The World Keepers 7

by Ty The Hunter

  They have it positioned almost perfectly over her shoulders. Once satisfied with its placement, they spend a moment lowering the machine so that the “U” brackets are now beneath her shoulders. Each man pulls his “U” out from the rod on the machine, then places it on its side on top of the mattress. They slide the “U” beneath the bodyboard.

  “They’re attaching it to the board. There must be loops on the backside of it or something.” Thomas says.

  He’s right. A few seconds later, after then men confer with each other to make sure everything is in place, they move back to the arm and slowly begin to push it up into the air. As they push, Kat’s body rises off the bed at an angle. Her head comes up first, then her shoulders, waist, legs, until her whole body is off the bed except for the part of the board attached to her ankles.

  At this point, the men begin to move the machine backward. This causes Kat’s bodyboard to slide back along the mattress, moving off of it toward where her head was.

  Once they get her almost entirely off the bed and only her ankles again are touching, they stop the machine. The nurse moves forward, gripping the bodyboard at her ankles, while PG starts moving the device backward again. It looks to me like they’re doing this because they don’t want her to swing wildly once the bodyboard comes off the bed. The nurse is holding everything steady, a stabilizing force.

  When she’s off the bed entirely, he releases the body board, and Kat is left hanging in the air, suspended from the machine by the “U” brackets.

  It’s unsettling to look at.

  The men continue to reposition the machine. They are indeed steering it slowly toward one of the man-sized tubes that does not appear to have anything in it, not even liquid, as some of the others do.

  Upon reaching the tube they want to use, the nurse again walks around and grips the bodyboard at the end, keeping it still as PG brings the machine to a stop. PG starts to toggle a joystick on the back of the machine. He presses the stick down. The machine begins to raise its arm. Kat is lifted high into the air, all the while the nurse has a grip on the bodyboard, keeping her from swinging into the glass (or whatever it is) of the tube.

  I can see her reflection in the curved enclosure as she passes in front. Even though the picture is bent and distorted, I can make out her features, looking for all the world like she’s sleeping peacefully.

  The nurse lets go of the board, and it swings slightly, making a metallic tapping sound as it bounces softly against the lip of the tube. PG raises the arm a bit more, and the board moves forward, clearing the lip and beyond as he centers her above the opening.

  He presses the joystick up, and the board slowly lowers down, into the tube. We can no longer see her, only the back of the bodyboard. We watch as she completes the journey and the board rests at the bottom, allowing her body to tip forward a bit, at a slight angle.

  Portal Guy pushes another button, and the end of the arm begins to rotate, efficiently moving Kat in a circle, so she is now facing the front of the tube. All the better for them to observe her, I’m sure.

  The nurse walks over to the base of the tube, which is set up on a low pedestal and opens a small hinged door, inside of which appears to be a control panel. He flips some switches, pushes some buttons, and steps back to watch as the tube begins to fill with liquid.

  It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever had to watch. Even though I know she must not be affected by this; I find myself holding my breath as the liquid creeps up her limbs. It covers her feet, her ankles, her calves, and her knees before I have to look away, putting my head in my hands.

  When I look up again, the liquid has traveled almost the entire length of her body, it’s past her chest, then past her shoulders. My breathing shudders when it covers her mouth and nose. I want so badly to get her out of there, to remove her from that horrible place and save her!

  “She can’t breath!” I rant and rave inside of my head.

  I want to scream at Thomas. I want him to do something to make this stop! “She’s dying!! She’s drowning! We have to do something!!!”, but I keep silent, knowing that nothing I do right now will do anything for her.

  When the water has reached the top of the tube, I expect the men to unclip the machine and walk away, but they don’t. There is more to be done, and I now understand what the wire was for, the one they ran beneath the velcro straps and hooked to the strap at her ankles.

  Portal Guy pushes another button on the machine. I hear the buzzing whine of a small motor working. Through the clear liquid inside the tube, we can see the strap at her feet come apart, then the ones at her calves, thighs, waist, chest, and shoulders. The motor is pulling the wire up. Each time it reaches a contact point of the velcro, it tears the velcro apart from its mate, releasing the bodyboard from Kat’s still form.

  Once the strap at her shoulder is opened, the nurse walks over to a nearby sink and begins to vigorously scrub his hands, all the way up to his forearms, like a doctor preparing for surgery. He holds his now impeccably clean arms out in front of him, touching nothing. He walks back over to the tube, as portal Guy brings a small ladder over to the front of it.

  The nurse steps up on the ladder, reaches his hand into the top of the tank, and releases the final strap keeping Kat’s head attached to the top of the board. He steps down, walks back to the sink, repeats the washing procedure, and dries off.

  PG manipulates the machine a bit more, raising the arm and pulling the bodyboard out of the tube in one fluid movement. The nurse has placed a large, white absorbent pad on the floor, and PG lowers the bodyboard onto it, minimizing any mess.

  I look back at Kat, the movement of the board away from her body causes her hair to float away from her head. It fans around her ethereally, like an angel, weightless and graceful. Sleeping Beauty, forever, until someone can rescue her.

  I glance over at Thomas. He isn’t like me. He hasn’t needed to look away. His mouth is set in a grim line, his shoulders are hunched toward the screen, and he seems determined. It’s clear what he’s doing, remembering everything that happened in there, committing to memory every inch of that lab, and the people involved.

  And I know, at that moment, that he and I will be going in after her.

  “I’m going with you!”

  “No, Jed, you are not going with me!”

  “I am, and you can’t stop me!”

  “Remember that time I tied you up with your socks and stuffed you in your toy box? Are you looking for a repeat performance?”

  That takes a little heat out of my fight. It was stuffy in that toy box, and I’m pretty sure my socks were dirty. Not a huge deal, except the one he used as a gag. I feel a small rush of pity for Dirk, but just a small one.

  He deserved it when I did it to him.

  “Besides,” Thomas says, “you don’t even know where I’m going to have to go. Kat isn’t IN the game, Jed. She’s somewhere, like some actual place, in the real world.”

  Huh, he’s right, I hadn’t thought of that.

  “Well, when you figure out where she is, I’m going with you. You’re only two years older than me. It’s not like you’re going to be any better convincing people to let you get on a plane or rent a car.”

  Jed looks at me, probably figuring out his next argument, but my mom walks in, hands clasped behind her back, and he sits back in his chair and feigns interest in his Life cereal.

  “Good news, guys.” she says, “You two have been so good about this grounding that I’m letting you off early.”

  “What?!”

  “Really?!”

  Thomas and I speak at the same time. This is awesome!

  “Yep!” She moves her arms from behind her back and shows us that she’s holding an iPad in each hand.

  “Here you go, Thomas.” she says, handing him his iPad.

  “And here you go, bug.” she says to me, handing mine over as well.

  I almost tell her not to call me that, but I’ve got my PRECIOUS back with me, so I let
it slide.

  She puts her hands on her hips, and we both sit up and pay attention because we know she’s about to deliver a lecture.

  “No more putty on the floor, guys. Keep your rooms clean, and dial it down on the crazy.” She pats me on the head, squeezes Thomas’s shoulder, and walks out of the kitchen.

  We both rush to boot up our iPad’s when we hear her call from her room: “Remember! No iPads at the table! Finish your breakfast, then play.”

  As one, we set the iPads in our laps, and keep eating.

  “You make a good point.” Thomas says.

  I’m shocked, did he just compliment me?

  “I know I do! But, what…..particularly are you talking about, though?” I feel like I made a lot of good points these past few days.

  “Well, I don’t know where she is, I don’t know how to find her, but I’m guessing she’s going to try and help us out there. My concern is her ability to send these messages to us. She’s not dead. Clearly, they don’t mean for her to die, but she is in some kind of stasis. I don’t know how long her ability to reach us through the web will continue. Is it something she can just do, or was it enhanced based on how healthy she was? I mean, if she were in top shape, she would have been able to get into the game, or call us, right?”

  “What if she could get into the game, though? I mean we haven’t been in the game since she was taken, so how do we know she wasn’t there?”

  “That’s true…” he goes silent, thinking.

  “And she can’t call us because you haven’t had your phone. She might somehow be able to figure out how to call Mom or Dad, but that’s not going to help. If anything, them getting a call like that would only make things harder.” I say.

  “That’s true, too….” more silence.

  “Can she see us, Thomas?”

  “What do you mean?” he asks.

  “I mean, each time she sent a video, it was perfect timing. She only sent me messages when no one else was around, and she started and stopped the videos only when Mom and Dad were out of the room. How did she know?”

  “So the question isn’t “Can she see us?” I don’t think. I think the question is “Can she see what we’re seeing?”, he replies.

  That’s unsettling to think about. Can Kat see through my eyes somehow? Does my ability to interact with the video game mean we’re connected in some more substantial way than just ability? Thomas is quiet again, and I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing I am.

  “Well,” I say, “now that we have our electronics back, how about we just see if she tries to get ahold of us that way. This would all be so much easier if we could just talk to her and figure out exactly what it is she wants us to do.”

  Thomas nods his head, still silent.

  “What do you think she meant about us keeping the beacons safe?” he asks. “I thought you said you destroyed the one from the zombie game? Didn’t you say that? Like you’d have gone back in after Ty, except you destroyed the beacon?”

  “I did say that, and I thought I had destroyed it. I thought that by taking it out of the game, I was destroying it.” I say, thinking about the three small gummy things in the safe in my room.

  “So, you don’t know if they do something or not?”

  I think about this, trying to remember if any of the three beacons felt special in any way once I removed them from the game. I know for sure they don’t glow anymore, they just look like half inch tall gummy replicas of whatever they were in the game. A messed up baseball trophy, a plaque, and a small crystal stone.

  “No, I don’t know. I just put it in my safe and left it there. The same as I’ve done with all three of them.”

  Mom got Thomas and me our own safes once we started getting an allowance on a regular basis. There were one too many instances of one of us “borrowing” the other’s money without permission. Okay, it was me, I admit it, I’m the reason mom got us safes. What can I say, I needed money to spend in the game. Besides, that was like two years ago. I was 8! I didn’t know any better.

  “Well,” Thomas says, pushing away from the table and picking up his iPad, “let’s go see if we can figure out what the beacons do.”

  Thomas heads to his room, and I head to my room. I take my safe from its super secret hiding spot (on one of the cubby holes in my shelf set, behind wads of used tissue) and open it, looking over my shoulder to make sure Thomas isn’t peeping on my code. It’s not an intricate safe, just one of those type you get on Amazon that’s shaped like a flat oval, like 2 inches deep, with 4 dials that go from 0 - 9. It also has a thick wire wrapped around the outer edge that you can unlock and attach to something. If you wanted to secure the safe to a pole or a table leg you could do that. I haven’t really figured that part out, but I’m sure people have a use for it.

  I take the beacons out of the safe. All three fit comfortably in my palm, but I wrap them each in their own tissue (new, not used) because they are kind of sticky.

  I close my safe, put it back on my shelf, and sit back on my heels, pondering the tiny figurines I’m holding. I close my first quickly around them when I hear the tell-tale “clack clack clack” of dog footsteps in the hallway.

  Ty walks into my room, making a beeline for my face as he shoves his wet nose into my hair, snuffles around, licks the side of my head, and then sits in his best “I’m such a good dog.” position, staring intently at my fisted hand.

  “This is not a treat, Ty.” I say, shaking my head.

  He whines, shifts his feet around a bit like maybe he wasn’t sitting JUST RIGHT to get the treat. Then he looks at me like “No, see, I sit like this, you give me food, that’s how it works.”

  “No, boy, noooootttt a trrrreeeeeaaaatttt.” I say it really slowly, like maybe if I enunciate, he’ll understand English better.

  This time, he bypasses the “sitting pretty”, stands up, and starts licking my fingers like if he can just pry them open, he can eat what’s inside.

  “No, noob, get!” I tell him, then I stand up and walk in to Thomas’s room, Ty at my heels.

  Thomas is sitting at his desk, already logged in to Roblox.

  “Kat’s not on, and I don’t see any messages from her.” he tells me.

  “What about Adrian and Carina?” I ask.

  “I don’t see them, either. I also don’t see Jake.”

  Jake hasn’t been around in awhile. I try to remember the last time I saw him. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t in the Titanic game at all, but I know I saw him in the zombie game and then when I was rescuing Ty from the prison game. Since then, he’s been radio silent.

  “Well, I got the beacons,” I tell him, “but you might want to go put Ty up because he seems interested in them for some reason.”

  “Maybe they smell like the games they came out of, and he’s just enjoying the new scents.” Thomas suggests.

  “Maybe so, I guess you can leave him in here.”

  Thomas clears a spot on his desk, looks into an empty plastic cup, and indicates I should shove them all in there. I do, and now it looks like a cup full of used tissue.

  “You better do something else with that, cause if mom comes in here to clean, she’ll toss them in the trash.” I say.

  Thomas just nods his head in agreement. “I don’t see anything special about them.” he says as he picks each one up, turning it over and over in his fingers, squinting at them from every angle.

  “I know. I looked at them as well. I can’t see anything, no levers, buttons, secret compartments, nothing.” They look like something you might get out of a gumball machine, only even less substantial.

  Ty walks over to the desk, snuffling and whining. He’s tall enough that he can get his whole neck and head on the desk, so he does. Thomas saves the beacons in the nick of time as Ty sticks his tongue out and starts licking the air where they were.

  “I told you he likes them.” I say as I get up, take Ty by the collar, and bring him out to the living room. He comes with me willingly enough but follows m
e back to Thomas’s room as soon as I start walking in that direction. I scoot ahead of him, slipping into the room and shutting the door. Immediately, Ty starts to whine. He hates it when we lock him out, and he sounds so pathetic, it’s breaking my heart.

  Dumb dog, he’s so awesome.

  “Let me put them up, and then maybe we can call Adrian or something, get him to get online?”

  “Good idea,” Thomas agrees, “we need to talk to the others, I don’t think we can do anything else until we’ve figured out what they know.”

  I pick up the beacons, walk back to my room, lock them in my safe, and put the safe back behind my used tissues.

  Ty dogs my heels the whole time.

  No pun intended.

  “Oh my gosh…..” I hear Thomas talking to himself as I walk back to his room, carrying my laptop in my arms. I had intended to sit down on his floor and log in to the game so that we could play together, but he’s up on his bunk. His computer is up there with him, so I decide to go ahead and take his desk.

  “What’s up?” I ask, looking up at him.

  “Jed, you’ve got to see this.” He beckons for me to join him on the bunk. I don’t feel like going back up and down that ladder. I also don’t feel like sitting on his gritty set of sheets (the boy is dirty, there are no two ways about this), but he sounds serious enough that I go ahead.

  He’s sitting cross-legged on his comforter. The laptop rests between his crossed knees, and he’s staring at the screen with a horrified expression. His fingers fly over the trackpad, changing angles so his in-game character can look all around.

  I can’t tell what game he’s in at first. It looks like some kind of post-apocalypse type of thing. Some buildings are mostly rubble, lots of characters running around screaming, cars tipped on their hoods. Water shoots from fire hydrants that have been ripped out of the ground. Fire shoots out of gas lines that had been previously buried, etc.