did I get here?… How?!”
She had tried so hard to make it all work. For months upon months upon months, she had done the very best she could with the hand she was dealt. Now here she was, broken in so many ways, in so very many places both inside and out—a product of her own damnable ambitions. But really… what had she done to warrant such abuse? She wanted adventure, sure. She wanted intrigue, of course, and a little novelty, now and again. Who the hell didn’t? But mostly, all she really wanted was to be left alone to create her own novelties. She wasn’t the smartest person in the world, as far as she knew; but she was smart. She knew how to entertain herself. Was it really so much to ask that she set her own course? She wasn’t hurting anybody.
Oh no, that wouldn’t do, of course. She had the intense misfortune of not only being a woman—a human woman with male counterparts that had their contemptible and insatiable desires—but being a relatively attractive one as well. For some reason she couldn’t really understand, this made her property in the minds of men. She was a thing… a thing to be protected and pursued all the same. In the minds of men, she couldn’t stick up for herself, of course, and couldn’t be trusted to be intelligent enough to think things through. No… she needed a man to do all of that for her. It had been that way with every man. It had even been that way with Matt York.
That had only been a one-time thing; something that had happened back when the Americans had first come calling with an offer she couldn’t possibly refuse: the promise of adventure and novelty. Matt had been so protective of her, and such a good teacher. Eventually, however, he had become far too protective and jealous, the same way that all men did. After a while of that, well, then the overtures started—the pledges of romantic fealty and all that sugary nonsense that men thought up when both of their heads thought in tandem. She was reticent to turn him down, of course. He was so very, very easy to fall for, what with his boyish charms and all. And the confidence that he had, even now it was practically irresistible.
But Matt was a man of novelty, just like everyone in this realm of secrets was. He had gotten too close… he had broken the first rule of tradecraft: ‘don’t shit where you eat.’ Vivika knew the direction this was headed, and had expressed it to him, and Matt… well, Matt was a man. Vivika, being an attractive woman, of course couldn’t be trusted to make her own choices for herself in his eyes. So, Matt had to make his own assessments about things and become very jealous and bitter. When his Boss had found out that Matt had compromised her, the only safe thing to do was to separate the two. It was one agent or the other, after all.
So now here she was, caught on this side of the damned Wall, with whatever protection she had left all the way on the other side. He may as well have been an ocean away for all the good he could do her. Even when she had been on that side, he had all but ignored her for fear of raising the ire of his case officer. That was then, though. Now, things were different. She had suffered the evil advances of Patrick for far too long already, before this. And, for all the lying, evil bastard that Patrick was, Vivika believed him when he said that Matt was involved, and that some score somewhere was being settled.
“No.” she thought to herself. “No, this will not do. This is all Matt’s fault that this happened. He’s going to know… I’m going to make him know what happened to me. He’s going to hear. He’s going to hear me, and Patrick, and every single fucking thing Patrick did to me. So will his case officer. So will all of the Americans—they’ll care. I’ll make them care.”
Weakly, she reached into her purse and turned off the audio recorder. She had to make it back to the phone-booth immediately and phreak the hotline one more time. It wasn’t protocol, but she didn’t care. This changed everything. It was Matt’s job to fix this. He had fucked up everything for her, and now he was going to fix it.
Quagmire
It was early morning when Lena finally walked through her apartment door, stretching and yawning. She was young, and should have been far more accustomed to all-nighters than she was. Than again, she was also a young woman who loved the feeling of thick blankets wrapping her in a safe cocoon, and the feel of soft sheets filling in any crack and crevasse just in case. Sleep was something she treasured almost as much as she did late-night forays—and certainly, more so than she treasured… ugh… mornings.
It didn’t matter if she was just going to bed in the morning or waking up. Mornings were mornings, and they were by far God’s worst invention ever. Instinctively, she knew that if there was a God, he wasn’t a morning person and wouldn’t save people before 8 am. So, if you died at 7:45, you went straight to hell—at least until Jesus or whoever had some coffee. Hell, even Lena’s mother hated mornings with a burning passion and refused to arise before 11, unless she had good reason to. For this reason, Lena thanked all the pantheons, real or imaginary, that her mother was still fast asleep. Lena was soooo-oo-oooo tired, and really didn’t want to play caregiver right at this very moment.
Step by silent step, she stole through the apartment, thanking Patrick for all of her lessons. As much as she had hated the extra anti-surveillance training, every silent step she was able to masterfully pull off today was a precious blessing from the HVA itself. It ensured that her mother would remain snoring obnoxiously and fretfully murmuring in her sleep about Soviet soldiers, while bringing Lena closer and closer to her bedroom.