To step off a building is to give oneself to physics. It is an act of surrender to the one, undeniable law of the world: gravity.
Rossie stepped into the void, and the law broke.
There was no sudden, sickening drop. There was no rush of wind, no scream ripped from her lungs by the fall. Instead, the moment her foot left the cold marble of the balcony, the world vanished.
It was not a fall; it was an erasure.
The sound of Jakarta—the distant traffic, the thrum of a million lives—did not fade. It was "cut," as if a cosmic wire had been snipped. The glittering, frozen lights of the city smeared into streaks of neon and then snapped out of existence, plunging her into a darkness so total, so absolute, that she wasn't sure her eyes were even open.
The air, which should have been rushing past her, was gone. In its place was a thick, cold, crushing pressure, like being at the bottom of a frozen ocean. It pressed against her skin, her chest, her eardrums. She tried to gasp, to scream, but the void stole her breath, swallowing the sound before it was even made.
She was falling, but she was not moving. She was trapped in a single, terrifying moment of non-existence.
Panic, pure and primal, seized her. She was untethered from everything. She was nowhere.
Then, a new sensation: his hand.
Maher Xander's grip, which she hadn't felt in the transition, was now the only anchor in the void. It was clamped around her upper arm, a band of unyielding steel. It wasn't a comforting hold; it was a proprietary one. He was not saving her; he was transporting his property. The contact was the only thing that proved she still existed.
The pressure intensified, the darkness seemed to fold in on itself, and then, as suddenly as it had begun, it ended.
A sound. A soft, oiled click, like a heavy door settling into a frame.
Her feet hit a surface. It was not the hard, unforgiving pavement of the street below. It was soft, plush, and stable.
The crushing pressure vanished. The air rushed back into her lungs in a painful, ragged gasp. Her ears popped.
Maher Xander released her arm. He didn't push her, but the simple absence of his grip made her stumble. Her legs, which had forgotten their function, gave way. She collapsed, catching herself on her hands and knees.
She was on a rug. A rug of impossible softness, woven from silk or some finer, unknown thread.
"Get up."
His voice was not a command. It was a simple statement of fact, as devoid of emotion as it had been on the balcony.
Rossie's hands were shaking so violently she could barely push herself upright. She was breathing in the scent of sandalwood, old paper, and something metallic, like ozone.
She slowly rose to her feet, her silk party dress, which had felt so elegant and grown-up an hour ago, now feeling like a child's costume.
She was in a room. Or, more accurately, a small palace.
It was a penthouse. But it was not her penthouse. Her family's home, with its bright, trendy Senopati aesthetic, was a sterile, flimsy box compared to this.
This place was vast. The ceilings were two, maybe three stories high, supported by columns of dark, polished wood that seemed to drink the light. The floors were a seamless expanse of black marble, softened by intricate rugs that looked centuries old. The furniture was heavy, elegant, and of no style she could name—a dark chaise lounge here, a massive, carved desk there, shelves that reached the ceiling, filled with leather-bound books, not objects.
And then, there was the view.
The "walls" on three sides of the massive room were not walls at all. They were glass, from the marble floor to the impossRequest.md" ceiling.
And through them, she saw the city.
She saw Jakarta, spread out like a glittering carpet of diamonds and topaz, the endless rivers of headlights flowing through its concrete canyons. She could see the glowing towers of the SCBD, the pinprick of the Monas monument in the distance, the dark, sleeping sprawl of the suburbs.
But the view was wrong. It was terrifyingly, impossibly wrong.
They weren't in a building, looking out. They were above the buildings. No, not above. They were next to them.
She walked, her legs robotic, toward the nearest glass wall. On her right, so close she felt she could touch it, was the glowing roof of a Sudirman skyscraper. She could count the windows on its upper floors. On her left, another tower. She was suspended between them, in a space that did not exist, looking down on a city that could not see her.
"Where are we?" she whispered, her voice a dry rasp.
"Home," Maher XAn.der replied. He was standing by the massive desk, shrugging off his impeccably tailored suit jacket as if he had just returned from a mundane day at the office. He placed it on a chair.
"This... this isn't possible," she said, her hands pressing against the glass. It was not cold, like the glass on her balcony. It was room temperature, but it felt dead, with no vibration, no life from the city beyond.
"Possibility is a matter of perspective," Maher said, his back to her. He was pouring a dark liquid from a crystal decanter into a glass. "You are accustomed to the laws of your world. They are small, and they no longer apply to you."
He turned, holding the glass. "These are the new laws. You will learn them."
He walked toward her, not offering her a drink, but holding his own. He stopped a few feet away, his silver eyes analytical, his presence sucking the warmth from the air.
"This is my home. By the terms of the contract, it is now yours."
"This is a prison," she spat, the first spark of her broken spirit returning.
"The two are not mutually exclusive," he replied, taking a sip. "A cage, no matter how opulent, is still a cage. You are observant. That will serve you well."
He set the glass down and began to walk the perimeter of the room, his hands clasEda.md behind his back. He was a professor, and this was his lecture. Rossie, his unwilling, terrified student.
"Rule one," he said, his voice echoing slightly in the vast, silent space. "You are my property. The contract signed in 1753 was an indenture of debt. Your family defaulted on that debt for seven generations. Today, the collateral was seized. That is you. Your life, your will, your future—they are no longer yours. They are mine. Do you understand?"
Rossie just stared at him, her heart a cold stone in her chest.
"I require a verbal affirmation," he said, his tone sharpening fractionally.
"I... understand," she forced out.
"Good. Rule two." He gestd.md to the glittering city beyond the glass. "You will have no contact with that world. None. Your phone is gone, as is your laptop. You will find no computers here that connect to their 'internet.' You will find no way to send a signal."
"My parents..." she began, her voice cracking. "My friends... they'll look for me. They'll call the police."
Maher actually smiled. It was the most terrifying thing she had ever seen. It was not a smile of humor. It was the baring of teeth, a brief, reptilian gesture of contempt.
"Who will they call, Rossie? What will they report? That you vanished from a locked, frozen room thirty stories in the sky? That you stepped off a balcony and simply... disappeared? They will find nothing. They will grieve. They will, as is the human custom, erect a small, sad monument in their minds. And then they will move on. Your 'kemakmuran'—the prosperity you were born from—demands it."
Tears were now streaming silently down her face, hot tracks of shame and terror.
"And if I scream?" she whispered, looking at the nearby tower. "If I break the glass?"
Maher followed her gaze. "Try."
He gestd.md to the wall. Rossie, in a fit of desperate, hopeless rage, ran at it. She pounded on the glass with her fists. The glass didn't vibrate. It was like hitting solid rock. She screamed, a raw, primal sound from the depths of her soul.
The sound died instantly, swallowed by the room. It was thick, silent, and absolute.
"This place," Maher explained with the patience of a collector describing a butterfly's case, "is not in Jakarta. It is beside it. It is a pocket, a shadow. The walls are not glass. They are the void, given form. Nothing you do will be heard. Nothing you do will be seen."
He paused, letting the crushing weight of her isolation settle on her.
"Rule three," he continued, as if she weren't sobbing. "You will not leave this space. The doors you see"—he pointed to several dark, wooden archways—"lead to other parts of this residence. A library. A gallery. Your quarters. They do not lead outside. There is no 'outside.' The only way in, or out, is the way we came. And you will only use it with my express permission and in my company."
He had circled the room and now stood before her again. She had sunk to her knees, her party, her life, her self, all shattered.
"You are a bride, Rossie Aurora," he said, his voice quiet. "The bride of a contract. This is your life now."
He looked at her, a weeping, broken thing in a ruined silk dress, kneeling on his priceless rug. He seemed to assess her, a tool to be stored.
"Your rooms are through the second arch on the left. You will find... appropriate clothing. I suggest you bathe and rest. I have business to attend to."
He turned and walked toward his desk, his back straight, his purpose clear. He had collected his debt, and now the novelty was over.
"Wait!" she cried out, her voice raw.
He stopped but did not turn.
"Why?" she begged. "Why me?"
Mais.mdr Xander stood in silence for a long moment, the silver of his hair catching the light of a city he ruled.
"Because you were owed," he said, without a trace of malice or sympathy. It was, like everything else, a simple, cold, contractual fact.
He continued walking, leaving her alone in the vast, opulent, silent cage. Rossie curled into a ball on the floor, the sobs racking her body, her cries unheard by the entire world.