Aftereffects
Christine retrieved the dark clothes from the dryer at the all-night Laundromat and trudged home.
This was not the best area to be walking around after dark, especially for a young woman, but she ignored it. For some reason, the usual trouble ignored her, too.
She made her way up the stairs to her apartment by feel and instinct, as the bulb in the stairwell was out, again. The tell-tales on her door were intact. The main lock opened easily to her key, as did the second, not-as-obvious lock. She entered the room, dropped her laundry to the side, and walked to the kitchen to get a much needed meal.
There was raw meat in the fridge -- hamburger, intended for tomorrow's supper. She caught a whiff of it and ran to the sink, violently ill. The spasms lasted for what seemed like hours, ending with dry heaves and bile.
Finally, she managed to get a glass of water, and, sipping, she went to her only chair and collapsed.
I did it.
I killed.
Premeditated murder.
I'm as bad as she is.
She looked around her tiny apartment, thinking of the work she had done to make it livable, of the cockroaches living in the flooring, of the noises she heard at night, and in the day.
It's all come to this. Born with a silver spoon, work till I drop to get my degree, and now I'm a common murderer.
She walked to the window and looked out into the night.
The only skills I can sell, no one I want to associate with will buy.
She went back to the kitchen and warmed up some milk, mixed with cocoa and sugar, hoping it would settle her stomach. It worked, some.
The tears started at last. She hadn't cried since first waking up in that too-small bed in the cold and dreary hospital in Astana, but now she cried.
She cried for her mother, whom she would probably never see again. She cried for her efforts in school, which now meant nothing. She cried for her boyfriend, who had left her shortly before graduation. She cried for her father, who had had such high hopes for her. She cried for her childhood, spent in the most exclusive of company, but not in the company of friends. She cried for her mentor, who had turned her into who she now was. She cried for the career she had once dreamed of, which had turned sour when she learned the truth. She cried for the children she had rescued, and those she had not.
She returned to the window and cried for her soul.
The local toughs were looting the newspaper box on the corner. The front page of a paper was torn off and drifted in the breeze.
She remembered seeing that page on her way to work that evening. It had shown a picture of one of the children she had rescued. They suspected that ten children had been kidnapped by the same ring, before she had become aware of it.
Now, the police had evidence of a larger kidnapping ring, but all the accomplices were dead. She controlled herself carefully, hoping to keep down the small amount she had drunk.
Even with the note she had left, there was no real evidence to connect the leaders of the ring to their crimes. There was nothing to convince the officials that they should look deeper.
Nothing.
Nothing but two names, spoken in complaint, by a man now dead, and heard by the woman who had killed him.
She struggled with her demons for what seemed like ages, but was only hours.
Finally, Christine Daee got up and dressed for work. She had a job to do, in a warehouse where children had been kept against their will, and wherever else those who still thought they employed her might be hiding the evidence.