006. the ghost in biko

Time was a punishment whose cruelty was exacerbated by a battlefield-induced fever pitch of perception, drawing extended breaths from Eoran, who was hyper aware that life needed only seconds to leave. Five minutes might as well have been an eternity. The shape in the distance twisted and turned, malformed into a monstrosity by the lens of glass through which it was observed and the dramatic light drawing attention to its slow motion show.

As he waited, Eoran’s mind implored him to prepare himself for eventualities. It urged him to not ignore the plethora of possibility and every reality the early evening held close to its mirage-mottled breast. The boy found that his positivity tended to be a resilient thing. His parents found him foolish in how he shirked any duty deigned beneath him under the assumption that it would just work out. So, then, why was he being so negative? Why were his lungs heavy with sentiments best collected by necrographers?

Fragility ever only seemed fortune-based in these types of situations. What made Brint take a bullet to the arm versus anywhere else? What made him take the bullet at all? Those other bullets should have hit their mark. Why was there so much sound and only half as much follow through? Ossan men were known for their bravado, and yet, this was war. Ammunition was a precious commodity.

His mind was somewhere else.

A proboscis unfurled through the split ledge between window and sill and supped chaos from the heatstroked air of day. A culmination of darkness swirled and separated, aether ripped in twain by an unseeable force of paramagnetic opposition. Starshine too early; moonbow circles and lightfleck fireflies flirting with each other in the unnatural hour. A glimmer in the glare of a gold-toothed grin.

“That’s a guy! Fuck!” Eoran spun around and ripped Brint from the wall like they had anywhere to go other than that lonely isthmus of concrete. A heavy metal door broke up the clay-stained gorge with a rectangle of grey. With his good arm, Brint shoved Eoran toward that exit. The hammering release of three lock’s bolts now kept their time.

One, Brint angled the barrel of his rifle up, down the length of the alley.
Two, Eoran’s fingers fought with the handle of the door.
Three, a shot echoed through the labyrinthine angles of western Biko’s remains.

Kasse caught his friend’s violent sway, a surge of strength meant for a locked door connecting with his chest. He was breathless. Mongrel boy, so much more at home in these concrete hollows than he’d ever admit, couldn’t tell if his throat was so caught by way of the impact or the proximity or fucking relief, but there wasn’t any time for reunion. Eoran was safe, Brint was—

Brint was not here,

not safe

not safe

not safe.

Dropping Eoran, Kasse charged the door. He was a starving tiger in a dying jungle, desperate leap a prayer to a goddess who never smiled, at least not from the side he always saw: the side where her teeth showed through her cheek, her eye sockets hollow save the chrysanthemum filigree that decorated her bones.

Kasse slammed Brint into the pavement, both men skidding as the sniper round hit the brick just behind where the sergeant’s head was milliseconds prior. 

“—F-fucking go—”

There was nothing but the jangling of dog tags and rifles, eardrum heartbeats, the hard scrambling of limbs and boots on the sandy ruptured asphalt. The PFC drug his superior up by the waist and shoved him into the building he’d so thoroughly secured.

Clambering up from the ground, Eoran filled the space left by the rush of Brint and Kasse’s harried shuffle, slamming the door shut behind them. The Toriet boy swiveled again, following the blur of crimson dragging an afterimage of violence behind his friend’s movements.

“H-aah,” Eoran wheezed. Dizzy as he was from all his careening, the boy was already at his friend’s waist, his thighs, scouring standard-issue camo for punctures with his eyes, trying to locate the source of the ruddy staining, trying to beat the ebbing of adrenaline that would surely soon incapacitate the other boy,
looking him over,
turning him around,
and around again,
and—

In that search for something he would never find, Eo’s eyes may have welled with an emotion. It was probably just a trick of the light, though. Day filtered in from rooms well beyond the one in which they stood from flimsy doors blasted open.

“Sitrep, Sejan,” Brint commanded, righting himself in the shade of the building’s interior. He, on the other hand, figured that was too much blood for the amount of deft ambulating that Kasse had displayed, so either someone had got it good or he’d just been saved by a ghost.

Hand to the back of Eoran’s neck, Kasse pulled him into a deathgrip hug, exhilarated survival instinct desperate to halt the spinning. He pressed his nose to his best friend’s temple, lips to the high edge of his cheekbone—just so fucking glad to see him again, to see him alive. 

“Entered on the south face through a window—” close enough “—uncovered a cache of weapons and ammunition before neutralizing two—” three “—hostiles on the ground floor, sir.” The boy swallowed the fervor of the earlier fight, once more collected into the cool indifference he wore like a shroud. He offered Brint a lopsided grin, so foreign on that pretty face flecked in enemy red. “Pretty good timing.”

Eoran’s arms encircled his friend, palms sliding along cloth-covered ribs as fingers sought a fistful of uniform to grip atop Kasse’s shoulder blades. His cheek took comfort in the sloping of that boy’s neckline—the feel and smell there, salinity of his sweat coalesced into the ferrous twinge of another man’s blood. A gentle exhale grazed the line of Kasse’s collar, ushering forth an ease that slackened his own shoulders, reduced his hold, substituted fear for affection down the length of his body pressed against the other boy. Only a year together and Eoran was so attached to his friend, unsure what he would ever do without him. Thankfully, for the time being, he didn’t have to wonder.

“Yeah, thanks for that,” Brint replied, expression an impish reflection of that cunning youth. “I owe you big, kid.” The sergeant moved to the door and peered into the guts of the building’s interior. He spoke into the stillness. “Weapon’s cache, huh? Could be fun. Let’s go check it out. You guys can give those shitheads across the street hell while I try to connect with the other teams. We’ll hold this position for now; they’ll probably want what’s in here. Let’s go.”

Already their CO was moving to the murkiness of the stairwell. Eoran released Kasse, adjusted his rifle, and turned to follow.

Kasse’s eyes were fully adjusted to the dark, maintaining his position as he watched Brint and Eoran pass through an enormous hole torn out of the wall. They were in the store room now and Kasse followed, leaning on a rough concrete edge as the others were approaching the door leading toward the shallow front room running along the building’s front—

the execution chamber coated in blood. 

The man in black’s body had been positioned in the doorway, neck broken. The other Ossan was left where Kasse took him down: facedown and bloodless. 

The grey-eyed soldier watched, observant. He followed where his fire team investigated, the curved angle of Eoran’s spine when he stood stock still and doe wary, where exactly Brint lingered around the recovered munitions, how both soldiers responded to his handiwork,

trying to decide whether or not either man thought him a wright.

“I haven’t cleared the upper level, sir,” the bloody boy said, quietus amplified in the hollow chamber. “Neither of them were bloodwrights.”

“Alright,” the sergeant nodded. “We’ll go clear it, then you two can come back down here and lug all this equipment upstairs so we can set up shop.” Brint was, apparently, preparing for his own presupposed eventualities. He was thinking ahead—if one more of them were to get taken down, then it would benefit them to be closer to the roof where an on-the-fly LZ could be made. Lugging a body upstairs would be too cumbersome on a man down an arm. “Good work, Sejan. You’re a real natural at this shit.”

Eoran remained silent, following a long line of blood that previously slithered away from the bellydown dead. He was unbothered, used to the sight of blood from his upbringing and unable to fake even a modicum of surprise at the sprawl of that human slosh. If anything, he was slightly glad. Glad Kasse’d been the one with the upper hand, glad that he wasn’t the one who had to snuff either of those lives. He followed Brint to the stairs again.

When they got to the middle landing between floors, the team leader waved a hand for Kasse to come closer to him.

“Did you hear anything up here when you were taking care of those other guys?” He asked, voice barely even a whisper in the echo chamber dark.

Kasse shook his head no as he approached and met Brint on the landing, passing Eoran on the stairs. He faced the sergeant—nearly touching shoulder to shoulder—masquerading a strategic proximity, but really, Kasse wanted to look down the landing at the other PFC. He had so many fucking questions right now. Eo was acting so strange: how watery his eyes were, how his clenched jaw was so tight, how closely he’d checked the ghost for injuries. How was he gonna relay his knowledge of the third soldier’s activities? The potential that he had been going upstairs to relieve or join others in his squad? Why did Eoran press so fully into their reunion earlier? What did Kasse know? Why did he feel like Eo was mapping him out?

Almost like Eo wanted something. What could he even want?

His brain raced through evidence. He rewound in full back to the rats, fast forwarding his journey through the wall, the stairwell, the store room, the dissolution, the murder—

pause. 

Kasse remembered the radio on the milk crate, now shut off. The walkie-talkie, sputtering staticed Ossan over the airwaves. Four half full packs of cigarettes (now two empty, the boy might have looted the room.) Three beers, two half bottles of water, a sweating can of Dokaco. Four chairs and two stools.

Six drinks, four chairs, two stools.

“I was real quiet—but I think there’s more. The one in black was on his way upstairs when I got ‘im.” Kasse was close, voice brief with his hand on Brint’s shoulder. He stared at Eoran as he carefully sorted through what was relevant. He held the younger soldier’s eyes, his own hazy gaze sharp and inquisitive and so fucking confused. “Six drinks. Six chairs. Four packs of cigarettes, all open. Only two bodies.” 

Kasse softened his stare, brow quirked at his friend in a silent what the fuck is going on, man?

How could that studied boy, in the brief life of a captive stare, relate the exactitude of his rushing heart? How could his eyes possibly tell the tale of his collapse? How could he ever pull his friend into the bleak darkness of his purview, so he could see for himself the way Eoran’s starless universe was being devoured by the vortices of another, and then maybe understand that the boy was terrified of what would happen on the other side of this unstoppable transmutation. He was sure Kasse would be drowned in the self doubt and the uncertainty, the warbling woe that wracked his bones, the suddenly crystal hindsight in which Eoran was able to see every single error he’d made in his life so far. He was barely surviving, and it was his own. How could he convey that he was just a dumb kid who wasn’t cut out for shit like this? That he was so much weaker than his teammates. The boy’s eyes lulled to the side, demure as he scoured the depths of himself before returning back to his friend. He said nothing, couldn’t condense himself into a twisting of features that would concisely relay his clumsy intricacies or the mathematics of the spiraling entropy gnawing away at his insides.

I’m trying but, Eoran shook his head briefly back and forth, reluctant and abashed beneath the mercury of his friend’s gaze. I can’t.

Brint scratched at his chin thoughtfully, looking up to the topmost landing.

“Well, they’ve gotta be either expecting their guy or trouble, with all that noise from outside.” Even the trifle of Brint’s volume overtook the non-tones of the boy’s tête-à-tête. “Toriet, Sejan—you first, I’ll follow behind. Hope to catch them off guard, but if it goes bad just open up on whoever’s in there okay?”

Eyebrows gently knit, Eoran crept past the pair in front of him and stepped lightly to the top of the stairwell. He waited for Kasse there, lips parted in a breath that formed the words, “When you’re ready.”

Coming up behind Eoran, Kasse was already scanning the second floor. It was relatively clear, save the remnants of a home torn apart. The crumbling remains of quickly demolished walls left just the supporting structures, allowing the boys to see straight through all parts of the shambled apartment. A mostly defunct bathroom full of pipes rusted from leaking sat on the far side. A beat up couch next to an armchair riddled with bullets, a shattered glass dining table surrounded by three broken chairs that matched the ones from downstairs, a pile of clothing covered in dust. Roaches skittered and hissed in what once was a kitchen off to the side, obviously living out of an overturned mini-fridge. The cabinets were a victim of the elements, sagging down the walls, wood grain laminate veneer peeling back to reveal bloated fiberboard beneath. A small tray of trinkets glinted by a hollowed out window, rhinestone barrettes and baubles catching the last glimmer of a now fading day.

Kasse held a hand up to Brint—hold up—before drawing a lazy circle in the air by his ear—regroup. The grey eyed boy pulled his friend close, eyes on a set of drop down stairs open in the center of the room. The ghost had his mouth to the other PFC’s ear, too close to just serve the volume of his words. 

“I’m going to go over there, behind the drop down. I’mma suggest Brint take another position to ambush. Aim your rifle and when we’re in position, call out in Ossan: Sister, you left your soda.” The boy was hardly a whisper, too tense to vocalize in full. He had no idea if he was right on this call, but he had a gut feeling that he’d killed three members of a family that used to live here. His breath trembled against Eoran’s neck, so close it would’ve been easy to taste his skin like he’d been wanting. It’s all he could think of since he’d made that heart evaporate downstairs, breaking the limiters he himself had placed on their friendship—Gods, all he could see was Eoran bent to the savaging of a lust he was desperate to redirect to Brint. 

Not here, not now, Kasse rolled the mantra through his mind like it made a fucking difference, eyes still watching for any movement in the dark. Don’t think it, don’t fuck this up, idiot—he’s all you fucking have.

“W-when… when we get outta this, we gotta talk—I don’t know what’s going on with you but shit feels different, Eo.” Gently, from one step behind, the boy rested his chin on Eoran’s shoulder. “So make it through this. I really need you to make it through this.” 

“Okay.” It was an all-purpose response, meant to sate every request made of him. The tilt of Eoran’s chin allowed him to peer at his friend from the corners of his eyes. When that boy pulled away, he watched him go, then left him to have his conference with their CO, who seemed to be unflappably impressed with Kasse’s cunning forethought.

Eoran took up his position and waited, tracing over the leftoverss of lives destroyed. Of course it was a family they were on the verge of wiping out. Why wouldn’t it be? It couldn’t just be some faceless jackasses who were too stubborn to lay down their weapons. It had to be a family trying to protect what was theirs, trying to beat off the greed of far reaching hands that sought to claim life and land for their own.

He followed his teammates movements in quick glances. Watch your aim, he heard his drill sergeant say into his ear, echo of a lesson lingering from long ago, things can get real crazy real quick out there and of all the things that can go wrong, friendly fire feels the fucking worst. Eoran turned his torso and straightened his chin; he adjusted his aim.

A look to Brint, barely visible aside from the gentle curve of the top of his head hanging over the grassy shade of his eyes. Ready?

Over to Kasse in confirmation. Ready.

Eoran called out into the stillness of the desecrated apartment, second-nature syllables rolling freely from his tongue, “Parang, umjue roshinoroiya…!”

“Hamadanta, Yavi!” A teenage girl’s sylphic voice echoed out from the crawlspace, annoyed. “Arsaiya e Varo, espaevalere darvastra, idiot-so-stupid, it’s just Dokaco—”

As soon as she was halfway down the steps, she saw that it was not her brother. She was a doe eyed thing with her gaze wide set in her round face, a ruddy blush painted across her small nose dusted with freckles. She was thinking too fast, too quick—the soldier with his rifle pointed at her was younger than Yavi and she could tell he was her kind.

Immediately she put her hands up, face haunted by the myriad directions her gut lurched in. 

“Please, other-brother, don’t bullet-shoot me,” the girl said, Amsteadean flecked with her lilting accent in shakes, too many words strung like she was still speaking Ossan. It was evident she’d learned the language from a dictionary. “I am undefendable-sixteen, weaponless.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Eoran huffed in a grumble that might as well have been subvocal while he watched the girl descend. He cleared his throat and spoke up. “Keep your hands up and get on the ground. If your hands move, I’m shooting you. Do you understand? Gehoya espakugoroani a aidashiani.”

The barrel of Eoran’s rifle remained trained on the youth, even though he saw every girl in his neighborhood back in Port Haven in her face, even though her annoyance carried a musical lilt similar to that of all the girls he’d grown up with and left behind. The crisp chime of her condemnation conjured a nostalgic tinnitus between the Toriet boy’s ears, and he hoped the sternness of his expression veiled his vulnerability. “Yakarangoroani,” he told her. I’m not your brother.

“But you are my brother—moreso now if Yavi is dead, if you took his life,” she said, returning to Ossan. “Why are you doing this here? Do they hold your mother in a cell without water? Did they murder your father? What have they done to you to make you do this to me?”

Swallowing hard, the girl took a step down. “My gave-me-name is Riki.” Another step, hands still up. “Yayeva da?”

Are you gifted?

Kasse, on the other hand, wasn’t entirely convinced, but presented with a teenage girl in a building more termite and shrapnel than wood and concrete, he understood they had to be careful. Looking back to Brint, Kasse decided to edge toward him, eventually finding his way to the sergeant’s side.

“Do you believe her?” The executioner was all questions now—what else did he have?

“Kid in an attic with a weapons cache downstairs?” Brint gave his words directly to Kasse’s ear, secrets shared from man to man and not meant for the air. “Fuck no. Look how slow she’s moving. Wish I knew what she’s saying. Stay sharp.”

Ignoring the movement of his companions traced through the undertow of his periphery, Eoran remained still and focused on the girl. “Stop talking.”

“I’m not the best but she called him brother—he said he wasn’t her brother. She said he was now, if her brother was dead downstairs,” the ghost translated to the minimized space between him and his CO. “Is your mother a prisoner. Is your father a body. Are you Varonian’s hostage.”

Are you gifted?

Kasse seized up imperceptibly, eyes wide in alarm. She was either asking because she knew or because she was. 

“I see-hear-feel-know you, karang,” she said, looking down nervously as she stepped down on another step. She seemed like she was looking for something, eyes blinking rapidly. “There is a skeleton inside the concrete of the stairwell; he was my uncle once. Did you put him there? Is that your gift?”

She knew. She was.

Fuck. The thought reverberated throughout the trap of Eoran’s skull. He didn’t want to do this with this girl, play word games spanning the pages of their combination dictionaries, deriving meaning from words cobbled together from thoughts barely lived in. The PFC drew in a slow breath. That was his reaction to her evincing of his friend. It hadn’t been Eoran’s gift. Two people, huh? There was no body in the stairwell. Just dust. Three people; dust. He exhaled.

“If you know me,” Eo’s misleading query began, “Then why ask?” His head tilted, a challenge boldly stated above the fluttering of his restless heart. Conciliation was not far behind. “It doesn’t have to be like this, you know. This city belongs to Varonian, but if I am destined to be your brother, then come down in peace and let us share a drink of water.”

“We could just take her out,” Brint said to Kasse, doubtful in the midst of more conversation between the girl and his other soldier.

“Not you, no. Your brother, then? The one who lurks beneath these stairs? Is your brother the ghost in Biko?” The girl only knew this war. If threatening this man’s teammate got her somewhere safe, so be it. “Does the white one know? Aah, I know. The country that owns you and wants to own me would make him an object, wouldn’t they. That is what Amstead does. It decorates its stolen house with stolen you, stolen me.” She tilted her head to the side. “Stolen him.”

All Kasse could see was Eoran’s face when he heard the words skeleton and stairwell. Watched him realize. Watched the way he took that deep breath like it would hold back the discovery’s escape. Watched him swallow. Watched him choke. Watched him let her keep talking.

“She knows we’re here,” Kasse said. All he knew was this war and if he had to sacrifice this girl to stay hidden, so be it. “I think… I think she’s a bloodwright.”

“Fuck,” Brint mouthed.

“You won’t drink with me, then,” Eoran said. “Amstead isn’t so bad. There’s opportunity, even for people like us. My brother of blood was recently accepted into the highest college for wrights. How can you say we are owned? He lives free, I live free. You, too, can live free rather than in this shell of what used to be. Riki, please.” The boy’s bargaining was motley assemblage of truths and falsehoods, words that made him want to gag softened by memories he was not able to linger in for long.

“That’s enough, this is only going to get worse.” Those were the last words the sergeant gave to Kasse before he was slipping away, finger hooked to the trigger of his gun, eyes wrapping around the side of the couch he was beginning to peer past. He glanced back as if to ask: Ready?

“Are you free though? Like really?” The girl smiled as she lowered her hands slowly. “Will your boy be free if I say it in your other tongue? Should I try it? How do you say yayeva in Amsteadean? It’s utility, right?”

Kasse tightened up, nodding to Brint. He was concentrating, imagining the step under Riki snapping in half. It wouldn’t be weird. It was an old, warshocked building. Old wood broke.

So was that what that sound was? 

From the hallway, or an echo in kitchen?
A noise on the stairs?
A creaking upstairs?
Or a heavy footfall—Brint. Kasse?
The stairs. Her step. Her hands. The stairs. Another’s steps.
Thick boots, working soles clobbering closer. Her smile. A creak across the ceiling, the floor, the stairs, oh fuck, the stairs. The building was complaining. That was what that was, right?

Not quite.