Redemption?

It had been a week since it all happened. Dani had underestimated the toll what he had done would have on his soul. Everywhere he went, he came across images and tributes for the comrades that had been martyred. Among them, an image of an innocent soul, one that haunted his sleep, that of Kobi.

What had he done?

To others, they were martyred heroes. To Dani, it was a scar on his soul that wouldn't heal, a scar that kept burning every time he came across their faces and the messages of hope and resilience plastered everywhere.

The events of that fateful day, that fateful march, had shocked everyone. And as much as they were angry, they were now fearful and exhausted. Their oppressors were getting an upper hand. The seeds of division that had been sowed had started to sprout. To me, it seemed like they barely stood a chance.

Though together they seemed so strong, this was a David versus Goliath fight and they had just started coming to terms with the evil that they were fighting against.

Dani withdrew and secluded himself. He was constantly fighting monsters in his mind that he could barely sleep, eat or interact with others. Unaware of the battles Dani was facing within, many still looked up to him as one of their voices; a leader they could count on.

But he knew what he had done and his conscience was not letting him have any rest. The days were long and the nights seemed even longer.

I had always been curious about Dani. I wanted to understand what made him tick. He had the voice, the charisma, and the zeal to get the job done, whatever the cost.  Eventually, I decided to trail him, careful not to arouse any suspicion. There was a science to trailing someone, after all.

Have you ever felt that eerie sensation, like someone’s eyes are locked onto you, only to turn around and find out it’s true? That feeling is called scopaesthesia—the ability to sense when someone is staring at you, especially from behind. It is an instinct rooted in survival, much like how prey in the wild can detect a predator’s gaze, even when it’s not directly in sight.

By now, I had known a bit about Dani's schedule. At this point in the mid-afternoon, he would leave his living quarters for the tavern in search of something to quiet his demons.

I waited, watching from a distance. One day, when he had gone out in search of his daily poison, I invaded his living quarters. I had to have a closer look. I needed to understand the man himself.

It seemed like it was a neat place before a bit of disorganization kicked in. Not unexpected though, many people had been caught up in the fight at the expense of other aspects of their lives.

He had some paintings on the wall and, from my deduction, a fellow student of the art of war.

Oh, a diary. This will definitely peel back the layers to understand the man I'm dealing with.

I flipped through and stopped at his accounts of when the marches began. He wrote about how he joined the movement and how it sparked a fire in him. He penned his dedication and his commitment to never turn back on the cause. He also captured details of his abduction and their trickery; making him think he had been rescued by the Brotherhood that he told them things he would never tell his abductors. From his words, I could feel his despair at realizing he had been sharing key details with his abductors.

That decision haunted him because just like that, his abductors had found a small pebble that would roll, causing a chain effect.  He could not have anticipated that the information he had given them would lead to the death of his comrades on the day of that fateful march.

With a sense of defeat, he wrote of how he had tried to take his own life twice already, clearly without success.

With that, I  had to leave, I  couldn't stay any longer. He would be back at any moment. I left  hurriedly, ensuring that nothing was out of place. I then carefully put the pin back on the door which he had left as an indicator if someone breached his space.

A good student of the art of war he was.. but so was I.

‘Redemption?…’ I thought as I tried to figure out a way to approach him. He was the soldier I needed at this very moment.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Like a pendulum swinging back and forth. Some believed the protestors were the aggressors, others the oppressors.

Some who saw themselves as more thoughtful said it was a case of who came first, the chicken or the egg. While others believed it all began long ago with the invasion of outsiders from far away lands. Some of whom still owned and controlled plenty in Maya.

As they argued on who and what triggered the pendulum, it was coming back. Swinging like a wrecking ball.

These events reminded me of ‘The Dance’. A mission that would forever be a lesson to all the agents from the Hinterlands. But that’s a story for another day.