The Audi darted through traffic with a practiced hand. To the cars passing by it looked as if the woman inside were talking to herself, but then in the world of hands-free cell phones that wasn't really unusual.
"Listen to me, we need to get a monitor out to Dr. Kleinmann's site next week, or we won't have his data in time for the interim analysis. Is that too difficult to understand?"
Christiana disconnected her phone with a huff and wished fervently that she had a handset to slam down. She compensated by tapping the accelerator to make up for lost time. Christiana was a project manager at Genentor Pharmaceuticals and she was very good at what she did. She pushed herself and her team hard for the chance at taking a swing at getting a new treatment for breast cancer into the market.
Unfortunately, being that driven left very little time for much of a social life. Six months ago, she would have happily been staying in the office until 9pm or later to catch the morning (Kyoto-time) teleconference with the East Asian team. Her boss had rearranged her priorities since that time however, fearing that she would burn out before the last big clinical trial could be completed. So Christiana had slipped back into the dating pool after a long absence, and since it was work-mandated, she swam right for the deep end with gusto. All of her colleagues at the office agreed that the change had sanded down some of her rougher personality traits.
She was running late tonight. Late for her next date. The thirty-three year old pulled her sedan into her flat's parking garage and slipped out of the vehicle. A chirp from the car's security system and the soft click-click-click from her heels echoed through concrete chamber. Christiana pulled out her blackberry to check her email as she rode the elevator up to her floor.
She checked her watch as the door to her apartment swung open and realized that she had time for a quick bath to get ready. The soak would probably help her soothe her jangled nerves, she thought. Setting down the armor (cell phone, blackberry, two pagers, and laptop bag) of her corporate shell, she unbuttoned her suit coat and started to slip out of her clothes. Moments later, a white silk blouse joined the jacket on the bed. Soon enough, wisps of steam floated out from underneath the closed bathroom door.
Later, the curly haired brunette sat at her dressing boudoir; nude and pink from the bath. The brownstone from across the street reflected in the mirror in front of Christiana. Her graceful hands were spreading a dollop of sweet-scented apricot lotion over the rounded curve of her tummy.
Christiana smiled as she viewed herself in the mirror. The professional woman had developed a bit of a disdain for convention through the course of her life. Indeed, she could never have risen so quickly at Genentor without coloring outside the lines. A good deal of that trait came from her confident self image. She had the curves and voluptuousness of a woman in a Raphaelite painting, and she knew it. Granted, she did not match the modern stick figure body of a Victoria Secret model, but in some ways she was much rarer than that. Her beauty was smooth and full-bodied like an aged cognac.
A whisper of silk floated through the room as she pulled a black stocking up her leg. She caressed the pink skin which marked the line where the silk road ended above her knee. Quickly, the stocking's mate adorned the other leg. With another smile, she piled her chestnut ringlets above her head and thought about the coming date with her lover.
Her reverie was broken, as she stared for a moment at the image in the mirror. Its motions were oddly disconnected and out of synch with her own. It was as if someone were on the other side of the glass was pantomiming her movements - always a split second behind. Christiana gasped and jumped back with a start on her bench as her reflective twin gave a big Cheshire cat smile. The woman in the mirror blew Christiana a kiss as it abandoned the pretense of following her lead.
Christiana reached out a trembling hand as she tried to prove that she wasn't having a breakdown. The brown-haired girl could feel the cold hardness of the glass underneath the pads of her fingertips. Her reflection was giggling sweetly in such a way as to cause her breasts to jiggle softly. The doppelganger seemed to be mocking Christiana with a teasing 'I-know-something-you-don't' type of look.
With a frustrated snarl, Christiana's deep brown eyes paused, squinted, and challenged the doppelganger. Her twin matched the look; joining Christiana in a joust of wills. The ice queen project manager realized that her twin's eyes had a hard edge of something sinister about them. She was staring at something dark, and not knowing what it was terrified her.
