Lucy Chapter 9: Sleepwalking

Filed: Lucy @ 1:23pm on June 13, 2011 No comments yet! :(   Word Count: 642
This entry is part 9 of 9 in the series Lucy

Lucy

That evening, Catherine was sent home twice. Once to Lucy’s old apartment to collect clothes and bid farewell to her neighbours who might have been worried about her. A second time to her old apartment where she would continue her life as if nothing had happened.

She would have to make new friends and present herself as Lucy, a protégé of her former identity who inherited after her death, but soon enough, Catherine would move and found her new life doing whatever she could to live.

The first stop was simply enough for Catherine. She had been briefed on Lucy’s former life by Jim and knew enough about her neighbours to explain she was moving away.

Lucy had no close friends or family. The agency assured it. They only used people with little social contacts with private detectives always preying for new loners like Lucy.

Deep inside Catherine’s new body, Lucy mentally protested, knowing too well that she did have loved ones and people close to her but in more underground circles that a private investigator might not find.

She had no one who would drop at her apartment to look for her, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t missed. Sure, her particular former job was manned by volatile people who frequently moved on with their lives without any afterthought but it didn’t mean she was lonely.

Catherine picked up, with the help of Jim’s men, most of Lucy’s possessions she could find, leaving behind empty drawers and closets as well as a full fridge and pantry.

She didn’t find any of Lucy’s hidden possession and didn’t even pick up her diary badly hidden under the mattress along with her laptop, but Catherine didn’t mind.

She simply wanted enough clothes that fit her new body well enough to go shop for new ones, as well as a few personal effects more suited to her new age to pass like she was really that young. Some necklaces and earrings which didn’t predate the Vietnam war and a few paintings and picture frames which would make her room look like a new person inhabited her bedroom.

Lucy was thrilled that her high school diploma was retrieved, not such much because she would still have her old diploma, but rather because of what had been hidden inside the frame.

But to Catherine, Lucy looked like any other weak-minded girls who lived in the city and hoped to make it big while living on welfare or poor jobs. It never occurred to her to ask more questions about the life of girl she was about to live.

If never occurred to her that all that she knew might be wrong.

Catherine lived amongst millionaires. The common folk were weak and to be used.

So, that night, in her old bed, she slept the sleep of the just only worried because her husband wasn’t with her and would never be with her again.

She had not even bothered to properly fold and hang Lucy’s clothes: they would be thrown away in a few days anyway, so why bother?

But that night, while she was dreaming of growing old with her husband, Lucy woke up. For the first time since the operation, she was back in control of her body.

She immediately tapped the sub-dermal security system and wandered in an old flannel pyjama in the gigantic penthouse apartment, moving the memory card hidden in her diploma under one of the bathroom drawers, in case the old lady threw all of her things away.

Lucy wanted to explore the apartment, but Catherine would guide her over the next few days anyway. She preferred to do as little as possible each night to reduce the risks of detection.

Soon, she would make phone calls and plans, but until then, she would bid her time, gently singing back to sleep, to simply celebrate the fact that she was still alive and occasionally in control of her body.

Series Navigation«Lucy Chapter 8: Security SystemLucy Chapter 10: Learning the routine»

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