The Master Key

by T. K. Toppin

  Sometimes, he wanted—badly—to have sex with men. He ached with lust and yearning in parts of his body he knew did not exist. He touched himself all the time—checking, feeling, to make sure he was truly a man. It bothered and confused him. His wife never felt right to him. His penis felt odd when he was with her; no matter how many times he rammed himself violently into her, it didn’t feel right. Instead, he wanted to be rammed, wanted to feel helpless and open—scream like his wife did—reamed into oblivion…

  And still his head hurt.

  So he picked up his military-issue gun and killed his two oldest children, then his wife, then put a bullet through his offending penis, and then his head. He’d forgotten about his youngest daughter.

  Fern attended her son’s funeral with something like mild relief; the secret had finally been hidden away for good. Safe and sound, never to be seen or heard from again. For the first time in a long while, she drew an easy breath. The nightmare had ended.

  She put Abandon-Brandon out of her mind and walked away.

  Fern was almost half-machine by then. People began to notice her erratic behavior, her un-aging face. And they talked about her. In her time, she’d made important and successful advancements and discoveries in sciences that benefited both herself and the medical community. But still they wondered about her. Eventually, she attracted too much attention without realizing it.

  On paper, she was close to sixty-five, though in reality she was a hundred and sixty-five. Yet she had no wrinkles, no graying hair, not even a tilt to her posture. People commented that she used her own enhancements and life-prolonging products. She ignored them or chose not to hear.

  But years passed and still she looked the same.

  Brandon’s youngest daughter, Ann, raised by her mother’s parents, grew into a beautiful woman with mesmerizing hazel-green eyes. One day she married and had her own daughter. Fern was intrigued by this new baby. Again, she saw the child looked a lot like herself. Technically speaking, they were all her daughters. But that was her secret. One she could never tell.

  When Fern’s records said she was seventy-four and the calendar year was May 2203, she vanished again. Some speculated she’d died in her dilapidated farmhouse. Other decided she’d disappeared somewhere along her daily commute between Prince Edward Island and Montreal, murdered for all the research she’d been hoarding and working on. These were vicious times, and any advancement to power was sought after with vengeance.

  But her peers didn’t really care. They’d considered her a mad scientist—a selfish recluse—at the best of times. Dr. Zara Sozanski had been known to ramble on about precious experiments that she’d hidden. Her secret work, the complex key she’d made to keep it hidden. Even Ann, her own granddaughter, thought her strange, as Fern constantly muttered and rambled about secrets upon secrets. About sleeping aunts in basements and forbidden experiments. She’d become an embarrassment at family gatherings; the few Fern had ever been invited to. Ann soon forgot about her.

  But Fern/Zara had still made a name for herself as the top bio-fusion expert in Canada and that could not be forgotten, regardless of her erratic behavior. Her research and findings blew everyone’s mind. Her suggestions were radical, extreme and, yes, mad. But no one had time to consider the findings then. A world war had broken out, vicious and terrible, and would last a very long time. At the end, it would spawn a brutal tyrant by the name of Dane Lancaster.

  In the paranoia that had riddled Fern’s mind, she imagined being constantly ridiculed and pursued by unidentified “people” who wanted her research, her discoveries, her creation. She did discover something. She’d created an immortal being. Herself. Yes, she could die—but she could also live forever. But the imaginary people who chased her; they needed to go away. She needed to hide her work and keep it safe, just like Aunt Josie.

  So Fern made a key, a special key only she could access and use. To make it even more difficult for those “people” trying to steal her work, she would need Aunt Josie’s help. Though Josie’s stasis-pod was ancient and primitive, Fern was smart and knew the mechanics of these pods. It didn’t take her long to get a small sample of her aunt’s blood—she didn’t even lose a single drop of the embryonic fluid Josie floated in.

  Before Fern buried the data, she made a rambled and disjointed message, a taunting, gloating confession from a deranged mind. Though her face remained smooth and untouched by the stains of age and time, and her eyes a perfect pale and glassy green, the finely molded lips and sculpted bones, it didn’t hide the vapid madness festering within her.

  Or the eerie, half-human control she had over her body movements.

  * * *

  Fern was beautiful. There was no mistaking that. I absorbed every detail of her face. She looked like me, like my brother, like his wife, and…like Margeaux.

  But it was Fern. It was her. When I’d last seen her, she’d been a toddler, but I had vivid memories of her. There could be no mistaking it.

  And her confession…

  Before I went to sleep, I could’ve sworn a thousand times over to anyone who asked that the world was a normal and straightforward place to live in. Black was black and white was white. Rain fell from the sky and the water was blue from its reflection. People ate, slept, woke up, and did things they’d done the day before, as they’d always done. And ghost stories and horrors were for around campfires and late night scare-fests with your friends. They didn’t happen in real life. And if they did, they happened to someone else, not you.

  But that had been before I woke up from my long sleep.

  John made a noise beside me. It sounded far away, remote. I wanted to look at him, I needed to, but I just couldn’t tear my eyes away from the image of Fern. I sensed his eyes, heavy and troubled, on me. And still I couldn’t look at him.

  He touched me, his fingers hot like a branding iron, and I flinched. He drew his hand away and made another sound. I couldn’t tell what it was he said. It sounded familiar, even comforting, if that were at all possible. To be honest, my mind was blank of all thought, but I sensed an oncoming cloud of torrential rains and violent storms.

  I took a breath, because that’s what people are supposed to do. And another. The first didn’t seem like enough. In fact, no matter how much air I breathed in, it never seemed to be enough. I gasped for air and rocked back, staring up at the ceiling of the shuttle we were in.

  Hot, scalding hands smothered my face, pressing me down.

  Surely I was going to die now? Had I not been stuck by a knife? I remembered bleeding a lot, so much so that it made me light-headed and cold. Yes, that was it. I was dying. I have to say goodbye to John because he’d never forgive me if I didn’t.

  Where is John? Has he come to rescue me yet?

  Why was I so cold, and why did people have such hot hands? I needed to close my eyes. They hurt, and they were very tired.

  I was very tired.

  Chapter 28

  “I know what I said. But I don’t care. Even if she can dance atop a roof, she’s not going anywhere!”

  “John.” Aline had a warning tone in her voice. “Going might be the best thing for her right now. She needs a distraction. I sure as hell need one.”

  “You’re supposed to be a physician. Act like one.”

  Aline swiped a hand through her hair, squeezed her eyes tight, and muttered under her breath, “I definitely used to live a normal life. It’s never been a dull moment since the day she came to stay.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Hmm?” Aline furrowed her brow with innocence. “Nothing. Look, just let her go. It will do her more good than moping. And reneging after saying you were going to take her will just send her into a blacker mood. You know that.”

  “No.” With finality, John glared at his sister.

  He remembered with some horror the look on Josie’s face, the way her eyes, those brilliant green, beautiful eyes, emptied of life. They retracted—she retracted into herself. Far, far inside, so far h
e thought he might not be able to reach her. And he wanted to reach in and drag her back out, but feared she might not recognize him.

  John also remembered, just a year ago, when she’d retreated into some inner world after her mind had shattered. It had taken long months before she surfaced and became herself again. But the shadows from the horrors had bruised her for months afterward. And now, just when he thought her life would finally be normal, this.

  Her silence had terrified him then. And the way she behaved now, like nothing had happened, as though everything was normal and as it should be. As though she hadn’t just fought for her life at the end of a knife or discovered her niece, her real niece, was in fact still—was the one who…

  He couldn’t even finish his thoughts or wrap his mind around it. Maybe he was the one, this time, whose mind had broken.

  True, he’d seen a great many things in his life. Great things, terrible things, horrific things! But…this? He didn’t even know what category it fell into if, indeed, a category for such madness existed. Yes, madness. That was it. Surely, that was it. And it was him who had lost his mind. Had to be…

  “As her physician, I’m telling you, John: let her go. It will help her. She needs it. Like she said before, she needs to see it end. Let her see it.” Aline’s voice, soft, calm, and very tired, filtered into John’s awareness.

  He turned to stare at his sister, who stood watching him with clinical interest. He imagined he looked pale, gaunt. He felt it. Gutted. Her physician eyes would see right through him. There was no point trying to hide his utter exhaustion from her.

  They were in Aline’s offices with Josie just down the corridor, being treated and transfused with her own blood. A part of John was impatient to get onto The Bullet and head straight up to the Scrap Yard. Two heavy-artillery cruisers had already been rerouted from the military space stations to rendezvous with him at the Scrap Yard. They had a six-hour head start. But he didn’t seem able to move. His place was with Josie. She needed him more, and if it meant he couldn’t go to help Simon, then he wouldn’t.

  He felt torn in half.

  Aline read him easily and snorted, which earned her a scowl. “You have to go, regardless. So go. Simon needs you, too.”

  “I can’t risk taking her.” There was no point arguing, and his voice had lost its earlier conviction. It was a losing battle.

  He also knew that the only way he’d be completely at ease was if he took Josie. Kept her close. Absurd as it was, he needed her just as much as she needed him. And it was a poor excuse; though the Citadel stood safe enough, someone had walked right in and taken her. He wasn’t about to let that happen again.

  “She’ll be fine. Trudesson is with her now. She’ll be armed and shielded to the point you’ll need a tank to roll her out of here. But she’ll be fine. Josie’s very angry now. Let her use that to help her get through this. Her rage needs to come out. Why not let it come out…constructively?” Aline shrugged and turned her attention to the door.

  Loeb strode in, rapping his knuckles twice on the door before entering. He appeared harassed, if that were at all possible. He nodded to Aline but directed his reliable brown eyes at John.

  “Sir,” Loeb said. “Vice President Tretyakova’s been briefed on the Iceland situation. She’s fielding calls now and not amused at what you have been up to. The media has got wind of it. Some reports claim Madam Lancaster is dead after trying to stop extremists from destroying the DNA banks. And they want to know why there is a DNA bank the general public is not aware of.”

  Loeb paused, took a breath, and continued. “Her presence there is also raising a number of questions, mainly that she was actually the one destroying evidence of her past, considering the recent events. The Scrap Yard situation has also just broken. It is not as major a news item as that of Madam’s. And…in another matter, The Americas want to break free from our alliance. There is also talk that Argentina does not agree and will declare war on the rest of The Americas if they do part ways.”

  John stared at Loeb, trying to decide how long Loeb had been standing there. He’d heard him, had understood every single word, but was just unable to process it. He blinked self-consciously.

  “Sir?” Loeb prompted with a frown.

  To cover his blank mind, John turned away to direct a brooding scowl at the floor. With his customary bowed head and hands clasped behind his back, he pretended to be deep in thought.

  “Tell Argentina,” John said, a little hoarse. He cleared his throat and continued. “Tell Argentina they can declare independency from The Americas, and they can remain in our alliance should they choose to do so. But if it’s war they want, it won’t be with The Americas, it will be with us. I’ll not have them taking pot-shots at the rest of the world just because they still want to hide under mother’s apron. And also ask them if they have suddenly become ignorant.” John turned, anger brewing inside him. “Remind them that sixty years ago, they were once a strong and powerful country on the brink of world-wide control. How easily they forget to walk on their own. They have enough resources and money to break free from both The Americas and us. Tell them to use their heads and think rationally. And remind them that a war with us will only destroy them.”

  Loeb nodded and closed his eyes. It was Loeb’s way of mentally checking off his “to-do” list.

  “And tell the media that my wife lives. That she was injured by a madman going by the name of Michael Ho—a madman who, at this precise moment, is hell-bent on taking control of the Scrap Yard. All because he wants to be immortal,” John sneered. “Spread that far and wide. He’ll find no refuge anywhere in this world, should he live.”

  Loeb hesitated with an intake of air. He wasn’t fully aware of Josie’s true connection to Ho, and he was too much of a professional to ever ask. One day, John thought, he’d have to tell Loeb the whole truth.

  “Shall I, instead, say that Madam Lancaster was, and has been, investigating and seeking out Ho since his involvement with the recent siege? Which led her to track him to Iceland, where she uncovered a plot to terrorize the world? That the incident in Iceland is indeed linked directly to the current situation on the Scrap Yard, and Ho was not destroying but stealing DNA samples, which he plans to use for his misguided scheme of cloning and cell-fusion with the droids? From there his intentions are to allow these droids to infiltrate into society, at which point he can then take over the world? And your presence there, as well as Dr. Lancaster’s, were all orchestrated by Ho, who kidnapped you all. First to gain access into the facility by Dr. Lancaster’s association with Hontag-Sonnet, and secondly to obtain a sample of your DNA in the hope he could clone you into a malleable, fake president that he could control for his own devices? And Madam Lancaster followed to foil Ho’s plans and attempted to rescue you both. This will put further credibility to her loyalty to you.”

  John gaped at Loeb. After a moment, he nodded and reached out to grip his trusty aide on the shoulder. “You mix lies with truths with such honesty. Loeb, have you ever considered going into politics?”

  “I prefer to work with you, sir, where things always make perfect sense. In any case, I lack the charisma,” Loeb replied with a deadpan expression.

  John managed a short chuckle and considered something with a frown. He glanced at Aline, who sat on the edge of her desk, watching the two men with amusement. Her face was puffy and sore from her encounter with Lee. She rubbed it absently as a man would, checking for stubble.

  “Loeb,” John said. “It’s against my better judgment but…while I attend to the situation at the Scrap Yard, confer with Adam on any matters of a political nature. He’s good at that. Only if you think you need advice. I’m sure you’re capable of managing yourself. If not, brief him on Argentina and The Americas and listen to what he has to say about it,” he paused and pursed his lips. “But do not necessarily act on his advice. Use your own judgment and share it with the Vice President.”

  Loeb nodded and turned to go. If it seemed confusi
ng, he didn’t let on. If it shocked him that Adam was still alive, he didn’t let that show either. Instead he smiled. “No wonder Madam Lancaster still speaks of Adam in the present tense before correcting herself.”

  John raised a brow and slid his gaze to Aline, who suddenly found her fingernails intriguing.

  Loeb stopped short of the door with a crease on his smooth forehead. “Madam Lancaster is well, I take it? Will she be accompanying you to the Yard?”

  “She will, yes. And she is…well enough. Thank you.”

  When Loeb left, Aline smiled in a motherly fashion at her brother. “You’re going soft, allowing Adam to help. I can see Josie’s influence on you. But must you confuse poor Loeb by telling him that Adam still lives?”

  “Loeb is not stupid. And with that…imagination of his, he would’ve figured it out eventually. I do admire his discretion. He’s a rare kind of person. One day, he’ll make a good president, if he’s so inclined.” John pressed his mouth into a tight line. “And I’m not going soft. Adam is the one going soft.”

  He turned and headed for the door where he paused. “In any case, he’s a good strategist, and he can be of some use rather than talking to imaginary dinner guests.”

  John left Aline’s offices and headed straight for Josie’s room, walking with purpose. He would try again to dissuade her, but his heart wouldn’t be in it. She’d make another fuss but, to be honest, he just wanted her near. He was so close to losing her already; it frightened him.

  * * *

  I had never been in space. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t even sure if I’d like it either. Aside from countless tiny dots that were stars, it seemed riddled with endless bits of junk. Lots of junk! Like scrap metal and bits of flotsam and jetsam from centuries of man polluting the great region called space. Every so often, the shuttle would jerk a bit to avoid those floating bits of trash. Larger craft would just repel them with their shields or blast them away with their guns.