Chapter 5: Lena's Song
Lena was singing.
Her voice wasn't powerful or polished, but it was clear as stream water. She sang an old song she'd learned from her grandmother, a song about a girl waiting for her fisherman lover to return from the stormy sea. She sang while mending her father's old fishing net, her slender fingers moving lightly and gracefully between the torn threads.
Their small workshop was located in a narrow alley in the coastal district of the capital. The smell of salt, fish, and tar hung permanently in the air, a scent Lena wouldn't trade for any perfume in the world. It was the smell of home.
Since her father's death a year ago, she'd been the one running the workshop. She was the only girl in her neighborhood doing this work, and she'd endured many pitying looks at first, then mockery, and finally, silent respect. The fishermen now came to her with their nets, because they knew she'd inherited her father's skill and honesty.
Her younger brother, Leo, burst in, panting. He was twelve years old, his large eyes gleaming with excitement and childish anger.
"Lena! The security men took Mr. Marco's goods again!"
Lena stopped singing and sighed. This wasn't anything new. The security men, or "the hyenas" as the neighborhood people called them, roamed the market every few days, taking whatever they pleased under the pretext of "taxes" or "public space occupation." Mr. Marco, the old fruit vendor, was their favorite target.
"Is he okay?" Lena asked, her hands returning to work on the net, but her movements became sharper.
"They pushed him. He fell to the ground." Leo said, kicking a small stone with his foot. "Why doesn't anyone do anything? Why are we always afraid of them?"
Lena looked through the small window in her workshop. She saw the wall of the building across the way. There was new graffiti, painted quickly in the middle of the night. A broken circle. The symbol of "Leader Zero" that had started appearing everywhere, like mushrooms after rain.
People whispered about him. A ghost fighting for them in the darkness. A legend. Hope.
"Some are trying to do something," Lena said quietly. "But it's not easy, Leo."
"But it's not fair!" Leo shouted. "I wish Zero was real. I wish he'd come here and beat them all up!"
Lena smiled sadly. She sometimes wished that too. But she was older, and she knew that real heroes were very rare, or perhaps just legends. Life had taught her to depend only on herself.
"Go help Mr. Marco gather what's left of his fruit," she told Leo. "And I'll bring him some fish for dinner tonight. We take care of each other. That's our way of fighting."
Leo nodded, looking less angry. He ran out of the workshop.
Lena returned to her work, and to her song. But this time, there was a sad chord in her voice. She sang about the sea, but she was thinking about the injustice surrounding her, which seemed as vast and deep as the ocean itself.
She didn't know.
She couldn't know, that thousands of miles away, in an invisible world made of light and electricity, there was another "sea." And that five strange, powerful beings had just decided they would send their own storm to her shore.
And that the "hyenas'" headquarters she hated, the ugly gray intelligence building that loomed like a giant tombstone, had been marked as a target.
The first piece in a game she didn't even know had started was about to fall. And her quiet life, like the fishing net she was mending, was about to be torn apart.