Alice presses the button to the side of my shirt, trying to find the right place to attach it. Her hands stop close to my chest, then began to get the needle through the holes.

“Got anything in your belly? It’s my fifth time asking already.”

“I have no appetite.” She squints at her work. “One can only enjoy so much bread.”

You eat so you don’t die of starvation, you fool, not to satisfy your appetite. “Did you have a lot of other food before you came here then?”

“I would not say so.”

“Tell me more.”

She hums. “At the institute, we have meat and eggs every Tuesday and Friday, but the remaining days are just bread, dry cheese and lettuce. But every time I finish a job, the abbot would give me chocolate or cookies wrapped in paper packages.”

“That’s also a luxury. We never have cookies.” There’s a high chance of the lab she was in being close to a confectionery factory. I should take a note of that.

“I suppose.”

Some people from Camp C were born to be transferred into such factories; and if nothing spectacular happens, they will most likely be doing factory work until they grow old. The production workers almost never use lethal guns unless obliged to, because others always guarded such places for them.

Alice’s voice disrupts me from my lines of thought. “I enjoy chocolate very much, and I also like to study things that the director teaches me. So I learned a lot. I can cook if I have the ingredients. Sewing is also what I am taught.”

“Who’s ‘the director’? Is he the same professor you talked about?”

“More like his right-hand man. He would assist me whenever the Professor is unavailable.”

She keeps talking even when she’s sewing. Perhaps she was longing for a conversation.

“Ever seen a food factory?” I ask.

“Not yet.”

“Have you been to any other complexes? Wood shop? Weapon assembly halls?”

“I would very much love to, but the Professor never let me out of the research institute.”

“Damn. So you’ve been trapped there all your life?”

“You make it sound like it was such an unpleasant experience. I did not live anywhere else so I could not compare, but I dare say that the institute offered better living conditions than this military complex.”

“Touché. Okay, so please tell me more about this amazing and livable research institute. Can it house three dozen people? Did anybody from the institute travel outside with you?”

No reply.

“Yes? No?”

Still no reply. Alice’s hands that have just been working with needle and thread effortlessly, grabs on the hem of my jacket, almost as if jerking it.

“Ah, crap, sorry,” I smack my lips. “A smidge nosey there, wasn’t I?”

She gives me a strange look. Her arched eyebrows furrow, straining her eyes as if studying me. But very soon, the skeptical demeanor is gone. She smiles softly and threads her needle through the buttonhole.

“Over a dozen people, Alexei,” she says. “They all have their own rooms. I usually stay in mine, and there are some rooms located by the corridor, but they are always locked so I cannot enter. The corridor was large enough for two people to sprint alongside each other, and from the beginning to the end of the corridor there were about ten doors. At the end of the hallway was a large iron gate, locked by electronic code, and I was never allowed to step beyond that gate. And on the other end of the hallway was the director’s Wondrous Office.” Her eyes seem to light up as she speaks the name.

Damn. I didn’t expect nearly as much information. “Wondrous office? What is it?”

“It’s . . . um . . . It’s hard to explain.”

“Try your best.”

“I will try, but now is not the time.”

“Oh, okay then.”

I can’t say I’m not curious, but I fight back the natural urge to press her for more. It’s important that Alice believes me. There are things that you can’t gain back once you’ve lost them, like trust, or your kidney.

But one way or another, I believe her. Top priority target—that was what they labeled her as when they handed me the file for her case. The word Rank S—the highest possible rank—was written in that file for the mission to capture her.

This woman should always be the one who I need to stay a safe distance from, to be wary of, to subdue if required. But right now, I’m sitting next to her on the sofa, letting her hold a sharp pointed needle above my lungs without any precaution.

But this person won’t stab me, will she?

There’s nothing in the Republic’s brief indicated she’s malicious, I convince myself.

Alice tries to separate the thread with the button, but she doesn’t have a knife or scissors to cut it. She struggles, like a dog worrying about a bone.

“Use your teeth!” I say.

“Pardon?”

“Use your teeth and yank it out. Have you never done that?”

“I have not.”

“Were you taught how not to use your teeth by the same person who taught you how to munch your food? Did he go ‘Don’t go around yanking stuff, that’s bad manners!’”

No reply. She has this blank look on her face that looks like a donkey just urinated on her shoes.

“Give me the needle.” I hold out my hand and take the needle without waiting for an answer. I take the thread between my teeth and shake my head. “There, it’s separated.” I give her back the needle. “Now put it back where you found it.”

She brings the needle and thread towards the stack of carton covers on the corner, opens a small bottle placed on top of the covers, and places the needle in it. I sit on the sofa, bend down and put a hand on the black button attached to my jacket. I’m eighty percent certain that this kind of thread is only used to patch holes. It’s too thin to withstand the pressure of one button and will sooner or later burst.

“Silly thing. It’s just a button,” I mutter to myself, rise from the sofa, and take off my jacket. “Hey. Get down here. It’s nap time.”

She nods but circles the bookshelf and takes a book with her before returning. I know that it was Anna Karenina, since she hasn’t taken her eyes off it for a whole week.

“You hug the book to sleep?” I ask.

She sits on the sofa, clasps her fingers to the top edge of the book and brings it to her chest. Looking at how she clings to her book, I realize how long and slender her fingers are. Her fingers are like porcelain, save for a slight peeling of the skin near her nails.

I raise my hand to look at the blisters, crumpled into scars, and turn it over to see the remnants of the deep cut that burned my index finger. I wonder how she can keep her fingers the way they are.

“I always do that.” She smiles. “The professor made me a bookshelf and put lots of textbooks and picture books on it. There are specific books that I have to borrow from the director so I could not give them back immediately. He had to build a bookshelf that fits my height. So, when it was late at night, I would take a book and read it and put it at the bedside so I would not have to search for it the next morning. Whenever I found a piece of work I fell in love with, I would hug it to sleep.”

“It’s a book, not a chicken egg. There is no need to cherish it like that. You can just throw the book under the sofa, maybe it will be even less crumpled than if nobody had ever touched it.”

“Oh, dear, that is no way to treat a book. I would say I am like the dragon in the book Beowulf, you know. I hoard treasures, then lie on top of them to protect them with my life. Oh, and Fáfnir in Siegfried too! But Fáfnir is greedy and evil. I wish never to become like him. But who can tell? The greedy are blind to their own greed!” She chuckles, as if amused at her own analogy. She then hugs the book tightly again and presses it to her chest like a medic trying to hold the blood in. Then, she lies down and rests her head on the sofa. If I were her, I would lie down and have a good sleep in this tired state, but she does her own thing. She goes on doing what she does, living as if she’s not even in reality. She’s probably living in those dragon books of hers, written by Stir-fried or whoever it is.

I take my jacket and put it on her body. Although her eyes are closed, she still whispers.

“Good night, Alexei.” Her sweet voice rises before slowly fading away.

“Night.”

I observe her until I’m completely sure that she’s sound asleep, then retreat to my corner, ransacking my pockets until I find what I need.

A tobacco pipe.