Firestone Key

by Caroline Noe

  Her words only acted as a catalyst to his rage, born of years of frustration. The serpent within him rose up and struck with terrifying speed…and it felt good.

  “No. Not this time!” he hollered, overturning the table and smashing the laptop against the wall. “This time you don’t get to use me and throw me out. You always get what you want, you and Leila. Good old Neil, he’ll do anything for us, get the money, build the Project, take all the abuse. Throw him a smile and he’ll do it. So, smile.”

  Elaine scrambled to open the door, but Neil was there first, slamming it shut. He grabbed hold of her wrist and brutally yanked her into his arms. The shock caused the Firestone to drop out of her hand and bounce onto the carpet. He violently jammed his mouth against hers as she fought to free herself. He kicked her legs out from under her and threw her onto her back on the floor. She clawed at his face, bucking and kicking as he ripped her shirt. Her nails caught his cheek, gouging a scratch. Neil punched her in the face, stunning her. Elaine’s head fell to one side, her eyesight blurring at the force of the blow. The Firestone lay on a level with her eyes as though taunting her.

  As Neil reached down to unzip his trousers, Elaine’s hand groped for any weapon with which to defend herself. Her fingers found the edges of the broken laptop. She swung it with all her might, catching Neil between the eyes. He howled and crumpled, enabling her to lever him off her body and scramble to her feet. Grabbing the Firestone, she bolted out of the door and fled down the empty corridor. She never saw Neil recover from the blow and finally come to himself.

  “Elaine? Oh God. I’m sorry. Wait. Elaine…”

  * * *

  Due to the lateness of the hour only one, monumentally bored, technician remained in the Project. He was currently slumped at a computer, his feet propped up on the console and his eyes tight shut. He briefly opened them to peek at the screen, only to be rewarded with the same tedious message that it had displayed for the last two hours: test 45c running…

  When Elaine hurtled through the open door, the startled technician’s feet hit the deck with a thump.

  “Doctor…” he began, his voice trailing off as he noticed her torn clothes and her bleeding and bruised state. “You alright?”

  “There’s been an accident in one of the labs,” Elaine lied, magnifying a fake sob for effect. “I need you to go get the Major.”

  “Isn’t he out with…?”

  “Get the duty officer to call him,” she insisted.

  “The test…”

  “I’ll watch it. Go. Please. Tell him to hurry.”

  The Project technicians had not been employed, or encouraged, to question anything that their genius bosses requested. He simply rushed out, leaving Elaine alone at the console. Far from watching the test, she immediately terminated it and programmed the entire Project to run. It obligingly burst to life with a rising metallic whine. Elaine gave the command to close and lock the safety door. She was well aware that she was engaging an untested and probably dangerous system, but Neil’s attack had forced desperation to the surface. All she wanted to do was leave, to return to Harlin and, right now, she didn’t care what that entailed.

  Bleeding from his head wound, Neil staggered into the corridor as the door descended. He lurched towards it, yelling, “Elaine, stop! Don’t do it.” He reached the closing doorway a split second too late. Neil inserted pleas between each session of hammering on the door. “Elaine, listen to me. It’s not ready. We haven’t run any real tests. It could overload. Elaine, think about this; you can’t use the stone without me.”

  * * *

  An expensively flamboyant, scarlet sports car made its way around undulating bends in the country road, its headlights bouncing off the trees that lined both sides of the tarmac. Leila was at the wheel, driving more slowly than would be expected of her impulsive character, but, then, she was steering one handed. Her other arm was wrapped around Caleb, his head resting on her shoulder. His fingers played with the engagement ring, newly installed on the third finger of her left hand.

  The idyllic scenario was interrupted by the slightly distorted sound of a strident rock song. Caleb sat upright and pulled his mobile phone from his pocket.

  “Major Grantham… What? …Say again, slowly… I’m on my way. Try to make her open it.”

  It was the tone of his voice, more than just his words, which alerted Leila to something being seriously wrong. “What’s happened?” she probed.

  “Speed up. Elaine’s lost it. Locked herself in the Project and won’t answer any calls.”

  Leila’s foot pressed the accelerator pedal to the floor. The car sped away into the night.

  * * *

  When Caleb and Leila barrelled down the corridor, they found Neil, slumped, his back against the security door, surrounded by military personnel and the crestfallen young technician.

  “Move. Out of the way,” Caleb yelled, his vocal authority clearing a path to the door. He and Leila both spotted Neil’s head wound and nail scratched cheek.

  “What happened to you?” Leila asked, but her brother pulled away from her ministrations, refusing to meet her gaze.

  The rising howl of a forming helix vortex could be heard, despite the thickness of the newly installed security door. Caleb yelled as loudly as he could, endeavouring to penetrate the metal. “Elaine, it’s Caleb. Open this door and we can forget it. You make me use the over-ride and they’ll throw you out of here. Do you understand?”

  Inside the sealed Project, Elaine ignored Caleb’s threat and edged closer to the spiralling helix. With a trembling hand, she inserted the Firestone directly into the vortex. There was no reaction; if anything, the spiralling seemed to slow a little.

  “No. Work. Please,” Elaine pleaded, fighting to hold the juddering stone in place, despite knowing that it would never work for her. Desperation had completely overridden logic.

  In the corridor, Caleb had run out of patience. “No more time!” he hollered at the sealed door.

  Afraid of the consequences for her friend and, even more so, for the future of the Project, Leila tried to reason with her new fiancé, but he gently pushed her away.

  “No, Leila. She’s gone rogue. You know we can’t have that.”

  Taking no pleasure in exercising his authority, the Major succumbed to the retinal scan and entered his access override code. The security door duly began its upward journey. When two feet of space appeared at the bottom, Neil suddenly shot to life and rolled underneath the door.

  A distraught Elaine still stood in the centre of the room, the Firestone clutched in her fingers. The helix vortex was collapsing around her. She saw Neil scrambling inside and screamed at him. “Make it work!”

  Neil found his feet and slowly shuffled towards her, wiping the blood from his head wound out of his eyes.

  “I’ll help you, if you want to go back,” he told her, his voice low and calm, “but not like this. You don’t even know where, or when, you’d end up. Give me the Firestone, please.”

  “Stay away from me,” Elaine cried, pulling the edges of her torn top together.

  Leila and Caleb ducked under the rising door, just in time to catch the last outburst and to spot Elaine’s torn shirt, cuts and bruises.

  “What the hell did you do?” Leila demanded, rounding on her brother.

  “You don’t understand,” Neil said, his hand outstretched in supplication. “I think the Firestone affects me. When I’m near it, I feel…strange.”

  Leila was totally confused. “The what? What are you talking about?”

  “Someone turn this damn thing off,” Caleb ordered, waving his hand at the collapsing helix.

  Leila headed towards her console, but Elaine jumped into her path and pushed her backwards.

  “What the hell’s got into you both?” asked Leila, feeling as though she had entered a madhouse. She was not used to being the sane element of the trio. “This is suicide. And you could take half the county with you.”

  Caleb was beyo
nd reasoning with a lunatic. He grabbed hold of Elaine, who fought him, tooth and nail.

  “Leila, turn it off!” he cried, struggling to contain a wildcat.

  In the midst of the fight, Caleb knocked the Firestone out of Elaine’s hand. It was immediately pounced on by the hovering Neil. Leila tapped on her keyboard and the spiralling helix gradually and safely diminished in intensity.

  “No!” Elaine screamed, brutally thrusting her knee into Caleb’s groin. He dropped to his knees, groaning. She thundered into Neil, clawing at his hand and pleading, “Give it back. Please, Neil. I have to go.”

  “What, in God’s name, is that?” asked Leila, trying to spot what they were fighting over.

  Neil held the Firestone above his head, out of Elaine’s reach, enabling Leila to get a clear view for the first time.

  “This is what makes time travel possible,” Neil told her, his bloody face a mask of mania. “This makes the Project work. It’s the Firestone.”

  Leila was utterly stunned by the ridiculousness of it all. She would have laughed, if the consequences of this night were not about to become extremely serious.

  “It’s a rock,” she pointed out. “She’s had it round her neck for years.”

  With Neil’s attention momentarily diverted, Elaine made a sudden lunge, catching him off guard. He tripped and fell backwards, allowing the Firestone to slip from his grasp and bounce onto the floor. The back of his head impacted the corner of Leila’s console with a sickening crunch, breaking open his skull. Blood poured from the horrific wound and ran down the slope, towards the fading helix.

  Elaine stood, frozen to the spot, devastated by what had just occurred. Far from comforting her, Caleb arrived at her side and delivered a backhanded punch that put her on her back.

  “Leave her alone,” Neil rasped.

  Leila cradled her brother in her arms. She glanced up at Caleb. It was obvious to them both that Neil was dying. Get a doctor!” Leila shrieked.

  Caleb yelled through the open doorway at those outside. “You heard her. Get help!”

  The young technician sprinted down the corridor, relieved to be given something to accomplish.

  Leila glared at Elaine, tears pouring down her face. “What have you done?”

  Neil turned his head, straining to locate the Firestone, lying on the floor, nearby. He locked gaze with Elaine and smiled at her. Reaching out, he rested his fingertips against the Firestone and murmured, “Send Elaine to the time she left before.”

  The fading helix suddenly burst into staggering blue brightness, spiralling faster and faster.

  “I thought you turned it off!” Caleb shouted at Leila, over the groans of straining machinery.

  “I did,” she told him.

  Consoles exploded beside them and sparks shot across the room. Caleb scrambled to a still functioning console to see power spiking through the roof. A horrendous shriek gained volume, causing all to clutch their ears in pain. Machinery buckled as explosion after explosion ripped the Project apart.

  With the safety door still open, lightning streaks of power snaked down the corridors, searing deep burns into the walls and exploding glass. Watchers scattered, but not quickly enough for the returning technician, who was skewered by a power streak. A spiralling vortex appeared, sucking in everything that wasn’t nailed down. Broken glass, bits of molten machinery, all flew through the air on their way into the vortex.

  Neil whispered to Leila. She had to lean close to hear it over the chaos erupting around her. “Overload. Have to stop it.” They were his last words; his eyes remained open in death.

  Leila clutched her brother to her chest and rocked back and forth wailing, “No, no.”

  “Leila, for God’s sake do something,” Caleb pleaded. Even a military non genius could see that they were moments from utter disaster. “Leila. Look at me. I love you. Stop this.”

  His words reached her, when nothing else could have. She was wearing his ring. She had a future with him and she wasn’t going to lose it all. Gently lowering her brother, Leila raced over to the melting circle of consoles. She tapped on keyboards, but none were still functioning.

  Elaine crawled towards Neil, horrified by his death. She watched the blood run down the slope and get sucked up into the vortex.

  “Elaine, help me,” Leila called to her lifelong friend, and sister. “It’s in full overload. We have to lower the rods together.”

  For a brief moment, time froze around Elaine, shutting out the shrieking cacophony and plunging her into total silence. She saw Leila’s lips moving, but heard no words. Her gaze switched from Leila, to Caleb, to Neil’s body, to the Firestone. She made a decision. Snatching up the Firestone, she threw herself into the bright centre of the spiralling vortex and vanished.

  Leila could scarcely believe the extent of Elaine’s betrayal. She stared at Caleb in desperation.

  “What do I do?” he pleaded, “Leila?”

  She pointed at the safety glass. “Handle. Smash the glass and wind.”

  Caleb was on his way over, when the lightning bolts and screaming of machinery gave way to total silence.

  “Too late,” Leila whispered.

  Caleb and Leila exchanged one, desperate look of love as the light around them achieved the brightness of the sun.

  “Into the helix!” Caleb yelled. “Now!”

  Both sprinted for the vortex from opposite sides of the room. The dampening rods gave way under the terrible strain, cracking and dropping with a shattering crash, blocking Caleb’s access. The entire laboratory started to implode, crushing in on them.

  “Cal!” Leila cried in anguish.

  “Go!” he told her.

  Leila was left with a choice that signalled the birth of all that would follow: she must go or die with him. In agony, Leila threw herself into the vortex.

  Chapter 12

  Bert was engrossed in practising his sword lunges and paying absolutely no attention to the others, engaged in digging a large hole. Being a seasoned warrior of thirty, he readily embraced the exercise necessary for the plying of his trade, but had a rather prissy aversion to dirty manual labour. His muscle laden, towering best friend, Morden, had no such qualms and was happily throwing sweet smelling earth over everything, including Bert’s feet.

  “Mind where ye throwing yer dirt,” Bert shouted down the hole and swung his sword in a wide arc over his head.

  “Mind ye not cutting off own head,” retorted Morden in his usual sensible tone. In truth, his current stable state belied a volatile past that only his wife knew the whole extent of. His best friend knew enough to understand that an addictive personality was part of that mystery and that it was presently occupied with excavating a moat for the partly finished castle.

  “If asking, be getting answer this time?” Bert enquired.

  “No time for answering, Bert,” Morden replied, spluttering dirt out of his mouth, “Try helping for change.”

  Bert would not be put off from asking the same irritating question he had asked many times before, enjoying how much it annoyed his friend.

  “Why ye digging hole, ‘fore walls be builded?” Bert’s gesture took in the semi-constructed castle walls, behind him. “And why be ye digging yeself?”

  “Be moat, not hole,” Morden told his idle friend, for the umpteenth time. “I like working, not like yeself.”

  “What use be gungus hole, when castle not finished?” Bert hid his wry smile. Baiting his friend was always an amusing pastime - almost as good as fighting.

  “When moat finished, castle also,” Morden sighed, dragging himself out of his latest creation and spitting mud onto Bert’s foot.

  “Urgh! Ye badly as young Drevel!” Bert exclaimed, wiping his shoe on the grass.

  Inside the widening hole, a dirt-covered head popped up and unleashed a toothless grin.

  “Least he working,” Morden commented, his words at odds with the fact that the scruffy child was now leaning on his spade and grinning up at them both.
“Be working, childlin.”

  The ten-year-old Drevel sniffed at being referred to as a ‘childlin’ and commenced shovelling dirt at the rate of two adult men. Morden and Bert burst into guffaws of laughter, which only served to increase the flurry of flying earth.

  “B’not killing yeself,” Bert shouted down to the boy whilst handing a water skin to his mud-laden friend.

  Morden gratefully gulped the cool water as Bert surveyed the building site. Whilst the castle was taking shape, it had not, as yet, acquired an outer wall capable of repelling a sustained attack. Despite his protestations, Bert knew that Morden’s plan for a moat was both necessary and timely. Although tribal wars had been raging for hundreds of years, the intensity and ferocity of the insurgencies had increased since the death of Gawain’s father and, for the first time, were threatening to overwhelm their domain. Their leader’s highly trained fighting men, of whom Bert was one, were the only force capable of protecting their way of life.

  “We getting there,” Morden remarked, reading his friend’s thoughts from the direction of his gaze. “Working fast as able.”

  “I know, Morden, and so do Gawain,” Bert said, sincerely. “None able as ye, nor as muddly. Ye look like mole.”

  The simile was apt. With his toffee blond, heavily braided hair thickly smeared with sludge and his large blue eyes peering through a layer of caked mud and dirt, Morden did indeed resemble a creature of darkness, even given his handsome features. Not to mention the growing piles of earth accumulating on the castle forecourt. He was not, however, distracted by his friend’s jokes; he knew him too well.

  “What be on yer mind?” he asked Bert.

  “Be only matter of time ‘fore fighting start,” Bert confided. The thought manifested in many a nightmare. “Not have nough men trained.”

  “We have what we have,” was Morden’s response. “Stop yer worrying or ye lose more hair.”

  A child’s guffaw escaped the widening hole. Everyone was well aware how sensitive Bert was about his thinning and receding hairline. He was about to deliver a sharp retort when a flash of blue light almost blinded him. Ranging spikes of blue energy crackled and snapped all around, threatening to skewer him. He leapt into the hole, a moment after Morden, only just avoiding stabbing himself with his own sword and flattening Drevel. All three crouched low, trying to shield themselves from the flying spades, water skins and mud, which were swirling in the roaring wind. An earth-shaking build up of pressure was suddenly relieved with an almighty, eardrum piercing, yet soundless explosion.