Captain Salem stopped Imane at a business named Kokki Ice. They sold Gelato ice cream, pastries and Italian inspired pizza. It was part of a light brown home above the shop, with three floors, glass doors, and a black staircase which led to the entrance. The glass doors of the entrance had the business name in white text laminated. Kokki on the left door. Ice on the right door.
Zayn managed to locate his father and sister after running half a block.
"I know you love ice cream," Captain Salem said, squeezing his daughter's hand.
"Gelato's my favorite. Vanilla and Strawberry."
"Zayn, what do you want?" his father asked, glancing to his right at his son, who stood a few feet away staring at the ground as if thinking about something of the utmost importance. "Zayn?"
"Yeah," he answered, raising his head to see if his father and sister watched him with the same raised eyebrows. That made Zayn laugh. "You two look exactly the same." He pointed at them both.
When Imane and her father locked eyes with their same raised eyebrows, both fell into laughter, happiness at its core after so long of being apart.
"I'm fine. I'll wait here while you get what you want."
"You sure? I know you like vanilla," his father said. He winked at Zayn. "I'll get you vanilla. Don't be shy."
"Yeah, don't be shy," Imane repeated.
Zayn cracked a smile. "Just hurry up."
Captain Salem and Imane climbed the steps to Kokki Ice.
It would only take a few minutes for them to order and get out, so Zayn didn't bother sitting down and instead leaned against the left pillar built alongside the first step of the staircase. He wondered how long his father would last with cancer, if the money he'd saved would be enough for international assistance, or perhaps move his father to another country. The idea made Zayn laugh. Impossible, he thought. He knew his father well enough, and it didn't seem like Captain Salem would move to another country.
As the minutes passed, a white and green police car made its way through the street then parked beside the sidewalk a few feet away from Zayn. Officer Samira and her partner burst out of their doors. She noticed Zayn and sprinted up the stairs with her partner into Kokki Ice.
It was odd to see her there, but the running and barging of officers didn't make Zayn doublethink anything. He figured the ice cream parlor reported a thief or something small. Plus, Zayn didn't want to speak to Officer Samira in front of his father, as the topic of drug exchanges would surely come up if she found out Captain Salem was Zayn's father, so for another minute, Zayn waited outside.
One person left the ice cream shop and jogged down the stairs wearing black jeans, a black hoodie and a black hat. Zayn noticed the person as they walked past him with their head down, face hidden, hands in the front pocket of their hoodie.
Then a familiar car arrived, a black Panamera Porsche, with its tinted windows. Aunt Niibel stormed out of her car in black loose pants and a zipped up dark blue jacket. "Zayn, go up! Didn't you hear?!" she shouted, her eyes wide open and her voice cracked. "Someone attacked your—"
Without waiting for her to finish, Zayn grabbed the edge of the pillar behind him and pulled himself forward, gaining momentum as he ran up the stairs into Kokki Ice. He pushed the glass doors open to pure white walls and immediately found his father on the ground, back against the white checkout counter, head dangling. He scanned for blood but found nothing. Zayn ran over, pushing Officer Samira and her partner aside.
"Dad! Are you okay?! Hey!" Zayn patted Imane's head and exhaled when he confirmed she was safe. "What happened to Dad?" he asked his sister.
"I do—n't—" Imane tried to speak but trembled.
Zayn placed his hand where his father was already pressing, the liver area, and blood gushed onto Zayn's hands, the blood of his father, the blood that made him who he was.
"No. No." Zayn gently pushed his father up right against the black wall of the cashier stand. Imane covered her face when she saw the blood. She tried to fight back the tears, biting on her lower lip. Teardrops slid down in full force, descending her soft, reddened cheeks, a daughter's pain.
Captain Zayn coughed. When he regained his composure, he raised his head to lock eyes with his son. "Protect your sister. That's all I ask from you. And leave Algeria, Zayn." Captain Salem coughed consecutively until Officer Samira ordered her dispatch service to expedite the ambulance. "Remember that an honest person can never make the wicked pay."
"It is time for you to choose", a voice spoke in Zayn's head, which sent shivers through his body. "Your future depends on the choices you make, and your choices depend on your desires at this very moment. What you wish to accomplish can be reality if you're ready to surrender everything you cherish."
Zayn had blinked and found himself in grayness. He was no longer in Kokki Ice shop. In fact, he wasn't even in the same world, he felt. Zayn could walk forward and make out gravestones with illegible carvings, some that looked like morphed letters of the English language and other stones with symbols he'd never seen before carved in. The gravestones were all lined to Zayn's right as he continued walking, one step at a time on the flattened cement ground, which seemed to be floating in the abyss of grayness surrounding him.
The last gravestone didn't have a name on it. But it had the lifespan of the deceased individual: 21 years. A quote then carved itself in the gravestone:
"Everyone I've cherished has turned to dust, but I protected you still."
It struck Zayn as a regretful life after reading the last words of the person who was buried beneath the gravestone. Without any dates, he couldn't know when that person had lived or what their name was. Their last words resonated with Zayn in an unexplainable way. Empathetic, perhaps. Though he was in what seemed like another world so maybe what he was seeing wasn't even real. But if it was, if that grave was real, then Zayn wished peace for that person whose life seemed tortured with unfortunate circumstances. Everything they cared about had turned to dust, eh? Zayn thought of such a reality, of being responsible for everything bad happening to the people he cared for.
What a cursed life.
What a wasted life.
"It is time to choose, young Zayn. As the new bearer of the necklace, you have completed the Walk of Life. I offer you the power of control and the ability to change your unfortunate destiny to attain whatever you want. But I will possess you, and when the time arrives, your complete obedience is at my command."
"My necklace? This is my mother's," Zayn spoke.
"Past owners do not concern me. You are the current owner. The choice to accept my power is yours."
Zayn didn't understand. His mother's necklace had some kind of power. It had some kind
of spirit being? "Power of control? Walk of life? Who're the dead people here?" Zayn asked,
staring at the last, nameless gravestone. "And you'll possess me?"
"Those who have lived before you, those who have accepted me, those who have attained greatness and those who have succeeded in the shadows." Her harrowing voice didn't climb up the back of Zayn's neck. Strang . . . but it felt as if Zayn spoke to a regular person, not some unknown, daunting voice.
"What does power of control mean?"
Her voice lightened. She laughed. Her frightening tone diminished into a joyous echo. "Those before you have accepted my offer blindly. You're the first to want to know more when your fragile life has hit rock bottom."
"Start with your name. And then how will I get what I want? How do you know what I want?" Zayn stood facing the grayness ahead and kept staring into the nothingness. He had nowhere else to look. The gravestones beside him had vanished. Eternal gray. Eternal emptiness. True silence.
She continued her laughter. "Humans all desire the same no matter the century, society or country." A winter breeze hit Zayn from ahead of him, freezing his ears and hands, only for a moment. "My name is Omayra."
"And?"
"You will learn to not speak more than is necessary," Omayra whispered, as if she spoke into his ear, as if she stood beside him. Her voice soothed to Zayn, who stood frozen in the grayness around him, unsure if he was going crazy or not.
"What is your power of control?" Zayn asked.
"The Walk of Life is shown only to the ones connected and capable of using my absolute power of control. If you decide against this, you will forget everything we've spoken of, and your destiny will remain pitiful. You will only know what it is once you decide."
Zayn began to hear a distant voice, ringing in his head, his name playing on repeat. His sister's voice. That was when he remembered what was happening in the real world—or out of this dream he was having—that his father was shot and bleeding, that his sister was crying and police were going to investigate.
With desperation and determination, Zayn turned to his right and faced the nameless gravestones which appeared again, specifically the one who died at twenty-one years old. With stern eyes and clenched fists, Zayn knew what he would do. "I'll give up everything for my sister. I accept you and your power of control, Omayra."
That same winter wind blew from behind Zayn, flapping his shirt against his back and side to side, until a burst of wind smacked into the upper middle portion of his back. Zayn exhaled and looked around at the darkening scenery, noting the gravestones fading, the cement pathway under his shoes disappearing, and felt the temperature rising, his hands wet, sweat sliding down the back of his head.
"Your enemies are now my enemies. Your friends, my friends. Your thoughts, my thoughts." Zayn felt a brush on his left cheek, a hand perhaps, fingers, gliding back and forth, a gentle caress. He even felt someone behind him. He reminded himself he stood in the middle of grayness, of nothingness, but it still felt like someone leaned against his back. "Desires, endless," Omayra whispered into his ear, alerting all of his senses. "Reality, manipulated. Death, prolific. Now, young Zayn, we dine on the blood of your enemies."
As quickly as Zayn had lost touch of reality and entered that bizarre gray world of gravestones, he regained his senses. He found himself still kneeling beside his father. His father nodded at him, as if Zayn hadn't just disappeared for ten minutes.
"What happened, Imane?" he asked his sister, whose eyes were red but no longer crying.
"Someone attacked Papa!" she shouted.
Before he could look around the ice cream shop—which had flooded with people who gathered around his injured father—someone slammed their hand on the cashier's counter above Zayn.
"I saw who did it!" the employee dressed in a black apron with a white shirt underneath yelled. "I checked the security camera! Someone walked into your father and then shot him. They wore all black. The shooter ran out the front exit after." The cashier pointed at the entrance and exit doors.
Officer Samira's pager alerted with two bings. "Ambulance is here. Coming up now."
"Okay, let's get him to the hospital," Officer Samira said. Captain Salem nodded and shut his eyes as he pushed himself up. "Help me get him up," she told her partner. And as they both lifted him up, careful of his bloody wound, a clear ziplock bag fell to the ground from the pocket of Captain Salem's pants. Inside, white powder. Zayn identified it immediately and so did the officers. "Why're you carrying . . ." Officer Samira trailed off.
Her partner, Officer Riad, picked the bag up. He raised one of his dark brown eyebrows, wrinkles forming up to the top of his forehead, where his bald head then took centerpiece. "You're under arrest, Captain Salem," Officer Riad said. "Once we confirm you're not in any health danger, you're coming in for questioning."
"What?! My father doesn't carry drugs!" Zayn shouted. He stepped forward but Officer Samira elbowed Zayn back with her right arm. "He's a Captain in the military!"
"Don't do something you'll regret, Zayn! Take care of your sister, and we'll figure this out," Officer Samira ordered, eyes glaring, focused on keeping Zayn's father standing because her partner wasn't helping.
"Looks like your drug involvement finally caught up with you, Zayn," Officer Riad said, standing to Zayn's right.
"Relax, Zayn!" Aunt Niibel shouted. She stood at the entrance of the ice cream shop but couldn't be seen because of the crowd of people spectating. Her voice, though, echoed in the shop. "Don't get in trouble! Focus on your father!"
Captain Salem turned to his son and exhaled. He was pale with his right hand still pressed on his bloody injury. His eyes half open, weak muscles, fighting to stay awake. He had a fading conscience and at one moment, Zayn swore his father's eyes crossed. Then his father shook his head slowly, confirming with Zayn that the bag of white powder, the drugs, was most definitely not his. Zayn knew that was what his father meant by the look in his eyes, without the words, without the evidence, with just belief.
The ambulance workers ordered for people to move as they forced themselves through the crowd. Zayn knew he had this moment and that moment only or Officer Samira would most likely detain him for questioning as drugs were always a suspicion of Zayn. He bit his lip and wished he could go with his father.
"Go to Aunt Niibel," Zayn ordered, hugging his sister. He pressed his cheek against her head, against her hair and hoped his sister would stay safe. "I'll find who did this to Dad. I promise."
Imane was pushed back as she watched her brother sprint towards the glass doors ahead. She reached to grab him but it was too late. She was left with her brother's last words.