He craned his neck into the room reluctantly, he was worried about being caught, being tried, being sentenced for something. He wanted to run, to jump, to free himself from the constraints of morality, of society, of language, of thought; he followed the young familiar brunette into the unlit stairwell, where a short distance below laid another, much murkier door behind several layers of thick padded darkness. He wondered why, in such an opulent residence as this, such a danki and seemingly neglected space should exist. But his eyes fell upon the young girl’s hair as soon as the child removed her hood, how much it reminded him of the woman he still held so dear, and how awfully familiar it was to him; even her outfit reminded him of her. There was something so strange about the girl, as though there was something else inside of her trapped within the body of a fourteen-year-old, that he almost felt so bad for thinking too much about her person; he resented her, then he pitied her, then he felt the beginnings of a connection with her, a connection which he so yearned for as an alienated youth. He shook his head, a despicable attempt to deny his natural impulses – the impulse for human connection – and felt deeply a desire to disrupt his habitual action ingrained into him by the society he was brought up in, that which had trained him to think that he deserved his lowly position within its stringent hierarchy. He was a child inside, but long had been beaten down for this fact, this ingrown humiliating fact. In the first place, this girl appeared to be quite intelligent, on virtue of the fact that she entertains his tangents, and quite similar to him internally, even though her outward appearance was starkly different to his, by way of effort; for Lena was well-dressed, whereas he was shabbily practical in his wear. This was an exemplification, he theorised, of her internal self, that which she kept hidden from all onlookers; for he observed her to be so absolutely ashamed of her own intelligence and questioning that she was shy of it because she knew she would be in some way or other be punished for it. From this he gathered that, although she and her sisters were touted as the ‘Populars’, she herself was and had been for an explicably long time a lonely person. She was lonely, because, like him, she rejected the influence of those around her, those who sought to bring her down to their vapid level. Her thoughts were not their thoughts. The girl walked down the concrete steps steadily, with apparent calm and confidence, a poise that could only be matched by a princess of a large empire, and sank into the darkness before his very eyes. When she had disappeared, like a stone dropped from too great a height for one to see the bottom, he felt within his chest a tinge of worry, which manifested itself into an emergent thought, and then into a sudden action: he quickened his descent of the stairwell, but so suddenly and so carelessly his legs ran of their own accord until he stumbled into the darkness, fearing that he would collide and crush the girl, he screamed and flailed his arms instinctively. He sank also into the darkness, and suddenly stumbled further into a new, much colder environment; a room, of whose walls could not be seen for it was dark and boundless, as though he was suddenly on board a small ship at sea during the night. He could believe hardly what he was experiencing sensationally, for it was drafty and smelly. Rod looked around in a panic, and his darting eyes tried to make sense of it all. Suddenly, he heard a click and there came an instantaneous burst of white light, which seared his eyes with tingling sensations, as though behind their white film lay tiny yellow worms. The first thing he saw was that which was before him: the face of the young girl, white and squarish, with a diamond jaw that definitely resembled that of the woman he had been torn from, and eyes which were filled with water, perhaps the equivalent of the North Sea which separated her from her home, but which reminded one instantly of Horus. But what was so interesting, what piqued his curiosity, was that there was an intelligence like his behind those eyes. The girl seemed as curious as him about the other, and as drained with life as him; she let out, no, she expunged a large volume of air out of air in exhaustion. Rod was well aware of the internalised misogyny that was present within him, ingrained inside of him by his abusers – society.
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Rod did not stare for long, but it took a great deal of effort to not say what was on his mind at that precise moment, and turned around to survey the entirety of the room and the contents therein. This basement was obviously not meant to be seen by any ordinary visitor; and now, a few hours past midnight, he was standing there with a bored expression plastered on his face. And yet, as his eyes slowly adjusted to the bright white light pouring down from the fizzling bars on the ceiling, rows and rows of large black computer towers, complete with flashing blue, red and white lights, stood before him with frightening ferocity. It was a data centre, below which could be seen through glass an innumerable bundle of thick cables leading to somewhere or another. Behind the block of supercomputers were even more supercomputers, such that the basement extended beyond what could be seen from his position. They – the computers – seemed to be speaking to one another, whispering, muttering, laughing between themselves under hushed breaths as though they were joking at the expense of the young man. He felt furious; he had an impulse, an urge to whip around and demand an explanation for this madness, or even worse, to punch and smash the computers to smithereens.
“Hey! What is this? What the hell is going on here?” he shouted, throwing up his clenched fists and smiling, trembling with anger.
“What do you mean?” replied the young girl quickly in a high-pitched voice, raising her eyebrows in astonishment.
“What does Aleku need all these supercomputers for? Eh?”
“How should I know?” stressed Lena, growing red with embarrassment.
Lena stepped away from the wall she had been leaning against and walked in small steps towards the computer mass, which loomed behind Rod like a dense, black forest. Rod rushed in front of her, blocking her with his outstretched arms, eyeing her with suspiciousness without realising that his actions could be misconstrued by any onlooker. But at that unfortunate moment, someone gripped his shoulder from behind and he felt cold metal on the front of his neck, below his neckbeard, and the hand that was on his shoulder was small and nimble, for its little, delicate fingers patted him lightly.
“I think you ought to calm down, you little temper-tantrum'er,” whispered the soft, delicate, Eastern-European voice behind the blade resting on his neck. “Now, what do you want? What are you here for? Who are you, really?” she asked Rod accusingly, the closeness of her breath making him feel utterly uncomfortable. “To your knees!” she snapped.
Rod gulped, and felt a shiver run down his spine as he did what he was commanded. His knees ached as they pressed against the cold concrete. He was so out of it that he had not noticed the trickling sweat which had started down his shiny forehead. For all his grandiosity, it was in this moment that the young man suddenly realised his feebleness. He was afraid of his own trembling movement, for the blade pressed into the thin, dirty skin of his neck.
“You-” he stammered out, “You’ve got the wrong man. I mean, I ain’t no man at all.”
“What are you twittering on about?” she said. “What is your purpose here, darling?” she added, and pressed her knee slowly into his kidney.
Rod winced. “I don’t know what you are talking about!” he cried.
“Oh, I think that you do. I am not here to play games with you, mister,” she said, pressing further into his kidney, and see-sawing the knife against his neck.
Rod screamed in pain and jerked from side to side, desperately trying to escape from the restraints of his captor, but to no avail. He wheezed and looked pleadingly at Lena, who had folded her arms and returned his desperate stare with a fierce, emboldened gaze.
“What is going on?” he whimpered, his eyes wide with terror and his hands, palms forward, held at the side of his head. “What have I done?”