Animalis

by John Peter Jones

  The Animalis hadn’t known lies, and hadn’t known betrayal. They were all little children. And like children, as they were abused, taken advantage of, and trodden under foot, their trust grew thin and fearful. Their instinct of self-preservation took over, and they would lash out in violent ways when provoked.

  Chapter 26

  Awakening

  Jax slowly receded from Hurley’s life; she should have some privacy left to her past. He had been seeking solace in her life, but had found more than he could comprehend. He had needed to know that there was more than misery in the world, and he had found it.

  Jax pulled himself back to the DNA that had trails connecting to him in the present. His body floated in the timeless present. He couldn’t die. This couldn’t be the end.

  Strands of possible futures trailed off in front of Jax. He was surprised to find that, within the next five minutes, he and Narasimha would almost certainly be picked up. The plane he had been on, Narasimha’s plane, was still in the upper atmosphere. The warthog that was flying the plane had waited for the others to leave, and was going to be returning.

  The arena again! Jax thought in despair. He checked inside of Narasimha and found that there was almost nothing he could do that would stop her from taking him back to that horrible place, and killing him herself.

  He could feel the focal point of life still watching him, waiting on him, before it would continue on. Was there something he could do? Beyond saving himself even, if these were the last moments of his life, was there some role that life needed him to fulfill? He wished there was someone to just tell him what to do. Hank, Hernandez, Hurley—Let them decide—and he would be the tool in their hands. What price would he have to pay if he made the wrong choice?

  He could use the pyramid to stop Narasimha to save himself and countless others she might kill. Just one life.

  But his mind resonated again with the answer from pyramid: “NO.”

  Something shifted inside his mind. Lessons from Hurley’s life, and his own, combining and unconsciously taking root in him. He couldn’t say exactly what he was starting to understand, and he still didn’t know if there was some vital action he was supposed to take while he was here, but he knew what he wanted to do.

  Narasimha’s life spread before him once more. He had to know what was motivating her. If he could understand her, then maybe he could change her.

  Jax absorbed her life in giant gulps: she had been a mother, she was the last of her kind, her parents and her children had been killed one by one by humankind, she had suffered and lost everything and attributed all of her suffering to humans, she had a need to hunt and she had convinced herself that humans were prey. But behind all of that, Jax found her need to belong. She wanted to have a place in the world. Someone had to want her.

  It was one simple thing, but impossible to achieve. She had demonized and debased humans down to the lowest and most insignificant creatures in her mind. How could Jax possibly make her believe that she was important to a human. He would have to conquer her first.

  Jax remembered Grimshaw again, and knew that there was a way.

  And he did it, delicately shifting sequences of DNA until the projections of the future seemed to follow his desired outcome.

  When it was done, Jax brought his focus back to the pyramid, and to his body spinning within it. Before he tried to pull himself from the experience, he thought of Hank again. His best friend, driven crazy, knowing what the pyramid might be capable of, while no one had believed him. Hank so badly wanted to see what the pyramid was capable of, Jax thought.

  Jax quickly found Hank’s DNA and watched it spread out before him. Hank sat, in the present moment, inside the company’s plane, within his small cabin, still aching from the near fatal dose of serum.

  His mind was split, torn between his faith and friendship with Jax, and his hatred for the Animalis. The split was creating a chasm. His mind was a whole world of thoughts and information, carefully organized and cared for.

  When the split had started to form, two months ago, the force of his emotions had pushed his actions out of alignment with his ideals, creating mental blocks, meant to stop his moral judgment from condemning himself for what he had done to the hyena, which had started to fragment his mind.

  It was painful to see. On one side, he was taught and raised to honor life, and on the other side, where he had hidden his grief for his mother, was a boiling volcano of vengeance ready to explode with a deadly wrath. And the pyramid had been the ultimate tool.

  Pain shot through Jax’s heart to see the chasm cutting through their friendship.

  Jax was growing weak; he could sense the strain of using the pyramid for too long building up inside his body. He had to get his mind out soon. But he wanted to do something, give Hank some satisfaction that the pyramid was the Ivanovich Machine.

  So he planted a seed in his mind as Hank sat in his cabin, linking their memories in a way that would give him an echo of Jax’s experience in the pyramid.

  Then Jax was back, focusing on himself; what his breath had been. Breath in, hold. Breath out, hold. In sixteen seconds, out sixteen seconds. Time was starting to continue. He felt his legs and his arms. The synapses finished firing in his brain and his eyes cracked open. The Earth spun into view, the blue glow so beautiful to him now. The pyramid continued to rotate, and the stars came into view. He was alive. In: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Had it worked?

  He could feel something shifting inside his body, sending out a sound of gurgling fluids. Something popped, but he didn’t feel any pain. He was changing.

  Fatigue washed over him. In the eternity of the machine, he hadn’t had to hold all of the information flowing through him. Now the enormous wave of knowledge was crashing into his limited body. His muscles ached, his eyes leaked, and his mind started to forget. The wealth of information slipping away like a dream. And his consciousness began to drift as well, slipping into a recovery sleep.

  The plane was coming to get them. He had seen the trails of his future leading back down to Earth. Narasimha would take him back to the arena to pay for his crime, and she would be the one to exact his punishment, when she found out what he had done.

  ——

  Jax woke up strapped to the wall of the plane. His space suit was off, and he could hear the rumbles from sound waves propagating through the air again. His head was still pounding and his left hand was numb. His muscles couldn’t have moved even if they hadn’t been strapped down.

  The light within the cargo hold burned his eyes, but he needed to see it. He held one eyelid open just a hair and looked down where the pyramid had been strapped. It was there again, cold and unmoving, held to the floor like the rest of the inanimate cargo. He shut his eye quickly to stop from getting sick.

  “Run … Run … Run it again. Run it again. Run in again,” a voice was saying. “Get-Get-Get Get another scanner-anner-anner-anner.”

  His brain hadn’t adjusted yet, and the words echoed and shot around his mind, circling past his awareness several times at a hundred miles an hour.

  “We only-ly-ly-ee-ee-eeeee have the one, Nara. Only have one, Nara. I don’t see anything wrong with it,” the warthog said.

  Jax opened his eye a little more. The two Animalis were talking next to the wall screen. A CT scan of the pyramid rotated in a three-dimensional image on the display. Narasimha saw him watching them. She held her hand up to stop the conversation with the warthog. He closed his eyes again.

  “Jax-ax-ax. Jax. You lived. I lived. I lived. I lived. You keep making these mistakes-stakes-aaakes-mistaaaaakes. Your enemy, brought helpless before you—helpless before you—again and again, and you don’t have the strength to act,” she snarled. She started walking to him.

  Jax wanted to speak, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to make any audible sounds yet.

  “Unless you don’t think that I’m your enemy? I’m your enemy? I’m
your enemy?” she said. “How did you activate the pyramid, Jax?”

  She waited for him to respond. After a moment, he decided to try. It hurt to move his lips and tongue.

  “We’re not enemies, Nara.” His voice was a gravelly whisper and came out of his mouth in slow motion. The effort sent his head pounding again.

  Narasimha waited for more. When Jax remained quiet, she started to laugh. “Humans are always coming up with new-new-new-new ways to flaunt their stupidity-eeeeeeee.” She looked back at the warthog and laughed again; the sound of it rocketed around Jax’s skull. “Why don’t you think—don’t you think—don’t you think we’re enemies?” She seemed to be asking it for an honest answer.

  “Because …” Jax pulled himself from the brink of unconsciousness. “I’m not fighting against you anymore.”

  “I wasn’t sure-r-r-r-r you were fighting me before. You were—you were—you were scurrying across my path like a cockroach, trying not to be crushed?” she said, standing directly in front of him. She looked into his eyes.

  Jax felt his body trying to tense up. Had this subtle part of his plan worked? Even if it had, there was no way to know how she would react to the change. He watched her eyes intently, trying to catch any hints of the change.

  Her head jerked back, and her eyes squinted. She let a little growl into her voice. “Why is the pyramid different? Why-Why-Why-Why isn’t the DNA signature showing up in the CT scans anymore?” She pressed her broad nose close to Jax’s cheek. Her moist breath warmed his skin.

  “I killed it,” Jax said. The numbness in his left hand began to sting. He wouldn’t last much longer before he would sink into unconsciousness again while his brain adjusted to the change. “It’s gone. The DNA inside it is completely destroyed.” He felt the breath stop on his cheek. The breath held for a long time, and when it returned, it was a growl.

  “Don’t lie, human-human-human,” she said.

  “I’d tell you how to use it, but it doesn’t matter anymore. No one will ever be able to use it again.” He started to let himself go; the sense of falling backward down a deep tunnel as his consciousness drifted away.

  Then he heard a deafening roar that was loud enough to compete with the ringing building in Jax’s ears. “It was mine, human!” As his mind drifted away, the voice was squeezed down to a tinny echo: “I’ll tear you apart for all the world to see!”

  Chapter 27

  A New Beginning

  He woke in a confused state inside a cage. In his dream, he had been playing the ACTS Animalis ball game with Hodge. All the players kept remarking about what a big smile he had, and he realized he was smiling. The muscles in his cheeks pulled the corners of his mouth into the biggest smile he had ever held.

  The concrete floor was ice cold, and there was no ragged blanket to hold this time. The exhaustion had subsided, all except the numbness in his left hand. It had stopped stinging and was now a constant buzz.

  Jax heard the rhythmic stomping of the arena crowd accepting two new Animalis combatants onto the floor above him and was relieved that his mind had adjusted to the change.

  They weren’t stomping for him this time. But they would be soon.

  How long did he have before the arena was cleared and prepared for his turn in it? Jax began to sit up and had to catch himself from tossing himself back to the floor. He slowly stood, letting himself experience the slightly altered muscle and tendon structures throughout his body.

  Once he was able to walk around his cell, he sat with his legs folded in a meditation position. There had been something he’d wanted to test when he had left the pyramid. He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing. In and out. He slowly increased the duration of the intake and exhale.

  The crowd cheered loudly above him. What horrible thing were they praising at this moment? Jax found himself thinking. His mind had wandered. He tried to bring it back to his breath. Would it work? Could he get there again? In for fifteen seconds, hold. Exhale for fifteen, hold.

  “I don’t know what kind of stunt that was you pulled last time, mal’chik, but people went wild over it. I can’t believe Nara found you again. And look at you, already have a new one grown.” The deep voice of the arena host broke Jax’s concentration again.

  Jax refused to open his eyes to acknowledge the man. In for sixteen seconds, hold. Exhale for sixteen, hold.

  “This time, I’m sorry, mal’chik, but I can’t offer you any help.” He seemed to think it was big news. “Not unless you want to split Nara’s kingdom with me if you win.”

  Pretend he isn’t there. In seventeen seconds, hold. Exhale seventeen seconds, hold. Jax felt a tingle.

  “If you kill Nara, it’s all yours. Her planes, the printer shops.”

  Jax tried to hold onto the tingle, spread it around with his awareness.

  “But, then, I guess one of the others will come after you. Those Animalis, they’d go to the ends of the Earth for her,” he was saying. “Strangest thing. They’re not terrified of her, like they should be, of a predator like her. I guess that’s why I haven’t made any moves against her myself.”

  The tingle faded. He lost it. Well, it was worth a shot anyways. Jax let his breath return to normal and opened his eyes.

  “Aw, there you are,” the man said. “Good. Do I need to shock you? Or will you come peacefully this time?”

  Jax didn’t fight. He let himself be led down to the cage that would spill him out into the arena. The man kept talking along the way, trying to inspire a good, money-earning fight from Jax, who just tried to ignore the words.

  The crowd began to chant. It was a different chant than Jax had heard before: “Na-ra!” Boom, boom. “Sim-ha!” Boom, boom. It was ominous that they already knew what was coming. Inevitably coming, there was nothing Jax could do to stop it. The large man stood in the shadows when Jax’s cage started to push him forward.

  Sunlight absorbed the darkness as the cage was pushed forward into it. The cage stopped. Narasimha watched him from across the arena. Her clothes were minimal and sporty, revealing the redundant ripples of muscles in her arms, neck, and legs. Her breathing was shallow. The focus of her stare revealed her animal origin. Jax could feel himself being transformed in her eyes, like he was already a chunk of meat waiting to be devoured. The walls of the cages swung open.

  Jax took a deep breath. He was getting close to the end of the DNA’s projected probable future that he had seen—and that which terrified him more: the time limit before the changes he had made disappeared. He could feel the blood in his veins growing cold with fear, but he had to stay calm. He tried to see through Narasimha the way he had in the pyramid. She was a living house of DNA. They were connected, brother and sister in life.

  Narasimha slowly walked out of the cage. Her feet took the delicate steps of a hunt about to begin.

  “Stop your attacks on humans, Nara,” Jax called out to her. “We're not your enemy. I'm not your enemy!”

  She could have been in the dead of space. The sound of the words hadn’t reached her. She continued to inch forward.

  Jax flexed his muscles, testing the changes to his body once more before the fight. He began to walk toward her.

  In front of him was one of the most deadly predators to walk the Earth. He had seen her devour a man, and now he had to beat her. He couldn’t be afraid of her terrible jaws, or her razor-sharp hands.

  She charged at him. The muscles in her body demonstrated their full potential, launching her across the arena at a terrifying speed.

  Jax’s altered brain worked in overtime. An extra layer of neurons preprocessed the visual information coming in from his eyes and gave him the sense that everything was moving in slow motion. Her claws extended from the tips of her fingers as she dove toward him. He could see her exact trajectory before her legs left the ground.

  He dodged to the left and felt his increased strength propel him safely away from her lunge. As her hands hit the ground, he turned and cracked his hand down on her back.<
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  Her arms crumpled and her body bounced against the ground. A cloud of dust swirled around her.

  Her growl was the first thing to re-emerge. With a fluid convulsion of muscle, she leaped from the dirt and landed on all fours. She closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “How?” she said. Her eyes were filled with hate beyond the point of rage. Her skin wrinkled and pulled up in an expression that made Jax want to run for his life.

  He extended his left arm at her, pointing his fingertips. But he stopped himself. He had to save that arm for a true emergency.

  She stood and began another slow approach, more wary of his speed and strength.

  The preprocessed visual information showed her muscles in her chest and arms beginning to bulge. Potential energy was building up in her shoulder.

  Her hand sliced through the air, almost overcoming his brain’s ability to slow the action. Jax shrank backward and felt the tip of a claw pass in front of his nose. Then he turned to the side, stepped closer, and kicked her before her second hand was able to swipe at him.

  The force of the kick knocked her off her feet, and she flew backward with her arms still slicing at him. She caught herself on her hands and feet again. She clutched her chest.

  “What have you done?” she said. “You’re not human.”

  She stepped away from him.

  Jax stepped closer.

  “Stun him!” she called to the lip of the arena.

  Jax stopped his advance and looked up. Six guards stood ready to extend their long shock sticks down at him.

  The nearest one jabbed, and Jax twirled to the side. Another guard moved in range and swung down.