Mark gripped the branch with knees and hands. The fabric of his suit pants wrinkled around his knees as he squeezed to give himself leverage. He limbered up his shoulder blades, spine arching as his palms left the bark and floated up through the air to hang just behind the perched form of General Graa. Fingers flexed. Stretched open.

General Graa had participated in many jousts and duels: in the air, on the ground, shoulder-mounted. None had prepared him for a human to sneak up from behind and pounce on him.

He let out a furious squawk as Mark lifted him, knees locked around the branch, fingers digging into wings and breast.

"Shut up! Shut! Up! I'll — argh!"

Graa's neck twisted around, his wicked beak jabbing at Mark's face. The human thrust the bird out at arm's length, and both were screaming now. No words were possible in their mutual, trapped fury.

Down on the ground, Koen's eyes widened as they tracked the movements of Mark's arms. He was lifting the thrashing, kicking Graa, knuckles white against black feathers, forearms bending back, as if to smash down against the branch.

"Mark!" he shouted. "Mark. It doesn't — " What could he say? What words would pierce the man's incoherent rage? "Mark! What are you afraid of?" Who knew, maybe he'd get an answer.

Mark's head turned. His face was chalky gray, except for a patch of red on either cheek. "You!" His teeth gnashed. "You're the bad guys. I'm the good guy. I keep telling you I need help and you keep turning! Up! The pressure." He shook Graa up and down for emphasis. This attracted his attention back to the matter at hand. "Shut up! I'll kill you! I'll wring your neck if you don't shut up! Give me! Amnesty! I never did anything. Say it!"

"You never did anything," said Koen immediately.

"Not you. You." He jiggled Graa. "I never did anything."

Koen couldn't think of what to do. He was distracted by the way the bird's head stayed entirely stable in the air as his body shook up and down.

Graa opened his beak, panting. His talons opened and closed. "Stupid," he said. "You have no hope."

"I'll kill you. I'll wring your neck. I'll twist off your wings."

Everywhere they weren't pressed down, Graa's feathers puffed out. "Imagine what will happen next."

Mark's breath came out in two gasps. "Ha. Ha. It won't matter to you. You'll be dead. Unless you grant me amnesty. Trade concessions. Money. Guaranteed safety on the trip back to Earth."

"Hmm." Graa mimicked the noise of a human considering an offer. "I am interested. Loosen your grip. Tell me, how can we arrange your safe escape?"

Mark thought, breathing hard. "Call your flier."

"It will lower a rope, but you will have to let go of me to hold the rope. You must trust me."

"I don't." Mark looked calmer now, more comfortable up on the tree branch, negotiating. "But, if you Transfer money to my account. $10 million. Yes. You'll have to explain that if anything happens to me."

"Expect no expertise from me on the ritual system your civilization uses to distribute goods. I can guess what a 'dollar' is but I cannot transfer one."

"Then I can just kill you. Kill Koen. Kill everyone and blame the jaguar, then go back to the Embassy and the rest of my career. Get it?"

"I understand. You wish to glide backwards."

"What?"

"Tell me," commanded Graa. "How will things be when you're back at your embassy?"

Mark stared at the bird in his hands. His breathing was speeding up again. A few meters down the path, Mr. Grumbles was beginning to whine. With a clank of armor, the erectus stood, rubbing his head.

"I remember!" Koen called. "The candle! It was the night we had dinner together. The stampot. It was raining outside, remember? That's what you want to have again."

Mark snorted in contempt. "Don't you get it? That was just me manipulating you."

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Koen was sure Mark was lying. Mark was convinced that he wasn't.

What exactly was Mark telling himself? Koen wondered.

"You want to be back on Earth," he said. "You want to be with people who you can understand." People he could control? But Koen didn't say that. "People who will keep you safe."

Mark breathed. Mr. Grumble's whining was getting louder. Graa made a growling noise and the erectus looked sharply up at him.

"What was that?" asked Mark.

"A sound of comfort," said Graa. "Human Mark, I will describe your experiences to you. Every day is a new confusion, a new shock. You issue orders, and they are not obeyed. A show of force is necessary to restore balance. I am correct."

Mark nodded slowly. Mr. Grumbles's hands began to tremble.

"Now, will you put me down, or shall I call my flier, and take us to the Accelerator?"

Mark's breath caught. "Call? You have a translator. It's recording this!"

His fingers squeezed, and General Graa gave a squawk of protest.

Mr. Grumbles roared.

It wasn't like any sound Koen had heard. He'd heard people scream in pain or fear — he'd done it himself — as if the pain injustice of the world pressed on the body and that pressure could be released as noise. But that wasn't the noise Mr. Grumbles was making.

Mr. Grumbles sounded like a baby when taken home from the playground or denied the bottle, only huge. Football fans might approach this in their rage at the other team, or rioters at their enemies. In a war, maybe? But Koen suspected that even then, Homo sapiens would filter themselves.

Sapiens considered what their buddies would think of them, and wonder if this was really the best way to spend their time. Or, as in this case, they protected themselves from the horror of the present moment with a blanket of abstract philosophizing.

There was no calculation or pretense in Mr. Grumbles. There was no self to lose. He was an animal who had been born, cared for, and strictly trained. He had come on a frightening journey and endured an even more frightening separation from his family. Mr. Grumbles been tugged on, pushed, yelled at, and given terrible, terrible showers. His amygdala was still active from the fight with the giant cat, and now, deep in his somatosensory cortex, mirror neurons were strongly active.1

Mark's hands squeezed Graa. He yelled, he tugged on Graa's delicate shoulder joints, and the brain of Mr. Grumbles lit with anguish and rage. He didn't like Mark at all.

"Ah! Ah! Ah-ha!" Mr. Grumbles ran to Mark's tree, screaming as his gauntleted hands smashed the bark. The shock traveled up his arms and hurt in his shoulders, even as Mark twisted General Graa's wings.

"Shut up!" Mark had mirror neurons of his own. "Fine! That's how it'll be. Everyone was killed by animals, except me. Very tragic. And I'll smash those fucking translators. And I'll be done! With this bullshit!"

Laura, the only person in this forest who hadn't let panic get the better of her, jabbed Koen in the ribs with her finger. He broke out of his philosophical paralysis.

"Guh?"

"Shh," she said. "The stick." She made a knocking motion with her hand and rolled her eyes upward, to where Mark was raging at Mr. Grumbles.

"Human Mark, do not harm me," commanded Graa. "Rise above your nature. Breathe deeply. Think!"

Mr. Grumbles tore at his gauntlet. He didn't even notice the pain in his teeth and fingers; his hand was free! He threw the armor-plated thing at Mark, and hit him on the forehead.

"Ow! God damn it!" Mark was not lost in his anger. He was found there. Like a war-leader at the head of a bellowing horde, he exalted at the crest of a boiling wave. Now, finally, he had the excuse he needed. A thrown gauntlet. A final insult. Now, his enemies would get what was coming to them.

He held Graa in two hands and began to pull.

Graa's beak snapped shut on the air. The vocalizations from within became high and choppy. "Do not. Do this. Do not. Fall into. Evil."

And Koen swung back Fling's staff. Like a child facing a pinata, he took aim at Mark's knees.

"How dare you?" Mark's voice was as pained as Graa, as if he were the victim here as well. "I. Am. A good. Person!"

The stick got him right in the knee cap.

The function of pain should be obvious. Animals that retreat from negative stimuli stand a better chance of remaining alive and someday breeding than those who do not. Occasionally, a central nervous system may calculate that damage to some extremity is a price worth paying for a higher goal, and can override pain signals. Just, not signals like these.

The agony that exploded up Mark's spinal cord was no mere warning. The muscles legs did not ask for permission to spasm and jerk out of the way of the terrible damage. They had already done so.

Mark kicked out at empty air. His balance changed. Instincts older than bipedalism kicked in, and his arms flung themselves out, fingers splayed to clutch branches and stop his fall. They failed.

Mark's injured leg refused to flex, and the rest of his body spun around it, tumbling him into empty air. There was a sound like a flag caught by the wind, and Mark's last sight before the ground struck him was of great, black wings. The last thing he heard was the onrushing howl of a killer ape.

1Acharya S, Shukla S. Mirror neurons: Enigma of the metaphysical modular brain. J Nat Sci Biol Med. 2012 Jul;3(2):118-24. doi: 10.4103/0976-9668.101878.