The Twelfth Keeper

by Belle Malory

  The security guard nodded, and a door behind him gave way. Kennedy followed the soldiers through it where she was escorted into a room full of…she looked around, thinking her eyes were playing tricks on her.

  Jail cells.

  “I don’t understand. Where’s Commissioner Plaffle?”

  One of the soldiers took her by the arm, leading her into an empty cell. “What are you doing?” Kennedy tried shaking him off of her without success. His hands were made of steel, and they easily steered her into the cell, shoving her in when she struggled.

  “The commissioner will be in to see you later.” He reached for her wrist, unsnapping her brace.

  “Hey, give that back!”

  The lock clicked on the door, trapping Kennedy inside. She banged on it, just to be sure. “What am I being held for? Don’t you have to read me Miranda Rights or something?”

  “This is Olympus. Here, you can be detained for any reason deemed suspicious.”

  Kennedy’s wrapped her fingers around the cold metal bars, pressing her face through the opening. “Tell me what I’ve done,” she demanded. “You can’t just keep me here!”

  Neither soldier said anything else. They left the room, leaving her locked inside.

  The outside door shut, leaving her completely and frighteningly alone. Her eyes welled with tears, and she looked around, the place a blurry picture of empty jail cells. Hers was the only occupied one.

  Without her brace, she couldn’t get a hold of Phoenix to tell him what happened. He wouldn’t know where she was. She was trapped in this godforsaken cell, and he would never know where to look.

  Backing up, she ran into the edge of a rusty bench. Kennedy sat on it, pulling up her legs. She wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin on her knees.

  Looks like I really screwed things up this time.

  Thirty-Nine

  “Forgive me if I skip the formalities. I’m a busy man.”

  Commissioner Plaffle breezed inside her cell, waking Kennedy from the half-sleep stupor she had fallen into. She straightened her body, facing him.

  He was tall, domineering, but had the innocent face of a wrinkly teddy bear. Even his bald head had wrinkles in it.

  “You and Phoenix Jorgensen went through my private files.”

  Kennedy blinked, letting his words sink in. He wasn’t talking about…wait a sec—his private files?

  “And don’t bother denying it,” he continued. “We found your prints everywhere.”

  Nice.

  Why had neither she nor Phoenix thought to wear gloves before breaking in? She shook her head at herself. Such a dumb move.

  He assessed her slowly from head to toe. Carefully, Kennedy asked, “So that’s what this is about?”

  “I needed to speak to you,” he said.

  She narrowed her eyes. “In a cell?”

  “The cell was necessary considering your habit of disappearing lately.” He took a seat on the bench opposite her, snapping his fingers.

  Commissioner Plaffle wasn’t the only person in the room. Outside their cell, a thin man with black hair and blue eyes held out a folder. The commissioner took it from his hands, licked his fingers and read through it. “Kennedy Mae Mitchell, age sixteen,” he read. “Born on Amelia Island, Florida.”

  Anxiously, she shuffled around on the bench. “Why don’t you simply ask me what you want to know?”

  Light brown eyes lifted uninterestedly to hers, then fell back on the folder. “Ah, here’s an interesting fact. You have yet to develop your abilities as the twelfth keeper. Also you left during a recent exercise and have yet to return to training.”

  “Exercise?” Kennedy snorted. “They actually called it an exercise?”

  Plaffle closed the file. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is you found classified details of a private mission. What matters is you’ve breached our intelligence, and now you pose a danger. Not only to me, but to everyone involved.”

  “All of it done completely by accident, let me assure you.” Honestly, she wished they had never stumbled upon that safe to begin with.

  “Regardless. What’s been done has been done, and I’m left facing some challenging decisions.”

  His words hung in the room ominously, as if one of the unspoken decisions he faced was whether or not she lived or died. Kennedy swallowed, thinking it was a very real possibility.

  “I wonder,” he said, scratching his head. “How much of the files you saw. Do you know our reasons for the mission?”

  Lying was pointless in her position, and Kennedy didn’t make an effort to hide anything from him. “The unregistered planet you’re sending the Peri-Guard to contains valuable resources.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” he said, crossing a leg over his knee. “I mean do you understand our reasons?”

  “I’m guessing for money,” she said tiredly. Why did they have to play this game? Couldn’t he tell her whether or not he was going to allow her to live?

  “Yes, it’s profitable. There’s no refuting that. But it’s not only profitable for me, Miss Mitchell. It’s profitable for our world. Think of what this find will do for our economy. For space travel and exploration. We’ll have so many precious metals, the means to create new technologies. Our wildest dreams can be built into existence.”

  If all of that was true, she wondered why the commissioner didn’t ask the United Council to hurry customs along with getting the planet approved for visitation. She started to ask as much, and then thought better of it.

  Obviously, Commissioner Plaffle was no idiot. He would’ve already tried to do the same thing, unless…“There’s a reason it hasn’t been approved yet, isn’t there?”

  “Smart girl,” he said. “A small bug with enough venom to kill a hundred men.” He held his hands out, as if it were a minor annoyance. “We have the ability to contain it, to make sure it never comes here. But because of that one damned bug, customs will never approve access.”

  Kennedy pressed her palms flat against the metal bench. “So you’re going without their permission.”

  “Sometimes it’s better for everyone if someone breaks the rules.” He bit the inside of his cheek. “Even as commissioner, I see how breaking rules every now and then can be beneficial.”

  “You’re crazy.” She slapped her hand over her mouth. Kennedy couldn’t believe she’d just called him that.

  Plaffle’s lips tightened into thin straight lines. “So that’s your answer?” he asked, leaning closer. “Refuse something that could make us so much better? Let one little bug get in the way of a brighter future?”

  “If that bug ever came here, it would put everyone at risk. You, me, our families.” She certainly hoped he had a family, hoped to appeal to him that way. “What might turn out as a lethal mistake isn’t worth the trouble.”

  Something sparked a kernel of doubt in the commissioner. She saw it alight in his eyes, lasting just a second. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. “Our ships are perfectly safe,” he argued. “And frankly, it is worth the risk, trillions of globals worth it.”

  “What you’re doing is wrong.” Kennedy felt the force behind her words, surprised to hear so much passion within them. “And once this gets out, no one will ever let you get away with it.”

  Kennedy wasn’t planning on keeping the commissioner’s secret. Fear shot through her veins, but there was no point in backing down now. She could lie, but he would never buy it.

  More importantly, defending the world was one of the things keepers were supposed to do. What she felt she had to do.

  Commissioner Plaffle rested his back against the metal bars behind him. “I’m very aware of how ardently you’ve refused your role as a keeper, Miss Mitchell. And as far as I’m concerned, you’ve never proven otherwise.”

  Kennedy ground her teeth together. There was a threat in there somewhere, she was sure of it. “Recent developments have changed things. I’m definitely the twelfth.”

  It felt strange to
admit it out loud. And even stranger, the release she felt in doing so.

  “Neither here nor there.” He waved her proclamation aside, as if it were of no importance. “What matters is if the world will care once you no longer exist.”

  Kennedy felt her eyes grow wide. He wouldn’t…would he? She tried to keep the hysteria out of her voice, and asked, “Are you willing to risk the safety of our planet on that bet?”

  She felt like smacking herself in the head. Of course he would risk the safety of the world. Especially since he was kind of already doing that.

  Commissioner Plaffle stood, and it looked like their conversation was over. “Sean, get my soldiers and tell them to escort Miss Mitchell to the tank.” He turned back around, facing Kennedy, but continued speaking to his assistant. “Make it look like she drowned during training.”

  Kennedy stood up and lunged for him. Within seconds, his soldiers were there, trying to pin her down. She managed to kick one of them in the stomach. He grunted, and another twisted her arm behind her back. She whimpered, feeling the pain shoot up her wrist and straight through the muscle in her shoulder. Before long, they had her pinned to the ground. Probably should’ve taken Karate 101 a little more seriously, she supposed.

  Commissioner Plaffle’s eyes gleamed wickedly, and the wrinkles in his face deepened.

  Kennedy glared at him. That arrogant bastard thought he was untouchable. “Phoenix will know you did it,” she said. “All the keepers will feel it when I die.”

  He merely shrugged. “We’ll get Phoenix before he can do anything. As for the others, you both abandoned them, didn’t you? They’ll know you both died, but they’ll have no idea why.”

  “You might be able to get away with murdering me, but Phoenix will burn this place to the ground before you touch him.”

  “Not if he doesn’t have access to fire.” Plaffle gestured for the soldiers to take her away. She struggled against them, and screamed, “You have no right to call yourself a human being!”

  Sharp laughter echoed behind her. “In a few minutes, neither will you.”

  Forty

  Phoenix felt like an idiot. He didn’t know what he was thinking letting Kennedy walk out of here without a disguise, without his protection. She had been gone for hours, and despite his best efforts to leave her alone, he broke down and called her an hour ago. She didn’t answer.

  Restlessness ate at him. He tried to clear his head by working on his atlas, but all he did was pace back and forth between stars. Nothing was going to distract him enough.

  He needed to find her.

  If she was still in shock, he would do everything he could to bring her out of it. Last time, he found a way to get her talking. He could do it again. Somehow.

  Phoenix swung the apartment door open, and headed towards the elevator. He wasn’t sure where to look, but he figured he would start with Level 3. He could check the registry to see if she was signed in.

  When the elevator beeped, he made his way straight to the hand scanner. He moved quickly, preferring to stay unnoticed. He wasn’t in the mood to talk, especially since no one had seen him since the day he walked out.

  Kennedy’s name wasn’t on it. Phoenix let out a deflated sigh. Ideas weren’t exactly flowing out and telling him where else to look.

  Maybe the atrium. She seemed at peace when they were there yesterday. Solace was something she seemed to crave, and it wouldn’t hurt to look there.

  “Hello, Phoenix.”

  He flinched at the sound of his name. It had been too much to hope he would go unseen.

  Phoenix cursed under his breath when he saw who stood across the hallway. Running and hiding sounded appealing just then, and for a split second, he debated doing it. “Calaya.”

  Tiny white-blonde braids formed a giant bow at the nape of her neck. Beaded shoes peeked out from her floor-length lavender gown as she stepped towards him. As most stargazers were, Calaya was a vision of loveliness, making her hard to ignore.

  The stud in her nose caught the light as she smiled at him. “How are you, Phoenix?”

  “Good, thanks. You?”

  “I’ve been all right. No complaints. Do you have a moment?”

  His glanced at the elevator. “Actually, I was sort of busy.”

  “This will only take a few minutes.” She rested a hand on his forearm. “Come, walk with me.”

  Phoenix nearly groaned. He needed to look for Kennedy, not waste time talking to Calaya. Or he could use this opportunity to ask if she could see where Kennedy was. Usually when he spoke to Calaya, she spat out vague predictions of an indefinitely cloudy future. It would be nice if she was useful for once.

  “Hey, Calaya. Since we’re talking, you wouldn’t happen to know where I could find Kennedy Mitchell, would you? You know, the twelfth keeper? Same girl you’ve been predicting I’ll fall for since I was a little boy.”

  Calaya said, “Ah, so she has finally come into the picture. I’m happy to hear that.”

  “Yeah, she’s here on Olympus.” He shook his head, finding it hard to believe she wouldn’t have already known that. “Don’t you watch the daily waves?”

  “Rarely. I find it best to keep my perspective as wide as possible. The waves are too draining.”

  Phoenix thought it was an odd thing to say, but didn’t comment on it. “So do you think you could look into your little telescope and find out where she is for me?”

  Calaya arched a brow. “Little telescope?” Her hand fell off his arm. “Phoenix, don’t think I don’t know when you’re being condescending.”

  He felt like an ass.

  No matter how much he might disagree with Calaya, it wasn’t like him to be callous. “I apologize,” he said, and meant it. He raked a hand through his already mussed hair. “Today has been one of those days, you know?”

  She pursed her lips, looking him over. “Yes, I can see that. You’re energy is darker than usual.”

  “It’s Kennedy. She’s missing. She freaked out earlier, and long story short, I’m worried.”

  She nodded in a very sympathizing way. “Wherever she’s at, I’m sure she can handle herself. She is the twelfth, after all.”

  “You don’t understand. She’s not like the rest of us. Not yet. She’s,” he struggled to find the right word. He didn’t want to call her weak. In some ways, she was incredibly strong. “Vulnerable.”

  Strangely, this made Calaya smile. “You’re already changing.” She took his arm again, patting it. “You remember what I told you? How you would change when she came into the picture?”

  If only he didn’t. “Yes.”

  “Tell me,” she said, forcing him to say it out loud.

  “You said I have a hero complex.” He rolled his eyes, which made Calaya chuckle. “You said my focus would switch tracks, from trying to be the world’s hero to trying to be hers.”

  “Exactly,” she said, pleased to know he actually listened all those years ago. She held her hand to his cheek. “Ah, Phoenix. It’s not a bad thing. I figure you deserve it after so many years of living behind the wall you put up.”

  He swallowed, urging himself to not to say anything else. Usually, he stayed quiet and listened to her, even when he hated what she said, even when he disagreed with what she said.

  Today, he wasn’t sure he could find it in himself to hold back his thoughts. “Listen, this might sound like an insult to what you do, and I hope it doesn’t come across that way. But I want to be the world’s hero. Kennedy is great, but when it comes down to it, I would rather be the world’s hero than hers. Regardless of how I feel about her, this thing that I am, this responsibility I’ve been given—it has to come first.”

  Calaya frowned, looking more than disappointed. She looked sad. “Even when you say the words, I can feel your lie.”

  “This isn’t a lie. It’s my choice. And I’m sorry, but my whole life won’t have been spent in vain.”

  Calaya sighed. “Oh, Phoenix. I really hoped you would choose diff
erently. I wanted to see you…happy.”

  He stared at her. “You’re saying I get a choice in the matter? It’s not predetermined by fate or something?”

  A small smile appeared, then faded just as quickly. “Of course, you do. We all have our choices. Kennedy was never a set path. She was your opportunity. An opportunity to be better, to be different. To be human.”

  An opportunity?

  Phoenix thought Kennedy was someone who was meant for him, not someone he had to earn. “What will happen to her?” He couldn’t help but ask the question. “If I don’t choose Kennedy, what happens to her?”

  Calaya smoothed out her gown, averting his gaze. “Someone else will.”

  Phoenix felt his hands clench into fists at his sides. “Someone who?”

  “Stars,” she breathed, and clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “You sound mighty jealous. I find that odd considering only a moment ago, you were fervently stating the twelfth will not be your chosen path.”

  She was right. But Phoenix didn’t care. Her being right didn’t soothe his urge to throw a fist into the nearest wall. God, he never knew he had a choice. Why didn’t Calaya ever make that clear to him? He might have looked at things differently…

  “Anyway,” Calaya said, walking a few steps ahead. “You should know there is a war coming. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Phoenix froze in his tracks. “A war? On Earth?”

  She nodded. “Between humans and an outside force. It will be the first of its kind. All of the keepers will play a big part.”

  “Do you know anything else about it? Do you know when?”

  Shaking her head, she said, “I wish I did. All I know is in order to win, Kennedy’s abilities in particular, are crucial. She will need to learn so much before the time comes.” Calaya looked around, taking in all of Olympus. “Not just here. It’s important for her to train beyond these walls. It’s important for all of you.”