The Gatekeeper

by Nuraliah Norasid

  He was the first to attack, but Altan was ready for him, and in a blink he was heels up, head down against the bars, the noise of the impact reverberating amidst a cacophony of hoots and cheers. Altan blocked most of Eedric’s initial attacks and came at him with keen counters honed, it seemed, by years of fights in rough underworld life. Eedric had no such experience but every hit made him meaner, added to the buzzing in his head so that all he could see, smell and hear was his opponent. Every successful attack became frighteningly narcotic and with every moment that passed, he adapted, got faster and better, until he was the one landing all the hits, taking few, feeling nothing.

  Something told him to stop. Maybe it was the hands that tried to restrain him. Maybe it was Sani looking up shakily at him from where he was still sprawled on the floor. Maybe it was Altan’s body slumped against the wall, face smashed into it, arms limp by his sides.

  There was a laugh, low and guttural, but so strangely sad. It took his fight-addled mind a while to realise that it was actually emanating from him.

  With the first jolt of shocking pain, he thought he had been shot. With the second, he fought his body’s reflex to jump away, and in doing so he froze up. He thought of Ria’s eyes as he fell to the ground, still aware though immovable. For all of their treachery, they were still so damn beautiful.

  They brought him to a new cell, where there was bedding for two and a corner for washing up, as well as a standard flush-enabled piss pot. The cell was better lit with a small barred window high up that brought in sounds from the outside—birds, the quiet hum of vehicles coming in and out, people speaking in low voices and smoking too from the smell of it.

  “Sorry, ‘Bang,” the young guard said as he turned the lock of the cell door, “standard protocol.”

  Eedric wondered if this skinny little Human was the one who’d tased him. He tried to see what was holstered at his belt but just as he was stepping back, another guard came along with another inmate and asked for the cell door to be unlocked. He felt almost sorry for the little man as he did as he was told with shaking hands, his inferior rank painfully conspicuous upon the epaulets of his uniform. The new inmate they shoved in with him was Sani, still battered but significantly cleaned up.

  “Lockup is full,” the new guard said to Eedric as if he was trying to explain something. “No more solitary cells. In-processing very busy.”

  Eedric stared at the man with as much emotion as an unpainted pet rock. “Did you manage to find her?” Eedric asked, his voice level. “The medusa?”

  The two guards exchanged a glance, both appearing rather puzzled. Finally, the second one spoke, “All the women are in another facility, sir.”

  Eedric nodded but said nothing. He didn’t move when they left, barely noticing the way Sani slunk past him to sit on the bed, or the way the other assessed him from behind his mangy fringe. He wore a shirt the guards had given him. It was grey and oversized, making him appear lankier than he already was.

  “Are you from one of the other settlements?” Sani asked him.

  Eedric turned away from the bars he had been staring at to look at his cellmate. He felt nothing but disinterest for Sani even though moments before, he’d very nearly torn a man’s throat open for him. All the fight was gone from Eedric and there was only numbness in the aftermath.

  “Hey, where are you from?” Sani asked. “I have never seen you before, so you must not be from Nelroote.”

  “Do you know Ria?” Eedric found himself asking in return.

  Something in Sani’s countenance changed at the mention of her name. Eedric couldn’t tell if it was hope, or joy, or maybe even fear.

  “Kak Ria?” Sani replied. “How do you know her?”

  Eedric couldn’t answer him. He found himself without words to describe either the meeting or the relationship they’d had.

  Sani stared at him and seemed to understand. “You’re that Changer who came to the settlement, aren’t you?” The boy hung his head, shaking it.

  Eedric clenched his jaws and turned away for a brief moment. Jerking his head in a vague direction, he went on to ask, “They were going to kill you. Why?”

  Sani clenched his jaw and looked down at his feet. “You… I—ah, I don’t know how you know Kak Ria, but you…you don’t need to know anything about this, or me…or what I did. I know that you just—” He grabbed at his hair as he sighed. “Thank you, man. Really. But…”

  “A man might have died today,” Eedric said, calmly, almost coldly.

  “Thanks, man… But what I did…” Then Sani shot up suddenly. “You don’t know what life is like there. You don’t know what it’s like carrying the stuff in your pocket, the meetings in the dark, taking money, paying… I am only a student. I want to graduate. I want to get a degree and get out of that hole! But every time I want to, every time I tried… It’s always—they always bring up the old connections. Just because I wanted a better life, I am selfish. Just because I have an education, I am stuck-up.”

  Eedric’s gaze continued to be fixed upon him.

  Desperately, he went on: “When they said I should tell them everything, where… What… And who… What can I do, man? What the fuck can I do?”

  “You told them?” Eedric asked quietly as the truth began to dawn on him. “You told them about Nelroote?”

  “What the hell was I supposed to do?” demanded Sani. “With the amount of drugs I was carrying, it would have been the noose for me. I am only a student! I never wanted this!”

  “What else did you tell them?”

  Sani fell silent.

  “What else did you tell them?” shouted Eedric as he came in close.

  “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Eedric had him by the collar, had him against a wall.

  “They sacked the entire settlement and they did not stop there,” Eedric bit out. With slow emphasis, he repeated, “What else did you tell them?”

  Sani’s mismatched eyes met his, before the former swallowed and then replied, “I told them about…the sisters.” Eedric drew him forward and slammed him back. Sani hissed at the pain. Eedric didn’t care. “There was nothing else I could say that would save me.”

  Eedric waited, his heart pounding, blood throbbing in his temples. Finally, Sani all but whined, “They were—they were interested in certain individuals, they said, so I told them about Kak Bara… Kak Ria… Thinking…”

  The growl that escaped from Eedric’s lips surprised even him, but Sani was too far gone to care. When Eedric released him, he slid to the floor as if melting into a pool of himself, sobbing. Eedric didn’t notice. A wildness had seized him but the aggression was without direction. He paced. He bloodied his hands trashing the sink, fluff flew from ravaged mattresses musky with smells of others before him. There was a confused turmoil of what-could-have-beens and failure, and of loss and regret.

  He turned suddenly to Sani. He was breathless when he said, “Do you know what you did? My father is dead. An entire estate is dead.”

  Sani stared at him, his expression a cross between horror and disbelief. “That wasn’t my fault!”

  “Yes,” said Eedric, “but all of that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t told them.”

  “They said that was what they wanted. Needed. Said they would leave the settlement alone after cleaning it up,” Sani explained, reaching an open palm to Eedric. “They said I would be granted immunity!” Softly, he added, petering out as he did, “And protection. For myself, my family. I had to choose. I had...to choose...” He sat back against the wall, tilting up his damaged face and closing his eyes. “They lied.”

  “Of course they did,” Eedric replied and sank down to the floor directly opposite Sani. He knew they’d put the younger man in the cell with him in the hope that he’d finish what Altan had started.

  He’d always thought Manticura’s law and order was the best in this part of the Layeptic. Suspects always seemed to be apprehended in record time, and a woman needn�
��t fear going to a twenty-four hour eatery for supper at three in the morning. Yet, when the people in the system were in some way significant enough, by some order of a shadow, the Manticurean prison was a terrifying nexus to be in.

  “Of course they did,” he said again, quieter this time. He leaned his head back against the wall.

  Eedric found out that Sani had served national service in the same camp as he had, only three batches later. Sani had pursued a liberal arts degree, whilst his family had wanted him to become a doctor. Eedric found that the grass was only greener or browner wherever your feet did not tread: “There is more to see,” said Sani about life on the surface. “It isn’t perfect. The more animal you look, the more people will treat you like shit, but at least you’re not looking over your shoulder all the time. Food don’t taste like it’s been in a cupboard for ten years. The air’s fresher too and you can get educated as long as you have the papers. Sometimes, when I’m up here, I forget about the dead bodies that turn up at the crossing between Mati and Styx every other Monday.” He grew quiet, regarding the wall above Eedric’s head, where new scratch marks crisscrossed over old ones. “And then I remember that all this is an illusion too, and underground is still where the family’s at, the hearts and the loved ones. I don’t even know if they’re even still alive.”

  Sani had been punching the walls. It took a long time for the yun scales to split and for the skin beneath to break. Blood seeped through the cracks and crevices, like tree sap through wounded bark.

  When they called for Sani, Eedric found that he was truly sorry to see the man leave. He had watched him fluctuate between despondency and frantic anger. There was nothing he could do or say to make the situation any better, or to drive away the reality that possessed them. He eyed the two guards standing just beyond the cell door, quelling a sudden desire to kill, to fight, and stood when the other stood.

  “Hey,” he said to Sani, balling his hands into the pockets of his pants, “your family will be all right.”

  “Yeah…” drawled Sani. The shadows beneath his eyes were darker than before. Eedric had heard, too, the nights of fretful sleep, full of tossing and turning, of quiet murmuring and the occasional prayer for a family’s safety.

  Sani held out a hand and Eedric grasped it. He watched Sani being led down the short corridor to disappear around the sharp corner with its tiny window, high up and out of reach.

  When Eedric was finally called, he expected to be led to a room for another round of questioning. Instead he was merely led through a series of gates and then down a corridor with a window stretching along one side. The room within was dark so he couldn’t see into it, only himself, his face hollowed and gaunt, his hair matted and appearing somewhat sparse as if he had tugged it out in patches. His hands were cuffed. “Sorry, ‘Bang, standard protocol,” another young officer told him kindly as he clapped the irons across his wrists. Daripada tadi standard protocol, he thought.

  They took his cuffs off just before a set of solid metal double doors. As they did so, he couldn’t get over the fact that just above the threshold of freedom, a pair of security cameras watched their every move, transmitting his every reaction to a networked set of blue-hued screens, the seconds running in a bottom corner tagging breath per breath.

  He didn’t know which was worse, the seemingly endless transit through a deadened corridor or the sterile room he found himself in later. Two paintings and a potted plant on facing walls directed the viewer’s eyes to the glass doors at the far end. In the room of perfect symmetry, Stepmother waited with an officer, both dwarfed by his uncle, whom he hadn’t seen in years. He was surprised to see them. Of all the people who he thought would bail him out, he had not expected them.

  That surprise gave way to sudden meekness and overwhelming guilt. He desired nothing more than to be shackled again and be turned back to the cell with its scratched up walls where he would await his trial. He could not meet their eyes, and felt himself choke on the incomprehension that was his tongue. More than that, he sought answers, and justice, anything before he was going to accept this revolving door prison with its dirty and convenient ways of getting rid of the people. Only, right then, he didn’t know where to begin searching.

  Stepmother was the first to step forward but he could feel his uncle’s eyes on him, the eyes that were Mama’s and his. In a brief glance, he saw the lines on the man’s face and jowls that framed it like parentheses.

  He could say nothing to the man, and to Stepmother all he could manage was, “I’m sorry.”

  Stepmother appeared to be on the verge of tears. For all of Father’s shortcomings, Stepmother had still loved him. She shook her head and reached out to touch the edge of his T-shirt sleeve.

  On their drive to Stepmother’s family home, where he would stay while awaiting his trial, Eedric asked that they stop by his uncle’s house so that he could see Grandma—his Nenek. A premonition of bad things to come—imprisonment, exile or the death penalty— called at him to do so. Besides, he also owed his only surviving grandparent a visit.

  Stepmother turned the car only after asking for directions. When they were there, she would not go inside with Eedric and his uncle. Said it wasn’t her place and that it wasn’t right. She’s a good woman, Eedric thought as he looked back at her sitting in the car, dabbing at her eyes with a pale handkerchief. She had him to put the blame on, but she didn’t. She saw bigger pictures while he was blinkered into smaller, selfish details.

  Seeing that, he turned around and surprised her when he opened the car door again. He reached in and touched her hand, really quickly, before he left.

  Nenek was wheelchair-bound now, small and thin, her eyes rheumy, wispy hair worn under the kind of thick knitted cap old women liked to wear. She saw him and greeted him with near toothless volume, “Ah, Maria datang pun!” He had to smile as he took her wrinkled hand in both of his by way of returning her greeting; got on his knees and brought the hand to his nose and lips. He detected the scent of medicated oil on her skin. The flat still smelt like cinnamon and betel nut, and the radio station continued to whisper its oldies and boy band ballads in the background.

  “Yah,” he told her, not looking up. “Maria is here now.”

  Severances

  Ria waited, perched in a tree a distance away from the open entrance to Nelroote, concealed in darkness. The cold cover of the foliage was laced with dew from the approaching morning. She had not thought to find her way to Nelroote on her own. Even with how small Manticura was, it had taken her a little over three days and many false turns, which had in turn taken her to farms, other lavish out-of-the-way estates, and a military training ground. All of which she had turned away from, because Rose Ville would have served its purpose. The nationwide panic, the questions—there would be no hiding; no burying her under layers of cover-ups and diversions. Not any bloody more.

  A sound caused her to tense. She drew her legs up and curled herself into a tight ball against the sturdy trunk of the tree to watch through the gaps in the leaves. There was nothing, perhaps an animal darting within the semak-samun. So she continued to watch, hesitant to approach the entrance until she could be sure whether it was guarded or abandoned.

  The first time she had crossed a threshold much like the one she was watching felt like a lifetime ago, even for a medusa. She couldn’t remember Acra’s face now. Only that, for a time, he’d meant so much to a girl who’d done terrible things. She remembered the void that existed after a departure; not a void that was all black, nameless and featureless, but one filled with everything that was empty of the departed. She wondered if that was what it was like for Eedric now that she had left him.

  After some time, she could hear the sound of booted feet. She waited for the squad to pass—two men in full helmets and dark uniforms, alert as they walked, rifles pointed down and neither of them speaking. They paused at the entrance to sweep their rifle lights down the tunnel within. It occurred to her how easily anyone could have found the
entrance. Eedric had. And now these soldiers. All it took was for someone to look. For someone to tell them where to look. At this point, she didn’t care who did. Only that what she had planned would come to fruition.

  She made her way down from the tree. The last foothold that she missed woke her to how out of practice she was in the whole art of tree-climbing. She fell, and there was no one waiting below to catch her this time. She landed hard on her right ankle, the pain forcing her momentarily to her knees on the leaf-littered ground below. She picked herself up and tried her weight on the injured foot before getting herself to walk.

  The soldiers were already turning to her, guns pointed, as she approached. She noticed that they were wearing light armour and helmets with visors of glowing green eyes—fully equipped to be mobile, to move fast and delay the effects of her gaze. But even the most seasoned soldiers could only plan on a fraction of certainties. One of them stared at her down his sight, and that was enough. Her hair framed her face and she was able to cover the distance between them within the milliseconds it took him to start curving his finger around the trigger. The world around her seemed to heave and buckle, wavering as if viewed from underwater.

  When the first man started to grey over she turned to the other. He had his face averted, gazing at a miniature image of her within a small circular mirror that he wore strapped to his inner wrist. He could have shot her. He had every chance to. Instead he started to run, to get away, but she caught up with him, rounding his body to stand before him. She almost smiled. She remembered now that she had always smiled when a soldier chanced upon the chamber. She’d thought that smiling was a balm against what she was meant to do. It was no balm, however. Just as breathing the surface air was no boon for those who’d lived all their lives without ever seeing the sun.