9 Tales From Elsewhere 11

by 9 Tales From Elsewhere

  “Broke your shoulder blade? That’s pretty hard to do. You’ve probably just given yourself a good bruising.” She came around the end of the bed, raising gentle hands to probe at his blade. Kevan couldn’t help a cry of pain and his vision spangled again, tears flowing despite his best efforts to stop them. “Okay, you may be right. Don’t move. I’m going to get the PA to help you out of your shirt and into the imaging chamber.” She flashed him a grin. “You aren’t pregnant, are you?” She winked at him when all he could do was stare back at her, nonplussed.

  Getting him into the imaging chamber proved to be the easy part of the process. Getting his shirt off, however, had been a lesson in brutal torture. At least the other infirmary occupants were asleep and didn’t see him spewing into the pan the physician’s assistant thrust under his nose when he couldn’t hold it back anymore. How he managed to keep from passing out was beyond him. Between the shirt removal and the spewing, Kevan couldn’t remember a time when he had ever experienced such pain. It hurt more now than when Jacob had hit him in the first place.

  The PA was gentle, and sympathetic, chatting about current events while running the scanner. Rather than try to get Kevan’s shirt back on, the PA draped it over his shoulders and led the boy back to his bed. He placed a stool down before the bed so Kevan could get himself seated again, then set about immobilizing his arm. Kevan’s belly roiled through the process, but managed to keep from disgracing himself again. The PA finished and strapped an ice pack over his shoulder. The ice gave some relief, and Kevan gave the PA a weak smile in gratitude. The man nodded, and left Kevan to wait for the doctor’s return. Just as Kevan began to wonder if he could figure out how to speed time up to get the doctor back, she appeared, her hands pushed into her coat’s front pockets.

  “Well, young man, let’s start with how this happened, shall we?” The doctor rolled a stool over and sat on it, watching him patiently. The story tumbled out of him: how Jacob blamed him for everything, and how the boy had been getting crueler with his taunts, and then finally this morning following him until they were alone in the hallway to the gym and the single swing Jacob had taken with the pipe. He almost told her about the time stoppage, but didn’t. Later, he wondered why. He and the other nine kids in his class were told every morning during breakfast to report any strange feelings or odd things that happened immediately so that their safety could be carefully monitored.

  The doctor nodded at the end, repeated back Jacob’s name and class number, and handed him a tiny paper cup with two pills in it and a cup of water to wash them down with. Her instructions to get some sleep sounded like the best plan Kevan had ever heard, and he was grateful for her help in getting horizontal. The drugs kicked in before long, and he slipped off into a dreamless sleep.

  Three days later he was released from the infirmary, the fast-heal treatments done. His shoulder was stiff, the muscles tight, but he’d been promised that would work itself out with regular use over the next couple of days. The follow-up imaging showed a complete heal, though the doctor had been mildly surprised by how quickly it had healed. It hadn’t been outside of normal parameters, though, so Kevan had escaped the infirmary without suspicion of his newfound talent. He’d been careful when he practiced that he hadn’t come into contact with anyone. The most difficult task had been learning to how best to hide himself while waiting for a door to open.

  To his chagrin, he’d figured out by the end of his first day that mechanical doors didn’t open for him. Nor would toilets flush, or water fountains flow. Water may as well have been frozen solid for all the good it did him while in stopped time, and food made of stone. The air was thicker, too, which made breathing a lot harder. Looking back on it now, he’d been very lucky that no one had noticed his intermittent absences from the infirmary on the first day. He’d taken his watch off before heading to the gym that day, so he had no way of knowing how many hours he’d added into his days trying to master the stop and start of time flow. The maintenance guys were probably scratching their heads over the random door malfunctions being reported all over the station.

  The day after he’d arrived in the infirmary, the doctor informed him of Jacob’s expulsion and expected return dirtside to face criminal charges. Kevan hadn’t realized until that moment just how afraid he’d been that Jacob would get off scot free, the way he had every other time he’d bullied Kevan. With that fear gone, he’d set off exploring every inch of the station – especially the restricted areas. It was during those explorations that he found where Jacob was being held to await the next shuttle down.

  Jacob’s absence seemed to change everything among Kevan’s classmates over the next two weeks – kids now laughed easily, and most of them tried to include Kevan in their conversations. Many of the kids had been discovering talents such as telekinesis, empathy, and teleportation of small objects over short distances. Two were able to change their size at the molecular level so they could get bigger and smaller, and still others were able to broadcast their thoughts in a small sphere around themselves. Once a kid started to show signs of a talent, they’d get paired up with an older kid with the same talent to coach them on controlling it. Kevan kept quiet about his talent since it didn’t seem as though anyone had a talent anything like his. An outsider again, but this time it was a good thing. If he didn’t admit to it soon, there were sure to be questions about why he was here at all. There were only six other kids left from his class that hadn’t manifested yet. If they didn’t find out he had a talent, they would have to send him home. That’s what everyone said. No talent by your seventeenth birthday means flunking out of St. Zeno’s. If he was lucky that would happen in just a couple of months.

  Kevan was walking to the cafeteria with a couple of boys from his spatial math class when the station floor heaved and shook under his feet, throwing them all to the ground. Without thinking, Kevan stopped time and scrambled back to his feet. The station control room was four levels up on the far side, and he took to his heels. It took going down four corridors before he got to an open lift door. Once inside he pushed open the manual door to the lift’s roof and set to climbing up the shaft. He had to stop to rest at each level, his breathing labored in the thicker air of stopped time.

  His palms slick with sweat, he sidled off the shaft ladder and over to the manual access door. Bracing himself against anymore vibration in the station’s structure, he started time again long enough to unlock the door, then stopped it again. Careful to not swing it too fast and possibly hit someone, Kevan cracked the hatch door open and peered out. The hall was empty though the door to the control room was half open. He closed the lift door, leaving it unlocked, and hurried to the room, squeezing past the crew member going in. It wasn’t until he got to the third workstation that he was able to figure out what had gone wrong. Off the port bow of the station, three unfamiliar vessels were firing missiles at them. One had already struck the station in the docking bay, and five more were less than a kilometer away. The unarmed station could hold out against one hit, but six? By the time the last one impacted, everyone aboard would be dead. Including him.

  Kevan stumbled back and fell to his bottom with a thump, panic holding his throat closed until he had to drag in a breath to stop the spots dancing in his eyes. His options were very limited, from where he sat. He couldn’t live long in stopped time without food or water, but if he started time again the station would be blown apart around them. It’s not like he could ask an adult for help, they’d all be dead in moving time, too. He was going to have to figure this out on his own.

  Kevan left the control room, and wandered the corridors. For two hours - by his watch - he wandered, trying to come up with something, sometimes wondering who was shooting at them. He stopped at a water fountain, his mouth parched from the effort of breathing in stopped air. Desperate, he leaned over the fountain and turned the knob. Nothing happened. He mumbled a plea, and stretched. He jumped back, startled, when water trickled from the fountain. That had never happen
ed before. It was one thing to swing a door on a simple hinge, but something else entirely for a machine with many moving parts to work. He stepped back to the fountain, turned the nob and stretched again. The water trickled, and he bent down to greedily gulp as much as he could. The longer he held himself stretched, the steadier the flow of water got, going from barely a trickle to a respectable stream arching over the porcelain basin. Curious, he let go of the knob and gasped when the water stopped. He stopped stretching and tried the knob again. Nothing. A stretch and it flowed. He stopped stretching and the water stream froze. Taking his hand from knob changed nothing.

  He scanned the corridor, anxious to see what else he could do, and his eye caught an open dormitory door. An older kid was about to hit the deck on his side, and Kevan tiptoed through his legs to get past him. About halfway down the bunk row, a girl was holding a granola bar. Stopped time had caught her chewing a mouthful, one check rounded like a hamster’s. Gingerly, Kevan reached out and tried to pinch off a piece. No luck. With the granola bar still between his thumb and forefinger, he stretched and broke off a piece. Triumph thrummed through him and he popped the piece into his mouth. Wary of a broken tooth, he bit down slowly and then almost choked in his excitement when he was able to chew it.

  Hope stirring in his chest, he turned and settled to the floor to lean against the bunk, lowering his chin to his arms crossed over his bent knees. Now he just had to figure out how far he could extend the envelope of moving time from himself. He’d catch his breath here, stretching to make it easier, then his next order of business would be getting something to eat. It would be easier to work out a plan if his grinding belly wasn’t distracting him.

  Sixteen hours later, Kevan backed away from the second last escape pod’s closed hatch. He rubbed his eyes until spots flickered behind his lids, his fingers straining the bandages he’d wrapped around his hand in an effort to blunt the pain of burst and bleeding blisters. It was getting harder to hold the envelope open enough to surround a companion, and the relief of letting the envelope go this time had been almost painful. One last pod to load, twelve more times he’d have to explain what was happening to a stopped time companion. His stomach rumbled a complaint, diverting him from his burning eyes. He needed a break before fatigue overtook him, and food to boost his blood sugar was in order.

  Kevan set off for the cafeteria, the empty halls both unsettling and comforting, compartment doors all open like silently screaming mouths. Not even his footsteps echoed in the perfect silence, only the sound of his own breathing, and the pulse of blood in his ears. He sat at one of the empty tables, a loaded tray abandoned by a boy he’d loaded into a pod hours ago making his mouth water, and fished the bottle of Adderall he’d swiped from the infirmary earlier. He dribbled out a thirty milligram dose, and popped them into his mouth. A mouthful of grape juice helped wash them down, and he tucked in to the toast on the tray. The scrambled eggs went next, followed by the bacon. Realizing he’d been cramming the food into his mouth, he forced himself to slow down on the pancakes, eating small bites and clearing his mouth before taking the next bite. He hoped the Adderall would kick in before he finished eating; he was too tired to keep stretching without the chemical help. The unwelcome thought that the cafeteria wasn’t the last place to be evacuated popped into his head again. Resolutely, he pushed it aside. Since there was no way he was going to evacuate that place, the cafeteria would be the end of it. Truth depended on perspective, and that was his perspective.

  Resisting the temptation to let his eyes close, he shook his head and jammed in the next mouthful of pancake. At no point during his time in the school had he ever been able to complain that the food wasn’t good. The pancakes were light, fluffy, and the syrup they were soaking in sweet and sticky. Better than his mom made, but he’d never tell her that since she was so proud of her Saturday morning pancakes.

  At last he stared at the empty tray and debated pulling over the next tray. He was hungry enough to empty it, but he wasn’t sure how well he’d be able to keep himself from emptying his overfull stomach during re-entry. Deciding on a compromise, he grabbed the apple from the tray and munched on that, forcing himself to go slowly. Finally, he noticed his heartrate increasing, and a mild euphoria infusing him. Time to get back to work. He dumped the half-eaten apple back on the tray and got to his feet.

  He squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. Determined to get this done as quickly as possible, he went to the table at the far end of the room and took the closest kid’s arm. Stretching, he pushed his envelope around the girl, startled as always when she took a breath in the unnatural silence of stopped time. She was a little quicker than most to catch on, and spun on the bench to look up at Kevan.

  “What’s happening?” she asked, her eyes wide and darting from his face to, what to her, would be a suddenly empty cafeteria.

  “The station is being attacked. Nobody knows who it is. I’ve stopped time to get everyone to escape pods. It’s your turn now.” Kevan pulled on her arm, and she responded, rising to her feet, swallowing visibly. She looked around again at the absolute stillness of the room, and nodded jerkily, letting him pull her along behind him.

  “Where is everybody?” the girl asked, trotting along beside him without resistance.

  “I’m almost done getting everyone into the pods. The principal and teachers I did pretty early so they could help me figure out how to get the pods pre-flighted.” Kevan guided her to the lift shaft two corridors over and snapped one of the two safety ropes he’d rigged to her belt. If she fell, he wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop it, and she’d just be hanging there in space outside his envelope with no way for him to get her back to the ladder. He snapped the other onto his own belt and tried not to think about what would happen if he fell.

  “If you’ve stopped time, why are you hurrying me? “ The girl tried to pull her arm free when he hauled her behind him to the ladder.

  “I’ve got to sleep sometime, and I’m afraid of what will happen if I do. It’s not something I’ve been able to figure out all by myself, and now isn’t the best time to do it.” It took everything Kevan had to not snap – it was the first time she’d asked that question, after all. How was she supposed to know he’d already answered it countless times?

  “If you let me go, I’m sure both of us will climb faster,” she said, as if he hadn’t thought of it moving up each and every rung. Part of why he’d left the cafeteria to the end was because it was only one floor up to the escape pods. His left arm shook again - despite the break - from pulling himself against the ladder while he pushed himself up each rung with his legs, his hands almost useless after the endless hours of gripping the rungs.

  “If I could do this without touching you, I would,” he said, trying to drum up a spark of indignation but all he felt was exhaustion. Obviously the girl heard it, for she made no further complaints.

  They left the shaft and, still holding her arm, he guided her to the only pod with its hatch open. He urged her to a deeply cushioned seat and helped her fasten the straps. The girl set about tightening the straps to fit, while he swayed on his feet, waiting. He nodded to her, and leaned away to let her go when she reached over to press his hand against her arm.

  “Wait. What’s your name? I think it’s important to know who saved my life,” she said, her clear blue eyes meeting his without blinking.

  “Kevan. Kevan Abbot,” he said, pulling away from her. He let go and she froze, lips parted as if she was about to say something more. He had to move on if he was going to get this done before he collapsed.

  Finally, the remaining eleven residents had been loaded into the escape pod and strapped in. He stood facing out the last pod hatch, his hand hovering over the control switch, doubts punching holes in him. For months he’d dealt with Jacob’s brutality, witnessed the boy berate others, suffered helpless rage when complaint after complaint had only produced deaf ears amongst the school administrators.

  Now, was the moment o
f choice. Now he could choose whether to offer Jacob redemption and save his life, or pass judgement and leave him behind to his death. There were enough seats left here in the pod. Kevan could go back for him. If he did nothing, would that be murder? After all, Kevan hadn’t fired the missiles. Nor had he confined Jacob in solitary. Jacob would have perhaps seconds to realize that he was going to die, and then die painlessly when the reactor failed as it was bound to do. That was probably more than he deserved considering how much pain he’d given others. On the other hand, could Kevan live with knowing he had deliberately let someone die? Through the whole evacuation process he’d avoided thinking beyond this point. Now he had to face it and make a decision. His eyelids drooped down of their own volition. He couldn’t help it. They were so heavy.

  Screaming sirens and flashing lights brought him sharply awake. Someone was screaming at him to close the door, and he slammed his hand against the switch. The floor heaved to another missile strike and he fell hard. The decking thrummed with the docking clamp’s release, then vibrated when the drive engine engaged. He had less than two seconds to get to his seat before the pod was free from the station’s gravity field. That thought propelled him from the floor and most of the way to his seat, momentum carrying him the rest of the way after the escape pod cleared the station’s gravity field.

  Kevan swung himself into the seat and strapped himself in, his heart thumping in his chest. Despite the adrenaline coursing through him, his head fell forward and unconsciousness rescued him from having to think at all.

  THE END.

  MOUNTAIN OF SILVER DUST by Robert Lampros