Late one night I got my chance—via a webcam I placed in a small crack in the wall, I was able to record the archivist inputting his long code. And via an equally small directional antenna, I copied the frequencies on the archivist’s access card. The next night I went in, found the investigation and sat down in the kitchenette of the homicide unit and started to read about the murder of a family. The report from the forensic technicians was as horrific as the medical examiner’s. Details that not only brought me closer to my parents and siblings, they brought me inside of them. The descriptions of myself, on the other hand, from the perspective of the police, I couldn’t take inside—it was as if I were looking at a photo of someone else. That was also when, sitting there late one night reading those files, I realized that the policeman who had carried me out of the apartment, who took care of me those first few weeks, who I’d thought about so many times without having a face or a name, that he was sitting in an office just a few doors away! Ewert Grens was the one who came to the apartment that day. I remembered him as so old, so I was sure he wasn’t working there anymore.

I wanted to know more about him.

The man I had trusted, who made sure I got a new home, a new world.

I went back down to the archive, searched for his name, and read all about his career. That was how I stumbled across Piet Hoffmann, in three very remarkable investigations during which Grens’s and Hoffmann’s paths crossed—and I realized this was exactly the person I needed. So I carried out a third burglary. I used the same already successful method, webcam and directional antenna, and I captured—just like in the restricted archive—Erik Wilson’s personal eight-digit code and the electronic information on his access card.

As expected, I found exactly what I needed in the safe.

All of the information about the criminal infiltrator project—the logbooks, intelligence reports, code names.

I spent another late night in the homicide unit’s kitchenette and read until I arrived at Wilson’s notes about Hoffmann’s plan to knock out a heavily armed MC gang all by himself—and I didn’t need to read more.

My name was Amelia, I left Hannah behind long ago, but that was when I really became myself again, Zana, completely.

—

She kicked the two bodies until she didn’t need to anymore, then went in to the Hoffmann family and sank onto the sofa in an empty spot between the boys. They were shaken, but more composed than she’d expected. They had their mother, they had each other.