Aswan, Egypt, December 19, 2009, 1:40 pm. 

The air was thick and filled with cigarette smoke, suffocating Nadine. She was on the edge of freaking out. She didn’t understand what was happening. No one told her why she was arrested. “Please let me talk to my family. It must be a mistake,” Nadine begged the officer.

“You don’t look like a criminal, but what you’re facing puts you in big trouble,” the officer said, feeling the fear that came from her high-pitched voice. “Fine, one call.”

She got the phone on the desk and dialed her father’s number. “Help me, please, I’m at the police station in Aswan! come and—”

“Who is this?!” Murad said, surprised.

“—what… I’m Nadine!” she said, echoing her father’s surprised tone.

The officer noticed how bewildered she was; he took the phone from her hand and said, “Mr. Murad Azmi? I’m Gamal El Kareem, an investigation officer of the Aswan security directorate, your daughter is here—”

Murad interrupted him, “Officer, I don’t have a daughter.”

“—but she insisted that you’re her father and her ID has your name on it,” Gamal said, holding her ID between his fingers. The officer ended the call after a minute of humming from his end. He stood up and eyed Nadine quietly before heading outside the room. He told another officer to call the Cairo security directorate immediately, right after he slammed the door behind him.

2:30 pm.

Nadine was shaking her legs nervously and staring at her clenched fists. The officer opened the door and ordered the soldier to take her outside. “Where are you taking me?!”

“The head of the Cairo security directorate ordered you to get to Cairo now,” the officer said coldly. Nadine wanted to scream, but her voice didn’t come out. The soldier took her outside, and they walked to ride the police vehicle.

“What is happening to me!?” Nadine said to herself.

“What did you do?” the soldier said as he was locking the handcuffs. “They wanted you in Cairo now. They even ordered a special airplane to get you there as fast as possible.”

“I did nothing! I’m innocent.”

“They all say the same thing before getting thrown into prison,” the soldier said and eyed her suspiciously. He left her in the car and headed back to the station. Officer Gamal was standing in front of the vehicle talking on the phone, then rode the car.

“Officer, please tell me what is happening!” she begged. The officer looked away and told the driver to head to the airport. Nadine begged him again to tell her anything, yet he looked stern and angry. She gave up and rested her head on the window glass, looking at the road.

The vehicle was fast heading to the airport. The intense anxiousness filled the space of the car. Officer Gamal talked on the phone most of the ride in codes; not one actual sentence came out of his thin lips. He was watching Nadine through the side mirror, shooting her with disgusted looks and whispered curses.

Nadine was staring at the fast-moving ground. As the last curse came out of the officer’s mouth, she closed her eyes, wishing for anyone to tell her what was happening.

A soft breeze of wind hit her face — she frowned; all four windows were up, and the air conditioner was on, even if one window was down. It would bring hot wind, not a cold soft one — another soft breeze hit her again, yet this time followed by a sound of wings thrust.

She slowly opened her eyes; her pupils dilated, seeing what was before her. Floating on air on an invisible chair, moving fast in the police vehicle, and the handcuffs around her hands were gone. The thrust sound came again with the soft breeze slowly showing what caused it.

Golden strings floating in the air slowly shaped into an angelic golden bird. Eyes almond in shape and its gaze was an incandescent blue fire that astounded her to the core. Its wings were enormous, and its primaries were flaming in the same incandescent blue fire as its eyes. Its thrusts were getting stronger and stronger, hitting Nadine with an ice breeze. She hugged herself and bent her head down. The wind became unbearable for her shivering body. She wanted to scream for help, yet her voice couldn’t get out.

She felt something nudging her roughly. She clenched her hand tighter around herself. The nudge came back and felt like a punch in the shoulder. She shot her eyes open and found officer Gamal looking back at her with one hand over her shoulder.

“Was the ride so relaxing that you fell asleep?” he said with a clenched jaw and narrowed angered eyes. Nadine looked at him puzzled and then her eyes shifted to the window and saw that they had arrived at the airport.

Cairo, Egypt, December 19, 2009, 3:20 pm.

Nadine sat alone in the investigation room, shaking her legs, and rubbing her left balm with her right thumb. Nervous is a simple word to what she was feeling. The room was a small one with a big square mirror across from her who kept looking at the door next to it.

She took a deep breath and rested her elbows on a metal rectangle table across from her chair. She impatiently waited for anyone to tell her what was happening, but from the moment she landed in Cairo, everyone she saw on her way to the investigation room eyed her with curious yet intimidating eyes.

The door opened rapidly, causing Nadine’s breath to be suppressed inside her shaking lungs for a long second. A middle-aged prosecutor closed the door behind him. He locked eyes with Nadine, who stared back, then sat across from her.

A creepy smirk laid slowly on his face, making her breathe harshly. “I will ask you some questions and I want you to answer honestly” — she nodded her head and looked at his now steady poker face — “good, now, tell me your real name.”

“Nadine Azmi.” — what a dumb question, she thought — he was already holding her ID between his hands. A smile crawled into the right corner of her mouth. The prosecutor looked oddly familiar. He reminded her of someone. His bushy eyebrows pulled down together in an almost comedic way and the tips of his ears turned to a soft darker shade of red.

A whispered chuckle escaped her lips when her mind reminded her of his resemblances. It was a manga character who had identical reactions to the prosecutor. Both had bushy eyebrows and overgrown black mustache, and the same stating-the-obvious-type of questions. The character had a memorable name, yet she could only remember his last name, Mori.

The prosecutor sighed and his eyes shifted darkly with an impatient look and the creepy smirk appeared again on his lips, covered slightly with his black mustache. “I told you to answer honestly.”

“I did,” she said.

The prosecutor’s smile disappeared and said, “You need to stop before you get yourself in more trouble.”

“I don’t understand what you want me to say. That’s my real name.” She narrowed her eyes, truly bewildered by his meaningless question.

“No, it’s not. There is no one by this name,” he said firmly.

“I am!” Nadine said and felt a powerful sensation of anger rising inside her chest.

“We already checked your ID, your blood, and your fingerprint, you don’t exist in our system.”

“How is that even possible? So, what am I now? A ghost?” she shouted, not able to bottle up her angry sarcastic thoughts any longer. He looked at her sharply. She sighed and said, “I swear I don’t understand how I don’t exist in the system! Or why am I even here!”

“You are accused of espionage,” he said calmly, which made Nadine even more furious.

“Espionage!” — she moved her hair behind her ears and looked at him — “a minute ago, you said I don’t even exist in the system! And now I’m a spy! That makes little sense,” she intoned as if she were talking to a five-year-old.

He didn’t even blink. “We’re investigating your partner in another room and apparently, neither of you want to admit the truth,” he said, sounding like a machine repeating a programmed message.

“Partner… Who!?” she was practically screaming.

“He called himself Adam Magdy,” he said, resting his back and looking antagonistically at Nadine’s confused face.

“Adam…” Nadine was shocked why the prosecutor was accusing her of spying, and what brought Adam into all of this. “You’re mistaken, prosecutor! We have nothing to do with spying!”

He got up and told someone outside to get him a laptop. In seconds, he brought it to him. “Explain this footage.” Security footage showed Nadine and Adam in the middle of the night receiving two bags full of money from a black-suited man for information.

Nadine’s eyes widened in shock and confusion; the deadly information that they said was like threatening-national-security-type of deadly. “That’s… not… me,” Nadine said, narrowing her eyes.

“Your face is pretty obvious.” he paused the video and pointed at her face on the screen.

“I’m telling you that’s not me,” Nadine said, looking at him, then at the screen. “I don’t know any of this… I don’t even know how a citizen like me would ever know this type of information.”

He took a long breath, closed his eyes, and clenched his jaw, then said, “I tried to be calm and asked you nicely, but what are you facing here could lead to the death penalty, be smart and confess.”

“Execution! But I did nothing wrong. Why would I be a spy!!?” Nadine said with widened eyes and an astonished face.

He stared motionlessly right into her eyes. “Where have you been on the 16th of December?!” he yelled suddenly.

She was startled, blinking fast at his sudden change of mood. “I went to Dubai for several hours, then got back.”

“There are no records of you leaving the country,” he said in a lower tone. “We have been following you and Adam for months and we have all the evidence to prove you guilty, but we need your confessions to finish the entire picture.”

“No offense, but you’re hallucinating,” she said.

He banged both his hands on the table. “You think it’s funny! You’re one call away from being dead!”

“All your pieces of evidence are fake!! Don’t you know who I am? I’m the daughter of the Azmi family! We are well-known in the country! I want to call my father right now.”

“You already called him. No need to tell more lies. We know that you’re not his daughter.” Nadine couldn’t believe her father denied her existence. The door opened; it was another officer. “What is the update with him?” the prosecutor asked him, who also shared the same steady comedic face.

The officer eyed her disgustingly — They looked like robots, Nadine thought — “Nothing,” the officer answered, cutting Nadine’s thoughts.

The prosecutor shot Nadine the same disgusted look and said, “Did you show him the evidence?”

“I did. He said he doesn’t know how he got here,” the officer said and shrugged his shoulders. The prosecutor looked deeply into Nadine’s confused face and told the officer to bring Adam.