“The pepper burns my throat,” Sarah thought, forcing down another bite of the curry. Across the dimly lit restaurant table, Agent Chen watched her intently, his weathered face betraying nothing. The spices danced on her tongue - a code, a message, carefully crafted in this deadly game they played.
Time fragments, memories blur. Moscow last winter, Berlin in spring, now Hong Kong in suffocating summer heat. Cities blur together in her mind like watercolors in rain. Who was she today? Tomorrow? Names, faces, lies upon lies.
“You seem distracted, my dear,” Chen’s voice cuts through her reverie. Smooth as silk, sharp as steel.
“Just remembering Paris,” she replies with a practiced smile. Paris - where it all began to unravel. The careful construction of her identity, years in the making, threatening to collapse like a house of cards.
The curry grows cold. Sarah pushes bits of pepper around her plate, mind drifting. Chen’s words fade to white noise as her thoughts spiral inward…
That night in Paris. Thunder rolling across leaden skies. The metallic taste of blood in her mouth. Running through rain-slicked streets, documents burning in her pocket. Betrayal burning deeper.
“…the exchange will happen tonight,” Chen is saying. She forces herself back to the present, though time feels fluid, unreliable.
“Of course.” Her voice steady despite the chaos in her mind. “The usual place?”
He nods, sliding a folded napkin across the table. Their fingers brush - accidental? Or another move in this elaborate dance?
Focus. Remember who you are. Remember your mission.
But who was she really? Layer upon layer of invented selves, like Russian dolls nested one inside another. At the core - emptiness? Or something else, something true?
The night unfolds like a fever dream. Streets writhing with shadows, neon signs bleeding color into puddles. She moves through it all like a ghost, Chen’s napkin burning in her pocket. The coordinates lead to the waterfront.
Time fractures again. She’s in multiple moments at once:
Here: walking toward the meeting point, heart thundering.
There: that rainy night in Paris, realizing too late she’d been compromised.
Everywhere: the bitter taste of pepper lingering on her tongue, a reminder of deceptions swallowed.
Chen emerges from the darkness. “You came.” His smile doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Did you doubt me?”
“Never.” He reaches for her. “But then, I never doubted you in Paris either.”
The gun appears between them, black and final as midnight. Time crystallizes into a single perfect moment of clarity.
“The pepper,” she says softly. “It was always too bitter.”
The shot echoes across the harbor. Sarah falls, truth and lies bleeding together on the wet pavement. In her last moments, time splinters one final time:
A young girl tasting pepper for the first time An agent taking her oath A woman losing herself in layers of deceit
The bitter taste lingers even as darkness claims her. Above, neon signs pulse like dying stars, indifferent to the small dramas playing out below. Another spy game concluded, another identity dissolved into the night.
Chen melts back into the shadows, leaving only footprints in the rain and the ghost of betrayal hanging in the air like smoke.