The Syker Key (4 page)

“How the hell does that happen?”

“I don’t know, but it’s a dangerous time because I can sense there are multiple parties converging on it right now. It's likely that it sensed viable competition for it, so it removed itself from the equation.”

“So now what?”

“Now I have to teach you how to be a wizard in one day. My fault I admit, but you’re going to be busy. Fortunately you inherited some good genes,” Pan said with a grin on his face.

“Jesus, what about Zack?”

“I don’t think you want to involve him just yet, it’s too dangerous, and he’s a little too young to train. Is there someone you can trust him with for the next couple of days?”

John knew there was. “Yeah.” Well, perhaps trust was stretching it a bit, but it was a far cry better than putting Zack in the middle of this mess.

***

“This sucks!” Zack mumbled under his breath as John knocked on the door to Will’s apartment.

“Sorry Pal, it’s an emergency.”

The door opened and Will smiled at them. “Hey guys. Come on in.”

John dreaded leaving Zack with his libidinous friend, but he was at least trustworthy. He just hoped the porn on his computer was password protected, because Zack was certainly smart enough to find it. Assuming of course that Will didn't share it with him outright.

They walked into the apartment, John carrying a small duffle bag full of Zack’s clothes, and Zack carrying his tablet. “I hope you have Wifi,” Zack said.

Zack hardly noticed the decor, but it didn’t escape John. It was definitely Will’s taste, and something out of a B-movie. At least he took down the posters of naked women.

John kneeled down to face his son. “I’ll be back in two days, okay? I promise.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“You’ll still see the eclipse, you’ll just have to see it with Will.”

“We have this awesome patio on the roof that’ll be perfect for it,” his friend chimed in.

“Okay.”

John hugged his son, then got up to leave. He turned to Will. “Thanks buddy. I owe you.”

“Yeah you do, but that’s okay. I'll make sure you make it up to me!”

Seven: School Begins

“Where to now?” John asked his long absent father.

“The eclipse will peak about a hundred miles from here. We can get some of the way by car, but the last twenty miles will be walking.”

John groaned at the idea. When was the last time he had walked twenty miles? It had been a while, and it certainly wasn’t on his list of favourite things in life. “I guess we’d better get going.”

“Oh, we have lots of time. For the walk anyways. I’m more concerned about your training.”

John started the car and off they went.

"I'm starting to get the idea that all this stuff is not just fantasy and legend."

Pan didn't answer him. He was apparently waiting for a question.

"The philosophers stone? Real?"

Pan considered it for a moment. "Yes, but not like you think. The stone wasn't a literal rock that would imbue immortality on anyone who consumed it. It was more a drug that helped to loosen up your preconceptions, leave you open to new ideas. Immortality was not a result of the stone, it was a result of what you learned when you took it."

John grinned. "Sounds great, when do I get to take some?" He said, only half sarcastically.

"As soon as we're in the mountains," his father shot back.

He didn't know if it was a joke or not, but he suspected it wasn't. "You actually have some of this stuff on you?"

Pan nodded. "It comes in handy from time to time. Especially since I haven’t had the Key for a while."

He thought about it for a moment. He wasn't sure if he was ready for immortality. "I don't suppose I have a choice in this?"

Pan actually chuckled. "You know, I remember a man having the exact same reaction when I first told him of the burden I was placing on him and his family. Jessica was only a toddler at the time."

John thought about it. Arthur had sacrificed the freedom of his family to protect the Key. Who was he to complain about the impact to Zack? He sighed. Zack would probably think it was cool. For the first twenty years. After that, all the hiding, all the moving around, John suspected that would take its toll.

Though he had to admit the Walker family seemed to have adjusted to it quite well. He thought about Jessica. She'd been around for over a millennia, what could he possibly have or do that would interest her?

Selfishness, he scolded himself. What was important was to stop whoever or whatever was responsible for the crystal going missing.

"This conjunction, I assume the Walker's will be there?"

"You assume correctly."

John smiled, much as he tried not to.

***

The Key was gone, and not.

Space was a concept held very tightly by the bearers, but not one that the Key found limiting in any way, just as with time.

It watched, again. It sensed the distress that the current bearer felt, but that was not to be avoided. It sensed the other players currently vying for bearership, and watched their activities with a faint interest.

Time was a shifting phenomena, but every once in a while a series of converging probabilities would come into focus, almost independent of time itself.

The Key watched, and waited. It would not wait long.

***

The restaurant was almost, but not quite, empty. Jessica was tired and just wanted the two couples to leave, but years of practice had taught her to at least hide the exhaustion. They were going to close early to leave for the trip.

The trip.

Jessica didn’t know what to think about it. With the Key gone, she didn’t quite see the purpose of heading to the site of the eclipse. It seemed...dangerous. She hadn’t been without it in more than a few hundred years, and now felt naked with it out of arms reach.

At the same time, whoever it was who was out there was probably capable of taking possession of the Key without her present when the eclipse peaked. She couldn't risk that. She had to go, and wanted nothing more than to be gone already.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed what could only be a rental car pull into the lot in front of the restaurant. Four large men got out of it.

***

Sam knew the Key was gone, but he had an idea about that. If he was going to take control of it, having control of the current bearer was going to be his ticket in.

Only four people in the restaurant, outside of the Walkers.

He didn’t want to kill anyone, it would attract too much attention, but he was prepared to if it came to it. But his instructions to his men were no shooting; threaten yes, shoot no. That would be his decision, and his job.

“Let’s go.”

The four of them walked into the restaurant, and instantly drew weapons. The daughter, Jessica, was apparently ready for them.

“Nobody move, nobody get’s hurt,” Derek said loudly, pointing his HK45 pistol directly at Jessica.

Sam noticed she didn’t cower, but kept a wary eye as they spread out around the restaurant. Most people flinch when having a gun pointed at them, and she didn’t even appear to regard it as a threat. Sam moved to the kitchen and kept his weapon trained on the parents, who regarded him with steely glares. The other pistol was hidden under his jacket.

“You don’t want to do this, trust me.” Jessica said to Derek, who was quickly approaching her.

Sam had warned him that she was probably still dangerous, crystal or not. He was right.

Jessica changed her focus to Derek’s gun. The magazine clip released, dropping the magazine to the floor, and at the same time the chamber slid back, releasing the live round. Derek stood dumbfounded, and with an empty gun.

Jessica made a pushing motion at him, and suddenly Derek was flying through the air backwards.

And it was just the distraction Sam needed.

In one smooth motion he removed the second gun from under his jacket, pointed it at Jessica and fired.

The blue dart struck her in the side, and she flinched, turning to Sam to try the same trick on him. Before she could, she collapsed on the floor. Sam turned his attention back to Jessica’s parents.

“Don’t even think about it. If you don’t interfere, she won’t be hurt.” He could see the rage pent up in Arthur’s face. All he could do was dangle the promise of her safe return, it was the only way he knew that would keep him in check, because as sure as he was of Jessica’s power, he was also sure that Arthur had probably spent enough time with the Key to learn some of the same tricks. Of course, these were mere tricks indeed compared to what Sam was capable of.

“If she is hurt, I’m not going to kill you, not quickly. But I will make sure you experience more pain than you can imagine for a very long time.”

Sam grinned at him. He looked at a block holding several knives and focused briefly. All seven knives suddenly jumped out of the block and landed, stuck, into the floor between him and the Walkers.

"If you think you can take me on, old man, you are welcome to try. At the risk of your daughters life, of course."

Sam backed away, then motioned for his two men still standing to gather up Jessica. Derek was just getting up, dazed slightly.

“Let’s go.”

They left, the two men holding Jessica unconscious in the back seat.

***

Catherine’s fingers almost clawed right through Arthur’s arm. “Arty, what are we going to do? We can’t leave Jessica!”

“We’re going to the rendezvous.” Arthur said with that look of steely determination Catherine had not seen for a very long time. “Pan’s around here somewhere, I can feel him. And I don’t imagine he’s left all of this up to chance. He’s going to need our help.”

***

Twelve hours until the moon was to pass in front of the Earth, a rare event arrived that would see an eclipse happen during a peak period of solar activity.

For the past four months the sun had been passing through a highly energetic area of the galaxy, absorbing nearly ten percent more plasma current activity than it was used to. The instability was going to come at a cost. Two massive solar flares were released, and NASA tracked both of them.

Both of them were not pointed at the Earth; had they been, mankind would have been ejected back to the stone age as every electronic and electrical device on the planet fried itself from the additional incoming energy from Earth’s sky.

The additional energy would graze the planet however. The only noticeable damage would be a few localized power outages, surprisingly some of them along the line of the eclipse as the moon would act like a focusing ring for the incoming storm.

One event would go unnoticed by all but a few. The Key knew what was coming, it could sense the buildup of energy the past few months. This was a dangerous time, and it had known that the bearer would be attacked prior to the eclipse. Time was a concept held by the bearer, not by itself. The Key was not sentient, exactly, but it was a focus of energy from other dimensions, other realms of life. It was not sentient, but it could, on occasion, reason.

It also did not take sides, but generally did not like change, which is why the elevated energies of an eclipse were required to change the bearer. All else being equal, it would prefer the company of those like the bearer, or at least closer in temperament.

For the first time in over ten thousand years it would be forced to remove itself in order to protect itself. Last time, the world was plunged into catastrophe as endless streams of meteors and comet fragments plummeted into the Earth, and wiped the civilization that had called itself Atlantis into history. They had been unable to use the Key to protect themselves, and almost ninety percent of all mankind was wiped out in that event. Man had been forced to rebuild literally from scratch.

All because the Key refused to take sides.

It could not sense any incoming meteor storm this time, but it would not have mattered to it in any case.

No, this time the bearer would not have an influence during the crisis.

It would let the two future candidates decide.

But even the Key could be surprised
.

***

John was chilled in front of the fire, blanket or no blanket.

The woods were surprisingly silent this night, no moon to keep the animals awake. “The one thing I never liked about camping,” he said. “Cold food.”

Pan shot him a sideways glance, and a grin. “So don’t eat it cold.”

John thought about it. His head was filled with ideas, swimming, drowning. How the hell do you undo thirty years of wrong-headed teaching? With drugs, it turned out. Not just any drug, the very one that history had called the Philosophers Stone. Philosophers stoned was more like it.

A white powder that Pan put into a bottle of water, and within seconds of John drinking it the world had changed.

The universe was nothing like he knew. The last hundred years of science were a lie, a misdirection. Other dimensions, other densities, the construction of stars, how the galaxy came together...Pan was trying to cram so much into him in such a short period of time he didn’t know if he could take all of it. Or if he believed it. Yet...