by Annie Besant
Priya launched herself at her brother and they rolled on the floor wrestling, while Biscuit shrieked and joined them on the floor.
That was how Mom found girl, boy and pterodactyl. ‘Sam! Priya!’ Mom shouted at the top of her lungs. ‘What are you doing?’ She was very nervous around the creature. It scared her that it had grown so quickly overnight, but so far, it had been nothing but gentle with her kids.
Priya and Sam sat up giggling, while Biscuit looked at Mom with its head cocked to the side.
‘Playing, Mom,’ Sam said, giggling again.
Mom raised an eyebrow. ‘And helping Biscuit catch lizards,’ Priya added hastily.
Biscuit had taken a liking to eating lizards, much to Mom’s reluctant delight. A smile tugged at Mom’s lips, but she kept her face serious. ‘I want you to clean up this mess,’ she said, looking at the scattered stuffing. She paused as her nose caught scent of something.
‘What is that smell?’ she grimaced.
Sam looked at the mat guiltily.
‘SAM!’ Priya and Mom exclaimed together.
10
A Night Flight
BENO was balanced delicately on the ledge outside the window. A bat hanging upside down on a branch looked at her curiously. It thought briefly about flying down and investigating, but something about the human made it hesitate. The bat decided no human was worth the trouble and flew off in search of its friends.
BENO flicked a glance at the bat and then proceeded to ignore it. Her attention was fully focused on finding her way into the room. However, if she hadn’t been so preoccupied, she would have briefly seen the shape of a very large bird flying overhead.
Priya yelled in delight and Sam hung on tight to his sister. Biscuit was giving out some sort of whoop as it dipped and dived in the sky.
Biscuit had been restless all night, going often to Priya’s window and chattering at the moon.
‘What is it, Biscuit?’ Priya asked sleepily. Biscuit tugged at her bedclothes and went back to talking to the moon. Priya slipped into her shoes. The pterodactyl followed her as she went to Sam’s room to wake him up.
‘He’s staring at the moon, I think he wants to go out,’ Priya whispered. ‘Let’s take him to the terrace.’
Sam rubbed his eyes and followed her as she and Biscuit led the way out of the house and to the terrace.
Biscuit waddled around the terrace eagerly and, before Priya or Sam could react, it hopped on to the terrace wall.
‘Biscuit, what are you doing?’ Sam squeaked.
Biscuit ignored him and jumped off the ledge; it was flying!
Priya and Sam stood with their mouths open. Biscuit looked like an overly large hang glider. A few minutes later, Biscuit came back, waddling towards them like an eager puppy. It was then that Priya had an idea.
She explained her idea to Sam. Before Sam could protest, she climbed on to Biscuit’s back and was dragging her brother along. Biscuit seemed to know what Priya was thinking and waddled to the ledge again. Sam squeezed his eyes shut as Biscuit pushed off. A second later, brother and sister were airborne and screaming.
Biscuit wheeled around their neighbourhood for a few minutes and then, like a cat sniffing out a mouse, it found the ocean.
Both Priya and Sam gasped to see the ocean spread out like a dark, moving blanket under them. It was lit by the moon and they could see small waves crashing on to the shore.
The ocean seemed to tug at the pterodactyl, who immediately swooped down in a gut-churning dive. Priya, who had always loved rollercoaster rides, held on tight and whooped. Sam repeated every prayer his mother had taught him.
They made a gentle landing on the beach and Biscuit waddled to the water, crooning and singing some strange reptile song. Priya and Sam climbed down and sat on the wet sand, their legs wobbling like jelly.
‘We are going to be in so much trouble if Mom finds out,’ Priya said, her teeth shining white in the moonlight.
Sam grinned back. ‘But it was worth it.’
Priya impulsively put her arm around her brother and hugged him.
‘Pipi,’ Sam said after a long silence. ‘Will we really have to give Biscuit away?’
Priya shrugged. For once, she had no answers.
The pterodactyl was running after crabs, chasing them towards the sea. As they watched, it grabbed a crab in its long beak and crunched it noisily.
‘At least now we know what it eats,’ Sam said, laughing.
An hour later, after much splashing and rolling with Biscuit in the water and the sand, they flew home. Biscuit got bolder and flew higher so that now Priya and Sam felt as if they were sitting above the city. As they looked at the twinkling lights below them, they felt they had never been happier.
Biscuit landed lightly on the terrace and reached out its neck to Priya. She stroked its neck and Sam patted it. Biscuit snuffled Priya’s pyjama pockets.
‘Sorry, Biscuit,’ Priya chuckled. ‘I left your treat in my room.’
Sam grinned. ‘The first one to Priya’s room gets all the treats.’
Girl, boy and pterodactyl raced each other to the house. Forgetting their sleeping mother and neighbours, they burst into their apartment crying, ‘I’m first!’ and laughing their hearts out.
‘Sshh!’ Priya said, suddenly remembering their mother. She pushed Biscuit and Sam ahead of her and turned to close the door.
The click of a trigger being pulled was as loud as a cricket’s call. It was followed by a soft whoosh. A loud, raucous cry and a great flapping of wings split the air.
‘BISCUIT!’ Sam shrieked, as the pterodactyl stumbled and then collapsed into a heap.
11
Facing the Enemy
The lights came on as Priya and Sam rushed to Biscuit. They were beginning to sob now, small sobs that were opening the door to a flood of tears. Two tiny darts with bright red tails were sticking out from Biscuit’s neck.
‘Silence,’ a cold voice commanded them. They looked up in the direction of the voice and felt the icy shock of fear. Their mother was tied up to a chair and unconscious; next to her stood a slim woman wearing charcoal grey clothes. Except for her face, everything was wrapped up in clothing. She looked exhausted but determined.
For BENO, the past two days had been gruelling. The helicopter had dropped her on a beach on the mainland and had flown away like a ghost into the night. She was far from home base and cut off from it. There were no satellites or fancy computers to help her out here. BENO could carry nothing that would tie her to the base. If she was captured or killed, everything found on her body would explode, incinerating her in the process. No one could even know her name.
The last thought made her pause. Name. She didn’t know her name. She had always been called BENO. She only knew that a long time ago she’d had a name. Sometimes she could hear it in her dreams, someone calling out her name in a way that filled her with happiness.
She had not been very focused recently. BENO had gone on more than a hundred successful missions. She was the best. Cold, sharp and merciless, she was everything Dr POX had made her to be. But what had Dr POX made her into? That thought slid under her skin like a splinter, uncomfortable and painful.
‘Mom,’ Priya sobbed.
Something in the girl’s voice softened BENO for a moment. ‘Your mother’s all right,’ she said in clipped tones. ‘I want you to come away from the creature.’
‘Biscuit,’ Sam said helplessly, even as great big tears fell on the inside of his spectacles.
‘Come away from the creature,’ BENO repeated. ‘Come here and sit next to your mother and I won’t hurt you.’
Priya understood the threat in the woman’s voice and nodded. She grasped her brother by his upper arm and hauled him with her.
They sat on the sofa near their mother and kept glancing at her, waiting for her to wake up. BENO could smell their fear thanks to the tiny bio-sensors grafted to the skin inside her nose that analysed every bit of organic molecule floating in the air.
BENO felt another moment’s pity for them. She cleared her thoughts. ‘Focus,’ she told herself sternly.
She checked her watch. It looked like a normal watch with the usual markings to indicate time. At a glance, it had two hands, four crystals embedded at the outer edges and a calendar window. But the watch was a spy’s dream come true, and there were some who had even tried to kill BENO just to get their hands on the watch.
The face of the clock could function as a camera and a voice recorder and record up to two hours’ worth of footage. The two hands were actually latitude and longitude indicators. BENO could instantly know exactly where she was. The four crystals, when activated by rotating the crown four times clockwise, would send out a beacon that signalled her location to her team. If rotated twice counter-clockwise, the watch would emit a sonic boom strong enough to knock out people in a hundred-feet radius. She didn’t dare use this feature without sturdy earplugs in place, because it could knock her out too! In extreme circumstances, the watch could be set to explode using the timer built into the calendar window.
She had already contacted the extraction team. Now all she had to do was sit and wait.
Mom came around slowly, feeling groggy and confused at first. She felt the pain pouring in from the lump on the back of her head. Mom fought the pain, letting it become the point on which she focused. She’d had headaches all her life, and she had learnt that becoming friends with the pain was the only way she could live normally.
Her surroundings came into focus slowly and with it the memory of stepping out of her room to check on the kids. She thought she had heard a door open. But a sharp blow was the last thing she remembered.
Mom’s pulse raced as she took in the sight of BENO sitting opposite her, calm and cool. She saw with relief that the kids were all right. Sam’s eyes were red and Priya had gone white. She smiled at them weakly, reassuring them. They were tired and scared.
Priya took a deep breath. ‘She has come to take Biscuit, Mom,’ she said, her voice shaking.
Mom nodded and then winced. ‘Who are you?’ she whispered, turning to BENO.
‘Who I am doesn’t matter. I have come for the creature,’ BENO replied.
‘It’s not a creature, it’s Biscuit,’ Sam said hotly.
‘Whatever you want to call it,’ BENO said calmly. ‘It is a prehistoric creature that is a threat to you and your sister.’
BENO had planned for that remark to worry the mother and she was right. Mom began to look anxious.
‘Biscuit will not hurt us,’ Sam said, his voice breaking.
‘It’s a dinosaur, boy; one of the most dangerous of its kind. It will eat you up for breakfast.’
‘Then why do you want it?’ Priya asked slyly.
‘The dinosaur belongs to us,’ BENO said, keeping her voice light. ‘We cloned it.’
The room grew silent as Mom, Priya and Sam tried to digest what they had just heard.
It was Priya who spoke first. ‘Who we? And really, it’s not a dinosaur. It’s a winged reptile.’
BENO shrugged as if it didn’t matter. Meanwhile, she was calculating what she would do in case she had to use force on the family. Three dead bodies would be hard to explain.
‘Look, ma’am,’ BENO said addressing Mom. ‘I just want the creature. I have come here to do you a favour and take it off your hands. Don’t you want to get rid of it? Can’t you guess the dangers of having such a creature in civilian surroundings?’
Mom nodded reluctantly. ‘Of course I want to get rid of it.’ Then she muttered, ‘It’s not a mutated bird after all.’
Sam began to weep softly.
BENO nodded curtly. ‘I promise not to hurt you or your children. I’m here for the creature only.’
BENO resisted the urge to yawn. Her shoulders were beginning to ache and her body was feeling the effects of pushing herself hard. What was wrong with her? It was bad enough that she was becoming philosophical, but she was beginning to feel pain. She needed to be reprogrammed. The faster she got the creature back to the base, the sooner she could get back to normal.
She distracted her mind from her body by studying the pterodactyl lying a few feet from the door. It was the size of a cow. Except that no cow looked so dangerous and no cow BENO had ever seen had a long beak with a row of sharp teeth or the sharp talons that now rested on the floor. BENO, who had never known nervousness, took a mental step back.
BENO glanced back at the family. It was clear that they had no idea what they were dealing with. On the helicopter ride to the mainland, BENO had read everything she could about the pterodactyl. But none of it gave her a clear picture of what she would be dealing with.
Looking at the creature in front of her, BENO instinctively knew that the pterodactyl was a mutation. A few seconds later, BENO squashed her intuition under the boot of soldierly duty. The sooner she took the creature back to base, the sooner she could deal with herself.
12
Betrayed!
Priya was trying to comfort Sam. ‘Don’t cry, flowerpot,’ she said, patting him on his head.
Sam shrugged her hand off and said in muffled tones, ‘Mom told you not to call me names.’
Priya repressed a grin. ‘Flowerpot is not a name,’ she paused. ‘Flowerpot.’ Sam continued to sniff.
‘I know Biscuit wouldn’t want to go,’ Sam said in sullen tones. ‘We can’t let him go, Pipi!’
Priya nodded. Though she felt a close bond with the pterodactyl, she knew it was growing at an abnormal rate. Mom had only let them keep it till Dad came, and even that was because they had wept and caused a scene. ‘Maybe it is best for Biscuit to go away,’ she thought sadly. What would they do with it anyway?
But Priya hadn’t watched all those sci-fi and spy movies for nothing. Everything about BENO suggested something secret and undercover, and there were a great many questions that were unanswered.
How on earth did a prehistoric creature come back to life? How did the egg find its way to Sam’s hand? Why was Biscuit growing so rapidly? And most importantly, how had this woman found them?
Priya had always loved mysteries and riddles. She saw a mystery around the pterodactyl and she was determined to solve it. But how?
‘So, what’s your name?’ Mom mumbled.
The woman, who was sitting up straight, replied tersely, ‘BENO’.
‘Beno?’ Mom repeated.
‘B-E-N-O, ma’am.’
‘Oh,’ said Mom, at a loss for words. Mom tried to ask more questions about the pterodactyl, but BENO was as responsive as a glacier. But she untied Mom after warning her against trying anything. Mom understood that this was BENO’s way of offering her a white flag. Mom nodded and got down to asking their ‘guest’ if she wanted something to eat or drink. BENO shook her head. Priya gave her mother a sour look and shifted her attention to BENO.
‘How did you know Biscuit was with us?’
BENO flicked her a glance and went back to staring at the wall ahead of her. ‘I traced the records.’
‘How?’ Priya persisted.
BENO stayed silent wondering if she should reply.
‘Priya,’ Mom admonished. ‘Stop pestering her. Maybe you and Sam should go to my room and sleep.’
‘It’s okay,’ BENO replied. She had decided she was going to indulge the little brat. ‘We have records of all our property. This … ah … egg went missing. Carelessness on a lab assistant’s part. I managed to find out who received the egg from the lab assistant with some well placed … err … questions.’
Priya was still not satisfied. Before she could ask any more questions, though, BENO’s watch beeped twice. She got up and opened the main door; a troop of four masked soldiers marched into the house.
Mom scrambled to her feet and grabbed hold of Priya and Sam, but the soldiers were not interested in them.
They stood around the pterodactyl and, on a signal from BENO, two of the soldiers undid a long rope from around their waists. Except it wasn’t a rope, it unrolled into
a large silvery blanket.
‘BISCUIT!’ Sam shrieked, trying to break free, but Mom grabbed him before he could lunge. The soldiers dragged Biscuit out the door and Sam sobbed while Priya looked away.
The series of events that unfolded was something that even BENO was not prepared for.
The leader of the team turned to BENO and saluted. BENO’s instincts went on red alert. That salute was reserved for a comrade who was dead.
Before she could react, the soldier whipped out a thin, sleek cylinder from a holster attached to his outer thigh and aimed it at BENO. She felt the bolt of electricity hit her in the chest and travel over her body, paralysing her in seconds. The last thing BENO heard was Priya’s scream as she lost consciousness.
13
Oh, Brother!
Sam had never been this scared in his life. Without thinking, he randomly pulled up the word ‘terrified’ from his mental dictionary.
‘Terrified means scared, which is an adjective,’ Sam said to no one in particular. ‘It means feeling extreme fear.’
‘Sam,’ Priya said gently, taking his hand. ‘Sam.’
He looked at her and took deep breaths.
‘It’s okay,’ Mom said coming to his side. ‘Everything is going to be all right.’
Sam leant in to his mother, still holding Priya’s hand, and sighed. ‘Mom, please don’t shout at the camera.’
In spite of their dire circumstances, Priya giggled. From the moment they had been locked in the cell, Mom had been yelling at the camera, threatening its viewers that her husband was ex-Army and would eat their heads for breakfast. She then gave the camera a list of demands that included everything from freedom to an apology to replacing the mat the soldiers destroyed.
Mom stroked his hair and sighed. ‘Okay, Sammy,’ she said, kissing him on the forehead.
‘What happened to BENO?’ Sam asked, wiping his forehead on his shirtsleeves.
Mom’s lip tightened into a straight line. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied.
Sam yawned; he was tired, hungry and sleepy. ‘I’m hungry, Mom,’ he complained. And that was all it took for Mom to storm back to the camera and resume her shouting.
