The pain in Zain's arm immediately faded away as he ran over to Sana's body. He put his hand on her wrist, like they did in the movies he’d watched: her heart was still beating. Inaya was busy wrapping up the large hole in her leg with a piece of cloth. Sana jolted awake and let out an ear-piercing howl. Inaya quickly muffled Sana's screams of shock with her hand. Zain tried to look into Sana’s eyes, but he couldn’t. He didn’t want to see the pure terror enveloping her face.
“Sana, it’s going to be okay. We’ll fix it,” Inaya said, unsure if it would actually happen.
The blood just wasn’t stopping. Inaya was fumbling with the cloth. Her hands were trembling too violently for her to tie up the wound. Zain watched for a moment and then jumped up and told Inaya he was heading to their parents.
He sprinted to the door, threw it open, and hustled to the landing of the stairs so fast that he barely noticed the mess of broken objects and shelves lying around the room. Only the windows remained unbroken, for the Qureishi family had chosen the strongest windows possible to avoid them ever shattering. Uncle Malek lay on the ground, coughing his lungs out. A very small metal rod was jutted through his arm.
“I heard Sana’s scream,” he blurted. “What’s going on out there? Is she alright?”
“No. Are Mom and Dad—“
At that very moment, Zain’s mother and father burst out of their bedroom door upstairs and hustled down to him. Despite the fact that they were physically unharmed, they both had heavy bags under their eyes and their pajamas were all bunched up.
“What happened? Is everyone alright?” Mr. Qureishi said in a panic.
"It's Sana!” Zain cried. "Her leg—it got cut off!”
Their eyes popped open.
“What? Where is she? Outside?”
Zain quickly led them out of the household to Sana, who was screaming through Inaya’s hand muffle. She was kicking her right leg hard against the ground, groaning in pain. Blood poured out from where her left leg used to be. In a moment, she fell unconscious again.
“Inaya, move.”
Mrs. Qureishi instantly shifted into a focused zone only she could enter. She quickly picked up Sana and tossed her over her shoulder. Zain—whose heart was growing greedy for space and pumping harder than ever before—followed his mother and father back inside, very unsure of what they could do to defuse the situation. Despite everyone else’s panic, Zain’s mother worked flawlessly to organize a plan in her mind. When they walked in, Uncle Malek was already heading towards them.
“What is it, Malek?” Mr. Qureishi asked.
“There’s—“
“Please open up! Pacifems are outside your door!” a sharp voice from outside came through the door.
Mrs. Qureishi halted and almost dropped Sana. Zain’s eyes widened. Right after an earthquake? There was no way they could cover any evidence in the time they had. He walked over to the door and peeked through the tinted window. He immediately scurried back, because even though he knew they couldn't see him through the window, the man was glaring right in his direction.
“What are they doing here right now?” Inaya asked with wide eyes.
Zain looked up at his mother, who handed Sana over to his dad. Her eyes narrowed as they always did when she was under pressure.
"Inaya, carry Sana up the stairs right now and get everyone behind the bookshelf. And listen to me,” she said as she tied up Sana’s leg, slowing down the blood release. “Listen to me. No matter what you hear, no matter who you hear, do not take a step out of that room. Don’t even consider it. And make sure Sana stays quiet if she wakes up.”
Zain and Inaya both aggressively nodded and quickly moved towards the staircase. Another loud knocking came at the door.
“In a second!” yelled Mrs. Qureishi.
As Zain hustled up the stairs with his sister, he remembered something.
“Inaya.”
“Not now, Zain—“
“Inaya, the leg! If they see Sana’s leg then it’s over!” he told her.
Inaya wiped several beads of sweat off of her forehead.
“Quickly go hide it as fast as you can. I have to get Sana into that room as fast as possible. Move quickly.”
Zain didn’t have to be told twice. He sprinted back down the stairs and darted past the kitchen, focused on getting Sana’s leg and nothing else. Over the broken decorations, over the blood-stained grass, over the tiny grass circle. And there it was. The leg was lying flat under the tree. Zain winced. But he knew there was no time to waste—so he shut his eyes, gripped the cold leg, and yanked. The shoe stayed put, but he was strong enough to tug the leg out with a revolting squelch. He quickly shrouded the sneaker with some branches and leaves from the willow and placed the leg behind a large bush, then ran inside where his mother painfully groaned.
He looked over to her and saw that she had gotten halfway through her leg with a large knife.
“Mom?”
Mrs. Qureishi turned over to him with such a horrific expression on her face that Zain wanted to run away. Her face was extremely contorted and her eyes as bloodshot as ever. Mr. Qureishi was clamping her jaw shut with his hands to prevent her from screaming.
“ZAIN!” his father yelled in a tone that Zain never wanted to hear again. “UPSTAIRS! RIGHT NOW!”
“Wait!” his mother shrieked, breaking from Zain’s father’s hold. “I can’t—I can’t do it. I need your help, Zain. I need you to cut off my leg.”
Zain took a deep breath. Uncle Malek was preoccupied with his arm, and only Zain’s dad had the strength to hold his wife’s mouth shut.
“What? Why?”
“Listen to me, Zain. I don’t have time to explain this to you. This is the only way we can save Sana.”
“Okay.”
Zain picked up the knife—already smothered in blood—and held in a gag. He had to do this. Wincing, he brought the knife to his mothers leg and pushed forward. Back and forth, back and forth.
“Everything will be over soon,” he murmured to himself. “Everything will be alright.”
His mom was screaming under his dad’s hands. At this point, Zain couldn’t even feel his arm. The only reason he knew he was still cutting was because his mom hadn’t stopped crying out.
With a final push, the knife cut through the last piece of flesh and instantly dropped from Zain’s shaking hand.
“Upstairs. Now,” his father said as he restrained his wife from shrieking louder.
Zain didn’t hesitate to head towards the entrance and up the stairs. The Pacifems were banging against the door at this point. And as Zain closed the doorway to the bookshelf room, they bursted inside the house. His breathing was so heavy that he couldn’t hear a word of what Inaya was whispering to him. But a minute passed by and he calmed down, realizing that Inaya was just reassuring herself that everything would be okay. Sana lay in her arms, lightly sleeping with shallow breaths. Inaya’s short brown hair was all over the place.
In time, the room got hot and humid, and Zain's skin was starting to get sticky. Inaya was busy trying to find some way to stop Sana’s dark blood from soaking up the cloth—to no avail. Zain groaned. He was beginning to feel the cut from the vase in his arm, like a constant stinging.
Inaya tenderly reached up and found the emergency flashlight, brightening up Sana to see what they could do. Zain almost puked now that he got a clear view of it. There was a white bone jutting out of her leg, and the cloth that covered the hole was now dark red, turning to black. Sana—still unconscious—was now breathing heavily in her sleep.
Zain’s was growing more and more lightheaded with every heavy breath. After about two hours, he was just beginning to slump down to the ground as the bookshelf door flew open. Standing in front of it was the silhouette of a woman holding a large metal object. Mrs. Qureishi stepped forward.
“We’re back."
Inaya’a large eyes stared down at her mother's face wet with tears.
"Mom. . ." she choked out.
“I know, I know. You’ll be alright, and so will she.”
Zain quickly focused his attention on Mrs. Qureishi’s leg. Where there was once muscular flesh and bone, there was now a hunk of shiny metal attached to her knee. She held an identical smaller prosthetic leg in one hand. She beckoned for Inaya to hand over Sana, who was now a sick shade of purple. Inaya promptly did. Quickly, she injected a clear liquid into Sana’s arm.
“The anesthesia should put her to sleep for an hour or two. You two, don’t come into the office. Uncle Malek is going to be doing surgery on Sana in there. He’ll attach the implant and slip on the prosthetic leg. And he’s going to give her blood—lots of it. The doctors already did it on me. Don’t interrupt him. He risked his job by stealing these tools.”
It then became clear to Zain what he had seen his mother doing downstairs. She had cut off her own leg so that she could be hospitalized, and Uncle Malek could take one prosthetic leg to his sister Zara while secretly hiding another for Sana. He felt a chill go down his spine, like a group of spiders crawling down his back, thinking of the pain his mother must have gone through while cutting off her own leg.
Mrs. Qureishi left the room, leaving Zain and Inaya alone in the silence. They didn’t really know what to say to each other.
“I’m going to read a book. Need to clear my mind.” Inaya said as she pulled a random book out of the shelf next to her and left the room. She always read to calm herself down.
The creaks on the floorboards seemed a lot louder than usual.
Now it was just Zain. He was starting to recover emotionally, but as more time passed the pain in his arm grew sharper. And now, it felt like he’d been cut so deep that there was no arm left. Clutching his arm, he went to find his mother in the hopes that she could do something about it.
Sana remained asleep for the rest of the day and the whole of the night. It was more difficult for Zain, but after the anesthesia for the stitches he also felt drowsy. He woke up the next morning and tried to push himself off the bed, but the stinging was so strong that he was forced to stop. So he lay in bed for a while, going over what had happened.
Just as he began to fall asleep again, his mother and father walked in with a large bag in their hands.
“Happy birthday, Zain,” they said excitedly as they placed in next to his bed. “Wait till your siblings are awake before you open it, though,” Mr. Qureishi added.
“My . . . birthday.”
“Forgot, didn’t you?”
Zain nodded. He’d never forgotten his birthday before. It was the one day he looked forward to every year.
“I’m sorry it didn’t go the way you wanted, Zain,” Mrs. Qureishi caressed his forehead.
“Is Sana alright?”
“Still asleep.”
Zain nodded once. He maintained eye contact with his red blanket.
“We couldn’t scream,” he said.
“What?”
“Yesterday. During the earthquake. We were outside and we couldn’t scream for help. I thought Sana was going to die.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“You did the right thing, Zain. All of you did. You all protected each other,” Mr. Qureishi said.
Zain shifted uncomfortably under his quilt.
“All this time, I’ve thought that pleasing the Pacifems was what mattered. As long as we keep them pleased, they wouldn’t care to search for illegal children,” he stared, trance-like at the palms of his hands. “And I never questioned the Child Ban. I thought it was just a part of society that the Pacifems had instilled. To prevent overpopulation. But it seems different now, for some reason. Maybe because how scared I was for Sana yesterday. If they really are planning to kill any children they find, then what’s the point of listening to them at all?”
“I wish we didn’t have to, Zain,” Mrs. Qureishi said calmly. “But if we don’t, our family will fall apart. To be honest with you, because of the Child Ban most people nowadays just go through the daily motions. No one is truly happy anymore. Children like you and Inaya and Sana, you’re what make the world a beautiful place to live in. And the Pacifems know it. But removing the Child Ban means removing immortality. And they’re scared of death.”
“People lose purpose if they know they’ll live forever,” Mr. Qureishi added.
“Everything great has to come to an end, Zain. Remember that. Even a life.”
Both Mr. and Mrs. Qureishi looked at Zain in concern, at his baggy eyes and his pale skin, and got up to leave the room.
“We’re your parents, Zain,” Mr. Qureishi said. “If you ever need someone to talk to, we’re always here for you.”
“I guess yesterday we were reminded that we’re not invincible, just immortal. We’ll let you sleep Zain—you need some more rest.”
As both of them silently walked out of the room, Zain cleared his throat and asked one more question.
“Do you ever think the Child Ban will end?”
Both his parents turned back around and looked at him. It felt like an eternity before they spoke.
“I hope,” Mrs. Qureishi said finally. She closed the door.
Zain slept for another hour and a half before he slid out of his bed. After completing his tedious morning routine, he exited his room at the same time Inaya exited hers. The skylight above shot down a cold, gray light into the long hallway they stood in. Inaya looked just as fatigued as Zain. She hadn’t bothered to make her hair and was still in her pajamas.
Without hesitation, Inaya stepped forward and pulled him into a tight hug.
“Sorry about your birthday, Zain.”
“It’s alright,” Zain replied. “At least everyone’s going to be okay.”
Inaya nodded soberly and placed her hand on the railing of the stairs as they let go of each other. She and Zain walked down together.
“It must have taken a lot of guts for mom to cut off her own leg. I don’t think anyone else could’ve done that. I wonder why dad didn’t cut it for her. Seems like it would be a lot easier.”
With a small chuckle, Zain whispered, “Dad doesn’t have the guts to cut off anyone’s anything. He won’t even kill the ants that try to steal our fruit.”
“Sana’s still asleep,” Inaya said. “I just checked. It’s odd. I don’t want to leave this place nearly as much as I did yesterday, I feel like I have to stay here and protect you two until we’re old enough to move on with life.”
Zain nodded absentmindedly, for his own thoughts were beginning to change much more than he had expected. In fact, everything Inaya had told him the previous day about leaving seemed much more reasonable now. He hadn’t realized it, but he’d gotten tired of living in one place, simply trying to avoid being caught by Pacifems. He didn’t want to feel like he was just on the edge of being found out at all times. He wanted to enjoy life—and he wanted to do it openly. He wanted to rid Gaudium of the child ban.
After a hearty breakfast with his older sister, Zain silently creeped back up to his room. He didn’t really feel like talking to anyone.
As he hopped onto his bed, he studied everything in his room. Never before had he taken the time to appreciate everything that he had.
He’d thought the house would break down with the earthquake, but apparently not. So he gazed around his room. It wasn’t much; each wall was a dull, faded cream color and there were black shelves and drawers on both sides of the room. Above him was a glass roof, so that he could watch the sky as he slept, although this was very problematic if he was trying to take a nap in the daytime. Some nights, when it was raining, he would lay flat on his back and watch the rain pitter-patter on the glass, and he would fall asleep in no time. And his bed. His bed could probably fit about three Zains in any direction. A maroon blanket and black pillows, with a white headboard rising up just at its head. It was really the only object of noticeable color in his room. Any remnants that there was someone who slept in this room every night had to be removed. The only place the Pacifems never checked was inside the drawers. They never suspected that anything environmentally damaging could be placed in a bedroom drawer. Or maybe they were just being lazy. Zain didn’t know.
He heard a soft knocking on his door—which was already slightly open—and sat up to see Sana twiddling her thumbs, staring up at him with large green eyes. Zain wasn't in the mood to talk.
"What do you want?” he barked.
It took him a moment to recall Sana’s situation, and instantly he felt his gut turn inside out. He focused his eyes on Sana's new leg, much smaller than his mother’s. Glowing green lines wrapped around the thick titanium metal.
He quickly made up a lie that wouldn't hurt her feelings, "Sorry, I thought you were Inaya for a second.”
Sana didn't seem like she trusted that, but nevertheless she lumbered over to the foot of his bed, and plopped down. She held in a sob.
“Will my leg stay like this forever?”
“I think so, Sana,” he said. “But it’s not all bad. You and mom are leg buddies now, and maybe it’ll be even stronger than your old leg!”
"I want my old leg back," Sana said bluntly. She was visibly trying to avoid letting a single tear fall. Watching, Zain felt a pang in his chest that he felt he would never recover from. “It’s not fair.”
He turned his neck and looked at the roof, then back to Sana. She was staring—no, glaring—at the ground, with a furious look in her eyes..
“It’s all because of the Pacifems,” she said angrily. “Maybe they could have made a leg for my size if we asked, but I can’t go near them. And now I’m stuck with this piece of junk!”
Her metal boot's lighting remained cyan blue as she stood up off the bed. As if she had completely gained control over it, Sana swung her gleaming shank into a shelf with full force. She had to yank hard to get it out. From that point, things just got worse and worse, and Zain silently watched as Sana destroyed his shelf now that she had a piece of metal she could do it with. Sana was tiny, but a monster when she wanted to be.
At this point she was fuming, but she knew not to break anything Zain actually cared about.
“Stupid tree. Stupid backyard. Stupid house. Earthquakes aren’t even supposed to happen here.”
“I know,” Zain said in wonder. “It’s not normal, we don’t even live near a fault line. And for it to be this strong . . . I’m surprised our home didn’t break down. I think whoever built it built it so that it wouldn’t break in this situation. The other homes are probably like that too,” Zain walked over to the pile of wood and picked up a large chunk. Sana had really smashed through the shelf.
“The other homes aren’t like that,” said Sana. “I heard Dad and Uncle Malek last night before he did that . . . stuff on me.” She shuddered. “All the other houses came tumbling down. Which means we have the strongest one!”
“Our house should’ve at least been slightly damaged, no?”
“But it didn’t! Other than the stuff inside, of course.” Sana exclaimed happily, forgetting about her leg for a moment.
Zain would have liked to talk more with her alone but Mrs. Qureishi walked into the room, and the first thing she noticed was the mess of smashed wood all over the floor. He braced himself for a hurricane of scolding.
He was more astounded than he’d ever been when she asked, “How are you doing, Sana?”
“I don’t like this leg. I don’t like it at all.”
Mrs. Qureishi walked up to her daughter and took her hand.
“You’ll get used to it, Sana. I promise. No one likes anything until they do. We should all be thankful that nothing worse happened,” she said calmly. “At least we still have a place to live. A roof to sleep under. Whether you realize it or not, there will always be something else we can lose too, so just be happy we didn’t lose everything. You’ll be okay.”
Sana grunted shortly.
“Now—you must be super hungry. I made you some really really spicy pasta!”
Sana half-heartedly followed her mother out of the room. Out of Zain’s window, the sun slept behind wide, gray clouds. The weeping willow now lay permanently on its side, a tangle of green surrounded by what could only be perceived as a floor of plants. Zain dropped the wooden plank back onto the dusty pile and focused his attention on the view. In the distance, he spotted a couple up on their second floor trying to replace their shattered windows. A spark of anger flared in him as he watched them chatting with each other carefree, not a worry to concern them. They were too happy to be sad. Even after an earthquake.
How come the world was like this? How come all these people were okay with the end of all children as long as they never died? A new hate for the child ban and everything that came along with it—the ever-growing egos of the citizens, the fear Zain felt every time he looked out a window, the child murders—exposed itself in him. The truth was, the child ban was useless. Eventually, all of the citizens of Gaudium would die one way or another in some sort of accident. He was sure that there were people who had died in the earthquake.
He used to wonder what joys awaited him outside the house once he turned twenty-five and could secretly enter society. Now his thoughts of the outside were plagued with Pacifems and joyless adults.
Now that he recalled it, they had actually been very lucky. The booming sounds of everything breaking down must have covered their screams. But that just made Zain even more angry, as it brought him back to how they might not have had this problem if they could scream for help. It was a circuit: no matter what, he always came back to some angry conclusion.
He ambled over to his mirror and held up his left arm. Cutting from his wrist to his shoulder was a long, jagged line of thin black stitches that his uncle told him would dissolve on their own. The area around them was inflamed and it reminded Zain of the little notches on a football.
It took him a few minutes to check up on all the other bruises and scars that had developed on his body.
The week flew by quickly. He decided to wait a bit to open his present, until everything about his birthday didn’t remind him of the earthquake. Mr. and Mrs. Qureishi had cancelled home-schooling temporarily in order to fix up all the furniture, and Sana was starting to master her new leg. She now knew how to move with more power, jump higher than usual, and even anchor it to the ground if she needed to.
It only took seven days before disaster struck again, during Zain’s seventh dinner being thirteen years old. His family and him were using regular plates as opposed to paper ones because the Inspection Pacifems weren’t expected for another month. Paper plates were reserved only for the days of possible inspections, when they had to dispose of evidence that they had a family quickly.
It was as Zain was about to bite into his third piece of chicken when a familiar banging arose at the door.
“INSPECTIONS! PLEASE OPEN THE DOOR!”
Inaya gagged on the piece of food in her mouth.
“It hasn’t even been two weeks yet.”
But there was no time to worry about that. The second they had heard the knocking Mr. and Mrs. Qureishi had shifted into cleanup mode, removing all the plates from the table and shoving the excess food into the fridge.
“Upstairs. Now.”
There was a slight quiver of stress in Mrs. Qureishi’s voice that only one who had been living with her for years would be able to detect. Zain and Inaya exchanged ominous glances and headed upstairs, Sana following in their wake. Her footsteps made an alternating thump, clunk, thump, clunk.
By the time they had made it behind the bookshelf, the front door downstairs had already been opened. And by the time they were able to catch their breaths, the woman was already in the library they were hidden in. She took no stops anywhere else in the house. Went straight to the library. Sana held in a deep breath.
“Excuse me, but may I ask why you’ve barged into my house not even two weeks after your last visit without so much as a greeting? Pacifem Law states that—“
“Law must be broken in times of danger,” the woman spoke in her hollow, soothing voice.
“I can assure you that there is nothing dangerous under this roof,” Mr. Qureishi said.
“I know a liar when I see one, Mrs. Qureishi. You are hiding something, someone.”
Mr. and Mrs. Qureishi stared blankly at the woman for a second, startled at the conclusion she had come to.
“If you’re implying that we have some kind of Pacifem traitor in this house, then you’ve interpreted our loyalties very wrongly, Ms.—“
“Kiara. Ms. Kiara. My name is Kiara Dempsey. Are you going to make me look for the children on my own or will you just hand them over?”
“We have no—“
“I am very aware of the three children you’ve harbored here for who knows how long.”
Her boots were heard colliding with the ground as she inched closer to the bookshelf.
“Listen,” a slight quiver in her voice. “There is no one in this house but me and my husband. No children. No danger.”
“The children are the danger, Mrs. Qureishi. Not only are they illegal but they pose a threat to the carefully made society that the Pacifems have worked so hard to erect. Now, this is my final warning. Please deliver the children to me and I may let you and your husband live.”
Zain could now hear Kiara’s voice right through the wall. She was standing directly on the other side.
“Tell me, why is it you seek the fall of Gaudium?”
With that, a long skinny leg with a high black boot burst through the wooden bookshelf and contacted directly with Sana’s tiny head. She was knocked out by the time the leg had exited the hole it entered in and the wide door was thrown open.
“Hello, kids,” she spoke with a voice so sweet yet so hollow that Zain was unable to tell just exactly what she meant. He gulped as he looked her up and down, slowly standing up. She was much taller than he’d imagined—taller than Inaya, at least. She had to be nearing six feet. And she was skinny but muscular at the same time. The first thing he noticed was her face. Her skin was a paler white than almost anyone he’d ever seen, she had a small patch of freckles at the top of her cheeks, and her eyes were as bright green as Sana’s, although they emitted a much more cynical light. She had on the normal Pacifem outfit—long, black boots with a long sleeved black button-up shirt covered by navy blue slacks and a vest. On her head lay a fedora with the golden emblem of the Pacifems in the middle: an empty hourglass placed inside of a small circle. Under the hat lay straight, silky jet black hair that hung down to just below her shoulders blades.
“Step away from my children,” Zain’s mother snarled.
“We can make a deal with you,” Mr. Qureishi begged. “But please let our children live.”
Zain himself was too petrified to even mutter a word or move. Nothing felt real.
“A deal means both sides benefit in some way. That would not benefit me or the Pacifems in any way. You’ve brought this upon yourselves. It was because of your selfish desire to have children that two young girls and a young boy must die.”
When Mrs. Qureishi launched herself at Kiara, complete pandemonium broke out. Sana had recovered and was now wailing at the top of her voice clutching a bump on her head while their father tried to usher them out of the room with Kiara occupied.
“It’s going to be all right, Sana. We have to go now—Zara!”
Kiara had flipped her over in a matter of seconds and she landed stomach first on the wooden floor. Zain and his sisters watched in shock as she delivered the final blow by kicking her head with the bottom of her boot. Zain’s mother had been knocked unconscious. It only took another few seconds for Mr. Qureishi to be out as well. There was something about the way Kiara fought that was terrifying. Her speed, her power. She had taken on two fully grown adults and knocked them out in a few movements.
“Stay still and this won’t hurt a bit,” Kiara hissed to the children.
Surprisingly, Inaya stepped in front of her younger siblings and ushered them back.
“I won’t let you—“
BOOM. Kiara’s boot slammed into Inaya’s head without a moment’s notice.
“Inaya!” Sana shrieked.
Inaya’s nose began to bleed as she forced herself back up again and threw a tight fist at Kiara. Kiara didn’t flinch. Not a single movement from her body. Her arm came up and caught Inaya’s mid-punch. It was hard to tell what was going on, because she held onto Inaya’s arm for about five seconds. A small grimace etched its way across her face as the muscles in her arm tensed. Inaya screamed so loudly that Sana covered her ears. A dull snap was audible right before Kiara knocked her out. She’d broken her arm.
Zain couldn’t really recall what happened after that. His heart was beating much too loudly and his body shaking much too violently for him to hear anything Kiara was saying or register what was happening. He’d never considered that he was going to die before, even with all the close calls. And so when Kiara’s fist slammed into Zain’s face with full force, there was nothing he could do except receive it, and let his vision turn black.
“Lunatics,” was the last thing Zain heard her say.