The sun rose from behind the darkness. The bright light reflecting off the top of the walls was a wound left upon my skin. I was lying on the ground, one arm slumped over my head. Where was I? My arm was numb. As all my limbs raised the flag of rebellion, I let out a sigh and tried to survey my surroundings through half-open eyes.
I tried to rewind the events. Last I remember... a doctor named Fevzi had told me I would see the Four Faces of the Mechanism. This was the man who claimed to be my father. Hearing these things from my own thoughts now felt even stranger. At least my hands and feet weren't bound in shackles. A fraction of my freedom had been returned to me.
I straightened up and looked back and forth. There were walls, but where were the others? What had happened to the other patients imprisoned here? They must have been trying to solve the riddle of a terrifying bomb last. A horrific thought took hold of me. What if they lost? What if they failed to make a choice and perished within these walls?
The silence became agonizing. My eyes searched a blue holo-screen for a single shred of interest. But there was none.
"Hey! Is anyone there?" I stood up from the ground with great effort. My hips ached from sitting. My voice collided against the walls and echoed back to me.
"Four Faces of the Mechanism!" I shouted. Out of breath, I continued: "Go on, show your face! Show it if you have any confidence! You're a coward! A coward who doesn't dare face people. A coward afraid to take off his mask!"
My low-voiced calling had soon turned into a high-pitched cry. What if he lied to me? If Fevzi had lied, and if he truly was my father as he claimed, what was his plan?
I paced back and forth between the walls. My head was spinning from the constant movement. Hunger and thirst had sat at my bedside again like two demons. Suddenly, a clicking sound was heard. It sounded like something being opened with a key. The only sound heard amidst such silence?
The sound of something hard and heavy closing was heard. It must have been an iron door. Perhaps the door of one of the walls, or perhaps the door of one of the huts from the day I first arrived here. I don't know. But the sound relieved me. I was shivering at the thought of being left alone in this vast place.
"Here I am."
A muffled voice echoed from behind the walls. I didn't understand. None of it. Did I hear this voice inside my head, or was it real?
"Where are you?" I called out, looking in all directions. "Y-you..." I swallowed with the dryness in my throat.
"The Four Faces of the Mechanism," he spoke. The voice was getting lower. "That is me."
"Why are you hiding yourself?" I had so many questions to ask him that I didn't know which one to ask first. Instinctively, I backed away. "Show your face."
A giggle came. It was as if it came from lips approaching a speaker. "Which one?" he asked in a mocking tone.
At that moment... his having four faces made sense to me for an instant. In that single moment, in a very absurd way, I believed that he was the Four Faces of the Mechanism. What was it that made me believe this?
"Show me your real face," I said in a faint voice.
The giggling stopped, and the voice suddenly grew serious: "There is no such thing as a real face. Everyone is a liar." This voice stood before me like a statue turned to stone.
"What do you want from the people here?" I asked into the void. The voice vibrating in the air seeped into my bones. "They chose to come here themselves."
"You are the ones who promised them hope," I denied, shouting. My stomach was doubled over with excitement as I felt the wind gliding from above hitting my forehead in waves.
"What if it's the other way around?" The question rang through the walls. What did that mean?
"What you're saying is nonsense!" I said. "A fool's errand! Even you don't know what they mean. If you're not afraid... show your face."
As soon as my question ended, a "CLACK" sound, reminiscent of a circuit breaker tripping, was heard. An image appeared, covering the wall from end to end. I closed my eyes tightly. I wasn't ready, no. It had happened so fast, so suddenly, that I bit my lips without even knowing what to say. My heart was pounding in my ears. Pain was ruining my lungs like cigarette smoke with every breath.
"You think we interfere in the lives of those here, that we kill them, that we put them into a predator-prey game, don't you? What if the situation is the exact opposite? What if you are the ones doing this to us?" His question was like a bullet thrown into a deep well. The voice stopped. It left behind the vengeance of a vast silence. "The ones dying are not you people or the patients. We are the ones who die."
"You are sick!" I said; "These are all diseased thoughts..." My eyes were still closed.
"Aren't you going to look at who I am?" he asked. He could even see the single tear already overflowing from between my eyelids.
"I can't dare..." I writhed. "I can't."
"You will," the voice said, softening for a moment. "And you will dare so much."
Clenching my fists, I dared to open my eyes. Perhaps it was the first, perhaps the last act of courage. I have to do it, I convinced myself. I have to know who he is. I asked for this. The tear slid down like a rock rolling toward my cheeks. It was heavy, ruthless, fearless. I was the exact opposite. Light, sensitive, full of fear.
A wind blew from the opposite direction onto my face. While my hair was swept toward my face, I saw the face looking at me on the screen. The first moment I saw it, I said, "Not now"; "Not now..." It was as stagnant as the first moment fate was written, as slow as the last moment death was written.
This face was the ache piercing through my ribs. The deadly ambition overflowing from deep, pitch-black eyes was washed with the sadness of a postponed meeting within seconds. My lips were frozen as if paralyzed, and time had turned into a mask of broken clay in my hands. The nobility of the cheeks approached the eye sockets, and the familiarity of the face turned into a shiver in every cell.
The face winking at me through the pixels belonged to him. The heavy dance of blue lights reminded me of the warmth touching my fingertips.
While Tarık's face faded from before my eyes, the real image came in its place. Tarık's image was an illusion. It was another person who was there. He was looking right into my eyes with a feeling of longing rarely seen in the world. This unusual warmth cut my breath like a garment tightly wrapping around me. The feeling of coolness surrounding my throat, my hands, my cheeks suddenly gave way to a fierce, unmistakable feeling of pity.
The one there... was the man I saw in the tunnel.
He was the man who told me to get out of the tunnel, who told me to take the letter back to where it was. The man who showed the photos of Tarık dying in an accident.
"Could you remember?" he asked. His voice no longer had an air of amusement. It was neither mocking nor cowardly. I shivered uncontrollably. Before myself. Before the whole world. His image had seemingly jumped out of the screen and come beside me. Grabbing my burning hands, he had thrown me to the edge of a terrifying abyss I had never known.