Undaa, Hakar, Senes, Stardate 2278.167
They had been stuck in the hallways of their housing unit for three days during the airstrikes. The basement of the building was not large enough to accommodate all its residents, so when drones or aircraft managed to get past Sheyhaar, they had to crowd into the hallways, where there were no windows. The war had been going on for over eight years now and though it appeared to be winding down, no one could be certain whether this was actually the case or it was just another temporary lull. There had been a few of those. Most of the time, though, it seemed as if it would go on forever. On the one side were the old government forces and on the other, a disorganized rebel coalition. The government had been a force for peace for many years but was highly corrupt, while the rebel coalition represented various factions with differing interests. Many Hakarans feared that if the rebels were victorious, peace would still not come as the rebels would be unable to resolve internal differences. The only thing uniting them was their desire to overthrow the existing government.
Three days was the longest they had ever been stuck in the hallways. No previous strike had lasted more than half a day. Residents were restless and many, including Losha, had gone into their rooms despite the warnings. Leaving the building was out of the question but at least he could get away from the smells, chatter, and constant flow of people trying to move past him on their way to the kitchen, bathrooms, or public comm device. If his windows shattered and blew at him, so be it. He had been lying on his bed for an indefinite amount of time when the sirens began going off again. The noise in the hallway was preferable to the piercing sound of the sirens so he returned to the spot outside the door where he and Joa had spent the past three days.
"Should one of us get in line for the comm again?" Joa asked as Losha sat down on the blankets they had placed on the floor.
"Yes. You went last time. I'll go." He got up and headed to the end of the long line for the public comm, which was down the hallway past the kitchen. They had been trying to reach Malar, whose housing unit was in an area where some buildings were reported to have been destroyed. They had called her three times - she had a personal comm device - but she hadn't answered. It wasn't unusual for her not to answer but it was unusual to take so long to return a call. The line used for the public comm on their floor would, of course, have been busy but Malar was usually fairly quick to respond with a message. Joa and Losha had been expecting whoever was on the comm device to announce that a message had come in for them for some time. Messages had come in for numerous other residents but still they heard nothing from Malar.
After the fourth unsuccessful attempt to reach her, Losha returned to his spot on the floor. The blankets did little to cushion him from the floor's hardness and his body was stiff. The sur made it somewhat more bearable, he thought, as he stared at the people sitting across from him, whose expressions bore the telltale blank look of people who had also recently ingested the drug. Did he look the same way to them as they looked to him - so blank and expressionless? He didn't care.
Finally, as the third day of the strikes drew on, residents who had their own comm devices began shouting that the raids had ended.
"We should go look for her," Joa said as they gathered their things from the hallway.
"Yes." Losha paused to dump the blanket onto his bed. He found himself longing to lay on its relative softness even though he knew it would be some time before he slept again. Sur could keep one up for days. At times they had gone to the kitchen in the middle of the night and found another resident, restless from sur, scrubbing the stove fervently or polishing the cabinet knobs with fierce voracity. "But I want to do this first," he said, pulling a small container out of the wardrobe.
It was kenal. He could not leave and look for Malar in his current state - he was too anxious. The kenal would relax him and, should he find something horrible had happened to her, it would allow him to function. Once after ingesting a great deal of sur, he had seen a young man, probably only a few years older than he was, blown apart when he stepped on an explosive. It was only the second time he had seen someone die - the first being Kadren. This young man was about Kadren's age at the time he died and Losha's thoughts had immediately returned to that awful day. He had hurried home, trying to push the memory from his mind. By the time he got to his room, his heart was beating so rapidly he felt as is if he were having a heart attack. I've taken too much, he thought, and fully expected to die there on his bed. He hadn't died but he had learned his lesson. He would never again ingest that large a quantity. There was no need now anyway, now that he had begun taking kenal as well.
After both he and Joa had gulped down the white pills, they went looking for Malar. She was not in her building, which was undamaged. Her roommate had not seen her since prior to the airstrikes and had assumed she had been with Losha and Joa or one of her wealthy boyfriends or girlfriends. Losha and Joa couldn't keep up with them - was she still seeing the woman who had made her money in the remodeling business before the war or had she dropped her in favor of the man who sold distilled liquors? It was possible she was still seeing both or neither of them. At times she would declare a relationship over, only to announce months later that the person had re-entered her life. She only cared that whoever they were, they were willing to spend credits on her.
There were many places throughout the city that Malar liked to frequent, but most of them would only now just be re-opening after the three day curfew. There was one place that was certain to have been open for some time though - the Maysal.
It had once been the Maysal Artists Colony, a set of connecting buildings of thick stone that were said to be over five hundred years old. Parts of it had been damaged during the war and it was now deemed unsafe, though the designation hadn't stopped Hakarans displaced by the war from taking up residence there. In addition to homeless, the Maysal was frequented by drug users, prostitutes, and young people looking for a hangout spot. Losha, Joa, and Malar all spent a good deal of time there. Although both he and Joa were technically still students, they rarely attended classes so they had a good deal of free time. Attendance was not compulsory at Hakaran universities - one only needed to pass the test at the conclusion of a course.
At one time Losha had enjoyed classes but since Vensar's death he had had little interest in attending them. Still, he had no difficulty in learning enough to pass the bi-annual tests. Joa had once aspired to be lawyer - he could talk himself out of just about any situation - but his growing addiction to sur had dampened his ambitions. He still insisted that "one day" he would be a lawyer, but Losha knew that he didn't really believe it.
Losha found something peaceful and calming in the stone walls of the Maysal. It was so large that he usually didn't have any trouble finding a place to be alone, or at least relatively alone, there. He and Joa split up and agreed to meet near the main entrance after they had completed their respective searches. It was approaching evening, the time when it was least crowded. People took refuge behind the cool stone during the heat of the day but tended to head out as the sun went down, returning later at night.
He walked towards an alley between two of the buildings that led to a large, open room on the left. This room was where he, Joa, Malar, and other friends could often be found. As he got closer to the alley's entrance, he heard yelling. He began to run and when he reached the alley, he found Malar struggling with a man who had her pushed up against the building. He held her against the wall with his left hand while his right felt over her pockets. Her bag lay on the ground beside them, contents scattered across the ground. Malar was tall and strong but this man was taller and clearly stronger.
Losha wasn't sure if it was the sur, the kenal, or the monster inside him, but he was so enraged that he beat the man senseless. Later, he recalled that it had been like watching himself in a film. It wasn't him grabbing the man, throwing him against the building, and punching him unconscious. He would not have done something so violent - he would have used the nerve pinch. No, Velekh would have used the nerve pinch. He didn't know who Velekh was anymore.
Malar had called the medics and instructed him to go home while she looked for Joa. Two days later, the police had come to his room and arrested him. It hadn't been hard to find the only Vulcan living in Undaa. The man, it turned out, had been the one who sold the distilled liquor - Malar's sometime boyfriend. As he had no criminal convictions and Losha and Malar had one each, his word was deemed more credible than theirs. Malar had kept the kenal the man had been looking for in her pocket though, kenal that he had given her, and had sold enough of it to buy Losha out of jail after five days. That's how things worked in Hakar at that time. The war-beleaguered government did not have the resources to deal with petty criminals - they'd rather have their money.