by E. E. Giorgi
My heart sinks. “N—”
“Shh!” Lukas stops me before I can utter my disbelief.
“Your punishment shall be seven days of Wela.”
Tahari walks behind Athel and out of our screen. Athel jerks his head and the video shakes imperceptibly. I hear Tahari’s voice from the air vent and yet what I see on the screen makes me imagine him behind my back, his threatening voice booming behind my ears.
Wela! Athel will be put out for seven days!
“You’ll also be banned from any future participation to the Kiva. You will always be reminded of your betrayal to the Mayake people.”
At the back, Mom yelps, yet she says nothing.
Uli stands up from his chair. “Tahari, I think this is too much. He’s just a kid. You didn’t give him a chance to explain his actions.”
“He was given the chance to explain himself and he lied!” Tahari replies.
Athel looks down at the tip of his boots.
What are you thinking, Athel? Why are you not saying anything? This is unfair!
Tahari’s voice comes muffled, then the video goes out.
I blink at the blue screen flickering before my eyes and slap Lukas’s shoulder. “It broke. I can’t believe it. Can’t you fix the screen? We’re missing the most import—”
“The screen is fine,” he says. “They just put Athel out. They deactivated him and started the Wela.” And then he looks at me, his face paler than ever. “We need to find Wes. They’re going to come after us next.”
* * *
Niwang is the most horrific punishment. People sentenced to Niwang are deactivated and disconnected from their batteries until all life is drained from their body. But the same threat comes with every Wela. Once deactivated, they take you away to a place where you could be forgotten and never reactivated again. Family and friends are expected to show up at the end of the Wela and claim you back, but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes people are too ashamed to do that. Years of obedience and acceptance have made the Mayakes more resilient to loss than shame.
I charge down the stairs, hot tears rolling down my cheeks.
This isn’t happening. Can’t be happening.
I slam through the fire door at the end of the stairs and run down the hallway toward the auditorium. The Kiva doors swing open and Mom comes out sobbing, followed by the muffled voices of the men and women still inside.
I sneak behind Mom, squeeze her arm, and drag her around the corner into a side corridor.
Mom flinches, her face corrugated in a million fears.
“You’ve got to do something, Mom,” I hiss. I shake her shoulders and stare into her face until I see it: the shame, the fear, welling up in my mom’s eyes.
“What have you done?” she whispers.
When you see fear, you’ll recognize it. But you won’t understand it.
My dad’s voice, from a long time ago.
Learn to fear, Akaela, even if you can’t feel it. You’ll be in danger if you don’t.
Why, Dad? How can I be harmed by not being fearful?
Dad’s handsome face looking into the dying sun.
Because those who don’t fear can’t be controlled.
I step backwards, away from my own mother. I see it now, the fear that controls her. She looks over her shoulder and nibbles the hook of her prosthesis. Would she be capable of giving me up? Just like she is incapable of defending Athel, her own son? Does she even wonder whether he’s been unjustly condemned?
I shake my head. “Please don’t do this to yourself.”
She tilts her head and mouths, “What have you done?” No sound comes out of her throat. She turns away and vanishes down the hallway.
I’ve done nothing, Mom, I think. But she can’t hear my thoughts. She wouldn’t hear them even if I yelled my head off.
The doors to the Kiva Hall swing open again and the Kiva Members start filing out. I hide around the corner and flatten against the wall. One by one, they all leave the big auditorium: Uli first, then the old Kiva Member who harassed me about Ash, then the man named Tahari. Many more come out, heads shaking and lips voicing thoughts of shock and incredulity.
“We need to go back to the roots of our people. Trust and honesty are the pillars,” I hear Tahari say as his steps resonate down the hallway.
“Trust and honesty,” a few others echo behind him.
And then silence settles again. Empty silence where a long, dead corridor looks like an endless prison.
Where do I go now? Where?
Athel.
Nobody took Athel out of the Kiva Hall.
* * *
Wes paces back and forth between the molded walls of the sixtieth floor. The wind howls inside and makes the vines sway. There’s no moon tonight, hidden behind a thick veil of clouds, leaving the abandoned wing of the Tower in complete darkness.
Wes sighs and waves his long, bony arms in the air. “We can’t hide forever!”
“What else do you propose we do?” Lukas challenges him, his eyes, as always, fixed on his data feeder. Blue light from the screen washes on his face.
I sit in a corner and ruffle Kael’s feathers. When I whistled, even wounded and tired, he left his perch on our windowsill and flew to me. You’re like me, Kael. We know no fear. That’s why we’re free.
Too bad it comes at a price.
“They caught Athel red-handed,” I say, my voice bitter. “Even if we go talk to them, they won’t believe us.”
I saw it in my mother’s eyes. I see it so clearly, now, what Athel had tried to tell me, why he knew there was no point in talking to them. Not even Uli.
Uli was there, too. He said a few words in Athel’s favor and then gave up.
Wes starts pacing again. Lukas thumbs through his data feeder. The wait kills me.
Wait for what?
Nothing’s going to happen unless we make it happen.
I pet Kael and then stand up. I lean from the ledge through the broken walls and inhale, the wind carrying the scent and chant of the Kawa River. The Tower has finally grown quiet. No more voices, no more children crying, no more people chattering. Only the distant snore from one of the floors below.
They should be sleeping by now.
Kael hops to my feet. I pick him up, croon softly in his ears, and let him fly back home. I watch him spiral in the sky above, then dip down toward the lower floors and vanish.
“I’m going,” I announce.
“Where?” Wes asks, his eyes shining in the darkness.
“To wake up Athel,” I reply, crossing the floor in wide strides.
Lukas jumps to his feet. “Wait, what? Are you nuts? There’s no such—no. That is so wrong!”
I turn and stare at him, his gaunt face a blue ghost under the light from the data feeder. “Right. Let’s just stay here and do nothing then. In the meantime, our fathers are in no less danger than before while Athel is incapacitated for a week.”
Lukas swallows, the hint of an Adam’s apple bobbing up and down his long neck. “I didn’t say that. It’s just—nobody has ever dared break a Wela. It’s unprecedented.”
“In this case, it’s unfair, too.”
Wes’s bulging eyes move back and forth between Lukas and me. “Aren’t you scared?” He says. “I mean, we’re already in trouble as it is. If you get caught doing this…”
“Besides,” Lukas interjects. “You wake him up and then what? Once they find out, they’re going to issue a Niwang this time. For both you.”
“Exactly,” I reply. “So I wake him up and then we leave.”
Lukas blinks, Wes gapes.
I slap a hand against my side and exhale. “I can’t believe you’re such cowards,” I say. And with that, I leave the floor and stomp down the stairs.
“Akaela! Wait!” Lukas comes running after me, slinging the satchel across his shoulders.
“You’re not leaving me here by myself, are you?” Wes calls.
* * *
I stare at the Ki
va doors, black and ominous, the same doors no Mayake can cross until the age of eighteen. Unless they’ve done something wrong, of course, in which case they shall enter with their head down, only to never be admitted again.
There are no guards, no alarms, no locks. They aren’t needed. The locks are inside the mind. I raise my hand and touch the black metal, cold against my skin. Wes and Lukas are behind me.
“Are you sure about this?” Wes whispers. “We could be damned forever.”
“Look who’s complaining,” Lukas snaps. “If they find us, with those legs of yours, you’re the only one with a real chance at not getting caught.”
He lowers his eyes and mumbles, “I’d never leave you guys behind.”
“Nobody’s leaving anyone behind,” I say. “And we’re not leaving Athel behind either.”
And with that, I push the doors open.
Part II
Chapter Twelve
Akaela
I step inside and let the light from the hallway carve the space in front of me, my shadow a long ghost stretching between concentric rows of seats. I hear cautious steps behind me: Lukas first, his thumbs squeaking on the screen of his data feeder, and then Wes, his titanium blades dragging against the linoleum floors.
The door closes behind us, the click echoes in the empty space.
Darkness envelops us.
For a moment, all I hear is our shallow breathing.
Then Lukas shines his data feeder and I squint, watching silently as he sweeps the blade of light across the auditorium. The space that looked so immense through Athel’s eyes seems to have shrunk, carved one bit at a time by the beam. Arching rows of seats hiccup all the way down to the semicircular stage, the chairs where only a few hours earlier the Kiva Members had been sitting now disarrayed and empty. Lukas points the data feeder to the podium and then across the black screen hanging at the back, its gash looking like an eerie grin teasing us.
Wes swallows loudly. “I don’t see Athel.”
“I know he’s out here somewhere,” I reply. “That’s what they’d do: they wouldn’t just issue seven days of Wela. They would leave Athel out here for everyone to see.”
Public shame is the worst of punishments for the Mayake people.
“We better get moving then,” Lukas says. He starts down the central aisle, the feeble beam of light from his data feeder bobbing with his steps. As our footfalls resonate across the long hall, I spot things lurking in the darkness, rapid movements at the periphery of my eyes. I turn and see nothing.
“I think I just saw somebody,” Wes whispers.
Lukas turns and shines the light across the hall, from the vaulted, peeling ceiling, all the way down to the double doors we came from.
“No,” he declares. “It’s just your imagination.”
“But I saw something!” Wes protests. “What if they’re hiding?”
I saw it too, I think, but refrain from saying anything.
“They wouldn’t be hiding,” Lukas replies in his usual condescending tone. “If they did guard the place, they wouldn’t even let us in. Akaela’s right. They don’t need any guards because they know nobody would ever dare this much.” He swallows, tunes down his voice, and adds, “That makes us either very brave or complete fools.”
“Brave,” I say, stomping all the way down the middle aisle and climbing the stairs up to the stage. Lukas’s light follows me. Behind the podium, the row of empty chairs is misaligned, the stern faces of the Kiva Members now gone, yet still imprinted in my mind.
The way they looked down on Athel, despising him.
How dare you steal, Athel?
How dare you break the sanctity of the Kiva Hall, Akaela?
The voices are in my head, my own thoughts haunting me, yet they feel so real I find myself turning. Lukas and Wes stare at me wide-eyed, their cheeks carved out of the darkness by the dim reflection from the data feeder.
“Athel’s not here on the stage either,” Wes says. “You were wrong, Akaela. They must’ve taken him away.”
“They never took him out of the auditorium,” I reply. Our whispers echo eerily, as though somebody is taunting us, repeating every word we say.
“Technically,” Lukas chimes in, “you weren’t here immediately after they put him out.”
“Technically,” I retort, grabbing his arm and redirecting the light to the back of the stage, “it’d be hard to move a limp person around and not be noticed.”
Lukas shrugs. “They could’ve used some secret passage.”
I bite my lip. Dang it, I hadn’t thought of that. “Fine. Either we find Athel or we find the passage they used to take him away.” I drag Lukas toward me and make him shine the light on the black screen hanging at the back. A patch of gray, peeling wall emerges from the gash that splits the screen in the middle.
I wish I had Athel’s eyes right now and could see in the dark. The blackness around Lukas’s dim beam feels ominous. A sudden longing for my brother takes hold of me, my big brother who’s always been there for me, my big brother determined to rescue our father.
There’s no going back now, I think. We’re not leaving until we find Athel.
I crouch down and pull up the hem of the black screen. Lukas slides his light underneath, but all there is to see is a white wall—chipped and moldy and faded by time. I crawl behind the screen, my hands groping the rugged texture of the cold stucco. I knock softly on the wall looking for a secret passage, the way I’ve seen Athel do every time we’ve gone exploring the abandoned wings of the Tower. A shadow breathes in my face and tickles my skin. Lukas ducks under the screen and shines the light in my eyes.
“Cobwebs,” he says, matter-of-factly.
He moves the light up and a sail of silvery strands hanging from the ceiling glimmers under the beam, between the wall and the black screen. Something flutters at the intrusive light and vanishes in a crack.
A bat, most likely, or a pigeon.
I slide along the wall and reemerge on the other side of the screen, plucking spider webs off my face.
“Find anything?” Lukas asks, shining the light once more all around the stage.
“No doors, no secret passages,” I reply gloomily.
The floorboards cave at the ends. They rattle under my steps.
“I think we should go now,” Wes whimpers, bracing himself as though he were cold.
I get down on all fours and slide my fingers between the planks. “I think we should look harder,” I retort.
I grope, poke, and stomp but find no manhole or door handle. Lukas sways the light one more time across the empty rows of seats. Every time the beam sweeps through I swear the place looks different, as if taunting hands were rearranging minor details here and there. Was the seat with the cracked back really at the end of the third row? Wasn’t it two spots to the left instead? Wasn’t the big stain on the first chair instead of the second one?
“What kind of stage is this anyway?” Wes asks.
“Back when the Tower was still a hospital,” Lukas lectures us, “the auditorium was designed for seminars and conference meetings.”
“And now it’s become another symbol of absolute power,” I say.
A power you betrayed, tonight, Akaela. And for this, you shall be punished.
The voices in my head sound louder this time, and angrier. I want to yell back at the voices, but Wes grabs my arm and squeezes so hard my fingers go numb.
“Did you see that?”
Lukas shifts his data feeder. The light falls on an empty seat.
“I swear somebody was there a moment ago.”
Lukas sweeps the light one more time from left to right. I expect him to start his usual patronizing speech on how we’re being irrational and nobody could’ve entered the place without opening the doors, but instead he remains quiet. The light wavers over the empty rows of seats.
Wes leaps down the stage. “Shine the light all the way to the door,” he says. “I’m outta here.”
�
��What?” I protest. “We haven’t found Athel yet!”
“He’s obviously no longer here.”
Lukas’s beam follows him as he climbs the slanted floor up to the main doors, his shadow bobbing and growing against the peeling walls. The doors squeak gently as he pushes them open and then close behind him with an ominous click.
In the heavy silence that follows, I can hear every beat of my heart, every click of my battery, every tic of my processors.
“I can’t believe he’s leaving us like this!”
Lukas sighs then he too climbs down the stage. “He’s right, Akaela. There’s nothing here.”
I swallow, a lump forming in my throat and refusing to leave. “We’ve come here risking everything. We can’t leave without Athel.”
We’ve violated the very heart of the Mayake culture and traditions, disobeyed one of the most fundamental laws to save my brother, risking our own survival. And now Lukas and Wes turn their backs on me.
Lukas sits at the edge of the stage, his data feeder propped on his lap. The rest of the space falls into a darkness so thick, it’s almost palpable.
“If we leave now,” he says, “we won’t get caught.”
I stomp my foot, the sound almost comforting in the blackness surrounding us. “You’re not thinking about Athel.”
“Athel got himself into trouble.”
His words make me seethe. “He did it for our fathers! You know what? If you don’t have the guts to do this, then go ahead and leave. I’ll find Athel on my own.” I spin on my heels and once again face the black screen. Somehow I have a hunch that Athel is there, behind that wall.
I just have to find a way through.
I grope until I find the fabric again and pull it, with anger this time. The screen comes apart right along the gash in the middle. I stare at the uncovered white wall and, through the dim reflection from Lukas’s data feeder, I finally see it. A door ring, rusty and gnawed, partially covered by a drooping flap of peeling wallpaper.
I found something, I’m tempted to say, but Lukas is not even looking at me, too busy thumbing the screen of his data feeder.
