FACES OF EVE

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.”