Chapter 28: S2E2: The Percentage She Thought Was Mercy
The salt-tinged breeze coming off Suva Harbour carried the shouts of children chasing a ball on the scraggly grass, the murmur of families unpacking coolers under picnic shelters, the dense, greasy scent of sausages on a public grill. My Suva Picnic Park hummed with a casual, sprawling weekend life. It was a place for belonging, for uncomplicated noise.
Varek had chosen it for that reason. The contrast was the point.
He found Maraia sitting on one of the low concrete seawalls, her back to the recreation, facing the water. She wore jeans and a simple grey t-shirt, her hair pulled into a loose knot. She looked like she was waiting for a bus, not the continuation of a species-altering selection. When he approached, she didn’t turn. She’d known he’d find her. His message had been clear: Be available.
He settled on the wall a few feet from her, not looking at her either. They watched a weathered fishing boat putter towards the wharf, its engine a persistent, phlegmy cough across the water. For a full minute, he said nothing, letting the normalcy of the park press in around them—the laughter, the sizzle of food, the thwack of the ball. It was a barrier. He intended to breach it.
“He’s trying to contact you,” Varek said, his voice casual, conversational. “Taitusi. Since the museum. He’s sent three messages.”
Maraia didn’t flinch. “I know.”
“You haven’t replied.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Now, she turned her head. Her eyes, usually so placid, held a faint, dry amusement. “Is that part of the test? My compliance with your imagined narrative?”
Varek smiled, conceding the point with a slight dip of his chin. “Merely observation. You were remarkably calm yesterday. That kind of control is either profound resilience or profound dissociation. I need to know which it is before I recommend you for a place in a society that values emotional stability.” He paused. “So. What really happened with Taitusi?”
She looked back at the water. The fishing boat had passed, leaving a fading scar of wake on the slate-grey surface. A toddler wailed in delight somewhere behind them.
“He wasn’t cruel enough to hate,” she said, her voice even, almost flat. It was a statement she’d rehearsed in the quiet of her own mind for a long time. “Just careless enough to keep hurting me. He’d make a promise… beautifully. You’d feel it here.” She tapped her sternum lightly. “He’d paint a whole future with his words, and you’d step into it because the colors were so warm. Then a problem would come. A bill. A family thing. A consequence. And he’d vanish. Not dramatically. He’d just… become unavailable. The phone would go to voicemail. He’d be ‘helping a mate’ or ‘locking down a big opportunity’. The responsibility would land on me. Always.”
She picked at a fleck of dried salt on the concrete. “And when it was over, when I’d dealt with whatever it was, he’d come back. Not with an apology, exactly. With a story. A story about why he’d been stuck, how he’d been thinking of me the whole time, how the whole mess had actually been a lesson that brought him closer to realizing what he had. He’d look so sincere. So burdened by his own complexity. Forgiving him didn’t feel weak in those moments. It felt… generous. Like you were the strong one, offering sanctuary to this beautiful, troubled creature.”
A muscle in her jaw twitched. “Niyan saw it before I did. He’d get this look, like he wanted to put his fist through a wall. I called him overprotective. I told him he didn’t understand Taitusi’s heart. I learned to fold everything he did—the vanishings, the excuses, the tears he’d sometimes have when he came back—neatly away. I got very good at folding.”
Varek listened, his posture relaxed, his eyes on the horizon. He didn’t offer sympathy. He didn’t nod understandingly. He simply absorbed the data. “And the final time? What made the folding stop?”
“Lusiana,” Maraia said, the name crisp and clean. “He didn’t vanish. He was just… with her. At a club, promoting some event. Someone sent me a picture. He had his arm around her, smiling that same smile. When I asked him, he had a story for that, too. It was networking. It was meaningless. It was for our future. I looked at him weaving this new tale, and I suddenly saw the loom. I saw the mechanism. The generosity drained out of me. All that was left was the neat stack of folded hurts, and it felt very, very heavy.”
She finally glanced at him. “That’s what happened. It’s not a tragedy. It’s a repetitive-strain injury.”
Varek was quiet for a moment, weighing her words. The control was not dissociation. It was curation. She had archived the pain, sorted it, labeled it. That was more useful, and more dangerous, than raw grief.
“Thank you,” he said, as if she’d given him a weather report. Then he shifted on the wall, turning his body slightly towards her. The casualness evaporated, replaced by a focused, surgical intensity. The sounds of the park receded, becoming background static. “A practical question, then. Given that history, given your understanding of how betrayal feels and functions… what percentage of yourself would you be willing to betray for a decisive advantage in this selection?”
The shift was so abrupt, so devoid of ethical padding, that Maraia’s breath caught. She stared at him. He wasn’t asking if she would. He was asking for a measure. A quota.
Her eyes left his face and returned to the boundless, impersonal water. She didn’t think long. The answer, it seemed, was already catalogued in her archives.
“Twenty-seven,” she said, her voice clear and exact.
Varek didn’t react immediately. He let the number hang in the salt air between them. “A precise figure.”
“Yes.”
“Why twenty-seven?”
“Because it’s a minority,” she said, looking at him again. Her gaze was unwavering. “It’s enough to be significant. Enough to gain an edge. But it’s not enough to become the thing you’re betraying. The majority—seventy-three percent—would still be me. I could live with that. I could come back from that.”
I could come back from that. The words were a chilling calculation of survival.
Varek studied her. He saw the architecture of her resilience now, the load-bearing walls, the compartments. She had just given him a blueprint. A twenty-seven percent blueprint.
He stood up, brushing a speck of concrete dust from his trousers. “The first group task is tomorrow. A simple logistics challenge. You’ll be team coordinator.”
He didn’t wait for a response. He simply walked away, melting back into the rhythms of the park, leaving her alone on the wall with her precise, terrible arithmetic.
Maraia watched him go. Then she looked down at her hands, turning them over as if checking for stains. The ocean wind, warm and carrying the smell of diesel and brine, washed over her. The children kept shouting. The ball kept thumping. The world continued, vast and unconcerned.
She had just told a stranger, a man who held a ticket to everything, exactly how much of her soul was negotiable. And she felt, for the first time in years, not folded, but eerily, utterly flat.
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HFC Bank Stadium, Suva, Fiji — at 220 Laucala Bay Road. HFC Bank Stadium is a multi-sports venue in Suva with a capacity of around 15,000, used for rugby, football, athletics, and major national and regional sporting events.
The stadium air was thick with the smell of cut grass, diesel from a distant lawnmower, and the sharp, clean scent of impending rain. On the pristine pitch, a scattering of teenage boys in mismatched training gear jogged off towards the changing rooms, their laughter and barked Fijian fading into the echoing cavern of the empty stands. The sky overhead was a bruised tapestry of grey and purple.
Niyan stood near the halfway line, the last one left, pulling a tight-fitting shirt over his head. His breathing was steady but deep, his skin sheened with a glow of expended effort. He didn’t look surprised to see Varek walking across the turf towards him. He’d received the same ‘be available’ message.
“Good session?” Varek asked, his hands in his pockets, squinting up at the towering floodlights.
“They’re kids. They have energy. My job is to point it.” Niyan tossed a water bottle from his kit bag and took a long drink, his eyes never leaving Varek. The assessment was mutual. “You don’t strike me as a sports fan.”
“I’m a fan of systems. Of pressure applied with intent.” Varek gestured at the field. “This is a beautiful system. Clear boundaries. Instant consequences. I imagine you find it… straightforward.”
Niyan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s honest.”
“Unlike people.”
“Some people.”
Varek nodded, accepting the correction. He let the silence build, filled only by the first sparse, fat drops of rain smacking the plastic seats in the stands. “I spoke with your sister today. At the waterfront.”
Niyan went very still. The casual pose evaporated, replaced by a hunter’s focus. “About what?”
“About Taitusi. About history. About percentages.” Varek watched him. “She’s remarkably self-possessed.”
“She’s stronger than she looks.”
“She gave me a number. Twenty-seven.” Varek said it like stating the temperature. “A calculated measure of her own betrayability. I found it… clinically brave.”
A wave of something dark passed over Niyan’s face. It wasn’t anger at Varek, but a furious, helpless protectiveness. He knew that number represented a landscape of pain he couldn’t fight for her. “She shouldn’t have to think in numbers.”
“But she does. Because the world we’re offering is numbers, Niyan. It’s data and thresholds. It’s why I’m here.” The rain began in earnest, a soft hiss washing over the arena. Varek made no move to leave. “I need to understand your numbers. Not your fitness stats. The other ones. The ones for the people you protect.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about them. Not as your family, not as your friend. As assets. As risks.” The instruction was cold, laid bare on the wet grass between them.
Niyan’s jaw tightened. He looked away, towards the tunnel his kids had vanished into. The rain darkened his hair, plastering it to his scalp. He spoke to the empty goalposts. “Maraia. She’s not weak. But she trusts pain too gently. She thinks if she handles it carefully, it won’t break her. That’s her flaw. She’ll let someone keep hurting her if they do it quietly enough.”
The analysis was shockingly stark. It mirrored, almost exactly, what Maraia had shown him. Varek stored the confirmation. “Viviana?”
A shorter, more definitive answer. “Viv’s the spine of our family. Hers is the only warmth that matters. And she’s warm only because she chooses not to be feared.” He finally looked back at Varek, his meaning clear. That choice could be rescinded.
“And Karavi?” Varek asked, his tone deliberately lighter, probing a different seam.
For the first time, Niyan’s expression softened, conflicted. “Kara? He’s my brother. In every way except blood. He’s there. Always. You don’t think about it, you just know it. When you need a second set of hands, a laugh, someone to watch your back… he’s there.” He paused, frowning at a memory. “It’s strange. For all that, there are holes. Things he never said.”
Varek tilted his head. The rain dripped from the brim of an invisible hat. “Such as?”
“There was someone. Years back. He was… consumed. Never told me her name. Never brought her around. It wasn’t a fling. He’d get this look, like he’d seen a ghost that gave him a secret.” Niyan shook his head, baffled by the lapse in their otherwise seamless bond. “It ended, whatever it was. He closed up that whole part of himself. Never talked about it again. Even now, if I push, he just shuts down. Changes the subject with a joke.”
Secret love. Never confessed. Varek filed the detail away in a cold, bright corner of his mind. It was a lever, pristine and unused.
“You describe them with loyalty,” Varek noted. “But also with distance. As if you’re already measuring them for a container they might not fit.”
Niyan didn’t deny it. The training had left him empty, defenses lowered. The stadium, now a cathedral of rain, felt like a confession box.
Varek stepped closer, the rain drumming on his shoulders. His voice dropped, blending with the downpour. “So measure this. For Maraia’s future. For a chance to ensure the people who depend on you are safe in a way you could never provide here… what would you give? Not in sweat. Not in effort. In principle.”
He let the rain fill the silence for a three-count.
“What percentage of your loyalty, your code, would you sacrifice? What percentage would you… betray?”
Niyan closed his eyes. The numbers game. It was a virus, and Varek had just injected it. He saw Maraia’s twenty-seven, a solitary, terrible benchmark floating in the dark behind his eyelids. He weighed the unthinkable against the unimaginable prize. The math was ugly and exact.
He opened his eyes. They were haunted, but clear.
“Thirty-four,” he said, the word rough, torn from a deep, sacred place.
It was higher than Maraia’s. A bigger man offering a bigger slice of his soul.
“Thirty-four percent,” Varek repeated, not a question, just a verification. He gave a single, slow nod. The rain soaked them both, but only one of them felt the cold. “Thank you for your honesty.”
He turned and walked off the pitch towards the shadowed tunnel, leaving Niyan standing alone in the center circle, the storm washing down over him, trying to cleanse the precise, transactional stain of the number now hanging in the air between them.
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Colo-i-Suva Forest Park, Suva, Fiji — along Princes Road, around 30 minutes from Suva’s central business district.
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Colo-i-Suva Forest Park, Suva, Fiji — along Princes Road, around 30 minutes from Suva’s central business district.
The air in the rainforest was a palpable, living thing. It cooled the skin with a damp caress, thick with the scent of wet earth, crushed leaves, and the sweet decay of a million years of greenery. Sunlight fought through a dense lacework of vines and giant ferns above, casting the narrow path into a shifting mosaic of emerald and gloom. The only sounds were the distant, trickling promise of a waterfall, the chatter of invisible birds, and the soft, unsettling rustle of something moving in the understory.
Taitusi’s nerves weren’t cooled at all. He felt them buzzing just beneath his skin, a live wire of anticipation. Varek walked ahead of him, moving through the dim light with an unsettling quiet, as if the roots and stones shifted to accommodate him. They’d been walking in silence for ten minutes. This wasn’t a meeting. It was an incision.
“Beautiful spot,” Taitusi said. His voice sounded too loud, too bright, cracking the forest’s quiet. “Good for clearing the head, you know?”
Varek didn’t answer. He stepped over a fallen log slick with moss and stopped beside a small, clear pool fed by a thread of water from the rocks above. He finally turned. His expression was neutral, but his mercury eyes held a weight that pinned Taitusi in place.
“No games here, Taitusi.” Varek’s voice was conversational, almost gentle. “Just a simple choice.”
“Choice?”
“Between two women. Between two betrayals.” Varek tilted his head. “Right now, in this moment, if you had to choose one to betray—who would it be? Maraia or Lusiana?”
Taitusi’s easy smile flashed, a reflex. “Come on, boss. That’s a hell of a question. Betray how? I don’t even—”
“The mechanism is irrelevant. The name is what matters.” Varek didn’t blink. “Who?”
The smile faltered. Taitusi rubbed the back of his neck, looking anywhere but at Varek. He could hear his own heartbeat thumping in his ears, syncopated with the drip of water. He tried to bargain. “Look, Lusiana… she’s here, you know? She’s present. Maraia’s the past. It’s not even a fair—”
“It’s not about fairness,” Varek interrupted, his tone allowing no detour. “It’s about sacrifice. Which piece of your history, or your present, are you willing to burn for a future? I need a name.”
The rainforest seemed to lean in, holding its breath. The charming narratives, the beautiful excuses, they withered in that damp, truth-saturated air. Taitusi felt them peel away, revealing the simple, ugly machinery of choice underneath. He was being asked to show his hand, and he knew looking at his cards would change him.
He swallowed. The name came out quiet, stripped of its usual musicality. “Maraia.”
Varek said nothing. His smile didn’t move, didn’t change. It was just a fact on his face.
Taitusi heard himself fill the silence, the justifier springing to life. “She’s… strong. She’s survived me before. She’d recover. She’s got her family, her work. Hating me would probably… solidify her, you know? Make her sure.” The logic sounded hollow even to him, ringing false against the pure green silence.
“Good,” Varek said, the word flat, an acceptance without approval. He took a single step closer. The space between them crackled. “Now. A harder one. Between you and Lusiana—who would you sacrifice?”
This silence was different. It was longer, deeper, a well Taitusi stared into. He saw Lusiana’s eager smiles, her careful hair, the way she held his arm in public like a claim. He saw the desperate want in her eyes, a mirror to a want he recognized in himself. Sacrificing her wasn’t discarding the past. It was burning a willing companion.
The forest listened. A droplet fell from a leaf above, landing with a perfect plink in the still pool.
His voice, when it finally came, was ashes. “Lusiana.”
There was no justification this time. No story. Just the name, hanging in the humid air like a confession. Shame flooded him, hot and immediate, followed by a chilling wave of self-recognition. He wasn’t surprised. This was the man he’d always been, the one who stepped over what was necessary to reach what he desired.
Varek nodded slowly. He had his answer. Regret might soften Taitusi, might make him poetic and sad in the aftermath, but survival owned him. It was the core operating system.
“Thank you for your clarity,” Varek said. He turned and began walking back down the path, not waiting. The interview was over.
Taitusi stood frozen by the pool, watching the perfect, concentric circles from that single droplet spread and vanish. The sounds of the forest rushed back in—the birds, the water, the rustle—but they felt different now. They felt like witnesses. He had just catalogued his own betrayals, one for the past, one for the future, and the math left him standing utterly alone in the lush, indifferent green.