Infinitude

by Ruchi Banerjee

Genres: Dystopian

Synopsis

The year is 2173. Humans are a near-extinct group herded together in protected sectors. Mira, a regular, self-absorbed, 16-year-old pimple buster, resident of Sector 51, has no clue how drastically her life is about to change when she accompanies her mother on a research project to a distant tropical jungle. There, Mira discovers a tall, super-intelligent and rather good-looking boy called Neel, who introduces her to a whole new world of mysterious possibilities. But before she can even begin to understand her feelings for him, things take a nightmarish turn . . . Carnivorous mutants are on the prowl. A deadly new breed of the forest, they have Mira trapped. Rescued by unlikely saviours, she finally learns the ugly truth of her world. Now, Mira must fight not only for her own life but also for humanity itself as she is pitted against a far stronger, smarter and more evolved enemy. Her only hope lies in Neel. But will he be able to overcome the overwhelming odds against them? Will this be the end of the human race? With electrifying action and forbidden love, Infinitude is the riveting story of two young lives caught in a deadly clash of civilizations.

Release date: February 5, 2014

Publisher: Hachette India

Print pages: 170

Sample

I

TIGER, TIGER

The Amazonia, 26 December 2173

Mira struggles to catch up. A minute ago, she had been right behind Neel chasing that dreadful sound, an eerie rustling that had filled her with darkness and foreboding. Now all she can see are the distant flashes of his shirt. Mira runs harder gulping the air in. The dank smell of wet rot weighs down on her lungs. Her clothes stick to her body drenched with the sweat of her exertions and her fear. Mira strives to draw strength from the towering trees surrounding her, but they seem to be struggling as well. They careen upwards like dementors, fighting to escape to the freedom of the skies above. Their dense canopy leaves nothing behind but a morass simmering with the static of all kinds of strange prehistoric insects.

Images of wiry antennas, feathery bodies and diaphanous wings fill Mira’s mind and she fights back a shiver. Her step falters as a stray beam of sunlight dazes her eyes. The halo stretches and then disappears. It just takes a second but as she focuses her eyes again, Mira draws in a sharp breath. Cold stark fear surges through her veins. The thumping of her chest resounds in her ears. It’s gone. The blur of white she had been following is gone.

Mira draws on the last reserves of strength she has left. Streaks of green and brown fill the corner of her eyes and her heart feels like an over-inflated balloon, just about to burst. She should have listened to Neel. She should have gone back home. Too late. Too late. Minutes pass and just when she’s about to give up hope, she sees a flash of Neel’s shirt again. Her shoulders collapse with relief and she sucks in a long shuddering breath. And then . . . one small misstep . . . Mira stumbles and twists her foot over a surface root. A sharp snap rings in her ears and a piercing pain sears through her ankle. Suddenly her whole body buckles and is . . . air-borne!

Mira shrieks, as much in shock as in pain. Her legs get bent upwards at an awkward angle, while her torso faces the ground below, pressed against something hard. Something that bites viciously into her skin.

As her whole body starts swaying, Mira looks down and realizes she’s about twenty feet above the ground! Panic strikes and she starts screaming, calling out to Neel.

A few seconds later, the terror of the moment passes and she quietens down.

No need to panic. Surely, Neel must have heard her. He must be on his way back right now.

She moves her fingers around to inspect but all she can make out is more of the same hard metallic rope that her face seems to be plastered on. As she feels the rope with her fingers, she begins to follow the crisscross patterns in it. Of course! It’s a net . . . a trap!

She curses at the sheer possibility of something like this happening to her and that too on a day when things had already been bad enough. Mira curses her wretched fate but doesn’t indulge in the self-pity for too long. Never one to just sit and fret, she resorts to action.

Lifting her hands, she clenches the net above her head and concentrates all her energy on hoisting herself up. But as soon as she tries to straighten her legs, a sharp stinging pain shoots up her right ankle, throbbing all the way to her brain. A cry escapes her lips and she collapses back, singed with the wasted effort.

Weighed down with her bulk, the net sways making her dizzy, Mira closes her eyes and shouts out Neel’s name again.

What’s taking him so long? Maybe Neel covered a lot of distance when she fell? Maybe he needs just a bit more time. Then it occurs to her. All this while, she has just been shouting Neel’s name! He must have thought she was trying to stop him. He may not even realize that she needs help! Stupid stupid.

She starts shouting his name again, this time adding her pleas for help. Then she waits. A minute passes. Then another.

What if he hasn’t heard her? What if something has happened to him as well?

For the first time ever, Mira feels the terror. Naked and unadulterated terror. Stuck in this trap with a broken leg and with no one coming to rescue her! This can’t be happening!

Mira’s eyes glaze over with tears but she can’t wipe them. If she moves her hands, the whole thing will start swaying again and she doesn’t want to risk moving her leg, even by an inch. Judging by the amount of pain, her ankle is probably fractured. She blinks furiously to clear her eyes and tells herself to get it together. She can do this. She feels a tingle in her back and realizes that she has to do this. She can’t stay in this position much longer. Her spine is bent at an unnatural angle and sooner or later, she will have to move. Maybe, if she could somehow manage to sit, she would be able to think more clearly. She lies there for a second, dredging up her reserves, willing herself to move.

Nothing in her life has prepared her for this, but then nothing could have. She remembers a saying her mom often used to quote during one of their heart-to-heart ‘talks’.

Life never prepares you for a mishap. It just shapes you for dealing with the aftermath.

She never really understood its meaning. Until now.

‘Ow.’ Her back wrenches. Already she can feel the beginnings of a muscle cramp. She has to move. Now.

Mira grits her teeth, clenches the net and raises herself. The pain is unbearable, like shards of glass coursing through her veins. Her body convulses, but she somehow wills herself to keep going. Twisting her torso, she brings herself into an upright sitting position. The net doesn’t allow her to stretch her legs, so she sits bundled up, drawing her knees to her chest. Then as the net slowly stills itself, she passes out.

The first stab of consciousness brings with it a scalding soreness in her leg that slowly starts spreading all over her body.

It’s definitely a fracture. It has to be. What else could cause such agonizing awful pain?

Mira sucks in a deep breath to brace herself before looking down at her ankle.

A glimpse of white tendons peeking out from behind crusted blood and she snaps her head up, trying to blank out the image that has just been seared on her mind. She brings her hands up to cover her eyes. And that’s when she notices the morphe on her wrist. Crystal veins thread across its surface like a tortured anatomical drawing.

Mira looks up at the canopy shrouding her. It is still as bright as it had been earlier, but now, with her morphe smashed, she has no way of knowing how long she has been unconscious. She checks her pockets in slow, clumsy movements, trying to take stock of her belongings.

She comes up with a bottle of water, a nutri strip and a repellent spray. The wedge between her chest and folded legs fills up with the meagre possessions.

Giving them a dejected look, she stuffs everything back into her pockets. Everything, apart from the bottle. After she was done putting back the spray and the nutri strip, she brings the bottle to her lips and sucks in a big gulp.

The rush of the water feels divine against her parched throat but she knows she has to be careful with it. She has to pace out all her rations however measly they might be because who knew when Neel might find her? Though find her, he will. He will have to realize she is missing, sooner or later.

Next she digs out the nutri strip and peels it open. Taking a bite, she sucks on it slowly, drawing it out, making it last. And that’s when she hears it.

A sound that tenses her body with foreboding. It is the same rustling sound which had led her to this trap.

Forgetting her resolve, she swallows the gloop in her mouth and looks around. Nothing moves, but then something rustles again. This time much closer.

She holds her breath and looks above. No one. An almost indecipherable soft thud comes from her right. Filled with dread, she turns her head and finds herself looking into a pair of impossibly wide, inhuman eyes. Orange flames speckled with gold dust, the feral irises gaze back at her and like pinpricks, they freeze each and every cell in her body. She wants to look away just so she can breathe, but she finds it impossible to tear herself away from those eyes. The eyes which bear the wild untamed gaze of a predator.

The faint rosette markings on its black hide shimmer as it crouches on a branch just a few feet away from her, standing absolutely still, as if carved out of a huge piece of obsidian. In a virtual world, she would have been awed by its magnificence, its potent strength and tensile tendons. But, this wasn’t cinematic beauty or a tame video game. This was a five-foot high, thickly barrelled predator with two sinister canines jutting out from its upper jaw and a primal look in its eyes. A look which firmly categorized her as prey.

As if to underline this terrifying reality, the beast moves forward on the branch, the thick sinews of its shoulders rippling with every step and just where the branch tapers off, still a good eight feet away from her, it pauses with its paw suspended in mid-air. Mira watches with rising panic as the beast then hangs its head low and giving her a good display of its killer mandibles, it . . . growls.

Mira has subconsciously been holding her breath all this while, but as she hears that primal guttural sound, she sucks in a sharp breath. She clasps a hand over her mouth to bottle the scream bubbling in her throat. Her eyes widen with terror as she realizes what the beast plans to do, right before it hoists itself in the air and with a terrifying sound of rage, lunges towards her. All the jungle sounds around her fade away, as she gazes in horror at the savagery of those eyes, now just a foot away from her face.

This is how I’m going to die. Stuck in a net, dangling from a tree, while a ravenous predator gouges and claws at my body. Death won’t be easy. It will be drawn out and very, very painful.

As these thoughts race through her mind, she suddenly realizes that the eyes which were focused on her a few seconds ago, have in fact . . . disappeared.

All the jungle sounds come rushing back to her and Mira kicks her feet in a belated reaction, her panic overriding any latent awareness of her fractured ankle. She tries to scramble back but her attempts only result in the net swaying wildly while a gut-wrenching pain in her leg wrings out a sharp cry from her.

Mira snaps her head around, expecting to see sharp claws clenching onto some part of the net, but no, thank the fates, she is out of reach. She looks down and sure enough the black beast is there, pacing below the net, circling it, as if expecting it to fall down. Startled at the thought, she looks up at the branch to which the contraption is tied. It looks sturdy and safe.

The rope seems to be tightly wound around the branch and when she brushes her fingers against the net, she realizes it is coated with a metal lining of some sort. The trap which holds her captive is completely breach-proof.

The knowledge makes her shoulders slump in relief. As the irony of her situation sinks in, she smirks to herself, but the tilt of her lips feels so alien, the humour so weary and her fate so doomed that even the absurdity of it all doesn’t succeed in making her smile.

The beast doesn’t try to pounce on her again, preferring to pace around on the ground instead. She watches the feline creature and thinks of the moment when it had roared at her. Long canines dripping with froth. Protracted talons impatient to score. An image of its gaping mouth and razor-sharp teeth flickers through her mind and a shiver runs down her spine. The predator baying for her blood down below is not just a beast but one of the new breeds. Stronger, deadlier and much smarter.

When the new breed stops pacing and stations itself under a tree, Mira uses the time to worry about what could have happened to Neel. As the daylight fades away, her despair escalates. Hunger starts gnawing on her insides till it feels like it is raking her open from within. Relenting, she opens the rest of the nutri strip and puts it in her mouth. For a few moments, she simply savours the weight of it on her tongue.

She had never imagined a moment like this. Snacking, while dangling twenty feet above the ground with a bloodthirsty predator waiting below to dine on her. A sudden deafening clap of thunder shakes her out of her thoughts.

‘Oh! Come on.’ She looks up instinctively, but of course, there is no sky to be seen. All she can see is the thick canopy of leaves above. Hopefully, it will shelter her from the impending storm.

It starts pouring, softly at first and then in torrents. She cowers in the net, her body convulsing as each roar seems to get closer and louder until she feels her sternum vibrate with every thunderous lashing. The canopy does protect her from a direct assault of the rain but the water soon starts dripping, forming steady streams, cascading from the channels of leaves and branches above her. She peers down and finds the new breed gone. Maybe the fates have finally decided to throw a little luck her way? But as the night approaches and the temperature drops drastically, Mira doesn’t feel so lucky anymore. Shivering in her drenched clothes with the cold intensifying her pain, she begs for relief.

The darkness spreads through the shower mist like dissolving ink, till it envelopes her firmly within its unyielding arms. She sits there helpless with her eyesight completely robbed. Her fingers fidget, seek her lips, trace them, rub against the curve of her chin, trying to make sure her body hadn’t dissolved into this absolute state of nothingness.

As the hours pass, Mira slowly submits herself to it. She lets the darkness turn into a crushing shroud and the rainfall into a dull rhythmic patter. She imagines her situation being played out in a movie. What would the actor do? Cover her ears tightly and stretch her mouth in a silent empty scream? Rock back and forth in extreme distress?

She contemplates these actions for a second, before snubbing the thought. She is much too physically worn out to attempt anything so dramatic. All she can manage is to sit motionless with her knees digging into her chest in a completely futile effort to preserve body heat.

The cold is as uncompromising and as unforgiving, as everything else around her. Even the beat of the rainfall soon begins to sound like an evil chant stabbing her ears, piercing straight through her brain.

Nature is a heartless badger, Mira despairs. It is not just about green dewy meadows and laughing waterfalls. It is also about ice that can chill marrows, forest fires that can melt skin off bones, floods that can rip apart limbs and droughts that can leave you parched, begging for mercy at her feet.

Mira realizes all this along with another certainty that she has refused to accept till now. No one is coming to rescue her, at least, not tonight. It would be impossible for anyone to tread through the jungle in this weather.

Shrinking into herself, she tries to capture some warmth but the icy despair is unrelenting. It soaks in through her skin, to her bones while she sits there stooped in her net, unbearably conscious through it all. The tears come. Silent desolation turning into wracking sobs. She cries for a long time, till there is nothing left inside of her, till her whole body feels frozen and anaesthetized. Till the numbness finally seeps into her mind and she surrenders herself to it.

An annoying buzz resounds in her head and for a second, she thinks it is the alarm on her morphe. The thought shakes her up from her slumber. Realization dawns as she opens her eyes and the glimmer that had risen in her heart is crushed. There are flies buzzing around her, attracted to the sweat and grime of her body.

Even though she tries to swat them away, the persistent beings keep gathering all around her. The repellent! Mira strains to get it out of her pocket and then sprays it liberally all over herself. Repulsed by the sharp smell of the chemical, the flies finally leave her alone.

Mira looks around. The rain has stopped but the greedy vacuous air still hangs onto the moisture. Her grimy clothes cling to her body but it doesn’t bother her.

What really worries her is the fever raging within her body, making her shiver, even in this sweltering heat.

Maybe she’s caught a cold from being drenched through the night? The nagging voice in her head whispers otherwise. Infection. INfection. INFECtion. She covers her ears and blocks it out before she starts believing it. But Mira knows. If she isn’t freed by the end of the day, she might be in a bad shape. She can’t keep waiting to be rescued.

Mira takes a small sip from the bottle and looks up. The net is twisted on itself, effectively sealing her in. Maybe she can swivel herself around, make an opening and then try climbing out of it. Of course, she would have to do all this with just one leg and with every slight nudge fe. . .