by Coral Walker
Dashing over, he crouched down inside a similar cavity, tucking in his legs just before the door handle turned.
The door swung open, and in floated a grey shadow.
8
Explosion
A few steps into the room, Ms Upright stopped, sniffing the air. Pivoting on her pointy heels, she made a sharp turn, that left her facing the desk.
In controlled steps, she marched over and fiddled with a pile of folders near her. Her bearing was casual and heedless. An unexpected, careless flick of the wrist knocked the pile over. Folders and papers scattered onto the floor by the desk.
Slowly she squatted down and started to pick up the folders, one at a time, with movements as rigid as those of a robot. When the area in front was cleared, she disappeared under the desk.
Soon she reappeared and returned the folders she had collected to the desk with the same stiff bearing. After that, she made her unhurried exit through the secret wall.
Ozzies were ozzies. They were not intelligent after all.
Jack breathed a sigh of relief but waited a little longer until the wall shut tight.
Through the wall, they heard someone greeting Ms Upright.
“I’ve given the room a good dust, Professor,” Ms Upright screeched.
“That’s kind of you, Ms Upright,” said the Professor’s amiable voice. “By any chance, did you see the children anywhere?”
“Oh, yes. I saw them heading for the duck pond.”
Brianna, who had come out before Jack, grimaced as she stretched her shoulders. “We didn’t meet her. Why did she lie?” she said.
The desk looked the same. All she had done was drop the folders by accident and then pick them up. He ran his eyes back to the replaced folders, piled up in a chaotic jumble — if she couldn’t be bothered to tidy them, why bother even to pick them up?
From underneath the table came a faint tick-tocking. He bent down to look.
A square blue-framed digital TIMER! Why would there be a timer under a table?
“Don’t tell me it’s a bomb,” chuckled Brianna behind him.
Jack recoiled and drew in a sharp breath. “Fifty-three seconds, if it’s a bomb, that’s how much time we have.”
At once her face went pale. With a cry, she rushed over to the secret wall a few yards away and started searching frantically for the switch.
Dashing over, Jack pressed a switch disguised as a no smoking sign.
Nothing moved.
Shouldering him aside, Brianna gave it a solid punch and shouted, “Are you sure it’s the one?”
It had to be the one ... but why …?
“The door!” she exclaimed and shot off again. An instant later Jack heard her dejected voice cursing, “Hell, she locked it.”
The fridge, the mammoth fridge in the corner near the door. He ran towards her and, without warning, pulled her over to it. The fridge was enormous, and it took just a couple of seconds to pull out the shelves.
“Get in, quick!” he urged and suddenly trembled himself.
She stared at him as if to say, “You are kidding.” but Jack’s push was forceful, so she submitted to it.
The mighty explosion came the moment he shut the door. Immediately he was thrown into the air.
His shoulder smashed first onto the floor, and the impact shoved him a few yards more until his head hit on the sharp corner of a wall. Beams of light danced before his eyes and dazzled him. Behind the lights, a malicious army of objects, headed by a chair and a work unit, were speeding through the air, heading towards him.
He saw their approach, but too dazed to think straight and too petrified to dodge, he simply stared.
+++
A shriek pierced the air.
“Jack!”
The voice persisted and this time snapped in his ear like a cracker. He jerked and his eyes flew open.
The glass was everywhere, some of which stood erect with their sharp edge stabbing into the floor like a dagger. Half a yard away, a swivel chair lay sideways with its wheels spinning.
“Are you alright?”
He fluttered his eyes. The voice was too distant to be taken for real.
The oval-shaped face was Brianna’s, and she was grinning in a funny way. Her face was smudged, and she looked like she had just cried.
“I thought you were hit,” she said and burst into a fit of hysterical giggling. How purple her lips were!
Of course, she was in a fridge! He had put her in there. She was alive, and so WAS HE!
He swung an arm to get a grip but hit something cold and hard. The metal work unit, bent on smashing him a moment ago, lay harmlessly to his left.
“Did ... did you see that, Brianna?” he gasped, waving his arms. “It was coming towards me. It was coming straight at me … but I …”
She wasn’t listening. A hole in the ground belching smoke drew her attention away; Ozzies, screeching and shrieking, scurrying around and bumping into each other, diverted her mind. When her eyes caught sight of the partly demolished stairs, her face went suddenly pale.
“Bo,” she cried, “I must check on Bo!”
She sprang to her feet, and away she scurried.
Groaning quietly, he scrambled to his feet. The scale of the damage awed him. For a while he stood quivering, uncertain whether he should catch up with Brianna.
A woman in a white gown at the far end of the room suddenly caught his attention. He stood and stared at her, astounded by her pale face and her thin and fragile figure, which trembled at times. She was no doubt ill. But something in her was unearthly and remarkable, drawing him towards her. Without knowing it, he wandered in her direction, marvelling at the exquisite grace she effortlessly manifested, despite her infirmity.
She smiled amiably at his approach, extending both her hands as if to receive him. Her gaze, soft and enigmatic, was fixed on him. He staggered on and could now clearly see her grey eyes, limpid and soulful, were waiting. But then she swayed all of a sudden, tilted to one side, and fell.
He lurched forward to catch her. But a man behind her got to her before him and clasped her tightly in his arms. Momentarily, the man’s silver hair blended with the woman’s white garment.
It was the Professor. With the woman in his embrace, he swept the room with his cold, piercing eyes before letting them fall on Jack. He had the remote look of a stranger, and for a while Jack was baffled.
Quickly he dismissed it. Of course, he reasoned, the Professor was troubled and confused. Who wouldn’t be after a terrible event like this?
He thought of Ms Upright, felt the urge to speak, and stepped forward. To his disappointment the Professor took no notice of his approach, turned and lumbered arduously down a corridor with the woman in his arms.
Jack followed them. In a couple of strides, his feet kicked something, and it whistled. He looked down and bent to pick it up. In his hands was the blue steam train on the turntable. A small bronze button that was slotted into the narrow space between the track and the turntable caught his eye.
How peculiar. Someone has deliberately stopped the turntable from turning.
+++
Ozzies scurried like worker ants, and their trail led Jack to a door, around which a small gathering of Ozzies stood peeking into the room. On Jack’s approach, they split noiselessly apart to let him pass.
The curtains were drawn, subjecting the room to the dim light of a lamp on top of a white desk. Even in the gloom, he could tell it was an elaborately decorated room.
The Professor was standing before a glass, coffin-like box, his head bowed. Inside the box the deathly-pale woman lay motionlessly.
“If that’s what you are thinking, then you are right. She is dying,” said the Professor without moving his head.
Jack shuffled a few steps forward. He could see tiny cracks all over the surface of the box.
“Who is she?”
“Tyanna, she is Tyanna,” said the Professor, sounding agitated.
“Tyanna, the Wona
woman from Taron?” Jack was startled. “What happened to her?”
The concern in his tone was genuine. The Professor raised his head slightly and his voice, though still bitter, conveyed less contempt.
“Yes, Tyanna, the Wona woman! After Marcus and Zelda had left Taron, she was blamed for their disappearance. A mystical being like her, so they said, who could foresee things, must have anticipated the event. Doing nothing to prevent their disappearance was just as guilty as conniving in the conspiracy. She was punished, chained to a large rock in the middle of nowhere, poisoned and left to die like an animal.”
His voice broke with emotion. He paused to regain his composure. “She called me, in her unearthly way, to say goodbye. Straight away I went, against her wishes, to find her and to save her. It was too late. The poison had impregnated her flesh and bones. Their effect was so profound that, even for a Wona, they were beyond reversal. She is merely kept alive in that box.”
“She saved me,” marvelled Jack. “I saw the furniture coming at me, and at the last instant it veered off.”
“No one on the island has that kind of power —stopping things from falling by a fixed gaze. Yes, she saved you. But don’t you see how feeble she is already? Any such deed could kill her instantly!”
For a while, the dark figure in front of Jack trembled as if troubled by intense emotions.
He turned abruptly, his face dark with tension. “Where were you before the explosion?”
Jack stuttered, “I ... and ... Brianna were in the lab.”
“Did you touch anything? The material in the lab could be dangerous, explosive even.”
“We touched nothing!”
“Did you?”
“Of course we didn’t. We just looked around.”
“You just looked around?” the silver-haired man snorted.
The derision in his tone was hurtful. “We saw the jars of dead babies …” Jack blurted out, clenching his hands, “and those incubators … and wondered … what does it feel like to be created in a test tube, to gestate in a pouch-like womb and spend your first days in a lab with forceps and scalpels.”
He stopped speaking all of a sudden, and the silence that followed was shocking and prolonged. The Professor, with his arms now folded and his eyes, deep and mindful, was staring at him. Feeling suddenly awkward and uneasy, he lowered his gaze.
The blue train he had been clutching since he entered the room caught his eye. “Someone came in,” he muttered, remembering what he came here for.
“Who?”
“Ms Upright.”
“Ms Upright does the cleaning.”
Jack’s voice became thin and shaking. “Was planting a bomb counted as part of her cleaning duties?”
The Professor’s face furrowed.
“Look at this,” he stretched out his hand with the train, “She jammed the turntable to stop Brianna and me from getting out. She wanted to kill us.”
“Nonsense!” retorted the Professor. “Ms Upright would never do that sort of thing.”
Then Professor’s eyes rested thoughtfully on the turntable, and he took it into his hand.
“JACK ...” a shrill cry came from the corridor. Brianna tumbled in from behind the dumbfounded Ozzies, panting breathlessly.
“Bo, Bo is gone!” she sobbed.
9
Tunnel
The cracks in the box spread like poison ivy. Presently, the glass coffin burst into pieces. The woman inside jerked upwards and coughed.
“Tyanna!” the Professor rushed over to help her out of the broken box.
Trembling, one hand in the Professor’s grip, she stretched out the other for Jack to take. Hesitating, he took it and flinched at its touch. It was icy cold.
“Jack,” she whispered his name and sighed as if the touch enchanted her. Her soft glance then drifted to Brianna. Releasing the Professor’s hand, she leaned forward to reach her.
Seeing her approaching hand, Brianna jolted back in alarm. “Don’t touch me! No! No!” she cried, round-eyed. “I just want to get Bo back.”
Tyanna swayed violently on her feet as if about to fall, but the Professor grasped her and steadied her in time.
“I don’t know where Bo is,” the Professor said grudgingly, and raised his voice in urgency. “But the island is damaged and soon will lose its atmosphere. Now the Luda box is broken I must take Tyanna back to Earth where I have a spare one. We —” he paused to glance up at Brianna, “must leave.”
“No! Not without Bo!” Brianna cried, startled by what the Professor had suggested.
“We’re running out of time …”
“Henry,” Tyanna called unexpectedly. She gazed up at the man who was holding her, and a gentle smile spread across her pallid face.
“We still have a chance,” she said.
+++
At the sound of a blaring siren, the Professor dashed out of the lift. Jack and Brianna started to follow, only to find their arms in Tyanna’s grip, which was surprisingly tight.
“Stay,” she commanded.
In the centre of the circular hall, an odd, oval-shaped vehicle was hovering over a gleaming silver disc. It rose up as the Professor approached and puffed wispy white clouds out from its underside, which spread into an expanding ring and, for a moment, enveloped the Professor.
“Ms Upright!” came the Professor’s booming voice.
The vehicle wobbled a little and swirled all of sudden so that the pilot’s window faced the Professor, revealing Ms Upright in the pilot’s seat with Bo sleeping on her lap.
“Bo!” Brianna gave out a high-pitched cry. At the sound of the cry, Tyanna’s body jerked, and her grip tightened.
Ms Upright, evidently enjoying the anxiety she had created, stroked Bo’s head triumphantly.
The Professor strode forward, spreading out his arms.
A menacing grin replaced the triumphant look on the Ozzi woman’s face. She eyed the Professor, who was approaching at a steady pace, and her expression became cold and resentful. Haughtily she flung back her head, and at the same time the vehicle started whirring noisily, and the air surrounding it grew thick. Rapidly it spun and, in the blink of an eye, sped into a tunnel behind it.
In desperation, the Professor ran after it.
“Henry!” Tyanna’s despairing cry was piercing and anguished. Before her voice had trailed away there came a deafening explosion from the direction of the tunnel. Quicker than thought, a forceful shove from Tyanna threw Jack and Brianna to the floor before the blast hit them.
It was a moment of utter chaos. They lay in shock and scrambled to their feet as soon as the last of the blast had rushed past them. Debris and smoke were everywhere, and the rumbling of the explosion was still echoing down the tunnel. Safety sprinklers had been triggered and water was showering down from the ceiling, adding a damp and dismal element to the disordered scene.
+++
Near the entrance of the tunnel the Professor was sprawled face down. With remarkable agility Tyanna flitted over. She threw herself down next to the prostrate man and, with much effort, turned him over. The effort exhausted her, and she quivered before sinking into a kneeling position. With a struggle, she held herself up straight and, extending both her hands palm down, let them hover over the Professor’s chest. She was so still and focused, it looked like she was performing some kind of rite.
The effort soon drained her. She trembled violently before collapsing and lying inert in her white gown. Next to her, the Professor, as if in response to the magic of Tyanna’s hovering hands, twitched and began to recover.
Wet hair clinging to his skull and beads of water dribbling down his chin, the Professor sat up with a bewildered look. The sight of the woman lying beside him shocked him greatly, and his face was etched with pity. He shuffled to his feet and bent low to gather the woman into his arms. Her weight, for a moment, overwhelmed him, and he staggered alarmingly.
Not far from him, the corner of the near wall was blissfully dry. With immen
se effort, he lumbered towards it. Once Tyanna was settled leaning against the wall, the bewildered look returned to his face. His eyes rolled wildly and aimlessly before falling harshly on Jack and Brianna, who were shambling their way over the debris-strewn floor towards him.
“She destroyed the tunnel!” in a hoarse voice he shouted in their direction. “She destroyed the tunnel!”
His face wrenched, as if hit by a torrent of emotion. “I don’t understand … why she … why she … after all those years … after all that I’ve done for her … she betrayed me …”
His babbling faded as his head lowered. For a while, he stood with his eyes cast down as if marshalling his troubled thoughts. When he lifted his head again, there was a strange glow in his eyes, beaming with unnatural energy.
“Destined, destined! It’s all destined to be,” he sputtered. “After all, Bo belongs to Taron — he has the blood of Taron.”
He turned to Jack and Brianna, eyeing each of them with conviction. “But you two have the blood of Earth coursing through you. You belong to the Earth, and I must take you back there. Perhaps, we will have a chance to live TOGETHER like a family.”
The word “together” was accentuated. It resonated mockingly in Jack’s ears and filled him with annoyance. The babies in the jars came to him and were now spinning madly in his mind.
“It was a joke, wasn’t it, Professor?” he uttered suddenly. “Brianna and I — to you we were just results of experiments. Dead or not, plenty of jars for the failed ones.”
“Jack …” The Professor was startled.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we were stored safely in those jars, saving you from the trouble having to take care of us and find us alien parents?”
He was out of control, and he knew it. He was mocking himself, calling Marcus and Zelda alien parents. It was like he was pushing them even further out of his already troubled life. Damn, he felt the sting in his eyes.
“Come here!” Brianna called unexpectedly from a screen nearby that had somehow survived the explosion. She pointed at the screen, breathing hoarsely. “We can jump into the hole, we can jump into the hole ... it can take us to Taron ...”
