Amygdala

by Harper J. Cole

  “Still think it’s just some guy in a suit?” asked Annie.

  Sandra Rivers slowly shook her head, her eyes slightly glazed. ‘Highly unlikely, given what we’ve just seen. It may be a robot of some kind …’ She shuddered, then went on with something more like her customary assurance. “Another possibility: an advanced hologram. It certainly seemed intangible at times. In any case, it certainly isn’t a spectre or demon. Let’s be absolutely clear on that. They want us to fear it, to panic and make mistakes; we’ll do no such thing.”

  Thunk.

  The heavy door shook under a sudden impact. Acting as one, the women backed away, except for Bala, who dropped automatically into a defensive posture.

  Protruding from the door at about head height was a sharp metallic point, dull and rust-coated. The creature had hammered one of its bladed appendages clean through a yard of very solid wood.

  With a tortured squeal, the point vanished, leaving behind a cloud of splinters, fluttering gently to the ground.

  Demon or not, the thing that stalked them was no hologram.

  It was real. And deadly.

  * * *

  Hunter had watched the whole spectacle in silence, too wrapped up in her crew’s struggle to move or speak. Her muscles ached from tension; it took an act of will to relax her body and steady her breathing now that her crew was safe.

  That safety, she feared, was likely to be transitory.

  She turned to Nomi, sitting grim-faced in her chair.

  “What is that thing?”

  “Krikili.”

  “I don’t know that word. You speak it like a curse. Is it a name, or a description?”

  Nomi gazed unseeingly at the screen. “Both, I suppose. Krikili is Krikili. But Krikili is also death, malice, avarice, futility, … terror. It will stalk your team with more determination and more directness, the longer they stay in its lair.”

  The captain drew in a long breath. Cleared her mind. It was time for her last appeal, her last bid to help her crew.

  “Look at me, Nomi.”

  The minister’s gaze remained dead ahead.

  With deliberate slowness, Hunter advanced to stand directly before the woman’s chair. Then she lowered herself to her haunches, and clutched her right wrist with her left hand, pressing both to her breast. It was a gesture of supplication well known to all Matan peoples.

  She was aware of Rolo stepping up to remove her, but Nomi waved him back. At last, the Gataran met Hunter’s gaze. Their eyes, the captain realised, were the same shade of blue.

  “You are full of surprises, woman of Rerutha. You have studied our ways and mastered them more swiftly than I could yours.”

  “Don’t be so sure of that. We aren’t so different, after all. But I don’t ask you to understand me, nor even to respect me. I only want to know … why must my friends die?”

  Nomi grimaced. She turned to Rolo.

  “Wait outside.”

  Hunter didn’t trouble to watch the aide as he departed. His uneven footfalls suggested annoyance, but his feelings were unimportant. Her only concern was the woman who held the fate of eight innocents in her hands.

  The minister glanced over Hunter’s shoulder at the elderly director. He had a pair of hefty earphones on and was busy with his work. Satisfied that they would not be overheard, Nomi spoke, keeping her tones hushed.

  “I lost my husband some years ago, Miriam. An artificial gravity failure at his workplace; they’re not uncommon. I managed to push through some reforms afterwards, but … too late for me. And my daughter.”

  “That must have been hard.”

  “I recovered. I’m a Gataran – we’re strong. But woes move in flocks, as they say. Bini – my daughter – was diagnosed with shimarolochi. Do you know the word?”

  Hunter didn’t, but she could guess the meaning based upon both the construction of the word and the context of its use. “A serious illness,” she suggested.

  “Cellular sickness. It can be lethal if untreated, but that treatment costs dearly, and fringe ministers are not paid well. Nor is my career expected to advance further; the unwritten law is that an ageing woman will decline gracefully into the shadows.”

  The captain nodded in sympathy. “An injustice under any circumstances, but far worse in yours.”

  “Yes … I needed a miracle. Then you appeared in the heavens, needing our fragment of Vitana’s riddle. It wasn’t easy, but I was able to convince my superiors to put it up as a stake in the Zakazashi. They didn’t think your team would have the slightest chance of winning. Perhaps they were right.”

  “You’ll get your promotion, if we fail,” prompted Hunter. “A senior ministerial post.”

  “I believe so. A coup like this should be enough to overcome the stereotypes about old women. I’ll have enough money for Bini. If, on the other hand, your team prevails, I won’t even be able to keep my current position. I’ll be forced to resign, hidden away in some minor administrative post.”

  “And Bini?”

  “Her sickness is terminal without treatments.”

  Nomi’s eyes were glistening; tears rolled down her cheeks. They were the first that Hunter had seen a Matan let slip.

  “I have a daughter, Minister. She’s grown up now, but I remember how I used to feel at the thought of her being in danger. I’d tell myself I’d do anything to protect her, pay any price, make any sacrifice.

  “But some sacrifices aren’t ours to make. Right now, there are eight women facing death. They didn’t choose it, they don’t deserve it.

  “You love your daughter, and I’ve nothing but admiration for that love. But ask yourself, what would she want? Would she really wish so much grief and loss upon others? If she knew this was the price of life, would she pay it? Eight dead for one to go on living … and living all her years with the burden of guilt. Can it be worth it?”

  It was Miriam Hunter’s last throw of the dice, and she had no idea whether it would be enough. She had grown much better at decoding Matan facial expressions and other tells since that first meeting with Captain Chiri all those months ago, but shadows had fallen across Nomi’s face, and her slumped shoulders spoke only of a grief she would surely feel whatever her decision.

  “Yes,” she said at last, her voice a dull monotone. “Yes, it is worth it. She is worth it. I’d sacrifice a thousand lives if it would buy her another day. Bini will never know what happened. The burden of guilt will be mine to bear, and mine alone.

  “As useless as my apologies are, I offer them. The Zakazashi will be played through to its natural conclusion.”

  Hunter rose slowly. She knew, then, that there was nothing more to say. Turning, she saw the main screen still on, the director still working, oblivious. Her team had entered a cube-shaped room of shining silver. A large screen dominated one wall. Before it was a transparent tube, running from floor to ceiling.

  The newest challenge. Would this one be the first to claim a life?

  “I shall watch with you and share your suffering.” Nomi’s voice was little more than a whisper. “The first part of my punishment.”

  The Captain couldn’t find it in her heart to hate the Gataran woman. Not yet, at any rate.

  “The Zakazashi. It can be beaten?”

  “Yes. The challenge is fair.”

  “Then my crew will find a way.”

  Saying those words lessened the burden on her heart. But only for a little while.

  VIII

  By the pricking of my thumbs,

  Something wicked this way comes.

  – William Shakespeare, Macbeth

  It was Sandra Rivers who faced the challenge of the silver room.

  There were terse instructions written on a golden plaque near the entrance. One of their party would have to stand within the clear tube and shout out answers to mathematical questions as they appeared on the screen before her, each with its own time limit.

  No mention was made of the penalty for answering incorrectly or overstep
ping the time. That was left to the imagination. Rivers tried her best to deactivate hers as she stepped into the tube and heard the curve of the door click into place behind her, shutting out all external noise. She didn’t need to check to know that it had locked.

  Gypsy, of course, would still be their first choice for a mathematical challenge under normal circumstances, but Rivers had no confidence in the troubled woman’s ability to function under pressure.

  Even for Rivers herself, focusing on the questions as they flashed up was far from easy. She prided herself on her mental control, but the fear was there throughout, tugging at her mind, demanding attention. It had been a trying day, and her concentration began to waver as the questions grew harder. She had no idea how many there would be, and the challenge played cruelly with her emotions, twice pausing for long enough that she thought she’d won, then abruptly hitting her with a fresh burst of tricky calculations.

  When the challenge finally ended, it did so without fanfare. Rivers heard the door behind her click open and sprang out of the tube with a speed she’d scarcely have believed herself capable of. A section of one wall promptly collapsed, revealing a hidden passageway, and she wasted no time leading her team down it.

  Later, with the benefit of hindsight, she realised that it would have been better to give herself a couple of minutes to cool down after the stress of the challenge. But she didn’t want to appear weak in front of her team; nor did she want to stay in that place and speculate on which kind of death she’d avoided. She was eager to press on.

  Too eager.

  In contrast to the precise lines of the glistening cube they’d just left, this was a return to the superficially natural stone passages they’d seen before, but smaller and darker. There were also a number of other paths branching off to either side. Commandeering the torch, Rivers began checking these for traps and other points of interest.

  She didn’t check carefully enough. Fifty yards in, they came to a sharp left-hand turn. There was a fairly wide opening on the outside of this turn, which Rivers checked with the torch, but she missed a smaller aperture on the inside. The first she knew of her mistake was when she heard a wild yell, and felt a heavy body slamming into her from behind.

  Her first thought was that their mysterious pursuer had caught her. The feel of hot breath on her face and muscular limbs flailing at her soon convinced her otherwise, but any relief she felt at this was minimal – her assailant was substantially stronger than she, and his blows might have done serious damage had they not been so wild.

  Fortunately, Bala was on hand to assist. Cat quick, she darted through the rest of the team, striking the shadowy figure as he reared up to give himself room for a stronger punch. She knocked him off Rivers and immobilised him in a single fluid motion that ended with the man flat on his belly while she crouched over him, her slender hands holding his right wrist in an armlock while he screamed and babbled incoherently.

  Waving off the helping hands her team offered her, Rivers retrieved the torch – she’d dropped it when struck, but thankfully it showed no signs of damage. She turned it on her Matan attacker.

  For Matan he clearly was, young and male, light-skinned and dark-haired. He looked a state, hair wild and overgrown, clothes reduced to rags, emaciated by Matan standards with the outlines of his ribs showing through clearly where his skin was bare. Dried blood and dirt caked a shaggy beard. His eyes were crazed, angry red irises dominating, dark pupils constricting as the light found them. The man continued to shout, his words wild and unintelligible to Rivers’ ears.

  “Can anyone make out what he’s saying?”

  “Some of it,” answered Hisano, raising her voice to be heard above the noise. “There’s a lot of rather crude abuse in there, and he isn’t exactly using proper grammar, but I’m catching the gist … it seems like he’s trying to goad us into killing him, and freeing him from the ‘perverted asylum of death’ in which he finds himself. He’s accusing us of being ‘acolytes of Krikili’, whoever that is.”

  “Oh, I can guess,” said Rivers. “Tell him we’re trapped here just like he is. Tell him we’re friendly.”

  The professor could have conveyed that message easily enough herself, but she wanted a moment to think. Krikili, of course, would be the name of the predator that stalked them. But who was this Matan, and what was he doing here?

  As she watched Hisano fruitlessly trying to calm the man down, the answer came to her. The group from the Bona Dea were not the first to face the Zakazashi. Other teams – Gataran teams – had taken it on before. This was likely a survivor of a failed attempt to beat the challenge.

  The only survivor, quite possibly.

  Based on his starved and haggard appearance, the man had been down here for several days at least. He might have picked up a wealth of useful knowledge during that time but was currently in no fit state to share it. They needed to calm him down and earn his trust.

  In this, Rivers realised, their appearance was against them. Perhaps this Gataran had heard that aliens were orbiting his planet before he entered here, but he’d never seen one face to face. In his addled state, seeing them as “acolytes of Krikili” wasn’t so unreasonable.

  She beckoned Iris forward. “What’s your diagnosis? How can we calm him down?”

  Iris subjected the Gataran to a clinical appraisal, her head tilted thoughtfully to one side. His body had begun to twitch unpredictably; Bala was maintaining her grip but seemed to be finding it more of a struggle now. Rivers realised that they may have to knock the man out if they couldn’t calm him down soon.

  “Psychological distress,” Iris declared.

  “Very insightful.”

  “A high degree of somatization,” the doctor continued, unperturbed. “Also, malnutrition and dehydration. Perhaps he’d like a drink?”

  This simple suggestion made a lot of sense; Rivers retrieved the bottle from her bag and placed it on the ground before the man’s face. He abruptly stopped struggling, eyes fixed on the bottle.

  “For you,” said Rivers in slow, clear Matan. “Drink.”

  “A trick,” said the man, his words much more intelligible this time. “A game of evil.”

  “No.” The professor unscrewed the top and took a sip herself, before placing it by the captive’s left hand. “We’re like you. Fleeing from Krikili.”

  He gazed at her in silence for a long moment, his eyes seeming to gain a little focus. Then he grabbed the bottle and brought it to his lips. Bala cautiously relaxed her grip enough for him to take some proper swigs.

  The man choked on his first mouthful but had no further difficulties in finishing the bottle. Rivers hoped she wouldn’t regret her generosity later. She drew forth a cereal bar but did not give it to him straight away.

  “What’s your name?” she asked. “I’m Rivers.”

  “Buchu,” he responded, only hesitating briefly this time.

  She indicated the bar. “You can have this if you don’t attack us again. Okay?”

  Buchu gazed hungrily at the food. Beneath the hair and dirt he was really very young, she realised – little more than a boy. “Yes,” he said.

  “Let him up, Bala.” Rivers gave the command in Matan – switching to English, a language of which Buchu knew nothing, might jeopardise her bid to win his trust.

  The Nigerian frowned. “Is that wise?”

  “Under normal circumstances, no. But our current situation dictates that we take a chance or two. Release him. Carefully.”

  Bala did so, slowly easing off the pressure on Buchu’s arm as she rose to her feet. She kept herself poised for action, standing in an alert posture between the Gataran and her friends.

  However, he seemed to have little interest in menacing them further, accepting Rivers’ offering and scuttling back to plant his shoulders against the nearest wall. They watched in silence as he ravenously devoured the bar.

  Rivers wordlessly drew another treat from her backpack. “We’re aliens,” she said, handing
it over. “Humans from Earth. We agreed to attempt the Zakazashi, not knowing that it could be lethal: we were tricked. You were in a team too, weren’t you? What prize were you hoping to win?”

  “A mansion on a tropical island. It would have become our joint property. Very beautiful, and worth a small fortune…”

  Buchu continued to talk as he ate; with a few more questions to nudge him in the right direction, Rivers got the information she wanted.

  Much of it was as she had guessed. Buchu’s team – four males and four females, all young – had entered the labyrinth about a week ago, in Earth time. Unlike the humans, they had been told that the newly revamped Zakazashi had the potential to be lethal, though the level of difficulty had been severely played down.

  They hadn’t managed to pass Examination 1 in the time given, falling just short of completing the eighth room with its mathematical puzzles, but had nonetheless progressed onto Examination 2 with a fair degree of optimism.

  Things had unravelled quickly, however. It seemed that Krikili had pursued the Gataran team with substantially more ferocity than the humans had experienced. Buchu had lost the first of his team at what he called the “stepping-stone bridge” – Rivers guessed that this was the same obstacle that Gypsy had been too frightened to cross – when the monstrous creature had come swooping out of the darkness at them, startling the young woman who was bringing up the rear and causing her to lose her footing. The rest of the team had met similar fates, either being carried off by Krikili or sufficiently menaced by his pursuit that they erred in attempting one of the deadly challenges that littered the labyrinth.

  By the time Buchu had reached the tangle of tunnels in which the women now stood, he had but a single companion left. After several close calls, the two of them were able to locate the gate leading out of the area, only to discover that it was impossible to open without the simultaneous actions of at least four people. They were trapped.

  As they stood before the gate, stunned and despairing, Krikili claimed the last of Buchu’s companions. He had been running and hiding ever since. A thorough search had revealed no more exits; there were entrances like the one Rivers’ team had just come through, but these were thoroughly sealed after use, and quite impassable from the inside. There was nothing left for him but to dodge Krikili for as long as he could and hope for a miracle.