Heavily falling snow begins to blanket the ground. A group of students dashes across the street, their steps leaving ephemeral trails behind them. Shadows fall long and heavy on the white world, shattered only by the amber glow of recently illuminated street lamps and the sharp silver light of the moon, casting its glow on even the darkest shadows of this strange city—the alleys and byways, similar in their white layer to the common streets but lonely and devoid of life.
Adjacent to one of these is a modest but undeniably quaint chapel. Its stained-glass windows are dark and closed, save for one. From this orifice drifts something just as beautiful as the frozen flakes of glitter falling from the heavens—music. On a grand piano in this small church, a young woman sits. She plays Rachmaninoff—the second movement of his glorious Second Piano Concerto—along with a professional recording on her phone. Her fingers dance out the notes, the sounds echoing throughout the chapel until their curiosity becomes their demise and dies in the dampened quietude of the snowy winter twilight. She plays with passion, as if in a dream where the matters of the world are meaningless.
Nothing else exists to her save the release and perpetual flying of her perfect movement—a strength and gracefulness beheld in the agile birds of the air. And she sits there and plays. Melancholy, power, and fire exist in the music itself. This woman is not here, however, to challenge the virtuosos, even as her thin hands dance on the keyboard with a deep and sincere tone. Instead, she is here to question both the glorious celestial bodies and the smallest, most fundamental particles. She is to be a physicist. Undeniably, though, it is a pity that she chose math over music.
The piece finishes, and the church is absolved in stillness, an echo of the silent world outside the window. She packs up her books and heads outside, her honey-brown head swaddled in a thick woollen scarf and the rest in a long winter coat. She makes her way through the streets and enters an entirely different world compared to the peaceful church, bustling streets filled with academics, tourists, and unambiguous passersby, all in their individual realities and oblivious to the troubles of others. The young woman's travels end at a narrow, more than slightly run-down student housing complex. Yes, she might be an exceptional pianist and already pursuing a PhD in Astrophysics at the young age of twenty-three, but short money has kept her chained to a shared apartment.
Jane walks to the door at the end of the corridor but pauses her hand at the handle. Laughter. It had to be tonight.
She unlocks the door and walks in to find her roommate, Danielle, entertaining a large group of friends. Upon noticing Jane's presence, Danielle saunters over, her wineglass tilting precariously.
"Jane… Care to join the party?"
In response, Jane stares at her incredulously and gazes dejectedly at the scene before her. Unfamiliar faces sprawled languidly across their shared furniture, and a red stain has already appeared on her Turkish rug. Finally, she throws off her coat onto the bench near the door.
"Christ, Danielle! Are we running a hostel now?" Jane blurts.
"Oh, relax. It's just a few people, Jane." Danielle smirks, raising her glass.
Upon receiving an icy glance in response, Danielle rolls her eyes and returns to the throng of visitors. Jane, however, takes shelter from the enquiring glances inside her room, shutting the door, locking it, and sighing hopelessly.
Inside is a colossal confluence of art and science. Academic papers and articles coexist on a desk with printed-out poems and watercolour landscapes. A collection of portraits are stuck with magnets to a chalkboard under logarithmic differentiation.
A well-read copy of Dante's Divine Comedy is bookmarked next to Fundamentals of Quantum Mechanics. It's quite inviting, but more than a little disorganised and dusty. Seeing as though there's nothing worthwhile she can do save the unfortunately dull work of studying for her exams, she sets to her task—earbuds in and music on.
As Jane navigates to her notes, she glances guiltily at two specific documents—her dissertation work. Jane exhales slowly. She knows that her topics are wildly outlandish and will probably go through the most extreme scrutiny. Defending them will be a nightmare. But that worrying is for later. For now, just studying is trouble enough.
For a few minutes, she drags her eyes across the lines of words and symbols in front of her. Finally, even the most riveting idea is reduced to a blur, and she slumps back, pushing back her office chair against the desk and nearly colliding with the whiteboard.
And so she gives up. What else would one do when faced with such repetitive and busy calculations and exercises? She stands up, takes off her earphones, and is once again exposed to the booming music of Danielle's speakers.
Stooping down, Jane reaches under her bed and comes up with a nearly empty box of cigarettes. Being satisfied that they are still there, she stuffs them in her pocket, walks back through to the door, once again under the scrutiny of her roommate's company, drapes her coat about herself, and exits.
Outside, the last remnants of twilight have been extinguished by the ever-encroaching release of night. Only the stars and crescent moon gleam down on the city now, and in turn, Jane as she makes her way through the streets. She traverses by no plan or algorithm. Possibly only by a mysterious spirit or, as some would argue, the very destiny that the universe operates on, humans are unable to escape.
Often on nights like these, her gaze turns heavenward, and the sheer beauty of the celestial void strikes her. The stars, as distant beacons of hope, mask their dramatic and terrible nature in their vast distance. They offer something more profound than any words could—a kind of heavenly hope that cuts through the dark. A scattering of so many suns above her. Gazing up, she stands there, staring, letting the cold air fill her lungs as her worries seem to shrink against the immensity above her. The universe is so much grander than any human life, but somehow, there she is. The universe expands in all directions around her, stretching nothing into everything with the swiftness of light. What a wonder. What a creation.
Other times, she feels hopelessly alone. The streets feel like a maze, and the sky above her more like an unattainable gem—a taunt of something more, even if it may be meaningless. But art is not meaningless, nor is a mirror if it reflects what truly matters. At least, that is what she tells herself.
Jane walks the streets, lighting a cigarette, trying to decide what her opinion of the concrete is tonight. Walking past an alley, a glimmer catches her eye. She backtracks. Not a star, not a streetlight—something blue and assuredly earthly. There it is again, shining out from the murky depths of an alley. A binary blinking—on, off, on, off.
She starts toward it, hesitant, and arrives. It looks like some sort of tablet. A lost phone, she thinks, and picks it up. Displayed on the screen against a blinding neon blue are the initials P.F. Its gunmetal cover is impossibly smooth, like the inside of an eggshell, though certainly not delicate. As Jane passes it between her hands, she notices a low hum emanating from it. Not a single seam or a stutter in the metal's silky perfection—not even a charging port.
As she continues to turn it over in her hands, a new noise pollutes the soft frequency—what sounds like the angered speech of a woman. And yet another instrument in the symphony of doom: footsteps. Two pairs, approaching from up ahead. Jane freezes for a reason she can't comprehend. The grand design of fate must have perfectly predestined this moment. Two heavily armed agents turn into the alley and stop starkly still in their tracks. They immediately cease their discussion as soon as they see Jane standing there, holding up the tablet in curiosity.
The taller figure takes several giant lunges toward Jane, swiftly grabbing a wooden board against the wall of the alley and swinging it directly at her head.
"Should've just kept walking," the man grunts.
Jane raises her hand and utters a cry as loud as her tight lungs will allow—but too late. On the second swing, the board hits its mark with a sickening impact. Jane crumples like a tree to its cleaver. The two figures gather around her fallen form.
"What the hell, Mark? Be careful! She could be dead!" hisses the shorter of the two—a woman with crimson hair.
"Oh, you shut up. Now help me—grab her legs," responds the dark-haired man, seemingly more annoyed by his partner than by the situation at hand.
Perhaps it stems more from their conversation before this occurrence than from her more recent statement. Nevertheless, the woman sighs and assists him in his task.
The two carry Jane's unconscious body out of the relative darkness of the alley, into the light of the moon, and finally into the back of a white van parked nearby—so brazenly inconspicuous that its intended discreteness is entirely useless. The two dump their load into the back with an unceremonious thump and slam the doors shut.
As soon as the woman gets into the passenger's seat, her counterpart starts the engine. They pull out of the parking spot and begin to drive slowly down the narrow English road. As it had done to Jane, the night's serenity holds power even over this industrial man and woman. They drive in complete and thoughtful silence, as if they hadn't just loaded a body into the back of their vehicle—dead or not is now Schrödinger's plight.
After an extended period of meditative silence, the woman runs her fingers through her hair and opens her mouth tentatively.
"What do we do with her?" she questions, continuing to fidget with her hair.
"Well, Claire… Bring her back to the rest of the team, dose her up with some amnestics, and drop her back where we found her. The usual. You'll have to get used to it if you plan to stay with this team," the man responds tiredly.
"And what if she wakes up before we get there?"
"After that? I thought you were worried about dying. Or should I go back there and whack her again?"
"Please be quiet, Mark."
The two continue to drive in silence. The road bends through the dark rolling hills that shoulder on each side. As the lights of Cambridge lose their influence on the surroundings, the stars shine even brighter, though the earth is cast into deeper shadow. A smattering of rain starts to fall, and Mark turns on the wipers accordingly. The roads are deserted save for the occasional lorry trundling past them—a smear of red brake lights on the rain-slicked asphalt. After some time, Mark lets out a sigh and peers past his brights into the darkness.
"They still at Alconbury?"
Claire starts out of a daze and whips out her phone. "Yep. Apparently, all the other service stations are swarming with cops—couldn't risk it."
Mark nods in response. "Radio in, will ya?"
Claire takes a radio out of the side door and adjusts the tuner. "We have an uninvited guest in the back. Protocol applies. Over."
After a few beats, the radio lets out a breath of static—a voice utters a clipped, "Copy."
"And here we are."
The van veers through the next exit and pulls up next to a large SUV parked in front of an abandoned diner. As soon as both agents exit the van, the SUV's front doors open slowly. A broad man in a leather jacket steps from the driver's seat along with another man with a septum piercing. They circle and shake hands with Claire and Mark.
"Where's the bird?" the pierced man questions, tousling his blonde hair in the rain.
"In the back," Mark replies, throwing open the loading bay door.
The driver of the two starts to rummage around among the neatly arranged rows of equipment and weapons in the SUV's trunk, his movements soon becoming panicked and frenzied.
"Where's the fucking amnestics, Steve?"
Steve whips around. "Oh, come on, Grey, you're joking."
"Do I look like I am?" Grey mutters as he picks up a vial. Wrong drug.
Mark swears under his breath and streaks his hand down his face, wiping off the residue of the downpour. "Who was supposed to pack them?"
"Wasn't it Supply Team's job?" offers Claire.
Grey steps up. "I thought you had them, idiots!"
"Brilliant," Mark mutters. "So what's the plan? Knock her out until we get to base and hope she doesn't wake up halfway there?"
Claire glances back at Jane, still out cold in the van, then at the duffel bag. She grabs a syringe from the SUV, taps the side of it, and sighs.
"I'll just give her a dose of anaesthetic. It's strong. It'll buy us enough time to get back to base in Cumbria. We'll wipe her there, okay?"
Mark puts his hands in his pockets and shakes his head back. "God, this is amateur hour."
"No kidding." Steve rolls up his sleeves.
A large, growling truck pulls in a couple of spots from the agents, and they hurry the operation, lifting a couple of unidentifiable bags into the SUV as Claire doses Jane. They must work fast—the fewer people see them, the better. Finally, the teams get into their separate vehicles and depart from the old service stop, leaving the lorry still idling where it had parked.
Mark and Claire's van follows the dark SUV out onto the highway again, a couple of potholes rattling the vehicles. Claire stares into the mirror, watching the single neon light of the eerie stop fade into the distance. Suddenly, a pair of lights flare in the side-view mirror. Claire sits up straight.
"Hey, that truck from back there is following us."
Mark looks in the rearview. Sure enough, the hulking trailer that had parked next to them was now keeping a steady pace behind them. Claire picks up the radio again.
"Heya, we got a tail at 6."
She shifts in her seat anxiously.
"Do you think it's anything?"
In response to her care, Claire receives a mocking side eye.
"No." Mark clips. However, he does check his holster—just in case.
After about half an hour, the team's observations of the truck are disproven anyway, and Clarire slumps back into her seat with a groan as they watch the lorry pull off the motorway.
"I swear, nothing cool ever happens to this team," Claire complains. "Apparently, a Logistics Unit had some sort of high-speed train heist mission last week."
Mark shakes his head. "Well, at least we have a mysterious civilian in the back."
Claire turns to him and scoffs, "Riveting."
Around the four-hour mark, the rain has abated slightly and the moon once again shines, making the watered world glisten. Mark no longer has to strain his eyes to spot the SUV in front of him, which drives annoyingly far ahead.
The hum of the road holds the two in its hypnotising rhythm until the turning signal starts to blink on Steve and Grey's SUV.
"That's us." Mark remarks.
Claire sits up and yawns. "Finally."
The van signals and follows, driving down a narrow gravel path that spits up its stones against the sides of the vehicles with a sharp pinging noise. It seems impossible that anything could be down this path other than a dead end, a termination into pure wilderness. However, the SUV ahead halts suddenly. A pair of dark, unnoticeable metal gates part before it like the Red Sea, the faint scraping of their metal piercing through the van.
"Home sweet home."
"Indeed, we are, Claire."