The Syker Key

by Fransen, Aaron Martin

  ***

  Twenty miles away John woke with a bolt, and the sound of Jessica's voice in his head.

  Did he actually hear her? Even hear wasn't the right word. He could feel her. What had surely been only been a couple of seconds had somehow felt like a long conversation he couldn't remember, like waking from a dream that disappeared instantly. He could have sworn he saw what she was seeing; trees, sky, men, voices, sweat, jolting. Then he felt a stab in his arm and it was gone.

  Pan was already breaking camp, but stopped to look at his son. "Jessica?"

  John nodded. "Was it real?"

  "Real enough. They must have drugged her. Don't worry, we'll be caught up with them soon enough."

  A sense of dread started to take hold of John. He hadn't felt this kind of anxiety in a long time. He remembered the day he was issued a gun for the first time, the anxiety that nearly crippled him for a week as he adjusted to the idea of carrying around a deadly weapon on his hip.

  The power had been intoxicating, but agonizing. Even drawing it once would result in paperwork, whether he used it or not. But what if...what if it was used, and worse, what if it was used to kill someone innocent? Could John live with that? He doubted it. The very idea of that guilt sent his mind spiralling into a panic.

  He knew his friend Will didn't have this problem, and couldn't quite understand that. Hell, most officers didn't have that problem, which made John a bit of a freak. He suspected he was just too sensitive, that he should "man up" and deal with it.

  But his fears had served him too. More than once he had been tempted to draw and he hadn't, instead trying to think his way around the situation. Had he just been lucky? His friend was getting into a routine of filling out paperwork for drawing, and on occasion firing, so clearly he was fearless about the whole matter. He would even joke about how often he spent filling out forms instead of doing actual police work.

  And of course the great irony was that John was a crack shot, scoring higher in the firing range than nearly anyone else. He had to be. As a father he knew all too well the price of making a mistake, and he was damned if he ever had to fire that he would hit the wrong person. John had spent more time at the firing range than almost anyone he knew, at least in the few years before Zack.

  He doubted, however, that his accuracy would serve him as well when the target wasn't a piece of paper.

  Well, certainly he thought so until that morning. He was beginning to believe that he would have no problem firing on the four that took Jessica.

  Four? He had no idea how many had taken her, so why had that number stuck in his head?

  They broke camp and moved on.

  John's head continued to reel. The hiking wasn't a problem for John, he was used to spending a lot of time on his feet, and in boots substantially less comfortable than the ones he was wearing. But this Pan, correction, his father, he wore what looked like the oldest pair of dirty old boots he could imagine. Not ancient, but they had certainly seen better days, so either they were really comfortable because they were broken in, or he had done so much walking that the boots didn't bother him one way or the other.

  And, he had to admit, Pan was easily as energetic as he was. He didn't stop for breathers, complain about his back or his feet, groan about the walking...he was a better traveling companion than his best friend.

  And how old was he, a thousand? Fifteen hundred? He didn’t look any older than forty. What the hell would you do with yourself with all that time? The mind boggled. His father had seen more than he could imagine, and that was just history, never mind what the Key had given him.

  The Key. The thing was a menace. John couldn't quite understand why Pan hadn't destroyed it. Clearly he hadn't used it for anything in intervening centuries, so why even have it? Destroy it and be done with it, no more risk of some asshole getting his hands on it. John did not take his father for a fool, so there must have been some good damned reason he hadn’t destroyed it yet.

  He was well aware that he could not even grasp the power of the Key just yet. These silly tricks Pan had taught him the last day were a mere taste of what it could do. He figured the real problem was whoever had taken Jessica. Clearly they knew about the Key, knew it's power. And if Jessica had been the bearer for all these years, and they were able to subdue her, what chance did John have against them?

  There was Pan too, of course, but John could sense Pan wasn't comfortable about the whole thing. Something was scaring him too. He added up the score: Jessica out of commission, the Walker family nowhere to be found, one old wizard, and one rookie cop/apprentice wizard, against some group (four popped into his head again) of unknown power.

  Fan-bloody-tastic, John thought, trudging through the forest in the weak morning light.

  The first shafts of sunlight were coming through the trees, and it felt like being recharged. He understood now too that it was exactly like being recharged.

  For the first time since yesterday he felt hope, and it felt like a weight being lifted from his heart.

  Hold on Jessica, I'm coming, he thought.

  ***

  They had arrived.

  Only three hours until the eclipse and Sam's group had, with a little help from the GPS, found the exact peak spot of the moon's passage across the sun. At noon it would begin.

  They had to be close, within a couple hundred yards, and the forest was going to make life difficult. You had to have a clear view of the sun while it happened, otherwise the Key wouldn't get the full effect and the whole effort would be wasted.

  After some searching they found a small clearing where they would have an unobstructed view of the noonday sun. Of course, the problem with a clearing like this was it left you vulnerable.

  Sam watched Derek bark orders to the other two. One of them was going to climb a tree and watch the clearing, the other one was going to patrol north, back where they came from, keep an eye out for visitors.

  Jessica stirred slightly as they laid her on the ground. Time for another shot.

  As Derek prepared the drug, Sam realized he had come to know quite a lot about the Walker family, despite their attempts to remain completely anonymous over the years. Walker, Smith, Jameson, Weebly...there was literally a page full of names they had taken over the centuries. The idea of that kind of life span still amazed him. They would even pass themselves off as their own descendants sometimes.

  He looked at the slowly rousing Jessica, then grinned when Derek injected her once more. Too plain for his tastes, or at least that was how she made herself look. He guessed that she had learned this trick to avoid being noticed, to be able to disappear in plain sight. Everyone notices a supermodel walking down the street; nobody would have given her a second look.

  They had been a busy family. Not always together, at least not as family, but always close. Jessica looked the same age as her parents, so he hadn't found any instance where they were anything other than siblings, in terms of having that familial assignment.

  England, India, Australia, the States, and finally Canada. It was tough to track their passage through time, and it had taken Sam over a decade to work it all out. Twelve years of pouring over immigration records, the kind of thing that made corporate P&L statements look like gripping reading. It was the kind of tedium Sam was good at.

  They were difficult to follow, but not impossible. Threads here, hints there. They had been very careful, probably as careful as he would have been. Of course, in his opinion squandering the power of the Key was ridiculous in the extreme. Why hide? With that kind of power, who cares if anyone, indeed everyone, knows you're immortal? There's nothing they could do about it. The Key was the ultimate expression of power, nothing on Earth could touch it.

  He could feel the blood rushing to his head, the temptation of it all.

  Three more hours and this would all be decided. He doubted it would be uneventful.

  Nine: A Spark in the Darkness

  John was starting to tire. It had been a lot more hik
ing than he was used to, but he refused to be showed up by a man several centuries his senior, even if he didn’t look much older than John. The beard, at least, made him look older, so that made him feel better.

  "We're close," Pan said to him. "We have to be careful."

  John almost laughed. Careful? Someone who's knowledge of magic amounted to a single card trick the day before, going after someone able to take out a full-on wizard?

  It didn't seem too likely.

  He looked up at the sky through the trees. The sun was nearing midday, and the moon was getting close.

  But something caught his attention, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. He looked around, trying to find the source of his discomfort, half watching and half listening, as if he’d be able to hear whatever was bothering him.

  Pan tapped him on the shoulder and pointed. "Over there," he said quietly.

  They stood still for over a minute, then John could see it: Someone in the trees, a ways off. They hadn't been seen yet apparently. John led his father behind a tree and they hid, waiting for the armed individual to get closer. Pan got his attention, smiling. "Watch."

  Pan peeked around the tree, looking at the mercenary as he put one hand on the tree and concentrated. Behind the mercenary a root silently rose out of the ground and reached to his belt, wrapping itself around the radio and gently lifting it out.

  By the time the mercenary figured out the radio was moving away from him, John was around the tree with his service pistol leveled at he head of the mercenary. "Don't move," he said in his most threatening voice, the one they teach you to use at the academy.

  The mercenary looked at him and appeared to consider his options. His gun was lowered, but at least in his hands, finger on the trigger, and John was careful to watch it's movements.

  "I wouldn't if I were you," Pan said, walking out from behind the tree. A wave of his hand and the rifle went flying out of the mercenary's hands and into Pan's. Pan examined the rifle, then with a shrug threw it into the air.

  It fell to the ground as dust.

  John tried not to get distracted by it, since it was likely the mercenary had more than the one weapon. "Where are they?"

  The mercenary just smiled at him. This wasn't going to be easy.

  "Sometimes, son, you have to learn to listen to the forest."

  Pan laid his hand on the tree again, and this time another root, a much larger one, came out of the ground, wrapped itself around the mercenary's legs, and promptly hiked him twenty feet into the air, upside down and screaming. Another root accompanied it and bound his arms to his sides.

  “I think we can stand to wait here a few minutes,” Pan said.

  ***

  Sam heard the scream, faintly.

  "Check in," Derek said, standing nearby.

  "Lookout one, clear," came the response on the radio.

  Only one response. Derek walked over to Sam. "We're not alone."

  "I hardly expected to be."

  Derek seemed disappointed. None of his surveillance toys had been tripped. "You think it's the wizard?"

  "Probably. He's not too much of a concern though. He can't move against the girl, not directly."

  He remembered the legends handed down in his family. Legends from before recorded history. From a time when the crystal went missing in the first place. He knew more about it's capabilities than this foolish wizard who had chanced upon it all those centuries before. Syker may not have stolen it from his family, but it was theft nonetheless. It had been the one remaining question: Why had the key disappeared all those centuries ago? If there had been a challenge to the bearer, then why had it not returned?

  They were never able to figure it out, but when it did disappear, an entire civilization crashed, and mankind was thrown nearly back to the Stone Age. Those who remained scattered, but without the support of a powerful society, the technology of the age past disappeared, never to be seen again.

  Sam nearly growled when he thought about it. One of his ancestors had approached Syker once, explaining the ownership of the crystal, and Syker had rebuffed them. What may have been, he had said, was not then. At least, that's how Sam's father explained it to him. He suspected there was much more to it, and that Syker wasn't nearly as genial as the story made him out to be.

  But that didn't change the fact that he knew the Key wouldn't interfere on anyone's behalf during the eclipse. It had disappeared this time because it sensed a realistic challenge to the bearer, and it was not going to give the bearer any unfair advantage.

  And Sam wasn't about to let that opportunity slip. Certainly not because of some hack wizard.

  "Should we send Eric to investigate?" Derek asked him.

  "No. Keep him where he is." He wasn’t about to be led into the forest chasing shadows, there was too much at stake.

  ***

  Arthur heard the scream, and turned to try to discover it's direction. He may not have been the wizard that Pan was, but he had some ability. Of course, Pan had taught him most of those things, and as incredible as bearership of the Key had been, when he gave it up it was as though he forgot almost everything he had learned.

  "About two hundred yards, that way," he pointed.

  Catherine looked. "Pan?"

  "I think so." The trees thinned in that direction, so it's likely that the mercenaries had found a suitable clearing from which to see the eclipse.

  "What are we waiting for?" his wife asked.

  They walked in the direction of the scream.

  ***

  Pan finished tying a cloth around the mouth of the mercenary, still hanging upside down from the tree. John had bound his arms and legs separately using some thin rope from his pack. "Okay, let him down."

  Pan shot him a surprised glance. "You do it."

  John wasn't sure if he was up to it. He looked at the tree root that had come out of ground and held the mercenary. Theory, easy. Practice, hard.

  He concentrated on the root and reached over to the tree. The bark was rough under his touch, jagged as he could feel it scraping at his skin. And something else...electricity? He couldn't be sure, but there was another sensation there, one he hadn't felt before. It started like a tingling in his fingertips, and quickly warmth was rushing down his palm into his arm. He could feel the tree, feel its life energy flowing into him, through him. It frightened him briefly, but he recovered.

  In seconds the light started to change as it had one time before. He could see hints of filaments in the air, pathways of flowing electrons creating very slight magnetic fields all around them, through them. A little manipulation was all that was required to turn those seemingly useless pathways into conduits.

  He found he could talk to the tree. On its own it did not have the energy to do what he was asking, he would have to provide it. This was the trick that Pan had taught him; there was no magic, only energy, and he was only a conduit for transferring it from one form to another. With a thought John was able to absorb the energy coming from the Sun and the ground beneath him, electrical energy, not just solar heating and radiation, and transferred it to the tree. The tree listened and waited, and when it had enough, it thanked John by doing what he had asked.

  The mercenary was dropped to the floor of the forest with a grunt as the roots loosened their hold.

  "Wow," was all John could say as he dropped his arm to his side.

  "We have guests," Pan said. John turned to see him grinning.

  A rustling several feet away betrayed the intruders. John prepared to reach for the tree, defensive, until he realized he recognized the newcomers. Jessica's parents.

  "Good morning Arthur, Catherine," Pan greeted. They didn't appear to be in good spirits. John frankly couldn’t blame them. He wasn’t either.

  "Hello Pan, John," Arthur said. "I'm glad you're here but in Gods name your timing is shite. You should have been here months ago if you knew this was coming."

  "Or at least warned us," Catherine added.

  "I
t wasn't to be helped I'm afraid," Pan told them. "It was well hidden from me until a week ago. If I had known sooner I would have acted to stop him before they could have gotten this far. As it is I don't yet know the full extent of their knowledge, or power for that matter. I'll say this though, they almost seem to know more about that damned crystal than I do."

  "That's not very encouraging," Catherine said with a frown.

  "Fear not my dear, Jessica's not in trouble quite yet."

  "Do you at least know where they are?" Arthur asked.

  Pan pointed in South. "About two hundred yards. This is one of four, but there's only one that's of any concern. The rest are just hired thugs. Well armed hired thugs, but hardly any challenge."

  "Armed or not, it's that wild card I'm concerned about." Arthur grabbed his wife's hand and squeezed. "He knew enough to take Jessica."

  "It's worse than that I'm afraid," John added. "He's been keeping her drugged." The Walkers threw him confused looks. "Every once in a while she wakes just enough to reach out, and somehow she finds me."

  Arthur grinned at him weakly. "Made quite an impact on our daughter you have, my boy."

  "I hope I can live up to that," John answered gravely.

  Ten: Threshold

  For the thirteenth time in its past history, the Key was at the cusp of seeing a new bearer. The change was imminent, it could see. Certainly time was an illusion, but that did not prevent the unlimited possibilities from being possible. What was impossible was to know at any given moment which future would happen. There were only probabilities.

  In this reality, it was probable that the Key was about to change hands. There were simply too many players.

  Slowly, time was reducing the options.

  The Key did in fact tend to prefer seeing bearers of like temperament. It was just easier, but in truth it could not, and would not, choose one over the other. Creation or entropy, the Universe did not care. Only people cared about it one way or the other.

  As long as there was balance, but even that didn't truly matter, since forces more powerful than the Key would ensure it.