by Samit Basu
Aman knows he can run really fast, remembers outrunning Jai underground just a few minutes ago. He tells himself he can do it again — and then the sound of feet behind him stops and his armour swerves as Jai flies over his head. There’s a dark-blue pole up ahead with traffic lights on it. Jai catches it one-handed, spins around, sticks out a leg, pivots and Aman sees Jai’s foot arcing towards his head. His armour is too tired for more evasive manoeuvres, and Aman runs straight into the kick.
He doesn’t feel any pain, his armour soaks up the impact, whining as it powers down, and Aman shoots like a cannonball across the street, watching in fascination as the door of Hamleys Toy Shop rushes forward to welcome him.
The burglar alarm goes off as Aman smashes into the store and barrels through rows and rows of toys. He ends up sprawled in the far corner in the middle of a jungle-themed soft toy exhibit. Aman is buried in stuffed cuteness. He hears footsteps approaching and fires his pulse cannon blindly, shooting in every direction. Shelves full of toys explode. The air is a riot of coloured fur and puffs of feathers. Soft animals and cuddly monsters fly, bounce around and are torn apart. Then the pulse cannon whirs to a stop. The armour’s done.
Aman struggles to his feet. Then his legs give way, muscles too tired to take his weight, and so he crawls across the floor, unable to see anything in a haze of cotton, fibres and miscellaneous stuffing.
He hears Jai cursing somewhere nearby. For an instant he sees a figure loom up above him, thrashing about, but then Jai stumbles over a life-sized toy gorilla and goes face first into a mountain of toys, filling the air with white fluff all over again.
Slipping, sliding, scrabbling, Aman makes it to the foot of the non-moving escalator in the middle of the store. He crawls up the steps on hands and knees as quickly as he can, while Jai, roaring like Godzilla, wreaks plush-cloud havoc in the soft toy section.
Aman’s up on the first floor by the time Jai crushes the alarm. Aman continues upwards as silently as he can. His body is threatening to quit, he has to drag himself up the stairs to the fifth floor. He makes it to the top, and smiles grimly as he sees it’s the boys’ section.
The shelves to his left are lined with film merchandise, row upon row of action figures, mostly superheroes, staring blankly out from their plastic sheaths, loudly coloured sheets of cardboard behind them advertising their many special features. Aman crawls between two rows of childhood idols. It’s getting hard to breathe. The armour feels like it’s strangling him. He doesn’t want any of this any more. He presses the buttons on his chest and sighs in relief as the black and silver plates slide off him and fold themselves neatly into briefcase form. His legs are completely numb. The rest of his muscles throb in one solid mass of pain, his nerves appear to be melting. Aman rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling. The phone rings in his head, but he doesn’t pick it up. He wishes he had a shut-down button. His eyes close.
He hears footsteps on the stairs, Jai’s firm tread, and he groans.
Jai strides up to the fifth floor of Hamleys, a confident smile on his face.
“I know you’re here,” he calls. “It’s only a matter of time.” He pops out of view as his footsteps come closer. Aman rolls away from the middle of the aisle, huddling close to a row of shelves. Jai walks up the aisle next to Aman’s. The shelves are only chest-high, and Aman can feel Jai’s presence, see his shadow inches away. Then the footsteps start to move away, and Aman almost breathes again. But Jai stops, and retraces his steps.
“There you are,” he says, leaning over a counter. He walks up to Aman and stands over him, grinning. “Frankly, Aman, you don’t look so good. Where’s your costume?” He grabs Aman’s T-shirt and pulls him to his feet. Aman’s body sags.
“It’s no fun when you’re asleep,” Jai says. “Here. This is for that little monkey-dance you pulled off at the cathedral.” He twists Aman’s left arm, breaking it. Aman’s eyes bulge, he screams.
“That’s better,” Jai says. “Don’t die on me, boy. Not yet. We’ve got to go outside and put on a show. You don’t want to die in a bloody toy shop. Where’s your sense of occasion? The world is watching and Vir let me down, giving up in the tunnel like that. On your feet.” He lets Aman go, and Aman falls on a shelf and slides to the floor, dragging a few Transformers with him.
“Bloody useless civilians,” Jai says. He grabs Aman’s broken arm and starts walking. White-hot shards of pain run across Aman’s body, but he does not have the strength to do anything other than moan as Jai drags him up the aisle and around the corner.
There’s a voice downstairs. A female voice, calling Aman. Uzma is here. Aman stirs and opens his eyes. Jai drags him back into the aisle and stuffs a toy monster in his mouth.
Aman goes online and tries to call Uzma. It’s her turn not to answer.
Jai walks back towards the stairs, and crouches behind the shelf closest to the top. It’s a good spot for an ambush, he’ll be able to strike before Uzma has time to say anything. He waits.
A tentative footstep on the bottom step. To Aman, it sounds like a gunshot.
“Aman?” Uzma calls. “Aman, you there?”
Jai tenses, ready to pounce, as someone runs up the stairs.
Summoning every last reserve of strength, Aman spits the monster out of his mouth and yells, “Don’t!”
Jai pounds the floor and yells in frustration. An instant later, he’s towering above Aman. He picks him up, hurls him against the nearest wall and charges at the stairs, where a head has just come into view. He’s a blur of speed, the perfect predator.
In his upside-down world, flying towards shelves full of action figures, Aman sees Jai’s hand move up in a scything chop, and winces as he hears Uzma scream. His back smashes into the racks on the wall. He falls to the floor, strange shapes floating inside his eyelids. Shelves full of toys tilt and fall, one after the other, like misshapen dominoes.
As Aman’s vision fades, the screams in the background fade and the world turns into a black and green sea of pain. The last thing he sees, soaring above him, is a flurry of colourful arms and legs, of muscular bodies and outrageous costumes, stars and capes, lantern jaws and ray-guns. For a brief and glorious moment, it’s raining superheroes.
When Aman wakes, four Tias are carrying him out of Hamleys on a stretcher, bickering amicably. One squeals in excitement as he opens his eyes and looks around.
There’s an ambulance waiting on Regent Street. Two more Tias sit in front inside it. Aman looks at his broken left arm, it’s bandaged, in a sling. He rises slightly and tries to speak, but the Tias shush him. They slide him into the back of the ambulance, bumping his head only once. Then they file inside behind him and merge into one body.
“Welcome back, darling,” she says, smiling. “Thought you were dead there for a bit.”
“Uzma?” Aman croaks.
“No, I’m Tia. Has it been that long?” she asks, and hugs him. The ambulance starts to move. “Uzma’s fine. You’ve been out for an hour, by the way. A lot happened. But that’s all right — you woke up in time to catch the end.”
“Armour,” Aman says. “My armour’s in there.”
“No it’s not. Uzma took it.”
“What happened? I remember Jai jumping at Uzma right before I blacked out.”
“No, that was me coming up the stairs with Uzma on sound effects duty,” Tia says. “You’d told your online spider thingies to message us your location every minute, remember? We knew he was there. We got there just in time, too — you’re really lucky he didn’t just rip your head off. He must be really fond of you. Vir’s alive too, by the way — Sher got him out.”
“How did you beat Jai? What happened up there at the toy shop?”
“You’ll see. Uzma told me not to tell you — she said she wants to explain it all herself. What a day, huh? I spent all the best bits sitting in cars arguing with stupid policemen, but this last bit was enough, thanks very much.”
“Where are we going?” Aman asks.
Jai floats high above the Anteros statue in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. There’s a sphere of white light around him, and he appears to be trapped inside it. He pounds on the wall of his bubble, but to no avail.
Anima and Vir circle the sphere in ever-changing orbits. Anima bears twin katanas, sparkling green. Her manga eyes are full of tears, visible even from the ground. Vir has a new costume, identical to the old one — there are many sportswear shops in London. The right side of his face is bruised and turning blue. Girls scream like Beatles fans as he whizzes over them. He notices Aman on the ground, and gives him a little wave.
Uzma emerges from a huddle in the crowd and walks up to the edge of the fountain under the statue. She’s never looked more beautiful; she’s doing her Grand Entrance thing again. The crowd sighs with love and desire as she takes her place under the ball of light. She looks around theatrically, raises her arms and calls her fellow superheroes.
Anima and Vir fly earthwards, touching down gently by her side. Sher emerges from an Underground exit in tiger-man form, he lopes up to the others, growling, and the crowd scatters as he crosses the road.
“Got to go, love. See you soon,” Tia says, and she walks off towards the fountain. Seven Tias merge into one, and the crowd applauds as she sashays up to her team. She blows a kiss at Uzma, and Uzma acknowledges it with a regal smile.
A rousing cheer echoes across Piccadilly Circus as another hero emerges from a police car. It’s the mysterious warrior in black and silver armour recently seen battling Jai above, around and under London. He lines up next to the others.
Through the crowd, Aman catches Uzma’s eye. She smiles at him and looks away. Zothanpuii also emerges from the crowd, mostly unnoticed, and stands demurely behind Sher, making seven, the traditional number in these situations. Photographers form a huddle around them and go wild as the seven all look up at Jai.
Uzma stands on the fountain’s edge and addresses the crowd.
“Does this villain deserve to live?” she cries.
Aman has read about crowds speaking in chorus in books, but it obviously never happens in real life…
“NO!” London says, as one.
Uzma nods sadly, and Vir flies up under Jai’s light-prison. He carries the sphere higher and higher until he’s just a speck in the sky, the light a glowing ball the size of a lightbulb, the prisoner inside it slumped, defeated, broken. Then Vir flies away, leaving the sphere hovering, and at Uzma’s signal the black and silver warrior leaps up and fires a pulse-blast at the prison-sphere. There’s a streak of light, a collective gasp, and the battle for London and the world ends, as Aman always suspected it would, with a huge explosion.
When the fireworks are done, there’s no trace left of the light-sphere, and Jai is gone. The crowd gasps appreciatively and applauds, cheering until every throat in Piccadilly is hoarse.
A Tia walks up and takes Aman’s hand.
“You should be very proud,” she says. “All this is your doing.”
“This isn’t what I wanted at all,” he says.
“You all right?” she asks.
“Sure. Though why am I here, and not with them? And who the hell is that in my armour?”
“Uzma will explain,” Tia says.
“Uzma has a lot of explaining to do,” he says. “What the hell just happened?”
“We saved the world,” Tia replies. “I think.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The party at the Eros fountain goes on for hours, and Aman is too tired to wait for it to end. Tia drives him to a hotel, and he treats himself to a honeymoon suite, compliments of a large mining corporation currently killing tribes in eastern India and pillaging their hills for bauxite. He sinks into a vast, fluffy bed and passes out in the middle of taking his shoes off. Tia finishes the job, straightens him out on the bed, covers him up and leaves.
He wakes up in the middle of the night to find Uzma by his side, smiling at him. The lights are on, and she looks tired but gorgeous. Her hair is tousled. Her breath smells of champagne. She takes his clothes off and throws aside her own. She climbs on top of him and they make love, slowly and silently. When it’s over, she begins to speak, her voice is soft and low, and even though he’s too exhausted to understand what she’s saying he goes to sleep with a smile on his face. When his eyes open again, it’s morning. She’s gone.
* * *
An hour later, Uzma walks into Hyde Park, past a red lion and white unicorn locked in eternal battle on a gate. She sees Aman to her right, leaning against the base of a statue of Achilles. An elderly Chinese woman sways gracefully on the grass near him, guiding her body through the slow, fluid motions of Tai Chi. Aman is watching young men in white helmets ride magnificent chestnut horses up and down Rotten Row, and doesn’t notice Uzma until she flings her arms around him.
“My parents send their love,” she says. “They said they’re sorry they tried to kill you and it’s all right about the furniture.”
“Then I have absolutely nothing to worry about,” Aman says, grinning. They link arms and start walking, two lovers taking in the morning air. Aman moves with the fluid grace of a couch potato who has just spent a week training with the Territorial Army. They choose a long, straight path flanked by tall, slender birches on either side. Apart from the occasional cyclist or jogger, Hyde Park is calm and green, London’s traffic a distant growl to the east.
“So,” Uzma says. “Question time.”
“Yeah,” Aman says. “Who was he? The man in my armour? The Illusionist?”
“Good question. That was Jai.”
Aman jerks his arm away and takes a step back.
“What?”
“That was Jai. Don’t be mad. We couldn’t think of what else do with him.”
“I don’t understand,” Aman says, rubbing his head. “What do you… Who was that in the big white bubble, then?”
“That was Shankar the Illusionist. Or, like he says, Shankar the Great Illusionist. Well, not him physically, of course — he was standing near the building with the big ads. His work. Vir and Anima just flew around it. The explosion was his as well.”
Aman crosses the path, shaking his head, and sits down carefully on a green bench.
“Just tell me everything,” he said. “I heard you coming up the escalator at Hamleys. I tried to warn you. Jai knocked me out. And then?”
Uzma sits beside him, feet on the bench, a hand on his arm.
“It wasn’t me,” she says. “I was a few steps below, completely petrified, trying not to bolt. Tia volunteered to walk in front so I’d have enough time to speak if Jai attacked. There were lots of her — she kept a circle all around me while we went from floor to floor, looking for you. When Jai charged, he killed a few Tias, but I told him to stop. He looked so angry, but he froze. I couldn’t believe it. He just stood there, waiting for orders. And I told him what I wanted him to do, and he did it.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him he was my slave now. That he belonged to me, and he also had to obey you and Vir. He had to protect us from all harm, and help us fix the world. I told him he could never harm anyone again unless we asked him to. That he wasn’t even to think of doing anything that would make me unhappy. And that he could never let anyone see his face again. Except us.”
She falters, and they look at each other in silence.
A jogger passes, ghost music trickling out of his iPod.
“Good command list,” Aman says.
“Thanks. I thought it up on the helicopter. There was one more thing on the list, but I’ve forgotten what it is.”
“You should tell him he has to obey commands from you even when you’re not physically with him. You know, over the phone, in writing, that sort of thing.”
“Nice. Yeah, I’ll do that. What else?
“I’ll make a list. I’m having a little difficulty wrapping my mind around it. So what are you going to do with him? Is he going to be your sidekick? Your bodyguard? Your dog?”
“Don’t say that,” Uzma says, looking away. “I don’t know. Maybe I should send him away. To meditate on a beach forever and think happy thoughts. We had a team meeting last night, before I came over to your hotel, and it was terrible. He was in there with us, and we couldn’t look at him. He just kept staring at me with this blank smile, this adoring face. I had to ask him to wait outside.”
“Team meeting, huh? That’s good to know.”
“Look, Aman, we all wanted you to be there. You know we did. But Tia said you were too tired. It was bad enough you weren’t there when we were trying to figure out what to do with Jai, how to stage his death, how to hide him.”
“Whose idea was that anyway?”
“Mine. Shankar wasn’t even with us at that point — it was just Tia and me, and then Sher and Anima brought Vir. We had to put a lot of makeup on him. Zothanpuii and Shankar weren’t even with us — they’d gone back to the hotel. Zothanpuii’s not wearing a white vest anywhere near a river again. She had to change. I don’t believe the whole show came together in the end.”
“It was a great show, though. Especially you. You’re a born con artist.”
“I’m an actor.”
“And a damned fine one. Where are the others now?”
“Hotel. Though I think Vir might have gone off with some groupies. Last night was very crazy. Premalata’s left, by the way.”
“What do you mean, left?”