Animalis (26 page)

“Now that I’ve seen your leg … Jax, was it?” Her voice bounced around the cargo hold of the plane. “Amazing. The foot is completely grown back. I know that one of you can use the machine. It doesn’t matter which one.” She came back into view. In her hand was a syringe. Her golden eyes moved between Hank and Jax. “You will do.”

And she approached Hank, lifting the syringe.

Chapter 22

Atonement

“No! What is that? No, please. Stop!” Hank cried.

Jax could hear him struggling under the harness.

“He doesn’t know. Neither of us know!” Jax shouted.

Narasimha checked the needle. She was really going to inject Hank.

“Do it to me! I can help you,” Jax said.

It was all wrong: Hank was trying to bring out her animal side, and make her lose control, wasn’t he? Now she was going to inject Hank with something.

She didn’t listen to either of them. The needle went into Hank’s arm. The plunger compressed. When she pulled it out, Hank spat at her. He screamed and cursed.

“That’s not a full dose,” she said. “No, not like the one you gave to my Rema, my hyena. You remember Rema? She couldn’t say very much when we found her in that hospital. No, poor Rema will be crippled for the rest of her life. But she is strong. Not like a human.” Narasimha slid the syringe into a recycling duct. “If this doesn’t kill you, then I will give you the full dose.”

Jax could hear Hank struggling in his restraints. Was it actually the same tormenting serum that Hank had given to the hyena? The straps would hold back the grotesque distortions his body would be trying to make. Jax could already hear him sucking in spasmodic breaths.

“Aaahhhhh!” Hank’s scream rose to an unbearable shriek.

Narasimha walked to the other side of the cargo hold and began manipulating a small section of a wall screen.

“It’s the … DN … DNA. All in the … in the DNA.” Hank was starting to ramble.

Jax caught another movement inside the cargo hold. Something white. It slid over a box and came across the floor to Jax. Of course it was Moxie. Jax felt both relieved and frustrated to see her. She was here again, miraculously, but could there be someone else with her? She stood and rested her paw on Jax’s leg. He started to struggle in the harness.

“Please, Moxie,” Jax whispered. He kept watching the rest of the compartment, hoping Grimshaw would appear as well. “Straps. Chew the straps.”

Moxie turned her head and then scurried back into the boxes. No, it was too much to hope for, but how had she gotten into the plane? Maybe this time she had only come to watch them be tortured and killed.

Narasimha turned around from the wall screen and started to approach Jax and Hank.

“No … controls,” Hank mumbled. “No way … to access the computer in the … pyr-pyramid. eeeeEEEEE—inside of yourself! The peptide … transmitters.”

“So weak,” Narasimha said to Hank. Then she turned to Jax. “I would rather have seen you under the drug. Could you have fought it?”

“Nara, our third warehouse has just been attacked,” the warthog said from where it stood in the doorway to the cockpit. “Krishna—he was killed!” it bleated.

Narasimha snarled. “What?” She looked at Hank, then back to the warthog. With another growl, she turned and went into the cockpit.

Jax heard the scratch of Moxie climbing over boxes toward him again. She came quickly to his side and began biting the straps.

“Good girl, Moxie,” Jax whispered. “Hold on, Hank.”

“Destroy … We have to destroy …” Hank looked like he could barely breathe from the tension in his body.

The first strap ripped apart and Jax could feel his knees loosen. Moxie was quick to break through the second strap, and Jax’s weight pulled uncomfortably at the last strap around his head. He pushed with his toes, balancing, while Moxie climbed to tear at the last strap.

Jax looked around the room for something he could use to stop Narasimha. A weapon, something. He saw a storage compartment in the floor, like on the rat plane, possibly some supplies, maybe a laser tool.

The strap tore and Jax expected to crumple onto the ground, but gravity had released its grip on them. That meant the plane had reached its apex and was gliding through space. Now he didn’t need to support himself.

“Moxie, can you get Hank?” Jax asked.

Moxie rubbed her soft fur against Jax’s cheek before bounding over to Hank.

Then Jax heard a sound from the cockpit. He had to hurry. The low gravity would at least help him move quickly through the cargo space. Jax leaped, and soared several yards. He could see the outlines of the compartment on the floor. He grabbed the handle and stopped himself before pulling it open.

This was a much larger compartment than he had expected, holding several space suits, straps, nets, and shock sticks.

The door hinges to the cockpit creaked; Narasimha would be coming for him soon. He snatched a shock stick, then launched through the air, pushing down on the hand grip and lighting up the shock stick along the way.

The door to the cockpit swung open just as Jax reached it. But it wasn’t Narasimha in front of him.

“Nara!” the warthog grunted.

The hiss of the electricity shot forward with Jax’s jab. Narasimha’s hand came from the side grabbing the end of the stick. Her body took the impact of the blow, shaking and convulsing. Her hand had clamped, out of control, to the shock stick. As her body jerked and twisted, the stick was pulled from Jax’s hands. The power shut off and it floated into the air.

“No!” the warthog cried.

It had escaped injury altogether, Jax realized. It grabbed the shock stick, and it lit up again.

“Nara!” the warthog shouted. “No, get away!”

It jabbed at Jax, and he moved away to get out of range. Narasimha’s body floated in the air.

“I’ll flush them out!” the warthog yelled. It pulled the door closed, with Narasimha inside, and the sound of the lock clicked.

Flushed out? Let them be sucked out into space? It wouldn’t, would it? But … didn’t Narasimha need them?

Jax looked at Hank. Moxie had chewed through his straps, releasing him from the harnesses, and he was floating into the air. It seemed like the serum had started to fade, easing the painful expression in his posture. Jax needed to get the space suits, just in case the warthog was crazy enough to open the cargo bay door.

Jax pulled two of the suits from the storage compartment and went to Hank. His breathing sounded as though it was starting to normalize, but Jax could still see waves of pain tensing up his body every few minutes. Jax pushed Hank’s legs into the suit first. Then he pulled the second piece over his head and arms. Once Hank was tucked inside, he sealed the suit together.

The alarms began wailing through the plane and Jax felt his stomach churn. How soon before the doors opened? In case he didn’t have time to get a suit on himself, he helped Moxie crawl inside Hank’s suit. He put the helmet over Hank’s head and sealed it with a hiss.

An icy wind began to tug at Jax’s skin.
No—too late!
The door was opening; the death of space was creeping in. He had his suit legs on when his fingers began to freeze. Arms in. He lost feeling in his feet. His gloved hands pressed the two pieces of the suit together.
Might be sealed;
he couldn’t tell in his panic. Helmet on. He shoved a dial on the front of the suit. Oxygen. He breathed.

Jax bumped into the ceiling. His limbs had become rigid, and his mind was swimming in a cloud of partially evaporated blood. But now the air inside the suit was staying, and he hadn’t died. Not yet. This might be their one chance to escape. Jax tried to grasp fragments of a plan.

Where was Hank? He had been beside him, hadn’t he? Jax twisted, searching for the floating limp body of Hank, but he wasn’t there.

Jax pushed off the ceiling to reorient himself. He saw a movement toward the tail of the plane and turned to see Hank floating toward the open cargo door. In a few moments, he would be drifting out into space. Jax didn’t time to do anything but act. He thrust his legs against the ceiling and shot down the length of the cargo hold. His plan hadn’t included taking their chances drifting into space, but even if he was able to get a cable or strap anchored to the ship in time to snatch Hank and pull him back into the plane, they would have to face Narasimha and her militants, maybe more torture, maybe the arena and death. Hank’s ramblings might have been enough for them to discover how to use the pyramid, and then it would be over for the entire human race.

The pyramid—gleaming metal, nine feet tall, the four sturdy beams of the base strapped to the floor of the cargo hold—caught Jax’s attention.
Take the pyramid!
He couldn’t let it slip out of their hands again. If their bodies were going to burn a fiery streak in the atmosphere, then the pyramid was coming with them.

Jax shifted his position to prepare to redirect his momentum toward it. He caught a section of shelving and sent himself toward the big metal pyramid.

The vibration of the nylon straps slipping out of their holds shook Jax’s gloves. He had it free in a few moments. As he wrapped his arms around the big metal beam, Jax felt it: consciousness, life. The pyramid was alive. The feeling was strange to comprehend. It didn’t move, or react to his touch, but within Jax, he felt some awareness from the metal, reacting to him. The pyramid was cold and unmoving, but it was alive.

He pulled, slowly dragging the heavy mass from its resting place. Once it was floating through the air, Jax held on. It was too late to stop now; Hank had cleared the lip of the bay doors.

The inside of the cargo hold drifted by: textured metal floor, flashing lights. There was silence within the space suit, except for the air moving in and out of his own lungs. Jax thought there should be a sense of doom coming over him, a pit forming in his stomach, but there was nothing.

Jax rode the pyramid like it was a comfortable porch swing. His legs dangled over the edge of the bottom beam, and he wrapped his arm around one of the four vertical beams. It was actually pleasant, the pyramid keeping him company. The blue glow of the Earth filled his vision, spreading out over the horizon, once he finally floated out into space. Rippled, swirling, vivid clouds gave a depth to the globe that felt close enough to touch. Even the stars felt within his reach.

What would Grimshaw do with the rest of her life now, without him? Living by her side for the two months with the Animalis, Jax had wanted to pretend it could last forever. But what would life be like if they had tried to join their lives together? Would he wait until his commitment to the military had expired, visiting her a few times out of the year? Would he continue to build a career? Would they have had a child together: Hodge and Grimshaw taking care of the baby while Jax spent far too much time working? He didn’t even know what Grimshaw did for her income. It seemed like it was something she never thought about, like her life was a series of adventures. Jax’s heart burned with the desire to experience all of those adventures. Whatever their life could have been, it wouldn’t have been normal. But he wouldn’t have had it any other way, if she had felt the same way.

Hank’s body was slowly coming closer. Maybe he had already died, overcome by the thralls of the painful drug. It wouldn’t matter in the next few minutes anyway.

A white star caught Jax’s eye, hovering just beside Hank. It could have been right next to him. In the vacuum that surrounded them, there was no haze from the atmosphere to scatter and blur the light coming off of it; clarity made the distance hard to distinguish. It was solid, and pearly white. But it wasn’t really a star …

It was a plane.

It was moving toward them, growing in size. In just a few minutes, it would be on top of them. And it filled Jax with hope.

Chapter 23

Collision

The Atticus was getting closer. Hank was getting closer. Narasimha’s plane was drifting away behind them. Maybe this wasn’t the time for Jax to die after all.

Hank started to move—he was alive! A crackle sounded inside Jax’s helmet.

“Hello? … Hello?” Hank said, still sounding groggy, but at least he had managed to turn on the suit’s communications.

It crossed Jax’s mind that whatever was said could be transmitted to the plane they had just escaped from.

“Hank. I’m sorry, it’s hard to explain. How are you feeling?” Jax asked.

“Who-Who is this?” Hank said.

“This is Jax. I’m floating behind you. Can you see that plane in front of you? It’s the Atticus, Hank!” Jax realized he was speaking to Hank as if he hadn’t just felt like he had had his insides ripped apart.

“Jax?” Hank sounded confused. He hadn’t he lost his memory, had he? “Where’s the pyramid? The lioness.” He choked with what sounded like an echo of the pain.

Jax breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ve got the pyramid. We made it out. It was Moxie. Somehow she followed us and made it onto the plane with us,” Jax said. “She’s in your suit with you. I’ll have to tell you what happened when we make it back to Earth alive.”

“That’s Grimshaw … coming toward us?” Hank asked.

The plane was getting big now. In reality, they were all cruising around the Earth at nearly the same blistering speed: the Atticus, Jax and Hank, and Narasimha’s plane. The relative difference between the movements was subtle, and felt like a slow-motion ballet.

“To the rescue,” Jax said.

“I might be able to shift channels to communicate with her plane over the headset. Do you know how to do that?” Hank asked.

“I don’t have my retina monitor anymore. I don’t see a way to manipulate the suit,” Jax said.

“There’s a pad on the back of the helmet; it should link to your brainwaves for controls. What does it say in the heads-up display?”

“No, I don’t see anything.” There was no HUD. The helmet must have been malfunctioning somehow.

“Alright, I’ll come back to this channel in a minute,” Hank said. There was a pop, and the soft hiss from Hank’s microphone went silent.

Jax was alone in his head again. Narasimha had probably gained control of her body by now. What would she do when she found out they had taken the pyramid out into space with them? It was possible that her plane, or at least she and the warthog, had weapons. Would they turn around and come after them?

Jax pushed his awkward, suited body around to get a view of the plane. It was only about twenty yards away. The cargo hold was still open, with the warning lights still blinking. If it slowed down, just slightly, it could scoop them right back up into its terrible belly.

The sound of breathing came back into Jax’s helmet.

“Alright. Well, we’ve got some backup coming,” Hank said, sounding more alert. “When she saw us get captured, she got a hold of Captain Hernandez. Sounds like he is coming to intercept us!”

“Hank, I’m worried we don’t have much time,” Jax said. “When we got out of the plane, I was able to hit Narasimha with a shock stick. But she has to have gotten movement back by now. She might even be listening to this now. Can Grimshaw, I dunno, bump us away from the other plane?”

“I’ll tell her,” Hank said, and was gone again.

Jax got in a position where he could look back and forth between the two planes. Grimshaw was very close now. He could see little puffs from thrusters that maneuvered her plane while at the edge of space. Jax looked back at the militant plane. It was closer, much closer than before.

“Hey! I see you! Grab my hand. Jax, get me!” Hank shouted like the sound of his voice was separated by the physical distance that their bodies were. Jax looked around. Hank wasn’t in front of him anymore.

“I’m just under you!” Hank said.

There he was, floating a few feet below the pyramid. Jax clenched his legs around the base beam he had been sitting on, and swung down to reach him. His hand stopped just four inches away from Hank’s. Jax loosened the grip on the pyramid with his legs, and tried to hold on by squeezing his calves against it.

It worked. Jax clutched Hank’s hand. Hank’s face looked gaunt, the strength sucked from it, but his eyes grew excited, looking past Jax, to the pyramid.

“Pull me in!” Hank said.

Jax moved to get a better hold on the pyramid, getting ready to pull Hank up with him.

“Hurry. I just need to be inside it,” he almost pleaded.

Jax stopped. Hank wanted to use the pyramid so desperately. It made Jax uneasy. Hank was losing control of himself, forcing them to peruse the pyramid in an obvious trap, hiding Jax from the captain. Jax could feel a cold dread, and kept his arm straight, holding Hank at a distance.

“Jax?” Hank looked at him, confused and angry.

The view below Hank changed. The blue and white and green of the Earth were being covered with dark metal. The cargo hold of the Animalis plane was swallowing them again.

Grimshaw’s plane was so close; the white reflection filled the glass of Hank’s helmet. The two planes were going to collide, with them right in the middle.

“Hold on!” Jax yelled.

Silently, the nose of the Atticus smashed into the tail of the other plane. Pieces of metal crumpled and drifted away. The open bay began to move again, shifting up and away with the impact. The floor came swinging up at them. Jax could hear the sound of the impact first through Hank’s microphone picking up the vibrations that it sent through his suit. Then Jax was hit. The two of them were pinned between the swinging door and the pyramid. The pressure was intense as the momentum of the pyramid was redirected.

When the edge of the door finally released them, the situation reversed. The door had hit them like a baseball bat, flinging them out into space. Jax’s grip on the pyramid was slipping as it pulled away in a crazy spin.

“Hold onto me, Jax!” Hank gasped.

The weight of Hank’s body, moving at a different angle from the pyramid, was ripping his hand away from Jax. The fabric of the gloves slipped, and Hank fell away, disappearing as the pyramid spun Jax’s view away.

The pyramid rotated away from where Hank had slipped off, taking Jax with it. In a moment, when the pyramid rotated back around, Jax might be able to reach him, but the pyramid was starting to slip away from his grip as well.

Jax fought the centrifugal force, hugging his body to the beam of the pyramid. The muscles in his arms burned with the effort. He pulled himself up on the beam, climbing toward the center of the pyramid. Finally, the force pushing him out decreased as his center mass came into alignment with the pyramid’s. He pulled his body into the center of the pyramid where he could relax his muscles.

He wanted to close his eyes; the Earth, stars, and planes were spinning around him. Until something stopped him, he would keep flipping head over feet. After a moment, the Earth came into view and he watched what was happening to the planes for a few seconds. Then the stars rotated back around and it was back to watching space.

The two planes moved into view again. They were slowly moving together below them. Grimshaw’s plane was beginning to turn sideways, sending more chunks of debris drifting as its bottom dragged against the tail of the other plane. The Atticus was in a much better position to keep flying than the Animalis plane, which was drifting down with its nose pointed at the Earth. Then the stars were back into view.

Hank was a foot out of reach of the pyramid now. But soon it would be two, and then four, and then a thousand, as the two minutely different paths continued to diverge.

“Hank, I’m sorry! Don’t worry, Hernandez is coming. Felix and Maven will be here to pick us up,” Jax said.

The view of the planes was swinging back into his vision.

“And my Animalis will be here to meet them, Jax,” Narasimha’s voice growled in Jax’s helmet. “The pyramid is not something I’m going to give up easily.”

Now Jax could see the planes floating above the Earth.

“Jax?” Hank asked. “Who is that?”

“The lioness,” Jax said. “Narasimha.”

“I’m glad you remembered my name,” she said.

Jax could see another plane approaching where the first two had collided. It was much larger than the Atticus and Narasimha’s plane.

“It has significance to me,” Narasimha said. “Are you familiar with Hindu deities, human?”

Why was she speaking to them like this? Wasn’t she trying to reorient her plane into a position to either come get the pyramid, or to escape?

“There have been many incarnations of Lord Vishnu, the god of this world. But none has been loved by the humans throughout the millennia like Narasimha.”

The Earth and planes were rotating back into view. The third plane was gradually getting closer, and now a fourth plane had appeared. It was sleek and black, with wings that ended in sharp points. The rear stabilizers were nearly as large as the wings—not one of their planes, so likely Animalis. Neither of the two most recently arrived planes looked like fat, weaponless, cargo planes. They were military. But Jax wasn’t paying attention to the planes anymore. Something small was floating above the planes now. He couldn’t see what it was before the stars were back in front of him.

“Half man, half lion,” Narasimha went on. “He protects his faithful subjects who call on him for protection. My subjects are those who have been maligned by the belligerence of mankind.”

The four planes came back into view. The thing above the planes was bigger now. It was moving toward Jax and Hank. A space suit? Was it Narasimha? Jax tried to keep the figure in view, but the movement made him sick and dizzy.

“Hank? Jax? This is Hurley! Are you on this channel?” Grimshaw said over the headset.

“Hurley!” Jax felt his heart leap at the sound of her voice. “We’re floating out into space, above the planes.”

“Jax!” she said.

“For every creature, Animalis or animal, which is killed by man, I will exact justice for the crime,” Narasimha continued.

“Oh, who is that?” Grimshaw asked.

“In the world to come, we will use the name ‘human’ as a curse.”

“That sounds pretty serious. Jax, I’m not sure if I approve your choice of friends,” Grimshaw said. “Right there, Hodge. I see you, Jax. We’re coming to pick you up.”

The Earth rotated back around. The floating figure was closer. It wasn’t moving very fast, but it was faster than Jax and Hank. And it wasn’t Grimshaw in the suit. Jax could see the face wrinkled into a snarl, golden yellow fur, and intense feline eyes. It was Narasimha.

Grimshaw’s majestic white plane was maneuvering around now, starting to move out to them. Maybe she could bump the lioness and send her tumbling out into space.

“Hello? Hello? This is US Border Patrol Reinforcement, Battalion 6 attempting to contact Catcher 6 Actual. Anyone one this channel? Catcher 6 Actual if you can hear me, please respond.” A new voice came into the conversation.

“F-Felix?” Hank asked.

“Yes? Who is this? Jax? Hank? Are you guys there?” Now Jax recognized the voice of Felix. Jax could see that the third plane was his company plane, the
Hornet
.

“Yes, we’re here,” Jax said. “We are stranded in space suits. Maybe two hundred yards above where you’re at now.”

The second Animalis plane was starting to arch up behind the Atticus. The
Hornet
fired a burst of machine gun rounds as a warning.

The scene was almost out of view, and Jax strained to watch. The Animalis plane fired a rocket. It flew through space at the
Hornet
. A flare shot out to it and the rocket exploded before it hit the
Hornet
. The hot point of light sent pieces flying in all directions, and the
Hornet
was pushed with the force of it. Then the scene spun out of Jax’s view.

“Wow!” Felix cried. There was a sound of him bumping into something, being thrown with the impact. “What was that? Maven? You alright?”

“Yes. I was clear of it,” Maven said. Her voice came over the speaker. “They shot a missile at us. More incoming.”

“We’re alright. This bird could probably take a direct hit and still be alright. Wow!” Felix yelled with another barrage of noise. When the noise had settled, he spoke again: “Maven, did you hear Jax? Can you move to them?”

“Maven? Are you in a pod?” Hank asked.

“Yes. Coming to get you,” she said.

The scene was coming back around for Jax.

“Hurley?” Jax said. “You should get out of here. That black plane coming up behind you has rockets.”

“We can handle ourselves,” Grimshaw said.

The blue glow of a shock stick lit up in Narasimha’s hand. She was very close now. On the next rotation, Jax would have to face her.

“Hodge, let out some drone mines,” Grimshaw said.

Two dozen tiny balls floated out of a compartment that opened up on the bottom of the Atticus. Each of them had their own thrusters, and they spread out in a pattern behind the plane.