Chapter 54: The Girl Chosen for the Light
The silence that followed Kofi’s selection was brittle, charged with the unsaid. Dust continued its lazy dance in the slanted light. Zoruk let the moment hang, observing the fracture lines in the room’s chemistry. Then, with a slight shift of his weight, he turned his attention from the men to the three women clustered like wary birds.
“For the female selection,” he said, his voice neither loud nor soft, but perfectly calibrated to fill the space left by their held breath. “Between Liyat Abebe, Bila Emerta, and Arsemma Negasi… the chosen participant for TDC Season Five is Liyat.”
For two full seconds, there was no sound at all. Not even a gasp.
Liyat’s hand flew to her mouth, her eyes widening into pools of pure, uncomprehending shock. She looked as if she’d been gently pushed from a great height. A flush of confused pleasure warmed her cheeks, immediately chased by a pallor of dread. It was a miracle and a mistake, written plainly on her face.
Across the room, Kofi’s eyebrows shot up. Then, a slow, intrigued smile spread across his face. He glanced from Zoruk to Liyat, his head tilting as he recalculated. Them. Together. The dynamic shifted in his mind, from a solo victory to a complicated, familiar game. “Well,” he murmured, the word mostly for himself.
“No.”
Yafet said it as a statement, flat and hard. He took a step forward, his graceful composure shattered into protective anger. “You are sending the most vulnerable person in this room directly into the stratosphere with the man who treated her feelings like a… a public gym workout. You saw the reconstruction. You know. This isn’t selection; it’s feeding.”
Arsemma’s laugh was a short, sharp crack. “It’s recklessness personified.” She stood now, smoothing her tailored skirt with a gesture that screamed of controlled fury. “Liyat can barely protect herself from a kind voice in a quiet room. You think she can navigate an inter-species political spectacle? She’ll be a passenger. A decorative, weeping passenger. This choice undermines everything you claimed to be evaluating.”
From her seat on the low drum, Bila did not look up. Her fingers traced the worn edge of the drum’s skin. When she spoke, her voice was so quiet it seemed to absorb the other sounds in the room. “I suppose being underestimated was still not enough.” There was no malice in it, just a cold, factual disappointment that somehow hurt more than anger.
Kaleb, ever the reactor, moved toward Bila, his hands flapping slightly. “Hey, no, Bila, that’s not—I mean, you’re obviously… you notice things, you’re tough in your own way…” He saw her flinch at the word ‘tough,’ and his mouth snapped shut, his face collapsing into a pained grimace. He’d done it again.
Zoruk listened, a scientist at an exhibit. He let the protests hang and decay.
“Liyat was not chosen because she is strong in the obvious way,” he said, his gaze resting on her. She trembled under it. “Nor because she is safe. She was eliminated for being safe. She was chosen because her warmth alters the emotional gravity of a room. Because people—strangers, allies, enemies—reveal their cores around her, thinking her innocence is a blank page. It is not. Not anymore. She is beginning to understand that her innocence has a taste, a weight, and a danger. That is a different kind of leverage.”
He shifted his glance to Bila. “You were useful. Observant. You see the man leaving with the folder when everyone is watching the stage. You are closer than you believe. But you still let the misfortune define your position. You sit in the corner, expecting it.” His eyes then found Arsemma’s blazing stare. “You possess one of the strongest social minds here. You map desires and conflicts with impressive speed. But you are terminally certain that control is the same as care. You arrange people for outcomes you deem correct, calling it support. On Lauris-Theta, that certainty would be a shortcut to spectacular failure.”
Liyat found her voice, a thin, wavering thread. “I don’t… I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Certainty was never the requirement,” Zoruk replied. “Awareness is.”
Yafet crossed the space between them, ignoring everyone else. He stopped in front of Liyat, his anger melting into raw pleading. “Liyat. You don’t have to go. He can’t make you. This choice, this prize, it’s not for you. You know what it cost last time. You don’t owe them your softness.”
Liyat looked up at him, at the beautiful, painful intensity of his care. She saw the stage lights in his eyes, the cue sheet in his heart. She looked past him to Kofi, who watched them with detached, analytical interest. She thought of the gray-suited man and the green folder, and how she’d been the light that let him slip away.
Tears welled and spilled over, tracing the same paths they had on Entoto Hill. But her voice, when it came, did not break.
“Maybe,” she whispered, the words soaked in sadness, “that is why I have to.”
Yafet recoiled as if slapped. The last of his hope drained from his expression, leaving only devastation.
Zoruk gave a single, slow nod. The process was complete. “The rest of you,” he said, his tone shifting to a professional, closing note. “Thank you for your participation. Your cooperation has been noted. Kofi and Liyat, tomorrow morning at five, in front of the Sheraton. Transport will be waiting. Bring one bag. Practical clothing.”
He did not wait for further arguments. He collected his dossier and walked toward the door, his footsteps echoing in the hollow quiet.
The wounds of the room bloomed in his wake.
Yafet stood frozen, staring at Liyat as if she were already receding into the distance, his artistic vision of a future with her finally, irrevocably out of frame.
Kaleb shuffled, clapping a hand on Bila’s shoulder, then thinking better of it and withdrawing, shoving his hands in his pockets. He forced a smile that was a grotesque mask of kindness. “Well. Free breakfast back at the cafe, for anyone who wants. No pressure.”
Bila finally stood. She did not look at Liyat or Kofi. She simply nodded, once, to no one, swallowing the rejection like a bitter pill. Her silence was a cavern.
Arsemma’s fury was cold and precise. She snatched her purse from a chair, her movements clipped. “A mistake,” she stated, to the empty air where Zoruk had been. “You’ve chosen the symptom and called it a cure.” She left without another word, the door clicking shut with finality behind her.
Kofi pushed off the pillar, rolling his shoulders. The confidence was back, but it was performative now, an old costume he’d slipped on out of habit. “Five a.m.,” he said to Liyat, as if making plans for a workout. “Don’t be late.” He offered a wink, but it fell flat. He exited, leaving the three of them in the ruined quiet.
Liyat looked around at the faded stage marks, the folded chairs, the ghost of her own naive smile lingering in the corner. The kindness that had always defined her here had been measured, weighed, and found useful for reasons she was only beginning to grasp. Being chosen felt nothing like being loved. It felt like being severed. The people who had defined her innocence—Yafet’s passion, Kaleb’s clumsy care, even Arsemma’s control—were now part of what she had to leave behind. She was the light being moved to a different stage.
And the shadows there were unknown.
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In front of Zoruk’s hotel in Addis Ababa. Early morning, just before departure for Lauris-Theta.
The cool March air carried the scent of dew and distant baking bread. Addis was a faint rumble of early engines, a city stretching under a bruised pre-dawn sky. Zoruk stood motionless near the hotel’s glass doors, a silhouette of patient elegance against the polished lobby light. He didn’t check his watch. He simply was.
Kofi materialized from the dim street, his duffel slung over one shoulder, moving with the loose-hipped gait of someone heading to a club. “You pick the most scenic times,” he said, his voice a little too loud for the quiet street. He nodded at the empty curb. “If the spaceship looks like a minibus, I’m demanding a refund. My Instagram cannot handle that aesthetic.”
“Your terrestrial social metrics are irrelevant now,” Zoruk said, his tone devoid of humor or malice. It was a simple fact.
“Ouch. Straight for the ego before coffee.” Kofi leaned against a concrete planter, feigning ease, but his eyes kept scanning the empty space where a vehicle should be.
Liyat arrived like a lost thought. She wore a simple jacket over her dress, her small bag clutched to her chest. Her eyes were swollen, her breathing shallow. She looked from Zoruk’s calm face to Kofi’s performed relaxation, then past them down the empty street. “Did… did anyone come?” she asked, her voice breaking on the last word. “Yafet? Or Kaleb? Or…” She couldn’t say Bila’s or Arsemma’s names. The hope was a physical ache.
“No,” Zoruk said. The word was final, clean as a surgical cut. “Some departures are cleaner without witnesses. Goodbyes are anchors.”
Kofi snorted, pushing off the planter. “Witnesses just make things dramatic. Tears, speeches, the whole messy production. This is cleaner. Like ripping off a bandage.” He glanced at Liyat’s face, saw the tears welling despite her fierce blinking, and his smirk faded. “Hey. It’s gonna be an adventure.”
“Will it hurt?” she whispered, ignoring Kofi, her gaze locked on Zoruk. “The… transport?”
Kofi barked a laugh. “Will it feel worse than trying to cross Bole Road at noon? If yes, I quit.”
Zoruk turned his head, not toward them, but toward a point in the empty street. The air began to hum, a sub-bass frequency that vibrated in their teeth. “Human comparisons will not prepare you. Your frame of reference ends here.”
A distortion bloomed in the middle of the asphalt. It was like watching heat haze coalesce into solid, impossible geometry. Light bent—the hotel’s sign, a distant streetlamp—stretching into green-gold strands that wove themselves into a shimmering oval. The air within it rippled like deep water, silent and profound.
Kofi’s joke died in his throat. His body went still, the casual pose forgotten. For one unguarded second, his eyes widened with primal, stomach-dropping fear. He covered it with a sharp inhalation and a toothy smile that didn't reach his eyes. “Okay. Not a minibus. Points for presentation.”
Liyat stumbled back a step, then instinctively stepped closer to Zoruk, her hand almost reaching for his sleeve before she snatched it back. She was terrified. She was also mesmerized. The light reflected in her wet eyes, painting her face in otherworldly hues.
“Once we step through,” Zoruk said, his voice a steady rhythm beneath the hum, “you are no longer candidates from Addis Ababa. You are contestants of The Dual Crown, Season Five. Earth is your precedent, not your protection.”
“I like the sound of that,” Kofi said, hefting his duffel. His voice betrayed him, thinner now, lacking its usual bedrock of chill.
Liyat turned her head, looking back down the street toward the waking city. A single anbesa taxi rounded a far corner, its headlights sweeping the dim. She thought of Yafet’s devastated eyes, of Kaleb’s clumsy kindness left on a cafe table, of Bila’s silent understanding in the corner. She thought of the man in the cheap gray suit, walking away with a folder while the room watched her burn.
“I hope,” she said quietly, to no one, “that being chosen doesn’t mean becoming a bad person.”
Zoruk looked at her then, a direct, measuring look. “Lauris-Theta will not ask whether you are good, Liyat. It will ask what your goodness survives. Now, follow.”
The rippling surface of the oval shivered and parted like a curtain, revealing an interior of soft, shadowless silver. Zoruk stepped through without hesitation, his form dissolving into the light.
Kofi clenched his jaw. He shot Liyat a look that was meant to be a confident ‘let’s go,’ but came out as a grimace. He mutterred, “Bandage. Ripping it off.” Then he strode forward, a man forcing his body into courage, and vanished.
Liyat was alone on the curb. The cool Addis air touched her cheeks one last time, carrying the familiar smells of home. She clutched her bag, her knuckles white. She did not think of adventure. She thought of survival. She took one final, shuddering breath, held it, and stepped into the light.
The silence was absolute. The green-gold oval collapsed in on itself, a reverse bloom, leaving the street empty, cold, and ordinary. The taxi passed by the spot, its driver humming, unaware that the city had just lost two of its own to a silence that hung in the air for a half-second longer than it should have. Then the morning moved on, and Addis Ababa was left behind.