The World Keys (The Syker Key Book 2) (6 page)

“How old?”

“Well, my father thinks he was born some time in the early eighth century.”

“He doesn’t know?”

“If nobody ever told you the year when you were growing up, would you know?”

Tam grinned. “True enough. But that’s a damned long time. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to live that long.”

“My father has always seen it as a burden, not a blessing. For over a thousand years he’s been working to ensure the safety of the human race.”

“But he hasn’t succeeded?”

John appeared to consider this for a moment. “In fact I would say he has, because were it not for his efforts, we’d be in a much darker place right now.”

“I see. And the astronaut in space, that was one of you.”

“Yes.”

“Can I talk to them?”

“Right now? No. But I can do you one better. I can put you in the suit and take you into space.”

Tam almost fell out of his chair. Space? Teleportation? Fear gripped him immediately like a vice, but he forced it down, forced himself to take a deep breath and think. “You’re not serious...”

John smiled at him. “Very. Interested?”

He thought about it for a moment. “Can I bring my camera crew?”

“Yes, but only you can go into space, so I’d recommend getting a portable camera as well that you can carry.”

“Okay, how do we do this?”

“Well, we have to be very, very careful because if the powers working against us get wind of this, they’ll end it very, very quickly.”

This wasn’t the first time he’d run into a story that he knew would cause problems all the way up, but it was very likely the one story that could end several people’s lives, if this John character was right. “Understood. I have an idea. When can we do this?”

“Right now, if you like.”

“How?”

“I can teleport you and your camera crew to where we have the suit stashed away, and we can have it filmed in a few minutes.”

Tam though furiously. Where was his cameraman today? Assignment? He didn’t think so, so he should be in the building. “Okay, can you meet us, uh,” Tam thought about where quickly, “at my apartment? In one hour?”

John got up and shook his hand. “One hour at your apartment.”

“You know where it is?”

John smiled again. “I can find it.”

***

Janet had been trying to sleep, and while sleeping in space wasn’t something that normally bothered her, these days stress certainly was. At least she was alone in the compartment, so all her rustling around wasn’t going to wake anyone else.

The others on the station had grown a little cooler towards her since the video, since the meteor shower on Earth. Oh, they were polite enough, but it was there. Subtle, gentle pressure not to talk to her. She should have expected that. They were all Yanks, except for Carol, the South African who’s accent she loved so much.

Giving up, she turned the lights up. “Shit.”

Suddenly, a woman in a space suit appeared only a few feet in front of her, helmet missing and her long straight hair starting to form a halo in the lack of gravity. “Shit!”

The woman smiled at her. “Hi, I’m Jessica.” She held out her gloved hand. “I believe you shot some footage of me.”

“Shit,” she said quietly. Janet, half in a daze from the shock of it, extended her hand, and the woman shook it.

“Still have your camera?”

She nodded.

“Good. Point it out that window in ten minutes, if you wouldn’t mind,” the woman said, pointing to one of the portholes.

Janet thought about it for a moment. “Then what? I’m sure the government’s blocking everything I try to download.”

“If it’s alright by you, afterwards I would like to borrow your camera, download the footage, then return it to you. I’ll make sure it gets published. But you have to promise not to say anything to anyone until it comes out.”

“And how long am I supposed to bite my tongue?”

“Couple of days, no more, I promise.”

Janet smiled. That mischievous streak of here was going to get her into serious trouble one of these days. She fully expected to be out of work when she returned as it was.

“Deal.”

***

Tam Lee was starting to get warm in the space suit, even in Colorado’s cool climate. Assuming he was actually in Colorado as John had told him, but he had no reason to doubt him. Not anymore.

His cameraman was as dumbfounded as he was, but at least he was getting the footage.

He had been interviewing John for the camera the entire time they were putting the space suit on him, and he had jolted a bit when the woman, Jessica, disappeared. Without her helmet. Wouldn’t she need that?

With a blink she returned, and Tam jumped again.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “Ready?”

Tam nodded. “Where will we be going?”

“Just a short tour of the solar system. Got your camera ready?”

Tam showed her the little iPhone he had brought along.

“Probably a good idea to start recording now.”

“Now Tam,” John offered, placing his hands on Tam’s suited shoulders, “just relax. If you’ve never experienced zero gravity it’s a little disconcerting.”

It was Tam’s turn to smile. “Clearly you didn’t read enough of my bio. I’m a roller coaster addict. Zero gravity’s no problem for me.”

John laughed, then put the helmet on Tam’s suit and sealed it. Tam had been careful to install the bluetooth earpiece under the helmet so the camera would be able to hear him, even if the camera itself was in the vacuum of space.

Jessica also put her helmet on.

“Ready?” John asked. Tam nodded. John looked over to Jessica with a knowing look.

Jessica took Tam’s gloved hand and as it had all the other times John had teleported him, the world shifted. Suddenly he was in space, looking down at the green and blue pearl of Earth. “Wow,” was all he could say. The sudden lack of gravity made him queasy for a moment, but it subsided quickly as his adrenaline kicked in to overpower it.

In the distance he could see the ISS. He looked over at Jessica. “You did this on purpose?”

She smiled at him. “I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have an extra witness. Wave!”

He waved at the space station, then the world shifted again.

He was looking at Jupiter.

If the sight of the Earth had impressed him, the sight of Jupiter literally took his breath away. It was like nothing he could have imagined, but strangely it was nothing like the pictures he had always seen. The colors were muted, subdued, and nothing like the vibrant shades he had always seen before.

But the detail! He could see textures, interactions, clouds, layers, things that the pictures never impressed.

“Wh...” he tried to say, realizing that his voice was breaking a bit. He cleared his throat and remembered he was carrying a camera. He turned it to Jupiter, then turned it to face him. “I’m at Jupiter. I...I don’t know what else to say.”

“Look over there,” Jessica pointed.

Below and to his left was a moon. Brilliant, white, as though covered in ice. Europa, it had to be Europa.

“Ready?” Jessica asked.

The world jumped again.

Now he was looking at rocks. Lots of rocks. An entire sky filled with rocks, in fact, big ones from what he could tell.

“This is the immediate threat to Earth. There are tens of thousands of asteroids, most of them hundreds of feet in diameter, all headed to Earth.”

“These are the ones a couple of astronomers have been talking about? How did so many rocks get put on a collision course?”

“How is a guess at this point. All we know is that it was deliberate.”

“How can you tell?”

“I know this goes against conventional astronomy, but imagine that everything in the universe is electric, and moving through magnetic fields created by that electricity. What happens when you get a short circuit, when an electric current suddenly finds a shorter path?”

“Uh, it flashes, like lightning?”

“Exactly. This is what a comet is. The electric potential of the Sun and the solar system is so powerful that any rock that comes flying in with a different potential literally short circuits as it approaches the sun.

“But some rocks have the same potential, most in fact because they don’t have widely varying orbits. The asteroid belt is a good example. The belt doesn’t produce comets because they already have the same potential as the inner solar system.”

“I don’t understand, why does that mean these were sent deliberately? Couldn’t they just be from the asteroid belt?”

“No, their orbit indicates they came from far outside the solar system. There’s literally no way for them to not be literally short circuited like an arc welder. Not unless their electric fields had been adjusted artificially.”

“But who would have done that? Aliens?”

“That, I’m afraid, is a story for another time. Suffice to say we have a very short amount of time to combat this particular threat.”

Tam watched, trying to remember to pan the camera around to look at everything. “Okay, I guess that’s enough.”

They returned home, to sudden oppressive gravity. Thankfully John was there to catch him. He could hear his cameraman curse quietly, still pointing large camera at him. When he was steady again, John removed his helmet.

“That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I knew you’d like it,” Jessica said, having removed her own helmet and lowered it to the ground. “Hang on a minute, I have to go get something.” She disappeared again, only to return a few seconds later, this time holding a chip from a camera. She handed it to Tam. “I’ll need that back, I have to give it back to it’s owner.”

“Uh, can I take the suit off first?”

***

Pan had been busy, and the fact that it was harder than ever to track down these people wasn’t helping matters. He found Konig, at least, and with Arthur’s help had managed to track down another three members of the cabal. Their protection went deep, that was certain, and he didn’t quite know what to do about it just yet.

“There’s something else that’s odd about them,” Arthur said, sitting beside him as they enjoyed a cup of coffee in Montelimar, France. “I know that they’re probably psychopaths, I mean they act without any emotion at all, but there’s no way that this tech is just handed down. Someone else is actively helping them.”

Pan nodded. It was an accurate assessment. Especially the time travel portion. Someone, something else was helping them, and it was someone who did not have humanity’s best interests at heart. With the help of the Key he had been getting a very strong feeling about it, that there was something out there literally feeding off of the suffering. “Whoever they are, they’re far more dangerous than those asteroids headed our way.”

Arthur disagreed. “I don’t think so, I think if John manages to get that story out, a big chunk of their support structure will start to crumble. People will see evil and conspiracy at every turn, and they’re going to start demanding transparency.”

“I hope you’re right, old friend. But in case you’re not, I plan on seeing if our other worldly friends have any other weaknesses.”

***

Tam had prepared an alternate story for the studio, but brought his producer in on the fakery after John had indicated they could trust him. “Chemical companies intentionally poisoning the Great Lakes,” was actually a story he had been working on, but it was a couple weeks away from being ready. It did however make for a good distraction.

They managed to get a couple of the staff involved at the studio, after Tam had personally visited them and impressed on them how important the story was...although he didn’t tell them the story. He did promise it would be explosive.

Nowadays they always taped their introductions to the stories; tonight Tam read his live on the air.

“First, I would like to apologize,” he said to the camera, the green screen behind him being used to project an image of a chemical factory to the viewers, “this story is not about chemical companies.

“What I’m about to tell you about will change your view of the world, and life itself. It’s a story of real life wizards, magic, the nature of true evil, and a threat to the planet like none you could ever imagine.”

And the story started.

***

Tam had been gracious enough to provide John with a thumb drive version of the story, and at the very moment Tam’s story started airing, John teleported to fifteen places around the world in succession to press “upload” to put the video on the Internet.

Their opponent’s only recourse now would be to argue it as being nothing more than some cheap special effects and a conned television personality. They wouldn’t be able to stop the video itself.

***

“You should see this,” Declan said to Rob, walking into his office. He turned on Rob’s television and changed the channel.

On the screen was an image of some television reporter in a space suit, apparently in space. The camera was turned around and he was looking at the ISS.