"I can't believe you thought that was a good idea."
She grins at me. "You know me." I don't. "Seemed like a good idea at the time." It might have.
I lean against the wall, looking at her. Young. Pale, smeared with soot and ashes; I wonder if she's mourning her own sanity. Because it's clear; nothing remains behind her blue eyes, nothing but dust and inner serenity.
Fire licks at the buildings behind us; I can hear it, that's how close it is to us. It sounds hungry.
"Come on," she says. "Let's go."
Her hair is cut short, light blonde, almost white, with smears of dark ash in it in it; her eyes almost glow in the half-light.
She hasn't told me her name, but expects me to know her; we don't know each other, but she calls me Max as if she knows me. If I hadn't stopped for just a moment to get a newspaper, I wouldn't be here. Someone else would be in my place.
"Who are you?" I ask, following her out of the alleyway, into the street. I don't know why I'm still following her, except that there's a burning building behind me, and any direction is better than backwards.
She wipes her forehead with the back of her hand, smearing the grime around, and walks grimly on. Pretending not to hear.
"Who are you?" I repeat.
"I thought you knew my name," she says.
"No, I don't." I tell her the truth.
She turns and looks at me, almost casual. "Anna," she says. "Anna Sinclair." She pauses. "You killed my father."
I take off running, because there's something in her eyes, something that doesn't belong, something that's, plain and simple, unearthly. And familiar.
She catches up to me, hardly expending any effort coming after me. She doesn't mention her father. "Come on," she says, almost teasing. "I've got a job to do."
"So have I," I say.
She glares at me. "Yeah. You do. You kill people."
"Listen," I say, edging away from her, stepping towards the middle of the street. "I don't do anything like that."
"You're a nutcase," she says, calm. "You kill people and then you say you don't."
"How do you know you're any different?" I ask.
The world shakes apart, because we aren't different at all, in fact we're the same person, and I hear her say what could almost be a prayer:
"If it makes you feel better to believe that, go right ahead."