Fragments of Alchemy: The Code Keeper

The Prophecy

“Quentin, are you alright?” Thea asked. She forced Quentin to let go, so she could hold him at arm’s length and check to see if he was hurt.

“I’m okay,” Quentin said in a small voice.

“Who are those men?” Thea asked.

“The Code Breaker’s Shadows,” Chadwick explained. “You can tell, because they’re all in black. The only Alchemists who wear black work for the Breaker.”

Quentin started to cry again. Thea wanted to comfort him, but all she could think about was the fact that Chadwick seemed to know too much about the Breaker’s Shadows. He’d taken one look at their kidnapper and shouted, Nightmare. But how did he know what a Nightmare looked like?

Thea distracted herself by looking around the library. The large room had been emptied of all furniture, save for the built-in bookshelves, which were empty. A long bookshelf went down the center of the room, dividing the large library in half. Through the red glow, Thea could see windows along one wall, and across the room, there was a door with a clouded glass window. Thea wanted to know what was on the other side of the door.

Apparently, so did Chadwick; he went around the bookshelf down the center of the room and headed straight for the door. “It’s just a toilet,” he called back to them, his voice bouncing off the tiled floor in the bathroom. “The water’s been turned off.” He came back out and slammed the door shut behind him. With a clenched jaw and crossed arms, Chadwick leaned back against the door and glowered at the floor. Then his eyes went wide and he said, “Bloody hell! Al, look!” and he pointed at the floor on the other side of the bookshelf in front of him, where Thea couldn’t see.

Thea walked around the bookshelf and looked down to see Todd Alder, sprawled on his back, his eyes closed, and his vest gone. “Todd!” Thea exclaimed, and she jumped down to him and shook his shoulder.

He didn’t respond, and Thea shook him again, worried that something was wrong. Then suddenly, his eyes flashed open, and he stared up at the ceiling.

“Todd, are you okay?” Thea asked, as Tajana and Quentin joined her on that side of the bookshelf.

“Althea?” Todd said, turning his head to look in her direction. “Not you too?” He groaned.

Thea held her hands up. “I’m sorry, Todd. I think I’m actually the reason why they took you in the first place. You were right to be worried. You were right to tell me I should give up on the Spectrum. Now look at what’s happened.” Then tears pricked at her eyes, and she put her face in her hands and tried not to cry.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Tajana said, coming up beside her. “Wallowing in despair right now won’t help us get out of here.”

“We have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting out of here,” Chadwick said suddenly. He was still leaning against the bathroom door with his arms crossed, shaking his head. “Wake up, Tajana! We’ve been nabbed by Shadow Alchemists. We’re never getting out of here, until we get rescued, which isn’t bloody likely—”

“Are you daft?” Todd interrupted Chadwick. “Don’t give up before we’ve even tried to escape!”

“Look here, you poncy prince,” Chadwick said. “There’s a big difference between giving up and being smart enough to know when to stop trying before something even worse happens.”

Thea was reminded that Chadwick called Todd The Prince when she first met him during that lesson in the Rotunda of the Seven Forces. She could tell that Todd thought he was better than Chadwick, just by the way he looked at him. That pompous sneer on his face showed his emotions plain as day.

Thea was struck again by how different the two boys were. Todd’s white-blond hair and pale eyes contrasted with Chadwick’s dark hair and hazel eyes. Todd was almost porcelain white, while Chadwick had a medium skin tone. Even the way they did their hair exaggerated how different the two boys were. Todd, with his perfect hair parted to the side, and Chadwick, with his ruffed up outgrown mess of hair.

“Stop shouting,” Tajana whispered. “They’ll hear us.”

But Chadwick took a breath to keep on arguing.

“I don’t know how we could get out,” Thea said suddenly, to stop their argument. “But I know that if we don’t even try, we’ll never get out of here. We can’t just let the Shadows win.” She looked pleadingly at Chadwick, who grimaced when he caught Thea’s eye.

“No one’s making you help us, mate,” Todd said. “But Althea’s my Protégé, and Tajana is in my Cohort. I’m helping, and that’s that.”

“Tajana’s my Mentor,” Chadwick said, but he wasn’t shouting anymore. “So I guess that means I’m helping as well.” He turned to Todd. “Alright, we’re trapped in a blooming library without a book in sight. What would you suggest we do?”

“We might be in a pinch, but we still have plenty of Conversion Circles on us,” Todd said rather reasonably. “There’s got to be something we could do.”

A pinch! In a rush, Thea remembered what Uncle Van had said when she opened her birthday present: That’s an Endless Ink Quill. It doesn’t need an ink well, because it will never run out of ink. It also writes on any surface. Very handy when you’re caught in a pinch.

Chadwick straightened up and put his hand into his pants pocket. He dug around and finally pulled his hand out. He held up something miniscule between the pointer finger and thumb of his right hand. “Who needs Conversion Circle tattoos when you’ve got an Endless Ink Quill?” he asked with a devilish grin. Then he grasped at the pen, waved his hand, and flipped the pen a little in his hand as it returned to its regular size.

“Brilliant!” Todd whispered. “Now what?”

Tajana stood up and walked the length of the library. Her white tunic and slacks glowed an eerie red in the light of the enchanted walls. She leaned toward the wall and examined the rippling waves of red power.

“What sort of Protection Conversion do you think it is?” Todd asked.

“Hard to say,” Tajana replied. “I didn’t see what Component he used, and lots of Protection Conversions are red. We can’t cancel it without the proper Counter Component. Chadwick, are the walls in the bathroom red too?”

“Like Rudolph’s fat nose,” Chadwick replied as he stared through the windows which were tinted with red.

“But the floor isn’t red,” Thea pointed out.

Tajana knelt down and touched the floor. “It looks like linoleum,” she said with a frown. “Probably a blend of synthetics.”

Chadwick swore again. “Meaning we can’t easily alter or manipulate it.”

Todd knelt and studied the floor too. “What do you think?” He looked at Tajana.

“Without Components … ?” Tajana looked at Thea, and then watched Quentin, who was still crying, though he was biting his lip in an effort to stay quiet.

Thea got up and moved close to him, wrapping her arms around his shoulder and pulling him into a sideways hug. “I’m so sorry, Quentin!”

He hugged her arm tightly and took a big breath. “It’s okay, Thea. We’ll figure this out. You guys are all so smart. You’re Spectrum Scholars, you know? I believe in you!”

“I’m no Spectrum Scholar,” Todd said as he got to his feet. “But I promise to do my best to help us all get out of here.”

Chadwick scoffed. “You’d leave me here if you could,” he said around clenched teeth.

“Chadwick, shut your mouth,” Tajana said.

“What?” he retorted, holding his arms out. “It’s the truth. You all know everybody treats me like I’m the next Breaker. None of you trust me.”

“Oh, come off it, MacNamara—” Todd said, using Chadwick’s last name. For some reason, the name seemed oddly familiar, like she could remember it from somewhere if she just focused.

“Shush, Chadwick!” Tajana said, but it was too late.

“Chadwick, what are you talking about?” Thea asked.

He came over and joined the group. He leaned in close and practically whispered, looking back and forth from Thea to Tajana, to Todd, and finally to Quentin. “It’s no coincidence that the Shadows kidnapped the three of us. Us Spectrum Scholars are special, not just because we’re full of ourselves or whatever you’re thinking, Talder, but like really special. If you look at all the past Givers, Breakers, and Keepers, as far back as you like, Tajana says they were all Spectrums.”

“Every single one?” Thea asked, turning to look at Tajana.

Tajana bit her lip and looked at Todd. Finally she nodded. “Every single one,” she repeated. “Well, for as far back as Spectrum Scholars existed, which is only the last six centuries, since Blackthorn and Burtree was founded.”

“What are you talking about?” Quentin asked.

“The three Spectrum Scholars become the next Trinitas,” Tajana explained. “It’s happened twenty times since Blackthorn and Burtree was founded. And it’ll happen again, with us, for the twenty-first time.”

“Wait a second,” Thea said suddenly. “Why would they kidnap Todd, then?”

“That, I can’t say for sure,” Chadwick said, leaning back a little and eyeing Todd warily. “Sorry mate. Maybe they thought they could get at us through you, seeing as how you’re Al’s Mentor. One thing I do know, Tajana is totally the next Giver.”

Thea cocked her head at Chadwick. “How do you figure?”

“The Giver is all about using Alchemy to help the common people, as a force of good in the world,” Tajana explained.

“You feed starving orphans,” Thea said with a rush of excitement. It was true! If anyone was going to be the next Giver, it was Tajana.

“So that makes Althea the next Keeper and MacNamara the next Breaker,” Todd said with a nasty look at Chadwick, and Thea realized why that name sounded familiar. MacNamara. It was one of the marked names on her schedule. A member of Chadwick’s family was working for the Code Breaker.

“Right, I’m the next Breaker because my dad was a pirate, is that what you’re saying?” Chadwick practically snarled at Todd.

“Knock it off, you two,” Tajana said.

Todd and Chadwick both looked at Tajana. Now was obviously not the time to start pointing fingers and accusing people of working for the Breaker. The scary thing was that Thea agreed with Todd. Of course, she couldn’t tell Todd that. Not now, anyways. Even if Chadwick did work for the Breaker, it would be best if Thea acted like she still trusted him.

“One of us is going to be the next Breaker,” Chadwick said to Thea, and suddenly he was like a different person again; no longer his happy-go-lucky self, he looked horrified. He was either a fantastic actor or he really was scared, which made Thea think about how Quentin wasn’t guilty of doing anything wrong, just because his father was working for the Breaker. Maybe it was the same with Chadwick.

“Maybe not,” Thea said. “Just because we’re all Spectrum Scholars doesn’t mean we have to be the next Breaker and Keeper and Giver. I mean, there could always be another Spectrum Scholar. Right?”

“Not bloody likely,” Chadwick said.

“But it’s still possible,” Thea said. “If you don’t want to be the Breaker, then you won’t be the Breaker. There’s no such thing as destiny. You can decide for yourself.”

“Are you sure about that?” Chadwick smiled hesitantly at Thea.

“Prophecies only exist in stories,” Thea said.

Tajana grimaced. “That’s not true. Diviners see into the future all the time. It’s totally possible that someone already knows which one of us is the next Breaker. And the next Keeper and Giver.”

“And if that person works for the Shadows who kidnapped us, then two of you are in for it,” Todd added.

“He’s right,” Chadwick said.

Thea’s shoulders sagged. For a while, the four Chemists stared at each other, utterly speechless.

“We have to do something,” Chadwick said.

“Yeah,” Thea said.

“We have to get out of here before it’s too late,” Tajana said.

Thea cringed as her Kundalini suddenly fluttered at the base of her spine. It seemed too early for her Kundalini to already be stirring, but maybe it was because she was so upset. “Ouch!” she whispered, reaching around to touch her lower back.

“Thea!” Tajana stood in front of Thea and grabbed her shoulders. “You have Kundalini Syndrome?” she asked in a motherly, concerned tone of voice.

“What? Althea has Kundalini Syndrome?” Todd asked.

Thea felt her face flush with warmth as she saw the look Todd gave her: a combination of outrage and disgust. She was embarrassed, but the heat of her Kundalini was also making her face go hot. “Guys! I’m fine,” Thea said, but she could tell that it wouldn’t be easy to reassure her Mentor, and Chadwick looked even more worried. “I’m already loads better, I swear. And Guru Ellhorn said I only had to stay in bed for the rest of the day.”

“How long have you had Kundalini Syndrome?” Todd blurted, his face somehow whiter than usual.

Thea closed her eyes and clenched her jaw. She had no idea how long her Kundalini had been deposed, she realized. Maybe her whole entire life. “It just happened, at meditation,” Thea said instead. “But I’m fine. I can walk around just fine.”

“Can you Convert?” Todd asked.

Thea hesitated. Her spine started to burn, and she winced.

“She’s not getting better,” Chadwick said. “What’re we gonna do?”

In the next instant, Thea was shivering from the blast of cold coursing through her body. A wave of dizziness made her lean against Tajana as she fought to regain her balance.

“We have to help her,” Todd said. But he looked back at Tajana and Chadwick and outwardly struggled with what to do. “What do we do?” he said under his breath, and Thea realized Todd was asking Tajana and Chadwick for a suggestion.

Tajana bit her lip and furrowed her brow. “I can’t heal Kundalini Syndrome.”

Thea’s Kundalini rushed up her back so forcefully, she winced and gasped loudly. “I know,” Thea said between sharp intakes of breath. “You’re not … a Guru.”

“The best you can do is try to reign your Kundalini in by clearing your mind and opening up your Chakras,” Tajana said.

Thea nodded and got down on the floor in the Ardha Padma meditation pose. She soon realized it would be a challenge to try and calm down to meditate now, when her brain wouldn’t stop racing from everything that had happened.

“Come on, Thea,” Tajana crooned, rubbing her back. It would have been encouraging, if not for the pain that was coursing up and down her spine.

Thea winced and tried to calm down, but her gasps for air only turned more and more frantic. Quentin grabbed Thea’s hand, and she squeezed back tightly. She shut her eyes tight and tried to take control of her breathing.

Her Kundalini suddenly shot up through all of her Chakras. Thea’s head jolted back and she found herself staring at the red ceiling, unable to move. In a flash, she saw herself back in the library with Guru Ellhorn standing over her. The Guru frowned sadly at Thea and reached out for her. “I tried to help you,” he said.

Thea reached out for the Guru’s hand. When they touched, Thea saw that her own hand was black. Thea looked down at herself to see that she was wearing the black robes of a Breaker’s Shadow. Then everything began to fade into blackness as Thea passed out.