by Lu Huiyi
Beng had told himself that he would never show up in the City Hall slums again. He had chosen his path, and he was willing to concede that it might not have been the best and the wisest move, just the most promising one that had been open to him at that point in time. But the Gentlemen had trained him, and he had served them and hurt and killed for them in return. There was no going back from that, and it was easier to not go back and hear recriminations that he could never actually make up for.
But then he had gotten the briefing for the next mission—to bring down the City Hall train station, so as to herald the Gentlemen’s declaration of open war against the Gahmen. Since completing his training, Beng had thought himself an excellent soldier, faithful to orders and not the least bit emotional about what had to be done, but all he could think of were the little huts clinging on like barnacles to the main body of the station, and of his family, his family which was too good and still too much his to be reduced to collateral damage at his hand.
He had very little time. He was out on a recce trip, and the Lead Trainer had left him alone for half an hour to scout around, for no reason other than the fact that the appearance of a blind man and his companion days before every explosion and collapse might raise far too many eyebrows. He did what preparations and checks he had to, and then crept to the slums. He had to warn his family at least, before anyone noticed. It ought not be difficult; he was good enough to not be noticed, as long as he managed to pop in and out of their hut quickly enough.
“Susan, are you in?”
Beng recognised Darryl’s voice at once, and ducked behind an abandoned road-stall at once. Darryl was at the door of his house, knocking and calling.
Ma sounded ill, from the sluggish way she moved, and the painful sounds she made when clearing her throat. Beng longed to go to her, but had enough sense to stay put. When Darryl knocked on their flimsy barrier of a door, Mother somehow got herself to her feet and zombie-shuffled to it. She tugged it open and then froze.
“I can kill him for you,” said the Power.
It was a bit troubling that the Power, usually so reticent, opted to use its highly limited daily quota of words on very few topics outside of killing, killing, and well, more killing.
“Susan,” said Darryl, tentatively.
“Why—you here?” Mother managed, scratchy and pained. (Was she ill, Beng wondered. He should have brought medicines; they had a whole stockpile, but he hadn’t thought of it, and the trainers might have noticed anyway. It was too late now.)
Darryl must have reached out towards her because she flinched at once, instinctively and violently, hitting the door in the hastiness of her retreat.
“Don’t be afraid of me, Susan,” said Darryl. Beng wondered why she was afraid of him. Had he done anything to her, or was it just the world at large that she was wary of now? But Darryl was unburdened by such concerns, and went on talking. “We’ve been hearing things above, Susan. It’s getting more and more unsafe. They want to evacuate your area soon, but I don’t know if it’ll be too late.”
There was a long silence.
“It’s not safe,” Darryl pressed on. “And I don’t know if they’ll move you anywhere better.”
“No—no place to go—”
“I know,” he said, and now he was earnest and confident, slipping seamlessly into the smooth protective manner of the provider. “Your husband can barely walk, and it’s all down to you—I know, I know you’ve suffered. Come with me, Susan. I’ll look after you.”
She glanced off to the side, and suddenly noticed Beng’s presence. Beng knew it, felt the accusing nature of her look, even before the Power let out an exasperated sigh. There was a long pause, but she didn’t react in the least. Beng could’ve kicked himself. This wasn’t how he had been trained.
“Susan, we’ve talked about running away together before. We could be free. We could get away from all this.”
His mother slapped Darryl’s hands away. He must have tried to reach out to her again, to reclaim some of the affection they must have shared before. Her movements sounded stiff and waspish; if Beng hadn’t known that he had been spotted, the sudden testiness of her behaviour would’ve given it all away.
“I thought you loved me,” Darryl said.
“I do,” she croaked out. She sounded like she would be sobbing if she could figure out how to. But she knew, and Beng knew, that love wasn’t the point.
“The world is different now,” he said, words practically tumbling over each other in his desperation to make her see sense. “The Gahmen is in disarray, and the people are angry, and we’ve got terrorists running amok, and we—we need to get away, see? We need to move while we still have the chance. Susan, I’ve never wanted you to live like this. But more importantly, I can’t let you die like this.”
“I…know you care about me,” she managed.
“Then why won’t you come with me?”
“Not won’t,” she said, so softly that even Beng had to strain to hear it. “Can’t.”
There was nothing in her answer to give room for doubt. Her staying behind was a reality and necessity that could not be elucidated any more clearly; it was an ugly full-stop, blotted and bold and not open to any sort of cajolement or negotiation.
“But why?”
Darryl sounded a little stunned; he obviously had not expected a refusal from a woman of her circumstances. He had obviously come thinking he was the best option she could ever have—and to his credit, he hadn’t been wrong.
Beng knew exactly what Darryl would see when he looked past his mother’s lean stature and beyond into the house—a vista of ugly, worn furnishings and undeniable poverty. There was nothing inside that could match his promises, only dirt and dust and a tired, broken-down husband. And when he spoke again, there was a new hardness to his voice. Before, she had been extraordinary, shining, the goddess who stood apart from the ramshackle ruins of her world, who he had to shield and save. Now, she was one of the masses, mere tools to feed a factory, collateral damage should the unwanted happen.
“You know I’ve been shielding your family all this while,” he said, quietly. “Your sons, they call them the weapon and the strategist of the Gentlemen. We have intelligence on them. And I can’t save your children anymore, especially not after the next thing they’ve planned. I’ve tried my best, Susan.”
“I’m—grateful—”
There was another long silence; Darryl made an odd, choked-off sound—an aborted attempt at her name, at some kind of tender plea, and then he stopped and composed himself.
“The evacuation begins next week,” he said, suddenly stiff, stilted and professional. “If you hear a blast, run. You know where the shelters are.”
He left her standing there. With certain, brisk strides, he walked away, her last chance at a better life. Slowly, laboriously, she turned and limped back, and slowly sank down into a defeated amidst her mound of blankets and things. In Beng’s mind, she seemed very old, very tired, and very sad. But she did not cry.
Beng, with his impeccable sense of timing, stepped in.
“You have to go,” he burst out, desperate.
Mother took a deep breath, as if shoring herself up to endure more than she had thought necessary or possible. She did not reply. Father hobbled forward—he had been waiting in the back of the hut, feigning ignorance to what had been happening mere metres away. He shoved something heavy out of the way with vast effort—a trunk? A suitcase? But Beng still did not budge.
“What do you think we’re doing?” Father said at last, when Beng refused to leave.
Father walked with an awkward, almost rhythmic clunk now. He had a boot with some kind of wooden leg, something that he must have needed since the accident on the highway construction crew. Every time Beng heard his heavy, uneven steps, he felt a stab of shame, and the accusing eyes upon him felt more visceral and punishing.
“We’ll be out of your hair soon,” said Father. “All of you, giving us warnings, leaving dam
age wherever you go. We don’t need your help. You make things worse.”
“Next Monday,” said Beng. “I can’t tell you much, but by next Monday—you need to be gone. I’m—I’m sorry.”
“You don’t mean it,” said Mother. “You think we don’t know who is behind all the terror attacks? Look at you. You’ve given your people everything. Don’t come back and pretend to know us. They are your people. Not us.”
“They’re not terror attacks—”
“Shut up. You don’t get to come here and—”
“I—I just came to say—”
“What do you have to say to us?” Mother barrelled on. “You just leave, and never say anything, and then you come back with presents and want us to be happy. What do you have to say to us?”
She was right, Beng realised. Words meant nothing in light of the reproaches of those who would have given anything and everything for their children to live. No apology or explanation would suffice. They had grown too far apart for words to do any good.
“I can kill them for you,” the Power said helpfully. “It would be easy. You don’t have to be sad about them anymore.”
“Oh my god,” said Beng.
“What?”
“Nothing, I—I—” Beng knew he should go, but he couldn’t bear to end the conversation just like that. “Where’s Grandfather?”
There was a long pause. Mother was breathing heavily, as though trying to hold back tears.
“He was close to ninety, and sick with pneumonia,” she said at last. The past tense wormed its way into Beng’s heart; he thought he might shatter from within. Misery barbed Mother’s words, and she spat them out like little knives. “What do you think happened?”
Beng felt very cold, the furthest thing from the efficient, calm warrior that the Gentlemen were so proud of.
“I shouldn’t have come,” Beng managed. Either Mother was crying now, or he was; he couldn’t quite tell. He turned and stumbled back out of the hut, almost tripping over his own feet on the way—he couldn’t imagine what his Lead Trainer would have said to that, and if he couldn’t even manage to do his job right, then what was he?
He left for good.
“You didn’t give the mission briefing this time round,” said Beng.
The sound of pencil scratching on paper stopped. Huat’s attention was captured, momentarily. But he didn’t look up.
“No,” he agreed. “I knew what was going to happen; I was in all the planning meetings. But we decided it might be a conflict of interest for me to give the briefing.”
“Because of Ma and Pa?”
“And Grandfather, too.”
“Grandfather’s dead.”
“He—what?”
“He was sick when we last went back, Archibald,” spat Beng. He didn’t know why he was being nasty, only that it made that gnawing guilty ache in his mind better and worse at the same time. “What did you think happened? And Father’s been injured, because of that highway takedown last month, remember? Or did you forget about that, the way you manage to pretend nothing happens outside of your little political bubble?”
Huat stared at him. He was silent, but fidgeting noisily and uncontrollably, which was how Beng knew he had struck home. It did not bring him any satisfaction.
“Your hands are as dirty as mine,” Huat said at last.
“We can’t let them die,” Beng said.
“Yes, we can,” said the Power.
“You keep quiet,” said Beng.
“Please stop talking to that thing,” said Huat.
“Why not? He’s as real as any of us.”
“I never wanted to hurt them,” said Huat.
“But we did, Huat. It’s not too late. We can stop the attack, Huat. Let’s leave the station alone. We don’t need to hit the station; surely there are other important landmarks.”
“The station is symbolic. If we get the station, we gain so much ground.”
“Surely you don’t think that’s the only thing that matters,” Beng challenged.
A pause, then an exasperated sigh.
“Look,” said Huat. “Not everything is within my control, all right? I told you. Conflict of interest. I don’t have that much say over the details for this mission.”
“Well, the larger idea behind it is still wrong.”
“You’re being unreasonable. You know we need to take down the big Gahmen landmarks. That’s always been our plan.”
Beng frowned.
“Well, we could evacuate the slums first. The people in the slums didn’t do anything. You know our family is there because the Gahmen abandoned them. They’re not the enemy.”
“I don’t have a choice, Beng,” Huat said, obviously torn. “We can’t set our schedule back like this. The Gahmen will wise up to it and we’ll never get another shot. What would the Elders say then? Don’t force my hand like this.”
There were many things Huat could have said at that point. Things like, I didn’t force you to start hurting people, or you agreed to train under the Gentlemen by yourself. But he didn’t.
“People from the Gahmen know who was behind the sabotages, Huat,” Beng said. “They’re on to us—that man from Mother’s factory told her so. If there ever was a time for us to get out of all this, then this would be it.”
There was a long silence. The air was tense, thick with paranoia. For a moment it seemed like Huat would either cave, or get up and inform the other Elders of his brother’s treasonous talk. Beng didn’t know what he would do if Huat did betray his trust like that, if he did betray not just his, but Mother’s trust in giving them such information. He thought, fleetingly, of how he simply wasn’t made for this kind of cloak-and-dagger thing, and then it occurred to him that he would never have guessed that he was made for blowing things up either, but there they all were.
Huat made an abortive movement, and then sank back into his chair wearily.
“Don’t tell me about these things, and I won’t be able to stop them,” he said instead, sounding defeated and much, much older than his twenty-nine years. The conversation was over. Beng realised, with a sickening twist of the gut, that this was the closest his brother would ever get to begging.
He dreamt.
In his dreams, the world was rich in colour.
They were sitting outside the train station, on concrete steps. City Hall station was a mess, as it had been since the Gentlemen had launched their attack. There were frequent skirmishes around the area now, and people walked quicker when they had to go past it, eyes carefully averted.
“Do you ever wish that people could see you?” Beng asked.
The Power thought it over, and shrugged noncommittally.
“Do you ever wish that you could see?” the Power replied. He was holding a pebble in his hand. Casually, without even thinking about it, he crushed it to dust. The stone crumbled in a starburst of lurid colours. Beng watched, fascinated. In dreams, his mind seemed to compensate, and sometimes provided him with a world that was veritably exploding in a thousand hues.
“Well, since you asked,” said Beng. “All the damn time.”
There was a discontented pause.
“You chose to give it up,” the Power said, a little petulant.
“I chose it so we could work together,” said Beng. “It’s not that I regret it. But seeing was very convenient.”
“There is a lot of ugliness in your world,” said the Power. “I want to take all of it apart.”
“There are some good things,” said Beng. He thought of the unexpected pinking of the sky at sunset, of Mother’s laugh lines, of Grandfather smoking contentedly on his pipe.
“All of it is ugly,” said the Power. “Do you remember what happened at the donation clinic? You went under, and there was only me. Just me. I could see everything and everyone could see me. I could see how scared, how stupid they were before I took them all apart. There are very few people like me. I can take it all apart.”
“This is why I don’t
regret it,” said Beng. “It would be nice to see again, but it’s probably nicer to make sure you aren’t out and about killing people for no reason.”
“As opposed to killing people for a reason?”
“I haven’t actually killed anyone.”
“Can you be sure?”
There was a brief silence.
“I liked being the only person in this body,” said the Power. “All of you humans think that power is made to be used.”
“What is it made for, if not?”
“I don’t know,” said the Power, smiling crookedly. “You’ve never let me find out.”
On 5th November 2025, there was a column in the morning copy of The State Times, titled “Loyal Official of the Gahmen, Guardian of the People”. It was on the front page, but in small print at the very bottom, as though the editors weren’t quite sure if they ought to draw attention to the news, or to keep the information as discreet as possible.
“Someone read it to us,” Elder Francis said at dinner that evening. The pages rustled, and one of the younger Gentlemen cleared his throat and began to read.
“The body discovered outside the City Hall Train Station has been identified. Mr. Darryl Poh, a factory supervisor and key grassroots leader of the Gahmen, has been brutally murdered by members of the Gentlemen. The Gahmen deplores such barbaric acts, and the entire State weeps for the loss of a good, kind, faithful man.”
There was a general rumble of laughter at the table.
“Good, kind, faithful man,” someone said. “Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t they?”
The rest of the Elders chortled in genial approval. Beng made himself join in, but there was something in his laughter that sounded a little hard and harsh, even to himself. But the self-doubt was more likely to go away if he didn’t let himself think about it, and so he diverted his mind to pleasanter things.
Printed on the ground in chalk, next to Darryl Poh’s body:
GAHMEN PIGS
DIE
LIKE DOGS
THE GENTLEMEN WIN