Animalis (12 page)

Grimshaw stepped back and gave a quick nod. “Yes, hurry! Thank you, Jax.” She pointed to spots around the frame before stepping back farther. “The locking bolts are here.”

Jax pressed the laser to the frame at the first bolt and lit the tip. He heard a sharp pop from tiny bubbles of air expanding rapidly under the heat of the laser. The plastic frame of the door melted and oozed beside the cut. He moved to the next and began to slice through again. Halfway through it, the tool beeped. Jax kept going, moving to the next bolt. The alert began again, and a moment later, the laser gave out. The power cell had dried up.

“Do you have any power cells this size?” Jax asked, pulling out the cell. “I’m empty.”

“Hodge?” Grimshaw said.

Then a piercing shriek came from within the cabin. Hodge growled.

“Hodge!” Grimshaw said louder. “Power cells! We need one this size.”

She tossed the cell and woke Hodge from his focus. He caught it and left.

“What’s going on, Jax? Why is he doing this?” Grimshaw said. “It isn’t right! I can’t let him do this!” Grimshaw struck the door again and her bracelets shook with the sound of shackles. “Hank! Stop it! Stop, please, stop! There’s another way! Please, let us find another way. There’s no information he can give you that’s worth putting yourself through this!”

Jax knew what Hank was doing: he was trying to find where the pyramid had been taken. But why would he come here? The other small units would be at the warehouse now, and they could have devised some way to find it. Instead, he had invaded Grimshaw’s serenity, like Jax had done. But he wasn’t looking for a sense of solace.

“Can we get another ICT scan?” Jax asked.

Grimshaw stopped pounding and let her fists rest against the door. Her chest rose and fell, her eyes staring far beyond the barrier in front of her.

“Yes. Alright,” she finally said.

The scanner ran across the door again. The material of the wall extruded and shifted, forming the 3-D scene scanned from behind the door again. Grimshaw leaned her head against the door, not looking at the image appearing.

“Please, Hank,” she whispered.

With a slight turn of her head, she looked at the wall screen. Immediately she turned her head back against the door and groaned.

Jax took in the image that had formed on the wall. Hank was frozen in time, kneeling over the hyena with an empty syringe in his hand. Below him, twisted and writhing in unbearable pain, lay the hyena. Its spine arched to the side with a sharp bend that would have broken a human’s back. Held together with restraints, the hyena’s hands had clenched into tight fists, the nails digging into its own palms from the strain. The face was …

Jax couldn’t look at its face. He wiped the image away from the wall. Jax couldn’t let this happen.

“Here, I found these.” Hodge had returned, carrying a handful of various-sized power cells.

Jax went to him and started picking through the handful to find a match.

Another shriek penetrated the door, followed by a string of incomprehensible sounds coming from the hyena.

Jax found a match and slid it into the tool. He lit up the laser and finished cutting through the middle bolt.

“I’m sorry, Grimshaw. He’s a good person, really. I didn’t know he could do something like this. He’s …”

The pyramid, it was so vital to Hank. Was it worth
this
?

The tortured Animalis continued to babble in the room. Grimshaw went to Hodge, stroking his ruffled fur, looking into his eyes and trying to soothe him.

Sparks shot from the last bolt when Jax finished cutting through it.

With a kick, Jax hit the door hard and it folded open. Hank leaped away from the door, tossing the syringe and backing toward the wall. His foot hit against a laser gun he must have taken from the warehouse and it clattered onto its side.

The hyena writhed slowly on the floor, words slurring out of its mouth. The hole in its chest had ripped open farther and was bleeding into its shirt and out onto the floor.

“Jax, I got it! It was all—Hey!”

Jax shoved Hank into the wall. The image on the screen rippled from the impact.

“Jax,” Hank wheezed, catching his breath, “the pyramid.” His face showed confusion, apparently surprised that Jax would come at him like this.

“Hank! What are you thinking? You tortured it!” Jax held him to the wall, but it was his own face he saw on Hank. Jax pressed the face into the wall screen in rage.

Grimshaw, meanwhile, had run to the hyena. Hodge had thankfully stayed outside. Kneeling over the hyena, Grimshaw pulled off the blindfold and checked its eyes.

“You didn’t even know what you were doing!” Grimshaw said. “You might have killed him, Hank! You can’t tell what their reaction to the serum is unless you watch their eyes!” She grabbed its wrist and laid two fingers on the skin there, checking its pulse. “Jax, I need your help with him.”

Jax pressed Hank for a moment longer. He was his friend. He had stood by his side for the past six years, before they joined the military, and he would be his friend after the military. Jax knew that.

Let him go,
Jax told himself.

“He was dead anyway, Jax. You left him there to die,” Hank wheezed. “He knew where the other transport was taken. We might be able—”

Jax dropped his hands away, releasing him from the wall. “I’m sorry, Hank.” Jax didn’t want to look him in the eyes. Hank had said it was the fate of humanity at stake. If Jax had Hank’s conviction, would he have been able to do what was necessary?

He looked into Hank’s eyes and felt a cold chill on the back of his neck when he saw Hank glaring at him. Jax backed away, feeling the distance between them manifest. He turned and went to Grimshaw.

“Take the medical kit,” she said. “We need to stop the bleeding in his chest. His blood isn’t coagulating like it should. He needs an IV. And I should put in a call for an emergency car.”

“No,” Jax said, stopping her.

What would happen if it was taken to a hospital? What would they do if they were able to revive the hyena? Let it return to the Animalis militants?

“We have to!” she said. “You saw the ICT scan. That lung is completely separated in its chest. It’s floating around in there, and now it’s bleeding again. I have to. I’m not going to let this life die, Jax. Help me, please.”

She got up and headed toward the wall. Hank moved away from her as she came to it. It looked like he expected her to attack him. When she ignored him and pulled up a request for an emergency car, Hank’s eyes started shifting around, navigating his retina monitor.

Jax shut out what had happened between him and Hank, and instead focused on the bleeding hole in the hyena. He took out an expandable splint and rolled it into a tight shaft. The hyena trembled and winced as Jax slid the splint into the laser hole, hoping it would stop some of the bleeding. He pulled open the kit and searched for a stimulant. After the energy it had exerted during the torture, the hyena would need a boost to keep its heart going.

Grimshaw came back and pulled out an ice pack. She cracked it and held it to the hyena’s forehead.

“Jax, we have to go after the pyramid,” Hank said. “You want to let the Animalis win? Let the stupid hyena die!” Hank spoke with a surprising fierceness. “You want the whole human race to disappear when they start using the pyramid? I did what needed to be done! He knew where it was going, Jax—and it’s leaving tonight.”

“Hank, how dare you say that.” Grimshaw pierced him with her stare. She used Jax’s shoulder to help her stand. Hank shrank against the wall as she approached. “You would have murdered this creature in cold blood!” She stopped inches from his face. He tried to squirm away, but she followed him with her glare. “And you will be a maggot beneath the burning heat of your own guilt for the rest of your life.”

She held Hank there, watching him. Her expression softened, and after a moment, she spoke to herself, “Pyramid?” She moved away from Hank and he relaxed a little. “A pyramid.” She pressed her fingers to her temple with a bewildered look. “And you’re saying it’s some kind of weapon?”

Hank folded his arms over his chest. “They already used it once. Those adorable little creatures you let run loose in here could be genetic weapons. It’s a machine that can alter DNA. All DNA. It created the Animalis, and it could destroy them. Or us …”

Grimshaw closed her eyes, and a pain passed over her face that Jax didn’t think was possible on her. “Hank, nothing’s going to change what you did to this hyena.” Her eyes opened and she looked at him with pity. “You might not acknowledge its pain, or its value, but it’s there. I can’t give you any more justice than the guilt you will feel as you live with this, so I won’t try.”

She stepped back and looked from Hank to Jax. “The pyramid. It was—I don’t know. I saw something, just before you came back.” She shook her head and scowled.

Jax could feel it. She was struggling to find the words to describe what she had seen.

“Like a dream, just out of reach.” She blinked and her scowl went away. “And it makes me afraid for what you’re getting yourselves into. You don’t think you know me, or I you, but I don’t want anything to happen to you. I have an idea of what’s going to happen when your teams try to enter that building. It might not help, but I have some equipment you could use.”

Hank didn’t react, and Jax was still catching up with her change in tone.

“Hodge?” Grimshaw called out. “Give me a hand here, will you? The emergency car is going to be here any moment, and we need to get this hyena out to it.”

Hodge ducked his head through the door opening, his expression moving in and out of a snarl. “Yes, Hurley,” he said, but he stayed at the door.

“You’re not coming,” Jax said to Grimshaw, “if that’s what you’re thinking. We barely made it back alive. The Animalis militants are trying to start something here, and we are right in the middle of it.”

“I know, Jax. I know,” she said with a frown. “Something big is coming or Jesus wouldn’t have sent you here, but that isn’t what you’re worried about. Hank, you’re saying the conflict is going to be over soon?”

Hank looked thoughtful, and Jax knew that a plan was already forming in his mind.

“They’re going to be scattering,” Hank said. “What is it that you have?” His eyes flitted to menus in his retina monitor, but he continued speaking: “We have to surround the new warehouse so nothing can get away. I’m sending the location to the other teams now.”

“Can you tell me more about this pyramid?” Grimshaw went to the wall and revealed a closet full of clothes. She pulled out something black, with arm and leg straps, and brought it to Hank.

“A flight suit?” Hank just stared at it in her hands before finally taking it.

Jax could see Hank hesitating, fiddling with the flight suit. His eyes were watching Hodge and the hyena.
Right … He doesn’t want them to hear more about our plans.

“Hodge, come here,” Jax said. “He’s unconscious. Grab his knees and let’s get him out of her.”

That would give Hank the privacy to share more information. Hank and Grimshaw moved to the corner so they were out of the way. Little Hank leaped from Hodge’s shoulders and scurried away as Hodge came to the hyena. Hodge and Jax then carried the hyena out of the Atticus and through the midday heat of the courtyard. Some travelers stopped to watch them carry the bloody, limp body to the emergency car that waited there with flashing lights. They slid the body onto the padded cot and strapped it in. Jax pulled up a menu on the wall screen and put in the injury information, then he sent it off to the hospital.

“Hodge,” Jax said as they started back to the plane. “Can you stay out here? Watch for anyone that might seem suspicious?”

“Yeah.” Hodge nodded. “Good idea. I’ll just stay out here.” With a big, slow blink, his eyes relaxed and the hairs on the top of his head flattened out.

Jax left Hodge and walked up the staircase. Before he reached the top, an icon of the captain appeared in his retina monitor—a video call. Jax felt a wave of dread, his body reacting to the recent memory of the orders to kill. The dread turned into a cold sweat as he stepped into the plane and closed the hatch. Hank and Grimshaw were still talking in the second cabin with the door open; their words passed over Jax without registering. He opened the first cabin and went in, closing the door behind him.

Hernandez’s icon continued to flash, waiting to be answered.

I have to answer,
Jax told himself. The thought of standing up to the captain made his throat swell.

Jax accepted the call and sent the face of the captain onto the wall screen. He held his arms behind his back and stepped away from the wall.

Hernandez was in his own cabin, sitting in a black, thickly padded armchair. He was bent forward, resting his forehead against hands that were laced together. Hernandez hadn’t noticed the call had been answered.

“Captain,” Jax said after a moment of silence.

The captain raised his head and unlaced his fingers. “Jax,” he said. His words came out cautiously. “You left Hank … your unit.” He paused, but clearly didn’t expect a reply. “That was a hard thing I asked you to do, going in alone to get Hank back, and stopping those Animalis.” The chair groaned as he leaned his weight against the backrest.