by Lu Huiyi
“You are very closed-off,” said Elder Francis abruptly. They were sitting in an office in the Institute, an underground establishment devoted to training and research. Beng couldn’t imagine how many people the Gentlemen must have had to pay off to hang on to all the property that they seemed to have access to.
“You don’t even know me yet,” said Beng, briefly annoyed. He was tired after the journey, and perhaps that made him more reckless and fractious than he usually would have been. If Elder Francis noticed his irritation, he didn’t particularly seem to care.
“It’s a fair observation. After all, you haven’t really tried to talk to any of the Gentlemen, outside of your own brother.”
“I’ve only been with you guys for a few months,” said Beng. “Give me a chance.”
A pause. Elder Francis poured him a cup of tea. Beng drank; it was delicate and floral. Good stuff, and laced with something heady and pleasant, that calmed him down but didn’t quite dull his senses. The Gentlemen never did things by halves.
“You’re safe here,” Elder Francis told him. “We’re underground and the walls are reinforced; it’s harder for your tracker to work here.”
“That’s good.”
A pause.
“Do you know why you’ve been brought here?”
Beng nodded.
“You said people here could help me with that episode—that power I felt—”
“We can,” Elder Francis assured him. “And we will. You’ve the power to change the world, you and a select few. And we’re here to help you do it. It won’t be easy. But when we’re done, it’ll be worth it. You’ll see.”
“Surely I could speak to them at least once,” Beng argued.
“Your training is highly confidential and needs your complete focus,” Elder Francis said. He was placid and kind, the way he had always been, but there was a slight frown creasing his temples which suggested that Beng was beginning to test his limits a little more than was wise. This wasn’t entirely surprising; Beng had been making the same request, albeit with increasing urgency and decreasing deference, with every passing week. “We’ve gone through this before.”
“I didn’t even get to explain to my parents before I left,” said Beng. “They’ll be worried. The deadline you gave me was far too tight, and it’s not like I know exactly when this training is going to end. Maybe just a weekend off, or—”
“We allowed you to leave a letter through Archibald,” Elder Francis interrupted. “Wasn’t that enough? Surely you are old enough to withstand a few months away from your parents.”
Beng slumped a little in his chair.
“I don’t think I’m asking a lot,” he muttered.
Elder Francis sighed.
“It’s not that I’m not sympathetic,” he said.
“I know, I know, it’s for a greater cause and we’re changing the world and all that, but—”
“Would it make you feel better if you knew they were well-provided for?”
Beng looked up.
“Is there a way?” he asked cautiously. “Some updates, or maybe you could send them a message from me, or ask them if they’ve anything to tell me or Huat?”
Elder Francis laughed indulgently.
“I’ll do you one better than that,” he said. “I’ll send men down with a packet of rice every week. And some tinned meats, and maybe even a little bit of dried fruit if there’s any available. Your family will be happy and provided for while you’re gone. I know what it’s like to care for your family; and I respect that. We can do what’s necessary to make things better for them, so that you can focus fully on your training.”
Beng paused for a moment. This was a generous offer, and better than what his family could have dreamt of getting for themselves.
“They know where you are. It’s not like we’ve left them under the impression that you’ve just disappeared into thin air. We’ll keep them safe and comfortable,” Elder Francis went on.
Maybe it was a bit selfish to obsess over meeting them, Beng thought. When the trade-off was food for his family, proper nourishment, not going to bed hungry—surely he could make that sacrifice for them.
“And Huat will tell them I’m doing all right?” he said at last.
“I’ll remind him personally to pass on the message,” said Elder Francis.
A week after, Elder Francis took him to the entrance of the Institute, where a horse and cart were waiting. There was a shipment of food and good things for his family; the driver had made a detour just to prove to Beng that the Gentlemen would keep their word. Beng thought of how Father, Mother and Grandfather would rejoice at this stockpile of treasures, and did not ask to cross the threshold into the outside world.
They called it training, adaptation, readjustment. At the start Beng had had bad moments when he felt unconvinced, even resistant—he had been pulled out of nowhere without much of a goodbye to his family, and stowed away in some repurposed bomb shelter away from the Gahmen’s attention. He supposed he had allowed many moral and personal boundaries to be breached from the moment he had agreed to peddle baggies to nameless faceless teenagers in dark alleys. But to be held in unexplained captivity was initially harder to bear, even when it was explained to him that it would be for the best and that he would be very, very grateful for it.
There was an inordinate number of meetings. Boring, statistically-driven reviews of his performance and progress. Elder Francis was a constant, patient but dour, unyielding and repetitive. After a while his presence became comforting out of sheer familiarity.
They woke and ate at regular times—for Beng was not housed alone. He was one of a small collection of young people who had been found to have potential of some kind. But the expectation was for them to engage in no more than the most necessary of communal interactions; they trained apart, and friendships were heavily frowned upon.
Most days were devoted to training and conditioning sessions. Some of it was simple physical training, sprints and runs and boxing, which Beng began to enjoy once he got through the initial rough start and muscle aches and cramps. There was a small rush of victory and control that came with surpassing the limits of his own body, and from the clipped, understated praise grudgingly offered by his reticent instructors.
He didn’t get to see Huat at all.
Some afternoons they had to undergo routine examinations from an army of quiet, dignified doctors. Nobody was cruel or unkind, but everyone Beng had to deal with was always coolly reserved and deliberately impersonal, which made things a little lonely. He wondered how many people the Gentlemen had managed to recruit from crucial professions. Were they really growing in might that quickly? He might just have taken up with the right side after all.
Everything was timed.
The showers, the meals, the trainings, down to the minute. They had huge mechanical clocks on the walls that ticked so loudly that the sound dominated their days and became the very rhythm of their existences.
Beng thought, most boring of all, were the afternoons spent sitting in the waiting room, like mannequins behind the glass dividers, gawked at and openly discussed by doctors and elders and staff. They were given copies of the Gentlemen Guidebook to read and memorise to while the hours away. At some point, Beng was simultaneously appalled and proud to realise that he could recite the whole thing backwards.
And every other week, they had Hell Night.
It was difficult, even terrible, but it was meant to be. And in time Beng went from fearing it, to trying to conquer it, to a numb acceptance of the presence of the ritual, trusting in the wisdom of the elders to carry them all through hell to an indiscernible other side. He had begun resistant—stubborn, even, but the wilfulness slowly subsided into a desire to be useful, to become strong in a way that not everyone could be.
Everyone had their own gods to worship, and for the first time Beng thought that his own god might just be the vessel of raw energy that waited within him. But one couldn’t rule over oneself, jus
t as one could not make the self an absolute idol. So Beng gave of himself to those who sought to mould him, seeking only to play the role given to him, hoping to emerge if not a god, then at least one of the faithful.
His first Hell Night, he had been far too complacent for his own good.
They had him blindfolded and his hands cuffed, left alone for so long in one of the rooms that he had lost all sense of time and direction. When the door clicked open, he turned expectantly in the general direction of the sound, expecting Elder Francis, or some kind of an explanation, or at least a task to be assigned, or—
He was not expecting to be struck, solidly, powerfully, in the face.
Something broke. He gurgled and cried out in spite of himself at the sudden rush of blood down his face. Then the blows were coming in all directions, too swift and vicious for him to anticipate or dodge. There seemed to be more than one person assaulting him, but he wasn’t sure; sound and impact and speed were confused as he struggled to stay upright, dizzy and pained.
He tried to cover his face with his cuffed hands, and was punished for that almost immediately. Strong calloused hands grabbed at him and begin to slam his head against the wall, once, twice, again, hard and cruel and unstoppable. Beng could feel blood pouring down his face; he threw up, and the sour stench of vomit and the tang of blood filled the air.
“First Monday, we clean the chimney.”
There was a wild churning in his mind, but nothing rose to protect him. Again the power within him squirmed and twitched, like a wounded animal, but did little more. It was not his to control; it was not theirs to bring out. They were going to kill him, but the energy was locked away deep within him and did not come to his rescue. Was this what Huat had signed him up for? And why did he himself agree—or rather, why did he not refuse? He was half tossed, half shoved across the room, he landed against another wall and crumpled to the floor with a sickening crack, and before he could catch his breath the hands were there again, dragging him up for more with unrelenting force.
He screamed then, but it was a wail of agony and not of strength. His struggles were growing feebler as the assault wore on, and he knew that he was losing his window to escape or fight back as his injuries increased and he got weaker and more afraid.
“What’re you screaming about? You aren’t going to die.”
“Stop,” he meant to say, but somehow, he stuttered instead, “W—who are you?”
“Other people will die for you.”
There was no answer. The beating stopped, briefly and blessedly, but somehow he knew he wasn’t safe yet. There was a slight rustling. He had no idea what it was.
“The ships come in the morning. Can we wait?”
“Wait—” he gasped. “Wait—who—”
There was a searing pain in his side, they had moved on from bare fists to some kind of weapon, tearing at him.
He screamed again, but the blows did not stop, and then there was no more.
“The ships come in the morning. Can we wait? Can wait? Can we wait?”
He woke up somewhere else altogether.
He knew he was still in the Institute the moment he woke up. Everything was sterile and concrete, but he was tucked into bed, an IV in his arm. For a minute he worried about how clean the needle might be, but decided that that was the least of his worries when he felt like he had been completely mauled.
Someone must have been waiting for him to wake up, because the moment he managed to crack open one swollen, encrusted eye, the door opened and Elder Francis entered.
“How are you?” he said.
“Ugh,” said Beng. His throat felt raw and the slightest movement sent spasms of agony through him.
“You want to be patient with that,” said Elder Francis, delicately placing a hand on a part of Beng’s arm that seemed a little less mottled and bruised. “You’re still healing, and that will take time.”
“I—I want—”
“What can I get for you? Water? Painkillers? We don’t have much, but I can make a special request—”
“No—”
“You sure? You must be in pain.”
“I want—I want to leave.”
A long, pregnant pause.
“You’re not in the right state of mind right now,” said Elder Francis gently and slowly.
Beng was certain that he had never been in a better frame of mind to decide anything.
“Attacked. Tried—they t—tried—to kill me,” he managed between heavy, difficult breaths. “I want to leave.”
“Nobody wants to kill you,” said Elder Francis, with an air of mild surprise. “You’ve got it all the wrong way around, son. Hell Night isn’t meant to be easy—they need to find the trigger, see? The trigger that will release your abilities. You need to endure. It’ll be worth it.”
“N—not worth it—”
“You can change the world, Beng. Keep the faith. Surely you won’t allow a little bit of pain to break you? Surely you’re not as weak as all that?”
“Not weak—but not—”
“Everyone is here to help you, Beng. But it’s not meant to be easy. Nothing worth having is, isn’t it? But it’ll be worth it. Think about it. It’ll be so worth it.”
“I’m tired,” Beng got out. His mind was cloudy with pain. Violence was the language of choice in the new world order, but it was never any easier to bear.
“Of course you are. You did very well today, you know.”
“But—we didn’t find the trigger.”
“No, that wasn’t the trigger. But isn’t it a good thing that we’ve ruled it out? We won’t have to do that anymore, now.”
That was a relief to hear. Somehow Beng knew that Elder Francis would keep his word on that. He sagged slightly into the mattress. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Elder Francis was injured too, his knuckles bruised and purpling. He knew the man could fight—that he was in charge of training members to be combat-ready, but it was still odd to think of the stately elder getting into a brawl of any kind.
“I could get you some sleeping medication,” Elder Francis went on. “Makes the time go faster. Soon you’ll be back on your feet and ready to train again.”
“I’m n-not weak.”
“Yes, you’ve done very well. It’ll be worth it. You just need to grit your teeth through the pain. But—something to help you sleep a little better, what do you say?”
Beng nodded jerkily, a minute movement, but Elder Francis caught it anyway.
“Good, yes, good, I’ll get you something,” he said. Then there was a tiny pin-prick in his arm, an injection of some kind. It was so minor compared to his existing levels of pain that Beng hardly registered it. He closed his eyes. It was easier to drift. He hoped that the meds would knock him out till he was better again.
The medicines were useless, that was what.
Beng was docile for a while, expecting the relief of medicated sleep. But it didn’t come. Instead, he spent a while drifting in and out of consciousness, disoriented and paralysed in his sickbed. By the time he could finally vocalise his discomfort again, Elder Francis had left the room for his dinner, and Beng could feel the beginnings of a debilitating headache, throbbing and creeping and unstoppable.
Beng had had migraines before, but this particular pain was like nothing he had ever experienced. The world burst into wild colour and agony, and if he had the strength to scream, he would have. It was within him and he couldn’t stop it—the pain was in his head, it was him, consuming his very self and leaving him nothing more than a raw nerve gasping and writhing against an endless onslaught of horror.
Beng wanted to die.
The grey walls were suddenly too much, too near, a stone weight pressing closer and closer, and he felt as though at some point they would fold in like a house of cards and bury him alive. There was a faint moving shadow in his peripheral vision, inching towards him but never quite getting there, dark and winged—like a crow—waves of nausea swept through him and he c
ould smell the putrid stench of vomit and he felt sicker and weaker and worse than ever—
“Are you awake—oh my god!”
The voice was unfamiliar. Beng managed to focus long enough to make out a fuzzy shape, a person in white—maybe a doctor or nurse, one of the many anonymous figures in the Gentlemen’s little army of medical personnel. Said figure turned and bolted out of the room; the clanging of the door reverberated through Beng’s head like a funhouse of sound.
He tried to breathe; he breathed only colour and pain and filth. He tried to endure like he had been asked to.
The door opened again.
“Allergic reaction—to the drug—” the doctor’s voice again, rapid and worried.
Elder Francis made a considering sound in the back of his throat. Elder Francis was here. He must know what to do; he had never permitted pain without an explanation. Surely he would fix it.
“It’s not an allergy,” Elder Francis said, looking at Beng, gasping in pain, shivering and hurting in his own filth. The bed was shaking, he had somehow pushed the IV out of his own flesh, and there was a growing crack blossoming along the opposite wall, but Elder Francis was unfazed, even triumphant. “It’s the trigger.”
“My trigger is sleeping medication,” said Beng, in unrestrained disbelief.
He wasn’t quite sure how he had survived the night. At some point they had brought in some sort of drug and injected it into him, and he had been so overcome with pain that he would have consented to anything, though he really was not in the state to say yes or no to anyone or anything by that point in time. He remembered dimly thinking that this wasn’t the kind of drug that meant medicine, but the kind of thing he had begun his time in the Gentlemen selling.