#wings in Jakarta

[bts-boys]

170429 BTS V at The Wings Tour in Jakarta © nuna v do not edit, crop, or remove the watermark

[orellazalonia]

The Hard Truth

Summary: An investigation occurs that uncovers the woman they trusted for years was never officially cleared and may have manipulated her way into their ranks by gaining their trust and blending in.

Word Count: 1.9k+

A/N: Sorry for the shorter chapter, I wanted something in between the next part for a better transition. (Granted, I’ve had shorter sections in previous parts lol.) Happy reading!!!

Main Masterlist | The One You Don’t See Masterlist

The alarms had stopped, but the tension hadn’t.

The command room felt smaller than usual. Dimmer, even with the lights on. The feed from the lower level played silently in the background. Doors swinging open, timestamp blinking, empty cells.

Sam stood near the window, arms crossed so tight it looked like he was holding himself together. Clint paced. Wanda sat with her elbows on her knees, hands pressed together under her chin. Bucky hadn’t said anything since coming back upstairs. He stood in the corner like a shadow. His mind racing with the woman who he had let into his life so easily, who has now confirmed his recent suspicions.

Tony leaned forward over the table. “This isn’t just a leak. It’s an inside job.”

“She’s still here,” Bruce said quietly. “Never left compound range. She was in the kitchen, admin wing, at one point she was in the library.”

“Because she’s not running,” Natasha finally spoke. “She doesn’t have to.”

Steve frowned. “We don’t have proof it was her.”

Sam let out a sharp breath. “We don’t have proof it wasn’t.”

“She’s helped us for years,” Wanda said softly. “You know that. She’s not… she’s not some enemy plant.”

“Are you sure?” Bucky asked. Not cruel. Not angry. Just… tired. “Because I’ve been in those roles. Done what she might’ve done. And nothing hides guilt better than familiarity.”

“She saved my life during the Jakarta op,” Clint said. “Broke protocol to do it. That wasn’t for show.”

“Or it was the perfect show,” Tony muttered, rubbing his temples. “God, we always give the benefit of the doubt to the ones who smile the most.”

“She didn’t just smile,” Bruce added. “She was kind.”

“Kind doesn’t mean clean,” Natasha said.

Steve held up a hand. “Okay. Enough. We investigate properly. No assumptions. Full audit.”

“She was cleared when she came in,” Sam said.

Tony looked up. “Yeah, but who cleared her?”

No one answered.

Natasha already had her tablet out. “I’ll pull her recruitment files.”

“And I’ll start backtracking movement logs,” Bruce added. “She might’ve used ghost codes. Might’ve had help.”

“And the other problem?” Clint asked. “The one still sitting in our holding room?”

They all went quiet.

You hadn’t moved since the alarm. Hadn’t reacted when the red lights flashed in the vents. Just sat there, the same way you had the day they brought you in.

Like none of it mattered anymore.

You knew something was wrong the second the air changed.

It wasn’t loud. There were no blasts, no running footsteps, no smoke. Just a shift. A stillness. And then the red lights began to blink in the hallway, casting slow pulsing shadows against the cold walls of your cell.

An alarm. An evacuation, maybe. A breach.

You didn’t move. Didn’t stand. Didn’t press against the glass to see who was coming. You already knew no one was.

Eventually, you heard voices that were muffled through layers of concrete and soundproofing. Rushed, angry, and familiar. The Avengers. Probably cursing at security feeds and trying to figure out what happened.

But the door to your cell stayed shut.

You remained on the cot, knees drawn up to your chest, fingers curled tight into the fabric of your sleeves. Your heart didn’t race. Your breathing didn’t spike.

Because this?

This was expected. Not the break-in. Not the escape.

Being forgotten.

That part wasn’t new.

You weren’t surprised when the people who called themselves your allies had left you behind weeks ago. And you weren’t surprised now that the ones who’d promised you freedom and recognition had done the same.

You were useful until you weren’t. Valuable until the real pieces needed moving.

They took the scientists. The tacticians. The charismatic ex-leaders and the secret-keepers. But not you. Never you.

Still, something small and pathetic inside you had hoped, in that flicker between silence and sirens, that someone would open the door. Even if it wasn’t to let you go. Even if it was just to say we didn’t forget you.

But no. It seemed both sides were incapable of such a thing.

You leaned your head against the wall, cheek pressed to the cool cement. The red light blinked across your face again. Then again. Like a metronome marking time you didn’t ask to sit through.

How ironic, you thought.

You’d been the one person caught between both worlds. The ghost in the hallway. The one who never quite fit in at the tower. And supposedly never quite belonged at the organization either.

You weren’t trusted enough to be freed. You weren’t important enough to be taken. You were just… there.

Something to clean up later. A problem for another day.

Your eyes stung, but you didn’t cry. You’d wasted those tears before. Back when you still thought loyalty meant something. When you still believed if you worked hard enough, if you were good enough, someone might look at you the way they looked at her. With warmth. With ease. With interest.

But they never did.

Not Bucky. Not Steve. Not Natasha. Not anyone.

And now?

Now, they had to decide what to do with you. Not help you. Not understand you. Just… assess you. Like a threat.

You curled tighter into yourself, resting your forehead on your knees. At some point, the alarm went silent.

But it didn’t matter. Because you weren’t escaping. You weren’t going anywhere. You were just one more locked door no one bothered to open.

The table was scattered with files from the breach. Footage frozen mid-frame. Timelines drafted and crossed out. A whiteboard bore questions no one had been able to answer hours earlier.

Until now.

Natasha entered first, tablet in hand, with her movements clipped and deliberate. Bruce followed, paler than usual, carrying the weight of what he’d helped uncover.

Steve looked up immediately. “Tell me you have something.”

Natasha didn’t sit. “We do. But you’re not going to like it.”

That made the room go quiet. Wanda leaned forward. Clint folded his arms. Sam stilled his bouncing knee, Tony turned away from the monitor, gaze narrowing.

Natasha tapped her tablet, and a profile hovered into the air.

Her profile. The one you had always envied. The one who could make Bucky smile in the way you couldn’t. There she was, her picture smiling and official.

“This isn’t her original clearance file.”

Tony frowned. “What do you mean?”

Bruce stepped in. “What we’ve all been looking at, the file we’ve used for years, it’s patched. Rewritten. Spliced with data from at least three separate sources. Her full psych eval? Missing. Background check? Incomplete. And the worst part? The approval logs are gone.”

“Gone?” Sam repeated.

“Wiped,” Natasha confirmed. “Not sloppy, either. Whoever did it knew exactly how to make it look like standard intake.”

Clint’s brows drew together. “But she’s been here for years. No red flags?”

“She never accessed anything she wasn’t given access to,” Bruce said. “No poking around in classified servers, no bypassing clearance. Everything she knew, we gave her.”

“She earned it,” Wanda said softly, but the words sounded uncertain now.

“Or we thought she did,” Natasha corrected.

Steve stared at the screen. “So… she walked in the front door with someone’s permission. But no one knows whose.”

“Someone scrubbed the trail,” Bruce said. “And unless we dig deep into archived logs, we’re not finding it anytime soon.”

The silence settled heavy after his last words.

The woman’s profile still hovered midair. Bright, clean, professional like it had nothing to hide. Like she belonged.

Wanda was the first to speak, barely above a whisper. “I used to tell her things. Not missions or codes, just… things… about my past. My fears. I thought she understood.”

“She did,” Tony said, voice flat. “That was the point.”

Wanda flinched, just slightly.

Bruce looked down at the terminal. “She remembered names, asked about our families, brought coffee when someone was exhausted. She wasn’t invisible, she blended in.”

Steve exhaled slowly, like the weight of it was finally hitting. “We let someone embed herself this deep… and we ignored the signs.”

“There were no signs,” Tony snapped, suddenly frustrated. “That’s the damn problem. She played it safe–played us safe. No hacking, no sneaking around, just friendship.”

“Manufactured friendship,” Bruce added quietly.

Wanda swallowed hard. “I thought she was my friend.”

Sam leaned forward, looking across the table at Steve. “So what now? We keep watching her and pretend none of this happened?”

“No,” Steve said. “We find out who she really is and what she wants.”

“And if she already got what she came for?” Bucky asked, finally pushing off the wall. His voice was low, tight, raw at the edges. “What if we’re just… leftovers?”

“She was close with you,” Natasha said carefully.

“I thought so,” Bucky answered, but his voice was distant now. “But I think I was just another door to walk through.”

No one knew what to say to that. The woman hadn’t stolen secrets or set off bombs.

But she’d done something worse, she’d made them trust her.

Meanwhile, time passed.

You didn’t ask how much. You didn’t care. No one had spoken to you. No one had come anyways.

The lights had returned to normal, the sirens cut off, and what remained was silence. Not even a damn explanation. You were just… here. As always. Present, but invisible.

You laid back on the cot eventually, staring at the ceiling. You found cracks in the cement. Water damage in the corner. A flickering bulb that buzzed faintly, like a whisper in the back of your skull.

Your limbs ached from how still you’d been, but you didn’t move. You didn’t see the point.

What would it change?

What was left to be gained by trying?

You’d done everything right once. Quietly filled in where others fumbled. Took notes no one asked for. Cleaned up messes without credit. Stayed late. Showed up early. Bit your tongue when they overlooked you. Smiled politely when you were excluded.

You’d never been chosen in any room or in any war. But you’d stayed anyway. Waited, hoping one day they might turn and see you standing there and realize what they had. What you could be.

But they hadn’t. Not until it was all too late.

And when the world fell sideways and you were dragged into something darker, you’d believed for one stupid moment, that maybe they would want you. The people in the shadows. The ones who said you were smarter than the rest. That you were necessary, sharper, wanted.

And you were, for a while. But that was the thing about being useful. It didn’t mean you were valued. It just meant you were used.

You rolled onto your side.

They had left you behind. Not by mistake. Not by oversight. Deliberately.

And maybe that was worse than being hated. At least hatred meant you mattered enough to be a problem.

This?

This was nothing.

You heard footsteps echoing down the hall at some point. Someone doing a sweep. A brief glance through the glass, but there wasn’t a pause or comment. The steps continued on as your throat tightened.

But you didn’t cry. You still wouldn’t give them that. Instead, you laid still with your back to the door.

You weren’t sure who you were anymore. You weren’t their administrator or analyst. Not anyone’s asset. Not even the villain they were trying to convince themselves you might be.

You were… what? A loose end? Maybe.

Or maybe you were just the reminder of everything they didn’t want to see: How easy it is to lose someone who was never really seen to begin with.

Taglist: @herejustforbuckybarnes @iyskgd @torntaltos @julesandgems @maesmayhem @w-h0re @pookalicious-hq @parkerslivia @whisperingwillowxox @stell404 @wingstoyourdreams @seventeen-x @mahimagi @viktor-enjoyer @vicmc624 @msbyjackal @winchestert101 @greatenthusiasttidalwave @avivarougestan @saoirses-things @itsmejen @saucysasha2035 @smokescreen1000

[txttletale]

niceys positive anon!! i don't agree with you on everything but you are so clearly like well read and well rounded that you've helped me think through a lot of my own inconsistencies and hypocrises in my own political and social thought, even if i do have slightly different conclusions at times then u (mainly because i believe there's more of a place for idealism and 'mind politics' than u do). anyway this is a preamble to ask if you have recommended reading in the past and if not if you had any recommended reading? there's some obvious like Read Marx but beyond that im always a little lost wading through theory and given you seem well read and i always admire your takes, i wondered about your recs

it's been a while since i've done a big reading list post so--bearing in mind that my specific areas of 'expertise' (i say that in huge quotation marks obvsies i'm just a girlblogger) are imperialism and media studies, here are some books and essays/pamphlets i recommend. the bolded ones are ones that i consider foundational to my politics

BASICS OF MARXISM

friedrich engels, principles of commmunism

friedrich engels, socialism: utopian & scientific

karl marx, the german ideology

karl marx, wage labour & capital

mao zedong, on contradiction

nikolai bukharin, anarchy and scientific communism

rosa luxemburg, reform or revolution?

v.i lenin, left-wing communism: an infantile disorder

v.i. lenin, the state & revolution

v.i. lenin, what is to be done?

IMPERIALISM

aijaz ahmed, iraq, afghanistan, and the imperialism of our time

albert memmi, the colonizer and the colonized

che guevara, on socialism and internationalism (ed. aijaz ahmad)

eduardo galeano, the open veins of latin america

edward said, orientalism

fernando cardoso, dependency and development in latin america

frantz fanon, black skin, white masks

frantz fanon, the wretched of the earth

greg grandin, empire's workshop

kwame nkrumah, neocolonialism, the last stage of imperialism

michael parenti, against empire

naomi klein, the shock doctrine

ruy mauro marini, the dialectics of dependency

v.i. lenin, imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism

vijay prashad, red star over the third world

vincent bevins, the jakarta method

walter rodney, how europe underdeveloped africa

william blum, killing hope

zak cope, divided world divided class

zak cope, the wealth of (some) nations

MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES

antonio gramsci, the prison notebooks

ed. mick gidley, representing others: white views of indigenous peoples

ed. stuart hall, representation: cultural representations and signifying pratices

gilles deleuze & felix guattari, capitalism & schizophrenia

jacques derrida, margins of philosophy

jacques derrida, speech and phenomena

michael parenti, inventing reality

michel foucault, disicipline and punish

michel foucault, the archeology of knowledge

natasha schull, addiction by design

nick snricek, platform capitalism

noam chomsky and edward herman, manufacturing consent

regis tove stella, imagining the other

richard sennett and jonathan cobb, the hidden injuries of class

safiya umoja noble, algoriths of oppression

stuart hall, cultural studies 1983: a theoretical history

theodor adorno and max horkheimer, the culture industry

walter benjamin, the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction

OTHER

angela davis, women, race, and class

anna louise strong, cash and violence in laos and vietnam

anna louise strong, the soviets expected it

anna louise strong, when serfs stood up in tibet

carrie hamilton, sexual revolutions in cuba

chris chitty, sexual hegemony

christian fuchs, theorizing and analysing digital labor

eds. jules joanne gleeson and elle o'rourke, transgender marxism

elaine scarry, the body in pain

jules joanne gleeson, this infamous proposal

michael parenti, blackshirts & reds

paulo freire, pedagogy of the oppressed

peter drucker, warped: gay normality and queer anticapitalism

rosemary hennessy, profit and pleasure

sophie lewis, abolish the family

suzy kim, everyday life in the north korean revolution

walter rodney, the russian revolution: a view from the third world

[hintze-of-bird]

I’ve recently been thinking about the relationship between my ethnicity and alterhumanity. I figured I might as well post my (incredibly broad) thoughts and experiences, since I don’t think I’ve seen a lot of us around in the community.

For those who aren’t aware, I am Indonesian. I was born in Jakarta, my mum is Javanese, and my dad is mixed Kutai and Javanese.

However, I spent majority of my life living in other countries. My parents wanted me to be a good English-speaker, so while my understanding of informal Bahasa Indonesia is passable, I am nowhere near fluent, whilst virtually illiterate. I am frankly clueless about our history, unable to play games such as congklak or even domikado, and I keep forgetting to greet my elders with salim. I’m sure there are aspects of my life that are distinctly Indonesian— like how soto ayam is a comfort food of mine, especially when followed by bubur the next day, or the arisan my mum and her friends have that I’m sometimes dragged along to —but I’m more likely to describe my upbringing as Islam-based.

Despite this, those who frequently interact with me may describe me as slightly nationalistic. It’s ironic, really. Especially when you consider that countries are a very human concept, and I am as nonhuman as any bird.

I find it interesting that a good handful of my species have theriform ranges that encompass Indonesia. I even consider Southeast Asian rainforests and rivers a hearthome. I don’t believe past lives resulted in my nonhumanity, but I have a sense of homesickness for those environments. I miss them somehow.

Perhaps it is the fact I feel so detached from my nationality is why I’m so drawn to it? These places are where I am from and in my blood, and I never got to experience them fully.

This may also be a partial explanation of why I became an albatross (tubenose feelings are not inherent for me, but I am one now).

We have a reputation for being long-distance travellers. Some of us spend years at sea, on the wing and distanced from land. I’ve lived in more countries than some, and now I’m a student boarder in the UK. I feel more like I’m adrift between places rather than tied to one, which is reflected in albatross lifestyles, to me.

There’s also the matter of being fictionkin. Indonesian representation is pretty much nonexistent in popular media. I am yet to discover a source in which I am Indonesian; canonically, I tend to be as British or American, which feels incredibly wrong even when I know that it’s still me. It’s similar to how I am always nonhuman regardless of source — I am Indonesian no matter my depiction. But this adds a layer to my feeling of disconnect from my culture.

Overall, it’s curious that my alterhumanity affects some feelings around my ethnicity, and is also slightly influenced in return. I wouldn’t describe these two aspects of my identity as very interconnected, but they are associated with each other somehow.

[milfstalin]

By 1965, the PKI had three million party members – adding a million members in the year. It had emerged as a serious political force in Indonesia, despite the anti-communist military’s attempts to squelch its growth. Membership in its mass organizations went up to 18 million. A strange incident – the killing of three generals in Jakarta – set off a massive campaign, helped along by the CIA and Australian intelligence, to excise the communists from Indonesia. Mass murder was the order of the day. The worst killings were in East Java and in Bali. Colonel Sarwo Edhie’s forces, for instance, trained militia squads to kill communists. ‘We gave them two or three days’ training,’ Sarwo Edhie told journalist John Hughes, ‘then sent them out to kill the communists.’ In East Java, one eyewitness recounted, the prisoners were forced to dig a grave, then ‘one by one, they were beaten with bamboo clubs, their throats slit, and they were pushed into the mass grave’. By the end of the massacre, a million Indonesian men and women of the left were sent to these graves. Many millions more were isolated, without work and friends. Aidit was arrested by Colonel Yasir Hadibroto, brought to Boyolali (in Central Java) and executed. He was 42. There was no way for the world communist movement to protect their Indonesian comrades. The USSR’s reaction was tepid. The Chinese called it a ‘heinous and diabolical’ crime. But neither the USSR nor China could do anything. The United Nations stayed silent. The PKI had decided to take a path that was without the guns. Its cadre could not defend themselves. They were not able to fight the military and the anti-communist gangs. It was a bloodbath.

Red Star Over the Third World Vijay Prashad, November 2017

The fourth way that anticommunist extermination programs shaped the world is that they deformed the world socialist movement. Many of the global left-wing groups that did survive the twentieth century decided that they had to employ violence and jealously guard power or face annihilation. When they saw the mass murders taking place in these countries, it changed them. Maybe US citizens weren’t paying close attention to what happened in Guatemala, or Indonesia. But other leftists around the world definitely were watching. When the world’s largest Communist Party without an army or dictatorial control of a country was massacred, one by one, with no consequences for the murderers, many people around the world drew lessons from this, with serious consequences. This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask: “Who was right?” In Guatemala, was it Árbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party? Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the détente between the Soviets and Washington. Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported—what the rich countries said, rather than what they did. That group was annihilated.

The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade & The Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World Vincent Bevins, 2020

[djuvlipen]

What are the best books you've read this year?

oooh thank you for asking!

my favourite was definitely lolita. it was so heartbreaking and well written, no other book had ever made me feel like this before. i even made a meme about it

second favourite was the haunting of hill house. i felt very meh about it for pretty much 99% of the book but the ending really took me by surprise and then i couldn't stop thinking about it. third one would be memoirs of hadrian by marguerite yourcenar. i felt very indifferent to it when i finished it but some parts really grew with me and i keep looking back at it

for non-fiction, it's definitely marxism and feminism: toward a unitary theory by lise vogel and left-wing communism by lenin (edit: and also "the jakarta method" by vincent bevins)

[communistkenobi]

hey there! I was wondering if you have any contemporary Marxist/even just leftist book recommendations for an annoying professor dad? he’s conscious of the, uh, enormous human suffering all around him, but unable to imagine anything outside capitalism. I am unfortunately not as academically educated as he is, and the more basic stuff I read isn’t impressive to him.

anyway I know you can’t magically fix my shitty dad, but any book recommendations you’ve got would be greatly appreciated. And thanks so much for all of the excellent Posting, I’ve learned a lot from you.

Academic doomers are the fucking worst! They read the material and concede the basic fact that this current system is rotten but turn that into a wholly negative outlook, refusing to imagine anything beyond it by painting all left wing politics and movements as uniformly “unrealistic.” It is pure cowardice. They are perhaps my least favourite kind of liberal, someone who mistakes their own (ivory tower, western) cynicism for pragmatism. They often tout the more ‘progressive’ version of “liberal in your twenties, conservative in your forties” to students, assuring any young person who makes demands for a better world that their pie-in-the-sky thinking will be beaten out of them one day. I have found historic accounts of past revolutions to be the most helpful for my own politics. Knowing about communist history keeps me from despair. Communism is not untested, it is not abstract, it exists in this world and it continues to exist despite the endless tide of imperial violence of capitalist countries trying to wipe it off the face of this earth. The conclusions the proletariat & all oppressed peoples continue to arrive at about their own exploitation cannot be destroyed, only delayed, and only for so long.

I would recommend reading up on a couple different revolutions - the Haitian, Cuban, and Russian Revolution. These are all proletarian revolutions, meaning they are worker revolutions (in contrast to the American or French revs, which were bourgeois, meaning property owners revolted against their own aristocratic/monarchical system for economic independence). For the Haitian Rev I would recommend the book black jacobins, and for the Russian rev I recommend the Russian Revolution by Walter Rodney. I don’t have any book recs for the Cuban Rev right now sorry! It’s on my to-do list of shit to read up on. Additionally, The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins outlines the anti-communist violence the US conducted around the world during the Cold War - I find this history useful to know as it helps counter the claim that communism “works only in theory but not in practice” or is “outright unrealistic,” as all communist programmes have been subjected to incredible amounts of violence and political & economic & social suppression by western countries in general and the US in specific. They have never been allowed to grow and learn on their own merits. finally, this isn’t a reading but a general recommendation, the podcast blowback is very good, it outlines the imperial history of the United States (a central pillar of that imperialist violence being anti-communist programmes). They cite history books and specific scholars in the podcast if you want to read more on specific events (their second season is about the Cuban Revolution!). I find it to be accessible, meaning they don’t use jargon, although the subject matter can be pretty horrific at times.

anyway I don’t know if any of that will help, I personally am skeptical of being able to save those types of people (ie people who have access to more critical scholarship than virtually anyone else on the planet but refuse to take it seriously - education is not a cure-all and the class interests of professors do a lot of work to inoculate them against left wing views), but who knows!

[scarlineorbit]

ONE SHOT //: “THE HUNGER”

The lights stuttered—half-dead fluorescents pulsing like a migraine overhead. Gunfire echoed somewhere above, sharp and uneven, like someone was sawing through steel with teeth. But Graft didn’t look up. He was crouched beside a body in the hangar—an operative from the logistics wing, throat intact, spine intact, but eyes blown wide from pain.

Not dead. Not yet.

Graft’s fingers hovered just behind the man’s neck, just below the base of the skull, where the spinal column thickened like a river bottlenecking into memory. His touch was surgical. Two fingers, middle and ring, pressed gently into the cleft between vertebrae.

The map opened.

Not to the eyes. Not even the mind. It bloomed like intuition. A raw, illuminated architecture of nerves and pathways burned in his senses—trembling with signals of pain, muscle seizure, bladder failure, a final silent scream still caught in the body like a spasm.

There it is. The locus. The exact thread that had screamed I’m dying. He pulled.

The “page” came loose with a twitch of resistance, like tearing parchment from an old binding. The man’s body spasmed, then went still. His face slackened. Not dead— yet. Just emptied. total brain death. The pain was gone. Stripped clean.

Graft stood, fingers twitching like a violinist between sets. In his nervous system, the echo still rang. Not his pain—but close enough to flinch from it. He didn’t.

Footsteps pounded from behind—he turned. One of the enemy squads, dark armor and hive-mind movement, synthetic overlays across their joints.

“Bio-sign confirmed,” one of them chirped. Not a voice. An audio construct.

Graft blinked. "Good. Try feeling this."

He stepped in close, palm open, fingers flaring with the glowing after-image of the extracted pain-map. The moment he made contact—bare skin to carbon fiber composite—he forced the echo into its circuitry.

The soldier convulsed.

No wound. No blood. Just raw, invasive nerve-pain written into a system that didn’t know how to feel it. It screamed anyway—digitally, physically, a noise like a shredded modem. It fell, twitching, weapon clattering beside it. The others hesitated. Graft looked at them with cold, dull eyes. “I can do this all day and night.” He muttered, his fingers flex at his side.

The hanger was pure chaos. Graft moved forward, stepping over the synthetic. Another echo bleeding through his spine, flaring behind his eyes. Someone else's pain, still warm. He didn't flinch. Behind him, the mechanical body jerked once more before going silent. Graft didn’t turn around. The remaining hostiles recalibrated. You could see it—head ticks, micro-gestures, the stutter in their footwork. Machines trying to make sense of fear.

“Primary anomaly exhibits neurokinetic interface—”

“Gods you're slow,” Graft muttered. He darted forward, too fast for their half-second sync lag to catch. One grabbed for a weapon—Graft caught the wrist with both hands and dug in, thumb against the soft junction of artificial tendon and synthetic nerve.

The contact sent a flash—not just pain. Something worse. The sense of dying with regrets still unspoken. The fear of a mother’s face forgotten. A pet you never went back for. The prognosis of a fast progressing disease with no cure. Graft had pulled that from someone in Jakarta, months ago. It was still lodged in his bones.

He poured it in.

The enemy screamed—not vocal cords, but a choked static that burst from their vocalizer in a waveform so sharp it cracked a nearby light panel. It collapsed, convulsing like a puppet trying to remember it had strings.

Two more flanked him. Graft spun low, scalpel slicing upward across a knee joint. The hiss of fluid. A burst of feedback. He caught the fall with his shoulder and touched—no hesitation, just skin to armor plating, like plugging his nervous system into a live wire. He didn’t even need to extract. The proximity let the pain bleed in—a man from years ago, bleeding out from war, too proud to scream. Graft took it in, then gave it back tenfold.

The enemy dropped.

The third one turned to him.

Graft just watched, breathing slow, like the fight had barely warmed him. His fingers twitched again, jittering with static and aftershock. Blood smeared across the side of his neck—his own or someone else’s, it didn’t matter anymore.

The third one took aim.

Graft just watched, breathing slow, like the fight had barely warmed him. He flexed his fingers, feeling his nerves crackle. One round clipped his shoulder. Another grazed his forearm. He barely noticed. Pain was too common. Too crowded. He was full of it. He consumed it. He surged forward, a blur of bone and tendon, palm pressed to the base of the skull.

This time, he fed in everything.

All of it.

The child who cried out from a scraped knee. The mother who buried her husband after a long battle with a terminal illness. The soldier who bled out alone in the dark, whispering for someone who never came. Every dying breath in this goddamn hanger. Years of screams—catalogued, locked, and now unleashed.

The body detonated. Not in fire—but in violent spasm. Neural systems melted trying to contain what the brain couldn’t name.

It jerked, flailed, went still.

Silence.

Just the stuttering lights. Just the scent of metal and piss and cooked nerve-tissue.

Graft stood among the corpses—organic and synthetic alike. His breath came in shallow clicks. His fingers twitched, still hungry, still reaching. His face was blank. Dead eyes. No satisfaction.

Behind a toppled crate, a lab worker cowered. Mid-forties. Blood at the temple.

Graft’s eyes met his.

“Did you feel them die?” the man whispered. Face pale. Half-horrified. Half-enamored.

Graft tilted his head. “No.”

His eyes flatly flicking to the bodies he had just put down.

“I made them wish they could.”

He walked away, spine rigid, hands trembling. Not from pain.

From what he left behind.

[the-strange-world]

Ranking the top 5 songs on Spotify for some artists

Obsessed- love - like - skip

Noah Kahan

Stick Season

Northern Attitude

Dial Drunk (feat. Post Malone)

Dial Drunk

You’re Gonna Go Far (too emotional)

Hozier

Take Me to Church

Someone New

Work Song

Would That I

Phoebe Bridgers

Motion Sickness

I Know The End

Kyoto

The Gold

Scott Street

NIKI

High School in Jakarta

Backburner

lowkey

Oceans & Engines

Every Summertime

Vance Joy

Riptide

Mess Is Mine

Georgia

Saturday Sun

Missing Piece

Birdy

Keeping Your Head U

Skinny Love

Not About Angels

People Help the People

Wings

Beabadoobee

The perfect pair

The way things go

Glue Song (feat. Clairo)

Glue Song

Death bed (coffee for your head) - Powfu

[aostralstories]

August 31, 2023.

My husband and I went to National Museum on Central Jakarta. The trip was fun! The museum itself is *crowded". Haunted, if you will. I prefer to call it "crowded" because, well, they're just chillin' there.

At masks room, we met and chat with several astral beings in the masks. Almost all of them are males and friendly (especially the Barong masks and statues!), except, of course, the one inhabiting Rangda mask. They were surprised to see Husky (yes, I brought Husky too so he can chat with various new friends there) and asked a lot to him.

Anyway, the one inhabiting Rangda mask is a scary woman, staring at everyone who passes the room judgingly. Photo below was taken 2 days prior our trip, when I went there alone.

Before that, I also show him some other museum exhibits that have friendly "guardian". One of the guardians even acted as a guide and explained to us about the exhibits. His Indonesian vocabularies are limited (he's more proficient in his locak language, but he's so excited telling us this and that around him.

A lot of things happened in this part only, but nit gonna tell you all of it because it's gonna be LONG, haha, sorry!

Anyway, we headed to the newer building, the right wing of the museum to see more exhibits. On one collection, I was called by "someone" who is guarding an inscription.

Mbah* (he looks like an old man) : "Nduk**, take this thing away."

Me : *looks at the inscription and found an eraser on it*

Me : "What the..."

Mbah : "Yeah... Someone put it there, thinking it was funny."

Me : "Ugh, those kind of people..."

I took the eraser VERY carefully, without touching the inscription.

Mbah : "Thank you, Nduk."

Me : "YAY THIS ERASER IS FOR ME!"

Husband : "HEY."

As you can see, the eraser is really good and of a good brand too! So I have to use it, right? Right?!

I look at Mbah.

Me : "Can I keep and use this as mine?"

Mbah : "Of course."

Me : "Yay! Thank you!"

And with that, I got a new eraser hahaha.

At another floor, we were looking at an old, old weapon when I suddenly smelled blood scent. Pretty sure it was the scent of blood, because... It was different that the smell of rust... And my nose was not in the distance where it can pick up the rusty smell, either, in case you are wondering what kind of iron scent I smelled.

I paused, I looked at the old weapon, raised my hand to the weapon (not touching, just... A gesture to attempt to make a contact), then asked...

Me : "What do you want to tell me?"

Weapon : "We took many lives in the war."

Me : "Yeah... Well... I'm not here to blame. It was a... War. And... Your job description is to... Uhhh... Take lives, right? War is always bad, but... I understand your job."

I remember the weapon also flashed a bit of war scene to me... Just a bit, when it said that it had taken a lot of lives.

War... Is always bad and bitter. Yeah...

Anyway, we then took photos in the iconic elephant statue of the museum (hence its nickname, "Museum Gajah"), and I played a bit with the "guardians" of the statue. Shaped like a pair of dogs, shaped like a pair of friends!

**Nduk (Javanese) : a term one used to call a girl, usually used by older people.

*Mbah (Javanese) : a term one used to call elder people.

[bts-boys]

170429 BTS V at The Wings Tour in Jakarta © nuna v do not edit, crop, or remove the watermark

[smithrpbog]

Carrel: "Not long. We'll touchdown soon enough. So go buckle up"

Lover: "She'll be ok. As soon as Carrie gets here, she'll get more playful"

Reilly: he changes his wings to get to a massive size. Flinging Jakarta off of him "Ha! Your days of beating me are over!"

[hargo-news]

PTPP Percepat Pembangunan Gedung Wing 2 Kementerian PUPR di IKN

Jakarta, 22 Mei 2025 – PT PP (Persero) Tbk (“PTPP”), terus menunjukkan komitmennya dalam mendukung pembangunan Ibu Kota Negara (IKN) Nusantara melalui keterlibatannya dalam proyek pembangunan Gedung Wing 2 dan Kawasan Kantor Kementerian Pekerjaan Umum dan Perumahan Rakyat (PUPR). Proyek strategis ini merupakan bagian dari Paket Pekerjaan Konstruksi Terintegrasi Rancang dan Bangun yang memiliki…

[kabartangsel]

PTPP Percepat Pembangunan Gedung Wing 2 Kementerian PUPR di IKN

Jakarta, 22 Mei 2025 – PT PP (Persero) Tbk (“PTPP”), terus menunjukkan komitmennya dalam mendukung pembangunan Ibu Kota Negara (IKN) Nusantara melalui keterlibatannya dalam proyek pembangunan Gedung Wing 2 dan Kawasan Kantor Kementerian Pekerjaan Umum dan Perumahan Rakyat (PUPR). Proyek strategis ini merupakan bagian dari Paket Pekerjaan Konstruksi Terintegrasi Rancang dan Bangun yang memiliki…

[the-forgottensaint]

Tubuhnya terasa hangat, bukan karena cinta, tapi karena rutinitas yang telah ia hafal seperti pola EKG. Osvani duduk di atas ranjang, membiarkan ujung jarinya menyusuri garis rahang Dr. Elias yang masih setengah tertidur. Cahaya dini hari menyusup lewat kisi jendela, menggoreskan bayangan luka di dinding putih apartemennya.

“Ini akan jadi pagi yang panjang,” gumam Elias, masih dengan suara serak.

Osvani tidak menjawab. Ia hanya menatap langit-langit seolah sedang menghitung berapa kali ia harus mengulang kesalahan ini untuk bisa merasa hidup. Tangannya bergerak pelan, menyapu rambutnya ke belakang, lalu meraih botol kecil di atas meja.

Lamotrigine.

Ia membuka tutupnya. Menatap pil di telapak tangannya seperti menatap bekas doa yang tak pernah terkabul. Tapi tidak hari ini. Hari ini, ia ingin mendengar mereka.

Pil itu diletakkan kembali, tak disentuh.

“Van,” suara Elias memanggil, lembut. “Kamu tahu, aku bisa saja jatuh cinta.”

“Aku tidak,” jawabnya tanpa menoleh.

“Kenapa kamu terus lakukan ini, kalau tidak ada rasa?”

“Karena aku harus menyalakan tubuhku sebelum aku menyentuh jantung orang lain.”

Dan seperti itu, ritual selesai. Ia mandi, mengenakan seragam, dan melangkah keluar—meninggalkan Elias dan sisa malam yang tak pernah dimaksudkan untuk dikenang.

Jalan menuju rumah sakit masih senyap. Jakarta belum terbangun, tapi di dalam dirinya, sesuatu sudah bergeliat. Suara-suara. Bukan bisikan… lebih seperti desakan dari balik kulit.

Kau tahu dia akan mati juga, bukan?

Kau cuma menunda ajal. Bukan menyembuhkan.

Kenapa tidak kau berikan yang lebih baik? Yang abadi?

Langkahnya mantap memasuki Cath Lab. Tim sudah bersiap, pasien sudah diintubasi, tekanan darah dijaga dengan norepinefrin, dan monitor memekik pelan.

“ST elevation di anterior, LAD sepertinya culprit-nya,” kata salah satu residen.

Osvani mengangguk. “Kita lakukan angiografi. Masuk lewat femoral. Siapkan stent ukuran 2.75x18 mm.”

Semuanya berjalan seperti biasa—seperti tarian yang sudah ia kuasai ribuan kali. Guide wire masuk. Kontras disuntikkan. Arteri tampak tersumbat.

Suara dalam dirinya kembali, kali ini lebih jelas.

Kau lihat penyumbatannya? Itu kelemahan manusia.

Darah. Lemak. Lemah.

Aku bisa tunjukkan padamu sesuatu yang lebih kuat.

“Predilatasi dulu, balon. Tekanan sepuluh atmosfer,” katanya pada perawat.

Tangan kirinya sedikit gemetar. Entah karena kafein… atau karena Naeva mulai mendekat.

Naeva.

Nama itu tak pernah diucapkan, tapi selalu hadir.

Bayangan dirinya yang lebih tajam, lebih jujur. Tanpa moral, tanpa ragu.

Kau bahkan tidak mencinta pekerjaanmu, Van.

Kau hanya mencandu kekuasaan memegang hidup seseorang.

Stent dipasang. Aliran darah kembali. Tim bersorak kecil, lega.

“Kita berhasil,” kata residen.

Osvani menatap monitor. “Belum tentu. Kembali perfusi bukan berarti kembali hidup.”

Mereka tak mengerti apa maksudnya. Dan itu lebih baik.

Saat semuanya selesai, dan pasien dikembalikan ke ICU, ia melepas sarung tangan dan berjalan keluar tanpa sepatah kata pun. Langit mulai cerah, tapi kepalanya redup. Suara-suara belum pergi.

Di ruang istirahat, Elias sudah menunggunya, entah bagaimana caranya tahu di mana harus muncul.

“Aku bawa kopi. Yang kamu suka.”

Ia menatap gelas itu sebentar, lalu berkata: “Tinggalkan saja. Dan ikut aku.”

Kamar kecil di sudut wing dokter jadi saksi berikutnya. Mereka melakukannya lagi—tanpa cumbuan, tanpa kelembutan. Gerakan tubuh, gesekan kulit, hanyalah cara mengusir gema yang terus melolong dari dalam dirinya.

Kau pikir ini akan membuatku diam?

Kau pikir orgasme bisa membungkam dewa?

Kau milikku, Van. Aku yang akan menyentuh jantung berikutnya.

Setelah semuanya usai, Elias mengangkat kepalanya dari bahunya. “Apa kamu baik-baik saja?”

Osvani hanya menatap langit-langit.

“Aku tidak kelelahan,” bisiknya.

“Aku hanya sedang tumbuh tanduk.”

⸻

[hermes-transmegistus]

I don’t mean to rain on your “English major” parade, but you need to consider studying a bit of history, too. Your understanding of the Russian Revolution seems to be informed exclusively by Animal Farm. It did not overthrow a tyrant just to replace it with another — it replaced the absolute monarchy with a people’s government that dramatically improved living conditions for the masses and installed the world’s first Marxist national government. Say what you will about Stalin on a personal level, but the Soviet government was better for common people in nearly every regard than its predecessor. Equating it to tsarist rule demonstrates an ignorance that comes from blindly accepting right-wing propaganda.

Also, George Orwell did not spend his life fighting fascism, he spent it fighting for liberal capitalism and its consequent imperialism. This is (to anyone even remotely on the left) a bad thing. Hell, he was a colonial police officer for the British Imperial occupation in Myanmar. That’s your “antifascist”? After 1945, when the liberal capitalist powers pivoted to embracing global fascism to fight communism, he gleefully became part of the propaganda machine set on demonizing communist governments in order to disrupt the global left. And now, you are buying that propaganda without any critical thought about it.

I’m not trying to be mean or anything, but you need to stop spreading and defending capitalist propaganda. Learn about the post-ww2 marriage between liberal capitalism and global fascism. Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti and The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins are good places to start. The truth is out there to find, but it’s not part of your high school curriculum. Branch out a bit!

very funny to me when people act like animal farm and 1984 are revolutionary anti government texts that the Powers That Be dont want you to read when they have literally been a part of every standard middle/highschool english lit cirriculum in the usa and beyond for decades. precisely because theyre such convenient primers to propagandize that Commies = Bad. the government is quite literally making kids read them