Yang Ru sat in the quiet of her office. The door was closed, the windows fogged over. She was left to wander the recesses of her mind. The voices were sharper now, especially after Mr. Liu Jianguo gave her more injections. The voices were hers, as if communicating across multiple channels. Each voice just a bit different than the others. The voices were hers and not hers at the same time. They calmed her, and they frightened her as well.

The voices tonight all said the same thing: Martian Sovereignty. War lead not necessarily to destruction, but, maybe, just maybe, a new era in human political dealings.

She thought the idea crazy, but it seemed to make sense and please her Alliance handler. She was afraid the whole thing would be like opening Pandora's Box or letting out the genie. She knew destruction was an inevitability of creation. The two went hand-in-hand.

Her mind then wandered to something else, something unrelated. She saw a Sudoku puzzle book on her desk with a handwritten note on top. She grabbed it and pealed the note from the puzzle book. The note read: "Thank you for a wonderful time last night, love. I am falling for you, and I hope you are falling for me."

The note melted away the voices, the distractions. The puzzle book took on new meaning and a newfound importance. She'd never been given something by a lover. She'd never been involved with another woman this long. They usually left her, or she left them behind, in order to find new challenges.

She opened the Sudoku book and began, in earnest, working out the first puzzle on the first page. Her mind quiet, and her heart beating slowly, yearning for her lover.

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