Turbulence

by Samit Basu

  Aman stands jubilant in the sun, body perfectly poised, armour glittering, heartbeat wild.

  “Hai!” he shouts, and means it.

  “Good,” Jai says. “I actually felt that.”

  He flips up, landing squarely on his feet. His clothes are in tatters where the pulse-blasts have hit him, and bits of his shirt appear to be on fire, but his body is completely unscathed. Aman backs away, looking for Vir, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Jai looks around too, and smiles again.

  “Vir is smarter than he looks,” he says, advancing towards Aman. “He took off when —” Aman fires both pulse cannons, and twin white power-spheres hit Jai squarely on the chest. He goes flying down the street, landing heavily. He shakes his head and jumps up again.

  “Tickles,” he says, and walks back towards Aman. Aman fires again, but Jai’s on the warpath now. One pulse catches him on the shoulder, his upper body twists but he keeps walking.

  Aman rips a nearby lamppost out of the ground, tosses it in the air and catches it. He puts on a display, whirling it like a kendo stick above his head and around his body, finally coming to a halt with his legs apart, lamppost held diagonally behind his back with one hand, his free arm pointing at Jai. Jai’s eyes are on the lamppost. Aman gives him a pulse in the chest with his free hand. Jai is knocked back, but doesn’t fall or falter; he keeps coming at Aman with long, steady strides.

  Aman is terrified, but his armour is not. He hurls the lamppost at Jai, who catches it and advances, swinging it from side to side. Aman feels his shoulders shrug and then a pulse-blast shatters the lamppost.

  There’s a louder sound further up the street, above the buildings. A road of wind. A sonic boom.

  Jai is left standing stupidly in the middle of a cloud of concrete dust, a red-hot vibrating metal rod in his hands. He drops it, looks up and sees Vir speeding at him like a bolt of lightning, fist aimed at his face.

  The punch is so hard that nearby windows shatter. Jai is knocked a good twenty feet back, and slides on his back down the street even further. Aman totters in the rush of wind, his armour adjusting his balance. Jai is down but not out. He’s clutching his jaw, groaning.

  Vir has taken to the sky again, he’s already far above them. He turns and stands in mid-air, high above the buildings around him, and Aman shivers. Even now, there’s something chilling about the sight of a man just standing in mid-air. To Aman’s right, a crowd of policemen rush towards the fight, the sound of sirens is heard all around. Jai stands up slowly, swaying slightly. An ugly bruise is sprouting on the right side of his face, and he spits out blood on his palm. He looks at his own blood in wonder, he hasn’t seen it in a while.

  Aman attacks. His armour evidently decides kung fu isn’t cutting it, and Aman finds himself running faster, moving closer to the houses on his left, and then he’s running along the wall towards Jai, his body almost horizontal. Jai doesn’t even notice him until the moment of impact, when Aman leaps off the wall and delivers a flying kick to his head. Jai is felled yet again, and two of his teeth fly out.

  Using his rage, Jai leaps off the ground this time, roaring incoherently as he charges at Aman. Aman trips him, finds himself swinging from side to side, raising one leg at a time, and shouts in surprise as his legs suddenly rise into the air. His body is upside down, his hands on the street. But Jai’s not holding him, no one is, his armour has decided to continue the Brazilian experience by switching from head-football to capoeira. Aman’s legs whirl like a helicopter’s rotors as he twists, leaps and turns in incredibly acrobatic dance-fight attacks, feinting, bending, sweeping Jai’s legs from under him time and time again, leaving him screaming in frustration and grabbing empty air.

  The policemen are upon them now, and seem mesmerised by Aman’s display. A few of them shoot at Jai, but stop when they realise he hasn’t noticed.

  But inside the whirling armour, Aman is feeling neither graceful nor heroic. He wants to go home. His head is dizzy from rushing blood, his stomach is churning and he’s torn muscles he doesn’t even know he had. Every split, every turn, every evasive cartwheel has left him groaning. The armour performs its finishing move, running up Jai’s body, viciously kicking his head again before somersaulting and landing on its feet. A watching policewoman cheers wildly as Jai turns a backwards somersault, and lands on his head, but Aman is mostly unconscious.

  * * *

  Jai rises again, hitting his head to clear the cobwebs. And then he rises even further, as Vir swoops in behind him, grabs him by the hand and takes off like a rocket. Jai is groggy, disorientated. He finally realises where he is when he sees the dome of St Paul’s whizzing by at eye level.

  Vir climbs higher and higher, London spreading out below them, the horizon a stripe of dark blue across an infinite world. Vir slows down, standing with the city far below his feet. He hoists Jai up on his shoulder. His former friend looks around, babbling incoherently, dribbling blood through the gaps in his teeth.

  “I’m sorry it had to end like this,” Vir says.

  He launches head-first into a dive, speeding down towards the city. Jai is now underneath him, arms and legs flapping in the rush of air, mouth open in a silent scream, trailing blood into the heavens. Vir accelerates relentlessly, adding his superhuman strength to gravity, and when they’re level with London’s tallest buildings, he lets go.

  The strongest superhuman of them all hurtles towards the street like a meteor, a skydiver with no parachute, flailing wildly, swimming through the air with nowhere to go but down.

  The impact of Jai’s landing shakes the earth. All of London trembles. Police cars wailing their way down Cheapside are thrown into the air. The road cracks open, a large crater is formed instantly, and Aman, running towards Cheapside, feels the shockwave as windows shatter and car alarms go off all around him.

  Wide fractures spread across the road, heading towards Aman as he sprints around the corner of New Change, and finds Jai lying in the centre of a large circle of sizzling tar. Millions of shards of glass from a corner building cover the whole area like confetti.

  Four red phone booths lie shattered and twisted around the crater; postcards advertising mostly naked women fall like snowflakes down on the scene. Two police BMWs, upturned like flipped cockroaches, spin wheels as their drivers crawl out through jagged glass windows. Two Tube station entrance signs and several traffic lights, all broken, spit sparks out on the street. A crumpled heap nearby used to be a flowerbed in the middle of the road, a trickle of earth and a few flowers have slid into the crater. Pink and yellow carnations die smothered in tar.

  Jai lies on his back in the crater, his burnt body splayed out, limbs oddly bent, eyes staring into space.

  As Aman runs up to the edge of the crater, Vir descends slowly in front of him.

  “We did it,” Vir says. “We saved everybody.”

  “I suppose so,” Aman says. “It wasn’t fair, though. But then nothing is.”

  “You did so well,” Vir says. “Have you called the others? Uzma? Tia?”

  Aman’s not listening. He’s staring in disbelief at Jai. At Jai’s mouth, where two bright new teeth are growing out of his mangled, bloody gums. At Jai’s arms, which are slowly untwisting. At the long scars and burnt patches that had covered Jai’s bloody chest seconds ago. They’re fading.

  “He heals,” Aman whispers. “Did you know he heals?”

  “No,” Vir says. “I don’t think he knows himself. No one’s given him a reason to heal before.”

  “Well, don’t tell him, then.”

  Jai blinks. His body convulses, and straightens out. He stares at the sky.

  “He’s invincible,” Aman says. “The perfect soldier.”

  “What do we do?” Vir asks. “Do we keep hitting him?”

  “Yes,” says Aman. “Most definitely yes.”

  Jai sticks out a hand and grasps the edge of the crater. He pulls himself up to a sitting position. And then he sees Aman and Vir, and for the first time Aman sees Jai look
scared. His gaze flickers around the broken street, and before either Aman or Vir has time to react, he leaps up, vaults out of the crater, lands on tottering feet in front of the stairs leading down into St Paul’s Underground Station and disappears from sight, clattering down the stairs into darkness.

  “I’m going to drop him into a volcano,” Vir says. “Could you go and get him, please?”

  Aman turns sharply.

  “What do you mean, ‘go get him’? You’re coming with me.”

  Vir looks sheepish.

  “I really don’t like enclosed spaces,” he says. “I don’t want to go underground. Just bring him out, I’ll deal with him.”

  Aman stands at the entrance and looks down. Somewhere below, someone’s screaming. He can hear metal strike metal. A power cable is loose on the lower steps, it slithers around, shooting sparks at him.

  “You think this is my comfort zone?” he yells. “Come on.”

  Vir hovers towards the entrance and floats into the tunnel, fists up, ready for action. Aman calls Uzma.

  “Where are you?” she asks. He can hear shouts and sirens around her.

  “St Paul’s. Heading underground with Vir. Jai’s in there. You?”

  “Persuading the police to let the others go. They’ve got a lot of Tias locked up in a van. We’re going to steal a helicopter after that.”

  “Nice. I’m heading in, might not get a signal. I’ve asked my bots to text you my location every minute.”

  “You coming?” Vir enquires from below the stairs.

  “Got to go,” Aman says. “Jai can heal himself, by the way. We need a plan to take him out, and I’m going to be running, not thinking. You take care of yourself, okay?”

  “Yeah. And Aman? I love you. You know that, right?”

  “Yes. Love you too. Bye now.” He runs down the stairs, grinning from ear to ear under his helmet despite the shooting streaks of pain that wrack his body with every step.

  Vir is waiting at the bottom and together they rush into the station, and vault over the ticket machines, Vir doesn’t bother to land on the floor. There’s an Underground official slumped over the wide entrance gate. As they race to the platforms down escalators and through narrow white-tiled corridors, Vir trails his fingers along the advertisements on the walls, moving in stops and starts like a fish in a waterpipe.

  It’s easy enough to tell which way Jai has gone — they just follow the trail of bashed-up Underground employees. He’s taken a tunnel leading west up the Central Line. Aman leaps down onto the track and rushes towards the darkness. Ahead of him, Vir hovers at the tunnel’s mouth, shaking his head.

  “Come on!” Aman yells.

  “Not going in there,” Vir says. “We could get hit by a train.”

  “Vir, the Tube’s shut. Because of us, remember?”

  “Too dark. Too narrow.”

  Aman runs back out of the tunnel and addresses the flying-man.

  “Vir, I could give you a lecture about facing your fears and being a hero, but there isn’t time. You’re our leader. Jai’s in there. Let’s move.”

  Vir flies into the tunnel, and Aman’s armour follows, moving along the metal track, sending sparks flying as they speed through the darkness. Vir flies into a wall as the tunnel curves and dips. He lands heavily, curses and drops behind Aman, flitting bat-like in the wake of the sparks from Aman’s feet.

  The armour flips to night vision, sends a sonar ping out into the tunnel, and finds nothing. It turns on its heat sensor, looking for Jai’s signature, and Aman sees a ghostly image up ahead. A blue shimmer, a will-o’-the-wisp. A running man fading into the distance.

  “Speed up,” he says to his armour, and it does. They pass swiftly through the tunnel, Aman’s clanging footsteps and great gusts of breath echoing in the narrow space. There are other sounds in the tunnel, strange wet sounds, whispers, crashes and thuds from far away, muffled roars and moans. Aman is glad he doesn’t have time to stop and listen, to wonder what he might find in London’s ancient labyrinth of tunnels. In a world where superheroes exist, what else is possible? His lungs are bursting, but the armour is relentless.

  They reach the next station, Chancery Lane. Vir flies up onto the platform, clearly grateful for light, but Aman sees Jai’s heat-trail heading into the westward tunnel and soldiers on. His armour is running at full stretch now, his vision narrowed in completely on pursuing Jai. Vir follows.

  A faint whine rises in Aman’s ears and he wonders if the armour is overheating; he wonders what he is supposed to do if it suddenly stops. Holborn and then Tottenham Court Road Stations pass by in a blur. They’re closing in on Jai now, the image ahead is clearer, and it’s slowly turning green. Huge drops of sweat streak Aman’s face. He’s beginning to drift away, barely able to feel his arms pistoning away in front of him. His body has moved from pain to numbness, it’s a struggle to keep his eyes open, to stay conscious.

  They rush out of the tunnel at Oxford Street Station. Aman hears a thud behind him and hurriedly shakes himself back into wakefulness. He’s already passed by most of the platform, and there’s no image of Jai in the tunnel up ahead. His feet swerve, of their own accord, running up the curved wall by the tracks, and then he’s running upside down on the ceiling. He somersaults, and the world spins crazily as his armour twists and lands neatly, transitioning from Olympic gymnast to Shaolin monk in an instant. He charges forward again, willing himself into awareness, towards the battle unfolding before him.

  Jai had been waiting on the platform by the tunnel entrance. He’d let Aman race by him, but when Vir flew out into the light, he’d pounced. Vir had hit the wall and skidded along it, breaking bricks, tearing film posters, tumbling onto the tracks.

  Vir throws himself into the air, but inside the station, he’s trapped. Jai leaps on him and bears him down to the ground. Aman sends a pulse-blast at Jai, but he simply lifts Vir up between them, and Vir’s body shudders as the white sphere connects.

  Jai punches Vir in the face, twice, lifts him and slams him onto the tracks with all his might. Cracks run up the platform and the walls. Aman is upon them now, but Jai swings Vir up again in front of him, and the armour stops mid-strike. Laughing, Jai tosses Vir into the western end of the tunnel. Vir is unconscious, and he falls heavily.

  Aman fires pulse-blasts at will, but Jai is faster. He dashes into the west tunnel after Vir, and the pulse-strikes shatter the wall behind him. Aman leaps down onto the tracks and runs after him through a shower of bricks and concrete, but just as he’s about to enter the tunnel his armour stops and bends backwards, and Aman sees Jai’s fist shoot over his face. He vaults acrobatically up onto the platform, and Jai rushes back into the tunnel.

  Aman struggles, straining forward, but his armour doesn’t move. And he hears a sound in his head, that annoying, awful sound that phones make when the battery’s low. Tu-du-doo. He’s running out of steam.

  Inside the tunnel, there’s not much of a fight going on. Aman can hear thuds and crashes, Jai’s voice raised in a triumphant, feral roar as he slams Vir’s body into the tunnel walls, again and again. There’s a pause, and then a loud crash, an inhuman scream, which is abruptly cut off, and then silence.

  Aman wills himself forward. After a few seconds, the armour comes back to life, humming angrily, but it’s too late. Jai strides out of the tunnel, fists covered in blood. He glances up at Aman, leaps nimbly up onto the platform and grins.

  “One down,” he says.

  Aman fires two pulse-blasts at Jai. He dodges them like a matador, and they hit the arch of the westward tunnel entrance. Chunks of mortar fly everywhere, and the roof collapses, sealing the tunnel.

  “Thanks,” Jai says.

  Yawning cracks run up and down the platform, and up the walls around them. The roof begins to rumble.

  Aman charges at Jai, but Jai leaps over him and starts running towards the platform exit. Aman hits him in the back with a pulse-blast, and Jai falls, skids and rises.

  “This is fun, k
id,” he says. “But let’s take it outside. No one’s watching in here.”

  He’s off again, tearing towards the stairs. Aman wants to dive into the tunnel, somehow dig Vir out, but his armour ignores him and follows Jai, sprinting up the platform as chunks of plaster begin to fall from the ceiling. He chases Jai down long, curving white corridors, up a motionless escalator, over deserted ticket barriers and out into the sun at Oxford Circus.

  Jai’s just a few metres ahead, standing in the middle of Oxford Street, looking around eagerly as if he’s a tourist out for a day of fun. Aman pounds him with a pulse, and Jai is thrown across the road into a Benetton shop window. He smashes into a solemn mannequin and slides along the polished shop floor, his journey into the world of fashion ending in a heap of overturned knitwear available in the Sale Up to 50% Off.

  Aman calls Uzma.

  “Oxford Circus,” he says. “Get Sher and Tia to the Tube station. They need to dig Vir out. He should be alive. He took a mountain. This is just a city.”

  “What?” Uzma yells back. He can hear a loud throbbing behind her. “I’m in a helicopter! We’re coming! What did you say?”

  “Never mind, I’ll text you,” Aman says, and disconnects.

  Across the street, Jai strides out over broken glass, a brightly coloured scarf draped rakishly over his bare muscle-bound torso. He looks like the world’s fiercest model.

  Tu-do-doo, says Aman’s armour. He sends Uzma a message, cartwheels to avoid Jai’s lunge and runs for his life down Regent Street. He has chosen this route for a very valid reason: it’s right in front of him. He doesn’t know whether he’s running himself, or whether the armour has taken over completely. Finding out would involve stopping. He hears the wail of a siren behind him, and flinches as it stops abruptly. Turning, he sees Jai leap off a police car and soar towards him. Aman sets his head down and runs, lungs threatening to burst. There’s a thump on the road some distance behind him. He hears Jai’s footsteps thumping up Regent Street in pursuit.