Footsteps.

Sara had been drowning in a peaceful slumber until her body felt the increasing vibration beneath her, and a few seconds later, she jumped up and listened for it as it approached, its intensity growing so vivid that it left no doubt of what it was.

She stood up and faced the door in a ready stance, her shoulders stiff and her hands in fists.

The chain that locked her door to its frame began clattering slightly as if being disturbed in a manner that’s meant to be discreet. Could it possibly be someone trying to rescue her? Unlikely, of course, how did she even think of something as ridiculous as that? She was a wheatlander Muslim woman who broke the law by trespassing, if there’s anybody who’s going to rescue her, that’d be herself.

She gave a silent promise to herself that she’s going to run straight out the moment the door opens, but when it did, she froze in place, staring wide eyed at the two figures at the entrance. It wasn’t her annoying gaurd that shook her but the ever so familiar girl standing next to him with her dark curls and deep blue eyes, those eyes that held her hand and provided her shelter when she had no where to go and no one to go to.

Her hands shook and the back of her eyes scorched like the pit of hell.

“Kris?” she asked in disbelief and Kris crossed the few steps between them and embraced her in a tight warm hug. Sara’s heart exploded out of its chest, the warmth of her friend’s body wrapped around it like a blanket after a night in the cold.

She let out a breath and broke the embrace to look her straight into the eye, holding her face and smiling so hard, too happy to believe that she’s actual flesh and bone, that she’s real.
And then it struck her, the realization as cold as ice.

Kris must’ve noticed the change in her expression for she tilted her head and asked in concern, “Sara? what’s wrong?”

“How are you here at the headquarters? You aren’t imprisoned, are you? Please tell me you snuck in and that you haven’t gotten caught.” Her eyes were pleading and her accelerated heartbeats only doubled her anxiety.

Surely, the rebels weren’t caught, right? Her friends are still out there opposing the system, aren’t they? But Kris’s strained eyes said something else entirely.

Kris shook her head before answering in an impassive tone, “No, Sara, we are indeed held captive at the HQ. Mike sold us out to the separators and they captured each and every single one of us.”

Her heart sank, a bowling ball dropped in shock.

“What now? We’re all behind bars and they get to get away with everything they’ve done and keep doing?” Sara’s words constricted her throat as she rested her head on her shaking hands.

Kris took her hands in hers and squeezed it, smiling a weak smile tinged with something else. Hope.

“Asli is still out there, and she’d promised me to initiate the revolution.”

Asli

Asli

Her Asli?

Kris, as of sensing her line of thought, nodded in confirmation.

“But how?”

Shrugging, “I don’t know,” she said, “She’d come all the way from Wheatland looking for you few hours before Mike pulled his stunt on us, and she’d been pretty invisible in all the chaos that the soldiers didn’t see her at all, and the fact that they hadn’t known she was there in the first place stopped them from looking deeper into the woods.”

“And the revolution? Don’t you think it’s a huge burden for just one person?”

Kris shook her head in dismissal. “A revolution starts with one, yes, but it never steps forward without a good number of others. Asli maybe alone now, but that won’t be true for long. In fact, she might have found allies right now as we speak.”

Sara nodded.

Kris squeezed her hands tighter. “Don’t give up hope, not yet.”

Sara nodded again.
____________________________

Mark was frozen in place, slumped over the cold body of his dear friend in defiance. He couldn’t grasp the idea that he’s lost forever. One minute he was there, talking and walking around, and the next he’s gone. Engin’s eyes were directed to the orange sky of the dawn, and he sucked in a breath as his trembling hand rose up to shut his eyelids, one by one.

He clasped his friend’s lifeless hand in his and choked on a muted sob as he whispered a promise to the polluted wind.

Rest in peace, brother, your sister is mine, she had always been.

Even though Mark was a devout catholic, he raised his both hands in the air and recited the one verse he often heard his friend reciting, so much so that he’d memorized it, ayat al kursi, it was. And when he was done, he smiled at the body before him and said, “And despite our differences, my friend, we shall remain united, even as death do us apart.” And with that he rose up, and started burying him, his silent tears fogging his vision.

Using a broken branch, he dug out a fair amount of earth and proceeded to enlarge the hole despite the sweat trickling down his forehead and back. At last, when it was large enough to fit his friend’s body, he tossed the branch away and began dragging him to it, gently lowering his body into his grave. He couldn’t bring himself to look at him as he managed to put the soil back in place.

On the ground with his hands filthy and his face wet with sweat and tears, he heard a distant sound, the normality of which was what astonished him.

What once was normal is now peculiar, he told himself as he stood up and scrutinized the deserted terrain, listening in for the familiar sound, unable to recognize it, until-

A ringing.

A phone’s ringing!

But that’s impossible, nobody could own a phone or even place a call through the public line to begin with. All means of  contact had been shut down ever since the separation, and yet Mark was sure he was not mistaken, that sound couldn’t be anything but a ringing phone, but an exceptionally loud one.

He fretfully turned around and ran a quick glance at his surroundings, but then the electronic beep fully registered in his memory, and a spark of realization shook him as he took off running in the direction of the only possible source in all of Wheatland.

The public phone booth.
____________________________

“Asli? Is that you?” the voice on the other side exclaimed, his surprise mirroring hers.

“Yes, yes, I am. What are you doing there next to an old phone booth? Why aren’t you with Engin, and the others? Is something wrong?”

Her question was followed by an uncomfortable silence, one that made her heart pound anxiously.

“Mark?” she called again, “Is something wrong?”

“Yes, I mean no, nothing’s wrong. It’s just that there’d been shooting at the borders and I was sent for inspection. How did you manage to call all the way from Pallid? I thought the communications had been severed for ages now.”

Asli couldn’t silence that little voice of suspicion after sensing his hesitation, but her subconscious told her to drop it for now and that’s exactly what she did.

“We’ve been tricked into believing that, they work just fine, except for the fact that calls can only be generated from Pallid. Would you listen to me though, I haven’t got time and it’s quite important.”

“Shoot, I’m all ears.”

“Ask Engin to expect a delivery to this phone booth in 24 hours and another call with instructions regarding what to do with the contents of the parcel.”

A second of silence.

“Mark, you still there?”

“Yes, yes, I am. What parcel are you talking about?”

“We’re starting a revolution here, Mark, and we need your cooperation in this or else all our plans would fail, do you understand?”

“And that includes receiving a mysterious parcel and expecting a call? What’s that all about?”

Asli let out a sigh, that guy was getting on her nerves with his questions and she was running out of time.

“Yes, yes, it is. Would you do that for me? Just tell Engin everything and he’ll do all the work, is that okay with you?”

That hesitation again, Asli’s senses were jingling.

And then,
“Of course it is, I’ll do it.”

Asli let out another sigh, this time of relief rather than exasperation.

“Thank you, Mark,”

“Just take care of yourself, Asli”

She couldn’t help but smile.

“I will,” she said.

“And stay safe.”

“I will,” she repeated.

“And know that you’re not alone, that you’ll never be, no matter what happens.”

Her eyebrows were crossed in confusion now, something was definitely not right, but before she could say anything, he hung up and the unnerving static was back.

She was lost in her own air of uncertainty until Veronica snapped her out of her trance with her question.

“You okay there?”  she asked.

Asli only nodded in response, and Jack was the one who spoke next.

“Next section?”

She pondered it for a moment but then picked it out randomly.

“Onyx.”
___________________________

His legs shook, his hands were trembling and when his eyes stunk and burnt with such a wild ferocity, he couldn’t hold it in anymore and sunk to his knees by the booth as he let out a scream so sharp it reverberated and spread out in the burnt woods. His lungs shrunk in pain and his eyes filled with tears. His grief was a mountain that rose on his shoulders, and he found it hard to breathe, to think, to function, but worse yet, to believe, to accept the undeniable truth.

Engin was dead, gone forever, and no force in this world could ever bring him back.

He lay there on the dry earth for a couple minutes in defiant sadness before slowly getting back on his feet.

And as he stood up, he wondered how he’d deliver the news, for they were heavy as lead, both the good and the bad.