Makira examines the blueprint of a building layout on the ground. I can see the finer details just fine in the night's darkness, being an ahli sihir and all. She can't. So, she turns her trusty LED flashlight on and shines it on the creased paper.

The floor plan for the Putrajaya Religious Complex.

"Amazing how you can get everything from the Internet nowadays, huh," notes Casey, sitting on a kerb close by and fiddling with his cross bracelet. Harmony and Xiao aren't far off with the former trying to engage in Mandarin small talk.

"Ramya has her uses, believe it or not." I hear a scoff from behind.

The Federal Territory of Putrajaya is a highly-developed area of Malaysia, as you'd expect for one of the country's two capitals. It appears that the controller of my destiny loves alleys, since this is the third time I've been in one recently. The cleanliness of this particular alley is no match for my last two. The people here actually throw their rubbish into the bins instead of on the ground. 

I kneel next to my focused Makira. Anyone would shake in their boots looking at her stern face and assortment of weaponry. 

"This is the umpteenth time you're going through the layout. You've memorised half the Quran, I'm sure you've memorised this."

"I can't leave much more to chance. Making the choice to bring you here was already a big one. Although, I reckon leaving you at the Towers to worry about my safety isn't a better alternative. Now that we're..."

"...girlfriends?" I whisper. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

I give her a sappy smile. What can I say? I can't help myself. 

"I hope your bandages are comfortable, Kiah. Stay frosty out there."

I feel her cold hand pressing on my shoulder, so close to my neck before she lets go and stands up. She looks great with her black jeans, black hoodie and tied hair.

All of her loose brown strands are in a neat bun with a thin bang going down the non-eyed side of her face. Moonlight strikes her at the perfect angle, showcasing her blemishes and battle scars—determination and experience.

"Tonight will be an important night in this country. It will be an important night, especially, for you. Your people, your kind... your futures will be decided by what we do and what we achieve in the coming hours. The historians of tomorrow will mark tonight as the time the ahli sihir fought back; freeing Jaxon Amputong from right under their noses."

She sweeps her head across every single one of us.

"Remember. This is not an attack. I know how much you despise JAKIS, but the public will not see killings in a good light. Nor will I. Be blinded by hate, and you'll be blind to justice." She sets a cautious eye on me.

Qatila feeds off of negative emotions. Remember.

Makira makes sure Hanto and her (somehow) folded naginata are tight on her waist and back respectively. Harmony puts on her brass knuckles. Ramya adjusts her magnetic bracelets. Casey says a short prayer and draws a cross on his chest. 

Xiao opens up his wrist wound with his balisong, but I quickly look away. Seeing blood makes me feel uneasy. 

I have to repress those memories. For the sake of everyone.

I inhale. I exhale.

>>

I fix up the strings on my hoodie. My bun doesn't fit well under the hood, so I leave the hood hanging behind my neck.

I take a rare look at myself with the help of Hanto's pristine blade. It's been wiped with oil from hilt to tip, causing it to form a reflection on the damascus steel via moonlight. I sigh at the sight of my singular bang.

Love has made me a changed woman. It's made me so vulnerable. Maybe fragile?

Well, you know what they say. Circumstances don't change a person's character, they reveal them. Maybe this has been enclaved inside you this whole time, Makira. It's not a weakness.

Cis, spare me the wordiness. This is hardly the time for introspection.

My high-cut combat boots make a dent in the ground on where I'm crouching. All of us are hidden behind a row of hedges; the sole barrier between us and them. 

"There's two fancy-dressed guards at the front entrance. We can basically ignore those sods, we're not going there. We can slip past and go through..." Ramya trails off. "Go through... give me a second..."

"You were saying?" Casey interrupts.

"Shush it. If you think you're so smart, try to find a way in yourself."

The orange lights of the Putrajaya Religious complex contrast well against the cool blues, mimicking something akin to the sand dunes of Arabia. These buildings are described as having a 'modern Islamic design', per the various infographic signs littered around the buildings that are in English, Malay, Jawi and Arabic. All the pedestrians from across the street can't see us in this park area, unless some of them are ahli sihir. In that unlikely case, they'd probably let us mind our own business anyway.

A well-dressed Malay woman in green had just left the front door of the West building, which is the one we're closest to. One of the guards, a short Malay man in a navy blue police uniform adorned with a name tag, a badge, a rank, a cap and other miscellanous things, steps to the side for the woman to walk past. She gives a polite nod and a courteous smile to him.

I hope Kiah has Qatila under wraps like her various bodily wounds. Civilians being around is another layer of risk. I've picked this lazy night to lower the headcount of the complex, but the risk is still there. We're not here to take lives. Much less ones that have done no wrong to us.

"Let's find a better vantage. We can't see much from here."

We shuffle our way across the trimmed hedge. Xiao nudges my shoulder and nods in a specific direction at the building. 

"Good looking out. See that, everyone?" I point to an opened window, unattended. Someone must've forgotten their routine. "That's our chance. We'll be at the second floor if we go through there, so we'll have to sneak through that and the first floor."

With care, we jump over the hedge and set our feet on the asphalt. This is our first felony of the night. Trespassing on federal property.

"Kiah? Just like we planned?"

My telepathic partner brings her arms out straight. Her spiral inai glows a bright blue as she starts to channel her telekinesis. She lifts her arms up, which in turn does to same to me. She levitates me a few metres off the ground and edges me closer to the window. Once I'm able to touch the windowsill, her telekinetic grasp loosens and I climb through. 

All of my friends squeeze through one by one. Last but not least, Kiah levitates in with grace and quietly closes the window shut. Her inai becomes brown again.

Fortunately for us, there seems to be nobody here. There's a couch, a few armchairs, a glass table and other bits of furniture in this quaint little waiting room. The carpeted floor is a drab grey. So are the walls, air-conditioner, even the water cooler.

"Ram, your turn. Be quick about it."

Ramya's magnetic beads on her bracelets float off her skin. Electricity lines her body and juts out of her eyeballs. She clutches her fists until they have no colour in them. Her French braid is lifted high up into the air through pure unadulterated electromagnetism. Kiah, Harmony and Casey shield themselves with their hands. I'm not a piece of electrical equipment, so I don't bother. 

In a blinding flash and a deep boom that rings in my ears, everything goes dark. The power goes off everywhere in the building. There's already some commotion to be heard from outside our room.

"Lights are off and cameras are off." She takes a moment to gather her bearings and wipe some sweat off her brow. "And fuck me if that EMP didn't wear me out. This Jaxon whatever bloke better have something good for us."

Harmony whisper-shouts in awe, puppy-eyed at Ramya. "That was insane! Holy–you're amazing!"

"Haih, I know."

Xiao leads the way. I tag along with Kiah so she can be my eye. We end up in an empty hallway. I can hear people talking in Malay not far from here.

"If you get into trouble, I'll bail you out."

I get confused as to where the echoing voice is coming from, but I figure out it's from none other than Kiah's telepathy.

"I'll do the same for you."

>>

Makira's hand clutches mine as I guide her through the darkness. There are endless amounts of rooms on both sides of the hallway, but we're not interested in any of them. We're in search for the stairs that lead down into the ground floor.

We sneak and sneak our way through. Our small steps make no noise to be heard. There are voices clamoring about, asking "What's just happened?" out loud in Malay. Through basic echolocation, we manage to stay away from those voices.

Makira stops in her tracks. She's in thought, almost like she's trying to remember something.

"Wait, Xiao. Turn right, and there should be one of the staircases that go down."

Xiao peeks his head around. That ends up being a big mistake on his part.

A guard walks right in front of us wearing a uniform similar to the guard we saw earlier. A fluffy mustache sticks out as a prominent feature of his face, as well as a pair of shades. He stops in his tracks when he sees us.

"Hah? Siapa tu–? / Huh? Who's that–?

Xiao wastes no time in springing up and covering the guard's mouth. The man tries to resist and shout to the others, but Xiao's already pulled down his red face mask.

"Tidur. / "Sleep."

The guard slumps over in his arms. He struggles to keep the weight of his massive body up.

"Quick, find some place to hide him." At Makira's orders, I twist the knob of the nearest door. It's a storage room, judging from all the brooms and cleaning equipment lying around.

We drag the guard's unconscious body feet-first into it. Just when I thought we were safe, Harmony bumps into a shelf and knocks over a whole vacuum cleaner perched atop. I break its fall inches away from banging against the ground and alerting the entire country.

Going down the grand staircase leads us into some sort of main lobby. It reminds me of a high-end hotel's. Not that I've been in one before obviously, but I've seen them in a billionaire romance flick I've watched with Harmony before. Namely, Crazy Rich Asians. I wasn't a fan.

The lady at the reception counter is tapping her nails against the wood, patience wearing thin as she awaits the power. Just like everyone else going here and there across the lobby trying to find a way to get the lights back on, they're none the wiser to what's hit them. 

The air conditioner's cool air is still making me shake a little. The whole vibe of this place is exactly that—cold. The office colours covering every inch don't help one bit. Everyone's dressed so formally; suit and tie, sarongs and headscarves, spotless white robes and leather shoes, et cetera et cetera. Civilised appearances, despite their contributions to a barbaric regime.

Makira explains the next move to us in whispers. "The reception's on our far left. Main entrance is on our right. If you look directly in front of us at the end, I think there should be a hallway that leads to a locked security door. We can make a dash for it."

I hold my other hand out to stop an overeager Harmony. "No, we can't. There's a man standing near that has eyes on it. We'll have to get him to leave."

"I'll do it," volunteers Casey. 

"Really, eh? What you gonna do? I wouldn't be against just a sock to his face with zìyóu and xìnyang here. My brass knuckles are itching for a stitching."

He's got his gaze fixed on a freshly lit candle by the reception. 

"Relax, I got this."

>>

On that note, the 21st chapter of KMR ends! I was planning on making this an extra long chapter, but I figured that splitting it into two would be a better choice to not tire your precious eyes out, despite there not really being a concrete reason to split them.

I'm hoping you guys will enjoy Casey, Harmony, Xiao and Ramya getting more attention in this chapter and the coming ones! Of course, I love Makira and Kiah but the others are equally as interesting, and it'd be a shame for me to not do them justice. Ramya's EMP looked pretty badass in my mind.

Bonus part below! The events are set after Makira's breakdown to Kiah and before they embark to Putrajaya.

<<

"...you get what I'm saying though, right Kiah?"

I rub my chin while sitting on my bed, covered by my blanket. Casey's got a point. Single people really do have the best relationship advice.

"Yeah. I'll try to convince her, but are you sure? Would it really help our little thing?"

"Relax," he pats my back, "you got this. If she can be that vulnerable with you, I'm sure this is nothing. Take good care of each other alright? I mean it." He ruffles my neat hair. "I didn't realise you girls were this serious. We might have to put in a door for your room one day."

I cringe at that memory. Still, I didn't get the worst luck. I shudder to think of the outcome if Harmony barged in instead. I wouldn't ever hear the end of it. "Appreciate it."

I start making my way towards Makira. She's on her desk, as usual. Opened book and pen in hand, as usual. She doesn't even realise I'm here this time around. There must be something particularly enthralling about whatever she's reading on there. 

Or maybe she's ignoring me. 

Her eye goes from my left to my right, scanning the evidently Arabic text at lightning pace. I take a deep breath.

"Hey, Kira?"

My lover jolts out of her droning. Her cold and neutral façade drops at the sight of me. "Oh, hi Kiah dear. W-what brings you here? Is it about what happened in the meeting room? I–I promise it won't ever happen aga–"

I hold my hand out. I drag a stool over to her and sit down. I let a good few seconds go by while I look into her pure black iris.

"Don't you ever apologise for being vulnerable to me. Dengar tak, sayang?"

Her face softens with a hint of shock in it. She musters up a small nod. I continue.

"I'm here to support you, as you are to support me. You don't owe me anything."

"Oh... I can't believe..." she clears her throat, "sorry, but I just don't know what to say–"

"You don't need to, Kira."

She says nothing more. That speaks a thousand words by itself. 

I reach into my pocket and drop a rubber band on the table.

"What's this for?"

"Let me tie up your hair."