Chapter 4

After my conversation with the glass, concentrating on work proved harder than I had expected.

I went back to my office, opened an email from Finance, and made an honest attempt to understand why the numbers in the latest report no longer matched the forecast. Normally, problems like that calmed me. There was always a reason somewhere; you found it, fixed it, and moved on. The world became comprehensible again.

Today, numbers were losing badly to the man who had been looking at me from the other side of a reflection only minutes earlier.

He existed.

The thought still sounded absurd, but arguing with it was becoming increasingly difficult. I had not seen him in a dream this time. We had spoken. He had answered my questions, laughed, watched me, and when he raised his hand toward the glass, I had almost felt the warmth of his palm.

And somehow, he had still managed not to tell me his name.

“Very convenient,” I muttered, forcing my attention back to the report.

A message from Marinka appeared on my screen.

Someone’s here to see you. Meeting room four.

A second message followed almost immediately.

A man. Handsome. I’d go instead of you, but for some reason he insists on Alice. The world is unjust.

I smiled despite myself.

Does this handsome man have a name?

Her reply came at once.

Martin. No last name. And he’s strange.

Strange how?

The typing indicator flickered for a few seconds.

I don’t know. Normal. Polite. But he looks like he knows exactly why he’s here. I hate people like that.

It was such a perfect description of Marinka herself that I had already started composing a reply when I stopped.

Martin.

The name meant nothing to me.

I checked my calendar. There was no meeting scheduled.

Did he say what he wants?

To speak to you personally. I asked about what. He said: her family.

My smile disappeared.

I read the message again.

There was not much to say about my family. I did not remember my parents. My uncle had raised me, and he had never liked talking about the past. He possessed the remarkable ability to end any unpleasant conversation with a single look, and as I grew older, I had stopped asking. Not because I had stopped wondering. You simply reach an age when you understand that if someone has avoided the same answer all their life, asking for the twenty-first time is unlikely to produce a miracle.

I closed my laptop and stood.

Meeting room four was at the end of the corridor. On the way there, I caught myself checking the glass walls again, but the reflections were perfectly ordinary: me, people at their desks, and even daylight.

Martin was waiting by the window.

He was younger than I had expected, perhaps a little older than me or roughly my age, tall and lean, with a pleasant face and light brown hair that caught gold in the sunlight. His dark suit was modern enough not to attract attention, though something about him still sat oddly within the office environment. Perhaps it was his posture. Perhaps the way he stood completely still in a place where everyone else was perpetually rushing somewhere.

He turned as I entered and smiled at once—not broadly, but with something that looked almost like relief.

“Alice.”

I closed the door behind me.

“Martin, I assume.”

“Yes.”

“Then we’re already making progress. Marinka usually manages to extract considerably more information before anyone reaches the meeting room.”

He laughed. “The woman with the coffee?”

“That’s her.”

“I survived the interrogation.”

“Then you’re well prepared.”

His smile deepened slightly. “I was told you don’t care for long introductions.”

That stopped me.

“Now I’m genuinely interested. Who told you that?”

Martin looked at me more closely, as though that were the question he had been waiting for.

“May I ask you a few things first?”

“You may. I’m not promising to answer if I don’t like them.”

“Fair.”

He gestured for me to sit and took the chair opposite rather than the one at the head of the table. For some reason, I noticed the choice.

“What do you remember about your parents?”

After Marinka’s message, the question was not unexpected, but that did not make it pleasant.

“Nothing.”

“How much is nothing?”

“Enough that you’re going to have to explain why a stranger is asking about my childhood memories.”

Martin nodded, accepting the condition.

“I knew people who knew your family.”

Not your parents.

Your family.

I registered the distinction immediately.

“Who exactly?”

“Some people who were close to your parents.”

“And thirty years later, you decided to find their daughter?”

“No. People decided to find you a long time ago.”

That made me look at him properly.

“Who?”

Martin was silent for a moment.

“I understand how that sounds. So before I explain what I can, let’s establish what’s happening now.”

I did not like that he was once again trying to decide the order of the conversation, but at least there was logic behind it.

“Fine. What do you want to know?”

“The last few days. Has anything changed?”

I almost laughed.

“How strange can the answer be?”

“The stranger, the more useful.”

He said it without smiling.

I studied him more carefully.

“People have started looking at me.”

Martin did not seem surprised.

“Strangers?”

“Among others.”

“How do they look at you?”

“As though they’re trying to remember where they know me from.”

He nodded slowly. “Anything else?”

“Light.”

This time there was a reaction, however slight. His fingers, resting on the table, stopped moving.

“What about it?”

“A streetlight went out yesterday. The traffic lights behaved strangely this morning. And here…”

I stopped.

For some reason, I did not want to tell him about the man in the glass.

Martin waited.

“And here?”

“The light turned silver.”

Something changed in his face. Nothing dramatic—he did not jump up, swear, or put on the expression of a man receiving some terrible revelation. The ease simply disappeared.

“When?”

“A few minutes ago.”

“Were you alone?”

“No.”

It was true.

“Who was with you?”

I met his eyes.

“My turn.”

He frowned slightly but did not argue.

“Fine.”

“What is happening?”

Martin leaned back and remained silent for several seconds. This time I did not rush him. For the first time since the meeting began, he did not look mysterious; he looked like a man being forced to make a decision.

“I had hoped we would have more time.”

“For what?”

“A normal introduction, for one thing.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You came to my office to ask about my parents and silver light. I think we’ve already lost our chance at normal.”

A smile touched his mouth. “Probably.”

“Then let’s aim for useful.”

Martin ran his thumb along the rim of the untouched cup in front of him.

“All right. Useful, then. Do you know why your uncle never told you much about your parents?”

The question landed more accurately than I expected.

“I assumed it was painful for him to talk about.”

“Perhaps, in part.”

“And the rest?”

“He was protecting you.”

I frowned. “From memories?”

“From questions.”

“Whose?”

“Not yours.”

The room went very still.

At last, there was something in his words that could not be dismissed as a stranger’s fondness for dramatic ambiguity.

“Explain.”

Martin looked directly at me.

“When you were a child, everything possible was done to make sure that anyone who might take an interest in you would not be able to find you. You grew up where you were supposed to look like an entirely ordinary child and, later, an entirely ordinary woman. Until recently, it worked.”

For a moment, I simply stared at him.

“You’re saying I was hidden?”

“Yes.”

“From whom?”

He exhaled.

“Everyone.”

I waited for him to continue, but this time he did not need to.

The meaning of the word had shifted.

Not everyone as a dramatic flourish.

Everyone who knew there was a girl somewhere who, for some reason, must not be found.

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you that yet.”

My irritation returned instantly.

“No. That doesn’t work. You come into my office, tell me my entire life was built around some kind of protection, and then decide to stop at the one part that actually matters?”

“I’m not deciding anything for you.”

“That’s exactly what you’re doing.”

“No. I simply don’t know the whole truth.”

I went quiet.

That answer I had not expected.

Martin continued before I could say anything.

“I know you were hidden. I know it was necessary. I know the search for you was supposed to begin much later, and I know whatever is happening now has started too soon. But if I fill in the gaps with guesses, that won’t help you.”

“Finally. A normal answer.”

He gave a brief, rueful smile. “I’m trying.”

“You started badly.”

“I noticed.”

For a few seconds, we looked at each other differently.

Martin still knew far more than I did, and that was irritating. But now, at least, I understood the limits of what he knew. I was no longer talking to a walking collection of prophecies.

“Fine. What do you know for certain?”

He considered the question.

“That what’s happening to you is real. The way people are looking at you is not accidental. Neither is the light. Something that used to hide you is weakening. That’s how I was finally able to determine where you are.”

I traced one finger slowly along the edge of the table.

“Only you?”

“I don’t know.”

The answer came too quickly.

I disliked it far more than I would have disliked certainty.

The man from the lake rose in my mind again.

He had known my name before Martin ever found me.

“What?” Martin asked.

I realized I had been silent too long.

“Nothing.”

His attention sharpened.

“You’ve seen someone.”

“You’ve had your turn with the questions.”

“Alice.”

“Martin.”

His mouth twitched.

“You are a very difficult person to talk to.”

“At least the conversation is finally honest.”

He laughed, though the amusement faded almost immediately.

“If someone else has appeared, I genuinely need to know.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know who else might have sensed you before they were supposed to.”

“And if I tell you?”

“I’ll try to determine whether it’s dangerous.”

“Try?”

“I promised not to pretend I know everything.”

Fair enough.

I almost told him.

Almost.

Something stopped me, and it was not fear. Not even distrust.

The man from the lake felt too personal somehow. It made no logical sense—I did not even know his name—but handing him over to Martin along with malfunctioning traffic lights and flickering streetlamps felt wrong.

“If I decide I need help, I’ll tell you.”

Martin studied my face for a moment, then nodded.

“All right.”

He did not press.

Unexpectedly, that earned him a few points.

“What am I supposed to do now?”

“Live as usual.”

I stared at him.

“You’re serious?”

“Completely.”

“Very helpful.”

“What would you rather I tell you? Lock yourself inside, close the curtains, and be afraid of every streetlight? I don’t know whether there’s any immediate danger. Changing your entire life because of my suspicions would be foolish.”

I liked that.

Not the answer.

The way he thought.

“But if anything new happens,” he continued, “contact me.”

Martin reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, took out an ordinary business card, and placed it on the table.

I picked it up.

A first name. A phone number.

Nothing else.

“Not even a last name?”

“My last name won’t tell you anything.”

“I’d rather decide that for myself.”

He looked at the card.

“Fair.”

He took a pen, wrote his surname beneath the printed name, and handed it back.

I could not help smiling.

“You learn quickly.”

“I have to.”

I stood.

“Next time, I expect more answers.”

“I’ll try to get them.”

“Now that sounds like an agreement.”

Martin rose as well.

At the door, I turned back.

“One more thing. You said I was supposed to be found later. By whom?”

His gaze lingered on my face for a moment.

“Not by one person.”

“How worried should I be?”

Martin thought before answering.

“For now, worried enough to pay attention when something strange happens. Not enough to let it run your life.”

I nodded.

At last, advice I could actually use.

“Goodbye, Martin.”

“Until next time, Alice.”

I left and closed the door behind me.

I walked back to my office more slowly than I had come. The conversation had not answered the main question, but it had taken away the last convenient possibility that exhaustion was behind everything that had happened.

Martin was real. He knew about my family. He knew I had been hidden, and he had come because something that had kept me unnoticed by certain people for years was beginning to fail.

It was not enough.

What unsettled me more was what did not fit.

Back at my desk, I placed Martin’s card in front of me and looked at the glass wall across the room. If he had only been able to find me now, after whatever protection surrounded me began to weaken, then the man from the lake did not belong anywhere in that explanation. He had appeared first. He had known my name. And judging by what had happened at the glass earlier that morning, he had not needed to find my office, arrange a meeting, or ask questions about my past.

He had simply known where I was.

Or perhaps felt it.

I touched the glass with my fingertips. It was cold, ordinary, entirely innocent beneath my hand, but I knew now how little that meant.

My phone vibrated on the desk.

A message from Marinka.

Are you alive in there? And who was that man?

I looked at Martin’s card.

I don’t know yet.

The typing dots appeared almost immediately.

But was he handsome?

I laughed, and for the first time that insane morning, some of the tension loosened its grip.

Yes.

Her answer arrived a second later.

Finally. One piece of good news.

I put the phone down and looked at the glass again.

The good news, as far as I was concerned, was something else entirely: I no longer doubted that any of this was real.

The bad news was that reality had just become much more complicated.

Somebody had spent thirty years making sure I never learned the truth.

And now, whatever had kept that truth away from me was beginning to fail.