Firestone Key

  FIRESTONE KEY

  CAROLINE NOE

  Firestone Key

  Copyright Caroline Noe 2018

  All Rights Reserved

  For Dad.

  Long gone, but never forgotten.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART ONE - CONSEQUENCE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  PART TWO - ORIGIN

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  PART THREE - DESTINY

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Acknowledgements

  Coming soon

  PART ONE - CONSEQUENCE

  Chapter 1

  The Firestone was just that - a stone - an innocuous black, shiny pebble that easily fitted into the average palm. All that it had to recommend it, by way of decoration, was a razor-thin, scarlet gash that spiralled around its length. No-one would have believed that it was anything other than a rock. Not a soul suspected that it could patiently lie in wait… and kill.

  The Firestone first appeared in this Present Age at the moment of Elaine’s conception. Elaine’s mother-to-be was the first to discover the pebble after its arrival, being clumsy enough to step straight on it as she slid out of bed. In the midst of experiencing a rare emotion – happiness – and because she was of a superstitious nature, she immediately assumed that her current good luck was due to the strange presence of this rock on her bedroom floor. She duly cherished it. Sadly, for the cheerful owner, that was the last time she would ever be happy again.

  * * *

  When the former British Empire eventually faced up to its ignominious collapse, some century after it had taken place, the government of the day courted public opinion by declaring that the homeland would be Great once again. This time it would include those whose ancestors had been roundly exploited in the past. To create a new Super Class, the National Academy was tasked with training the finest young minds of Britain, whatever their ethnicity, gender, etc. With the student body entirely funded by the government, and aided by a few unscrupulous businessmen with deep pockets, the Academy was touted as a charitable institution of inestimable promise. In fact, it was the training ground for the next generation of wealth creation. Even the dimmest of the genius students quickly discerned the difference and used it to their advantage.

  None, however, were aware of the global tragedy beginning to take root in our most basic of needs: food. It would take a full generation for the magnitude of the disaster to become apparent, just in time for the prospective saviour to arise: a young woman wearing a necklace made of stone.

  * * *

  Elaine was born into a world that would be considered toxic by anyone’s standards. Her mother had grown up in an abusive household and had never been given the help needed to avoid recreating it. Falling in love with a carbon copy of her handsome and violent father, she discovered exactly how manipulative her lover could be, at almost the same moment as Elaine was conceived. She may well have loved her daughter, in whatever way she could manage through the prism of warped thinking, but any maternal feeling was soon eclipsed by a stronger emotion: terror of, and dependency on, Elaine’s brutal father.

  The child swiftly learned that silence and hiding were the key to survival and took this internalisation of her world into every area of her life. Her school reports indicated that she was quiet, respectful and punctual. No-one, except her mother, ever saw the bruises which were kept carefully hidden beneath loose clothing, her father being accurate with his abuse. Not even Elaine knew the extent of the scarring to her soul, with the exception of her clear understanding of loneliness.

  As her father often remarked, when he was sober enough to do so, Elaine didn’t resemble his handsome features, having inherited her mother’s nondescript looks, fine mousy hair and average height and build. If her physical ordinariness wasn’t enough to alienate her, Elaine soon exhibited signs of having been gifted with an extraordinary mind, clearly inherited from neither of her parents. By the age of ten, the daughter’s intellect already vastly eclipsed her father’s; the final nail in the coffin of paternal love.

  Following a school assessment, her exceptional mind came to the attention of the National Academy, a representative of which attempted to gain the approval of her parents for Elaine’s enrolment. Her father, sensing that he might be able to extort money from someone, was fiercely refusing to give his consent when a tragedy occurred that removed both her parents from the picture and delivered a livid, diagonal scar, bisecting her face. She never spoke of either matter to anyone.

  Six months after her traumatic twelfth birthday, Elaine and suitcase were deposited at the austere entrance to the Academy. No-one bothered to see her inside; after all, Elaine was far too intelligent to need any moral support. Having watched the car screech away at top speed, leaving a choking cloud of dust, she dragged her suitcase through the massive wooden doors and up three flights of stairs.

  Alone again, she turned her stone necklace over and over in her fingers, glancing around the room that would be her home for the next six years. The walls were devoid of decoration, sporting a miserable shade of ivory that matched the blandness of the grey carpet. Apart from the bed on which she currently sat, the only other furniture was a large plastic desk and its matching chair and lamp – cream, of course. Resembling a cross between a hospital ward and a prison cell, the entire room was a bare canvas for the latest occupant’s imagination. Elaine felt bereft of any. Her creative inspiration had dried up under the onslaught of self-pity. Having decided that to lament her lot was a pointless waste of time, Elaine went on a lone expedition to spy out the rest of the premises.

  Pacing along the corridor, she noticed that the grey carpeting of her room seemed to extend throughout the entire establishment in a snaking sea of drabness. Reaching the stairwell, Elaine gazed up at spiralling steps which strained towards another four floors of depressing sameness. The decision to head downstairs was not a difficult choice to make; at least gravity was on her side. She had almost reached the first floor when music floated up to her eager ears, banishing the funereal silence of the dormitory block.

  Elaine followed the heavy beat and joyful rhythms which magnified as she opened the door to the corridor. Locating the source, she peered through a wide open door to witness the most beautiful girl she had ever seen, gyrating around the multicoloured room in a scarlet kaftan.

  The room was peculiar, to say the least. Various fabrics hung from the ceiling, from behind which peeped a variety of posters and charts depicting the Universe, the Periodic Table and a curious array of dinosaurs. The latter were wearing the latest fashions, stuck over their limbs with tape. The desk had long since disappeared beneath a heap of fads, gimmicks and the scribblings of its manic owner.

  “Want to dance?” the girl hollered over the music, grabbing Elaine’s hand and propelling her headlong into the chaos of her room. “Are you the new girl? You must be. I’m Leila,” the willowy beauty continued in the smooth, clipped tones of the upper classes.

  Elaine stared up at the twitching apparition, whose ironed-straight, ash blond hair sailed a good six inches above her own mousy head. “Elaine,” she softly replied, utilising her usual habit of using as
few words as possible.

  “What?” Leila yelled, not hearing a word over the thumping rhythm.

  “Elaine!” her soon-to-be best friend responded in the loudest voice she had ever managed to muster; then stood shocked at the sound of it.

  “Hellooooo Elaine,” Leila sang, picking out the tune as she completed a circuit of the room, clambering over the discarded clothes and paraphernalia that littered the floor. “How old are you?”

  “Twelve,” Elaine replied, mesmerised by the girl’s china blue eyes, like those of a doll from centuries past.

  “I’m older. I’m a teenager. Thirteen and five feet eleven.”

  Quickly bored with her dancing - Leila’s roving mind never allowing her to concentrate on one thing for very long - she turned off the music and moved on to her next short-term obsession.

  “I’ll show you around,” she told the newcomer, her voice echoing down the corridor, into which she had already made lengthy strides.

  Confused by the attention, Elaine felt obliged to follow and scrambled to catch up with the lanky girl as she flowed away in a sea of scarlet chiffon.

  “It’s quiet at the moment; everyone’s in their lessons.”

  “You?” Elaine enquired, a little out of breath with the speed of their tour.

  “Nope. Day off, to relax,” Leila replied, smiling. She knew the irony of that statement. “They make me rest.” Her expression indicated how foul she found the concept. “I work on too many things. I don’t like doing nothing, do you? Their work is sooo boring. I can think of so much better...”

  “Like blowing up the science lab, three times?”

  The masculine voice came from behind them. Elaine turned and saw a young man of similar height and bearing to her impromptu tour guide, although his features were not as striking.

  “My twin brother. Don’t listen to him. He’s a boy,” Leila announced, as though that explained everything.

  “My name is Neil. My sister never bothers to name me,” he advised, his expression remaining unmoved.

  Elaine couldn’t tell whether he was annoyed by his sister’s lack of interest or resigned to it. His expression altered, however, once his gaze found her face. Being used to the swiftly suppressed shock reaction of most people when faced with her scar, Elaine looked away, giving him time to regain his composure. Once he realised how his reaction had been perceived, Neil was overcome by shame, being an inherently kind soul.

  “This is my new friend, Elaine,” Leila stated, rescuing her brother, although she was blissfully unaware of that fact.

  “Hello” said Neil, surprising Elaine by grasping and firmly shaking her hand.

  In the space of a few seconds, a stunned Elaine had experienced two utterly unique events: friendship and touch.

  “Watch out for my sister,” Neil continued, still pumping Elaine’s hand. “She’s a troublemaker. They would throw her out, only she’s cleverer than all of them put together.”

  “That’s me!” Leila agreed, delivering a stunning smile that made her pale eyes sparkle. “I’m showing her around, so go away.”

  “Fine,” Neil responded, with a sniff. He wanted to stay, but had never been able to deny his sister anything.

  Leila watched him take a few tentative steps into the distance before changing her mind, as was her want. “Alright, you can come, if Elaine says so.”

  “OK,” the smaller girl agreed, when two sets of eyes swivelled to hers.

  “You don’t say an awful lot, do you?” Leila correctly observed, whilst disregarding tact.

  “Can’t all be as loud as you,” Neil chided. He turned to Elaine. “They tried to make her wear normal clothes, but they gave up. She likes to look a twit.”

  “I look red,” Leila responded, with her usual lateral thinking.

  For the next thirty minutes Leila whistled around the campus, brother and friend in tow, delivering a non-stop stream of useless anecdotes and off-the-wall observations on their surroundings and fellow students. Peering through the windows of the classrooms, Elaine gained a snatched view of the laboratories and workshops where she would spend her days being a genius. In the huge and staggeringly well-equipped computer lounge, she easily spotted Leila’s empty work station; a rubber Tyrannosaurus Rex, wearing a sequined tutu, was firmly taped to the top of the console.

  * * *

  Considering the unusual nature of the trio involved, they became oddly inseparable, with only one overriding drawback to their closeness. Despite Neil being invariably kind and reasonably good-looking, albeit not in his sister’s league, Elaine never felt the slightest attraction to him. Despite her scarred face and reticence, Neil had fallen in love with Elaine by the end of the first day of meeting. Four years later, the sexual tension between the pair had become difficult to handle, especially for a girl who had only ever witnessed the abusive relationship of her parents.

  Perched on a balcony, their legs dangling through its metal bars, Leila and Elaine were engaged in ogling the boys’ football team during practice. Mud flew and muscles rippled as a tall, dark, handsome hunk dribbled his way down the pitch, wind blowing through his hair.

  “Sorry, I don’t like him,” observed Elaine, to Leila’s utter shock.

  “You don’t like him?” Leila squeaked, choking on a stolen can of beer. Rules meant nothing to her at this stage, principally because she knew that she could never be expelled. Her parents, whilst always somewhere abroad, were powerful and wealthy; besides, she was a genius extraordinaire.

  “I mean your brother,” Elaine qualified.

  “Neil? I don’t like him, either.”

  Elaine snorted with laughter. “He’s your brother.”

  “If I was you, I mean. He’s my brother, but he’s… I’d want him.” Leila pointed at the Hunk below. “Go for him.”

  “Scar,” Elaine stated, her voice hard.

  “So?” replied Leila, with all the comprehension of the beautiful. “Try. He would like you. They would all like you; if they knew you.”

  Neil emerged from the Academy carrying a huge pile of books on ancient architecture, his emerging passion. He knew that he didn’t bear the intellect of his twin and that he had been allowed to attend the Academy as an attempt to keep Leila in line, but he was neither stupid nor idle. He was only foolish where his feelings for Elaine were concerned. As soon as she entered his mind, his eyes involuntarily strove to locate her.

  The girls swiftly withdrew their legs and shuffled backwards, out of his eyeline, until he moved on.

  “He’s going to ask me. Again,” Elaine groaned. “He gets sad when I say no.”

  “We shall be leaving here soon, anyway.” Leila stared at Elaine with an intensity in those pale blue eyes that was a little unnerving. “No-one splits us up.”

  * * *

  All through her miserable childhood, Elaine had secretly fantasised about being a model or an actress or, failing that, a creative arts genius. As luck would have it, she turned out to be extraordinarily gifted in exactly the opposite manner. Mastering the elements of physics within a year of her arrival, Elaine was swiftly diverted into the field of Quantum Mechanics and Electrodynamics, whether she liked it or not. She didn’t complain, soon learning to savour the esteem in which she was held.

  At eighteen, she delivered a thesis, so incredible, that it earned her plaudits from around the world, principally because no professor, tutor or scientist had the capacity to follow her reasoning through to its impenetrable conclusion. Even Leila had difficulty reviewing past page ten, whereupon she became bored and gave up.

  Neil had graduated and now split his time between the building of other people’s projects and talking to Elaine on the phone, nursing his long-term crush. In her turn, Neil remained the only man to whom Elaine could relate, sensing no threat to her wellbeing or likelihood of abandonment.

  When Elaine stepped through the doors of the Academy for the last time, she found both her friends waiting for her, ready to act as delegates for a new governme
nt project.

  “What project?” Elaine had asked.

  “Anything we want!” Leila shouted and did a little dance of glee.

  None of the trio was aware of the truth: Leila’s DNA thesis, delivered the year earlier, had caused so much consternation in scientific circles that the government had been forced to keep a close watch on her development. Fearing a dangerous move into the private sector (and the potential loss of revenue that might result), Leila had been quickly assigned to the ‘Think Tank’; where all the most lethal thinkers were housed. They were given carte blanche to research, money no object, and the military on hand to end the rise of any fledgling megalomaniac. Naturally, Leila had refused to join unless her brother and friend came with her. Thus, Elaine found herself in a cavernous underground facility without a single idea of what to do.

  For six years, the trio debated what worthy project to expend their time and intellect upon, without reaching a consensus. In the meantime, their unworthy versions flourished without measure; a steady stream of the inventive and useless which, of course, netted a fortune. The trio would probably have continued for decades, growing steadily more bored and disillusioned, had not the global crisis emerged.

  The tragedy, whilst a generation in the making, was devastating once it took hold, quickly spreading across all continents. Somehow the entire food chain, both plant and animal life, had become contaminated. At first, the victim suffered a low-level nausea; a queasy sense of unease and loss of appetite, whatever food was consumed. Soon, the body became progressively unable to tolerate any sustenance and expelled the ‘poison’ by violent vomiting and diarrhoea, laden with blood. Eventually, the digestive system ceased to function. Liquidised food gave way to injected nutrients as humanity began to starve by the millions.

  Academy alumni, including the trio, were engaged across the world, but all that the brightest minds could discover was that the process was irreversible and untreatable. With the plague apparently being neither bacterial, viral, nor a true contamination, they were unable to find the cause or any viable treatment. It was too late to trace the spread of the disease back to patient zero and there seemed no pattern as to when, or if, a patient would develop symptoms.