The Underground
Vera Kane - POV
The taste of expensive whiskey burns my throat as consciousness floods back, rich and smoky with undertones of something darker. Something dangerous. My tongue feels heavy, swollen with the memory of being thoroughly kissed, and when I run it across my lower lip, I can still taste him—whoever he is.
I'm sitting on a leather banquette in what looks like a 1920s speakeasy, all dark wood and brass fixtures gleaming in amber light. The air hangs thick with cigarette smoke and secrets, and jazz music drifts from speakers hidden in the shadows. This isn't the kind of place I go. This isn't the kind of place I even know exists.
But my body knows it. My muscles are relaxed in a way that suggests familiarity, and when I shift position, I move with unconscious knowledge of the space around me.
"You're back." The bartender looks up from polishing glasses, his voice carrying casual recognition that makes my stomach drop. He's older, maybe sixty, with the kind of weathered face that suggests he's seen everything and kept quiet about most of it. "Didn't think you'd surface this early."
"I'm sorry, I don't—" I start, but he's already shaking his head.
"Raven, honey, you were intense tonight. Even for you." He sets down the glass and leans across the bar, lowering his voice. "Whatever you were discussing with those people in the corner booth, it had them spooked. And that takes some doing."
Raven. He knows me as Raven.
I look down at myself and feel that now-familiar jolt of displacement. I'm wearing a black silk dress that clings to curves I didn't know I had, paired with boots that add three inches to my height and look like they could double as weapons. My reflection in the bar mirror shows smoky eye makeup and blood-red lipstick—a face that belongs to someone who lives in shadows and speaks in whispers.
"What time is it?" My voice comes out rougher than usual, as if I've been talking for hours.
"Just past 2 AM. You've been here since eleven."
Three hours. Three hours of my life that I'll never get back, lived by someone else in my body.
My phone buzzes against the bar where I must have placed it, and when I pick it up, there's a video file in my messages that I don't remember taking. With trembling fingers, I tap play.
The footage is grainy, shot from my phone's camera positioned discretely on the table. I watch myself move through the bar with lethal grace, my posture completely different from the tentative way I normally carry myself. This version of me commands attention without trying, moving like a predator who owns every room she enters.
I'm talking to three people in the corner booth—two men and a woman, all dressed expensively but with the kind of hard edges that suggest they're not corporate executives. The audio is muffled, but I can make out fragments. Code words. References to shipments and territories and someone called "The Doctor" who's been making problems.
The Doctor. Dr. Voss?
As I watch, the camera catches me leaning forward, speaking in rapid Mandarin to one of the men. The language flows from my lips like I was born speaking it, my hands moving in gestures that suggest intimate knowledge of whatever we're discussing.
Then the footage cuts to me standing, shaking hands with the woman in a way that looks more like a business transaction than a social goodbye. Money changes hands—not much, but enough to suggest this isn't a friendly conversation.
The final frame shows me walking toward a back room with someone whose face the camera can't capture, just a tall figure in dark clothing whose presence makes my on-screen self move differently. More feminine. More alive.
More dangerous.
"Who was I with?" I ask the bartender, my voice barely above a whisper.
He gives me a look that suggests the question itself is strange. "Same as always. Though you seemed... different tonight. More focused. Like you were planning something big."
I check my jacket pockets with the desperate efficiency of someone looking for clues to their own life. Business cards from places I've never heard of—a martial arts studio in Chinatown, a private investigator's office, something called "Memory Recovery Services" with an address in Georgetown. All of them have my name written on the back in Raven's aggressive handwriting, along with dates and times that must mean something to her.
There's also a cocktail napkin with an address scrawled across it in black ink: 1247 Post Alley. Below that, a single word: "Midnight."
"I need to go," I tell the bartender, standing on unsteady legs.
"Course you do." He's already back to polishing glasses. "Just remember what I told you—some doors can't be unopened once you walk through them."
I have no idea what he's talking about, but something in his tone makes my skin crawl.
The bouncer stops me at the door before I can escape into the Seattle night. He's massive, the kind of man who could snap me in half without breaking a sweat, but when he looks at me, there's something almost gentle in his expression.
"Ash is looking for you," he says quietly. "Said to tell you the anniversary is coming up."
The name hits me like a physical blow. My knees actually buckle, and I have to grab the doorframe to keep from falling. Ash. I don't know who that is, but my body knows. Every cell in me responds to the name with a mixture of longing so intense it's almost painful and terror so complete it makes my vision blur.
"What anniversary?" The words come out as a croak.
"You don't remember?" The bouncer's expression shifts from gentle to concerned. "Raven, you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Maybe I have. Maybe I am one.
"I'm fine," I lie, pushing past him into the alley behind Pike Place Market.
The walk back to my apartment passes in a haze of confusion and growing panic. Every shadow might be hiding someone who knows Raven better than I know myself. Every passing stranger might recognize the woman I become when I'm not myself.
By the time I reach my building, my hands are shaking so badly I can barely work the key in the lock.
Inside my apartment, I head straight for my laptop, desperate to document everything while the memories are still fresh. But when I open the folder where I keep my integration therapy records, I freeze.
Someone's been here. The files are still in the right order, but they've been moved. Opened. Read. My photographs have been rearranged—not randomly, but purposefully. Someone went through my documentation with careful attention, looking for something specific.
In my bedroom, the violation becomes personal. My journals are stacked differently on the nightstand. My clothes have been shifted in the closet. Someone has been through my most private spaces with the casual familiarity of an invited guest.
But it's the single red rose on my pillow that stops my breath completely.
The flower is perfect, blood-red petals still fresh with morning dew, and underneath it is a note written in my own handwriting:
Stop fighting me. He's waiting. —R
I sink onto the bed, the rose's perfume filling my nostrils with something that smells like promises and threats in equal measure. Raven was here. In my apartment, in my bedroom, leaving evidence of her presence like a calling card.
She's not just stealing hours from my life anymore. She's claiming space in my world.
My fingers close around something hard in my jacket pocket—a key I don't remember finding. It's old-fashioned, ornate, the kind that opens heavy doors with serious locks. I try it in my apartment door, my desk drawers, even my jewelry box, but it doesn't fit anything I own.
Which means it opens something that belongs to Raven.
The note crumples in my other hand as I stare at the key, understanding finally dawning. This isn't just about integration therapy or psychological healing. This is about two completely different lives, two different identities sharing the same body.
And somewhere in this city, someone named Ash is waiting for the woman I become when I'm not myself.
The woman who might be more real than I am.