Keystones: Altered Destinies Read online

  Deklan had never seen anything quite like it in his life. “What’s that?” he queried.

  Cheshire’s grin was back in full force. “It’s a tool used by repair technicians. It’s also a miniature version of the engine that pulls the Elevator up and down the cable. It will lock onto the cable and pull us both up. I call it a hauler.”

  This level of preparation made Deklan suspicious. “You haven’t told me why you’re helping me.”

  Cheshire replied with a question in the same cheerful tone. “Do you want to get onto the Elevator or not?”

  “I do, but I don’t know where my parents are.”

  Cheshire nodded and started ticking off his fingers. “Brice and Tricia Tobin are on the Elevator accompanied by your friend, Michael, as well as their new acquaintance named Arc. Slate and Vinicius are also aboard.”

  The words hit Deklan like a shotgun blast. He stepped backward in disbelief. “Who are you?” he asked again.

  “A Keystone, like you.” Cheshire sprang across the empty space to the cable, falling about six or seven meters before snapping the hauler into place. His momentum carried him past it for a few moments before a belt-like attachment between himself and the device swung him back. He then activated the hauler and ascended to eye level with Deklan. “Moment of truth,” he said. “Are you coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” Cheshire threw Deklan an identical belt-like loop that would attach him to the hauler as well.

  Deklan looked at the loop with skepticism as he fitted it around him. “Now what?”

  “Jump. It’ll catch you.”

  It was almost like being back at work as a stuntman. Deklan jumped. His momentum carried him much farther than Cheshire’s momentum had carried him, but he too came back around and was held by the slender loop, though he dangled a good ten meters below Cheshire.

  “Excellent. Now it’s time to get up there.” Cheshire reactivated the hauler, which pulled the two of them skyward toward the not too distant Elevator.

  In Cheshire’s hands the small device moved faster than a full-sized Elevator, such that in perhaps ten minutes they were only meters below the underside of their quarry and hundreds of stories above the Earth. The ground spread out beneath them, resembling the view from a plane or skyscraper. Cold wind tore at Deklan’s thin clothes. It was much like returning to the dark void where he’d come so close to dying, though more scenic.

  “What now?” he called up to Cheshire, forced to yell over the wind’s rush.

  Cheshire yelled back down to him, “This will take a minute, and the air is getting thin. Here, you’ll need this to breathe.” Cheshire pulled two small masks fitted with canisters from another voluminous pocket. After attaching one to the line down to Deklan and dropping it, Cheshire affixed the other to his face.

  Deklan snagged the mask with numb fingers as it hit his waist. “You seem suspiciously well prepared,” he shouted.

  Cheshire flashed him a quick thumbs-up. “I’m always that. It’s my gift. I advise you to put the mask on while you can still breathe.”

  “Now what?” asked a confused Deklan as he put on the mask.

  Cheshire pulled his mask away from his face to yell his answer. “Now we wait for the signal.”

  What signal? Deklan wondered as he was overcome by darkness.

  The Terra Rings

  Susan drifted. She felt as though she were waking from a dream. More than that she felt suffused with life and energy. Errant currents of thought came together for her. Awareness returned as she rose to consciousness. Everything was black with little white points, but at the same time strangely illuminated.

  The last thing she remembered was her vanishing into a suffocating darkness. And now this?

  She hung suspended in space next to an Elevator terminal. It was a massive sphere with large glass sections. Cutouts in the side faced down to Earth. She could see that the cutouts housed Elevators as they left and arrived. Coming up fast enough that it would be there in seconds was an Elevator. To her left were the Terra Rings. Far below was Earth.

  Susan looked down at Earth through her body. She knew that this should worry her, but the emotion didn’t come. She didn’t know what was going on or how she got here. Susan searched for memories that might explain where she was. She had been getting colder. Of the time between then and now there was nothing.

  Susan watched an Elevator arrive at its destination. Something odd was hanging from its underside. Without conscious thought Susan moved closer, crossing half of the distance before realizing that she could initiate movement.

  It was Deklan. He hung from the bottom of the Elevator. Frozen crystals of blood indicated burst veins and capillaries all over his body. He was connected to the Elevator by a long tether line and an assortment of straps that held him in place. A mask covered his mouth and nose.

  Susan saw all this dispassionately. She realized that she should have been upset or horrified, but as before the emotions were absent.

  Curious, she circled around the terminal’s docking station and looked for an entrance but found only large viewing ports. Inside she could see wave upon wave of people leaving the Elevator.

  At first no one noticed her, but then someone pointed. A rush of people came to where she was. Several pressed their faces against the glass, and others crossed themselves.

  She was curious about their reactions in a clinical way and put a hand against the glass. At least that was her intention. Instead, her hand passed through the glass and into the terminal.

  It was an odd sensation, not quite a shiver and not like anything that she’d experienced before. Experimenting further, she pushed more of her hand and arm through the port. Meeting with no resistance, she continued to thrust her entire body through the glass until she no longer was floating in the vacuum of space but instead was standing inside the docking station. She knew that the ambient temperature here must be warmer, but she felt no difference.

  Susan strode forward, hanging in the air a half meter above the floor. People parted before her, moving with clumsy grips on the zero-gravity handholds, and formed a circle around her. Questions, cries, and exclamations came at her from every direction.

  “Looks like you’ve got competition in the angel department,” said a voice. The words sounded flat to her. Susan knew that they carried an emotion or sentiment, but she couldn’t place it.

  Intrigued, she turned to the man who had spoken, apparently to a companion. He was vaguely familiar. The last time she had seen him he had been winged and carrying a dog.

  Two more people were beside him, Tricia and Brice Tobin, Deklan’s parents. Should she tell them that their son was so close? Did they already know? Would they care? These thoughts flitted through Susan’s mind before she reached a decision.

  “Tricia, Brice,” she tried to say. No sound came out. She tried again but was mute. She felt that audible words should be coming out, but there was nothing.

  Concentrating, she attempted to make a sound, any sound. An unidentifiable noise escaped from her throat. Encouraged by her success, she focused on this one thing and was surprised when she heard a gasp from many throats.

  All of the emotions that had been denied to her when she first woke up crashed over Susan. The strongest of them all was grief. Deklan was dead. Tears formed in her eyes and streaked down her cheeks. She didn’t understand how she could have not cared.

  “Tricia! Brice!” Her voice rang out over the room, but only silence echoed in its wake. She tried to step closer to Deklan’s parents. Here, however, there was no gravity, and she remained suspended above the floor.

  Tricia and Brice regarded her as they would a stranger. “Who are you?” asked Brice, confusion knotting his features.

  “It’s Susan,” she answered. “You don’t recognize me? We went to Boa Vista together.”

  Brice hesitated before speaking. His words, when they came, were slow and cautious. “Susan died, and you don’t look like her.”


  Her shock at the words was buffered by their being just one more surprise after so many. “I died? What do you mean that I don’t look like myself? None of this is important, however. Deklan is attached to the bottom of the Elevator, and we need to retrieve his body.”

  Brice and Tricia became motionless statues. Words withered on their lips before they could begin to speak.

  Michael found his voice first. “How can we verify this?” he asked. “Anyone, speak up! There must be cameras or viewing ports we can use to check this report.”

  To Susan’s surprise Michael’s wings sprang forth from his back, and he flew over to her. His flight was wobbly but still functional in the zero-gravity environment of the docking station. Grasped her, he studied Susan in a way that made her feel she was under observation in a lab.

  His eyes narrowed as he scrutinized her face. “You claim to be Susan Anthony?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Michael spun her around so that she faced the window she had just slipped through. The shock of the last moment having passed, she wondered how she had done such a thing. Then she caught sight of her reflection in the glass, and her heart skipped a beat.

  She once had been a rather short and chubby brunette, but this mirrored image of a woman, whom she couldn’t think of as herself, was slender and tall with skin that glowed. Her hair resembled spun gold.

  “Where did we first meet?” Michael quizzed her.

  Susan’s mind raced, still stunned by her reflection in the window. “Outside my practice in New York. You carried an injured dog into an examination room. Then you flew Deklan to a hospital.”

  When Michael, despite this answer, scrutinized her intensely again, she understood why. There were no physical similarities between the woman he saw and the woman he remembered.

  He nodded like a man who, though unsure, had still made up his mind. Surveying the room, he asked, “Does anyone know how to find cameras up here?”

  Waking Up

  Deklan yawned before blinking. He was on a metal table, surrounded by people staring at him. They appeared to be doctors, but none of them looked familiar. They were acting as though he were the most interesting thing in the room. Deklan rubbed the palms of his hands into his eyes while thinking fast. He remembered being in the harness with Cheshire before everything went blank.

  The room was a soothing light blue color with a sense of clinical tidiness. There were cupboards and drawers labeled with a multitude of medical names that he could only presume held drugs and equipment. An IV ran from his arm to another machine, and an array of sensors were monitoring his vital signs.

  “Where are we?” he managed to ask.

  “You’re at the terminal docking station in orbit,” answered one of the doctors. His voice was detached as though he were running a laboratory study.

  “Where did you find me?”

  The doctor’s tone didn’t change one jot. “You were found hanging from the underside of an Elevator.”

  Deklan covered his mouth and breathed into his hand. He’d been afraid of that answer. This was just as bad as the morgue in New York, if not worse. He might as well check just to be sure, though. “In space?”

  “Yes.”

  This response left almost no room for doubt. “Was I wearing a suit?” he inquired.

  “No. Your body was frozen solid at three degrees Kelvin.”

  “Was I alone?” Deklan asked.

  The doctors glanced at each other before answering. “Yes.”

  Watching his attendants, Deklan realized that they weren’t as in control of the situation as they wanted him to think. Maybe he could use that. “How did you revive me?” he said.

  “We didn’t.” All three doctors watched him with a hawk-like focus, hanging on his response to this information.

  Cheshire had known that this was possible, thought Deklan. The more pressing question of how he had known still troubled him.

  The doctor coughed and brought Deklan back to the moment. “There is the issue of cost for our medical care.”

  Deklan stifled a wry smile. “Why? What exactly did you do?”

  “What?” replied the lead physician, sounding confused.

  “You just said that you didn’t revive me.” Deklan looked at his body, noting with some pleasure that the scratches from Mittens had closed up. With greater satisfaction he saw that his fingers had grown back. He waggled them in the air and enjoyed the lack of pain before turning back to the doctors. “I’m not aware of a procedure that brings people back from the dead, so what am I being charged for? The use of this table?”

  The doctor’s facial expression made it clear that he was making it up as he went along. “We needed to run tests, check your blood work, and make sure that your revival was proceeding in a timely manner.”

  Deklan gave this response all of the respect it deserved: “Poppycock.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s a British expression that means nonsense. I thought that it was more polite than saying bullshit. A corpse was found in space under unusual circumstances. I’m only guessing here, but I imagine that it was brought down to this area and upon examination was found to be warming faster than the ambient temperature could account for.” Deklan tapped his wrist. “Then I probably picked up a pulse. Shortly thereafter, I’m guessing, my wounds started to heal on their own, along with damage to my internal organs, all without any intervention on your part. You ran blood work and tests to document my recovery so that when you publish your joint paper you’ll have evidence to support your otherwise outrageous claims. In short, you want me to pay for the paper you plan to write about me when I would have recovered just as easily if stuffed into a broom closet.”

  Deklan folded his arms and leaned forward with a trace of a smile on his face. “Listen to me closely: I am not paying you.” Deklan removed the IV drip from his arm. “I might pay you for the cost of the drip, however, since that appears to be the only thing that was done for my benefit rather than for your study.”

  “But. . . .”

  Deklan knew that it was essential to maintain control of the conversation. “No. Right now I want information. How long did I take to recover?”

  The doctor sighed, “You resumed breathing after one hour and thirty-three minutes.”

  “Excellent. And how long did it take me to wake up?”

  One of the doctors glanced at a monitor. “Fourteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds.”

  Deklan remembered Cheshire’s disclosing that his parents were on the Elevator. “Are there people trying to see me?” he asked.

  For the second time in as many minutes, all three doctors looked surprised. “How could you possibly know that?” said one of them.

  Deklan persisted, “I refuse treatment. Who are the people waiting for me?”

  The lead doctor consulted his Uplink. “Brice and Tricia Tobin, Sebastian Diamond, and Susan Anthony.”

  “Susan Anthony?” asked an astonished Deklan. “Are you sure?”

  The doctor looked at his Uplink again. “Yes, why?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Apparently there’s a lot of that going around,” said the doctor dryly.

  Deklan ignored the man’s snide tone. “I want to see them now.” He swung himself off the table and for the first time realized that he was in a hospital gown and floating. “And I want my clothes.”

  “Your clothes did not survive the rigors of space.”

  “Fine. Give me some scrubs. I’ll pay for them.”

  “We can’t just release you,” replied the doctor in charge.

  “I’ll see myself out then,” said Deklan.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” proclaimed a second doctor.

  “Are any of you, by chance, Keystones?” asked Deklan.

  “No,” said the lead speaker.

  “Well, then, let me lay this out for you. You three are attempting to tell a Keystone of unknown abilities what he can or cannot do. Get out of my way and
open the door!”

  “No.”

  “Do we need to go through this again? Let me out now.”

  The third doctor, the only one who hadn’t yet spoken, swiped the door that allowed Deklan to leave. Using wall handles, Deklan pulled himself into the hallway to a waiting room.

  “Deklan!” shouted Tricia. “Are you okay?”

  Her son enfolded his mother in a reassuring hug while his father looked on. The other person there besides Michael was someone he couldn’t quite identify. She was tall, beautiful, golden, and glowing. Her hair was effervescent, with spots of light moving through it. First things first, though, he had to reassure his parents. “Dad, he said. “I’m starving. Got any chocolate?”

  Brice Tobin straightened, his eyes still moist, and held out his hand. With a twitch of his fingers a Twix appeared. He tossed it to his son, who tore open the wrapper and took a big bite. “It doesn’t matter how often things like this happen to me. I can’t imagine waking up and not thinking that Twix bars taste amazing.”

  He took another bite before continuing, “Michael, it’s good to see you here. I guess I can thank you for getting my parents to the Elevator, though it looks like it cost you. I’m sorry.”

  Michael laughed and shook his head, an unexpected response. “No,” he replied, “they grow back.” He looked around. “It’s a little confined here, but I’ll show you another time.”

  Deklan then turned to the glowing woman. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re not Susan Anthony.” He felt a deep disappointment as he said those words. ”So who are you?”

  “Oh, it’s me alright. I’ve looked in a mirror and can’t believe the change either. But then I saw them bring you in frozen and lifeless, yet here you stand. I can’t seem to get rid of you.”

  Deklan regarded her in disbelief. “I’d like to believe you,” he said, “but you don’t resemble Susan in the slightest.”