The Refugee Sentinel

by Hayes, Harrison

Li-Mei leapt in the air, kicking Colton’s chest with both feet, a move he would have failed to dodge even with healthy eyes and untied arms. His chair crashed backward and threw him to the ground. When he opened his eyes, he saw her towering above. She stepped on his ribcage, on the same place she had kicked, and leaned in so he could see her face.

  “Wasting time is useless, you see. No one’s coming to save you.” She caressed his face and parted his hair down the middle then nodded her approval at the result. “If shooting you was an option, I would have paid money to do it… You have ten seconds. Unless the next words out of your mouth give me a preference, you’ll get the sauna room. Now…” she paused, “I’m listening.”

  Lying on his back, Colton coughed away pepper spray. “Sauna room,” he said, “and I’ll see you in hell real soon.”

  “Despite the touching color commentary, I will focus on your guidance.” Li-Mei grabbed Colton by the leg and dragged the bundle of man and chair toward the large box. “You’ll be sitting inside. Asking you to burn while standing up would be barbaric; there could only be one Joan of Arc, after all.”

  A trail of splintered wood, like a brown chalk line, left by the chair dragging against the floor was the last image Colton remembered before passing out.

  fourteen years and one hundred forty four days till defiance day (61

  It was Li-Mei’s last day in Jenli, the type of day you’d read about years later. The rain pelted the submissive ground for hours and the air hung heavy with retribution.

  She stood at the smudged mirror and funneled her arms through the sleeve holes. The black and green tunic – as narrow as a bowtie at the neck – cascaded from her collarbone to her ankles. She put a bamboo belt on, then washed her face, the water hugging the peach fuzz of her cheeks. Li-Mei had grown up. Taxi had come to her several times today, his head nudging her feet, until she whipped him with a look, both long and impatient. Distractions and cuddling were moot. Today, Jenli was cowering under the weight of something dark.

  She walked into the square, bustling with Servants in tight foot traffic, like a human version of a busy anthill. Were they drawn by the heavy rain or was it something else? Her presence brought about an instant hush that swallowed the crowd like a glove. The branches of an old oak tree in the square creaked, as if in conversation with the falling raindrops. Her tunic billowed, impregnated by the wind, as she stood unmoving under the cutting sheets of rain and scanned the crowd, one face after another. Without breathing, they looked away, as if the girl were a young Medusa.

  Li-Mei was about to turn a page. But first came this last trial on this last day. Then Jenli would let her go. She was lucky to have made it this far. Her butchered scalp, broken arms and amputated ears stood silent witnesses to the price the six-year-old had paid to reach age thirteen.

  He appeared in the crowd and, in an instant, she knew he was it. Her final challenge: the price to pay to continue living beyond Jenli. The crowd withdrew from the center of the square and he stumbled forward in the open space, like a rock left behind by the departing tide.

  “Do you remember me?” Li-Mei said. “I’m the girl whose soul you crushed.”

  The Purple Servant smiled. The last time his grin held terror. Today, she thought she saw a flash of cowardice in it. His voice shook in the wet wind. “I did what I had to do. And now I will finish it.”

  “No,” she said and her face twisted. “Today, I’ll become a part of you, Servant, as big as you have been of me.” She caressed both sides of her head, where her ears once were and spread arms through the rain, like two waterfalls. Then she soaked the downpour, motionless, as the water gushed in her eyes and clobbered her skin. “I never lose, Servant,” she shouted. “No matter what you throw at me. You hear?”

  She ran toward him and he waited, with legs deep in the boiling rainwater and knees bent. He swung hard for her, with the kinjal, but she slid between his planted legs, at the same time as a flash of thunder tore through the sky. Her fists shot up, two pistons cloaked in skin, smashing against the Servant’s groin. He collapsed to his knees, chin tucked in, as if praying to the gods of pain to let go. He shuffled around on his knees to protect his back. Too late… Like a shadow she rose behind him and struck his torso twice more, breaking two of his ribs. The Purple Servant keeled, gasping for air and clutching where she had hit.

  Li-Mei put a foot on his back and pushed, sending him splashing into the mud then jumped in the air and landed on the back of his ankles, where the fibulas connected with the heels. Both sets of bones shattered, the left one broken by her for the second time.

  “Get me a rope,” she shouted. The crowd stood stunned by her efficiency. A moment earlier, these two had risen against each other and now the battle seemed done. The rope appeared and Li-Mei tied it into a hangman’s noose that she secured to a branch of the oak in the square. The rain was letting up and turning to a mist, and the silent crowd watched, pregnant with morbid fascination. She dragged him to the tree, then hit his throat with a karate chop and slid the noose around his neck. The Purple Servant left the ground and burrowed fingers under the noose in a desperate barrier between neck and rope. Li-Mei kept pulling, hand over hand, and the rope, heavy with rain, swayed like a line swallowed by a wounded marlin. His breaths whistled in and out: hard air dotted by gurgling. She held on and waited. He waited too, looking at her, his palms under the noose, precious breaths inching into his throat.

  Then she let go. The Servant fell down in a heap of coughs and again, she kicked his back. “You’ve taught me well,” she said from behind and put her foot on his shoulder blade. The sound of his shoulder breaking filled the square. She broke his other shoulder next.

  Li-Mei took the rope and pulled again. This time, he offered no resistance and rose with arms dangling like empty laundry. He looked at his executioner and whispered “Vaya Con Dios, young one.” Then the rope ran out of coil and Li-Mei’s next pull propelled the man upwards, disconnecting him from Jenli’s muddy square. He kicked three times, lost control of his bowels and died. When he touched the ground next, the Purple Servant was a lifeless body.

  two days till defiance day (62

  Sylvya laid face down on Colton’s makeshift mattress and inhaled. Mixed with his scent were the foreign smells of the mute commandos and their Police Chief. She hadn’t said a word when they had cuffed him or when he had screamed they’d kill him because he had sacrificed for his daughter or when he had gone limp, his rage breaking in sputtering wails.

  If they had come and dragged him out of her life, like she wanted, why did justice feel so hollow? She massaged her temples in a useless attempt to shake the feeling she had done a low deed. Was she going through a letdown after achieving her goal? And was it true he was trying to save the life of his daughter instead of deserting Defiance Day?

  Her gut felt full of lead and her ears buzzed. She looked around the empty room, like a general surveying a battlefield littered with the corpses of the men she had sent to die. What had she done? Had she betrayed and killed him? She did love Dallas and Sadie, what mother wouldn’t, but a life without Colton wasn’t worth it. She had tried living that way for years and was not going to go back. On autopilot, she took a fistful of Ketamine syringes from the controlled-substance lockbox and rushed out of Virginia Mason.

  She was flying through downtown at forty over the speed limit. The cops, by a miracle, had not yet arrested her for reckless driving, as she barreled toward the building, which should have done the arresting. She saw no other choice but to undo this. Please, God, she was praying without knowing why. As a nurse, she had witnessed too many deaths of people who didn’t deserve to die and was convinced that if God existed, he had the ethics of an alley cat. She prayed anyway, to arrive safe to the Seattle Police Headquarters and it looked like God was answering by getting rid of the cops along the way.

  As she got closer, Sylvya downshifted and headed for the back entrance – not even God could eliminate all cops in the front of a cop statio
n. In the backstreet, two prowlers idled with their stoplights bathing the night in red. She held her face while her lips whispered to her unhearing ears, “Focus. Focus. Focus.”

  The prowlers took off before she could park and she jerked forward to keep up. She didn’t ask herself why or how a green Jetta would look following two police cars or what distance to keep to remain unnoticed. There was no time for such details. She had minutes to go until curfew, when invisible choppers with thermal sensors would crisscross the sky and arrest her on the spot if they felt like it. She bet that Colton was inside one of the two cars and clung onto that bet as the only information with substance. The prowlers merged on the Fourth Avenue suspension bridge and kept driving until Seattle’s downtown bridges turned into suburban streets and then a two-lane road.

  At a red light, the cars stopped. Then at the following green, one took a left and the other drove forward. The Jetta stood motionless, Sylvya’s muscles were paralyzed by the irreversible present. She had to choose… She stepped on the gas pedal. Nothing. Then took a breath and pushed again. The Jetta winked forward, then stopped. In day traffic, this kind of driving would have gotten her rear-ended. Instead, the night took it in with patience. She had to choose… And standing still was the wrong answer. Sylvya’s foot went for the pedal again and her hands steered to the left. This was it, she had made a choice and collected her random-pick lottery ticket.

  Empty streets stretched ahead. She drove and cried, quiet sobs at first then loud, almost screaming, in chorus with the revving engine. How long had she stayed at that light? Half a minute or a full one? The sweat on her back pushed through her shirt and her legs shivered, frozen with the tension of facing the truth. The prowler was lost and no amount of driving would help her catch up. By taking that left at the light she had pointed back to the city, while the other car, with Colton inside was well on its way to some far-away detention center.

  Sylvya was driving through streets and suspension bridges at ninety miles per hour, the buildings flying by, blurred like in a racing video game. This was the moment preceding a calamity, which afterwards people would replay in their minds, with the realization their lives had changed forever. Pull over and live, her common sense told her, stop tempting the thermal sensors and a future of unending what-ifs. Yet she kept driving because even if the physical catastrophe of plunging into a building or being shot down by a chopper hadn’t yet happened, she had already crossed the mental point of no return. She had lost, without a mulligan to save her. Why worry about a carnal disaster when the bigger one had already struck? Her head rested on the steering wheel and her shoulders rose and fell, like pistons of an engine propelled by sorrow beyond description. She floored the gas pedal.

  “Please, help me God,” Sylvya whispered, lifted her head and saw the oncoming side of a high-rise at a fast-approaching T-section. In self-preservation, she took a sharp turn then regretted it the next instant. Did she seek salvation or not? Her face firmed and, with a made up mind, she guided the bulleting Jetta. No more swerving… the next T-section would be her last. She saw a “Dead End” sign and turned. No more mistakes. Death grinned at her then extended a bony handshake, as Sylvya closed eyes again and leapt off the ledge of the world. But in that moment, as her toes separated from the edge, she saw the prowler. It was parked on the sidewalk of an intersection, the last one before the dead end.

  Sylvya slammed on the breaks and turned the steering wheel. To think she could avoid impact was to laugh in the face of at least twenty different laws of physics. The Jetta tumbled sideways, like a clumsy drunk, four tires going airborne prior to impact, and smashed into a boarded-up beige building.

  Sylvya clasped Death’s expecting hand with both palms and commenced introductions. She swore she could see the airbag deploy, millions of talcum particles exploding everywhere. They danced, like liberated snowflakes in a December nor’easter, as she had once seen in a TV documentary recorded before she was born. Then for some reason, Death pulled out of the handshake.

  The outside noise poured into Sylvya’s ears and her old life, the one from before the crash, snapped into place. She surveyed the damage. The front of the Jetta had collapsed like a giant ice-cream cone with her, a vanilla scoop, sitting in the middle. She attempted to move, starting with her toes. As far as her brain told her, they wiggled fine.

  The prowler’s hazard lights blinked a hundred feet up the street. Hope, the most stubborn of all emotional weeds, pushed roots inside her heart. If the cop car was here, maybe Colton was too. Maybe he was alive. But first she had to get out of the scrap pile. She pushed against the driver’s door, but it would not budge. She tried a second time and a third – it refused to open. She looked around the car again. Option two was to exit through the windshield, which was no longer there. Sylvya could march a squad of cheerleaders through that hole, as long as she could free her legs. She tucked them and, thanking a God she had converted to in the last ten minutes, she twisted.

  Each pull bit into her flesh with teeth of glass and jagged metal. She felt something above her left knee tear, followed by pain and the sticky trickle of warm blood. Her legs had to make it, at least until she found Colton. Afterward, she could collapse legless and bloodless for all she cared. She turned in the driver’s seat, first to one side then the other then lying on her stomach, and pulled an inch with each rotation.

  Ten minutes later, she had broken free. She pressed her bloody knees to her chin. Bleeding gashes, the largest one on her left thigh, and swollen bruises covered her legs. She patted them down, from ankle to hip and thanked her new celestial friend once again. In her professional estimate, she had suffered no broken bones and could cope with the pain for the next hour, driven by adrenaline alone. Then all bets were off. She crawled through the shattered windshield, bloody feet negotiating the carpet of broken glass until she stood on the sidewalk.

  She ran toward the prowler’s blinking lights, reached the car and stuck to it, palms and wild-eyed face pressed against the glass, looking inside and remembering to breathe. No luck – the one-way windows showed the reflection of her face and nothing more. She went for the passenger door and it swung open with a muted whoosh, revealing the car’s interior. The smell of leather greeted her, mixed with the smell of human waste and blood. She placed both knees on the back seat and leaned in. The prowler, reminiscent of a soccer-mom-mobile, swallowed her up to the bare ankles. There was no one inside, yet she wanted out in an instant, maybe because of what she imagined they must have done to him there. Then she saw it and took a step back: Colton’s suede jacket was in the front seat.

  Sylvya fell to her knees. She had chosen the right car and had found him.

  fourteen years and one hundred forty three days till defiance day (63

  Li-Mei tilted the alarm clock to see the time better. The morning flooded her room with messy light, reflecting off the puddles yesterday’s downpour had left outside. Her head hummed with the remote murmur that would blossom, nine times out of ten, into a pounding headache. Through the night she had checked the time every few minutes. It was six-am at last and she had pushed through.

  A notice had appeared under the door last night. At first, she refused to believe it. What hadn’t she done? For all she knew, the Purple Servant was still hanging in the square: the end to all tests and all battles. She was supposed to report back the following morning with packed bags. But last night, as she was heading for the shower – she had never killed a person before and her body hurt to the bone – she saw the paper slip.

  She took her time turning around and covering the distance between the bathroom’s tiled floor and the front door. It made no sense to rush. No matter how fast she opened the door, the carrier of slips always disappeared without a trace. In the beginning, she would check behind corners, run around the building and waited for him by the door, but had never caught a glimpse. For a short while, she thought the slips were a game of hide-and-seek. It wasn’t a game. Some slips were explicit: “Battle again
st seven Servants at nine-am tomorrow in the square.” She’d show up and they would beat her teeth in, then she’d crawl home, hoping the next slip would wait until she had the chance to heal some. As she grew stronger and refined her combat style, the losing slowed and stopped altogether. Consequent groups of Servants would find themselves knocked out with concussions and sprains. On principle, she stayed away from spilling blood or breaking limbs. Sometimes, she would defy the slips and skip the encounter to test the system but without exception, her opponents would find her, always more numerous and always carrying weapons. So it paid to do as she was told.

  But the slips weren’t always appointments. Sometimes they would lecture her: “Be true to your courage,” or “Remain vigilant and pure.” Nothing happened on days following such brainteasers… with two big exceptions. Two slips announcing: “Prepare for tomorrow’s reckoning,” had preceded both encounters with the Purple Servant. Last night’s slip read “Save Taxi.”

  Under the hot shower she hoped it was a lecture slip… it had to be. Throughout the years, the Jenli system of drills and classes and slips had been blind to Taxi’s existence… until last night. She considered locking him in her room, checking out alone and coming back for him before leaving. But how could she, after this slip? She’d never let anything bad happen to him. “You’re coming with me,” she said and opened the door. Enticed, he bolted out. Jenli’s summer mornings were hard to beat.

  Li-Mei locked her room one last time and turned around. The world was wet and shiny from yesterday’s rain, with the morning sun ricocheting from the pavement and the grass. By sheer solidarity, such days were meant to keep harm at bay. Or was it a decoy? She held the door handle to steady herself.

  Taxi was hard to find because of the glare but she heard him shuffling ahead through the grass. His barometer would sense danger long before she could, so his enthusiasm helped ease her nerves. Maybe the paranoia was in her head? She doubted it, but who was she to question hope.