“You know, this would be a lot easier if we could just wake them up.”
“We can’t risk them making a frenzy, Cameron. That woman is still driving in the front of the van. She could hear them.”
“Both of you—remember what Bolton told us. If we don’t have to make a sound, don’t make one. We’re getting in and we’re getting out. Help me untie them now. These ropes are thick.”
Just awakening, this was all Zain heard as he sat with his eyes closed. Judging from how gently the van was shaking, they must have been moving slowly on some tiny road. As for the voices, they were completely foreign to him. His hearing was distorted. All he knew was that these people were untying his two sisters and would soon be doing the same with him and his parents.
It wasn’t very long before he got dizzy and droned out of consciousness for the second time.
“Zain, wake up. We have a tour in an hour and you have to be ready.”
Zain’s eyes shot open within a second. Where was he? Why was his mother speaking to him? From his flat view on the bed he could see that he was in a large bedroom with a white, unlit chandelier hanging from the roof. A patch of sunlight softly warmed his face as he sat up and looked at his mother. She was wearing nicer clothes than she’d worn in a while, and she even had makeup on.
“Tour?” Zain said. “What tour? What happened with Kiara? The last thing I remember was—“
“Kiara catching us, yes. But we woke up here and this note was sitting right next to our front door.”
Zain rubbed his eyes as he took the note from her, vaguely remembering voices he couldn’t recognize.
Dear Qureishi family,
Please be ready to leave the house at 10:00 AM for a tour of Totum, provided by Totum’s very own Pacifem Resistance League recruits. Thank you.
Best regards, Totum Consulate.
“I don’t understand anything in this note, mom. Who are these people?”
“Neither do I. But we should be ready regardless. We don’t really have any other choice, do we? And I want to talk to you and your sisters before we leave. So get ready.” With that, Zain’s mother hugged him much tighter than usual and he hugged her back with an equal effort. “I love you so much, Zain.”
“Love you too, mom.”
She took the note and left. Zain sat blankly on his bed for a minute, trying to understand what was happening and how to react. He was sure that he would wake up in some sort of underground Pacifem dungeon or something, chained to a wall with his sisters chained next to him. He certainly didn’t expect to wake up in a rather nice bedroom with clothes already folded up for him in the drawers and books stacked for him on the shelves.
He let himself breathe a sigh of relief. Never had he been more worried or frightened in his life, nor more grateful to wake up in a bedroom. He’d been so close to dying. In that last moment, right before Kiara hit him, he had felt the life drain out of him like water.
As he changed and brushed his teeth, he tried to understand what he could from everything written on the note. Totum? The Totum Consulate? Was he in some kind of unknown country, untouched by nuclear devastation?
The second he left his room a pair of lanky arms wrapped around his shoulders and a much smaller set around his waist.
“We’re all okay, Zain,” Inaya said ecstatically as her and Sana squeezed him. He hugged them back, and a wave of tranquility came over him that he had never felt before. And for a moment, he felt like letting out a sob. A happy sob.
“We are.”
“Now can we go eat breakfast, Inaya? I haven’t eaten in ages!”
“Yes, Sana,” Inaya giggled as Sana hopped away from them and down a bright set of stairs. The wide hallway they stood in was bordered with navy blue walls and a white roof with lighter blue circles dotted all over. Along every few feet hung a metallic, golden cylinder with a bright light bulb inside. “It’s cool, isn’t it? This hallway. I’ve never been anywhere with this kind of style before.”
“We haven’t been many places,” Zain responded as he and his sister sauntered towards the staircase.
“Exactly! This house is so interesting! And it’s even bigger than ours. It has a game room, movie theater, play area—it has everything we could want.”
Zain wasn’t really listening. Something had been nagging at him ever since Inaya and Sana hugged him.
“I’m sorry for not protecting Sana with you back at the house.”
“Huh? Don’t think about that, Zain. You’re safe now. We don’t have to think about that anymore—I think. It depends on whoever this Pacifem Resistance League is,” Inaya held his shoulder. “You don’t have to apologize to me. It’s okay to be scared.”
The cast on her arm was a clean white. Brand new.
“It was like I was so scared I couldn’t move. I never thought that happened in real life. And you broke your arm because of me."
“I would have broken my arm anyway,” she said with a sly smile. “You saw the way Kiara moved. Such a skilled fighter, yet she’s a Pacifem. She confuses me. I thought they were the supposed peace-keepers. How come she can fight?”
“Maybe on the outside they are. If they kill children, who knows what else they do?”
“Who knows,” Inaya repeated. “Did mom tell you she wants to talk with us?”
“Something like that.”
Zain assumed she was going to prep them for the tour or something. Not that his mother knew much, but she always liked to prepare. Especially if she was going somewhere she’d never been before.
Breakfast was some square-cut cereal that Zain had never had before, but it felt like an entire new category of flavors was entering his mouth every time he took a bite. Every moment he was growing to like this place a little bit more. Most of the windows were shut and veiled but a bright light still managed to seep in through the corners of each.
Sana had already finished an entire bowl and was moving on to try the next cereal in the cabinet. Whenever she saw a food she’d never eaten, she couldn’t help herself. Mrs. Qureishi also joined them.
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She looked at each of her children in turn, then said “I want you to know that your father and I will always be there for you. It’ll never come down to what happened yesterday. We want you three to always feel safe, all right?”
“We know, mom,” Inaya said kindly.
Zain and Sana both nodded.
“We can’t go back home anymore,” Mrs. Qureishi said. “We shouldn’t go back to Corrin ever again, if we can help it.”
Sana quietly wiped a tear off her face that no one seemed to notice.
“You three are my children. You’ll never have to worry about losing me or losing your father. We would risk the fate of the world to keep you safe. We love you.”
“Now, apparently a tour guide is coming to pick us up in ten minutes. Listen to me now because I’m only going to say it once. Stay behind your father and I unless we direct you to do otherwise. None of us know where we are or who these people are. Just because they saved us doesn’t mean that we can trust them.”
“I mean, they are called the Pacifem Resistance League,” Zain noted.
“Nevertheless, we can’t trust them just yet. I’m not always right. Most people don’t save lives in exchange for nothing. They’ll want something from us, I’m sure. And we don’t know how this operation functions or anything.”
“What about Uncle Malek?” Sana asked with a spoonful of cereal in her tiny mouth.
Mrs. Qureishi’s face instantly flushed as she scrambled to find the note she had read earlier and ensure that it did not mention him on there. Her eyes widened and her hands shook a little as her fears became true.
“No, no, no. I totally forgot about Malek,” she said in a panic. “If the Pacifems find him before anyone else can then they’ll—“
“We have to try to get him over here,” Inaya said in a hurry. “They’ve already seen him enter our house multiple times. They know he knows.”
“We—we have to contact someone,” Zain’s mother swung her arms up to her face, in the process of knocking over a large bowl. Its shatter on the floor was distinctly heard all throughout the house, and Sana—being Sana—somehow managed to accidentally slip off the chair. Whenever there was an opportunity to get hurt, she always did and no one knew how.
This time it wasn’t big. The glass had made a small but deep cut in her arm so that she had to hold a bunch of paper towels to it to stop the bleeding.
“I’m sorry, Sana,” Mrs. Qureishi calmed down a bit and was picking up the large pieces of glass with her bare hands. “I should’ve been more careful.”
“I’m alright.”
As according to Sana’s usual pattern, she also didn’t wail and cry out in distress, which is what both Inaya and Zain would have done at her age. Mrs. Qureishi had just finished sorting out the shards with a broom as Mr. Qureishi entered the room.
“Is everyone okay?” he said calmly. “I heard a glass shattering.”
“Not a glass, a bowl. But yes, everyone’s alright Kamran. But we have to contact someone as quickly as we can. Malek might not know what happened and for all we know the Pacifems could have already . . . dealt with him.”
He looked into his wife’s eyes for a moment, something hiding behind the curtains of them. He was the one who could always tell just how troubled she was, even if she didn’t know it herself.
“We’ll contact whoever we can, Zara,” he rubbed her shoulder. “I doubt the Pacifems have thought to look for him just yet. And Malek has always been able to hold up on his own, even when you two were little. In fact, the tour guides should be here in a minute or two. We could tell them if they are who they say they are.”
“If,” Inaya repeated.
“If. Never trust someone until you’ve seen the look in their eyes,” Mrs. Qureishi said. "The Pacifem Resistance Organization could be just as cruel as the Pacifems, for all we know right now. And I’ve never heard of anything called Totum in my life.”
As if on cue, a loud, rhythmic knocking issued from the doorway. No words followed, unlike Kiara’s knocks. Mrs. Qureishi put a finger to her lip telling everyone to be quiet as she approached the door and threw it open. What was on the other side shocked her for a second. Her face transformed from an expression of steeliness to surprise to excitement in just a few seconds.
“Are you . . . our tour guide?”
“One of them, yes.”
“And you’re a—“
“Child. Yes, I am in fact not an adult.”
“Not a what?” Sana said with a mouthful of food.
All three children immediately jumped up and ran over to the threshold. Sure enough, standing there, present and alive, was a girl as tall as Zain. His siblings and him stared at the girl with a fascination they had never felt before. She was wearing a black dress that went down to her knees and her equally black hair was done up in a large, messy bun behind her head. Here, standing right in front of them, was what the Pacifems had clearly banned throughout Gaudium, and she wasn’t hiding at all.
“Is everyone ready?” the girl asked politely. “If you all are, I can walk you to the tram.”
“What tram?” Zain asked, intrigued.
“You’ll see.”
When everyone had signaled they were ready to leave, the girl walked out of the view of the front door and down a long carpeted hallway that reminded Zain of the hotels he saw in movies. As he walked (everyone had already forgotten about finishing breakfast), he noticed that everything was still painted either navy blue, white, or a bold gold.
“I’m sure you all have many questions,” the girl said curtly as she walked, short high heels sinking into the carpet. “Rest assured that once we enter the tram, we will explain everything and answer any questions you may have.”
Zain’s mother glanced at Zain’s father. They had to learn more about these people before they could even mention Uncle Malek. Sana stepped unevenly behind Inaya and Zain, avidly watching each movement the girl ahead made. All three of the children wondered what could possible be outside just as they arrived at a tall, dark blue door. Printed in gold on its center was the number 23. The girl looked back at the family once as she threw open the door and grinned. A tornado of light burst through the door; Zain’s brown eyes took a moment to adjust as he stepped through the threshold.
For a moment, everyone other than the girl stood blankly in shock. Zain was having a hard time even coping with what he was seeing. Laid out right in front of them, far enough to the point where they couldn’t see the other side, was a city of the same navy blues and golds and whites of the place they had just exited. Here and there on the navy roads cars were drifting along; skyscrapers scaled so high that Zain had to tilt his head up to see the top; several families could be seen walking together. Families. As in, families with actual children. And behind them were at least a hundred buildings almost identical to the one the Qureishis had just left.
“Follow me, please,” the girl said smugly. She pulled her hand up and beckoned for them to follow.
“Look at those kids!” Sana yelled ecstatically as she pointed to a family with two kids walking in the distance. “Look! Kids!”
“I see them, Sana,” Mr. Qureishi ruffled his daughter’s hair as he watched them strolling together, with the same swelling excitement in his eyes. “They’re like you.”
“Up these stairs, please. We’re almost at the station.”
Up the stairs they went. The sun cast their shadows across the steps that folded in a new direction with each stair. They looked more like zig-zags than human silhouettes. At the top of the stairs was an empty station. Above was a thick glass roof that let in almost all of the light. Benches were placed here and there right next to the railings that looked down on the ground thirty feet below. In the middle of both sides of the station ran a singular rail that stretched on until it turned a corned around a building and Zain could see it no longer.
“Welcome to the elevated tram station of Totum! This is where the Pacifem Resistance Organization recruits provide all the new residents of Totum with a tour of the city. The tram should be arriving shortly.”
“Is Totum . . . the city?” Zain’s mother gazed around in wonder.
“Yes, this is Totum. I know all of you must have many questions even about the small amount of things you have spotted this far but me and my team will answer any questions you have in the tram,” the girl looked at each of the siblings in turn. The corners of her lips were turned up in a comfortable grin, watching pleasantly the shock on the Qureishi children’s faces. Zain had never been so profoundly excited. “Well, look at that. Just on time.”
Everyone quickly turned to the right to make out a tram nearing as it turned the corner around a building. It was a clean white and had a sleek look about it, and as it grew nearer the words on the side became more and more visible: “The Bullet”.
“I hope you’ve all come on empty stomachs,” the girl said with a small giggle. They did, in fact, not come on empty stomachs.