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15.
He woke up with a scream and jumped to his feet.
Clean greenish water splashed around him, filling the air with a wholesome oat smell. He felt adrenaline pumping through him. The door was calling! He rushed to their tanks, but those were empty.
He heard the animals roaring before he even smelled them. This time he peeked from a safe distance—sick to his stomach. The rippers had caught a smaller animal, some sort of wild cat, and torn it apart in a gory, bloody mess.
One of the rippers spotted him and came loping in great strides. Its movements reflected the utter confidence and arrogance of a king predator. They probably owned that valley out there. And yet it kept stopping, hesitating. Then, as it heard his running steps, the animal must have forgotten its fears about the door closing. Scenting his terror, it ran after him. He could hear its powerful paws digging into the dust, and its raspy breath getting closer behind him. It panted like a person, almost as if asking to reason with him, but he understood its deadly intentions.
The birthing gallery was no sanctuary anymore.
Alex’s heart pounded, and he tasted the bitterness of adrenalin and fear as he climbed on the edge of a tank and from there to the ledge above.
The ripper entered the room, its magnificent tail switching, and its head scenting left and right. Then its yellowish eyes spotted him and it snarled.
Alex slipped, releasing a small cloud of debris, and the ripper backed away hissing. Its hackles stood up.
Alex recovered at the last moment, and pulled himself up.
The ripper was cunning. Already it patrolled in circles on the edge of the tank he’d jumped from. It snarled at him and seemed to be gauging a jump.
He looked up and spotted a tree root growing out of the ceiling. Any moment now the animal would come flying. It probably weighed 250 pounds, and could knock him from his perch with one paw. Then he’d be gone.
He bent both knees and leapt, stretching one arm as far as he could. It was his only chance.
At the same moment, the ripper leapt.
He grasped the tree root and pulled himself up with both hands.
At the same moment, he felt the rush of air under him. He felt the hot, wet breath on his calves. He heard the click as a set of claws missed him and struck the wall, then a scratching sound as the animal slid down, and finally a splash as it landed in the water.
The ripper roared in fury and jumped back on the edge of the tank.
At that moment he felt the root above him sag and then give. He felt a fine trickle of sand on his face that turned into a torrent of small rocks and then medium rocks and finally boulders. He heard a brief scream below, then silence. When the root first gave, it swung him face-first against the rock face. There he clung more afraid of the ripper below than he should have been of the avalanche coming down from above.
A few more rocks shifted and then it got quiet.
He coughed in the chocking dust. He hung on blindly until his hands could not grip any longer. Then he dropped—a mere foot onto the dry yellow clay and gray sedimentary rocks piled under him.
The sky above him was visible through a thick fog of dust. Blue! And golden sunlight! He held his hands over his eyes to shield them until they could adjust to the blinding light.
As the dust began to drift away, he saw that the entire gallery was choked with rubble. No clone would ever be born here again. The delicate balance of water and herbs and mushrooms and hormones that had evolved over the eons had just received its death wound. He imagined the door, with its muscles, would die soon too.
The ripper lay pinned on its back, only its face showing. It was still alive, whimpering feebly. It looked at him through a cloud of pain, moving its tusks back and forth as if still trying to gore him. He picked up a boulder the size of a bowling ball and walked over to it. It whimpered in fear as it saw his intentions. He smashed its skull in and it died there before him. This would be the tenor of his relationship with the rippers.
There were more of them abroad, and they had his scent, so it would be only a matter of a short time before another came looking for him. They’d be extra hungry now that their food supply had run out.
Bathed in cold blue daylight and no longer sheltered from the world, he looked up toward the sunlight. He would be fighting for his life time and again. He started climbing up the rocks to his new world.
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