Akaela (9 page)

*
 
*
 
*

Niwang is the most horrific
punishment. People sentenced to Niwang are deactivated and disconnected from
their batteries until all life is drained from their body. But the same threat
comes with every Wela. Once deactivated, they take you away to a place where
you could be forgotten and never reactivated again. Family and friends are
expected to show up at the end of the Wela and claim you back, but that doesn’t
always happen. Sometimes people are too ashamed to do that. Years of obedience
and acceptance have made the Mayakes more resilient to loss than shame.

I charge
down the stairs, hot tears rolling down my cheeks.
 
 

This isn’t happening. Can’t be happening
.

I slam
through the fire door at the end of the stairs and run down the hallway toward
the auditorium. The Kiva doors swing open and Mom comes out sobbing, followed
by the muffled voices of the men and women still inside.

I sneak
behind Mom, squeeze her arm, and drag her around the corner into a side
corridor.

Mom
flinches, her face corrugated in a million fears.

“You’ve
got to do something, Mom,” I hiss. I shake her shoulders and stare into her
face until I see it: the shame, the fear, welling up in my mom’s eyes.

“What have
you done?” she whispers.

When you see fear, you’ll recognize it. But
you won’t understand it.

My
dad’s voice, from a long time ago.

Learn to fear, Akaela, even if you can’t feel
it
.
You’ll be in danger if you don’t.

Why, Dad? How can I be harmed by not being
fearful
?

Dad’s
handsome face looking into the dying sun.

Because those who don’t fear can’t
be controlled
.

I step
backwards, away from my own mother. I see it now, the fear that controls her. She
looks over her shoulder and nibbles the hook of her prosthesis. Would she be
capable of giving me up? Just like she is incapable of defending Athel, her own
son? Does she even wonder whether he’s been unjustly condemned?

I shake my
head. “Please don’t do this to yourself.”

She tilts
her head and mouths, “What have you done?” No sound comes out of her throat. She
turns away and vanishes down the hallway.

I’ve done nothing, Mom,
I think.
But she can’t hear my thoughts. She wouldn’t hear them even if I yelled my head
off.

The doors
to the Kiva Hall swing open again and the Kiva Members start filing out. I hide
around the corner and flatten against the wall. One by one, they all leave the
big auditorium: Uli first, then the old Kiva Member who harassed me about Ash, then
the man named Tahari. Many more come out, heads shaking and lips voicing
thoughts of shock and incredulity.

“We need
to go back to the roots of our people. Trust and honesty are the pillars,” I
hear Tahari say as his steps resonate down the hallway.

“Trust and
honesty,” a few others echo behind him.

And then
silence settles again. Empty silence where a long, dead corridor looks like an
endless prison.

Where do I go now? Where
?

Athel
.

Nobody
took Athel out of the Kiva Hall.

*
 
*
 
*

Wes paces back and forth between
the molded walls of the sixtieth floor. The wind howls inside and makes the
vines sway. There’s no moon tonight, hidden behind a thick veil of clouds, leaving
the abandoned wing of the Tower in complete darkness.

Wes sighs
and waves his long, bony arms in the air. “We can’t hide forever!”

“What else
do you propose we do?” Lukas challenges him, his eyes, as always, fixed on his
data feeder. Blue light from the screen washes on his face.

I sit in a
corner and ruffle Kael’s feathers. When I whistled, even wounded and tired, he
left his perch on our windowsill and flew to me.
You’re like me, Kael. We know no fear. That’s why we’re free
.

Too bad it comes at a price
.

“They
caught Athel red-handed,” I say, my voice bitter. “Even if we go talk to them,
they won’t believe us.”

I saw it
in my mother’s eyes. I see it so clearly, now, what Athel had tried to tell me,
why he knew there was no point in talking to them. Not even Uli.

Uli was
there, too. He said a few words in Athel’s favor and then gave up.

Wes starts
pacing again. Lukas thumbs through his data feeder. The wait kills me.

Wait for what?

Nothing’s going to happen unless we make it
happen
.

I pet Kael
and then stand up. I lean from the ledge through the broken walls and inhale,
the wind carrying the scent and chant of the Kawa River. The Tower has finally
grown quiet. No more voices, no more children crying, no more people
chattering. Only the distant snore from one of the floors below.

They should be sleeping by now
.

Kael hops
to my feet. I pick him up, croon softly in his ears, and let him fly back home.
I watch him spiral in the sky above, then dip down toward the lower floors and
vanish.

“I’m
going,” I announce.

“Where?”
Wes asks, his eyes shining in the darkness.

“To wake
up Athel,” I reply, crossing the floor in wide strides.

Lukas
jumps to his feet. “Wait, what? Are you nuts? There’s no such—no. That is
so wrong!”

I turn and
stare at him, his gaunt face a blue ghost under the light from the data feeder.
“Right. Let’s just stay here and do nothing then. In the meantime, our fathers
are in no less danger than before while Athel is incapacitated for a week.”

Lukas
swallows, the hint of an Adam’s apple bobbing up and down his long neck. “I
didn’t say that. It’s just—nobody has ever dared break a Wela. It’s unprecedented.”

“In this case,
it’s unfair, too.”

Wes’s
bulging eyes move back and forth between Lukas and me. “Aren’t you scared?” He says.
“I mean, we’re already in trouble as it is. If you get caught doing this…”

“Besides,”
Lukas interjects. “You wake him up and then what? Once they find out, they’re
going to issue a Niwang this time. For both you.”

“Exactly,”
I reply. “So I wake him up and then we leave.”

Lukas
blinks, Wes gapes.

I slap a
hand against my side and exhale. “I can’t believe you’re such cowards,” I say.
And with that, I leave the floor and stomp down the stairs.

“Akaela!
Wait!” Lukas comes running after me, slinging the satchel across his shoulders.

“You’re
not leaving me here by myself, are you?” Wes calls.

*
 
*
 
*

I stare at the Kiva doors, black
and ominous, the same doors no Mayake can cross until the age of eighteen.
Unless they’ve done something wrong, of course, in which case they shall enter
with their head down, only to never be admitted again.

There are
no guards, no alarms,
no
locks. They aren’t needed.
The locks are inside the mind. I raise my hand and touch the black metal, cold
against my skin. Wes and Lukas are behind me.

“Are you
sure about this?” Wes whispers. “We could be damned forever.”

“Look
who’s complaining,” Lukas snaps. “If they find us, with those legs of yours,
you’re the only one with a real chance at not getting caught.”

He lowers
his eyes and mumbles, “I’d never leave you guys behind.”

“Nobody’s
leaving anyone behind,” I say. “And we’re not leaving Athel behind either.”

And with
that, I push the doors open.

Part II

Chapter Twelve

Akaela

I step inside and let the light
from the hallway carve the space in front of me, my shadow a long ghost
stretching between concentric rows of seats. I hear cautious steps behind me: Lukas
first, his thumbs squeaking on the screen of his data feeder, and then Wes, his
titanium blades dragging against the linoleum floors.

The door
closes behind us, the click echoes in the empty space.

Darkness
envelops us.

For a
moment, all I hear is our shallow breathing.

Then Lukas
shines his data feeder and I squint, watching silently as he sweeps the blade
of light across the auditorium. The space that looked so immense through
Athel’s eyes seems to have shrunk, carved one bit at a time by the beam. Arching
rows of seats hiccup all the way down to the semicircular stage, the chairs
where only a few hours earlier the Kiva Members had been sitting now disarrayed
and empty. Lukas points the data feeder to the podium and then across the black
screen hanging at the back, its gash looking like an eerie grin teasing us.

Wes
swallows loudly. “I don’t see Athel.”

“I know
he’s out here somewhere,” I reply. “That’s what they’d do: they wouldn’t just
issue seven days of Wela. They would leave Athel out here for everyone to see.”

Public
shame is the worst of punishments for the Mayake people.

“We better
get moving then,” Lukas says. He starts down the central aisle, the feeble beam
of light from his data feeder bobbing with his steps. As our footfalls resonate
across the long hall, I spot things lurking in the darkness, rapid movements at
the periphery of my eyes. I turn and see nothing.

“I think I
just saw somebody,” Wes whispers.

Lukas turns
and shines the light across the hall, from the vaulted, peeling ceiling, all
the way down to the double doors we came from.

“No,” he declares.
“It’s just your imagination.”

“But I saw
something!” Wes protests. “What if they’re hiding?”

I saw it too
, I think, but refrain from
saying anything.

“They
wouldn’t be hiding,” Lukas replies in his usual condescending tone. “If they
did guard the place, they wouldn’t even let us in. Akaela’s right. They don’t
need any guards because they know nobody would ever dare this much.” He
swallows, tunes down his voice, and adds, “That makes us either very brave or
complete fools.”

“Brave,” I
say, stomping all the way down the middle aisle and climbing the stairs up to
the stage. Lukas’s light follows me. Behind the podium, the row of empty chairs
is
misaligned,
the stern faces of the Kiva Members now
gone, yet still imprinted in my mind.

The way
they looked down on Athel, despising him.

How dare you steal, Athel
?

How dare you break the sanctity of the Kiva
Hall, Akaela
?

The voices
are in my head, my own thoughts haunting me, yet they feel so real I find
myself turning. Lukas and Wes stare at me wide-eyed, their cheeks carved out of
the darkness by the dim reflection from the data feeder.

“Athel’s
not here on the stage either,” Wes says. “You were wrong, Akaela. They must’ve
taken him away.”

 
“They never took him out of the
auditorium,” I reply. Our whispers echo eerily, as though somebody is taunting
us, repeating every word we say.

“Technically,”
Lukas chimes in, “you weren’t here immediately after they put him out.”

“Technically,”
I retort, grabbing his arm and redirecting the light to the back of the stage, “it’d
be hard to move a limp person around and not be noticed.”

Lukas
shrugs. “They could’ve used some secret passage.”

I bite my
lip. Dang it, I hadn’t thought of that. “Fine. Either we find Athel or we find the
passage they used to take him away.” I drag Lukas toward me and make him shine
the light on the black screen hanging at the back. A patch of gray, peeling
wall emerges from the gash that splits the screen in the middle.

I wish I
had Athel’s eyes right now and could see in the dark. The blackness around Lukas’s
dim beam feels ominous. A sudden longing for my brother takes hold of me, my
big brother who’s always been there for me, my big brother determined to rescue
our father.

There’s no going back now
, I think.
We’re not leaving until we find Athel
.

I crouch
down and pull up the hem of the black screen. Lukas slides his light underneath,
but all there is to see is a white wall—chipped and moldy and faded by
time. I crawl behind the screen, my hands groping the rugged texture of the
cold stucco. I knock softly on the wall looking for a secret passage, the way I’ve
seen Athel do every time we’ve gone exploring the abandoned wings of the Tower.
A shadow breathes in my face and tickles my skin. Lukas ducks under the screen
and shines the light in my eyes.

“Cobwebs,”
he says, matter-of-factly.

He moves
the light up and a sail of silvery strands hanging from the ceiling glimmers
under the beam, between the wall and the black screen. Something flutters at
the intrusive light and vanishes in a crack.

A bat, most likely, or a pigeon
.
 

I slide
along the wall and reemerge on the other side of the screen, plucking spider
webs off my face.

“Find
anything?” Lukas asks, shining the light once more all around the stage.

“No doors,
no secret passages,” I reply gloomily.

The
floorboards cave at the ends. They rattle under my steps.

“I think
we should go now,” Wes whimpers, bracing
himself
as
though he were cold.

I get down
on all fours and slide my fingers between the planks. “I think we should look
harder,” I retort.

I grope,
poke, and stomp but find no manhole or door handle. Lukas sways the light one
more time across the empty rows of seats. Every time the beam sweeps through I
swear the place looks different, as if taunting hands were rearranging minor details
here and there. Was the seat with the cracked back really at the end of the
third row? Wasn’t it two spots to the left instead? Wasn’t the big stain on the
first chair instead of the second one?

“What kind
of stage is this anyway?” Wes asks.

“Back when
the Tower was still a hospital,” Lukas lectures us, “the auditorium was
designed for seminars and conference meetings.”

“And now
it’s become another symbol of absolute power,” I say.

A power you betrayed, tonight, Akaela. And for
this, you shall be punished
.

The voices
in my head sound louder this time, and angrier. I want to yell back at the
voices, but Wes grabs my arm and squeezes so hard my fingers go numb.

“Did you see
that?”

Lukas
shifts his data feeder. The light falls on an empty seat.

“I swear
somebody was there a moment ago.”

Lukas
sweeps the light one more time from left to right. I expect him to start his
usual patronizing speech on how we’re being irrational and nobody could’ve
entered the place without opening the doors, but instead he remains quiet. The
light wavers over the empty rows of seats.

Wes leaps
down the stage. “Shine the light all the way to the door,” he says. “I’m outta
here.”

“What?” I
protest. “We haven’t found Athel yet!”

“He’s
obviously no longer here.”

Lukas’s
beam follows him as he climbs the slanted floor up to the main doors, his
shadow bobbing and growing against the peeling walls. The doors squeak gently
as he pushes them open and then close behind him with an ominous click.

In the
heavy silence that follows, I can hear every beat of my heart, every click of
my battery, every tic of my processors.

“I can’t
believe he’s leaving us like this!”

Lukas
sighs then he too climbs down the stage. “He’s right, Akaela. There’s nothing
here.”

I swallow,
a lump forming in my throat and refusing to leave. “We’ve come here risking
everything. We can’t leave without Athel.”

We’ve
violated the very heart of the Mayake culture and traditions, disobeyed one of
the most fundamental laws to save my brother, risking our own survival. And now
Lukas and Wes turn their backs on me.

Lukas sits
at the edge of the stage, his data feeder propped on his lap. The rest of the
space falls into a darkness so thick, it’s almost palpable.

“If we
leave now,” he says, “we won’t get caught.”

I stomp my
foot, the sound almost comforting in the blackness surrounding us. “You’re not
thinking about Athel.”

“Athel got
himself into trouble.”

His words
make me seethe. “He did it for our fathers! You know what? If you don’t have
the guts to do this, then go ahead and leave. I’ll find Athel on my own.” I spin
on my heels and once again face the black screen. Somehow I have a hunch that
Athel is there, behind that wall.

I just have to find a way through
.

I grope
until I find the fabric again and pull it, with anger this time. The screen
comes apart right along the gash in the middle.
I stare at
the uncovered white wall and, through the dim reflection from Lukas’s data
feeder
,
I finally see it
. A door ring, rusty
and gnawed, partially covered by a drooping flap of peeling wallpaper.

I found something
, I’m
tempted to say, but Lukas is not even looking at me, too busy thumbing the
screen of his data feeder.

He doesn’t deserve to find Athel. I do
.

I lean
forward and brush my fingers along the ring. It’s cold, almost icy, and as soon
as I touch it, all lights turn on. I squint, momentarily blinded by the sudden
brightness.

“You’ve
breached the most sacred of our rules, little girl,” the voice says, except
this time I know it’s no longer in my head. This time the voice is real.

I turn and
find Tahari standing in front of me, a deep frown etched across his forehead.
Yet his eyes twinkle with satisfaction, as though he enjoys catching me at
fault like this. I’m ready to snarl back at him, tell him what great injustice
he’s done to my brother—after all, at this point, what else have I got to
lose
?—
but something squirming in his hands makes
me freeze on the spot.

Ash
!

The evil
man is holding poor little Ash by the scruff. Behind him, a second Kiva Member rubs
his knotty hands together and then points at me. “Yes, that’s the girl,” he
says. “She took the cat in.”

Tahari turns
Ash belly up and examines him. “Wasting implants on animals,” he scolds.

“He’s just
a baby,” I protest, pounding against the man’s large stomach and reaching up on
my toes. “He needed help! Give him back to me!”

Tahari
pushes me away, making me fall and slam my head against the podium. I flip over,
looking for Lukas, but can’t spot him anywhere.

Have they taken him away or has he managed to
hide
?

A green fog
lingers on the stage. It’s thick and dense and keeps swirling and rising as if
it possessed a mind of its own. I stare wide-eyed at Tahari’s tall frame as it looms
over the fog, poor little Ash squirming in his twisted hand.

I’ve been
caught in the Kiva Hall, a crime that cannot be forgiven. The thought should
frighten me, yet all I can think of is my poor kitten, prisoner of such evil
man. And Athel. I failed to rescue Athel. Angry tears fill my eyes. I scramble
back to my feet, my legs heavy, as though held down by the ominous fog. I spot
more shadows moving in the mist. They look smaller, Wes and Lukas, maybe. I
want to yell at them to make a run for it, to leave the place before they get
caught, but there’s a lump in my throat, my voice lodged inside and refusing to
come out.

I stumble
against the chairs, push them away, and fling myself at Tahari. He moves away
and then laughs as I fall on my face and knees.

“You’ve
got nowhere to hide now, stupid little girl. You’re going to pay for this. You
and your pathetic little pet.” He clasps a hand around Ash’s belly and squeezes.
The poor kitten sways his head back and mews.

“No!” I
cry. “Let go of him!”

I try to
get back to my feet, but strong hands grab me from behind and hold me down.

“I’m
disappointed in you, Akaela.”

Uli
. Uli’s here too. He pins me to
the ground with his prosthetic arm and looks pitifully at me.

I thrash
my arms, trying to wrestle away from his grasp. “You don’t understand, Uli. I
can explain. I know Athel’s innocent. Yuri and Cal lied!”