A Promise Kept

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash
”Please reopen the case! My daughters have been hurting for too long,” Chung Mi-Suk collapsed to her knees and clasped her hands together in a relentless, heart-wrenching plea that twisted the onlookers’ stomachs with guilt. “Please! My daughters are hurting! Please help me put them to rest!”

The milling police station was on pause, watching the tragic spectacle of a mother pleading on behalf of her deceased daughters to the police. But no one could quench the fire burning within the poor woman, for the sexual assault case had long since been written off by the attorney in charge, and two decades had gone by in a heartbeat. There was nothing they could do. Nothing but watch. And as Mi-Suk realised that her prayers would fall on deaf ears today as well, as they had done so for the past decade, she staggered back up on her feet and exited the station.

The rain poured down ruthlessly and drenched everything in ice-cold water. She lifted her shoulders and chafed her arms from the cold yet did not try to flee from the rain or seek shelter somewhere where it couldn’t reach her. Instead, she stood her ground at the steps of the police station and watched the world go by before her in a rapid sequence. In those fleeting moments, while watching the common people go about their routine, she broke down and wept from the helplessness.

The evidence she so carefully collected over the years and put on pen to paper, an entire dossier with files upon files, now lay on the wet ground, the paper crumbling and eventually melting away like the seething fire in her heart consuming her resolve.

She was dying. A whole lifetime had come and gone in the blink of an eye, and before she realised it, she had become a mother, a widow, and now just an old lady whose only purpose was to seek justice for the twin daughters she raised so tenderly, whom she shielded from this cruel world, only to see them melt away just like how these papers now faded to the cadence of the heavy rain.

“Hey, ahjumma, you okay?”

She didn’t answer; instead, she looked on without moving as two young men rummaged through her pockets and ran away with the few coins she had, leaving behind her purse and an old photograph of her family before the tragedy took place and everything fell apart. With shaking hands, she picked up the photograph and smiled, wiping away her tears.

“I won’t leave this world until they’ve all paid. Umma, promised you, remember? Even if I have to keep on living and cheat death, I won’t break my promise to you, so sleep tight, my angels. Umma will soon join you and your appa. I promise.”

Rising back up on her feet, she trudged through the crowd of people from all walks of life as they fled the pouring rain, their movements in the background a blur of motion and their presence almost negligible.

The only thing Mi-Suk could see, the only thing that arrested her, was the large LED display with an award-winning movie director and his up-and-coming press conference and subsequent movie premiere for his newest blockbuster. And when she finally was close enough to it, staring up with hollow and detached eyes, her tears blended in with the salty rain and something in her expression changed – one that gave away nothing yet told a chilling story all at the same time.

Then, like the undead, she dragged her feet through the bustling capital, towards the studio where the press conference would be taking place later that night. She saw or heard nothing but the angelic voices of her beloved daughters, the way they called her umma, and those blissful days back in time when this cruel world did not blacken their purity and fill them with hatred and shame.

One and a half hours; the press conference was only one and a half hours away now.

Her eldest said the director was always the last one to arrive on time, that he would let all the filming crew and staff wait for him on purpose to relish in his ego. Such people never changed, only became worse over time. Their ego was so high, their sense of reality so low, yet they actually dared to believe themselves as nothing more than the filth they were, for they had become so used to tramping on and deriding those unable to fight back that they thought they were invincible, that they could stave off justice by paying those willing to accept the money thrown at them like the barking bitches they were.

And perhaps, they were right to think so, now that she thought it through, from where she lay in wait at the underground parking lot of the studio with a metal pipe tightly in her bony, wrinkled hand. Perhaps they were indeed right to think so….

Half an hour passed. Then, gradually, forty and fifty minutes. No one showed up in the parking lot, not even other people. Eventually, she decided to wait the entire length of the conference, approximately two hours or slightly more than that. She spent those hours just waiting and doing nothing else, counting the seconds, getting lost in thoughts and old memories, then restarting from the beginning on a never-ending loop.

At around 10 pm., things started to shift, and the solitude and harrowing memories gave way to other kinds of thoughts, the kinds that only a grieving mother could tolerate without losing her sanity along the way. She followed each person, tracing their movements, while keeping an eye out for the one she was looking for. But even as the minutes ticked away, the director remained elusive. Had he not come to his own press conference? But then she recalled the LED display she saw earlier tonight and knew that couldn’t be the case. Perhaps this wasn’t the parking lot used by the people who attended the conference?

Feeling the pressure of time, Mi-Suk hid the pipe in her bag, her youngest gifted her with her first pay through sweat, blood, and tears – and as she learnt after her passing – with her body.

She started for the stairwell leading to the lobby.

The entire place was filled to the brim with newspeople, overly zealous fans with no regard for their own or other people’s safety, and the few celebrities who were now standing at the centre of the red carpet posing for the paparazzi. Overwhelmed by the blinding lights and recurrent shutter of the cameras in the background, she noticed a young woman screaming her head off a few feet away and quickly made her way through the crowd, showing each one of them aside, and then grabbed hold of her.

“Director. Where is he?”

The young woman cast her a side-long look, judging and eyeing her down, before replying with a hoarse voice. “Director Kim? He’s still backstage, I guess. Why, are you a fan or something—”

Mi-Suk grabbed both of her hands—“Thank you, thank you!”—and slipped past security unnoticed, perhaps due to her old frame and those seventy years of agony that had hunched her back, turned her hair grey, and made her lose her teeth prematurely. After all, what harm could a seventy-year-old pose to anybody?

Only if they knew… only if they knew the fire burning inside her, the one that flared now and then, and ate through the deepest chamber of her heart, body, and soul like she’d entered the inferno even before shutting her eyes shut to this wicked, corrupted world.

Navigating the backstage was harder than she thought it would be. She passed by an entire corridor lined with doors for the third time by the time she heard what she could only describe as the sound of a muffled scream. Before she knew it, she found herself in front of a door with no label on it and perked her ears. She’d gone deaf once due to a vascular issue in her right ear, way before she lost her daughters so untimely, but had managed to get it back after treatment. She still had issues with that ear, but despite her hearing loss, those screams were so loud that she, for a few seconds, was stunned into silence.

Yet, as she looked around the corridor and the passersby, she noticed that no one even cast her a glance or inquired about the screams coming through all the louder with each passing second. She thus grabbed a crew member talking loudly over the phone, trying to bring his attention to the strange sounds.

“Young man, listen. You must call security!”

The young man tried to shake her off. “Ahjumma, how did you get in here? Huh?”

“Someone asks for help, in there, listen,” she tried, pulling the crew member closer to the unlabelled door. “I’m not lying. Listen! You must hurry and call—”

“Shibal!” The young man pushed her away so hard she hurled towards the walls, hitting her head. Gliding a hand through his sleek hair, staring her down with an annoyed look, he crept closer with a look that gave away that he indeed heard something but pretended not to.

“Hey, ahjumma, I don’t hear a damn thing, so stop the crazy act and leave before I call security. Do you hear me? Hey, I’m asking if you heard me? Shibal! Bitch, I said—”

“Always the same thing. It never stops. It never does. Why? Why doesn’t it ever—”

“Huh? What’d you just say? Never—what? You cursed me or something? Fucking bitch—”

Mi-Suk reached for the metal pipe in her bag. She didn’t hesitate, not even as the young man lay in a pool of his own blood, begging for mercy. Instead, she repeated her words, just as he told her to do moments ago, and kept bludgeoning his face until he stopped begging for his wretched existence and lay motionless on the linoleum floor. She then left his body to bleed and turned her attention to the unlabelled door, the pipe dragging at her side, as she twisted the knob.

A young woman lay naked, drugged, on the lap of the director whose wasted life she’d come to take. The filthy perpetrator stood up as he noticed her at the door, pulling up his trousers. She locked the door before anybody could intervene and save the director’s life.

Then… she took one step at a time. Slow and steady. Seeing nothing but darkness before her, hearing nothing but her angels’ voices in her ears, feeling no other emotion but that of a grieving mother who had gone without getting justice for far too many years.

“You want money? I’ll pay you! I’ll give you my entire fortune! I’ll do anything!”

Mi-Suk couldn’t help the smirk playing on her lips. “Then tell me, Director Kim, can you return my daughters to me? Let me see them one final time so I can ask for forgiveness?”

“…What? Daughters? Hey, ahjumma, you,” he pointed at his head, mocking her sanity, “you’ve lost a screw or something?”

“When I kill you, the world will know, finally, the monster you are… the things you’ve done… those horrible, horrible things you’ve done to such pure souls, who wanted nothing but recognition for their hard work, to repay their parents with their first pay, to give back to the world…”

“Huh? What’s this about? I’ve done nothing! Yah, ahjumma, you think I’m the only one who does things like that?” He paused, his eyes darting from the pipe in her hand and the young woman now getting back her senses. “Besides, you think fame at a young age comes at no cost? We all pay the price, in our ways, and bitches like this with their bodies. What’s so bad about it, huh? Nothing’s for free in this world, shouldn’t someone of your age know that the best?”

“That pay!” she snapped, her eyes turning wild with the anger festering beneath the surface, “has cost two precious lives! Tell me, Director, what kind of price tag requires forty counts of rape, derision, and sexual abuse by several men, of whom the majority are married and have kids of their own!?”

“This is just the way of the world! You think killing me will stop the system?”

“Then I’ll break the system, too, until none of it remains, if doing so I must until the very second I cease to exist! For killing people like you… it is not justice. It’s an obligation.”

The door behind them flung open as security entered. By then, however, the director had already succumbed to his injuries. They found Mi-Suk cradling the young woman, wiping away her tears and lulling her into comfort; her face and clothes covered in crimson, and her eyes wet with tears she didn’t know she still had. When she saw the security guards with their weapons aimed at her, she released the young woman and picked up the metal pipe on the table before her, advancing.

“Stop! Stop moving! Stop moving and put the pipe on the floor. NOW!”

But she didn’t stop, nor did she let the pipe fall. Instead, she let it down to the side, letting it drag on the floor, and then brushed past the security and the crowd of onlookers as she continued down the hallway aimlessly. Several people followed her, capturing her movements with their cameras and livestreaming. But the crowd didn’t stop her, not even as the security tried to step in. Instead, they became her live shields and blocked anybody trying to intervene.

She came to a halt at the centre of the red carpet, now directly facing the shutters, those blinding shutters that kept capturing her every single move and livestreaming. For a while, she just stood there and said nothing, not even as the crowd grew larger and the number of cameras only increased. Then she released her grip on the metal pipe, collapsing on her knees, addressing the nation and the police that failed her.

“I, Chung Mi-Suk, hereby plead guilty to the murder of Director Kim, the perpetrator in my daughters’ sexual assault case that was written off before the investigation could even begin. My daughters… my poor angels, when they heard of this, blamed by the authorities for being raped on several occasions by several men, including Director Kim, killed themselves before justice could be served. My husband died not long after, unable to live with the grief, and I tried decades – decades! – trying to make my voice be heard! Yet no one heard my pleas, bought for and paid with dirty money! So, what else could a mother do but kill her daughters’ abusers herself? To make sure they rested in peace, wherever they were, to finally be able to let go of the past, and say: “I did my best, the only thing I could, and kept my promise to you.” I do not ask for leniency but for my daughters’ case to reopen, as well as other similar cases the prosecutors wrote off in return for bribes and lavish gifts, or perhaps, buried secrets. I, Chung Mi-Suk, thus plead guilty to all charges against me…”

A delayed applause erupted through the crowd of people, of whom some couldn’t keep their tears in, while others, infuriated by the prosecutors’ failure to follow proper protocol and capture people like Director Kim, demanded justice and for all cases related to sexual assaults to reopen despite the statute of limitations.

While Mi-Suk never wanted this to be the case, spilling blood was her last resort, and she did not regret it. Not one single second of it. Even the inmates at the prison she was sent to broke out with cheers as she was escorted to her cell by two female guards, praising her strength as a mother and her unwavering love for the children she lost too soon and in such a short time, one after the other.

She died of old age only a few months short of spending a year in the prison, where she became the light of beacon for the inmates and the nation as a whole, recounting her twin daughters’ merry childhood as well as those harrowing years before the light in their eyes shut forever, bringing the whole court to break down and the prosecution to admit to their negligence and failure to follow proper protocol in front of the public, convicting those who deliberately took bribes and wrote off cases to hide their own skeletons in the cupboard.

But this was far from over. As with everything in this world, behind the scenes, new cases of exploitation and abuse occurred. Director Kim was right. There was no stopping the systematic abuse going on in plain sight; this was indeed the truth. But one thing was certain: every unpaid deed resurfaced and justice served sooner or later. No man was safe, and sometimes, all that was needed for that to happen, was someone like Mi-Suk who stared death in the eye with conviction and forced the world to open its eyes and see the ugliness behind purple-tinted glasses, even on the account of her own livelihood and health, for heroes needed neither fame nor comfort, only the will to force the system to reboot now and then.

Whether this deed was the unjustified murder of children, leaving them to rot from hunger, or the atrocities of barbarians with no empathy towards people other than their own, or the numerous world leaders watching a whole population burn yet choose to turn a blind eye like the cowards they were and would forever be as long as yet another innocent life was taken before it has a change to bloom like the flower they were meant to be – neither a terrorist nor a human animal living in open sewages…

 

 

 

 

 

The Cull - Still the Wheel Turns (Epilogue)

Photo by Nika lukava on Unsplash

I was discharged from the psychiatry ward three weeks after the police found us. In order to reintegrate into society, we promised to keep our silence about the pilot project and the fate that befell a great many.

They had no idea we caught it all on camera. I saved all the records on a USB drive, just in case history repeated itself – as it always does.

Three years later, I found myself standing in front of a classroom as a teacher. Things went back to normal. But not for long.

I thought it was all over. The project, the experiments, and my own part in all this. I was wrong. Deadly wrong.

“Is your anne taking a nap too? Just like mine?”

Ali’s voice broke the silence as I crouched in front of my mother’s grave. He stood behind me, watching as I tenderly ran my fingers through the parched soil, imagining it was her soft skin.

This was my first time visiting the place where she was put to rest. There was a time when I thought I didn’t deserve to see her. I thought she’d hate to see her murderer pay a visit. But Ali encouraged me to break this train of thought.

I glimpsed behind me and smiled. The cool breeze brushed against my face.

“I hope she is. Are you cold?”

Ali shook his head, carefully, and then mustered up the courage to ask me something that took me by surprise.

I stood there, at a loss for words, unable to find the right way to express myself. I could tell he knew I was having a hard time.

I wondered just how long he had been lost in this thought, contemplating this very question, and what had prevented him from voicing it sooner.

“What… happened to her?”

“It’s… it’s a long story. I don’t know where to begin…”

He squeezed my shoulder.

“It’s okay, Elin. You can tell me some other time.”

Standing up, a lopsided smile slowly appeared on my face. I wrapped my arm around him and kissed his head.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I didn’t take Ali under my wing. Instead of pursuing motherhood, I chose to be a solid pillar of support for both Ali and his brother. I wasn’t cut out for that kind of stuff, anyway.

A young couple reached out with open arms to embrace him and his baby sister. I was grateful towards them. Despite me being a stranger, they entrusted their son to my care.

I had the chance to visit them a few times too and see what kind of life Ali led.

The way they looked at the unfortunate siblings told me that he wasn’t just someone they adopted. He had become their flesh and bone. It was the same for Ali.

“Wanna grab a bite before we catch the train?” I asked to change the topic.

“No, I’m good.”

“I’ve got cash, you know,” I said, my voice trailing off as he shook his head. “How about some ice cream, then? You like ice cream.”

He shook his head again, his hair tousling with each movement. Every time I asked if we should eat something, he would do that.

Not that I was short on cash, but my earnings were just enough to make ends meet, and this little fellow seemed to know all about this. Since when did he grow up this much?

As the clock ticked closer to afternoon, we rushed to catch the train before it departed. It would take us a solid two hours to arrive at the capital, and then an additional half-hour bus ride to reach Ali’s two-storey house.

The train was packed with people, leaving little room to manoeuvre. It was a stroke of luck that we came across two empty seats, perfectly positioned to face each other in the aisle.

I plonked down next to an older man in his fifties, while Ali took a seat next to a girl of similar age. The man’s worn leather jacket emitted a faint scent of tobacco.

Since we had a long ride ahead, I plugged in my earphones and let the heavy metal music drown out the noise of the train, lulling me into a peaceful sleep.

I jolted awake roughly forty-five minutes later when the man lightly tapped me to get off the train. I moved to the window seat, taking in the breathtaking view outside, and then waved Ali over.

But he was engrossed in a conversation with the girl, so I drifted back to sleep. Once again, however, something stirred me awake. A loud, jarring noise shattered the silence.

Someone dropped a leather bag on the seat next to me. I looked around me, hoping to catch someone else’s attention, but everyone seemed too absorbed in their own affairs to pay me any mind.

There was no sign of the owner anywhere. I moved past the bag and scanned the aisle, catching snippets of hushed conversations that floated through the air.

Regardless of which direction I looked, there was no one searching for the bag. I eased back into my seat, my gaze locked on the mysterious leather bag, my thoughts racing with a thousand unanswered questions.

After waiting for nearly thirty minutes, I unzipped the bag to look for the owner’s contact information.

The weight of the bag was the first thing that immediately grabbed my attention. It was surprisingly heavy.

While trying to figure out what could be inside, something else caught me by surprise. The pungent smell.

I jumped back and moved away from the bag. There were several black trash bags inside.

Seeing my distorted expression, Ali asked if everything was all right. When his eyes landed on the leather bag, I zipped it up and excused myself.

I secured the WC door and unzipped the bag again. My hand rose to cover my nose from the pungent odour that hit me. The foul odour was one I knew all too well. So why couldn’t I bring myself to open the trash bags and check if I was right?

A chilling sensation ran through my veins, causing my blood to curdle. I drew a deep breath, my heart racing as I cautiously opened one of the trash bags, only to be overcome by a grotesque scene.

I moved away, my eyes shifting rapidly, consumed by a sense of terror. Every inch of my body shook and my mind became flooded with despairing thoughts.

Inside the black bag was a decapitated, boiled head. Its features were distorted and unrecognisable, but something told me I knew who it was.

With my thoughts scattered all over the place, I mustered the courage to reach inside the bag and place the boiled head in the sink.

 Rummaging through the black plastic bag, I found a blood-stained letter hidden inside it. My name was written on it.

The bag hadn’t been dropped by accident.

I read the letter, absorbing every word as I went through it. My hands were shaking like there was no tomorrow.

Images of the double-decker bus, the three men, and the carnage flooded my mind. The air felt heavy and thick, making it hard for me to take a full breath as my throat tightened.

My chest rose and fell with each laboured breath. My face lost colour as the tears I thought were long gone threatened to spill.

To Elin,

State Library, 1999. The Cryonics Lab.

Let’s finish what we started.

Sincerely, Mark.

The Cull - The Dawn of the Damned

Photo by aboodi vesakaran on Unsplash

As my eyes cleared, I noticed I was back in the cave. How did I manage to come back here? My last memory was a jumbled mess, like a puzzle with missing pieces. I couldn’t remember anything.

To make matters worse, my head throbbed with excruciating pain. How long had I gone without water? I shook my head vigorously, trying to clear the fog that clouded my thoughts.

Then I heard a chorus of voices breaking the silence and I sat upright. The others were huddled in one corner, their voices rising in a heated debate that filled the cave with tension.

Noor was among them. I heaved a sigh of relief as soon as I spotted her. She had made it. A weight lifted off my shoulder.

As I groaned and stumbled to my feet, I approached the others, panic rising in my chest the second I noticed the infant was missing.

The words escaped from my parched lips, slipping away like fleeting whispers in the wind, before I could hinder them. The survivors fell into silence, their eyes wide with fear, as they turned to face me.

But I was too preoccupied by what had happened to the infant to notice this at first. The old woman was the first to brush past me and return to her little corner, followed by Niclas, so that only me, Noor and her dad were the only ones standing up.

“Where is it?” I asked, frantic. “The baby.”

“Don’t worry. Yudes is taking care of it.” Noor said, pointing to the corner.

My frantic gaze scanned the cave until it settled on the old woman, clutching something concealed under a blood-stained fabric. Ali sat right beside her and was sound asleep.

“I found some milk powder while I was looking for you. It’ll keep it alive for now I guess. But it needs breastmilk and a warm place to stay.”

“I know,” I said, my voice trailing off as the pain in my head reached another height. “I know. I-I’ll figure something out.”

“Elin,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. I shifted my focus from my feet to her eyes laced with concern as she continued. “Don’t you have something to tell us?”

“What do you mean?”

She paused for a brief moment before posing another question. I could tell by the way her eyes kept flickering that she was nervous.

“I saw you. You were talking to one of them. I followed you back to the vehicle when you split up. Then you passed out.

“You followed me?”

“Why did he let you go? Elin? Elin, please…”

I scratched the back of my head. Were they literally thinking I was cooperating with those bastards or something? Then again, it did seem like that from the outside, didn’t it?

“Listen, there’s a misunderstanding—”

“You confess you talk them?”

“Not quite like that, Omar. I just… He talked to me. It’s not what you’re thinking. There’s something I can’t tell you, some kind of connection between me and this-this messed-up project, okay?

“But that’s not what matters right now. He told me there was a rat among us, okay? We need to find out who it is and—”

“How can we trust you?” Noor said, adding. “And what’s the connection between you and this project? Elin? You gotta tell us!”

“I-I can’t, all right? You’ll just have to trust me on this one! If we don’t act now—”

“Let’s pretend you’re right. Okay? Let’s just do that for a sec. But why would that murderer tell you something like this, then? Knowing he’ll put one of his own in danger.”

“He…or the person who’s responsible for putting us through this hell knows me. That’s what he said, okay? He was instructed to keep me safe. I- I don’t know why. Don’t look at me like that, Noor! I wouldn’t risk my life if I were one of them, would I?”

“How he know you?” Omar said.

“I’m-I’m not sure. I have an idea but that’s not what’s important right now. We need to find out which one of us is lying.”

“What about the bag?” Noor asked. “Did you find it?”

“I did, sort of. There were no weapons in it though, just gasoline to dispose of the bodies.”

“Dispose of the bodies? Why? Or rather, why now?” Noor said, adding. “You said some of the cadavers were at least a few weeks old. They didn’t dispose of them before, so why now?”

 “I think something didn’t go according to their plan.” I took a deliberate pause, making sure to look at them both in order. “I think the police are on their way.”

“A-are you sure? Elin? Are you—”

“I think so. I’m not sure but… it sounded like that to me. Just don’t say anything to the others for now.”

“Why no?” Omar said.

“We don’t know who the rat is. If that person finds out about the police, they might do something reckless.”

“So what do we do now, just wait or what? What if you’re wrong and the police never come?”

“I’ll go look for something we can use to defend ourselves with – just in case. I think they’re hiding weapons somewhere in the forest. I’ll see if I can find something to eat, too. If we’re lucky—”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No, stay here. Keep these people safe. We don’t know who the rat is yet, Noor. You’re the only person I can trust. Please…”

She nodded, albeit reluctant. “Then stay safe. No matter what. Do you hear me? Don’t do anything stupid and risk your life! We need you here.”

I didn’t reply. I wasn’t going to keep a promise I couldn’t keep. I was already dead on the inside. I was more comfortable with the idea of putting my life at risk than with the alternative.

When I returned to the double-decker bus, I noticed that everything inside the baggage compartment had been emptied this time.

Someone had gone to great lengths to ensure that we would be defenceless, leaving nothing for us to find.

As I nibbled on my dry lips, contemplating my next move, I turned around and gazed up at the looming bus.

It was rocking. Before I could react and make a break for it, the lawyer guy stepped out. The gun he held was steady, its barrel aimed directly at me. How did he know I would come here?

Conrad followed closely behind him, a sinister grin stretched across his face like the wicked thing he was. A living human animal, the first of its kind.

“I think we should start by gouging her eyes out and then shoot her. What’d you think Henrik?”

Conrad approached with outstretched hands. His eyes were wild with delirium. I clutched to the bus, feeling the rough texture of the metal against my fingers as I backed away.

The other guy seized his arm just inches from getting to me. “We don’t have time for that, you dickhead.”

“Come on, dude! You’re seriously gonna let her off that easily? Seriously, after everything we did, after all the fun we had, you’re just gonna shoot her?”

“All right. I’ll give you thirty seconds. But if you fail, we’ll do it my way. You got it?”

So, this was the fate that awaited me? A smirk spread across my face as I envisioned the macabre scene of my eyeless, hollow sockets and rigid corpse consumed by the roaring flames of the bonfire along with the rest of the passengers.

What a glorious end it would be to become a macabre toy in the hands of those, who deserved death more than any other species.

At that very moment, just as Conrad forced my eyes wide open, a surge of greed washed over me. I wanted to know why we were brought to this place and why we were subjected to such merciless treatment.

“Why are you doing this to us?”

Conrad broke off. His grin faded, perhaps annoyed, as if I had interrupted his playtime – his only means of entertainment.

But Henrik didn’t seem bothered by my question; instead, a faint smile appeared on his face as if he found my question entertaining.

“‘Cause you’re part of a project granted by the government. But we already told you that…”

“What government would kill its own people?”

“We don’t go after regular folks who pay their taxes. We’re after people like you who are just a burden to everyone else – people like you who are wasting our resources.”

Burden? It took me a while, but I eventually understood the intention behind his words. It was evident that most of the passengers were devoid of any life goals, their futures uncertain and undefined.

They were forever shunned by the society they lived in, their differences bringing upon condemnation. He was right, we were burdens, a constant source of frustration and resentment to the rest of society.

But we didn’t choose this path for ourselves – this world, this inhospitable planet filled with avarice, starvation, and malevolence caused our demise.

I couldn’t suppress the smirk that crept onto my lips upon hearing this.

“How do you plan on using those resources, then?” I already knew the answer. I was the one who came up with the project.

“It’s gonna be a whole new world after this and you people are the key to this big change.”

“Big change, huh? Sure, if that’s what you want to call this massacre.”

Henrik stepped closer. A wide grin stretched across his face, revealing the excitement brewing in his disturbed mind.

I knew what he was going to say even before he said it. Still, it took me a few seconds to process everything and come to terms with the reality I was now confronting.

 “Do you believe in cryonics, miss?”

A chilling sensation ran through my veins. This word was not unfamiliar to me. Of course, it was not. This place, the double-decker bus, the mayhem, the damn project…

They were all part of the research paper I wrote when I still had my whole life ahead of me. This carnage was my creation. But I never finished it.

Blood splashed onto my clothes, leaving behind a vivid crimson stain. Gasping, I looked up. The dirk knife stuck out right between the lawyer’s forehead, who, still conscious, lost his grip on the gun.

As he turned around to see his murderer, he collapsed sideways, his limbs splayed out in an awkward position. Despite being frozen in one spot, I saw my chance and acted swiftly, leaping forwards to pick up the dagger and plunging it right into the back of Conrad’s skull as he looked in the direction of the ominous forest.

When he fell to his death, I locked eyes with the one who threw the dagger and saved my wretched existence. He really went all out to make sure I stayed alive, huh?

Taking my chance, I snatched the gun and made a break for it, swearing under my breath as I wiped off the blood on my face with the back of my arm.

As I made it back to the cave, panting still and out of it, Noor and the others were yet again huddled together in one corner. I was about to break the news that two of the guys had been killed when Noor cut me off.

I could see a glint of doubt and suspicion in her gazelle eyes. Her voice carried a bitter tone as she accused me.

“You’re the one! You’re really—”

“What…? What’re you going on about? Look, I-I got this gun from one of the—”

“I saw you, Elin!”

“Saw what?”

“He helped you! That-that guy, he helped you!”

“Look, I already told you that there’s a connection between this programme and me! I can’t tell you what it is, okay? Just know that—I’m not what you think I am…”

I stopped mid-sentence as she made a face at me. I frowned, not sure what she was trying to do at first, but then it all dawned on me.

I glanced at Omar without really knowing why and he returned my gaze with a confirming nod. What was going on? It didn’t take me long to figure it out, though.

I scanned the hideout until my eyes landed on the old woman, who now stood upright and was ready to apprehend me. Now that I took a second to study her, she wasn’t as old as I thought she was all along.

Sure, she was at least in her mid-seventies, but not more than that. Wait… It was her? But how did Noor and her dad figure it out? In any case, this was for the better. The sooner we got rid of the mole, the better our chances of survival were.

I decided to play along.

“I’m really not lying. You gotta trust me.”

“You hide something in hand. I no lie. Allah big. Allah see me, how should I lie?”

Oh, that was it. They must’ve seen something under the quilt. A gun? Maybe a knife? But I couldn’t act recklessly. Both Ali and the infant were too close to her.

I took a deliberate step closer to Yudes without taking my eyes off Ali, whose desperate eyes told me he was the one who discovered the mole.

Without completely letting go of the dagger, I shifted my focus to the woman. Our eyes met. That was when Omar shouted something unintelligible but I could tell that he wanted me to take action.

I lunged forwards and felt the impact as the woman shoved me to the wall and tore my cheek open. A knife, it was…

As she went for Ali and the infant, I leapt forwards and shielded them both with my bare hands. The blade cut through my palms and fingers as I held her back just enough for Noor to carry the infant away.

Distracted momentarily by Niclas’s cries, Yudes pushed me against the wall. I shut my eyes, grimacing, as I waited for the fatal strike. Why was she so strong? But it never came.

When I regained back my senses, Omar was stooping over me, shouting at me, but I couldn’t hear what it was until a few seconds later. My mind was a hazy mess.

That’s when I realised what had happened. She took Ali. That darned piece of shit! I rose to my feet and stormed out of the cave and sprinted towards the vehicle down the slope.

I ran with all my might.

Although I was as unfeeling as a stone and as cold as ice, the thought of a little kid dying an unjust death was unbearable to me.

I promised his mum I would keep him safe, and I was determined to fulfil that promise. I had to.

I caught up with her. The distance between us grew shorter with each step until we reached the double-decker bus, where her accomplices were surrounded by a swarm of flies already and rotting. But she didn’t know that.

She came to a sudden halt and turned to face me, positioned on the opposite side of the bus, by the slope, and remained oblivious to the fact that her accomplishes had already met their demise.

She sneered at me, her upper lip curling upwards in a wolfish grin.

“Oh, we’re so gonna wipe you all out! You can bet on that, you little shit! None of you will make it out of here alive, do you hear me!? Human animals like you don’t deserve to live!”

“Ali’s just a kid. The only animal here is you!”

“He’s a Muslim terrorist! He’s going to murder us all! I have to get rid of him!” In a disturbed combination of laughter and delirium, she shouted at the top of her lungs. “He’s going to chop off the heads of forty babies! Forty babies! Forty babies! Forty babies!”

I stared at the poor kid upon hearing this. He trembled. A sharp pang of pain surged through my chest. I looked away. Although he couldn’t decipher her words at such an age, I could tell that he could feel the waves of hatred reverberating from her voice.

The thought of living in a world where the oppressors had control over the oppressed sickened me. If that wasn’t the portrayal of a heartless creature, what else could it be? Spreading lies and twisting the truth with such indifference, with such arrogance!

Forty babies, huh? What a bunch of derailed fuckers. Even a child could come up with a more plausible lie.

“He’s just a kid, whether you see him as one or not. He wasn’t born to be a terrorist, he was born to die at the hands of those who oppressed him!”

She grinned, her wicked eyes growing wider and more sinister.

“You know why I took this job?”

“Because you regretted not murdering more Arabs in order to take over their country for good? The illegal settlement wasn’t enough?”

“It’s not theirs! It was given to us! Yahwe chose my people to rule this land so the Messiah can come! We’re above these human animals!”

“Ah, the Messiah thing, huh?” I said. “So convenient to use religion as a shield, right?”

“That’s what Yahwe wants! We’re the chosen people! We’re above law and reason!”

“Sure. Whatever you say. But that doesn’t mean you can just go around and kill people or distort the truth to get what you want. I’m sure your Messiah would agree with me.”

“You don’t know anything about my people!” she said. “You think I don’t know who you are!? You’re the one who started all of this!”

“I didn’t start anything. You pieces of shit did! Just like you always do by distorting the truth in your own fucking favour!”

“This project was all you, Elin!” With a maniacal expression on her face, she surveyed the surrounding bloodshed and laughed. “Look! You’re just as guilty! You have blood on your hands, too!”

I observed her until she stopped laughing her head off. She was right. I had blood on my hands. I should’ve seen this coming when I first sat down to write that paper. But I didn’t.

I never considered that something I discarded would come back to haunt me. Then again, looking back, there was no way I could have predicted this outcome.

Someone finished my paper. Was it the person who so desperately wanted me to stay alive? Maybe it was. I would probably never know. I was going to die here.

But first, I had to save Ali. He wasn’t a terrorist. He wasn’t a human shield. He wasn’t a human animal. He… he was a child. Just a child.

“They’re all dead,” I began, pausing to see her reaction. “And the police are on their way.”

“The government is on our side! The world is on our side! There’s nothing you human animals can do!”

“This place, what you’ve done to us… It’s all over social media as we speak.” It wasn’t entirely false. We captured every moment on film, but we did not have the opportunity to share it with the world yet. “Even with the heavens on your side, you can’t hide the truth. It’s over. Let the kid go.”

“You think I’d fall for that?”

“Call your accomplishes and see for yourself, then.”

She had Ali in a chokehold as she reached for her phone. As the ringing reverberated from the other side of the bus, she made her way around, never taking her eyes off me.

Seeing them there, lifeless and bathed in their own blood, her eyes grew wide. The confusion etched on her hardened face was easy to read. I could almost hear her thoughts: ‘How in the world did you pull this off?’

“This is your last chance. Let the kid go or rot in prison.”

The faint croak of sirens soon reverberated in the vicinity, announcing that help had come at last. I thought it wouldn’t come. As the noise grew louder, I briefly glanced behind me, trying not to show my surprise.

Yudes released her grip on the kid and made a break for it. However, my heart couldn’t find any reason to celebrate as Ali leapt into my secure arms. He clung to me, his grip so tight that I could feel his fingers digging into my skin as he wept uncontrollably.

Peering into the dense forest ahead, a shiver ran down my spine, fully aware of the lurking presence of the man in the white shirt there.

I smirked. Why was it that, whenever I made up my mind to end my life, fate found a way to keep me alive? What a joke…

The last thing I anticipated was the arrival of the police. I thought I could deceive the woman, put Ali in Noor’s care and then off myself with the gun the lawyer left behind.

Worst-case scenario, I was going to use the bullets on that piece of shit and save one for myself. But she ran away like the coward she was. Fucking human animal.

When the police brought us to safety, they searched high and low, but Amina was nowhere to be found. I scoured every corner, but it was as if she had vanished without a trace.

In the ambulance, when I asked Noor about Amina, she told me something that left me in disbelief. Amina was never there. She was a mere creation of my thoughts and existed solely in my mind – a mirror image of my former self.

I created her as an escape from reality. The death of my mother was too difficult for me to cope with, so I created her as a comfort to my unsound and deteriorating mind.

The Cull - A Mother’s Dua, A Daughter’s Sin

Photo by fitra zulfy on Unsplash

“How work today? Yemek yedin mi?”

I was helping my crippled mother when she asked me if I had eaten at work. I couldn’t help but feel a heightened sense of wariness towards her, which she must have noticed as I peeked at her with a half-hearted smile.

She had laid on her own stool for an entire day, singed and humiliated, yet she still worried about me.

Feeling a deep sense of shame, I lowered my gaze and instinctively reached out for my punctured arm.

“Just another day. Her zamanki gibi.”

I carefully placed her diaper into a black plastic bag, intending to dispose of it with the rest of the trash after dinner.

Although she clearly wanted to inquire further, she stayed silent as I helped her put on her underpants.

Her sombre eyes followed me wherever I went as if trying to uncover my thoughts. I wiped away a tear, its saltiness lingering on my fingertips, as I was about to go to the kitchen.

“You must be starving, anne.”

She grabbed my hand, refusing to release it until I mustered up the courage to meet her gaze.

Her hair, once brown, now mirrored the colour of the snow outside. The passage of time had etched lines and wrinkles onto her once-youthful face. Her lively spirit had lost its spark, leaving behind a sense of defeat and exhaustion.

She was a mere shadow of her former self, a hollow imitation of the woman I once called anne.

“Remember, Allah is bigger than your worries. Always. Unutma kızım.”

I hesitated, feeling a knot in my throat. I dropped my eyes to the floorboards, averting her piercing gaze. I wanted to agree with her, to reassure her I already knew. But the words stuck in my throat.

I gently pushed her hand away, feeling the slight tremor in her fingers, and shambled to the kitchen.

After preparing her favourite soup, mercimek çorbası, I added two 300 mg Gabapentin pills and stirred it in.

My GP prescribed it for my sleeping disorder but I seldom took it. I wanted to be alert at all times, even while in a deep sleep in order to take care of my bedridden mum.

I took a deep breath and arranged everything neatly on a tray before returning to the living room. The authorities turned off the heat a month ago, so the entire place felt chilly.

I placed the tray on the table, the clinking of glasses echoing through the room. Before settling on a three-legged stool, I covered my mum with another layer of quilt.

As I held the spoon to her bluish lips, I noticed a flicker of hesitation in her guarded expression.

She knew, I thought, so why did she take a sip of the soup? As I felt a pang of ache in the depths of my heart, my breathing became laboured and I couldn’t bring myself to meet her gaze.

The touch of her fingers against my cheeks carried a weight of acceptance as if she had resigned herself to the idea of her life coming to an end by my hands.

I didn’t have to say anything. She knew that neither of us would live to see the daylight tonight.

I brushed her hand aside and stood upright. At that moment, the weight of my actions hit me like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her.

I fixed my gaze on the only window in our living room, watching my reflection twist and contort with anguish.

What had become of the person I once was? The reflection in the mirror seemed foreign and unfamiliar. My pale complexion, sunken eyes, hollow cheekbones, and stoic expression painted a picture of exhaustion.

I felt like a walking corpse, devoid of any semblance of life and devoid of emotions. I mused over the idea of having been human at some point in my existence.

How ironic, wasn’t it? Once a promising student with a great future ahead of her…

When my mum finally slept, I could hear the soft rhythm of her slowing breath and was lost in my own thoughts. Minutes turned into hours as I stood there, gazing blankly through the window.

The shimmering moon beckoned me to hurry, the twinkling stars pleaded with me to stop.

I shut my eyes. Tears streamed down my face. I turned around and opened my eyes, wiping away the never-ending tears.

I retrieved the stolen syringes and carefully rolled up her sleeve. With every gentle push of the syringe, I marvelled at how peaceful her face appeared.

Then I waited. I gently caressed and kissed her delicate hands, feeling the warmth slowly dissipate until they turned cold. I witnessed her soul depart from her body, leaving only an empty vessel behind.

But I didn’t cry. I didn’t have the right to shed tears for her, not when I was the one who had robbed her of life.

Only three syringes remained. I rolled up my sleeve and inserted one cannula into my arm, followed shortly by the other two. Only then did the tears return.

My cries shattered the tranquillity, reverberating like the desperate cries of a troubled child. I sobbed until there was nothing left but a deep, exhausted sigh. As I emptied the last syringe, my vision blurred and darkness consumed me.

The door swung open, and a voice screaming my name was the last thing I remembered before losing consciousness. The familiar face made me recall something I had long forgotten.

It was my birthday.

This was where my memories ended, like a broken film reel. I bore the guilt of my mum’s untimely demise. I tried to take my own life but fate had other plans.

Like the snowflakes, she melted away, while I stayed, alive despite everything. That day, I should’ve met the same fate and faced the consequences of my sins. But I didn’t.

Day after day, the same question plagued my mind: why? Why did I live? Why me?

I opened my eyes…

The Cull - The Past Intertwined

Photo by Sven Brandsma on Unsplash

Noor and I left the others behind and made our way back to the double-decker bus after half an hour. The bus stood in solitude, undisturbed by any wandering souls, which meant the three guys were still in the nearby forest.

We picked up the pace, our footsteps echoing through the silence of the dark forest until we decided to split up. Noor went right, disappearing into the shadows, while I ventured left.

I marked an x on the trunk of an oak tree with the dirk knife. An hour. We decided to meet in front of the oak tree in an hour.

It was a few minutes after our separation that I picked up on a peculiar and repugnant smell in the air, which left me unsettled.

I broke off and looked around myself, trying hard to pinpoint the source of the repulsive smell, when a clamour erupted to my left. I cowered behind a towering tree, the rough bark scratching against my back, and finally located the source of the putrid stench.

From behind some bushes, amidst a heap of burning cadavers turning to ash, came a haunting din. It was only then that I noticed a decrease in the number of corpses strewn across the hard ground.

So, this was what he meant, I reasoned, when he said they should finish what they started. It all made sense now. The plan was to set fire to the bodies and eradicate any evidence that could indicate foul play.

This confirmed to me that either help was on the way or that their plans hit a snag – otherwise, they wouldn’t be in such a rush to dispose of the bodies.

The bag I saw didn’t contain weapons; instead, it was filled with containers of gasoline. They had meticulously prepared all this in advance, leaving no room for unexpected mishaps.

I watched the cadavers burn, their charred remains crumbling and vanishing with each gust of wind. My misty eyes took in the heap of destruction before moving to the three murderers, who wore wide grins as they watched the morbid spectacle.

Although I had never subscribed to the notion of good and evil, God and Satan, I couldn’t deny that these three men were the embodiment of pure evil.

Startled, my eyes widened in surprise before I instinctively lowered my head. The guy in the white shirt, the one who punched Conrad, turned his head and locked eyes with me.

It happened so abruptly that it took me a while to register what had actually occurred. It dawned on me that he had been observing me all along, silently, long before our eyes actually met.

I sprinted with all my might. My heart raced in my chest, the adrenaline pumping through my veins as I sprinted towards the empty vehicle.

But I couldn’t just abandon Noor, not when I had given my word to Omar that I would keep her safe. I stopped short and found a hiding spot behind some wilted thicket of bushes near the towering oak tree we promised to meet at.

I breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the weight of my escape lift off my shoulders as I realised no one had followed me. But it was short-lived.

Time flew by, and before I knew it, minutes turned into hours. There was no sign of Noor as if she had been swallowed up by the void, leaving no trace behind.

Panic surged through me, making my palms grow clammy with sweat. They couldn’t have found Noor, could they?

She went the other way and shouldn’t have run into anyone. But what if I was mistaken? They could’ve called for backup once they found out we called the police…

While I was contemplating what to do, a voice emerged from out of nowhere, causing my blood to curdle and my mind to go blank.

I raised my eyes and flinched. Stooping over the wilted bushes, the man in the white shirt observed me. I almost let out a scream.

“Looking for someone?”

His smile, with his lips curved into a grin, sent shivers down my spine. I rose to my feet, my heart pounding in my chest as I cautiously looked over my shoulder.

With each stride I made, he mirrored my movements, taking twice as many steps. I tightened my grip on the dirk knife, feeling the weight of it in my hand, ready to strike.

The guy halted in his steps as he noticed the dagger and maintained a safe distance from me. I directed it at him not long after, my heart pounding in my chest as I kept moving backwards, constantly checking behind me.

“Back off! I said, back off!”

“Put that thing down and let’s talk.” His voice was guttural, deeper than I thought it would be due to his soft features. “Don’t you want to see her?”

“W-what?”

“I helped her give birth and took her somewhere safe. The others don’t know. I can bring you to her.”

I frowned. Ali’s mum? Why? Why on earth would he do something like that? Didn’t these people bring us here to off us?

Something… something was off about this guy. Moreover, how did he know about the connection between me and her?

“How do you know? That I was looking for her.”

“I was returning to the bus when I saw you run off with the kid. I figured she’d convinced you to take him with you.”

“You left her there on purpose? Why?”

He took his time replying.

“Let’s just say it’s an occupational hazard and keep it at that. What about you? Why’d you let her talk you into it? Someone like you…”

“Someone like me?” I repeated. “Do I know you?”

“Just answer the question. Do you want to see her or not? If it’s the latter, then—”

“The infant. What happened to it?”

“It’s with her,” he said, adding nimbly upon seeing the doubt in my eyes. “I’m not lying. You don’t trust me?”

“Yeah, I think you’re full of it.”

He laughed, bemused from the look of it by the way I worded this sentence.

“Well, you’ll know for sure if you come with me – whether or not I’m lying.”

“Who the hell are you people, anyway? Why are you doing this to us?”

“We’re just doing what we are told. We’re all part of a pilot project overseen by the government.”

 “A project that’s meant to kill innocent people? Is that what you’re saying?”

“It’s for the greater good. Those people were gonna die, regardless. We just sped up things. Come on! You know that’s the truth! Those people don’t add anything to society, do they? They’re just burdens – all of them.”

“I don’t see the good in killing children.”

I couldn’t shake off the unsettling feeling as a knowing smile slowly spread across his face. He remained silent, not uttering a single word in response.

Then, like a sudden bolt of lightning, another realisation dawned on me. This guy knew me. I didn’t know him, I was sure, but he knew me. That was why he was smiling like this right now.

I dropped my head with a smirk. That bastard knew me, huh? How convenient.

“Take me to her,” I said as I looked up again, waving the dagger. “But only if I bring this along.”

“Sure. Follow me.”

His flickering eyes betrayed his distress as we ventured deeper into the forest. I tightened my grip around the shaft, feeling the rough texture against my palm, as I scanned the area for any sudden movements.

He was hiding something under his shirt. From what I could make out, it looked like a handgun.

If only I could overpower him and seize whatever he was hiding, perhaps we could level the playing field against these bastards.

He came to a standstill and turned around. Not even a single muscle on his face twitched.

I tightened my grip around the shaft, ready to strike whatever stood in my path, when he finally broke the silence.

“We’re here.”

I frowned. My grip on the dagger loosened as I looked around and spotted a carefully arranged bed of leaves to the right. My mind went blank with horror as the shrill cry of an infant pierced the air not long after.

I rushed to the bed of leaves and I picked up the bloody thing. It shivered from the frigid weather and had turned purple.

As I stood up with the infant clutched tightly in my embrace, the cold tip of the dagger pressed against the nape of my neck.

That was when I noticed that I had let go of it amidst the chaos. I didn’t turn around to face him.

“Where’s she? The woman.”

“She didn’t make it.”

“You lied,” I said as I cradled the infant against my chest, feeling its tiny heartbeat, to keep it warm. “You fucking bastard.”

“You’re not like what they told me.”

I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye as he said this. Who the hell were ‘they’?

“People change.”

“Not you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll know when the time’s right.”

“Who the fuck are you? I don’t know you. But it sounds like you do.”

“You weren’t supposed to be here. You know that, right? If I hadn’t noticed it was you, you’d probably be dead by now. I saved you.”

I looked away, smirking. “Is that so? Should I thank you or what? Just cut to the fucking chase and tell me what’s going on.”

He shifted his focus to the infant.

“It’s just a matter of time before that thing bites the dust. Why not save your questions for later?”

Deep down, I knew he was right, even if I didn’t want to admit it. Its body temperature dropped significantly and showed no signs of warming up.

I tucked it snugly under my gown, feeling its tiny body against my chest. I didn’t do this out of kindness, but rather out of necessity.

I may have made mistakes in the past – mistakes that would never be forgiven – but I was not a bad person, not innately at least.

“So what do you suggest?”

“Stay here until sunrise. That’s how you’ll stay alive. That thing too.”

“There are people out there who need me. I can’t just stay here and save my own skin, can I?”

“I can’t let you leave…”

“Why’s that? Come on. Don’t I at least deserve to know why?”

“Because the person responsible for this project tells me to. Is that enough for you?”

I rubbed my hardened face, frustration building up in every fibre of my body.

“And who’s that, huh? The person responsible for this sick project?”

“Someone you know very well.”

“Oh, someone I know? Of course, it is…” I paused, trying to choose my words right. “What’s that bastard’s name, then?”

“Why don’t you try and figure it out for yourself?”

“Is this some fucking joke?” I said, no longer able to hide the anger in my voice. “Huh? Is it fun? Killing a bunch of helpless people just for the kick?” I dropped my head, the thoughts racing through my disoriented mind. “Just like how you did back in October 2023? You fucking pieces of shits!”

“I know this is hard to accept right now. But I need you to stay calm and keep your voice down, okay?”

“Why… why are you doing this?”

“I told you. I’m just following orders.”

“Not that. You said you saved my life. Why? Because that person, the one responsible for this death sentence, told you?”

“Yeah, more or less. He didn’t know you’d be here. How did you end up like this?”

“How did I end up like this?” I repeated for myself. “I don’t know, I…” I paused as a realisation hit me. “He? It’s a guy.” I averted my gaze. “A… guy?”

“He tells me you know each other very well.”

“He tells you? How funny. It’s almost like you’re…” I bore my eyes into the guy’s blue eyes as a thought crossed my mind. “You’re… not human?”

A knowing smile played on his lips. “That should be the least of your concerns right now. Those people you risked your life for? You can’t save them.”

“What? Why not?”

“One of us is with them as we speak. Our customers don’t like it when things are too easy, you see. It’s all part of the project, although a live audience wasn’t exactly part of the original plan. But you already know that.”

“Who is it? The rat—”

“I can’t tell you that—hey, where you going? Hey! I told you! You can’t save them! It’s over! Do you hear me? It’s over!”

“Shut it and mind your own business! And tell that person he can fuck off too! Whoever he is!”

I brushed past him without a second thought, knowing very well that he couldn’t hurt me. The only thought in my mind was to return to the cave and tell the others about the rat among us. The only problem was that I didn’t know who it was.

It could be anyone, really. But who? I hadn’t seen Amina ever since I returned from the watchtower, Noor risked her life to help me get there, and none of the other survivors had done anything remotely suspicious that would expose their betrayal.

Moreover, I didn’t know whether Noor made it back to the hideout or got caught in the forest and was set on fire. How was I going to face Omar if I showed up all by myself?

As I was having these thoughts, I finally made it back to the double-decker bus. The number of cadavers was almost half now and the stench of singed flesh hung heavy in the air.

I put the sleeping infant at the top of the slope and climbed up myself shortly after. When I looked over my shoulder right before venturing deeper into the forested vicinity, I locked eyes with the guy in the white shirt.

I couldn’t tell if he was a friend or foe. But if he was really telling the truth, it meant the others were in danger. I had to expose the mole and alert the others. But how? Who could I trust?

As if these questions weren’t taking their toll on me already, my mind played yet another trick on me, taking me back in time.

I broke off.

The hungry infant bellowed, eagerly sucking at my chest. Gasping for air, I collapsed onto the hard ground, the image of my mother’s distorted face haunted me.

I attempted to stand up, but my legs buckled beneath me.

And the forest faded away…