by Cole, Jason
She had one shot at this. Kira began to unravel the vines from around her forearms until there was just five inches held tightly in each palm. She leaned away from the tree and put both feet flat up against it. She squatted down and backed up, practicing the motion as she stared at the tree she needed to get to.
Three, two, one…
She held onto the vines just long enough to explode off with her heels. Letting go as she flew through the air, and landed square into the next tree. Her chest hit so hard she was sure the tree was made of cement. The air gushed out of her lungs. She wrapped her arms around, and squeezed with all her might, as if her life depended on it. Because her life depended on it.
Her feet were wrapped around, heels digging into the bark. She had made it. Now secured to the tree, laboriously breathing, she was a couple feet closer to the target.
She turned her head and poked around the tree to see how far the hut was. It was just a few easy transitions away. She grabbed the nearest hanging vine and used it to swing the rest of the distance. She navigated tree to tree like this until she had two feet on the platform that was built around the target's hut.
This was it. Her objective was inside, and time was running out. She could hear him tinkering away inside. She let the vines swing back towards their trees and reached into her gear.
One vial of bright blue liquid, an anesthetizing patch, and her camera. These were her essentials, her hammer and nail, mouse and keyboard, the tools of her trade. She had gotten so comfortable with them, that they were like external extensions of her. The vials were her fingers, the camera, her eyes, they were all one unit. The missions were just a matter of executing a predesigned plan. This was that moment.
She tiptoed around towards the side of the hut and poked her head around. She wanted to make sure that there were no patrolling guards or wandering children. The coast was clear.
She put the patch inside of her palm, the chemically treated side facing up. On it was a mixture of modified chloroform and other potent anesthetizing agents. Something she had concocted in her spare time to make things a little easier.
She flipped her hood up, pulled the black handkerchief up over her mouth, and made her way towards the entrance.
He was sitting there, eyes closed, head slightly toward the ceiling. His legs were crossed and arms stretched out from his sides with his palms facing. He appeared to be offering himself up to something, or someone. There was a unique fragrance in the air.
Within the blink of an eye, she was a foot away, with her hand extended, and the patch on his neck. Unlike anything she had ever experienced before, he remained motionless. Silent, un-reactive, and then his eyes opened. He stared right into her eyes, his gaze igniting her soul. She noticed the corner of his lips curled. He was about to smile, right as the patch was taking effect.
What kind of human doesn’t react? For all he knows, his life may be over, and yet he had the audacity to smile? She was stunned, forgetting why she was there.
She pulled the hanging animal skin back across the entrance to the hut. She peaked out toward the village to make sure no one had seen her enter. Everything looked good, and she turned back into the hut.
Kira walked over and sat down next to the shaman who was now lying on his side. She stared at him curiously and tried to make sense of his reaction. It was as if he had expected her. The look in his eyes was not the look of a surprised man. Instead of surprise, desperation, or fear, it was a look of willingness and comfort. Had he looked into the future with some otherworldly ritual, and in knowing the nature of her visit, decided to go with it? She knew the inexplicable events that took place would haunt her for days to come.
She grabbed the vial of blue liquid, poked the end of his finger, and collected three drops of blood. Her eyes were fixated on the red liquid diluting itself, fading into the blue. She inverted the vial a few times to speed up the process, and then she took out her pipette. She pipetted 250 microliters on a glass slide and turned her camera on.
She placed the slide down on top of a small table. It appeared to be carved out of a stump, with the skin of an animal stretched over the top.
Taking her camera, she stared at the screen on the back and zoomed in on the droplet. She waited for it to scan and initiate itself. Once it sensed DNA within the view, the green button would light up and processing could begin.
As she waited, her mind wandered again, thinking back to the message update. Wondering what kind of person was waiting for this gene. Were they good people? Rich or poor? These were the usual questions she filtered through. The same questions she knew would never get answers to.
Beep, beep.
The camera notified her it was ready to begin flash sequencing. She pressed the green button and the scanning began. She walked away from the tripod, and sat down on a stool in the side of the hut.
Her eyes were fixated on the shaman. The massive headdress made of colorful flowers, big green leaves, all held together with a sort of fibrous string. It was majestic, and she admired these sorts of people. They had their own world here. So unadulterated and pure. At least she knew when she was done, he would have no recollection, and they could continue on as if nothing ever happened.
Chapter 7
Blinking rapidly, Kira was fighting her way through a dense mental fog. As her vision struggled to gain focus, she realized how the hut was now filled with smoke. What she had thought was incense when she walked in was some sort of medicinal or hallucinogenic type plant that the shaman must have lit. The room was one big wavy image and the colors were screaming at her. It hurt to even look.
She glanced down at the camera and noticed it finalized.
Process complete.
The only good thing she had going for her right now was that the shaman was still lying on the ground motionless
She looked down at her hands just a couple inches from her face and realized how bad the situation was getting. The outlines of her fingers which separated them from environment were fading. Her world was beginning to fade seamlessly into her surroundings, no longer feeling distinct and separate. Amidst all of the chaos and confusion, there was a subtle serenity and peacefulness to it. For a brief moment she felt part of something, an integral part to the world and not a forgotten outcast.
She hit finalize on the camera and the nucleotides began to appear on the screen. The sequence was being saved and isolated from the genome. Once this process was complete, she could take this back to her room, perform the chemical cleavage in her room and deliver the isolated gene. Mission accomplished. Not so bad after all, assuming she could make it out of this place in one piece.
All of a sudden, the colors were dimming; total darkness was encroaching, consuming her. The colors faded quickly, and her consciousness even quicker.
She knew she had a few more seconds to get out of this hut or risk passing out and being discovered. One could only imagine what a tribe of people would do if they saw their shaman lying unconscious on the floor and a stranger in the room.
Grabbing her gear, she stuffed her things back into the bags, fumbling around like a drunk, and staggered back towards the entrance. She pulled the cloth open a couple of inches and squinted out at the village. As if the village wasn’t impressive before, now it looked like it was flying in midair. The hallucinogens were setting in, the effects growing stronger and stronger.
Kira was now experiencing a complete sensational overload. Each nerve bombarded with more external stimuli than it could process. The rain was deafening, the colors once vibrant were now dead, and she knew time was not a resource she could spare at this moment.
There was no time to wait. She slithered out of the hut and made her way to the back.
Even the wood was beginning to feel different under her feet. It was as if she was weightless. There was no gravity, and she was floating. The tree she needed to get to was right in front of her. She knew it was just a few feet away because not too long ago she made that exact leap. For so
me reason though, the tree would not stay still. What frightened her was that she didn’t feel any wind blowing around her. The moving tree must have been another illusion created by the shaman’s smoke.
It seemed almost impossible to try and jump and hang onto such an elusive target. Was it safe to assume it was the one in the middle? No, it’s not safe to assume anything when you’re over one hundred feet in the air. She looked down over the small wooden railing, and even in this drug-induced state, her stomach still became queasy just at the site of the drop.
She heard footsteps coming from the other side of the hut. Someone knocked, and then silence.
More knocking.
Finally, she heard the animal skin being pulled across the doorway, and the footsteps had entered the hut. Now they were just ten feet away, separated by a thin wall of straw and leaves. She heard screaming and more footsteps. More footsteps and more footsteps. It was as if every soul that lived up here was headed straight for her direction.
She made sure everything was secure, planted her feet on top of the wooden railing, and jumped, unsure if she would hit the hard tree and latch on, or if she would fly by the tree and crash to her death.
It felt like she was suspended in the air forever. She prepared for the impact and hoped to have the wind knocked out of her because at least that would mean she had made contact with something.
Thud.
The water soaked bark slapped against her chest and the side of her face. She was sure if her cheek had split open, or if it was just the water continuing to pour down. None of that mattered for now, as she focused on hugging the tree with all her might. She dug her fingernails into the bark until she felt them bending backwards as if they might snap off any moment.
Her world finally came to a halt, and she managed to cling on to the tree. Starting to scale the tree downwards, she grabbed a vine and began to wrap it around her forearm, but it was almost impossible to do. Her limbs were beginning to feel numb. Her grasp on the tree felt was weakening, the tree itself felt like it was shrinking between her arms, and there was nothing she could do. With all her might, she grabbed and squeezed the tree, but it didn’t help.
Peeling her head off the tree, Kira looked out into the rest of the forest, and saw nothingness. She kept blinking, hoping to erase the darkness and replace it with reality, but to no avail. The vine began to slip from her grasp, she no longer felt the tree, and her consciousness seemed to be following suit.
Using every last ounce of energy, she closed her eyes and forgot about everything but that vine. Letting that slip out of her hand would ensure her death. She did her best to tie it in a slip knot, wrap it around her forearm, and quickly tighten it with her left hand. Nowhere near as secure as she would have liked, it would have to do for now. Her entire body had turned numb, and she had to convince herself that she really did tie that vine. It wasn’t a figment of her imagination.
Her vision on its way out, all she could see now was the terrifying distance to the floor of the forest. An unthinkable distance to fall. Definitely not the way she had imagined spending her last moments on Earth. What a lame way to go, falling to her death in the rain forest after being unknowingly drugged by a creepy shaman. Kira always imagined an epic battle with a trained assassin or something of that nature.
Inhaling a hallucinogenic smoke and slipping from a tree was much too forgettable.
The world was gone. Her stomach now in her chest, she had this internal sense of freefalling. Her external senses turned off, the weightlessness inside was all she had to go on. The freefall felt like an eternity, as if she had a parachute attached that was delaying her descent. Expecting to hit the floor at any moment and have her body decay back into the earth, she passed out before it happened.
Chapter 8
Boom, boom, boom.
There was a sledgehammer inside of her face, pounding away. Her sinuses felt swollen and her forehead was under severe pressure. She felt a pulling, an indescribable force ripping at her. Her world felt completely upside down.
Slowly opening her eyes, she was staring at a tree that had been flipped over. As her senses returned, the pounding in her face turned out to be the blood pulsing as it rushed into her head. Looking up towards her feet, she noticed that the vine had wrapped itself around her ankle and snagged just before her head met the ground.
Out of every mission she’s ever been on, not once had she relied on luck. Her head was splitting, her foot was as white as a ghost from the life-saving tourniquet, and none of it mattered. She was alive and just seven feet from the safety of Earth. There were no broken vials dripping liquid from her bag, so the gene may still be in intact.
Kira reached up and started to saw at the vine with her pocket knife, getting ready for the drop. As the last few fibers of vine shredded apart and with her bags and camera in her hand, she landed flat on her back. Lying there for a second, she waited a minute to recover before she got up and pressed on. The excruciating pain of blood flow returned to her foot and left her almost crippled. The pain was so unbearable, she was afraid she would lose consciousness again.
She couldn’t help but wonder how long she’d been hanging? If her foot was numb, it must've been more than a minute or two. Did she fail the mission? Had time run out, and she was too late?
She started to feel nauseous at the thought of failing the client. The idea that someone may die because she made such a mess of this extraction gnawed at her.
She rushed to her feet, making little effort to avoid the nose-making branches and leaves. The only thing she could think about was getting back to that plane.
She threw her backpack back on, took the camera in, and started to sprint. As if her life depended on it, no, as if someone else's life depended on it. The brush was thicker than she remembered, the floor was soggy, and her clothes felt like they were lined with weights. She felt as if someone had dunked her in a pool while she was unconscious and tied her back up when they were done. The entire situation was miserable. Every step caused the water to squish out from the padding inside of her shoes, blisters were inevitable. She reminded herself that at least she could still feel pain. That hallucinogenic was unlike anything she had experienced and getting out alive was a successful mission in and of itself.
Swiftly dodging sharp thorns and zero concern for attracting any sort of wildlife, Kira continued to sprint on. The map indicated she was just a mile away from where the plane would be waiting. At this rate she could do that mile in under ten minutes despite the setbacks and conditions. It felt good when all of the brutal conditioning paid off for once. Only her lungs and muscles weren't in agonizing pain.
Finally, reaching the outer limits of the rainforest with the runway now in sight, she was able to make out the outline of the plane. The closer and closer she got, the more details appeared, and eventually she was even able to see the silhouette of the indifferent pilot. She was never so happy to see him, regardless if he would say a word to her or not.
Maintaining her pace, she had made it in a time that led her to believe there was still a chance. She smiled at the pilot with an awkward and tired smile. His reaction was typical and unrevealing. A slight smile, but that was all she found due to his dark aviators. Once she entered the plane, he folded up the staircase and door behind her and rushed into the cockpit.
The plane was already running and before she could even buckle herself in, he floored it. She stared out the window looking down on the canopy and, unlike many other missions, there was no longing to return. Tired, starving, and soaking wet, she couldn’t wait to return to her own space.
The danger level may have only been a 5.5, but the suck-factor was definitely an eight or higher.
They landed. Kira rushed into her apartment and got straight to work. No time to change into dry clothes or eat. Mixing different PCR primers and other chemicals to cleave the sequence at specific sites, she was able to get it done in record time. The final product was a normalized amount of DNA with the tar
get gene suspended in nuclease-free water. She sealed the top with parafilm and rushed out the door.
The blue drop box was around the corner, an old USPS box. Located next to an abandoned building, the compartment for the vial was inside, and it required a code.
76432901.
It always boggled her mind how she remembered that number, or when she learned in the first place.
Add it to the list of never-to-be-answered questions.
Inside of the old post office box, a small black box shot out of the inner left wall like a drawer. She stuffed the vial side and closed it.
Once the black box sealed itself shut, she left.
Job complete. On her walk back to her apartment, she was able to breathe, and relax. Her heart could stop skipping beats, and she could sleep. Yes, sleep. Nothing in the world sounded more attractive than a good 10 hour nap.
Casually walking back to her apartment, she looked up at the sky. The sun was beaming. It made her feel like she had spent years in that rainforest. The warmth of the sun felt so foreign. The rays washed over her, cleaning off the filthy residue of the rainforest. She could feel her body replenishing itself. As soon as she entered her apartment, she plopped down on the couch like a sack of potatoes and crashed. Nothing could stop this. It was as if her eyelids were weighed down by anchors.