Kane awoke sometime later in an infirmary bed, with a heartbeat monitor beeping quietly beside him and an IV in his left arm. He clutched the glass of water beside him and drained it, then tried to move his injured leg and realized he could not. He stared at his right leg for a long time before he registered what he was seeing: the leg was gone below the knee, and a red bandage was wrapped around the stump.
A sharp snore drew his attention, and he found Mitchell asleep in his wheelchair in the corner. His brother Bill was lying on the couch in a comedic fashion, his horned head on one armrest and his knees on the other, with his feet dangling all the way to the floor. Kane held back a snort, despite his situation, and peered around the rest of the room. He was about to hit the call button when his sister, Amy, came through the door, reading a chart, the small dorsal fin atop her hairless head glistened with recently applied saline balm. Glancing up, she noted he was awake and smiled happily at him. He returned the smile half-heartedly, but he was still glad to see her.
“How are you Kane?” Amy asked as she squinted at his chart. He did not answer, and she looked up as she continued. “Rosa was barely able to stabilize you before the ambulance she called got there. Sepsis had already set in too deeply, and you went into septic shock before I could even get you hooked up. It was close … but I was not able to save your leg Kane. I’m sorry.”
Staring down at the stump of his leg again, he still did not say anything.
“Kane, I need you to look at me.” Amy approached his bed and put her hand on his shoulder.
Kane looked up and saw Mitchell watching him, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bill stirring as well.
“I’m good, sis. It’s just a lot to absorb. I need some time to wrap my head around everything. Do you think you guys can give me some time?” he asked, glancing from Mitchell to Bill.
Mitchell nodded and wheeled himself from the room. Bill got to his feet, and his head hit the ceiling. Muttering under his breath, he stooped down and thumped Kane’s big toe as he passed, winking. Amy stared at Kane for a few more seconds before she spun around and walked towards the door.
“Press the call button if you need something. Miranda will be by soon,” Amy said without turning around, closing the door behind her.
Kane sat there for a long time, trying not to feel sorry for himself—and failing. Eventually he grew tired of the pity party, and he tried to clear his mind, slipping into his zen state. As he entered his mind space, he saw a praying mantis sitting on the roof of the rat cage and the snapping turtle was stalking back and forth, glaring at it. He approached the turtle, but it backed away from him.
This again, Kane thought as he let his spectral self dissipate into fog. As he had done with the rat, he rapidly conjured up walls around the turtle and shrank them down. As he imagined his body within the cell, the turtle rammed into him, shattering the walls as Kane crashed through them. He tried again, and again, but it never worked, and he finally left the turtle alone, pacing around it as it watched him warily. Then Kane decided to try something different. He placed a second cage and then a third around the first and tried merging them together. They melded into thick walls that seemed much sturdier.
Once more he manifested himself inside the box, and the turtle rammed him again, but this time he only crashed into the wall, sliding to the floor in a daze. He shook his head to clear it, and when he opened his eyes, he was face-to-face with the turtle. It head-butted him then, and Kane saw stars. As they cleared, he opened his eyes again, only to receive another headbutt. He growled, and when he opened his eyes this time, he slammed his head into the turtle’s, and the creature exploded into white light and flowed into Kane. Blinking the spots from his vision, he saw a giant white snapping turtle sleeping in the corner of the cage.
Kane then scanned his mindscape for the praying mantis, hoping to duplicate this trick. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw it streak by as he felt a sharp sting on his ear. Touching the helix of his ear, he found a sticky silver substance there instead of the blood he was expecting. He sensed that it was going to take a long time to catch the mantis, and he did not want to do it right now. Although his body was ethereal in this place, it still hurt terribly after getting smashed through walls and having his skull nearly cave in. Pain was a mental concept, after all—and what better place to get a taste of it than in his mind?
But he wanted to try one more thing. As he stared down at his astral legs, noting that both were still there, he tried to connect with his body’s snapping turtle characteristics. If the owl-bat-eagle could replace its missing wings with a transformation, could he regenerate this way as well? Reaching behind himself, he felt the shifting plates that now covered the length of his back, and he was confused to find that his wings were missing. He was beginning to panic when the mantis came to hover in front of him, staring into his eyes. He slowed his breathing and just looked at the mantis, and it shook its head and flew off in a flash.
“Guess it’s not your time,” he said to the streak of dark hunter green as it disappeared into the darkness.
He cleared his mind again, and with all the speed he could muster, he connected with the turtle as it stood up in its cage, eyeing him expectantly. I need your help, my friend. The turtle nodded and slowly closed its eyes. Kane followed suit, and when he opened them again, the turtle was standing in front of him, looking at his right leg. Cocking its head to the side, it pressed its snout to his leg. He felt his fingernails began to itch, then the nails of his left toes. Pressure was building up in his pelvic area, and it began spreading down his right leg. The pressure terminated at his knee, then started to build alarmingly. It was becoming painful… Then the turtle head-butted his knee, and he relaxed in understanding as the pressure flowed downward and he felt his right foot and nails begin to tingle as well. Looking around he found the turtle curled up in the corner of its cage once more.
Back in his physical body, he opened his eyes and looked down at his right leg. He was extremely drained and tired, but he was elated to see that his right leg was back! He did note with some alarm that the skin was a slight shade of green, and the nails on that foot were bigger and thicker. He wiggled his toes and smiled to himself, then pressed the call button.
“Can I help you?” asked a woman with a thick country accent from the speaker beside his head.
“Yes, will you send Amy and the rest of my visitors back into the room, please?” Kane asked politely, covering his new leg.
“Right away, hon.” He heard the speaker disconnect.
A few minutes later, Amy came into the room, followed by Mitchell, Bill, and Miranda. His wife rushed to his side and flung her arms around his neck, snuggling in and squeezing him tightly.
“We nearly lost you, Kane,” she sobbed gently as he patted her on the back.
Amy approached him after a few seconds. “We need to change out your bandages, Kane. The nerves are still a little raw, so this might hurt a bit,” she said as she began to lift the blanket up—then gasped loudly.
Miranda looked at her in fear. “What’s wrong?” she sobbed, tears running down her rosy cheeks.
Kane tugged her in for a hug and whispered into her ear, “Hush, honey, everything is going to be okay. I promise.”
“How?” Amy stammered, throwing the sheet back to expose his new leg to the others.
“It’s a long story,” he said as Miranda moved to get a closer look.
“Can you wiggle your toes?” Amy asked, grabbing a tongue depressor from the nearby table and running it up the bottom of his foot.
“Yes!” He giggled as he yanked his foot away. Then she poked each individual toe, and he laughed at the look of wonder on her face.
“Extraordinary,” she said under her breath, analyzing the changes to his leg and dictating them on a recorder she pulled from her pocket.
Kane looked at Mitchell, who had stood up from his wheelchair to get a better look. Gawking, Kane stared at Mitchell, mystified. Mitchell saw the look and glanced worryingly at Miranda. She nodded, and Kane knew instantly.
“How long have I been out?”
Amy glanced up at the graveness in Kane’s voice and looked around the room. “Eleven days,” she said, gently patting his new leg. “We almost lost you a few times, but after we removed the infected tissue, you began to creep back from the edge.”
“Enough of that,” Bill said, interrupting the silence that had fallen. “Explain. Now.”
Kane laughed and sat up a little straighter. “Get me some food, and I’ll fill you in on what I know.”
His food came about twenty minutes later as he explained, and thirty minutes after that, he finished up his story and looked around at each of them. “If what Chuck said is true, then someone wants me dead—badly. The man from the parking garage not only has more supplies than our super city, he offered at least three groups of people an extreme amount to kill me. I watched Chuck transform from a human into a gorilla in the blink of an eye, and if the man at the garage is half as strong as Chuck, he will be nearly unstoppable. He is well connected, rich, and an Offloader like I am, apparently, so I need to eliminate the other two groups involved before I go after him.”
“ ‘We,’ ” Mitchell cut in, conviction burning in his eyes.
“No, Mitchell, this is my fight. I can’t have you involved.”
Mitchell laughed sardonically. “You don’t get to tell me what to do, Captain.”
“Are you really pulling rank on me? It’s going to get you killed!” Kane said exasperatedly.
“Maybe, but this is what I signed up for, and this city is more important to me than you know. The threat this man poses to us and Newmerica makes eliminating him a priority,” Mitchell said, standing up to his full height.
Kane knew he had lost, and he looked at the rest of his family. “You will protect them while I’m gone?” he asked, turning to Bill, who promptly slugged Kane in the shoulder in response. His arm went numb for a few seconds. “Fuck!” he yelled, rubbing it. “Sorry for asking.” He smiled at his little brother.
Mitchell cleared his throat. “I received word from the gates that Rebecca, Kyle, and Cally were entering the city right before you called us into the room. I sent them out to eliminate the mall compound, and I assume it was a success, because it’s only been three days since they left.”
“Then that is one off the list, and the Humanist compound won’t be around much longer if they failed to subdue that monster the woman let loose on the town. Which leaves the mysterious group from the water that no one has seen,” Kane said thoughtfully.
“One of my nurses, Jacob, is a massive great white shark Purist who goes swimming in the ocean sometimes. He’s on shift now; I can go ask him if he’s seen anything weird recently?” Amy offered with a nervous smile.
“That would be very helpful,” Kane and Mitchell agreed together.
“I’ll go with her,” Bill said, following her to the door.
“I’ll give you two some privacy and see if I can get a lift back to the scav compound to get the rest of your gear situated, Kane,” Mitchell said. “Oh, before I forget, we were able to get your SUV repaired. You still need to tell me how that all happened. See you soon.” He nodded to Miranda as he wheeled himself after Bill.
“I’m scared, Kane,” Miranda said once they were alone. “I know Mitchell wants you to fight, but why can’t we all just leave?”
“You know that’s the plan eventually, but right now, we just don’t have the money to leave,” Kane responded soberly.
She closed her eyes and climbed back into the bed, cuddling up against him and holding him tightly. “My mom is with Harry,” she said, a bit muffled with her face smooshed against his chest.
He laughed and pulled her closer, and they lay like that for a while until Amy and Bill came back into the room.
“Good news,” Amy began as she sat down on the couch next to Bill. “After some gentle coaxing from Bill, Jacob told us that there is a small group of aquatics living in a system of caves they’ve carved out beneath the city. He visited once, and he says that they live almost peacefully with some of the more aggressive beasts down there. They do have a leader, but they rarely come up to the surface, and the caves are too deep for most people to reach. He said even if you had a good set of scuba gear, the leviathans down there would chew you up and spit you out.”
“Damn, there goes that plan… Thanks, Amy.” Kane scratched his chin absentmindedly. He was abashed to feel a substantial bit of facial hair there, and seeing his expression, Miranda leaned in to whisper in his ear. “I like it,” she purred devilishly, giggling like a schoolgirl.
. . . . .
Miranda drove her car into the garage and pressed the button to close the door as she and Kane got out. Entering the house, he found his mother-in-law, Sorcha, playing cards with Harry at the kitchen table. Harry looked up and immediately lunged towards Kane, crying as he slammed into him. His sobs broke Kane’s heart.
“I couldn’t—hic—come see you! I never would have—hic—gotten to say goodbye! I couldn’t leave—hic—because of this stupid curse,” Harry finally got out through his broken, hiccupping sobs. “I can’t do this anymore, Dad.” He broke off his hug and began wiping at his eyes.
“I know, son,” Kane said as he hauled Harry back into his arms and hugged him tightly. “I know.”
Sorcha was watching them, still sitting at the table, but tears were flowing freely down her cheeks as well.
“Hey, Momma,” Kane said with a watery smile.
“ ’lo, love,” Sorcha replied.
They ate a good home-cooked meal that night, then Kane went downstairs to spend some time with Harry. Harry wanted to read a few chapters out of the book they were reading together, called Saphira, and Kane was happy to oblige. They were almost done with the first book in the series, and Kane made a mental note to try to track down the next. After they finished reading, they talked for a bit about games and movies. As Harry began to yawn, he asked Kane a question.
“Can I see it?”
“See what?” Kane looked confused.
“Your new leg,” Harry said with a roll of his eyes.
Kane chuckled, rolled up his pants leg, and stripped off his sock.
Harry scrutinized it for a few seconds. “Why is it green?” he asked, wonder in his eyes.
“I don’t know. I guess it has something to do with the turtle side of it,” he said as Harry reached out his hand to touch his leg.
Without warning, Harry’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he began convulsing wildly.
“What the fuck!” Kane yelped, trying to steady Harry’s convulsions. Then he watched in horror as the wings on his son’s back suddenly fell away. A massive bulge was forming there under the boy’s baggy hoodie, and the seams started to rip. As the hoodie tore apart, a massive turtle shell took its place. Kane shuddered at what he had just done to his son. He dared not touch Harry’s bare skin for fear of causing another transformation.
Harry groaned and cracked open a multifaceted blue eye. “What happened?” he asked, looking at Kane in confusion.
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“I guess a transformation was triggered when you touched my skin,” Kane answered skeptically.
“Why? That didn’t happen with Uncle Bill, or Aunt Amy, or Thomas or Mitchell. Why now?”
“It probably has something to do with my new abilities.”
An idea struck him then, and he carefully laid his hands on Harry, praying that nothing else would happen. Closing his eyes, he entered his zen state—and found himself dragged abruptly into Harry’s mind. It was a swirling storm, animals flying around in all directions. It was silent though as Kane walked through the chaos, dodging the ferals as they flew by.
When he came to the eye of the storm, he found Harry curled up in a ball in the center, eyes screwed shut. He touched Harry gently, but when nothing happened, he tried shaking him instead. It seemed he was not capable of interacting with his son at all, so he reached out with his mind and erected a mental cage with one wall missing. Seeing a turtle hurtling through the storm, he positioned the cage to catch it as it flew by. He missed the first time, but as it came back around, he lined it up correctly, and the turtle slammed into the cage. Kane quickly slammed the lid on as the unbelievably vicious creature tried to tear the cage to pieces.
Next he constructed another mental cage, but it was ridiculously small. When he tried to make it bigger, the mental strain was too much, and he slumped to his knees. Again he looked into the swirling storm of animals, trying to find something that would fit in the small cage. Then he spotted the gecko and positioned the cage to catch it. He finally got it lined up, but inexplicably, the gecko bounced off an invisible barrier covering the top of the cage. Bringing the cage closer to peer inside, he saw a fly at the bottom, and he hurriedly slammed the lid down before it was able to escape. Then he collapsed to his knees again as blackness closed in around him.
“… Mom!” Kane heard through the haze. “MOM!” Kane tried to open his eyes. “MOM!!” Harry screamed even louder.
Kane opened his eyes to see Miranda flying down the basement stairs, and he looked up into the eyes of his son—now miraculously returned to the normal human blue eyes that he shared with his mother. He sat up hastily as Miranda, followed promptly by Sorcha, burst through the vacuum seal, causing the alarm to start blaring.
“Harry, what happ—” Miranda broke off the second she saw Harry’s eyes. Rushing to him as fast as humanly possible, she took his face in her hands. She began to cry as she crushed him into a hug, forgetting Kane as he climbed carefully to his feet, wobbling in place.
Kane examined Harry carefully, noting the lack of turtle or fly traits. He was thrilled his attempt had worked, but he felt as if he could sleep for a week. His eyelids had lead weights tied to them, and he swayed as he stood there.
Sorcha approached, putting a steadying hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay, Kane?” Sorcha asked as she took in his pale, clammy complexion.
“Yes ma’am,” he said quietly, barely able to speak above a whisper. He swayed even more precariously, and Sorcha grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Harry, sweetie, will you help me and your momma get your daddy upstairs to bed?”
“Sure, Nana!” Harry pulled out of his mother’s tight embrace.
. . . . .
Kane awoke to Miranda getting out of bed beside him.
“Morning already?” he asked, slapping her gently on the backside as she stood.
She laughed and skittered away from him. “Yep—but it’s the next morning for you. You slept through the entire day yesterday, we were starting to worry again.”
Kane groaned and sat up. He felt refreshed, but there was a dull throb above his left eye. “Coffee,” he grumbled as he threw his legs over the edge of the bed. “I’m going to hop in the shower really quick,” he said as Miranda left the room.
“Okay, honey,” she replied from the other side of the closed door.
He turned the water on as hot as it would go and scalded himself until his body adjusted. He felt his muscles relax under the heat, and the steam seemed to make the throbbing above his eye less noticeable. Almost two weeks had passed since he and Rebecca had escaped from the Humanist compound, and he had been out for most of it. Closing his eyes, he rested his forehead against the shower wall, letting the water cascade down his back.
How was he going to get down to that underwater cave system? He cut the water off after a few minutes of contemplation, and after getting dressed, he went downstairs for his much-needed coffee. Harry and Miranda were sitting at the table eating breakfast, but there was no sign of Sorcha.
“Where did your mom go?” Kane asked Miranda as he sat down with his steaming cup.
“She went home to feed Seacláid.”
“That demon chihuahua is still alive?” Kane asked with a sneer. He and the dog had never gotten along, which only proved that the breed as a whole was insane, because all other animals liked Kane.
Harry glanced up at him and caught him staring back.
“How are you, son?” Kane asked gently, still marveling at what he had managed to do.
“I kinda miss my wings … and video games are a lot harder with boring old human eyes. But I am glad to be back to my old self. Do you think you could get rid of some more of my traits?” Harry asked hopefully.
Kane’s head began to throb instantly at the idea of caging any more animals, and he shook it gently. “Not for a while. It took a lot out of me.” Harry dropped his gaze to the table and frowned. “Chin up, kid. This is a step in the right direction,” Kane said encouragingly.
“I know,” Harry replied glumly, and he went back to eating his breakfast.
Kane felt much better by that night, and he set an early alarm so he could get to the scavenger compound and check in on the progress of the mission.
. . . . .
The next morning found Kane walking through the compound, and arriving at Mitchell’s door, he knocked twice.
“Welcome back!” Mitchell said, beaming as Kane entered. “I’m just finishing up some reports here with Kyle. Have a seat.”
Kane crossed the room and dropped into the proffered chair, nodding at Kyle. “Glad to be back. What’s the situation?” he asked, getting right to the point.
“The mall compound was eliminated, and Rebecca brought back a few bundles of supplies that they had been paid with,” Mitchell said. “We have sent a convoy to retrieve the rest of it, but we also discovered a major problem: all of the supplies were ours. As in, they were Newmerica supplies from the warehouse across town.”
“That is a problem,” Kane said. “If the parking garage group has found a way to sneak into the city and steal our supplies, we have a huge vulnerability on our hands.”
“That’s our thought as well,” Kyle said in agreement.
“I’ll have to do the garage solo. I have been there before and have a little history with the group already,” Kane stated.
“Out of the question!” Mitchell blustered. “You can’t fight them all by yourself!”
“I won’t be fighting them,” Kane said. “They’re just a bunch of kids huddled up in an underground parking garage. Their parents are rarely there, from what I gathered, and Jackson and a few others are the only ones that will give me any trouble if things go sideways.”
“Well, I don’t like it. But I will give you a chance to end this peacefully before we go in full force. It’s not too far from the city wall, so we can stage a force nearby if things go south,” Mitchell said with a nod to Kyle.
They discussed plans for a bit, then Kane asked Mitchell for his resupply tokens. Mitchell pulled them out of his top drawer, and after Kane signed the paperwork, they walked together to the supply cage.
As they approached, Kane got the clerk’s attention with a wave. “Do you have another CZ back there somewhere?”
“We might have one more, but it is in the special category, so it won’t be cheap,” the clerk said.
“Four tokens?” Kane asked hesitantly.
“Five.”
Kane whistled. “Set that aside for me for now; I’ll stick with the .40 S&W. I only have ten tokens.”
He wound up getting an ACOG scope for the M16 he had absconded with, as well as a Mossberg Shockwave with a hip holster. He would have to modify his throwing knife sheath to work with the hip holster, but it would give him more close-range firepower. That left him with four tokens, so he picked up six more throwing knives, a Beta C-Mag, and enough 5.56 ammo to tide him over for a while. He still had a bunch of twelve-gauge back home; he would have to swing by the house to grab it before he left for the mission.
With that done, he grabbed his SUV from lockup and asked one of the guys there to deliver his wife’s car back to the house. He checked to see if Rebecca’s vehicle was on station, but sadly it was not. He would have to catch up with her later. Hopping into his SUV, he headed back to the house to grab his shotgun ammo. When he got there he said goodbye to Miranda again, but when he went down to say goodbye to Harry, he heard music coming from the basement bathroom. Kane decided to leave him be and kissed Miranda one last time, but instead she whisked him into the hall closet for some quick fun.
As he was about to leave a little later, a stupid grin on his face, he saw that the open-door light was on. He must not have closed the door properly when he got home. Putting it from his mind, he drove toward the Bronx River Gate. It was getting close to sundown as he exited the final gate, and he decided to drive until the sun set before stopping. Another hour passed as the sun sank below the horizon and he approached the outskirts of the abandoned city where the parking garage was located.
Deciding that this was as good a place as any, he navigated off the road into an overgrown park, where he hoped to find some nice, fluffy grass he could smash down to make a cushion under his sleeping bag. He opened the back door to grab it, but as he reached for it, the sleeping bag and other supplies suddenly shifted. Kane had his pistol out in an instant.
“Whoa, Dad! It’s just me!” Harry gasped with a screech, bolting upright with his hands in the air.
“Harry! What the hell are you doing out here?” Kane shouted.
“I’m not gonna let you and Mom keep me locked up anymore. I’m going to prove that I can make it out here. I can’t just be closed up in the basement without any way to help! I couldn’t even visit you in the hospital!” Harry said, voice rising desperately.
Kane’s temper had rapidly flared up, but at Harry’s explanation, the bluster went out of him. Sighing, he grabbed his sleeping bag and closed the back door with Harry still inside. Harry banged on the door, but Kane just stared at him for a minute.
“Get some sleep. We’ll talk more in the morning.” Kane walked towards the spot he had chosen to camp.
“Dad! I’ve got to pee, Dad! Dad!”
“Use a bottle” was all Kane said as he walked away, gathering twigs to start a small fire.
Kane awoke before sunrise as usual and stirred the fire back to life to get the coffee started. As it percolated, he relieved himself in the nearby bushes and went to check on Harry. His son was curled up in the back seat, sleeping soundly, and Kane marveled at the fact that if Harry stretched out, he would not be able to fit back there. His son was getting so big that Kane did not know how he felt about that.
He shook the wonder from his mind as the sound of nature around him seemed to grow overwhelmingly loud. Everything out here might be the creature that killed his son. They all wanted a piece of them, and Harry had no training. He could either rectify that, or drive all the way back home to drop Harry off. Kane knocked gently on the window to rouse him, then went to fix himself a cup of coffee.
Harry joined him a few minutes later, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He plopped down on the ground beside Kane and groaned. Kane had always turned his mind and body all the way down to reach his zen state, but he decided to try something new; he reversed the process instead, amping up his mind and body to their limits. A menacing aura blasted out from him in all directions, and the surrounding sounds of life suddenly went silent. Harry shuddered uncontrollably, and Kane dialed it back a bit.
“What the hell was that?” Harry asked as he looked up at Kane and saw the hardness of his stare.
“Just trying out something to see if I can get you a bit more protection,” Kane replied.
“Thanks, I guess,” Harry said with another unconscious shudder as he poured himself a cup of coffee. He sipped, spluttered, and spewed it out. “Blech! Got any cream and sugar?”
“Yeah, let me just run to the kitchen and check the fridge,” Kane responded with a sardonic smile.
“Very funny, Dad,” Harry quipped with an exaggerated eye roll.
Kane laughed heartily, and they sat there in silence for a while.
“All right.” Kane stood up. “If you’re going to be out here, there are some rules you have to learn and some training we have to get through.”
Harry perked up, eyes twinkling. “You’re going to let me stay?”
“I don’t have much of a choice, young man. But when we get home, I am locking all of your gaming systems in the closet for a month, and all you’ll have will be your workout equipment.”
Harry’s chin dropped to his chest, and he tried not to pout.
“There’s no time to sulk out here,” Kane barked, making Harry whip his head up. “Let’s get to work.”
He unholstered his pistol, ejected the mag, racked back the slide, caught the bullet that flew out, and handed the gun to Harry. Kane began going over every component of the pistol, bit by bit, and over the next few hours, Harry learned to disassemble and reassemble it, load it, and dry fire it. Finally, he set up some targets and let him shoot half a box of ammo. Harry proved to be a natural, quickly finding a comfortable stance after Kane gave him a few pointers. When Kane was satisfied, he removed the holster from his belt and gave it to Harry, whose jaw dropped.
“Take good care of it, and only point it at what you intend to kill,” Kane said with a grim smile.
Harry swiftly buckled the holster onto his own belt and adjusted it until he found a comfortable position. Kane went back to the SUV and dug around in the center console until he found his old Infidel 133 and matching sheath, which he had Harry put on as well. For the next four hours, Kane taught Harry the basics of close-quarters combat, and after a while, he incorporated Harry’s new knife as well. Harry finally began to run out of steam, and Kane realized that they had only had a few sips of water and some crackers all day.
“That’s enough for the day. Follow me.” Kane walked into the tall grass and began to disappear. Harry hurried after him, but he was not fast enough; as he entered the tall grass, Kane was nowhere to be seen.
. . . . .
Harry called out, then felt a sting in his left leg as the grass exploded with movement and a shape disappeared back into the vegetation. He gaped down at his leg, seeing a thin slice in his jeans, and he felt around the rip to check it. His fingers came away with a bit of blood on them, and he panicked and called out again, “Dad!” Then he received another sting to his calf. There had been no movement this time, and he peeked down again to find an identical slice two inches below the first.
Crouching, he cleared his mind, trying to remember everything he had learned that day. But there was so much, and as his breathing quickened with his frustration, he felt a third sting close to the other two. He flinched but did not bother looking down; he knew what he would find. Forcing himself to calm down, he steadied his breathing. He stayed that way for a while until he heard movement somewhere to his left.
Harry strained his feline ears, but the sound did not repeat. He slowed his breathing even more. His ears twitched, and the hairs on their tips stiffened as he zeroed in on what his cat ears heard that his human brain did not. He focused harder than he ever had before, and a small headache began to build behind his left eye, but now he could hear the breathing of three different beings. Two of them were too small to be a human, so Harry drew his knife and threw it towards the third.
. . . . .
“Fuck!” Kane threw himself sideways, dodging the knife heading straight for him. The blade buried itself in the tree he had been crouched under, and his eyes widened to the size of saucers. “Holy shit, Harry!” Kane yelled as he got to his feet.
Harry stumbled through the grass and rushed towards him. “I’m so sorry, Dad! I assumed you would catch it or something…” Harry broke off the apology as Kane engulfed him in a hug.
“Don’t apologize! I am so proud of you!” Kane all but crushed Harry in his arms. “I think that might be enough for today, but you’re going to have to explain how you did that.”
Harry beamed as Kane let go of him, but he did not follow as Kane began walking towards the camp. “There are two life forms hiding nearby,” Harry said, and Kane looked back at him questioningly. “One is right over there in a hidden den, and the other is hiding in a hollow of the tree.” He pointed to each spot as he said it.
Kane quickly approached the tree and glanced into the hollow to see a Pure squirrel. He darted his hand in to grab it. It bit him before he could get a good grip, and he rushed to the car to grab a cage. After throwing the squirrel inside, he grabbed another and had Harry show him where the other creature was. Moving the brush covering the mouth of the den, he peeked inside to find a snow-white rabbit. He stared at it for a long moment, then finally reached his hand in and gently placed the rabbit in the cage.
“This is not a wild rabbit; they’re all but extinct. It must have escaped from the Bronx Quarantine Zone,” Kane said after he stared at it for a while. “I don’t think we should turn this in for a bounty; we might get asked too many questions. But we can’t just let it go, or it will just become the next meal of some other animal.” He looked at Harry and found him gazing at it longingly. Kane’s face grew stern. “Harry, you are not getting another pet. We tried with that albino rat snake, Pika, and every time you touched it, you mutated more and more. It crushed your mother when we had to get rid of her cat, Stacy—and you have the cute, fluffy ears to show for that mistake,” Kane said exasperatedly.
“They aren’t cute,” Harry said gruffly, covering his ears with his hands. “But you can help me now, regardless. We can at least try. It gets lonely in the basement … especially when Mom is in one of her moods.” Harry blushed as he said this, and Kane’s face darkened at the mention of Miranda’s condition.
“Let’s get some food in our bellies,” Kane said dismissively, and they walked back to the camp in silence.
. . . . .
After a long night of stargazing, Kane awoke the next morning and roused Harry with a knock on the window. Following breakfast, they repeated the same routine as the day before, but with a break for lunch this time. But in their next round of hide-and-seek, Harry had a harder time finding Kane this time, and his growing headache put an abrupt stop to the game.
“I think we need to try and get you a better handle on your animal instincts,” Kane said after he had boiled water for some tea. The two of them sat there waiting for the tea to steep as Harry rubbed at his temples. They discussed options for a while, and Kane explained how he was able to access his zen space as they drank their tea.
They spent the next two days going over all the Buddhist techniques Kane knew, to little effect. It would take months for Harry to improve, but at the end of their fourth full day at the park campsite, Kane decided to try to cage another of Harry’s inner animals.
Entering Harry’s mind, he summoned a cage with the plan of capturing at least two. The gecko and cat swirled faster than ever in the tornado of his son’s mind, almost as if they knew Kane was after them. The cages he had left on the ground last time he was here had been swept back up into the storm, but they looked like they were still sturdy and intact. He positioned the cage to catch the cat and succeeded on the first try. When he slammed the mental lid on the cage, the cat seemed to lose its mind, clawing viciously at the bars and hissing loudly, with the hair standing straight up on its back. Suddenly feeling his mental energy being depleted, he exited Harry’s mind.
Kane found Harry slumped in the passenger seat with his eyes rolled back in his head. He patted Harry on his cheek, but his son did not wake up. He shook him slightly, with little effect, then more vigorously as his panic began to mount. Jumping out of the driver’s seat, he ran around the car, flung open the door, and pulled Harry out to lay him gently on the ground. Then he dove back into his son’s mind to see what he could find. Fighting his way through the storm to the center, he found Harry sitting in the eye of the storm, crying.
“That was ridiculously painful,” he sobbed. “I think the cat is too much of a part of me. The pain is almost unbearable.”
Kane plucked the cat cage from the storm and brought it over to Harry. When he took the lid off, the cat leapt from the cage and stood there, meowing loudly at him. Harry extended a shaking hand and stroked the cat’s back. It swiveled to him cautiously, slowly climbing into his lap, where it curled up and sat watching Kane with fire in its eyes. There was a flash, and the cat seemed to explode with light, which flowed into Harry. When Kane blinked the spots from his eyes, he found a white cat curled up next to his sleeping son. The storm around them weakened, and he slowly withdrew from his son’s mind.
Kane came back to his senses and opened his eyes to find an enormous set of eyes staring down at him. Gasping, he hastily sat up as the giant owl-bat-eagle hooted loudly and flew up into a nearby tree.
“You again?” Kane watched the beast for a while before turning to check on his son. Cracking open his eyelid, he jumped back as he discovered the slitted pupil of a cat’s eye looking up at him.
Harry did not wake. He slept soundly as Kane maneuvered him as best he could into the backseat of the SUV before closing the door. Then Kane gazed back up to see what the owl was up to. To his relief, he saw that it was staring off into the distance, ignoring him. He walked towards the campfire and decided that they needed to get back on the road tomorrow. They had wasted too much time here, and he had to find somewhere for Harry to lay low while he scouted out the parking garage. With one last glance towards the giant bird-bat, he closed his eyes and went to sleep.