Chapter One - Run Girl Run.
Alina allowed herself a breath as she slid into the window seat, watching through her peripherals as the other passengers filed on.
There were more people than she thought had been waiting at the bus stop and she forced herself calm as the last passenger was seated and the familiar hiss of hydraulics signalled that the bus was ready to pull off.
She thought back to the first bus she had taken only a few days ago; the hiss had made her jump and she had had to smile in embarrassment at the middle aged lady and child sitting across from her.
If she remembered rightly, she had muttered something about not being used to public transport, all the while trying her best to conceal what little remained of her accent.
Alina had lived in the U.S. for a fair few years now, but there was still a hint of a german lilt to her speech. She had not hidden it before, thinking it inconsequential to her survival in America; she was hardworking, kept her head down and her nose clean so why would it matter if she had an accent?
That had been a mistake. She could see that now...Now, she was painfully aware of how much the accent made her stand out.
The last two weeks had taught her this.
Alina allowed her eyes to slide closed and she leant her head back on the metal bar behind her. It caused an ache in her neck and at the base of her skull, but she ignored it, after all she was not trying to sleep. She could sleep when she got there...or at least she hoped she could.
In truth, she had no idea how she would be treated when she arrived. They might not take kindly to an anonymous runaway turning up on the doorstep claiming to be something that she had no way to prove.
Well no 'good' way anyway.
Good! Alina scoffed inwardly, Look at where good's got me…
Her thoughts turned unbidden to the face that had been the cause of her impromptu road trip but she did not have the strength to fight them.
She saw the age-weary eyes behind bifocals nearly an inch thick. She saw the thinning silver-grey curls sitting above a pained brow. She saw the baggy pink cardigan hanging limply off the boney frame and she saw the multitude of knitted blankets draped across the bed in a futile effort to keep the inhabitant warm even though the radiators were already turned up as high as they would go.
Alina could almost hear the woman's breathy voice as she pulled the stiff, clinical looking chair closer to the bedside. She had reached out for the woman's frail hand then, given a comforting squeeze.
'Are you ready?'
The woman in the bed nodded faintly. Alina responded with a nod of her own.
She remembered that her eyes had flitted to the door, momentarily, even though she had made certain to close it.
After a second or two, listening for voices that might hear any exchange within, Alina bit her lip and fixed the old woman's gaze.
'What's your name?'
There was a sudden miscomprehension in the bespectacled eyes. Alina implored her with her own, rolling them when she could see that the confusion was preventing the answer.
'I need to know you understand what is going on. I can't do this if you don't have the capacity to realise what is about to happen.'
The woman gave an understanding nod, 'Please.' she breathed, her voice croaking with the
effort, 'I want this.'
Alina attempted a comforting smile, but felt that it came across as more of a grimace. Her eyes flitted to the door and back again.
'Then answer the question…please?'
'Pat...Patricia Jean Noble.'
Alina felt a momentary wave of gratitude wash over her.
'And when is your birthday?'
'April 13th 1925.'
'Good.'
Alina took a steeling breath. This part was always the hardest; she couldn't imagine spending day after day in bed, relying on others to clean, dress and feed you and she was sure that she was helping (giving peace and rest to those who didn't want to be here anymore) but still it was always a shock to hear people give voice to that want.
Find a way to help people. Grandmama Hilda had said, Find a way to make this a blessing. Not a curse.
But she never said how much it would hurt her.
'Do...do you understand what is going to happen now?'
'Yes.'
Alina gave an encouraging nod.
Pat continued, trying her best to give a reassuring smile, 'You are going to k-'
Even though her speech was slow, Pat was quick to notice the stifled flinch that Alina gave as she began to say the word.
She stopped mid-sentence, taking a moment to correct herself, before giving a more sensitive answer, 'You are going to help me...to die.'
Alina nodded gratefully at the correction and blinked away the itch in her eyes. She swallowed back the lump in her throat and stood solemnly. She reached out for Pat's other hand and the old woman lifted it as best as her waning strength would allow.
Alina folded the thin fingers in her own, all at once noticing how cold they were. She shook her head, chasing away a momentary thought that it would be difficult to tell when Pat had passed away if her fingers were that cold already.
Alina turned her attention back to the room and the woman before her. Pat was smiling now, her brow still creased with pain, but grateful that it would soon be over.
'Are you ready?'
Pat gave a nod.
Alina cocked her head to one side.
'Yes. I am ready to die.'
With a breath, the younger woman gritted her teeth and closed her eyes. It did not take long for the sensation to start. She felt the tingle in her fingers, focused her mind, searching for the spark with invisible tendrils.
She imagined them like vines, growing out of her fingertips and finding their way through Pat's body, encircling her brittle arms with skin like paper, rippling across the pacemaker scar just below her left collarbone, spreading out across her chest and wrapping around the broken rib that was the souvenir from her latest fall.
After a few seconds, the vines located what they were after: The steady beating of Pat's heart.
In her mind's eye, Alina imagined it as a pulsating light, yellow and warm, like the comforting pulse of a lighthouse.
She felt Pat's breath hitch in her throat.
'I feel it.' the old woman breathed, 'I feel...so...warm.'
Alina furrowed her brow, concentrating hard over the weak yet somehow deafening voice. She allowed the tendrils to surround the light, watching from behind closed eyelids as they slowly grew closer, the pulse growing weaker, the light diminishing with each millimetre they encroached.
Just before she allowed the tendrils to completely smother the light, she heard Pat speak.
Small words, but sincere.
'Thank you.'
There was a splutter in the light then. There always was. Always just before it went out completely; the last surge of energy.
Grandmama had theorised that it was the last piece of energy that the body used to push the soul out and on to it's next destination.
Alina wasn't so sure. She had always felt Grandmama was far too fanciful for her own good.
She had her own theory that it was more like shock, some instinctive reaction from the body in a vain attempt to keep living.
Whatever it was, she hated the splutter.
Alina felt the vines retracting, the humming in her fingertips subsiding. Only when she was sure that the deed was done, that Pat was never going to take another breath, did she open her own eyes.
She looked down at the body before her, taking solace in the fact that, in place of a pained frown or grimace, there was a peaceful smile.
Alina swallowed back another lump and blinked a few times in rapid succession. She could not allow herself to cry.
That would give her away.
She had done that before…
It had resulted in a disciplinary since she had been found sobbing at the foot of a resident's bed instead of 'following the correct notification of death procedures'.
That was 2 or 3 care homes ago now and she had learned from her mistake.
No, it was better to hold it in, to try not to think of it until she was safely at home in her bed.
Then she could cry all she liked.
Instead of crying, Alina got to work setting the scene. She removed Pat's glasses and placed them on the bedside table at an angle that would hopefully look as if Pat herself had placed them there. She then gently moved Pat's now lifeless arms to her sides and pulled the top blanket from under one of them and up to her right shoulder. This, she hoped would make it look as if Pat was napping. This had been Pat's idea and she had chosen the time specifically, aware that many of the residents took naps after lunch. This was something that she hoped would arouse the least suspicion.
That was Pat all round, Alina found herself thinking with a sniff.
When she was done and sure that everything looked as it should, Alina crossed the room to the door. She closed a hand around the door knob, flicked the light switch off with the other and spared the now lifeless body one last pitying glance, before leaving the room.
Alina was suddenly woken from her thoughts by a hand on her shoulder. She found herself twisting in her seat to the passenger behind her, a middle-aged man in a suit, greying at the temples.
'Sorry miss, but I thought you were asleep. Didn't want you to miss the stop.'
'Oh, thanks.' Alina responded. She must have quirked an eyebrow or something as the man then spoke again.
'This is the only one before the last stop.'
Alina found herself nodding and she turned her gaze out of the window, trying to figure out exactly where she was, before realising it was an exercise in futility. She turned her attention to the bag between her ankles instead. She reached for it, placing it deftly on the seat beside her, taking note of a squealing of brakes and the slowing of the bus.
Alina found herself savouring the cool evening zephyrs as she stepped onto the concrete sidewalk. She looked around to try and gain some sense of where she was and waited for the bus to pull away again before crossing the street to a nearby taxi rank.
She climbed gratefully into the first cab she came to. The driver smiled politely and waited patiently for her to get strapped in before asking where she wanted to go.
She found herself hesitating for a moment, doubting whether this was a good idea after all.
But where else can I go? She pondered inwardly, Have to at least try, right? Right?
'Where to, miss?' The driver asked again, growing tired of the silence.
With a nod, Alina steeled her resolve.
'To the Umbrella Academy.'