Rook

life. I have left instructions on how to build yourself a new identity, and lists of names and facts that you can use to protect yourself. It would never be a completely safe life, but it would be as safe as I, a person who knows how to prepare, can make it for you.
    Or you can choose to adopt my life as your own. You can find out why you have been betrayed. I said before that mine is a good life, and that is true. The body you are in has been privileged enough to have wealth, power, and knowledge beyond the dreams of normal people. You can have those things as well, but this choice will be dangerous. For whatever reason, an injustice has been committed against both of us. An injustice against you because you did not do anything, and an injustice against me because I cannot believe that I will do anything to deserve it.
    So, that’s the choice you have to make. Unfair? Absolutely. But you still have to make it. There are two keys in the envelope, and both are to lockboxes at the Mansel Bank on Bassingthwaighte Street in the City;1011-A contains all the materials you need to go away and 1011-B puts you back into my life. I would not blame you for making either choice.
    I wish you nothing but the best. Whatever you do, be careful until you have opened the box. Remember, they want you dead.
    Sincerely,
    Myfanwy Thomas
     
    She put the letter down on the table, picked up her coffee, and walked over to the balcony door. She hesitated, but then dismissed her fears.
No one followed me,
she thought.
There aren’t going to be snipers waiting for me to come outside. Get a grip.
She opened the door and went out into the morning. It was a nice day. All around her were hotel rooms in which people were eating much the same food as she was, and balconies where they were enjoying the same late-winter sunshine and looking down on the same steam coming off the heated (and completely deserted) pool. But she imagined that she was probably the only person about to decide who she was going to be.
    Well, Ms. Thomas, your story is very compelling,
she mused.
You have deliberately tried to tantalize me into some sort of pursuit of justice. You give me no details of the life I would be inheriting. You
want
me to be curious. And although I still have no idea who I am, it seems that I do have a penchant for intrigue.
    I don’t know whether I get this from you,
she thought,
but I have enough sense to realize that your little mission would be a fool’s errand. And I’m not even vaguely intrigued by your promise of “wealth, power, and knowledge beyond the dreams of normal people.” Can you hear me somewhere in the back of this brain? If so, then hear this: Don’t flatter yourself, darling. Your life holds absolutely no appeal for me.
    She stared up at the clouds, which she couldn’t remember ever staring at before. She drank the coffee, and although she knew it was good, and that she liked it with milk and sugar, she couldn’t remember ever drinking coffee before. She could recall the movements needed to swim the butterfly stroke, although she couldn’t remember ever entering a pool. There were so many memories to build and experiences she knew she would enjoy.
    If people are going to be trying to kill me, then I want to be somewhere far away, and I want to be spending as much money as you have bequeathed me. Whatever you lacked in courage, I am going to make up for in common sense.
She went back in the room, picked up a pen, and firmly circled 1011-A.
    S he lay on the bed with a steak draped over each eye, thinking about what she would do next. There were a few issues that needed to be addressed. First, how was she to get to the bank without catching the attention (and, subsequently, the fist) of some psycho with a fetish for surgical gloves? Second, where did she want to go once she opened the door to her new life? The first problem seemed relatively simple. In her panic the previous night, she’d extracted a rather large quantity of cash. Certainly enough to hire a car and driver to take her to the bank. As to the second, well, for all her obvious faults, Miss Myfanwy Thomas as was did not strike her as a liar. She expected to find everything she would need in box 1011-A. Thomas had said there would be instructions and advice on how to build a new life. Of course, there remained the question as to why Myfanwy Thomas hadn’t elected to take this wealth she claimed to possess and flee the country herself before she lost her memory.