Land Of The Gods

by Abhishek .

  Before long, the Japanese had opened fire and were trying to push the Jargantaans backward. Meanwhile, we got to see the base in its entirety. While we walked over a metal gangway that stretched across a chasm nearly five hundred feet in diameter, we looked over the railings to find a lasagna of different stories About forty feet below us was the first sheet of glass. Beneath the glass hundreds of Jargantaan warriors, all dressed in black parachute insulating jackets and black trousers, were running around. All of them had their eyes on us and were beefing up themselves with all sorts of artillery.

  “Duck!” Vivek cried and pulled Lifana and me downwards. A volley of white super-freezing projectiles flew past our heads and tore into the flesh of four Japanese troops.

  “The pale guys from the training facility down there, are rushing up here! Hayaku! Do not let anyone enter this area!” shouted Daniel who was walking right in front of me.

  “Jargantaan generals are reputable for their own distorted idea of transparency in their soldiers. They cannot tolerate anybody concealing anything from them. They observe everybody. So these glass walls are for spying. No way of hiding,” Lifana told Vivek and me.

  We got back up and I followed a deep whirring noise. I looked down and noticed two more floors beneath the training facility, all encased in glass. The second tier had a laboratory of sorts. A lot of brown and yellow powder, sand-like, was being experimented with. Intricate valves, conduits and a plethora of heavy machinery converted the sand into granules of silver. I squinted my eyes and noticed the granules shining and vibrating energetically. This tier seemed like a metallurgical lab straight out of a science fiction movie.

  We crossed the gangway and stopped at a corner. The Jargantaan force had been bottlenecked and faced fierce resistance from the Japanese. Suddenly, I heard heavy footsteps from a dark corridor on my side. I turned in time to see a thickset Jargantaan soldier burst out of the darkness like a bull. He ploughed his body into Daniel and me. Together, the three of us tore away the thin metal rails and the world rolled in front of my eyes before I landed on the glass roof.

  I writhed in pain and felt the soreness in my back. My finger slipped on the glass and I felt the numerous spiderweb cracks spreading out from the place where I lay. I craned my neck carefully and spied on Daniel. He was lying on the floor and seemed to be knocked out cold. From the corner of my eye, I noticed a couple of Japanese falling on the roof as they scrambled for balance on the thin ledge.

  “You!” I turned and in a moment, the Jargantaan who had pushed us jumped on top of me and landed heavily, with his knees on my either side. The glass cracked even more.

  “I am going to show you what it’s like to come in uninvited!” he bellowed and threw a punch at me. I leaned my head leftwards a second before the fist smashed against the glass. The man threw another fist at me. It made contact this time and I felt my cheekbone crack. I managed to dodge two more punches and accepted another one which cracked my lip. By now, the spiderwebs had increased ominously, threatening to give way.

  I deflected a punch and yelled, “We are going to fall, you idiot!” But the man paid no heed. He raised his fist for another punch just when a scream rang out from behind him. He hesitated and in that moment, Daniel caught his arm and in a fluid motion tackled him. The two heavyweights, landed on the cracked glass, moments before we floated in the air with shattered glass raining down around us.

  * * *

  Daniel’s story

  Alexandria, Egypt

  March 16, 2017, Thursday, 0835 hours EET

  The threesome had fallen near the mouth of the cave. So when they fell, they found no obstruction between them and the glass tiers. While Mathias fell limply, shattering the layers of glass as he plummeted downwards, the soldier and the Jargataan were engaged in a free fall brawl. While spinning in the air, they grabbed onto each other and crashed through the next glass floor. Suddenly, Daniel kicked the Jargantaan away and punched him in the face, making him spin out of control. They shattered through the next floor.

  The Jargantaan latched again onto the soldier and the two of them spun together once again just before the man pulled him downwards and thrust his feet into his stomach at the right moment. He pushed the Jargataan away from him immediately before grabbing hold of a metal crossbar, a small part of a gigantic metallic lattice that encased the ground floor working place, and swung upwards. Although he was safe from getting smashed on the ground, the jolt was too hard for soldier to withstand. He fell down heavily on top of a table.

  At the same time, the Jargantaan missed the machine and tore into a metal plate on the ground floor, disappearing into a deeper chasm that glowed red with electric heat.

  Daniel rolled onto his chest and gasped for breath. He touched his lower chest and felt an intact rib cage. He bent his arm painfully, feeling a sprain in his left shoulder, and rolled towards his right, only to collapse on the ground in a pile.

  The soldier pulled himself up and rested on his elbow when he felt a biting cold wind sweep across the exposed skin on his face. He looked up at the intricate network of interlaced metallic pipes and found nozzles poking out of their surfaces; nozzles that were evenly spaced out and spewed out cold air, extremely cold air.

  “These dastardly aliens have their working area climate controlled to imitate godforsaken Antarctica!” The soldier thought to himself. “Seems like Nevada will be their worst nightmare.”

  Through the metal lattice, he saw the boy who had fallen with him. The boy was hanging from a pulley that jutted out at least two meters from the high walls. Even at a distance, he noticed the blonde teenager relying on the strength of his fingertips. Suddenly, his grip gave way and boy came crashing through one of the platforms and landed on top of a tall wooden scaffolding. Wood shards were strewn all around him, as he fell down.

  While the boy tossed over side to side, the soldier checked the tiny LCD screen on his wrist. He gave a sigh of relief as he realised that it weren’t the bones of his wrist that had fractured. Cracks webbed the surface of the screen and dead pixels shimmered asynchronously. Yet, he managed to emit his location to a satellite along with a message that read ‘Tunnel has been found’ before the screen blacked out completely.

  The boy turned on to his side and rolled over the edge of the scaffolding. He fell limply towards the hard, stone ground, about to hit the floor when he was caught single-handedly by the soldier. The man caught him by his collar, holding him up in the air with his thick muscular arm, before setting him on the ground. The boy blinked his eyes and moaned in agony.

  “Hey! Try standing up,” the soldier whispered.

  “Where are we?” the boy muttered and opened his eyes briefly.

  “We... fell many storeys down. But I think no one on this tier knows that we are here. Better stay in hiding till we know which side is winning.”

  The blonde teenager closed his eyes and passed out once again just before an explosion thundered through the entire cavern. The soldier pulled himself up on his feet and limped to the back of the generator. He craned his neck and looked up from where he had fallen. To his horror, he stumbled back as dead and frozen Japanese soldiers rained down like hailstorm. A bomb had been detonated which had ripped apart the network of gangways and frozen the blood of hundreds of Japanese troops. If the general hadn’t died yet, the soldier’s clairvoyance saw Kiyoshi-san kneeling in front of the aliens and asking for mercy before he met his icy grave. There was no chance that they could overpower this cavern, teeming with hundreds of pale-faced aliens.

  “Hey! Hey!” Daniel poured a bottle of water on the boy’s face. He woke with a start and looked around, frantic. “I am sorry, boy, that we brought you to an absolute hellhole! Let’s get out of here right now!”

  Kapittel 59

  Ram’s story

  Asr-Gawa

  March 16, 2017, Thursday, 0745 hours Earth EET

  “Considering his, or rather its, notoriety I don’t feel that LOKI is something very lawful,” Ram
looked up at Nanna while tying his shoe laces. “Of course it isn’t! It’s outlawed here but everything serves a purpose. Yes, let’s leave it at that. You must see for yourself. Now hurry! No time to relax, Ram!”

  Ram stood up and straightened his clothes, feeling odd about them being from another dimension. “But if I don’t have a brain lattice, that you say, I should be as invisible as a ghost, isn’t it?”

  “No, no! No way to play ghost here in Asr-Gawa. We always have our eyes on every Asurian.”

  “But without the lattice, how will they track me?”

  “The brain lattice which is inserted at birth for every Asurian only serves as the tracker for the actual emotions and capability of violence. Other than that, we have the ability to track every living being through a network of cybernetic airborne devices by sensing the blood types. We have the ability to track even non-Asurian blood types. It is only recently because of dwindling resources that our surveillance has reduced to only the bare minimum and that is why you havn’t been detected yet. However it is a matter of time.”

  “Oh! Much like Big Brother is watching you, no?” Ram grinned.

  “Pardon me, but I don’t quite understand you. Is that a Mandaa term?”

  “Come on, now! We have to go!” Dr Shanbhag pulled Ram along and smiled at him. “Enough of George Orwell. There is no Big Brother here but there is surely a Big Bad Council.”

  “Come on Papa! I’ve just learned that I have Asurian blood in my veins... at least half of it. So, let me savour this moment! Up till now, I thought only Mathias was cool because he was an alien. Now, I finally feel as cool as him!” Ram’s effusion gave way to something that he had forgotten for sometime. “Oh! Umm...what should I call her?” Ram asked his father while pointing at Nanna.

  “You can, perhaps, call her Dronnung Nanna. Seems quite appropriate enough for her ego,” retorted Shanbhag.

  Ram tapped on her shoulder lightly before walking out of the doors. “Dronnung Nanna, I wanted to let you know something.”

  She turned and gestured for him to continue, “You don’t need to call me those ridiculous names! I am not a Queen!” she added.

  “I came to Asr-Gawa only by accident, and in order to tell you the whole story of how I fell into a teleporter would simply take too long. I just wanted to tell you that....”

  But before he could continue, she shrugged impatiently and interrupted with, “Come to the point quickly, Ram. We are extremely short of time!”

  “Yes, yes. I wanted to tell you that my friends, Mathias and Vivek, might... or rather will come for me. I wanted to be assured of their safety here in Asr-Gawa.”

  “One illegal entry leads to many more!” she grumbled and glowered at Ram. “Fine. They are just as unlawful as you are. I’ll try to make sure that they are safe if they do not get to them before me.”

  “But Mathias may not need protection,” said Ram.

  “They all need it Ram, since they are not from here!”

  “No no, you don’t understand. Mathias is from here. He should have the brain lattice!”

  But she was already gone. She had stormed out of the door in impatience, without hearing the last bit. And he had to hurry after her.

  The foursome walked briskly to the nearest capsule transportation station. The air was cold and there was hardly anybody walking on the road, save the ones sleeping on the pavements. Strangely, all the structures were cuboidal. Even if the buildings looked different from each other in design, the shape was always a standard.

  Although the blue and grey residential buildings in this region formed a dull and monotonous picture, the region nearer to the centre of Asr-Gawa seemed to be clustered with ultra- modern spire like towers, probably reserved only for the elite few.

  Ram was observing this disparity in the society when he noticed that the few people who were on the roads were being driven into some stations, similar to bus-stops, which were guarded by a security guard clad in black shape-shifting clothes.

  “Why are they being pushed into these stations? Look! The whole pavement has been barricaded!” Ram told his father, Nanna and Heimdallr when he spied on a security guard beckoning them to quickly come to one of the stations. “I don’t feel that we are allowed up here on the road now,” he said and found a tense look on the other three’s faces. They kept glancing the officers from the corner of their eyes and started walking even more briskly. They strangely resembled a band of people about to commit a crime.

  “We aren’t going to them Ram. The people are being drawn to safety as the layout of the roads is about to change any moment now,” Heimdallr whispered to Ram.

  “What? Layout of the roads? How?”

  “Every few hours, the layout of the roads is changed here. This is to make sure that the traffic build up is optimum. The road system is built on a lattice like grid and they can be changed from the base to move around and reconnect at different intersections. That is why you will see that the roads are built at a different plane from the residences.

  Ram looked around and now noticed the subtle level difference.

  “Couldn’t it be dangerous to us if we’re still walking here?”

  “Stay calm and stick close to me. We don’t have much time before you are detected. This is the only time we have when we can make a run for the tube station. Nobody is expected to be on the roads now and nobody can also apprehend us.”

  The officer jumped over the brown barricade that had enclosed the whole pavement. He made his way towards them slowly, aware of the dangers of being crushed beneath a building if he was still on the roads when they shifted. Stepping very gently, he made his way towards the four of them, calling out to us in Asurian. Nanna and Heimdallr were careful to mask their faces with their shape-shifting clothes to avoid being recognised by the very security infrastructure that they presided over.

  Suddenly, Ram felt a vibration under his feet. All of a sudden, the grooves in the dark yellow road they were walking by, grooves which were indiscernible by now, started clicking. The road started to contort and the four of them fell down on their knees.

  “The layout of the roads is changing!” Heimdallr yelled over the rumble coming from the bowels of subterranean Asr-Gawa. “Brace yourselves!” He yelled and all of them started sprinting as fast as possible while the officer nearly managed to jump over the barricades into the shelter of the stations.

  The road twisted towards the right and in the blink of an eye, two pole like structures whizzed past over them.

  “Follow me! You don’t want to get crushed beneath these buildings!” Heimdallr yelled.

  They rounded a turn and for a fleeting instant, the sprawling expanse of the city came into view through a gap between two houses. It seemed like moving away from the centre of the city, almost as if they were on a gigantic treadmill. They ducked under houses and squeezed through a pair when the movement accelerated. Nobody could maintain balance and they fell down on their knees. Ram got up in a flash and followed a low hum coming from his left, almost as if a truck was headed at him.

  He turned his head and his eyes widened. There rushing at him was a two-storey building. In the second he had before impact, Ram’s feet felt immobilised. He couldn’t bend them and falling back to the ground had escaped his mind as an option. Ram simply jumped and tried to grab the door sill. However, the building was rushing at him in a blur. Ram burst through the flexible windows and rolled away awkwardly on the floor while the building took to the air.

  Ram slid on the floor limply before standing back up. Once inside the building, he was awed by the fact that he could hardly feel the movement. He parted his feet and stood as steadily as possible.

  For the first time, Ram saw the interior of an Asurian home even though this one had been abandoned. There were a few chairs that seemed to have been moulded up from the floor itself, for the furniture and the floor seemed one. A sunken holographic projector remained empty, similar to the two niches flanking it on either side. The niches had
receptacles for storing various devices. Then, Ram looked at the window on the other side. The world was rushing away on the other side of the circular window, completed with the same flexible material Ram had burst through. Of course, most of the features of the house did not make sense to Ram but in the helter-skelter of the moment, his only aim was to get back to solid ground.

  Ram turned and peered through the window he had broken. The building had stalled in mid-flight and started to move leftwards, down the street he had come before. In the few seconds that elapsed, Ram spotted a window next to the display. He sprinted towards it and found Heimdallr running towards him. He was quite far away, his distance enough to remind Ram of the jump in the Nanda Devi Biosphere. At that moment, he imagined Mathias to be next to him, pouring into him the courage that he needed to survive. Ram could almost envisage his face, his smile and his dauntless spirit. In that instant, he took a few steps back and ran towards the window before tearing away through bendable glass and launching himself into the air.

  For a moment, he felt elated at the fact that his timing had been perfect enough for him to land straight in the hands of Heimdallr when suddenly, a building came at from his right. He landed on the roof so unexpectedly that he had hardly the time to scramble for grip. Ram rolled off and started falling again before landing like a pile on another building’s flat roof which still happened to be stationary on the ground. Ram crawled on his fours to the edge and saw Heimdallr again. He was running towards him while ducking underneath buildings. The guards were helpless; none of them could dare to move into the arena of large flying cubes that could crush them at any instant. This time, Ram jumped, only to fall into the strong and sure hands of his uncle. After so many years, he finally felt what it was like to have a family, a number of arms that are always behind you, pushing you and supporting you from the back.