A hum grew into a roar, drowning out the sounds of nature and imminent death outside. Over the crackle, Lorelei shouted, “You see, now? We can go anywhere. We can fix what he’s done.”
“Fix what?” Keene said, his tongue thick with fatigue and the urge to sleep. “There’s nothing to fix.” The pain overwhelmed him. He dropped to his knees.
“There’s everything to fix,” Lorelei said. Keene continued his arduous journey into the chilly darkness separating him from his sister. His ribs smarting, Keene managed to crawl into the outskirts of the light.
Lorelei’s finger lingered over a small button on the side of the wall. It began to glow with a fierce blue reminiscent of the statue’s eyes—except far, far more powerful. He turned around, seeing a shining column of light coming down the stairs. Apparently the silver ship was exhibiting this fantastic illumination as well.
“What the hell are you going to do?” Keene said, the roar breaking into a crescendo of white noise.
“I’m gonna fix everything bad that’s ever happened because of that Timekeeper bastard,” Lorelei said. “And then I’m going home.”
“You can’t fix what’s already dead.”
“You can when you have a time machine.”
Keene heard a faint click in the sea of sound, just before the blue glow devoured the room.
35 | The Chronological Council
Keene opened one eye, his retinas still burning from the sudden flash. The power of the blue light had been exponentially larger than the brief burst emitted in Franz’s lab. Apparently this time ship was the real deal—or at least pretended to be.
Footsteps pattered through the water.
“Lei? You can’t do this.” Whatever this was. Keene didn’t even know where Lei had directed the ship. Hopefully as far from the pirate queen as possible. Although it looked like one danger was simply being swapped for another.
No answer came. The footsteps grew further away.
Keene gritted his teeth and staggered to his feet. A dim glow from the back of the room illuminated the pathway to the stairs. He glanced back, hoping that, perhaps, his sister had left the Pendulum behind.
She had left pieces, but the fusion cores were missing. The Silver Songbird was grounded until he got them back. Keene limped up the stairs and collapsed. Linus and Theodora still tended to Strike in the corner.
“Where’d she go?” Keene said, each word unsteady.
“Lorelei just rushed out, dude,” Linus said.
“You go outside yet?”
“She’s not doing well,” Theodora said. “Fever has set in.” She mopped Strike’s brow with a piece of fabric torn from her dress.
“So that’s a no, I take it.” Keene gasped, each breath unseating and reseating his busted rib. If he was the picture of health in comparison to Strike, then this mission already looked like a failure. A thin trickle of blood dripped down from his bare collarbone, streaking his torso a faint shade of red.
He pursed his lips together and stared at the silver ceiling. A little blurry, but his vision would do all right. He closed his eyes, activating the neural implants. Diagnostics booted up. He selected the thermal imaging.
They weren’t kidding about Strike’s body temperature. It was difficult to get an accurate reading, but her heat signature glowed almost red, whereas Linus and Theodora’s were much friendlier shades of orange and yellow.
Keene closed his eyes and shut down the implants.
He propped his arm up against the slick wall and pushed himself to his feet.
“What about our friend Ching Shih?” It hadn’t even registered that her unconscious body wasn’t in the cabin until this moment. An unsettled wave of panic boiled up from Keene’s abdomen. That was too damn much. A dying friend, his sister gone rogue and a pirate queen still on the loose?
He wasn’t sure he could handle that.
Keene breathed an audible sigh of relief—forceful enough that his ribs actually popped like a soda top—when Linus said, “We tossed her overboard when she woke up.”
“Before or after the flash?”
“A little before,” Linus said. “What the hell was that, anyway?”
“I’ll let you know when I do.”
Keene limped towards the cabin door. It took both hands and seemingly all his energy to pull it open. At least there was no pirate queen to deal with. She could continue to terrorize the nineteenth century instead of Keene.
The ship was now on land, much as it had been originally, deep within the man-made cave. Except its current lodgings were much sleeker.
Keene stared at the all-white room. It was difficult to tell how large it was, since the gleaming lights and immaculate paint job gave him the sensation of being trapped in ether. He dragged his aching body towards the side of the ship and looked down.
Seawater and dirt stained the once-pristine ground. A dirty set of footsteps led across the antiseptic room, the strides long, disappearing at an exit marked only by the blackened handprint Lorelei had left behind.
Keene slid down the ladder and followed the path. He pressed against the door, and it slid open with a friendly chime. The connecting hallway was also all-white, marred only by Lorelei’s intrusive footprints. However, on one side of the hall stood a row of glass cubicles.
All empty of personnel, filled with boring office sundries. Cheap particle board desks, ergonomic keyboards, chafing leather chairs.
Keene leaned against the glass, streaking the panes with blood and grime. When he looked back, he saw that his stains had been removed. The windows were self-cleaning, although the floors were not.
Lorelei’s footsteps led to the end of the hall, disappearing around a corner.
So far away.
Keene banged the back of his head softly against the glass, cursing the rest of the journey. It might as well have been a trip across the desert without water or food. And what could he even do in his current condition when he caught up with Lei?
He hoped that this place had good security, although the thought of that made his throat constrict a little. Not for his sake, but for hers.
Keene pushed off the glass to get a little momentum and tried to keep walking. His steps grew shorter, his breaths more shallow.
So damn long.
He barely had the energy to even wonder what this place was. If only Fox were still alive. These were the types of moments she would swoop in, save him from certain death. The goddess in the machine. But now he had to assume her mantle, make sure things turned out all right. And Keene didn’t know if he was up to it.
He knelt down, staring at the floor, the never-ending line of footprints.
One of the glass doors swung open, and his heart leapt. The cubicle had been empty. Keene noticed a faint shimmer wash over the glass, and the scene changed. Instead of a drab office, he saw a portal to another world.
A familiar cabin in the middle of the Chinese countryside, silent and still. A nearby lake. In the far background, a wagon pulled by horses over a dirt road.
Keene looked away from the glass, up at the person who had emerged.
“You,” he said to the monk from the pagoda, “but how?”
The man offered Keene his hand. He lifted the space-pirate upwards as if Keene weighed no more than a bag of feathers.
“All shall be explained.” He propped Keene up, and together they worked their way through the corridors. With the monk’s help, Keene found that they were actually quite short, this strange all-white environment fairly compact.
They came to a final door, larger than the rest.
The footsteps stopped in front of it.
“We’re not travelling back again, right,” Keene said.
“It is time for the water,” the monk said. He reached out. Keene jerked on his shirt sleeve, and the man stopped.
“Your nam
e.”
“You are Keene,” the man said with a beatific smile. “I am Keene. We are all Keene.”
“No.” Keene shouted unintentionally.
The man smiled wider. “Fair enough. Call me…Chen.” He narrowed his eyes, so that they formed greedy little beads, then opened them to their normal resting place. The contrast was startling. Then he waved his hands in the air, his robes slipping slightly to display sinewy forearms. “Or Ben. And this is the Chronological Council.”
“You’re not Chen.”
“See,” Chen replied, and then pressed open the door. “You are understanding.”
“Understanding what?”
“We are all water. This will explain everything.” He slipped a small object into Keene’s pocket. Keene shut his eyes as they were bombarded with a familiar blue light. He felt two strong hands on his back push him forwards.
The door swung shut and the monk was gone.
36 | The Use of Water
The room was small, no larger than fifteen feet square, its architecture similar to the rest of the facility. Lorelei worked at the console in the center, blue light streaming from its top. She had glance at Keene when he had stumbled in, but then had quickly returned to her activity at the brushed steel controls. Little lights of different colors—some blue, others red—flashed intermittently from its surface, briefly punctuating the swirling blue.
“You gotta stop, Lei,” Keene said, even though, at this point, he wasn’t even sure what the right move was. Life could be like that sometimes. Saving the world even more so. Tough decisions with untold consequences. And never all the information. Not even close.
“Don’t try to stop me, Kip.” Lorelei darted back and forth in front of the console, flicking switches and typing in commands. “I’m going to make it so none of this ever happened.”
“That’s not how life works.”
“Says who?” She looked up, her hands hovering over the flashing panels. A soft whine now accompanied the massive burst of blue light. “You?”
“I’m not gonna fight you,” Keene said. He limped towards the middle of the room, resting his head on the console’s top. This made him about level with Lorelei’s navel. He sighed, his limbs shaking. “I’m too tired.”
He heard more clicking and activity as she said, “Good. Because you can’t win this time.”
“You remember,” Keene said, “back when Mom and Dad died? I did take care of you.” He coughed. His tongue tasted slightly like copper. “And I tried to keep you away from Dash.”
He laughed, and his ribs revolted, the pain barking at him to stop. But he gave a few more chuckles anyway.
“You did all right.”
“Couldn’t keep you away from Dash,” Keene said. “Derek was a real son of a bitch like that, you know. Figured he would break your heart some other way. Didn’t figure it’d be by dying.”
“I can get him back.” Her voice was hushed. “I have to get him back. All of it.”
“That’s not how it works,” Keene said. “You can’t avoid the pain. It’s just part of the deal.”
“I can avoid this pain.”
“One day or another, you’ll have to deal with it,” Keene said. “And right now, it’s not too late.”
“Not too late for what?”
“To escape with a piece of yourself intact.” He limped around the side of the console, so that he was face-to-face with his sister. Her hand hovered over a touch-screen command that he could read. But Keene understood what she was deliberating about.
His fingers felt around in his jeans. The monk had actually slipped two objects within. One felt like a flash drive. The other was a strange rod shaped like a straw.
Keene snaked it out and held it out in his palm.
This was gold. Pure gold, it seemed. He rolled it around in his palm. A little window running through the center, like the slit in a thermometer, showed that the strange object was filled with what looked like water. It came with no instructions.
Lorelei’s hand still sat frozen in mid-air over the console.
Keene’s gaze fell on the panels. On his side, there was a single circular slot. About the size of the golden rod.
In a smooth motion, using the last of his remaining energy, Keene jammed it into the opening. Lorelei turned towards him, her mouth agape, like she’d been gut-punched by a sudden betrayal. Keene didn’t know what he’d just done.
But he had to have faith that water could be used to cleanse instead of destroy.
A giant flash of white light erupted from the console just as Keene’s head banged off the hard metal.
37 | Home
“Hey,” Linus said. “Wake up. Earth to sleepy.”
Keene’s eyes fluttered open. The grass beneath his head felt soft. A familiar lake stared back at him, a snow-capped mountain standing watch behind it in the distance.
“We’re back in Cotopaxi?” Keene sat up, whipping his head about frantically. “What happened to the ship? Lorelei? Are you real? What—”
The surprise of being alive wore off, and a number of sharp pains jolted through his body. Keene slumped back into the grass, his collarbone, ribs and shins all screaming at him.
“The whole place just went haywire,” Linus said. “White bursts of light all over the place. Warning sirens. Something about imminent destruction over the intercom, dude.”
“Everything hurts.”
“Yeah, we called in the medivac,” Linus said. He jerked a thumb to his side. Keene wasn’t willing to look, though. The cost of doing that was way too high. “Striker’s not doing so good, man.”
“She’ll be all right,” Keene heard Lorelei say. A chopper sounded in the distance.
He closed his eyes.
Kip Keene awoke two days later to the sound of screeching wheels.
“No,” he said. “More morphine. Need to sleep.”
“If I’m awake, you sure as hell don’t get a pass,” Strike said. “I was shot. Were you shot?”
“I got stabbed a couple times.”
“I’ll take that as a no, I haven’t been shot, and I’m just a big whiner.” Her wheelchair bumped into the foot of Keene’s bed. “They say I’m not allowed to walk for a couple more days. Tear out my staples.”
“They give you a lampshade, too?”
“Hilarious.” Strike took something from her lap and tossed it at Keene before he could protest. A notebook computer landed on his stomach, right on his cracked ribs. “Oh, I’m sorry, did that hurt?”
“Not at all,” he said through clenched teeth. “What’s this?”
“Explains what happened,” Strike said. “If you want to know.”
“Can I get a summary?”
“We saved history,” Strike said. “But no more time travel.”
“Big loss,” Keene said. “I’m good on seeing Ching Shih again.” He coughed. “What about Theodora?”
“Our madam friend stayed in Cotopaxi, so I’m told. She’ll be around. Fascinated by Franz’s work. I think his wife’s jealous.”
“Wouldn’t want to get on Maria’s bad side.”
“Tell me about it,” Strike said. A nurse came into the room. When her eyes fell on Strike, a stern expression crossed her face.
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” the nurse said.
“Yeah, well I don’t do rules too well. Check my file.”
“You’ll tear out your staples. Get back to bed.” The nurse, a plump middle-aged woman with graying hair, crossed her arms like a schoolteacher reprimanding a particularly disobedient child. “I’ll call the doctor.”
“Oh no, not the doctor,” Strike said. She began wheeling out of the room. “See ya, Keene. We still got a couple things to hash out when you stop being a big puss and can walk again.”
“Like what?”
“Well, Mom’s kinda pissed that her yacht disappeared. And we’re broke again, I think.”
“Hey, Strike?”
The blonde woman paused in the doorway, her hands perched on top of the wheel wells. “Yeah, buddy?”
“I’m glad you made it.”
“Back at ya.”
Keene heard the screeching wheels grow fainter and fainter. Then he opened the laptop and clicked play on the video already onscreen. The USB thumb drive plugged into the side glowed.
Chen—or the monk, or whoever it was—appeared on screen. He was at the top of the pagoda, overlooking the Grey Isle. A small array of sensors flashed behind him. He had a large smile on his face.
“Hello, Mr. Keene. I am Ben, the leader of the Chronological Council. I understand that you have some questions about what has transpired. If you are watching this video, then you have survived your ordeal and made it back to the present intact. Thus, I offer you my heart-felt congratulations. We first learned of our former colleague’s—whom you know as the Timekeeper—alterations to the timeline when your yacht suddenly burst into nineteenth century Guangzhou. Such a large anachronism greatly disrupts our sensitive instruments. The Chronological Council immediately determined that you, your compatriots and your sister should be dispatched to preserve the integrity of the inflection point. I begged them for the chance to perform the execution. They agreed, and I was sent back.
“I suppose I should explain our purpose. The Chronological Council is responsible for watching over time’s inflection points, of which there are twenty. We are to keep them from tampering, our missive being to preserve the historical timeline. Each of those glass rooms disguised as cubicles—were any visitors to stumble upon our headquarters—was a direct entrance to an inflection point.
“This being our missive, I decided that there was only one way to truly preserve history from meddling. This required some subtle meddling of my own, unfortunately. As I was leader of the Council, I was privy to inner circle information—such as the fact that we’d recently discovered the Silver Songbird in nineteenth century Guangzhou, hidden off the coast in a secret cavern in the Grey Isle.
The Kip Keene Box Set: Books 1, 2 & 3 Page 48
