She jolted awake with a scorching flame in her throat. Or so it felt. Miriam came fully alert, but she struggled to lift her heavy eyelids, which she kept closed, feigning sleep while feeling something sharp slicing into her neck. She instinctively knew not to move, or panic. Not yet.

Feeling wary, Mariam employed her senses, but she heard no whisper or movement, and she felt no stirring of air across her bare skin. She detected no scent of a body or breath that was not her own. The only thing she smelled was a fading hint of decaying roses and disinfectant. “Where am I?” she though while the sharp pressure was still on her neck. She then opened one eye and took in her environment in a heartbeat.

Mariam was laying sprawled on an unknown bed in a room she’d never seen before. Across the bed, the covers were finely textured brocade, and above the headboard, an old defaced wall clock hung crookedly. The time read a few minutes past eleven, which was contradicted by a small modern radio clock resting peacefully on top a walnut chest drawer, which read a quarter to four.

Two large crystal vase shards were scattered on the brownish carpet, which was dotted by a careless pattern of faded red stains. From the fading tone of the light flowing in through the sheer curtains, Mariam was assured it was late afternoon. She picked up muffled voices, speaking in Afrikaans, which was a match to the room’s decor and appointments passing down the expansive lawn outside the room.

“Guesthouse room,” Mariam surmised. The room was expensive and elegant, not what she could afford. She took several more breaths, making sure that she was alone. She had spent her entire youth running away from herself, which eventually led to her living a life decorated only by loneliness.

That was the point when Mariam learned the rudimentary skills of her future profession. Survival in her field required accuracy, vigilance, and extreme sureness. When her former employers found her and recruited her from the humble clinic, she worked for them as an assistant nurse. The transition to terrorist proved to be an unbelievable one, though. Eight years later, she wore another face, an evolution that a part of her still fought, leaving her half formed while waiting for the soft clay to harden into its new shape. But what could she become? She had been betrayed by her former employers, an international criminal organization called Evo Institute, but even that name wasn’t real, at least to the extent of its true intentions.

The real purpose of the organization remained shadowy, even to its own employees. At least up until eight years prior. It had not taken long for the organisation to show its true colours after employing Miriam. The results of that were … Armageddon. She finished off the thought with an involuntary mutter because thinking about it made her skin crawl. In fact, that was the actual reason she had come to Greylingstad. She had to dig to the roots of the poisonous tree before it bore any more rotten fruit.

Mariam slowly sat up and caught her reflection on a shattered mirror on the armoire. Her blonde hair was mussed by the pillow, and the emerald of her eyes were dull and sensitive to the weak afternoon sunlight. She had been drugged. Someone had stripped her down to her bra and panties, likely to search her for weapons or perhaps purely to intimidate her. Her clothes, which included blue jeans, white shirt, and a navy jacket, had been folded and placed on top of a neighbouring antique chair. On a brownish mahogany nightstand, her weapons had been arranged in a neat row, making a mockery of their lethality. Her SIG Sauer pistol was still in its shoulder holster, while her silver Chrome .45 pistol had been unsheathed, shining stingingly bright.

The gun was shining as brilliantly as the new piece of jewellery adorning Mariam’s neck. The stainless-steel band had been fastened tightly and low. A tiny green LED light was glowing at the hollow of her throat, where sharp prongs dug deep into that tender flesh.

“So this is what woke me up?” Mariam thought. She reached for the electronic necklace and carefully ran a fingertip along its surface, searching for the mechanism that secured it. Under her right ear, she discovered a tiny pin- sized opening. It was a keyhole. But who holds the key? Her heart thudded in her throat, pinching against those sharp prongs with every beat. Anger flushed her skin, leaving behind a cold dread at the base of her spine. She dug a finger under the tight band, strangling herself and driving the steel thorns deeper until agony lanced through her body, setting fire to her still-brittle bones.

After a while, Mariam collapsed on the bed and contorted with pain. Her back arched, and her chest was too constricted for her to scream. Then darkness … nothingness … but relief flooded through her as she fell back. The sensation was short-lived, though. She woke up again, tasting blood where she had bitten her tongue. A bleary-eyed check of the radio clock revealed that only a moment had gone by. She then rolled back, still trembling with aftershocks from the near electrocution, and swung her legs off the bed. She kept her hands well away from her neck and crossed to the window, needing to get to the door.

Standing slightly to the side to keep herself from being seen, Mariam stared out at the snaking mountain which stood like a gigantic slope with a distinctively familiar arrangement of whiteley painted mountain stones, artfully spelling “S.R”. Lowly below, an arcade of identical defaced buildings lined the streets with overgrown patches of meadows and tall clumps of trees, separated by the occasional perennial river winding in between the clumps.

“I’m stiII in Greylingstad,” Mariam thought, then turned and studied the opulent room draped in silk and decorated in gold leaf. “I’m at the B&B Houses.”

Although Mariam had lived most of her youth life in Greylingstad, she had never slept in any one of the B&B Houses there before. In fact, it was only one of her partners that ever slept in here. His name was Daniel, and thinking about him brought tears to Mariam’s eyes. She forced the thought to the back of her mind.

Before dying on a mission to initiate a programme that would annihilate the servers so as to stop the Evo Institute’s propaganda, Daniel had warned Mariam that something major was afoot within the organization, stirring up all her contacts. One of her trusted contacts had set up the rendezvous. But, apparently, money only bought so much trust.

Mariam had met with the science teacher in the Lion Bottle Store downtown, which was a steel-caged and leather-appointed homage to the African teaching. The science teacher had been seated on the side table, nursing a glass of Vodka which was a popular drink at that establishment. Next to his chair rested a black leather briefcase, holding the promise of secrets yet to be revealed. She had a drink, only water, but she knew it was still a mistake.

Just at that moment, Mariam’s mouth felt cottony, and her head felt really heavy. As she moved back into the room, a low groan drew her attention to the closed bathroom door. She cursed herself for not thoroughly checking the rest of the room after waking up, and she blamed it on the fuzziness of her thinking. That lack of vigilance ended, though. She stepped silently and swiftly across the room, snatching her holstered pistol off the nightstand. She shook the weapon free as she reached the door, letting the shoulder harness fall silently to the carpet.

Once at the door, Mariam listened through it. As a second groan, more pained now, erupted, she burst into the bathroom with her pistol raised. She swept the small marble-adorned chamber, finding no one at the sink or vanity. Then a bony arm, sleeved in tattoos, rose from the tub, waving weakly as if the person was drowning. The hand then found the swan-shaped gold faucet and gripped tightly to it.

As Mariam got closer, a skinny blond-haired woman held on to the spigot to pull herself into view. She turned around and, when she spotted Miriam, her eyes widened at both her half-naked state and the obvious threat of the weapon. She scrambled back into the empty tub, palms held up, looking ready to climb the marble walls behind her. She wore only a pair of navy panties and a matching bra with a stainless-steel collar. It was a match to Miriam’s.

Perhaps sensing the same pinched pressure on her neck as Miriam, the woman clawed at her throat. “Don’t,” Miriam warned, but the woman panicked and tugged. The green light on her collar flashed to red and her entire body jolted, throwing her a foot into the air and crashing back into the bathtub. Miriam lunged and kept her head from cracking into the hard marble while feeling a snap of electricity sting her palm.

Mariam’s actions were not motivated by altruism, though. The woman plainly shared her predicament, and maybe she knew more about the situation than she did. The woman convulsed for another breath, then went slack. Miriam waited until her eyes fluttered back open; then she stood and backed away. She lowered her gun, sensing no threat from the woman, who cautiously worked her way into a seated position. Miriam studied her as she breathed heavily, slowly shaking off the shock.

The woman shared the same height as Miriam, as well as her hair and her brows and the shape of her collarbone. In fact, every detail of her entire physical appearance was the same as Miriam’s. The only thing that told them apart were the tattoos that formed endless labyrinths across the woman’s chest and swathed her arms, spilling over her shoulders and spread into two dark wings of artwork along her back. Her stomach was clean, though. It was still an empty canvas.

“What’s your name?” Miriam asked, taking a seat on the commode. The resemblance between her and the odd woman didn’t surprise her at all.

The woman breathed heavily. “Betty Gwabe,” she said. Although she answered in English, her accent was distinctly Zulu.

“You speak Zulu?” Miriam asked.

“I am Zulu,” the woman responded, sagging with relief. “Judging by your appearance, you’re also one of us.” She paused. “Are you the Syre?”

“What?”

“The Syre,” Betty repeated. “You know, the first one?”

“No, I’m not,” Miriam said. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

The woman’s voice remained dazed. “I was at a pub. In Balfour. Someone bought me a drink, and then another, and then another, until I couldn’t feel my face anymore. Then I woke up here.”

‘So she must have been drugged too,’ Mariam though. She believed the woman might have also been brought there and collared, like her. ‘But why?’ she continued in her thoughts. While she was thinking, the phone suddenly rang and echoed across the room.

Tell us: how do you think Betty and Mariam got to where they are?