The Sandman

103

Saga lets ice-cold water run over her hands. Her swollen knuckles are sore and she’s got three small wounds on them.

Everything has gone wrong.

She lost control, beat Bernie up, and Jurek got the blame.

Through the door she heard the guards shouting about four ampoules of Stesolid before they dragged him into his cell.

They thought he was the one who had attacked Bernie.

Saga turns the tap off, lets her hands drip on the floor and sits down on the bed.

The adrenalin has left a drowsiness, a quivering heaviness in her muscles.

An emergency doctor was called in to take care of Bernie. She heard him chattering manically until the door closed.

Saga is so frustrated she’s almost in tears. She has ruined everything with her wretched anger. Her complete inability to control her damn emotions. Why couldn’t she just keep out of the way? How could she possibly have let herself be provoked into fighting?

She shudders and clenches her jaw. It’s quite possible that Jurek Walter will want to get his own back for the fact that he got blamed.

The security doors clatter and she can hear rapid steps in the corridor, but no one comes to her cell.

Silence.

Saga sits on the bed with her eyes closed as the noises start to reverberate through the walls. Her heart is beating faster. Suddenly Jurek Walter lets out a guttural howl and screams with pain. She thinks she can hear someone kicking their bare heels against the reinforced steel. It sounds a bit like a fist hitting a punchbag.

Saga stares at the door, thinking about electric shocks and lobotomies.

Jurek is still screaming, his voice cracking, then she hears some heavy thuds.

Then silence again.

All she can hear now is the gentle clicking of the water pipes in the wall. Saga gets up and stares through the thick glass of the window in the door. The young doctor walks past. He stops and looks at her with a blank expression on his face.

She sits on the bed until the light in the ceiling goes out.

Life in the secure unit is much harder to bear than she had imagined. Instead of crying, she goes through her mission in her head, thinking about the rules for long-term infiltration and the purpose of the entire operation.

Felicia Kohler-Frost is completely alone in a locked room. She could be starving, and may well have Legionnaires’ disease.

Time is running out.

Saga knows that Joona is looking for the girl, but without any information from Jurek Walter the chances of making any kind of breakthrough aren’t very high.

Saga has to stick it out, she has to try to bear this for a while longer.

As the light goes out she shuts her eyes and feels them pricking.

She ponders the fact that the life she left behind had already left her first. Stefan is gone. She has no family.