Chapter 2

The Real Work

It was hard to remember, but I think I drove all night. I was surprised that I didn't have to convince the Golden Path that the guy in the red Royal Guard jeep wasn't one of the pink-jacket-fuck's men. They were drinking, of course, a lot of araa, vodka, and Shangri-lager. Fireworks – which I'm pretty sure were just RPGs – and AK-47 shots launched into the sky, lighting it up. I just kept driving, leaving the explosions and colors behind me.

I must have drove all night. I honestly don't remember. But I do remember waking up in the morning in my parent's bed. It was hard for me to imagine it, but it must have been.

In my dreams I saw Shangri-la. The nightmarish landscape with its holy creatures bleeding and dying was gone. The scenes of ravishing destruction and fresh blood was gone. In its place were the ruins of paradise. Walls were halved, with their stones crumbled into pebbles. The bells I had freed stood high, but still. The Mani wheels that I turned as Kalinag stood similarly still. If I turned them… would anything happen? There were no demons. There were none of those exploding demons dogs. There were no yakshas with fire cannons.

I still had my bow. I still had my knife. But I looked around, and the tiger was gone. I remember that he jumped into the Rakshasa's mouth, and sacrificed himself so the opponent might be defeated and Shangri-la might be freed.

No. That wasn't me. That wasn't me.

I hated that I might be losing my mind. Like Robert Barclay. But I slept. It was the worst sleep I've ever had, but at least when I woke up I could feel like I existed.

I woke up from my phone vibrating on the table next to my bed. My parent's bed. It took me a moment to realize where I was, and that I had driven all night. I picked up the phone and answered it without checking the name, "Hello?"

"Ajay!" it was Amita, "Where are you?"

"What is it?"

"We're… just checking in."

"I did it." I said, "It's done."

"That's great." I could hear the smile on her face. I know they had made it to the Palace and discovered the body. They'd probably found the shrine, too. I wonder how many of them made the connection. I had told enough people that I was looking for Lakshmana. Certainly Amita knew. She was smart enough to make the connection, "Now the real work begins."

I put the phone down and hung up. I didn't have the mental space for her right now. I… I didn't have the space for much of anything.

I picked myself up, feeling like I'd just drank a shelf full of alcohol. I hadn't had anything to drink, though. All I did was kill someone. One guy. A lot more than one. Even yesterday, I killed at least thirty of them. And the one I did kill… was my mother's lover. The father of my sister. My sister. Whom my father murdered. Whom my mother murdered.

I threw the phone against the wall. I wanted to throw it harder, but I just didn't have the strength. It felt like an effort to do something so simple. And yet I knew that if a Heavy walked up the stairs with an MG42, I could be on him in a second, jamming my khukuri into the gaps of his armor, without hesitation. I had done it so many times. It was the best way to kill them.

I stood, knowing I needed to eat something. I walked down to the ground floor and for some reason… felt like, like burning this fucking place down. I stared for a long time at the thangka on the wall. I wondered how much time I lost in those mystic hallucinations. When I collected Robert Barclay's letters, I thought I would hand them over to a scholar once I left Kyrat. But now that I held them, looking back at this thangka scroll, I felt like I had dodged some kind of bullet. Or had I?

Turning around, I saw the little shrine I had set up. There was a photograph of my parents. It seemed inappropriate given the circumstances. Behind it was a statue of Kyra, a ritual object my father, or maybe my mother, had stored away at some point. Taking them out and setting them up seemed like exorcising the house of its demons. Well, the war. I guess was was the demon that destroyed my family.

But now that the war was over, the statue of Kyra seemed like it belonged here… but it was the photo that didn't.

I told myself that the photo would come to represent an idea of peace. An idea of what could have been without Pagan Min and his horde of Triads. What once was before Pagan Min and his horde.

I opened the door and walked outside. I heard Reggie and Yogi doing something over by their tent pounding stakes into the ground. I wandered over to them on what felt like a fever-induced gambol and looked over at them. Yogi was indeed pounding the stakes into the ground, while Reggie was reclined smoking a j.

"'ello neighbor," Reggie said, cheerfully getting up.

"Oh! Mister Gale," Yogi said in that Western way, "Well, I guess that's it, then?"

They wandered over to me.

"No more mayhem and destruction?" He took a puff, "Hanging up the old rocket launcher?"

Reggie said it so casually, as if launching rockets was my passion, and I had decided that I was too old for this shit. I wasn't even twenty-six. How was I supposed to just…

"Right, I really love what you've done with the place." The place. He pointed at my parent's house, and I turned and looked. I don't know why, I knew what it looked like. I was happy that I got to spruce it up while I was here. But honestly, I hadn't even thought about getting out of here. I missed my return-flight around the time I knocked out De Pleur and stuffed him in the trunk of a car. I guess getting back to India would require a whole new Visa and proof that I was leaving. And that would at least require a stable Internet connection. Was Kyrat capable of that? "I'll be sad to see you go."

"Put on the shelf, as it were, gathering dust." Reggie said, clearly angling for the possibility that they might squat at my parent's house. Honestly, why the fuck not? As long as they promised to treat it with respect, smoke on the porch our outside (good luck with that), and treated it with respect… sure.

"Unless..." Yogi said, interrupting his buddy.

"Some unfinished business, perhaps?" Reggie asked, "Loose ends to snip?"

I honestly wasn't quite sure what he was talking about

"Or people to kill." Yogi said.

I wanted to kill him in that moment. All I could hear was Pagan calling me a lunatic. And worse, being right.

"That's what I just said, Donald!" Reggie's use of Yogi's given name shocked me out of that anger.

"It's Yogi, you prat." After a flash of Yogi's own anger, he turned to me and held out the joint, "Smoke?"

"Smoke?" Reggie repeated.

"Not this time," I said. I turned away from the disappointed stoners and walked back towards my parent's house. I heard Yogi pass Reggie the joint and take a puff.

"Thank you," he said.

I crossed the bridge and a second later I felt my phone ring. It was Amita. I thought about not answering. I thought about just taking a jeep and driving the fuck out of this country. Fuck it, I'll cross over into Tibet. Let the Chinese authorities take me prisoner and I'll fucking break out of a PLA dungeon. I was fucking done with this shit. All of this Kyrati bullshit. Kyratis! Was this what they were? Was this what I was? Fuck. Maybe that's why Hurk was my best friend here.

But then I realized, De Pleur was American, too. And so was Willis. Was I one of them? Or was I Hurk?

"Ajay?" As soon as I heard her grating voice, I realized I was an American Amita. Between De Pleur and Hurk, I was De Pleur.

"What is it?"

"We need your help."

I didn't answer.

"You there?"

"Yeah."

"Is… something wrong?"

"What do you want?"

"We've been hearing some chatter. The Royal Guards and Royal Army know that Pagan is dead, and we think that there's going to be a significant power struggle. We're in charge now and they've got an insurgency packaged and delivered."

She was going to ask me to kill the commanders. I knew it.

"Sounds about right."

"We've singled out the most likely commanders. I'll mark them on your map. Can you take care of the problem?"

And suddenly, the fucking cycle of war was so apparent. What happens when I killed these five guys? Who would rise to the top of the Post-Pagan Insurgency? And who would Amita call to destroy them? To keep cutting the heads off the hydra until there were no insurgents, just singular monsters like the Goat? Ghosts of a war that Kyrat could only Zeno's Paradox into insignificance… while whole lives and families are decimated. No. I reminded myself that "decimate" meant to take something down by a tenth. My family was annihilated into nothingness. Until it was just me. And one is not a family.

"What if I said I didn't want to be your dog any more?"

"Ajay?" she asked, sounding like a mother who couldn't believe her son just talked back to her.

"Fuck you, Amita."

"Ajay! Is something wrong?"

"You fucking heard me. Get one of your drug lord sycophants to do it. I'm fucking done."

She was silent. I bet she was thinking about killing me.

I was about to throw the phone. Momentarily, I was reminded that I needed it to try and book a new plane ticket, but then she came back, "Do… you want to talk?"

"The fuck is left to talk about?"

"I'm… worried about you."

"I thought you said the real work is beginning now?"

"Yes. But there's no sense is doing the work if I burn out my best men."

So I was one of her men. "Yeah," I said, "Let's talk."

"Great," she said, "I'm finishing up some business at Tirtha. Let me know where you are going to be tonight. We'll meet."

I hung up the phone.

Business.

For some reason that word stuck in my head.

I grabbed an MS-16 from the gun rack and slipped it inside the passenger seat of the jeep I stole from the Royal Fortress. I got into the driver's seat and turned the keys. Ravi Ray was celebrating the death of their asshole king.

"Preach, brother." I stepped on the gas and headed towards Tirtha.