Chapter 28: REWIND 7 <<<<<<< [--:--am]

One month later.

“How’s your mother doing Byunghee?” Changsun’s legs dangled from the edge of the harbor, tantalizingly close to the grimy water’s edge. He stared far out into the distance as if there was something more than the smog and smoke of this rotting world.

“Same as always,” Byunghee shrugged as he rooted through his bag, searching for an apple. Only then did he realize he had given his last apple to his noona on his way home. His stomach growled in protest and almost like clockwork, Changsun pulled an apple out of his bag and tossed it over his shoulder. Byunghee caught it instinctively. “Changsun…” he said in a warning tone. He couldn’t live off his brother’s charity forever.

Changsun just waved it off. “You would do the same for me,” was all he said. Byunghee sighed and took a bite out of the apple. Juice speckled his chin and he swiped his tongue over it, not wasting a drop.

There was silence for a few minutes as Byunghee polished off the apple, core and all. Then Changsun broached it with careful words. “Byunghee…” he started, then stopped as if he had just caught himself nearly walking off a cliff and was realizing just how precarious his position was.

“Say it,” Byunghee said.

“I…shouldn’t…” Changsun finished. Changsun did this a lot. He didn’t mean to come off so insensitive and manipulative-sounding, this Byunghee knew, but Changsun spoke first and thought later. He would catch the words that walked out of his mind and off his tongue and then try his best to stuff the incriminating string of letters back into them, but once the cat was out of the bag, it was well and truly out. There was no halfway through and Byunghee knew that Changsun’s curiosity would kill him later.

“Say it,” Byunghee said with finality. He loved Changsun no matter what.

Changsun closed his eyes and bit his lip. “Did you ever find out why they killed your father?”

Byunghee in a breath. He hadn’t been expecting this sort of question.

Changsun’s next words stumbled out even faster, like letters on little legs that stumbled and jumbled and crashed all over the page. “That was silly of me, I shouldn’t have said it. Forget about it Byunghee, I didn’t mean it. You know I didn’t mean it….Byunghee?”

Byunghee exhaled. “I don’t know Changsun,” he answered to the former and not the latter question. “I honestly don’t know.”

“Really?” Changsun asked in a small voice. “Nothing at all?”

Byunghee closed his eyes and replayed the last memories of his father: the waking up in semi-darkness and hearing his mother and father arguing about coming home and safety and in two-day’s time after he finished-

“Code: Red,” Byunghee whispered. His eyes flew open. How could he have forgotten that?

“What was that Byunghee?” Changsun tilted his head, turning his body to look at Byunghee. He frowned at Byunghee’s frozen expression, not seeing the cogs furiously working beneath. “Hey,” he clicked his fingers in front of Byunghee’s face. “Earth to Byunghee, hey!”

“Code:Red,” Byunghee repeated.

“What’s that?”

“Something I overheard my father telling my mother two nights before the enforcers arrested him. He said it was his final project. Something that would…revolutionize us with new information and…a new government or something…”

Changsun sat bolt-straight. He stared at Byunghee like he was sporting a pink afro and had just spoken a spiel in Spanish to him. “Byunghee…” he finally said in a semi-strangled voice. “Do you realize what you’re talking about?”

“What?” Byunghee’s left eyebrow flew up.

Changsun scooted closer. “Treachery,” he whispered fiercely. “The enforcers could arrest you for speaking words like that! Isn’t that exactly what they executed your father for? ‘Espionage, government theft, the release of highly classified information and the attempt of overthrowing the government’.”

Byunghee gulped. He hadn’t realized Changsun had remembered the exact words that had spelt out his father’s death. “Well…”

“Byunghee,” Changsun grabbed Byunghee’s arms. “Promise me you’ll never talk about this again. Nowhere is safe, no one can be trusted. No even me.”

“Don’t be silly,” Byunghee frowned. “I can always trust you.”

“No you can’t,” Changsun shook his head viciously. “What if the enforcers threatened the lives of my family for the verification of your words? You may be my brother Byunghee, but I have a mother and a father and a noona as well. You know full well how family and brotherhood weighs the same on a scale.”

“I know,” Byunghee said softly and Changsun’s frown vanished. “I promise.”

Changsun sighed and sagged forwards, leaning against Byunghee. “Thank you,” he said. “It’s just…I can’t lose you. I came so close to losing you, to losing you to grief and loss. You were a shell, barely living and just breathing. I can’t lose you again.”

“You won’t,” Byunghee promised and leaned forwards against Changsun’s shoulders. They were growing out. Both boys’ frames were elongating and stretching, shoulders that would one day carry weights heavier than any burden they could have expected. “That I promise.”

***

[Promises are

/

easily broken]

***

Lightning flashed.  Byunghee stuffed his head into the thin mattress and tried to get to sleep. But that was an impossible feat. Sleep just wasn’t coming.

Byunghee growled and rolled out of bed. He stalked a few paces and then decided he might as well go outside for a walk. Nighttime was a dangerous hour, but no one would be haunting his house in this weather.

As quietly as he could Byunghee tiptoed past his two noonas and his mother who shared the living room (Byunghee now slept in his sister’s old room) and closed the door behind him. The wind lashed even harder out here, howling and screeching like an old woman at a fish market. Byunghee winced and wished he had something thicker to wear, anything to shield him against the whip like slashes. But it was because he was squinting that he saw the dark shadow against the backdrop of grey.

Byunghee blinked. He scrubbed his eyes. Surely he was envisioning black scrawls. No one else would be out in this kind of weather.  Thunder boomed, a bass backdrop to the chaos that was about to begin.

No, he wasn’t imagining it. There was someone moving out there.

Unafraid of those yellow-forked daggers, Byunghee ventured forwards. He slipped round the back of his house and down the small alleyway that had long gone unused. It was supposed to be a sewage system but then the government had converted to underground drains and these ones were left to rot. Byunghee slid around the edge of the drainage system and peered over the top.

There. Black shapes. Adult sized.

Byunghee crept closer, the thunder masking his unsteady footing. A crackle of radio suddenly filled the air and Byunghee froze.

“Enforcer Lim come in,” the scratchy command came out. “I repeat, Enforcer Lim, come in.”

The black figure’s hand crept down to its waist and pulled a radio free. Byunghee squinted. From here the shape and stature was stocky. Male perhaps? Two others stood behind him, their rifles aloft and their backs to him, eyes hidden behind visors tracking the area. What were enforcers doing here? In the middle of the night and such horrendous weather?

“Enforcer Lim reporting in,” the enforcer replied, grabbing Byunghee’s attention again.

Crackle.

“Are you in position?”

Static.

“Affirmative.”

Crackle.

“Good. Permission to set up Project Lightning Strike granted.”

Static.

“Understood,” the enforcer said and tucked away the radio. Byunghee stared with interest as the man then proceeded to pull out what looked like a small black remote.  He lifted it and pressed a button. Smoothly a silver keyboard slid out from what seemed like thin air; likewise with a monitor. Byunghee’s watched, his gaze fixated as the enforcer began typing and the monitor filled with green letters that rolled off the screen and dissolved into thin air. And then that was it. Byunghee was thoroughly confused by what the man had even been doing.

“This is enforcer Lim,” the man lifted the radio to his lips. “Project Lightning Strike has been set up.”

“Affirmative enforcer. Please activate the Project and retreat to safe grounds.”

“Affirmative,” the man said. Was that a strain in his voice that Byunghee detected? No. It must be the whistle in the wind. “Activating now.”

The man lifted his finger and pressed one key. Enter.

That’s all it took. The screen lit up like a beast unleashed. The green words appeared again and marched at a lightning fast pace across the monitor. Words, numbers, letters scrawled by and Byunghee felt like his eyes would go crossed if he watched the code any longer. And then it stopped. Frozen. Suddenly the screen changed to white with four words printed boldly on it: Project Lightning Strike, Activated.

“Project Lightning Strike?” Byunghee whispered, his brow furrowing. And as if by magic or some sort of command a bolt of lightning flew down and struck the ground right in front of the enforcer. He didn’t flinch. He watched the electricity crackle in front of him, dance like little tempests at a party and then – to Byunghee’s growing horror – he watched as the electricity circled, a wolf doing rounds, and grow and fire burst fresh from the ground.

As if by magic.

“Project Lightning Strike has been activated,” the man reported smoothly.  

“Very good,” the radio crackled. “Please retreat. We will monitor’s the progress of the purge from here on now. Well done enforcer, with this those Code: Red insurgents will be flushed out like rats.”  There was barely suppressed smugness in the speaker’s voice that made Byunghee grit his teeth. But it was the words spoken that frightened him more.

Purge. Code:Red. ‘Like rats’.  

Byunghee’s eyes widened as he connected the dots.

No….nonononononono-

It was too late. The fire leapt upwards, a beast possessed. More lightning bolts were surrounding the computer, as if it were a conductor drawing electricity to it. With each strike the fire grew, pawing and and spreading so much that Byunghee could almost see the beast within it salivating.

Byunghee fell backwards as the fire burst upwards, starbursts of the worst sort of celebration.

A purge.

Code:Red.

Fire.

They were going to kill everybody.

Byunghee scrambled to his feet and ran back towards his house just as another bolt struck and the fire grew and the purge constructed so devilishly by the government began.