The World Keepers 7

by Ty The Hunter

  “What the heck?” I say to Thomas.

  He doesn’t respond, so I look over at him. He’s looking at the kitchen, where our Dad has moved away from the fridge and is making his way back to the living room.

  “About ready for me to start the match?” Thomas asks him.

  He’s chill about it, but I can hear the quaver in his voice. That was way too close for comfort.

  “Almost, Thomas. Give me a second to hit the head, and I’ll be back.” my Dad replies.

  He walks into the hallway and no sooner disappears from sight when the screen goes from black to grey fuzziness again. The video is back, the nurse and shuffling patient are standing in the doorway, looking as though they are getting ready to make their way into the corridor outside the room.

  The nurse moves ahead, walking outside the room to where a wheelchair waits along the wall. He (I can tell it’s a man now for sure) comes back to the patient. Placing both hands on the patient’s shoulders, he turns him or her to face back in the room so he can nudge the seat of the wheelchair up to the patient’s legs.

  The patient sits down, head hanging low, lank hair obscuring any features. From this angle, we can see that the hair is very long. The patient must be a girl.

  Once the nurse has the patient situated, he walks out of the room, turns around to grasp the handles of the wheelchair, and proceeds to back the chair out of the doorway. Just before he moves to turn the chair into the hallway, the patient looks up, her eyes going straight to the camera.

  It’s Kat.

  “Kat!” Thomas says. He runs up to the TV screen, his nose almost touching the glass.

  “Kat, where are you!?” He’s doing that soft yell again, trying to make sure our parents don’t hear.

  “She can’t hear you, Thomas.” I try to tell him, but it comes out more like a croak. My mouth has gone dry, my tongue feels like sandpaper, and my heart is beating so hard, I can hear the “WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH!” of it in my ears.

  What is going on? What have Thomas and I gotten involved with? All I can think of is that man, the one on the lifeboat. He was able to come into the game, to Jump in, like I do. Not only that, he was able to take Kat with him. She didn’t even try to fight. Why didn’t she try to fight?

  “It’s because she knew it would be pointless.” my brain replies to the question I never asked out loud.

  I know it’s true. She didn’t fight because she knew she wouldn’t win. She spent all this time helping Thomas and I because she knows we’re her only hope.

  I sit back down on the couch. I might be sick. I really might be sick. What are they doing to her in that place!?! What would they do to us in that place? When will they come for us? Can we avoid it?

  Somehow, I doubt it.

  Hanging my head between my knees, I gather my wits, knowing my Dad is going to be back in the room any second.

  Thomas is still standing there, looking at the TV. The nurse has successfully backed the wheelchair out of the room and pushed it down the hallway. Kat’s gone, but the video continues to play, and Thomas cranes his head to the side, as though he can look down the hall, in the direction she went, if he tries hard enough.

  A noise brings my attention back to the present. I look up and see my Dad coming out of the bathroom. I’m scrabbling for the TV remote so I can turn it off before he sees, but there’s no need. Almost as soon as I catch sight of my Dad, the picture on the screen flicks back to the video game.

  “Thomas, what are you doing?” My Dad asks.

  Thomas steps back from the TV screen.

  “Oh, there was a smudge, I wiped it clean with my shirt sleeve.” he says as he resumes his seat in the camp chair on the floor.

  “Good man.” my dad replies. “Start it up.” he tells Thomas, indicating the game they were playing.

  There’s a long pause, and then Thomas replies, “Nah, I’m good. I think I’m going to read for awhile, then hit the sack.”

  He gets up out of the camp chair, places his controller on the entertainment center, and stands there, staring blankly at the TV screen.

  “Everything okay?” my Dad asks. He leans a bit forward in his chair, ready to stand up and help.

  “What?” Thomas seems to shake himself. “No, I’m fine, just tired. Night Dad.”

  He walks out of the room slowly, staring down at the floor. His shoulder bumps the hallway corner hard as he heads to his room, but he doesn’t even flinch, like he didn’t even notice.

  “Do you want to play, Jed?” my Dad asks me. I know he’s just being nice, this really isn’t my game, and I’m awful at it, but he’ll play with me if I want to.

  “No, I think I’ll go read with Thomas for a bit, but thanks.” I lay my book on the couch, and start walking toward the hallway.

  “You forgot your book.” My Dad says.

  When I turn around to get it, he’s staring at me, like he knows something is up.

  “Jed, you know if there’s anything you want to talk about, your Mom and I are always here, no matter what it is.”

  I pick up my book and stand behind our dark leather sofa, looking back at my Dad. He’d never believe me, I know it. I know there’s no point in even thinking about telling him the truth. All the same, at this moment, I want nothing more than to hand the problem to him and have him tell me that he’ll take care of it.

  It’s a selfish thought, and I know it. What if he got hurt? What if my Mom got hurt? The people who took Kat are powerful, and my parents are just…..normal. I’d never be able to live with myself if they came to harm because of this.

  “I know, Dad.” I say, smiling. “Everything’s good, though, I promise.”

  I tell my lie, then I turn my back on him, and walk toward Thomas’s room.

  “What are we going to do?” I ask Thomas.

  He’s laying on his bunk, staring at the ceiling, spinning one of the little planets my Dad hung for him years ago.

  “I have no idea.” he says. “What are we supposed to do? We can’t get online. We have no electronics. There’s NOTHING we can do!”

  He gets pretty loud at the end of the sentence, and I glance toward the door, wondering if his outburst will attract attention.

  “We’ve been grounded for four days. Surely it can’t last much longer.” I say.

  Mom never grounds us for this long. I know she’s upset about having to shave the dog, but I also know she tries to understand that sometimes young boys do foolish things.

  “So then what?” Thomas asks. “We get ungrounded, and then what?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrug. I mean, I’m the 10-year-old here, he’s the older brother, shouldn’t he have a plan?

  “I guess we log back into the game and see what we can figure out. Maybe she’s also been leaving messages for Adrian and Carina. Maybe they have more information that they can share with us?”

  I know it’s a long shot, but it’s the best I can come up with, and I don’t think we can do anything until we can get back online, that’s just how it is.

  Thomas lays there, saying nothing. I sit there, staring at Thomas and thinking about the messages Kat has sent so far. I’m at a loss. Until we can get online, we can’t do anything. We’re just going to have to wait it out.

  Footsteps in the hallway signal that one of my parents is heading to Thomas’s room, so I open my book. Thomas grabs his book from under his pillow, and we’re both fully engaged in “I was just sitting here reading.” mode when my Mom walks in.

  “Hey boys, Thomas has his parkour class tonight, don’t forget.”

  I totally forgot. He takes this class once a week where this total ninja of a teacher teaches him how to climb walls, do flips, and jump over things.

  #lifeskills

  I figure Mom just has him in there so she can tire him out!

  “Jed, do you want to go with us, or are you going to stay home with Dad?” she asks.

  “I’ll go with you guys.” I say.

  Nothing against the class, bu
t it’s held in a gym, and it smells like sweaty socks, body odor, and stinky feet. That said, maybe some one-on-one time with Mom will soften her up and convince her to let us off grounding.

  “Alright.” She says. “Thomas, get ready, we’re leaving in 5 minutes.” She leaves the room, closing the door behind her.

  Thomas climbs down from his bunk, grabs his gym shorts from his closet, and goes to the hall bathroom to get changed. I head to my room, pull on my socks and shoes, then head to the car, where my mom is waiting for us.

  I sit in the 2nd row, Thomas calls shotgun, and we pull out of the garage.

  We live on acres and acres of land, so the driveway is super long, it’s all fenced, and there’s a gate to the street, keeping our dogs in, and ALLLLL of the neighbor dogs out. At the end of the driveway, Mom pulls the car out of the gate, then puts it in park as the gate closes behind our car.

  “I need to stick some stuff in the mail, be right back.” she tells us.

  She climbs out, shuts the door, and walks off toward the mailbox.

  This is when the 3rd message shows up.

  Does your parent’s car have a GPS system? You know, the screen that sits in the middle of the dashboard? Sometimes it has a map on it, or the station of music you’re listening to, or maybe a camera showing the back view of your car? We have one in our car. Usually, the screen shows a map. When Mom got out of the car, it was showing a map.

  For like 2 seconds.

  I’m watching her walk to the mailbox, and out of the corner of my eye, I see the GPS screen black out. I don’t think anything of it, because who really knows the inner workings of these cars.

  Then it starts with the grey fuzzy static. I noticed that for sure.

  “Thomas, the GPS screen.” I say to my brother.

  He must hear the urgency, the disquiet in my voice because he snaps his head around, looking at the little computer set in the middle of the dashboard. On the screen, another video appears. This time, there is sound as well.

  We are watching the same male nurse, and the same wasted, malnourished looking patient….Kat….it’s definitely her. She is being pushed into a room, but not the one she was being led away from earlier. This room is different. There are gigantic, man-sized tubes filled with liquid, lining the walls. There are….things in those tubes, but I can’t tell what they are, and I’m quite sure I don’t want to know.

  A massive bank of computers sits on one end of the room, near the door. I can’t tell what’s on the other end, because that's where the camera is, positioned high on the wall, toward the ceiling, same as last time.

  In the middle of the room, there is a hospital bed surrounded by machines. One looks like the thing that monitors a person’s heart rate, oxygen saturation, stuff like that. Another machine, on the other side of the bed, is not anything I’ve ever seen before. It has tubes and wires protruding from it, and on top of it sits a large, clear container full of some sort of liquid. Since the video is black and white, I can’t tell what color the liquid is, but based on the way it sloshes when the machine is bumped, it’s too thick to be water.

  The nurse helps Kat from the wheelchair, and into the hospital bed. She’s only wearing a hospital gown that is short sleeved and comes just past her knees. I find myself wondering if she’s cold. The entire room looks like it’s freezing, sterile, even the sheets on the bed probably feel like ice against the skin.

  Can her body heat compete with the air? Somehow, I doubt it.

  I imagine that I can hear the air conditioner pumping through the large, circular vents I see overhead. There is a yellow, plastic strip secured to one of the vents, and it stands almost straight out with the force of the air being pushed continuously through. No doubt, it's keeping the environment chilly, creating a hostile space for any warmth and moisture seeking bacteria.

  He lays her straight, very gently, and arranges her hands tight to her sides. Then he pulls the sheet and blanket up over her bare legs and arms, so only her head and shoulders are visible.

  He moves her around like she weighs nothing, and I know that she must be very slight. This is not the Kat I’ve seen in the game. That version of her is healthy, maybe what she looked like before…...before whatever this is, happened to her.

  Another man walks in to view, and I immediately recognize him as the Jumper on the lifeboat, the one who pulled Kat into the portal with him. He reaches down and bends over a bit to retrieve something from the side of the bed, then he leans over her, and repeats the motion on the other side. When he straightens up, I realize what he’s doing.

  Kat is being strapped down.

  Two thick leather bands are gathered in his hands. Each is attached at one end to a side of the bed, already buckled around the glinting metal of the frame. The shorter side has a shiny metal buckle hanging from it. The longer side is just leather with intermittent holes punctured through. He loops the long end through the buckle, pulls the belt away from him to tighten it, and slips the buckle peg through a hole. Then he pushes the rest of the long end through the buckle end, securing it out of the way. He’s very efficient, taking no more time that you or I would take to put on a belt.

  Moving to the middle of the bed, he repeats the process. The male nurse steps into the shot and moves to the end of the bed, doing the same thing there. They move out of the camera’s angle, and all we see is Kat, laying completely still, secured to the hospital bed in three places.

  Portal man comes back in to view and stands near Kat’s head, leaning down, as though to speak to her.

  “Katrina,” he says, softly, “tell me what you’ve told the other Jumpers.”

  Kat doesn’t respond. Her eyes are closed, she appears to be asleep, or…..No, I can’t even think about that.

  “Katrina,” he repeats, “did you tell them how to get into the game?”

  No response.

  “Did you tell them about the beacons, how to use them?” He strokes her hair from her face, and I see her flinch away from him.

  “Where are the beacons, Katrina? Which Jumper has them?” he asks.

  She still doesn’t respond.

  He gives a small, exasperated sigh, then straightens up, away from her ear.

  “It doesn’t matter, dear. It’s okay, I’ll find them. I always find them.” He turns away from Kat, moves to the machine with the huge vat of fluid attached to it, and flips a switch. The machine hums to life, lights flash, it starts to beep, and the liquid inside the vat begins to bubble in slow, turbulent, waves.

  Portal man turns to the nurse, indicating that he should come to the machine. “She doesn’t have much time left, let’s get this done before she dies.” he says, dispassionately.

  Then the screen goes black.

  The ride to Thomas’s class is unbearably slow. I want to talk to him so badly. I’m sure he feels the same way judging by the glances he keeps giving me in the rearview mirror. There’s no way to do anything with Mom in the car.

  An audiobook is playing over the speakers. My Mom loves those things. I think it’s her way of broadening our horizons, forcing a little history or something on us when we have no choice but to listen.

  Sometimes it’s stuff I can really get into, military history, naval battles, the Civil War, etc. Sometimes it’s stories about big disasters, like the Johnstown Flood, that one was fascinating.

  This book is about people who have defected from North Korea. I don’t know much about North Korea, but it sounds like an awful place. It definitely doesn’t lift my spirits. All I can think of is Kat and what she’s going through.

  How long has she been there? Have I ever talked to her when she wasn’t a prisoner in that place? Why has she never said anything? I've played in so many games with her, and she never said a word. Why didn’t she ask for help?

  That thought is followed quickly by another. What would I have been able to do if she had asked for help? Nothing. I guess she probably knew that.

  Instead of asking us to get her out of there, she
decided to do something she thought would be better, more efficient. She found us and tried to teach us about what we are, what we could do. If we were stronger, we’d be more effective, and we’d stand a better chance of saving her.

  It’s bigger than that, though. If she taught us what we were, introduced us to people like us, we’d have a better chance of stopping this evil at its source. That’s what she wants, I know it. That makes sense to me, and I feel a little better. Kat DOES want us to help her, that much is clear. We just have to figure out how to get it done.

  I have no idea how Thomas made it through his class, but he did, jumping and flipping and climbing walls like it was just any other day, like we hadn’t watched Kat get subjected to…...whatever that was. For every bit of calm and collected he had, I had an equal amount of nervous energy and jitters.

  “Jed, are you alright?” my mom asked me at one point.

  Her question startles me a bit. I was so “in my own head” that I sort of forgot where I was, or that I needed to do a bit better job of acting normal.

  I’d been sitting on the wooden bleacher benches in front of the giant window (they have this type of seating, even though the class is held inside), watching Thomas and bouncing my knees up and down, my feet firmly planted on the bench in front of me.

  I stopped fidgeting, forcing my legs to go still.

  “Yeah, I’m fine, just thinking.” I replied, looking up at her and shrugging my shoulders.

  “You know you didn’t have to come to class, right? I know it’s hard to sit still for so long.” She thinks I'm silent because I’m bored, and I’m okay with letting her believe it.

  “No, it’s fine, I don’t mind waiting, it’s almost over anyway.” All of the kids in Thomas’s class are sweaty messes by this point, all of the parents in the room are checking their watches, ready to get home and get to bed.

  “You guys have been really good with this grounding.” My Mom is still talking to me. “I appreciate you not giving me a bunch of grief about it.”