Chapter 1

Agnes sat on the edge—you know that part of the windowsill where you almost fit, but half your butt hangs out. She looked straight onto Eighth Avenue. Cold. So cold she could draw hearts on the glass if she breathed hard enough on it. Hearts, stars, circles, all the shapes you loved to trace when you were a kid. She remembered that feeling of joy and freedom and believing that anything you wanted to be was possible, and that if you simply thought it, it would magically appear.

Looking down from above her fifteen-floor apartment made the city unimportant and foreign to her. The lights flickered on the wet pavement, the taxis and Ubers stopped and started with new fares, and people kept walking—silently, no sound, just graphics in front of her. It had not stopped raining for a month. The Atlantic ocean had risen above the shorelines, and life still lacked some meaning for Agnes. Warnings had been issued for all five boroughs of New York City. Tsunami waves had started to develop, and most advancements and work on the city had been paralyzed. Entire neighborhoods had been evacuated, and all she could think about was the man she had fallen in love with who had asked her to leave New York and go find him back in London.

He was like her: a creature changed by life, impermeable, and iron-willed. Someone off the grid. He had made her find Saint Agnes inside of herself, and she, in turn, had changed his life. The two spies, after realizing they were in love, had to separate in order to stay alive. Life in London as a 00 was not at all glamorous. There are no late-night lingerie dances with a wine bottle and a roaring fire, no fancy dinners and jewelry boxes waiting for you on your nightstand. It was grueling, painful, and mind-breaking work. Most agents did not survive for more than ten years. They either got killed, disappeared, and never returned, or, maybe, if you were lucky, you found something more in life, such as love.

But the thing was they were not real people. They had no fixed identity, no one passport, no one way of waking up and driving to work. The night Agnes fled London, he had promised he would wait for her find him, and they would leave together. HQ had been compromised. All 00s were on alert, and she had gone into deep cover. Only the people she thought were transient had connected to the deepest part of her being. Agnes was once a little girl who dreamed of adventures on the island of Puerto Rico, pretending to be a soldier with her brother while running their bikes past the lines her mother had invisibly drawn for them. Agnes, one day, got lost and needed to be found again. This is how she became, and chose, to be a 00.

A long time ago, Agnes had gone off the grid. Nobody knew anything about her, not even her family. She had disappeared for almost three years. She had driven to California and lost all contact with everybody she ever knew. What triggered her was an explosion of her family life. After watching her mother pack her bags and seeing her father accept the accusations of cheating, she realized there was no one you could trust in this world. She actually paid for her mom’s plane ticket out, a one-way ticket, and poof. Gone. Agnes didn’t know how much this moment had marked her and how she ran, ran far away, because that is what she knew. That was what was familiar to her. Even before that moment, when she was a little girl growing up in the now underwater island of Isla Bonita, she always had the urge to run, run far away from her home, to protect herself, to be free. Something inside of her was evolving, and she didn’t trust people. Not even her parents.

The rain hit the window, and she saw her own reflection. Thin, pale, beautifully tired. Her bed was unmade with her white sheets crumpled up. She craved a cigarette although she had quit years ago. Her black tights, oversized fluffy mint sweater, and wool socks shrouded her from the dry emptiness of that apartment. She had bought the minimal requirements needed to be considered a regular person, go to a regular job, and sleep normally: a bed, dresser, chair, and mirror. Agnes had been contracted by a real estate company to work in the newly acquired luxury building in the outskirts of Queens. It was fitting; she had worked undercover operations in Russia, Israel, and Paris. Most of the residents were old Orthodox Russian couples and Consulate expats. She was right at home. It was an odd line of work—hard and unrewarding— yet, there was a touch of magic when those residents saw her talent of reading them, giving them what they needed, and still playing a game. She made everybody happy but always felt out of place.

She lived alone in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. No pets, no roommates, and no boyfriend. Agnes had been alone for a long time, and she had liked it that way until she met him.

Agnes touched the windowpane with her fingers. She did not let herself think too much about him, or she would lose her mind. He had kissed her with love, and she had promised to go back, and she trusted him. But, after what happened, how could she go back and stay alive?

“What am I doing here?” asked Agnes out loud.

She yawned and stood up, stretching her arms up and letting out a loud exhalation as she moved across her bedroom and into the hallway. Long brown hair, white porcelain skin, and thin with curvy hips and strong legs, Agnes had not relied on her beauty until she realized she had it. Maybe if she had thought herself as pretty sooner in her life, she would not have become a spy. Perhaps a handsome man in her real estate company would have fallen in love with her, seen her worth, and asked her to dinner. There was a part of her that wanted that. One man in her office was quite striking, and she was tired, tired of waiting, of playing the stone goddess, always patient in some pathetic long distance love affair. Agnes never had real love, only men who abused her soul and used her weakness to their advantage. Her heart had taken a beating.

She stopped and put her hand to her forehead. A blinding pain came over her. A memory flashed in her brain, making her dizzy and fall on the floor. She moaned, but she felt like she was falling into a black pit full of freezing cold water. The memory of where she had been and what had happened to her made her cover her eyes, and down she went. Her body hit the floor like a wooden block, and no one knew she was unconscious… A bloody beating that had almost killed her.