by Lu Huiyi
Beng took a step back. Sharp shards of rock pierced his skin, and pain lanced up his foot at once. The floor was completely shattered, all rubble and dust around him.
We can kill them all.
“I’m here,” Beng gasped. “I’m here, I’m in control, what did I do—”
Elder Francis sat serene before him. Beng reached out without thinking and his fingertips grazed the Elder’s face. There was a thin rivulet of blood, making its slow journey down the older man’s forehead and cheek.
“Shit, I’m sorry—”
“You need to listen to me,” said Elder Francis, steady despite the head injury. Beng fell silent, and Elder Francis went on, his voice clear and commanding. “I know you want to save your brother. You’ll only be able to do it if you calm down and listen to me.”
Beng felt like he had done enough listening for a lifetime, and he still didn’t know the ins and outs of the whole thing—who was right, and what was true? But there was no utility in contesting the point. He only had Elder Francis, and Elder Francis had the powers of both the Gentlemen and the Gahmen arrayed on his side. Beng could only hope to keep himself on that side of the line as well, if he was to have any hope of finding and saving his brother.
“You need to help Huat,” he said at last, a concession to the only truth he had left—a concession that felt a little like defeat, and a lot like homecoming.
Beng had never seen the slave ships for himself. In all his time with the Gentlemen, he had never had the opportunity to go to the ports where they circled like vultures, and he had possessed no desire to either. What he could infer from Elder Francis was that they were massive monstrous affairs, operated by a loose alliance of Gahmen thugs and nomadic pirates from across the region, feats of modern-day engineering that were capable of ferrying people back and forth between the other Southeast Asian nations.
Beng had thought that being stripped of citizenry had been bad, but to become enslaved on the ships was a fate far worse for its irreversibility. A non-citizen could hope and work to meet the CARE criteria, but the ships were so tightly guarded that it was nearly impossible to escape once on board. Over time, the labour forces on the ships had become more than just a collection of vulnerable abductees, but also of convicted criminals that the Gahmen had not seen a point in building prisons for, as well as any political prisoners who had finally said or rebelled too much.
Elder Francis said that Huat was on one of the ships, but not yet put to work, and very much safe and alive—albeit incapacitated. Beng was sceptical of at least half of the statement. He remembered talk of the ships on the night of the assault, and he didn’t trust anything that the Gahmen had a hand in.
“I want to talk to him,” he said.
Elder Francis placed a hand on Beng’s shoulder, and Beng forced himself to hold still and accept the unwanted contact.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Elder Francis demurred. “The Gentlemen’s alliance with the Gahmen is still in its infant stages, and we wouldn’t want to compromise it by breaking their trust. And bringing the powerful brother of a terrorist figure—yes, Beng, your brother acted like a radical, and you have to accept that that’s how people will see it—onto the ship where he is? That definitely threatens any ties that we’ve built so far. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
It wasn’t like he could do much else. Since the debriefing meeting after City Hall, Beng hadn’t been allowed to leave the Training Institute much, much less meet anyone or do anything unless chaperoned by the watchful eye of Elder Francis himself.
“You promised that you would keep him safe,” Beng pointed out.
“And Archibald is very safe,” said Elder Francis. “Safe from doing anyone any harm.”
He lies, he lies.
“If anyone has hurt him—” Beng began, trying to clamp down on the Power’s rising anger, but not very hard. It was getting a little more difficult each time to resist the Power, especially because he felt himself to be in increasing agreement with it, against the very organisation that had taught him to control himself.
“Nobody has, and will hurt him,” said Elder Francis quickly. “As long as you continue to serve the Gentlemen, I will fight for the safety of your brother. And perhaps when he repents, we can bring him back into the fold.”
“I’m holding you to that,” said Beng. And he had thought that he, with little power to negotiate, was pleading for mercy, but with the quiet whisper of the Power undergirding his words, it felt a little more like a threat.
Clean-up operations took a few months.
It was heavy work, a good part of it menial, and with a substantial amount of time spent on crushing and destroying rubble and debris so as to make it easier to manage. Beng ended every day in such deep exhaustion that despite his worry for Huat, sleep came easy. The Power, too, was so thoroughly worn out that it could manage little more than a low-key murmur.
Sometimes the other trainees, those who had spent time at the Institute to harness their unexpected gifts, were also sent to work on clean-up. But Beng noticed that he was the only one who was scheduled to work there every day. He supposed that the others were frequently despatched on missions more central to the objectives of the Gentlemen—perhaps the kind of destroy missions he had been sent on before, or constructing and safeguarding key infrastructure, or anything of greater importance than just shifting heavy loads onto waiting wheelbarrows.
A part of Beng itched to be useful again.
It was the part that had been forged through the pain of training and of the crushing of whatever spirit he’d had before. For too long he had fed off the pleasure and pride of being a crucial weapon of the Gentlemen. To have his brother in disgrace, and himself relegated to menial labour, was something of a let-down.
It was only towards the tail end of the clean-up that he was summoned to another mission briefing.
“You say he is loyal to you,” the harsh voice of the Chief rang out, as Beng felt out the contours of the chair he had been guided to, and took a seat.
“I know he is,” said Elder Francis. “He’s had many chances to flout authority over the past few months, but he has shown himself to be loyal.”
“If he manages this task—” the Chief’s words were practically dripping with doubt— “I’ll believe it.”
“What do you want me to do?” Beng asked, cutting into the by-play before him. There was a rustle of paper, and then the chair creaked as Elder Francis leaned forward.
“We need you to speak with Archibald,” he said.
Beng, who had been expecting some kind of clean kill mission, was understandably bamboozled.
“Sure,” he said. “It’s not like I haven’t been asking to do that for months now.”
“Listen to me,” said Elder Francis. “You need to convince him to return to the fold. He needs to take the pledge again and get a tracking implant, and then he can resume duties under the Gentlemen. I promised I would look after your brother, Beng. You have worked hard these few months. This is your reward.”
It didn’t feel like a reward.
“Implant?”
“Just a simple tracker, nothing more—”
Beng frowned.
“You forget that I’ve experience with the kind of crap they implant in people,” he said, voice growing hard and angry. “It’s not a simple tracker, it’s a goddamn time bomb. No matter what Huat has done, he doesn’t need to be treated like a common criminal—”
There was a grating squeal and then a thud, as one of the chairs half slid, half flew against the wall, and the Chief sprang to her feet.
“I don’t have time for this kind of sissy bullshit,” snapped the Chief, slamming her hands down on the table. She was an endless burst of movement, feral and fast enough that it made Beng’s head spin to track her movements. “You talk to your brother and tell him why exactly he should learn to be loyal to the right people. And then if he doesn’t, you kill him.”
“Now, Mada
m—” Elder Francis began.
“You kill him,” she repeated. “Or I’ll end you. You know I will.”
Beng felt a stirring of the soul, something akin to the old defiance that he used to nurse, and yet not totally unlike the childish cruel bleating of the Power.
“Just so we’re entirely clear,” he said, blood rushing in his ears. “You’re trying to blackmail me into killing my own brother.”
He is all we have left.
“It doesn’t have to be like that, if Archibald sees sense—” said Elder Francis.
Beng could almost hear the beating of his own heart, the steady thump like war drums cutting into the current of useless conversation around him. He straightened up a little, and as he rose to his feet, the tension in the room increased so much as to be almost unbearable.
“My brother fought on my side when the Gahmen implanted a tracker that could kill me. My brother was a key part of the Gentlemen. Anyone who swears loyalty to the Gentlemen should also swear loyalty to Huat.”
“Oh,” said Elder Francis. Beng was not stupid enough to mistake the utterance for concession or compromise.
There was a brief pause. When Elder Francis spoke again, his voice was cool and unconcerned, the way Beng remembered him being at the start of training. It was as though he had shed his good-cop mask of nervous sympathy in a mere instant, and that was how Beng knew he had crossed the limits of the Elder’s forbearance.
“If you want to see it that way,” Elder Francis went on.
“I told you he was useless,” said the Chief, irritable as always. “We should’ve gotten rid of him and his whole traitor family.”
Beng rolled his shoulders.
“I don’t think this is going anywhere,” he said casually, but the Power was already spoiling for a fight. He loosened his reins on the Power a little and slipped seamlessly into a fighting style, so naturally and smoothly that he was barely cognisant of having done so.
“Stay,” snapped the Chief, as if talking to a misbehaving dog. There were brief clicks, and sounds of shuffling—Beng knew at once what they meant.
“I know your guards have their weapons trained on me right now,” he said, deliberately keeping his voice steady and light. “But you might have underestimated how much I can destroy—and how fast I can move.”
“Stay,” she repeated. Her voice was like ice. The Power hated it.
Beng felt the creeping control of the Power making its way over his consciousness. As usual, it was a fine balancing act to ensure that he would stay in control. It was harder this time round, when he loathed the Chief so much, and yet was desperately invested in ensuring that Huat was going to stay alive.
He settled for wrapping unrelenting fingers of air around the Chief’s throat and then slamming her hard into the nearest wall. There was a distinct crack and a wet, drawn-out gasp of pain.
It was very satisfying. He had expected it to be.
There was a bit of a commotion, before the guards rallied to her defence. But when one of them turned his weapon onto Beng, Beng allowed the grip on her throat to tighten further, until she was choking out incoherent gurgling demands to her men to stand down.
It was only when the guards had dropped their arms that Beng permitted her just enough leeway to breathe. She gagged a little, pressed against the wall, flakes of plaster drifting to the ground around her. Her legs were kicking uselessly, a metre from the ground.
This was the kind of cruelty that Beng would have balked at in the past, but she wasn’t dead, so Beng didn’t care very much. Lithe and little, she suddenly seemed a lot less like a menacing bloodthirsty leader, but more like a young girl, helpless and bird-like in her slightness. But Beng had experienced enough of her vrutality to not yield to pity; her seeming vulnerability only pleased him and the Power more.
“Where is my brother?” he demanded.
She made an abortive movement, lifting her head despite being pinned down by his Power, probably to glare at him.
“You—listen—”
Another tendril of strength, snapping her finger with an audible crack. She made a bitten-off sound of pain, but did not scream.
“Tell me!”
He had had her in his grip long enough that she must be starting to turn a little blue, and her wheezing was thick with pain. But somehow, she managed to spit in his general direction.
Another finger.
This time she seemed to almost black out from the pain, going limp for a brief moment, but then she regained enough control of her faculties to hover on the edges of consciousness. The Power was singing in his blood, proud.
“This could get very messy,” said Beng. “It’s really your choice how much you want to drag this out.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
The Chief—in spite of the pain she must be in, and the fact that he was the one with the upper hand at the moment—laughed. At that same moment, Beng felt a growing wetness on his forearms, and the warmth and tang of it made him realised that she was bleeding out—it was as though her skin was splitting itself open into a hundred tiny cuts and spilling her blood onto him. Beng was briefly confused. He hadn’t done anything to induce this, and he had control enough over the Power that he knew exactly what kind of destruction he meant to wreak upon the Chief, and what mercy he intended to afford her.
Then she despatched a wild force—not deadly and precise like his, but crazy and huge like a tidal wave of rage or insanity, enveloping his being and throwing him so hard against a far wall that for a moment he thought his back might have been broken. He tried to get up, but the moment he had gotten himself into a trembling crouch, her mad strength caught him again and sent him flat on his back again, gasping from the impact of it.
“You think you’re special just because you have power,” she said, breathless, voice trembling—but why? She had the upper hand now. “But I am the Original, the strongest there is. You cannot defeat me.”
Then a scrape of her boots on concrete as she moved abruptly to throw up, a guttural sound of primal pain. The metallic tang of blood filled the air.
Then the burly mannish hands of her guards caught at him—he tried to squirm away—someone or something hit him, and pain blossomed in his head—and then he knew no more.
Chapter 9
He woke.
There were footsteps, startlingly close to his head. He was lying down. The floor was hard, and hot with the afternoon sun. Also damp, and none too clean.
The floor was moving. Rhythmic rocking movements, that made him a little giddy.
The air smelled fresh, but with the tinge of salt and stench that always came with the—the sea.
The sea.
He was on a ship.
The ships.
THE SHIPS.
The ships were run by pirates, and the pirates trafficked their slaves. Everyone knew that.
Beng willed himself to not freak out. Once his breathing had evened out, he tried to sit up. He managed only with great difficulty, because his hands were chained and he couldn’t move his feet at all. It felt like there were great weights on them.
The chatter around him had stilled as he came to. His captors (who?) must have noticed, which meant that his chances of escape were growing slimmer and slimmer by the minute. He reached out to the Power, which was weakly stirring, as if dazed. His hands, first. If at full strength, they could have gone through the shackles like butter. But the Power wasn’t quite itself yet, so they began the slow grind of sawing through the metal chains.
“You sure you want to do that?” The Chief’s voice rang out, caustic and mocking.
Beng ignored her. He willed himself to move faster but it was useless; he felt sluggish and slow.
“I’m just saying,” the Chief went on. “Maybe you can get free in time, but wouldn’t you like to know who I have in front of you right now? In front of you, chained up, with a knife to his throat, if you want to be a little more precise.”
Beng stopped moving.
“You let him go,” Beng said. He made a herculean effort and finally the metal links around his left wrist gave a little. He began to nudge at it more, frantically, with the corners of his mind.
Two things happened very quickly.
A great jagged force launched itself at him, slamming his arm back onto the floorboards. The bones in his wrist shifted with the force of it and he gritted his teeth against the pain. Then the sound of something slicing through fabric and flesh, and a barely choked-back gasp from Huat, followed by a similar sound from the Chief.
“Huat!”
“I—I’m okay,” Huat managed, sounding distinctly not okay.
“You think you can do anything just because you’ve got some power,” the Chief snapped. “I told you to stop. You want Archibald to die? Because I told you, I am the Original, and I could kill him so easily—I could.”
She was gasping for breath, deep guttural wet sounds, between every few syllables, but trying valiantly to hide it.
Why? He hadn’t struck her since he’d regained consciousness; he hadn’t been able to fight back.
“That’s your trigger. Your power hurts you,” said Beng, with a flash of realisation. “It hurts you when you use it.”
I want to hurt her, said the Power, apropos of nothing, sounding far more awake and responsive than it had in a while.
“I’m going to give you a choice,” said the Chief, as though Beng hadn’t said anything at all.
“You must be crazy to think that I would believe that for even a second.”
“Just go, just go—” Huat pleaded. There was a vicious thump and he trailed off into a groan of pain.
“You leave him alone!” Beng snapped, struggling fruitlessly against the combined efforts of his shackles and the Chief’s oppressive power. She laughed, but it sounded like she was in pain. Beng made sure to constantly move and fight against her strength, so that it would continually consume more of her in turn.