Frost

Prologue

Present day
Location: classified

Her eyes kept falling on her trembling hands. They lay on the table in front of her and she was fumbling with them. Slight traces of dried blood were visible. She would have preferred to hide her face in her hands, but the handcuffs that bound her hands to the table did not allow her to do so. The cold metal scraped her skin around her wrists and made them sting slightly. The young woman bit her lower lip and tried to calm herself down. But how could she? Her head was about to explode. She couldn't remember why there was blood on her hands or why the black suit, which fitted perfect on her body, was torn and also had traces of blood on it. She didn't know why she was wearing it or how she had ended up here in the first place. To be more precise, she couldn't remember anything.

She only remembered a forest. She had been running from something, or at least she suspected she had. She remembered the panic and the quick steps. She remembered being surrounded by people in black suits and being caught. So she got into the room, or rather into a kind of cell with only a table and two chairs. She sat on one of the chairs and a man sat on the other.

He was wearing black clothes. An eye patch covered one of his eyes, while the other looked at her intensely. He had a neutral expression on his face and looked professional. However, she could see a spark of curiosity in his gaze. He had not yet said a word to her. The only thing he did was watch her silently.

"Do you remember your name?" he finally asked. He had leaned forward a little and had rested his arms on the table while his eye never left her slightly trembling body.

"No," she answered, staring back at her hands. Even the sound of her voice was foreign to her. She had tried to sound strong, yet even she could hear the slight tremor in her voice.

"Or your birthday? " the man continued to ask anyway. Her previous answer did not stop him from asking more questions and finding out what he was dealing with.

"No." Her eyes did not leave her hands as she looked down at them, trying to remember even a little bit from her past. Who was she? That was a question even she couldn't answer, and if not her, then who could?

"Or where are you from?"

"No" she repeated her answer and looked up again. The man had not changed his sitting position and continued to watch her behaviour closely.

"Maybe your family? Parents? siblings?"

The young woman certainly had a family. Maybe her parents were looking for her right now. Someone had to be looking for her or missing her. The young woman's gaze turned to the mirror in the wall. Yet she was sure it was not a mirror and she was being watched from the other side as well.

"No."

"Friends? Maybe a relationship?" the man with the eye patch continued to ask. Her head turned away from the mirror and she now looked at the man penetratingly as well. He wasn't giving up. Maybe it was her imagination, but it seemed to her that he wanted her to remember. She just didn't know what exactly there was to remember.

"No" her voice had lost its tremor. The girl was frustrated with herself and straining every nerve in her brain to remember. But no matter how hard she tried, nothing appeared in the void.

"Do you remember what happened to you in all these years? Where you were? And with whom? Why?"

What was supposed to have happened to her? It almost seemed as if the man knew more about her than she did. And in her defence, she didn't even know where she was now. So how was she supposed to know where she was before? Let alone with whom? The man with the eye patch was the first person she'd met, and she didn't even know his name.

"Nothing," she answered after a while. She feared that the man would lose his patience if she continued to just answer the questions with no. However, the man seemed patient with her and didn't seem to get frustrated with her answers as much as she did.

"Do you know what year it is?"

The woman lowered her head again and stared at her hands. She didn't even know what day of the week it was or what season it was. She would have liked to bang her head against the table. Maybe then she would remember something.

"No."

"Is there anything you remember?"

The woman's eyebrows scrunched together. The man looked at her carefully while she wondered if she should say the word out loud. She couldn't do much with it herself, but maybe he could. Her head rose up and she looked straight into the eye of the man sitting in front of her.

"I only remember one word. Frost."