Asiya needed her pass, and she marched to those words in her head like they were the beat of a drum.

The HR and people's department was situated on the fifteenth floor, six floors above Asiya's, and guarded by frosted glass doors that could only be opened with a staff fob.

Asiya had carelessly left hers hanging on the back of her chair.

She hadn't initially intended on venturing off of her department floor for lunch. She hadn't been in the mood to talk or to see other people. She had planned to do whudu, pray and have a pity party at her desk.

But her plans had changed once Fatimah had given her a name.

Someone was going to hear her speak today. Someone, if not everyone, would listen to her, even if it took kicking them down to their knees.

Asiya charged closer to her office.

She felt like she was wasting precious time trying to get her pass, so each one of her steps was being electrified. Each one was faster than the previous, larger than the last, and every step felt riskier, too, like Asiya was at risk of tripping on her skirt and falling flat on her face, but she couldn't stop.

She felt too full.

Like there was a violent screaming scene playing out on a television inside of her, but someone had turned the volume all the way down or pressed the mute button.

Asiya could feel the movements, the anger, the hurt. She could feel the ripples from the chaos being acted out streaming through her, but she couldn't empty herself of them. Even though they were foaming inside her like a childish mixture of baking soda and vinegar.

The exit had been sealed. Asiya was determined to hold everything in until she stood before the right person.

Asiya slammed through her office, causing Kerry to jump in her spot.

Kerry snapped her head around, alarmed, her work phone tightly pressed against her ear. She moved her fingers in random shapes, mouthed some words and motioned towards Asiya. Come here.

Asiya batted away each of Kerry's signals. Her eyes zoned in on her lanyard. She grabbed it and bolted out of her office.

Time was ticking, and Asiya's feet were on fire as she ran to catch it. She would be okay if all that was left of her legacy in this office were dark, smoggy imprints on the floor after this. They would be proof she had done something.

"Asiya!" Kerry poked her head out of the office door and hissed her name across the hallway loudly. "Asiya! Where are you going?"

Asiya's fist swung towards the direction of the lift as she ignored her boss.

Asiya vaguely registered Kerry hastily giving instructions to the person on the phone before calling after her.

"Asiya!" Kerry called out again.

Asiya didn't respond. She didn't turn around. She didn't slow her speed or stop. Asiya was in a trance.

She continued to barrel towards the lifts, but instead of pressing the button, she swerved to the right and flew through the stair exit.

The lifts were too slow. It was lunchtime for most people. They would be even slower. Stopping and restarting at every floor, like a bus picking up passengers. Asiya didn't have time for that.

The stairs were rarely ever used. They were steep, wide and painful if you missed one. They were a workout, but they would be quicker.

Asiya began climbing up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Her fingers stretched over the cold bannister as she hoisted herself upwards.

Her feet slapped against the concrete, and her breath pulsed in her throat, but she couldn't stop to catch it, and she wouldn't stop for Kerry to catch up too, who was toddling after Asiya like an abandoned child, crying out her name in breathless bursts.

"Asiya," Kerry wheezed, her voice growing fainter, "Asiya, please stop."

I can't. I need to get them off. I need to get these words off my chest so I can breathe.

"Asiya! I asked you to stop!" Kerry's voice boomed up the stairway.

Kerry had shouted.

Kerry never shouted.

She snapped. She swore. She rolled her eyes. She threw staple pins at the wall pretending they were poor but, according to her, well-deserving targets, and if she needed to, Kerry could drop her voice into a patronising, syrupy tone that could make someone believe they were in between the teeth of a siren, but she never shouted.

Asiya's right foot hovered over the next step before she reluctantly planted it on the one below.

"For God's sake, Asiya!"

Asiya listened to Kerry curse under her breath.

She watched Kerry impolitely inhale and exhale. Her cheeks inflated and deflated like a balloon as she yanked her heels off her feet and tottered up the stairs towards her.

Asiya closed her eyes and sucked in her bottom lip.

What time is it now?

Lunch would be nearly over.

Gouge would probably be back at his desk, like everyone else. Still, she could take him. Asiya would just have a larger audience than she had anticipated.

He'd called her dramatic once. She'd show him dramatic. She'd give him a show.

Maybe it would be better if her performance was captured by an audience. Audiences gave arguments validity. They were witnesses. Witnesses increased credibility, and credibility could justify Asiya's actions and lead to results.

"Asiya...gosh...child," Kerry puffed as she draped her upper body against the metal bannister. "What the hell is going on? Why are you so upset? Where are you going?"

"I'm going to see Gouge," Asiya answered simply.

Asiya needed her words. All the words she could get.

Gouge's words were cocky and confident, and they ran out of him as though they were operated by a battery. He would have an excuse ready for every accusation Asiya would hurl at him.

So, Asiya needed to be prepared and able to counteract every single one of his sentences.

She couldn't afford to stumble or stutter because he'd pick on that weakness and pull on it until her argument was nothing more than a bunch of loose threads.

Asiya wouldn't eat into her reserves and waste her words on Kerry.

"The head of complaints?" Kerry squeezed her eyebrows together. "Why? What's wrong?"

"What's wrong? What's wrong is that he's a racist bully!" Asiya exclaimed. No explanations. Kerry could figure it all out by herself.

"Whoa, okay," Kerry whistled. She clutched a side of her stomach, rubbed it tenderly and stepped upwards so she and Asiya were on the same step. "Tell me what happened," Kerry commanded gently.

"I don't want to," Asiya said.

You are wasting my time, Asiya thought inwardly. Kerry was diluting Asiya's energy and anger. Things that she should be saving for Gouge, things that Asiya wasn't sure she could confront him without.

"You're not leaving my sight until you do."

Asiya chewed on her lip.

Kerry placed her heels on the ground. "I mean it."

Asiya recounted what Fatimah had told her in what sounded like a single breath.

Asiya then justified her volatile plan by telling Kerry what had happened to her the last time she had raised an issue.

She had done so not because her plan needed bulletproofing, evidence, or assurance that it was the right thing to do or the only thing that would work but because Kerry had advised her to seek Gouge's help before.

"Okay," Kerry nodded. "Let's go back. We'll get Fatimah and file a report."

Asiya balled her fists, forcing all her energy to thrum into her feet and keep her grounded in defiance.

"No."

"No?"

"Respectfully, Kerry, but no."

"Asiya, I think you need to–"

"No," Asiya repeated. "I am not filing another report. I'm not filing any more reports. Reporting him doesn't do anything. Filing a report never does. It never has. These things never get taken seriously. They're never acknowledged. Never dealt with. No one is ever held accountable. At most, someone will tell us that these are grave accusations. Or they'll thank us for bringing their attention to such an important issue. If we're lucky, they'll tell us they've taken it on board. Taken what on board? How? The people continue to roam around the office. Not even a passive-aggressive email, in-directing their behaviour, gets sent out. Our reports stay that. Reports. Accusations. He said, she said, like playground games. They're not allowed to exist outside our heads and beyond our perspectives."

"Asiya–I get–You can't just barge into the human resources department and start shouting at hi–"

"Then what can I do? Tell me, Kerry, what the appropriate response is! Tell me what I'm meant to do to have these things taken seriously! I've done everything I'm supposed to!"

Asiya tightened and released her fists as though the movement would screw all her emotions closed, but it was too late. The cap on her emotions had popped off.

"Tell me what font I have to type out my report in for it to be processed, Kerry," Asiya hissed. "What language do I have to speak? How should I present myself? How should I act? What should I say? What words must I use on my ticket so it's picked up? How do I translate myself so someone will understand me? So someone will listen. So, someone will take my words at face value and not distort and retell them in their own? Don't tell me to soften my voice. Speak politely and go through the right channels 'cause I've done that all before."

Anger was an unreliable emotion.

The spurring rage Asiya had initially felt had been brittle. Like air in a flute, it didn't stay with her. It didn't leave her with anything solid. As soon as she had paused, caught her breath, and expelled it all by conversing with Kerry, the feeling, her so-called confidence, had disintegrated and blown away like dust, leaving Asiya crumbling onto the floor.

What a joke, Asiya said to herself. Her anger had no bite.

Jokes.

Gouge would pass his comments off as jokes.

"Reporting these things doesn't do anything. They just get brushed away because they're non-derogatory words. Half-hearted, backward compliments. Jokes. Curious, harmless questions. Mistakes. Accidents. They don't mean anything," Asiya drawled sarcastically.

"And microaggressions! Oh, those are lukewarm," Asiya waved her hand dismissively, squeezing out a few more acts of the character she was playing. "They don't burn enough to be considered racist. They're not innocent, they just nip at our skin, they never actually pinch through, they don't draw blood, they don't leave marks, so why should they be taken seriously? They're nothing reportable. They're just words, but it's not only in war and death that people show certain lives are more important than others, Kerry."

Kerry shifted around Asiya.

She moved her hands from the bannister. She placed her hands on her side, on her hips, then stretched them out towards Asiya but instead wrapped them around herself, all the while staring at Asiya as though she didn't know where her hands belonged, where to place them and needed Asiya's direction.

Asiya ignored Kerry's movements and placed her cheeks in her hands, cupping her falling memories.

All those times, she thought inwardly. The previous situations with Gouge, comments made throughout her childhood, the incident at the station, meeting Yusuf's family, all those incidents.

She hadn't shaken those things off. She hadn't let them go. Those experiences had shaken her, snagged and stuck. They had been time-stamped into her life.

The ticking. The ticking wasn't the sound of time moving. It had been a countdown.

I'm sick of how I allow them to make me feel. No matter how hard Asiya tried not to, her heart absorbed the words she was told to shake off and carried on beating, transporting poison through her bloodstream, making her feel their effects over and over again.

Asiya sank her head lower into her hands.

"I'm sorry, Asiya. I didn't know. I didn't think...," Kerry said slowly. She sat down on a step. "This isn't about me, though, it's about you. Fatimah. The others. I care about you, Asiya, and your future. You've explained some of what you've been going through to me, so I hear how frustrating this is, but I'm worried. I'm worried that if you burst into that human resources department and lose your head, as much as he's in the wrong, you've done all the right things before, and he's the problem, you'll get in trouble."

"I know," Asiya mumbled.

Asiya didn't have the guts or energy to confront Gouge anymore anyway. She felt haggard, like she had been sitting under a beating cold shower for hours, watching her resolve drain away.

"Have you prayed?" Kerry suddenly asked.

"What?" Asiya lifted her head. "No."

"Go and pray. Then get Fatimah, and both of you go home. Go get ice cream, watch a movie, shop, spend time with your husband, just get out of here," Kerry instructed. "I will deal with Gouge. I will handle this."

Asiya immediately began to protest. This was her issue, and while releasing her anger and combusting in the process hadn't been the best idea, she felt like it was still her fight to finish.

Leaving this situation behind, even if it would be in Kerry's capable hands, wasn't as easy as Kerry described.

Asiya couldn't just waltz out of work like nothing had happened. The situation and her feelings wouldn't be left behind the automatic front doors. They would follow her wherever she went.

And when they didn't, all it would take was one bad day or one wrong word to cause them to come rushing back to her, like a dog returning a stick to its owner.

"I haven't finished wor–"

"Do you really think you'll get something done?"

No.

"Asiya, you've told me what you've done, what you've tried and should've been able to do. Now, let me have a go. Let me see what I can do with your help."

"But I can't sign out early today. The clock. I'll get a mark," Asiya argued weakly.

"I'll sign you and Fatimah out," Kerry said firmly. "I'll sort this."

Kerry wrapped a hand around Asiya's arm and gently squeezed it.

Asiya could tell that Kerry was being honest. She could hear the grit overpowering her accent and could feel a determined tremor in Kerry's fingers. "Let me try and help. Please. I promise you, I will get something done."

And that was that.

Asiya picked herself up from the floor and plodded down the stairs while Kerry clicked and clacked up them to the next floor with a lift.

Kerry is right, Asiya thought to herself. She would get something done. People would listen to her because Kerry was older. She was a boss. A supervisor. A partner. She had a stake in the company.

Kerry's prominence would carry Asiya's complaint all the way to the top and result in the ticket landing on the right desk of the right person.

But Asiya was still burning because those weren't the only reasons.

People would listen to Kerry because she was white.

The ticket would be placed on the right desk because it was being held by the right coloured hands. Hell, someone would even offer to personally handle it or, at the very least, hold the door open for Kerry to scuttle it through.

They would listen to Kerry's, aka Asiya's complaint and heed Kerry's instructions because they were coming out of her lips. They would nod earnestly as Kerry dictated exactly what should happen. They would take down notes and pass those notes along.

They would make plans. There would probably be a meeting set, an initiative created, and some action taken.

That was good.

All of that was good.

But those prospects tasted bittersweet.

Even though justice would be served, Asiya couldn't help the fact that her insides were still blackening and smoking. Because even as Asiya saved her friend, herself, and her dignity, she still needed a "saviour" of her own.

A white knight had still come to her rescue, and while Asiya trusted and believed Kerry's good intentions, she was sick of being a damsel in distress.