ANARCHISTALES

One of the ants slipped beneath the street door and into the building’s entryway.

Hearing the commotion below, it panicked and began scurrying in circles.

“Drop your weapons!”

Dave’s voice thundered through the stairwell.

The ant hurried down the stairs. When it caught sight of the chaos at the entrance, its antennae twitched as it searched for the safest place to hide.

Iliryalı and Terzi stood perfectly still, watching Dave and Chloe, whose hands were shaking.

They answered the two officers’ fear and indecision with an uncanny, synchronized stillness of their own.

Three more police cruisers came screaming up to the building. Officers jumped out and took cover behind their doors and hoods, weapons trained on the pair.

“You’re not getting out of here alive!” Dave shouted. “Put your hands on your heads!”

“No one gets out of here alive, Dave,” Terzi said.

Dave stared at him.

“How do you know my name?”

Neither of them answered.

“Chloe…”

Terzi’s voice was soft.

“Do you remember how you got out of the cellar at Hotel Lilith?”

Chloe had never told anyone she had been locked down there.

The cellar’s hidden door had been the last door through which any light had ever reached her soul.

And Jack had closed it without hesitation.

“Who are you?” Chloe asked.

Terzi looked directly into her eyes.

His were a deep, midnight blue.

But Chloe did not see his eyes.

She saw the fire.

She was there again.

Little Chloe was burning.

And Chloe felt the pain all over again.

A dull ache spread across her back. Sweat soaked her skin. Her mind fought desperately against whatever was trying to take control of it.

David saw what was happening to her.

He knew there was nothing he could do.

He couldn’t stand there and watch Chloe begin babbling in front of the entire force.

So he raised his gun and fired into the air.

The shot cracked through the street.

Birds erupted from the rooftops.

The ant froze.

Its antennae trembled as its uncertainty over which way to run became absolute.

One of the officers shouted for permission to fire.

Chloe stopped him.

No one had moved, yet the tension kept building. The officers were beginning to lose control, cursing and shouting as they teetered on the edge of violence.

Then a young officer—barely into his twenties—vaulted over the hood of a cruiser.

He drew his baton and charged Iliryalı.

He looked at the man as though he were some medieval warrior who had wandered into the modern world.

The officer picked up speed.

He meant to put both men down with overwhelming force.

“Stop!”

“Don’t!”

Dave and Chloe screamed at him.

Behind the cruisers, the other officers shouted encouragement.

The street seemed to shake beneath the noise.

The young officer kept coming.

Iliryalı and Terzi did not move.

They did not even seem to breathe.

The distance between them vanished one step at a time.

A bead of sweat rolled down the officer’s forehead, slipped past his eyebrow, and traced a line along his cheek.

His pink lips trembled.

A muscle along his jaw twitched violently, the spasm running toward his ear.

The vein in his neck bulged beneath the collar of his blue shirt, straining against the knot of his navy tie.

His bright green eyes burned beneath perfectly shaped brows.

Terzi welcomed the death rushing toward him with an aria.

As he sang “O mio babbino caro,” his eyes filled with tears.

“O dio, vorrei morir!
Babbo, pietà, pietà!”

(Oh God, I wish I could die!
Father, have mercy, have mercy!)

By the time he reached the final words, the officer was almost upon Iliryalı.

The aria ended.

The officer struck.

And disappeared.

Not thrown back.

Not torn apart.

He simply came apart at the cellular level, disintegrating before the eyes of everyone in the street.

Then—

silence.

The street fell silent.

The city.

The universe.

Everything that had a voice went quiet.

It was the kind of silence in which a single feather falling from a bird’s wing would have sounded like an earthquake.

For several seconds, no one moved.

One of the stunned officers opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Opened it again.

Then, finally:

“Fire!”

The street erupted.

A relentless storm of bullets tore through the air.

Hot metal poured toward Terzi and Iliryalı.

It did nothing.

The bullets might as well have been raindrops.

Neither man moved an inch.

When the barrage finally stopped, Iliryalı’s lips parted.

His voice came out low and hoarse.

There was no threat in it.

And yet every person there heard the words at exactly the same moment.

“Go…

Your time hasn’t come yet.”

The officers backed away, trembling.

Then they fled.

Chloe and David remained where they stood, unable to move, as though someone had poured concrete around their feet.

Terzi and Iliryalı looked at each other.

They took a step at the same time.

Iliryalı stopped.

Something had cracked beneath his boot.

Slowly, he lifted his foot.

A tiny red ant lay crushed beneath it.

He stared at the body.

Then he looked at Terzi.

Terzi shook his head.

No.

Iliryalı’s eyes filled with tears.

“I didn’t write this one, Iliryalı,” Terzi said.

His chin trembled.

He was afraid of Iliryalı’s anger.

He was trying to make him understand that this was not his doing.

“What the hell?” Dave muttered.

“This thing has been killing people for days, and now he’s crying over an ant?”

Iliryalı heard him.

He didn’t care.

“So there are other writers in this world besides you, Terzi.”

“Let’s go,” Terzi said. “You shouldn’t dwell on this.”

“I didn’t kill it on purpose, Terzi.”

He looked down at the crushed ant.

“I’ve never killed anything by accident before.”

“Here, they kill on purpose and call it an accident, Iliryalı. Then they pretend their consciences hurt. But when they really kill, they don’t feel a thing.”

“Bring it back, Terzi.”

“I can’t do that here, Iliryalı.”

Terzi looked at the ant.

“Here, all we can do is kill.”

Iliryalı turned toward Dave and Chloe.

“What about them?”

“They’ll forget us.”

Terzi began walking.

“They’ll survive by forgetting.”

Iliryalı followed.

And as they walked away, both men slowly dissolved into the air—

and vanished.

Chaotica ft. Lacivertiğnedenlik