The Compound

2011

It was now March and exams were two days away so Xander decided to forego his usual 8 o'clock run and stay in to study with some books he had retrieved from the library. He turned on the surveillance monitor and noticed that he had never watched Fiona at this point of the day. He had begun to take comfort in his lack of findings. There was nothing suspicious about her activities and it seemed like the instructors must have been acting on inaccurate Intel. He habitually watched her from the camera affixed to the center light of the ceiling fan. It showed her red locks bounce over to her writing desk – a desk he had never seen her use.

Xander, at last, was struck curious, as she brandished a writing pad and pen. He peered closer and concluded she was drawing something similar to what he had seen etched over her wall. Xander's eyes fell back to The Republic. Something struck Xander on the feed that pried his eyes from the text and glued them back to the surveillance screen. Her shoulder was blocking his vantage point but he was able to see the twitching of her hand. They were short, assertive motions of the pen – not the smooth strokes used for drawing flowers. A chill ran through his extremities, something was not right.

She's writing something... I've been watching her for months and never have I seen her write. Is it a journal, a letter?

He bolted up and switched the central feed to the desk lamp camera, where he could have a better vantage point. From this view he could see that she was in fact writing. He couldn't see the entirety of the message but he could see the last few lines from his camera's angle. Xander focused on the letters and rendered a reproduction of them directly onto the wood of his coffee table. She completed the letter, folded it and placed it in an envelope. It hadn't dawned on Xander until he looked at what he had replicated. When his eyes lowered to what was scrawled out on his coffee table - he was struck senseless.

It read:

1900 hours – Xander finishes dinner and studies in the library for upcoming finals

2000 hour – Xander doesn't take his evening jog and retires for the evening

No intimate contact made.

Xander could not believe his eyes, he rubbed his eyes but the letters would not change and neither would their meaning. He wiped his face, pulling down his cheeks as he reviewed the message's implications.

Fiona is tracking my movements. Not only is she a double but she is spying on me. I'm her target, just as she is mine.

The realization was difficult to grasp.

But then the hardest question surfaced.

No intimate contact made? Has she been playing me this whole time?

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