This short story was published on Sunday, 25 January 2026 and is part of the Kakantiga Ultra or Cantos of the Beyond: a daily new short story or play dreamfishing and celebrating past, present, possible and future Kristang culture. This short story features the anticipated future 38th Kabesa and is set in Pedra Nova / New Island in March 2506.
Amadeus Malik Revan Goonting learned, at thirteen, that nothing truly bad ever happened to him, no matter how truly bad he had decided to be.
People shouted. People threatened. People wrote reports. People said words like final warning and last chance and we are very concerned. And then, inevitably, nothing followed. Systems stalled. Committees hesitated. Elders disagreed. Someone always decided that he was “still developing” or “too young to define” or “too important to mishandle.”
By fifteen, he had perfected the art of surviving consequences without absorbing them.
On the morning they finally sent him to the Kabesa, he was sitting on the roof of Icehouse Dormitory Three, legs dangling over five storeys of reinforced glass and glacial steel, eating a protein bar he had stolen from the infirmary.
Below him, the emergency sirens were still winding down.
They had not been loud enough, in his opinion.
An hour earlier, he had overridden the heat-regulator grid for Sector B. Not enough to kill anyone. Enough to panic them. Enough to force an evacuation. Enough to make supervisors sprint and medics argue and administrators scramble for explanations they did not yet possess.
He had done it because he was bored.
And because he wanted to see who would move first.
They always moved slowly.
The settlement of Pedra Nova shimmered beneath him in sheets of pale vapour, domes and corridors half-buried in ice, threaded together by light-strips that pulsed like visible nerves. Beyond it, the Antarctic horizon stretched empty and merciless, a white silence that had outlasted empires.
New Island did not reward recklessness.
It tolerated it, briefly.
Amadeus finished the protein bar, wiped his hands on his trousers, and waited.
He did not have to wait long.
By midmorning, two community wardens arrived with insulated coats, neutral expressions, and a tablet already loaded with his file. They did not shout. They did not lecture. They did not ask why.
That was how he knew something had changed.
Usually, authority arrived in layers. First came the junior monitors with their earnest eyes and badly memorised scripts. Then the counsellors, trying to translate irritation into “concern.” Then, if he was feeling especially creative, the review panels with their laminated badges and ritualised disappointment.
Today, none of them appeared.
Instead, he got Warden Lúcia and Supervisor Rahim.
Which was… new.
Lúcia Verghese had been in New Island administration longer than Amadeus had been alive. Her hair had gone white in stages that corresponded almost perfectly to major infrastructure failures. Rahim Ramon Zulkharnain, beside her, still had colour in his beard, but his eyes carried the unmistakable look of a man who had filled out the same incident form so many times that his handwriting now anticipated his despair.
They did not look angry.
They looked tired.
“Get down,” Lúcia said.
Not loudly. Not sharply. With the flat precision of someone who had already spent her entire quota of emotional energy before breakfast.
Amadeus swung his legs back onto the roof and dropped lightly onto the maintenance walkway.
Rahim exhaled.
A long, controlled breath. The kind taught in conflict-management workshops.
“Do you have,” he asked, “any idea how many people you triggered into emergency protocol this morning?”
“Forty-two,” Amadeus replied.
Rahim blinked. “How do you—”
“Forty-three if you count Dr. Oliveiro, but she panics performatively, so I didn’t.”
Lúcia closed her eyes.
Just for half a second.
Then opened them again.
“All right,” she said. “We are skipping everything.”
“Everything?” Amadeus asked.
“Yes. The mediation. The restorative circle. The values reflection. The twelve-page worksheet about community trust.”
Rahim tapped his tablet. “Do you know how many versions of that worksheet you’ve completed?”
“Seven,” Amadeus said.
“Eight,” Rahim corrected. “You forged my signature on one.”
“It was aesthetically inconsistent,” Amadeus replied.
Lúcia made a sound that was not quite a laugh and not quite a sob.
“Come on,” she said. “We’re walking.”
They did not take him toward the main corridors.
They took him outward.
Past the insulated housing blocks. Past the algae farms. Past the solar spines and wind pylons humming like restrained beasts. Through a pressure gate that most students only passed during evacuation drills.
Beyond it lay the outer habitation ring.
And beyond that, the open ice.
A crawler waited on the platform: low, wide, magnet-treaded, built for long-distance travel over fractured snowfields. It bore no institutional markings. No warnings. No slogans.
Just matte steel and silence.
Amadeus raised an eyebrow. “Is this an exile?”
“No,” Rahim said. “This is an escalation.”
They boarded.
The crawler slid out of the settlement and into the Antarctic expanse, its stabilisers adjusting constantly to invisible shifts in terrain. The domes of Pedra Nova receded behind them, shrinking into pale geometry against the endless white.
For the first time, there were no observers.
No peers. No screens. No passive witnesses.
Just wind, ice, and two exhausted adults who had finally run out of procedural patience.
After twenty minutes, Rahim spoke.
“You know,” he said quietly, “we tried everything with you.”
“I know,” Amadeus replied.
“You treat people like test subjects.”
“I prefer ‘data points.’”
Silence followed that.
The crawler continued its steady climb along the outer ridge road, its magnet-treads gripping the ice-laced basalt beneath them. The terrain here was older, rougher, less sculpted by planners and engineers. Exposed rock ribs jutted through snowdrifts. Patches of hardy moss and engineered tundra-grass clung stubbornly to crevices where meltwater pooled in summer.
Amadeus watched it all with mild interest.
Greenery was rare on New Island.
It was expensive. Politically negotiated. Carefully rationed.
Which meant someone had chosen to grow it here.
The road curved.
And suddenly, Pedra Nova fell away beneath them.
The settlement spread out below like a living map: domes, corridors, heat-lines glowing faintly through translucent ice, freight lines threading between districts. From this height, it looked orderly. Elegant. Manageable.
He knew better.
They drove along the side of a broad granite slope that slanted down toward a sheer cliff face. The cliff overlooked the entire settlement, its edge reinforced with transparent wind-shields and low safety rails.
Set into the slope, half-hidden by terraces of vegetation, stood a house.
Not a bunker.
Not an institutional complex.
A house.
Wide and low, built in stepped layers that followed the mountain’s natural contours. Its outer walls were pale stone and treated wood. Vines crept along solar trellises. Small groves of dwarf trees grew in insulated beds, their leaves trembling gently in the wind.
Light spilled from broad windows.
Warm. Steady. Human.
Amadeus frowned.
“That’s… it?” he asked.
Lúcia glanced at him. “You were expecting a throne room?”
“A prison,” he said honestly.
Rahim parked the crawler beside a narrow footpath lined with low shrubs.
They stepped out.
The wind here was gentler, broken by the slope and the terraces of vegetation. It carried the faint scent of soil, recycled freshwater, and something floral Amadeus could not immediately identify. Small drones drifted lazily between planter beds, tending leaves and moisture levels with near-invisible precision.
Amadeus noticed all of it.
The drones’ blind spots.
The spacing between railings.
The way one section of the cliff face dipped just enough to allow a controlled slide if someone was reckless and lucky.
The distance to the nearest public transit node.
Two minutes of observation, and he already had three possible exit routes.
They walked up the stone path.
With every step, his internal map refined itself. Nothing like what the old Hive Hegemony setups in the textbooks had asserted would be the case for any kind of relational centre:
No perimeter fence.
No visible guards.
No security turrets.
Interesting.
The entrance was a wide glass-and-wood panel half-covered by climbing vines. A small basin of water sat beside it, fed by a narrow trickle from above. Someone had placed smooth black stones at the bottom in a deliberate pattern.
Not decorative.
Calming.
Psychological architecture, Amadeus thought.
Cute.
Rahim hesitated.
He turned to Amadeus.
“You know whose house this is,” he said.
“Yes,” Amadeus replied.
“You’ve researched them?”
“Everyone researches the Kabesa,” Amadeus said. “Some just pretend they don’t.”
Lúcia studied him for a moment.
“And what do you think?”
Amadeus considered the question.
Not because he lacked an answer.
Because he was deciding how much damage he felt like doing before these two fuckers left him here to die.
“They’re safe,” he said.
Lúcia frowned. “Safe.”
“Yes. Institutional wallpaper. You can’t point at them and say they’re corrupt. You can’t point at them and say they’re incompetent. So everyone just… projects virtues onto them and moves on.”
Rahim stiffened. “That’s unfair.”
“It’s efficient,” Amadeus replied. “They survive by being uninteresting.”
Silence followed.
Lúcia’s jaw tightened.
“That is not how most people would describe the Kabesa.”
“Most people don’t analyse power,” Amadeus said. “They romanticise it.”
He gestured vaguely toward the house.
“This is branding. ‘Look, I’m humble. I grow plants. I live simply.’ It disarms criticism.”
Rahim stared at him.
“You’re fifteen.”
“And?” Amadeus replied. “You brought me here, didn’t you?”
Lúcia held his gaze.
“For someone who doesn’t care about consequences, you spend a lot of time narrating them.”
“I care about leverage,” he said. “Not feelings.”
She studied him for another second, then turned back to the door.
The panel slid open soundlessly.
Warmth flowed out, carrying the layered smells of herbs, clean wood, and something faintly citrus. Inside, light filtered down from narrow skylights, scattering across stone floors and shallow water channels.
The house did not feel like a seat of power.
Which irritated him.
Footsteps approached.
Unhurried.
Measured.
Then the Thirty-Eighth Kabesa appeared at the end of the atrium corridor.
She wore simple layered clothing, earth-toned, practical, unadorned. Her hair was loosely tied back. No insignia. No visible interfaces. No ceremonial markers.
If Amadeus had passed her in a corridor, he might not have looked twice.
Which meant it was curated.
She stopped a few steps away and looked at him.
Not startled.
Not impressed.
Unmoved.
“Bong pamiang, Amadeus,” she said.
Just his name.
No hierarchy.
No cushion.
He felt a spike of irritation.
“Pamiang fedeh,” he replied curtly.
Lúcia cleared her throat.
“You can go, Lu. Nang dibeh.” said the Thirty-Eighth Kabesa gently.
“Sertu kereh onsong…balah kung isti diabu?” Rahim asked.
“Sertu sempri,” said the Thirty-Eighth Kabesa, again with a radiance that disgusted Amadeus.
Lúcia and Rahim left quickly, grateful and unsettled.
The door slid shut.
Silence.
Amadeus and the Thirty-Eighth Kabesa stood facing each other across the narrow water channel.
Three seconds passed.
He used them to update his escape map.
Then she spoke.
“You’re planning how to leave.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Already?”
“You’re not special.”
A flicker of something like amusement passed through her eyes.
“Do you think you’ll succeed?”
“Depends how bored I get.”
She regarded him steadily.
“Walk with me.”
”No.”
”Nggeh bai andah?”
”Nggeh kereh sabeh klai andah chuma bos?”
”Yo andah sibrih ki manera?”
”Manera di porku godru,” said Amadeus, clinically, as if this was the most astute observation in the world. He mimicked a fat sow he had seen in one of the library vids, swaying heavily from side to side. ”Santah naki, alegrah naki, prigasozambes na riba di mundu.”
The Thirty-Eighth Kabesa laughed. ”You think this is the top of the world?”
She didn’t laugh this time.
She sighed.
Slowly.
Like someone realising they had been overpromised a problem.
He stopped in his tracks.
“Is that it?” she asked. “That’s your big performance?”
He bristled. “What?”
“The pig impression. The insults. The posture.” She waved a hand vaguely. “All that noise so you don’t have to say anything real.”
“Don’t psychoanalyse me,” he snapped.
“I’m not,” she said flatly. “I’m bored.”
She let the word hang there.
Bored.
Not disappointed.
Not angry.
Not offended.
Bored.
Amadeus felt it like a slap.
He opened his mouth to fire back.
“Bored?” he repeated.
Then he laughed.
Not sharp.
Not fake.
Real.
Brief.
“Wow,” he said. “That’s your big move?”
She didn’t respond.
So he kept going.
“You drag me up a mountain, kick out my escorts, do a whole minimalist-power-palace routine…”
He gestured around.
“And your verdict is ‘I’m bored’?”
He tilted his head.
Mocking.
His favourite angle.
“Congratulations. You’ve invented apathy.”
Her eyes flicked.
He saw it.
“You think that’s intimidating?” he continued. “That pretending I’m beneath your emotional threshold makes you untouchable?”
He stepped closer.
Slowly.
Calculated.
“No,” he said quietly. “That’s what people do when something gets under their skin and they don’t want to admit it.”
“Incorrect,” she replied.
“Is it?” he shot back. “Because five minutes ago you were performing my personality like a stage play.”
She laughed.
Not loud.
Not amused.
A single, sharp exhale through her nose.
“Performing?” she repeated.
She clapped once.
Slow.
Mocking.
“Please. If that was a performance, it was verbatim.”
He stiffened. “You’re full of shit.”
“Am I?”
She took three quick steps toward him.
Fast.
Aggressive.
His move.
His pacing pattern.
“Let’s check.”
She pointed at him.
“‘Systems are supposed to bend.’ Your phrase.”
Another step.
“‘People panic because they’re weak.’ Also yours.”
Another.
“‘Collateral is inevitable.’ You said that in Hydro Bay C and laughed.”
She stopped an inch from his face.
“You want timestamps?”
His breath hitched.
“You stalked me,” he snapped.
“No,” she said flatly. “I audited you.”
“Same thing.”
“No,” she replied. “One is obsession. One is preparation.”
She stepped back.
Rolled her shoulders.
His shoulder roll.
“Here’s the part you’re missing,” she went on. “You think mirroring is lazy.”
She spread her hands.
“It’s expensive.”
“What?”
“It takes hours to learn someone’s verbal tics. Their pacing. Their deflection patterns. Their favourite contempt faces.”
She demonstrated one.
Perfect.
His favourite.
He felt exposed.
“I did that,” she said, “before you walked in.”
Silence.
“You weren’t ‘figuring me out,’” she continued. “You were walking into a trap you helped design.”
He scoffed. “You’re pretending this was all planned.”
She tilted her head.
“Did you notice the water channel placement?”
He froze.
“Did you notice the stone spacing?” she added. “The sightlines? The acoustics?”
He hadn’t.
Fuck.
“This house is built for confrontation,” she said calmly. “People talk here. People unravel here.”
She gestured between them.
“And you did. On schedule.”
His jaw tightened. “You didn’t win anything.”
She smiled.
Not kind.
“Didn’t I?”
She leaned against the railing.
Relaxed.
In control.
“You came in thinking you were the smartest person in the room,” she said.
“You’re now wondering if you ever were.”
He snapped, “I’m still standing.”
“Of course,” she replied. ”Igual kema akeh porku bos nanggora ja mostrah kung tudu mundu.”
That did it.
Something inside Amadeus snapped.
Not loudly.
Not theatrically.
Not in a way anyone had ever learned to manage.
He laughed once.
Too hard.
Too fast.
“Wow,” he said. “You really love hearing yourself talk.”
She didn’t answer.
She just watched.
Which made it worse.
He turned.
Suddenly.
And kicked the nearest stone planter.
Hard.
The impact rang through the atrium like a cracked bell.
Water sloshed over the edge. Dark soil spilled across the floor. A dwarf shrub tore loose at the roots and collapsed sideways.
Neither of them moved.
So he did it again.
This time he grabbed the edge of the planter and shoved.
It scraped.
Screeched.
Toppled.
Ceramic shattered against stone.
Fragments skittered across the floor.
He grabbed a low bench.
Lifted.
Flung it.
It slammed into a glass panel.
Didn’t break.
Cracked.
A spiderweb of white fractures spread outward.
He stared at it.
Breathing hard.
Chest heaving.
Then he laughed again.
There it was.
Something real.
“You see?” he barked. “This is what happens when you stop pretending I’m a puzzle.”
He swept his arm across a side table.
Bowls.
Tools.
A stack of tablets.
All of it clattered to the floor.
“You want honesty?” he shouted. “Here it is.”
He kicked a water channel divider.
Stone chipped.
Water surged.
“I don’t care about your architecture.”
Kick.
“Your audits.”
Kick.
“Your little psychological terrarium.”
Kick.
Plants snapped.
Leaves tore.
Soil sprayed.
The house, immaculate moments ago, now looked wounded.
Disordered.
Human.
He stood in the middle of it, panting.
Sweat slick on his neck.
Hands trembling.
Eyes bright and feral.
“There,” he said hoarsely. “Now it’s real.”
Silence.
The drones had frozen.
The house systems had not intervened.
No alarms.
No restraints.
No security surge.
Nothing.
Just her.
Standing exactly where she had been.
Arms relaxed.
Face unreadable.
Looking at the wreckage.
Then at him.
Then back at the wreckage.
She walked over to the fallen planter.
Knelt.
Picked up a broken shard.
Examined it.
Set it down carefully.
Stood.
And looked at him.
“More,” she said.
“More,” she said.
Amadeus blinked.
Not because he was surprised she wanted it.
Because she had taken it away from him.
That was his trick, usually: push until adults flinched, then own the flinch like a trophy.
She wasn’t flinching.
She was… commissioning him.
He smiled.
Mean.
Relieved.
“Finally,” he said. “A customer.”
He turned and walked deeper into the house like he belonged there.
He didn’t stomp. He didn’t rush.
That was for amateurs.
He moved with the calm of someone picking a lock they’d already practiced on in their head.
He headed straight for the seams.
Not the pretty parts.
The load-bearing parts.
A narrow corridor opened into a side gallery: shelves of clay jars, hanging herb racks, a wall of small framed maps of New Island’s water tables and heatflow. There were no cameras. No obvious sensors.
Which meant the sensors were the kind you didn’t see.
He reached up, gripped a hanging rack, and yanked.
The cords snapped.
Dried herbs rained down like shredded paper offerings.
He scooped up a jar and threw it at the wall.
It exploded into sharp dust and fragments.
Then another.
And another.
He didn’t pause to admire the mess.
He was building a pattern.
A message.
He kicked open a low cabinet with his boot.
Glass clinked.
Metal clicked.
He found a panel of maintenance tools, set into the wood like the house expected someone to need them.
Of course it did.
Of course she did.
He grabbed a thermal cutter handle.
Held it up.
“Nice,” he said. “You keep toys in your own temple.”
“It’s a house,” she replied, from behind him.
Her voice didn’t change.
He turned his head slightly, just enough to show teeth.
“Same thing,” he said.
He started for a ceiling conduit.
Not a main line.
A side artery.
He’d learned in settlement maintenance: you don’t go for the heart first. You go for what makes it annoying to live.
He jumped, caught the ledge, and hauled himself up with smooth athletic ease. He pulled at the conduit seam with the tool handle.
It shifted.
He grinned.
“You didn’t lock this.”
“I did,” she said.
He paused, tool mid-pry.
Then the lights didn’t flicker.
The house didn’t alarm.
Instead, a soft tone sounded once. Pleasant. Domestic.
A hidden latch released.
The conduit cover slid open by itself.
Like the house was opening its mouth.
Inviting.
He stared at it.
A laugh escaped him, startled and angry at the same time.
“Oh, you’re playing,” he said.
“Of course,” she replied.
He plunged his hand inside and grabbed a bundle of fibre lines. He yanked.
Hard.
The house responded with another soft tone.
Then the floor under him warmed, subtly, like a slow breath.
Not enough to burn.
Enough to make his grip slip.
He cursed and shifted his weight.
He yanked again.
This time something gave.
A strip of line tore loose with a satisfying snap.
A small win.
His eyes lit.
“Ha.”
He dropped down, landing light.
He held up the torn line like a ribbon.
“There,” he said. “I can still hurt you.”
The Kabesa looked at the cable.
Then at him.
Then she nodded, once, as if he’d correctly answered a question.
“You can hurt objects,” she said.
He stepped forward fast, aggressive again, trying to reclaim the tempo.
“Don’t reduce it.”
“I’m not reducing anything,” she said. “I’m sorting it.”
He scoffed and turned away, stalking toward the atrium again.
He wasn’t done.
If she wanted “more,” he’d give her a whole catalogue.
He grabbed a tall trellis frame near the window, the one braided with vines. He braced his foot against the base and shoved.
The trellis buckled.
The vines tore with wet little snaps.
A sheet of leaves slid down the glass like green skin.
Outside, the view of Pedra Nova blurred.
Perfect.
He’d always loved ruining a view.
He seized a drone that had drifted too close, caught it mid-hover, and slammed it into the floor.
It cracked.
Sparks popped.
The drone whined once like an animal and went still.
He looked up, eyes bright.
“That one costs,” he said.
The Kabesa didn’t move.
“Good,” she said again.
Amadeus’s smile thinned.
“Are you going to do anything?”
“I am,” she replied.
He waited.
She walked past him.
Not around.
Past.
Close enough that he could have shoulder-checked her.
Close enough that her calm felt like provocation.
She stepped into the centre of the atrium, where the water channel ran.
Then she sat down on the stone floor.
Right in the mess.
Right beside the spilled soil.
Her sleeves brushed wet leaves.
She didn’t care.
She folded her hands in her lap.
Looked up at him.
And waited.
Amadeus stared.
This was wrong.
Adults didn’t do this.
Adults either punished you, begged you, or performed disappointment like a ritual.
She was offering him… nothing.
No reaction to steal.
No fear to harvest.
No authority to wrestle.
Just a still target that refused to become a target.
He felt the urge spike again.
Not sadness.
Not guilt.
Something else.
The itch of a game that wasn’t working.
He kicked a broken ceramic shard across the floor.
It skittered and stopped near her knee.
She didn’t flinch.
“You’re trying to make me do something,” he snapped.
She blinked slowly.
“I already did,” she said.
He frowned. “What?”
She nodded toward the doorway.
He turned.
The entrance panel had slid shut again at some point.
Quietly.
Seamless.
He hadn’t noticed.
Of course he hadn’t.
A small light above it pulsed once, gentle and steady.
A lock signal.
He felt heat rise in his chest.
“You locked me in.”
“I didn’t need to,” she said, still sitting there. “You stayed.”
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
He hated that.
He hated it so much.
He strode to the door, grabbed the edge, and pulled.
Nothing.
He hit the panel with his palm.
Hard.
Nothing.
He tried the manual seam.
He found it.
Of course he found it.
He jammed his fingers in and started to pry.
The seam didn’t budge.
Not because it was reinforced.
Because it was designed to feel like it should budge.
A decoy seam.
A fake out.
He realised it mid-pry.
His jaw clenched.
Behind him, the Kabesa’s voice, mild as ever:
“More?” she asked.
Amadeus turned slowly.
His eyes were furious.
But his smile came back anyway.
Because if she wanted him honest, he could be honest in the one way he knew how.
He walked back toward her.
Not to attack her.
To reclaim the centre of the room.
To reclaim the narrative.
He planted his feet in front of her and leaned down, close, close enough to be disgusting on purpose.
“You want more?” he said softly.
“Here.”
He pointed at the wreckage with a lazy sweep of his hand.
Then he pointed at himself.
“This is the part you don’t get.”
He smiled wider.
“I can do this all day.”
He straightened.
And with deliberate, careful calm, he picked up the biggest intact jar left on the shelf.
Held it for a moment.
Let her see he was choosing it.
Then he dropped it.
It shattered at her feet like a thrown gauntlet.
He watched her face for the flinch.
For the reaction.
For the proof that she was human.
She looked down at the shards.
Then up at him.
And finally, finally, her mouth curved.
Not kind.
Not impressed.
But sharp.
A real edge.
“Good,” she said. “Now do it without the audience in your head.”
Amadeus slapped her.
It landed with a flat, clean sound in the warm air, obscene in how ordinary it was. Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Just a quick, mean punctuation mark.
The Thirty-Eighth Kabesa’s head turned a fraction with the impact.
She didn’t fall.
She didn’t clutch her face.
She didn’t stare at him like he’d just revealed a monster.
She simply let the angle of her chin settle back into place, as if she’d been nudged by a door that swung too fast.
Then she blinked once.
Slowly.
And smiled.
Not a forgiving smile.
A recording smile.
“Again,” she said.
Amadeus’s eyes flashed.
“What?”
She tilted her head the way he did when he wanted to make adults feel stupid. Same degree. Same lazy contempt.
“Again,” she repeated, in the same tone he used when he made someone redo a task for his amusement. “If you’re going to escalate, do it properly.”
His throat tightened.
There it was.
She’d stolen even that.
He forced a laugh, sharp and brittle.
“You want a demonstration?” he said. “Sure. Why not. You’re obviously collecting samples.”
He raised his hand again.
Not fast this time.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Letting it hang there between them like a threat you could taste.
The house made no sound.
No alarm.
No restraint.
The drones remained frozen, like the entire place had agreed to become a stage.
The Kabesa looked up at his lifted hand and said, softly:
“Good. That’s the real one.”
Amadeus paused.
His fingers twitched.
He hated that his body had hesitated on its own.
He hated that she noticed.
He hated that she named it like she had rights to it.
So he pivoted.
A win, then. A different kind.
He didn’t hit her.
He hit the house again.
He swung his fist into the nearest glass panel, right beside her shoulder. The crack spread, fast and white, a blooming fracture.
He leaned in, close.
“So this is your thing,” he hissed. “You make people swing at you so you can sit there and feel holy about it.”
The Kabesa’s eyes flicked to the cracked glass.
Then back to him.
“No,” she said. “I make people show their aim.”
He snorted.
“My aim is whatever I feel like.”
She nodded, like he’d just proven her point.
“Exactly,” she said.
Amadeus’s smile came back, predatory.
“Alright.” He straightened. “Let’s do it your way.”
He turned and started walking again, deeper into the house, scanning, cataloguing, choosing targets with the same cold care he used when he chose people.
He yanked open a storage panel near the atrium corner. Inside: emergency blankets, a med kit, sealed water rations.
He lifted an eyebrow.
“Prepared for your little saint routine to get messy?” he called over his shoulder.
The Kabesa stood and followed at an unhurried pace, matching his distance without chasing him. Mirroring again: present, not needy.
Amadeus grabbed the med kit and hurled it down the corridor.
It burst open on impact. Neat packets skittered across the floor like pale insects.
He kicked the water rations next. Pouches split. Clean water spilled across stone, soaking soil, turning the mess into slick mud.
He heard her footstep shift slightly behind him.
Not a flinch.
An adjustment.
A practical one.
It made him angrier than fear ever would.
He reached the side gallery again, the one with the maps.
He tore a map off the wall.
Not just any map. One with handwritten annotations. Fine lines. Careful marginalia.
He held it up.
“You want ‘no audience’?” he said loudly. “Here’s no audience.”
He ripped it in half.
Then again.
Then again.
Paper fell in strips.
He dropped the shreds onto the wet floor and ground them under his heel.
The Kabesa stopped beside him.
She looked at the destroyed map, as if it mattered.
Finally.
A reaction to steal.
Amadeus watched her face greedily.
She reached down, picked up one torn strip, and read the fragment still visible on it.
Then she handed it to him.
Her fingers didn’t tremble.
Her eyes didn’t plead.
She offered it like a receipt.
Amadeus stared at the strip.
On it, in crisp ink, were two lines he recognised instantly.
Not because they were famous.
Because they were his.
Two phrases he’d said to Rahim once, when he thought the hallway was empty. When he thought no one mattered enough to remember.
He swallowed, furious at his own body for doing anything as dramatic as swallowing.
The Kabesa’s voice stayed even.
“You like evidence,” she said. “So I keep it.”
He crushed the paper in his fist.
“You’re obsessed,” he spat.
She nodded again, calm as a blade.
“Audit,” she corrected.
He stepped closer, trying to reclaim the psychological high ground through proximity, the old animal trick.
“You think you can make me feel something,” he said. “You think you can trap me in your little plant museum and make me confess.”
He smiled, showing teeth.
“You can’t. I don’t do ‘real.’ I do effective.”
The Kabesa’s smile returned.
And this time, it was unmistakably his.
Not in warmth. In cruelty.
“Effective,” she echoed. “Good word. Let’s test it.”
She turned away from him and walked back toward the atrium.
Not fleeing.
Leading.
He followed without thinking, because he hated being left behind in his own scene.
They returned to the centre, to the wreckage, the cracked glass, the spilled water, the dead drone.
The Kabesa stepped into the middle of it and raised her voice, not loud, just carrying.
“House,” she said.
The house answered with a soft tone.
A pleasant, domestic note.
Amadeus’s eyes narrowed.
“Open external channel,” she said.
Another tone.
Then, from somewhere unseen, a low speaker came alive. The kind used for announcements. Not private. Not intimate.
The Kabesa looked at Amadeus.
And in his exact cadence, his exact casual contempt, she said:
“Go ahead. Perform.”
His stomach tightened.
Because he understood immediately.
If the channel was open, Pedra Nova could hear.
Wardens. Supervisors. His peers. The people he’d trained to fear him.
This wasn’t a trap built of stone spacing and acoustics.
This was the trap he actually cared about.
Visibility.
He lunged for the wall panel where the speaker was embedded.
Too late.
The Kabesa didn’t move to stop him.
She didn’t need to.
She simply spoke again, and this time her voice sharpened, clipped, administrative.
“Broadcast to Warden Lúcia and Supervisor Rahim,” she said. “Live.”
The house chimed.
Confirmed.
Amadeus froze mid-step.
He turned slowly, fury blazing, but threaded now with something else: the calculation spiralling fast, frantic.
“You wouldn’t,” he said.
The Kabesa tilted her head, perfectly matching his favourite mocking angle.
“Wouldn’t I?” she replied.
He stared at her.
This wasn’t about punishment.
This was about taking away his favourite weapon: the hidden audience he always imagined, the one that made him feel powerful while he wrecked things. The one that let him tell himself it didn’t matter.
Now the audience was real.
And she’d invited it.
He took a breath, forced his face back into composure.
A win for him, then.
He smiled, smooth and bright, the charming mask he wore when he wanted adults to doubt their own judgement.
He turned slightly toward the unseen speaker and said, sweet as poison:
“Hello.”
Then, without looking away, he said to the Kabesa, softly enough it could still carry:
“You think you just won?”
The Kabesa met his smile with his own.
And said, into the channel:
“He just asked if I think I won.”
She paused.
Let silence do work.
Then she added, lightly:
“Amadeus, tell them what you told me about collateral.”
Amadeus’s smile held.
Held.
Held.
A muscle refusing to die.
And then, for the first time since he’d entered the house, he didn’t know what to say.
Amadeus’s smile held.
Held.
Held.
A muscle refusing to die.
And then, for the first time since he’d entered the house, he didn’t know what to say.
That silence lasted maybe two seconds.
Two seconds too long.
So he did what he always did when the script failed him.
He wrote a new one.
He turned back to the speaker and laughed, easy and bright, like he’d just been handed a mic at a school assembly and this was all a bit of harmless theatre.
“Collateral,” he said, warm as honey. “Right. Sure.”
He glanced down at the mess, the ruined plants, the cracked glass. He widened his eyes like he’d just noticed it.
“I told her that collateral is inevitable,” he continued, voice mild, reasonable, the tone of someone explaining gravity. “Because it is. On New Island. In an ecosystem. In a community. You can’t keep everyone comfortable and also keep them alive. That’s not how systems work.”
He let that hang.
Then he added, gently:
“And I said it because I was angry. Which you can hear. Because I’m fifteen, and apparently we’re doing public humiliation therapy now.”
A beat.
He nailed the word therapy with a soft laugh, like it was a joke on him and he was generous enough to share it.
He looked at the Kabesa with a sweet, wounded expression.
“Congratulations,” he said, still speaking to the channel. “You got me to react. You win. You can all go back to your spreadsheets.”
He lifted his hands, palms up.
“I’m the bad kid. She’s the holy mountain lady. Everyone gets their story.”
It was good.
It was very good.
It was the kind of performance that made adults immediately want to soften, to nuance, to rescue the idea of him from the reality of him.
He could almost feel the settlement leaning toward forgiveness through the walls.
The Kabesa didn’t interrupt.
She let him build it.
She let him put the bow on it.
She let him enjoy the moment where he thought he’d stolen control back.
Then she spoke into the channel, conversational.
“Thank you,” she said.
Amadeus blinked. The word didn’t fit.
She continued, as if she were summarising a meeting:
“Amadeus just demonstrated something important. He can sound reasonable while he is damaging things. He can sound calm while he is frightening people. He can narrate care without doing care.”
Her gaze stayed on him, not the speaker.
“And he can do it while still trying to decide whether to hurt me again.”
The air went sharp.
Amadeus’s smile twitched at the corners.
The Kabesa went on, still mild:
“Amadeus, would you like to correct the record and tell them the other sentence you said right before ‘collateral is inevitable’?”
Amadeus didn’t move.
His brain ran fast, calculating angles.
The channel was open. The audience was there. The house was locked. The Kabesa was steady.
So he chose his next win.
He chose the one he always chose when he couldn’t win cleanly.
He went for her credibility.
He turned to the speaker again, voice lowering into sincerity.
“You’re hearing this, right?” he said. “This is what she does. She makes claims she can’t prove so you’ll fill in the blanks.”
He tilted his head, soft concern.
“She wants you to imagine me as dangerous enough that whatever she does next is justified.”
He looked at her.
“Is that what this is?” he asked, sweetly. “Creating a reason?”
That one was aimed straight at the wardens’ exhaustion. Their fear of making the wrong call. Their terror of becoming the bad guys in a story that would outlive them.
A real win.
The Kabesa nodded once.
“Yes,” she said.
Amadeus’s eyes narrowed. “Yes?”
“Yes,” she repeated, still calm. “I’m creating a reason. Because you’ve spent years creating permission.”
He scoffed. “Permission for what?”
The Kabesa didn’t answer him.
She addressed the channel.
“Warden Lúcia. Supervisor Rahim. If you can hear me, reply with the standard acknowledgment.”
A soft chime from the speaker.
Two voices, slightly distorted by distance and the house’s audio filter:
“Confirmed,” Lúcia said.
“Confirmed,” Rahim echoed, voice tight.
Amadeus felt his stomach drop, just a fraction.
The Kabesa looked at him as if he were a line in a report.
“Good,” she said. Then, to the channel: “Amadeus just damaged a live drone, destroyed water reserves, and cracked structural glass. He also struck me.”
Amadeus’s mouth opened.
“Correction,” he snapped. “I didn’t—”
The Kabesa raised a hand without looking at him.
The house chimed.
A second sound followed, different: a tiny replay cue.
Then the speaker played it back.
The slap.
Not loud. Not cinematic. Just the flat, clean sound, undeniable.
Amadeus went very still.
The Kabesa didn’t gloat.
She didn’t even look pleased.
She continued, like someone finishing a grocery list.
“Amadeus. You wanted no audience in your head. Here is the real audience. They don’t live in your fantasies. They live in your consequences.”
She paused.
Then she said, almost gently:
“Now choose. Do you keep performing, or do you start telling the truth?”
Amadeus laughed.
He couldn’t help it. Not because it was funny, but because laughter was a lever and he needed something to pull.
“You want truth?” he said, voice sharpening, losing some of its polish. “Fine.”
He stepped forward, then stopped just out of her reach.
He pointed at the speaker.
“You all love her,” he said. “You love this. You love a Kabesa who can make a monster on command and then act clean about it.”
He jabbed a thumb at his chest.
“And you love me because I’m useful. I make your rules feel real. I make your meetings feel necessary. I’m the reason you get to be important.”
That was another win, nastier, more accurate.
The kind that made people angry because it hit something true.
He saw the Kabesa’s eyes sharpen.
Finally.
Something like irritation.
He seized it.
He kicked the broken med kit across the floor so packets scattered like thrown seeds.
“You want more?” he said, loud. “Here’s more.”
He reached for the nearest intact fixture, a slim light panel, and ripped it down with both hands. It tore free with a crunch of clips.
The lights in the corridor dimmed.
Not blackout. Just enough to make everything feel slightly wrong.
He held the panel like a trophy and looked at the Kabesa, breathing quick.
“Now,” he said. “Do something.”
The Kabesa stood.
For the first time, she moved fast.
Not toward him.
Toward the wall.
Her hand went to a small recessed plate that looked like nothing. Her thumb pressed it once.
The house chimed.
And the speaker, still open to Lúcia and Rahim, said in the same pleasant domestic voice:
“Relational Authority Suspension Protocol: Initiated.”
Amadeus blinked. “What?”
The Kabesa looked at him.
And smiled, sharp.
“You like systems,” she said. “So I built one that doesn’t revolve around you.”
Amadeus’s face tightened.
The speaker continued, warm and polite, like an automated bedtime story:
“Amadeus Malik Revan Goonting: Access to Respect temporarily revoked. Agency permissions: revoked. Empathy overrides: revoked. Kindness privileges: revoked. Actualisation privileges: limited to supervised channels.”
Amadeus took a step back without meaning to. He masked it instantly, voice snapping back into control.
“You can’t do that,” he said. “You’re one person.”
The Kabesa tilted her head.
“No,” she said. “I’m a function.”
Then, into the channel, crisp:
“Warden Lúcia, confirm lockout execution.”
“Confirmed,” Lúcia said, and there was something in her voice that wasn’t exhaustion anymore. It was relief. Like someone had been waiting years for permission to stop negotiating with a fire.
Rahim swallowed audibly over the line.
“Confirmed,” he said.
Amadeus stared at the speaker like it had betrayed him.
He turned back to the Kabesa, lips parting.
Something in him scrambled, searching for the old tools: charm, threat, contempt, comedy.
He tried charm again, quick, reflexive.
“Okay,” he said lightly, as if amused. “So you’ve got a fancy house and a button.”
He gestured at the wreckage.
“Still didn’t stop me.”
A small win. A technicality.
The Kabesa nodded.
“Correct,” she said. “You can still break things.”
She stepped closer, not flinching, not backing away, eyes steady.
“But you can’t hide behind ‘nothing happens to me’ anymore.”
She tapped the side of her jaw once, where he’d struck her.
Not a dramatic gesture. A simple note.
“And you can’t buy your way out of this with performance.”
She looked at the speaker.
“Rahim,” she said, “escort team can come up in ten minutes. Not to restrain. Just to witness.”
Amadeus’s pulse jumped.
Witness.
That word hit him harder than the lockout.
No hero narrative. No lone genius. No private stage.
Just people watching, calmly, while he chose who he was.
He forced a smile anyway.
Because that was what he did.
And he said, softly, almost admiring:
“You’re good.”
The Kabesa’s smile didn’t soften.
“I know,” she replied. “Now show me if you are.”
And behind Amadeus’s eyes, the next damage plan formed, slick and automatic.
Except now it came with a new variable.
Witnesses.
And for the first time, he wasn’t sure which version of himself he wanted them to see.
Amadeus stood very still.
Not because he had decided to.
Because his body had paused without consulting him.
Ten minutes.
Witnesses in ten minutes.
A countdown.
He hated countdowns. They turned chaos into a schedule.
He rolled his shoulders once, loosening them, buying himself half a second of normality.
“Witnesses,” he said lightly. “Right. So this is a show now.”
“It always was,” the Kabesa replied.
He smirked. “At least you’re honest about it.”
He walked to the centre of the atrium again, slow, deliberate, reclaiming space. He nudged a broken shard aside with his shoe and planted his feet where the water channel split around a stone island.
The stage.
He looked around at the wreckage.
Cracked glass.
Dead drone.
Spilled soil.
Torn maps.
Water pooling like melted patience.
He breathed in.
Out.
Reset.
If there was an audience coming, he would curate.
He always did.
“You know what’s funny?” he said conversationally. “You think this is new. You think you’re the first person who’s ever ‘seen through me.’”
He made air quotes.
“Counsellor Maya. Age ten. Said I was ‘armouring with intelligence.’”
He paced two steps.
“Director Chen. Age twelve. Said I ‘externalised shame through disruption.’”
Two more.
“Rahim. Last year. Said I was ‘running simulations on people.’”
He stopped and looked at her.
“They all thought they were special.”
“And they were all wrong,” she said.
He laughed. “No. They were all temporary.”
He leaned against a cracked pillar.
“You’ll be temporary too.”
The Kabesa didn’t bristle.
She nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “So will you.”
That landed wrong.
He frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” she replied, “that this version of you has an expiry date.”
He scoffed. “You don’t get to define me.”
“I don’t,” she said. “Reality does.”
He opened his mouth with something sharp ready.
Then the house chimed softly.
A neutral tone.
Status update.
“Escort arrival in seven minutes.”
Seven.
His jaw tightened.
“Wow,” he said. “You really scheduled my moral awakening.”
“Your accountability,” she corrected.
“Same propaganda, different font.”
She smiled faintly at that.
“Not bad,” she said. “You’re improving.”
He blinked. “At what?”
“Deflection,” she replied. “You’re using humour now instead of objects.”
He snorted. “Progress.”
Silence stretched.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Just the hum of systems.
The distant wind.
Water trickling over displaced stones.
Amadeus shifted his weight.
The itch returned.
Not the urge to break.
The urge to win.
“Let’s say,” he said slowly, “I cooperate.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically,” she agreed.
“What happens?”
She didn’t answer immediately.
She walked to the water channel, knelt, and began rearranging the scattered stones with careful fingers, redirecting the flow back into something like order.
Only then did she speak.
“Then you sit with them,” she said. “You listen. You don’t perform. You don’t negotiate. You don’t weaponise insight.”
“And if I don’t?”
She looked up.
“Then this becomes your life for a while.”
He followed her gaze.
The house.
The isolation.
The altitude.
The deliberate absence of escape.
“Exile with plants,” he muttered.
“Containment with dignity,” she corrected.
He laughed again, but weaker.
“You really think this works.”
“I know it does,” she said.
“On me?”
“Especially on you.”
That irritated him.
“Why?”
“Because,” she replied, “you’re not actually stupid enough to believe your own mythology.”
He stiffened.
She continued, calm, precise.
“You pretend you’re empty. You pretend you’re bored. You pretend nothing sticks.”
She set the last stone in place. The water straightened, obedient.
“But you catalogue everything. You remember everything. You replay everything.”
She met his eyes.
“People who feel nothing don’t keep archives.”
He said nothing.
The house chimed again.
“Escort arrival in four minutes.”
Four.
He swallowed.
Barely noticeable.
She noticed.
“Scared?” he snapped, reflexively, projecting.
“Yes,” she said.
He froze. “Yes?”
“Yes,” she repeated. “You are.”
He opened his mouth.
She cut in, gentle but firm.
“And so am I.”
That disarmed him more than any attack.
“You?” he scoffed. “Of what?”
“Of wasting you,” she said.
He stared.
No one had ever framed it that way.
Not as danger.
Not as liability.
Not as problem.
Waste.
Like spoiled potential.
Like a resource mishandled.
“That’s manipulative,” he muttered.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Responsibly.”
Three minutes.
He rubbed the back of his neck.
A nervous tic he hated.
“So what,” he said. “You’re betting I’ll crack?”
“I’m betting,” she replied, “that you’ll get tired of pretending you don’t care first.”
He paced once.
Twice.
Stopped.
“You realise,” he said, “if I change, I lose power.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“And you’re fine with that.”
“I’m fine with you gaining a different kind.”
He snorted. “You make it sound like a trade-in.”
“In some ways, it is.”
Two minutes.
He looked at the door.
Then at her.
Then back at the door.
“Do they know,” he asked quietly, “everything?”
“Enough,” she replied.
“About… today.”
“Yes.”
“And before?”
She considered.
“They know patterns.”
He exhaled slowly.
A long breath.
Not performative.
Real.
“That’s worse,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed.
One minute.
The house chimed softly, like a polite reminder that time existed.
Amadeus stood in the middle of the wrecked atrium, surrounded by evidence of himself.
He felt strangely exposed.
Like someone had turned on the lights in a room he’d lived in the dark.
He looked at the Kabesa.
“You’re enjoying this,” he accused.
She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I’m staying.”
That stopped him.
“What?”
“Everyone else eventually leaves,” she continued. “Hands you back to the system and hopes for the best.”
She met his gaze.
“I’m not done with you today.”
The outer door hummed.
Pressure seals cycling.
Footsteps approached, faint through insulation.
Voices.
Muffled.
Arrival.
The moment crystallised.
He had one last move before the audience entered.
One last chance to choose the old story.
He straightened.
Smoothed his expression.
Let the familiar mask settle.
Then, unexpectedly, he dropped it.
Just a little.
“Do they… hate me?” he asked, quietly enough that only she could hear.
The question slipped out before he could strangle it.
He looked furious with himself for saying it.
The Kabesa didn’t smile.
She answered honestly.
“Some of them are angry,” she said. “Some are afraid. Some are exhausted.”
“And…?”
“And many of them are waiting,” she finished.
“For what?”
“For you to stop making them guess who you are.”
The door slid open.
Cool air rushed in.
Lúcia and Rahim stepped inside with two other wardens.
They stopped short at the sight of the wreckage.
No one spoke.
Amadeus stood very straight.
Hands at his sides.
Eyes forward.
Not performing.
Not collapsing.
Balanced on a knife-edge between who he had been and who he might become.
The Kabesa looked at him once more.
Not as a judge.
As a witness.
And said, quietly:
“Your turn.”
*
Amadeus felt every pair of eyes land on him like small, precise weights.
Not crushing.
Measuring.
Lúcia’s gaze moved first, automatically, the way it always did in emergencies: cracked glass, water on stone, disabled drone, debris pattern. Inventory before emotion.
Rahim’s eyes went to Amadeus’s hands.
Empty.
Still.
That surprised him.
One of the other wardens, Erie, swallowed audibly.
“Oh,” she said softly.
No accusation.
Just: oh.
Amadeus hated that sound.
It wasn’t fear.
It wasn’t anger.
It was recognition.
The Kabesa stepped half a pace back, giving him space without abandoning him.
She didn’t frame him.
She didn’t introduce him.
She didn’t explain.
She let him exist.
“Go on,” Rahim said gently. “We’re here.”
Not Explain yourself.
Not What did you do.
We’re here.
That was new.
Amadeus’s mouth went dry.
Every instinct screamed at him to perform.
To cry.
To joke.
To attack.
To intellectualise.
To turn it into theatre.
Anything but this.
He stared at a dark stain where water and soil had mixed on the floor.
Then he looked up.
“I—” he began.
Stopped.
Restarted.
“I broke things,” he said.
It sounded stupid.
Small.
True.
Lúcia blinked.
Just once.
“I hit her,” he added.
Quieter.
The Kabesa did not move.
Rahim nodded slowly. “Yes.”
Amadeus clenched his jaw.
“I didn’t… plan to,” he muttered.
That was a lie.
He knew it.
They probably did too.
So he corrected himself.
“I mean. I did. But not… like.”
He exhaled sharply.
“Not because of her.”
Silence.
Erie spoke, hesitant. “Then why?”
He looked at her.
Really looked.
She wasn’t afraid.
She wasn’t moralising.
She was confused.
He hated that even more.
“Because,” he said, voice roughening, “when people look at me like they’ve figured me out…”
He made a vague gesture at his head.
“…I feel trapped.”
The word surprised him as it left his mouth.
Trapped.
He frowned at it.
Then kept going.
“And when I feel trapped, I wreck the room.”
A weak laugh escaped him.
“Apparently.”
No one laughed with him.
Good.
Rahim shifted his weight.
“So this morning?” he asked.
“The heat grid?”
Amadeus nodded.
“I wanted everyone running,” he said. “Because when everyone’s running, no one’s watching me.”
That landed.
Lúcia’s shoulders slumped a fraction.
Not in defeat.
In understanding.
“How long?” she asked quietly.
He hesitated.
Then shrugged.
“Always.”
The word echoed in the atrium.
Always.
The Kabesa spoke for the first time since the door opened.
“Say it to them,” she said.
He looked at her.
She met his eyes steadily.
Not demanding.
Inviting.
He turned back to the wardens.
“I don’t know how to stop,” he said.
There.
That was it.
The forbidden sentence.
The one he’d never allowed himself to think, let alone say.
“I know how to fake it,” he continued. “I know how to look better. I know how to wait it out.”
His voice cracked, just barely.
“I don’t know how to… not do it.”
Erie covered her mouth.
Rahim closed his eyes for a moment.
Lúcia stepped forward.
Not abruptly.
Not dramatically.
She stopped two metres away.
Respectful distance.
“Thank you,” she said.
Not Good job.
Not About time.
Thank you.
“For telling us,” she added.
Amadeus blinked.
“That’s… it?” he asked, suspicious.
“For now,” she replied.
The Kabesa nodded.
“This is the beginning,” she said. “Not the verdict.”
He looked between them.
No one was reaching for restraints.
No one was reciting protocols.
No one was threatening relocation.
They were just… there.
Witnessing.
“So what happens?” he asked.
Rahim answered.
“You stay here,” he said. “With her. For a while.”
Amadeus glanced at the Kabesa.
“Like… prison?”
“No,” Rahim said. “Like apprenticeship.”
That word hit him sideways.
“Apprenticeship at what?” he scoffed.
The Kabesa replied calmly:
“At being accountable without collapsing.”
He snorted. “That’s not a thing.”
“It is,” she said. “It’s just unpopular.”
Erie knelt and began quietly gathering scattered med packs into a crate.
No ceremony.
Just repair.
Lúcia activated a repair drone.
It hummed to life and began sealing microfractures in the glass.
Life resuming.
Around him.
Not in spite of him.
Because of him.
Including him.
He watched, strangely hollow.
“So I don’t get expelled,” he said.
“No,” Rahim replied.
“You don’t get erased,” Lúcia added.
That mattered more.
Amadeus looked down at his hands.
They were shaking.
He curled them into fists.
Then forced them open.
”Why are you manipulating me?” he said.
Only the Kabesa looked up. Erie and Rahim and Lúcia continued on with the drones. The Kabesa looked at him quizzically.
”Who are you talking to?” she said, and so sincerely that he almost believed her.
”I…I…”
”If it’s a question you’re asking yourself,” said Lúcia, ”then you deserve to know the answer.”
“You taught us,” she replied.
Another silence.
The Kabesa folded her hands.
“You asked why,” she said. “Here is why.”
She pointed, not accusingly, just factually, at the broken glass.
“At thirteen, you learned nothing truly bad would happen to you.”
He stiffened.
She continued.
“So you started testing how far that was true.”
She gestured to the dead drone.
“Every year, you pushed the line.”
To the spilled water.
“Every year, it moved.”
To the torn maps.
“And every year, you learned the same lesson.”
Her eyes met his.
“That no one would stop you.”
His throat tightened.
“That’s not—”
“It is,” Lúcia said quietly. “We didn’t stop you.”
Rahim nodded. “We delayed. We negotiated. We softened.”
Erie looked down. “We were afraid.”
“Of me?” he snapped.
“Of failing you,” she replied.
That landed sideways.
He laughed, but it came out wrong.
“Wow. That’s… convenient.”
The Kabesa didn’t let him deflect.
“Amadeus,” she said, firm now. “Why do you think you keep asking if people hate you?”
He froze.
No one had ever repeated that back to him.
“I don’t,” he muttered.
“Yes, you do,” Lúcia said. “Indirectly. Constantly.”
Rahim added, “You provoke it.”
“Then measure it.”
Erie finished, “Then pretend it doesn’t matter.”
He stared at them.
“You’ve been… tracking me,” he said faintly.
“Paying attention,” Lúcia corrected.
The Kabesa stepped closer.
“Here is the part you haven’t said yet,” she said.
“And I’m going to ask you to say it.”
He bristled. “No.”
“Yes,” she replied calmly.
She waited.
No countdown.
No pressure.
Just expectation.
Amadeus’s pulse hammered.
Say it.
Whatever it was.
He didn’t know.
But he knew it was dangerous.
“I…” he began.
Stopped.
Swallowed.
“I don’t know,” he said angrily. “What you want from me.”
“That’s honest,” Rahim said.
“But incomplete,” the Kabesa added.
She softened her voice.
“What are you afraid will happen if you stop performing?”
He laughed.
Loud.
Defensive.
“Nothing,” he said instantly.
No one reacted.
No nods.
No reassurance.
Just quiet.
The lie hung there.
He felt it.
Hated it.
Tried again.
“People will… get bored,” he said.
Erie shook her head. “They already aren’t.”
“People will leave,” he snapped.
Rahim’s jaw tightened.
“Some already have,” he said.
Gently.
That hurt.
Amadeus’s hands curled.
“People will see I’m…” He stopped.
The word wouldn’t come.
The Kabesa waited.
He hated that she wasn’t rescuing him. He wanted to slap her again.
”The other cheek this time,” she said playfully, and all of Amadeus’s insides turned to ice.
In all his haste to destroy her, he had forgotten the oldest trick in the book.
Siruwi.
Every instinct Amadeus had built for fifteen years suddenly found no traction.
No angle.
No purchase.
The Kabesa’s eyes had changed.
Not brighter.
Not sharper.
Deeper.
Like a lake whose surface you’d mistaken for glass.
“You felt that?” she said, far too brightly, tapping the cheek he hadn’t slapped.
“Bullshit,” he muttered automatically.
But it sounded weak.
The Kabesa tilted her head slightly.
“Oh, Amadeus,” she said softly. “You just thought: If she really sees me, I’m finished.”
His breath stuttered.
“Stop,” he snapped. “Don’t—”
“You also thought,” she continued, gently, “If she doesn’t, I’ll have to keep doing this forever.”
His hands clenched.
He didn’t remember thinking that.
Which meant he had.
“That’s not—”
“And right now,” she added, “you’re deciding whether to hate me for noticing.”
”Why did you do this to me?” said Amadeus. His hands were shaking. Everything was shaking. ”You…you…from the start I walked in here, you could just have…why…?”
The Thirty-Eighth Kabesa didn’t answer immediately.
She didn’t rush to soothe him, either. She turned her head slightly, as if listening to a sound that wasn’t in the room, then looked back at him with the same steady attention she’d been using like a tool.
“Because you’ve been living inside a loophole,” she said.
Amadeus laughed once, a harsh bark. “A loophole.”
“Yes.” She nodded toward Lúcia and Rahim. “Everyone kept trying to persuade you out of it. Or punish you inside it. Neither works, because the loophole isn’t in policy.”
Her gaze returned to him.
“It’s in your nervous system.”
Erie flinched at the bluntness. Rahim didn’t. Lúcia’s eyes lowered for a moment like she’d been waiting to hear someone say it cleanly.
Amadeus swallowed. “So you’re… rewiring me.”
“No,” the Kabesa said. “I’m removing your hiding places.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“It isn’t,” she replied. “One is control. One is contact.”
He stared at her like she’d spoken a foreign language.
“Contact,” he repeated, with contempt he couldn’t fully summon. “With what. Feelings.”
“With reality,” she corrected.
Then, almost casually, she asked the question he’d been trying to outrun since he was thirteen.
“What did you want to happen this morning?”
Amadeus opened his mouth.
A dozen clever answers lined up like soldiers. Boredom. Systems testing. Stress inoculation. Resilience drills. Necessary pressure. The settlement needed to be tougher. Everyone should be grateful.
He could feel the old script rising, polished and familiar.
Then he felt it again, that strange internal slip where the Kabesa’s attention found the seam before his performance did.
He exhaled sharply.
“I wanted them to move,” he said, finally.
Rahim nodded once. “They did.”
Amadeus’s jaw tightened. “Faster.”
Erie’s eyes flicked up. “Why?”
He snapped, reflexively, “Because they’re slow.”
The Kabesa waited.
It was maddening. The way she waited. Like she could afford to.
Amadeus’s breath came quicker.
“Because when people are slow,” he said, louder, “they start deciding things.”
“Deciding what?” Lúcia asked, very quietly.
Amadeus’s throat closed. He felt his face heat.
He tried contempt again, because contempt was safe.
“Deciding I’m a problem.”
No one denied it.
No one rushed in with “No, you’re not.”
That was the difference.
They let the sentence land and stay landed.
Amadeus’s voice dropped, almost against his will.
“Deciding I’m… not worth the effort.”
Erie’s expression softened, not pitying, not patronising, just recognising the shape of it.
Rahim’s shoulders shifted like something heavy had been repositioned.
The Kabesa nodded once.
“There,” she said. “That’s the engine.”
Amadeus flared. “So what, you dragged me up here to prove a point?”
“To stop the engine from driving the vehicle into walls,” she replied, calm as stone. “Yes.”
He laughed again, shaky. “You’re making it sound… rational.”
“It is rational,” she said. “It’s also expensive.”
He blinked. “Expensive?”
“Because the settlement pays for it.” She gestured at the wreckage, at the cracked glass, at the dead drone. “And you pay for it, too, just later.”
Amadeus’s eyes narrowed. “How.”
The Kabesa’s voice didn’t change.
“You become older,” she said, “and your tricks still work, but they stop feeling like power. They start feeling like hunger.”
Amadeus went still.
It wasn’t a prophecy. It wasn’t mystical. It was the kind of statement that came from watching enough people collapse in predictable ways.
He hated that he believed it.
“So what,” he said, trying to regain edge. “You’re going to fix me.”
“No,” she replied. “I’m going to make you responsible.”
He scoffed. “I already am. I’m the only one who understands systems.”
“Understanding isn’t responsibility,” she said. “Responsibility is what you do when your understanding costs someone else.”
His lips parted, then closed. He couldn’t find a snappy line that didn’t sound like a child, which infuriated him even more.
Rahim cleared his throat.
“Amadeus,” he said, “we didn’t bring you here to humiliate you.”
Amadeus shot him a look. “Then what was the broadcast.”
The Kabesa answered instead.
“Witness,” she said. “Not spectacle.”
Amadeus’s laugh was smaller now. “Same thing.”
“No.” Lúcia’s voice was flat and tired and sharp. “Spectacle is when we watch you to feel something about ourselves.”
She looked him in the eye.
“Witness is when we watch you so you can’t lie.”
Amadeus’s face tightened.
He hated the simplicity of it.
He hated that it worked.
Erie, still crouched, lifted one of the med packets and set it neatly into the crate, then said, softly:
“We’re not here to hate you.”
Amadeus’s mouth twisted. “Then why do you all look like you’re at a funeral?”
Erie smiled. “Because we are.”
He scoffed. “For what?”
“For the version of you we kept enabling,” she said.
Silence.
The Kabesa stepped closer, not threatening, just present.
“Now,” she said, “answer your own question.”
Amadeus’s eyes flashed. “Which one.”
“Why did I do this to you,” she replied. “Say what you think.”
Amadeus stared at the floor. At the wet stone. At the torn paper stuck to his boot.
His hands were still shaking.
He hated being seen shaking.
He breathed in hard.
Then out.
And said, very quietly:
“Because you think I’m going to kill someone someday.”
The air in the room changed.
Not panic.
Not outrage.
Truth registering.
Rahim’s eyes closed briefly.
Lúcia didn’t flinch.
Erie’s lips pressed together.
The Kabesa looked at him for a long moment.
Then she said, evenly:
“No.”
Amadeus blinked, startled. “No?”
“No,” she repeated. “I don’t think you’re destined to ruin a life because you’re a monster.”
He sneered, trying to recover. “Then what.”
“I think you’ll ruin yours,” she said. “If nothing interrupts this loop.”
That hit him harder than the accusation he’d invented.
He laughed, but it came out broken. “That’s… dramatic.”
“It’s ordinary,” she corrected. “It’s what happens when people learn they’re consequence-proof.”
Amadeus’s throat worked.
He wanted to say something sharp.
Something that would make her blink.
But the sharpness wouldn’t come.
So he said the next true thing, like his mouth had finally stopped asking permission.
“I don’t know how to be… consequence-full,” he muttered.
The Kabesa’s expression shifted, just slightly. Not warmth. Not pity.
Precision.
“Good,” she said. “Then we can start.”
Amadeus blinked rapidly. “Start what?”
The Kabesa turned her head toward Lúcia and Rahim. They nodded. The Kabesa turned back to Amadeus.
”I’m going to show you something,” she said. ”Something very few people get to see. Even your teachers.”
*
The Kabesa led him down a narrow corridor he had not noticed before.
It curved gently inward, away from the atrium and its wreckage, away from witnesses and protocols and repair drones. The walls here were darker, lined with treated basalt and thin veins of bioluminescent moss that glowed faintly blue, like submerged stars. The air felt cooler. Thicker. As if sound itself had been padded.
Amadeus followed without comment.
He told himself it was strategic.
It wasn’t.
The corridor opened into a small chamber.
No grand display.
No ceremonial archive.
Just a low, circular room with a shallow pool at its centre and a single translucent panel rising from the floor like a sheet of frozen water. Threads of light moved slowly within it, drifting like plankton.
A memory screen.
He recognised the type from history modules.
He had never seen one used like this.
The Kabesa stepped to the edge of the pool and knelt. She rested her fingers lightly on the water’s surface.
It did not ripple.
Instead, it brightened.
A soft harmonic tone filled the room, not sound exactly, more like pressure in the bones. Amadeus felt it behind his eyes, at the base of his skull.
“What is this?” he muttered.
“Memory interface,” she replied. “Filtered.”
“Filtered from what?”
“Well, from me almost drowning in your bullshit just now.” The Kabesa smiled. ”You might have heard it in the civics class, if you gave a shit. We call it the arvahang.”
She closed her eyes.
Her breathing slowed.
Not theatrically.
Practised.
The light in the pool deepened, then rose, climbing the translucent panel in slow, misty bands. Images did not appear all at once. They condensed gradually, like fog learning how to be a landscape.
At first, it was only colour.
Sepia browns.
Faded blues.
A wash of sun and dust.
Then sound.
Footsteps.
Voices.
Distant traffic.
And then:
A street.
”Nineteenth-century Melaka,” said the Thirty-Eighth Kabesa.
Narrow.
Uneven.
Alive with carts and vendors and shouting.
The image wavered, unstable, as if seen through water.
A woman walked alone.
Straight-backed.
Carefully dressed.
Holding a child’s hand.
Her face was tired.
Not weak.
Worn.
Someone passed her.
Then another.
Then a man leaned out from a doorway and spat onto the ground.
“Pelacur,” he called.
”Whore,” said the Thirty-Eighth Kabesa, as if it were the same word as grapes or tennis.
Another voice followed, sharper.
“You and that bastard shouldn’t even be alive.”
The child tightened his grip on her fingers.
The woman did not look at them.
She kept walking.
Amadeus felt his jaw tighten.
“Who—” he began.
“Eliza Tessensohn,” the Kabesa said softly. “The Third Kabesa.”
The image dissolved.
Reformed.
Now a bus stop.
”Post-war Malaya,” said the Thirty-Eighth Kabesa.
A large man stood under a rusted shelter, clutching a stack of papers to his chest. He wore a jacket too thin for the weather. His shoes were cracked at the seams.
A group of men nearby were laughing.
One noticed him.
Snorted.
“Hey. Traitor.”
Another joined in.
“Working for the Japs’ money still, is it?”
“Selling out your own bloody people. You fucking swine.”
The man said nothing.
He stared straight ahead.
Waited for the bus.
Hands shaking.
“Charles Paglar,” the Kabesa murmured. “Eighth Kabesa.”
The scene blurred.
Shifted.
A small publishing office.
Stacks of manuscripts.
Dust.
A middle-aged man sat opposite a desk, posture too formal, hope barely contained.
An editor skimmed pages.
Then dropped them.
Flat.
“I’m sorry but there is just no such thing,” the editor said, bored, “as Eurasian literature worth publishing.”
The young man’s smile froze.
“Oh,” he said softly. “I see.”
“No, you don’t,” the editor replied. “You should stop pretending.”
The man gathered his papers with shaking hands.
Left.
“Percy Aroozoo,” the Thirty-Eighth Kabesa said. “The Ninth Kabesa.”
Amadeus’s throat felt tight now.
He didn’t like it.
Didn’t know why.
The screen shimmered again.
Modern colours.
Clean lines.
A classroom.
Whiteboard.
Projector.
A young man wearing orange stood at the front, explaining something animatedly, hands moving as he spoke. Students were listening. Some smiling.
After class, an older teacher blocked his path. His supervisor, maybe. Her voice was low. Controlled.
“You know,” she said, “being so… open about yourself is inappropriate.”
He frowned. “About what?”
“You know,” she replied. “Your… lifestyle.”
He stiffened.
“This is a school,” she continued. “Parents talk. It’s shameful.”
He stared at her.
“It isn’t,” he said.
”You can’t pretend like it isn’t,” his supervisor said.
”I’m not,” he said.
“Kevin Martens Wong,” the Kabesa said quietly. “Thirteenth.”
The images faded.
The panel dimmed.
The room returned to stone and water and soft blue light.
Amadeus stood very still.
His heart was pounding, but not in the way it did when he was angry.
In a slower, heavier way.
Like something had been placed inside him.
“What was that?” he whispered.
The Kabesa opened her eyes.
Her pupils were dilated, her face pale with effort.
“Arvahang traces,” she said. “Filtered through siruwi. Memory-resonance. Not recordings. Echoes.”
“Why?” he demanded. “Why show me this?”
She looked at him.
Really looked.
“Because,” she said, “you think you’re the first person in New Island to be targeted.”
He frowned. “Targeted by who?”
“By contempt,” she replied. “By erasure. By being told you don’t belong unless you perform correctly.”
He shook his head. “That’s not—”
“Yes,” she said gently. “It is.”
He swallowed.
“They didn’t… break things,” he muttered.
“No,” she agreed. “They endured them.”
He looked back at the darkened screen.
“They just… took it.”
“They transformed it,” she corrected.
“Into what?”
“Into responsibility.”
He scoffed weakly. “That sounds like Hegemony propaganda.”
She smiled faintly.
“So did ‘collateral is inevitable,’” she replied.
Silence.
Amadeus stared at the pool.
“I don’t get it,” he said finally. “They were… attacked. You’re saying I’m… what. Doing the same thing?”
“No,” she said. “You’re doing the opposite.”
He looked up sharply.
“They were told they didn’t deserve to exist,” she continued. “So they built space for others.”
She stepped closer.
“You were never told that.”
He opened his mouth to deny it.
Then stopped.
She went on.
“You were told you were special. Untouchable. Too important to mishandle.”
He felt heat rise in his chest.
“So you learned,” she said, “that pain wasn’t real until you caused it.”
That landed.
Hard.
“You break rooms,” she continued. “They walked through civilisations being broken over and over again.”
He whispered, “That’s not fair.”
“No,” she agreed. “It isn’t.”
She rested her hand on the edge of the pool.
“And what you saw in the arvahang isn’t about glorifying suffering,” she said. “It’s about remembering what people did with it.”
He looked at her, eyes bright.
“So what,” he said hoarsely. “You want me to be like them?”
“I want you to stop thinking you’re alone,” she replied.
He laughed softly. “This is… your inspirational speech?”
“No,” she said. “This is your inheritance.”
That word made him flinch.
“Inheritance,” he repeated.
“Yes,” she said. “Bos sa ardansa, filu. You didn’t just inherit protection. You inherited unfinished courage.”
He stared at the dim panel.
“They were… scared,” he said.
“Constantly,” she replied.
“Did it ever stop?”
“No.”
He was quiet for a long time.
Then, very quietly:
“And they didn’t go on to wreck things.”
“No,” she said. “They had to build them. Even when they kept getting wrecked over and over again.”
He rubbed his face with both hands.
When he lowered them, his eyes were red.
Not crying.
Strained.
“So what am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Just… be noble now?”
She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “You’re supposed to learn what your ardansa is for.”
“And what is it for?”
She looked at him.
“For making it safer for the next Kristang person to be honest.”
Amadeus swallowed.
“That sounds… impossible.”
She smiled.
“So did surviving Melaka as a single woman with a son in 1858.”
He snorted weakly.
“Great. No pressure.”
She placed a hand lightly on his shoulder.
Not claiming.
Not restraining.
Present.
“You don’t have to be them,” she said.
“You just have to stop pretending you’re nothing.”
He looked up at her.
“And if I mess up?”
“You will,” she replied.
“And then?”
“Then you repair,” she said. “Instead of detonating my fucking house.”
He thought of the cracked glass.
The dead drone.
The spilled water.
The fine dust of shattered ceramic.
All of it was still there.
Waiting.
Not erased.
Not moralised away.
Just… present.
Evidence.
Amadeus followed her gaze.
“I can’t fix that,” he said quietly.
“You can start,” she replied.
“With what?” he snapped. “A mop?”
“With attention,” she said. “With time. With staying when it’s uncomfortable.”
He snorted. “You make it sound like penance.”
“It’s maintenance,” she corrected.
He stared at the floor.
Maintenance.
He knew that word.
Grids. Filters. Pressure seals. Thermal lines.
You ignored maintenance and things failed later, catastrophically.
“You planned this,” he said suddenly.
She looked at him.
“Of course,” she replied. ”You think they just let any old fool be the Cowgirl of Heaven?”
“Not just… today,” he pressed. “All of it.”
She hesitated.
Then nodded.
“Yes.”
His jaw tightened. “With Lúcia and Rahim.”
“Prepared,” she corrected. “Not scripted.”
“Same thing.”
“No,” she said gently. “A script would have required you to behave. We assumed you wouldn’t.”
That almost made him laugh.
Almost.
“And if I hadn’t… cracked?” he asked.
She answered without hesitation.
“Then we would have waited,” she said. “And kept building safety around you until you were ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“To feel,” she replied.
He scoffed weakly. “I feel. I get angry.”
“That’s sensation,” she said. “Not feeling.”
He opened his mouth to argue.
Closed it again.
Because part of him knew she was right.
The anger had always been easy.
It arrived fast.
It burned hot.
It protected everything underneath.
“So what happens now,” he asked quietly.
She gestured around them.
“Now we repair,” she said.
“Together.”
He stared. “You mean… me and you?”
“Yes.”
“And them?” He nodded toward the corridor, where Lúcia and Rahim waited.
“And them,” she agreed. “And others, when needed.”
He frowned. “You’re not sending me away.”
“No,” she said.
“You’re not putting me in some… programme.”
“This is the programme,” she replied.
He let out a slow breath.
“That’s… inconvenient.”
She smiled, small and real.
“Yes,” she said. “Growth usually is.”
Silence settled.
Not the tense kind.
The kind that happens after something important has been said and both people are letting it land.
The bioluminescent moss pulsed faintly along the walls.
The pool glowed, soft as moonlight.
Amadeus watched the light ripple.
“You used siruwi,” he said suddenly.
She looked at him.
“Yes.”
“You read me,” he said. “Back there. Before I even… knew.”
“I listened,” she corrected.
“That’s not normal listening.”
“No,” she agreed. “It isn’t.”
He hesitated.
Then asked, very carefully, “Does it… hurt?”
She considered.
“Sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like standing in a river and letting other people’s weather pass through you.”
“That sounds awful.”
She laughed quietly. “It can be.”
“Then why do it?”
“Because,” she replied, “some people have never been mirrored without being judged. Siruwi lets me reflect without distorting.”
He frowned. “You mean… you weren’t trying to trap me.”
“No,” she said. “I was trying to meet you where you actually are.”
He looked down at his hands again.
They were steady now.
That surprised him.
“So when you… saw things,” he said. “In my head.”
“I didn’t see images,” she replied. “I felt questions.”
“What kind?”
She met his eyes.
“Am I disposable. Am I only useful when I’m dangerous. Would anyone stay if I stopped being interesting.”
His throat tightened.
He looked away quickly.
“Stop,” he muttered.
“I’m not listing them to hurt you,” she said. “I’m listing them so you know you’re not alone with them.”
He swallowed.
“No one’s ever… said them out loud.”
“That’s why they ran you,” she replied. “Unspoken fears make excellent engines.”
He gave a shaky laugh. “Great. I’m fuel.”
“You were,” she said. “Past tense. And only for your own fears and insecurities.”
He stared at her. “You’re sure about that?”
“No,” she replied honestly. “I’m committed to finding out.”
That was somehow more comforting than certainty.
They walked back toward the atrium.
Slower now.
Not circling.
Side by side.
Lúcia was supervising a repair drone sealing the cracked glass. Rahim was helping Erie catalogue damaged equipment. Erie knelt near the water channel, redirecting flow with careful hands.
No one stopped when they saw Amadeus.
No one stared.
They made space without spectacle.
That, too, was part of the plan.
The Kabesa picked up a small repair kit and handed it to him.
“Drone first,” she said.
He took it automatically.
Then froze.
“You’re… trusting me with tools.”
“Yes.”
He blinked. “That seems… risky.”
“It is,” she replied. “On purpose.”
He stared at the kit.
Then nodded once.
“Okay,” he said quietly.
He knelt beside the ruined drone.
It was worse up close.
Burnt circuitry.
Cracked casing.
A mess he had made without thinking.
He opened the kit.
His hands hesitated.
“What if I do it wrong?” he asked.
“Then we redo it,” she said. “That’s maintenance.”
He let out a breath.
“Right. Maintenance.”
He began carefully dismantling the casing.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
For once, not trying to be impressive.
Just trying to be accurate.
Minutes passed.
No commentary.
No praise.
Just presence.
At some point, he realised something strange.
He wasn’t bored.
His mind wasn’t racing.
He wasn’t scanning for exits.
He was… here.
Working.
Breathing.
Existing without performing.
The thought startled him.
“Hey,” he murmured.
“Yes?” she replied.
“If I… keep doing this,” he said, eyes still on the drone, “does it get easier?”
She considered.
“Different,” she said. “Not easier.”
“How so?”
“You stop needing to burn rooms to feel warm,” she replied.
He snorted softly. “That’s poetic.”
“Siruwi side effect,” she said.
He smiled despite himself.
A small one.
Unpractised.
“Mutu merseh,” he blurted out quietly, and suddenly, it was not straining. It was real tears in his eyes. The hatred welled up in him but he didn’t push it away. It just sat there.
“For what?” said the Thirty-Eighth Kabesa.
“For… not giving up,” he muttered.
She didn’t answer immediately.
Then she said, softly,
“You didn’t give up first. Why would I?”
He paused.
Let that sink in.
“Why do you even care about me?” he blurted out again, as the heat inside him kept rising, and he kept, for once, learning how to ride it rather than be overtaken by it. ”I mean, I fucked up your house. I fucked up your face.”
The Kabesa did not answer him at once.
She tightened a small coupling on the drone casing, tested it with her thumb, then set the tool aside. Only then did she look at him.
Amadeus watched her hands.
He had always watched hands in moments like this.
Hands told the truth before mouths did.
Yelling hands were dangerous.
Clenched hands meant punishment.
Busy hands meant distraction.
Her hands were… steady.
That unsettled him.
“Because,” she said, “in Kristang culture, nobody gets left behind.”
He frowned. “That’s… a slogan.”
But even as he said it, something in his chest tightened, sharp and unfamiliar.
“No,” she replied. “It’s a rule.”
She gestured, not grandly, just outward, toward the house, the ridge, the settlement far below.
“When someone keeps falling out of the weave,” she continued, “we don’t cut them loose.”
“We check the weave.”
Amadeus’s fingers curled around the edge of the workbench without him noticing.
“What does that even mean?” he muttered.
He hated that his voice sounded thin.
“It means,” she said, “if one person keeps burning rooms, it is never only about that person.”
He looked up sharply. “So now this is everyone’s fault?”
The old reflex: attack first, before the blame landed.
“No,” she said calmly. “It is everyone’s responsibility.”
He scoffed. “Convenient.”
But the word tasted wrong in his mouth.
“It’s inconvenient,” she corrected. “It means I don’t get to call you ‘the problem’ and walk away feeling clean.”
She leaned back against the workbench.
“In the traditions I was raised in before the exodus,” she went on, “when a child grows up believing nothing bad will ever happen to them, that didn’t come from nowhere.”
Amadeus’s throat tightened.
He swallowed hard and pretended to be interested in a loose wire.
“It came from adults who were tired. Overloaded. Afraid of making the wrong choice. Afraid of breaking trust.”
Across the atrium, Lúcia’s shoulders shifted.
She stopped what she was doing for half a second.
Then continued, slower.
Rahim’s hand tightened around a repair strap.
Mira wiped her eyes quickly with her sleeve and hoped no one noticed.
The Kabesa noticed.
She didn’t exploit it.
“So they cushion,” she continued. “They delay. They soften. They hope maturity will arrive by itself.”
Her eyes returned to Amadeus.
“And when it doesn’t, they tell themselves: at least he’s clever. At least he’s alive. At least he’s not worse.”
Something in Amadeus cracked quietly.
He stared at the floor.
“That sounds… familiar,” he muttered.
His voice was barely there.
“Yes,” she said. “It should.”
He picked at a loose wire, too hard.
It snapped.
He flinched at the sound.
“So you’re saying,” he said slowly, “I exist because everyone messed up.”
The words came out sharper than he meant.
Like he was daring her to agree.
“No,” she replied. “You exist because life is difficult.”
Then, more firmly:
“You exist like this because none of us stepped in hard enough, early enough, together.”
His jaw trembled.
He pressed it shut.
“So I’m some kind of… community failure report.”
The sentence tasted like poison.
She shook her head.
“You’re a community alarm,” she said.
He stared. “That’s worse.”
His laugh was thin and brittle.
“No,” she said. “An alarm means something can still be fixed.”
He went quiet.
Very quiet.
The drone hummed softly as its power cell recalibrated.
It was the only sound.
“You know what usually happens,” she continued, “in societies that don’t think this way?”
He didn’t answer.
He couldn’t.
“They isolate,” she said. “They label. They discard.”
She picked up a cracked fragment of ceramic and turned it in her fingers.
“Someone like you gets turned into a cautionary tale. Or a statistic. Or a villain.”
She set the shard down.
“And everyone else gets to pretend they were never part of it.”
Amadeus’s eyes burned.
He blinked fast.
Too fast.
“That sounds… efficient,” he whispered.
“Yes,” she replied. “And devastating.”
He worked in silence for a few moments.
His hands shook slightly as he adjusted a connector.
Mira noticed.
She moved closer.
Not touching.
Just… near.
Then, quietly:
“So you’re not… trying to save me.”
The question escaped him before he could stop it.
It was small.
Almost childish.
She smiled faintly.
“I’m trying to keep us honest,” she said.
He looked up. “Us.”
“Yes,” she replied. “All of us.”
She nodded toward Lúcia, Rahim, Mira.
“Your teachers. Your wardens. Your neighbours. Me.”
“And you,” she added.
He snorted. “I’m the worst one.”
It sounded like a confession.
“Right now,” she agreed.
Then, gently:
“Not forever.”
His breath hitched.
He turned away quickly, pretending to check a panel.
“So,” he said instead, “what does ‘nobody gets left behind’ actually look like?”
His voice was rough.
She considered.
“It looks like this,” she said.
She gestured to the tools in his hands.
“You fixing what you broke.”
He stared at the screwdriver like it had suddenly become important.
“To them,” she added, nodding toward the others, “it looks like us not washing our hands of you.”
Lúcia and Rahim said nothing, but Amadeus felt what they wanted to say. His eyes burned hot.
“To the community,” she continued, “it looks like making space for your repair instead of just your punishment.”
He frowned. “That sounds… slow.”
“It is,” she said.
“Messy?”
“Yes.”
“Embarrassing?”
“Frequently.”
His laugh this time was real.
Soft.
Almost relieved.
“No wonder nobody likes it,” he whispered.
She smiled. “Exactly.”
He tightened a final connector and clipped the casing back into place.
The drone flickered.
Then lifted, unsteadily, like a bird relearning flight.
Amadeus watched it rise.
His eyes finally filled before he understood why.
He scrubbed at them angrily.
Something in his chest loosened.
“I’ve never seen it that way,” he admitted. “Before.”
“Most people don’t,” she said. “Until someone refuses to abandon them.”
”Isti nus sa ardansa,” said Lúcia.
”Nus sa bida,” said Rahim. ”Kada dia nus ja falah kung bos.”
”It was all…slogans,” said Amadeus, wiping the heat away from his eyes, and the Thirty-Eighth Kabesa nodded.
”Was. Past tense, no longer,” she said.
“Damn,” mumbled Amadeus.
The Thirty-Eighth Kabesa picked up another repair kit and handed it to him.
“Welcome to belonging,” she said.
He took it.
“Welcome to belonging,” she said.
He took it.
Outside, beyond the glass and stone and ice, New Island kept breathing.
Inside, among broken things and even more patient and still very broken people, Amadeus Malik Revan Goonting began, very slowly, to learn how to stay as one of them too.