“No!” he shouts in belated realization, but it comes out like a gurgle.
His vision narrows, gray wings flap like a distant moth at the edge of his consciousness.
Then the real searing begins and Jim has an oh-shit epiphany. His geneticist mind has made a leap of logic in the thread of consciousness that remains.
And it's not a good one.
He instantly rejects it. Maybe I'm off-base? Maybe Jim's injuries have made his brain turn to mush?
Wouldn't be the first time.
But when his pain falls away, only to be replaced with an entirely new agony, he knows he's not wrong, but epically right.
Jim's no longer human. In healing him of his injuries, the ape dudes promoted a change that doesn't have any take-backs.
I'm becoming, he thinks right before passing out in the snowy meadow of blood.
He just doesn't know what.
Chapter 14
Elise
Elise clings to Adahy with her face pressed against his back as he climbs hand over hand to the lowest platform of the tree homes.
The houses themselves blend with the surrounding foliage. Cleverly pitched roofs shed snow far and away from the homes within. Wide rafters give access to porch railings that run the perimeter of each structure and flat platforms ascend to within a horse length of one another.
Jumping. They use the platforms for jumping.
Elise is weak, her arms barely able to grip Adahy's strong neck. Yet she does, for the dizzying heights below would see her dead.
Adahy reaches the first platform, swinging her around to its center.
Elise expects it to shift with her weight, but it is solid beneath her feet. A shaky breath escapes as she slowly lowers herself to the rough wood planks. Her palms flatten against the wood, the texture coarse beneath her skin. She closes her eyes, feeling the thump of Adahy as he lands beside her.
All around her, smoke rises, eating the forest below them with tongues of flame.
The forest canopy suffocates the smoke, snow beginning to melt off the coniferous boughs from the heat as it falls like rain in a reverse internal weather storm.
Acidic rain falls, the smell of smoke is wet ash in her nostrils.
Adahy's strong arms wrap around her from behind, pulling her against him.
“We will die here in this forest, Adahy,” she whispers against his chest.
“No die,” he says. “Jim save us.”
Elise opens her eyes, her dark gaze finding his bright green one. “What?”
He kicks his chin toward a window where the trees intersect at the tips, leaving an upside down triangle of space to look through.
Elise gasps at the view.
Jim is getting beaten by the corrupt Band.
Elise hears a sound and realizes the mournful noise comes from her. She puts her hand above her heart, the pain is so fierce she cannot cover the hole of her grief before it escapes as tears rolling down her cheeks.
Adahy captures her sadness as it falls, wiping each wet drop with his thumbs. Elise can smell the sap on his fingertips and kisses each one in return. His tenderness makes her cry harder, for she cannot bear to have its void if they are to die.
She looks up at his stern face. “Jim cannot save us.”
“Watch,” Adahy replies softly and Elise reluctantly turns back to the scene of Jim falling to his knees.
Being viciously kicked.
Elise cannot stand to watch Jim's slow death, nor can she look away.
She stands suddenly when the men of the tree move in behind the ones of the Band with synchronized precision.
She watches as Ulric lifts Vaughn off the ground and sinks impossibly long fangs into that broad neck from behind.
“He meets the tomahawk regardless,” Adahy murmurs with bright satisfaction.
Elise nods in slow fascination.
Her fingernails make bloody crescents in the flesh of her palms as Brom and Tab move in behind the Band.
Skulls are dashed together and the Band go to the ground like limp noodles, obviously no match physically for the tree men in their half-forms.
“What—what are they doing?” Elise whispers, unable to keep the horror of her speculations out of her voice.
“Saving Jim,” Adahy replies in Iroquois.
She turns to Adahy, his strong face never looks away, never falters from the gruesome scene below. “Why?”
Elise knows with grim certainty that Jim left Ulric in the Pathway. That he injured him during the feeding of Calia.
Now they will end Jim, it is the most logical course of action. He is a Traveler—better more than a Fragment in their eyes for lack of knowing the difference. And their presumption of his guilt by association is overall a fair one.
Had they but gotten to know the Jim that I do.
A ghost of a smile perches on Adahy's full lips. “Jim offered a distraction,” he states in Iroquois. “It was enough.”
The tree men huddle over Jim.
Elise rushes to crowd the railing, eyes trained on the scene of Jim bleeding out on the snow, colored rust with from the brief but brutal battle.
Her eyes train on Ulric as he suspends his arm above Jim. Blood flows into Jim's mouth as she watches from her bird's-eye view midway up the ancient trees.
“They feed him,” she exclaims in stunned wonder.
“Yes,” Adahy confirms.
Elise rolls her lip between her teeth, gnawing on the plump flesh. “What will that do?”
Adahy shrugs, shaking his head slightly. “Heal him?”
Heal differently than what I can do. Elise is not sure of her healing success with those who are not of Band blood. If she had been called upon to heal Jim—could she have?
Ulric's blood is good. He healed Elise. Her hand hovers against her stomach, thinking of what it might mean for her—and Adahy—someday.
Adahy tenses and Elise snaps herself out of her thoughts, stepping back from the edge, her fingers falling away from the smooth wood railing.
Jim takes Ulric's blood.
Color trembles around his mouth. Rich vitality spreads across his face like a brushfire, gathering everywhere her eyes see exposed flesh.
It is clear the men of the tree saved him.
His body arcs off the bloody snow.
Elise's eyes widen as she watches what else happens to Jim's body.
The problem is, he is no longer Jim, but someone else.
Something else.
*
Jim's eyes pop open.
I feel awesome.
Jim's still on his back but no longer feels like he's treading water against croaking any second. He no longer feels the onslaught of weakness brought on by internal bleeding.
The sky is a smooth gray, like polished pewter. Snowflakes tangle with Jim's lashes. He blinks and they melt, the water sliding down his face like tears.
The smoke sullies whatever sun remains in the sky, causing scooped out pockets of shadow where sunlight would normally live.
Low voices reach Jim's ears.
“He will awaken...”
“It is not my fault—he is male, and it is different because of where he hails.”
“We—he is too unique to keep. We cannot anticipate—”
Jim knows those voices. He rises up on his elbows. “Hey guys, don't have a powwow without me.” Jim puts his fingers on his chest, frowns at not wearing any clothes, shrugs and continues, “I'm right here,” he whistles, fluttering his fingers, “yoo-who.”
Brom, Ulric and Tab swivel to look at him. Jim sees they're still half-ape. Huh. They're not ugly in this form per se, but they look like huge human men, with a streak of gorilla. Or more than a streak.
Ulric strides to Jim.
Jim's going to play it smart and hops to his feet, giddy that he actually can move that fast after the beat down from the Band. He sways for a moment then the vertigo recedes quickly, leaving him wonderfully steady. “Hey now—tree dude.” He puts up his hand, get
s a load of what it looks like and stops talking.
Jim doesn't typically find himself speechless.
Well this sure-as-fuck isn't typical.
He lifts his hand, staring at the fine-boned length of it. His skin is darker than he remembers, each finger is larger, and longer as well, with knobby knuckles gracing the appropriate places. Jim flexes his hand. A fine skim-coat of coal black hair covers the lower three quarters on the top.
His eyebrows jerk up.
Ohboyohboyohboy—I'm a fucking ape.
Jim mewls deep in his throat. “What in the holy grail did you do here, guys?”
Ulric approaches Jim in a cautious way, like he might bolt.
Jim won't self-delude. It's a thought.
“What had to be done.”
“Okaaaaay,” Jim says, dizziness threatening to overwhelm him again. “You gave me blood—you've given blood to Calia too—and I don't see her ape-ing out.”
Ulric allows a small smile.
“Not funny.” Jim glowers.
Brom shakes his head, grabbing one of the dead Band and dragging the body toward the woods. Tab takes the other.
Jim's eyes sweep the three dead Band and it's not even a bleep on his radar. He simply doesn't give a shit. It was either him or them.
It's gonna be me every time.
Jim's eyes move back to Ulric.
He sees a recent wound on his chest.
Ulric is three meters from Jim's position. The wound appears in such perfect detail it's as though he is standing beside Jim.
It's not just the hands, pal. It's the whole enchilada. Yup. There's no returns on this one.
His chest tightens as realization strikes like a sword. I can't go back home. It'll cause a stir.
A bubble of laughter rises in Jim's throat, and escapes his lips.
Ulric cocks his head, giving him a considering look.
Consider away.
“So you give me blood to save me because turnaround is fair play, and then suddenly—poof—I go all tree dude. Maybe I didn't want to be an ape.” Jim punches his chest with his weird-ass hands. “With fangs,” Jim adds, wincing a little at the plaintive tone in his voice.
Screw it.
“It wasn't my intent to turn you, Jim.”
Jim rolls his eyes. Spilt fucking milk. “I don't have the genetic material to be—” Jim looks at Ulric standing almost seven feet tall and built like a brick shithouse, “—one of you guys.”
Jim knows this. He knows what his entire DNA strands look like—intimately. Every geneticist worth his salt in the first third of the 21st century had better know.
“I do not think it is what you have within you, Jim—but what it is that I have to complete you.”
The wheels of Jim's mind spin furiously. So the mad Zondorae brothers cooked up a little genetic cocktail. They justified tossing it on the surviving humans in this world because of the fact that without their intervention, they would have met an apocalyptic death.
Lame justification.
As scientists, they didn't think of this world as their oyster, but rather—their personal Petri dish.
How does this affect me?
For starters, it looks like Ulric has some special genetic transference that works with humanoid males.
Makes some sense, what with the bodily fluid exchange.
Jim shudders.
And what of the women? They don't become apes?
Jim suddenly hits on it.
They're carriers.
Chapter 15
Adahy
Adahy stays where it is most protected. The Stone Giants are strange and brutal.
Yet, they are smart with employing stealth, cover and cleverly built dwellings. Unlike his own nomadic tribe, the men of the tree as they call themselves, have evolved in plain sight, hiding with expertise. They are nomads within the forests they are native to.
The thought of the Stone Giants above his head, in the roof of the forests the Iroquois had traveled beside—traveled through on some occasions—gives Adahy savage pause. How many times could they have taken their women and killed them all?
Why had they not?
Were the Fragment the biggest threat even to those of the tree?
Ulric swings above the railing with a seemingly effortless hop and Adahy draws Elise tight to the front of him, training his gaze on the warrior, who could be Band if it weren't for the absence of throat slits.
Adahy remembers that Ulric has a linguistic advantage, and begins in Iroquois without pause. “You have changed the Traveler.”
Ulric wipes sweat and soot from his forehead, which serves to cause it to cling inside the deeper wrinkles of his forehead in his current form. “Yes,” he admits. “He was dying. I reacted as I must.”
“Now he is—” Adahy struggles for a way to identify Jim without offending Ulric and cannot.
Ulric's gold eyes land on Adahy. “He is now First Species, as I am.”
“First Species?” Elise echoes.
Adahy wants to keep her quiet, so as to keep notice from her. But he cannot find it within himself to quiet a woman silenced so cruelly in the past.
Ulric's glittering gaze meets hers, and Adahy feels her head nod, eyes cast to the rough wood floor of the platform.
“Yes, female. The Evil Ones put us here first. We do not need the air of our throats as the Band. We need only the trees. We can live outside of the woods, in the boughs of the forest—the sea of the clans. There is no physical environment we cannot overcome or traverse—adapt in.” As long as the cover of night is upon them, Adahy notes, but Ulric does not say.
“What of the sphere-dwellers?” she asks quietly to the floor.
“Look at me, Elise.”
Adahy bristles at the command but allows it, for Ulric's voice is gentle. Adahy is as curious as she, though his questions might differ from hers. If he can learn who these Stone Giants really are and their intent, he might have a chance to survive. To help Elise survive.
Elise lifts her head with slow purpose.
Ulric glances at Adahy, as though gauging the male. Adahy unflinchingly returns his regard.
Ulric releases a pent up sigh. “The sphere-dwellers are soft. Without their domes of steam to hide within, they would be exposed as we, and die quickly without the provisions our forms afford. They are human—fragile. Jim has made it clear that the peoples of this earth,” Ulric takes a slow twirl in the tight confines of the landing, “are nothing more than a crude experiment of the fabric of humanity.”
“Control groups,” Jim says from behind him.
“Oh Jim!” Elise gasps and his face colors in obvious discomfort at his new appearance.
“I know I look weird.” Jim rakes his fingers over a skull now bare of hair, an extreme brow ridge hides eyes that were once almond-shaped, and as black as the night giving way to day.
His hand slowly drops. He stares at it, pats his bare head again and shakes his head. “God. This is so Alice in Wonderland.”
“Oh?” Elise asks, and Adahy frowns, not understanding the reference, especially uttered in the germanic clip of whatever flavor of English Jim speaks. A good sort of Fragment speech, Adahy muses to himself.
“You've heard of that story?”
Elise slowly nods, a reluctant smile forming on her lips “Yes, it is a tale of a girl who follows a rabbit down a hole with unfortunate events transpiring forthwith.”
Jim barks out a laugh, startling the three of them. “ʻUnfortunate eventsʼ. Yeah. That's me. But I'm still running after the rabbit, and I think the hole I chose bites.”
Elise and Adahy frown.
Jim holds up a hand, then turns to Ulric. “A little help, Ulric.”
Ulric gives a slight smile. He flicks his head sharply and beads of ashy sweat fly over the rail. “What Jim is saying is that his future has taken an unforeseen route, and he does not like the uncertainty that such a change brings to the present.”
“Yeah,” Jim says, wagging a finger a
t Ulric.
“Yet—you live Jim,” Elise says, stating the obvious.
It is clear she tries to assuage Jim's pain at a transition not of his choosing.
Jim grunts. “Kind of. I mean, I'm an ape now.”
Ulric's thick brow drops low over his eyes. “We are not apes, Jim. We are a derivative of gorillas.”
Jim turns to Ulric, putting his changed hands on his hips. “Oh—that's so much better, Ulric—really.”
Ulric dips his head, covering a smile with his fist. “Yes, but let us stay to the brass tacks.”
Jim's eyebrows lift.
“You are alive because of my blood, and now altered—while I attempt not to be insulted that you're so distraught over having inherited my form after I saved your life.”
Adahy sees Ulric's point. And after a minute or so, Adahy knows Jim does as well.
“Well hell.”
Ulric puts out his hand and Jim takes it. “We are well met, Jim the Traveler.”
Jim slowly raises and lowers Ulric's hand. “I don't think I'm going to be traveling much more, Ulric. I can't run around my earth like this, all apey and shit. It's only good for the movies.”
Ulric frowns, releasing Jim's hand. “I don't know this term—movies. And I will repeat: we are not apes.”
Jim waves the explanation away. “Forget it. What I'm saying is: the world I come from is dead to me now. They're not ready for what I've got going on here.” His palm cuts a swath over his new form.
Adahy thought he looked fairly odd before as well. Of course, outside of the tribe, everyone looks different. His despondency over the change is evident on every inch of Jim.
“Then stay, Jim,” Ulric states simply. “We could use a man of the tree who also understands the thought processes of the Fragment.”
Jim shakes his head. “This is not my home, Ulric. And for the record, I love the comparison to the Frag. God.”
Ulric's frown sweeps his brows so low over his eyes they look like banked coals in his face.
He ignores Jim's words and asks instead, “Have you tried to change back?”
Jim shakes his head. “I don't even know—I'm just coming to terms with this.”
“If you could change back Jim, would you return to your world?” Elise asks.
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