by Gary Urey
“Stay back!” Daisha cried, still unable to see who or what was approaching. “I’ll sic my dog on you! He’ll bite!”
“Dziewczyna,” a deep voice grumbled in the darkness.
Dziewczyna.
The foreign yet strangely familiar word flooded into her ears. Daisha reached deep into her mind, desperately trying to remember where she had heard it before.
“Loosha,” she hushed to herself, finally realizing the source. He was one of the Doctor’s Pursuers. The last place she had seen him was right in this very spot, when Boris ripped a chunk of flesh out of his arm and Axel beat him with a fallen tree branch.
The tall, muscular man emerged from behind a tree, making Daisha’s insides shatter like a sheet of ice. The bull tattoo on the side of his neck gleamed in the moonlight. His thick accent was unmistakable.
“Remember me?” Loosha said, aiming a pistol at her.
Boris instinctively leaped at him. Loosha reeled back on his heels and fired at the dog. With a blast of smoke, Boris let out a yelp and fell to the dirt. Daisha turned to run and heard another shot. Sharp, slicing pain tore through her right hip. She stumbled to the ground and reached for the injury. She expected to feel a wound left by a bullet, but instead discovered a small, feathered dart penetrating her skin.
“Wha…wha…what do you want?” Daisha panted.
Loosha leaned over her. “I knew you’d come back here,” he said.
Daisha looked up at him. Her eyelids fluttered, head bobbing like it was too heavy for her neck, and she passed out cold.
Chapter Three
AXEL
After wiggling for a few yards, Axel dropped into a large, subterranean chamber lit with torches. He took one step and crumpled to the ground.
“Owww!” he cried out as excruciating pain sliced through his wounded leg.
Megan rushed to his side. “Help!” she hollered, her panicked voice echoing off the cave walls. “We have a wounded kid here!”
People emerged from the shadows. Axel looked up and saw two dancers from the Sun Temple, a man and a girl who looked to be about his age.
“Treat his wound immediately,” Jag ordered.
The two dancers lifted Axel off the floor and carried him down a long, dark passageway. Ancient murals and carvings covered the rock walls: a four-armed man, swans, snakes, elephants, exotic birds, and several godlike figures seated in a lotus position.
They passed through a beaded curtain and into another room. The place glowed orange from several lit candles. Smoke from jasmine-scented incense wafted in the air. Elegant tapestries of Hindu gods decorated the walls.
“Where am I?” Axel asked as the two dancers laid him down on a cot filled with pillows.
“One of the sleeping chambers,” the girl said with a thick Indian accent.
“I’ll get the medical supplies,” the man said as he exited the room.
The girl produced a knife and sliced away Axel’s pant leg.
“What are you doing?” Axel said in protest.
“I’m exposing the wound so it can be cleaned. You don’t want these soiled pants anyway.”
When the girl removed the pant leg, Axel saw his wound for the first time—a deep gash three inches long. Dried blood and exposed flesh spilled around the cut. The look of it made Axel even more light-headed than he already was.
The girl dabbed a white cloth in a pail of water and started wiping away the blood.
“Ouch,” Axel moaned. “I’m going to need a dozen stitches.”
“A lot more than that, I’m afraid,” the girl said, trying to be as gentle as possible. “My name’s Charu. You’re Axel, right? Larraj told me a lot about you.”
A shiver went up Axel’s spine as he remembered the mystical Larraj reading Daisha’s and his palm leaves back at the Sun Temple. Even though they had never met the Nadi reader in their lives, he had known their names, ages, places of birth, and other personal information. He even knew about the Doctor, that their parents were scientists, and how they had lost their lives.
The boy with hair like a muddy river must die yet still live.
The prophecy Larraj had revealed back at the Konanavlah Sun Temple came into Axel’s mind. So did Daisha. Axel’s heart clenched and tears formed at the corners of his eyes. Larraj’s palm leaf prophecy had gotten it completely correct. Without Daisha, Axel felt dead inside. Yet, he was still alive.
“Larraj explained to me in intimate detail my palm leaf prophecy,” Axel said after a moment. “Who knew I was so popular in this part of the world?”
Charu chuckled. It made Axel feel good to hear laughter again. He studied her face. She was young, probably a teenager not much older than him, with large dark eyes and black hair. Glistening in the center of her forehead was a red dot. Axel knew this was called a bindi, but he had no idea what it meant.
Charu caught his eye. “Let me guess: You want to know what my bindi represents?”
“Uh…I didn’t mean any disrespect,” said Axel, fidgeting.
Charu smiled. “Don’t worry. I get it all the time from tourists who visit the temple.”
Axel grimaced in pain as she cleaned closer to the wound.
“Perhaps we’ll have time later,” Charu said. “There is a lot to tell, and I need to concentrate.”
The other dancer came back into the room, carrying a canvas bag with the words Suture Kit written on the outside. The man looked to be in his twenties. He was bare-chested with long gold beads draped around his neck. His loose, silky pants were the iridescent blue and green colors of a peacock. His costume perfectly matched Charu’s elegant purple and gold sari.
“Is he ready?” the man asked.
Charu shook her head. “Antiseptic,” she said.
The man rummaged through the bag, pulled out a brown bottle, and handed it to her.
“This is going to sting,” Charu said. “Are you ready?”
Axel nodded and closed his eyes. When the antiseptic flowed over the wound, he let out an anguished cry. Charu dabbed at the wound and poured on more cleaner, each dose more painful than the last. When she had sanitized the area, the man knelt beside Axel.
“My name is Kundan,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ve stitched up many wounds. The scar will be barely visible after healing.”
Kundan put on a pair of rubber gloves and rubbed a white cream around the wound. Instantly, the area grew numb.
“Hand me the scissors and tissue forceps,” Kundan ordered Charu.
Charu rolled her eyes. “Yes, Your Highness,” she said sarcastically as she retrieved the items from the canvas bag.
Kundan loaded thread into a curved needle and went to work closing the wound.
“That should do it,” Kundan said when he had finished. He wiped away the excess antiseptic and covered the wound with a large bandage.
“How do you feel?” Charu asked.
Axel shrugged. “Like I just got about twenty-five stitches.”
“I’ll be back later,” Kundan said. “Try not to move around too much. And don’t worry, the men who were chasing you will never find you down here.”
Kundan pulled off the rubber gloves, tossed them in a trash pail, and left the room.
The room grew brighter. Axel craned his neck and saw that Charu had lit a torch hanging from the wall.
“Why didn’t you light that before Kundan started stitching me up?” Axel asked. “He could have seen better.”
“His Highness saw just fine,” Charu said. She poured a glass of cold water from a pitcher and handed it to Axel. “Drink this. You need to keep hydrated.”
Axel sat up, tilted the glass to his lips, and chugged the water down in three giant gulps.
“You don’t like Kundan very much, do you?” Axel asked.
Charu made the international symbol for Loser by raising a hand to her forehead and extending her index finger and thumb. Then she became more serious.
“He’s all right,” she said. “He wanted to be a temple dancer.
I mostly do it because my parents expect me to.”
“I know what that’s like,” said Axel. “Well—I guess my parents didn’t know any of this would happen, but I’ve been on the run for months because of what my dad and Daisha’s mom discovered.”
“Perhaps this can be a new start.” Charu smiled. She poured Axel another glass of water and picked his bloody pants off the floor. As she was walking to the trash pail, something round and hard fell from the pocket. The item skittered across the floor and landed just out of Axel’s reach.
“It’s my GeoPort,” Axel said.
The memories attached to the unit made his chest swell with both anger and sadness. With everything that happened back at the temple, running through the jungle on Jag’s back, and now these caves, he had forgotten all about it. Then he realized it was actually Daisha’s. She had dropped hers right before hurtling into the sky. As Jag and Megan hauled him to safety, he had scooped the GeoPort up and shoved it into his pocket.
As he thought back to the events that brought him to the caves, a tear leaked down his cheek. He wiped it away and tried reaching for the GeoPort.
It couldn’t be a new start for Axel like it was for Charu. Not yet. He needed to find out what happened to Daisha.
“Hand me the GeoPort, please. I can’t reach it.”
Charu picked up the GeoPort and handed it to him. “What is it? A new type of phone?”
“It’s a…well, it’s…I’ll explain another time,” Axel said, not even knowing where to begin.
He tapped at the buttons, trying to turn it on. The thing was dead. Without an X-Point, there was no more Geographical Transportation. Without Geographical Transportation, there was no immediate way back to Palo Alto. Could Daisha possibly be alive? If so, was she waiting for him back at the Hoover Park Dog Run?
The Doctor and his Pursuers flashed in Axel’s mind, making his heart swell with fury. “This thing’s a curse!” he cried, hurling the GeoPort across the room. “I never want to see it again!”
Chapter Four
DAISHA
A series of loud rumbles ripped Daisha from her sleep. She opened her eyes, sat up, and saw the walls shaking. Beside her, a pitcher of water rattled off a nightstand and crashed to the floor. Dust rained down on her from above. She looked up at the ceiling and saw a small fissure working its way across the sheetrock.
Her heart raced, and sweat poured down her cheeks.
“What’s happening?” she called out.
Then everything grew quiet, as if someone had flipped a switch to off.
Daisha rubbed her eyes.
“Was I just in an earthquake?” she mumbled groggily.
Seismic activity wasn’t that uncommon where she was from in California. Usually, the quakes were minor. There were a lot of 2.9s—maybe a 4.0 every now and again—barely enough to feel anything at all. But this one was much bigger, at least a 6.0 or higher.
“Where the heck am I?” she wondered, glancing around at the strange surroundings.
She was lying on a soft bed, wrapped in a fluffy comforter, inside an elegant-looking bedroom. Fancy artwork, now crooked from the tremor, hung from the walls. Rays of bright sunshine streamed in through the large windows. There was a door leading to a stone patio, and just beyond that was a swimming pool and well-manicured lawn. A pile of black-and-white fur lay crumpled next to a dresser.
“Boris!” Daisha exclaimed.
She jumped out of bed and stumbled to him. For a panic-stricken second, Daisha thought the dog was dead, but then she saw the gentle lifting and falling of his chest. Slowly, the events of the previous night replayed in her mind. She had blasted through the Warp, heading directly to the heart of the sun. Then, just as she had been about to plunge headfirst into a fiery solar death, she’d landed at Centennial fountain, and Boris had been waiting for her. They’d made their way to Hoover Park, hoping Axel would be there.
A sharp, needling pain shot across her right hip. She reached down and felt a bandage, one that she hadn’t placed there.
“Loosha,” she said out loud. “The scumbag shot Boris and I with some kind of tranquilizer dart.”
She walked groggily across the room and gave the door a tug. Someone had locked it from the outside. She tried the patio doors. Same thing. With a grunt, she picked up a heavy marble sculpture of a lion beside the patio door and hurled it at the window, trying to escape. It didn’t work. The sculpture bounced off the window like the glass was made of rubber. She had to step out of the way of the sculpture flying back at her.
Footsteps pounded outside her door.
The bedroom door flew open. Loosha and an older woman wearing pink nursing scrubs stepped inside. Daisha didn’t recognize the woman, but Loosha was exactly as she remembered him from Hoover Park, tall and muscular, with buzzed blond hair and a bull tattoo on the side of his neck. A holstered pistol dangled from his side.
Anger boiled inside Daisha’s heart. She charged at him, fists flailing, trying to get out the door. Loosha grabbed her by the shoulders and flung her hard to the floor. The man was too big for her to get past. And this time Boris wasn’t in any state to help her.
“Let me go!” she cried.
“Try that again, dziewczyna,” Loosha said in his thick accent, “and you and I will have big problems.”
“Please, sir,” the nurse said, her voice filled with concern. “The girl’s had a rough—”
Loosha shot the nurse an icy glare, instantly quieting her. “You’ve bandaged her hip fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “I will take over from here.”
The nurse gave a resigned nod and stepped out of the room.
“That was some quake,” Loosha said when the nurse had left. “Lucky all the windows are made from earthquake-resistant glass. Otherwise, the Doctor’s house crew would have a mess to clean up.”
“What do you want with me?” Daisha asked, her muscles tense in case she had to defend herself against him.
“I think it’s the other way around,” Loosha said, slowly moving toward her. “What do you want from me?”
“I don’t want anything from you! Where am I?”
“You’re on the Doctor’s property in one of his guest cottages. I live here too.”
An audible groan escaped from Daisha’s lips. Her last memory of the Doctor was when he had plunged his knife into Axel’s leg.
“Is Axel here?” she asked, hoping the Pursuer would say yes.
Loosha shook his head. “As far as I know, he’s still in India. The Doctor is too, and he’ll be there for quite a while. He and his little cockroach sidekick, Pinchole, have a lot of explaining to do for blowing up that temple.”
“Is Axel de—” Daisha started to say, but couldn’t bear to say the words.
“Dead? Is that what you want to know?”
Daisha nodded.
Loosha shrugged. “I don’t know or care. The Doctor already paid me for capturing him. I thought you’d put more pieniądze in my pocket, but I was wrong.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My friends back at the Doctor’s headquarters just told me he doesn’t want you anymore. It was a big waste of my time staking out that park and waiting for you.”
“Then let me go.”
“Not quite yet. I may still get something for you.”
Loosha brushed by her and knelt down beside Boris. With a scowl, he lifted Boris’s head and examined the dog’s teeth.
“I paid two thousand dollars for this Karelian.” He held up his heavily bandaged right hand. “And this is the type of loyalty I get in return. He was supposed to protect me, not you.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t beat and kicked him, he’d like you better,” Daisha said, remembering her captor hurting the dog right before the attack at Hoover Park.
“Dziewcz—” Loosha started to say, but Daisha interrupted him.
“My name’s Daisha. D.A.I.S.H.A. Not dziewczyna.”
Loosha chuckled. “For such a young dziewczyna—
”
A loud chirping sound bounced off the walls.
“Where’s that noise coming from?” Loosha asked.
Daisha’s heart soared. She knew the sound was coming from her GeoPort. It was working! The chirping meant that her GeoPort had recharged and was ready to Warp again. She yanked the unit out of her pocket, ready to punch in 23.1483° N, 79.9015° E, the longitude and latitude numbers for the Konanavlah Sun Temple, but she saw something strange. There was already a set of numbers flashing across the unit.
21.52, 75.3, 78.14, 0.9786
Daisha knew instantly the numbers weren’t latitude and longitude. She rattled her brain, trying to figure out what they were.
“Where did they come from?” she whispered to herself.
“What are you mumbling about?” Loosha asked.
She ignored her captor and tried to erase the numbers and type in the coordinates for the Sun Temple. It didn’t work. The numbers were stuck in place.
“What’s wrong with this thing?” she wondered aloud.
“Give me that,” Loosha growled, reaching for the GeoPort. “The Doctor might give me a bonus for this.”
Daisha pulled the unit away. “Get away from me!” she screamed in his face.
Loosha grabbed Daisha by the arm. Daisha countered his move by punching him in the stomach.
“Owww!” Loosha cried out.
Daisha pushed him away, but he quickly recovered and snatched her by the wrist. Just as he was about to take the GeoPort from her hands, she pressed the SW button. With a blast of white smoke and electrical discharge, both of them detonated into the Warp.
Chapter Five
MUNI
Muni parted her office window curtains and stared outside. A melancholy smile stretched across her face. She loved watching the children play in the grass of the Antakaale’s Sri Lankan tea plantation, but this scene made her sad too. She and her followers used to have eight children. Now they were down to seven, all of them girls between the ages of three and a half and six. Her thoughts swam with memories of the other child who was no longer with the group. Varya was her name—one of the Sanskrit words meaning “precious.” At twelve months, she had just learned to toddle. Her big toothy smile and thick black hair had always delighted Muni.