Chapter 1
***
During the war, it was a field hospital. Many soldiers and civilians had been killed or saved there during the war, and Jared's men had been killed or saved there as well. He glanced at the hospital's annex, which still bore the scars of a missile that had once been fired from the Dachen Republic. The last place countless soldiers would go, it now served as a pediatric ward.
Jared's cigar was as short as his pinky finger when a woman in a white apron emerged from the pediatric ward, led by a man. Jared cut off the butt of his cigar and stuffed what remained in the plated case back into the inside pocket of his coat. Soon, the door clicked open.
"Get in."
"...."
She didn't recognize him at first glance. It was night, and it was dark enough in the car that she could barely make out his features, and he was wearing a hat, so Jared looked more like a shadow reflected in the moonlight than a man. Eventually, she realized.
Someone pushed the squirming woman into the car. She gave a small groan and slumped back into the seat.
"It's been a long time, Miss Sasha."
"..................ah."
It took her a moment to recognize Jared's form. He patted the driver's seat a couple of times, and the car drove away from the hospital in silence.
"It's Frank, my old driver."
Sasha didn't know if she should answer. Jared laughed and added an afterthought so she wouldn't feel awkward.
"Sadly, he lost his hearing during the war and forgot how to speak, but he's a good driver. A God-given talent."
"Yeah. I see."
"Can you handle life in a hospital?"
"Yes. I'm doing well, thanks to you."
"I heard you turned down Viktor's marriage proposal."
Sasha blinked in confusion. Jared smiled and added.
"He’s my subordinate."
"Oh."
"You also turned down Doug's proposal."
"If you mean ..................Doug..................."
"Ensign Douglas."
"Ah."
"I thought you were too pretty to beg, but I didn't realize you'd be such a demoralizing factor for my agents."
Sasha smiled faintly. Jared studied her for a moment, then quickly changed the subject.
"You're growing up nicely, Miss Sasha. I didn't think you'd make it through the year if you were left alone."
Until Sergeant Viktor told him that the twenty-year-old woman in the pediatric ward was suffering from a fever, Jared hadn't made the connection between Sasha and the doll-like girl he'd left in the hospital over a decade ago.
But when word spread that the pediatric ward was now staffed by a woman who looked like an incarnation of Aphrodite, Jared soon found himself thinking of her. The green-eyed girl who told him her name was Sasha, with eyes that looked like they could burst into tears at any moment.
Indeed, she had grown into a beauty that could steal a man's heart, a beauty that would not be diminished by dark shadows. Jared looked at her hands, folded neatly together on her white apron. They were too fine and clean to have been covered in blood.
"Miss Sasha, do you still remember your native tongue?"
"...."
Sasha's homeland, Nerra, was the border between North and South, and the two continents that divided it spoke different languages. It was the legacy of a millennia-long ago, when the nations of the West expanded their dominance and took over chunks of land one by one.
"Kiom vi memoras la Esperan lingvon (How much do you remember)?"
"Mi memoras tiom multe kiel mi lernis. Ĝenerala (As much as I have learned, General)."
He smiled approvingly at the calmness in Sasha's voice.
"Mi bezonas iun. Kiel tankvila kaj diskreta virino, kiu scias bone uzi la lingvon (I need a woman. A calm, discreet woman who speaks the language of the Northern Hemisphere)."
Sasha's brow faintly cracked. She lifted her inexhaustible green eyes to study Jared's form, his intentions impossible to fathom.
"Ĝi estas por la estonteco kaj sekureco de via lando. Mi bezonas muelon por infiltri la Respublikon de Doi (It's for the future and safety of the homeland. I need a spy to infiltrate the Dochen Republic)."
Sasha's heart sank. Jared looked at her to make sure she understood everything he'd said, and when he saw the pale blue look on her face, he breathed a sigh of relief.
"It's nothing too difficult, I just need you to be a secretary to a Republican congressman. Two weeks at the shortest, a month at the longest."
"Wait, now.................. that means.................."
Sasha hesitated, pouting a few times.
"You're telling me to go back across the border, back to where I fled from?"
Dochen’s soldiers destroyed anyone who defied their will. It was their own people who had barely survived who stood in front of the pit, shot them, and spread dirt over the piles of bodies stacked like piles of firewood.
Sasha and her brother scraped the dirt with their hands to cover their parents' bodies. The only thing that hurt more than her swollen fingers was the knowledge that she would lose her parents and be driven out of her country in one day. It was the reality of having to flee, leaving family, relatives, and friends behind for fear of death. Now, in Sasha's memory, her country, Nerra, was taken over by the Dochens, a land of fear and despair where they killed people like cattle, nothing more, nothing less.
"Why?"
"Isn't that your homeland?"
"No, that's not my homeland, my homeland is gone, it's just a den of Dochen now."
"We need someone who speaks the language."
"There are plenty of people who are fluent in the language. In my ward alone, we have people from the northern hemisphere.................."
"They need to be trustworthy."
"..."
"Preferably a young, beautiful woman."
"..."
Jared looked into Sasha's budding eyes and added another word.
"Sad, mysterious, and mysterious is a plus."
"..."
Sasha was at a loss for words.
Her brother, who had fled across the border with her, had also been conscripted into the Allied army, fought at the front, and never returned after the war ended. It was Jared who found Sasha a job at the hospital, where she was practically an orphan.
She was living on the streets begging, and Jared gave her clean clothes, food, and a place to sleep in exchange for a penny. Sasha still didn’t know why he got her a job at the hospital that day, when she had no money. But she knew it would be a debt she would have to repay one day. She just didn't think it would be like this.
"You’re all set. We've got your new identity, your new name, your new clothes, all ready for you. All you have to do is do what we say and be a secretary to a Republican congressman. That's all."
"I can't do that."
Sasha replied, stunned. She couldn’t. No wonder.
"You can."
He insisted. He sounded so confident, so unapologetic, that Sasha was willing to defend herself.
"I can't do it, you know, I don't know how to do anything, at most I can clean up blood, put on bandages, make beds, but what can I do, I don't know anything, I'm not a soldier, I'm just a poor orphan, a maid in a hospital!"
"So."
Jared said, his expression not changing at the sound of Sasha's outraged voice.
"What?"
It was Sasha who was flustered again.
"Miss Sasha, people think the war is over, but it isn't. Across the border, the soldiers of Dochen are still aiming for this place. You don't want to lose what you've worked so hard to build, do you?"
She had heard the stories in the newspapers, on the radio, countless times. Spies, espionage, invisible blades, missiles aimed at each other. The ward was still a war-scarred building, littered with shrapnel.
The march of Dochen had stopped, but the lines drawn to demarcate the north and south, the walls erected with coarse wire mesh, hadn't diminished the tension in the fractured land. Jared was right.
The war was not over yet. After a long war, people become cynical and no longer dream or envision a future. They just live one day at a time, like there's no tomorrow.
"The fate of the country is in your hands. No one should have to suffer the tragedy of losing their family, as you lost your parents and brother at the hands of Dochen."
"...."
"Call me at that number when you've made up your mind."
Jared held out the note. Sasha's thin hand hesitated, then took it.
"I'm getting off here. Frank will drive you to the hospital."
It began to rain outside the car window. Jared turned up his coat collar and disappeared down the deserted street. Frank turned the car around without another word and headed for the hospital. In silence, Sasha unwrapped the crumpled note in her hand: no name, no designation, just a phone number scrawled dry.
Sasha thought of her parents, who had fallen like petals before her eyes; of her brother, who had disappeared before her eyes, dressed in a military uniform, promising that he would soon be granted citizenship in the country of exile. Sasha muttered to herself as she watched the scenery slip away.
"After all, no one ever came back.......Right..................?"
***
Jared Rohner was a field commander during the war, as he is now. Once in a hut, once in an underground bunker, and now in his fourth-floor office at the United Nations Information Agency. Jared slipped his fingers through the blinds that blocked the sunlight and scanned the building's entrance. Among the busy people coming and going, the man he hoped to see had not yet arrived. He dug into his pocket in frustration and pulled out a cigar. The one he'd smoked the last time he'd seen Sasha was still there.
***
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