"The idea of 'free will' is as absurd to me as auras and crystals. Maybe some of my more, shall...
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Index/Chapter One: Only Nine Once
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
"The idea of 'free will' is as absurd to me as auras and crystals. Maybe some of my more, shall we say 'free-spirited' colleagues think differently, but I am a man of science. I deal with rock-solid, fundamental biological facts. As I'm sure many of my contemporaries will agree, the human brain is little more than a biological computer. Your hardware is determined by your genes, and your software is slowly programmed into you until well into your twenties. When defects enter either category, 'willpower' counts for nothing. One can no more reason themselves out of depression, or schizophrenia, than one could reason themselves an inch taller. The individual is helpless without the learned, rational, guiding hand of another. And sometimes even that is not enough. People can't just 'change'. Not the way they wish they could."
–Preston Langley, Progenitor Research Director
–Preston Langley, Progenitor Research Director
Memories are weird. They just come and go and there's not really much you can do about it. Dad says that nobody remembers when they were born, but that's stupid. Isn't being born, like, the most important moment ever? If it wasn't, why would we have birthdays? Your birthday was awesome this year, speaking of which. There was so much cake and chips and soft drink that you felt super sick at the end of the day and you kind of had a huge headache too but Ms. Jenkins got you some stuff that fixed it all so it was okay. But it was really sunny and great outside so everyone was at the pool pushing each other in and whacking each other with pool noodles, then you all got to go inside and use the home theatre. Dad said he was friends with the people at the movies so he had a copy of Harry Potter 6 a day before it even came out in theatres for everyone to watch. You thought it'd be awesome if everyone watched the first five movies first so you could see them allll in a row. Dad said that was kind of a dumb idea because all the movies put together were like thirteen hours. But you thought it was a cool idea and besides it was your birthday anyway, you should get to do what you want to do. He couldn't argue with your logic there. Everyone had to call their parents, and a couple guys had to go home anyway, but that was fine.
You don't remember when you fell asleep, but you thought it was somewhere around the bit in Prisoner of Azkaban where Malfoy got punched in the face. When you woke up, Lakshmi was sitting on the ottoman with some cereal halfway through Order of the Phoenix. You told her she sucked and threw a pillow at the back of her head. You told her there were no girls allowed at your birthday party, but she said that didn't count any more because it was the day after. Obviously that was stupid, so you told her she sucked again and threw another pillow. That one hit the bowl and made it fall on the floor. Then she started saying she'd go dob on you to dad. Took you ages to make her go away. At least your friends agreed that she was a total pain. Like, yeah, it was technically her birthday too, but she should've stayed with her friends in the girl side of the house until yours left.
Dad wasn't angry. He didn't say anything about it even after the rest of your friends were gone. You asked him why Mum couldn't come again. He said he was sorry, but there were 'scheduling problems'. Said he celebrated on the day of too because you're only nine once. Promised that once he could find time to take you and Lakshmi up to the Gold Coast holiday house, you could do your birthdays over again as a family. Properly. You did this every year, so you weren't complaining. Extra birthdays!
You're thinking about it now because it's two weeks later, Term 3 and back at school. You just walked out of Science and ran into one of your Year 4 friends. Being friends with older kids always makes you feel cooler and more grown-up. And hey, he only calls you 'Meg' sometimes. When he says it it's a joke, just between the two of you. Not like you asked to be born with a dumb name like 'Meghanada' anyway. But anyway it's lunch period, and you're headed to the playground with your cool older friend, when Lakshmi shows up. She's being annoying like sisters always are, of course, so you try to make her go away. But she just keeps pestering and pestering you, trying to make you go over to the corner with her to talk about something. You want to look cool in front of your friend so you just ignore her.
She says most of your friends are only your friends are only your friends because Dad is rich and they just want stuff. Because you always have spare pocket money, have cool birthday parties, and give away old stuff. Your friend gets angry, says she's just making stuff up for no reason. Lakshmi says she overheard a bunch of your friends at recess talking about how cool it is to have a rich friend. Your friend gets even angrier. He shoves Lakshmi.
She hits the ground hard. You didn't walk far enough away from the buildings to get to the grassy parts before she showed up. She lands sprawled across the cold, grey concrete. Nothing to protect her knees or elbows. She definitely skins them. You think you see blood. She's not crying, not yet. She's still just shocked. Floored. Your friend's a bit shocked too. So are you. You don't know if he's shocked he did it or that it drew blood or what.
[ ] Shove him back.
[ ] Hit him.
[ ] Help Lakshmi up.
[ ] Ignore her.
You don't remember when you fell asleep, but you thought it was somewhere around the bit in Prisoner of Azkaban where Malfoy got punched in the face. When you woke up, Lakshmi was sitting on the ottoman with some cereal halfway through Order of the Phoenix. You told her she sucked and threw a pillow at the back of her head. You told her there were no girls allowed at your birthday party, but she said that didn't count any more because it was the day after. Obviously that was stupid, so you told her she sucked again and threw another pillow. That one hit the bowl and made it fall on the floor. Then she started saying she'd go dob on you to dad. Took you ages to make her go away. At least your friends agreed that she was a total pain. Like, yeah, it was technically her birthday too, but she should've stayed with her friends in the girl side of the house until yours left.
Dad wasn't angry. He didn't say anything about it even after the rest of your friends were gone. You asked him why Mum couldn't come again. He said he was sorry, but there were 'scheduling problems'. Said he celebrated on the day of too because you're only nine once. Promised that once he could find time to take you and Lakshmi up to the Gold Coast holiday house, you could do your birthdays over again as a family. Properly. You did this every year, so you weren't complaining. Extra birthdays!
You're thinking about it now because it's two weeks later, Term 3 and back at school. You just walked out of Science and ran into one of your Year 4 friends. Being friends with older kids always makes you feel cooler and more grown-up. And hey, he only calls you 'Meg' sometimes. When he says it it's a joke, just between the two of you. Not like you asked to be born with a dumb name like 'Meghanada' anyway. But anyway it's lunch period, and you're headed to the playground with your cool older friend, when Lakshmi shows up. She's being annoying like sisters always are, of course, so you try to make her go away. But she just keeps pestering and pestering you, trying to make you go over to the corner with her to talk about something. You want to look cool in front of your friend so you just ignore her.
She says most of your friends are only your friends are only your friends because Dad is rich and they just want stuff. Because you always have spare pocket money, have cool birthday parties, and give away old stuff. Your friend gets angry, says she's just making stuff up for no reason. Lakshmi says she overheard a bunch of your friends at recess talking about how cool it is to have a rich friend. Your friend gets even angrier. He shoves Lakshmi.
She hits the ground hard. You didn't walk far enough away from the buildings to get to the grassy parts before she showed up. She lands sprawled across the cold, grey concrete. Nothing to protect her knees or elbows. She definitely skins them. You think you see blood. She's not crying, not yet. She's still just shocked. Floored. Your friend's a bit shocked too. So are you. You don't know if he's shocked he did it or that it drew blood or what.
[ ] Shove him back.
[ ] Hit him.
[ ] Help Lakshmi up.
[ ] Ignore her.
Table of Contents
Prologue: Golden Age
Chapter One: Only Nine Once
Chapter Two: Bush Mansion
Chapter Three: Teen Angst
Chapter Four: At Its Corps
Chapter Five: A Chance For Renewal
Chapter Six: Fangs In The Dark
Chapter Seven: Cornered
Chapter Eight: Astra
Chapter Nine: Rakshama!
Chapter Ten: Run Boy Run
Chapter Eleven: The Golden Age Is Over
Act 1
Chapter Twelve: Orientation
Chapter Thirteen: Secret History
Chapter Fourteen: Dis-Orientation (with thanks to @Revlid for the write-in)
Chapter Fifteen: Meet n' Greet
Chapter Sixteen: Harrow Road
Chapter Seventeen: Prince of Lanka
Last edited:
Chapter Two: Bush Mansion
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
You stoop and offer Lakshmi a hand. She tugs on you for support, righting herself with a chorus of tender 'ow, ow, ow's. Blood dribbles down from her elbow and knee, the latter stream creeping ever-closer to the rolled-up top of her sock. You stoop and pull it all the way down her shin to her ankle. It'll be disgusting all day if it gets blood and stuff in it. Lakshmi murmurs a thanks to you quietly, breath still shuddery. You stand up. Weird. You almost expected a teacher to have magically appeared by now. But no - right now it's just other kids playing handball or going to have lunch or whatever. They don't really care.
Your friend begs Lakshmi not to tell on him, then runs off as fast as he can. Pretty typical. It's what you'd do if you pushed a girl.
"You wanna go dob him in?" you ask. "Teacher's lounge is on the way to the nurse I think."
Lakshmi shakes her head, sniffling and wiping away tears. She starts limping off to the nurse's office. You follow, keeping pace.
"Why not?" Down the hallway, past the library. Nurse's office is right down the end of the hall, past the trio of chairs by the wall. Your lunchbox is still in your locker. You're feeling really hungry now. You wish you at least had a chocolate bar or something. "Mean, he said that bad stuff about me, right?"
"I'unno."
You stop. Lakshmi stops too, leaning against the wall and rubbing her scraped elbow.
"Did you make it up?"
"I dunno!" Lakshmi throws her hands up, just to snap them back into position again. Rub rub rub. "Didn't... hear everything. Not sure."
"Then why'd you say my friends only like me because Dad's rich!?" you shout.
"Because mine do!" she shouts back.
You go quiet.
"I don't like any of the stuff my friends do," she goes on. "Never have anything to talk about with them. But they come to my parties and I get to sit with them. I get to be popular. Was just scared it was like that with you too."
"Boys aren't like that," you say with complete confidence. "We just talk about the things everybody does. Like how Superman could beat up Batman."
It's quiet for a little bit.
"But Batman's smart and builds gadgets so he can plan for it," says Lakshmi.
"Uhmagoodd Lakshmi I told you not to go in my room!" you complain.
It's quiet for another little bit. Lakshmi hobbles over to the door and knocks. No answer. Maybe there's a staff meeting on. She sits down heavily on the nearest chair. You run off to the boy's toilets for some hand towels - stinks in there but you're only there for a little bit. You come back and hand them over. Lakshmi mumbles a 'thank you' and starts wiping up all the blood. Wincing when she hits her scrapes. You sit down on the other chair, an empty one between you and her. Your stomach growls.
"You should go have lunch," she says. "Think I'm okay now."
"M'not hungry," you reply.
More quiet. You hear happy squeals outside as kids run around on the grass, tackling and falling all over each other. You look at your watch. Quarter-to already.
"... Superman has superstrength," you say.
"Batman can wear a robot suit," she counters.
"Superman can fly."
"Batman has a plane."
"He can't be in a robot suit and a plane at the same time. That's just dumb."
"Not if the robot suit turns into a plane."
"... that's awesome."
Memories are weird. Not much about primary school sticks in your mind. Your teachers' faces stay but most of the names are gone. What they taught you is probably all gone. But you remember how it looked. The concrete under the awnings just by the main school building. The rough, grey-green carpet inside, the equally rough brick walls with nowhere near enough grout. The kinda small library. The dumps they called the locker room and toilets. To be honest, for a private school the primary school part was kind of crappy. The Kindy part was definitely nicer. But you remember it. And you remember that lunchtime with Lakshmi.
It's October next year, another second birthday. Spring holidays and Dad has time off work. He says he wishes you all could've driven up to the Gold Coast together like a proper family, same as every year. Then he mentions that it's over nine hours and nearly a thousand kilometres, meaning you and Lakshmi would definitely kill each other before you got there. So you fly like you always do, play your PSP for an hour, and you're there. Then Ms. Jenkins drives you another half hour until the road runs out, then you take the boat the rest of the way. Going out on the boat is kind of boring, but the short trips there and back are fun enough. It's nice to watch the trees go by on the shore, feel the wind and spray on your face. It rounds a corner into an inlet and you pull up to the dock.
It's Mum's house, way out in the wilderness. So far away from civilisation that you can't even hear cars or anything. Nothing but trees as far as the eye can see, mountains and little streams. Dad says it isn't actually an island, but it definitely feels like it. Like you could walk and walk and walk along the shoreline and just wind up exactly where you started. You and Lakshmi always explore when you're here. You catch Ms. Jenkins following you all the time, but running away from her and hiding is half the fun.
But that's for later. Right now you and Lakshmi just shout "Mum!" and run up the path to hug her. She stumbles when you both hit her, patting your heads and remarking on how big you've both gotten. You both complain in stereo that you're soooooo hungry, Dad wouldn't let you stop for anything to eat along the way and you barely had breakfast, you're probably going to faint and/or die. Then you both catch the scent of what Mum's cooking inside and peel away, sprinting for the kitchen. You'd never say it where Ms. Jenkins could hear 'cause it'd be rude, but nothing's better than Mum's cooking. Sure sometimes it looks like weird meat-ooze and it's nothing like what you eat at Dad's place, but it always tastes amazing. And it's spicy! You love having eating competitions with Lakshmi, watching her get teary-eyed and run for the milk first every time. Never gets old. Mum comes in and reminds you both not to stuff yourselves too much 'cause there's still cake and stuff for the birthday twins for dinner. It doesn't stop either of you.
Dad comes through the door with flowers and gives Mum a kiss (eugh). She's all distracted for some reason. They lean in close and murmur some stuff to each other you can't hear. Dad swings around and acts like nothing happened.
"Mum and I just need to talk about some stuff for a minute. You kids have fun for a bit, alright? You've got your phones if you need me."
"Yes dad," the two of you reply in chorus.
You scoop up the last of your rice and scarf it down as Mum and Dad head off to the bedroom. You go to leave your empty bowl on the table and leave but Lakshmi smacks you on the shoulder so you put it in the sink with her's.
Mum's house is way big, enough beds and bathrooms for all four of you to not get in each other's way. Two storeys, big windows to the forest outside, everything all new and angular and cool. There's a heated indoor pool, a big TV, a library, a game room, everything. Seeing Mum for Second Birthday is always great. But it must get really boring for her to be out on her own all the time. With Dad you at least know he's in business in... sssomething. But when someone asks you what Mum does all you have is an "i'unno". Not like your teachers can ask either, since she never has time to come down for parent-teacher interviews. Or come down at all.
"So what d'you wanna do while Mum and Dad are K-I-S-S-I-N-G?" Lakshmi asks.
"Shut up," you grumble. "They're probably just talking about taxes or mergers and acquisitions."
"What's taxes?"
"I'unno," you shrug. "So what d'you wanna do?"
"I asked you first."
"I asked you second."
"Yeah, that means you have to answer, idiot."
"First the worst, second the best," you retort.
"Last one wears the golden dress," Lakshmi says loftily. You make a noise of shock. She has you there.
[ ] Go play in the game room. You could play Wii Tennis, or Mario Party, or continue to fail to understand what happens in pool.
[ ] Go exploring outside. You and Lakshmi have been working on a map every year, and you've got a good feeling you can fill in a lot of it today.
[ ] Go exploring inside. Maybe you can uncover some clues about what Mum does all day. Maybe you can find your birthday presents early!
[ ] Tell Lakshmi to do whatever without you. Go listen at Mum and Dad's door.
Your friend begs Lakshmi not to tell on him, then runs off as fast as he can. Pretty typical. It's what you'd do if you pushed a girl.
"You wanna go dob him in?" you ask. "Teacher's lounge is on the way to the nurse I think."
Lakshmi shakes her head, sniffling and wiping away tears. She starts limping off to the nurse's office. You follow, keeping pace.
"Why not?" Down the hallway, past the library. Nurse's office is right down the end of the hall, past the trio of chairs by the wall. Your lunchbox is still in your locker. You're feeling really hungry now. You wish you at least had a chocolate bar or something. "Mean, he said that bad stuff about me, right?"
"I'unno."
You stop. Lakshmi stops too, leaning against the wall and rubbing her scraped elbow.
"Did you make it up?"
"I dunno!" Lakshmi throws her hands up, just to snap them back into position again. Rub rub rub. "Didn't... hear everything. Not sure."
"Then why'd you say my friends only like me because Dad's rich!?" you shout.
"Because mine do!" she shouts back.
You go quiet.
"I don't like any of the stuff my friends do," she goes on. "Never have anything to talk about with them. But they come to my parties and I get to sit with them. I get to be popular. Was just scared it was like that with you too."
"Boys aren't like that," you say with complete confidence. "We just talk about the things everybody does. Like how Superman could beat up Batman."
It's quiet for a little bit.
"But Batman's smart and builds gadgets so he can plan for it," says Lakshmi.
"Uhmagoodd Lakshmi I told you not to go in my room!" you complain.
It's quiet for another little bit. Lakshmi hobbles over to the door and knocks. No answer. Maybe there's a staff meeting on. She sits down heavily on the nearest chair. You run off to the boy's toilets for some hand towels - stinks in there but you're only there for a little bit. You come back and hand them over. Lakshmi mumbles a 'thank you' and starts wiping up all the blood. Wincing when she hits her scrapes. You sit down on the other chair, an empty one between you and her. Your stomach growls.
"You should go have lunch," she says. "Think I'm okay now."
"M'not hungry," you reply.
More quiet. You hear happy squeals outside as kids run around on the grass, tackling and falling all over each other. You look at your watch. Quarter-to already.
"... Superman has superstrength," you say.
"Batman can wear a robot suit," she counters.
"Superman can fly."
"Batman has a plane."
"He can't be in a robot suit and a plane at the same time. That's just dumb."
"Not if the robot suit turns into a plane."
"... that's awesome."
Memories are weird. Not much about primary school sticks in your mind. Your teachers' faces stay but most of the names are gone. What they taught you is probably all gone. But you remember how it looked. The concrete under the awnings just by the main school building. The rough, grey-green carpet inside, the equally rough brick walls with nowhere near enough grout. The kinda small library. The dumps they called the locker room and toilets. To be honest, for a private school the primary school part was kind of crappy. The Kindy part was definitely nicer. But you remember it. And you remember that lunchtime with Lakshmi.
It's October next year, another second birthday. Spring holidays and Dad has time off work. He says he wishes you all could've driven up to the Gold Coast together like a proper family, same as every year. Then he mentions that it's over nine hours and nearly a thousand kilometres, meaning you and Lakshmi would definitely kill each other before you got there. So you fly like you always do, play your PSP for an hour, and you're there. Then Ms. Jenkins drives you another half hour until the road runs out, then you take the boat the rest of the way. Going out on the boat is kind of boring, but the short trips there and back are fun enough. It's nice to watch the trees go by on the shore, feel the wind and spray on your face. It rounds a corner into an inlet and you pull up to the dock.
It's Mum's house, way out in the wilderness. So far away from civilisation that you can't even hear cars or anything. Nothing but trees as far as the eye can see, mountains and little streams. Dad says it isn't actually an island, but it definitely feels like it. Like you could walk and walk and walk along the shoreline and just wind up exactly where you started. You and Lakshmi always explore when you're here. You catch Ms. Jenkins following you all the time, but running away from her and hiding is half the fun.
But that's for later. Right now you and Lakshmi just shout "Mum!" and run up the path to hug her. She stumbles when you both hit her, patting your heads and remarking on how big you've both gotten. You both complain in stereo that you're soooooo hungry, Dad wouldn't let you stop for anything to eat along the way and you barely had breakfast, you're probably going to faint and/or die. Then you both catch the scent of what Mum's cooking inside and peel away, sprinting for the kitchen. You'd never say it where Ms. Jenkins could hear 'cause it'd be rude, but nothing's better than Mum's cooking. Sure sometimes it looks like weird meat-ooze and it's nothing like what you eat at Dad's place, but it always tastes amazing. And it's spicy! You love having eating competitions with Lakshmi, watching her get teary-eyed and run for the milk first every time. Never gets old. Mum comes in and reminds you both not to stuff yourselves too much 'cause there's still cake and stuff for the birthday twins for dinner. It doesn't stop either of you.
Dad comes through the door with flowers and gives Mum a kiss (eugh). She's all distracted for some reason. They lean in close and murmur some stuff to each other you can't hear. Dad swings around and acts like nothing happened.
"Mum and I just need to talk about some stuff for a minute. You kids have fun for a bit, alright? You've got your phones if you need me."
"Yes dad," the two of you reply in chorus.
You scoop up the last of your rice and scarf it down as Mum and Dad head off to the bedroom. You go to leave your empty bowl on the table and leave but Lakshmi smacks you on the shoulder so you put it in the sink with her's.
Mum's house is way big, enough beds and bathrooms for all four of you to not get in each other's way. Two storeys, big windows to the forest outside, everything all new and angular and cool. There's a heated indoor pool, a big TV, a library, a game room, everything. Seeing Mum for Second Birthday is always great. But it must get really boring for her to be out on her own all the time. With Dad you at least know he's in business in... sssomething. But when someone asks you what Mum does all you have is an "i'unno". Not like your teachers can ask either, since she never has time to come down for parent-teacher interviews. Or come down at all.
"So what d'you wanna do while Mum and Dad are K-I-S-S-I-N-G?" Lakshmi asks.
"Shut up," you grumble. "They're probably just talking about taxes or mergers and acquisitions."
"What's taxes?"
"I'unno," you shrug. "So what d'you wanna do?"
"I asked you first."
"I asked you second."
"Yeah, that means you have to answer, idiot."
"First the worst, second the best," you retort.
"Last one wears the golden dress," Lakshmi says loftily. You make a noise of shock. She has you there.
[ ] Go play in the game room. You could play Wii Tennis, or Mario Party, or continue to fail to understand what happens in pool.
[ ] Go exploring outside. You and Lakshmi have been working on a map every year, and you've got a good feeling you can fill in a lot of it today.
[ ] Go exploring inside. Maybe you can uncover some clues about what Mum does all day. Maybe you can find your birthday presents early!
[ ] Tell Lakshmi to do whatever without you. Go listen at Mum and Dad's door.
Chapter Three: Teen Angst
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
"Let's look around inside," you suggest.
"That's boring," says Lakshmi.
"Why'd you ask me if you don't wanna do what I wanna do?"
"Because I thought you'd pick something that wasn't boring."
"It's not boring!" you insist. "Come on, if we check all the cupboards and stuff maybe we can find our presents?"
"Oh yeah that's actually not a bad idea!"
"First dibs on what we find."
"They'll have our names on them, idiot."
"Yeah but I get to open mine first and you have to watch me."
"I bet it's socks."
"Don't even joke about that!"
Thankfully you don't have to deal with Ms. Jenkins getting suspicious. She just sits herself down in the living room with some tea and buys your excuse about scoping out the best hide-and-seek spots. Well, you think she does. Maybe she just doesn't care. Honestly you and Lakshmi are really bad at hide and seek. You're both so good at seeking that the hider never wins. But either way your restless search soon takes you upstairs, giving the master bedroom a wide berth. You hear a few faint murmurs behind the door, but don't think anything of it. Probably just boring adult talk. You check the guest room just to be safe - normally it's either locked or sparkling clean. Today it's neither. There are open suitcases lying on the floor, piles of clothes on the bed. You and Lakshmi slow down as you both edge your way through the ajar door.
"These look like... Mum's clothes," you say, confused.
"Did she just get back from a trip?" Lakshmi wonders aloud. "Or... is she leaving?"
The two of you wander a little further into the room. Lakshmi gravitates to the bed, digging curiously through the pile of fabric. Coming up with what looks just a really really long towel made of silk or something. You try to stick to the plan and check in the cupboard. Nothing inside, not even hung up. Bare as the day it was made. You get down on the floor and peer under the bed. You see the telltale shadow of something hiding in the darkness. You reach under and tug it over, grunting with effort. It's actually surprisingly big. Is it your present? Maybe it's a console? No it... looks more like an instrument case, once you get it into the light. Varnished wood with gold clasps. You pop them one at a time, lifting the lid. You see shiny metal-
"Meg!"
You drop the lid, your head swivelling. "What?" you snap.
Lakshmi holds up a gold swastika necklace. "I think Mum's a Nazi!"
You gasp. This changes everything.
"I see you two are still taking things at face value. Very disappointing."
You and Lakshmi whirl to face the voice, Mum's curious views on the superior Aryan race forgotten. There's a man standing in the doorway, like he just appeared with no sound at all. Old and bony like a stick insect in a skin suit, with that musty smell of old people about him. Wrapped in loose yellow-orange from the waist down and over his right shoulder, a string of beads hanging from his neck. His white beard is thick and bushy, the rest of his long hair split between falling naturally down his back and wrapped up in a sort of bun on top of his head. There's a weird red mark on his forehead. All in all he's the worst Santa Claus ever.
"Uncle Val!" you and Lakshmi say in unison.
He plucks the necklace from Lakshmi's hand and holds it up at slightly the wrong angle, so that it's 'standing' on one of the right angles. "This is the swastika as it was corrupted by the Nazi party. It has created a stigma I doubt the faith will ever shake."
He turns it flat, so it sort of forms a square instead of a diamond. "This is its true orientation. It can be used as a charm to ward off evil and bring good fortune, but it represents many things. Brahman. Shakti. Brahma's four faces. The Purushartha; Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha."
The two of you look at him blankly. He purses his lips. "Have you really learned so little of your own culture?"
"We learn plenty about Australia at school," Lakshmi says.
"Dad says he agreed with Mum not to do religion stuff with us 'til we're older," you say.
"Except Christmas," Lakshmi adds. "Everyone does Christmas."
"Christmas has presents."
"And so do birthdays!" Lakshmi finishes for you. "We were up here to um... look for ours. Do you know where Mum hid any?"
"Rampant materialism feeds a sickness of the soul," Uncle Val says knowingly. "The true path is to learn how to let go of worldly attachments, and pursue spiritual enlightenment."
You and Lakshmi gaze soulfully up at him and speak as one. "Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?"
He stares back at you both with a gaze like stone. Neither of you blink. The battle of wills commences. The air becomes still. Not a sound is heard from outside.
"... I saw where she hid the How To Train Your Dragon DVD," he says reluctantly.
"Yesssssssssssss!" you and Lakshmi hiss as one, punching your fists.
"Now run along downstairs you little demons, and stop hunting for morsels. You'll get the rest of your presents when your parents decree it!"
Uncle Val shoos you both out the door, and you think nothing of it. He stays behind a little while, and locks the guest room door when he leaves, and you think nothing of it. A few minutes later and you're just sprawled out on the couch, kicking Lakshmi to make her stay on her side, and watching How To Train Your Dragon.
Three years pass. It's October again. Second Birthday is cancelled. Mum's schedule won't work out this year. But she has something better, she said. She and Dad had a long talk and decided that thirteen was old enough to give you and Lakshmi a proper look at her culture. Balance out living with Dad most of the time. He says he converted but you never see him do all that much. Either way, as luck would have it there's a temple about fifteen minutes drive from home. Ms. Jenkins gets you there in ten, and she only barely manages to find a place to park. You soon find out why. When Mum said her extended family would be coming, she meant it.
It's a wedding. And it's not at all like the weddings you see on TV and in movies. Those are boring, practically monochrome. Everyone wears the exact same suit. Everyone behaves themselves in an orderly fashion. Not so with a Hindu wedding. Possibly exacerbated by there being just so many people. The minute you get into the temple it's like walking into a wall of noise and colour. None of you dressed for the occasion, not really. You feel drab and out of place. You shrink behind Dad and Ms. Jenkins.
You must get introduced to fifty people just trying to get through the temple to the lawn outside. You don't remember any of their names. You don't remember any of their faces. You don't register any of their connections to Mum. Your tiny mind is overwhelmed. You don't hold Dad's hand like some eight-year-old but dammit you come close. To your relief the four of you finally make it back out into the open air, what must be a hundred chairs laid out in neat rows on the lawn. You get accosted by a dozen more distant relatives on the way to your assigned seats. When you sit down with Dad and Lakshmi, Ms. Jenkins is gone. You understand, you suppose. Technically she isn't family. She probably went back to wait in the car.
Dad whispers to you both when the ceremony starts - once the bride is far enough down the aisle to be out of earshot of course. Pointing out the bride's richly-decorated sari and the groom's equally eyecatching sherwani. He reassures the two of you that it's okay to have no idea what's going on. Everything's being said in Sanskrit, the language of holy ceremonies. There are a few muttered apologies that he didn't get the two of you involved with the entire multi-day ordeal, just the day of, followed by rapid justifications that he thought it would take a lot out of you both. He's especially specific about the seven steps that the bride and groom take together, in the presence of the sacred flame. Apparently that was the most important thing they had to do when he and Mum got married. The bride and groom kiss, lit by the flame-gold sunset. Everyone else seems very affected and into it. You feel like an unwashed potato.
Time for the reception. The tables are supposed to be separated by gender, you think. Or by family. Or by no logical structure at all. You have no idea. All you know is that you wind up sitting at a mostly empty table with a couple of kids either younger or older than you, watching the festivities. Watching your Dad over in the corner, trying to go with the flow but mostly sticking out like a very white-faced sore thumb. The twelve-year-old next to you introduces himself as Mandeep and asks you if you play Pokemon. You grunt "yeah". He says "Genesect is my favourite Pokemon". You say "cool" and silently judge him for liking fifth gen best. That was a lot of intense conversation, so you feel the need to rest for a while.
No, mostly you just stare across the wedding. Watching through the gaps in the shifting crowd of people as Lakshmi is swarmed by adoring Indian aunties. Fawning all over her, pinching her cheeks, chatting her ear off. You just don't get it. It's bad enough that Lakshmi's still as popular at school as she's ever been, maybe more, when you've got maybe five friends. Bad enough that she doesn't have every kid in school making fun of her name. But now she has to go and be the life of the wedding out of nowhere?
"Hey." You nudge the older kid, maybe 15, on your other side. "You see her, over there? Why's everyone swarming her and stuff?"
The guy peers through the crowd, following your finger to Lakshmi. He exhales air out his nose a little harder than usual and goes back to playing his 3DS under the table. "Isn't it obvious? She's basically white. That'll get her far, at least that's what my Mum says about that stuff. I seen her put on cream every morning to whiten herself up. Pretty crazy, huh?"
"So... what?" you ask.
"So they're probably all angling to get her married to their sons and grandsons and nephews and shit," he replies.
"Hey, that's my sister, man."
He glances up at you. "... pff. Yeah right."
"Wha- I'm serious. We're twins."
He glances up from his game again, brow quirked dubiously. "You sure that's your sister you're looking at? 'cause you uh... aren't the same colour."
It's not something you ever thought about. Not something you ever thought worth talking about. It was just so self-evident. So beyond scrutiny. You're twins. You grew up together. You always had your birthday on the same day. You always tried to stick together. It's not like you were ever told that... that what you always assumed was completely and utterly wrong. You look down at the back of your hand, the dark brown skin stretched tight over your knuckles as you curl it into a fist. You wonder about things. A lot of things.
" 'scuse me," you mumble, getting up from your seat. You turn and walk through the crowd, away from the festivities. The heat of the crowd fades, replaced by the chill of the falling night. You were all stuffy and sweaty anyway. You gratefully unbutton your blazer and loosen your tie, shivering as the cold hits you in earnest. The lights at the temple are on, casting thick black shadows before you as you walk to the carpark. You find the car easily. Ms. Jenkins is sitting there just like she said she would be. She rolls down the window. She's a little under Dad's age, white, blonde hair straight and cropped to just under jaw height. She tilts her sunglasses down slightly, inspecting you with her green eyes.
"I don't feel very well," you say. Well, it's not really a lie. "Can you take me home?"
"I'd have to check that with Mr. Dane," she replies. "But I can check the glovebox for any-"
A warm, familiar hand on your shoulder. Your father's shadow falls over you. "No worries, Ms. Jenkins. I'll take him. Think I've outstayed my welcome a bit, anyway. Keep Lakshmi company while I'm gone, would you?"
"Of course, sir." Ms. Jenkins slips out of the car, handing the keys over to Dad, and heads off to go rescue Lakshmi from the no doubt ravenous aunties. Leaving you alone to silently climb into the passenger seat beside Dad. For an absurd moment you wonder if he even remembers how to drive. Certainly you don't remember the last time he was actually behind the wheel himself. But Dad pulls out of the space and navigates back into the street just as well as Ms. Jenkins would've, joining the evening traffic on the way home. Just dark enough that you could probably still get around without them, but everyone has their headlights on anyway. For the first few minutes, all is quiet.
"So what's up, mate?" Dad asks. "Bit of a tummy upset?"
"Am I really your son?" you ask.
Everything goes a bit quiet after that. You can't believe you actually said it. It just slipped out. Slipped out and you can't take it back but dammit you don't want to either. Something's been nagging at you and now you think you finally know why.
"What's brought this on?" Dad asks, bewildered.
"People at the wedding didn't believe I was Lakshmi's brother, let alone her twin," you reply. "Now that I think about it, it's always bothered me a bit. But that was before I had someone point it out to me."
"Point what out?"
"You're white. Mum's, like... dark brown." You stumble over your words, in part out of sheer disbelief. How can he not get where you're going with this? "Lakshmi's a mix so she's really light brown. I'm not. I'm just Mum's colour."
"... look, mate, genetics are very complicated," Dad starts, struggling to split his attention between the road and you. "It's not necessarily pick-and-mix. Sometimes the dominant and recessive-"
"Did Mum sleep with someone else?"
Dad brakes hard at the lights, lurching you forward in your seat. The seatbelt goes taut and yanks you back. Dad whirls on you.
"Hey!" he snaps. "I don't know what's gotten into you tonight but I'm not going to put up with that kind of talk."
"Then why aren't you actually answering me?" you retort. You feel like you should be cringing in fear from Dad's anger but you're not. You're angry too. It makes you brave. Makes you think about nothing but what you want. "Tell me, yes or no, am I your son?"
"We are not having this discussion, Meghanada," he says firmly, swearing under his breath as he fumbles the stickshift.
"How come we only see Mum once a year? Why can't we just move to the Gold Coast and live with her?"
"It's more complicated than I can explain in the car, alright-"
"Why's she hiding from us? Is she ashamed of us? Or just of me?"
"Neither of us are ashamed of you-!"
Click. Your seatbelt releases. Clunk. The door swings open. You slip out of your seat and slam the door shut before Dad can say more than "hey-!". You timed it just right. The light turns green. Dad hesitates. The car behind him sounds its horn, long and loud. You turn away, put your hands in your pockets, and start walking. You hear the engine, see the car roll on ahead of you. You can imagine the gears turning in Dad's head. You can almost see him checking around for somewhere to park and confront you. But in the end he finds no opportunity - or maybe he just can't be bothered to deal with you right now. He accelerates back up to the speed limit, and his tail lights disappear around a corner. You're all alone in the gloom. Good. You fish out your phone and bring up the map app to chart your way home.
But why hurry? You know you'll just get a lecture full of non-answers when you get home. Scolded for being dramatic. Besides, he'll have to about-face and bring the car back for Ms. Jenkins and Lakshmi at some point anyway. That'll just leave you all alone in the big, empty house, imagining what'll come next. No. You don't much feel like that tonight. Tonight you feel more like making Dad sweat for a change. You close the map app and just walk.
Your phone rings. You think about just letting it play out. You decide against it. Instead you pull it out, hit 'hang up', and put it back in your pocket. There. Now Dad'll know you deliberately ignored him instead of just missing the call. Maybe that'll give him something to think about for a change.
Your eyes adjust to the gloom. The walk works you up to a sweat again. It's the curious sensation of being too warm on the inside but too cold on the outside. You button your blazer up again and stick your hands in your pockets. It's fine, you can deal. It's spring. If it were July or something, then you'd be proper fucked. But you can put up with a bit of a chill.
You're not really thinking about where you're going. You're just putting one foot in front of the other. Just stewing in your thoughts. The memory of Lakshmi surrounded by Mum's adoring extended family. Taking the transition to high school perfectly in her stride with all her friends. No sniggering fuckbrains calling her a faggot for having a girl's name. The memory of the time you caught Mum praying at her shrine and she got all weird and hesitant when you asked her what it was all about. How Uncle Val's four times happier to talk to you about Mum's culture than she is. Weird looks you wrote off at the time. Were they weird looks? Are you just getting paranoid now? Are you making shit up that wasn't even there?
"Hey!"
You stop. You look left. You're out the front of a house, a fairly big and nice one and that. Maybe just a little bit worse than Dad's place. Shit, did you wind up back in the Links without realising it? You could just be a couple streets over from home. The front door's open, light spilling out across the porch. Falling across the right side of the man standing there, hand raised in greeting. He's at least a six-footer, maybe more, and well-built to boot. Gym bunny, not bodybuilder. He's white, close-cropped brown hair, brown eyes, about Ms. Jenkins' age. White shirt and tracky dacks, no shoes. The casual sort.
"What?" you reply, wary.
"Nice night for a walk, but it doesn't really seem like you. What's the matter?"
Your brow furrows. "Look, man, I dunno why you have me confused with, but-"
"Meghanada, right?" The guy shifts, leaning against the edge of the open door. "It's Rob. I'm a friend of your dad's. He called me, told me to keep an eye out in case I saw you. Sorry, I don't visit much. You were probably about this big when we saw each other last." He measures with his hands, as if indicating the size of a fish he caught. Faint memories do stir. You're pretty sure you've heard Dad or Ms. Jenkins mention a 'Rob' before.
"Cool," you say, not sure what else you can add.
"You headed anywhere in particular?"
"... not really," you admit with a shrug.
"Just want to be out of the house. I understand." Rob gestures invitingly. "Come on in and have some tea, if you'd like. Stay as long as you need."
"Oh. Um..." You shiver. "... tea sounds nice, heh, thanks."
Rob's place is pretty barebones. The furniture is all pretty artless and utilitarian. Really, the most extravagant part of the setup you see is the big flatscreen TV. The kitchen looks brand sparkling new, as if it's never seen a spot of grime in its life. You glimpse the inside of his fridge as he goes in for the milk. There's... not much else in it. Some apples and foil-wrapped energy bars and that's it.
"On a diet?" you ask.
"Nah. Just really need to do the shopping."
You tell him how you like your tea - fairly weak, half milk, two sugars. He just makes it that way without being a fuckhead about your preference, which is definitely nice. Not only that, it actually tastes the way you like it, too. Ms. Jenkins gets it wrong so much that you've just started doing it yourself at home. You take your tea and sit down on the couch, suppressing a sigh of relief as you sink into the pillowy softness. Rob takes a seat at the far end and sips his own tea. Strong, no milk, no sugar. What a weirdo.
"What's up?" he asks, once most of your tea is gone. You shrug silently. He sets his tea down on the coffee table and turns to face you. "You don't have to say anything. Believe me, that's fine. But in my experience, talking about it really does help. If nothing else, having to explain it to someone else makes it all sit straighter into your head. You have to untangle it and put it all in a line to feed it through into words."
A pause. Rob leans back, reclining on the end of the couch. "Whatever you say, not a word to your Dad. Promise. Everyone needs someone they can confide in, right?"
You nod imperceptibly, staring straight down into your milky tea.
[ ] It's Dad. Sometimes you feel like you have nothing in common with him. Like there's this barrier between him and you that isn't between him and Lakshmi. Like he hides things from you. Like he feels like he has to handle you with care or you'll go off like a bomb.
[ ] It's Mum. Sometimes you feel like she's hiding from you, like the yearly Second Birthdays are just all she can handle before she has to recharge. Like she's only still doing that much out of obligation or something. Making excuses.
[ ] It's Lakshmi. Sometimes you feel like you're not really twins. Like somehow, at some point, Lakshmi just became better than you at everything. She became smarter, more popular, more easygoing, more successful. Like she's drawing further and further ahead of you, leaving you behind.
[ ] It's you. You feel like you're in this transparent bubble that's keeping you just that little bit apart from everyone you know. Like you're a puzzle piece with all these weird rounded edges that just don't seem to fit. You don't really feel Indian and you don't really feel Australian. Sometimes you just feel like the second half of a two-for-one deal that nobody actually wanted, but they just make the most of with.
[ ] Say nothing.
"That's boring," says Lakshmi.
"Why'd you ask me if you don't wanna do what I wanna do?"
"Because I thought you'd pick something that wasn't boring."
"It's not boring!" you insist. "Come on, if we check all the cupboards and stuff maybe we can find our presents?"
"Oh yeah that's actually not a bad idea!"
"First dibs on what we find."
"They'll have our names on them, idiot."
"Yeah but I get to open mine first and you have to watch me."
"I bet it's socks."
"Don't even joke about that!"
Thankfully you don't have to deal with Ms. Jenkins getting suspicious. She just sits herself down in the living room with some tea and buys your excuse about scoping out the best hide-and-seek spots. Well, you think she does. Maybe she just doesn't care. Honestly you and Lakshmi are really bad at hide and seek. You're both so good at seeking that the hider never wins. But either way your restless search soon takes you upstairs, giving the master bedroom a wide berth. You hear a few faint murmurs behind the door, but don't think anything of it. Probably just boring adult talk. You check the guest room just to be safe - normally it's either locked or sparkling clean. Today it's neither. There are open suitcases lying on the floor, piles of clothes on the bed. You and Lakshmi slow down as you both edge your way through the ajar door.
"These look like... Mum's clothes," you say, confused.
"Did she just get back from a trip?" Lakshmi wonders aloud. "Or... is she leaving?"
The two of you wander a little further into the room. Lakshmi gravitates to the bed, digging curiously through the pile of fabric. Coming up with what looks just a really really long towel made of silk or something. You try to stick to the plan and check in the cupboard. Nothing inside, not even hung up. Bare as the day it was made. You get down on the floor and peer under the bed. You see the telltale shadow of something hiding in the darkness. You reach under and tug it over, grunting with effort. It's actually surprisingly big. Is it your present? Maybe it's a console? No it... looks more like an instrument case, once you get it into the light. Varnished wood with gold clasps. You pop them one at a time, lifting the lid. You see shiny metal-
"Meg!"
You drop the lid, your head swivelling. "What?" you snap.
Lakshmi holds up a gold swastika necklace. "I think Mum's a Nazi!"
You gasp. This changes everything.
"I see you two are still taking things at face value. Very disappointing."
You and Lakshmi whirl to face the voice, Mum's curious views on the superior Aryan race forgotten. There's a man standing in the doorway, like he just appeared with no sound at all. Old and bony like a stick insect in a skin suit, with that musty smell of old people about him. Wrapped in loose yellow-orange from the waist down and over his right shoulder, a string of beads hanging from his neck. His white beard is thick and bushy, the rest of his long hair split between falling naturally down his back and wrapped up in a sort of bun on top of his head. There's a weird red mark on his forehead. All in all he's the worst Santa Claus ever.
"Uncle Val!" you and Lakshmi say in unison.
He plucks the necklace from Lakshmi's hand and holds it up at slightly the wrong angle, so that it's 'standing' on one of the right angles. "This is the swastika as it was corrupted by the Nazi party. It has created a stigma I doubt the faith will ever shake."
He turns it flat, so it sort of forms a square instead of a diamond. "This is its true orientation. It can be used as a charm to ward off evil and bring good fortune, but it represents many things. Brahman. Shakti. Brahma's four faces. The Purushartha; Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha."
The two of you look at him blankly. He purses his lips. "Have you really learned so little of your own culture?"
"We learn plenty about Australia at school," Lakshmi says.
"Dad says he agreed with Mum not to do religion stuff with us 'til we're older," you say.
"Except Christmas," Lakshmi adds. "Everyone does Christmas."
"Christmas has presents."
"And so do birthdays!" Lakshmi finishes for you. "We were up here to um... look for ours. Do you know where Mum hid any?"
"Rampant materialism feeds a sickness of the soul," Uncle Val says knowingly. "The true path is to learn how to let go of worldly attachments, and pursue spiritual enlightenment."
You and Lakshmi gaze soulfully up at him and speak as one. "Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?"
He stares back at you both with a gaze like stone. Neither of you blink. The battle of wills commences. The air becomes still. Not a sound is heard from outside.
"... I saw where she hid the How To Train Your Dragon DVD," he says reluctantly.
"Yesssssssssssss!" you and Lakshmi hiss as one, punching your fists.
"Now run along downstairs you little demons, and stop hunting for morsels. You'll get the rest of your presents when your parents decree it!"
Uncle Val shoos you both out the door, and you think nothing of it. He stays behind a little while, and locks the guest room door when he leaves, and you think nothing of it. A few minutes later and you're just sprawled out on the couch, kicking Lakshmi to make her stay on her side, and watching How To Train Your Dragon.
Three years pass. It's October again. Second Birthday is cancelled. Mum's schedule won't work out this year. But she has something better, she said. She and Dad had a long talk and decided that thirteen was old enough to give you and Lakshmi a proper look at her culture. Balance out living with Dad most of the time. He says he converted but you never see him do all that much. Either way, as luck would have it there's a temple about fifteen minutes drive from home. Ms. Jenkins gets you there in ten, and she only barely manages to find a place to park. You soon find out why. When Mum said her extended family would be coming, she meant it.
It's a wedding. And it's not at all like the weddings you see on TV and in movies. Those are boring, practically monochrome. Everyone wears the exact same suit. Everyone behaves themselves in an orderly fashion. Not so with a Hindu wedding. Possibly exacerbated by there being just so many people. The minute you get into the temple it's like walking into a wall of noise and colour. None of you dressed for the occasion, not really. You feel drab and out of place. You shrink behind Dad and Ms. Jenkins.
You must get introduced to fifty people just trying to get through the temple to the lawn outside. You don't remember any of their names. You don't remember any of their faces. You don't register any of their connections to Mum. Your tiny mind is overwhelmed. You don't hold Dad's hand like some eight-year-old but dammit you come close. To your relief the four of you finally make it back out into the open air, what must be a hundred chairs laid out in neat rows on the lawn. You get accosted by a dozen more distant relatives on the way to your assigned seats. When you sit down with Dad and Lakshmi, Ms. Jenkins is gone. You understand, you suppose. Technically she isn't family. She probably went back to wait in the car.
Dad whispers to you both when the ceremony starts - once the bride is far enough down the aisle to be out of earshot of course. Pointing out the bride's richly-decorated sari and the groom's equally eyecatching sherwani. He reassures the two of you that it's okay to have no idea what's going on. Everything's being said in Sanskrit, the language of holy ceremonies. There are a few muttered apologies that he didn't get the two of you involved with the entire multi-day ordeal, just the day of, followed by rapid justifications that he thought it would take a lot out of you both. He's especially specific about the seven steps that the bride and groom take together, in the presence of the sacred flame. Apparently that was the most important thing they had to do when he and Mum got married. The bride and groom kiss, lit by the flame-gold sunset. Everyone else seems very affected and into it. You feel like an unwashed potato.
Time for the reception. The tables are supposed to be separated by gender, you think. Or by family. Or by no logical structure at all. You have no idea. All you know is that you wind up sitting at a mostly empty table with a couple of kids either younger or older than you, watching the festivities. Watching your Dad over in the corner, trying to go with the flow but mostly sticking out like a very white-faced sore thumb. The twelve-year-old next to you introduces himself as Mandeep and asks you if you play Pokemon. You grunt "yeah". He says "Genesect is my favourite Pokemon". You say "cool" and silently judge him for liking fifth gen best. That was a lot of intense conversation, so you feel the need to rest for a while.
No, mostly you just stare across the wedding. Watching through the gaps in the shifting crowd of people as Lakshmi is swarmed by adoring Indian aunties. Fawning all over her, pinching her cheeks, chatting her ear off. You just don't get it. It's bad enough that Lakshmi's still as popular at school as she's ever been, maybe more, when you've got maybe five friends. Bad enough that she doesn't have every kid in school making fun of her name. But now she has to go and be the life of the wedding out of nowhere?
"Hey." You nudge the older kid, maybe 15, on your other side. "You see her, over there? Why's everyone swarming her and stuff?"
The guy peers through the crowd, following your finger to Lakshmi. He exhales air out his nose a little harder than usual and goes back to playing his 3DS under the table. "Isn't it obvious? She's basically white. That'll get her far, at least that's what my Mum says about that stuff. I seen her put on cream every morning to whiten herself up. Pretty crazy, huh?"
"So... what?" you ask.
"So they're probably all angling to get her married to their sons and grandsons and nephews and shit," he replies.
"Hey, that's my sister, man."
He glances up at you. "... pff. Yeah right."
"Wha- I'm serious. We're twins."
He glances up from his game again, brow quirked dubiously. "You sure that's your sister you're looking at? 'cause you uh... aren't the same colour."
It's not something you ever thought about. Not something you ever thought worth talking about. It was just so self-evident. So beyond scrutiny. You're twins. You grew up together. You always had your birthday on the same day. You always tried to stick together. It's not like you were ever told that... that what you always assumed was completely and utterly wrong. You look down at the back of your hand, the dark brown skin stretched tight over your knuckles as you curl it into a fist. You wonder about things. A lot of things.
" 'scuse me," you mumble, getting up from your seat. You turn and walk through the crowd, away from the festivities. The heat of the crowd fades, replaced by the chill of the falling night. You were all stuffy and sweaty anyway. You gratefully unbutton your blazer and loosen your tie, shivering as the cold hits you in earnest. The lights at the temple are on, casting thick black shadows before you as you walk to the carpark. You find the car easily. Ms. Jenkins is sitting there just like she said she would be. She rolls down the window. She's a little under Dad's age, white, blonde hair straight and cropped to just under jaw height. She tilts her sunglasses down slightly, inspecting you with her green eyes.
"I don't feel very well," you say. Well, it's not really a lie. "Can you take me home?"
"I'd have to check that with Mr. Dane," she replies. "But I can check the glovebox for any-"
A warm, familiar hand on your shoulder. Your father's shadow falls over you. "No worries, Ms. Jenkins. I'll take him. Think I've outstayed my welcome a bit, anyway. Keep Lakshmi company while I'm gone, would you?"
"Of course, sir." Ms. Jenkins slips out of the car, handing the keys over to Dad, and heads off to go rescue Lakshmi from the no doubt ravenous aunties. Leaving you alone to silently climb into the passenger seat beside Dad. For an absurd moment you wonder if he even remembers how to drive. Certainly you don't remember the last time he was actually behind the wheel himself. But Dad pulls out of the space and navigates back into the street just as well as Ms. Jenkins would've, joining the evening traffic on the way home. Just dark enough that you could probably still get around without them, but everyone has their headlights on anyway. For the first few minutes, all is quiet.
"So what's up, mate?" Dad asks. "Bit of a tummy upset?"
"Am I really your son?" you ask.
Everything goes a bit quiet after that. You can't believe you actually said it. It just slipped out. Slipped out and you can't take it back but dammit you don't want to either. Something's been nagging at you and now you think you finally know why.
"What's brought this on?" Dad asks, bewildered.
"People at the wedding didn't believe I was Lakshmi's brother, let alone her twin," you reply. "Now that I think about it, it's always bothered me a bit. But that was before I had someone point it out to me."
"Point what out?"
"You're white. Mum's, like... dark brown." You stumble over your words, in part out of sheer disbelief. How can he not get where you're going with this? "Lakshmi's a mix so she's really light brown. I'm not. I'm just Mum's colour."
"... look, mate, genetics are very complicated," Dad starts, struggling to split his attention between the road and you. "It's not necessarily pick-and-mix. Sometimes the dominant and recessive-"
"Did Mum sleep with someone else?"
Dad brakes hard at the lights, lurching you forward in your seat. The seatbelt goes taut and yanks you back. Dad whirls on you.
"Hey!" he snaps. "I don't know what's gotten into you tonight but I'm not going to put up with that kind of talk."
"Then why aren't you actually answering me?" you retort. You feel like you should be cringing in fear from Dad's anger but you're not. You're angry too. It makes you brave. Makes you think about nothing but what you want. "Tell me, yes or no, am I your son?"
"We are not having this discussion, Meghanada," he says firmly, swearing under his breath as he fumbles the stickshift.
"How come we only see Mum once a year? Why can't we just move to the Gold Coast and live with her?"
"It's more complicated than I can explain in the car, alright-"
"Why's she hiding from us? Is she ashamed of us? Or just of me?"
"Neither of us are ashamed of you-!"
Click. Your seatbelt releases. Clunk. The door swings open. You slip out of your seat and slam the door shut before Dad can say more than "hey-!". You timed it just right. The light turns green. Dad hesitates. The car behind him sounds its horn, long and loud. You turn away, put your hands in your pockets, and start walking. You hear the engine, see the car roll on ahead of you. You can imagine the gears turning in Dad's head. You can almost see him checking around for somewhere to park and confront you. But in the end he finds no opportunity - or maybe he just can't be bothered to deal with you right now. He accelerates back up to the speed limit, and his tail lights disappear around a corner. You're all alone in the gloom. Good. You fish out your phone and bring up the map app to chart your way home.
But why hurry? You know you'll just get a lecture full of non-answers when you get home. Scolded for being dramatic. Besides, he'll have to about-face and bring the car back for Ms. Jenkins and Lakshmi at some point anyway. That'll just leave you all alone in the big, empty house, imagining what'll come next. No. You don't much feel like that tonight. Tonight you feel more like making Dad sweat for a change. You close the map app and just walk.
Your phone rings. You think about just letting it play out. You decide against it. Instead you pull it out, hit 'hang up', and put it back in your pocket. There. Now Dad'll know you deliberately ignored him instead of just missing the call. Maybe that'll give him something to think about for a change.
Your eyes adjust to the gloom. The walk works you up to a sweat again. It's the curious sensation of being too warm on the inside but too cold on the outside. You button your blazer up again and stick your hands in your pockets. It's fine, you can deal. It's spring. If it were July or something, then you'd be proper fucked. But you can put up with a bit of a chill.
You're not really thinking about where you're going. You're just putting one foot in front of the other. Just stewing in your thoughts. The memory of Lakshmi surrounded by Mum's adoring extended family. Taking the transition to high school perfectly in her stride with all her friends. No sniggering fuckbrains calling her a faggot for having a girl's name. The memory of the time you caught Mum praying at her shrine and she got all weird and hesitant when you asked her what it was all about. How Uncle Val's four times happier to talk to you about Mum's culture than she is. Weird looks you wrote off at the time. Were they weird looks? Are you just getting paranoid now? Are you making shit up that wasn't even there?
"Hey!"
You stop. You look left. You're out the front of a house, a fairly big and nice one and that. Maybe just a little bit worse than Dad's place. Shit, did you wind up back in the Links without realising it? You could just be a couple streets over from home. The front door's open, light spilling out across the porch. Falling across the right side of the man standing there, hand raised in greeting. He's at least a six-footer, maybe more, and well-built to boot. Gym bunny, not bodybuilder. He's white, close-cropped brown hair, brown eyes, about Ms. Jenkins' age. White shirt and tracky dacks, no shoes. The casual sort.
"What?" you reply, wary.
"Nice night for a walk, but it doesn't really seem like you. What's the matter?"
Your brow furrows. "Look, man, I dunno why you have me confused with, but-"
"Meghanada, right?" The guy shifts, leaning against the edge of the open door. "It's Rob. I'm a friend of your dad's. He called me, told me to keep an eye out in case I saw you. Sorry, I don't visit much. You were probably about this big when we saw each other last." He measures with his hands, as if indicating the size of a fish he caught. Faint memories do stir. You're pretty sure you've heard Dad or Ms. Jenkins mention a 'Rob' before.
"Cool," you say, not sure what else you can add.
"You headed anywhere in particular?"
"... not really," you admit with a shrug.
"Just want to be out of the house. I understand." Rob gestures invitingly. "Come on in and have some tea, if you'd like. Stay as long as you need."
"Oh. Um..." You shiver. "... tea sounds nice, heh, thanks."
Rob's place is pretty barebones. The furniture is all pretty artless and utilitarian. Really, the most extravagant part of the setup you see is the big flatscreen TV. The kitchen looks brand sparkling new, as if it's never seen a spot of grime in its life. You glimpse the inside of his fridge as he goes in for the milk. There's... not much else in it. Some apples and foil-wrapped energy bars and that's it.
"On a diet?" you ask.
"Nah. Just really need to do the shopping."
You tell him how you like your tea - fairly weak, half milk, two sugars. He just makes it that way without being a fuckhead about your preference, which is definitely nice. Not only that, it actually tastes the way you like it, too. Ms. Jenkins gets it wrong so much that you've just started doing it yourself at home. You take your tea and sit down on the couch, suppressing a sigh of relief as you sink into the pillowy softness. Rob takes a seat at the far end and sips his own tea. Strong, no milk, no sugar. What a weirdo.
"What's up?" he asks, once most of your tea is gone. You shrug silently. He sets his tea down on the coffee table and turns to face you. "You don't have to say anything. Believe me, that's fine. But in my experience, talking about it really does help. If nothing else, having to explain it to someone else makes it all sit straighter into your head. You have to untangle it and put it all in a line to feed it through into words."
A pause. Rob leans back, reclining on the end of the couch. "Whatever you say, not a word to your Dad. Promise. Everyone needs someone they can confide in, right?"
You nod imperceptibly, staring straight down into your milky tea.
[ ] It's Dad. Sometimes you feel like you have nothing in common with him. Like there's this barrier between him and you that isn't between him and Lakshmi. Like he hides things from you. Like he feels like he has to handle you with care or you'll go off like a bomb.
[ ] It's Mum. Sometimes you feel like she's hiding from you, like the yearly Second Birthdays are just all she can handle before she has to recharge. Like she's only still doing that much out of obligation or something. Making excuses.
[ ] It's Lakshmi. Sometimes you feel like you're not really twins. Like somehow, at some point, Lakshmi just became better than you at everything. She became smarter, more popular, more easygoing, more successful. Like she's drawing further and further ahead of you, leaving you behind.
[ ] It's you. You feel like you're in this transparent bubble that's keeping you just that little bit apart from everyone you know. Like you're a puzzle piece with all these weird rounded edges that just don't seem to fit. You don't really feel Indian and you don't really feel Australian. Sometimes you just feel like the second half of a two-for-one deal that nobody actually wanted, but they just make the most of with.
[ ] Say nothing.
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Chapter Four: At Its Corps
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
"It's..."
It's Dad. He doesn't respect you. It's Mum. She doesn't care about you. It's Lakshmi. She's just so perfect and holier-than-thou.
"It's me, heh."
Rob doesn't comment. He just slowly takes another sip of his tea. You take the opportunity to down the rest of yours. The sweet, milky warmth does a little to make you feel better. A small, fortifying heat in your stomach. You cradle the still-warm mug, feeling the leftover warmth bleed into your palms. Stare into the last dregs collecting at the bottom.
"It's like I don't know who I am any more," you mumble. "Like I don't belong in my own family. Like I don't even know them. Like I'm this weird... hanger-on. Honestly the minute it occurred to me that I might be adopted I jumped on it so quickly 'cause... 'cause it just makes the most sense to me."
"Why do you think that is?" Rob asks diplomatically. You scoff.
"Look at me, heh. I've got an excuse not to have noticed for so long, I'm a stupid kid. Everyone else's probably known my whole life. Just not said anything 'cause they didn't want to hurt my feelings. I may kinda look like Lakshmi and I may be the same age as her but... but come on!"
Rob nods. "I'd say this is something you should discuss with your Dad but from the sounds of it you already did."
"For all the good that did," you say glumly.
"Yeah." Rob leans forward and sets his still-steaming mug down on the coffee table. "I'll be honest with you, Meghanada. I can't empathise with you as much as I'd like. I have no idea what it'd be like to be in your position. Can't imagine how hard it would be not even being able to trust my place in my own family. But if it's any consolation... everyone feels a little out-of-place sometimes. Outgrowing what used to be familiar and finding your new niche is something everyone goes through. You're thirteen, after all. The teens are when that all starts."
"Yay," you say, unenthused.
He scratches the back of his neck. "So... family's out of the picture. For now. Any friends you can talk to?"
You scoff. "Friends don't talk about stuff like that." You pause. "... not my friends, anyway."
"Try the school counsellor." You look at him. He shrugs. "They're not top-of-the-line but they're there for a reason, y'know? If nothing else, he can help make school a bit easier while you try to sort things out. I think you should at least try it, for what it's worth."
"I guess."
Silence falls. It feels thick, choking. A tie that's way too tight, compressing your throat. You want to say something just to break it, but you have no idea what. You move to pick up your mug and take it into the kitchen. Rob beats you there with a quiet thanks for the thought, finishing off the rest of his own mug and taking the two to the sink to be rinsed. The rush of water is something to fill the space, at least.
"... so what should I do now?" you ask, somewhat stupidly.
"Like, 'right now tonight' now?" Rob asks. You nod. "Go home, I'd say. Just get a good night's sleep and try to tackle all this fresh in the morning. I'm sure your Dad'll give you some time to settle your thoughts."
"I guess," you say, unconvinced. "I can walk. Don't have to drop me off-"
"Drop you off?" Rob grins. "Mate, we're backyard-to-backyard. I boost you over the fence and you're home already."
"... oh." You feel very stupid now.
"Come on." Rob pats you on the shoulder. "Let's get you home. And not a word to your dad, promise."
He smiles at you. You smile back, a little weakly but it's there. You force yourself to stand, the couch creaking as it slowly erases your ass-print. Rob opens the back door for you, flicking on the backyard lights. Crickets chirp softly in the distance as you walk across the springy grass, your shadow stretching out long and dark before you. You pass by the pool, covered and unused. The night chill comes back in full force. You shiver, hug yourself. When you get to the back 'fence' you're greeted by an impossibly high, impregnable wall of hedges.
"This doesn't seem-"
"C'mon, I'll boost you up." Rob ducks down, offering you his cupped hands. You shrug, decide to try it out. Not like you'll break your neck if you fall. You step up into his offered hands, only to immediately cry out in surprise as you seem to shoot up into the air. You wobble, windmilling your arms, and before you know it you're on top of the hedge. The shrubbery's so thick that it supports you like slightly springy rock. You lie flat across the surface, on your stomach, clinging to it like a surprised beetle. You hear Rob chuckle.
"There's a bit of a hill on your side. The drop's fine, you can make it!"
You force yourself to swing your legs over the side and let go. There's a brief moment of the terrifying rush of falling before your legs crumple and you lie in a stunned heap on the grass. After a minute of feeling like you just died, you rise to discover that you're completely unhurt, and feel a little silly. You go to thank Rob, only to remember that he's quite out of sight now.
"If you need a chat, you know where to find me!" he says through the hedge.
"See you," you say.
You sleep okay that night. Not great, but not terrible. In the morning, nobody wants to talk about it. Dad doesn't bring it up. You don't want to either. You know it's not going to solve anything. You're not in the mood for a repeat of yesterday. You just silently put up with Lakshmi talking about just how much all the aunties adored her and how there's a million grandsons that want to meet her. You just silently put up with a lot until you get back to school.
You see the counsellor like Rob said. First appointment doesn't really get much done. But you don't want to feel like you pussed out on it at the first opportunity. So you go again. And again. And again. Each time mumbling out a little bit more about yourself. It's the fourth visit when the counsellor finally has an idea. You like being at Mum's place, seeing the hints of her culture - hell, even like Uncle Val hanging around. You want something to bond with Dad over. He said he converted, so why not go to the temple for a while?
Dad really likes the idea. He's intensely apologetic about his schedule as always, but soon enough you find time on the weekend. You go to a different temple from the one where the wedding was - a fresh start for the both of you. Something about the temple's atmosphere soothes you, grinds down the sharp edges of the problems slowly sawing away at you. You listen in on a couple of the group prayers, but you don't participate. Instead you wander the halls, listening as Dad explains the various gods as best he can. Explains what he learned from Mum about prayer. You pray to Ganesh for the wisdom to navigate through the confusing mire your life has become. You pray to Hanuman for protection, albeit with some persuading from Dad. Dad prays to Lakshmi, though you don't think he really needs help on the wealth and prosperity front. And lastly you pray to Vishnu, that no more of what you cherish can slip away from you.
You go every week for the rest of the school year. More when you can swing it. Then work gets in the way again. Some new project or another, even less free time than he usually has. You try not to mind too much. You ask if you can start a prayer-corner in your room instead. He helps you pick things out for your little shrine with all the time he has left. You trawl the Internet looking for new gods to learn about and add to the shrine. It feels... you're not sure really. Comforting, in a way. Like Mum's life isn't just a once-a-year treat any more.
You see Rob every week or two. Sometimes he's just going for a run and passes you while you're taking a walk. Sometimes you drop by. He doesn't keep his door locked - it's a good neighbourhood like that. You talk, about all the stuff you have no one else for. Or about nothing in particular. He says he's an artist, the detailed sketch kind that doesn't exactly line the walls in the Louvre but pays the bills. He must be really good to afford a place right behind Dad's. Rob's a bit odd but you don't mind. He likes his quiet and so do you. He likes his space and so do you. It's surprisingly easy to get your schoolwork done at his place, with no Lakshmi or Ms. Jenkins hovering around. Dad says Ms. Jenkins probably appreciates the break. You don't find it as funny as he does.
It's October again. Your second fifteenth birthday. You and Lakshmi show up at Mum's house to see an unexpected addition. A brand new archery range, a rectangular block of bush cleared away with all the proper top-of-the-line accoutrements present and accounted for. Mum says that archery's very big in Hindu history, that she always loved it as a kid. Uncle Val says that teaches one to centre themselves, to shut out outside distractions and focus. Dad just says that it's pretty fun, and hands you your brand new bows to see for yourselves. You can't lie. It is fun. You're a first-timer and you suck, obviously, but Uncle Val and Mum help you and Lakshmi out loads. And there's something just viscerally satisfying about it. Feeling the bowstring creak as you draw it back, feeling the tension, the weight of the draw. Letting the arrow loose in one explosive movement and watching it shoot off with a fwip. Sometimes even into the target.
When you get back, Ms. Jenkins tells you there's an archery club not 20 minutes' drive from home. You and Lakshmi sign up immediately. You start going every weekend, sometimes more when it's school holidays. It's funny - you were starting to think that you and Lakshmi had nothing it common. Still feel like you have no idea what's going through her head or what she does all day sometimes. But when you head over to the club and set up side-by-side on the range, it feels just like old times. The two of you shoot in pristine silence until all your arrows are gone, then chat about anything and nothing as you trudge over to retrieve them. On-off, a curious rhythm. You've been shooting a couple of times too, but it was never the same. Guns are all well and good in videogames and movies but they're a bit... boring in real life. Your bow feels better. You feel like you're in control of every part of it. Like your entire body is engaged, pulled as taut as your bowstring. There's something about that feeling just before you loose. Something about refining your technique, every fractional stage of the draw and release. Uncle Val's right. It does teach you focus. It does teach you patience.
Not enough.
Cadet Corps is possibly the worst idea in the history of man. It's the idea of having every boy from Year 9 to Year 12 join - attendance compulsory - a mockup of the Australian Army and have to stay after school every Monday for drills and shit. And the 17 and 18 year olds are COs, trying to control 15 and 16 year olds. It's exactly as genius as it sounds. And it's not enough that complete cockheads have been instated as your superior officers for the next four years, and many weeks Corps goes on and on in the simmering heat until that one 'tard in the squad (and there is always at least one) understands the concept of "left right left" and "right turn". It's not enough that it's only for the guys, so Lakshmi gets to swan on home and laugh off your complaints as idle bitching. No, then you have to go to camp.
Cramped busfuls of sweaty teenage boys trundle off to the middle of the bush right in the middle of Summer. You don't have any friends in your squad, of course. Figures. Crowds by the buses as everyone waits to haul their shit into base camp. The sun beats down angrily, with a vengeance. Your feet sweat in your big stupid boots and thick socks. Somehow the evolutionary advantages of your darker skin aren't much comfort.
It's not as bad at first. The first two days you're at base camp, eating fairly okay food (holy shit the rat-packs have Smarties) and sleeping in cabins with real bunk beds. Snoring roommates notwithstanding. It's not fun doing drills in the sweltering 30+ degree heat and most of the theory work goes in one ear and out the other, but it's not awful. The next two days it's even hotter, and you have to shift to the next camp in the rotation. Facilities are worse, but at least there's still plenty of taps around. Abseiling's pretty cool, you can't be shitty about that unless you tried. And even though they only let you shoot piddly-ass single-shot bolt-action .22 rifles that kick like an old man coughing, shooting's an okay change of pace. You don't like it as much as archery, but the basic principles are there. Keep calm, stay patient, focus, and judge your distance.
Then it's day 5. Time to trek to the third camp. A long, long, long, long trek over hill and dale and then up a fucking mountain. You don't exactly have your thermometer with you but it feels like the hottest day of the week so far, and your canteen isn't bottomless. But for extra irony, you have to cross a river about fifteen minutes into the hike. Everyone's boots get soaked. It's an auspicious start. No one wants to waste breath chatting so it's nothing but a silent, puffing slog as sweat pours from every pore. Your kit only seems to get heavier and heavier with every step you drag it through the bush. At some point during the climb, with seemingly no rhyme or reason, you feel something start to squirm under your shirt. You contort and flail, shaking it wildly, and see something long with too many legs fly out. Too late. The bite swells and stings the rest of the way there. Your mood only gets fouler.
You finally make it to the midway camp as the sun mercifully begins to set. There's a bunch of old spent shell casings lying around that under no circumstances are to be picked up as souvenirs, so of course everyone has a couple in their pocket by the time the entire squad's settled. You stampede for the river and drink until the water gurgles and sloshes in your stomach, then finally refill your bone-dry canteen. Your stomach growls anyway as you shamble back to camp. A couple guys get the fire going while a few bright sparks whip out the portable stoves and pans they brought in their kit bags. The assorted camo-clad teenagers all rummage around in the remnants of their 24-hour rat-packs, hunting for their dinners. You paw through yours. Breakfast muesli with milk powder's gone of course. Instant noodles were for lunch, eaten dry and chased with water. Tea was for lunch, to make the last of your water count - shit's cash when you use condensed milk. Any other various odds and ends long-since consumed. Just your main-meal sachet left. You blindly tear open the brown plastic and-
Wait. That smell.
You check the front. Printed in cramped little text is the nature of your repast. BBQ beef.
Shit.
"So uh, what's everyone got?" you ask as casually as possible. Doesn't seem like many people hear you. Or care. The ones that do reply still have beef meals, either exactly the same as yours or with veggies. Shit shit shit. You try to act casual - as casual as one can be, holding an opened MRE sachet at arm's length like a snooty food critic. Ugh. Shit. You'll just have to own up to it.
"Look, has anyone got something that isn't beef?"
"Yeah, I got chicken italiano. Why?"
You recognise the voice. You look. It's the corporal. Shit. Name's David Baker or something. Dave-o to his friends, of course. His idea of leadership is encouraging mockery, and he never helps out with the actual heavy lifting. Blonde and blue-eyed, perhaps a carrier for the superior Aryan asshole genes. You steel yourself and try to speak as evenly as possible.
"Can we swap?"
"Nah. I like chicken. Besides, looks like most of the unit got the same thing." He shrugs. "You get shit rat-packs once you're out of base camp."
"Look... please." You can practically feel your balls ache with the effort to be polite.
"What's up, got a lust for cock-meat in the evening, mate?" he chuckles. "Seriously though, fuck off and eat. Or get working on your tent."
"Sir." You're fine with calling every adult male on campus 'sir' but you draw the line a guy barely over a year older than you. "I... can't eat beef. Ok? I need your chicken ration."
"Why?" He folds his arms, the sachet tucked under his arm. You purse your lips so tight they vanish completely. All the good private schools in town are some denomination of Christian. Dad had to search high and low for a nondenominational one. When he finally found it it was so far away that Ms. Jenkins chauffeuring you and Lakshmi was practically mandatory. And yet despite his best efforts over the years you still felt this growing... unease. Of not fitting in right. After all Hindus are, what, 1% of the population? Statistically speaking you're a unicorn. It's always just seemed easer to keep it under wraps. Safer. Maybe just paranoia but- shit you've been quiet too long, say something.
"Because I'm Hindu," you force out. "I can't eat it."
He raises his eyebrows and leans back a little. "That right? Yeah you guys like, worship cows or some shit?"
"Hhhaaaaa. No, we don't worship them now can I just have the chicken please." You make to reach out for the sachet. David flicks it away from you, held at head-height.
"Hey hey hey, hang on. Don't snatch." There's that shit-eating grin. "If you don't pray to cows, what's the problem with eating 'em?"
Ugh, shit. Praying. You couldn't exactly pack your shrine in your kit bag. And trying to do it au naturale just felt so... hollow. So you stopped. It hasn't improved your mood. You take a slow, deep breath. It's okay. You don't have to give him a theological lecture. Bare essentials.
"They aren't worshipped but they're sacred," you explain evenly. "Traditionally they're seen as motherly, part of the family-"
"So your mum's sacred too, then?"
CRUNCH
It's not something you think about. Not a neuron sparks in your conscious mind. Your nerves spark to life and your fist just goes sailing forward. No thought. David can't see it coming. Couldn't react even if he did. The sensation feels oddly like punching a bag of chips, feeling it all crunch and crumble beneath the plastic skin. His head snaps back and he just crumples like a ragdoll, hitting the dirt hard. Your knuckles sting. It takes a bit for everyone else to realise what you just did. For David to react. There's a moment of what seems like perfect silence.
David doesn't make a noise. He's out cold. Everyone else makes plenty of noise. It all washes over you at once in one big wave, trying to drown out your thoughts. The veins in your forehead pulse. Your brain seems too big, pressing painfully against the inside of your skull. It aches behind your eyes. Someone's grabbing at your shoulder.
You scoop up the fallen MRE packet, walk away from the campsite, and start to eat it cold.
The night passes in a whirl. They have to radio base camp and mention David's injuries. They treat him as best they can. The other two officers scream at you but it just... rolls off. You pitch your tent far away from everyone else that night. In the morning you set off early, barely time for breakfast. A handful of guys take off their belts and lash them together in a makeshift stretcher, just like they taught you. You have to carry all their kit. By the time you all reach the forward camp you're about ready to collapse. The medics waiting there take David away. The teachers take you away, too.
You get sent home early, of course. After a forced march back to base camp, Ms. Jenkins is waiting out front to take you home. She doesn't say a word in all the hours and hours of driving. Nobody else is home when you get back. You don't eat. You just go to bed. You don't leave the house for a couple of days.
You go to the principal's office. Dad's there too. Had to come home early from a business trip. You're told, in no uncertain terms, just how badly you fucked up. David's family is screaming bloody murder about what you did to his face, wants to bring you up on charges. They're a family with a long history of ties to the school. Generations of rowers and rugby players and top-scoring students. The school doesn't have the will or the inclination to silence them. Neither, you realise, does Dad. He doesn't say a word in your defence during the entire appointment. He just nods and agrees when the principal recommends expulsion.
He doesn't speak to you the whole car ride home. You can see his clenched jaw working, the tendons shifting in his neck. He's angry. Furious. Doesn't know where to direct it. You almost wish he'd yell at you. You try to think of something, anything to say. Find nothing. The gulf between you is too wide. Instead you say nothing. When you get home, only you get out of the car. Dad says something tersely about needing to head right back to the office to make sure his work doesn't collapse. You walk up the path and into the house all alone.
Lakshmi's waiting for you.
"What the fuck's wrong with you!?" she shouts as she springs up from the couch. "Everything's going just fine then out of the blue I hear you went psycho!? The entire school knows about it, Meg! David's face swelled up like you beat him with a shovel! He can barely breathe! He sure as hell can't play Rugby until he heals! And Dad was freaking about having to come home and deal with the school kicking you out! What could he have done that was so bad you had to turn into a caveman and assault him? God, did you ever stop and think about how this would affect dad, or me? Now I'm just going to be the sister of the psycho who assaulted someone on camp for like three years!"
Your jaw goes tight. Your fist clenches. You breathe, slowly, in and out.
[ ] Say nothing. There's nothing more to say. Nothing that'd change anything or make it better. Just let it wash over you and go to bed.
[ ] Tell Lakshmi that you're glad she knows where her priorities are.
[ ] Tell Lakshmi exactly what the fuck's wrong with you.
It's Dad. He doesn't respect you. It's Mum. She doesn't care about you. It's Lakshmi. She's just so perfect and holier-than-thou.
"It's me, heh."
Rob doesn't comment. He just slowly takes another sip of his tea. You take the opportunity to down the rest of yours. The sweet, milky warmth does a little to make you feel better. A small, fortifying heat in your stomach. You cradle the still-warm mug, feeling the leftover warmth bleed into your palms. Stare into the last dregs collecting at the bottom.
"It's like I don't know who I am any more," you mumble. "Like I don't belong in my own family. Like I don't even know them. Like I'm this weird... hanger-on. Honestly the minute it occurred to me that I might be adopted I jumped on it so quickly 'cause... 'cause it just makes the most sense to me."
"Why do you think that is?" Rob asks diplomatically. You scoff.
"Look at me, heh. I've got an excuse not to have noticed for so long, I'm a stupid kid. Everyone else's probably known my whole life. Just not said anything 'cause they didn't want to hurt my feelings. I may kinda look like Lakshmi and I may be the same age as her but... but come on!"
Rob nods. "I'd say this is something you should discuss with your Dad but from the sounds of it you already did."
"For all the good that did," you say glumly.
"Yeah." Rob leans forward and sets his still-steaming mug down on the coffee table. "I'll be honest with you, Meghanada. I can't empathise with you as much as I'd like. I have no idea what it'd be like to be in your position. Can't imagine how hard it would be not even being able to trust my place in my own family. But if it's any consolation... everyone feels a little out-of-place sometimes. Outgrowing what used to be familiar and finding your new niche is something everyone goes through. You're thirteen, after all. The teens are when that all starts."
"Yay," you say, unenthused.
He scratches the back of his neck. "So... family's out of the picture. For now. Any friends you can talk to?"
You scoff. "Friends don't talk about stuff like that." You pause. "... not my friends, anyway."
"Try the school counsellor." You look at him. He shrugs. "They're not top-of-the-line but they're there for a reason, y'know? If nothing else, he can help make school a bit easier while you try to sort things out. I think you should at least try it, for what it's worth."
"I guess."
Silence falls. It feels thick, choking. A tie that's way too tight, compressing your throat. You want to say something just to break it, but you have no idea what. You move to pick up your mug and take it into the kitchen. Rob beats you there with a quiet thanks for the thought, finishing off the rest of his own mug and taking the two to the sink to be rinsed. The rush of water is something to fill the space, at least.
"... so what should I do now?" you ask, somewhat stupidly.
"Like, 'right now tonight' now?" Rob asks. You nod. "Go home, I'd say. Just get a good night's sleep and try to tackle all this fresh in the morning. I'm sure your Dad'll give you some time to settle your thoughts."
"I guess," you say, unconvinced. "I can walk. Don't have to drop me off-"
"Drop you off?" Rob grins. "Mate, we're backyard-to-backyard. I boost you over the fence and you're home already."
"... oh." You feel very stupid now.
"Come on." Rob pats you on the shoulder. "Let's get you home. And not a word to your dad, promise."
He smiles at you. You smile back, a little weakly but it's there. You force yourself to stand, the couch creaking as it slowly erases your ass-print. Rob opens the back door for you, flicking on the backyard lights. Crickets chirp softly in the distance as you walk across the springy grass, your shadow stretching out long and dark before you. You pass by the pool, covered and unused. The night chill comes back in full force. You shiver, hug yourself. When you get to the back 'fence' you're greeted by an impossibly high, impregnable wall of hedges.
"This doesn't seem-"
"C'mon, I'll boost you up." Rob ducks down, offering you his cupped hands. You shrug, decide to try it out. Not like you'll break your neck if you fall. You step up into his offered hands, only to immediately cry out in surprise as you seem to shoot up into the air. You wobble, windmilling your arms, and before you know it you're on top of the hedge. The shrubbery's so thick that it supports you like slightly springy rock. You lie flat across the surface, on your stomach, clinging to it like a surprised beetle. You hear Rob chuckle.
"There's a bit of a hill on your side. The drop's fine, you can make it!"
You force yourself to swing your legs over the side and let go. There's a brief moment of the terrifying rush of falling before your legs crumple and you lie in a stunned heap on the grass. After a minute of feeling like you just died, you rise to discover that you're completely unhurt, and feel a little silly. You go to thank Rob, only to remember that he's quite out of sight now.
"If you need a chat, you know where to find me!" he says through the hedge.
"See you," you say.
You sleep okay that night. Not great, but not terrible. In the morning, nobody wants to talk about it. Dad doesn't bring it up. You don't want to either. You know it's not going to solve anything. You're not in the mood for a repeat of yesterday. You just silently put up with Lakshmi talking about just how much all the aunties adored her and how there's a million grandsons that want to meet her. You just silently put up with a lot until you get back to school.
You see the counsellor like Rob said. First appointment doesn't really get much done. But you don't want to feel like you pussed out on it at the first opportunity. So you go again. And again. And again. Each time mumbling out a little bit more about yourself. It's the fourth visit when the counsellor finally has an idea. You like being at Mum's place, seeing the hints of her culture - hell, even like Uncle Val hanging around. You want something to bond with Dad over. He said he converted, so why not go to the temple for a while?
Dad really likes the idea. He's intensely apologetic about his schedule as always, but soon enough you find time on the weekend. You go to a different temple from the one where the wedding was - a fresh start for the both of you. Something about the temple's atmosphere soothes you, grinds down the sharp edges of the problems slowly sawing away at you. You listen in on a couple of the group prayers, but you don't participate. Instead you wander the halls, listening as Dad explains the various gods as best he can. Explains what he learned from Mum about prayer. You pray to Ganesh for the wisdom to navigate through the confusing mire your life has become. You pray to Hanuman for protection, albeit with some persuading from Dad. Dad prays to Lakshmi, though you don't think he really needs help on the wealth and prosperity front. And lastly you pray to Vishnu, that no more of what you cherish can slip away from you.
You go every week for the rest of the school year. More when you can swing it. Then work gets in the way again. Some new project or another, even less free time than he usually has. You try not to mind too much. You ask if you can start a prayer-corner in your room instead. He helps you pick things out for your little shrine with all the time he has left. You trawl the Internet looking for new gods to learn about and add to the shrine. It feels... you're not sure really. Comforting, in a way. Like Mum's life isn't just a once-a-year treat any more.
You see Rob every week or two. Sometimes he's just going for a run and passes you while you're taking a walk. Sometimes you drop by. He doesn't keep his door locked - it's a good neighbourhood like that. You talk, about all the stuff you have no one else for. Or about nothing in particular. He says he's an artist, the detailed sketch kind that doesn't exactly line the walls in the Louvre but pays the bills. He must be really good to afford a place right behind Dad's. Rob's a bit odd but you don't mind. He likes his quiet and so do you. He likes his space and so do you. It's surprisingly easy to get your schoolwork done at his place, with no Lakshmi or Ms. Jenkins hovering around. Dad says Ms. Jenkins probably appreciates the break. You don't find it as funny as he does.
It's October again. Your second fifteenth birthday. You and Lakshmi show up at Mum's house to see an unexpected addition. A brand new archery range, a rectangular block of bush cleared away with all the proper top-of-the-line accoutrements present and accounted for. Mum says that archery's very big in Hindu history, that she always loved it as a kid. Uncle Val says that teaches one to centre themselves, to shut out outside distractions and focus. Dad just says that it's pretty fun, and hands you your brand new bows to see for yourselves. You can't lie. It is fun. You're a first-timer and you suck, obviously, but Uncle Val and Mum help you and Lakshmi out loads. And there's something just viscerally satisfying about it. Feeling the bowstring creak as you draw it back, feeling the tension, the weight of the draw. Letting the arrow loose in one explosive movement and watching it shoot off with a fwip. Sometimes even into the target.
When you get back, Ms. Jenkins tells you there's an archery club not 20 minutes' drive from home. You and Lakshmi sign up immediately. You start going every weekend, sometimes more when it's school holidays. It's funny - you were starting to think that you and Lakshmi had nothing it common. Still feel like you have no idea what's going through her head or what she does all day sometimes. But when you head over to the club and set up side-by-side on the range, it feels just like old times. The two of you shoot in pristine silence until all your arrows are gone, then chat about anything and nothing as you trudge over to retrieve them. On-off, a curious rhythm. You've been shooting a couple of times too, but it was never the same. Guns are all well and good in videogames and movies but they're a bit... boring in real life. Your bow feels better. You feel like you're in control of every part of it. Like your entire body is engaged, pulled as taut as your bowstring. There's something about that feeling just before you loose. Something about refining your technique, every fractional stage of the draw and release. Uncle Val's right. It does teach you focus. It does teach you patience.
Not enough.
Cadet Corps is possibly the worst idea in the history of man. It's the idea of having every boy from Year 9 to Year 12 join - attendance compulsory - a mockup of the Australian Army and have to stay after school every Monday for drills and shit. And the 17 and 18 year olds are COs, trying to control 15 and 16 year olds. It's exactly as genius as it sounds. And it's not enough that complete cockheads have been instated as your superior officers for the next four years, and many weeks Corps goes on and on in the simmering heat until that one 'tard in the squad (and there is always at least one) understands the concept of "left right left" and "right turn". It's not enough that it's only for the guys, so Lakshmi gets to swan on home and laugh off your complaints as idle bitching. No, then you have to go to camp.
Cramped busfuls of sweaty teenage boys trundle off to the middle of the bush right in the middle of Summer. You don't have any friends in your squad, of course. Figures. Crowds by the buses as everyone waits to haul their shit into base camp. The sun beats down angrily, with a vengeance. Your feet sweat in your big stupid boots and thick socks. Somehow the evolutionary advantages of your darker skin aren't much comfort.
It's not as bad at first. The first two days you're at base camp, eating fairly okay food (holy shit the rat-packs have Smarties) and sleeping in cabins with real bunk beds. Snoring roommates notwithstanding. It's not fun doing drills in the sweltering 30+ degree heat and most of the theory work goes in one ear and out the other, but it's not awful. The next two days it's even hotter, and you have to shift to the next camp in the rotation. Facilities are worse, but at least there's still plenty of taps around. Abseiling's pretty cool, you can't be shitty about that unless you tried. And even though they only let you shoot piddly-ass single-shot bolt-action .22 rifles that kick like an old man coughing, shooting's an okay change of pace. You don't like it as much as archery, but the basic principles are there. Keep calm, stay patient, focus, and judge your distance.
Then it's day 5. Time to trek to the third camp. A long, long, long, long trek over hill and dale and then up a fucking mountain. You don't exactly have your thermometer with you but it feels like the hottest day of the week so far, and your canteen isn't bottomless. But for extra irony, you have to cross a river about fifteen minutes into the hike. Everyone's boots get soaked. It's an auspicious start. No one wants to waste breath chatting so it's nothing but a silent, puffing slog as sweat pours from every pore. Your kit only seems to get heavier and heavier with every step you drag it through the bush. At some point during the climb, with seemingly no rhyme or reason, you feel something start to squirm under your shirt. You contort and flail, shaking it wildly, and see something long with too many legs fly out. Too late. The bite swells and stings the rest of the way there. Your mood only gets fouler.
You finally make it to the midway camp as the sun mercifully begins to set. There's a bunch of old spent shell casings lying around that under no circumstances are to be picked up as souvenirs, so of course everyone has a couple in their pocket by the time the entire squad's settled. You stampede for the river and drink until the water gurgles and sloshes in your stomach, then finally refill your bone-dry canteen. Your stomach growls anyway as you shamble back to camp. A couple guys get the fire going while a few bright sparks whip out the portable stoves and pans they brought in their kit bags. The assorted camo-clad teenagers all rummage around in the remnants of their 24-hour rat-packs, hunting for their dinners. You paw through yours. Breakfast muesli with milk powder's gone of course. Instant noodles were for lunch, eaten dry and chased with water. Tea was for lunch, to make the last of your water count - shit's cash when you use condensed milk. Any other various odds and ends long-since consumed. Just your main-meal sachet left. You blindly tear open the brown plastic and-
Wait. That smell.
You check the front. Printed in cramped little text is the nature of your repast. BBQ beef.
Shit.
"So uh, what's everyone got?" you ask as casually as possible. Doesn't seem like many people hear you. Or care. The ones that do reply still have beef meals, either exactly the same as yours or with veggies. Shit shit shit. You try to act casual - as casual as one can be, holding an opened MRE sachet at arm's length like a snooty food critic. Ugh. Shit. You'll just have to own up to it.
"Look, has anyone got something that isn't beef?"
"Yeah, I got chicken italiano. Why?"
You recognise the voice. You look. It's the corporal. Shit. Name's David Baker or something. Dave-o to his friends, of course. His idea of leadership is encouraging mockery, and he never helps out with the actual heavy lifting. Blonde and blue-eyed, perhaps a carrier for the superior Aryan asshole genes. You steel yourself and try to speak as evenly as possible.
"Can we swap?"
"Nah. I like chicken. Besides, looks like most of the unit got the same thing." He shrugs. "You get shit rat-packs once you're out of base camp."
"Look... please." You can practically feel your balls ache with the effort to be polite.
"What's up, got a lust for cock-meat in the evening, mate?" he chuckles. "Seriously though, fuck off and eat. Or get working on your tent."
"Sir." You're fine with calling every adult male on campus 'sir' but you draw the line a guy barely over a year older than you. "I... can't eat beef. Ok? I need your chicken ration."
"Why?" He folds his arms, the sachet tucked under his arm. You purse your lips so tight they vanish completely. All the good private schools in town are some denomination of Christian. Dad had to search high and low for a nondenominational one. When he finally found it it was so far away that Ms. Jenkins chauffeuring you and Lakshmi was practically mandatory. And yet despite his best efforts over the years you still felt this growing... unease. Of not fitting in right. After all Hindus are, what, 1% of the population? Statistically speaking you're a unicorn. It's always just seemed easer to keep it under wraps. Safer. Maybe just paranoia but- shit you've been quiet too long, say something.
"Because I'm Hindu," you force out. "I can't eat it."
He raises his eyebrows and leans back a little. "That right? Yeah you guys like, worship cows or some shit?"
"Hhhaaaaa. No, we don't worship them now can I just have the chicken please." You make to reach out for the sachet. David flicks it away from you, held at head-height.
"Hey hey hey, hang on. Don't snatch." There's that shit-eating grin. "If you don't pray to cows, what's the problem with eating 'em?"
Ugh, shit. Praying. You couldn't exactly pack your shrine in your kit bag. And trying to do it au naturale just felt so... hollow. So you stopped. It hasn't improved your mood. You take a slow, deep breath. It's okay. You don't have to give him a theological lecture. Bare essentials.
"They aren't worshipped but they're sacred," you explain evenly. "Traditionally they're seen as motherly, part of the family-"
"So your mum's sacred too, then?"
CRUNCH
It's not something you think about. Not a neuron sparks in your conscious mind. Your nerves spark to life and your fist just goes sailing forward. No thought. David can't see it coming. Couldn't react even if he did. The sensation feels oddly like punching a bag of chips, feeling it all crunch and crumble beneath the plastic skin. His head snaps back and he just crumples like a ragdoll, hitting the dirt hard. Your knuckles sting. It takes a bit for everyone else to realise what you just did. For David to react. There's a moment of what seems like perfect silence.
David doesn't make a noise. He's out cold. Everyone else makes plenty of noise. It all washes over you at once in one big wave, trying to drown out your thoughts. The veins in your forehead pulse. Your brain seems too big, pressing painfully against the inside of your skull. It aches behind your eyes. Someone's grabbing at your shoulder.
You scoop up the fallen MRE packet, walk away from the campsite, and start to eat it cold.
The night passes in a whirl. They have to radio base camp and mention David's injuries. They treat him as best they can. The other two officers scream at you but it just... rolls off. You pitch your tent far away from everyone else that night. In the morning you set off early, barely time for breakfast. A handful of guys take off their belts and lash them together in a makeshift stretcher, just like they taught you. You have to carry all their kit. By the time you all reach the forward camp you're about ready to collapse. The medics waiting there take David away. The teachers take you away, too.
You get sent home early, of course. After a forced march back to base camp, Ms. Jenkins is waiting out front to take you home. She doesn't say a word in all the hours and hours of driving. Nobody else is home when you get back. You don't eat. You just go to bed. You don't leave the house for a couple of days.
You go to the principal's office. Dad's there too. Had to come home early from a business trip. You're told, in no uncertain terms, just how badly you fucked up. David's family is screaming bloody murder about what you did to his face, wants to bring you up on charges. They're a family with a long history of ties to the school. Generations of rowers and rugby players and top-scoring students. The school doesn't have the will or the inclination to silence them. Neither, you realise, does Dad. He doesn't say a word in your defence during the entire appointment. He just nods and agrees when the principal recommends expulsion.
He doesn't speak to you the whole car ride home. You can see his clenched jaw working, the tendons shifting in his neck. He's angry. Furious. Doesn't know where to direct it. You almost wish he'd yell at you. You try to think of something, anything to say. Find nothing. The gulf between you is too wide. Instead you say nothing. When you get home, only you get out of the car. Dad says something tersely about needing to head right back to the office to make sure his work doesn't collapse. You walk up the path and into the house all alone.
Lakshmi's waiting for you.
"What the fuck's wrong with you!?" she shouts as she springs up from the couch. "Everything's going just fine then out of the blue I hear you went psycho!? The entire school knows about it, Meg! David's face swelled up like you beat him with a shovel! He can barely breathe! He sure as hell can't play Rugby until he heals! And Dad was freaking about having to come home and deal with the school kicking you out! What could he have done that was so bad you had to turn into a caveman and assault him? God, did you ever stop and think about how this would affect dad, or me? Now I'm just going to be the sister of the psycho who assaulted someone on camp for like three years!"
Your jaw goes tight. Your fist clenches. You breathe, slowly, in and out.
[ ] Say nothing. There's nothing more to say. Nothing that'd change anything or make it better. Just let it wash over you and go to bed.
[ ] Tell Lakshmi that you're glad she knows where her priorities are.
[ ] Tell Lakshmi exactly what the fuck's wrong with you.
Chapter Five: A Chance For Renewal
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
"I'm glad you know what's really important," you say. It's not really something you think about. Not something you mull over long and hard, searching for just the right response. The words just fall from your mouth, coming easily. Nastily.
"Do you?" Lakshmi snaps, her hands on her hips.
"At least I don't pretend to be white so that people will like me."
Slap. The impact is immediate. Instinctual. Your left cheek stings and smarts, burning like fire. Lakshmi's hand must hurt just as badly. The sound seems to echo, lingering unnaturally. Filling the hallway before finally ebbing away, replaced with nothing but silence. The vaguest notes of your breath, her breath. You look at her. She looks at you.
"That's how it felt," you say.
She says nothing. She just forces her way past you. For a moment you consider grabbing her, stopping her. Yelling at her. Apologising to her? You don't know what you want. You don't act, and like that she's gone. Soon you hear the distant sound of the front gate opening and closing.
You go to your bathroom and wash your face. Your cheek is still stinging. The red mark is still bright on your face.
You and Lakshmi do apologise to each other. Eventually. But it's a rote thing, a mandatory thing. There's no real conviction behind the words as you both get it over with as soon as possible. The things that were said, left unsaid, still linger between the two of you. Slowly congealing like tar. You can still see her, sure. You exchange a few words with her when you bump into each other around her house, light small talk about how things are going at school. But that's all.
Dad's trying not to be too angry at you. He believes your story about David provoking you. He just doesn't let that excuse you. For the next three days, whenever he gets home you have to sit through lectures about thinking before you act, learning patience and temperance. It all goes in one ear and right out the other. Perhaps more accurately it just hits the barrier. A barrier identical to the one between you and Lakshmi, finally complete after years of slow, inexorable buildup. The man feels like a stranger, sometimes. Always busy, always fobbing you off to Ms. Jenkins, always keeping Mum at arm's length from you. Always hiding things from you. Now you're just angry. He doesn't understand what it was like, how could he? If he knew what it was like, if he was really in your shoes, he'd have done the same thing. He's ignorant and a hypocrite for presuming he can lecture you like this.
Mostly he's angry about you getting yourself kicked out of the best school he could find for you. You didn't like it that much anyway. But Dad simply won't let it go now. That was the only nondenominational school he could find that was up to his standards, he keeps saying. But now that you're out it comes down to a choice between faith and education, and he's going to choose education for you. And to make matters worse you got yourself expelled in the first term of a school year. The mad scramble to arrange your enrolment in the new school so you can catch up on your work and be ready for second term, on top of regular work-stress, leaves Dad tetchy and irritable. You happily stay far out of his way, only emerging in common ground when absolutely necessary. The wall grows thicker.
A suitable school is found, close enough to home that you can take public transport. Dad leaves again the instant he can, citing unavoidable work things. You don't really care. The house is so quiet and empty with him away and Lakshmi at school that it's hard to focus on your schoolwork, your senses instinctively straining to hear Ms. Jenkins' movements about the place. You keep getting sidetracked. Your mind wanders.
None of your friends call you again.
You finally start school at the new place. It's all-boys this time - seems 'co-ed' wasn't high on Dad's priority list now that you and Lakshmi are going to different schools. It's hard enough on the first day, being introduced to classes that have already been through weeks of school together. Already been through three years of high school together, in most cases. And then, of course, there's the fact that the place is Anglican. There's an hour-long Chapel every Thursday after lunch, and a Bible Studies class period on Fridays. You don't make a big deal about it. Why should you make a big deal about it? None of the kids seem particularly inclined toward god-bothering. Plenty of them seem just as bored with Chapel as you are, as happy as you are to treat Bible Studies as a bludging session. But there's still that little voice in the back of your mind. A little truth that makes itself known. It's just not worth it to make a big deal about being Hindu. You don't need special treatment. You should just stay quiet about it. Safest that way. You don't know anyone and you don't particularly want to know anyone, either. More walls sprout.
July rolls around. Dad says he has to be in Brisbane for a week for a conference, but he'll be back to celebrate your birthdays on the weekend. Lakshmi says he doesn't have to wait up on her, she'll just head out to the movies with her friends on the 14th. You lie and say that's what you're doing too.
The 14th dawns. Your phone vibrates. A text from Dad; 'Happy Birthday! xxooxo'. You check the time, and wait. Soon enough you hear the sounds of movement and chatter as Lakshmi has breakfast and gets ready for school. The jingle of keys, the door opening and shutting. You wait. The car starting, rolling back down the driveway. The gate halves powering apart. The low-pitched whine of the tires creaking against the asphalt and the car takes off down the road, out of earshot.
You ring school and tell them you're sick. Your husky, early-morning voice is somewhat convincing but they still want a doctor's certificate or some shit. Honestly you don't care. You just hang up and slump out of bed. Can't just stay inside all day, no matter how much you want to. Ms. Jenkins will be back sooner rather than later. Besides, you don't have anything to do.
Your eyes alight on your bow case.
The hours pass in a blur. There's no thought in your head. No distractions. You don't have to worry about school or Mum or Dad or Lakshmi. The world shrinks until it's nothing but you, your bow, and the target. Draw, hold, release. Wind up the tension in your muscles to breaking point, then let fly. A satisfying rhythm, a soothing rhythm. One shot flows into the next.
You're startled out of your reverie by a hand on your shoulder. Time's up. The club's closing for the night. Plus, as the range instructor illustrates by passing you his binoculars, you just ruined one of your arrows by splitting it in half. Not that you accomplished an amazing Robin Hood-esque feat of marksmanship in a daze, of course. The arrows are just clustered so thickly around the vicinity of the centre ring that splitting one simply became a statistical certainty. You planned to spend a lot of time here. You brought a lot of arrows. The guy asks you why you were here all day, all alone on a school day. You tell him the truth. He heats up a sausage roll and hands it to you with a Coke, free of charge, on the way out. You smile weakly and thank him.
You make it home. No one's there to greet you. Ms. Jenkins must be out chaperoning, or just chauffeuring. You take the ice cream out of the freezer and go to your room.
Dad takes you out to Indian for dinner on Saturday, just the two of you. He's friends with the owner, Sanjay. And Sanjay happens to have the second-best butter chicken and cheese naan on the menu that you've ever had in your life. It's... nice. It's an attempt. The food's really good and he mentions seeing the new Star Trek with you next week - not at home 'from a friend' but in the theatres, for the authentic experience. You chat a little about Star Trek. He admits to being a huge fan of the TV shows when he was younger. It's kind of funny to imagine Dad as a hardcore Trekkie, doing the salute and everything. He says he thought the JJ Abrams movies were pretty crap, just being war movies instead of highbrow exploration of philosophy and ethics in a post-scarcity spacefaring sci-fi. Not that there's nothing wrong with a good war movie, he's quick to add before you can mumble out something about liking the Abrams ones. In any case, he says he heard the third reboot one is a lot better. You smile a little, say you'd like to see it with him.
He asks about school. The mood sours. You decide not to stay for dessert. He asks for the cheque and you leave.
No Second Birthday again. Mum's busy, tied up in her own business. She Skypes you and Lakshmi in October, same time as usual, but it isn't the same. At one point you may have even been approaching excited to tell her how much better at archery you are now. Instead, when she asks all you can do in reply is shrug and mumble.
You spend lots of time with Rob. Well, sometimes not 'with' strictly speaking. A lot of the time you're just there to do your homework, there to be somewhere quiet that isn't shut up in your room at home. There to stretch out on the lawn of an unfamiliar garden where no one you know can see you. Of course you chat from time to time, from sports to movies to what you're working on in the syllabus. You eventually tell him about your archery hobby - it didn't start out very secret, but these days it feels secret what with all the practice you get when you're all alone. He suggests bringing it to Dad, maybe thinking of making a career out of it. You're an athletic kid and you're young, he says. You can do it. You think of the wall between you and Dad. You lie and say you'll think about it.
A year passes. This time the 14th falls on the last week before school starts back up. You take the opportunity to sleep in. When you do wake up you don't even check the time, just throw on the first set of clothes you find and shuffle out barefoot into the house. You beeline for the kitchen, still blinking and rubbing sleep from your eyes. Doesn't seem to be much light coming through the windows. Must be the middle third of the day or so. You take a spoon from the cutlery drawer and a tub of yoghurt from the fridge.
"Ah!" A half-yelp of surprise greets you as you turn. There's an unfamiliar teenage girl standing in front of you, all dolled up and ready for a night out. She's a bit early for that, it seems. She blinks at you, uncomprehending. "Uh... hi?"
You slowly peel the lid off the yoghurt and lick the excess off the underside.
"Lakshmi didn't say she'd be inviting any boys," she ventures.
You scoop up a spoonful of strawberry yoghurt and put it in your mouth.
"You a... secret boyfriend of hers?" she guesses.
"You're in my kitchen," you reply with a mouthful of yoghurt.
She goes red in the face and promptly flees with all due haste. You just turn around and go to the cupboard, getting out a fresh glass to pour yourself some OJ in between mouthfuls of yoghurt. Now that your senses have fully awakened you can hear the chatting in one of the further-off rooms, punctuated by bouts of giggling. Fucking Lakshmi. Sure you never specifically asked her not to bring friends around but you would've thought that would be a pretty fucking obvious thing she could not do. Not that you care what her shitty friends think. Certainly not as much as she does. But it would've been nice to have some warning.
You pull out your phone and tap the screen a few times. You have your OJ, finish your yoghurt, have another glass of OJ and finish that too. You sprawl across the couch and just lie there, possessed by no particular desire to bother turning on the TV. Soon enough the doorbell rings. You get up. Lakshmi goes to the door as well. She stops mid-stride when she notices you. Maybe even she forgot that you live here. You say nothing, don't even look at her. You just open the door, thank the pizza guy, and take your order into your room. Lakshmi doesn't say a word.
Another year passes. It's the mid-year term break again. Lakshmi's out with her friends again. You're stretched out on the white leather couch, finishing up the last of a bag of chips. You're watching TV but you're not really watching it. It's more like it happens to be existing in your general vicinity while you face forward. All the sound and colour just slides right off you. Your head is completely empty of thoughts. Sadly not the good way.
Your phone rings. Dad, according to Caller ID. You consider letting it ring out for a moment. On the eighth ring, you hit 'accept call'.
"Hey."
"Hey, mate! How are you?"
"Fine."
"Fine?"
"Mhm."
The connection's not very good. There's crackly background noise, the sound of pure randomness as the line tries to fill in what isn't there. Dad coughs to clear his throat.
"Well you don't... you don't sound fine, Meghanada. And that worries me."
"Does it?"
A crackling rush of static as he sighs. "I'm sorry I've been jet-setting so much recently, buddy. Work's picked up too much and I keep telling them I need more time to spend with you two but they just won't listen to me."
"It's fine," you say with a shrug, even though he can't see you. "You see us plenty."
"Maybe, yeah. But then again I'm not really the one you wanna see more of, eh?"
"Huh?" you say stupidly.
"Listen. I was meant to keep this as a surprise, but I think it's better you know right now. I dunno. Might help perk you up a bit. But I talked with your Mum and we've been working on her schedule together, and we got you something special. Just for you."
You sit up, the leather creaking. "What d'you mean?"
"I'm pulling you out of school on your 18th so you can fly up to the Gold Coast and see Mum," he says. "There's two return tickets to India waiting for you. Call it an early gap year. You can just finish Year 12 when you get back - I've already made the arrangements."
You're completely silent.
"... you there, buddy? Did we drop out?" Dad asks, slightly worried.
"N-nah, heh, we're good," you stammer out. "I just, um..." You sniff, kneading your eyes. "Thanks dad. That's a really great birthday present."
He chuckles. "Don't mention it. Besides, Mum says she has one just as good all lined up for you when you get there. I don't really believe her but, hey, what do I know? I'm a man."
You laugh. "See you soon, Dad."
"Seeya."
When the day comes you're... you can scarcely believe it but you're excited. Would you even venture to say 'elated'? Maybe! You're not sure and you don't really care. You don't remember feeling this excited or energetic or enthused or any other e-word about something in about three years. You're actually organised in advance for once in your life. Your suitcase is all packed and ready to go, your phone charged, your wallet in your pocket, everything in order. You've said your goodbyes to Lakshmi, such as they were - the wall is still there, but at least now you have something nice on the horizon to see when you turn away from that particular problem.
Speaking of the horizon. You look out across it as you sit on your suitcase out the front, basking in the dying light of the sun. Letting your eyes drift closed, the gentle breeze that heralds the coming night taking the edge off the heat. Pretty warm for a Winter afternoon. It'll be downright freezing in an hour or two. But you're sure you'll be safe in the car, or in the plane, by then. Dad said either he or Ms. Jenkins'd be around by about 6. You dig out your phone to check. 6:12. You consider the number, then shrug. It's fine. Three more minutes, then you'll call him. Even if he's late, you don't really care. You're willing to give him plenty of slack for this.
A police car rolls down the street. Not really much cause for alarm. They cruise through the community fairly regularly, just checking things out. You tune them out, mostly. Only take notice when you see Dad waving at them as they pass by, or the few times you saw them park so he could chat to them. It's a safe neighbourhood and they're one of the reasons it feels that way. No, you notice because it slows to a stop right outside your house. You hear the distant sound of a handbrake engaging, and two doors opening as the cops get out, but the engine keeps running. You stand, begin to slowly walk forward. One cop steps forward, eyes hidden by aviators, one hand on his hip. The other motions for you to open the gate. You do, obviously. You head to the keypad and punch in the code. There's a soft click as the electronic lock gives way, and the steel gate slides out of the way. You step out into the driveway, and the cop mirrors your motion.
"G'day," he says, hands resting on his hips. "Your sister home too?"
"Uh... yeah?" you say slowly, glancing over your shoulder. "What's this about?"
"Well, uh... wish I was here under better circumstances, mate, but it looks like things haven't really worked out that way." He adjusts his cap, his leather jacket rustling. " 'fraid there's been a bit of an incident."
"What?" Your brow furrows. "What kind of incident? Something happen with Dad?"
"Look, just so you know, neither of you are in trouble." The cop raises his hands, patting the air a little to assuage your worries. "But I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask you and your sister to come with us down to the station. There's been a security breach and Mr. Dane's made his preference known that this is how he wants situations of this kind to be handled."
You're... you're not sure how to take this. It's a lot to process all at once, pretty much the definition of a hard one-eighty in how you expected today to go. You squint against the practically horizontal rays of the setting sun, peering at the cop's face. His mouth is smiling, but you can't see his eyes.
[ ] Agree. After all, Dad knows these guys. No time to waste fucking around because you have a funny feeling.
[ ] Say you'll go get Lakshmi. Bring her up to speed once you're inside, ask her what the Hell she thinks is going on and what you should do.
[ ] Ask the cops for ID and call Dad. Maybe you're just being paranoid, maybe not. You don't care. It'll only take a minute.
[ ] Tell them to back off and keep your finger near the button to close the gate. Something doesn't feel right. And honestly, you're in a shit mood anyway.
"Do you?" Lakshmi snaps, her hands on her hips.
"At least I don't pretend to be white so that people will like me."
Slap. The impact is immediate. Instinctual. Your left cheek stings and smarts, burning like fire. Lakshmi's hand must hurt just as badly. The sound seems to echo, lingering unnaturally. Filling the hallway before finally ebbing away, replaced with nothing but silence. The vaguest notes of your breath, her breath. You look at her. She looks at you.
"That's how it felt," you say.
She says nothing. She just forces her way past you. For a moment you consider grabbing her, stopping her. Yelling at her. Apologising to her? You don't know what you want. You don't act, and like that she's gone. Soon you hear the distant sound of the front gate opening and closing.
You go to your bathroom and wash your face. Your cheek is still stinging. The red mark is still bright on your face.
You and Lakshmi do apologise to each other. Eventually. But it's a rote thing, a mandatory thing. There's no real conviction behind the words as you both get it over with as soon as possible. The things that were said, left unsaid, still linger between the two of you. Slowly congealing like tar. You can still see her, sure. You exchange a few words with her when you bump into each other around her house, light small talk about how things are going at school. But that's all.
Dad's trying not to be too angry at you. He believes your story about David provoking you. He just doesn't let that excuse you. For the next three days, whenever he gets home you have to sit through lectures about thinking before you act, learning patience and temperance. It all goes in one ear and right out the other. Perhaps more accurately it just hits the barrier. A barrier identical to the one between you and Lakshmi, finally complete after years of slow, inexorable buildup. The man feels like a stranger, sometimes. Always busy, always fobbing you off to Ms. Jenkins, always keeping Mum at arm's length from you. Always hiding things from you. Now you're just angry. He doesn't understand what it was like, how could he? If he knew what it was like, if he was really in your shoes, he'd have done the same thing. He's ignorant and a hypocrite for presuming he can lecture you like this.
Mostly he's angry about you getting yourself kicked out of the best school he could find for you. You didn't like it that much anyway. But Dad simply won't let it go now. That was the only nondenominational school he could find that was up to his standards, he keeps saying. But now that you're out it comes down to a choice between faith and education, and he's going to choose education for you. And to make matters worse you got yourself expelled in the first term of a school year. The mad scramble to arrange your enrolment in the new school so you can catch up on your work and be ready for second term, on top of regular work-stress, leaves Dad tetchy and irritable. You happily stay far out of his way, only emerging in common ground when absolutely necessary. The wall grows thicker.
A suitable school is found, close enough to home that you can take public transport. Dad leaves again the instant he can, citing unavoidable work things. You don't really care. The house is so quiet and empty with him away and Lakshmi at school that it's hard to focus on your schoolwork, your senses instinctively straining to hear Ms. Jenkins' movements about the place. You keep getting sidetracked. Your mind wanders.
None of your friends call you again.
You finally start school at the new place. It's all-boys this time - seems 'co-ed' wasn't high on Dad's priority list now that you and Lakshmi are going to different schools. It's hard enough on the first day, being introduced to classes that have already been through weeks of school together. Already been through three years of high school together, in most cases. And then, of course, there's the fact that the place is Anglican. There's an hour-long Chapel every Thursday after lunch, and a Bible Studies class period on Fridays. You don't make a big deal about it. Why should you make a big deal about it? None of the kids seem particularly inclined toward god-bothering. Plenty of them seem just as bored with Chapel as you are, as happy as you are to treat Bible Studies as a bludging session. But there's still that little voice in the back of your mind. A little truth that makes itself known. It's just not worth it to make a big deal about being Hindu. You don't need special treatment. You should just stay quiet about it. Safest that way. You don't know anyone and you don't particularly want to know anyone, either. More walls sprout.
July rolls around. Dad says he has to be in Brisbane for a week for a conference, but he'll be back to celebrate your birthdays on the weekend. Lakshmi says he doesn't have to wait up on her, she'll just head out to the movies with her friends on the 14th. You lie and say that's what you're doing too.
The 14th dawns. Your phone vibrates. A text from Dad; 'Happy Birthday! xxooxo'. You check the time, and wait. Soon enough you hear the sounds of movement and chatter as Lakshmi has breakfast and gets ready for school. The jingle of keys, the door opening and shutting. You wait. The car starting, rolling back down the driveway. The gate halves powering apart. The low-pitched whine of the tires creaking against the asphalt and the car takes off down the road, out of earshot.
You ring school and tell them you're sick. Your husky, early-morning voice is somewhat convincing but they still want a doctor's certificate or some shit. Honestly you don't care. You just hang up and slump out of bed. Can't just stay inside all day, no matter how much you want to. Ms. Jenkins will be back sooner rather than later. Besides, you don't have anything to do.
Your eyes alight on your bow case.
The hours pass in a blur. There's no thought in your head. No distractions. You don't have to worry about school or Mum or Dad or Lakshmi. The world shrinks until it's nothing but you, your bow, and the target. Draw, hold, release. Wind up the tension in your muscles to breaking point, then let fly. A satisfying rhythm, a soothing rhythm. One shot flows into the next.
You're startled out of your reverie by a hand on your shoulder. Time's up. The club's closing for the night. Plus, as the range instructor illustrates by passing you his binoculars, you just ruined one of your arrows by splitting it in half. Not that you accomplished an amazing Robin Hood-esque feat of marksmanship in a daze, of course. The arrows are just clustered so thickly around the vicinity of the centre ring that splitting one simply became a statistical certainty. You planned to spend a lot of time here. You brought a lot of arrows. The guy asks you why you were here all day, all alone on a school day. You tell him the truth. He heats up a sausage roll and hands it to you with a Coke, free of charge, on the way out. You smile weakly and thank him.
You make it home. No one's there to greet you. Ms. Jenkins must be out chaperoning, or just chauffeuring. You take the ice cream out of the freezer and go to your room.
Dad takes you out to Indian for dinner on Saturday, just the two of you. He's friends with the owner, Sanjay. And Sanjay happens to have the second-best butter chicken and cheese naan on the menu that you've ever had in your life. It's... nice. It's an attempt. The food's really good and he mentions seeing the new Star Trek with you next week - not at home 'from a friend' but in the theatres, for the authentic experience. You chat a little about Star Trek. He admits to being a huge fan of the TV shows when he was younger. It's kind of funny to imagine Dad as a hardcore Trekkie, doing the salute and everything. He says he thought the JJ Abrams movies were pretty crap, just being war movies instead of highbrow exploration of philosophy and ethics in a post-scarcity spacefaring sci-fi. Not that there's nothing wrong with a good war movie, he's quick to add before you can mumble out something about liking the Abrams ones. In any case, he says he heard the third reboot one is a lot better. You smile a little, say you'd like to see it with him.
He asks about school. The mood sours. You decide not to stay for dessert. He asks for the cheque and you leave.
No Second Birthday again. Mum's busy, tied up in her own business. She Skypes you and Lakshmi in October, same time as usual, but it isn't the same. At one point you may have even been approaching excited to tell her how much better at archery you are now. Instead, when she asks all you can do in reply is shrug and mumble.
You spend lots of time with Rob. Well, sometimes not 'with' strictly speaking. A lot of the time you're just there to do your homework, there to be somewhere quiet that isn't shut up in your room at home. There to stretch out on the lawn of an unfamiliar garden where no one you know can see you. Of course you chat from time to time, from sports to movies to what you're working on in the syllabus. You eventually tell him about your archery hobby - it didn't start out very secret, but these days it feels secret what with all the practice you get when you're all alone. He suggests bringing it to Dad, maybe thinking of making a career out of it. You're an athletic kid and you're young, he says. You can do it. You think of the wall between you and Dad. You lie and say you'll think about it.
A year passes. This time the 14th falls on the last week before school starts back up. You take the opportunity to sleep in. When you do wake up you don't even check the time, just throw on the first set of clothes you find and shuffle out barefoot into the house. You beeline for the kitchen, still blinking and rubbing sleep from your eyes. Doesn't seem to be much light coming through the windows. Must be the middle third of the day or so. You take a spoon from the cutlery drawer and a tub of yoghurt from the fridge.
"Ah!" A half-yelp of surprise greets you as you turn. There's an unfamiliar teenage girl standing in front of you, all dolled up and ready for a night out. She's a bit early for that, it seems. She blinks at you, uncomprehending. "Uh... hi?"
You slowly peel the lid off the yoghurt and lick the excess off the underside.
"Lakshmi didn't say she'd be inviting any boys," she ventures.
You scoop up a spoonful of strawberry yoghurt and put it in your mouth.
"You a... secret boyfriend of hers?" she guesses.
"You're in my kitchen," you reply with a mouthful of yoghurt.
She goes red in the face and promptly flees with all due haste. You just turn around and go to the cupboard, getting out a fresh glass to pour yourself some OJ in between mouthfuls of yoghurt. Now that your senses have fully awakened you can hear the chatting in one of the further-off rooms, punctuated by bouts of giggling. Fucking Lakshmi. Sure you never specifically asked her not to bring friends around but you would've thought that would be a pretty fucking obvious thing she could not do. Not that you care what her shitty friends think. Certainly not as much as she does. But it would've been nice to have some warning.
You pull out your phone and tap the screen a few times. You have your OJ, finish your yoghurt, have another glass of OJ and finish that too. You sprawl across the couch and just lie there, possessed by no particular desire to bother turning on the TV. Soon enough the doorbell rings. You get up. Lakshmi goes to the door as well. She stops mid-stride when she notices you. Maybe even she forgot that you live here. You say nothing, don't even look at her. You just open the door, thank the pizza guy, and take your order into your room. Lakshmi doesn't say a word.
Another year passes. It's the mid-year term break again. Lakshmi's out with her friends again. You're stretched out on the white leather couch, finishing up the last of a bag of chips. You're watching TV but you're not really watching it. It's more like it happens to be existing in your general vicinity while you face forward. All the sound and colour just slides right off you. Your head is completely empty of thoughts. Sadly not the good way.
Your phone rings. Dad, according to Caller ID. You consider letting it ring out for a moment. On the eighth ring, you hit 'accept call'.
"Hey."
"Hey, mate! How are you?"
"Fine."
"Fine?"
"Mhm."
The connection's not very good. There's crackly background noise, the sound of pure randomness as the line tries to fill in what isn't there. Dad coughs to clear his throat.
"Well you don't... you don't sound fine, Meghanada. And that worries me."
"Does it?"
A crackling rush of static as he sighs. "I'm sorry I've been jet-setting so much recently, buddy. Work's picked up too much and I keep telling them I need more time to spend with you two but they just won't listen to me."
"It's fine," you say with a shrug, even though he can't see you. "You see us plenty."
"Maybe, yeah. But then again I'm not really the one you wanna see more of, eh?"
"Huh?" you say stupidly.
"Listen. I was meant to keep this as a surprise, but I think it's better you know right now. I dunno. Might help perk you up a bit. But I talked with your Mum and we've been working on her schedule together, and we got you something special. Just for you."
You sit up, the leather creaking. "What d'you mean?"
"I'm pulling you out of school on your 18th so you can fly up to the Gold Coast and see Mum," he says. "There's two return tickets to India waiting for you. Call it an early gap year. You can just finish Year 12 when you get back - I've already made the arrangements."
You're completely silent.
"... you there, buddy? Did we drop out?" Dad asks, slightly worried.
"N-nah, heh, we're good," you stammer out. "I just, um..." You sniff, kneading your eyes. "Thanks dad. That's a really great birthday present."
He chuckles. "Don't mention it. Besides, Mum says she has one just as good all lined up for you when you get there. I don't really believe her but, hey, what do I know? I'm a man."
You laugh. "See you soon, Dad."
"Seeya."
When the day comes you're... you can scarcely believe it but you're excited. Would you even venture to say 'elated'? Maybe! You're not sure and you don't really care. You don't remember feeling this excited or energetic or enthused or any other e-word about something in about three years. You're actually organised in advance for once in your life. Your suitcase is all packed and ready to go, your phone charged, your wallet in your pocket, everything in order. You've said your goodbyes to Lakshmi, such as they were - the wall is still there, but at least now you have something nice on the horizon to see when you turn away from that particular problem.
Speaking of the horizon. You look out across it as you sit on your suitcase out the front, basking in the dying light of the sun. Letting your eyes drift closed, the gentle breeze that heralds the coming night taking the edge off the heat. Pretty warm for a Winter afternoon. It'll be downright freezing in an hour or two. But you're sure you'll be safe in the car, or in the plane, by then. Dad said either he or Ms. Jenkins'd be around by about 6. You dig out your phone to check. 6:12. You consider the number, then shrug. It's fine. Three more minutes, then you'll call him. Even if he's late, you don't really care. You're willing to give him plenty of slack for this.
A police car rolls down the street. Not really much cause for alarm. They cruise through the community fairly regularly, just checking things out. You tune them out, mostly. Only take notice when you see Dad waving at them as they pass by, or the few times you saw them park so he could chat to them. It's a safe neighbourhood and they're one of the reasons it feels that way. No, you notice because it slows to a stop right outside your house. You hear the distant sound of a handbrake engaging, and two doors opening as the cops get out, but the engine keeps running. You stand, begin to slowly walk forward. One cop steps forward, eyes hidden by aviators, one hand on his hip. The other motions for you to open the gate. You do, obviously. You head to the keypad and punch in the code. There's a soft click as the electronic lock gives way, and the steel gate slides out of the way. You step out into the driveway, and the cop mirrors your motion.
"G'day," he says, hands resting on his hips. "Your sister home too?"
"Uh... yeah?" you say slowly, glancing over your shoulder. "What's this about?"
"Well, uh... wish I was here under better circumstances, mate, but it looks like things haven't really worked out that way." He adjusts his cap, his leather jacket rustling. " 'fraid there's been a bit of an incident."
"What?" Your brow furrows. "What kind of incident? Something happen with Dad?"
"Look, just so you know, neither of you are in trouble." The cop raises his hands, patting the air a little to assuage your worries. "But I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask you and your sister to come with us down to the station. There's been a security breach and Mr. Dane's made his preference known that this is how he wants situations of this kind to be handled."
You're... you're not sure how to take this. It's a lot to process all at once, pretty much the definition of a hard one-eighty in how you expected today to go. You squint against the practically horizontal rays of the setting sun, peering at the cop's face. His mouth is smiling, but you can't see his eyes.
[ ] Agree. After all, Dad knows these guys. No time to waste fucking around because you have a funny feeling.
[ ] Say you'll go get Lakshmi. Bring her up to speed once you're inside, ask her what the Hell she thinks is going on and what you should do.
[ ] Ask the cops for ID and call Dad. Maybe you're just being paranoid, maybe not. You don't care. It'll only take a minute.
[ ] Tell them to back off and keep your finger near the button to close the gate. Something doesn't feel right. And honestly, you're in a shit mood anyway.
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Chapter Six: Fangs In The Dark
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
"Can I, uh..." It's weird. Dad would've called you. Or would've called Ms. Jenkins, surely. He wouldn't have left you in the dark like this on your big day. Would he? "Can I see some ID, thanks?"
"Sure, mate."
They dig out their badges and show them off. Rectangles of black leather that unfurl and dangle towards the ground, bright silvery NSW shields below and ID cards hidden beneath clear plastic above. You can't quite read the names but those are useless to you anyway. You focus on the pictures, trying to match them to the faces you see before you. You can't tell if the skin tone is right in this dying light. You can't tell if the build is right, what with their leather jackets. You can't tell if their eyes are right, hidden by those aviators. The hair's right, but the facial structure? Your eyes keep flicking back and forth and back and forth but every single time there's still a little doubt, still a little niggling worry.
"I-I'm just gonna see if I can get through to Dad, alright?" you say. The closest cop gestures for you to go ahead. You fish out your phone and tap over to Dad's contact info with a shaking thumb. Why are you shaking? It's fine. It's all fine. You bring the phone to your ear as it dials. You're just being paranoid for no reason. It's going to be just fine.
"Hi, you've reached Patrick Dane's phone. Unfortunately I can't pick up right now, but if you leave a message here or with my secretary I'll get back to you as soon as possible."
"H-hey Dad," you say. "Just calling to check what the plan is for today. You're a bit late is all." You pause. Too long. You don't want to bring your phone back down. A chill wind rolls down your back, making you shiver. You swallow. "Oh? Just had to stay a bit late? It's fine, heh, that's why we plan for the worst. You want me to just call a cab and meet you at the airport?" Another fake pause. "Right. Um. See you there."
You slowly lower the phone. "I, uh, guess things got sorted out after all? Sorry to bother you, heh, but Dad and I kind of have a plane we need to catch."
Their faces don't move. They haven't moved since you pressed 'call'. They've just had those wide, toothy, completely non-reassuring smiles stretched across their faces. No sign of their eyes behind the sunglasses. Inscrutable. You hand hangs by your side, phone still cupped loosely. You're rooted to the spot.
"Come on, son," says the closest man, still smiling. "We both know that was a lie."
"Hey!"
You turn. So do the cops. It's Rob, all dressed up for his usual outing. First a jog in the morning, then jogging to the gym and back in the evening, like clockwork. You could set your watch to it. He's glistening with a thin sheen of sweat, his white tank-top clinging to his frame in places from the perspiration. He has one of those bicep-mounted phone cases for runners, but it currently sits empty. His gym back is slung across his back, strap running shoulder to hip. A rush of relief hits you. Rob'll be able to straighten this all out, you're sure of it.
Rob reaches out and snaps the first cop's neck.
It's such an easy, lazy motion. He barely seems to put any effort into it. One moment his left hand is outstretched, cupping the man's cheek as if to pull him into a kiss. And then his wrist just twists, and the man's head is facing backwards. The skin of his neck is rumpled and twisted, turned too far. Bulging unnaturally from within, the spinal cord severed and the vertebrae untethered. The man twitches, the last impulses firing down his ravaged nerves. He crumples like a ragdoll, a useless pile of meat and bone.
The second cop goes for his gun, fake smile twisting into an all-too-real snarl of rage. Rob steps in, left wrist closing around the man's right. Keeping the gun pointed square at the ground as his free hand comes around. Flesh rips from within. His fingernails peel away like little plastic tabs. Claws erupt from his fingertips, vicious silver arcs that gleam in the day's last light as they whip around and tear the second man's throat out. Literally. You can see the chunk of severed larynx in Rob's bloodied fist. The cop gurgles uselessly, staggering back one step, two. Grip weakening. Rob steals his gun with one twist. Raises it in his free hand, aimed instinctively. BANG. The gunshot makes you jump. The second cop's head snaps back, the back of his head becoming a thick spray of blood, bone and brain. Rob whirls, points the gun down. BANG. You jump again. The first cop's body twitches ever so slightly. Blood spreads rapidly from the ruin that the back of his head has become.
Click-clickclick. The pistol clatters as it bounces on the driveway, discarded, still smoking. Crunch. The gate panel is reduced to a crater of twisted metal, limestone, plastic and circuits. The gate rolls back over the driveway, sealing off the house. Rob's looking at you. His eyes are unlike you've ever seen them. They're cold, piercing, unblinking. Burning from within with a scarlet light.
"Get inside," he orders.
"... I..." It's all you say. All you can do. All you can think. This is just a dream, right? Some kind of dream-turned-fucked-up-nightmare. Once-familiar things warped by your bored brain deep in the night. You're going to wake up soon. Maybe the trip to India was too good to be true, but you'll take the disappointment if the nightmare will end.
"Get inside!" Rob repeats, louder. He shoves you in the chest. Hard. You go flying what must be two or three metres, sprawling hard across the driveway. Brain rattling in your head as the back of your skull hits the asphalt, exposed elbows raw and bleeding. Head spinning. You're going to be sick. Your stomach is gnawing away at itself, folding in and consuming itself, you're going to roll over and vomit until you can't breathe. You push yourself up on your skinned elbows.
The street outside is a chaotic mess of skidding vehicles, screeching tires and crumpling metal. There must be half a dozen cop cards all drifting haphazardly into place, uncaring of what they hit. Their trapped occupants simply kick out their windshields and crawl out onto the bonnets of their squad cars, pistols drawn. Swarming. Cops don't 'swarm'. Soldiers don't 'swarm'. People don't 'swarm'. Rob swings his gym back around to his front, ripping the zipper straight out of the fabric around it with his bloodstained claws. Reaching inside to pull out the contents. It's not his towel and phone.
It sounds like an electrified jackhammer. It looks like a movie prop, something from Aliens that's just meant to look good before the effects get added in later. It's so big it looks like it should be sitting in a turret housing on an APC or something, not clutched in a single man's hands. It shouldn't be working. It shouldn't exist. But it is, and it does. The bright chrome barrel slides back and forth like the nozzle of a nailgun, the muzzle flash bright orange and wreathed in azure traceries. A squad support weapon from the 22nd century. It takes off arms, it takes off legs, it takes off heads, it punches holes in torsos the size of garbage bin lids. Flesh simply vaporised in an instant, not a speck of blood or bone left. The burning bolts slag the squadcars, turning the wheels to molten piles of tar and metal. The tanks begin to explode, one after another. Rolling waves of solid heat, bright orange flares that blind you, as the impossible gun cooks off the fuel. The 'cops' go flying, screaming, riddled with shrapnel and scorched by the flames. Rob scything through them with ruthless, pitiless efficiency.
More vehicles. Trucks, armoured vans. It's like something from SWAT - you didn't even know Australia had a SWAT equivalent. But, no, it's not ordinary. Not even close. You saw what Rob's gun did to the ordinary squad cars. Against the armoured vans it only gouges great, molten craters. Each shot rocking them on their suspensions with the force of the impacts. They trail dribbles of molten orange metal, skidding into place. The backs burst open. There must be two dozen men in all, dressed all in black. Tactical gear, military. Assault rifles and gas masks. This is insane. This is something out of a videogame, a movie. This can't actually be happening.
The two sides exchange fire. A hail of bullets tears through Rob. You see them all hit. You see them punch through and exit in a spray of blood and meat. But he doesn't fall. He doesn't even flinch. He may as well be being stung by mosquitoes. He just curls his lip and keeps firing in one long, smooth sweep across the assembled force. The barrel's glowing orange.
You hear the distant howl of wolves. Getting closer. But there are no wolves in Australia-
Rob's gun beeps, locking. He releases his grip on the trigger, turning away from the solid wall of gunfire. Seeing you still there, exactly where you landed. Frozen with fear. His gaze rises, looking over your head and towards the front door. "Cover me!"
You follow his gaze. There's a monster in the doorway. A creature that's humanoid, maybe even feminine in shape, but nothing else. It wears nothing but its own natural armour, a suit of glossy black chitin that gleams wetly in the dying light. An exoskeleton. An alien. Whatever it is it responds to Rob's order, bracing itself against the doorframe to bring its weapon to bear. Something vaguely shotgun-shaped, grasped in bony, black, clawed hands. THOOM. The report must shake every window in the house in its frame. It doesn't fire a slug so much as a solid white-hot rod of metal, turning to a streak of light that sears your retinas. It racks the slide and fires again. That's all you see before Rob's free hand closes around you and you're hoisted into the air, thrown unceremoniously over his slab-muscled shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
You see the world upside-down behind him, retreating as he double-times it to the door. You see the carnage the thing's shotgun wrought, the craters in the street from where the metal rods over-penetrated and sank straight into the asphalt. Steam billows up through one, changing to boiling water. It must have hit a water main. The water falls, mixing with the pools of blood splattered all across the street. The fake cops, the soldiers, the whatever they are, regroup. They fire at Rob's retreating back but he angles himself, shielding you with his body. You hear dull, metallic thunks as some of the bullets hit something solid inside him and stop dead.
Wolven howls. Dark shapes in the crowd. Tall, wide, vast shapes that stand head and shoulders, maybe even more, among the assembled gunmen. Your stomach cinches tight, greasy nausea flooding your senses. An icy fist grips your heart, another your lungs. Another holds your eyes open, refusing to let you blink. You see the dark shapes. You see them assemble at the gate, outlines broken by bristling fur. Snapping, spittle-slick, gleaming fangs. Luminous, lupine yellow eyes. Clawed hands that wrap around the bars of the gate. Overdeveloped, inhuman muscle that flexes and slithers and bulges, and all of a sudden the solid iron is crumpling like foil trampled underfoot they're on all fours now and bounding how can they be so fast they're so close already they're almost upon you they're going to-
"Initiate lockdown!" a familiar voice orders curtly.
You're across the threshold. A thick, steel shutter descends like a guillotine blade. A heartbeat later something big slams into the other side. Shaking the shutter in its housing. Denting it inward. All around the house you hear similar shutters snapping down. Hear an energised hum, smell the stink of ozone, as they energise. Machine-guns chatter outside, two sets in a ballistic war of noise. Rob lopes onward, into the living room. The armoured alien falls into line behind him, just 'in front' of you.
"Are you hurt?" it asks in the same familiar voice.
"... M-Ms. Jenkins?" you murmur. Barely a wheeze. You can feel sweat pouring down your face. You can feel your heart racing in your chest, pounding against your sternum like a drum. Beating desperately against the bars of its prison to get out, to flee. Your nerves are electrified, your blood is on fire. You squirm and try to escape, but Rob's grip is too strong. You scream madly, thrashing, crying yourself hoarse. Tears of terror stream freely down your cheeks. The only reason you aren't pissing yourself is because there's nothing to release.
"Black Spiral Dancers," Ms. Jenkins says, addressing Rob as she accelerates to his side. "Meghanada is most likely suffering from Delirium."
"He may need to be sedated. Lakshmi?"
"She was in her room. She is secure and unharmed."
You're deposited on the leather couch. A familiar sensation. Too familiar for this nightmare reality has become. It's impossible. It's all impossible. You know that, of course you know that, you're rational, you're sane. What you saw wasn't real. What you saw wasn't real because if it was real then everything you know is a lie and that's not rational. You're sane because you're rational and you're rational because you're sane and that's the only way this makes sense. Claws and teeth in your mind, scratching and gnawing at your brain, the inside of your skull, trying to burst free. The hot breath of a predator on the back of your neck as you run in the dark, running and running and running but there's no escape there'll never be a mistake. You're beyond the firelight and you're in their territory now, you're not the predator you're the prey, you're prey running scared you're so scared you just want to see Mum and Dad again is that so wrong? Why can't you just have that? What did you do to deserve this? You're crying like a baby, like the big soft helpless defenceless baby you are, sobbing and bawling for all the good that does when the wolves are circling. You can't breathe, every sip just goes into more sobs. Your shoulders shake out of control, you hug your knees to your chest and rock back and forth. You can't breathe there are claws raking through your lungs you can't breathe there are jaws around your throat fangs scything through the cartilage and sinew and biting down and drinking the hot blood you're going to die you know you're going to die you're going to die and never see your parents again.
What sad little beasts.
"Meghanada?"
The name of thunder.
The voice is soft and small but it reaches your ears. Lakshmi is curled up on the other side of the couch, knees hugged to her chest just like yours. Shivering. Shaking. Peering over her arms for some sign, any sign, of hope.
"... I'm sorry about everything." A hoarse whisper. It's true. She wants to say one true, heartfelt thing to you before you both die.
This is not the end.
"Meghanada." A strong hand on your chin, squeezing tight. Lifting your head. "Look at me." You look.
Your name is an earth-shaking roar.
Cold, pitiless eyes burning scarlet. This close you can see how fake they are. You can see the 'lens' of humanity over the whirring, spinning, manyfaceted optics set in Rob's sockets. You can see the ticking clockwork inside him. He's not human. Maybe he was never human. He's a killing machine and he slaughtered those people like animals. And he's your only hope.
"Your dad is coming," he says. "Listen to me. Your dad is coming. Ms. Jenkins and I got the alert out. All we have to do is hold out and the Convention will be here. You and your sister are going to live, no matter what Ms. Jenkins and I have to give. Do you understand me?"
Your father is a king, wealthy and learned and mighty. He will not surrender his holdings easily. He will come.
You try to squirm away, try to look away from the burning red eyes. Claws scratch at the base of your skull, of your brain. You blink and you're running naked through a forest, cold and frightened, sipping for air as the beasts follow in the dark.
"Do you understand me?"
Do you understand me?
Claws around your throat.
Claim your birthright.
[ ] Lakshmi needs you. She's your sister. You came into this world with her and if you have to leave it, it'll be with her too.
[ ] Rob was your friend. Is your friend. He listened to you. You felt at ease around him. He helped you when you had nobody else left to turn to. That wasn't just a robot. That wasn't programmed.
[ ] Your Dad is coming. Whatever nightmare your life has become, whatever secrets he was keeping from you, he planned for it. He made sure you were safe. And he's coming. You're going to live.
[ ] You refuse to be bullied by these snarling, slavering beasts. Rabid dogs are not to be feared. They are to be put down. This fear is useless, childish. Crush it.
"Sure, mate."
They dig out their badges and show them off. Rectangles of black leather that unfurl and dangle towards the ground, bright silvery NSW shields below and ID cards hidden beneath clear plastic above. You can't quite read the names but those are useless to you anyway. You focus on the pictures, trying to match them to the faces you see before you. You can't tell if the skin tone is right in this dying light. You can't tell if the build is right, what with their leather jackets. You can't tell if their eyes are right, hidden by those aviators. The hair's right, but the facial structure? Your eyes keep flicking back and forth and back and forth but every single time there's still a little doubt, still a little niggling worry.
"I-I'm just gonna see if I can get through to Dad, alright?" you say. The closest cop gestures for you to go ahead. You fish out your phone and tap over to Dad's contact info with a shaking thumb. Why are you shaking? It's fine. It's all fine. You bring the phone to your ear as it dials. You're just being paranoid for no reason. It's going to be just fine.
"Hi, you've reached Patrick Dane's phone. Unfortunately I can't pick up right now, but if you leave a message here or with my secretary I'll get back to you as soon as possible."
"H-hey Dad," you say. "Just calling to check what the plan is for today. You're a bit late is all." You pause. Too long. You don't want to bring your phone back down. A chill wind rolls down your back, making you shiver. You swallow. "Oh? Just had to stay a bit late? It's fine, heh, that's why we plan for the worst. You want me to just call a cab and meet you at the airport?" Another fake pause. "Right. Um. See you there."
You slowly lower the phone. "I, uh, guess things got sorted out after all? Sorry to bother you, heh, but Dad and I kind of have a plane we need to catch."
Their faces don't move. They haven't moved since you pressed 'call'. They've just had those wide, toothy, completely non-reassuring smiles stretched across their faces. No sign of their eyes behind the sunglasses. Inscrutable. You hand hangs by your side, phone still cupped loosely. You're rooted to the spot.
"Come on, son," says the closest man, still smiling. "We both know that was a lie."
"Hey!"
You turn. So do the cops. It's Rob, all dressed up for his usual outing. First a jog in the morning, then jogging to the gym and back in the evening, like clockwork. You could set your watch to it. He's glistening with a thin sheen of sweat, his white tank-top clinging to his frame in places from the perspiration. He has one of those bicep-mounted phone cases for runners, but it currently sits empty. His gym back is slung across his back, strap running shoulder to hip. A rush of relief hits you. Rob'll be able to straighten this all out, you're sure of it.
Rob reaches out and snaps the first cop's neck.
It's such an easy, lazy motion. He barely seems to put any effort into it. One moment his left hand is outstretched, cupping the man's cheek as if to pull him into a kiss. And then his wrist just twists, and the man's head is facing backwards. The skin of his neck is rumpled and twisted, turned too far. Bulging unnaturally from within, the spinal cord severed and the vertebrae untethered. The man twitches, the last impulses firing down his ravaged nerves. He crumples like a ragdoll, a useless pile of meat and bone.
The second cop goes for his gun, fake smile twisting into an all-too-real snarl of rage. Rob steps in, left wrist closing around the man's right. Keeping the gun pointed square at the ground as his free hand comes around. Flesh rips from within. His fingernails peel away like little plastic tabs. Claws erupt from his fingertips, vicious silver arcs that gleam in the day's last light as they whip around and tear the second man's throat out. Literally. You can see the chunk of severed larynx in Rob's bloodied fist. The cop gurgles uselessly, staggering back one step, two. Grip weakening. Rob steals his gun with one twist. Raises it in his free hand, aimed instinctively. BANG. The gunshot makes you jump. The second cop's head snaps back, the back of his head becoming a thick spray of blood, bone and brain. Rob whirls, points the gun down. BANG. You jump again. The first cop's body twitches ever so slightly. Blood spreads rapidly from the ruin that the back of his head has become.
Click-clickclick. The pistol clatters as it bounces on the driveway, discarded, still smoking. Crunch. The gate panel is reduced to a crater of twisted metal, limestone, plastic and circuits. The gate rolls back over the driveway, sealing off the house. Rob's looking at you. His eyes are unlike you've ever seen them. They're cold, piercing, unblinking. Burning from within with a scarlet light.
"Get inside," he orders.
"... I..." It's all you say. All you can do. All you can think. This is just a dream, right? Some kind of dream-turned-fucked-up-nightmare. Once-familiar things warped by your bored brain deep in the night. You're going to wake up soon. Maybe the trip to India was too good to be true, but you'll take the disappointment if the nightmare will end.
"Get inside!" Rob repeats, louder. He shoves you in the chest. Hard. You go flying what must be two or three metres, sprawling hard across the driveway. Brain rattling in your head as the back of your skull hits the asphalt, exposed elbows raw and bleeding. Head spinning. You're going to be sick. Your stomach is gnawing away at itself, folding in and consuming itself, you're going to roll over and vomit until you can't breathe. You push yourself up on your skinned elbows.
The street outside is a chaotic mess of skidding vehicles, screeching tires and crumpling metal. There must be half a dozen cop cards all drifting haphazardly into place, uncaring of what they hit. Their trapped occupants simply kick out their windshields and crawl out onto the bonnets of their squad cars, pistols drawn. Swarming. Cops don't 'swarm'. Soldiers don't 'swarm'. People don't 'swarm'. Rob swings his gym back around to his front, ripping the zipper straight out of the fabric around it with his bloodstained claws. Reaching inside to pull out the contents. It's not his towel and phone.
It sounds like an electrified jackhammer. It looks like a movie prop, something from Aliens that's just meant to look good before the effects get added in later. It's so big it looks like it should be sitting in a turret housing on an APC or something, not clutched in a single man's hands. It shouldn't be working. It shouldn't exist. But it is, and it does. The bright chrome barrel slides back and forth like the nozzle of a nailgun, the muzzle flash bright orange and wreathed in azure traceries. A squad support weapon from the 22nd century. It takes off arms, it takes off legs, it takes off heads, it punches holes in torsos the size of garbage bin lids. Flesh simply vaporised in an instant, not a speck of blood or bone left. The burning bolts slag the squadcars, turning the wheels to molten piles of tar and metal. The tanks begin to explode, one after another. Rolling waves of solid heat, bright orange flares that blind you, as the impossible gun cooks off the fuel. The 'cops' go flying, screaming, riddled with shrapnel and scorched by the flames. Rob scything through them with ruthless, pitiless efficiency.
More vehicles. Trucks, armoured vans. It's like something from SWAT - you didn't even know Australia had a SWAT equivalent. But, no, it's not ordinary. Not even close. You saw what Rob's gun did to the ordinary squad cars. Against the armoured vans it only gouges great, molten craters. Each shot rocking them on their suspensions with the force of the impacts. They trail dribbles of molten orange metal, skidding into place. The backs burst open. There must be two dozen men in all, dressed all in black. Tactical gear, military. Assault rifles and gas masks. This is insane. This is something out of a videogame, a movie. This can't actually be happening.
The two sides exchange fire. A hail of bullets tears through Rob. You see them all hit. You see them punch through and exit in a spray of blood and meat. But he doesn't fall. He doesn't even flinch. He may as well be being stung by mosquitoes. He just curls his lip and keeps firing in one long, smooth sweep across the assembled force. The barrel's glowing orange.
You hear the distant howl of wolves. Getting closer. But there are no wolves in Australia-
Rob's gun beeps, locking. He releases his grip on the trigger, turning away from the solid wall of gunfire. Seeing you still there, exactly where you landed. Frozen with fear. His gaze rises, looking over your head and towards the front door. "Cover me!"
You follow his gaze. There's a monster in the doorway. A creature that's humanoid, maybe even feminine in shape, but nothing else. It wears nothing but its own natural armour, a suit of glossy black chitin that gleams wetly in the dying light. An exoskeleton. An alien. Whatever it is it responds to Rob's order, bracing itself against the doorframe to bring its weapon to bear. Something vaguely shotgun-shaped, grasped in bony, black, clawed hands. THOOM. The report must shake every window in the house in its frame. It doesn't fire a slug so much as a solid white-hot rod of metal, turning to a streak of light that sears your retinas. It racks the slide and fires again. That's all you see before Rob's free hand closes around you and you're hoisted into the air, thrown unceremoniously over his slab-muscled shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
You see the world upside-down behind him, retreating as he double-times it to the door. You see the carnage the thing's shotgun wrought, the craters in the street from where the metal rods over-penetrated and sank straight into the asphalt. Steam billows up through one, changing to boiling water. It must have hit a water main. The water falls, mixing with the pools of blood splattered all across the street. The fake cops, the soldiers, the whatever they are, regroup. They fire at Rob's retreating back but he angles himself, shielding you with his body. You hear dull, metallic thunks as some of the bullets hit something solid inside him and stop dead.
Wolven howls. Dark shapes in the crowd. Tall, wide, vast shapes that stand head and shoulders, maybe even more, among the assembled gunmen. Your stomach cinches tight, greasy nausea flooding your senses. An icy fist grips your heart, another your lungs. Another holds your eyes open, refusing to let you blink. You see the dark shapes. You see them assemble at the gate, outlines broken by bristling fur. Snapping, spittle-slick, gleaming fangs. Luminous, lupine yellow eyes. Clawed hands that wrap around the bars of the gate. Overdeveloped, inhuman muscle that flexes and slithers and bulges, and all of a sudden the solid iron is crumpling like foil trampled underfoot they're on all fours now and bounding how can they be so fast they're so close already they're almost upon you they're going to-
"Initiate lockdown!" a familiar voice orders curtly.
You're across the threshold. A thick, steel shutter descends like a guillotine blade. A heartbeat later something big slams into the other side. Shaking the shutter in its housing. Denting it inward. All around the house you hear similar shutters snapping down. Hear an energised hum, smell the stink of ozone, as they energise. Machine-guns chatter outside, two sets in a ballistic war of noise. Rob lopes onward, into the living room. The armoured alien falls into line behind him, just 'in front' of you.
"Are you hurt?" it asks in the same familiar voice.
"... M-Ms. Jenkins?" you murmur. Barely a wheeze. You can feel sweat pouring down your face. You can feel your heart racing in your chest, pounding against your sternum like a drum. Beating desperately against the bars of its prison to get out, to flee. Your nerves are electrified, your blood is on fire. You squirm and try to escape, but Rob's grip is too strong. You scream madly, thrashing, crying yourself hoarse. Tears of terror stream freely down your cheeks. The only reason you aren't pissing yourself is because there's nothing to release.
"Black Spiral Dancers," Ms. Jenkins says, addressing Rob as she accelerates to his side. "Meghanada is most likely suffering from Delirium."
"He may need to be sedated. Lakshmi?"
"She was in her room. She is secure and unharmed."
You're deposited on the leather couch. A familiar sensation. Too familiar for this nightmare reality has become. It's impossible. It's all impossible. You know that, of course you know that, you're rational, you're sane. What you saw wasn't real. What you saw wasn't real because if it was real then everything you know is a lie and that's not rational. You're sane because you're rational and you're rational because you're sane and that's the only way this makes sense. Claws and teeth in your mind, scratching and gnawing at your brain, the inside of your skull, trying to burst free. The hot breath of a predator on the back of your neck as you run in the dark, running and running and running but there's no escape there'll never be a mistake. You're beyond the firelight and you're in their territory now, you're not the predator you're the prey, you're prey running scared you're so scared you just want to see Mum and Dad again is that so wrong? Why can't you just have that? What did you do to deserve this? You're crying like a baby, like the big soft helpless defenceless baby you are, sobbing and bawling for all the good that does when the wolves are circling. You can't breathe, every sip just goes into more sobs. Your shoulders shake out of control, you hug your knees to your chest and rock back and forth. You can't breathe there are claws raking through your lungs you can't breathe there are jaws around your throat fangs scything through the cartilage and sinew and biting down and drinking the hot blood you're going to die you know you're going to die you're going to die and never see your parents again.
What sad little beasts.
"Meghanada?"
The name of thunder.
The voice is soft and small but it reaches your ears. Lakshmi is curled up on the other side of the couch, knees hugged to her chest just like yours. Shivering. Shaking. Peering over her arms for some sign, any sign, of hope.
"... I'm sorry about everything." A hoarse whisper. It's true. She wants to say one true, heartfelt thing to you before you both die.
This is not the end.
"Meghanada." A strong hand on your chin, squeezing tight. Lifting your head. "Look at me." You look.
Your name is an earth-shaking roar.
Cold, pitiless eyes burning scarlet. This close you can see how fake they are. You can see the 'lens' of humanity over the whirring, spinning, manyfaceted optics set in Rob's sockets. You can see the ticking clockwork inside him. He's not human. Maybe he was never human. He's a killing machine and he slaughtered those people like animals. And he's your only hope.
"Your dad is coming," he says. "Listen to me. Your dad is coming. Ms. Jenkins and I got the alert out. All we have to do is hold out and the Convention will be here. You and your sister are going to live, no matter what Ms. Jenkins and I have to give. Do you understand me?"
Your father is a king, wealthy and learned and mighty. He will not surrender his holdings easily. He will come.
You try to squirm away, try to look away from the burning red eyes. Claws scratch at the base of your skull, of your brain. You blink and you're running naked through a forest, cold and frightened, sipping for air as the beasts follow in the dark.
"Do you understand me?"
Do you understand me?
Claws around your throat.
Claim your birthright.
[ ] Lakshmi needs you. She's your sister. You came into this world with her and if you have to leave it, it'll be with her too.
[ ] Rob was your friend. Is your friend. He listened to you. You felt at ease around him. He helped you when you had nobody else left to turn to. That wasn't just a robot. That wasn't programmed.
[ ] Your Dad is coming. Whatever nightmare your life has become, whatever secrets he was keeping from you, he planned for it. He made sure you were safe. And he's coming. You're going to live.
[ ] You refuse to be bullied by these snarling, slavering beasts. Rabid dogs are not to be feared. They are to be put down. This fear is useless, childish. Crush it.
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Chapter Seven: Cornered
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Your hand finds another. It's warm. It squeezes you tight. It doesn't let go. You don't let go either. You squeeze back just as tight, so tight it hurts. It hurts, you know you must be hurting her, but she's hurting you too. You've both hurt each other plenty. But it's not enough to make you let go. It's not enough to make her let go.
"... understand," you whisper hoarsely.
Rob nods slightly. He claps his unbloodied hand down on your shoulder, squeezing. "Do exactly what Ms. Jenkins and I say, when we say it. You'll make it through this."
He releases his grip on your shoulder and straightens, scooping up that giant gun of his. Looks like it's compressed slightly, folded in on itself to save space. He levels it at the hip, rounding the couch to keep an eye on the front door. CLANG. The shutter dents in again. Ms. Jenkins slaps the butt of her shotgun's stock, telescoping it back into the main body. Following the line of the living room, past the TV, to cover the windows and rear hallway on the backyard-side of the house. Heat-haze rises from the barrel of her shotgun, the choke sizzling. Your eyes alight on Lakshmi's face, right next to you.
"... we gonna die?" she asks in a small voice.
You shake your head.
"I..." She swallows. Chokes back tears. "... didn't want you to go."
"You can come with me," you say. "Dad'll buy you another ticket."
CLANG. The shutter over the window dents, its housing rattling. Cracks spread along the wall. Ms. Jenkins readies her shotgun, sighting down the length behind a featureless mask of gleaming black bone. You and Lakshmi jump.
"Dad'll buy his own ticket," you ramble. "We'll all go together, all four of us. We'll go on a holiday and we'll be with Mum for a week or a month or a year if we want."
The entire house shakes. Lakshmi screams. You think you scream too. The sounds overlay so neatly you can't be sure. Dust rails down from the cracking ceiling. You throw your arms around your sister and she responds in kind, squeezing your lower back hard enough to make your spine click even as you crush her against your chest.
"And then Mum can come move in with us like we always talked about and we can go to Luna Park like we used to and show Mum all the best spots in Sydney and-"
The horrible squeal of shearing metal, inches-thick shutters buckling and crumpling like foil. You hear two steps, and Rob's gun opens up again. Ms. Jenkins leaps to your side, grabbing you roughly with one clawed hand and hauling you to your feet with Lakshmi. The claws dig into your skin, slash through, draw blood. She doesn't care. A few flesh wounds are worth getting the two of you to safety. She strong-arms the pair of you around the coffee table one-handed, still clinging to each other like limpets. She hefts her shotgun in the other, levelling it one-handed and keeping it firmly trained on the corner where the entrance hall meets the living room. Rob's firing down it, slowly backing away, lips curled back from his teeth in a grimace. You can't see what he's shooting at.
A furred outline, outstretched claws-
THOOM. You go deaf. You feel the heat of the slug's passage as it rockets from the barrel of Ms. Jenkins' shotgun. It goes in the thing's shoulder, punches through its chest cavity, rockets out the other side in a dark pink cloud of blood and bone and meat. The shape flies, hits the bloodied wall and slumps. A tangled pile of ruined meat, fur and blood. You almost want to laugh, to whoop. You had no reason to be scared. Just a big, stupid-
C-crak-crack. The mountain of meat moves. Eels slither beneath the flesh, making the pelt bulge. Clawed fingers twitch spasmodically. The entire corpse convulses, already-shattered spine bending almost to the point of snapping clean in two. One arm rotates, lining up with the pulverised socket. Driving right back into the mess of bone shards. You hear them clicking and scraping, crunching back into place. Like glass beneath a boot. The arm hangs limp, useless, only to be pulled taut with an audible snap as the tendons are restrung. The creature finds its feet, planting one paw, then the other. One arm still dangling by a single scrap of muscle, still bent backwards double. It turns, whips around so fast it's like it's trying to snap its spine at the pelvis. The nearly-severed arm swings like a grisly tassel. Swinging back sharply. Strands of meat and sinew lashing together like striking snakes, visible through the crater where its shoulder once was. Limb popping back into the joint with a sharp snap. Body hunching forward like an abandoned puppet as its vertebrae crunched back into place, one by one. Hunched over. Taking deep, bellowing, hungry breaths. Claws flexing as thick drool fell from its fanged maw. It looked up with eyes that were nothing but swirling emerald pits into endless-
THOOM. You go deaf again. Another bolt of white-hot metal nails the creature in the sternum, blowing out a hole so massive you can see the wall through the other side of it. It pauses, briefly. Then it keeps coming. Ms. Jenkins tosses the gun in the air, pumps it one-handed, throws it back into firing position. THOOM. A headshot narrowly missed. Half its face is gone. The flesh on one side of the snout is stripped bare, too many fangs in too small a mouth half-shattered. A slickly squirming tongue, a fat lump of meat darting out through the gaps in its fangs to taste its own dark blood. You can see brain matter through the hole in the skull. It keeps on coming. Rob backs up the hallway rapidly, giving the beast everything he's got. The bolts of energy scorch fist-sized craters in the thing's hide, the stench of burnt fur and sizzling flesh flooding your senses. Blackening exposed bone. But it doesn't stop. It only accelerates. It picks up speed for the pounce that'll take all four of you down at once, drive you to the floor so it can maul you to pieces.
The walls burst inwards. Metallic, humanoid silhouettes emerge amid clouds of dust and debris. You see metal cradles set recessed in the walls. They were there the whole time. There were androids hiding in the walls your entire life.
"Dane family in danger. Dane family in danger. Dane family in danger." The twin robots intone in unison as they level their chunky, semi-automatic shotguns and pump the triggers for all they're worth. A solid hail of buckshot peppers the beast, slowing it just a hair out of surprise if nothing else. It swipes once. The leftmost drone is dashed against the wall, a sparking mess of crumpled metal. It swipes again. The rightmost drone's head is sheared off. The beast picks up the body, hoists it overhead, and tears it in two with a single flex of its regenerating muscles.
Just enough time. Rob and Ms. Jenkins force you and Lakshmi through the doorway into Dad's study, and shut the door tight. Press a button you've never seen before and a steel shutter descends over the door. Once more it dents immediately, the beast at the gates howling with fury as it batters itself against the barricade over and over and over.
"Over here," Rob orders.
Dad's study. You were never allowed in here. It was always the place you Should Not Go and Never Touch Anything. Dad kept his files and folders and work stuff exactly the way he needed it, and messing with anything could cost him valuable time. It was a small request. And you had little need to go inside but sheer curiosity. It's airless, no windows, a little room all to itself accessible only by that one door. Defensible, you realise at last.
Suddenly you wonder why you and Lakshmi were kept home from school nine years ago, the day of the great dust storm that swathed the coast in scarlet. Why Ms. Jenkins took you and her into Dad's study with the door closed and played board games all day until the dust cleared.
Rob pulls a book from the shelf. Rips free, more like. It hits the floor, pages fluttering. The shelf slides out, slides to the left on hidden rails with a soft hiss. Exposing a door. Not just any door. A vault door. The kind of immense, chunky thing you'd see guarding a bank vault, made of enough steel for a fleet of cars. Rob hauls it open one-handed, grunting with effort. Ms. Jenkins throws you and Lakshmi over the threshold. You nearly trip and tumble down the long, dark staircase.
"What's happening?" you plead. "Where are we going!?"
"Get downstairs and hide," Rob replies curtly. "Only Mr. Dane can open this door once we lock it down."
"We'll be fine," Ms. Jenkins finishes. "This is what we trained for."
"I-if they can't break through the door then come inside with us!" Lakshmi cries out, her voice breaking. "Come with us, we'll all hide together!"
They don't reply. Rob doesn't look at you. They reach out and swing the vault door shut as one. You and Lakshmi throw yourselves against the other side of the door, pushing with all your might. They're stronger than you. Even together, you can't fight them.
"ROB!"
"MS. JENKINS!"
The door swings shut, locking with a pneumatic hiss. Steel rods shoot into the floor, the walls, the ceiling. Anchoring it firmly in place. You're plunged into absolute darkness. You can't see. You can't even hear through the thick steel. It's like you're floating in space, in an endless black void.
"L-Lakshmi?" you ask in a small voice.
Her hand finds yours. You squeeze. She squeezes back.
Light strips flick on, one by one. Lighting the way as the staircase plummets down, down, down, down into the bowels of the earth. You descend the steps together, one at a time, accompanied only by the soft scrape of your shoes on the metal and your own breathing. Neither of you lets go.
What awaits you at the bottom is a bunker. One vast room that must be the size of your entire house, maybe even bigger. And every scrap of space is taken up by two things - supplies and weapons. Everywhere you look there are cans of nonperishables, bottles or water, plastic- and foil-wrapped things of every size and shape. There's a stripped-down kitchen, a fridge, a freezer. Bunk beds and bathrooms, sectioned off by curtains. Enough rations to live down here a year, maybe more. Knives, machetes. And guns. Entire racks of guns, fit to equip the entire army that could live down here. Black plastic rifles and empty magazines, entire boxes of bullets. Other boxy shapes, shotguns and pistols, guns of every sort. Even the sort that don't exist. The ones you thought didn't exist until today. Until your world fell apart. And, almost as an absurdist punchline, there are bows. Modern torque-bows with pulleys and counterweights and what look like half a dozen different strings, more complicated than any you've ever tried to use.
The earth quakes. Dust rails down from a hundred tiny crevices in the high-arched roof. The shelves rattle. Indistinct sounds echo down the stairway. You and Lakshmi turn as one, hands still tightly clasped. Staring at the foot of the steps as you hear the beginnings of a low, muffled, metallic whine.
"... Meghanada," Lakshmi says in a soft voice. "They're going to get in."
"They said we had to hide," you reply. Voice shaky. Unconvinced.
"Where?" she asks.
You don't know. It's one room. You can hide, but not for long. They'll search. They'll sweep. They'll tip over every shelf and overturn every bed until they find the two of you. Will the extra minutes, extra seconds, be enough for Dad to ride home on a white horse and save you? You know exactly what she's thinking is the alternative.
"Rob and Ms. Jenkins couldn't kill those things," you say quietly. "Neither can we."
"Maybe." Her hand tightens around yours. "It'll be together."
It'll be together.
[ ] Pick up a machete. Simple enough. Just swing away. Leave a nasty mark. No chance of missing.
[ ] Pick up a gun. Any gun, so long as you can load it quickly. Probably worse than useless against those things. You've never used one before. You might miss. But it'll feel good to fire right before the end.
[ ] Pick up a strange gun. Like the ones you saw Ms. Jenkins and Rob using. Unwieldy, arcane, but they do more damage. You might leave a bigger mark. Might even fight your way out. Heh.
[ ] Pick up the bow. Just a toy in comparison to all the other weapons. You've never fired at a moving target. At a person. But you know how to use it. Draw and release.
"... understand," you whisper hoarsely.
Rob nods slightly. He claps his unbloodied hand down on your shoulder, squeezing. "Do exactly what Ms. Jenkins and I say, when we say it. You'll make it through this."
He releases his grip on your shoulder and straightens, scooping up that giant gun of his. Looks like it's compressed slightly, folded in on itself to save space. He levels it at the hip, rounding the couch to keep an eye on the front door. CLANG. The shutter dents in again. Ms. Jenkins slaps the butt of her shotgun's stock, telescoping it back into the main body. Following the line of the living room, past the TV, to cover the windows and rear hallway on the backyard-side of the house. Heat-haze rises from the barrel of her shotgun, the choke sizzling. Your eyes alight on Lakshmi's face, right next to you.
"... we gonna die?" she asks in a small voice.
You shake your head.
"I..." She swallows. Chokes back tears. "... didn't want you to go."
"You can come with me," you say. "Dad'll buy you another ticket."
CLANG. The shutter over the window dents, its housing rattling. Cracks spread along the wall. Ms. Jenkins readies her shotgun, sighting down the length behind a featureless mask of gleaming black bone. You and Lakshmi jump.
"Dad'll buy his own ticket," you ramble. "We'll all go together, all four of us. We'll go on a holiday and we'll be with Mum for a week or a month or a year if we want."
The entire house shakes. Lakshmi screams. You think you scream too. The sounds overlay so neatly you can't be sure. Dust rails down from the cracking ceiling. You throw your arms around your sister and she responds in kind, squeezing your lower back hard enough to make your spine click even as you crush her against your chest.
"And then Mum can come move in with us like we always talked about and we can go to Luna Park like we used to and show Mum all the best spots in Sydney and-"
The horrible squeal of shearing metal, inches-thick shutters buckling and crumpling like foil. You hear two steps, and Rob's gun opens up again. Ms. Jenkins leaps to your side, grabbing you roughly with one clawed hand and hauling you to your feet with Lakshmi. The claws dig into your skin, slash through, draw blood. She doesn't care. A few flesh wounds are worth getting the two of you to safety. She strong-arms the pair of you around the coffee table one-handed, still clinging to each other like limpets. She hefts her shotgun in the other, levelling it one-handed and keeping it firmly trained on the corner where the entrance hall meets the living room. Rob's firing down it, slowly backing away, lips curled back from his teeth in a grimace. You can't see what he's shooting at.
A furred outline, outstretched claws-
THOOM. You go deaf. You feel the heat of the slug's passage as it rockets from the barrel of Ms. Jenkins' shotgun. It goes in the thing's shoulder, punches through its chest cavity, rockets out the other side in a dark pink cloud of blood and bone and meat. The shape flies, hits the bloodied wall and slumps. A tangled pile of ruined meat, fur and blood. You almost want to laugh, to whoop. You had no reason to be scared. Just a big, stupid-
C-crak-crack. The mountain of meat moves. Eels slither beneath the flesh, making the pelt bulge. Clawed fingers twitch spasmodically. The entire corpse convulses, already-shattered spine bending almost to the point of snapping clean in two. One arm rotates, lining up with the pulverised socket. Driving right back into the mess of bone shards. You hear them clicking and scraping, crunching back into place. Like glass beneath a boot. The arm hangs limp, useless, only to be pulled taut with an audible snap as the tendons are restrung. The creature finds its feet, planting one paw, then the other. One arm still dangling by a single scrap of muscle, still bent backwards double. It turns, whips around so fast it's like it's trying to snap its spine at the pelvis. The nearly-severed arm swings like a grisly tassel. Swinging back sharply. Strands of meat and sinew lashing together like striking snakes, visible through the crater where its shoulder once was. Limb popping back into the joint with a sharp snap. Body hunching forward like an abandoned puppet as its vertebrae crunched back into place, one by one. Hunched over. Taking deep, bellowing, hungry breaths. Claws flexing as thick drool fell from its fanged maw. It looked up with eyes that were nothing but swirling emerald pits into endless-
THOOM. You go deaf again. Another bolt of white-hot metal nails the creature in the sternum, blowing out a hole so massive you can see the wall through the other side of it. It pauses, briefly. Then it keeps coming. Ms. Jenkins tosses the gun in the air, pumps it one-handed, throws it back into firing position. THOOM. A headshot narrowly missed. Half its face is gone. The flesh on one side of the snout is stripped bare, too many fangs in too small a mouth half-shattered. A slickly squirming tongue, a fat lump of meat darting out through the gaps in its fangs to taste its own dark blood. You can see brain matter through the hole in the skull. It keeps on coming. Rob backs up the hallway rapidly, giving the beast everything he's got. The bolts of energy scorch fist-sized craters in the thing's hide, the stench of burnt fur and sizzling flesh flooding your senses. Blackening exposed bone. But it doesn't stop. It only accelerates. It picks up speed for the pounce that'll take all four of you down at once, drive you to the floor so it can maul you to pieces.
The walls burst inwards. Metallic, humanoid silhouettes emerge amid clouds of dust and debris. You see metal cradles set recessed in the walls. They were there the whole time. There were androids hiding in the walls your entire life.
"Dane family in danger. Dane family in danger. Dane family in danger." The twin robots intone in unison as they level their chunky, semi-automatic shotguns and pump the triggers for all they're worth. A solid hail of buckshot peppers the beast, slowing it just a hair out of surprise if nothing else. It swipes once. The leftmost drone is dashed against the wall, a sparking mess of crumpled metal. It swipes again. The rightmost drone's head is sheared off. The beast picks up the body, hoists it overhead, and tears it in two with a single flex of its regenerating muscles.
Just enough time. Rob and Ms. Jenkins force you and Lakshmi through the doorway into Dad's study, and shut the door tight. Press a button you've never seen before and a steel shutter descends over the door. Once more it dents immediately, the beast at the gates howling with fury as it batters itself against the barricade over and over and over.
"Over here," Rob orders.
Dad's study. You were never allowed in here. It was always the place you Should Not Go and Never Touch Anything. Dad kept his files and folders and work stuff exactly the way he needed it, and messing with anything could cost him valuable time. It was a small request. And you had little need to go inside but sheer curiosity. It's airless, no windows, a little room all to itself accessible only by that one door. Defensible, you realise at last.
Suddenly you wonder why you and Lakshmi were kept home from school nine years ago, the day of the great dust storm that swathed the coast in scarlet. Why Ms. Jenkins took you and her into Dad's study with the door closed and played board games all day until the dust cleared.
Rob pulls a book from the shelf. Rips free, more like. It hits the floor, pages fluttering. The shelf slides out, slides to the left on hidden rails with a soft hiss. Exposing a door. Not just any door. A vault door. The kind of immense, chunky thing you'd see guarding a bank vault, made of enough steel for a fleet of cars. Rob hauls it open one-handed, grunting with effort. Ms. Jenkins throws you and Lakshmi over the threshold. You nearly trip and tumble down the long, dark staircase.
"What's happening?" you plead. "Where are we going!?"
"Get downstairs and hide," Rob replies curtly. "Only Mr. Dane can open this door once we lock it down."
"We'll be fine," Ms. Jenkins finishes. "This is what we trained for."
"I-if they can't break through the door then come inside with us!" Lakshmi cries out, her voice breaking. "Come with us, we'll all hide together!"
They don't reply. Rob doesn't look at you. They reach out and swing the vault door shut as one. You and Lakshmi throw yourselves against the other side of the door, pushing with all your might. They're stronger than you. Even together, you can't fight them.
"ROB!"
"MS. JENKINS!"
The door swings shut, locking with a pneumatic hiss. Steel rods shoot into the floor, the walls, the ceiling. Anchoring it firmly in place. You're plunged into absolute darkness. You can't see. You can't even hear through the thick steel. It's like you're floating in space, in an endless black void.
"L-Lakshmi?" you ask in a small voice.
Her hand finds yours. You squeeze. She squeezes back.
Light strips flick on, one by one. Lighting the way as the staircase plummets down, down, down, down into the bowels of the earth. You descend the steps together, one at a time, accompanied only by the soft scrape of your shoes on the metal and your own breathing. Neither of you lets go.
What awaits you at the bottom is a bunker. One vast room that must be the size of your entire house, maybe even bigger. And every scrap of space is taken up by two things - supplies and weapons. Everywhere you look there are cans of nonperishables, bottles or water, plastic- and foil-wrapped things of every size and shape. There's a stripped-down kitchen, a fridge, a freezer. Bunk beds and bathrooms, sectioned off by curtains. Enough rations to live down here a year, maybe more. Knives, machetes. And guns. Entire racks of guns, fit to equip the entire army that could live down here. Black plastic rifles and empty magazines, entire boxes of bullets. Other boxy shapes, shotguns and pistols, guns of every sort. Even the sort that don't exist. The ones you thought didn't exist until today. Until your world fell apart. And, almost as an absurdist punchline, there are bows. Modern torque-bows with pulleys and counterweights and what look like half a dozen different strings, more complicated than any you've ever tried to use.
The earth quakes. Dust rails down from a hundred tiny crevices in the high-arched roof. The shelves rattle. Indistinct sounds echo down the stairway. You and Lakshmi turn as one, hands still tightly clasped. Staring at the foot of the steps as you hear the beginnings of a low, muffled, metallic whine.
"... Meghanada," Lakshmi says in a soft voice. "They're going to get in."
"They said we had to hide," you reply. Voice shaky. Unconvinced.
"Where?" she asks.
You don't know. It's one room. You can hide, but not for long. They'll search. They'll sweep. They'll tip over every shelf and overturn every bed until they find the two of you. Will the extra minutes, extra seconds, be enough for Dad to ride home on a white horse and save you? You know exactly what she's thinking is the alternative.
"Rob and Ms. Jenkins couldn't kill those things," you say quietly. "Neither can we."
"Maybe." Her hand tightens around yours. "It'll be together."
It'll be together.
[ ] Pick up a machete. Simple enough. Just swing away. Leave a nasty mark. No chance of missing.
[ ] Pick up a gun. Any gun, so long as you can load it quickly. Probably worse than useless against those things. You've never used one before. You might miss. But it'll feel good to fire right before the end.
[ ] Pick up a strange gun. Like the ones you saw Ms. Jenkins and Rob using. Unwieldy, arcane, but they do more damage. You might leave a bigger mark. Might even fight your way out. Heh.
[ ] Pick up the bow. Just a toy in comparison to all the other weapons. You've never fired at a moving target. At a person. But you know how to use it. Draw and release.
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Chapter Eight: Astra
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Your hand ghosts up the limb of the compound bow. It's cool to the touch, smooth. Aluminium or carbon fibre or something along those lines. Your hand wraps around the moulded, textured grip in the middle. Hefting it out of the cradle. It feels light, just the right weight. The long, cylindrical counterweight just below the grip makes the balance perfect. It's even better than the bow you got for your birthday.
Your birthday. Heh. Seems so long ago now. Like you haven't seen your mother ever since she gave you that bow. It's not much, barely anything - but part of you likes this. Being reminded of her and what she taught you, right before the end.
You test the draw weight. The tightly-wound string rolls smoothly through the pulleys. Draw-weight's too high for you, but it won't matter as much at this close a range. Seems simple. Feels simple. You take some arrows. A small cluster, maybe half a dozen, held sandwiched between the grip and your hand. You doubt you'll use them all. The arrow in your right hand nocks firmly, settling against the sights. They're ambidextrous, you realise, able to be flipped to either side of the bow. You don't use either. You're used to eyeballing it.
You don't have to turn to know that she's there. Test-drawing the bow, nocking her own arrow. Part of you's surprised that she even thought of it. You always assumed that she'd given up on practising, lost most of her muscle. You never really paid enough attention to her to know either way. The corner of your mouth quirks. Here, now, and you want to ask her how often she trained while you weren't around.
"Your stance is really good," she says quietly, unexpectedly. "You must've practised a lot."
The whirring and grinding grows louder. Slowly piercing the muffling bubble of the bunker. The stairway flickers as sparks pour in. The earth quakes again.
"Almost every day," you reply.
"You must be really good at it," she says.
Not good enough, you think.
The bubble is broken. Whatever's drilling at the door pierces through, assaulting your senses with a cacophony of squealing and grinding metal like nails being drilled into your ears. You hear an immense, dull, booming impact. A second as the vault door falls completely from its hinges, hitting the stairs hard. Sliding down like a steel avalanche from its sheer weight and momentum. It hits the bottom like a missile, cracking the hardened concrete, settling into a dusty crater as the dust and debris settle.
Running feet. Sprinting, dashing, tripping and stumbling. The shapes come charging down the stairs. They barely look human any more. They look leprous, cancerous, flesh sloughing off them in half-liquid sheets. Disguises, false faces, skinsuits. Their veins are bulging pipes, so swollen with blood that they've ruptured in places. Pumping streams of toxic emerald blood. Skin sallow and translucent and glistening with sweat, eyes jaundiced green pits with pupils so vast as to have almost completely eclipsed the iris. Madly chattering teeth, bloodied on their own mouths and tongues. Stolen uniforms bullet-riddled and frayed. All wounded, staggering, pushing through their injuries with sheer mad energy. Some disregard even missing limbs. None of them bring firearms to bear. They don't have the mental capacity to use them any more. The only goal in their tortured minds is to descend upon you and Lakshmi, and tear you to shreds with their bare hands.
Draw. Exhale. Loose.
The first goes down with a shriek, the shaft sinking through the remains of his vest like paper. Far enough to protrude out the other side. Another shriek, another body hitting the floor. Lakshmi's shot. You reach forward and pluck a second arrow from the fistful in your bow-hand, nocking and drawing it in the same motion. The pulleys roll on without flaw. The second arrow is launched. This one tries to dodge, ducking down. Succeeding only in putting its forehead in the arrow's path. Its head snaps back as if shot, nearly flipping as its own momentum takes its legs out from under it. The thrum of a bowstring as Lakshmi fires her next shot. Another goes down. There's a rhythm to it, like a pulse. The two of you pick your own targets, and never once do they overlap. The crowd thins, thins, and thins some more. You release your second-last arrow. One of them tries to duck behind a fellow to use him as a human shield. The arrow pierces them both, pinning them together as they fall. The last is undaunted, still screaming a wet, bestial scream as it charges. You... don't reach for another arrow. You don't know why. All you know is that you feel it's unnecessary.
Lakshmi's second-last arrow slips between the creature's lips and comes out the other side, fletching and all. It stumbles to a stop, blinking, confused. Pawing at the air. Trying to keep screaming, only to gurgle. Blinking with surprise, cupping its throat, as it slowly topples over. Dead.
All of them. Every last one of them is on the ground. Arrows in their heads, their hearts, bleeding in a twisted pile of warped flesh. You don't know how to feel. You know how you're supposed to feel but you... don't. There's no acidic reflux as your rebelling body forces you to retch up everything in your stomach. There's no revulsion at the pile of corpses, half dead at your hand. You're in shock. Everything's numb. Distant. You can't allow yourself to hope, not yet. Can't allow anything to cloud your focus. Find your centre, like Uncle Val always said. Be like water, flowing over and around obstructions, be-
A body rolls down the stairs, collapsing in a heap atop the others. Unlike them. Black chitin torn open in a dozen places by parallel pairs of claws. Just as many puncture wounds. Just as many clawmarks. Great, bloody chunks bitten and torn out of her. Legs, one arm, broken beyond all hope of repair. Smooth, blank, organic faceplate broken. You see a few wisps of blond hair. You see one green eye. Open. Unblinking. Lifeless. You didn't know Ms. Jenkins' eyes were green.
Lakshmi's next breath freezes in her chest.
Something comes down the steps. Something big. Something heavy. Something vast. Something moving slow, taking its time. Dragging something metallic, scraping, bumping down each step. The feet come into view first. Broad, clawed paws, big enough to smother your face. To crush your skull beneath the pad. Bulging, fur-covered calves. Trunk-like thighs. Two clawed hands, one curled loosely. The other wrapped around its prize.
The metallic heap is tossed. It sails through the air for a brief instant. Bouncing off the dead, rolling this way and that, finally landing with an almost gentle 'tink' on a patch of uncovered concrete.
Rob is almost unrecognisable. Nearly every scrap of flesh has been torn from his frame. His steel frame. It had a sort of artistry to it once. The robot's skeletal core was solidly built, strung in some kind of fibrous, black, textured substance like synthetic muscles. Thin wires crisscrossing like nerves. Joints and ligaments and tendons, 'organs', all mechanical. Disguised perfectly. None of that artistry remains. He's a ruined toy now, a cheap plastic toy that a child has finally grown bored with. His left leg is a crushed, dragging mess of twisted metal and sparking wires. The right has been pulled completely from his body at the hip, dark blue coolant of 'blood' pumping sluggishly from the wound. His chest is a crater, steel ribs cracked inward and crushed into a mess of razored shards. He's been disembowelled, more dark blue fluid gushing from his rent stomach as intestine-like tubes spool in the growing pool. There's a bite taken out of his skull, a huge chunk of the left side of his head missing. You can see his brain, or whatever it is that passes for one in his skull. Electronics. Wiring. Software and hardware. His one remaining eye stares up at you, a beady little pinprick of scarlet in a ruined socket. He stretches out his hand to you, skeletal steel digits twitching. Other arm bent completely the wrong way.
"M-meg... haa... naa... da..." There's no humanity in the voice any more. None of the familiar cadence, the easygoing warmth. Synthesizer too badly damaged to speak more clearly than a free text-to-speech program. "Ru-"
The beast brings its foot down. Rob's head disappears beneath it, into a crater of smashed concrete and pulverised metal. Whatever light was left in the machine goes out. The outstretched arm goes limp. Clattering against the ground as it falls. The lupine beast pulls its foot back up slowly, metal shards falling from the sole, minor wounds closing over. Healed. All for nothing.
You don't feel nothing any more. There's something pulsing behind your eyes like a second heartbeat. There's something burning inside you, like a hot coal in the pit of your stomach. Every breath feeds it more oxygen, fans its flames. You want it to stop, you want the pain to end, but you can't stop it. There's no stopping it now. The barrier has broken, and can't be mended. It's so hot now, it hurts so much, you want to cry. You want to scream. You want to scream and shout and roar at the top of your lungs until your throat gives out and the last scrap of breath has fled your body, but you can't. Your muscles go into spasm. It's like you're having a seizure. You can't breathe, you can't move, but you can feel every nerve in your body lighting up as if on fire. As if electrified. It's like there are eels living under your skin, slithering and writhing back and forth as if it were water. Squirming and coiling and knotting over and around each other. Your stomach tightens. There's a fist around your heart.
The fire is hate. A roaring inferno, scorching your insides, charring your lungs and heart. Too much for you, too much for a single person. It's going to burn away at your insides, hollow you out. You exhale. Your throat burns. It feels like there should be flames, steam. There's nothing. Nothing but you. Nothing but what you choose to do in this single moment.
You nock your final arrow. It clips in easy. Sits tight. You raise the bow, perfectly level, perfectly vertical. Your stance is flawless, fit for a sculpture. Stable. Motionless. You feel the pulleys roll as you draw the string back. Further. Further. You shrug your shoulders, using your chest muscles, your back muscles. Everything from the waist up goes into the draw. You hit your limit and you exceed it. You wonder, with a distant curiosity, if the sensation you feel is your muscles tearing. You don't care. Your body doesn't exist. The pain, if there is any, is an illusion. The world doesn't exist, it's a distraction. All that exists is the bow, your arrow, and the target.
And the archer by your side.
"Garuda astra!"
The wind swirls and churns in a miniature hurricane. You hear the thrum and snap of Lakshmi's bowstring releasing. Broad wings of every colour block your vision. Translucent as glass, warping the light as it passes through. Soaring on the jetstream. Letting out a triumphant, ear-splitting shriek of fury as it descends upon its target. Wings buffeting the beast, forcing it back a step. Indistinct talons scything, slashing, carving great bloody chunks of flesh from its chest. Exposing its sternum, its bloodied ribs. The beast howls in fury, slashing madly, rending the bird of wind apart. Blood drools from the great, gaping wound in its chest, thick and dark. Glistening, black things with too many tendrils squirm inside the meat. Strands of flesh already reaching over, trying to heal the wound.
There's some kind of haze hanging over your shoulders. A shroud, so transparent as to be invisible from one side, black as night from the other. You regard the distraction with a moment's curiosity. It's not just your shoulders. It blankets the entire house, the entire property. Permeates it, everywhere and nowhere. A stifling, smothering canvas to conceal this little slice of the world from retribution until it's too late.
It failed. Retribution has already found it.
The shroud catches light where it touches you, and burns to cinders.
The stupid beast's eyes meet yours, and you realise you're smiling.
"Naga astra."
The bow bursts. The grip shatters in your hand. The limbs break off into a thousand pieces, hot shards of shrapnel that scatter in every direction. The string launches forward. The arrow tears it in half before it can even snap back. The inferior weapon becomes nothing in your hands. You don't care. It did its job.
The serpent coiled around your left arm winds around the arrow mid-flight.
You feel the backblast wash over you. Blowing your hair straight back and flat over your skull. Plucking at your jacket, lifting it horizontal, fit to tear it from your body. The shelf behind you topples over completely with a jangling crash. The bunker shakes, dust falling, but this time you know why. The bodies on the floor are scattered like leaves in a storm. The beast doesn't even have time to react. The arrow slips between its outstretched hands. The serpent buries itself in its chest, and sinks its fangs into its heart.
The beast is launched back as if by an invisible fist. Striking the stairs with backbreaking force. Its jaw pops open, vomiting up a spray of blood. Back arching fit to snap its spine clean in half. It tries to howl, gurgling instead. Suddenly all is quiet. Suddenly all is still. The beast falls forward, to its knees. Keeps falling. Only barely keeps itself upright by slamming a hand down on the concrete. Cradling the sucking wound in its chest with the other, claws sinking into the ruined meat. Blood soaks its hand, rolls down the forearm in thick rivulets, drooling down its abdomen and pooling on the floor. The things squirming inside it try to flee. You see them trying to slip through the cracks in its fingers. Bloodied drool strings from its fangs as it smashes its fist down on the concrete, cracking it. Forcing itself up on one knee, back up to its feet. Shambling forward, free hand outstretched. One step. Two. Three.
A gleaming, silver shape rockets down the stairs. A massive paw cups the back of the Black Spiral Dancer's skull scoops down, slamming it into the surface of the fallen vault door. You see the metal dent. You see the spray of blood and bone as the beast's snout crushes flat. You watch as the newcomer slams the beast's skull again, and again, and again and again until there's barely anything left that could be confused for a face. Then it straightens up to its full height, easily as tall as the Black Spiral Dancer once was, raises a booted foot, and kicks down. What's left of the head is severed at the nape of the neck, sheared off at the edge of the vault door. The beast finally lies still.
The newcomer could be its twin in size and shape. Towering, broad, muscular frame. Backbent, lupine legs. Clawed sabatons on its digitigrade feet. Clawed gauntlets on its great paws. Some kind of skintight undersuit, black and white and silver, strung thickly with artificial muscle fibre. Shining hex-print patterns. Logos and barcodes. A product, assembled off the shelf. Chest rising and falling as it breathes like a set of bellows. Its helm has sculpted, triangular sheaths for its ears. An opaque obsidian visor shields its eyes, articulated jaws extending to protect its snout. Its fangs are steel.
It steps aside and Dad throws himself at the two of you. You and Lakshmi stagger closer together as his arms wrap around you, holding you close. You feel him shudder against you, chest wracked my sobs of abject relief. Holding you so tight it hurts.
"God I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I never wanted this to happen." He doesn't know where to put his head. He just keeps switching back and forth, pressing his forehead against each of you in turn. "I was trying to keep you safe, I was trying to make sure nothing like this ever happened. Are you alright? Are you hurt? Please tell me neither of you are hurt. I swear I'll get everything straightened out, we can move somewhere safer, I can explain things, we can-"
The lupine creature rests a gauntleted paw on Dad's back. He stills. "They have to be debriefed," it says in a voice like ground gravel.
"... yes. Yes, I-I suppose they do." Dad straightens up to his full height, smoothing down his suit. Trying to compose himself, make himself look presentable. He doesn't do a very good job of it. His eyes are still red-rimmed and glistening with tears. He sniffs. "We're going to have to go outside and talk to my associates from work. They need to get your stories about what happened, explain... the situation. We'll have to separate. But I promise, we'll all be together again soon, and I'll tell you everything. Everything."
"What... what were those things?" Lakshmi asks in a halting, quiet voice. "And what d-did we do?"
"They were..." He mulls over the word. "Business rivals. Vicious. Unscrupulous. As to what you did..." He pauses again. As if there's a word, a blockage in his throat, he's trying to force out. He can't. "They'll discuss it in the debriefing."
He looks at you. There's something in his eyes. Something that wasn't there when he looked at Lakshmi.
You say nothing. He looks away.
Men in tactical military gear flood down the stairs, carrying bodybags and what looks like biohazard containment gear. The majority of them set to work on the pile of corpses at the foot of the stairs. Bagging them, mopping up the blood and sterilising the floor, erasing any trace of their presence. You see one man squat by the ruined wreckage of Rob's frame. Regarding it with complete detachment, rolling it this way and that to inspect the damage. Letting it fall like scrap metal and rising to go attend to some other matter. You look away.
Four men with rifles escort the three of you through the wreckage of your home. Your old life. Past the other scattered bodies being bagged and tagged. Past the bodies of two smaller werebeasts, cut from stem to stern with white-hot blades, wounds still sizzling and stinking of burnt fur. The walls of every room are riddled with the signs of battle, bullet holes and slashes and clawmarks. There's no front door any more, just a ragged hole carved into the house's facade. The front lawn is strewn with bodies, the grass thick with brassy shell casings. There are gun turrets on the balcony, you realise distantly. No doubt contributing to the din you heard as you fled for your life. The scorched hulks of the bombed cars in the street are being cleared away by trucks, workmen inspecting the utter ruination of the road. There are new cars and vans, unmarked and black. Two friendly white ambulances. Waiting with open doors.
"I love you," Dad says before the doors close. You sit on the gurney and stare at nothing as the ambulance starts up. A slight jolt and it's off, towards parts unknown. You doubt its destination is a hospital.
"Hey there." The doctor, or paramedic, or whoever he is crouches down beside you. He's got a friendly, familiar coastal Australian accent. "I'm Dr. Yim, I'll just be giving you a checkup. Making sure everything's okay. Can I take some blood?"
"Sure," you whisper hoarsely, tongue thick and dry, throat barren. There's a little sting in the crook of your elbow, your flesh pulsing around the intruding needle as hot blood wells up in the container. He draws the needle out, hands you a cotton ball to press against the puncture. You keep staring ahead. Think of nothing. What is there to think about it? All reason and logic and rationality have been tossed out the window. You're so out of your depth you can't even see the bottom. Lying on your back, limbs out and floating, is easier than trying to tread water. You hear some machine or another beep.
"Alright let's see..."
The doctor's quiet for a while. Too long. You turn and crane your neck over your shoulder to look at him. His eyes flick up to meet yours. He smiles rapidly.
"Contaminated batch, sorry about that," he apologises. "It happens sometimes. May I have your other arm?"
You shrug, and offer the aforementioned limb. He squeezes around the gurney to draw blood from your right arm. There's another sting, another uncomfortable throbbing. He draws the needle out and returns to the machine. You sit and wait. He forgot to give you another cotton ball. You cover the fresh wound with your finger instead. You wait and hear the machine beep again. You hear more silence.
"I'll get these bloodworks back to you as soon as I can, alright?" the doctor says eventually. "Or to your dad, so he can give them to you when you see him next. No worries!"
***
The clock in the corner ticks. A steady, mechanical little click that seems deafening in the silence of the room. It reminds you of an interrogation room. But not quite. There's carpet, at least. The chair is comfortable. The table isn't just some slab of steel, but artfully shaped like something you'd see out of a catalogue. There's a pitcher of water in the middle of the table and a glass. You've had six. You still feel parched.
You have no idea where this room is. When the ambulance finally stopped you were underground. You went through some side door or another, down some elevators, up some elevators, through some hallways and around some corners. You could be in the centre of the earth for all you know, some nondescript office building sunk into the rock like a spear. You've been in the waiting room for nineteen minutes and fifty-five seconds. You counted them all. You tried the door, of course. It was locked. You fold your hands and stare down at the brown skin, stretched taut, still dusty and bloodied.
Fifty-eight seconds. Fifty-nine seconds.
Twenty minutes. The door latch clicks as the knob turns. It swings open. A man in a dark suit enters, hands behind his back, and pushes the door shut with one heel. He looms over you, silent, impassive. Old, time-weathered face expressionless. Short, blond-white hair swept back from his receding hairline. Short, almost colourless stubble clinging to his jaw. Eyes hidden by reflective, opaque shades.
"Meghanada Dane?" His voice is hoarse, practically a murmur. You nod. Something crinkles behind his back. He reveals his hands.
A cardboard to-go coffee cup and a brown paper bag with a chocolate-iced doughnut in it. He sets the offerings down on the table beside the water pitcher and withdraws his hands. Taking off his shades to reveal piercing, pale bluegreen eyes.
"Your father tells me you don't like coffee," he says, pulling up his chair and taking a seat. "I hope hot chocolate suffices."
"... thanks."
The man just watches you. Studying you. As if committing every single line, crease, flaw and imperfection you have to memory. Stamping an image of you on his mind. You hesitantly reach out to the paper bag and drag it over. It crinkles loudly as you pry it apart, retrieving the doughnut. You take a bite. You finally realise just how hungry you are. Suddenly you're scarfing it down, swallowing greedily. Seemingly satisfied, the man averts his eyes. Digging a notebook and pen out of his suit pocket and resting them on the table.
"You've been through a very trying time," he says simply. "More than most would be able to process. There's no shame in being confused by what you've experienced today, and this meeting will be as long or as short as it needs to be. But before I can offer you anything, I'm afraid I need to ask you some questions."
"... what would I have you want?" you ask in a quiet voice.
"Some men make plans based on gut feelings, conjecture, hearsay and assumptions. I am not one such man," he replies. "I deal in facts. I happen to be lacking some at present, and I was hoping you could fill in some of these... shall we say, nagging blank spaces in the information I have."
You say nothing. He seems to take this as an agreement. He flicks through his notebook briefly.
"The group that attacked your home operates through a variety of shell corporations, subdivisions and proxies," he explains. "But to us, they are known as a singular entity by 'Pentex'. We happen to be in a conflict with them at present, in many forms. One of those forms is business. Mergers, acquisitions, hostile takeovers. Your father recently masterminded a strategy which dealt a serious blow to Pentex's holdings in Sydney. Acquired land that they were very much hoping to develop for themselves. They took offence to this, and they went after you to hurt him."
"... I see," you say, not seeing at all.
"Which brings us to the matter of your family." The man laces his fingers together, steepling them slightly. "Your mother is an enigma to us. Until now we were willing to overlook that curiosity, as Mr. Dane's private life is his own and his work for this organisation has more than earned a healthy respect for his privacy. Unfortunately, that's no longer an option. If Pentex was willing to attack you and your sister at your home, they can and will attack again. We need to be able to find her so we can place her in protective custody."
Your brow furrows. "But... the house at the Gold Coast."
"We had a time on-site. The place was empty."
But... that can't be right. That's where Mum lives. That's where she's always been. Where she was always waiting.
"Would you mind describing your home life to me?" the man asks. "In your own words. Anything that stood out to you, anything odd. Anything that might help us find your mother."
[ ] Be open. You don't have anything to hide, and if it helps them find Mum and keep her safe then you're more than happy.
[ ] Be selective. There's some stuff you don't quite feel comfortable about sharing with this guy. Stuff you doubt is relevant, or don't trust him with. The situation feels off.
[ ] Be reserved. You have no idea where you are or who you're talking with, not even a shred of context for what's going on. Refuse to talk until you have Dad in the room with you.
Your birthday. Heh. Seems so long ago now. Like you haven't seen your mother ever since she gave you that bow. It's not much, barely anything - but part of you likes this. Being reminded of her and what she taught you, right before the end.
You test the draw weight. The tightly-wound string rolls smoothly through the pulleys. Draw-weight's too high for you, but it won't matter as much at this close a range. Seems simple. Feels simple. You take some arrows. A small cluster, maybe half a dozen, held sandwiched between the grip and your hand. You doubt you'll use them all. The arrow in your right hand nocks firmly, settling against the sights. They're ambidextrous, you realise, able to be flipped to either side of the bow. You don't use either. You're used to eyeballing it.
You don't have to turn to know that she's there. Test-drawing the bow, nocking her own arrow. Part of you's surprised that she even thought of it. You always assumed that she'd given up on practising, lost most of her muscle. You never really paid enough attention to her to know either way. The corner of your mouth quirks. Here, now, and you want to ask her how often she trained while you weren't around.
"Your stance is really good," she says quietly, unexpectedly. "You must've practised a lot."
The whirring and grinding grows louder. Slowly piercing the muffling bubble of the bunker. The stairway flickers as sparks pour in. The earth quakes again.
"Almost every day," you reply.
"You must be really good at it," she says.
Not good enough, you think.
The bubble is broken. Whatever's drilling at the door pierces through, assaulting your senses with a cacophony of squealing and grinding metal like nails being drilled into your ears. You hear an immense, dull, booming impact. A second as the vault door falls completely from its hinges, hitting the stairs hard. Sliding down like a steel avalanche from its sheer weight and momentum. It hits the bottom like a missile, cracking the hardened concrete, settling into a dusty crater as the dust and debris settle.
Running feet. Sprinting, dashing, tripping and stumbling. The shapes come charging down the stairs. They barely look human any more. They look leprous, cancerous, flesh sloughing off them in half-liquid sheets. Disguises, false faces, skinsuits. Their veins are bulging pipes, so swollen with blood that they've ruptured in places. Pumping streams of toxic emerald blood. Skin sallow and translucent and glistening with sweat, eyes jaundiced green pits with pupils so vast as to have almost completely eclipsed the iris. Madly chattering teeth, bloodied on their own mouths and tongues. Stolen uniforms bullet-riddled and frayed. All wounded, staggering, pushing through their injuries with sheer mad energy. Some disregard even missing limbs. None of them bring firearms to bear. They don't have the mental capacity to use them any more. The only goal in their tortured minds is to descend upon you and Lakshmi, and tear you to shreds with their bare hands.
Draw. Exhale. Loose.
The first goes down with a shriek, the shaft sinking through the remains of his vest like paper. Far enough to protrude out the other side. Another shriek, another body hitting the floor. Lakshmi's shot. You reach forward and pluck a second arrow from the fistful in your bow-hand, nocking and drawing it in the same motion. The pulleys roll on without flaw. The second arrow is launched. This one tries to dodge, ducking down. Succeeding only in putting its forehead in the arrow's path. Its head snaps back as if shot, nearly flipping as its own momentum takes its legs out from under it. The thrum of a bowstring as Lakshmi fires her next shot. Another goes down. There's a rhythm to it, like a pulse. The two of you pick your own targets, and never once do they overlap. The crowd thins, thins, and thins some more. You release your second-last arrow. One of them tries to duck behind a fellow to use him as a human shield. The arrow pierces them both, pinning them together as they fall. The last is undaunted, still screaming a wet, bestial scream as it charges. You... don't reach for another arrow. You don't know why. All you know is that you feel it's unnecessary.
Lakshmi's second-last arrow slips between the creature's lips and comes out the other side, fletching and all. It stumbles to a stop, blinking, confused. Pawing at the air. Trying to keep screaming, only to gurgle. Blinking with surprise, cupping its throat, as it slowly topples over. Dead.
All of them. Every last one of them is on the ground. Arrows in their heads, their hearts, bleeding in a twisted pile of warped flesh. You don't know how to feel. You know how you're supposed to feel but you... don't. There's no acidic reflux as your rebelling body forces you to retch up everything in your stomach. There's no revulsion at the pile of corpses, half dead at your hand. You're in shock. Everything's numb. Distant. You can't allow yourself to hope, not yet. Can't allow anything to cloud your focus. Find your centre, like Uncle Val always said. Be like water, flowing over and around obstructions, be-
A body rolls down the stairs, collapsing in a heap atop the others. Unlike them. Black chitin torn open in a dozen places by parallel pairs of claws. Just as many puncture wounds. Just as many clawmarks. Great, bloody chunks bitten and torn out of her. Legs, one arm, broken beyond all hope of repair. Smooth, blank, organic faceplate broken. You see a few wisps of blond hair. You see one green eye. Open. Unblinking. Lifeless. You didn't know Ms. Jenkins' eyes were green.
Lakshmi's next breath freezes in her chest.
Something comes down the steps. Something big. Something heavy. Something vast. Something moving slow, taking its time. Dragging something metallic, scraping, bumping down each step. The feet come into view first. Broad, clawed paws, big enough to smother your face. To crush your skull beneath the pad. Bulging, fur-covered calves. Trunk-like thighs. Two clawed hands, one curled loosely. The other wrapped around its prize.
The metallic heap is tossed. It sails through the air for a brief instant. Bouncing off the dead, rolling this way and that, finally landing with an almost gentle 'tink' on a patch of uncovered concrete.
Rob is almost unrecognisable. Nearly every scrap of flesh has been torn from his frame. His steel frame. It had a sort of artistry to it once. The robot's skeletal core was solidly built, strung in some kind of fibrous, black, textured substance like synthetic muscles. Thin wires crisscrossing like nerves. Joints and ligaments and tendons, 'organs', all mechanical. Disguised perfectly. None of that artistry remains. He's a ruined toy now, a cheap plastic toy that a child has finally grown bored with. His left leg is a crushed, dragging mess of twisted metal and sparking wires. The right has been pulled completely from his body at the hip, dark blue coolant of 'blood' pumping sluggishly from the wound. His chest is a crater, steel ribs cracked inward and crushed into a mess of razored shards. He's been disembowelled, more dark blue fluid gushing from his rent stomach as intestine-like tubes spool in the growing pool. There's a bite taken out of his skull, a huge chunk of the left side of his head missing. You can see his brain, or whatever it is that passes for one in his skull. Electronics. Wiring. Software and hardware. His one remaining eye stares up at you, a beady little pinprick of scarlet in a ruined socket. He stretches out his hand to you, skeletal steel digits twitching. Other arm bent completely the wrong way.
"M-meg... haa... naa... da..." There's no humanity in the voice any more. None of the familiar cadence, the easygoing warmth. Synthesizer too badly damaged to speak more clearly than a free text-to-speech program. "Ru-"
The beast brings its foot down. Rob's head disappears beneath it, into a crater of smashed concrete and pulverised metal. Whatever light was left in the machine goes out. The outstretched arm goes limp. Clattering against the ground as it falls. The lupine beast pulls its foot back up slowly, metal shards falling from the sole, minor wounds closing over. Healed. All for nothing.
You don't feel nothing any more. There's something pulsing behind your eyes like a second heartbeat. There's something burning inside you, like a hot coal in the pit of your stomach. Every breath feeds it more oxygen, fans its flames. You want it to stop, you want the pain to end, but you can't stop it. There's no stopping it now. The barrier has broken, and can't be mended. It's so hot now, it hurts so much, you want to cry. You want to scream. You want to scream and shout and roar at the top of your lungs until your throat gives out and the last scrap of breath has fled your body, but you can't. Your muscles go into spasm. It's like you're having a seizure. You can't breathe, you can't move, but you can feel every nerve in your body lighting up as if on fire. As if electrified. It's like there are eels living under your skin, slithering and writhing back and forth as if it were water. Squirming and coiling and knotting over and around each other. Your stomach tightens. There's a fist around your heart.
The fire is hate. A roaring inferno, scorching your insides, charring your lungs and heart. Too much for you, too much for a single person. It's going to burn away at your insides, hollow you out. You exhale. Your throat burns. It feels like there should be flames, steam. There's nothing. Nothing but you. Nothing but what you choose to do in this single moment.
You nock your final arrow. It clips in easy. Sits tight. You raise the bow, perfectly level, perfectly vertical. Your stance is flawless, fit for a sculpture. Stable. Motionless. You feel the pulleys roll as you draw the string back. Further. Further. You shrug your shoulders, using your chest muscles, your back muscles. Everything from the waist up goes into the draw. You hit your limit and you exceed it. You wonder, with a distant curiosity, if the sensation you feel is your muscles tearing. You don't care. Your body doesn't exist. The pain, if there is any, is an illusion. The world doesn't exist, it's a distraction. All that exists is the bow, your arrow, and the target.
And the archer by your side.
"Garuda astra!"
The wind swirls and churns in a miniature hurricane. You hear the thrum and snap of Lakshmi's bowstring releasing. Broad wings of every colour block your vision. Translucent as glass, warping the light as it passes through. Soaring on the jetstream. Letting out a triumphant, ear-splitting shriek of fury as it descends upon its target. Wings buffeting the beast, forcing it back a step. Indistinct talons scything, slashing, carving great bloody chunks of flesh from its chest. Exposing its sternum, its bloodied ribs. The beast howls in fury, slashing madly, rending the bird of wind apart. Blood drools from the great, gaping wound in its chest, thick and dark. Glistening, black things with too many tendrils squirm inside the meat. Strands of flesh already reaching over, trying to heal the wound.
There's some kind of haze hanging over your shoulders. A shroud, so transparent as to be invisible from one side, black as night from the other. You regard the distraction with a moment's curiosity. It's not just your shoulders. It blankets the entire house, the entire property. Permeates it, everywhere and nowhere. A stifling, smothering canvas to conceal this little slice of the world from retribution until it's too late.
It failed. Retribution has already found it.
The shroud catches light where it touches you, and burns to cinders.
The stupid beast's eyes meet yours, and you realise you're smiling.
"Naga astra."
The bow bursts. The grip shatters in your hand. The limbs break off into a thousand pieces, hot shards of shrapnel that scatter in every direction. The string launches forward. The arrow tears it in half before it can even snap back. The inferior weapon becomes nothing in your hands. You don't care. It did its job.
The serpent coiled around your left arm winds around the arrow mid-flight.
You feel the backblast wash over you. Blowing your hair straight back and flat over your skull. Plucking at your jacket, lifting it horizontal, fit to tear it from your body. The shelf behind you topples over completely with a jangling crash. The bunker shakes, dust falling, but this time you know why. The bodies on the floor are scattered like leaves in a storm. The beast doesn't even have time to react. The arrow slips between its outstretched hands. The serpent buries itself in its chest, and sinks its fangs into its heart.
The beast is launched back as if by an invisible fist. Striking the stairs with backbreaking force. Its jaw pops open, vomiting up a spray of blood. Back arching fit to snap its spine clean in half. It tries to howl, gurgling instead. Suddenly all is quiet. Suddenly all is still. The beast falls forward, to its knees. Keeps falling. Only barely keeps itself upright by slamming a hand down on the concrete. Cradling the sucking wound in its chest with the other, claws sinking into the ruined meat. Blood soaks its hand, rolls down the forearm in thick rivulets, drooling down its abdomen and pooling on the floor. The things squirming inside it try to flee. You see them trying to slip through the cracks in its fingers. Bloodied drool strings from its fangs as it smashes its fist down on the concrete, cracking it. Forcing itself up on one knee, back up to its feet. Shambling forward, free hand outstretched. One step. Two. Three.
A gleaming, silver shape rockets down the stairs. A massive paw cups the back of the Black Spiral Dancer's skull scoops down, slamming it into the surface of the fallen vault door. You see the metal dent. You see the spray of blood and bone as the beast's snout crushes flat. You watch as the newcomer slams the beast's skull again, and again, and again and again until there's barely anything left that could be confused for a face. Then it straightens up to its full height, easily as tall as the Black Spiral Dancer once was, raises a booted foot, and kicks down. What's left of the head is severed at the nape of the neck, sheared off at the edge of the vault door. The beast finally lies still.
The newcomer could be its twin in size and shape. Towering, broad, muscular frame. Backbent, lupine legs. Clawed sabatons on its digitigrade feet. Clawed gauntlets on its great paws. Some kind of skintight undersuit, black and white and silver, strung thickly with artificial muscle fibre. Shining hex-print patterns. Logos and barcodes. A product, assembled off the shelf. Chest rising and falling as it breathes like a set of bellows. Its helm has sculpted, triangular sheaths for its ears. An opaque obsidian visor shields its eyes, articulated jaws extending to protect its snout. Its fangs are steel.
It steps aside and Dad throws himself at the two of you. You and Lakshmi stagger closer together as his arms wrap around you, holding you close. You feel him shudder against you, chest wracked my sobs of abject relief. Holding you so tight it hurts.
"God I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I never wanted this to happen." He doesn't know where to put his head. He just keeps switching back and forth, pressing his forehead against each of you in turn. "I was trying to keep you safe, I was trying to make sure nothing like this ever happened. Are you alright? Are you hurt? Please tell me neither of you are hurt. I swear I'll get everything straightened out, we can move somewhere safer, I can explain things, we can-"
The lupine creature rests a gauntleted paw on Dad's back. He stills. "They have to be debriefed," it says in a voice like ground gravel.
"... yes. Yes, I-I suppose they do." Dad straightens up to his full height, smoothing down his suit. Trying to compose himself, make himself look presentable. He doesn't do a very good job of it. His eyes are still red-rimmed and glistening with tears. He sniffs. "We're going to have to go outside and talk to my associates from work. They need to get your stories about what happened, explain... the situation. We'll have to separate. But I promise, we'll all be together again soon, and I'll tell you everything. Everything."
"What... what were those things?" Lakshmi asks in a halting, quiet voice. "And what d-did we do?"
"They were..." He mulls over the word. "Business rivals. Vicious. Unscrupulous. As to what you did..." He pauses again. As if there's a word, a blockage in his throat, he's trying to force out. He can't. "They'll discuss it in the debriefing."
He looks at you. There's something in his eyes. Something that wasn't there when he looked at Lakshmi.
You say nothing. He looks away.
Men in tactical military gear flood down the stairs, carrying bodybags and what looks like biohazard containment gear. The majority of them set to work on the pile of corpses at the foot of the stairs. Bagging them, mopping up the blood and sterilising the floor, erasing any trace of their presence. You see one man squat by the ruined wreckage of Rob's frame. Regarding it with complete detachment, rolling it this way and that to inspect the damage. Letting it fall like scrap metal and rising to go attend to some other matter. You look away.
Four men with rifles escort the three of you through the wreckage of your home. Your old life. Past the other scattered bodies being bagged and tagged. Past the bodies of two smaller werebeasts, cut from stem to stern with white-hot blades, wounds still sizzling and stinking of burnt fur. The walls of every room are riddled with the signs of battle, bullet holes and slashes and clawmarks. There's no front door any more, just a ragged hole carved into the house's facade. The front lawn is strewn with bodies, the grass thick with brassy shell casings. There are gun turrets on the balcony, you realise distantly. No doubt contributing to the din you heard as you fled for your life. The scorched hulks of the bombed cars in the street are being cleared away by trucks, workmen inspecting the utter ruination of the road. There are new cars and vans, unmarked and black. Two friendly white ambulances. Waiting with open doors.
"I love you," Dad says before the doors close. You sit on the gurney and stare at nothing as the ambulance starts up. A slight jolt and it's off, towards parts unknown. You doubt its destination is a hospital.
"Hey there." The doctor, or paramedic, or whoever he is crouches down beside you. He's got a friendly, familiar coastal Australian accent. "I'm Dr. Yim, I'll just be giving you a checkup. Making sure everything's okay. Can I take some blood?"
"Sure," you whisper hoarsely, tongue thick and dry, throat barren. There's a little sting in the crook of your elbow, your flesh pulsing around the intruding needle as hot blood wells up in the container. He draws the needle out, hands you a cotton ball to press against the puncture. You keep staring ahead. Think of nothing. What is there to think about it? All reason and logic and rationality have been tossed out the window. You're so out of your depth you can't even see the bottom. Lying on your back, limbs out and floating, is easier than trying to tread water. You hear some machine or another beep.
"Alright let's see..."
The doctor's quiet for a while. Too long. You turn and crane your neck over your shoulder to look at him. His eyes flick up to meet yours. He smiles rapidly.
"Contaminated batch, sorry about that," he apologises. "It happens sometimes. May I have your other arm?"
You shrug, and offer the aforementioned limb. He squeezes around the gurney to draw blood from your right arm. There's another sting, another uncomfortable throbbing. He draws the needle out and returns to the machine. You sit and wait. He forgot to give you another cotton ball. You cover the fresh wound with your finger instead. You wait and hear the machine beep again. You hear more silence.
"I'll get these bloodworks back to you as soon as I can, alright?" the doctor says eventually. "Or to your dad, so he can give them to you when you see him next. No worries!"
***
The clock in the corner ticks. A steady, mechanical little click that seems deafening in the silence of the room. It reminds you of an interrogation room. But not quite. There's carpet, at least. The chair is comfortable. The table isn't just some slab of steel, but artfully shaped like something you'd see out of a catalogue. There's a pitcher of water in the middle of the table and a glass. You've had six. You still feel parched.
You have no idea where this room is. When the ambulance finally stopped you were underground. You went through some side door or another, down some elevators, up some elevators, through some hallways and around some corners. You could be in the centre of the earth for all you know, some nondescript office building sunk into the rock like a spear. You've been in the waiting room for nineteen minutes and fifty-five seconds. You counted them all. You tried the door, of course. It was locked. You fold your hands and stare down at the brown skin, stretched taut, still dusty and bloodied.
Fifty-eight seconds. Fifty-nine seconds.
Twenty minutes. The door latch clicks as the knob turns. It swings open. A man in a dark suit enters, hands behind his back, and pushes the door shut with one heel. He looms over you, silent, impassive. Old, time-weathered face expressionless. Short, blond-white hair swept back from his receding hairline. Short, almost colourless stubble clinging to his jaw. Eyes hidden by reflective, opaque shades.
"Meghanada Dane?" His voice is hoarse, practically a murmur. You nod. Something crinkles behind his back. He reveals his hands.
A cardboard to-go coffee cup and a brown paper bag with a chocolate-iced doughnut in it. He sets the offerings down on the table beside the water pitcher and withdraws his hands. Taking off his shades to reveal piercing, pale bluegreen eyes.
"Your father tells me you don't like coffee," he says, pulling up his chair and taking a seat. "I hope hot chocolate suffices."
"... thanks."
The man just watches you. Studying you. As if committing every single line, crease, flaw and imperfection you have to memory. Stamping an image of you on his mind. You hesitantly reach out to the paper bag and drag it over. It crinkles loudly as you pry it apart, retrieving the doughnut. You take a bite. You finally realise just how hungry you are. Suddenly you're scarfing it down, swallowing greedily. Seemingly satisfied, the man averts his eyes. Digging a notebook and pen out of his suit pocket and resting them on the table.
"You've been through a very trying time," he says simply. "More than most would be able to process. There's no shame in being confused by what you've experienced today, and this meeting will be as long or as short as it needs to be. But before I can offer you anything, I'm afraid I need to ask you some questions."
"... what would I have you want?" you ask in a quiet voice.
"Some men make plans based on gut feelings, conjecture, hearsay and assumptions. I am not one such man," he replies. "I deal in facts. I happen to be lacking some at present, and I was hoping you could fill in some of these... shall we say, nagging blank spaces in the information I have."
You say nothing. He seems to take this as an agreement. He flicks through his notebook briefly.
"The group that attacked your home operates through a variety of shell corporations, subdivisions and proxies," he explains. "But to us, they are known as a singular entity by 'Pentex'. We happen to be in a conflict with them at present, in many forms. One of those forms is business. Mergers, acquisitions, hostile takeovers. Your father recently masterminded a strategy which dealt a serious blow to Pentex's holdings in Sydney. Acquired land that they were very much hoping to develop for themselves. They took offence to this, and they went after you to hurt him."
"... I see," you say, not seeing at all.
"Which brings us to the matter of your family." The man laces his fingers together, steepling them slightly. "Your mother is an enigma to us. Until now we were willing to overlook that curiosity, as Mr. Dane's private life is his own and his work for this organisation has more than earned a healthy respect for his privacy. Unfortunately, that's no longer an option. If Pentex was willing to attack you and your sister at your home, they can and will attack again. We need to be able to find her so we can place her in protective custody."
Your brow furrows. "But... the house at the Gold Coast."
"We had a time on-site. The place was empty."
But... that can't be right. That's where Mum lives. That's where she's always been. Where she was always waiting.
"Would you mind describing your home life to me?" the man asks. "In your own words. Anything that stood out to you, anything odd. Anything that might help us find your mother."
[ ] Be open. You don't have anything to hide, and if it helps them find Mum and keep her safe then you're more than happy.
[ ] Be selective. There's some stuff you don't quite feel comfortable about sharing with this guy. Stuff you doubt is relevant, or don't trust him with. The situation feels off.
[ ] Be reserved. You have no idea where you are or who you're talking with, not even a shred of context for what's going on. Refuse to talk until you have Dad in the room with you.
Chapter Nine: Rakshama!
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
"God I... I don't know where to start," you say helplessly. "I-I mean my whole life up 'til now's been a lie! Ms. Jenkins was some- some kind of alien and Rob was a fucking robot and-"
"I understand," the man says, his tone measured and smooth. "I understand. You need some answers to contextualise what you know. What you need to understand is that your father leads a certain... lifestyle. As we all do. A lifestyle which is not necessarily conducive to raising a family. It was his choice to keep his work separate, and we respected that. But, as today quite... explicitly proved, he could not leave you two unprotected. So he invested his personal assets into two discrete Constructs. Ms. Jenkins, purchased from our Progenitor branch. Robert, or 'Rob' as you knew him, from Iteration X. An old pre-Anomaly HITmark model, I believe. Quite the investment."
You look at him blankly.
"Though they hid their true nature from you, they were not... strictly speaking, false in their intentions. They were hired help to the nth degree. Whatever interpersonal connections you believed you formed were more or less genuine."
"And... and you guys? Who are you?" you ask. "What did Dad do for you?"
The man purses his lips momentarily. "It would... be quite a long explanation. Suffice to say 'we' are a global conglomerate. We operate in five discrete branches, or Conventions, but in general we share the same goals. Your father worked for our Syndicate branch in an operational capacity for many years. He distinguished himself in the Bangladesh incident of '99 and was promoted to a prestigious post in the Re-Org branch here in Australia."
"I see," you say, not seeing at all.
"So, your mother? Pentex's reach is unfortunately quite long. We may have little time."
"We, um, we weren't really together much," you admit. "Mum was always away doing her own stuff. Living at the Gold Coast holiday house or- or I thought, at least. Lakshmi and I, we only ever visited her once a year or so. 'Second Birthday' we called it. We were born on the 14th of July, Bastille Day I mean, but we always went up to the Gold Coast in October or so before Term 4 started. And we'd spend a couple days there. Have dinner, go to the beach, catch up. If she had to run out Uncle Val'd look after us-"
"Pardon me." You fall silent. The man tilts his head ever so slightly. " 'Uncle Val'? He isn't on your father's list of known associates."
"Well... no, heh," you reply awkwardly. "We dunno if he's really our uncle exactly. Mum never directly said he was related or anything. But he's always hanging around helping Mum around the house and stuff so we just started calling him Uncle Valmiki. He's nice. Little bit weird around Dad sometimes but, I dunno, never got the sense he hated him or anything."
The man nods. He's not taking any notes. Your eyes flick down to the empty pad questioningly. He just stays silent until you start talking again.
"And, um... I dunno, not much more to say," you go on hesitantly. "I guess there's the religion thing but that's kind of minor."
"Oh?" The man seems curious now. "We've never had cause to pry into Mr. Dane's reasons for converting. Was it for your mother?"
"Yeah. They never really talked about it much, though. Dad tried to raise us non-religiously. Mum mostly kept quiet about it. Uncle Val talked about it if we asked, sometimes if we didn't. Apparently he was there at their wedding, helped them make sure it was authentically Hindu. Think... think Dad cared a lot about making Mum feel comfortable about it."
"And do you?" he asks.
"Huh? Oh. Uh... yeah?" You aren't quite sure how you're supposed to react. "Mean I'm, um, Hindu myself heh. Pray when I can, don't eat beef. That stuff."
"I see." He doesn't take notes again. Loudly. You scratch your cheek nervously.
"That's, um... that's all I can really think of, sorry..." you trail off.
"No need to worry. You've been very helpful." The man stands, pushing his chair out from the table. Straightening his tie until it's flawlessly equidistant from both edges of his blazer. "You should drink your hot chocolate. It's going to get cold."
You dutifully drink your hot chocolate. It's more 'warm chocolate' at this point, and goes down easy. Must be brewed with real chocolate or something. The man inclines his head to you and dons his sunglasses once more, stepping away from the table and tugging his sleeve up to check his watch. You don't know why he'd do that when there's a clock right behind his head, but what do you know about the world any more? As if on cue, he opens the door.
Dad and Lakshmi are waiting outside.
"Meg!"
You spring to your feet, your chair lurching away from you. Lakshmi rounds the table and you move to greet her. You collide in a tangle of warm bodies and squeezing arms. It hurts and you're probably hurting her too but honestly you don't give a shit. It occurs to you that it's probably the closest you've been to her in three years. When she finally pulls away she's furiously rubbing her eyes dry.
"S-so glad to see you, was starting to get worried." Lakshmi sniffles and composes herself. "They been talking to you too?"
"Yeah." You nod in the sunglasses-wearing man's direction. "You?"
"Yeah!" She's way more excited about being talked at by a strange man in a locked room than you are. "Yeah they've been telling me all about the stuff Dad's been working on! It's amazing, Meg! I yelled at him for not telling us sooner, heh, but it's fine! It's so great, they're going to evaluate us and find us jobs and shit!"
"W-wait, jobs?" you ask, bewildered. "Lakshmi we're not even done with high school."
"Fuck high school! We're gonna -well they said school's gonna be handled in-house which sucks but I can live with it I guess- but we're gonna be working with Dad! In, like, the biggest industry in all of Australia combined! Doesn't that sound awesome?"
"It- yeah?" You glance at Dad. He takes a second to realise you're looking at him. A second to wipe that melancholy look off his face and smile at you.
"Yeah," he replies, markedly less enthused than Lakshmi. "Well, I mean... you don't have to join the Syndicate, Lakshmi. Part of evaluation is working out which Convention best suits you. Or working so you suit it."
"Indeed," the man standing beside him interjects. "But I'm afraid before we get ahead of ourselves, Meghanada will need to be isolated for a period of time. Contamination concerns, you see. He didn't emerge from the brush with Pentex quite as intact as Miss Lakshmi here."
"... I see." Dad rests his hand on Lakshmi's shoulder, squeezing tight. He's not looking at you. Why isn't he looking at you? You want to say something, call out to him, ask him what's wrong and what's going to happen. No words come. You just look on, mute. Worry grips your stomach.
"See you, Meg!" Lakshmi calls back as Dad steers her out of the room.
"... see you," you reply.
***
It's a pretty nice room. Like a high-end hotel room, the kind Dad'd put you up in whenever you went overseas for holidays. A nice, big, fluffy bed that you can just sink into and fall asleep almost instantly. A TV with Netflix - and not the shitty Australian Netflix, but the real kind that Dad always got special for the house. They even managed to salvage your clothes and stuff from your room. You watch plenty of movies, play around on your PC and PS4, and whenever you're hungry you just go to the touchscreen by the door and enter what you want. And there's a minibar when you don't want to bother the kitchen, or wherever they're getting your meals from. Door's locked whenever the (admittedly pretty friendly) staff aren't coming in, which is kind of offputting, but hey, they said it was a quarantine thing right? Nothing to be worried about.
One morning you wake up and breakfast's already in the room, waiting for you. Some kind of steaming meat dish, like ground beef or pork mince or something. Weird. You don't normally have meat for breakfast, not unless it's like, sausages and bacon and shit. You creep over, almost hesitant. Sniff. It doesn't.. smell like beef. Which is a good sign. You scoop up your fork and have a taste. Salty, got a sort of tang to it. Definitely pork, or something like it. Some cut of pork you've never tasted before, or maybe seasoned in some new way. Whatever it is it tastes... good. Really really good! Before you know it you're wolfing it down, hungrier than you've ever been in your life. Scraping up every last little scrap of meat, practically licking the plate clean. The hot meat sits comfortably in the pit of your stomach, warming you from within. You feel satisfied in a way no meal's ever managed before. It puts you in a great mood.
When you wake up the next morning you're in a different room. You're still half-asleep when you realise it. You have to sit up, rub your eyes furiously to clear the sleep from them. Blink away the fog. You have to get out of bed, pad around the room, check every corner. It's still... nice enough you suppose. But it's definitely different. The bed's a bit smaller, a bit harder. The wood panelling and soft furnishings have given way to a more utilitarian sort of aesthetic, everything built to be sturdy and not much else. Your PS4 made the transition, connected to the new TV. Your PC's gone. You experimentally boot up the former. It won't connect to the Internet any more.
You take a nap in the middle of the day. Dad and Lakshmi are there to visit when you wake up. She's dressed in some kind of uniform, military-looking, like she joined Cadet Corps herself. Hair tied back in a ponytail. Dad looks much the same as he always has. She's just as excited as she was when you last saw her. Jabbering on and on about the new classes she's going to, the new people she's meeting, the new places she's been seeing. It all sounds great. Really, it does. You try to sound enthusiastic when you tell her so. Apparently you were moved because of some new complication. She isn't clear on the details, wasn't told much specifically. But it's something concerning so you have to stay here for at least a few days more while everything gets sorted out. Dad is... barely there. Distant like you've never seen him before. Letting Lakshmi do all the talking, putting forward the bare minimum of effort to be considered part of the conversation. You want to ask him what's wrong. But you don't want to, either. You're sure he'll just deflect it. And you're scared of what he'll say if he doesn't.
There's no 'custom order' touchscreen in your new room. Every day at eight, twelve and six it buzzes and you have to pick one of three choices. You try all nine dishes over the course of your stay. All nine of them have that weird, tangy pork in them in some capacity. Strange, but part of you doesn't mind the oddness. The seasoned pork tastes fantastic. It helps calm you down, helps you go to bed feeling less nervous.
When you wake up again, you're in another room. It's not really a 'room'. It's little more than a hollow concrete cube, furnished with the bare essentials. Your bed is a small single, hard, economical. The TV is sunk into the opposite wall, inaccessible. The last of your belongings are gone. All you have are your clothes. No matter where you look, you can't quite find where the door is supposed to be. Everything is smooth, flat, grey stone. Cold and unyielding to the touch, no matter where you push and how hard. Your bed is bolted to the floor. Four little black globes sit in the corners by the ceiling. Watching.
Your head hurts. Your arms hurt. You hurt all over. You find shaved patches in your hair, little pressure bandages pressed against your skull. You rip off your shirt, hands darting back and forth across your torso, down your back. You don't have a mirror, you can't be sure. But you feel scars. Small, precise surgical scars.
You're trapped. A rat in a box. A lab-rat. This time there's no choice at all. Every mealtime all that's given to you, pushed through a small horizontal slot on a steel tray, is that salty pork. You don't eat it. You can't eat it. You sit on your bed, shirtless, hugging yourself, rocking back and forth. You can't breathe. You can't think. This can't be happening. It shouldn't be happening. It's got to be some nightmare, right? They told you that you'd be with Lakshmi and Dad. You were supposed to get a clean bill of health and leave. You were supposed to... to get out. Things weren't supposed to go back to normal but they were supposed to be something. You were supposed to have something. You weren't supposed to be all alone. You sob, but there's no one to hear you. No one but your unseen jailers. No one to help you.
Your dreams are fevered things. You drift in and out of consciousness, soaked in sweat, the sheets clinging to your burning body. You beg for water but nothing comes. You feel blindly, searching your bedside table. A jug of something cool. Water? Did they bring in water while you were asleep? You fumble for it. It slips from your sweat-slick, trembling hand. Shatters on the cold, stone floor beside your bed. You curl up in a shivering ball, throwing the sheets off, pulling them back on, over and over in an endless cycle. You feel like you're dying. You are dying. Maybe that's the only escape you'll have. How long have you been here?
You're not eating. You can't eat. How can you eat? It feels like you're body's trying to kill itself out of sheer spite for its captors. Sometimes you wake up with an IV drip in. You always rip it out as soon as you can. You always taste that salty pork on your lips. What are you supposed to do? Fight back? How are you supposed to fight back at something you can't even see? What're you supposed to do? You just want to know why. You just want it to stop. You just want to go home and spend some time at Rob's house and and and
You sleep and you dream, you wake up but you keep dreaming. You keep dreaming of the moment you drew that bow further than you had the strength for. You keep dreaming of that snake that leaped onto your arrow, squirming and winding around it like a favoured perch. The joy you felt in your heart as you fired the arrow that killed Rob's killer. The joy you felt as it suffered. The crunch of its bones, music to your ears. You wish it was in front of you right now. You want it to burn, bleed, suffer, for what it's done to you. You want to go back to that day when everything fell apart and kill every last one of those 'Pentex' men yourself. Kill them yourself. Watch them fall in droves by your arrows. Feel them break and tear in your bare hands. You want the street to be wet with their blood for daring to take away the happiness you'd always wanted, that you were so close to having. You dream of that smug, smiling, fake cop that tried to trick you. That murderer with a smirk on his face, luring you and Lakshmi to death. You dream of lunging for him, bearing him to the ground. Sinking your teeth into his throat and tearing away a bloody chunk. It tastes so much like the salty, sweet pork they've been feeding you. You want more. You want to gorge yourself on it. You dream of killing them all. Every last person who's kept you from your family.
You scream so loud that you wake. You wake to find a crater in the concrete behind your headboard. Cracking, crumbling, dripping grey dust. Dust on your fists. Bloodied, torn skin over your knuckles. You reach up with shaking hands and feel the depressions. They match. Why do they match.
You dream again. Or were you always dreaming? It must be a dream. It has to be a dream. You're going to wake up and it's just going to be Ms. Jenkins calling you. Or Dad calling you. Or Mum. It'll just be Mum. You fell asleep at her place on Second Birthday and she's calling you down to cut the cake with Lakshmi. But it's weird. She's calling you the wrong name. You haven't been Meghanada for such a long time. Your name is-
"Meghanada!"
You sit bolt upright with a cry. Panting, gasping for air as if you were drowning. You were drowning. Still are. You have to desperately sip at the air, sweat-soaked chest heaving. Heart pounding so loudly that your pulse is deafening in your ears.
But Dad's there. Dad's standing in front of you. You swing your legs over the side of your bed and try to stand. Sway. Fall back down with a 'thump'. You can't think straight. Why's everything so sluggish? Thoughts... moving weird. Can't focus. Vision blurry.
"You're still sedated. You're meant to be asleep," Dad replies hurriedly. "I had a friend feed the cameras and biometric sensors a loop but I don't have much time."
"What... why...?" you murmur deliriously.
"Meghanada I... I didn't want this to happen." He's close to tears. His eyes are red-rimmed - he's already been crying. On the verge of starting up again. His own breathing isn't much more even than yours. "I swear this is the last thing I ever wanted to happen. Your mother and I we- we swore we'd do everything in our power to prevent exactly this and I- I let her down. Let you down."
"Why?" you force yourself to be more coherent, to speak louder. You clench your fist against the bed. Make the muscles flex, make them work. Make the blood flow. "Why's Lakshmi...?"
"Because she's human- half human," he replies. "Because she's a fucking demigod and the top brass are so pleased I brought her to them she's a fucking gold star on my fucking-" He cuts himself of, pressing his palm against his mouth. Choking back a sob.
"What..." The words come slow. The thoughts don't. They whirl crystal-clear inside your skull. "What do you mean... 'she's human'?"
He's quiet for a very long time. Such a long time you're afraid he won't respond. That he'll disappear like smoke. Become a dream. Like everything else you wanted.
"I-I love you, Megahanda. You know that, don't you?" he practically whispers. "Please, out of all the lies I've told you that wasn't one of them I-"
Your strength returns to you all at once. The fury burns away the drugs, whatever it is turning toxic inside you. You surge to your feet, lunge forward, fingers closing around his shoulders. Sinking in painfully. He nearly topples. You hold him upright. Shake him like a ragdoll, like if you shake him hard enough everything will make sense and you'll finally get to go home. "What am I!?"
He's quiet again. For such a long time. But when he speaks again, he speaks in the way he knows you'll understand. So that you know he's telling the truth.
"When... when the Satya Yuga ended, Brahma slept," he says. "And as he slept his breath took form. The creatures that grew in his shadow were beasts of longing, and their bloodthirst was so strong that they... they tried to eat him alive in their first moments. Brahma cried out for help. Vishnu cast them to Earth for their sins. And... and they were named after that cry."
'Protect me!' cried Brahma as his unwanted children tore at his flesh. A single word in Sanskrit, that became their name.
You know that name
Rakshasa.
[ ] Say nothing.
[ ] Force him to tell you where you came from.
[ ] Make him get you out of this cell. You don't care how, or what happens next.
[ ] Hit him. Hard.
"I understand," the man says, his tone measured and smooth. "I understand. You need some answers to contextualise what you know. What you need to understand is that your father leads a certain... lifestyle. As we all do. A lifestyle which is not necessarily conducive to raising a family. It was his choice to keep his work separate, and we respected that. But, as today quite... explicitly proved, he could not leave you two unprotected. So he invested his personal assets into two discrete Constructs. Ms. Jenkins, purchased from our Progenitor branch. Robert, or 'Rob' as you knew him, from Iteration X. An old pre-Anomaly HITmark model, I believe. Quite the investment."
You look at him blankly.
"Though they hid their true nature from you, they were not... strictly speaking, false in their intentions. They were hired help to the nth degree. Whatever interpersonal connections you believed you formed were more or less genuine."
"And... and you guys? Who are you?" you ask. "What did Dad do for you?"
The man purses his lips momentarily. "It would... be quite a long explanation. Suffice to say 'we' are a global conglomerate. We operate in five discrete branches, or Conventions, but in general we share the same goals. Your father worked for our Syndicate branch in an operational capacity for many years. He distinguished himself in the Bangladesh incident of '99 and was promoted to a prestigious post in the Re-Org branch here in Australia."
"I see," you say, not seeing at all.
"So, your mother? Pentex's reach is unfortunately quite long. We may have little time."
"We, um, we weren't really together much," you admit. "Mum was always away doing her own stuff. Living at the Gold Coast holiday house or- or I thought, at least. Lakshmi and I, we only ever visited her once a year or so. 'Second Birthday' we called it. We were born on the 14th of July, Bastille Day I mean, but we always went up to the Gold Coast in October or so before Term 4 started. And we'd spend a couple days there. Have dinner, go to the beach, catch up. If she had to run out Uncle Val'd look after us-"
"Pardon me." You fall silent. The man tilts his head ever so slightly. " 'Uncle Val'? He isn't on your father's list of known associates."
"Well... no, heh," you reply awkwardly. "We dunno if he's really our uncle exactly. Mum never directly said he was related or anything. But he's always hanging around helping Mum around the house and stuff so we just started calling him Uncle Valmiki. He's nice. Little bit weird around Dad sometimes but, I dunno, never got the sense he hated him or anything."
The man nods. He's not taking any notes. Your eyes flick down to the empty pad questioningly. He just stays silent until you start talking again.
"And, um... I dunno, not much more to say," you go on hesitantly. "I guess there's the religion thing but that's kind of minor."
"Oh?" The man seems curious now. "We've never had cause to pry into Mr. Dane's reasons for converting. Was it for your mother?"
"Yeah. They never really talked about it much, though. Dad tried to raise us non-religiously. Mum mostly kept quiet about it. Uncle Val talked about it if we asked, sometimes if we didn't. Apparently he was there at their wedding, helped them make sure it was authentically Hindu. Think... think Dad cared a lot about making Mum feel comfortable about it."
"And do you?" he asks.
"Huh? Oh. Uh... yeah?" You aren't quite sure how you're supposed to react. "Mean I'm, um, Hindu myself heh. Pray when I can, don't eat beef. That stuff."
"I see." He doesn't take notes again. Loudly. You scratch your cheek nervously.
"That's, um... that's all I can really think of, sorry..." you trail off.
"No need to worry. You've been very helpful." The man stands, pushing his chair out from the table. Straightening his tie until it's flawlessly equidistant from both edges of his blazer. "You should drink your hot chocolate. It's going to get cold."
You dutifully drink your hot chocolate. It's more 'warm chocolate' at this point, and goes down easy. Must be brewed with real chocolate or something. The man inclines his head to you and dons his sunglasses once more, stepping away from the table and tugging his sleeve up to check his watch. You don't know why he'd do that when there's a clock right behind his head, but what do you know about the world any more? As if on cue, he opens the door.
Dad and Lakshmi are waiting outside.
"Meg!"
You spring to your feet, your chair lurching away from you. Lakshmi rounds the table and you move to greet her. You collide in a tangle of warm bodies and squeezing arms. It hurts and you're probably hurting her too but honestly you don't give a shit. It occurs to you that it's probably the closest you've been to her in three years. When she finally pulls away she's furiously rubbing her eyes dry.
"S-so glad to see you, was starting to get worried." Lakshmi sniffles and composes herself. "They been talking to you too?"
"Yeah." You nod in the sunglasses-wearing man's direction. "You?"
"Yeah!" She's way more excited about being talked at by a strange man in a locked room than you are. "Yeah they've been telling me all about the stuff Dad's been working on! It's amazing, Meg! I yelled at him for not telling us sooner, heh, but it's fine! It's so great, they're going to evaluate us and find us jobs and shit!"
"W-wait, jobs?" you ask, bewildered. "Lakshmi we're not even done with high school."
"Fuck high school! We're gonna -well they said school's gonna be handled in-house which sucks but I can live with it I guess- but we're gonna be working with Dad! In, like, the biggest industry in all of Australia combined! Doesn't that sound awesome?"
"It- yeah?" You glance at Dad. He takes a second to realise you're looking at him. A second to wipe that melancholy look off his face and smile at you.
"Yeah," he replies, markedly less enthused than Lakshmi. "Well, I mean... you don't have to join the Syndicate, Lakshmi. Part of evaluation is working out which Convention best suits you. Or working so you suit it."
"Indeed," the man standing beside him interjects. "But I'm afraid before we get ahead of ourselves, Meghanada will need to be isolated for a period of time. Contamination concerns, you see. He didn't emerge from the brush with Pentex quite as intact as Miss Lakshmi here."
"... I see." Dad rests his hand on Lakshmi's shoulder, squeezing tight. He's not looking at you. Why isn't he looking at you? You want to say something, call out to him, ask him what's wrong and what's going to happen. No words come. You just look on, mute. Worry grips your stomach.
"See you, Meg!" Lakshmi calls back as Dad steers her out of the room.
"... see you," you reply.
***
It's a pretty nice room. Like a high-end hotel room, the kind Dad'd put you up in whenever you went overseas for holidays. A nice, big, fluffy bed that you can just sink into and fall asleep almost instantly. A TV with Netflix - and not the shitty Australian Netflix, but the real kind that Dad always got special for the house. They even managed to salvage your clothes and stuff from your room. You watch plenty of movies, play around on your PC and PS4, and whenever you're hungry you just go to the touchscreen by the door and enter what you want. And there's a minibar when you don't want to bother the kitchen, or wherever they're getting your meals from. Door's locked whenever the (admittedly pretty friendly) staff aren't coming in, which is kind of offputting, but hey, they said it was a quarantine thing right? Nothing to be worried about.
One morning you wake up and breakfast's already in the room, waiting for you. Some kind of steaming meat dish, like ground beef or pork mince or something. Weird. You don't normally have meat for breakfast, not unless it's like, sausages and bacon and shit. You creep over, almost hesitant. Sniff. It doesn't.. smell like beef. Which is a good sign. You scoop up your fork and have a taste. Salty, got a sort of tang to it. Definitely pork, or something like it. Some cut of pork you've never tasted before, or maybe seasoned in some new way. Whatever it is it tastes... good. Really really good! Before you know it you're wolfing it down, hungrier than you've ever been in your life. Scraping up every last little scrap of meat, practically licking the plate clean. The hot meat sits comfortably in the pit of your stomach, warming you from within. You feel satisfied in a way no meal's ever managed before. It puts you in a great mood.
When you wake up the next morning you're in a different room. You're still half-asleep when you realise it. You have to sit up, rub your eyes furiously to clear the sleep from them. Blink away the fog. You have to get out of bed, pad around the room, check every corner. It's still... nice enough you suppose. But it's definitely different. The bed's a bit smaller, a bit harder. The wood panelling and soft furnishings have given way to a more utilitarian sort of aesthetic, everything built to be sturdy and not much else. Your PS4 made the transition, connected to the new TV. Your PC's gone. You experimentally boot up the former. It won't connect to the Internet any more.
You take a nap in the middle of the day. Dad and Lakshmi are there to visit when you wake up. She's dressed in some kind of uniform, military-looking, like she joined Cadet Corps herself. Hair tied back in a ponytail. Dad looks much the same as he always has. She's just as excited as she was when you last saw her. Jabbering on and on about the new classes she's going to, the new people she's meeting, the new places she's been seeing. It all sounds great. Really, it does. You try to sound enthusiastic when you tell her so. Apparently you were moved because of some new complication. She isn't clear on the details, wasn't told much specifically. But it's something concerning so you have to stay here for at least a few days more while everything gets sorted out. Dad is... barely there. Distant like you've never seen him before. Letting Lakshmi do all the talking, putting forward the bare minimum of effort to be considered part of the conversation. You want to ask him what's wrong. But you don't want to, either. You're sure he'll just deflect it. And you're scared of what he'll say if he doesn't.
There's no 'custom order' touchscreen in your new room. Every day at eight, twelve and six it buzzes and you have to pick one of three choices. You try all nine dishes over the course of your stay. All nine of them have that weird, tangy pork in them in some capacity. Strange, but part of you doesn't mind the oddness. The seasoned pork tastes fantastic. It helps calm you down, helps you go to bed feeling less nervous.
When you wake up again, you're in another room. It's not really a 'room'. It's little more than a hollow concrete cube, furnished with the bare essentials. Your bed is a small single, hard, economical. The TV is sunk into the opposite wall, inaccessible. The last of your belongings are gone. All you have are your clothes. No matter where you look, you can't quite find where the door is supposed to be. Everything is smooth, flat, grey stone. Cold and unyielding to the touch, no matter where you push and how hard. Your bed is bolted to the floor. Four little black globes sit in the corners by the ceiling. Watching.
Your head hurts. Your arms hurt. You hurt all over. You find shaved patches in your hair, little pressure bandages pressed against your skull. You rip off your shirt, hands darting back and forth across your torso, down your back. You don't have a mirror, you can't be sure. But you feel scars. Small, precise surgical scars.
You're trapped. A rat in a box. A lab-rat. This time there's no choice at all. Every mealtime all that's given to you, pushed through a small horizontal slot on a steel tray, is that salty pork. You don't eat it. You can't eat it. You sit on your bed, shirtless, hugging yourself, rocking back and forth. You can't breathe. You can't think. This can't be happening. It shouldn't be happening. It's got to be some nightmare, right? They told you that you'd be with Lakshmi and Dad. You were supposed to get a clean bill of health and leave. You were supposed to... to get out. Things weren't supposed to go back to normal but they were supposed to be something. You were supposed to have something. You weren't supposed to be all alone. You sob, but there's no one to hear you. No one but your unseen jailers. No one to help you.
Your dreams are fevered things. You drift in and out of consciousness, soaked in sweat, the sheets clinging to your burning body. You beg for water but nothing comes. You feel blindly, searching your bedside table. A jug of something cool. Water? Did they bring in water while you were asleep? You fumble for it. It slips from your sweat-slick, trembling hand. Shatters on the cold, stone floor beside your bed. You curl up in a shivering ball, throwing the sheets off, pulling them back on, over and over in an endless cycle. You feel like you're dying. You are dying. Maybe that's the only escape you'll have. How long have you been here?
You're not eating. You can't eat. How can you eat? It feels like you're body's trying to kill itself out of sheer spite for its captors. Sometimes you wake up with an IV drip in. You always rip it out as soon as you can. You always taste that salty pork on your lips. What are you supposed to do? Fight back? How are you supposed to fight back at something you can't even see? What're you supposed to do? You just want to know why. You just want it to stop. You just want to go home and spend some time at Rob's house and and and
You sleep and you dream, you wake up but you keep dreaming. You keep dreaming of the moment you drew that bow further than you had the strength for. You keep dreaming of that snake that leaped onto your arrow, squirming and winding around it like a favoured perch. The joy you felt in your heart as you fired the arrow that killed Rob's killer. The joy you felt as it suffered. The crunch of its bones, music to your ears. You wish it was in front of you right now. You want it to burn, bleed, suffer, for what it's done to you. You want to go back to that day when everything fell apart and kill every last one of those 'Pentex' men yourself. Kill them yourself. Watch them fall in droves by your arrows. Feel them break and tear in your bare hands. You want the street to be wet with their blood for daring to take away the happiness you'd always wanted, that you were so close to having. You dream of that smug, smiling, fake cop that tried to trick you. That murderer with a smirk on his face, luring you and Lakshmi to death. You dream of lunging for him, bearing him to the ground. Sinking your teeth into his throat and tearing away a bloody chunk. It tastes so much like the salty, sweet pork they've been feeding you. You want more. You want to gorge yourself on it. You dream of killing them all. Every last person who's kept you from your family.
You scream so loud that you wake. You wake to find a crater in the concrete behind your headboard. Cracking, crumbling, dripping grey dust. Dust on your fists. Bloodied, torn skin over your knuckles. You reach up with shaking hands and feel the depressions. They match. Why do they match.
You dream again. Or were you always dreaming? It must be a dream. It has to be a dream. You're going to wake up and it's just going to be Ms. Jenkins calling you. Or Dad calling you. Or Mum. It'll just be Mum. You fell asleep at her place on Second Birthday and she's calling you down to cut the cake with Lakshmi. But it's weird. She's calling you the wrong name. You haven't been Meghanada for such a long time. Your name is-
"Meghanada!"
You sit bolt upright with a cry. Panting, gasping for air as if you were drowning. You were drowning. Still are. You have to desperately sip at the air, sweat-soaked chest heaving. Heart pounding so loudly that your pulse is deafening in your ears.
But Dad's there. Dad's standing in front of you. You swing your legs over the side of your bed and try to stand. Sway. Fall back down with a 'thump'. You can't think straight. Why's everything so sluggish? Thoughts... moving weird. Can't focus. Vision blurry.
"You're still sedated. You're meant to be asleep," Dad replies hurriedly. "I had a friend feed the cameras and biometric sensors a loop but I don't have much time."
"What... why...?" you murmur deliriously.
"Meghanada I... I didn't want this to happen." He's close to tears. His eyes are red-rimmed - he's already been crying. On the verge of starting up again. His own breathing isn't much more even than yours. "I swear this is the last thing I ever wanted to happen. Your mother and I we- we swore we'd do everything in our power to prevent exactly this and I- I let her down. Let you down."
"Why?" you force yourself to be more coherent, to speak louder. You clench your fist against the bed. Make the muscles flex, make them work. Make the blood flow. "Why's Lakshmi...?"
"Because she's human- half human," he replies. "Because she's a fucking demigod and the top brass are so pleased I brought her to them she's a fucking gold star on my fucking-" He cuts himself of, pressing his palm against his mouth. Choking back a sob.
"What..." The words come slow. The thoughts don't. They whirl crystal-clear inside your skull. "What do you mean... 'she's human'?"
He's quiet for a very long time. Such a long time you're afraid he won't respond. That he'll disappear like smoke. Become a dream. Like everything else you wanted.
"I-I love you, Megahanda. You know that, don't you?" he practically whispers. "Please, out of all the lies I've told you that wasn't one of them I-"
Your strength returns to you all at once. The fury burns away the drugs, whatever it is turning toxic inside you. You surge to your feet, lunge forward, fingers closing around his shoulders. Sinking in painfully. He nearly topples. You hold him upright. Shake him like a ragdoll, like if you shake him hard enough everything will make sense and you'll finally get to go home. "What am I!?"
He's quiet again. For such a long time. But when he speaks again, he speaks in the way he knows you'll understand. So that you know he's telling the truth.
"When... when the Satya Yuga ended, Brahma slept," he says. "And as he slept his breath took form. The creatures that grew in his shadow were beasts of longing, and their bloodthirst was so strong that they... they tried to eat him alive in their first moments. Brahma cried out for help. Vishnu cast them to Earth for their sins. And... and they were named after that cry."
'Protect me!' cried Brahma as his unwanted children tore at his flesh. A single word in Sanskrit, that became their name.
You know that name
Rakshasa.
[ ] Say nothing.
[ ] Force him to tell you where you came from.
[ ] Make him get you out of this cell. You don't care how, or what happens next.
[ ] Hit him. Hard.
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Chapter Ten: Run Boy Run
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
"Answer my fucking question!"
You've been this angry before, you know you have. This is just the first time you've felt it like this, in your bones and in your teeth, like your gums could split open and your lips could shrivel with the heat of your anger. Your grip tightens on his collar, and you're sure you could rip the silk like cheap paper.
"What am I?! You've never told me anything, now it's all werewolves and robots and fucking demigods and demons? What am I? What did you do?!"
"It's a lot to explain and I don't have much time-"
"Condense it!"
He stills in your grip. Your breath catches in your throat. You listen.
"Magic exists," he says. "But it doesn't. Except... fuck the nuances, I don't care any more. Magic used to be widespread, used to keep people in line. The unassailable divine right of kings. The will of the gods. Whatever you called it. A group formed called the Order of Reason that wanted to depose magic and replace it with science, science to be distributed and used freely, by anyone. By the time the mages knew they had an enemy they'd, we'd, overthrown them. We took control of the world from behind the scenes, brought about industrial revolution, and named ourselves the Technocratic Union. We've been in control for hundreds of years now. Protecting the world from the things they don't believe in any more."
"Things like me."
He doesn't answer you. Not directly. "Your mother and I, we met in Bangladesh in the conflict of '99. The Week of Nightmares we call it now. Something old, ancient, woke up. Some kind of long-lost bioweapon that drove its derivative subspecies mad. It was wetwork. House to house fighting. Exterminating whole nests. Killing the bitten because there was no time, not enough antiserum, not enough men, not enough supplies, not enough. We worked alongside mages because if we didn't, we weren't just looking at losing India. We could lose even more."
"Mum," you say quietly, your grip on his lapels slowly slackening. "She's a mage too?"
He nods weakly. "A priestess of Lakshmi. When I met her she was just an asset I had brought in for evaluation. She knew the area. Knew the culture. Knew what we were fighting. She was, is... I can't describe it, and we don't have time to waste. All you need to know is that being in a foxhole with someone changes how you feel about them. Race, religion, ideology, it all goes out the window when they're the only reason you're still breathing and vice versa. I stayed in touch with her. I made sure she got to Australia safely. And I married her."
You shake your head, throwing away the thousands of follow-up questions racing through your mind. You just need one. "Tell me what happened, where did Lakshmi and I come from?"
"No one... no one knows exactly what makes a mage," he says. "Or people like me. The people who just wake up one day and see the universe fit in a way it never did before. You felt it too, didn't you? When you shot that arrow."
Your muscles exceeding their limits. The world slowing down. Your eyes focusing like a hawk's. The blast of air behind you as you fired. The ethereal serpent that leapt onto your arrow to bite the werewolf's heart.
"No one understands Awakening," Dad goes on. "No one. All we have is useless conjecture and putting people who show certain preliminary signs into high-stress situations until they just snap. It's some kind of rare trait, something genetic, atavistic, there's as many theories as there are Technocrats. There could be a social and cultural element for all we know! All I know is what I believed, what your mother believed. That Technocrat children grow up Technocrat and Traditionalist children grow up Traditionalist and that's just how it's always been. How it'll always be. That even with all our knowledge and power we're still slaves to our environments. What's passed on, the genes and the memes. And... and a parent's job is making sure their children have the best possible chance at a future. At being whatever they want to be."
You don't press him any further. You just wait for him to compose himself. To force himself to keep speaking. You suspect that if you weren't holding him up he'd be slumping. Eighteen years of lies and secrets and fear come rushing out.
"It was a ritual," he admits in a small voice. "I converted to Hinduism. Valmiki officiated our wedding. We conceived on a holy night under favourable portents. I used my connections to... 'lose' some of a shipment of experimental fertility supplements from the Progenitor branch. We hoped so desperately that maybe, if we combined our resources, science and magic, our child would... would be able to choose. Would be free. And then Bastille Day came. Lakshmi was born."
Silence. He doesn't go on.
"Where did I come from?" you ask hoarsely. He doesn't respond. You shake him. "Where?"
"The Umbra," he replies, not looking at you. "The air opened up and something reached through and just... handed you over. Set you down beside Lakshmi and left. We never saw it again."
It's so quiet you can hear your own blood pulsing. Your heart racing. Thrumming in your ears. The soft sound as you try to moisten your lips.
"I'm not even your son?"
"We were so frightened." He isn't looking at you. He's looking into the distance, into his memories. "Your mother was so weak after the birth and Valmiki was busy trying to stabilise her and you, you were... you didn't look human. I thought about leaving you there. I thought about abandoning you like I didn't even want you and letting you die out there, all alone and unloved."
He squeezes his eyes shut tight, tears welling from the corners and dribbling down his cheeks. Teeth gritted tight. He turns to look at you, opening his glistening eyes.
"But you held Lakshmi's hand. That was the first thing you ever did in your life. You held your sister's hand. And I have never thought of you as anything less than my son since that day."
You let him go. You stagger backwards, reeling. The backs of your knees hit the bed. You sit heavily, the mattress creaking. Looking down at your hands. Human on the surface. Just the surface. You don't know what's squirming underneath. Waiting to break out.
"What do they want with me?" you ask in a small voice. "The Union wh-why are they keeping me here?"
"Rakshasa are native to the Umbra. They're not meant to be able to survive on Earth alone, not for any length of time, and not without help. You were... 'born' here. You've adapted. And you've Awakened." Dad nervously smooths down his hair. "I sat in on the meetings. Read the reports the Progenitors sent us. You're a nascent shapeshifter that can process human enzymes into energy at an impossibly efficient ratio and there are no end to the number of Traditionalists gone to ground in Australia that might be willing to help you understand your powers or turn you into a weapon. Worst-case scenario, if you got out? The Orbital Knight would have to be deployed. And that's the best we've got."
"Then why keep me here?"
"... your genetic material is too valuable," Dad says quietly. "Maybe, maybe, in a few weeks or months they'll have the infrastructure in place to contain you properly, start working on you as an asset rather than just a tissue farm. It's a risk you can't afford to take."
"What am I supposed to do?" You lift up your hands helplessly, just to let them slap back down onto your knees. "I don't even know where the door is."
"That's why I hired someone who makes doors."
Dad's watch beeps. He checks it nervously. Then he falls to his knees, throwing his arms around you, and pulls you into the tightest hug he's ever given you. Tight enough that it hurts. You don't resist.
"I don't know if we'll ever see each other again," he admits. "Maybe I should hope we don't. But this way, there's a chance you'll see your mother. That this doesn't have to be everything your future is. That's enough for me. Look, I-" He bites his lip. "I have to go. The cell's monitoring systems are going to cycle back online in under a minute. Just... wait. Wait and trust me one more time."
He kisses you on the forehead.
"Goodbye, Meghanada. I love you."
He steps away from you. Over to the part of the wall that your meals get pushed through. He presses his hand against a completely nondescript part of the concrete and a panel depresses, an invisible door sliding up from the floor and into the ceiling. Light beyond. Part of you wants to follow him. To push past him and escape right now.To hold onto him and never let go. You don't do either. You just stretch out your hand towards his retreating back as the door slides down.
"... bye, Dad..."
You're a good boy for the next few days. You eat your meals. You keep yourself hydrated with the water that seems to just reappear on your nightstand every time you turn away. You flip through channels on the TV, just trying to occupy the hours. Trying to stave off sleep. Your sleep doesn't get any better. It feels like your muscles are moving under your skin, knotting and kinking, getting caught. You must have hurt your hands during the night. Deep, bruised purple-black is spreading through the nail beds. Your toenails, too. Are you sick? Are they all going to fall off? Hah. You have to laugh at yourself for such a stupid thought. You aren't even human. Who knows what the fuck's going to happen to you next.
You wish you had a mirror. You can't even check how you look through your phone front camera. They took that too. The best you can do is stand in front of the TV with the screen off and stare. Stare at your gaunt silhouette in the dark reflection. You can pick out the shape of your face, rimmed by light. The vague impression of your features. Your eyes, shining from the reflected gleam of the light. Something's wrong about them. It's too dim to know for sure but they're wrong.
You wake up in pain. Your lip stings like hell and you have a splitting headache. You feel around your mouth with your tongue. Your prominent canines taste coppery. There are twin punctures on your bottom lip. Your scalp feels cold-
You feel your skull. Your head's been shaved completely. You can feel all the little bumps and valleys, the scabs and scars and stubble. A lump, stitched skin stretched taut. Hurts to so much as touch it, let alone apply any kind of pressure. Feels like someone put a lump of ice under the skin, under the skull. You can feel it the rest of the day, all night as you try to get to sleep. You can't find any way to lie on your bed that doesn't make it hurt.
You wake up again. The wound's been reopened. The lump is gone. You touch the wound - it hurts. You must've been here a long time. Your nails are getting long. You sleep and dream of nothing at all.
"Meeeeeeg."
You stir, your brow furrowing. Eyelids fluttering open, sticking with sleep
"Meeee~g."
You rub your eyes, confused. Roll over. Someone calling you? You don't wanna get up. You're tired and cold and in pain and you just want to sleep in.
"Hey fuckface!"
You sit upright. Your TV's talking to you.
The screen is mostly black, the kind of 'bright' black of a screen that's on but showing nothing at all. Nothing save for the emoticon face plastered across it. A horizontal semicolon for the eyes, two white blocks of light that stare unblinkingly into you. A rotated bracket, corners turned upward. It bobs up and down slightly as you watch.
"You up? Comprende?" A little pixellated 'mouth' opens and closes beneath the upturned bracket. "C'mon man, it's gonna be hard enough to bust you out without you being a zombie the whole way. Do something! Jump! Say 'apple'!"
"You the... guy Dad was going to send?" you ask, kneading your brow with the heel of one hand.
"Dingdingding! You're conscious and you can retain basic information, great start, man, great start. Now look under your pillow. It's not money from the Tooth Fairy but it's still pretty good. 'specially in your case."
You obediently search beneath your pillow, hand finding something small, cool and rigid. You retrieve it. It's a... Bluetooth earpiece? It's not like any model you've seen before, but that's pretty low on your list of concerns right now. You numbly affix it to your ear, adjusting it until it sits right.
"There you are. Now you can hear and obey my divine commands wherever you go." The smiley face shatters, pixels splitting and forking and stretching out into lines. Sketching out a circular floorplan, corridors arranged like spokes in a wheel. The 'axle' pulses red. "You're on the lowest level of the prison complex, so you're gonna need to head to the lift and take that baby all the way up. Yes the security systems are going to be very scary but don't fret, I disabled them. Your dad gave me an opening when he hired me. Left you his earpiece, too."
"How much did he pay you?" you ask. A random thought that's simply voiced the moment you think it. You're curious to know what your life is worth. The floorplan becomes a face again.
"XD You kidding? I always do Union jobs gratis." A pause. "But I did root around in the servers some before I got here. Finder's fee and stuff
. Now get dressed so your dick's not hanging out and let's get going."You get dressed numbly. You're glad you're numb. If you weren't, the full enormity of what's going on might just crash down on you and leave you completely useless. Make you curl up in a ball and sob to see Dad one more time. You lace up your shoes. You zip up your hoodie and pull the hood down over your bald head. You straighten up, heart racing.
":S Well you look like shit but it's better than nothing. Plan is for people not to look too closely at you anyway."
The door slides open to your right. One big slab just rising into the ceiling, out of sight. You see the walkway beyond, a sharp left turn to freedom.
"Off you go. Remember, I'll be right there in your ear." The TV winks off. Literally.
You take your first step outside your cell in God-knows-how-long.
And immediately leap back in when you see the gun turret hanging from the ceiling.
"I said I'd turned security off you fucking grognard," the mysterious voice pipes up in your ear. "Get a move on!"
You lean out the doorway, cautiously stretching out your hand into the hallway and waving. The squat, plastic-shelled thing doesn't budge. The twin machine guns stay locked in place, 'staring' straight ahead.
"While we're young?" the voice prods.
"Sorry."
You step out into the hallway. 'Get a move on' towards the centre of the detention level before the voice starts yelling at you again. All around you are cold, grey blocks of concrete like yours. Hanging from the ceiling, ready to be mixed and matched at will. You spy the long, spiderlike limbs stretching out from the centre of the level that can do just that. Rising up, high up. You crane your neck to see as you draw close to the central well, tracking its slanted ascent towards what you can only assume is the surface. You wonder how far down you are. You wonder where you are.
"Going up," says the voice. You see a platform waiting for you. You step aboard and press the 'P' button on the raised panel by the safety rail, since every other one just seems to be for different levels of the prison. And you doubt it stands for 'Parking'.
The wide platform starts rising with nary a judder, smoothly guiding you up. Row after row of cold grey boxes pass as you rise. Inert. You wonder if anyone else is in there. What kind of things must be in there if they're sharing a prison with you. All around the central well, on every level of the prison, you see more ceiling-mounted gun turrets sitting cold and lifeless. You see humanoid shapes forged from metal waiting in racks, robots like the ones you saw at home maybe. You see humans too. Or -you think of Ms. Jenkins- things that just look like humans. Suspended in some kind of translucent liquid medium wearing dark grey bodysuits, weapons close at hand. Ready to fight the second they're 'born'.
"Um. Hey?" you ask.
"Yo?" You hear crunching. You think the voice is eating chips.
"What do I call you?"
"Oh, right. Didn't introduce myself. Name's Ichiban, Ichi to my friends. Maybe you've heard of me."
Silence, not even the sound of the lift's workings to break it. "... no?"
Crunch crunch crunch. "It's okay. I was a poor, ignorant soul like you once, too. But we're gonna fix that up right quick. 'cause if we don't you'll probably die or get thrown in a cell again. So, y'know. Motivation."
The lift slots into place at the very top floor. You're left in little more than a steel box with a dizzying drop below you, separated from you by nothing but a layer of glass. You hear things shifting in the walls, the heavy chunk and thunk of things too heavy to be moved by men. It's not a metal box, you realise. The wall in front of you is actually a thick airlock, even now slowly rising. Spilling light. You double-time it down the short, sterile little steel corridor beyond, hugging your hoodie tight to your body. You open a set of smaller, human-sized double-doors to find...
A police station. You blink. It's so ordinary it takes you a second to pick out the 'futuristic' additions to the precinct. The desktop monitors are holographic, the keyboards hovering strips of light. But everything else is scuffed, used, lived-in. Abandoned mugs with the dregs of coffee, screwed-up wads of paper, scattered pens, everything. There are a bunch of other doors all leading off to other parts of the station, rooms half-glimpsed through the windows. Drunk-tank. Offices. Locker room. Armoury. The last one almost tempts you. Then you reason that it'd probably just make things a lot worse. Instead you keep heading for what you think is the front and emerge in the lobby, behind the reception counter. Nobody's there either. Just a subtly nodding bobblehead of something that looks like a rottweiler fucked a xenomorph.
"Where is everyone?" you ask.
"Out to lunch, on patrol, called in sick," Ichi replies. "Y'know, the usual. The precinct's meant to be patrolled by drones anyway but I have them taking a nice little nap. Front-desk-jockey just got a spoofed text from his ex about their sex tape. I was all set to spring the 'I made one of us in secret' card but he actually had made one, the stupid asshole. Who tapes themselves fucking? What's sexy about that?"
"I don't really have an opinion," you mutter as you clamber over the desk, quickly crossing the polished floor emblazoned with a 'CSC' shield. Opening the double doors ahead. "For now can you please just tell me how to get- oh."
You're still underground. But there's a whole city down here with you.
Space is at a premium and the Union have made the most of it. The level you're on, the 'ground' floor, is almost completely covered by buildings and walkways up above. Everything's dim here, the shadows gathering in gloomy corners and recessed doorways, most of the light coming from the windows. Barracks, labs, medical facilities. Down one street you think you spy a storefront sign with a coffee mug somewhere in the iconography. Down another you see a compact little noodle card, manned by a hovering drone. More importantly you see a turn-off marked as stairs up. You race for it. You climb both flights two at a time, puffing, heart pounding.
It's like a great subterranean dome. A dome with gigantic window on one side with a view of nothing but blue water, lit only by the docks extruding into the depths. City blocks cling to the buildings, spiralling up to the apex in great tiers. Restaurants, theatres, a school, even shopping centres and holographic ads for what to buy there. Everything's lit like the midmorning sun. Even the air is nice, practically fresh. Feels good to fill your lungs with it. The park is probably the culprit - while you spy snatches of green in potted plants and nature strips here and there, the park is a surprisingly sizeable chunk of real estate that butts right up against the gigantic window to the sea. Trees and grass and bushes and flowers, more than enough benches to sit and relax in the little slice of nature. And dominating it all is a massive obsidian spire, some kind of clutter around the base.
"Obelisk Park," Ichi notes. "No time to fuck about visiting the monument, we've got to get you topside. Let's seeeee..."
You hear the sharp kshk of a can being popped. You hear him gulping down whatever it is, but it quickly fades into background noise. The lights flicker above. A single, enormous mass of carefully-arranged light strips that crosses the ceiling in an imitation of the sun's passage across the sky. As you watch the artificial 'sun' blinks back and forth along its track, before finally alighting in its proper place once more.
"That you?" you ask.
"Wha- noooo! I'd never!" Crunch crunch crunch. Gulp. Fuck, you're hungry. "Hang a left down the end of the street there. Cross when it's clear, cut through the alley, over the fence, left again, right at the library, go straight ahead for three blocks then-"
You resign yourself to having to ask for directions every five steps and keep moving. Keep on furtively scurrying like a rat caught out in the daylight, darting from shadow to shadow as it tries to escape the house. You won't stand up to a second's scrutiny, so Ichi doesn't let anyone get the chance. He times your emergences down to the second. All you see of the residents is what you can glimpse from your hiding places, what you watch from the shadows. Men and women in hideously expensive and well-cut suits, their eyes violet or scarlet or gold, looking down at their phones with furrowed brows of concern. You see a seven-foot-tall reptilian, its feathered crest a riot of colour, leaning up against a wall wearing nothing but a pair of black compression shorts. Talons carving little grooves in the pavement as it sips from its coffee cup, listening to its compatriot - a man in some kind of high-tech armour. No, not armour. If it's armour it's too small for his body, nowhere for him to fit. It's him. His body's been replaced from the jaw down, replaced by a finely-sculpted idealisation of the human form in white and silver. He doesn't even bother wearing shorts. He has no modesty to preserve.
"Now take a right around here past the coffee shop and- oh hello there."
If Ichi was going to elaborate on his findings, you don't hear it. You follow his instructions too well. You see the little group of people hanging around outside. You flatten yourself against the wall, peek cautiously around the corner. You don't think they saw you. They're too busy reassuring Lakshmi.
A black woman with bright gold eyes, a gold-plated earpiece looping around one ear. Wearing some kind of sci-fi fusion pantsuit, gilded black. An Asian guy in a jacket and jeans, little metal protrusions framing his face at the jaw. Emerging across the back of one hand from his sleeve. Liquid metal gleaming at his throat, little tendrils reaching up for his jawline. Another guy with golden-brown hair, wearing a half-buttoned dress shirt and designer jeans. Model good looks. A simian tail curling around his waist. An easy smile exposing fangs. They all look so strange, but they're still people. You've seen how people like them hold themselves. Lakshmi's found herself another David. Another of her old friends.
Lakshmi's wearing long sleeves and gloves. You hear her curse as her coffee slips out of her hand. The half-monkey guy catches it with his tail, offers some witty comment or another. Lakshmi thanks him, stooping to retrieve it. Her sleeve hikes back a little, exposing metal. You didn't know she wore a watch, especially on her right hand. The half-monkey guy turns to leave, beckoning her and the others. They start to move away.
Lakshmi stops dead, and turns.
You dart back behind the corner as quick as you can, pressing yourself against the wall so hard you'd think you were trying to merge with it. Chest heaving, pulse racing. Were you spotted? Are they coming for you right now, calling in to the cops to come throw you in a cage again? You feel bile rise in your throat. Fuck, you're going to be sick. You strain your ears to hear them.
"Lakshmi? What's up?"
"I... I dunno. Had this weird feeling, I guess."
You said goodbye to Dad. Can you risk saying goodbye to Lakshmi too? Could you live with yourself if you didn't?
[ ] Step out into the open.
[ ] Do nothing.
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