My name is Amélie Lacroix.
And as far as I know it, I am dead.
They stopped looking for me long ago. Their needles and serums pulled the warmth from me, and likely my name with it. At each physical examination I am a husk, a mannequin tailored to line up the perfect shot. I am a program of the highest level, tearing apart their French into binary codes, into names and faces—into a thermal reading in a packed crowd.
No one knows I'm still here.
I search for my pulse, only to find that heartbeats have faded to tiny sparks that provide just enough blood to complete my programming. There is no change, no racing heart when I see a certain someone grace my periphery. It is constant, cold, robotic—the needle in the record that's forced to scratch over the same notes. My melody is gone, replaced with the most basic and deadly of basslines.
I can barely feel myself anymore, let alone remember. I lose more and more of myself with each passing day, and the remnants of memories only hold a few words.
Mon trésor. These words explode in a shimmering gold, with the lingering feeling of the briefest of joys. The voice that speaks them is glossy like polished oak yet as soft as downy feathers, and I know without a doubt that the voice means them with all their being. I long to recall the speaker's face, but my weak attempts yield next to nothing, and I seem to fall into the programming, too.
But two more words follow, dragging me to the surface and leaving me gasping for air.
Pourquoi Amélie?
These words ooze scarlet, the kind that drips off my fingertips. They're sharper than a mirror's edge and just as clear—and in a split second, I can see an expression of shock and terror, twisted cruelly together down the barrel of a gun.
The sensation that pulses through me is unique, most likely because it's the last time I ever felt that feeling.
Regret.
It's the last time I was able to pull myself out of the darkness I had been buried alive in—and even then, I was a voyeur at best, sitting in the control room of a life I no longer knew. Those awakened days, the days where I could watch the cold, crimson cinema of life after ending life, were the days that left me feeling the emptiest. Because as long as I remained emerged from the void, I knew there was something missing.
Mais qu'est-ce?