Law of Kanya
Episode 1: The Family Secret
By Josh Buckby

Chapter 5

Evan’s eyes were opened wide, and his fear was immeasurable. The differences were immediately obvious. There was no sound, not even from his own heavy breathing, and for that matter whatever he was breathing, it didn’t feel like oxygen. It was odourless and left a burning sensation in his nose and mouth, hot and rancid.
He was surrounded on all sides by a void of bright blue light that overcame him, peaceful and exotic. The endless twisting tunnel they’d seen like a TV screen from outside the portal… he was inside it now.
The long cable holding the robot hovered just above him, and it trailed out almost infinitely into the depths of the portal. Evan tried to reach out and grapple onto it. Maybe there was a chance he could pull himself back out the way he came in.
He tried and fell short, falling and tumbling softly into the void. Evan gasped. There was nothing to stand on in here. He was floating weightlessly around as if he were in space. He made one more failing attempt to get out before he sunk in any deeper. What followed was an experience he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to fully recount.
This was teleportation – that was what he’d convinced himself upon seeing the portal. Any minute now he was going to be broken down into a million atoms, dematerialised, and sent somewhere far, far away. At least, if he was even aware of it, that’s how he imagined his fate would play out.
It wasn’t at all what happened. Instead, it all began with a violent yank forward that sent him hurtling forward at breakneck speeds, chest first, as if he was being pulled by a fishhook stuck in his belly button. He was sent tumbling without bearings, surrounded on all sides by blue light, twisting and turning with sickening velocity.
After what seemed like a full minute of the harrowing experience, he could feel himself slowing, and could see the blue edges of the wormhole receding into what resembled a pitch black wall. Evan tried everything he could to prevent himself hitting it, but the entire experience was out of his control.
He closed his eyes, about to collide and splat like a fly on a windscreen. Much to his astonishment, his descent was slowed and cushioned, as if he was breaking through a layer of foam. As a huge gulp of fresh, cool and familiar air entered his mouth, he felt at once totally confident that he was out of that mess.
He was only given a few seconds to enjoy the serenity before realising what was awaiting him. He’d been mistaken. He had been thrown forward into the portal, but that wasn’t quite how he’d come out.
That black wall he’d seen was actually a floor. The break in a long vertical drop. Gravity returned abruptly, sending Evan screaming and crashing; a few meters in height and face down against a cold steel floor.
The drop made it difficult to stand up and he flailed, his chest aching. The long cable of the robot was still poking out from the opening. He had no choice but to muster all the strength he could and duck for cover when it started thrashing about like a snake.. The robot was spat out and slammed against the steel floor next to him with an echoing clang.
“No…” it muttered, rubbing its eye just like a human would their head. It was amazing they were both still in once piece with a landing like that. Evan still wasn’t sure he hadn’t busted a rib or two. The machine recovered much quicker of course, towering above him just like it had in the basement.
“You two pests! I’m going to enjoy this much more then I should!”
“Evan! Evan, hold on! I’m coming!”
For Kelly, the experience was much the same: a gut wrenching ride as she was hurled at the speed of light through the vortex. She cringed, all her effort put into not barfing up that day’s lunch. Every direction she glanced was a blur of blue and white.
He could see her slowing as she neared the portals horizon, much as he imagined she would. It disappeared right on cue. Evan leapt out and made a grab for Kelly as best he could in his condition. With much luck she fell into his waiting arms, but his knees buckled and the two thudded in a heap to the floor.
“Argh! Kelly? Are you.. ouch!”
“Aaa… I’m okay. Barely…” Kelly moaned, a searing pain shooting through her joints. He might have saved her quite as harsh a landing as he had been through, but they were both fatigued from the whole experience. They could barely scramble onto their hands and knees properly.
As they did, the portal rippled again and spat out a tiny shape at Kelly’s side. She looked down and picked up Benjamin, perplexed.
“Oh, seriously sis?!” Evan groaned loudly. “Why did you drag that useless thing along?”
“I… didn’t!” she stammered in fear.
“Seal off this room and the portal, at once!” the voice of their abductor ordered.
The chamber they’d been dropped into was a wide, dark and industrial looking dome. High above, the roof of the dome opened up to reveal a swirling grey sky. The portal that had spat them out was fixated just below the opening. They once more counted their blessings for whatever had softened their fall.
There was a resounding crack, and Kelly and Evan had to shield their heads as a strike of lighting hit the tip of the dome, sending sparks raining down on them. The room was filled with a rush of cold air like a vacuum. When they looked up again, the portal was still there, but the swirling centre had become solid. It looked like nothing more then a pane of blue glass now.
“You three are trouble together.” The robot grunted. “I’ll let your companion out once I deal with you two!”
“Ricky!” Kelly gasped. “You didn’t…”
As they got to their feet, the robot retreated into a room about half a story above them. A wide glass barrier came slamming down, separating them. “You…” Evan muttered at the robot. “What on gods green earth are you?”
“A superior being, all evidence would indicate!” it said smugly. “I’m afraid you have no choice but to play by my rules now.”
Kelly’s temper grew. It wasn’t easy to read emotion with an eye the lone distinguishing feature, but the voice told her everything she needed to know about this creature.
“Where are we?!” she growled at the robot. “And what did you mean? I’m gonna crush you into a cube if you’ve done anything to Ricky!”
“Hey watch it, you stupid human!”
Kelly shook her head as a much smaller shape leapt up to the glass. “This here’s Prime-Eleven!” it shouted in a childlike voice. “The second most powerful robot on the planet! You can’t talk to him like that!”
“Prime-Elev… Second most… Wait, you’ve got friends?!”
The figure that had leapt up to the glass was another machine that looked almost identical to the vacuum cleaner, but on a much smaller scale, and it wasn’t alone… the room above was teeming with them, all madly at work on consoles that surrounded their bigger brother.
Prime-Eleven, as he’d been introduced, pushed the small ones’ eye below the glass embarrassingly. “Now now, leave the diplomacy to me, unit three.”
Several of them pressed up against the glass panel, all suspended on cables just like him. Kelly and Evan still couldn’t see where they all led to. “I said back to your posts, the lot of you!” the robot ordered loudly. The overbearing demand sent the little robots slinking away, and prime turned his full attention back to brother and sister. “As for you two, you have no one to blame for this except yourself!”
“But you dragged us here!” Kelly shouted, startled.
“I do apologise for that! Under better circumstances, I’d have been at your services and dragging you here, as you put it, could have been avoided!” The tone in the robots voice had changed again, and he did seem genuine.
“But my master demands a much swifter approach now.” he added. “I’m to bring anyone opening the portal back here at once, by force if necessary.”
“Your master?” Evan asked.
“Again, I apologize. It was unavoidable… as is this.” He grunted, folding his thin, stumpy arms and went back to the controls. “Release the spirits.”
“Spirits? What are you doing?”
Evan came to a halt and took a deep sniff, and at once he could sense it. The air seeping into the room had changed; turned dense and hot in a way that reminded him of an asthma kit, or even his recent punt through that portal. He looked down, only now noticing the floor was grated, and a bright white mist was pouring up from a room below.
“Spirits!” he shouted, throwing his shirt up over his mouth. “Kelly, he’s drugging us!”
Kelly clapped her hands over her mouth and backed away, but where in the world were they going to go? They were caged in on all sides. “Stay away from it!” she shouted regardless. “Whatever it is, don’t breathe it in!”
“It’s too late!”
Within moments Evan was coughing wildly. He felt his joints begin to tire even more severely. Was it a sedative? Had to be, he figured. He wasn’t going to be able to stand for much longer, let alone fight back if it kept this up.
Kelly held her breath and rushed to her brothers’ side. As she knelt, she couldn’t imagine what was wrong with him? His face was going red, and his skin was hot to the touch.
“Get me out of this room, please!” he begged.
She backed away again and exhaled deeply. “Stop it!” she raged. ‘What have you done to him?”
Evan thought he was just about to fall unconscious, his eyes drifting closed. Then he caught sight of the fumes, now leaking in large doses out of the grating. They were bright white like tobacco smoke. They were viscous, spreading in all directions and… and…
His eyes snapped open again. “I’m… seeing things!” he suddenly grunted to Kelly, stumbling forward. “I think this stuff is making me hallucinate!”
He could see faces taking shape in the smoke. What looked like big, smiling faces. He rubbed heavily against his eyes, trying to clear his vision. “I can see faces laughing at me!” he gawked.
Kelly couldn’t see a thing as she looked around desperately. “It’s alright Evan. Just stay calm! They’re not real, and they can’t hurt you.”
“Why’d you drug us?” Evan asked through the delirium.
There was a patronising chuckle produced from Prime-Eleven. “It’s not a drug, you idiots! You think I’d waste all that effort, and bring you all the way back here just to poison you to death? Nothing quite as crude, my friend.”
The rate it was filling the room, Kelly couldn’t keep it at bay any longer. The gas seeped through her shirt and sent her instantly into a spluttering mess. Ugh, what was that stuff? It tasted utterly sour like vinegar. She struggled with the effects, only to send herself stumbling and crashing against the nearest wall before falling back to her hands and knees.
When she looked back up, she froze in disbelief. Now she could see the faces too. Kelly could see the faces in the gas.
“Evan! Oh my god, what are they?”
Evan missed a breath as a long trail of mist next to him began to solidify. He could see eyes forming… primal, instinctual eyes glaring at him from a fanged maw. More strands of the gas took similar appearances, surrounding him and boxing him in like a pack of…
Wolves. The faces in the gas were wolves.
“I don’t like this!” Kelly screamed. “What are these things?”
“We’ve gotta be imagining them, like you said!” Evan whimpered. “Their just some kind of mind trick!”
She reached out to her brother, her face dripping with sweat, as the ethereal shapes closed in on Evan from all sides. One took a sudden vicious snap at his neck, just barely missing as he darted away. His reactions confirmed Kelly’s worst suspicions…
If they were just mirages… then why were they seeing the exact same thing?
“Try to relax…” Prime Eleven snickered. “They’re not as dangerous as they seem…”
With that sentiment, that just wasn’t going to happen. Evan staggered back as that one tendril of the mist approached, the wolf face snarling rabidly. He pleaded with his hands held high. “No! No wait please…”
The wolf darted forward, snapping at Evan’s chest. The blow from the otherwise immaterial creature felt agonizing, hitting him with all the force that came with the real thing. He felt it lunge through him, the sensation of teeth and claws tearing into his skin just as one would expect.
Seen through Kelly’s eyes, she held her breath, fearful she’d lost both her brothers. But the wolf left no marks, no bites or blood or anything of the kind, despite the fact it appeared to drill right through Evan in one clean swoop. The whole attack even lifted him clean off the ground before letting him go, and he tumbled in a heap when it released it’s hold.
“No! Evan!”
The ghostly images were circling above Evan’s head more like vultures then wolves now. They were paying Kelly no attention. They didn’t seem to care that she was just as easy pickings as him… At least until, summoning her last strength, she started crawling back towards him.
“No!” Evan barely managed to squeeze out. “Kelly! Leave me!”
Seeing his desperate plea, one of the ghostly wolves turned and caught sight of her. It snarled and snapped, drawing the others to attention. They all had her in their sights now and there was little she could do to fight back. Kelly prepped for the same savage treatment as her brother...
All of a sudden, the wolves stopped swarming and went eerily still. Then they began to rise higher, their eyes cold and fixed on her. Kelly could swear they were taking up a formation that reared overhead, similar to what the robot had done.
“What in the world?” Evan gasped.
Kelly could only shake her head in return. In the one time she wanted him to be loud and overbearing, Prime-Eleven was deafly silent. She feared that whatever the wolves were suddenly doing was out of his control.
“SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE….”
Kelly fell on her back. What sounded like a crowd of people whispering and gossiping surrounded her on all sides. The spectral wolves were beginning to grow in size, their eyes ablaze with a stirring, remorseless intellect. Finally, one deep unified and hissing voice filled the room…
“SHE IS STRONG...NO… STRONGER STILL…”
“No! No that’s impossible!” Prime-Eleven finally shouted in protest. “You were destroyed! Your power is gone!”
One of the wolves turned and let out a ghastly roar in the robots direction. Kelly pressed her hands to her ears as the woeful cry shattered the glass inward, raining a million pieces down on the frantic machines.
She flinched as something took hold of her arms and legs. Kelly looked down to see the gas twisted into the shape of long claws. They still looked like white smoke, but sure enough they felt just as real and strong as her own two hands, maybe even stronger. They forced her to her feet and carried her underneath the open roof.
“NO! Stop it! Let me go!”
She caught sight of Prime-Eleven clambering through the shattered remains of the glass panel. “Stop this at once!” it screamed. “I command you! You can’t do this! I forbid it!”
“YOU BETRAY YOUR MAKERS!” the deep voice replied. “You and the one you serve, who took our world away from us so heartlessly! Now you will be reminded of your place! She has come, and we will claim her as our own! She will restore us!”
“No, please! What are you doing to me?”
Kelly struggled with all her might as another bolt of lighting rained down. This one ejected into the control room and played havoc with one console. It seemed to hit with too much accuracy to be an act of nature.
Much as she had been forced to endure, all Evan could do was watch as his sister was lifted off the floor by the wolves. One monstrous looking one approached her, fanged maw ready to bite.
She was terrified, knowing what was coming. “NO!” she shouted constantly. “NO! NO! NO! STOP I’M BEGGING YOU! PLEASE!”
All other wolves turned their heads to the stormy sky above the portal, and let out a single, united howl. A third crack of lightning struck. Kelly’s eyes opened wide.
The beast marking her lunged…
“AAAAARGGGGGHH!”
Evan lost sight of his sister behind the blinding flash. Still aching in every bone, he kicked his way across the grated floor, and against the wall under the robots control room as debris and sparks began to tumble down from the latest strike.
The ghostly wolves weren’t holding his sister anymore. A small and unfamiliar shape was being lowered in her place.
“Kelly? Kelly where are you?”
Suddenly it seemed as if the wolves were panicking. Snapping and snarling in all directions and loosing their hold on the figure they’d summoned.
“No!” Evan screamed again. “You monsters! What did you do with her?! Where is she?”
With their howls turning into high pitched screeches, they started to fade away. The figure they’d left in Kelly’s place came tumbling to the floor. It collapsed, murmuring faintly. It had yet to open it’s eyes, but it reached out, as if in desperation for something. It came to the plush toy and pulled it close.
“Oh no…” Evan whimpered.
Hearing the disjointed creaking of gears, Evan spied the robot as it clambered over the wreckage of its console, its eye transfixed on the creature now in place of Evan’s sister, and whimpered.
“I’m doomed…”
The whole chamber rumbled. The stray lightning strikes had taken their toll. With a resounding boom, an explosion practically devoured the chamber with the robot above. Pieces of machinery were crashing down everywhere. A loose cable caused another fire to brake out just above the portal. Evan kicked himself under the cover of the control room and huddled in a ball.
No sooner had he that he felt his body go limp and from no-where, a searing burning pain unlike anything else spread across his skin. He managed to glance at his reflection in a broken piece of glass. His face wasn’t red anymore. It was going unbelievably pale.
“Oh please!” he screamed. “No, not me too!”
The robot cried out at the same time as him, and there was a final eruption above them. Evan closed his eyes as the flames spread. The room, the robot, everything was engulfed by fire…
And then, in a flash, everything was gone…