Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  ‘Ms Fang, Mr Ma wants to know just how soon after the chip is installed we will be able to look inside the subject’s mind?’

  Ms Fang breathed in slowly as she prepared to answer; it was obvious that she wanted to give an answer that would please Mr Ma, whose impatience in terms of this matter was plain to see, but at the same time she realised she had to stick with the cold, hard facts of the situation.

  ‘Well, it is, er, difficult to say, sir,’ she responded uneasily. ‘Especially seeing as the mind we’re going into is so vastly different from any mind we’ve worked with up until this point. That’s why we decided to go the surgical route instead of simply giving him the silver pill with the nanobots. There are millions of neural—’

  Mr Ma turned and looked away from the operating table for the first time since the procedure had started, and he held up a hand to silence her while harpooning his eyes into hers with a hellishly intense gaze. He kept his eyes fixed to hers with his jagged steel barbs and gestured slowly in sign language as she squirmed and perspired.

  ‘Mr Ma doesn’t care about the details,’ Mr Wang said, the tone of his voice even and gentle, yet carrying the subtle threat of a panther’s low growl. ‘He just wants to know when. When will he be able to get inside the subject’s mind?’

  Ms Fang swallowed slowly and pulled a tissue from her lab coat pocket to dab at the beads of perspiration on her forehead before answering.

  ‘I cannot say for sure, sir. We have ramped up testing and development, but we may be, well … months … years … from that kind of breakthrough.’

  Mr Ma’s wrinkles morphed, like a flipbook animation of a line drawing, into an expression of tempestuous wrath. His skeletal hands curled into balled fists at his sides and he opened his mouth. A deep, raspy hiss clawed its way up his throat and crawled out from between his crimson lips, causing Ms Fang to shrink back in fear. With his rage-trembling hands he made a few angry gestures, and again Mr Wang interpreted for him.

  ‘Is there no way to accelerate the procedure? As you can see, Mr Ma is very … eager … to get inside Aboubakar’s head.’

  ‘I’m t-, terribly sorry sir,’ she stammered, quickly regaining her confidence as she continued, ‘but we’re talking about something that’s currently beyond the limits of what we can do. We’re, we’re trying to push through these boundaries as fast as we can … but there are still boundaries.’

  Mr Ma scowled, the valleys and crags of his wrinkled face twisted with naked disgust and unbridled anger, but he turned around to continue watching the procedure, and retracted his withering barbs from Ms Fang’s eyes.

  ‘You may return to your work now, Ms Fang,’ Mr Wang said coolly. ‘Thank you, we will speak again later.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ she replied, a chilly sweat icing the small of her back, and she then turned on her heels and scurried off.

  Mr Wang turned to Mr Ma and spoke to him in an uncharacteristically candid tone.

  ‘I’m sorry that you are disappointed sir, but as Ms Fang said, we must exercise patience here. Her team do seem to be doing their utmost to achieve a breakthrough. Putting more pressure on them isn’t likely to help, if I may say so … it might have the opposite effect, in fact.’

  Mr Ma tilted his head ever so slightly toward Mr Wang and fired a fierce glare out of the corner of his eye. However, he replied to his bodyguard in calm, undramatic gestures.

  ‘Thank you sir,’ Mr Wang said, ‘I know you do appreciate my advice, blunt as it is sometimes. Tell me, are you absolutely sure that nobody else on the board knows about the actual details of this experiment?’

  Mr Ma nodded and signed a few sentences.

  ‘Ah, excellent strategy, sir. It is good that the other board members – especially Deveraux and his camp – are kept in the dark about the full extent of the power that lies in this technology. And we will make sure that we keep things deliberately vague at the upcoming meeting at Sigurd’s headquarters. You have done well to fool them into thinking that it is a mere tool for memory and brain-probing analysis. There is, of course, a great deal of power in that itself – in being able to access all of the information that is stored in the minds of these monsters – but nowhere near the level of power contained in being able to control them. And then, of course, to potentially find and control what has been lost and hidden for so long … such a thing is beyond imagining. But it seems that the unimaginable may become a real possibility with this technology.’

  Mr Ma simply nodded in response to this.

  ‘Excellent, sir. Once you have this card in your pocket, it will assure you of absolute power. However, we must make a contingency plan in case anything happens to you. Forgive me for saying this sir, but you know how it is, with your age and your ailing health. You do have the best physicians in the world working for you, and the regular transfusions of teenagers’ blood, that much is true, but I see you every day, all day, and some days it … it breaks my heart, sir, to see how fragile your health can be.’

  Mr Ma remained dispassionate, and he replied to this comment by gesticulating slowly.

  ‘As you wish sir. I will prepare a secret brief for your grandson, explaining everything about this facility, and what the ultimate goal is with implanting this chip into the brain of a beastwalker. If anything should happen to you, the brief will go straight to him. He alone will inherit the power you are going to wield through this new technology, and he will become the new CEO of the Huntsmen Corporation when your time is over.’

  Mr Ma nodded, and the faintest shadow of a smile creased the corners of his mouth. He looked up at Mr Wang, and his eyes were a lot warmer than they usually were. He gave him a gentle nod, and then resumed watching the surgical procedure below.

  ***

  Aboubakar opened his eyes, and rising tide of potent nausea caused him to sit up immediately. With his stomach feeling as if it had been wrung into a tight knot, he leaned over the side of the bed, expecting a torrent of vomit to cascade out of his mouth. For a few moments it did feel as if it were creeping up the back of his throat, like magma tentatively probing a fissure in the earth, but then the urge subsided. His head throbbed with a dull, constant pain, and his mouth was dry as any midday desert, but aside from that he didn’t feel too terrible; as with most drugs and poisons, his beastwalker blood was able to deal with the anaesthetic in a far more efficient and speedy manner than that of a mortal.

  He was back in the white room. Everything white, as if someone had left a window open during a blizzard the night before. He had to squint and half close his eyes against the dazzling brightness of his surroundings; the intensity was too much for his dilated pupils to handle.

  ‘Hello?’

  A tentative croak, dragged from his parched mouth with the reluctance of two rough planks pressed together and scraped in opposing directions. He waited for a good few seconds after the word had evaporated into the air before trying again.

  ‘Someone? I need water! Please!’

  Even speaking these few words seemed to hurt; it felt as if the words were strands of barbed wire hauled up from his stomach and pulled through his throat.

  Nobody responded. From the top corner of the room the unblinking convex eye of a security camera stared down at him. A tiny red light was glowing on the side of the camera; it had to be on. He stared at it and waved his hands around, and then made a gesture miming drinking from a glass.

  There was no response, so he threw up his hands in the air.

  ‘Bulla!’ he shouted abruptly, wincing and coughing immediately from the raking pain this harsh shout induced.

  He lay back down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, which was also bleached of colour, like everything else in this room. White. Everything white. If part of whatever the Huntsmen were doing to him involved driving him to insanity, it was working. He did not know how long he could last in here, in this bone-white space, this cuboid skeleton of concrete and plastic and steel devoid of colour and life. There were no distractions, no
thing to focus on, just the blinding whiteness. That, and his mind. And, of course, all the restless recollections of everything that had gone wrong in recent weeks, the memories of how the life he had built up for himself, his economic empire, had been conquered, subdued, and crushed beneath the heels of the powerful.

  It had been quite something to have had the rug yanked so quickly and violently from beneath his feet. He had come down hard, and still felt dazed from the blow. Now here he was, having gone meekly into the hands of the enemy, sitting in a prison cell with bandages around his head and a hole in his skull. God only knew what they had done to his brain – or what they were going to do to him after this. That thought sent slug-crawling chills of greasy horror down his spine.

  But what could he do? Here he was, at the complete mercy of his captors. Any attempt to resist them would be met with lethal force. He had no choice but to cooperate.

  With these dark thoughts swirling through his head, he kept on staring at the ceiling, hoping that some sort of revelation would hit him, that some madcap plan of escape would burst from one of the too-white light bulbs and burn inspiration into his brain – but none came.

  Nothing.

  Nothing but the dry snow-coating of the room. He was starting to drift back into a slumber when the sound of a key turning in the lock jolted him awake with a start. He sat up in the bed as a small, androgynous-looking Chinese nurse wearing a surgical mask walked into the room, carrying a tray with a tall glass of water and a bowl of some sort of porridge. She walked directly over to him, although her eyes did not meet his at any point.

  ‘Water, quickly,’ he croaked.

  She did not reply but pulled up the wheeled tray at the bottom of the bed and put the food and water onto it and then rolled it up to him. He snatched the glass of water off of the tray and chugged it as fast as he could, but it felt as if it had done nothing to slake his burning thirst.

  ‘More water, please, please.’

  The nurse ignored him and pointed at the porridge. She still would not meet his eyes with hers.

  ‘I’ll eat that later,’ he said in Mandarin. ‘For God’s sake, just get me some more water.’

  She did not react at all to his request and kept pointing at the porridge. Aboubakar felt anger starting to seethe inside him.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?! Get me some more damned water! Or just, just fucking say something!’

  No reaction. The finger simply pointed unwaveringly at the porridge. Aboubakar breathed in deeply, doing his best to calm himself and keep his anger at bay. He picked up the spoon next to the bowl and gingerly put a spoonful of porridge into his mouth. It tasted surprisingly good and seemed help a little in terms of rehydration. He started spooning more into his mouth, and eventually he was gobbling it up with the eager haste of a child given unlimited reign over a table of sweets and cake, and before he knew it the bowl was empty. At this point he felt better, but his stomach was still crying out for more, and his body felt as if the rehydration process had only been partial.

  ‘All right, I’m done,’ he muttered. ‘Are you happy now? Come on though, I need more. Please, please, more water, more food—’

  ‘And you will have it,’ a new voice said, speaking English.

  Aboubakar looked up and saw that Mr Wang had entered the room while he had been eating. The silent swiftness and stealth with which the man moved was distinctly unnerving, and Aboubakar started with fright when he noticed him at the foot of his bed.

  ‘What have you done to me?’ Abou asked. ‘I deserve to know that much at least.’

  Mr Wang’s face was cold, his phoenix eyes two obsidian balls glinting menacingly from beneath his scarred eyelids.

  ‘You deserve nothing, Aboubakar,’ he said coldly. ‘In fact, you’re lucky we’re even keeping you alive, so be grateful for that. We do have a plan for you, but we want you to work with us, willingly, rather than against us. It would make things so much easier for both you and ourselves. So as long as you cooperate, we’ll do our best to make your stay here comfortable. And in that regard, it would seem that the first item on the menu is more food and water, yes?’

  Abou nodded, his expression grim with suspicion. Mr Wang barked out a curt order to the nurse, and she hurried away. He then turned back to Aboubakar and smiled.

  ‘She’ll be back with more soon. I apologise for the uninspiring nature of the meal, but while you are recovering from the surgery it is the best food for your body to repair itself. Right now you have a hole in your skull, so you need to be extremely careful about moving and touching your head. The bone has been stapled back in place, but nonetheless you must exercise caution. We do not want to damage your brain, and I’m sure you don’t want that either. I know that your kind heals a lot faster than my kind does, and that the bone in your skull will knit to the point of full repair in maybe ten days or so. However, up until that time you are, unfortunately, going to be confined to this room. For your own safety, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Aboubakar muttered, his words dripping with sarcasm.

  ‘Now, just so that you know, you’re not going to have to sit here doing nothing but stare at the walls day in and day out. There is a task that you need to perform while you are in here.’

  ‘And what might that be?’ Aboubakar asked, his voice heavy with scepticism.

  ‘I’ll show you.’

  Mr Wang took a remote control out of his pocket and pressed a button. With a subtle hiss, the wall opposite Aboubakar’s bed opened up, and the parted wall revealed a large television. Mr Wang then retrieved a wireless video game controller, walked over to Aboubakar, and handed him both items.

  ‘We have a very long, very involved video game we need you to play. If you go at it for eight to ten hours a day, you should be able to finish it in two weeks. I must add that you have to complete the game in order to be let out of this room; your success at playing it will determine how soon you can leave this place.’

  Aboubakar took the remote and the game controller from Mr Wang with wary hands, staring at him with an expression that was both incredulous and suspicious at once.

  ‘That’s all? You want me to sit in here and … and play a video game all day?’

  Mr Wang smiled.

  ‘That’s right. On the remote, you hit that button to open the TV cabinet, and this one to load the game. If you get tired of playing, you can press this one to switch to Netflix and watch a few shows or a movie. However, I will remind you again that finishing the video game is your priority while you’re in here.’

  Aboubakar stared at the controller and remote for a while, and then glanced up at Mr Wang.

  ‘That’s really all I need to do?’

  ‘Yes, this is the only thing you are required to do. You can start right now, in fact.’

  ‘The nurse is bringing me more food and water?’

  ‘She is. She’ll be back shortly. This is all you need to know for the time being, so for now I will bid you farewell.’

  Mr Wang smiled and gave Abou a slight bow, and then turned on his heels and headed out of the room, shutting the door with a quiet click behind him. Aboubakar stared at the screen for a while, perplexed by these strange circumstances in which he found himself. Nonetheless, there was nothing he could do at this moment but cooperate, so he loaded up the game.

  Outside, Mr Wang, Mr Ma and Ms Fang were watching him on a screen on the wall, fed by the security camera.

  ‘There, that was quick,’ she remarked.

  ‘So this game, this will allow you to map out his brain and start the process that will allow us access to his mind?’ Mr Wang asked.

  ‘Yes sir,’ she answered. ‘Part of his mind, at least. This game has been specially developed for that exact purpose. After he’s played it out, we’ll have a pretty good start laid down in terms of getting inside his mind.’

  Mr Wang clasped his hands together, clearly pleased.

  ‘Wonderful! Well, the sooner the better. Mr Ma and I are very, very e
ager to see what’s inside that mind of his.’

  ‘I’m sure you are, sir. We are as well.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Good little scientists, you all are! Well, you are prepared to handle this on your own from here, yes? Mr Ma has some very pressing concerns elsewhere in the world, and an important banquet to attend with other board members in Bangkok on the 31st. We’ll return here early in November to check on progress.’

  ‘We should have made good inroads by then, sir. I’m quite sure of it.’

  ‘Excellent! We will see you then, Ms Fang.’

  PART NINE

  30

  WILLIAM

  21st September 2020. A remote mountain cabin near Graeagle, Northern California, USA

  Aurora was here. William could feel her, hear her, smell her … and taste her. Despite the tantalising closeness of her presence, though, the sense he wished to indulge above all others was inaccessible; his eyelids stubbornly refused to open. That, however, did not matter. Her presence, her soul – that glorious comet, that dazzling blaze against the darkness of everything – shone with a neon supernova fervour behind William’s eyes. He could not breathe, so utterly entranced was he by the aura of her presence. Elation washed over him, and he lost himself in a feeling of weightlessness, as if he were levitating. And then, amidst these sensations of bliss and ecstasy, there was the electrical thrill of her skin against his.

  ‘My love … finally, finally, finally,’ he whispered through semi-paralysed lips.

  ‘William, my warrior poet. I’ve been waiting for you … I’ve been waiting for so long.’

  ‘Let’s stay here forever, lass. Don’t leave me again, please don’t ever leave me again.’

  She laughed, and the ripple of that glorious timbre drizzled over him, the sound shattering into a million shards the sarcophagus of glass in which he had been entombed.

  ‘I never left you, my warrior, never. I’ve been right here, by your side. Right here, always and forever…’