The buzz of electricity vibrated past his head as he dodged. Jax dove away from the sticks to the center of the ring, where Narasimha waited for him.
He shifted his muscles in the air, changing from the dive roll that Narasimha was preparing to leap at, and into a stiff handstand.
As his hands hit the ground, Narasimha pounced on the bare earth where he should have been. Jax continued his sideways momentum, hopping into the air over her exposed back with his body extended above him.
Jax landed on top of her, pressing her face against the dirt floor. Her arms swung up to swipe at him, but he caught her wrists.
His body came down and he pressed his knee against her back while he twisted her arms and pressed her hands back toward her elbows, locking the arms straight. If he pressed too hard, the tendons in her forearms would snap.
She struggled under him, and he pressed her face against the ground harder.
“I’m not your enemy, Nara,” Jax taunted. “Humans are not your enemy.”
“Guards!” she bellowed.
“Call them back,” Jax said.
She growled in response.
Jax grimaced. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he had to have his left hand free. Still, he couldn’t hold both of her arms with only one hand.
With a quick jerk, Jax shoved her left wrist forward and heard a sickening pop. And her arm went limp. Her breaths came in furious hisses. If it hurt, she didn’t let it show.
“I’ll kill them, Nara. Call them off now,” he said.
His left arm pointed into the air. Inside his forearm, Jax pumped the new series of muscles hidden beneath his skin. The specialized cells contracted with the pressure and released their electric energy.
The air exploded above him as lightning shot out of the tips of his fingers and tore through the air. Fifteen hundred volts instantly expelled from the three condensed electric eel glands in his arm and then spidered into the air. The shockwave of sound thundered through the arena and shook the walls.
“Stop!” Narasimha called.
The guards were already backing away, shaking their heads. The crowd of Animalis watching the fight shrieked.
“You …” she panted. Her body shifted under his knee and he pressed down harder on her remaining arm.
“I …” she said. Her head twisted and her eyes searched the empty lip of the arena.
Her breathing grew intense.
“Kill me,” she said.
Jax let go of her arm and stepped away. He could see her muscles coiling and bulging. Every fibrous inch of her body called for his blood. He could have moved to avoid it, but he wouldn’t.
Fur, clothes, and claws erupted from the ground. Jax could feel the bottom of his stomach open into an empty void watching her come for him. His life filled his vision, just like it had in the pyramid. He could see everything all at once: lazy summer holidays from school, executing Hank’s myriad plans, seeing Hurley for the first time, killing the hyenas, living without his leg, and now watching Narasimha’s mouth open wide for him.
Jax smiled. Even with all the pain that the world could offer, and what it was about to offer to him, he smiled.
She slammed into him and they both crashed against the ground. Her face drew close, snarling and panting. He could see right into her yellow, fireball pupils now. There was more than rage inside her now. Her eyes widened as she looked into his.
“I’m sorry,” Jax said to her. “I’m sorry I killed the people you love, Nara.”
Narasimha stopped. She held her body perfectly still, watching him. Her eyes grew wider.
Jax continued to whisper. “I’m sorry I can’t do anything to bring them back.”
A deep growl started to fill the arena.
“What is this?” she bellowed. “Why am I seeing this again?”
It was working, when she looked into his eyes, it triggered the memories Jax had planted inside her DNA, and she could see it.
She roared in agony. “Why can I see this woman? The Animalis!” Her eyes were swelling with emotion. “They’re killing them!” Her roar was ear splitting.
“I gave you these memories,” Jax said, “so that you could experience what you would have inside the pyramid.”
She was seeing the wholesale murder of the Animalis that Hurley had been a part of.
“This is life, Nara. This is what happened. But don’t give up on us. If you can see her life, don’t give up on us.”
She released him and backed away, shaking her head and moaning. He had also given her the rest of Hurley’s life. Narasimha could see how Hurley had changed, became penitent, and filled with compassion.
Jax pushed himself up, watching her.
“Make it stop!” She charged at him. The muscles in her body demonstrated their full potential, ready to launch through him at a terrifying speed.
Jax kept still, his arms open. He let the fear of her brutal approach pass through him in a breath and felt peace take its place.
As her muscles began to flex, the tears overtook her rage and her charge diminished.
“This isn’t real.” She tried to say it with force, but it came out in doubt. “How could a human change like this?” She was walking to him now. Her voice was sinking into a whimper. “It doesn’t change what they’ve done to us.”
“No,” Jax said. He could feel hope building inside his chest. “But there’s a better way to make things right.” He was within arm’s reach of her now. “Help us find a better way, Nara.”
The powerful, bold, dominant lioness Jax had known wasn’t there anymore. A pitiful expression had replaced the ferociousness. Her shoulders rolled forward, and she turned her head down and away from him.
She took another step toward him. She was so close that the fur on the back of her neck bent under his breath. She was waiting for him.
Around them, the audience continued to watch in silence. The guards shifted uneasily. The sweet smell of ozone drifted down and Jax filled his lungs with it.
“Humanity needs you, Nara,” he said. And he meant it. Jax wanted to hold onto the hope he was feeling. It was a moment that held the promise of a new future, but one that would still be filled with pain and struggle.
Jax brought his hand up and began to stroke her soft, golden fur on the back of her neck. She hadn’t attack him. She hadn’t ripped him to pieces as she could have easily done.
Something inside the lioness rumbled under his hand and tickled his fingertips. He kept stroking the fur when he realized what it was: her deep, rhythmic purr.
Epilogue
Hank sat on the edge of his bed, letting the weight of his head sink down between his hands. The hairs on the back of his head brushed against the palms of his hands, tickling his scalp.
A tremor of pain cascaded through his body, an echo of the drug still making its way out of his system. When he closed his eyes, he could see the lioness standing before him again, her terrifying eyes, and teeth, and snarl.
“Jax,” he said out loud to himself. The rescue plane hadn’t found him or the pyramid. This time he couldn’t hide from the guilt; he had been blinded by the need to get the machine and use it. So blind that Jax had been taken again because of him.
Hank found his last memory of Jax in his mind. The image was rough, changing as he remembered it. I’ve got to keep my focus, he scolded himself. But the face was there—
And there was a sudden explosion within Hank’s mind, a supernova of information. Traits, thoughts, whole lifetimes, generations of lifetimes poured through him.
His subconscious mind went to work, cataloguing and storing the information, while his conscious mind reeled with questions: What’s happening to me? Where is this coming from?
Connections began to form: all of the new memories stemmed from Jax. Hank was inside Jax’s mind while he looked on at an unfathomable vista of experience. He could see Hurley, Narasimha, himself, and the two little animals, Moxie and Little Hank.
Hank felt another tremor of pain
coming on, pulling his mind away from the glimpse into what had to be eternity.
When the throbbing had left him again, he went back into the new memories. Jax had been inside the Ivanovich Machine!
But unlike Jax, Hank locked onto one aspect of the experience, and couldn’t let it go: Moxie and Little Hank were not created by the pyramid; they had been there before it was created. They were from somewhere beyond physical reality.
His subconscious mind took the memory and stored it away with a tag. The name of the tag phased from his subconscious into his conscious mind, and he mouthed the word out loud:
“Seraphis.”
THE END
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About the Author
With a background in art, animation, film, and video games, John Peter Jones brings a unique and refreshing perspective to the science fiction genre. He studied computer animation and traditional art at Brigham Young University's award winning Animation Program and helped in the production of two Student Emmy award winning shorts.
John Peter Jones (Peter) was born in Rigby, Idaho and grew up roaming the desert country by his house with his siblings. At the age of eight, after breaking his leg while taking on two friends in a game of chicken on the monkey bars, he dictated a short story which his mother dutifully transcribed. It was a horror tragedy that required the best of his monster drawing abilities to illustrate.
Peter is currently twenty eight years old, is happily married to the love of his life, Katheen Petra Jones, and is working from home as a part-time stay at home dad with his four crazy kids. His first full length young adult science fiction novel, Animalis, went on sale October of 2014.
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