Keystones: Tau Prime (22 page)

The medical personnel hadn’t done much for him yet. His face was crusted with drying blood, some of which cracked like a layer of salt when he moved his jaw. “Are you going to give me some new clothes?” he asked the female doctor. After asking the question Deklan remembered the beacon in his pocket and the gift from Cheshire. He shouldn’t have said anything, he realized, to invite further scrutiny.

“No.” The doctor smiled maliciously and crinkled her forehead under her red hair. “There’s no point in wasting new clothes on dead men.” Deklan didn’t like the way her eyes shone at the word “dead.”

“And my concussion?”

She flared her nostrils before tapping the wall in his room. His bed made an odd noise that sounded like a ball’s being dropped into thick oil, and the transparent glass came alive with a meter-wide depiction of Deklan’s brain and another of his skull. Both his brain and skull were rendered in three-dimensional images that showed both the outer surfaces and the inner structure. The image of his brain meant almost nothing to him except that it didn’t have any flashing red warnings. The image of his skull did have such warnings. He could see trauma to his jaw, where a tooth had been dislodged, and cracks in both cheekbones as well as a hairline fracture down the side of his jaw. His doctor folded her arms and studied the graphics. “You’re face is going to swell,” she said, “but it’s not life-threatening.”

“I’d agree with that assessment.” It was Jamie’s voice coming from his right.

Deklan whipped his head around only to find Arkady dressed in the clothes of a man. The sound of flesh hitting flesh came from his left. Looking back, he saw Jamie standing over the doctor, who was sprawled on the floor. Gone were Jamie’s blond locks, replaced by red curls that tumbled over her ears. “You need a lot of rescuing, don’t you, Deklan?” Despite the gravity of their situation, the words held a playful note.

He opened his mouth and was surprised at his first question. “When did you dye your hair?”

A lone eyebrow arched up, and Jamie treated him to an amused smile. “Really, that’s your first question?”

When he’d first met her, she’d been a featureless terror, later a beautiful tanned woman with dark hair, and after that a beautiful blonde with no memories of their time together in Boa Vista. His question about her hair was important. “Actually yes.”

“It just happened,” she replied. “Don’t worry. I don’t think I’ve lost anything.”

A flush of relief swept through his system. “Good. Do you know where Calm is?”

Jamie stood next to Deklan, laid a finger on him, and teleported him out of his restraints. They reappeared together with Deklan still in a prone position but without anything underneath him. He fell a few handbreadths before she caught him. “Yes,” she answered, “I know where Calm is, but I came for you first.”

Her words lit a tingle of pleasure in Deklan.

Jamie wrinkled her nose at him. “We need to get that blood off your face.”

“How did you know to come find us?”

Jamie inclined her head toward Arkady. “She told us.”

That didn’t answer Deklan’s question. He turned toward Arkady with a puzzled expression.

Arkady met his look with a small frown that bespoke controlled inner turmoil. “It was Veronika,” she said. “When Darya killed those men at the elevator, she started screaming and showed us the images over and over.” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Veronika was always the one to come to the surface. She spent the most time here. She must have snapped after we told her that she wouldn’t be able to come to the surface anymore. We think that she planned your entire ambush.”

“We were all supposed to die then? She knew they had a man who could annul Keystone abilities?” Deklan knew that he would always believe the answer to be “Yes.”

“We don’t know,” said Arkady. “She blinded us with illusions. Father sent me to find your friends and try to get you out.”

“Is Jonny with Calm?” asked Deklan.

“No, we left Jonny at the shipyard aboard
The Bloody Fox
.” The name obviously amused Jamie. “His ability isn’t exactly combative and we thought it would be good if he learned how to pilot the craft. Its controls are antique.”

If Jonny was okay, it occurred to Deklan, the rest of the details weren’t important. “We need to check on Calm,” urged Deklan. “He was shot.”

“Let’s go then. He’s a few beds up from you.” Jamie put a hand on Deklan’s shoulder and teleported them to different patient areas three times before stopping.

Calm lay on a bed. Like Deklan formerly, his hands and feet were restrained, with his hands down by his waist. Unlike the case with Deklan, he had been stripped of clothes, and his stomach wound was covered in a translucent gel.

“What’s that?” Deklan asked, pointing to the gel.

“It’s a healing method that was discontinued more than a century ago,” Jamie answered. She gripped the restraint on Calm’s right hand and snapped it open. “It was effective in its day, but we have better treatments now. From what I saw of their rejuvenation tanks this is probably the best medical care that they can offer.” Jamie then went to work on Calm’s left wrist.

Calm lifted his head and tilted his chin, scanning his abdomen. “This is their best treatment?” he asked skeptically.

“Yes,” replied Arkady.

“And just how bad was that gunshot?” inquired Calm.

Jamie rocked her head from side to side. “There’s really no such thing as a good gunshot to the gut.”

Deklan noted the evasion in her words.

“Do you think you can move?” asked Jamie, moving on to free Calm’s ankles.

Calm nodded, but without much enthusiasm. “What’s the plan?”

“Do you have the beacon?” Jamie asked Deklan.

He pulled it from his pocket. “I do, yes.”

“Good. In that case we run like hell.”

“That’s it?” replied Deklan, leery of plans that trusted to chance. “Nothing clever with Arkady, the giant crocodile?”

Arkady scowled. “I can’t shift shapes when I’m dry. In any case we need to get going. It’s a miracle that we haven’t been caught yet.”

Just then the door opened, and AnnaLea walked in with a phalanx of ten guards. Each man had a gun, and two guards carried shoulder-slung weapons that looked capable of demolishing walls. “Leaving so soon?” said AnnaLea in a mocking voice. “I insist that you stay.” The men around her raised their weapons.

“Calm?” Jamie asked.

“I don’t think that my power is working,” he replied.

“It looks as though you’re out of options,” said AnnaLea, her smile intensifying and broadening.

A high-pitched beeping noise came from Deklan’s pocket, and a red light flashed through the fabric.

“What is that?” asked AnnaLea in a sharp tone, the smile disappearing from her face.

Deklan reached into his pocket and pulled out the black sphere that Cheshire had given him. Formerly featureless, it now was lit by concentric red rings that flashed in a sequence from the top to the bottom and back again.

“Throw that into the corner,” AnnaLea commanded.

Deklan was torn between throwing it at her and obeying her order. The two men with cannon-like guns swiveled to point their weapons at him. Deklan decided to trust Cheshire and do as he was told. A flick of his wrist sent the little sphere bounding through the air toward the corner. He watched with the same interest as everyone else in the room when the red lights stopped and a black shadow streamed from the ball.

The shadow quickly spread to the floor and ceiling, blanketing the room in darkness. The darkness spread further, engulfing everything it touched. Then came the laughter. Manic laughter, dark laughter, issued out of the shadows and filled the room.

Deklan’s eyes widened, and his shoulders tensed. It couldn’t be what he thought it was; it couldn’t be
who
he thought it was.

Without waiting for orders, AnnaLea’s men immediately opened fired and sprayed the shadow with their weapons. The bullets did nothing but tear into the walls, passing through the shadow without effect.

The shadow condensed into something denser, peeling away from the walls and forming a demonic outline. “Prey,” came a sepulchral utterance. A hand lashed out and enveloped AnnaLea. The rest of the shadow followed, covering her and collapsing downward until she and it were a two-dimensional stain on the floor.

Two of the guards fired at the floor, three of them stared in astonishment, and the remaining five ran.

“Deklan,” asked Jamie in a gasp, “what was that?”

“Don’t ask. This is our chance. Run!”

The others didn’t need to be told twice. Calm pulled himself to a standing position and pulled his blood-stained clothes over his head. Jamie teleported Deklan through the door and returned for the others. When she came back with Arkady, Deklan had already made it halfway to the stairs at the end of the hall, and a second later Jamie was standing near them holding Calm. Arkady’s feet pounded the tiles behind him as Deklan reached the stairwell.

“Deklan, what was that thing?” Jamie asked again as they started down the stairs.

A host of answers—monster, murderer, psychopath—swirled in Deklan’s head. “A Keystone, psychotic and homicidal,” he answered without stopping. “He calls himself Stalker.”

“That thing made of shadow was a man?” Jamie’s voice grew louder with every word as she teleported herself and Calm to the stairwell. Arkady was racing to keep up with the group.

“Keep it down,” cautioned Deklan, “and, yes, he turns back into a man.” Deklan shivered, thinking of Stalker’s human form. The one time he’d seen Stalker in the flesh the man had oozed danger.

“What’s he doing to AnnaLea?” Jamie asked in a fractionally quieter voice.

“By now she’s dead and the men with her too. He freezes his victims.”

“How do you know that?”

Deklan’s throat tightened. “I was one of his victims. The last time I saw him my Keystone powers were gone, just like now.”

“Why was he in your pocket?”

Although Jamie’s question wasn’t accusatory, Deklan knew that his next answer was important. “After I was separated from all of you, Cheshire gave me the sphere. He told me that it would arm itself and that I was to use it when I was out of options. I would have told you except that it’s been only a day since you all thought I was crazy. What was I going to say? A teleporting man that I’d met on Earth and the Terra Rings appeared, gave me a black ball, and disappeared?”

Calm broke into the conversation for the first time. “I would have believed you,” he said. “I’ve met him too.”

“Fine,” replied Deklan, “but let me ask you this. If I had told all of you, what would we have done differently?”

“He’s right,” declared Calm. “We can argue about it later. For now let’s keep going.”

“It’s three more floors before we’re at the ground level,” said Arkady, her words coming between short, sharp pants.

Deklan and Arkady vaulted down the remaining three flights of stairs, trailing behind Calm and Jamie. Deklan’s legs burned, and sweat drenched his forehead. He needed to pace himself if they were going to make it. Pausing for a moment, he said, “Wait! Calm and I are covered in blood.”

“No,” replied Jamie, pointing at him. “
You’re
covered in blood. They cleaned Calm up. Turn your clothes inside out and rub your face.”

Deklan peeled off the blood-caked tunic, inverted it, and slid back into the garment. Dry spots of blood crackled against his skin, and tackier spots stuck to him. It felt like wearing clothes lined with drying mud. He then rubbed his face with a sleeve, trying to wipe the blood from his skin.

Seeing his discomfort, Jamie couldn’t resist a jibe. “Deklan,” she said, “if you could shrug off being shot, you can survive this.”

Her memory was coming back, but he didn’t see any other changes in her personality. “I’m fine,” he muttered. His voice was gruffer than he intended it to be.

“Arkady will lead the way,” directed Jamie. “She can pass for a native, and she can match the Tau Primans’ accent.”

Arkady’s apprehension made itself known through a tightness in her jaw. “Okay, then. We need to go.” She pushed open the stairwell door and led them into the bustle of the ground floor.

Streams of people were flowing in and out of the building’s main concourse. The sound of a sharp intake of breath drew Deklan’s eyes to Arkady. The stiffness in her face had spread to the rest of her body. Back at Sanctuary she had admitted that she didn’t like crowds. Seeing her now, Deklan understood what an understatement that had been.

In the back of his mind he half-expected everyone to point at them and cry, “Tainted!” Meanwhile Jamie walked behind Arkady, flanked by Deklan and Calm. Calm kept his steps slow but even. No grunts or groans escaped his lips, and his face was placid.

The four of them joined the flow of people leaving the building. As he and Calm walked through the door, Deklan felt as though he had a bull’s eye painted on his back. The beacon in his pocket banged against his leg, and he worried that each time it bumped against him it would attract attention.

Once outside the building Arkady stopped, and Deklan surveyed the crowd around them. There were hundreds of people in red, none of whom looked at them twice. “Father promised something spectacular,” murmured Arkady, loud enough for Deklan to catch but not loud enough to carry beyond their circle. “I just don’t know what it will be.”

A gathering commotion rippled through the crowd, and isolated gasps punctuated the sound. “Down!” Deklan yelled, not knowing what the danger was but sure they were going to be shot. He pushed Jamie down with him to the ground. Hearing no immediate sound of gunfire, Deklan risked a look up. Not a person moved. The Tau Primans’ feet were rooted in place and their heads tilted back with jaws open. He followed their collective gaze.

The ocean was moving. It still floated as one long cylinder in the habitat’s center, but a tsunami was traveling toward the end closest to them.

“Something spectacular,” echoed Deklan. “Is this it?” He helped Jamie to her feet.

Arkady ignored his question. “That’s going to take less than a minute to reach this side of the habitat.”