Prologue

Elizabeth

Wednesday, 24th October, 2018

5:37 AM

A dream is just a dream, but like the wind that swept across the twilit waters of the pool, it can send out ripples—ripples that, upon reflection, are insidious enough to make even the 90, 854 tons of marble, granite and bluestone gneiss of the Washington Monument quiver.

The dream hung in the periphery of Elizabeth's awareness as her feet pounded the concrete path that ran alongside the Reflecting Pool. The cool air blazed through her chest with each breath, and the thudding steps jarred through her ankles and shins. Like the scent of violet, the dream trace undulated, one minute so faint that it was almost as though it had never existed at all, the next drenching her in its suffocative smell until the blue-black darkness around her caved and the visions rushed in.

Concrete turned to a sea of grass; the plumes broke and billowed around her knees, the fronds brushed against the exposed skin of her calves, whilst hidden stones jabbed at her bare soles. The marble obelisk morphed into the trunk of a black walnut tree; its limbs branched up and crackled into the night like a lightning bolt striking the pyramidion. Then her body lurched. She was thrust to the cusp, and like the roots of the tree—half lodged in the earth, half extending out over the chasm below—her toes curled into the soil and her heels jutted out over the abyss. Her fingertips dug into the rough grooves of the bark. Her heart thundered against her ribs.

'Take my hand.' Outstretched fingers trembled as they sought her own. 'Take my hand.'

She could do it: she could reach out, she could take his hand.

But what if she didn't? What if she stopped? What if she just let go?

Time stilled, and for a moment she floated. Waited, just waited. And the question hung in the air with her: Would she fly or would she fall?

Elizabeth halted so abruptly that the DS agents running behind her whipped past, and as the illuminations of the National Mall swam through her vision in a blur of giddy white lights, she doubled over and clutched her knees. She squeezed her eyes shut and sucked in ragged breath after ragged breath—the air ravaged its way to the bottom of her lungs—and she waited for the echoes to die out.

Take my hand. Take my hand. Take my—

"Ma'am?" Matt's voice. "Is everything okay, ma'am?"

Take my—

Elizabeth let out a huff. She pinched the bridge of her nose, and then straightened up. She met Matt's eye, just for a flicker. "Everything's fine." Then she strode on, and shook the pins and needles from her fingertips.

Matt's frown lingered, but he said nothing, and when she eased into a jog, he fell back into line with the other agents around her.

She soon settled into the lulling rhythm of trainers thudding against the track, her even breaths burning through her chest, the warble of a bluebird anticipating the dawn.

When she reached the top of the pool, she turned back. The reflection of the Washington Monument projected like a path of white light across the surface, ready to guide her home.

But the wind gusted, the water rippled, and the edges of that path wavered. Concrete turned to grass. The branches of the black walnut tree groped like gnarled fingers towards the bleak pink blush of dawn. Take my—

"Let's pick up the pace."

And with that, she ran on.