Keystones: Tau Prime

by Alexander McKinney

  Deklan’s attention suddenly was drawn to the main passenger area by a commotion. What now? he thought as passengers began to yell.

  At the epicenter of the growing ruckus Avery was shrinking. Deklan furrowed his brows as he tried to think through the implications of what he was seeing. Beal finished the race first. “Oh God, she’s going to need a stimulant.”

  “What?”

  Beal ignored Deklan as she again tore through drawers in search of what she needed. “Here!” she called out, triumphantly holding out another set of repeater syringes and sprinting toward Avery. A confused Deklan followed in Beal’s footsteps.

  Avery was writhing in reverse. Her skin rippled and her joins popped as she sank in on herself. The fur faded away to reveal pale and unchanged flesh. Last of all Avery’s snout receded into her head, and her normal face reappeared.

  Beal knelt next to her and felt for a pulse, “Damn it! The Pylomin is too much for her now. It’s not good to mix drugs like this.” So saying, Beal slammed the repeater against waxy skin and injected Avery four times in rapid succession before pausing to feel her pulse again. “Good. She doesn’t feel so faint any longer. I don’t want to add more to the mixture in her system.”

  “Is there any kind of a precedent for this?” asked Deklan.

  “Keystones with metamorphic abilities? Yes, I’d say so. Look at your friend.”

  “No, I don’t think it’s the same. Avery was heavily sedated, and she still changed. Michael needs to think about it. Avery’s change doesn’t seem voluntary to me. What was the trigger? How do we deal with this sort of problem? If Avery transforms again, do we need to hook her up to an expandable straightjacket with a string of repeaters attached to it?”

  Beal just shook her head, errant strands of blond hair flying everywhere. She looked like an exhausted shadow of the perky and confident young woman whom Deklan had met just a few hours earlier. “I don’t know,” said Beal. “Don’t borrow trouble. Let’s just dock and get paid.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Strawberries

  Emergency services on the Ring took over once The Madeline docked, whisking Michael to the nearest hospital. Not being a family member, Deklan had been excluded from the medical deliberations and informed of where he could wait for news. Now he sat staring at Michael’s rejuvenation tank, one of dozens at this particular facility.

  Michael’s tank was the largest there, three meters in height and two meters in width, big enough to accommodate any person prior to The Sweep. Now the tank held Michael in an awkward embrace with his wings folded around him, obscuring a view of his torso, but any curious observer could see his face. The tank was filled with translucent nanite-laced gel that would, in theory, allow the severed wingtip to bond with the remaining stump.

  Deklan wanted to apologize to Michael for getting him to help with Avery, but Michael hadn’t awakened since his accident. Scans showed that he wasn’t suffering from any form of head trauma, but with so severe an injury Beal had kept him medicated on the way back up from Earth, and doctors on the Ring had kept him sedated before his immersion in the rejuvenation tank.

  Few people were psychologically equipped to be conscious while submerged for days or weeks on end as organs or limbs regenerated and they were fed through an intravenous drip. Keeping such patients in an induced coma was standard practice, as Deklan well knew from numerous misadventures. Given his claustrophobia, Michael was especially unsuited to being awake through the tank-enclosed rejuvenation process.

  Deklan kept close watch over his friend. He knew that Michael wasn’t going to do anything, but somehow he felt that he was supposed to be there, almost as though he had to expiate his sense of guilt.

  The beeping of his Uplink interrupted his self-condemnation. Susan’s face appeared on his wrist screen. “Deklan,” she exclaimed. “Thank God you’re alright. The news about rescue teams to Earth has been ugly. I was worried about you and Michael.”

  Deklan’s voice was subdued. “I’m okay, and I think Michael will be okay, but he got hurt pretty badly.”

  “Oh, no! How badly?” Susan’s voice was compassionate and helped to coax more information out of him.

  Deklan looked to one side as he answered, distancing himself from his words. “One of his wings was bitten off at roughly the midpoint. He’s in a rejuvenation tank right now, and I’m hoping for the best.”

  “Bitten off?” Susan asked.

  “It got pretty hairy. I need to visit the Keystone woman who did it. I haven’t had a chance to speak to her because she nearly died on the way back up here. It was a mess.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Deklan shook his head before he spoke. His eyes met Susan’s briefly before he looked away again. “What is there to say?” he replied. “I’m here with him. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Well, you could stop being a baby.” Susan’s voice had lost all softness and was instead hard-edged.

  Deklan stared at her in surprised. This was not the reaction he had expected. “Excuse me?”

  “Michael’s an adult,” answered Susan. “It was his choice to go with you, so stop castigating yourself. At the very least you should have called me to tell me that you were okay. I’m guessing that you haven’t even called your parents. You realize that if you don’t and they see the news, your mother is going have an absolute meltdown, right?”

  Deklan held his Uplink as far as he could from his face. “Well, I guess so, but it seems important to be here.”

  “Why? Do you know how long it’s been since someone died in a rejuvenation tank?”

  “No.”

  “Seventy-three years. Get it through your head. Regardless of how bad Michael’s injury was, it’s okay now. Call your mother.”

  Instead of following Susan’s advice, Deklan went to visit Avery. She was in a secure ward but visible through two-way glass. Like Michael, she was in an induced coma. Unlike Michael, she was uninjured and healthy. The sedatives had been purged from her system, and bruises aside she was none the worse for wear. There were no signs on her body or face that she’d ever been anything but a normal woman. She lay in a diagnostic cradle that swept over her body in an unceasing search for further information. The results were hidden from Deklan’s view, but several doctors were clustered around her running tests.

  There were reports of hundreds of cases like hers from the evacuation. Some involved people who had turned into enormous and predatory animals. Deklan had even read about a man who had metamorphosed into a fifteen-meter leopard seal and been put down by a woman who could point her hand like a gun and put people to sleep.

  Susan was right, decided Deklan: he was being selfish and should have called his parents when he got back. It was just that he didn’t want to make the call because he would be proving his mother right about Earth’s being dangerous after The Sweep. But he also knew that, like jumping into cold water, it would be better to get it all over with as quickly as possible. With no little trepidation he flicked a series of icons on his Uplink.

  His mother’s beaming face soon appeared with something green in her hair. “Deklan!” she effused. “You have to see my tomatoes.” Her voice conveyed a raw excitement that was usually reserved for the winning of lottery jackpots.

  “What, Mom?”

  “My tomatoes! They’re huge!”

  Tricia paused for a moment, and Brice Tobin interjected. “Son, it might be better if you just came here.”

  The trip from the hospital passed in a blur. Deklan ignored any thoughts of what was waiting for him and researched the disasters reported by other evacuation teams.

  When he stepped into his parents’ hotel room, the sight that greeted him was peculiar. The space no longer resembled a vacation spot but, instead, an improvised hydroponics lab. Hanging pots were everywhere, with a jungle of vines escaping from each of them. Tendrils draped the room, using the edges of any convenient surfaces as routes for expansion. More plants peaked out from the ba
throom, and the bed was wreathed with flowers.

  Dirty footprints were tracked across the carpet, and his father’s shirt was smeared with evidence that he had been helping with the tasks at hand. The garbage overflowed with trimmed bits of stems and leaves. His mother’s clothes were even dirtier, and she had a small plant growing in her hair. Deklan wasn’t sure whether he should bring it up.

  Displayed on one table was a veritable cornucopia of fruits and vegetables. The produce was some of the biggest that Deklan had ever seen. The tomatoes were the size of baseballs, the strawberries the size of his fists.

  As he surveyed the bounty, Deklan could only ask, “Did you grow all of this since this morning?”

  His mother had never looked more excited. “Yes! And this isn’t everything. Your father and I have gorged ourselves on fruit.”

  Deklan helped himself to a strawberry and bit into it. The flavor was superior to that of any other strawberry he’d ever eaten.

  His mother watched him like a hawk as he finished the fruit. “Oh, Deklan, what do you think? Did you like it?”

  Deklan knew that there was only one acceptable response. “It was great, the best strawberry I’ve ever tasted.”

  “Your mother has rediscovered her long-missing green thumb.” Brice’s comment was said in the driest tone of voice Deklan had ever heard his father use.

  Tricia scurried around the room, bouncing from plant to plant like a teacher trying to control a room filled with unruly pupils. “This is great! I’m going to start up my own company, ‘Tricia’s Tomatoes: A Fruit and Vegetable Emporium.’ Oh, I can’t wait.”

  The plants were visibly growing as Deklan looked at them. Before his eyes new leaves budded forth and then unfurled. It was like weeks compressed into seconds. He hated to break the moment but said, “Um, I have some bad news.” Both of his parents turned to him. Deklan took a deep breath and continued, “There was an incident in Houston. Michael’s in a rejuvenation tank.”

  “How serious is it?” asked Brice.

  Deklan swallowed the painful lump in his throat. “One of his wings was bitten in half.”

  “Bitten in half?” Brice asked incredulously.

  Deklan found a plant-free seat and sat down. “Yes,” he replied.

  Brice walked over to his son and put a hand on his shoulder. “How is he now?”

  “We saved the wing, and as I said he’s in a rejuvenation tank, but his physiology isn’t exactly normal, so I’m hoping for the best.”

  Tricia swept Brice aside and hugged Deklan. “We simply must go see him.”

  Deklan’s voice was muffled by his mother’s sweater. “Sure, not a problem, but there isn’t much to see. He’s unconscious and will be until his wing knits. You know the drill: they keep people asleep in those tanks so they won’t have a panic attack. It would be especially bad for Michael, what with his claustrophobia.” He realized that he was rambling.

  Tricia’s voice was firm. “Even so, we’ll go see him. We owe Michael a lot, don’t we, Brice?”

  Deklan stood with his parents in front of Michael’s tank. Both Brice and Tricia had changed into something tidier out of respect for Michael.

  As before Michael hung suspended in the liquid, a mask strapped to his face. Since Deklan had left, intravenous lines had been added to Michael’s wingtip. The readout on the tank gave no estimate of how long he could be expected to stay submerged.

  Brice broke the silence, his voice quieter than usual. “Did you speak to a doctor?”

  “Yes, but they couldn’t tell me much.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  Deklan tapped at the readout on the tank, selecting a simplified display that would give information suitable for the layman. It flashed up statistics for injuries, mortality rates, and recovery times. “Every normal injury,” explained Deklan, “has a recovery time with a variance depending on the individual and his or her age.”

  Tricia interrupted him gently. “Deklan, your father and I know that. We’ve spent a lot of time outside your rejuvenation tanks.”

  “Michael’s injury isn’t normal,” added Deklan. The display indicated that the lines leading to the wingtip were nutrient feeds to keep it alive and give Michael’s body a chance to graft it back onto him. His wing had yet to show any signs of the severed bone’s healing.

  Day 6

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Survivor's Guilt

  After a night of uneasy tossing and turning interspersed with shallow sleep, Deklan had given up and gone to the hospital to visit Michael. He went even though he knew that there was nothing for him to do and that Michael wouldn’t know that he was there. He’d chosen not to renew contract work on Earth.

  He read the diagnostic information off the display. The jagged wound, torn muscle, and cracked bones appeared to be knitting, albeit slowly. Deklan felt that this was a small victory. He noticed that most of the tanks in the ward were full, but there was little foot traffic. He wasn’t going to speed Michael’s recovery, and yet here he was again.

  Deklan knew that he needed a focus, something useful to do, something to distract him from wallowing in self-pity and guilt. From the moment he’d realized how dangerous animals were after The Sweep, he’d had the overriding goal of getting his family to safety. Along the way he’d made friends with Michael and Susan. Now Michael was in a tank, and Susan wasn’t accepting his calls. His parents were now as safe as they could be, and there wasn’t much call for a movie stuntman during a worldwide crisis.

  Deklan scrolled through job postings again. He didn’t feel qualified for anything. He could try to go back to law, though finding a position would be hard, but even if he succeeded it would be like admitting defeat. Defeat was not something to which he was accustomed, yet the last few days had been dogged by failures small and large.

  Deklan felt adrift. He needed a purpose, something bigger than a paycheck. He’d never done anything just for the money. He’d wanted to help people, but instead he’d nearly gotten Michael killed. So this is what self-pity looks like, he thought to himself.

  Just then Deklan noticed a wiry and thin man standing three meters behind him. The stranger’s face was framed by dark hair, and he possessed dark eyes that seemed to know too much. “It’s me,” said Cheshire, a wry smile on his face and his voice quiet.

  “What do you want? Do you have any other creative ways to get me killed?” Deklan grew very still, like a prey animal in the presence of a predator.

  Cheshire kept his distance while looking both confident and amused. “Yes, actually, and I could make sure that you stayed dead.” From his tone he might have been talking about the weather.

  A shiver ran up Deklan’s spine. His newfound power of regeneration wasn’t something with which he was comfortable yet, so hearing that there was a way to overcome it was worrisome. What bothered him even more was that he believed Cheshire. “Are you threatening me?” he asked.

  Cheshire’s smile didn’t waver; if anything it grew wider. He looked like a man who was immensely enjoying himself. “Not at all. You asked; I answered. Try to keep up.”

  “Why are you here?” said Deklan. His distrust and uncertainty made the question sound more like an angry accusation.

  “I’m here to ask what the hell you’re doing staring at a rejuvenation tank when Susan has gone flying through the wormhole.” Cheshire’s tone became kinder. “Or, to put it another way, there is a way to be good again.”

  Deklan felt that he’d lost the thread of the conversation. “What?” To be good again? What did that mean? Then his brain caught up with the rest of what Cheshire had said. Susan had gone through the wormhole. Deklan suddenly went cold all over. When she hadn’t answered his last two calls, he’d assumed that she was busy, but Cheshire could be telling the truth.

  “Did you really think that she was just not answering your calls?” said Cheshire, as though reading Deklan’s mind. “Check the casualty list from yesterday’s breaches near midnight. She’s the only bo
dy that’s unaccounted for.”

  “Why do you care about Susan? Why have you been keeping track of her? Why have you been keeping track of me?” Deklan’s voice was low when he started asking questions, but he was nearly yelling when he finished.

  Cheshire remained infuriatingly calm. “You must have more pressing questions than that.”

  “Answer me!”

  “I care about the wormhole.” Cheshire shrugged, a gesture that infuriated Deklan. “Susan is the first human being to go through that wormhole.”

  Deklan regained a measure of control over his tone. “How do you know that she went through the wormhole?”

  “Well, for one thing I watched her, but for another here’s some footage.” Cheshire flicked a few icons on his wrist Uplink, a model similar to Deklan’s.

  Glancing at his Uplink, Deklan felt the hairs on his neck stand on end. The information was coming in through his Secure Identity. How did Cheshire have access to his Secure Identity? Of lesser concern was the file itself, a second-long video. “What the hell is this video, and how do you have my Secure Identity?” challenged an irate Deklan. “Who are you?”

  “You need to play the video slowly.” Cheshire winked at him, smiled infuriatingly, and vanished.

  Deklan scowled before turning his attention back to the video he’d been sent. Even when he played it at extremely low speeds, there wasn’t much to see. The footage of a bolt of light streaking through the wormhole’s mouth didn’t prove anything, he told himself. Susan was fine. She just wasn’t taking his calls.

  He maintained this logical inference for at least three more seconds before inputting commands to call up a list of casualties from the previous day’s breaches. There it was: three survivors and one missing person, Susan Anthony. She was the only person whose body had not been found.

  Cheshire therefore might have told the truth. Susan could have gone into the wormhole. But why? And what could Deklan do about it?