by M. G. Harris
“I can’t deny it’s a risky procedure. . .” she admits. “If you hadn’t come along, we might have been forced to try it on one of our own people.” Her eyes twinkle dangerously. “But imagine how unpopular that would make me in the Sect.”
Finally, I bring myself to say it. “What are you going to do to me?”
DiCanio inhales deeply. “Nothing less than this, Josh: the genetic procedure will change the course of your destiny.”
I wait, but she says nothing for a long while. I’m desperate to ask Will it hurt? What are the chances of it going wrong? But I don’t. She’s not getting the pleasure of watching me dissolve into tears like a terrified kid.
Eventually she concludes, “When you wake up, Josh, all being well . . . I believe you’ll be more than happy to join us in the Sect.”
Are they going to brainwash me – from inside my DNA?
It’s a struggle to keep my voice from shaking, but I do it. “I will never, never help you, no matter what you do to me. Not after what you did to my dad, to my sister, to my mum and my friends.”
DiCanio leans in close, puts her mouth next to my ear. “We had nothing to do with your father’s disappearance. But you’re right to fear me, Josh; I’m relentless. The fate of the planet is at stake. I won’t let a teenage boy stand in my way.”
She pulls away and stares down at me, her expression dark and fathomless.
I look back at her but can’t answer.
There’s a taste like ashes in my mouth when I wake up. For several seconds I have the strongest sense of déjà vu. I’m alone, strapped to a bed in a barely furnished hospital room.
Did any of that stuff with the Professor woman actually happen? Or did I dream it? The last thing I remember is that redheaded nurse approaching me with a syringe. I was literally rigid with fear.
I tug at the straps.
Amazingly, my wrists slide right through them. The straps have been unbuckled.
I’m free.
But who unbuckled them and why? I’m entirely alone. The room is exactly as I remember it. Even the Bracelet of Itzamna is precisely where I remember DiCanio leaving it – on my bedside table. I pick up the ancient relic and slide it on to on my left arm until it won’t go any higher.
In no time at all I sense the familiar surge, a sizzle of energy between my skin and the Bracelet.
It’s definitely a specific thing, this weird electricity between the artefact and me. The Professor didn’t seem to experience anything similar when she touched the Bracelet. At least – she didn’t mention it to me.
But then I guess she might not tell me anything . . . who knows?
Slowly, I climb off the bed and test my legs. They seem fine. I’m still wearing the hospital gown, but when I glance towards the end of the bed I notice a heap of blue and green clothes and trainers. They’re mine.
Needless to say, they weren’t there before.
Someone has tried to rescue me. Were they disturbed before they could wake me?
I remove the gown and give myself a quick once-over. Pretty much as expected, my chest and ribs are covered with bruises from Gaspar’s capoeira blows. But apart from the bruising, I seem to be OK. There’s a plaster taped on the inside of my left forearm – when I pull it away there’s a blood-soaked dab of bandage.
OK, so needles have been plugged into my arm . . . but that seems to be all. Whatever they did to me, it doesn’t seem to have caused any obvious damage.
Unless they haven’t started yet. Or maybe the changes are inside me – something I won’t know about until I eat or drink or talk?
I test my voice, quietly. It seems OK. I check my face with my fingers. That seems OK too. Then I remember that she mentioned my eyes. I blink a few times. My vision seems unaffected. I don’t seem to have x-ray vision or anything cool. . .
So what was DiCanio on about?
Quickly, I get dressed. The door to my room has a small glass window. I peer through into the corridor before opening it. It’s empty. I nip out and walk down the corridor until I come to what I recognize as the door to a cold room similar to the one in Lorena’s research department in Ek Naab.
I can’t resist taking a look inside. I found some pretty useful stuff in Lorena’s cold room. Who knows what I might find in here?
Inside, I’m shivering within seconds. I don’t seem to be able to handle the cold as well as I used to. Is that a side effect of the genetic treatment?
Fear twists my guts. Is this how it’s going to be for the rest of my life? Every time I feel some new or strange sensation, wondering whether something is going wrong inside me? Waiting and wondering when and how my body is going to betray me?
My gaze passes over some metallic shelving, on which sits a large glass case with a sliding door. I catch my reflection in the glass and metal, just for an instant. That’s when I glimpse it for the first time.
There is something odd about my eyes.
I focus; stare hard at my reflection in the shiny aluminium. It’s such a simple thing but even so, it takes me seconds to work it out.
My eyes have turned blue. Nothing too distinctive; not a deep or violet shade. Just everyday pale blue.
Carefully, I poke a finger into my right eye. I force myself to touch the eyeball. There doesn’t seem to be a contact lens there.
My eyes are actually blue.
Now that’s a proper change. Just as I’m starting to feel elated that it isn’t something grim, I wonder what else they’ve done. The Sect wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble only to change the colour of my eyes – would they?
Suddenly it’s all shockingly real. They’ve changed the inside of me – altered my DNA. But what have they done? Will I ever really know?
It’s a bombshell. I blink rapidly, now incredibly aware of my eyes. Leaning against the glass case on the metal shelving, I slowly focus on the contents – a bunch of plastic tubes with blue screw-cap lids, in a rack. Each one has a long label, handwritten in black marker pen.
I stare at one of the labels. Once my brain registers what I’m looking at, it’s unmissable.
AGYLIHRPPREIKGR
The fifteen-letter sequence of the Key. Is the Sect still working on making the crystal version?
Very gradually, I begin to work out where I must be. The newspaper story mentioned that Professor Melissa DiCanio ran a pharmaceutical company. I can’t remember the name, but it was definitely in Switzerland. That must be where they would store the Crystal Key – in the company’s top-secret labs.
So I’m in Switzerland, not the jungle of Brazil. That explains the aeroplane. If I can only find Ixchel, maybe we can break out of this place, escape.
Switzerland: organized, efficient. How hard could it be to get around such a country?
I’m on the point of turning away and leaving the cold room to look for Ixchel, when I turn back. I stare long and hard at the tube with the label AGYLIHRPPREIKGR.
Could it be that the actual Crystal Key is in there? The object I’ve been searching for, obsessed with during the past months – what if it’s actually here, just centimetres away?
With a hand that trembles not only from the cold, I pick out the tube and unscrew the lid. Inside is a coin-sized piece of polystyrene foam. I pluck it gingerly between two fingertips and pull it away.
Underneath, lying on a further wedge of foam, there it is.
It’s beautiful.
They did it; the Sect actually did it. They managed to grow the Crystal Key.
A crystal: not particularly shiny like a diamond, yet definitely a crystal. It’s about as big as a garden pea and roughly diamond-shaped, but with at least eight faces of different sizes.
I roll up my T-shirt’s sleeve to expose the Bracelet of Itzamna. Holding my breath, I pick out the crystal with utmost care and position it over the dimple in the Bracelet. It’s going to fit – more or less. But I’ve no idea how I’m going to keep the crystal in place. I’m still holding my breath when I push the crystal into the depr
ession on the Bracelet.
I gasp. The metal of the Bracelet seems to melt around the edges of the crystal. Some of the symbols light up from some hidden power source. I didn’t realize that the Bracelet has moving parts, but from the vibrations through my skin, I sense that it does. Parts of the outer casing slide over each other, revealing a smaller panel covered with symbols that start to flash. Another symbol, which seems to be made of what looks like mercury, actually changes shape before my eyes.
There’s a scarily steady rhythm to the shape-changing. Like seconds counting down.
With a jolt of dread, I register the fact that the roaring noise in my ears isn’t just my own fear. From outside the cold room, there’s a steady noise like a klaxon. Somewhere in the labs, an alarm has gone off.
I’ve triggered something – maybe when I took the tube holding the crystal, or opened the glass case that contained it. Either way, I’m about to be toast. Judging from the commotion outside in the corridor, the security guards just sprang into action.
In a kind of fascinated horror, I stare at the Bracelet on my arm. It’s counting down to something – but what? The newly exposed flashing symbols keep cycling through the same series of flashes. Am I supposed to press something?
The Bracelet of Itzamna can be activated by accident.
This must be what Blanco Vigores meant. He said it happened to him too, when he first found the Bracelet. The Bracelet of Itzamna is active now; it’s going to transport me somewhere in time and space. Maybe I need to press some of the symbols . . . but I’m way too scared of making a mistake to risk it. Desperate, I try to unclip the Bracelet.
The release catch has vanished into the inside of the device. I can’t shift the Bracelet.
I’m trapped– going wherever the Bracelet of Itzamna decides to take me.
The door to the cold room clunks heavily, opened from the outside. Harsh voices reach me from the corridor.
“There’s someone in here. . .”
I feel the rise of panic. This is unstoppable. Let’s hope I don’t end up inside a mountain.
There’s no blinding flash or anything. It’s as though a tear appears in the world around me, like a mask ripped off to reveal the true features underneath. The cold room vanishes, torn away in one gigantic sheet. Instead, I’m in a long, bare corridor, a concrete floor, walls of bare rock. Faint strains of music drift from somewhere down the corridor. I can’t hear much more than the soft, steady rhythm of a snare drum. Dim electric lighting flickers unsteadily overhead. I take a few steps forward and see a heavy metal door. It’s slightly ajar. I push the door gently and peer inside. The music gets louder.
I know this song – but what’s it called? Something about the tune drills deep inside my head. There’s a sense of a dream half-remembered. It feels like something connected with my father, but also . . . with Camila.
I shiver from the sheer impossibility of what’s just occurred to me. This really can’t be happening . . . can it?
Not again. . .
I’m staring into a prison. Most of the room is separated off with floor-to-ceiling bars. There’s a man sitting in a cell about ten metres square. He’s wearing an orange-coloured jumpsuit, sitting on a wooden stool facing away from me, reading a book.
He doesn’t have to turn around for me to recognize him. I know my father from this angle – his head in a book, cool jazz on the stereo.
I clear my throat quietly. “Dad.”
I try my best to stay calm when he turns around, but don’t quite manage. He turns around and meets my eyes with an expression of such joy that a lump forms in my throat. He leaps up, drops his book and rushes to the perimeter of his prison.
“Josh! Josh!” He laughs, incredulous, hands gripping the sides of his face. Then I’m against the bars and hugging him, feeling his beard against my cheek. When I look at him again, he’s so thrilled that tears have come to his eyes.
“Hijo, Josh, what” – his eyes roll with amazement – “what are you doing here?!” He laughs again, more dazzled by the second, throws his head back. “This is incredible! Do you have any idea how much I’ve dreamed that I’d see you again? That somehow you’d just walk through my door one day? And now you have? God, it’s unbelievable!”
Dad’s joy is infectious. But I can’t quite give myself over to it. I need to understand what’s just happened. Because if my dad’s alive, then. . .
I’ve gone back in time.
“Dad, Dad . . . where are we?”
He looks puzzled. “You don’t know?”
I shake my head.
“Inside Area 51,” he explains. “In a deep underground military base. But if you didn’t know that . . . how did you get here?”
Silently, I roll up my sleeve and show him the Bracelet. That instant, his expression changes completely. He looks at the Bracelet for a long time, not touching it. Then, carefully, he runs a finger around the depression which holds the crystal. And looks back at me.
“The Bracelet of Itzamna.”
I nod. “I fixed it – I found the Crystal Key! Now I’m going to get you out of here. You know how to use it, don’t you, Dad?”
He takes a deep breath. “Yes, I do.”
We both gulp, moved by the utter seriousness of what I’m suggesting. Instead of getting on with it, Dad takes a step back, his chin in one hand. He looks me up and down slowly, as if seeing me for the first time.
“You’re older. Taller. Your arms, your chest, they’re bigger. Even your face – you’re getting a square jaw. . .”
“I’m fourteen,” I tell him.
“But . . . there’s something else . . . something very different about you. . .”
“My eyes,” I say. “They’re blue. From a genetic experiment. Long story. . .”
If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. In fact, he seems to be thinking deeply. Bluntly, he says, “You’re from the future, aren’t you? When did you get here?”
“Less than a minute ago.”
My dad is speechless, just looks at the ground, shaking his head.
“You found the Crystal Key . . . and fixed the Bracelet? When?”
I shrug, puzzled. What’s he getting at? “Right before I used it.”
Dad’s expression intensifies. “No one used the Bracelet since you found it?”
Now I’m frowning. “Well, no. It was broken.”
Dad starts muttering to himself. “He found it . . . fixed it . . . ended up here . . . which means. . .”
“We have to send you back into the past,” I interrupt, pushing my face against the bars. “And stop the NRO from capturing you . . . and bringing you here.”
But when Dad looks up again, there’s a sad smile on his face. “Why?”
“Because unless we do, bad things happen.”
“‘Bad things’? You look to be in pretty good shape, Josh. How’s your mother? I miss her so much, you’ve no idea.”
I swallow, nervously thinking of what my mother went through when my father first disappeared, and then when he really died. How can I tell my dad any part of that? I decide to stick to the bare bones.
I don’t want to have to tell my dad that unless we get him out of here, he’s going to die.
“Mum? She’s OK – now. It’s been hard for her . . . really hard.”
He nods thoughtfully. “I wish we had more time, Josh. But we don’t. If I’m right . . . and I think I am . . . we have probably five minutes.”
“Before the guards come?”
“Before I use my Bracelet.”
Now he’s completely thrown me. “What?!”
My dad lifts up his right arm, pulls back the orange sleeve to reveal the Bracelet on his forearm. “Your Bracelet is mine – but from the future. If you just used it a few minutes ago – that means that it was last used to leave this place about five minutes from now.”
I stare at him blankly. “Huh?”
“You don’t know how to use the Bracelet, do you, Josh? So listen carefully now
. I’m serious. Your life and the lives of millions of others may depend on it.”
Anxiously I lick my lips. “What? No. You have to use my fixed Bracelet to escape. And I’ll use the old Bracelet . . . to get to wherever it’s going.”
Which, I now realize, must be Mount Orizaba. Dad’s broken Bracelet would zap him from here to the slopes of the volcano.
Well, not in my new timeline. This is the zero moment. From here, everything changes.
I stretch an arm through the bars, trying to reach my father’s wrist. “Give me your Bracelet. Show me how to use it. I’ll be fine – come and look for me on Mount Orizaba. Dad, can you remember that? Orizaba.”