Animalis (31 page)

“Humanity needs you, Nara,” he said. And he meant it. Jax wanted to hold onto the hope he was feeling. It was a moment that held the promise of a new future, but one that would still be filled with pain and struggle.

Jax brought his hand up and began to stroke her soft, golden fur on the back of her neck. She hadn’t attack him. She hadn’t ripped him to pieces as she could have easily done.

Something inside the lioness rumbled under his hand and tickled his fingertips. He kept stroking the fur when he realized what it was: her deep, rhythmic purr.

Epilogue

Hank sat on the edge of his bed, letting the weight of his head sink down between his hands. The hairs on the back of his head brushed against the palms of his hands, tickling his scalp.

A tremor of pain cascaded through his body, an echo of the drug still making its way out of his system. When he closed his eyes, he could see the lioness standing before him again, her terrifying eyes, and teeth, and snarl.

“Jax,” he said out loud to himself. The rescue plane hadn’t found him or the pyramid. This time he couldn’t hide from the guilt; he had been blinded by the need to get the machine and use it. So blind that Jax had been taken again because of him.

Hank found his last memory of Jax in his mind. The image was rough, changing as he remembered it.
I’ve got to keep my focus,
he scolded himself. But the face was there—

And there was a sudden explosion within Hank’s mind, a supernova of information. Traits, thoughts, whole lifetimes, generations of lifetimes poured through him.

His subconscious mind went to work, cataloguing and storing the information, while his conscious mind reeled with questions:
What’s happening to me? Where is this coming from?

Connections began to form: all of the new memories stemmed from Jax. Hank was inside Jax’s mind while he looked on at an unfathomable vista of experience. He could see Hurley, Narasimha, himself, and the two little animals, Moxie and Little Hank.

Hank felt another tremor of pain coming on, pulling his mind away from the glimpse into what had to be eternity.

When the throbbing had left him again, he went back into the new memories. Jax had been inside the Ivanovich Machine!

But unlike Jax, Hank locked onto one aspect of the experience, and couldn’t let it go: Moxie and Little Hank were not created by the pyramid; they had been there before it was created. They were from somewhere beyond physical reality.

His subconscious mind took the memory and stored it away with a tag. The name of the tag phased from his subconscious into his conscious mind, and he mouthed the word out loud:

“Seraphis.”

THE END

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About the Author

With a background in art, animation, film, and video games, John Peter Jones brings a unique and refreshing perspective to the science fiction genre.   He studied computer animation and traditional art at Brigham Young University's award winning Animation Program and helped in the production of two Student Emmy award winning shorts.

John Peter Jones (Peter) was born in Rigby, Idaho and grew up roaming the desert country by his house with his siblings.   At the age of eight, after breaking his leg while taking on two friends in a game of chicken on the monkey bars, he dictated a short story which his mother dutifully transcribed.   It was a horror tragedy that required the best of his monster drawing abilities to illustrate.

Peter is currently twenty eight years old, is happily married to the love of his life, Katheen Petra Jones, and is working from home as a part-time stay at home dad with his four crazy kids.   His first full length young adult science fiction novel, Animalis, went on sale October of 2014.