A week had passed since discovering the phone. Seven days of checking locks, testing windows, and counting every shadow that didn’t belong.
I’d approached Wolf carefully. Told him about feeling watched, about strange coincidences. Nothing specific enough to sound paranoid, but enough to make him take notice. His response was immediate and thorough.
The security cameras around the Reihenhaus showed nothing. The hallway leading to my room: empty for weeks except for my own comings and goings. No one had entered while I was out. No one had been near the dresser, the phone, or anything else that mattered.
Wolf flicked ash from his cigarette and gave me a look that was half amusement, half warning. “Keener war da, man,” he said. “If someone’s watching you, it’s through a screen, not a window.”
But that didn’t explain the phone in my drawer. Didn’t explain the ringtone of a song I hadn’t heard in decades. Didn’t explain how someone had my real name, my number, and my presence without ever setting foot in the building.
I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at both devices lying on the nightstand. The old phone sat dark beside my regular one. Both felt like loaded weapons I couldn’t quite figure out how to disarm.
Think, Alan. Process this logically.
The analytical part of me kicked in, grateful for familiar territory. Someone had placed that phone in my dresser. That much was fact. But when? How? Wolf’s cameras had been recording well before I moved into the Reihenhaus.
Had it always been there?
The thought sent ice through my veins. Had I been carrying evidence of my own surveillance from the beginning? Packed it myself in some fugue state I couldn’t remember?
No. That’s paranoia talking.
Lana’s voice cut through my analysis, unusually subdued. She’d been quieter since the phones appeared, her usual fearlessness tempered by something I’d never felt from her before: genuine unease.
They invaded our sanctuary.
That was the heart of it. This room had been the one place where the boundaries between Alan and Lana didn’t matter, where observation and performance could finally stop. Where I could examine this strange dual existence without outside eyes tracking every move.
But if someone could place a phone in my drawer without triggering security, without leaving any trace… what else could they do? What else had they already done?
The invasion felt personal in a way that went beyond simple surveillance. It was intimate. Precise. Like someone had reached inside our heads and left a calling card we couldn’t ignore.
They know exactly who we are.
Both of us. Alan and Lana. The voice that analyzed and the voice that acted. Someone understood the duality, had mapped it, maybe even anticipated it.
That scared me more than Wolf’s crew, more than Klaus’s basement games, more than Seline’s clinical experiments. Those were known quantities. Dangerous, but comprehensible.
This was different. This was someone who could move through locked doors and secured buildings like smoke, leaving only questions and the faint echo of an American song from decades past.
We need to find out.
Lana’s determination pushed through the unease, sharp and clear.
But for the first time since the transformation, I wasn’t sure we were equipped for the hunt.
~oO🐺Oo~
I dialed Seline’s number with steady fingers, though my pulse hammered against my ribs.
She answered on the second ring. “Lana.”
“We have a problem.” I kept my voice level and professional. Told her about the phone, the messages, and the impossibility of someone accessing my room without leaving traces.
I pressed the phone to my ear, listening for something beneath her silence— the faint hiss of static, the slow tick of a clock on her end. Nothing.
“The ringtone…” she said finally.
“Jackson 5. I’ll be there.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“Interesting… I’ll look into it.”
The line went dead.
That’s it? Lana’s frustration flared.
No questions? No theories?
But I recognized that tone. Seline wasn’t dismissing the threat: she was already calculating, already working through possibilities I couldn’t see.
Three days later, my phone buzzed. A single message from an unknown number:
—9:30pm. Zur Letzten Instanz. Prenzlauer Berg.
My stomach tightened before I even finished reading. I knew that address. The same narrow street where Martin’s building leaned against the tram lines. The same smell of fried onions and damp stone.
The bar was barely six blocks from Martin’s old apartment. From where this all began.
She found something, Lana whispered.
I stared at the message. I didn’t know if I wanted the truth or just proof that we weren’t losing our minds.
~oO🐺Oo~
The night air in Prenzlauer Berg was crisp as Lana’s steps echoed off the cobblestones, instinctively dodging puddles and revelers alike.
The familiar blue curtains in Martin’s window made me falter mid-step. The lights inside were dim, hinting at solitude. Was he okay? Or just more reminders of life I’d left behind?
The chill seemed irrelevant compared to the tension that gripped me as we neared Zur Letzten Instanz. For a Monday night, the place was unexpectedly subdued. The ambiance felt almost conspiratorial in its quiet: exposed brick walls with years of stories trapped within, tiled floors reflecting subdued lamplight, and dark wooden booths that offered both intimacy and isolation. It felt timeless, like a place where secrets are exchanged more openly than pleasantries.
A long bar stretched against one wall, crowned with a substantial wood counter that seemed to absorb the quiet energy of the room. And there, on a solitary bar stool, her silhouette sharp against the dim light was Seline. Her posture was as composed as ever, the subtle glint of her eyes acknowledging my arrival, as if she’d known all along exactly when I would step through that door.
For a moment, everything else faded.
I approached the bar, Lana’s steps confident despite the familiar weight of questions pressing against my chest. Seline watched me settle onto the stool beside her, her expression unreadable in the amber light. The low murmur of conversation and the scrape of a chair somewhere behind us formed a rhythm just offbeat from my pulse.
“Berliner Pilsner,” I said to the bartender, my voice steadier than I felt.
Seline’s laugh came low and amused, a sound that carried recognition. “I see some things stay the same, ja.”
The reference hit immediately: that night, the cheap beer on Martin’s coffee table, the three green bottles sweating in the lamplight. She remembered. Of course she did.
“Habit,” I said, taking the glass as the bartender slid it across the counter, foam still settling on top.
The silence between us stretched, charged with unspoken history. I opened my mouth, ready to unleash the flood of questions that had been building since that phone appeared in my drawer, since those messages started arriving, since I realized someone had been watching us from the very beginning.
But Seline held up a single finger, elegant and deliberate, signaling me to wait.
Her eyes never left mine as she lifted her own glass: something expensive, to her lips. The message was clear. I’d speak when she allowed it.
Footsteps approached from behind us, measured and controlled. Not the casual shuffle of other patrons, but the deliberate cadence of someone accustomed to making entrances.
A man settled onto the stool beside me, his presence immediately commanding the space. Late-fifties, maybe older, with the kind of weathered confidence that spoke of decades navigating rooms where power mattered more than protocol.
“Scotch,” he told the bartender, his accent distinctly American, tempered by years abroad. “Neat. Eighteen or older.”
The specificity of the order felt intentional, like everything else about him. He waited for his drink with the patience of someone who expected the world to move at his pace.
Once served, he turned to Seline first. “Doctor.”
The single word carried layers of familiarity and respect. Seline’s nod was barely perceptible, but her acknowledgment felt significant.
Then those sharp eyes fixed on me, and his demeanor shifted subtly. The professional mask softened into something warmer, more approachable. A smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes but suggested it might, given the right circumstances.
“And you must be Lana.” He extended his hand: firm, deliberate, warm enough to disarm. “Karl Muir. Been looking forward to this.”
The charm was practiced, effective. It was the same precision I’d seen in mirrors lately, the kind that smiled before it struck.
~oO🐺Oo~
“Central Intelligence,” Karl said easily, like ordering another drink. “Thirty-plus years. Been around. Singapore, D.C., Dubai. Berlin’s my last stop.”
My hand remained frozen in his grip. CIA. The letters hit like cold water, washing away any remaining illusion that this was simply about underground clubs or mysterious transformations.
“You’re looking a little pale,” Karl observed, releasing my hand with practiced ease. “Don’t worry. This isn’t some black site interrogation. More of a… consultation.”
Seline finally spoke, her voice cutting through my shock. “Muir oversees our operational funding. Project SYREN operates under certain governmental… protections.”
“Protections,” Karl echoed, swirling his scotch. “That’s a diplomatic way of putting it. Let’s just say we have mutual interests in advanced human enhancement research.”
This was the stuff of paperback thrillers I’d devoured in my youth. Shadowy government agencies, clandestine experiments, subjects who vanished into bureaucratic footnotes. The X-Files. Not real life. Not my life.
The words rolled past me, dull against the sudden roar in my ears. The bar felt smaller, its walls closer, the air heavier.
Yet here I sat, transformed beyond recognition, while a CIA operative casually explained how my existence had become a matter of national security.
Lana’s curiosity flickered.
Ask him what they did to us.
I swallowed it back before the words escaped.
“These recent developments have me a little concerned,” Karl said, sliding a thick manila envelope across the worn wooden table.
My fingers trembled as I opened it. An Elektronischer Aufenthaltstitel fell out first: the plastic German residence permit gleaming under the bar’s amber light. Beneath it, a small dark blue book. Stamped in metallic letters: Passport. United States of America.
I flipped it open. My breath stopped.
The photo showed her face— my face. Hazel eyes, too clear, too knowing. Printed beside it in official typeface: Lana Harper.
“Your new papers,” Karl said simply.
I set the passport down, my hands unsteady. “So I’m now part of the CIA?”
“No.” Karl’s response was immediate and precise. “You are an asset. Off the books.”
Off the books…
Meaning no record, no recourse, no existence if they decided to erase me.
“So who knows?”
“You. Me. Seline.” He paused, considering his words. “The Berlin station chief knows SYREN exists, and little more. Enough to testify under oath before a judicial inquiry, insufficient to compromise deniability.”
Compartmentalization. Even I knew that much about intelligence work. The fewer people who knew the full picture, the safer the operation remained.
But safer for whom?
~oO🐺Oo~
The cold night air hit my face as I stepped out of Zur Letzten Instanz, my new papers tucked securely into the hidden pocket of my jacket. The weight of them felt heavier than plastic and paper had any right to.
CIA. The letters kept circling my mind like vultures. Every footstep on the cobblestones echoed with the magnitude of what I’d just learned. This wasn’t some rogue scientist’s basement experiment. Project SYREN had government backing, funding, and protection.
I passed under the amber glow of street lamps, their light casting long shadows that seemed to stretch toward the apartment buildings where normal people lived normal lives. People who went to sleep as themselves and woke up the same. People whose existence didn’t require manila envelopes and classified briefings.
Thirty years in the field, Karl had said. Singapore, Dubai, DC, and now Berlin. The kind of man who moved pieces on boards I couldn’t even see. And now I was one of those pieces.
Lana stirred within me, less troubled by the revelation than fascinated. She saw opportunity where I saw entrapment. But then again, she hadn’t lived forty-four years as Alan Brody, hadn’t built a life only to watch it crumble into unemployment and divorce papers.
Now that life felt like someone else’s distant memory.
Off the books. Asset.
My feet carried me without conscious direction, mind still reeling from Karl’s words.
A couple approached on the narrow sidewalk, arms linked, their quiet conversation drifting through the night air. I was so lost in thought that I didn’t notice how close they were until my shoulder bumped into the man.
“Entschuldigung,” I muttered automatically, the apology slipping out in Lana’s softer voice.
I took another step before something made me glance back. The woman’s laugh: familiar, melodic. The man’s posture, that slight hunch of his left shoulder.
My blood turned to ice.
Martin.
And on his arm, Sarah.
They walked together with the easy intimacy of people who belonged to each other, her hand resting on his forearm, his head tilted toward hers as she spoke. The golden café light caught her profile: still beautiful, still the woman I’d crossed an ocean for.
They hadn’t noticed me. Why would they? To them, I was just another young woman on a Berlin street, nobody they’d ever seen before.
Twenty meters further down the street, I stopped. My heart hammered against my ribs as I pressed my back against the cold brick wall. One, two, three… I counted to ten, each number a deliberate anchor against the chaos in my chest. Lana’s pulse stayed steady, even as mine scattered.
When I turned around, they were still there. Martin’s familiar slouch, Sarah’s animated gestures as she spoke. They moved with the comfortable rhythm of people in love.
I followed at a distance, staying in the shadows between streetlights. They turned onto Kollwitzstraße, toward Martin’s building. Of course. The same Altbau where I’d slept on his couch for a little over a month, where I’d written that pathetic goodbye note before disappearing into Lana’s body.
The heavy wooden door clicked shut behind them. During the day, it would just be latched, but after dark… the residents always made sure it was locked properly.
Light spilled across the street as someone emerged from the building opposite. An older man, keys jingling in his hand. Before I’d even decided, Lana was moving: a half-jog, a smile, the automatic confidence I couldn’t summon.
“Danke,” I breathed as I slipped past him through the closing door, my other hand fumbling convincingly for nonexistent keys. Just another resident coming home late.
The man nodded absently, already walking away.
My pulse thundered, but Lana was already listening… waiting for our next move.
~oO🐺Oo~
The Treppenhaus stretched above me, its ornate wooden banister spiraling upward through four floors of faded grandeur. High ceilings and tall windows cast shadows that danced in the dim lighting, the kind of architectural drama that made Berlin’s old buildings feel like stages for secrets.
My legs already ached at the thought of the climb. Four floors. In my old body, it would’ve been a trudge: too many beers, too little breath.
But Lana moved differently.
She took the stairs two at a time, her feet silent on the worn stone steps. No breathlessness, no burning in her thighs. Just fluid motion carrying us upward through the building’s spine while my pulse continued hammering against my ribs.
I told her to slow down. She didn’t. The command hung uselessly between thought and motion.
At the top landing, a simple metal door marked the entrance to the roof. Dachluke, the kind of utilitarian addition that broke the building’s nineteenth-century elegance.
Lana’s hand slipped into my jacket pocket, fingers finding the crude lockpicks I’d borrowed from Kemal a few days ago. I’d forgotten they were there.
She worked the tools with surprising precision, feeling for the mechanism’s give. A gentle twist, pressure applied just so, listening for the subtle clicks that meant progress.
The final tumbler clicked. A sound so small it felt dangerous to notice.
Cool night air rushed across my face; my heart kept racing.
The rooftop opened into a panorama of Prenzlauer Berg’s distinctive skyline. Brick chimneys jutted up like sentinels against the clouded night, their shapes broken by satellite dishes and the occasional solar panel. The neighborhood’s Altbau buildings stretched in neat rows, their uniform height creating a gentle rolling landscape of red-tiled roofs and dormer windows.
Lana turned slowly, scanning the terrain with predatory focus. Streetlights carved golden rectangles through the darkness below, illuminating patches of tree-lined streets and the distant glow of Kastanienallee’s late-night establishments.
There. Two buildings over.
Martin’s Altbau stood out for reasons my memory supplied: the slightly newer brickwork where war damage had been repaired, the peculiar angle of the fire escape. Third floor, corner apartment.
The blue curtains were unmistakable, even in the dim light filtering up from the street.
As if summoned by our attention, the window slid open with a soft scrape. Sarah appeared in the frame, her silhouette sharp against the warm light spilling from the room behind her.
She paused there, breathing the night air, just as she always had. Twenty years of shared nights, and she still needed those few minutes at the open window before sleep.
My chest tightened with something dangerously close to longing. Cold air filled her lungs, not mine.
~oO🐺Oo~
Movement flickered behind Sarah’s silhouette. Martin filled the space beside her, his hands settling around her waist with the easy familiarity of repetition.
He buried his face in her neck, and even from this distance, I could see the gentle press of his lips against her skin. Not urgent. Not desperate. Practiced.
Sarah melted into his touch, her head tilting to give him better access. When she turned in his arms, their mouths met without hesitation, her arms lifting to circle his neck like she’d done it a thousand times before.
My hands gripped the roof’s edge until my knuckles went white.
My Sarah.
Twenty years of marriage, and now she moved into Martin’s arms with a contentment I hadn’t seen in the final years of our relationship. The easy intimacy spoke of months, maybe longer. How many nights had I crashed on his couch while they…
The timeline shifted in my head, rearranging itself into something uglier. Had this started before she filed for divorce? Before she called me a shell of the man she’d married?
Or had Martin simply been waiting, patient and kind, for the pieces of our wreckage to settle?
The bitter taste of betrayal flooded my mouth, but underneath it lurked something worse: the realization that they looked right together.
Sarah lifted her arms above her head. Her dress lifted up, around her waist, then around her shoulders, up over her head. And before I could register what was happening, she was undressed.
My pulse hammered.
No…
Lana’s voice cut through the static in my head.
Let’s go, Alan.
I couldn’t move. Or maybe I didn’t want to.
Sarah was still in front of the window, kneeling down. In the dim light, Lana could make out her head bobbing up and down. Martin’s silhouette fills up the window frame. Arms forward, bracing himself against the glass.
The same window I’d stared at countless mornings, nursing hangovers on his couch. The same apartment where I’d collapsed after she threw me out, where Martin had offered quiet sympathy and cheap beer.
My vision tunneled. Twenty years reduced to this: watching my ex-wife blow my friend in the window of the apartment that had sheltered me.
Alan! Lana’s voice again, sharper now.
My legs wouldn’t respond. I couldn’t move, but my lungs clawed for air. Every rational thought screamed to leave, to preserve what dignity remained. But something darker held me there, forcing me to witness the final desecration of everything I’d once believed about my life in Berlin.
Time blurred. When my vision sharpened again, Martin had disappeared from the frame.
Sarah remained.
Naked. Still. Her silhouette was perfectly outlined against the warm glow of the apartment.
A shiver ran through my spine, at once cold and burning.
I knew that body. Every curve, every small imperfection she’d worried over, and I’d kissed away. The way her left breast sat slightly higher than her right. The small scar below her navel from childhood surgery. How she’d cross her arms when she felt exposed, even after twenty years together.
But now she stood unguarded, comfortable in her skin in a way she’d never been with me toward the end.
I remembered her smell: that mix of lavender shampoo and something uniquely Sarah that would cling to our pillowcases. How she’d steal the covers every night, then curl against my back when the cold woke her. The way she’d hum off-key while making coffee, completely unconscious of the habit that had once driven me to distraction.
Christ, what I wouldn’t give to hear that tuneless humming again.
Sarah shifted, one hand trailing along the window frame. Even from here, I could see how relaxed she was, the contentment I’d spent our final years failing to give her.
Alan…
Lana’s voice felt distant now, muffled by the weight of everything I’d lost.
When I looked up again, Martin was back in the frame.
Standing behind Sarah, his hands gripping her hips with confidence. She had her arms braced against the window frame, her body angled forward, offering herself to him completely.
Her hips rocked back and forth in a rhythm that spoke of desperate need. Each thrust drove her forward against the glass, her breasts bouncing with the force of their bodies colliding. The motion was hypnotic, primal, and utterly without shame.
Sarah’s head tilted back, her mouth falling open in what I knew was a moan of pleasure. Even through the distance and glass, I could see it in the looseness of her body: the surrender, the way she pushed back to meet each of Martin’s movements with hungry desperation.
A bitter knot twisted in my stomach, sour and unrelenting.
They moved together like they’d choreographed this dance, his larger frame dwarfing hers as he drove into her from behind. Sarah’s hands flattened against the window, her fingers splayed wide for leverage, her spine arching in that way that used to drive me wild when it was my hands on her body.
Alan, please…
Lana’s voice cut through the static, pleading.
Don’t do this to yourself.
But I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Couldn’t stop cataloging every detail of their intimacy. The way Martin’s head dropped forward, probably whispering something against her neck that made her arch deeper. How Sarah’s legs trembled with the effort of maintaining her position as he took her harder, faster.
This is torture.
She was right. Every second of watching carved another piece out of whatever remained of my dignity. But I stayed frozen on that rooftop, a voyeur to the destruction of my old life.
Martin’s pace quickened. Sarah’s movements became more frantic, her head thrown back as she chased her release. When her orgasm hit, even from this distance, I could see the way her entire body went rigid, then melted against the glass.
They stayed connected for long moments afterward, Martin’s arms wrapped around her waist, holding her upright as the aftershocks ran through her.
Alan…
Finally, mercifully, they moved away from the window. The light dimmed.
I remained on the rooftop, my hands still gripping the edge, my entire body shaking with something that felt like grief.
Twenty years. And she’d never looked at me the way she’d just looked at him.
~oO🐺Oo~
I slumped against the chimney stack, the cold brick pressing into my spine through the thin fabric of my dress. The rough texture grounded me, a sharp contrast to the numbness spreading through my chest.
In my mind, that relentless analyst wouldn’t stop replaying what I’d witnessed. Frame by frame, like reviewing surveillance footage. The way Sarah’s body had responded to Martin’s touch with an eagerness I’d forgotten existed. How long had they been together? Had she been thinking of him during those final months of our marriage, when our bedroom had become a battlefield of silence and rejection?
The same hollow ache I’d felt when she’d asked for the divorce settled in my stomach. That moment when she’d sat across from our kitchen table— our table and delivered the verdict with clinical precision. You’ve become a shell of the man I married, Alan.
I’d thought she meant professionally. The unemployment, the rejection letters, the slow erosion of my confidence. But watching her with Martin, seeing that raw hunger in her movements, I understood she’d meant something deeper. Something I’d failed to see or refused to acknowledge.
Twenty years of marriage, and she’d never moved like that for me. Not even in the beginning.
Each replay made it worse. The analyst in me catalogued every detail, every gesture that spoke of comfort and familiarity between them. This wasn’t new. This wasn’t rebound sex or loneliness. This was a relationship with roots, with history I’d been blind to.
Alan.
Lana’s voice, soft and careful.
You’re hurting yourself.
“She looked happy.” The words came out cracked, barely audible against the Berlin night.
I know.
“Happier than… than she ever looked with me.”
That doesn’t make this your fault, Alan.
But it did, didn’t it? I’d driven her away through neglect, through becoming exactly what she’d accused me of being… a shell. And Martin had been there to catch what I’d let slip through my fingers.
Alan. Lana’s voice grew firmer. Let’s go home.
I dragged myself upright, my legs feeling unsteady beneath me. The city lights blurred and smeared across my vision, creating streaks of amber and white that seemed to mirror the tears I refused to acknowledge.
We made our way back toward the roof access door.
The Berlin skyline stretched endlessly around us.
I wanted to fall. Lana wouldn’t let me. Each step felt monumental… walking away from the last tangible piece of who I used to be. The man who’d been married to Sarah, who’d had a career, who’d had purpose.
My breath came in short puffs, and I realized I was shaking. Not from the cold, though the wind cut through my jacket. This was something deeper, a tremor that started in my chest and radiated outward until even my fingertips felt unsteady.
Behind us, Martin’s apartment stood silent, hiding its secrets behind soft, blue curtains.
