by E. E. Giorgi
He doesn’t deserve to find Athel. I do.
I lean forward and brush my fingers along the ring. It’s cold, almost icy, and as soon as I touch it, all lights turn on. I squint, momentarily blinded by the sudden brightness.
“You’ve breached the most sacred of our rules, little girl,” the voice says, except this time I know it’s no longer in my head. This time the voice is real.
I turn and find Tahari standing in front of me, a deep frown etched across his forehead. Yet his eyes twinkle with satisfaction, as though he enjoys catching me at fault like this. I’m ready to snarl back at him, tell him what great injustice he’s done to my brother—after all, at this point, what else have I got to lose?—but something squirming in his hands makes me freeze on the spot.
Ash!
The evil man is holding poor little Ash by the scruff. Behind him, a second Kiva Member rubs his knotty hands together and then points at me. “Yes, that’s the girl,” he says. “She took the cat in.”
Tahari turns Ash belly up and examines him. “Wasting implants on animals,” he scolds.
“He’s just a baby,” I protest, pounding against the man’s large stomach and reaching up on my toes. “He needed help! Give him back to me!”
Tahari pushes me away, making me fall and slam my head against the podium. I flip over, looking for Lukas, but can’t spot him anywhere.
Have they taken him away or has he managed to hide?
A green fog lingers on the stage. It’s thick and dense and keeps swirling and rising as if it possessed a mind of its own. I stare wide-eyed at Tahari’s tall frame as it looms over the fog, poor little Ash squirming in his twisted hand.
I’ve been caught in the Kiva Hall, a crime that cannot be forgiven. The thought should frighten me, yet all I can think of is my poor kitten, prisoner of such evil man. And Athel. I failed to rescue Athel. Angry tears fill my eyes. I scramble back to my feet, my legs heavy, as though held down by the ominous fog. I spot more shadows moving in the mist. They look smaller, Wes and Lukas, maybe. I want to yell at them to make a run for it, to leave the place before they get caught, but there’s a lump in my throat, my voice lodged inside and refusing to come out.
I stumble against the chairs, push them away, and fling myself at Tahari. He moves away and then laughs as I fall on my face and knees.
“You’ve got nowhere to hide now, stupid little girl. You’re going to pay for this. You and your pathetic little pet.” He clasps a hand around Ash’s belly and squeezes. The poor kitten sways his head back and mews.
“No!” I cry. “Let go of him!”
I try to get back to my feet, but strong hands grab me from behind and hold me down.
“I’m disappointed in you, Akaela.”
Uli. Uli’s here too. He pins me to the ground with his prosthetic arm and looks pitifully at me.
I thrash my arms, trying to wrestle away from his grasp. “You don’t understand, Uli. I can explain. I know Athel’s innocent. Yuri and Cal lied!”
Uli presses his good hand on my mouth. “Even if that were true, you are guilty of breaching the sacred Kiva Hall, Akaela.”
I clasp my fingers around Uli’s arm, struggling to breathe through his grip.
Tahari steps forward from the greenish fog swirling across the stage. His hands knot around Ash’s belly and his nails dig inside the kitten’s fresh wound, where Uli has inserted his implant. Blood oozes from the cut and trickles down Tahari’s arm.
“No,” I cry. “Please don’t hurt him. Please.”
“This is your punishment,” Tahari says. “Implants like yours should’ve never been made.”
“No!” I shout. “I’m not afraid of Niwang. Put me out, I deserve it. I betrayed the laws of the Mayake people. But please don’t hurt my kitten. He’s not at fault, please stop torturing him. Please!”
Tahari’s eyes narrow, cruelty dripping from his bloody fingers. “That’s your problem, little girl. You have no fear.”
He raises his hand farther up and flings Ash hard on the ground.
I bawl in pain. Uli lets go of me and I run to the mess of ginger fur and blood splattered on the ground below the stage. Tears roll down my eyes. How could they be so cruel? Niwang doesn’t even match this kind of punishment. I sift my fingers through Ash’s bloody remains and his fur dissolves into a fine powder that flies everywhere, like the ashes from the Gaijins’ factory when the wind blows them our way. The fog is so dense now I can barely see my own hands, matted with the thick powder. It chalks up my mouth and throat. I want to scream but I can’t. I want to run, but my legs are glued to the ground.
My head pounds.
It’s the fog, I think. I’m breathing the fog and it’s making me sick.
Uli grabs my arm. “We need to go, Akaela. You can’t escape Niwang this time.”
I look up to him, my eyes blurred with tears. “Just let Athel go. Please. Athel…”
Uli shakes his head. “We can’t find him. The fog… it’s too dense.”
Too dense.
“Too dense, Akaela. Don’t breathe it. Don’t breathe the fog.”
Don’t. Breathe. The fog.
Uli leans over me, his shadow wavering, coming and going. He covers my face and tells me not to breathe, his voice strange, distorted. He sounds like a kid now, as he presses a scarf against my face and shakes my arm.
“Get up, Akaela!
“Up?” I mumble, realizing I’m lying on the floor, my cheek pressed against the leg of a chair. “What?”
Lukas takes my hand and presses it against the scarf he’s put over my mouth. “Keep it there,” he says, “and let’s go!”
Lukas. I’m talking to Lukas, not Uli. I recognize his voice, even though his face is covered and there’s darkness all around us. The green fog I could see earlier… where did it go? And why is Lukas in such a hurry to leave? There was something I was supposed to do, somebody…
Athel!
“I screwed up, Lukas,” I say, my whole body shivering even though I’m drenched in sweat. “They’re going to put me out. Niwang. I couldn’t find Athel, I—”
Lukas pulls me up, his voice suddenly angry. “It was all a nightmare, don’t you understand? The air—it’s laced with poison. We need to leave. Now!”
I sit up, squeezing the scarf against my face. It smells old, like clothing that’s been in a drawer far too long. I look toward the stage, now plunged back into darkness. The green fog is gone, only a wavering glow is left lingering from Lukas’s data feeder, like a far away memory. I lift my right hand, the one I dipped in Ash’s bloodied fur. It’s dry. No fur, no blood.
Just a dream. It was all a dream.
I try to stand up and my head spins. Lukas prods me from behind. “Straight ahead,” he says, his voice muffled by whatever’s covering his face. “Toward the door.”
I take a step then remember. “What about Athel?”
“We can’t find him. The air—there’s some kind of gas poison in the air. Comes out when you step on the stage. We just—can’t.”
The stage. The poison comes from the stage.
The fog is in my head.
Sweat drips down my forehead, yet my body keeps shivering. Bitterness clings to my mouth. I was drugged. Tahari didn’t kill Ash. Tahari isn’t even here.
I snatch the data feeder from Lukas’s hands. “We’re not leaving without Athel!”
“Akaela, the scarf! Keep it on your face, you fool!”
I pull the scarf back up and sweep the light across the stage, the torn black screen gaping at me like a ghost. The fog rises again, but this time I know what it is.
Just a stupid hallucination.
I hold the scarf against my nose and blink. The fog in my head buzzes like loud static.
Think, Akaela. Think!
There’s a hiss. Subtle. I spin on my heels. I shine the light around me and then rest it on the podium. I crouch by it, the hiss louder now. I need both hands, so I set the data feeder on the floor and grope around the
edge of the podium, sliding my fingers under the baseboard. The voices come back, yelling in my ears.
“You’re evil, Akaela.”
“You shall be punished forever. With death.”
“Death doesn’t scare me,” I yell back.
Death doesn’t … I catch a splinter in the wood. The pain shakes me awake for a moment, blood blotching the floorboards. There’s a switch at the bottom of the podium. I see it, blink, and then can’t find it anymore. A deep exhaustion takes hold of me. The fog lingers over my eyes and closes them.
It’s just… a stupid… hallucination.
I grope, feel the switch between my fingers and pull it down.
Blackness envelops me.
Blackness and silence.
…
“Akaela!”
I roll over. A hand wraps around my arm and squeezes it.
“Wake up, Akaela! We found him! We found Athel!”
I spring my eyes open and pull myself up. Athel! The fog is gone and a dim light lingers in the hall.
“What time is it?” I murmur, my voice pasty and my tongue dry.
Lukas looks at me, worry written all over his face. “Almost five a.m. They’re going to be here soon. We’ve got to move!”
Realization dawns on me. I sit up. “You found Athel?”
Lukas nods and hops down the stage. I try to get up but a wave of dizziness makes me stagger against the podium. I hear noises from below the stage, as of scuffing against wood. I crawl to the edge and watch as Lukas and Wes, both on their hands and knees, drag Athel’s limp body out of its hiding spot.
“Athel!” I shout.
My brother had been hidden inside a wood cell carved underneath the stage. The switch I’d flipped at the base of the podium stopped the gas from being released, and Lukas was finally able to find him. Actually, he claims an algorithm he ran through his data feeder found Athel. It came up with three most likely locations and underneath the stage was the one with the highest probability.
Geek.
I climb down the stage, kneel by Athel’s side, and touch his forehead. It’s icy cold, his face as white as porcelain. If it weren’t for his shallow breathing—the only movement the minimal level of current circulating his body will allow right now—I’d think he was dead.
“I bet they used LSD powder,” Lukas says, continuing his explanation of how the night evolved. “Comes from a fungus, really easy to crush it into powder, leave it near a fan and let it go off when triggered by a motion sensor.”
“I thought you left, Wes,” I say, groping the deactivation switch at the back of my brother’s head.
Wes blushes. “I saw something, I swear. I freaked out. But I think I was hallucinating already. I don’t think I ever left. Did I, Lukas?”
Lukas shines the light from the data feeder on Athel’s face. “We would’ve never made it had Akaela not found the LSD source,” he mumbles, almost ashamed to admit that for once I’d done something right. There’s a faint light lingering, dawn slowly casting away the night and filtering through narrow slats close to the ceiling.
I find Athel’s deactivation switch and scowl at the two of them. “It’s almost daylight, we’ve got to act quick. Ready?”
They nod. I press Athel’s switch.
Chapter Thirteen
Athel
Day Number: I lost track.
Event: End of Wela.
Number of Mayakes left: 431, I think.
Goal for today: Escape ???
My whole body aches, and my joints screech with pain every time I move. I lean over the sink and splash water on my face. Wes stands by the door, twitching and scraping the floor with his blades.
“Dude. Can you make it faster?”
“Give him a minute,” Lukas says. “He’s probably severely dehydrated and in shock. His actuators require a minimum of—”
“Shut up,” I hiss.
They all freeze, the three of them, and stare at me wide-eyed. I squeeze the cracked porcelain of the sink and let the water drip down my face. My head is spinning. I still can’t get a sense of what’s happened. I remember opening my eyes and seeing nothing at first, then the blurred faces of Lukas, Wes, and Akaela slowly emerging through the light from Lukas’s data feeder. They took me from the auditorium and whisked me to the public restroom on the second floor—Lukas’s idea after he established that whatever I was saying wasn’t making any sense.
Splash his face with water, he said.
I can splash myself, thank you.
“This is not the end of my Wela,” I say, staring at my pale face through the mirror.
Lukas and Akaela reply at the same time. One says yes, the other says no. And I’m the one who’s making no sense.
“We dragged you out of Wela,” Akaela blurts out, so fast I have to repeat the words in my head twice in order to make sure I get it.
“You did what?”
“It was Akaela’s idea,” Wes interjects from the door, his whole body itching and jerking against the jamb. “Can we go now?”
I flex my fingers, blood finally flowing back through my veins. My sister—my baby sister—lured two of my best friends inside the Kiva Hall, breaching one of the most sacred rules of the Mayake people, in order to rescue me from Wela.
Rescue me, when I was being punished.
Not even my own mother would have dreamed of such a thing. Not after I brought upon me the public shame of stealing.
Lukas taps his fingers on the data feeder.
Akaela drops her chin. “It’s almost dawn, Athel. We gotta go.”
“Go where?” I snarl. “Don’t you see? There’s nowhere to go now!”
Akaela stares at me as though my words just slapped her in the face. Lukas gulps loudly, Wes fidgets by the door jamb.
Why am I so upset?
I’m the one who got us all in trouble. We had a plan, and it was perfect, until I screwed up and got caught. And Akaela… Dottie, my little sister, did the unthinkable.
I suddenly realize why I’m angry. Even if I did finish my Wela, nothing would’ve been the same again. Shame has fallen on me. I’m the outcast now, the unwanted.
I would’ve left anyway, probably gone out to search for Dad on my own. And now Lukas, Wes and Akaela have no choice either. They’ve become outcast too, just like me. We must flee before we get caught. The punishment for what we’ve done is Niwang.
No, I’m not mad because of this. I’m mad because deep inside I know I would’ve never had the guts to do what my little sister did.
The first noises stir out of the Tower. The squeaking of doors, the tiptoeing of footfalls across long corridors.
“Sun will be up in eighteen minutes,” Lukas says, reading off his data feeder.
Wes cranes his head out the door. “Still clear,” he says. “But it won’t be like this for long.” A film of perspiration pearls his forehead.
Akaela shuffles past me and pulls on Lukas’s sleeve. “Let’s go,” she says. “Athel doesn’t appreciate our help.”
“No, wait,” I say.
I feel the pressure, the noises from the floors above us louder and more frequent. The Tower gradually awakens, its inhabitants getting ready for their daily tasks.
“Let’s get Kael,” I say. “And the horses.”
Akaela’s jaw drops. “The horses? Through the gorge? Are you out of your mind?”
I press my lips together. “Do you think we have a choice at this point?”
Lukas’s eyes dart between the two of us. “He’s got a point,” he says.
“The terrain in the gorge is not—”
“Somebody’s coming!” Wes shuts the door and stands against it, his face as pale as the walls around him.
“Quick! Hide!” I hiss, and we all disperse in the different stalls. Wes’s smooth blades slide over the porcelain as he clasps the edge of the partition and tries not to skid off the toilet lid.
We all shut the stalls and stand on top of the toilets barely in time. The main bat
hroom door squeaks open and heels tap inside. I glimpse the slim figure of a woman through the slit between my stall door and the partition. I hold my breath, realizing that between the four of us, we’ve occupied all the stalls. If she tries to push one open…
She bends over the sink, washes her hands for a good three minutes, then bends down, pulls up her skirt and pries open a flap on her outer thigh.
Phew, I think. She’s just fixing a switch or something.
The switch turns out to be a yarn of cables and wires the woman pulls out of the flap, examines, and then shoves back inside her thigh. Some people have itches. This one has a misplaced screw she can’t locate.
I hear a faint noise from the stall next to me. Then a beep that makes me jump. The woman hears it too. She jerks her head up and looks around, quickly shutting the flap closed. She pulls down the skirt and stares suspiciously at the stalls. We’ve all got our feet up over the toilet, so she can’t see us, yet the beep—probably from Lukas’s data feeder—has given us away.
I hold my breath, count to ten. The woman steps in front of my stall, then walks cautiously to the next and stops in front of Wes’s. I know it’s him because I hear the subtle grating of his blades against the toilet porcelain.
“Who’s there?” the woman demands.
Three, two … I count.
She raises her hand to the door and suddenly I hear it slam open and glimpse her stumbling backward on the floor, Wes a blur zooming out of the bathroom and into the hallway outside. Lukas, Akaela, and I all jump out of our stalls at the same time and run after him.
The woman shouts something—too bad we’ve got no time to stop and listen. The aches of my few hours of Wela melt away in an instant as we dart through the long corridor and down the stairs to the first floor. Voices echo up the stairwell as our footfalls awake the rest of the Tower. Stirred from their nests, pigeons coo and rats scuttle away. Lukas trips at the end of the stairs and slams against the wall. Wes is already too far to call him back, probably out the main doors by now and still running.
“Go get the horses!” I yell to Akaela. She nods and darts away while I stop to see what’s going on with Lukas.
