Rotor blades of a helicopter chopped the night apart. The air burned with smoke and metal as gunfire rattled nonstop below, while flames crawled along the mansion walls and licked at broken windows.
A young woman in a white dress stood by the tall window, barefoot on cold marble. Red and blue lights flashed over her pale face. Her emerald eyes tracked the chaos outside as if she were watching rain fall instead of people dying.
She let out a slow breath.
Somewhere down there, her family was running. Or already gone. She didn't let herself guess which.
Boots thundered through the lower floors. Doors shattered. Shouts climbed the stairs.
Behind her, five shadows then shifted. The guards said nothing. They didn't need to.
She turned from the window and walked to the piano.
As the first notes of Für Elise slipped into the air, soft and clean, the door exploded inward.
*bang* *bang* *bang*
Gunfire tore through the room. Her guards fell one by one, bodies hitting the floor in heavy thuds. Blood sprayed across the white walls, the black piano, and even on her dress.
Meanwhile, two bullets punched into her body from behind. She flinched but she didn't stop playing.
"Hands up!" someone shouted.
Her fingers kept moving.
She smiled.
"Fire..."
The bullets then came like rain.
The music broke at last, and she fell forward, slid to the floor, and whispered, almost kindly, "At last, I'm free."
Then the world went quiet.
But then...
Something pulled her forward.
Step after step after step.
There was no ground under her feet, no walls she could touch. Just a long stretch of darkness and a tiny white dot trembling far ahead. Her throat scraped with every breath, dry like sand.
She kept moving.
An unknown amount of time passed.
The darkness didn't change. Her thirst only grew sharper, clawing deeper, and every breath she took and let out burned. Every step felt heavier than the last.
Water.
The light ahead swelled.
Closer.
Closer.
Then the darkness tore open with a blinding flash of light.
*Beeeeep*
A soft and long beep nudged her awake.
Another beep followed. Slow. Steady.
Her eyelids fluttered. Light leaked in. She squinted until shapes formed. Pale walls. A ceiling too clean to be real. Something tugged at her arms.
Her body felt like it weighed a thousand tons.
She tried to move. Nothing happened.
A rasp then slipped from her lips. "Wa… ter…"
She waited in silence, staring at the ceiling while the beeping kept count of her heart. At last, the door opened. Footsteps. Fabric whispered.
"You're awake?" a woman's voice said, startled.
A button was clicked. More footsteps came fast.
She swallowed. Pain scratched all the way down.
"Wa… ter…"
A man's voice answered this time, calm and practiced. "Let her drink. Slowly."
A straw then touched her lips. It took three tries before her mouth remembered how to work. Then water slid in, cool and gentle, like rain on cracked earth. Her eyes burned. She blinked hard and kept drinking.
"Do you know your name?" the man asked.
"I…" The word tangled.
The memories suddenly surged inside her head.
Gunfire.
Blood.
Music breaking mid-note.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. The beeping jumped.
She turned her head in panic and caught sight of dark hair spread across the pillow.
Dark.
Not gold as she remembered.
"Mirror," she whispered. "Please."
They hesitated. Then the nurse lifted one in front of her.
When she looked into the mirror, a stranger stared back instead.
Black hair. Brown eyes. A face she had never worn.
"Wha..."
Another set of memories surged inside her head.