“Meow!”
“No!” Jamie ran into the path of the car with his arms out, hoping the driver would slam on his brakes in time.
Jelly closed her eyes and held her breath, expecting the worst…
Darkness.
Imagine your arms, legs and midriff are suspended in the air. Like you’re lying on cloud, without fear of falling either side. No more noise.
Just complete and utter silence.
That’s how Jelly felt for a time once the headlights disappeared. She opened her eyes very slowly.
A horizontal slit let a flood of white and pink light into her retinas. It should have hurt but it didn’t. Instead, it had a soothing effect.
Her left paw lifted into view, complete with her titanium claws. She exercised them, retracting them in and fanning them back out. A tiny whirring occurred, followed by a streak of blue shocks.
Her right paw waded in front of her face, blockading the view of the length of her body.
An endless gloop of pink stuff cocooned her outstretched body as if being smothered by a warm duvet.
No more suffocating. No more water. No more anything.
She tried to flip around to her side but couldn’t. Perhaps she was too relaxed? Not as such. She wanted to move around – but simply couldn’t.
Her limbs worked, evidently. She wasn’t tired – quite the contrary.
She lifted her face to the side and stared at the sticky, pink substance and tried to meow at it.
But she couldn’t speak. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.
A face emerged within the pink, jellied tomb. A nose, then two cheekbones and a pair of eyes. It moved around and stared back at Jelly.
“Ha… Haloo… ?” Jelly mouthed.
A smile stretched across the image of the woman’s face and nodded. “Hello, Jelly,” it said, softly.
“Mwaaa-ack,’ Jelly nearly squeezed out a sound but it was of little use. She pained when she tried to speak and so decided against it.
Another face appeared directly above her. A Japanese woman Jelly had met on Space Opera Alpha. Her name was Zilla Chin-Dunne.
“Zaaah…” Jelly tried and licked her mouth.
Zillah’s face nodded and slowly faded away from the sloppy, pink ceiling.
Jelly made the mistake of blinking. Blackness fell for approximately two-fifths of a second and turned back to pink. Another blink. The gelatinous catacomb turned black.
Another blink, and it turned pink once again.
It frightened Jelly to the point where she didn’t want to blink ever again.
Before she had time to display her defiance the entire womb-like tomb rotated around her body. The sound of the movement was intense. She wasn’t able to block her ears with her paws. Try as she might, she’d just have to put up with the deafening sound.
“Meeeooowwww…”
“Jelly,” a voice whirled around the increasing spin of the tomb, “Something fantastic is coming…”
“Mwaaaah,” she screamed and clamped her face with both paws, careful not to take her eye out with her infinity claws.
Lightning bolts struck around the internal walls of the tomb, briefly illuminating it to resemble the inside of a human brain.
Then, Jelly herself began to spin around sideways.
At first it was quick, but as the tomb’s rotation sped up so, too, did Jelly’s – in the opposite direction.
Spin… spin… spin…
Faster and faster and faster…
A rocketing thunder clap lit up the tomb as it smoothed out into a perfect cylinder, spinning faster than was comprehensible.
Jelly’s meowing bleached into a blend of gargles and growls then to nothing as she rotated several hundred times per second.
The thunder bolts intensified as a pang of white light broke out from her face.
Perfect oblong particles broke along her whiskers, streaking out to her nose and cheeks, shifting them away from her head.
Just then, a storm of choral music piped in, smearing into the brilliant white light as Jelly spun around even faster. And faster. Her body blurred she was spinning so fast.
Her body ballooned due to the inertia until it reached the insides the tomb in all directions. Jelly’s zippy revolutions per second were beyond measure.
Spin-spin-spin-spin… Jelly let out a prolonged growl of pain.
The white light exploded into a miasma of heavenly outreach.
Seconds later it swallowed onto itself, leaving absolutely nothing left… of anything.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The staff parking lot.
A quartet of USARIC mercenaries decked out in standard-issue armor bundled an elderly man into the back of a limousine.
“Get in, now,” the leader of the squad stood next to the door as the man got in.
“Sheck is secure,” he said into his black-coated utility sleeve. The USARIC logo adorned the underside of his forearm, along with his first initial and surname – K. Too.
He listened intently to the response.
“Kaoz,” Marr shifting his behind across the length of the limousine’s back seat, “Are we going or what?”
“Team, listen up,” Kaoz addressed his three subordinates and pointed at the peninsula in the not-too-distant horizon. “We’ve had a major security breach at the Animal compound, Sector Z118.”
“What happened?” asked one of the mercenaries, ready to spring into action. “What kind of breach?”
“Most escaped. The perps have been dealt with but the subjects in the second bay escaped.”
“Escaped?”
“They’re headed for the peninsula.”
The reflection of the incomplete Space Opera Charlie vessel smeared across Kaoz’s visor.
“Set up a task and finish team to bring them back. They’re not regular felines.”
“They’re not?”
“No. Don’t ask any questions. Just find them and bring them back. Dead or alive, I don’t much care at this point.”
“Understood,” Kaoz stepped into the limousine and took a seat opposite Maar. He thumped on the driver’s compartment, “Let’s go.”
The driver slammed on the gas and drove toward the gated exit. A kick of dust lifted from the ground and into dusky haze of the setting sun.
Maar almost freaking out inside the car. He couldn’t get comfortable, fidgeting around with the belt clip in the padding of the plush seat.
“Don’t be anxious,” Kaoz flipped his visor over his head and pinched his mouthpiece, “You’re perfectly safe now. ETA, ten minutes.”
“Good, good,” Maar looked over his shoulder and saw the USARIC building vanish into the distance, “Please tell me this damn car is bulletproof?”
“Of course it is.”
“I’m sorry. Can we talk business, please?”
Kaoz and Maar turned to a stern-looking man with silver hair sitting opposite them. He pressed his back against the glass compartment between them and the driver.
“Sorry, Crain. What’s the update?”
Crain McDormand – USARIC’s head of the legal counsel and the chair of the select committee. Not someone you’d want to get on the wrong side of. He had a manner about him that suggested he’d take you down in court for looking at him the wrong way.
Crain opened his palm and pulled out his thumbnail, “About fifteen minutes after Vasilov was executed someone sent an Individimedia broadcast from within USARIC’s animal compound.”
He set his cuticle down on the champagne unit next to his knee.