Forty-eight hours means two days.
Two days of sitting in my apartment watching videos of a girl named Emma Morrison. Forty-eight hours of videos on repeat. Emma at school. Emma drawing. Emma laughing at the park with her father. Emma existing. Being real. Being alive.
She has my mother's laugh.
That's what breaks me on the first day. Not that she's eight years old. Not that she's innocent. But that she laughs exactly like my mother laughed before the depression swallowed everything. Before the pills. Before the rope in the bathroom at 3 AM when I was sixteen and asleep in the next room.
I watch little Emma drawing at her father's desk and I see my mother at that same desk. Healthy. Before. Capable of love. Capable of seeing the world as something beautiful instead of something that needs to be survived.
But in between the videos of Emma, I'm looking at Nathan Cross's file.
I've memorized every detail. His background. His business operations. The way his eyes look intelligent in the photograph. The specific angle of his mouth when he's thinking. The intelligence behind every expression.
I've also memorized the fact that Harris wants me to kill him.
And I've realized the terrible truth: I don't want to.
That's the thought that keeps me awake through the first night. Not the Morrison contract. Not The Collective's ultimatum. But the understanding that I was already compromised before Marcus showed up.
The Collective just confirmed what Harris already knew.
The second day, I stop watching Emma's videos.
Instead, I watch Nathan's file. His security schedule. The movements of his guards. The layout of his penthouse. I tell myself I'm studying him. Preparing to kill him. But the truth is I'm trying to understand how someone could survive in a world that clearly tried to break him the same way it tried to break me.
His eyes look like they've seen things that would destroy most people. Like he's already died once and came back harder.
I know that look. I see it in the mirror.
At midnight on day two, my phone rings. Unknown number. Marcus.
"You've had your forty-eight hours," he says without preamble. "What's your answer?"
I should feel terrified. Instead, I feel something else. Clarity. The kind that comes from understanding that you're going to lose everything anyway. That the only choice left is which version of yourself you die as.
"No," I say. My voice doesn't shake. That's the training. Control everything, including your fear. "I don't kill children. I've never killed children. I won't start now. I don't care what The Collective thinks. I don't care what you think. I won't do this."
The silence is absolute.
"Then you're a traitor," Marcus says finally. "And traitors get eliminated."
He hangs up.
The panic should come immediately. Instead, there's something different. Something that tastes like relief.
I make calls.
My bank: "We're sorry, but we're unable to process that request at this time."
My credit card company: "That account has been closed."
My therapist license board: "We're processing a voluntary withdrawal of your credentials."
Each call is a finger tightening on my throat. But underneath the panic, there's something else. The thought of Nathan. The thought that maybe I don't have to be alone anymore.
That maybe I don't have to survive by myself.
By hour two, my apartment building's security system stops responding to my biometrics. Hour three, my access card declines. Hour four, I watch from the lobby as men in neutral clothing and careful expressions enter my apartment with boxes and equipment.
They move efficiently. No conversation. No emotion. They're erasing me the same way I've erased targets. Clinical. Professional. Perfect.
I leave before they finish.
By hour five, I'm sitting in a coffee shop across the street with a disposable phone and the last fifteen hundred dollars in cash I kept hidden in a book. I watch the cleanup team work. Watch them take my furniture. My clothes. My photographs. Everything that proves I existed.
But while I'm watching my life disappear, I'm thinking about Nathan.
About how he has resources. About how he has power. About how he's been searching for someone for five years with the kind of obsession that suggests he doesn't let people disappear. That he fights to keep the people he cares about.
A woman at my table is reading a book. She has a wedding ring. A purse that costs more than I can earn legally in a month. A life that's real in a way mine will never be.
I'm invisible to her. Just another person in a coffee shop.
But Nathan Cross would see me. Harris was right about one thing. Nathan has the ability to see through people. To understand them. And somehow, I think he would understand me.
By hour six, my apartment is empty. The walls are bare. There's no trace that Sarah Mitchell ever lived there. No evidence that I existed at all.
My phone buzzes. Different message. Different app. Harris.
"Preliminary meeting with subject tomorrow at 2 PM. Therapy office setup confirms he's expecting you. Subject shows high susceptibility to psychological manipulation based on family trauma profile. You'll have him compromised within two sessions. Two weeks maximum until elimination."
Two weeks.
I reread the message and understand something. Harris thinks Nathan will be easy to manipulate. Harris thinks Nathan is broken in a predictable way. Harris doesn't understand that Nathan has already figured out everything.
Harris doesn't understand that Nathan's been playing the same game the entire time.
The coffee shop closes at 11 PM. I walk out into the Manhattan night with my last fifteen hundred dollars and the clothes on my back. The city sparkles around me. Millions of people going home to their apartments. Their lives. Their futures.
I have none of those things.
But I have options.
I can disappear into the system and hope they never find me. Spend the rest of my life as a ghost. Hiding. Running. Looking over my shoulder.
Or I can trust someone.
For the first time in five years, I can trust that someone might actually want to help me. That someone might actually be strong enough to protect me. That someone might actually see me clearly and choose me anyway.
I head toward Nathan Cross's building.
The glass facade rises forty stories into the night sky. Security cameras scan the perimeter. Guards patrol with professional precision. It's a fortress designed to keep threats out.
But I'm not a threat he knows about yet.
I use the next two hours to find my entry point. The east wall. The blind spot. The service entrance that should be sealed but isn't because Nathan's security team got lazy. Because no one expects a woman to scale a building in the middle of the night.
No one expects Sarah Mitchell to exist at all.
But as I'm preparing to climb, I allow myself one thought.
What if Nathan has been waiting for this? What if breaking into his penthouse isn't a desperate escape move? What if it's the moment where I finally come home?
What if he already knows exactly who I am?
At 11:47 PM, I'm standing at the base of his building.
My hands are steady. My heart is racing. And for the first time since I became a weapon, I'm moving toward something instead of running away from something.
At 11:59 PM, I'm climbing.
At 12:16 AM, I'm inside Nathan Cross's private office.
Alarms scream.
Guards rush in with weapons.
And I stand in the center of the room with my hands visible and realize that I've just committed to the most dangerous choice of my life.
Either he kills me as a trespasser.
Or he saves me because he's been waiting for exactly this moment.
Either way, Sarah Mitchell stops existing tonight.
But maybe, for the first time in my life, that's not a death.
Maybe it's a beginning.