NORAYA
She yelled. She couldn’t help it, Tania had her down
in a tight ankle-lock and it hurt.
She tapped her hand and Tania released her.
She heaved on the tatami. It was a rice-white knitting
of thin bamboo strips.
It smelt of floor detergent and treated wood.
“Your defense is weak, your endurance weaker,” Tania
commented, “Again.”
Noraya pushed up and regulated her breath as she
regained her balance.
She posed a battle stance and faced Tania.
They were in a mixed dojo for rent. The room was
theirs for another three hours.
Tania stood with her hands behind her back and
regarded her with a stoic expression. She wore an identical matte-white kimono
with her hair tied in a neat ponytail.
“Endure, Noraya,” said the woman, “Consume the pain
and alter its shape.”
Noraya hated her nonsensical lectures. She hated
defeat even more.
But she kept silent and prepared for the next assault.
Tania lurched and launched a flurry of attacks. Noraya
sidestepped and blocked the blows with her arms and palms.
She caught an opening and threw a punch to Tania’s
face.
Noraya didn’t know what happened next, but her thigh
was swiped, then her feet, and she was down. Tania pinned her, locked her ankle
and twisted.
Noraya held her tongue and balled her fist in an
agonized frown.
She yelled again a moment later.
They showered, packed and left the gym.
They stepped out the stairwell and blended into the
crowd of milling tourists, hecklers and shoppers in the night market.
The air was both enticement and assault. Sweat blended
with fake perfumes, roasted aromas and steamy scents.
Words and sentences hurled, murmured and conversed in
a cacophony of dialects, against roaring fry pans, cha-cha music, whirring
generators and weird sermons from cheap loudspeakers.
A river of bobbing phone-screens competed with the
stall lamps and glares of signboards.
Occasional camera flashes here and there.
They filed in with the congestion and crossed three
avenues through the bazaar, then entered another stairwell and climbed up to a
restaurant on the fifth floor.
“Muslim-Chinese,” Tania announced at the entrance,
“Xin-Jiang cuisine. You okay with this?”
She was in her business suit and flats again. Noraya
didn’t understand how she could walk so much and not break a sweat.
She shrugged nonchalantly at Tania and said nothing.
“You don’t talk much, do you?”
Nope. Noraya thought and shrugged again.
It was four months since the ‘execution’. Another girl
took Noraya’s place at the gallows for the murder she committed. Tania assured
her it was the scapegoat’s choice.
“The Ungrateful Niece”, as the gossip headlines called
her, finally met with just punishment.
She thanked Tania for the deed, but she couldn’t accept
that someone had to die for her to live yet again. Guilt, shame and remorse
ravaged her existence every day.
She reviled herself. She regretted her choice at the
lockup and kept mostly quiet unless it was absolutely necessary to speak.
Tania relocated her to Kuala Lumpur, put her up in a
studio apartment in the urban center, and registered Noraya to an international
college with a new last name.
She began a series of tests, trainings and lessons for
the price of her new life.
Noraya hadn’t fought or studied since the accident two
years ago, but she went to her courses and workouts with Tania mechanically, if
not subserviently.
After all, Noraya was hers to command now.
It didn’t matter anyway. It was only cowardice that
made her chose the life Tania offered.
Her soul died in the wreckage as she breathed her
mother’s blood, shampoo and burned flesh from her scalp, before the rescue crew
laser-cut the pan-caked metal and pulled her out.
She saw a glimpse of her father’s flattened form, with
the giant wheels of a truck upon the crushed hull, then she was on a cot and
the rest were just snap-reels of her resuscitation.
Strangely, murdering her uncle with her bare hands
didn’t trouble Noraya as much as the accident even now.
Perhaps she was born evil, but Noraya still thought
the sick bastard brother of her father deserved it. Before he attempted to
violate her, the bastard slapped her aunt enough times for Noraya to get used
to her wails.
“Why did you choose me?” she asked.
They finished the food on the table. Fried vegetables
and a lamb soup.
It was tasty, especially the soup. Noraya admitted
silently that she enjoyed it much, and tried not to smile her indulgence.
“I didn’t,” said Tania, “You chose me.”
She took a sip of tea and watched the bustling streets
below the restaurant.
“I’ll be honest with you, Noraya. You’re not as good
as I thought. Or maybe you are. You might be even better. But you don’t know
what you want.”
Tania fixed her gaze at her apprentice. “You just
didn’t want to die.”
“You made the choice of its consequence, but you do
not wish to take its responsibilities.”
For some reason, Noraya didn’t feel like backing down
tonight. She couldn’t understand what drove her, neither was a second spent in
her reply.
“Do you always talk like that? Or are you just trying
to impress me?”
Tania smiled. Noraya never seen that before, she
didn’t think the woman had humors.
“Too much lawyer, I suppose,” said Tania, “I don’t
know, I just got used to it. Strange things a woman do to be taken seriously,
my dear.”
“So that’s you what you are?” Noraya ventured, “A
lawyer?”
“One with a massive charity trust fund, yes.” Tania
didn’t hesitate in her revelations.
“I heard about your case from a criminal attorney in
my firm. You were perfect for an idea I wish to execute for a long time, so I
gave you a choice. You took it, and here we are.”
Tania leaned back in her seat and crossed her legs.
“I must say,” she mused, “Took you long enough to
start asking questions.”
Noraya looked to the table and cupped the mug in her hands.
She spoke too much. What was she doing? She should just shut up and do whatever
the woman wants. She just wanted-
“You want life to be simple.” Tania voiced her
thoughts.
“It could be. I’m giving you another choice.”
Noraya lifted her gaze to the woman.
“Your course ends in a year.” Tania continued, “With
me, and the college. In that time, I’d suggest you find a new name for
yourself. Then either we part ways, or you are my operative.”
“Operative for what?” Noraya nearly laughed her
confusion. “What is this? A spy movie?”
“Something like that, I suppose,” Tania hinted a
smirk, “Or more like Batman.”
“Only, Bruce Wayne is a woman, and Alfred is the girl
who wears the costume.”
Noraya guffawed and spit some of her tea.
“This is ridiculous,” she said, “It’s stupid in fact.
It’s a lame joke. What are you playing?”
Tania tilted her head and regarded her with an
intriguing look.
“Lawyers don’t joke much, Noraya, and honestly, I prefer
not to call you by that name anymore, don’t you agree?”
She straightened herself and filled her cup.
“What about the other girl?” asked Noraya, “The one
who died for me?”
“She didn’t die for you, my dear,” Tania replied, “She
was a leukemic hospice I worked with. She thought she lived a meaningless life.
So I told her your story and she wanted her death to mean something.”
Noraya was speechless.
“Far-fetched, I know.” Tania sipped her tea and
admitted, “But reality is strange like that, I suppose. Impossible things
happen every day, just a coincidence that you are one of them.”
“Dumb luck.” Noraya conceded. Like the accident.
She stared at her benefactor.
“My name is Lyana, with a Y. Lyana May Osman.”
The name she wanted, with the names of her parents.
She didn’t know who she was, and Tania was right, she
didn’t know what she wanted either.
But she would pay the price of her life.
It was her choice this time, and luck had nothing to
do with it.
Tania flashed her mysterious grin. “Greetings, Lyana.”
LYANA
She deflected his punch, moved in, bent his arm behind
his back, and kicked him down by the leg-joint.
The man yelped as she kneeled on his back and twisted
his ankle.
“Where is it?” She asked. She was controlled,
confident. Polite even.
He slapped the floor. “It’s in the hard drive!”
Lyana crunched her kneecap down his spine a notch
harder. The man shouted.
“And where is that supposed to be?”
“The suitcase!” he cried, “Under the table!”
Lyana loosened her crush, but clutched the man’s hair
and slammed his forehead to the flat mezzanine thrice.
He quit bawling, and pressed a hand to his dizzying
temple.
She strode over to the wide office desk, crouched, and
pulled the dark brown suitcase from its hiding.
The man turned on the floor and crawled quietly to the
file-cabinet by the long couch.
His head was bleeding but he ignored it with a scowl
and a hand on his backbone. He opened the bottom drawer, careful, and reached
for a sidearm.
Lyana placed the case on the table, turned to the man
and flew a dagger from her sleeve.
The man realized the pistol was on the ground, before
he noticed the blade pierced through his open palm, and stuck it against the
leather couch while he kneeled.
He howled again.
Lyana brought the suitcase, marched to the man, kept
the gun in her office jacket and pulled out the stiletto.
He crumbled on the floor and clutched the wrist of his
wounded hand.
“The code.” Lyana demanded.
“You’ll DIE for this!” the man hissed. “I’ll hunt you
down and- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!”
Lyana tugged his bleeding palm and gave it another
quick stab.
“Your heart is next.” She threw the feeble limb back
to his body.
“The code, please.”
The man was a blend of fear, bewilderment, and anger.
He stared at her with beads of sweat all over his bitter grimace, and held his
hands together on the floor.
“169247,” he confessed resentfully.
Lyana keyed the encrypt lock and opened the suitcase.
She took the portable hard-drive the size of a wafer bar,
pulled out a smartreader and jacked a cable to the data device.
The program verified its contents in a second. She
slotted the wafer to her back.
The man watched her agile movements from the floor.
“Who the fuck are you, Lyana?” he asked.
She rose, and made to leave the room.
“No one you need to know, director.”
She handed the wafer to Tania, and sat in the rattan
chair opposite her in the small lounge.
It was an early afternoon. The sounds of the tropical
forest filled the winds.
They were in a remote farm hidden somewhere deep in
the Vietnamese jungles.
She left the director’s office, bought a night flight
to Saigon, and rented an SUV for another four-hour ride to get here.
It wasn’t her first visit though. The farm was one of
their meeting points after a mission, and this was her fifth completed
assignment.
The man who owned it was Tania’s ‘friend’ or some
associate or whatever.
Lyana didn’t bother to ask too many details. She knew
it was safe and that was enough.
Besides, it was just another holiday after a
successful op. Or so she thought.
Tania checked the data with a smartpad and seemed
satisfied with her efforts.
But her next question startled Lyana. “What did you
do?”
“What do you mean?” Lyana frowned in her seat and
reached for her iced tea. “I did the job.”
Tania turned to the lush green scenery across the open
fields.
“You’re not an assassin, Lyana, and I didn’t train you
to kill.”
Lyana was confounded. It wasn’t the first man she
bashed on a mission.
“I don’t understand,” she argued, “I did what I had
to.”
“He wasn’t supposed to be in the office.”
“That’s not the point.” Tania flared her stoic
sternness. Lyana could pick up the subtleties of her benefactor’s eccentric moods by now.
They’ve spent enough time together on and off their vigilante assignments.
Lyana knew she was about to launch into a lecture again.
“You didn’t have to assault him, stab him or nearly
cripple him. You didn’t need to threaten his life either. Worst of all, you
were blown. We don’t operate on a deadline, Lyana. Time is relative to the work
we do. You could’ve retrieved the evidence later.”
“You mean the work YOU want to do,” Lyana challenged,
“Without getting your hands dirty?”
She was definitely angry now. For all of Tania’s
stupid idealisms and grandeurs of heroism she risked for, how dared she lecture
her about the rights and wrongs of her methods?
She couldn’t care less about the people Tania went
after. Loan sharks, corporate sleazebags or corrupted businessmen. She did it
for Tania and the repayment for her rightful debt of life.
Lyana realized that was what incensed her. She
attacked the man because she had to.
She endangered her life to finish the job for Tania,
and that was all.
“You’re right, Lyana,” Tania conceded, “I am a coward
in many ways.”
“But remember, I gave you a choice every time, and I
told you exposure is never an option under any circumstance.”
“You’re just worried about yourself.” Lyana sneered.
“I suppose you’re right,” said Tania, “So this is my
offer: stay here for next six months and learn how to shoot. Or get out and do
whatever you want with your payment.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Lyana countered, “I don’t
do this for your ‘charity’ money.”
“And I don’t do this so we can hang together, Lyana.”
Tania riposted, “Or waste time to give you new identities.”
“Then teach me.” She replied, “Teach me how to do it
and you don’t have to worry about my screw-ups. You pay me enough to buy a fake
IC anyway.”
But Tania wasn’t interested in her childish pesters.
“Decide tonight.”
She stood and left the lounge.
Lyana called after her. “What do you mean ‘learn to
shoot’?”
That night, she kissed Tania.
It was always her. All of it. Every creep she helped
put behind bars or made them vanished or suffered in their own machinations, it
was all for Tania.
She hated and was prideful of the fact at the same
time.
They shared the same guest room in the farm. Tania was
to stay the night before she returned to Saigon in the morning. She slept like
the dead but not Lyana.
She stood by Tania’s bed like a stalker, and thought
about all the things she’d done since the woman saved her from the gallows. She
was 25. She knew the love of her parents and no one else, but it wasn’t the
same with Tania.
Her benefactor wasn’t that old, really. She just
talked that way, and ten years was nothing.
Lyana cared not if it was Stockholm-syndrome or
whatever stupid psychological fancy disease she had. She didn’t dare voice that
stupid word and give her sentiments its dull-witted name either.
All Lyana knew was she wanted her. So she crawled into
Tania’s single bed, held her slumbering face and pressed her lips to hers.
Tania woke with a start, but she didn’t stop her.
Instead, she returned Lyana’s advances, and the following hour was spent in
ecstasy.
For Lyana, it was beautiful, and impossibly,
unbelievably true.
None of the words from all the languages she learned
were enough to describe the warmth, the scents, the voices, the softness, the
oneness or the pure and absolute contentment after.
At least for that hour.
Tania slipped off the bed in her naked form and tied
her ponytail as she went to her luggage.
She fished a pack from the side pocket and proceeded
to light a cigarette.
Lyana sat up with a pillow and watched her. She didn’t
know Tania smoked.
Then again, even after working for her in the past two
years, there was much about Tania she had no knowledge of. Her… sudden object
of passion and infatuation.
What was Lyana doing? What was she thinking? She
didn’t understand herself anymore.
Tania sat at a nightstand by the other bed across from
her and smoked on.
Cicadas hummed their ballads as the ceiling fan
whipped the humid night air in the room.
“Nien’s grandfather was a Viet-Cong sniper,” Tania
interrupted the symphony, “He taught all his children to shoot. There’s an
illegal firing range he set up for rich tourists with a gun fetish.”
She blew a grayish breath and continued.
“I don’t want you to be a killer, Lyana. But I need
you to watch my back for some jobs I want to do. And yes, you’re right. These
are my jobs. Work that I want to do without getting my hands dirty.”
She locked her gaze with Lyana.
“I’m going after the mafias, the triads, the mobs and
the gangs next. It’s your choice if you want to join me, and as usual, I will
pay you justly.”
Lyana was annoyed.
“I told you, Tania,” she shook her head and answered,
“I don’t these do things for your money.”
“Then why don’t you choose a different life, Lyana?”
“Because I-“ Lyana stopped herself. She couldn’t say
it. She shouldn’t. She mustn’t.
Tonight was a mistake. All they done in the past hour
was a colossal error of judgment.
“It isn’t, Lyana.” Tania replied, “You just think it
is because you thought I saved you.”
“But as I said many times, my dear. I gave you a
choice, you took it, and here we are.”
Lyana choked down a threatening whimper. “Why did
you-? Why did we-?”
“Because I chose to,” Tania said gently, “Because I
wanted to. I do find you attractive, Lyana, and I’m deeply flattered that you
think the same of me. We both acted on our choices and experienced a moment of
intimacy that I cherish, but I don’t think we should go beyond that.”
Lyana was muted once more. A maelstrom raged within
her. She abhorred her weakness.
Her despicable foolishness and-
“Did you choose me because I’m a murderer?” asked
Lyana, “Because I can be one? Unlike other people?”
“No, Lyana. I gave you-“
“Stop it.” She cut Tania off. “No more lawyer talk.
Please. I hit the man because he looked like my uncle. I chose to hit him. I
didn’t need to, but I did.”
Lyana was shocked by her own confession.
“Do you think I wanted to kill him? Like what the
other lawyer said? Like what the news said?”
Tania sighed. She drew another drag and leaned forward
with her elbows on her knees.
“Does it still trouble you?” she ventured, “Your
uncle?”
Lyana tried to sort her jumbled mind between her
emotions for Tania and her own bloodlust.
“No. That’s worst I think.”
Tania finished her smoke and stubbed it in the ashtray
on the nightstand.
She walked over to Lyana and sat next to her on the
bed.
“It’s not, Lyana. You strangled him because he tried
to rape you. The law doesn’t mean justice all the time, and it doesn’t prove
what is right or wrong either.”
“Whether it was a choice you made in the moment or was
it survival instinct, you did it because you had to. Doesn’t mean killing him
was lawful, but it doesn’t make your choice the wrong one or prove you a
murdering maniac.”
“And it doesn’t bother you because you know you are
right.”
She lifted Lyana’s face to hers.
“I didn’t choose you, Lyana.” she carried on, “You
chose me, every time.”
“Whatever reasons you continue to fight for, it
shouldn’t be for me or because I saved you. And I didn’t find you because you
wouldn’t hesitate to kill. But because I believe you know what is needed to be
made right in the ways the law cannot do.”
Tania shifted closer and kissed her forehead.
“He’s dead, Lyana. And don’t worry about the director.
I have that sorted already. You can decide what you want to do later. But I’m
afraid you have to stay here for now.”
Lyana was a mess, though she began to sense a new path
in her entanglements with Tania and the violence she committed.
There was a clarity somewhere she needed to find in
her mind and her heart.
Whatever sentiments she had for Tania, it was trivial
to her choices from here on.
“How the hell did you know a sniper?” She forced a
smile through her tears.
SITI
The morning zephyrs drifted into the apartment living
hall.
Distant bird songs crooned the early sunrise in the
soothing coolness.
Siti kneeled facing the open balcony, and touched her
forehead to the smooth ceramic.
She stilled her pose and intoned the lines in her
consciousness, before she rose for the next cycle of worship.
She repeated the ritual, stood and faced the
iron-grilled veranda with its chair, coffee table, and blue curtains dancing
softly in the wind.
The day’s full brightness began to fill the sky.
Her mind was empty. A serene tranquility devoid of
thoughts or emotions.
A blankness that was both a void and a sense of
lucidity.
She was one with the universe, yet insignificant to
its grand evolutions.
The ultimate benevolence that perpetuated the burning
stars in the infinite dark and all things within its countless spheres, gave
her the self-awareness of her bearings, and the conscience to learn, to
experience, to act and to choose.
Thus, He alone shall judge one and all, in this reality
and eternity after.
Siti breathed a quiet sigh and concluded her
reflections.
She sat back down on the floor-mat, closed her eyes
and began a different meditative practice. One aimed at regulating her mind and
synchronizing her inner chakra.
She guided her breath to a controlled rhythm, and let
the surrounding calm merged with her senses.
Subtle energy flowed in her pulse to perform an
orchestra of rejuvenation, as the consciousness of her entity converged with
the contemplations of her soul.
The awareness of the universe with the balance of mind
and body, it was the way she chose to live for the past two years.
Her ex-husband was the one who reintroduced Siti to
her faith.
She thought it was funny how things turned out in the
end.
It was the reason she married him, she supposed.
Adam’s fervor, learned interpretations and intellectual dissections reminded
Siti of her late father.
Both men had enlightening insights on spirituality
that were vastly different from the politicized indoctrinations amongst the
local populace, or the hideous demented versions in some communities of the
world.
In the first few weeks of Adam’s courtship, they
debated endlessly about the common arguments, and went on to deeper ideas and
discussions, usually throughout the night.
When they prayed together for the first time since her
childhood, Siti found the inner peace her father used to describe: the serene
humility of existence, in the benevolent embrace of an unfathomable,
all-encompassing greatness.
Besides her parent’s death, her ex-husband was
oblivious to everything else about her past.
But it was through the rituals and deliberations with
Adam that she reconnected with her parents’ souls.
More important, she found the path to accept her
actions and judgments of her former life.
Unfortunately, Adam was a mistake.
She knew from day one and refused to admit it until it
was over.
To him or to herself.
She came home early one day and caught him having sex
with her colleague in the guest room. The woman apologized profusely,
dressed-up frantically and left the apartment.
They stood and faced each other in the room: Adam in
his boxers and silent guilt by the bed; Siti at the far wall, just as muted.
They stayed that way for a full hour.
There was nothing but the sounds of the late afternoon
from the window, as the room suffocated in their mutual silence, and the
hailstorm waited to explode.
“I’m sorry, sayang,” he finally said, “I- I just-”
“No,” Siti cut him off, “It’s not you. It’s me. I
know.”
She walked to the small vanity in the corner, pulled
the chair and sat.
“I never loved you, Adam.” She stared at the floor
tiles.
“Whether or not
you’re a cheating bastard, this, us, it was never going to work.”
It was true. The cold, hard truth pierced her with a
stark clarity as sharp as a keen blade.
She thought she invested her emotions for Adam, but
none of it was real.
She indulged his advances, courtship, and finally,
marriage because she wanted a new life.
One that was separated and wholly different from her
past.
She was an actress playing house. First, as the role
of a common lover, then, the obedient, domicile wife. And she failed.
Miserably, horribly and completely.
Caught out in her own lie by his adultery.
“Leave,” she said, “Just pack-up and go. I’ll get a
lawyer for the divorce.”
Adam rushed to her side, kneeled and held her hands.
“Please, sayang. Don’t. I’m- I’m sorry. I’m just-.”
He tried to touch her face but Siti slapped him away.
Cold rage and sheer disappointment were incredible,
unbearable weights crushing her heart.
From her dishonesty or Adam’s debauchery, she couldn’t
tell.
“Please, sayang,” He clutched her hands again and
pleaded, “I can change. I will change.”
“One more chance, Siti, please. We don’t have to
divorce.”
She shrugged off Adam’s gentle grip and wiped the
tears in her lids before they could betray her. She turned to the curtained
window and focused on the printed patterns instead.
“Please go, Adam. Now.”
They signed the papers a month later and Siti lived
alone since then.
Apart from the evening when she kicked him out, she
hadn’t shed a tear for Adam.
But though her ex-husband was a dreadful, selfish
blunder, her connection with faith stayed on, and became stronger every day.
She supposed she could thank Adam for that at least,
despite their mutual, but varied hypocrisies.
Siti dried her short fringed-bob with a towel as she
stepped to the connecting bedroom.
Residue warmth and aromas from the bath spilled into
the space.
She picked the remote on her double-bed, and activated
the home-console on the far wall.
“Good morning, Mam,” the flat screen loaded its
interface and greeted in polite manly English.
“The time is 6:21am, Tuesday, March 24th, 2042. What
would you like to hear about, Mam?”
“The news, Alfred.” Siti replied as she moved to the
closet next to the screen.
The device connected to a preprogrammed online portal
and began its recitations.
“Headline: ‘Racism and religious fascism on the rise’,
says analyst’. Content: ‘University of Malaya Professor…”
Siti prepared her costume and textbooks as the
interface cycled through the news pieces.
The info droned on while she summarized the
narratives.
Nothing new: Right-wing groups hurling threats and
insults at minorities; the usual propaganda from government officials; some
minister gave an outrageous comment about a social issue, another netizen
arrested, another scandal revealed, etc. - the usual laundry list of discordant
happenings and gutter politics that proved this country a gigantic mess.
Just another day in Malaysia. Siti thought.
It wasn’t because she cared much about current
affairs.
Life went on with or without her attention for such
problems.
She supposed it was just something ‘normal’ people
did, and Siti had to equip herself with the knowledge for the lunch hour with
her coworkers, lest they brought up these ‘topics’.
It was fast becoming a social trend to talk about
politics recently, and she didn’t want to be too obvious in her nonchalance.
‘Normal’ people were always judging each other, and it was never good to be
blatantly ‘unique’.
Also, ‘The Morning News Hour’ was one of Adam’s habits
she couldn’t quite get rid of.
A wall-console named ‘Alfred’ was his idea and
indulgence as well; along with that awful tight-suit and cat-ears he used to
beg her to wear on ‘occasions’.
She must remember to burn those soon.
Siti wore her beige kebaya and a silk-white tudung to
match, but just as she was about to call off Alfred, a news item piqued her
interest.
“Headline: ‘Drug syndicate convicted after one-year
trial.’
Content: ‘All 39 members and associates of the K47
crime syndicate were found guilty, after final verdicts for the last five defendants
were announced late yesterday afternoon. A police chief inspector and an
officer from the Home Ministry were amongst the convicted. The syndicate was known
for its violent crimes, production and distribution of narcotics,
human-trafficking-”
“Give me the names, Alfred,” Siti commanded, “The last
five convicts.”
The AI quick-scanned and recited them. It was the
names she wanted to hear.
“Should I continue with the article, Mam?” Alfred
inquired.
“No.” she said, “Upload a copy to my phone and
power-down.”
Siti grabbed her car-keys, handbag and textbooks from
the nightstand before she walked to the wall-shelf beneath the screen.
“Upload completed, Mam. See you
this evening.”
She disconnected her smartphone from the charger.
“Thank you, Alfred.”
Siti scanned the article on her phone in the elevator
as it sped down from the 33rd floor.
“You’ve done it,” she thought, “You’ve really done
it.”
After all this time, the entire syndicate was finally
crippled: consecutive life sentences without parole for the lieutenants; double
and triple death penalties for the five higher-ups.
Prison was probably a lifetime holiday resort for the
second-tier ‘managers’, but at least the bosses, the corrupt cop and the YB
were gone for good.
They’d be sucked into rounds of appeals, but Siti knew
the case was strong and it would be difficult to overturn the verdicts, unless
through foul play.
The only thing she didn’t understand was the name of
the prosecutor.
It wasn’t the attorney she assumed it must be. For
starters, it was a man.
She searched for any related news or information about
the lawyer.
Apparently, he was a young, hotshot prosecutor in the
AG’s office, fresh out of junior practice and straight into the shark pool with
this landmark case.
Did she hand over the job to someone else? Siti
wondered. Or was he the new operative?
The elevator dinged its arrival at the basement car
park, and Siti filed her thoughts away, as she left for her car.
Siti started the old Kelisa and circled up the car
park ramps.
She drove up to the open driveway, onwards to the exit
booth.
She tapped her pass-card at the guard post and thought
about breakfast at a nearby kopitiam as she rolled out to the main road.
She stopped the hatchback as the auto-gate folded
behind her.
Parked by the sidewalk opposite the apartment compound
was a woman in a business suit, smoking next to a silver sedan.
It was Tania.
NURUL
After her uncle, the first three men Nurul killed were
part of a drug crew who escaped a shootout with the police.
The morons didn’t know their boss was already dead, so
Tania took a huge risk by posing as their gang lawyer after the women tracked
them down to an abandoned warehouse.
Within a year since Vietnam, Tania switched to
criminal law and Nurul began the investigations and subversions of the local
mobs.
The attorney was convinced the dead tokan was only a
fraction of the business, and she hoped to sniff out the other hidden hands
behind the syndicate through the gang of five.
She was also certain that the police was somehow
involved despite the earlier raid.
Nurul scoped the hideout with her long-range rifle
from a factory office eight hundred meters out.
In the dim-lit room, five men sat on stools at a
foldable desk. Rubbished paper and empty food packs strewn all over the floor.
Dirty mattresses stacked in the corner, while two yellow bulbs hung from the
ceiling.
The five were playing cards but the desperation
between them was palpable in Nurul’s enhanced view.
There was a knock on the door, and the men halted the
game while the leader went to open.
Tania entered the nest and introduced herself with a
name card.
Things went wrong instantly. There was a code between
gang members and their civilian associates. Neither of them knew what it was.
The leader exchanged no more than two words with
Tania, then all five men pulled out their pistols and moved to grabbed the
attorney.
Nurul didn’t think. She shot the leader, then the
closest man to Tania, then the next.
Bodies dropped with blasted heads. Tania pulled her
sidearm and rolled to the ground in a hail of misfires from the last two men.
They flipped the table for cover and backed out to an
adjacent room.
Before Nurul caught aim, Tania shot the men’s feet,
ran behind the table as they fell, and put two more rounds in their chests.
Nurul was shocked stiff at the carnage they’ve just
committed.
Tania’s voice spoke from her earpiece: “That was too
damn close, my dear.”
The attorney checked the two dead men beside the table
again.
Nurul heard Tania’s heavy breaths and her own racing
heartbeat.
“I suppose my hands are as bloody as yours now,” said
Tania.
A year later, Nurul killed a couple of goons.
Nien pointed them to a girls-smuggling ring with ties
across the region.
Nurul was fair enough to pass as a Vietnamese. So she
went deep cover through Nien’s connections, and boarded a container with twenty
prostitutes-to-be, who didn’t know what they were in for.
Her mission was to protect the girls and to maintain a
constant safety signal with Tania.
The girls were stowed in a hidden compartment with an
air duct, and traversed the South China Sea for three weeks to a dock in Johor.
Meanwhile, Tania passed the evidence discreetly to an
ambitious customs officer who wanted a big career break, and the authority
forces monitored the smugglers in secret as they waited for the container to
arrive.
But the cavalry acted too soon and spooked the local contacts.
The guards on the ship knew about the raid just before arrival, and decided to
throw them all into the sea before they docked.
The two men pulled away the decoy wall, drew their
machetes and chopped the first girl by the door. Nurul didn’t wait.
She pounced on a man, grabbed his skull, snapped his
neck, then threw the machete from his hand in a whip-stab to his partner’s
heart.
They fell to the girls’ horrified shrieks.
She dashed out of the container and leapt off the
ship. She swam for three hours to the nearest dock and slipped into the shadows
before the coast guard arrived.
The other girls were deported back to Vietnam, and
again, the elusive masterminds behind the syndicate got away.
In the three years since her training at the farm,
they had disrupted operations, tricked allies into fighting each other, botched
deals and sneaked boundless incriminating evidence to glory-seeking law
enforcers.
They sent many associated gangsters into the hands of
enemies or to the harshest sentences possible in the legal system.
They spent long hours and sleepless nights together, deconstructing
puzzles and building connections between the cases. There was a powerful
syndicate that most of the major activities ultimately converged to an immense
network that spanned the entire region.
The organization had their fingers in a multitude of
businesses, both legal and illegal.
They discovered the local ‘chapter’ was led by a
number of persons connected to those in public office and law enforcement.
But the duo was still nowhere close to unmasking the
shadowed hands with the puppet-strings.
So Tania formulated a bold and devious stratagem to
make the three largest mafias in the capital fight amongst themselves.
A three-way gang war to disrupt the business so
severely that the big guns must come out to settle the score before they
decimated each other to the last man.
Nurul stole merchandise from one gang, and divided the
loot between the other two.
One side thought the other was planning an attack, so
Nurul drew the third into the fight: by guiding low-level dealers to start a
market in areas between the feuding two.
Next were the raw deals, double deals, bad deals,
deadly deals, no deals, and wrong deals between mid-level leaders and
territorial tokans, taukehs and taikos.
Then, evidence and media pressure to compel raids on
legal fronts, but insinuations that the intel was passed to the cops by allied
gangsters.
And of course, the good old trick of catching petty
adulteries between the wives, lovers, girlfriends, or boyfriends of rival gang
members.
The result was a long-drawn, bloodied, and horrific
eight months, but effective.
News of violent crimes dominated the headlines. There
were shootouts, street-brawls, pub fights, karaoke lounge assassinations,
burned restaurants, vandalized shops, kidnaps, murder and wholesale massacre every
other week.
Though most of it were buried, the ones with the
highest body-counts were impossible to hide. Even the Home Minister, the IGP
and the Prime Minister found political purchase, and used ‘gangsters’ as a
crude euphemism for ‘other ethnicities’. Not to mention the pledges and vouches
to battle crime month after month, with ‘statistics’ to prove their efforts.
The truth was Nurul knew they gone overboard with
their tactics. It wasn’t the same with just one gang to deal with, or even two
to play against. A war triangle brought the kind of devastation that affected
innocents and civilians.
But it was too late to back out or stand down. What
was done was done.
They made the choice of its consequence, now they must
take full responsibility and see it through, or all of it would be wasted lives
and meaningless butchery.
Tania made it clear when she offered Nurul the job.
“It will be ugly, Nurul,” said the attorney, “Lives
will be lost and jeopardized. I cannot tell you this is the right thing to do,
or that you must do this with me out of hubris or sentiments.”
They were in the same Muslim-Chinese restaurant. The
place had become their regular meeting spot over the years.
It was raining that night, but they ordered the same
fried vegetables, lamb soup and hot tea.
Tania did her usual ‘look-away-for-important-talks’
routine and stared at the drizzle outside before she continued.
“You must understand the gravity and the risks of your
choice this time. We may not walk away unscathed or unscarred. I’m not even
sure if I’m prepared for it just yet.”
“Will it work?” Nurul held Tania firmly in her gaze.
The attorney regarded her with a hint of regret in her
expression.
“In time, after too much blood is spilled. Yes, it
will work. But it will be a burden on your psychology, my dear. Yours and
mine.”
She never seen Tania struggled with such great doubts
about her decisions before.
“Tania,” said Nurul, “I’ve seen how they live and the
things they do. The girls in the containers, the addicts in the alleys, the
broken families coming home to bloody threats and shit in packs or other stupid
pranks. I’ve seen how they swindle folks out of their savings; beat dreams out
of kids in poverty, and the middle-class, upper-class pricks that feed them
with their decadence. And that’s just the things I can give words to.”
Nurul took a sip of tea. “If it works, I want in.”
“Careful, my dear.” Tania’s smile was a mixture of
hope and remorse.
“Belief might be good, but hubris is a monster.”
The attorney slipped her hand under the table and
touched Nurul’s thigh.
“Just, give a week’s thought before we begin. Please
Nurul, for your conscience.”
As promised, she said yes after a week. And after
eight months of terror, finally, the heat and convoluted rivalries went way too
far for everyone, including the mafias.
So the big three called a truce and the bosses decided
to meet in a grand restaurant in the capital, a public and neutral ground
between the gangs.
Needlessly to say, everyone caught wind of it.
Tania went official and set up shop with the PDRM
forces as they surrounded the vicinity in a four avenue wide parameter.
Nurul rifled-up in a cheap hotel room, and guarded an
obscure side alley the cops couldn’t notice. Her game was to mark down any
escapees for the PDRM later.
The duo knew the gangs were to settle the war, with an
exchange of goodwill money and exclusive contrabands. Even if they couldn’t nail
the bosses for all their crimes, just the cash and goods alone were enough to
charge them.
Tania stood by the consoles and operators at the
command post in a rented apartment across the street.
She watched the convoys of black sedans and bike-gangs
strolled into the scene.
Suited old men with their bulky entourages entered the
wide sliding doors to the bows of escorts and waitresses.
“Give it thirty minutes,” said the PDRM commander.
But all hell broke loose before the half hour.
A chaotic procession of bangs, howls, flashes, screams
and battle cries, roared from the restaurant into the bustling night air.
PDRM elites stormed the halls, but it was far too late
for anything except to shoot everyone.
In the alley, Nurul spotted a black-suited fat man running
with three suitcases.
“Tania,” She broke comms and hailed, “I have a man
with the goods.”
Nurul trailed him as the seconds ticked by and the man
was about to run out of her rifle’s range.
“Take him.” Tania ordered flatly in her ear. Nurul
fired.
A second, then the man fell at the edge of the alley
with his lung pierced.
Nurul was gone. She didn’t see the man choked to death
in his own blood.
Two days later, they realized the man she shot was
nobody, a poor middle-age SME manager who owed the loan sharks too much and was
forced to put up a show for the cops.
He probably thought the suitcases were loaded. They
were, with old newspapers.
It was why the shootout happened so fast. Everyone was
paranoid of everyone else, so they decided to take each other out once and for
all.
Only, none of the bosses were even there.
Tania, Nurul, the mafias and the PDRM. All the players
were played by their own games, and no one came out a winner that night, except
the reporters first to the scene.
Nurul didn’t wait for another offer. She chose to
leave for good.
She became Siti without Tania’s knowledge and
disappeared for the next two years.
TANIA
Siti watched from the Kelisa with her hands wrapped
around the steering wheel, and her body bent forward to the windscreen. It was
impossible. But no, there she was.
Across the asphalt with the thick yellow double-line
in the middle, by the faded, uneven concrete sidewalk, and the tall trees with
thin barks behind the sleek, curvy luxury sedan - its silver gleam, flared an
elegant highlight of its upper hull under the early morning sun; and in front
of that arrogant piece of moving alloy, Tania.
Tania: with her ponytail bobbing slightly in the
winds, her sly grin, her tall nose, and her classy slim-cut black business suit
with a silk-white shirt, and a knee-high skirt.
Tania: as she slipped the long, thin-wrapped, paper
white cigarette between her lightly glossed lips, sucked ever so subtlety and
breath, before she’d pulled the stick out, and blew a thin grey zephyr, which
obscured her eyes with her long lashes but Siti couldn’t really see that from
her distance-
ENOUGH. What was she doing here? How did she find
Siti? What in God’s name did Siti needed to do to escape this woman?
SCREW IT. Siti knew exactly the game she wanted to
play. She reined in her frown and arranged her face to a happy smile. There.
She was ready now.
Siti rolled her window, stuck half her body out with
her tudung, and waved with animated excitement.
“HEY! OH MY GOD! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S YOU! WAIT! WAIT!
I DRIVE OVER!”
She swerved the Kelisa across the road and parked
facing Tania’s sedan.
Tania merely watched her with a fixed grin and smoked
on.
Siti switched off the ignition, exited the vehicle,
ran the ten paces to Tania and gave her a crushing bear hug.
Tania threw her hands up and tried not to betray her bafflement
as Siti snuggled her face to the side of her neck, and squeezed her tight.
She threw the cigarette in the general direction of
the sidewalk and held Siti in her arms.
Tania kept her tone. “It’s good to see you too, my
dear.”
She patted Siti’s back but her erstwhile operative
crushed her for a few seconds more.
Siti released her body and grabbed Tania’s hands
instead.
“You wanna see my house?” Siti asked eagerly. Siti was
positively beaming.
Tania checked her for a beat. “I suppose.” She held
her frown at bay.
“Can we walk? Or should we drive in?”
Siti composed her features to an almost worried look.
She clutched on to Tania’s palms.
“You should probably drive in.” Siti was serious for a
while. “Your car is way too flashy.”
“Might get stolen. You know how it is these days. Car
thieves everywhere and all.”
Siti returned to her hyper-optimism. “No worries! I
have an extra parking space anyway!”
She swung Tania’s arms around for a bit, before she
let go and scurried to her car.
Siti slipped into the Kelisa and beckoned. “Come!
Come! Follow me!”
If Tania was troubled, Siti couldn’t tell. She
couldn’t care less either.
Siti was the happy school teacher today and she shall
play her role to its best.
After she brought Tania into her apartment and locked
the door, Siti dialed her principal’s office, told the man she wasn’t coming in
today and feigned a coughing fit.
Then she led Tania to a tour of her home: the long brown
couch and the glass lounge table with the candalin the living hall, a diamond-shaped analog
clock on the wall, whole space painted with a soft blue hue to match the
curtains, the gloss-white ceramic floor tiles, iron-grilled veranda with an
ergonomic plastic chair and a coffee table…
Then the hallway, with its many printed photos of
Siti’s honeymoon in Greece (though she removed the ones with her ex-husband
already), and now…
Tania kept silent as Siti brought her to each chamber
and pointed out every visible object in every space.
Siti showed Tania the study she furbished to her late
father’s exact oak-wood deco, and the small kitchen, which was really just a
hot-pan. Siti didn’t cook much…
Tania seemed curious about the locked room at the end
of the hallway, but Siti shan’t bring her there. That was the guest room. Siti
short-circuited the encrypt lock and didn’t want to fix it.
When they stepped to the bedroom, and Siti rushed to
the middle, flung her arms and twirled, Tania walked over, held Siti’s face
gently, and pressed her lips to hers.
She was 25 again. She was Lyana again.
Vietnam was a long time ago, but Siti didn’t care.
She didn’t understand a thing. None of it. And she
didn’t wish to.
They kissed. Long, sloppy and passionate. Siti never
kissed anyone like that apart from Tania.
Then again, she only ever tasted her ex-husband’s lips
apart from Tania’s.
Siti pushed her away and slapped her.
“What do you want?” She demanded.
Tania nursed her cheek but kept to her usual cool.
“Are we done playing games then, Siti Lee-Malik?”
Siti gave up. She sat down on the double-bed with the
pink sheets.
“I’m a primary school teacher, Tania,” Siti announced
to the wooden nightstand.
“I have a life that I chose and I intend to keep it.
So tell me what you want. Then get out.”
She fixed her hard gaze at Tania.
“And don’t you dare say you’re here to ‘give me a
choice.’ Because I’ve made mine two years ago, and I’m happy with it.”
Tania looked over to Alfred the wall-console, then
turned to the floor-tiles, but couldn’t utter a word. Tania in her fancy
business suit, her swishing ponytail and her intelligent lectures.
For the first time, for as long as Siti remembered,
she actually caught Tania without a smartass reply. She would smirk if she felt
good about that, but she didn’t. She was miserable.
Something was very wrong with her benefactor. Siti
felt her brewing ache.
Tania sat on the floor with her legs folded and leaned
her back against the hard closet. She stared blankly at the vanity-table on the
far wall next to the bed where her former operative seated in a similar pose.
Quiet settled like an invisible fog.
“What we’ve done,” Tania interjected the hollow
denseness.
“What I’VE done, two years ago. Does it still trouble
you?”
She turned to Siti. “Because it troubles me.”
Siti could see Tania’s armor peeling off now. She
could see the immense, crushing weight of remorse upon her features. How the
past two years had ravaged her.
The sly grin was an agonized lie. So was the kiss. It
wasn’t passion. It was desperation.
Just like the lie Siti told herself with Adam.
Tania resisted the urge to look away from Siti.
“I’ve been looking for you,” she said, “Not for jobs.”
She paused.
“For closure, I suppose.”
She hesitated again.
“I once lectured you about hubris. But it was actually
my hubris all along. I made choices that were not mine to make, and worse, I
dragged you into it.”
Tania wiped her face. “The things I’ve made you do.
All that blood. All the deaths.”
It pained Siti to see her like this. Defeated.
Dejected. Guilt-ridden.
It shredded her heart with a million knives, and there
was nothing Siti could do for her.
“Is that why you gave the job to someone else?” she
ventured.
“Yes,” Tania replied, “I’m not a lawyer anymore. I’m a
lowly media manager in the PM’s office. I teach pricks to talk well, so they
don’t look too much like the idiots they are.”
Siti chuckled softly, and Tania smiled with her. It
was the hint of her mysterious grin.
But so much of its former luster and confidence was
lost.
“Anyway,” Tania stood up from the closet, “I don’t
really know why I came. I just wanted to see you, I suppose.”
Siti stifled the temptation to hold her.
Tania walked to the doorway. “I’m sorry, Siti. For
everything. All of it.”
She turned and made to leave.
Siti couldn’t stop herself anymore. She skipped off
the bed and hugged Tania from behind.
Tania took in her warmth. “I’m sorry, my dear,” she
whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Tania’s body shuddered. Siti turned her around. She
never thought it was possible, but Tania was crying. Unstoppable torrents of
tears streamed and covered her face.
The guilt Tania locked within her for two years came
rushing, gushing, pouring out.
She crumbled into Siti’s embrace, and Siti gave Tania
every ounce of tenderness she could muster. The duo slipped slowly to the
floor.
“I’m sorry, Noraya,” Tania whimpered again and again,
“I’m sorry, Lyana. I’m sorry, Nurul. I’m sorry, Siti. I’m sorry-”
But the recitation did not release her of the pain.
There wasn’t enough words to describe how much, how heavy, how deep, how
scorching, how excruciating it was.
Siti drank in Tania’s agony. Her tudung was soaked, so
was her kebaya, but it didn’t mattered. She took every particle of their shared
guilt and swallowed it whole within her soul.
Here was the person who gave her the choice to be
something other than dead.
Here was the person who believed she was right when
the world thought she was wrong.
Here was the person who fought, killed, looked evil in
the eye with Siti, and never flinched.
Here was Tania. Her savior. Her benefactor. Her
mentor. Her inspiration. Her love.
Siti could never forsake her. She must absolve her.
Tania had no one else.
THE LAST ONE
After Tania emptied the great oceans of remorse within
her, Siti led her to the bathroom, helped her strip, adjusted the shower to a
soothing warmth and let her cleanse.
When she was done, Siti brought her to a
Muslim-Chinese restaurant. A different one this time, in a single storey
shop-lot, ten minutes’ drive from Siti’s apartment.
They sat in a booth seating for two, separated from
the adjacent tables with bamboo-screens. Privacy was not an issue, however. It
was long past lunchtime in the afternoon and the eatery was deserted save for
the staff.
They finished the food in silence, fried beef strips
with vegetables and rice, before Siti tried to speak with her again.
“Why are you in the PM’s office?” she asked.
Tania held her teacup on the table.
“For a job,” she confessed quietly, “My last one.”
“It’s a solo mission, my dear. I don’t want you with
me.”
Siti regarded her. Like Siti, Tania was an exceptional
actress. But she knew Tania’s outpour back in the apartment was real, and she
had always been honest with Siti before.
Despite Tania’s admissions, Siti never blamed her
benefactor for anything they done in the past. She’d been through the same
process of pain, desolation and extreme self-hate, before she found faith with
her ex-husband.
“Why?” Siti inquired. “Why are you still doing this?”
Tania sipped her tea and stared at the empty dishes on
the table.
“I don’t know,” she said after a time, “Because I
don’t have anything else, perhaps. In a way, it’s also unfinished business. So
I suppose it’s for closure as well, like why I searched for you.”
She risked a glance at Siti.
“After you left, I gave everything we had to a
colleague. I wanted an out then, so I quit the firm, and went into public
relations.”
She nursed her cup again.
“That was a lie, of course. I didn’t know how to face
my sins, so I left. I passed the buck to someone else to finish the job. Then I
started the next one so I could bury myself in it.”
She paused for a beat.
“I’ve always handed the dirty work to someone else.
You, then my colleague. So I suppose it’s time I get my hands dirty for the
choices I make.”
Tania took another a sip, before she finally met her
gaze with her former operative.
“How have you been, my dear?” she asked kindly. “Have
you been well?”
Siti indulged her. “Fine, I guess. Kids are fun.
Work’s easy. Life’s simple.”
A hot breeze blew past the bamboo curtains.
“I was married
for a while,” said Siti, “Dumb mistake that was.”
“Here,” she pulled out her phone, scrolled to a
picture and showed it to Tania.
“That’s him. Adam. Cheating shit. Caught him fucking
my junior in my own damn house.”
“Fucker didn’t know how lucky he was,” Tania teased.
She handed the phone back to Siti.
“It’s that why that room was locked? And that
cat-woman costume in your closet?”
Siti laughed. “Yeah. Men. You know how it is.”
Tania’s expression was a mix of sad and glad.
They stared at each other, tender but quiet.
Tania gave a subtle nod to Siti’s tudung. “Did you
find peace in religion?”
Siti shook her head, and had a taste of her tea.
“Not religion.” She answered. “Faith. Huge
difference.”
“My Dad used to say that all the time. I never
understood what he meant until I met Adam.”
Tania leaned her elbows on the table, and crossed her
hands pensively under her chin.
“Did you find absolution? Forgiveness?”
Siti shook her head again.
“There is no absolution, Tania,” she replied gently,
“It’s just acceptance for who I am, what I’ve done, and where I am in the
bigger picture.”
“Maybe I’ll go
to hell. Maybe I won’t. Makes no difference either way. I killed an innocent
man and made people suffer or die. Nothing can ever change that.”
“I can’t say what we’ve done was right,” she
concluded, “But I know not all of it was wrong.”
“And in the end, it’s not for us to decide, Tania. But
for God.”
Tania beamed a sad smile.
Her tortures were still obvious to Siti. But her
benefactor was also happy for her.
“I was wrong about you, my dear. You are far better
than I ever expected.”
The afternoon tranquility flowed into the premises.
The vigilantes breathed the warmth between them.
They needed no utterance or hollow pronouncements.
It was true enough in mutual presence.
Tania straightened herself and broke the spell.
“I should get going,” she said, “Thank you, Siti.”
Siti shot a hand from her seat, and grabbed Tania’s
arm as she stood to leave.
“What kind of unfinished business? What’s the job?”
Tania shook her head. “You don’t need to know.”
Siti pulled Tania back to the cushioned-chair across
her and ordered another round of tea.
“No.” She was adamant. “You gave me a choice for
everything. So now it’s my turn:
Either you tell me, or I stop you. I don’t care what
it is you think you’re doing, but I’m not leaving you in danger, Tania.”
The former attorney examined the watercolor landscapes
on the green wall.
Siti locked her firmly in her sights.
A volt-bike passed on the road outside, and the waiter
refilled the teapot.
Tania remained muted.
“Fine.” Siti declared her ultimatum. “Send me the work.”
“Whether I join you or not, that’s my choice to make.
Not yours.”
“Or I WILL stop you, Tania.” she pledged, “Don’t think
for a second that I can’t.”
That night, Alfred the wall-console received a data
packet, and Siti spent the next two days deciphering the information.
It was extensive intel on SynchroTech. Evidence and
clues of a massive conspiracy, led from the data-wafer of the man she nearly
crippled all those years ago - the job before her training in Vietnam.
On the third morning, as Tania sat at her office desk
with a cup of coffee, she checked her smartpad and found an encrypted message
from an old contact:
“No one does the right thing. We only do what we think
is right.
My name is Nuridah Hassan.”