Berlin was beautiful in the summer. Everything was lush, especially the forests in Grünewald on the western edge of the city, and despite the staggering heat that ushered in the midday, everything was quite lovely. Around Freie Universität, summer students from around the world milled about, all of them speaking in English as they bought decidedly German school supplies set up on a table in a cracked and partially grassy courtyard outside of the Mensa. A bus hummed by on Habelschwerdter, the eleven-something X11 that told Hannah that it was time to leave her safehaven amongst the blur of students and head back to her singular existence in her Mariendorf apartment. As students began spilling back into the Mensa for afternoon classes, she closed her book and stood, throwing a messenger bag over her shoulder and walking glumly toward the Thielplatz station.

As always, when she began to walk, she could see the two men -- her 'keepers' as she called them -- slipping out of the café in the Mensa building to follow about fifty metres behind her as she moved to the station. Looking down at her feet with the strap of the bag hooked in one thumb, she tried her best to ignore them as she tapped across the shaded sidewalk and down the stairs to the train platform. As she stood watching the train squealing in from Krumme Lanke, the men stood stiffly by, their lips squeezed shut into thin lines. She always wanted to tell them to relax, but she'd been warned that if she ever spoke to either of them without first being spoken to, she would further risk her family's safety.

The doors of the train wooshed open and she stepped onto the train and sat down, her shoulder leaned against the wood panelling along the side of the seat. As the train moved away from the station, the men sat catty-corner from her. Covered by the seat side, she rolled her eyes.

It was the same every weekday (emphasis on weekday, for the weekends in Berlin were considered too dangerous to allow Hannah outside of the sparsely touristed Mariendorf): breakfast at the little Turkish place down the street from her apartment, a slow walk down Mariendorfer Damm, catching the U6 to Tempelhof, then the S41 to Heidelberger Platz, and lastly the U3 to Thielplatz before spending a couple of hours reading outside of Freie. She came back to her apartment in the afternoon, was allowed out for grocery shopping in the early evening, and then was under house arrest until she left the next day for her breakfast. It was painfully monotonous.

Today, however, she found it almost acceptable because she knew that the moment she arrived home, her husband would be waiting for her there, and from that point, she was only ten hours from seeing her daughter.

Her speediness at Heidelberger Platz made her catch an early train, so by the time she reached Tempelhof, she was about ten minutes ahead of schedule. No one was going out to the suburbs at this time of day, so the choice in trains was distinctly lacking. When she got to the Underground of Tempelhof, she was greeted by the sound of moderate silence, so she took a seat at one of the grimy benches and was about to get her book out again when there was a sudden burst of sound coming down the stairs.

'No! We take the U...' a crumple of paper. 'The U6 to Westphaleg and then walk!'

'We go to Alt-Mariendorf,' answered another voice. 'Then we walk. If we get off at Westphaleg, we'll have to walk even farther with our bags.'

Hannah looked up the stairs to see a couple, each lugging two bags, coming down the stairs. The woman, who was looking extremely harried, was leaning heavily to one side as she looked at a fresh copy of the U-Bahn map. Cracking open her book, she tried to ignore the two of them, but once they got down to her level, they chose to sit right next to her. Shifting oddly, she crossed her legs away from them and leaned heavily on the arm of the bright yellow bench.

'Gestatten Sie?'

Hannah swallowed and looked over at the dark-haired man sitting next to her. She pressed her index finger to the page of her book and shut it. 'Ja?'

'Wo befindet sich der nächste Bahnhof für Kruckenbergstraße?'

She paused, staring at them as she shook her head slowly. 'I--I'm sorry, I--'

'Oh good, you speak English,' said the brown-haired woman next to him as she leaned forward, her curls falling in her eyes. 'Neither of us is really good at German.'

'We've just flown in and are trying to get to our new apartment on Kruckenbergstraße,' said the man, holding out a Xeroxed map showing the apartment complex. 'Do you know how we get to Kruckenbergstraße?'

Biting her lip, she looked blankly beyond them to the two men farther down on the platform. 'Get off at Westphaleg.'

Turning to ignore them again, she was exasperated when the man tapped her shoulder. 'What do we do after that?'

'I don't know,' she lied, closing her book and slipping it into her purse. 'I'm sorry, I'm not from this part of the city.'

'Oh,' said the woman softly. 'Could you maybe ask those men for us?'

Hannah shook her head jerkily. 'I don't like talking to people I don't know, I'm sorry.'

'Maybe we should take a taxi,' muttered the man to the woman as he stood. 'It'd be a lot easier for us.'

The woman stood and looked down at her. 'Thanks for your help.'

Hannah nodded, clutching at the back of her bag as the two of them walked away. There was a rush of air that proceeded the train, and once it stopped in the station, she jumped aboard the closest car, followed closely by her keepers. Down the platform, the couple waited until the last possible moment to jump into the foremost car, the man barely getting his bag through before the door shut. Pressed against the door, he looked sideways at the woman.

'Was that her?'

'Yeah,' said Jessie, tugging at her dyed and permed hair. 'I'd recognise her anywhere.'