Immortals (7 page)

Chapter 10

The Moons

Domus-Nova

Mouse-tail Galaxy

Domus-Nova Year 2548, Earth Year 7859 AD

Jai woke up on the bed in the white room as before; pinned to it by the paralysis of his body. Nothing much had changed. The walls were luminous white and the strange clock with the sixteen-hour face still hung on the far wall.

There was no sign of the old man.

The wall at the foot of his bed shifted and there was a dull whirr of the machinery as the door in the white rolled up. The old man in the ‘bomb-squad suit’ walked through the door and towards him.

The visored visage drew up next to Jai’s face. The old man was smiling a very benevolent smile.

He raised his hand and pointed it to the wall on Jai’s left. Jai seemed more in control of his faculties today and could turn his neck to follow his arm. The finger pointed to yet another section of the white wall. Jai’s eyes remained riveted to the wall as if he were waiting for something to happen.

And at that moment the wall seemed to shift and then a section of it drew up, revealing another room beyond, with a cot and someone on that cot, hooked up to a silvery machine above his head, that spewed fine sparkling blue wires that entered his head, shrouded in a very fine white mist.

Jai was puzzled and he turned his head towards the old man by his side.

The man smiled yet again and urged him to follow his finger pointed at the wall beyond the cot in the other room. Jai turned his head to the adjacent room and the wall beyond that cot started to shift. The walls drew apart from the middle, revealing what could possibly be a window on that wall.

The view to the outside of that window was that of a breathtaking night sky. The sky was dark outside, with a spattering of beautiful stars glittering in the night sky. As he watched, the stars dimmed and an ethereal bluish glow filled the night sky. His eyes were riveted on the beauty of the sight and then a blue disk rose across the margin of the window. The disk rose steadily higher into the sky and painted the night in a hue of blue. Jai felt amazed and elated as he watched the lovely view. The disk made its way across the sky slowly and Jai’s eyes followed it all along. As the trail of the disk slowly faded away, there was darkness again and then there was another faint glow on the lower corner of the window. He waited, his eyes fixed on the small patch of sky that he had been allowed to watch today. The glow brightened and another disk, smaller than the first and distinctly whiter, came into view.

This disk was smaller and yet radiated much more light than the first disk.

The light was whiter, like the moon he was so used to seeing on Earth, and this white light dispelled the blue of the previous disk. Both the disks must look glorious in the night sky, thought Jai as he imagined the scene of the night sky. The white one chasing the blue one as they both sailed across the night sky, painting it in countless subtle shades of blue and white.

Jai felt a sense of calm and happiness that percolated down to his core and he turned around to face the old man. He wanted to ask a million questions of that old man but he still had not found his voice.

The old man raised a placard that simply read:

‘LUEON and MAJON – moonrise on the Domus.’

The words meant nothing to Jai. He looked up quizzically at the man in the visor, who smiled and brought his hands to Jai’s face, placed them over his head and closed his eyes gently, to the whirring noise from above his head. He felt himself sinking deeper into darkness until it blotted him out of that room.

Chapter 11

The Ambush – Replayed

Henna’s Village, Jharia

Jharkhand, India

10 May, 2012

Jai jolted up from his dream, on the cot in the courtyard of Henna’s house.

As his eyes opened, he saw the moon right over his head. A single moon, and this one not full, was shining through tiny cloudlets and bathed him in its milky whiteness.

There was no one else in the courtyard… yet.

Jai bolted up from his bed and ran to the room where he had hidden his gun. He pulled out his revolver, a gift from Ali a long time ago, and ran to take position behind the pillar overlooking the courtyard.

After stationing himself behind the pillar, the absurdity of what he was doing struck him. But then again, this had happened to him the third time now. And he was not sure whether he should just dismiss it all as dreams of a tired mind. He decided, though, to remain behind the pillar for some time.

‘Maybe now is the time that I’ll find out,’ he murmured to himself, conniving with himself into beating his own rationality.

He did not have to wait for long.

There was a thump and a rustle of leaves somewhere to his left. The first assailant had jumped the brick boundary wall and had landed in the heap of chopped cattle-feed stored there.

And then and there, rationality lost to oddity and Jai started believing in his strange faculty.

Other noises followed the first thud – one more where the first had landed and two more thuds a little to the right. There were four thuds altogether. Jai knew it would be a hell of a difficult task to take down all four of them alone.

He looked around and saw the glint of kitchenware propped against the pillar for drying. He quickly found what he needed.

Three of the assailants were creeping up towards the house and the fourth remained hidden in the bushes to Jai’s left. From his position behind the pillar, Jai could see all of them. The hidden assailant lay to his left in the bushes while the others crept up to the right of the pillar. Jai picked up the large, gleaming kitchen knife that was possibly used for chopping meat. He steadied himself by propping himself against the pillar and quietly turned around to face the assailant in the bushes. His own face was still hidden in the darkness around the pillar.

He steadied the knife in his right hand holding it by the blade and the fingers of his non-throwing arm curled into a crack in the middle of the pillar, using it as a pivot. He needed to hurl the knife with speed and the pivot would help him get the desired speed in that hunched up sitting position.

He took a last look at the other three assailants and threw the knife. It sailed the distance in silence and struck its mark, the target’s left half of chest. The intruder was hurled back and he howled in pain as he fell. Jai immediately picked up his revolver and turned to the others in front of him. All of them looked back towards the noise and two of them started for the bushes instinctively. The third one stood his ground and Jai knew he was the leader.

He took aim from where he stood and fired.

Jai was at an advantage as he was hiding in the dark and had a clear shot at the assailants. The bullet found the forehead of the third assailant and he fell dead to the floor. There was a loud report with the shot and Jai had given his position to the other two assailants with that shot. They started firing indiscriminately into the darkness around Jai. Jai scrunched up behind the pillar, waiting for the barrage to die down. The noise of the shots had awoken everyone in the village and lights flickered on inside Henna’s house too.

The remaining two assailants could not risk exposure and decided to flee. Jai looked towards his left and saw one of the assailants climbing up the wall. He pulled his trigger and the bullet found its mark. The assailant was hit square on the back of his head and he slumped on the wall itself, half his body hanging on either side of it.

The last assailant was nowhere to be seen.

Henna and her mother were at their door, looking aghast at what had happened. Jai rushed to them.

Henna gave him a quick brush over, searching for any bullet holes, and then burst out crying with concern and alarm.

Jai held her in her arms.

‘Nothing has happened to me. I am alright. One of the bastards got away.’

Henna looks up at him, tears running down her cheeks

‘Who were these people?’

‘
Bhai’s
men, I guess. I didn’t think they would reach here.’ Jai said the words but he did not mean them. He had known that they would come after her family but he had not anticipated that it be would be so brutally quick.

That these men found him and Henna here was perhaps a mere coincidence. They had come with the motive to wipe out Henna’s family, the price that her family had to pay for her betrayal.

It was all about appearances in the underworld. A gang-leader cannot be perceived as weak and in this deadly display of retribution, the family often was the apt target. The consequences of one’s actions did not stop with that person, but engulfed their entire kinship.

That was the greatest morality check for the Mumbai mob. What you did on the streets of Mumbai was a matter of life or death for your family. You die loyal, and they were rewarded; you betray, and they had to pay with their lives. People like Jai were considered dangerous. Jai had no one to call a family and that meant the gang had no insurance against a betrayal by him.

Jai realised he had betrayed the gang and that now the gang had Henna and her family to answer for Jai’s and her own betrayal. Only, that made his resolve stronger to guard Henna with all his might, and keep her safe, come what may.

Henna had told her mother the gist of what had happened to her. She saw the mayhem and understood what had transpired. The pillar on the left of the house had collapsed during the fight and the courtyard was a mess. Three unknown and armed male dead bodies lay strewn in her house.

Henna’s mother gathered herself in a moment and said:

‘Both of you leave immediately. I will handle everything.’

She urged her daughter and Jai to go. She feared for the safety of her daughter.

‘But…’

Jai wanted to say something but Henna’s mother cut him short.

‘Henna’s father will be here soon. I will send for him. The police also will be here anytime now. No one outside of the house has seen both of you till now. It will be very difficult to explain your presence to the police and it would not take them long to figure out the connection. Moreover, I am sure the police are also in cahoots with these people.’

That last sentence made sense to Jai.

The advice was sound and it was best for them to leave.

‘But Aunty, you cannot stay here for long. They will make another attempt sooner rather than later. It is a prestige issue for these bastards now.’

She nodded but did not say anything.

Quick farewells were said and Jai and Henna were on the road, sneaking out of the back of the house in ten minutes.

Jai walked at a steady pace as they made their way to the railway station. They would be on the first train out of there.

‘Where will we go now?’ Henna asked between sobs.

‘Mumbai.’

‘What?’ Henna was surprised and stopped in her tracks. She looked at Jai, dumbstruck.

‘What’s in Mumbai? Nothing you say to
Bhai
can make him change his mind now,’ Henna said in a desperate voice.

Jai walked close to her, placed his palm against her face

‘Henna, I am never going to plead for mercy with the person who has hurt you thus. I am not going to Mumbai to plead with the bastard.’

A tear rolled down Henna’s cheek.

Jai continued, ‘I am not going to say anything, but we need to do something. If we do not, they will stop at nothing. Your family will be murdered and then a relentless cat-and-mouse game will go on until we are caught. I do not wish to live a life of the hunted, looking over our shoulders at all times.’

‘But what can we do, Jai?’

‘I have something in my mind and I need you to trust me on this. Please.’

Henna stood there, ambivalent for a second, and then bobbed her head in an affirmative and caught up in stride with Jai.

Henna’s trust in Jai was nothing short of absolute.

Jai did not have to try too hard to convince her. She was now following him blindly and if anything were to happen to her, Jai would never be able to forgive himself.

He would not let anything happen to her.

He had already ‘brought her back’ from the dead twice. He would do that over and over again if needed.

They walked in silence towards the railway station.

***

The train journey was uneventful.

It had mostly been silence between them during the journey. They were uncertain about what lay ahead for them. Jai had an ill-conceived plan and all Henna had was a blind yet shaky trust in Jai. Shaky not because she felt he would betray her, rather whether he would achieve what he had set out to do. Neither had any answers and so neither asked any questions of the other. Henna was worried about her family but realised that she could not do much to help them. Jai was lost in his own world, fighting his own demons.

Jai had a little sleep and in it he had a nightmare where he was amidst the burning ruins of the urban Somalian landscape and before him lay the bullet-ridden lifeless body of Henna. Jai was Abdi in the dream and he was screaming in horror and his voice echoed across the hollow walls of a destroyed city. There was no one to hear the wails of Jai, and next thing he saw was that he was carrying the lifeless body of Henna in her arms and frantically running here and there, seeking help.

Jai had woken up in a cold sweat.

He realised that there was perhaps no other way for him. He had to take the bull by its horns. Or else he would have to run all his life; he would tire one day and then they would get caught and meet a sorry end.

The things that had happened to him in the last few days gave him reason to believe that he could pull off what he had in mind. Something that had never happened before, and something that probably never would again.

He did not understand what was happening to him. He had been so busy keeping alive that he hadn’t given much thought to anything else.

Was he immortal? Was he beyond injury? Why was it happening to him? What was happening to him? Why did the room in white have a sixteen-hour clock face? Why did the room have a window that opened to the most beautiful night sky he had ever seen; a sky with two very beautiful moons? Why was the room there? And where was there? And why did he not look like himself in the room? Why was he in the room?

He didn’t have the answers to any of these questions. He wondered if he ever would have answers to them. All this thinking just led to a severe, splitting headache and he let go of his thoughts.

He looked at Henna’s lovely face, sleeping with her head on his lap, a thin line of saliva drooling down from the corner of her lips on to his pants.

That made him smile for the first time since he had been on the train. He had her with him and that was all that mattered right now.