Prologue

I have begun to despise my office. The mirrors all glare back at me, surrounding me, assaulting me with visions of my own tired face. I want to move to a smaller, less extravagant place, but I really don’t have the time to do so.

It’s been two years after the war, and at least five months since I have even heard from any of my friends. This job has become my life, completely and utterly, possessing every ounce of free time and energy I may ever express. I want to tear my hair out, but instead, I go back to signing random “Urgent” documents.

For one moment, I lean back in my chair, small sigh slipping unnoticed through my lips. There’s one solitary photograph on my immense, cluttered desk, my only personal possession here. Picking it up, the heavy lead crystal cool against my palm, I stare into my companions’ faces, and especially into yours.

Allah, help me so that I may never forget your beautiful emerald eyes or velvety voice. Sometimes, I hear it in that special place between dreaming and waking, where everything is surreal and heightened. I wonder if you hear me there, too.

Replacing the frame, I rise to my feet and walk over to the one, non-mirrored wall, staring out the forty-seven floors below. I have become an animal in a cage; something locked up, admired, and petted. I lost my freedom seven months ago, when I lost him.

I head back to my confining desk, (which I have begun to refer to as my “jail”), and reach to the left side of it. I retrieve a familiar black case, setting it with a quiet “clunk” atop all of the papers and “Priority” documents. I can feel the wistful smile slowly creep like a thief across my lips as I open it.

My violin. The mahogany wood shines in the sunlight and the strings beg me to run my fingers down them slowly. The bow lies beside it like a lover, a partner, each combining to become one instrument, one being. My hand slides over the smooth wood, the smile quickly growing across my lips.

I had left this here for a year now, forgotten almost, as it lived beside my desk. I hadn’t dared touched it, work forbid me any sort of a life and my heart was not in it after the war. So, I tucked it away, lost even in plain sight, and ignored until today for some strange reason.

I pull it out, feeling that weight that I oh so missed, and tuck the end beneath my chin. Without looking, I grab the bow, continuing to smile as if I was seeing my long lost lover. Closing my eyes, I place the bow to the strings.

And without a warning, it slides out from beneath my chin, slipping carelessly through my betraying, numb fingers. I cry out, reaching for it in absolute vain as it shatters onto the cool green marble of my office floor.

Quickly, I drop to my knees, scraping up shards of wood and broken strings, but it is beyond repair. The neck is completely cracked in half, the body of it shattered into three separate pieces, which lie so close to each other, they seem to still be connected. Only the bow is left in tack, but strangely enough, it is covered in scarlet, accusing blood.

Amazed, I look to my hands and notice the streams of crimson coming off them in torrents. Did I cut myself on a shard of wood? After a quick examination, no is the evident answer. Confused, I turn to the ruined instrument, and my mouth falls open, numb.

Across the strings lies a heart, an apparent human one, beating and pulsating, spilling it’s life across the damaged wood.

“What in Allah’s name?” I whisper, my voice hoarse to my own ears. Stunned, I turn my sea-colored eyes upward and towards the mirrors that surround this damn office, and the scream I have been biting back pours forth, ear piercing and agonized.

Staring back at me from all sides were people, human beings locked inside the panes of glass. Their eyes are cold and distant, mouths gaping open in silent screams of icy alarm, some with their hands up to block out some unseen terror. Some faces I know, others I guess. One thing is for sure, however, and it is most evident by the blood that covers fatal wounds in their spiritual bodies.

They are all dead.

The heart continues to pump on the violin, beating and working, while hands claw at their mirror cages. Huddling into a ball on the floor, I bring my hands to my face and begin to cry, the tears and wails coming in full force.

The nightmares plague me while I’m awake! I have seen glimpses of such terrors in passing, quick fickle flashbacks that come as soon as they leave, making me wonder if I ever seen them. However, this is detailed, frightening, maddening! I can see the crimson streaks as it pours like syrup out of gaping mortal wounds; I can see the missing limbs and screaming mouths! I can see them begging me for help, for mercy!

Never have I come to grips with the horror of our war, and it continues to haunt me still, but this, this is too much! I know that my hands are stained with blood, but this is a living nightmare!

“Wake up! WAKE UP!” I scream, my voice cracking. “STOP IT!”

“Mr. Winner?”

Tears still streaking down my face, I tentatively peek through my fingers to see an unfamiliar young woman standing curiously in my doorway. The dead are gone from my walls, my instrument is no longer cursed, and I look like a fool, weeping on the marble floor of my office in a pair of khaki’s and a button-down white shirt.

Quickly, I wipe my cheeks and hope I look a little more in order. She flashes me an odd smile as I nod and grin, weakly. “May I help you?”

“Then I take it, you are Mr. Winner,” she says, shutting the door behind her. She’s plain, not someone I would take a deep notice in if she were in a crowd. Her dark hair is cut to her shoulders, the ends curling up and framing an ageless face. Her brown eyes stare at me from behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and while combined with a gray business suit, she looks professional and serious.

“Please, call me Quatre,” I reply, still grinning. My cheeks are hot and red from embarrassment; I can feel it.

“I’m glad I was able to find you,” she whispers, opening the pale brown briefcase at her side. Thinking nothing of it, I take a seat in my leather, cushioned office chair, which I have come to think of as the “bunk” to go along with my desk, the “jail”. She offers me another smile, this time almost ravenous, dropping the case to the floor and holding an intimidating, gleaming AK-47 in its place. I see the weapon a thousand times, reflected at every angle in the torturous mirrors surrounding us.

“Mr. Winner, I think you had better come with me.”