Turbulence (13 page)

“I know it hasn’t happened before,” Vir says, “but it could happen now. We’re superhumans. And we all have so much in common.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Could you come a little closer? No? Princess Anima, the Evil Flying Muscle Monster is feeling shy. Could you bring him here, please?”

The schoolgirl steps forward. Her face transforms as well: her eyes grow, becoming huge ovals that stretch across half her face. Her nose shrinks, her skin changes colour. In a few seconds, she’s a pretty, pink, horrifying real-life approximation of a Japanese cartoon. Fairy wings sprout on her back. Two samurai katanas, crackling with green flame, appear in her hands.

“Flying Double Moon Death Charge!” she screams, her voice
as cute as sleeping rabbits. She flies up into the air, swinging her swords, tendrils of light trailing behind her.

Vir hasn’t met Anima before and doesn’t want to meet her now. He swerves to avoid her but she’s faster than he is. The swords sweep in glittering arcs and slash across his skin, criss-crossing streaks of unimaginable pain. He screams aloud as the green light crackles into his bruised skin, burning a large cross in his uniform.

Anima lands on the ground on one knee, head bent, swords tucked beneath her arms and perfectly aligned to her back, a classic samurai pose. She raises her head, sees Vir and laughs, a sweet, innocent, bell-like laugh as he wobbles groggily in the air. And then she’s off again, zipping through the air towards him, her hand flickering faster than the eye can see.

“Stars of Destruction!” she cries.

A stream of three-pointed shuriken, ninja throwing stars of green light, slam into Vir’s face. Dizzy, hurt, blinded, he crashes to the floor as Anima soars above him and lands lightly across the hall. She stands coyly, one hand across her mouth, another archly placed on her hip, her manga eyes brimming with amusement, and her laughter tinkles out again. This time it grates across his ears like chalk across a board.

Vir groans and attempts to rise, hears a soft padding noise, smells rank, fetid breath, and suddenly his head is trapped between Sher’s tiger jaws, the all-powerful stench of rotten meat filling his nostrils. The monster shakes Vir from side to side, trying to snap his neck. Failing, he bites him again, dagger-like fangs scratch across Vir’s face but still don’t draw blood.

Roaring in frustration, Sher swings a mighty paw into Vir’s stomach and the flying-man skids far along the floor before
finally rolling to a halt. Sher reaches him in one unnaturally graceful pounce. He kneels astride Vir and hammers a succession of punches into his chest. Vir stops thrashing about after the first barrage and merely twitches in response to the second. The floor beneath him cracks and splinters.

“Come on, soldier,” Jai sneers. “Make it interesting.”

Vir doesn’t move. Sher lifts up his head by the hair and lets it go, Vir falls limply to the floor.

“You’ve made your point, Jai,” says the Commander, visibly trembling. “I would like to leave now, with your permission. I’ll arrange a meeting between you and the Air Chief Marshall.”

“Of course you will,” Jai says. “But why are you in such a hurry to leave? The show’s only just started. No one’s even dead yet.”

Seven Tias, armed with a devastating array of weapons, burst through a door. A company of guards sitting in a dark room full of glowing TV sets put up their hands obligingly.

The Tias look curiously at the screens around them. Each one connects to a camera that shows a padded cell. Some of the cells are empty, but several clearly contain superpeople.

“Keys,” a Tia demands.

A guard tosses her a set of keys and the guards all watch appreciatively as Tia-with-the-keys multiplies herself tenfold.

“Will someone be nice enough to lead us to the cells?” a Tia asks. “We really don’t want to shoot you.”

“That’s good, madam,” a guard says. “But whatever it is you’re trying to do, give up. You should surrender before Jai and his men get here. They are not nice like us.”

“Take us to the cells,” Tia says, shaking her gun in what she hopes is a menacing fashion.

“Cells won’t open with just these keys,” the guard says. “You need swipe cards from the science wing.”

“Let’s go there, then. I’ve got time.”

The Tias rush out with two guards in tow. The other guards return to their perusal of the screens.

“Two hundred rupees says Sher kills the last one.”

“Tariq,” says another.

They gather round and lay their bets.

“Hey,” suggests a guard after a while, “do you think we should, you know, sound the alarm?”

An alarm rings out.

“Tariq,” Jai says. Tariq nods and disappears.

“I’ve seen enough,” says the Commander. “You can lead the team. I agree to all your terms, whatever they are. Now let Vir go. He’ll be useful.”

“No,” Jai says. “He dies tonight. I don’t deal well with betrayal.”

The Commander struggles with this for a moment or two.

“Very well,” he says. “But if you don’t let me leave in the next fifteen minutes, I won’t be able to stop the air strike on this building. I wasn’t bluffing about that.”

“Yes, you were,” Jai says. He turns away from Vir with a reluctant sigh. “Would you like to know what I think happened, Commander? I think you were lying to me in my office, and you tricked Vir just as I did. Because, you see, if the Air Marshall, or the Prime Minister, or the Pope, or anyone with half a brain
and a phone at his disposal learned about me, this valley would have been crawling with soldiers. I think Vir came to you and told you his story, and you decided to come here and get yourself a crack team and an overnight promotion.”

The Commander considers blustering his way out of this, but after a few seconds of trying to look indignant his shoulders sag.

“Now let’s be reasonable, Jai,” he says. “They’re never going to take you back. You’re not — you’re more than human now. Different. Hell, they’d have locked that poor boy Vir up if he’d gone to them. You wouldn’t stand a chance. Unless you’re working under someone they
do
trust. A bridge between the uppermost tiers of the military and its finest team.”

“In other words, you.”

“Yes. I believe in you, Jai. I always have. And these powers you have… Imagine what you could do with my help. With my guidance.”

Jai reaches out and snaps the Commander’s neck.

“What are you looking at?” he yells at Sher and Anima, who are staring at the Commander’s corpse, puzzled. “Get back to work!”

Three Tias run into what looks like a hospital ward. Beds are arranged in rows down the middle of the room, around forty people lie in these beds. Doctors scuttle about, adjusting drips, taking readings, playing with their BlackBerries. Charmed by this vision, a Tia fires her gun into the air, and the doctors dive for the floor.

“Sliding card thingies that open cell doors! Hand them over!” Tia yells.

A buxom nurse holds up a wobbling arm, and a Tia snatches a card from it.

A gunshot rings out. Tia turns to dust. The nurse screeches. Two more bursts of gunfire, and the other Tias also fade away.

The card flutters to the floor.

“Where else are they?” Tariq bellows, teleporting to the other end of the ward.

Seven more Tias rush in and dive for cover as Tariq appears in their midst, spinning and shooting at random. Other voices cry out; two doctors are hit. A white sheet near Tariq turns red. All over the room, patients dive for cover, hurling their sheets aside.

For two agonising minutes, Tariq and Tia shoot at each other. Tariq flickering up and down the hall, firing continuously; Tia rolling, ducking and diving, leaving a body behind at every turn.

The gunfire stops suddenly. Tariq is gone. Tias emerge from behind beds, whirling about, picking cards off corpses. At one end of the room, a Tia tosses a sheet off a seated figure and receives a bullet to the face.

Tariq is back, shooting at random and vanishing.

“Everyone stay down!” a Tia screams. She runs to the centre of the ward and stands, gun extended, and spins around. Five more Tias blossom in a circle, their gun barrels forming a six-pointed star. They fire simultaneously.

Tariq materialises and is mowed down. His body flickers for a few seconds and then moves no more.

“Is anyone alive?” a Tia calls. Moans and whimpers answer her. “Come with me,” she says.

* * *

The tiger-man’s claws rake Vir’s face lazily.

“Hey, Jai,” Sher says. “I think I’m done.”

Vir opens his eyes. He grabs Sher’s paws, sits up straight, head-butting the tiger’s muzzle. As Sher yelps in pain, Vir rolls him off and jumps up, shaking his arms, ready for round two.

Sher rises to his feet with feline grace and crouches, his head moving from side to side. Green tiger eyes gaze hypnotically into Vir’s, and Vir flinches as Sher snarls, displaying his fangs. He tries to think of something clever to say but can’t. He knows it’ll come to him later.

The tiger-man leaps on him, snarling. Vir jabs him, hard, on the nose, and follows up with a kick to the stomach that doubles Sher up. The beast flees now, heading towards the gym area.

Vir flies after him and barrels into him from behind, sending him head-first into a weights machine stacked up with massive one-ton weights. As the punch-drunk tiger swings wildly, Vir steps up in front of him and grasps him around the waist. Face contorted with effort, he picks Sher up, flies up to the hall’s ceiling, squeezes the breath out of the tiger-man and drops him.

Cats don’t always land on their feet, and Sher lands on his nose. The floor shatters. The tiger stays down.

“Princess Anima! This is a test,” Jai calls.

“Super Striker Spear!” Anima squeals, driving a glittering energy-spear into Vir’s side and sailing over him, her fairy wings buzzing.

Vir swivels, snaps the shaft with a well-placed chop and flies away, his head spinning, the sizzling spearhead falling harmlessly to the ground. As Anima sails after him, sprouting another pair of katanas, the air around her glowing and
distorting, he turns, faces her, watches the swords rake his chest, then grabs them and breaks them in half across his knee. His hands feel frozen and aflame all at once.

The child is frightened now. Twin fountains of tears pour out of the sides of her face. He grabs her by the shoulder.
One punch to the face,
Vir’s instincts yell, but he can’t make himself hit this little girl.

A decision he regrets almost instantly as Anima conjures up a huge battle-axe and tries to cut his head off with it.

Vir spirals to the floor, his Adam’s apple a huge, throbbing lump of pain. She’s buzzing all around him now, darting humming-bird-like, pausing, hurling sparkling energy bolts, laughing.

Vir is dizzy, fading, spent. Groaning, he takes to the air, flies around the room as fast as he can, dodging shuriken and arrows, darts and spears, watching Jai smirk beneath him, and wondering what his father would have done in his place.

Tia opens the door to the first cell and finds an elderly woman clad in a Benarasi sari sitting demurely inside.

“What’s your power, aunty?” she asks.

“I can sing,” she says.

“Sweet. Can you get out of here?” She helps the woman to her feet, and runs to the next cell.

All along the cell block, other gun-toting Tias swing doors open, struggle with locks and usher inmates outside. A confused crowd of people from the science section mills about, though the smarter ones have already started racing towards the upper levels.

At the end of the block, yet more Tias deliver quick instructions: Get out of here, stop for nothing, lots of women who look just like me are waiting to show you the way.

Bursts of gunfire echo through the building as clusters of Tias take on its less friendly inhabitants. Tia doesn’t stop to count the people she’s rescuing. She knows several of them won’t make it; some will die before they leave the building, the Himalayas will account for others. Not to mention the small matter of Jai’s superpowered allies, thankfully otherwise engaged for the moment. But she’s left several copies prowling all over the base, armed to the teeth. Whatever happens, she knows she has achieved something this night.

A siren wails. “That’s the signal! We need to leave the base!” yells a fleeing doctor.

“Bloody genius,” a Tia growls, and runs to another cell.

“Mega Power Destruction Crossbow!” Anima yells.

Twinkling razor-edged bolts of power shoot towards Vir, and even as he dodges them he realises that the flying schoolgirl is slowly herding him into a corner. Vir’s second wind has almost run out, and his head is spinning too fast for him to see clearly. Pure instinct and blurry green lines are all that keep him going.

Anima flies above him, fighting casually, not even at full stretch — she’s toying with him. Her crossbow disappears and a huge mace appears in her tiny hands. She swings it effortlessly, catches him smack in the middle of his back and he crashes down again, skidding along the floor, tasting dirt and sweat and concrete and blood. His blood. He rolls over, lies on his back, and blood bubbles up in his mouth. He
coughs, spits, tries to get up and fails.

“Well done, Princess!” Jai cries. “Finish him!”

Anima laughs and curtsies in mid-air. The mace disappears in a cloud of green bubbles. A broadsword appears in its place.

“Final Decapitation Combo!” she calls, twirling the sword over her head and sweeping down for the killing strike.

At the last possible moment, Vir swings his hands up and blocks the sword. The blade cuts into his palm and sizzles as sparks of power ripple across his arms. He rips the sword from her grasp and tosses it aside as he rises into the air in front of her. She’s manga-terrified, her mouth a small pink circle, her impossibly huge eyes quivering.

Vir grabs her wrist with one hand and, with the other, begins to tickle her. She squeals and giggles, helpless tears running out of her eyes, now horizontal slits above her rapidly rising nose. Her laughter reaches impossibly high notes, elsewhere in the hall, a light shatters.

“I’m the hero, Princess,” Vir says, gently but firmly. “And you’re a good girl, aren’t you?”