Chapter 1 THE PILL

She woke to the sound of water dripping,

The ceiling above her was a pale, water-stained yellow. Not hers. The smell of burnt coffee and something metallic curled around her senses. She sat up too fast, the motion sending black sparks across her vision.

The apartment was silent, except for the drip-drip-drip. A kitchen sink faucet, she realized. She didn't remember having a kitchen like that.

She didn't remember... anything.

A note sat on the table in front of her, written in neat, block letters:

Take your pill before 8 a.m. You'll need it.

Beside it, a single white capsule in a glass tumbler of water. No signature. No explanation.

Her first instinct was to throw it away. Instead, she checked the clock - 7:52 a.m.

Her stomach knotted. What if she needed it? What if it was poison?

She stared at the pill, heart thudding, until the decision made itself. She swallowed it dry.

And then it began.

The apartment fell away in a wash of light - blinding, searing - and she was standing in the middle of a crowded street. The air was wet with fog, voices calling out in a language she didn't know. Her fingers were clamped around a thick, bloodstained envelope.

"Run," a voice whispered behind her.

She spun, but the crowd had dissolved into shadowy blurs. The only clear shape was a figure in a red hood, watching from across the street.

The world tilted. A hand - not hers - shoved the envelope into a rusty mailbox. A flash of white teeth in the dark. Then the scene shattered like glass, and she was back in the kitchen, gasping.

The envelope was on the table. Real. Heavy in her hands.

Her breath came quick and shallow. Inside, she found a single Polaroid photograph: a man in a gray suit, lying in what looked like an alleyway. His eyes were open but wrong - too still, too glassy.

She turned the photo over. Four words, written in the same block letters as the note:

You were there too.

The room seemed to shrink around her. She dropped the photo like it burned, grabbed her jacket, and stumbled toward the door - but stopped.

On the inside of the doorframe, scratched into the paint, were six words:

Trust no one. Not even you.

Her legs felt like water. She didn't know her name. She didn't know this apartment. She didn't know the man in the photograph.

But someone did.

And they wanted her to remember - or forget - something worth killing for.