This is Chapter 2 of the short story Silence in Time. Only on Steemit!

Please read Chapter 1 to catch up. For the time challenged of us, here's a recap of the story for us -

Recap: Some time in the near future, W, a woman in her mid-thirties, is a master assassin. She operates out of an underground bunker at a remote location, which houses sci-fi level paraphernalia. She is also a master of disguise, and dresses up casually for a mission. She enters a hotel late at night, steals the key card from the housekeeper, infiltrates a hotel room and is about to assassinate its tenant...

...but suddenly collapses to the ground. It's as if she fainted out of the blue.

Silence in Time - Chapter 2

W is still on the floor, passed out. Even her fall was absolutely silent, and the target is still sleeping.

About thirty seconds later, W wakes up. She is shocked to find a silenced pistol in her hand and has no idea where she is or how she got there!

W has had a complete memory blackout. It's a pure case of retrograde amnesia - she has no memories whatsoever from before the collapse. As is the case with retrograde amnesia, she can recall how to do things - her skills, but nothing about her person or world. So, with her sharp instincts intact, she does not panic. Calmly, she picks up the pistol and walks out of the room. She takes the elevator down and strolls out of the hotel and to a quiet, solitary alleyway.

Methodically, W surveys all material she has on hand. It's just a pistol, a dress, and eight dollars in cash. Like her own private investigator, she sets out on a journey to discover who she was.

She lays down the facts - to her it seems pretty clear that she was out to murder someone, but passed out of, perhaps, fear. It was this shock that caused her to lose all her long term memory up to the point.

But she looks at the pistol - it is a work of art custom designed to fit her hand. Her instincts tell her that she designed it - so she couldn't have been a stranger fearful of weapons and murder. Surely, the amnesia was not due to a shock.

Back on track, she contemplates the next step. She can't go to the police - it's obvious she was committing a first degree crime. So she starts by visiting an internet café. She takes a picture with the webcam and reverse searches the internet. No results at all. She checks up her fingerprint against the public database. Nope. Nothing.

Next, she tracks down the dress maker. It's a wildly mass produced product at a departmental store and they have no logs of customers. They can't tell W when her dress was bought or by whom.

Throughout her day, she discovers several things about herself - an extreme proficiency at pickpocketing, manipulating people, computer hacking, to name a few.

It's all starting to make sense. It may be disturbing for someone with a fresh mind, but she knows - she can feel it - she was a spy, a saboteur or an assassin.

(to be continued)