Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  Njinga, gasping for breath as wave after wave of pain hammered her, looked up and saw a slim figure, clad in a white stormtrooper suit, step over the gory mess that used to be Joao. The newcomer was holding a smoking combat shotgun in violently shaking hands.

  ‘Chloe,’ Njinga gasped.

  The girl pulled off her helmet, flung it down and sprinted over to Njinga. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and her lips were quivering with emotion, while flecks of vomit and half-chewed food glistened on her chin … but she was alive, as was Ranomi.

  ‘I’m okay, I’m okay,’ Chloe whimpered, dropping down onto her knees next to Njinga and wrapping her arms around her in a tight, desperate embrace. ‘I’m okay, I’m okay…’

  Njinga hugged her back, quick and fierce, but then broke off the embrace and struggled to her feet; her animal-enhanced hearing was already detecting the thumping of combat boots charging up the steps behind.

  ‘Hurry kid,’ she gasped, fighting through the relentless waves of debilitating pain. ‘We gotta go, we gotta run, go, go, go!’

  Chloe, high on adrenalin, nodded and obeyed; it was all she could do. The three of them raced off into the gloom, infused with a rip of desperate hope. They would make it out of here alive; Njinga knew this now, for she could feel it in her bones. As for the others, though, she did not know. She did not know at all.

  ***

  With his pulse racing and fear prickling its tingling discomfort across every square inch of his skin, William crept through the pulsating red and black, feeling as if he were moving through the innards of some gargantuan dragon too boundless, powerful and terrible for a single human mind to contemplate. Glints of red light, like blood droplets, shimmered on the tip and edge of his AK-47 bayonet; the blade itself seemed to be drawing him onward. It was as if some invisible thread was attached to the weapon; a long bubblegum-like wisp of steel, stretching from the point of the bayonet to the centre of a distant forge, white-hot and somehow magnetic. With every step forward William took he felt as if he was edging further from the reality of the present and sinking deeper into some surreal realm located in the liminal twilight between nightmares and unconsciousness. Beads of sweat nipped like jungle insects as they inched a tortuous passage down his temples and the back of his neck. His breathing was consciously controlled, repeated in deep and evenly spaced intervals, but the rhythm of it brought neither calm nor focus into his troubled and anxiety-riddled mind.

  He paused to visually sweep a staircase below. Assured that it was clear, he checked the time and then pictured the layout of the building in his mind. Something had gone terribly wrong, he understood that much now. They had long since passed the time limit for the mission’s completion, and the rest of the Rebels should have fled the building a good while ago; Huntsmen reinforcements would be arriving any second, and their response to what had happened here would be measured on a scale of unimaginable violence.

  Escape was the only rational option. Going through the corridors and down the stairs would not only be too risky, though, it would take too long. However, there was another way down, a faster way, with the added bonus of near total secrecy: the elevator shaft.

  William hurried over to the elevator doors and used his bayonet to pry them open just enough to get some fingers in. From there he was able to squeeze the doors open wide enough to slip in sideways. A gulf of dense blackness greeted him, and even with his tiger-enhanced vision he was unable to see more than a few feet into the depths of the shaft. His tiger senses were, however, able to pick up something else there: a human presence.

  Adrenalin shot through his veins like a streak of lightning flickering its violet-blue power across the dome of the sky. His first thought was that it was a Huntsmen assassin, waiting under the cover of darkness to attack any beastwalker who set foot inside this place, so he shouldered his rifle and eased a finger onto the trigger, moving with stealthy speed, sensing that his adversary was not yet aware of his presence. He stood on the edge of the precipice for a while like this, focusing his tiger senses so that they could paint a clear mental picture of where his enemy was, and what they were doing.

  It seemed, however, that he was either losing his mind or that his senses were deceiving him; the human was breathing in short, shallow breaths, and their heart was hammering out a frenetic blast-beat. Their fear was palpable, as unmistakable as the scent of jasmine in full bloom. And there, yes, right there, was the unmistakable sound of quiet sobbing.

  What was this? Whoever was in here was plainly terrified, and was certainly neither a soldier nor an assassin. William could almost feel their shivers of fright and anxiety vibrating the molecules of stale air in the shaft. There was only one thing he felt he could do now. He pressed his AK-47 to his shoulder, peered down the sights until the barrel was aimed in the direction of the breathing he could so clearly hear with his tiger ears, and prepared to fire.

  A few floors down from him, Adriana was too absorbed in her own emotional turmoil to notice the figure slipping through the elevator doors a few floors above. Her heart felt as if it was on the verge of bursting through her ribcage, and she had long since lost sensation in her extremities, which tingled dully with a pins-and-needles sensation. A sharp ache throbbed in her handcuffed wrists, and her legs had begun to tremble with an alarming violence; she wasn’t sure how much longer she could remain perched on this ledge before toppling off of it and plunging to her death in the seemingly bottomless pit below.

  She had heard a sustained barrage of gunfire earlier, terrifying in its intensity and how ferociously it had shaken the very walls, but now it had stopped, but nobody had come for her, as they had said they would. This, however, had not surprised her; she had long since understood that she could trust absolutely nobody.

  She considered, for a brief instant, leaping into the black abyss below, for it seemed, at this juncture, to be a perfectly rational choice. After all, if her so-called rescuers – these people she had risked life and limb to let into this place, and who had then treated her like a common criminal and left her handcuffed mere inches from certain death – did not come back for her, she would eventually be discovered by Sigurd and his thugs, and God only knew what horrors they would visit on her for her part in this rebellion.

  A curious, heady warmth spread through every cubic inch of her body as she focused all of her thoughts on what was clearly becoming the only option to escape this hell. After all, she had tried it once before, and although she had failed, if she did it here, now, there would be no second failure. She knew that she was at least six stories above ground, and that the elevator shaft also went down a few stories below ground level; the fall would definitely kill her. There would be a second or two of paralysing terror as she plunged with madly accelerating speed through the pall of the dark, but it would be cut very quickly and mercifully short. And then this nightmare of insanity and horror and fear would be over.

  She could not fight the stinging blade, serrated with tragic remorse, sadness and regret, that ran her through with the brutal efficiency of a rapier. She knew, she absolutely knew that inside this mind, in this body that her soul inhabited, there existed so much potential, so much passion, so much drive, such goodwill … and love. Oh yes, love, the kind sung, written and painted of by bards, poets and artists through the ages. How she had longed to feel it, to plunge herself into its electric neon spectrum of dazzling light and colour just once in her life. To blaze unseen beams of heat from her eyes into her lover’s, to feel the driving energy that coursed invisibly between all living things condensed and concentrated in the touch of her skin against his. She could not fight back the tears as the realisation that she would never experience this flooded her entire being, like billowing black ink through clear water.

  Even as the tears flowed, though, she bit her quivering lip and growled softly in the lonely darkness.

  No.

  Now was neither the time for self-pity nor remorse. It was the time for action. A final, ultimate act
ion. An act of defiance, of pent-up wrath, of determination and ultimate liberation. She drew in one final breath of the foul air as she prepared to take the last step she would ever take in this world. That was when the flashlight beam hit her square in the face.

  Her eyes, accustomed to the dark, felt like they had been seared with the flame of a blowtorch. All she could do was shriek in fright and wrench her face away from the pain-pulsing light, twisting to the side and cowering like a feral cat cornered in an alley.

  ‘Who are you, and what are you doing down there?’ a voice from above demanded.

  Something about the voice sent an uncanny shiver rippling along every square inch of Adriana’s skin. She knew this voice, she knew it intimately somehow, like a voice from a long-forgotten childhood dream. Despite the fear soaking through her skin like winter rain, a wash of serenity and calm bleached away her fear and anxiety.

  ‘My name is Adriana,’ she managed to stammer. ‘I’m nobody, I’m just, j-, just a prisoner of Sigurd’s.’

  ‘A-, Adriana?’

  The voice from above changed abruptly in tone. From stern curtness, verging on raw aggression, it had abruptly taken on a softer edge, in which vulnerability and confusion were intertwined. Perhaps this voice knew hers as well, against all odds.

  ‘Yes. Please sir, please, help me! Help me, please, please!’

  ‘Stay right there, I’m coming down.’

  Up above, William’s heart was thundering out a heavy, intense rhythm in chest, and unsettling washes of alternating hot and cold were surging through his body. His eyes were wide and white, stark against the asphalt shadows of the shaft; he had seen a ghost, he was sure of it, in that split-second in which his flashlight beam had fallen on the face of the woman perched on the ledge below him. It couldn’t be, surely. What devilry was this? Had his mind finally caved in to the unending pressure that needled it from all sides, and tipped over into the tumbling, cartwheeling freefall of pure madness, of full-blown clinical insanity?

  Yet … that voice.

  So hauntingly familiar, tattooed onto his ear drums, every familiar vibration of which sent shivers of pleasure fizzing across his skin.

  It could not be. It could not be.

  He slung his rifle over his shoulder with its strap, took a short run-up and sprang with nimble agility across the shaft, grabbing onto the steel rungs of the service ladder as he landed. He scurried down it, with a sense of growing excitement fluttering like light-crazed moths in the night inside his upper torso with every rung he descended. Reality began to swirl, the images he saw before him melting with psychedelic abandon; shadow dripped liquid-like all around, and the steel and stone bent and flexed like rubber. All thoughts fled the theatre of his mind, departing like a flock of startled birds at dusk, leaving a darkened stage with sign of neither actors nor audience, until a lone spotlight crashed through the darkness, revealing a lone white-clad figure at its centre.

  ‘Aurora,’ William whispered as he descended, caught in the grip of a feverish delirium. ‘Aurora, Aurora, Aurora…’

  Eventually he reached a rung that was on the same level of the ledge on which Adriana was perched. He could hear the steady rhythm of her breath, feel the microscopic ripples of her pulse vibrating its waves through the molecules of the still air. And he could smell the delectable scent of her hair, her skin, her breath; scents that at once were deeply familiar to him, even after more than a century apart.

  It cannot be, it cannot possibly be … this goes against every law of nature, every scientific principle of the physical universe. Yet … it is.

  Adriana could not see much of William through the inky dark, but she could make out the outline of his body as he came down the ladder, and the closer he got the more a deep part of her could feel his presence in a way that she never had with any other human being. Instinctively she understood that she would be completely safe with this stranger, as odd and alarming as that notion seemed when considered in the harsh light of rationality.

  ‘Aurora,’ he whispered. The sound of his gravelly voice was soothing; a gentle, comforting aural balm.

  ‘No, it’s Adriana,’ she replied, correcting him despite a strange sense of déjà vu that hit her the instant she heard that name.

  It didn’t seem to matter to him.

  ‘Aurora, are you safe? Are you injured, are you hurt in any way at all?’ he asked, compassionate but urgent as he half-turned, hanging off the rung with his right arm so that he could face her.

  ‘No, no, I’m all right.’

  ‘Lean across to your left and take my hand. I’ll catch you and hold you safe.’

  ‘I can’t. My hands are handcuffed behind my back.’

  ‘Turn around then, let me see your hands so I can get those cuffs off.’

  Adriana shuffled with slow caution on the narrow ledge, inching her way around until her back was fully turned to William. The throb of pain in her ankle was growing more intense, and she wasn’t sure how long she could continue to stand.

  ‘Ah yes, you’re cuffed tight. Listen, I’m going to put some liquid nitrogen on the chain of the cuffs. When it’s done its work, you should be able to snap the chain with a quick pull of your wrists in opposite directions, yeah?’

  ‘Yes, okay, I’ll try that.’

  ‘Hold tight. Extend your arms out behind you as far back as you can. We don’t want any of this nasty stuff dripping off the chain onto your skin.’

  ‘All right.’

  Adriana extended her arms out behind her as far as she could, until her shoulders were burning from the effort.

  ‘That’s as far as I can stretch,’ she said.

  ‘Good. Keep as still as you possibly can, love.’

  She heard him fumbling around, and after he had put some of the liquid nitrogen onto the chain he fell silent. It was a strange silence, and her feelings at this moment were not those of fear, anxiety or nervousness, but rather comfort and safety. She had no idea how she could feel those things in this stranger’s presence, though. She suddenly realised that she hadn’t even asked him his name.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘I’m William. William Gisborne’

  The way he said it sent a shiver coursing down her spine. It was not the first time she had heard this name, but when the name came from his lips it took on an altogether different aspect; it now had a presence, weighty and thick with the evocative air of almost-forgotten early childhood memories.

  They each remained in silence for the next few moments as they waited for the liquid nitrogen to do its work, but it was the silence of a late night relaxation in front of a roaring hearth fire, the silence of two lovers drinking in one another’s presence, saturating themselves in the sensory swirl of an intensity of taste, scent, touch, and the melded, reciprocal warmth of two bodies, drawn together. After what felt like a long yet indulgent few moments, William finally broke the mystical quietude.

  ‘I think the cuffs will snap now, love. Give ‘em a good sharp tug.’

  Adriana did as he suggested, and sure enough the chain linking the handcuffs snapped.

  ‘You’re free now,’ he said. ‘Next you’ll need turn around and face me. When you’re ready, jump across and I’ll catch you.’

  William kept the flashlight off as Adriana slowly turned around. His heart was racing with a hurtling excitement that he hadn’t known for decades. His tiger eyes could see well enough in the dark from this short distance, and the instant her face was revealed to him he nearly lost his grip on the ladder. It almost caused his heart to explode inside his chest; seeing these eyes, that nose, that mouth, those ears, that flowing hair, that graceful jawline, that slender neck, and the keen, creative intelligence that burned with such effervescent vigour through the prism of those hazel irises.

  ‘Aurora,’ he whispered as he stared, entranced, at Adriana’s face, which seemed to be a carbon copy of his soulmate’s. ‘This is … this is impossible. This is a dream … it has to be.’

  �
��I need some light if I’m going to jump,’ Adriana said.

  ‘Okay, but whatever you do, don’t look down.’

  William flicked on his flashlight, keeping it aimed at the wall so as to keep the light diffused instead of direct and blinding. Now it was Adriana’s turn to gasp, for when she finally saw the face of the man she had been talking to, a shiver of recognition shook her.

  ‘You!’ she gasped. ‘But … how?! How?!’

  Their eyes finally met in the dim off-white effulgence, and a zap of unsettling energy tore through the space between them. All of a sudden it seemed as if the entire space was filled with the charged static that was the prelude to a lightning strike.

  ‘You know me, don’t you?’ William murmured. It was more a statement of plain truth than a question.

  ‘I, I do,’ she replied, her voice drenched with uncertainty and confusion. ‘But from my dreams. I’ve only ever seen you … in my dreams.’

  ‘This isn’t a dream. This is real. All of this.’

  ‘I … I know. I just … I just can’t believe it’s really you.’

  ‘I feel the same, but for a very different reason, I think. I honestly don’t know how to explain all of this to you, though,’ William murmured.

  ‘And I can’t explain even a fraction of what I’m feeling now, in this moment. I’ve never felt anything like this before, never.’

  ‘I have. Once…’

  All this time their eyes had been locked together, their pupils fixed to one another by unseen rods. William forced himself to snap out of it, with the final shreds of rational thought in his muddled mind making a valiant last stand against this torrential cascade of feelings.

  ‘We have to get out of here,’ he said, his tone hardening. ‘Hurry, lean across and jump. I’ll catch you.’

  ‘Are you sure? If I fall—’

  ‘You won’t. I said I’ll catch you, and by God I will. We can’t linger any longer; we have to leave now.’