Animal

by G S Banks

  ‘Use this. It’s access all areas. Now let’s go.’

  With that we run down the stairs and stick to the very edges of the room, skirting around the battle. Heather punches and kicks as we go, knocking guards aside so I can get through. We finally reach the exit and I give her one last look as she enters the fray. I gulp down the sense that I’m saying some kind of final goodbye and run off, heading for the lift.

  It’s deathly quiet out here as I face the doors. And empty. Eerily so. I press the large green button to the side of the lift door and see it light up under my touch. The door is small, too small – anyone taller than me couldn’t get through it without bending down. There’s a low hum before it slides open. I step inside and am immediately and acutely aware that it is a tiny, cramped space made entirely of shiny metal. The door clamps shut and I find myself encased inside the box as it begins the descent. My stomach lurches. Down, down, down I go. There don’t seem to be any other stops along the way – it takes me to one place and one place only. I feel the creeping sensation of being trapped spreading over me like ice forming on a freezing lake. I try to calm my shallow breathing. I mustn’t pass out or anything stupid – not with the others fighting to stay alive above me, and god knows what below me. The lift continues its never-ending descent. I wipe the sweat from my forehead and cling to the side to steady myself.

  I suddenly see a picture in my mind, my first ever memory, the first time I saw Kelci as a newborn baby in the hospital as my Mum cradled the crumpled ball with its spindly arms and legs. I leaned in and she looked right back at me, with enormous blue eyes. I touched the impressive tuft of blonde hair at the front of her head and in that moment I was completely in love. I remember the softness of her skin under my lips as I kissed her for the first time.

  Without warning the lift comes to an abrupt stop and my heart stops with it. I press the only button there is in here but nothing happens. Have we arrived? I press the button again but there’s no response. The door stays shut. It’s hot, much hotter than it was. I must be way, way under the Earth now. Far enough for a Rabbit’s thump not to bring the whole compound down. My throat is closing up. There’s a wiggling motion and suddenly for no apparent reason the lift begins to go again. Relief. I must be nearly there now.

  As the lift moves I feel deep tremors rumbling in the ground like a hundred dragons turning in their dungeons. I remember the last time I saw Kelci. Looking at me with those terrified eyes, screaming at me to run. Held tight in dark arms. Why hadn’t I listened to her at the party? Because I thought I knew best. The lift gives a violent bang as it stops. I smash the button and this time it lights up and when I press it again the door slips open and a wave of hot air washes in as I step out.

  I move carefully and find myself in a tunnel with huge silver tubes running along the walls. There’s a strange, metallic smell, which makes me feel nauseous, and I see how rocky and crumbly the walls are where the bare earth has been carved out. As the lift door closes behind me I instantly feel like I will never get out. I take a deep breath. I tell myself to keep my bearings, remember where this lift is. The floor trembles beneath my feet. I begin with a light run down this tunnel, taking note of the nooks and crannies where I can hide if I see anyone. I turn a corner and pick up speed as I pass along another tunnel. I run past something embedded in one of the walls but I’m moving too fast to see what it is so I slow down and step backwards to get a glimpse.

  It seems to be a small cave that has been holed out of the wall with white bars covering the entrance. I creep nearer and there, inside, I see a pair of eyes staring out at me. I gasp, then put a hand over my mouth to stop myself from making a noise. It’s a young boy with white-blond hair and angelic features. A Rabbit beyond a doubt and yet at the same time his face is all sunken in and weird. He looks at me with outright terror. Moments later he leans back into the shadows of the cave and I don’t see him anymore. There’s a lump in my throat so big I can’t swallow it down. I run right up to the bars and look in only to see the dark outline of him crouching alone at the back of his tiny cave.

  ‘Do something Nina. Do something now,’ I murmur to myself.

  I jog along the tunnel and see more barred up holes in the walls – one Rabbit after another, all blindly panicked, some crouching away from me, some grabbing onto the bars as if they are holding on for dear life. There’s more rumbling, muffled somehow and I can only guess that they have put something into the floors and walls to prevent their captives from taking the place down. Why are they here? These forgotten creatures? They look out at me with pitiful eyes. I can stand it no longer.

  Finally I see a pair of eyes looking out at me so familiar, it makes my heart crumble. Those eyes, blinking at me in all their fullness and all their blueness. But their brightness is gone. I look back at those eyes and I feel everything coming upon me all at once – terror, hope, relief, despair. For there she is, one hand on the bar staring out at me, blinking and confused. Can she see who I am? I run straight towards her, holding my breath, and take out the card Heather gave me with trembling hands. The bars disappear into the ceiling and there is nothing between us, nothing but hot, subterranean air. I reach out my hand, but by now she has backed up into the far corner where she watches me, wary.

  ‘Kelci,’ I say, softly.

  With that she bends forwards ever so slightly to look closer. She could bolt at any moment, straight out of this cell. She’d be too fast for me to catch her. I lower my voice to a whisper.

  ‘It’s Nina. Your sister.’

  She pokes her head out of the shadow a little more.

  ‘I’m here to take you home.’

  I reach into my pocket, take out the case then remove the glasses. She stares at me as I hold them out to her.

  ‘Here. Your glasses. Put them on.’

  At first she just stares at me, then looks at my hand. I nod gently, then slowly, slowly she reaches out for them, then takes them from my hand and shakily puts them on her face. Why isn’t she talking? What did they do to her? I reach out my hand.

  ‘Just take hold of my hand and we can leave here, together.’

  She lets out a murmur. I feel my hand hanging there in the air. There’s a noise from outside the hole. I’m aware of the bars. If they were to come down… She wears the same frown she had the day she manifested. I hear another knock from outside and she jolts nervously.

  ‘Please, take my hand.’

  Another noise, louder. She doesn’t move.

  ‘Please.’

  I look into her eyes.

  ‘Let me help you.’

  She frowns, scrunching her nose, and closes her eyes. I take a step forward. Please, please, please let me help you… I reach my hand out a little further. Half of me expects her to cower away, or run off… But as I look at her with pleading eyes, she reaches for my hand and immediately I clasp it, and pull her towards me.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  I take her arm and place it over my shoulders, sensing the thinness of her limbs, feeling her laddery ribcage next to mine. We step out. An almighty alarm begins to clang. I look around at the other cages, seeing those helpless faces once again. I can’t just leave them here. But the alarm gets louder, deafening, and the front of every cave closes up into a series of blanks. No more Rabbits to be seen. I hear shouts from behind and turn to see a group of guards, seven in total, headed our way. Here we go.

  ‘Run!’ I shout.

  And that’s exactly what we do. The alarm pulsates. The ground shakes harder. We speed back down the tunnels and I’m surprised that I’m keeping up with Kelci. How did I get so fast? We reach the lift and I slam her in. She holds tightly on to my arm with both hands. I hit the button and it lights up. The lift begins its vibrating ascent. I lean back against the metal and let out an enormous breath. The echo of the alarm floats around the tiny box and I look at her. We keep moving upwards and I hold on to her tightly. We’ll be with the others soon. We remain in silence, just the sounds of our breathin
g, the alarm getting quieter and quieter, and the groan of the lift as it rises. It feels like we have almost reached the top when, without warning, the lift moves from side to side, just a little. Then it halts. Kelci raises her eyebrows and I feel a pang of panic.

  ‘It will start again.’

  I muster up a reassuring smile. We stand there speechless. Still the lift does not move. We remain for what seems like an eternity and still, the lift refuses to move. I hear a rattling sound, far below and it looks as though the walls are beginning to sway in on me. I bang on the sides of the lift as though that may make us move. Kelci stamps her foot and the whole box jerks violently.

  ‘No, Kelci!’ I say, before softening my voice. ‘No thumping just now.’

  Almost too slowly to notice at first, I sense that the lift is moving. Except, the lift is not moving upwards, it is moving back down the shaft.

  27. Your Eyes

  The Burrows, Lotus Corporation

  Terror grabs hold of my throat and if it weren’t for my saucer-eyed sister clinging to my arm, I would be screaming. We are descending and it might as well be straight to hell. Are we going to die? Or worse? Because there is worse, I’ve seen that now. I take a deep breath. I don’t want to die. I don’t want my sister to die. I look at Kelci, a pale apparition, as the lift trundles on its grim course. I look around and something strange happens. My eyes, they’re seeing everything so clearly… I run my hands along the metal. The sides of the lift are smooth and yield nothing. It’s not until I reach as high as I can above me that I feel a slight indentation in the ceiling. It’s as thin as a thread of linen and I follow it around with my hands – some kind of seam forming an invisible square. We must get free, we must go UP. I smash upwards with all my might but nothing happens.

  I do it again, this time using more force… More force than I knew I was capable of… There’s movement. I lurch upwards again, hitting hard. Then again, falling back to the floor. I hit it again and see that the right side of the join is beginning to come away. The lift keeps on descending. I waste no time smashing upwards and the outline finally peels open like a tuna can. Through it, I see gaping, rumbling darkness. I look at my hands, clenched into fists, and I can’t understand how I just did that. Kelci looks up at the opening, then looks at me and immediately, her eyes turn to big blue moons.

  ‘Nina…’ she says.

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Your eyes…’ she says.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Your eyes are golden.’

  I put my hands to my eyes and rub them. I shake my head and turn to her.

  ‘Golden,’ she says.

  I hear the alarm below us getting louder. My sight is zooming in, then out, then in again. I see everything in the most excruciating detail. What is happening to me? Then I remember the tour, at Muldoon. They are able to see things hundreds of miles away, said Artemiz. Could it be? There’s no time to contemplate. I look up at the hole in the roof of the lift.

  ‘You have to jump up there, ok?’ I say to Kelci. ‘Then pull me up.’

  Rabbits are good leapers, but I wonder if she will still be able to jump.

  ‘Can you do that?’

  She nods. She stares upwards for a few seconds, nudges her glasses up her nose then without another word and leaps up and disappears through the opening. It panics me to not be able to see her.

  ‘Kelci?’ I shout.

  Her face appears.

  ‘Pull me up!’

  Is the lift moving faster? I reach out both my arms towards her as she leans through the opening. I grab hold of her arms and she pulls me up. I push myself up using my feet against the side of the lift. Kelci drags me through and I find myself lying on the top of the blackened lift, looking up to see a long, narrow shaft, dirty and black, filled with metal bars and cables. I gulp. What do we do now? All I know is that every single fibre of my being is saying UP, UP, UP!

  ‘Get on,’ I say, turning my back towards her.

  She climbs on, grasping my shoulders just like the times we would piggyback when we were kids. I secure her and focus my eyes as far up the shaft as I can. The lift is descending faster and the alarm is getting louder. There are shouts and bangs echoing all around. I hear Lady Muldoon’s words in my mind. All you need to do, is believe. I look up the shaft once again. I lift my chin upwards. I close my eyes. Then, my feet rise up from the metal. First my heels, then my toes, until I am no longer touching the surface of the lift. Kelci gasps. I gasp. Then I fall back down, my feet hitting the metal. I don’t know what I’m doing. How do I do it? The lift must almost be at the bottom…

  ‘Nina,’ says Kelci, almost screaming. ‘Please. We can’t go back there.’

  I stare upwards again, trying not to think. Thinking isn’t helping! I let my feet, somehow, rise again, higher this time. But then there’s a thud as the lift reaches the ground and then another thud as my feet hit the metal once again. Come on, come on, come on. The alarm is deafening and there’s scrambling and noises coming from the lift. They’re inside it. Kelci is screaming now.

  ‘Please! No! Please!’

  I grab onto Kelci’s hands as they claw around my shoulders. At the opening two gloved hands appear, one holding an Electron. They can’t get us, I won’t let them get us. I squeeze my eyes shut and hold Kelci tight. Somehow, I don’t even know how, my feet come off the metal and we begin to ascend.

  I’m flying.

  But it is narrow, so narrow and I don’t know what I’m doing. There are great bunches of cables travelling the whole length of the shaft. I feel a sharp pain in my calf as the Electron ray hits me. I let out a scream, and so does Kelci. We hit the side of the shaft. I don’t look down, I can’t look down but I hear curses and hollering. My leg sears with pain. I stare upwards, willing myself not to stop, not to fall, not to let go of Kelci. I see a slit of light, at the top of the shaft. If we can just get to that. I feel Kelci’s hands slip a little on my shoulders and I shout at her to hang on. Her terrified breath rings in my ear.

  ‘I’m slipping!’ she shrieks.

  Her grip loosens a little more and I try to pull her arms around me, tighter. We’re both slick with sweat. We start to spin in the air and smash against the cables. The side of my face gets covered in oil as we hit them. I push against them with my foot, to keep us away, trying to steady us. There’s so little room, it’s dark, and it’s hot, so hot. I can barely breathe. If I were to stop flying now… If we were to fall… It’s becoming a long way down… Kelci feels so heavy on my back. I stare at the light, sweat pouring down my face. There’s an almighty creaking sound that resounds from below and my heart stops beating. The cables begin to grind against each other, moving. I sense Kelci looking down, frantic.

  ‘They’re coming!’

  I glance down for a second and see that the lift is beginning to ascend. I look to the shaft of light and fly as fast as I possibly can towards it. It seems like an agonizing age before we finally reach it. I slow to a hover. Kelci feels even heavier when I’m not moving so fast. It’s an opening between the doors, but what now? I bang against the metal with my right hand, whilst still holding on to Kelci with my left. No one is going to hear you. No one is going to open those doors for you. I let out a cry as I smash the doors again then run my hands along the seam between them.

  ‘Let me kick them! Let me kick them!’ screams Kelci.

  She’s so unsteady on my back, but I have no choice. I turn away from the door and feel a sharp push as Kelci slams her foot into the doors. They vibrate under the force, but it has made her even harder to hold on to. The lift is close now, rattling and churning just below us. How long until we are in the range of an Electron? She thwacks the doors again with her other foot this time, leaving us both reeling in the air. Everything spins, but there’s an opening now, between the doors.

  ‘Hold on!’ I shout.

  Kelci’s whole body tightens around me and I lurch towards the opening, grabbing on to what little f
loor there is exposed between the doors.

  ‘Climb off me!’

  It’s all we can do. I cling to the floor, with my arms and elbows, my whole body shaking with the effort. Kelci scrambles on my back and lets out a yell as she hauls herself over my shoulders, my head and onto the floor. She turns to me, on her hands and knees, then starts pulling my body through the opening. She heaves and I use what energy I have left to push myself through. We are utterly breathless, covered in sweat, dirt and oil. Kelci’s expression is as astonished and battered as I feel. But there’s no time, the lift will arrive any second… I grab her by the hand and we run, high-speed all the way to the atrium. I look at her as we dash along and for one moment, despite all the pain, all the exhaustion, all the shock – seeing her beside me makes a sweet wave of relief, and love, crash over me. We are alive. We are actually alive.

  _____

  There are uniformed bodies strewn all over the floor, loads of them, some moaning and clutching their limbs, others silent and still. Then there are the ones still standing, too many of them, brandishing their weapons and raising their voices, just as they did before I left. I catch sight of Alisdair, deep in the uproar. He’s battered and cut, covered in blood. Then there’s James, brandishing two Electrons in each hand, shouting and whooping, bounding from one end of the room to the other, taking swipes at those below. He’s bare-chested, with his t-shirt, now covered in blood, wrapped around his leg.

  ‘You didn’t know a Frog could be so bad,’ he shouts to one of the guards. ‘Did you? Did you?’

  Lucy appears from one of the walls, her hair electric blue, diving into the action. There’s Ben too, looking huge with sweat running in streams down his face, his body heaving. Heather is shooting an Electron from one of the balconies and there’s another figure next to her, leather-clad and chestnut-haired… Artemiz! She has a bow in her hand, and she’s shooting arrows – fast, strong and unrelenting. Then there’s another figure, wearing a cardigan, having a fistfight with two guards. Professor Dunedin! And close by him, lifting another guard high above his head is Kenny Collins. How did they get here? But there’s no chance to answer that because there’s a guard, hurtling towards us at full speed.