We didn’t sleep that night.
Neeka—if that was even her real name—poured everything out between hurried glances at the door and frantic taps on her burner phone. Names. Coordinates. Access codes. Surveillance tactics. It was like watching someone shed a second skin, revealing something battle-worn underneath.
Her “parents” weren’t even blood. Just handlers. The family dinners, the vacations, the stories about her childhood? Fabricated. Scripted. Rehearsed.
“But what about me?” I asked, finally, when the air had gone still. “Was I… just another cover?”
She looked up slowly, her eyes glassy. “You were the only part that wasn’t.”
God, I wanted to believe her.
But something felt off.
Not just about her. About me.
Because as she spoke, pieces inside me shifted—like puzzle fragments that had been waiting for someone to rattle them into place.
And memories I hadn’t touched in years suddenly lit up.
A man with a silver wristwatch, standing at my 10th birthday, saying words no child should hear.
“Someday, you’ll be useful.”
A locked drawer in my father’s study I’d never dared to open.
A burn mark behind my left ear, one I was told came from a childhood fever. But it wasn’t a scar.
It was an implant. Deactivated.
I’d been groomed for something, once. I knew it now.
And suddenly I wasn’t sure who was using who anymore.
The next morning, I left her sleeping on my bed and walked to the woods behind our street—the only place without cameras, or so I thought.
My hand found the rusted payphone built into the old ranger tower. It wasn’t hooked to a line anymore.
But that didn’t mean it couldn’t send a signal.
I picked up the receiver, and the static buzzed in my ear.
Then: “Verification phrase.”
I hadn’t said these words in ten years.
“The river is darkest at the bend.”
Silence.
Then: “Asset reactivated. Awaiting instructions.”
I hung up.
And for the first time in my life, I didn’t know who the enemy was.
When I returned, she was gone.
So was the phone I kept under my mattress, the notebook hidden in my closet, and the envelope labeled “If I disappear.”
There was only a note, written in her uneven script.
ns216.73.216.228da2“I’m sorry. I couldn’t risk it. They’re watching you, too. I wasn’t the only one living a lie. I think we were both assigned to destroy each other—and neither of us knew.
But the worst part? I still love you.21Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWLxt1Pu61R
–Neeka”
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