Page 74 of Cassian is Getting Out

Ruari makes me not want to think.

That is dangerous.

He stared at the three lines until the ink dried and the dots on the page stopped being a grid and became the grey web on Diwa’s screen, every thought linked to the next.

Maybe there was something to that…

Cassian flipped to the next page, pressed the space pen to the centre of it, and wrote ME in block capitals so large they took up a quarter of the page.

He drew a circle around it, like one of Diwa’s nodes.

Then he started writing down the decisions that he owned.

Whisky went in the top right corner. Cider underneath it, smaller, because the cider had at least tasted nice before it poisoned him. Mini Cooper on the left side.

Pub. Steak night. Staying out past midnight without telling Colin.

Sex in the Range Rover without a condom.

That one he wrote quickly, the letters cramped and small, as though shrinking the words could shrink the recklessness of the act itself. Colin’s face when he’d smelled them was a memory Cassian could have done without.

He drew dotted lines from each decision inward to the circle around ME. These were his. He’d told Colin so in the hospital. Nobody made me do any of that.

At the bottom of the page, he wrote Ruari and circled it. Ruari was the biggest decision on the page.

His pen hovered between Ruari’s circle and the whisky.

The arrow wanted to go from Ruari to the decisions, because Ruari had driven them to the dealership and told Cassian to pick out the car he wanted. Ruari had taken him to the pub, and everything on this page had happened in Ruari’s orbit. The pen wanted to draw the obvious line: Ruari as the origin point, Cassian as the destination, influence flowing in one direction from the man who decided to the man who followed.

The nib touched the page beside Ruari’s name, and the first stroke of the arrow was half-formed before Cassian stopped.

In the compound, the Lumineer stood at the centre of every decision and everyone else arranged themselves around him like spokes in a wheel.

The Lumineer chose Charles for him. The Lumineer chose the doctrine to pass on to the Family. The arrows all pointed one way.

He was about to draw the same map with Ruari’s name where the Lumineer’s had been.

Cassian put the pen down. The half-drawn arrow would have run from Ruari to Whisky and told a story about an alpha who made things happen to an omega who let them.

Yes, Ruari had put the glass in front of him, but Cassian had picked it up. Ruari had said down it, and Cassian had obeyed. Ruari hadn’t held him down, or spoken in the voice that meant I decide what you do. Cassian had wanted to be inside whatever Ruari was enjoying, the way he’d wanted to be inside the Lumineer’s light, and inside Uriel’s tenderness.

Then he drew a new set of arrows. These started at ME and pointed outward to every decision on the page. Ruari’s voice had been louder, but the hand had been his.

The page looked different now. ME sat at the centre with arrows radiating outward, and Cassian was the hub.

He didn’t like it.

ROYAL COMMISSION INTO THE FAMILY OF LIGHT

Recorded Submission — Transcript Excerpt

Witness: Cassian Calyx (né unknown)

Date of recording: [REDACTED]

Present: Ms Arden Welsh (Counsel Assisting), Dr Rachel Wilson (Support Officer)

COUNSEL ASSISTING: Cassian, I’d like to return to the compound itself. The Commission has heard evidence from former members, from law enforcement, and from journalists who visited the property over the years. One detail has come up repeatedly: there were no fences. No locked gates. Members drove into town for supplies, attended markets, collected post from the roadside letterbox. From the outside, there was nothing preventing anyone from leaving. Can you help the Commission understand why people stayed?