Critical Space

Prologue

It was, she realized later, an audition of sorts.

Then, however, it was simply a murder. The calculated death of a target named Oksana Zurkowska.

The way she described it, I could imagine the details she omitted from her story. I filled it all in, the texture and the color, the sound and the smell. I could see the institutional washroom, feel the fog of steam from the showers, hear the drip of water onto the gray tiles of the floor. The clouded mirrors, sheets of polished metal rather than silver-backed glass. The porcelain sinks along the wall stained with rust brought up from the pipes. The smells of bleach and mildew and soap clung to the walls and ceiling, and the condensation rolled in beads to the floor, trickling to the drain in the center of the room.

She told me it was bright and sunny that day, but for some reason all I see is a shade that falls listlessly to the floor from high transom windows never opened to the outside. I see it in winter, oppressive and bitterly cold, but, as best as she could remember, it was spring.

The stalls had no doors, so she hid in the one farthest from the entrance, standing on the bowl, her feet on either side of the seat. It didn't matter that the concealment wasn't total. Oksana always used the sink nearest the entrance, she knew. Even if it was being used, Oksana would wait. Oksana liked that sink; it had the best water pressure of any in the building.

She waited for Oksana to close the door and start the water, hearing the pipes rattle and knock in the old walls. She listened, and when she heard the sound of the brush scrubbing teeth, she moved.

It was, she told me, like sitting in the back of an empty and dark theater and seeing oneself on the screen. She understood her motion and intent, and yet there was no attachment to the action. She was moving, she was acting, and she felt nothing at all.

She remembered that she found that curious.

Oksana Zurkowska, brushing her teeth, was taken entirely by surprise. The first blow drove her against the edge of the sink, crushing the air out of her. The second hammered her forehead against the tile at the base of the metal mirror. So did the third, and fourth, and fifth, until blood was coming off the wall, mixing with the foam of the tooth powder and water floating in the sink. Oksana hardly made a sound.

When she felt Oksana's head alter, felt the skull stop resisting the blows and finally yield to the pressure, she stopped and let the girl fall.

It was like shattering an unusually tough pumpkin, she told me.

On the floor, Oksana's left arm was still moving, jerking from side to side, as if pulled by a puppeteer's string. Then that stopped.

The sound of the water filling the sink came back to her. She reached out and shut off the tap, and the water stopped, and she saw herself reflected in the mirror. Blood had streaked the pitted surface, and then she realized that it had streaked her as well. It was on her hands, on her shirt, on her face.

She stripped and set her clothes by the radiator, so they would stay warm. Then she got into the shower, standing motionless beneath the water as it took its time changing from ice cold to scalding hot.

She wasn't feeling much of anything, she told me. Mostly, she just wanted to get the blood off herself. She remembered trying to decide what she would do about the shirt, that she had resolved to throw it in the furnace and to take a replacement from Oksana's own closet. They all wore identical clothes in the orphanage and she doubted anyone would notice anything except that the new shirt would be too large on her.

Oksana, after all, had been a big girl, ten years old.

She, on the other hand, was only eight, and small for her age. Part One