by Caroline Noe
Elaine considered and came to the conclusion that that just about summed it up. “Yep.”
“I need more whisky.”
Neil disposed of his glass in favour of drinking straight from the bottle. Elaine yanked it out of his hands and slammed it on the table.
“This is me, Neil. Not Leila. I’m not some Lord of the Rings groupie. I’m not asking you to believe me, I’m asking you to behave like a scientist and test the damn thing. If it did affect the helix, we might be able to figure out how and repeat it.”
“You want to go back?” Unfortunately for Elaine, Neil was particularly astute where she was concerned and had hit on the crux of the matter. “Did you meet a man there?”
Taken by surprise, Elaine hesitated, just long enough for Neil to glean that she did.
“Neil. Please. This is about the stone, not me or anyone else,” Elaine lied.
Neil didn’t believe her for a second; still, he had to admit that he was intrigued by the madness of it all. “We should tell Leila. She can cut the time…”
“No. No Leila,” Elaine insisted, grasping his hand. “Promise me. Just us. Together. Promise.”
Neil stared at her hand. Although, deep in his heart, he realised that he was being manipulated, it felt so good to be close to her. He told his uneasy conscience that, whatever her motivation truly was, it didn’t matter.
“Ok. We’ll do it quietly,” he agreed.
Elaine produced a pair of thin surgical gloves from her pocket as though pulling a rabbit from a hat. Neil stared at them and back at her.
“Is that really necessary?” he asked, trying not to snigger.
Elaine slapped the gloves against his chest until he took them.
“Whatever happens, you never touch the stone itself,” she insisted. “We don’t know what it really is and it pays to be safe. Promise me.”
“Lot of promises tonight,” Neil responded, taking the gloves.
“Please, Neil. I won’t give you the stone unless you promise.”
Neil sighed. “Fine. I promise. Look, they’re going on.” He thrust his hands inside the gloves and waved at her with musical jazz hands.
Elaine gently placed the innocuous little pebble on his glass coffee table and watched it rattle back and forth. She grabbed the bottle of whisky and took a swig whilst Neil picked up the Firestone and examined it, testing its weight in his gloved palm.
“Neil. Be careful.” She felt compelled to warn him, needing his help, but not wanting to see him hurt. “The Queen was prepared to kill for this thing. Whatever it is, it’s not a toy.”
Neil lifted the Firestone to the light and peered at it.
* * *
Leila had been happy and relieved when Elaine started spending liberal amounts of time with Neil; however, as time wore on, it became obvious that the pair were shutting her out of their lives. Growing suspicious as to what they were actually doing, she took to sneaking around the Project, trying to catch them at, whatever it was they were trying to hide. Having found nothing, but legitimate analysis of the recovered data, paranoia began to affect her own work.
Leila’s changing attitude only served to convince Elaine of her former friend’s untrustworthiness. In an atmosphere of escalating suspicion, the Firestone quietly did its work.
* * *
With his curiosity peaked, Neil threw himself into analysing the Firestone with every scientific tool at his disposal. His first important discovery was that the Firestone had a flaw. Staring at the surface through a powerful microscope revealed a delicate crack running along the edge of one of the blood red spirals. Neil attempted to retrieve a sample. Scraping the surface with a scalpel yielded nothing but a teeth grating, nails down a blackboard noise.
“Try the laser,” suggested Elaine, despite the fear of harming her only means of returning to Harlin.
“Could damage it further,” Neil warned, putting a voice to her fears.
“We need the sample,” she stated, firmly.
Neil programmed a tiny laser beam to pass over the surface of the stone. The Firestone remained untouched.
“No way,” murmured Elaine. What was this pebble made of, that it could take such punishment? Refusing to give up, she recalibrated the laser to a far stronger setting. No substance known to man could withstand such an onslaught for long.
“You sure?” Neil asked.
Elaine’s response was to flip the switch, bombarding the surface of the Firestone with a fiery hell. The laser completed its vicious cycle and ceased. Neil peered through the microscope at the surface. There was still no discernible effect on the Firestone. Before Elaine could stop him, he picked up the pebble. Although he was wearing the surgical gloves, they were too thin to save him from a serious burn.
“It’s not even warm,” he noted, incredulously. “What is this thing?”
Turning to a glass cabinet, he grabbed a bottle labelled WARNING - HYDROCHLORIC ACID, pulled the stopper and dropped the stone inside. Elaine was so stunned that the ever-dependable Neil had committed two impetuous actions, one after the other, that she didn’t say a word, besides, the wretched rock just sat there, unimpressed. Neil disposed of the acid and rinsed the stone in water.
“Is this even a rock?” he asked, whereupon he savagely launched it across the length of the laboratory.
Elaine stared at him, dumbstruck by the weird outburst from the most placid of men. To be fair, Neil looked rather surprised, himself.
“Sorry. I’ll fetch it,” he told her, dutifully trotting down to the other end of the laboratory.
Leila and Caleb, returning from another of their soggy, but gratifying outdoor romantic trysts, happened to glance through the laboratory window from the safety of the corridor. They saw Neil return to Elaine’s side, face downcast. Elaine gave his shoulder a squeeze of forgiveness.
Leila ducked down beneath the window, pulling Caleb after her. He didn’t protest, having had to listen to her incessant moaning about being excluded. Perhaps, now, she could accept that her brother and friend were sneaking around for a love affair and not a conspiracy.
Inside the laboratory, oblivious to prying eyes, Elaine noticed that Neil was staring at her hand, where it gripped his shoulder. She slowly removed it. He continued to stare at that place, long after the hand had gone.
“Try testing it against the Project mock-up,” Elaine suggested. “See what you get.”
“I will,” he agreed. “You’re not staying?”
“No. I have to look willing for Leila or she’ll get suspicious. I’m checking on the progress of the new Project,” Elaine told him, finding a way to escape his longing. “I’ll see you later.”
She smiled at him, but as soon as she turned her back, the smile dropped into a concerned frown. Even after she had gone, Neil touched his shoulder and smiled.
Leila and Caleb emerged from their hiding place, having avoided the exiting Elaine.
“What are they up to?” Leila whispered.
“I can guess,” answered Caleb, with a leer.
Leila shook her head. “No. She’s never wanted him.”
“People change their minds.”
“Not Elaine, she’s stubborn. Had to be, with her childhood.”
“You’re too suspicious,” Caleb whispered, homing in on her inviting mouth.
Leila ducked away from his advances and marched into the lab. Caleb sighed and followed her. Everything was a drama with this woman.
Neil jumped and looked suitably guilty at Leila’s sudden appearance.
Leila began her interrogation. “What are you up to, brother?”
“Tests and more tests,” Neil answered. It sounded weak and nervous, even to his own ears.
Leila spotted the Firestone in his hand. “That’s Elaine’s necklace,” she stated, confused as to why he would have it.
“She gave it to me,” Neil told her. He sounded even less convincing.
“She gave it to you?” Leila repeated, her voice and posture a study in cy
nicism.
“What’s so odd about that?” Caleb asked.
“Her mother gave it to her,” Leila told him, “when she was little.”
“I thought she hated her mother,” said Caleb, recalling another of their late night sex and gossip sessions.
“She hated her father,” Leila corrected. “Her mother was just weak. She kept it to remind herself that there’s always a way out.”
“And now she’s got Neil,” said Caleb, winking at Neil. He guided Leila out of the door. “Come on, you. I want you ready to go out. Tonight’s a special night.”
“Now what are you up to?” Leila laughed, easily distracted by her lover’s latest game. “Everyone here’s up to something.”
As soon Caleb’s back had turned, Neil’s soft, bland expression distorted into a venomous sneer. He juggled the Firestone in his gloved hands – up and down.
* * *
Although the Project had been fully rebuilt, technical calibration was a lengthy and laborious task. Elaine joined a legion of faceless experts who sat at every computer, reading helix output parameters, amongst other riveting tests. Data poured across her screen, but she didn’t see a digit of it. Her mind was a long way distant, remembering the fingers of a scarred young man as they moved a strand of wet hair from her face. The memory was both sweet and bitter. So engrossed was she, that Neil and his experimentation on the Firestone escaped her thoughts.
* * *
A discarded pair of surgical gloves lay on the workbench, next to Neil’s laptop. He had set himself the task of constructing another small scale mock-up of the Project and the damn things had got in the way.
The mock-up, complete with embracing helixes and dampening rods, quivered as electrical current flowed through, producing a tiny, intermittent helix vortex with an accompanying blue flash. Wires running from the model recorded power levels and displayed them on the big screen, nearby. The Firestone sat in its own cradle, connected up to the experiment, covered in sensors. With each intermittent flash, the power spiked a little, but not enough to produce anything Neil hadn’t witnessed a thousand times before.
“Oh, come on!” Neil shouted, experiencing a level of frustration far beyond that due to his current situation. On the screen, unseen by Neil, the power suddenly spiked far higher than before. By the time he looked up, it had returned to small peaks. Snarling at the stone as though it were alive, he yelled, “Make it work, whatever you are!” and grasped it in his bare right hand.
A huge surge of emotion swept through Neil’s body, as though he had touched a live power cable. The feeling overwhelmed his senses with an almost sexual intensity and swamped his long nurtured inferiority with a flood of a vicious confidence. Deep inside the darkest corner of his soul, a captive serpent uncoiled and slithered towards freedom.
There was a massive blue flash and a brain melting, high pitched whistle as the entire workbench shook. Power spikes flew out of range of the chart and jumped around erratically. A fully fledged helix vortex formed within the model, sucking surrounding papers and wires inside. The screen showed the power levels converting to a solid block of readout lines as the tiny experiment teetered on the edge of a full meltdown.
Terrified, Neil spontaneously screamed, “Stop!”
Incredibly and inexplicably, the vortex disappeared and the helix faded. All the shaking and whistling ceased when the mock-up switched itself off, with a click. Neil dropped the Firestone onto the workbench and staggered backwards off his stool, landing in a heap on the floor. Breathing heavily, he stared up at the innocuous pebble as it gently rocked on the workbench. Even as he promised himself that he would never touch it again, he knew that it was a lie.
* * *
The Tollington village restaurant was hardly five star dining, but its cute little cottage style, complete with wooden beams, flowers and candles, was a popular local spot for the romantically inclined. A sharply suited Caleb sat opposite Leila, who was wearing her tiniest little black dress. The gorgeous couple were sharing the dessert course, washed down with a bottle of white wine.
Caleb caught the eye of an elderly waiter and nodded, before turning his gaze back to the blue eyes of his lover and telling her, “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“Thank you, my prince,” Leila replied. She had heard those words many times, and from many people, but never from one she actually loved in return.
The waiter reappeared, carrying a blood red rose and, strangely, gave it to Caleb with a smile.
“Isn’t that usually for the woman?” Leila laughed, intrigued.
“Move with the times,” Caleb quipped. He peered closely at its petals for a moment and then back up at her, with a look that could have melted an iceberg. Handing her the bloom, he said, “Actually, it is for you.”
She smelt the fresh scent of the flower before noticing something sparkling within the petals. Her fingers carefully probed and were rewarded with a delicately created ring, its flower motif crafted in diamonds. To the thumping music of her heartbeat, she watched Caleb drop to one knee before her.
“I love you, Leila,” he told her, his voice thick with emotion. “Will you marry me? Please?”
In the midst of a flood of tears, Leila launched herself at him. He lay on his back, with her on top, clutching the ring.
“Is that a yes?” he laughed.
“Yes,” she whispered and kissed him as though her life depended on it.
All around the newly engaged couple, waiters and diners applauded their joy.
* * *
Having escaped the monotony of Project testing for the sterile safety of her quarters, Elaine slumped in her armchair, thoughts ricocheting around her brain. The sudden knock at her door was almost a welcome interruption, until a frenetic Neil hurtled into the room, waving his laptop and shouting, “It works!”
“What?” mumbled Elaine.
“Your stone, it works.”
Elaine glanced into the corridor. Thankfully, there was no-one to overhear him. As she closed the door and turned, Neil slammed the laptop onto the table and flung both arms around her in a fierce bear hug. She patiently endured, but didn’t return the embrace, extricating herself after a moment.
“Show me what you’ve found,” she insisted.
For a split second, a look passed across his face; one that she had never seen before. In all the years that they had known one another, Elaine had found him to be many uncomfortable things, but she had never been afraid of him. She breathed a sigh of relief when he returned to the laptop and swivelled it around.
“Watch this,” he told her, beginning a recording of the extraordinary events in the laboratory. All through his demonstration, he hovered around her like a hyperactive child. Elaine calmly watched until she saw Neil snarl at the Firestone and grasp it with his bare hand. She immediately paused the recording.
“I told you,” she barked at Neil. “I told you not to touch it and you promised me.”
“You’re missing the best bit,” Neil insisted. “Watch.”
He savagely jabbed at the keyboard and the recording continued. Growing increasingly concerned, Elaine watched the mock-up experiment go stratospheric and Neil yell, “Stop!” She gasped as the helix faded and the experiment switched off. She replayed that moment, over and over, zooming in closer and closer, until she could draw only one, earth-shattering conclusion.
“It turned off by itself,” Neil stated, voicing her staggering thought. “Hell, it started by itself. And that’s not all.”
He tapped on the keyboard, displaying a recording of a solid block of lines.
“What’s that?” asked Elaine, peering at it from a number of angles.
“Power output per second,” Neil told her. “If I recalibrate to power per millisecond.”
He pressed a key and the screen changed, revealing two power outputs forming an interlocking helix that, to Elaine’s shock, bore more than a passing resemblance to the famous model of DNA.
�
�Two lines? I assume one is power output from the mock-up,” Elaine deduced. “What was the other?”
Neil’s smile was almost as disconcerting as his previous expression. “The stone.”
Elaine swallowed, hard. “The Firestone produced this?”
“Look. Elaine, look at it. It’s interlocking. What does it remind you of?”
“DNA.”
Neil grew so excited that the mania in his eyes reminded Elaine of the Harpy and her obsession with the Firestone.
“And not just any DNA…” he cried.
She stared at him, the hairs on the back of her neck rising.
“…Mine.”
Elaine collapsed back into her armchair. The strength had drained from her legs.
“Your DNA? How can it…?” she stuttered, her genius mind fighting to make sense of the impossible revelation. “You must be wrong.”
Neil leaned in, placing his hands on both arm rests, locking her in place. “I ran it through the database three times. Direct match to me, familial match to Leila.”
A terrifying dizziness began to overtake Elaine’s thoughts. The implication of Neil’s discovery arrived in full force. “You’re saying it’ll only work for you or Leila?” Elaine asked, afraid of the answer. “Or a close relation?”
Oh God, Harlin…
Neil produced the Firestone from his pocket. The expression on his face as he clutched the rock bordered on idolisation. “I don’t know what I’m saying,” he laughed. The mania in his tone was now unmistakable. “This is massive. We have to run a barrage of tests. I need to find out what this thing can do. We have to tell Leila. She’s the one with all the creative ideas. She’ll know what to do.”
“No!” Elaine shouted, snatching the Firestone from his grasp. “She never gets hold of it. You understand?”
“You asked me to do this,” Neil snarled, his whole demeanour altering.
Suddenly afraid of what he might do, Elaine thrust herself free of his arm lock and headed for the door. “Thank you, Neil,” she soothed, trying to tame an escaping beast that she had never seen before. “Leave it for now. Trust me.”