Chapter 6 - The Timekeeper

The Timekeeper continuation

F

rom Heathrow Airport, we first had a layover flight to Charles de Gaulle Airport, in Paris, France. I relayed to Diana want I was thinking since it was over an hour before we have to check-in to our next connecting flight. “Since we’re here in Paris, can’t we go and find the other Alchemysts?”

She just gave me a worried stare then answered. “I don’t think we have enough time to find the Others in such a short amount of time.” Seeing an opportunity, I seized having an advantage over her.

“How stupid can you be?�"“

“Don’t call me stupid.”

“Why not? You do that to me all the time?” I grinned, happy with the squirming she was doing on her seat. “I mean, I am a Timekeeper and I do control time, so it isn’t gonna be much a pain in the a*s, right? What do you think?” I solicited Kieran’s opinion. He was just staring out the large paned windows of the airport lounge while waiting for our boarding. “I suppose we could try, but it would be troublesome, since it’s already afternoon. I’d have a hard time identifying Alchemysts.”

“You can identify Alchemysts? How?” Suddenly, it piqued up her interest like a dog offered a bone does.

He just shrugged nonchalantly, as if expecting us to know about it already. “We have the ability to see people’s auras. Alchemysts tend to emit a colorful ‘odor’. While ordinary people also emit these, they have a more powerful tone of a scent. Since it’s already afternoon, it would be harder to see since the sun’s light interferes with our ability to see clearly. But we could try to?” he quickly added, seeing my cold-blooded stare directed at him. Diana looked over her shoulder, just in time to change my make-face at Kieran. I just motioned “It’s your choice.”

She nodded her head, making her mind up. “Kieran’s right. We don’t have much to see, now that his abilities have been dampened. The best thing that we could do is come back to Paris the next moment that we have. Although I have to admit that it was good thinking on our part, Spencer.”

I just breathed in and exhaled noisily. It was quite a bummer, since I really wanted to visit Paris. My whole life, I’ve only heard about it in television or seen it in print ads. It was this close to seeing it for the first time, and this Kieran bloke destroyed it.

I haven’t noticed time pass by because before I knew it, we were already being paged by the reception, telling us it was time to board. This time, I got the seat next to Kieran. It was still in the same, wide, jumbo-jet layout, like the one we took to Paris, but this was more packed. Maybe it’s because of these Americans who were loudly chatting, presumably going back after their vacation from the City of Love.

This time, our seat layout was similar, in terms of me still being in the middle, but with Kieran on the window-side (my left), and Diana on my right. The crew launched on their spiel about safety and things. If they could teach me how to handle people who want to kill me, I’d listen well. Heck, I’d even pay them to cover the basics.

The flight to D.C. was less turbulent than the last one. The crew was friendly, and no one in particular was itching to get their hands on our necks and strangle us to death. I was starting to think that the coast was clear. Then the whole plane shook.

Being the easily-dizzified person I am, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. Looking at the people, they all stopped mid-chatter and looked onwards with a blank, white expression, that was completely emotionless, and quite frankly, terrifying to look at. I just assumed that it was their first time in riding a plane and staggered towards the lavatory, where I quickly washed my hands and splashed some water on my face. While at it, I took a piss, which was of great content, since I haven’t peed in a long time (since I became a Timekeeper). Come to think about it, maybe if you’re an Other, you get to have enormous power over your biological bodily functions.

I guess the plane was really in a bumpy ride because the people were all starting to scream, both children and adults alike on the borderline of screaming. I heard a soft, but audible, thump on the cubicle door. There must be something wrong, and me being helpful, wanted to help. Before I could even reach for the door, everything went silent. Maybe, they were sedated or something. Chuckling to myself, I exited.

When I saw it right before my very eyes, I almost shat myself on the floor: There were no people on the plane. At all. Terrified, I ran to my row and nudged Kieran and Diana awake. “Wake up!”

“What the hell is your problem? It’s about 10 in the evening. What do you want?” she shot at me, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“What is my problem? There is no one on the f**k*ng plane!” I shouted back. Diana immediately stood and surveyed about. True to my word, there is no single soul on our cabin. She muttered, “Must be the work of Projectors.”

She hustled us to search the whole plane. Diana got to search the first class, Kieran on business, and I here in the starting-to-be-odiferous economy cabin.

To be perfectly honest, while walking down the aisle, I was really scared. At 5’11”, I am a scaredy-cat. But gaining some powers as a Timekeeper gave me some confidence. Maybe not that much like Diana’s or Kieran’s, but definitely infinitely larger than my former self’s. Every once in a while the plane would shake, shudder actually, but I let it go. Probably because of the air turbulence hit by it.

I searched the whole economy class, but to no avail. Tired of searching across four hundred seats or so, not even finding a remnant of luggage in any of the overhead carriers, I took a seat at a vacant chair and got a moment to breathe. The plane then again shuddered. Curious, I peeked at the cockpit and saw something that I wasn’t supposed to see. My mouth hung agape as my feet struggle to sprint towards Diana and Kieran.

“Diana! Kieran! Code Red!” I shouted at the top of my lungs like a lunatic. I ran towards the opened cockpit, confirming what I just thought. “In the cockpit guys, hurry!”

Just in time, they arrived, with Diana’s gasp barely audible at the sound of the engines roar: there were no pilots. I looked frantically at them. They looked equally shocked as I was. And since I was very scared(!) and didn’t know what to do, I paused time. As expected, Kieran froze in mid-stance, only Diana and I were able to move. I asked her the obvious question there is. “What do we do?”

“Well, we do the only thing that we could do: we land the plane down.”  She admitted.

I almost tore my hair to shreds when I heard what she suggested. I don’t think anyone in this cockpit is capable of bringing a commuter plane down, let alone a jumbo jet. I performed my breathing exercises to calm my nerves a little bit, even though in situations like these, nothing can calm you. Diana and strapped ourselves into the captain’s and the co-captain’s respectively, and I unpaused time.

The sudden movement of the plane moving forward was overwhelming. Diana grabbed the headset and relayed in “Mayday, mayday, mayday.” In a few moments, the radio crackled through, hearing a voice. “What’s your emergency, Air France Flight 27?”

She spoke first. “For starters, all people in the plane vanished. Just vanished, leaving three of us on board of the plane. Even the pilots are missing.” All I heard on the other line is some laughing and howling by the operators. “This must be some kind of joke.”

My nerves were being tested by this I guess burly man, so I retorted, “If this is some kind of joke, we would be laughing our asses off. Our plane is going at a general direction of moving forward, and we don’t have any clue as to fly it. Now, are you gonna help us land this plane at Dulles? Or are we gonna crash this motherfuck*ng plane because you aren’t teaching us how to land this?”

Laughter stopped and the emergency operator handling us became serious from happy in 0-0.00001 seconds, tops. “Who is at the captain’s seat?”

Diana chucked in. “I am. Kathleen Mellark.” I looked at her, insane. What are you doing?  She just shrugged me off. Mind your own.

“Okay Kathleen, listen to me carefully. Every step is crucial as to how you’re gonna land the plane. Now, the plane is most likely set on autopilot. Can you check on your panel above you, a little on the right side if it is.” She angled her head and read each knob, arriving at the autopilot. “It is.”

“Good. Until you run out of fuel, you’re good to go. Check the fuel of the engines. In a 747, it’s most likely located on the Engineer’s console, the one on the back of the co-pilot’s seat.” Kieran got on the seat and checked the dials that were flashing green. “Some of them are about twenty percent.” He replied after checking.

Diana relayed this to the operator. The guy comforted us, saying “Okay, don’t worry. Most airlines are required to at least bring in an additional twenty percent of reserve. Most likely, you’re running already on your reserves. But judging from your location, you would make it to Dulles just in time.”

Since we were approaching New York, instead of D.C., he gave us a complete description, detailed step-by-step procedure on how to properly land where we were supposed to in the first place. There were various instructions regarding flaps and landing gears, when you’re supposed to get them down, how you’d lower the engines’ throttle, everything. I felt that we went through a Pilot Crash Course 101 Seminar. This went on for about twenty minutes. “That’s about it. I’m gonna relay you to the guys at Washington Dulles and alert them of your case. Good day.” He clipped off.

Through the whole ordeal, Kieran and I were silent and Diana was doing all the talking. Then something caught my attention on the front. “Diana,” I nudged her. “Diana, look!”

We saw this massive white, rib-looking structure jutting out from a sea of lights and planes bordering it. The whole plane shook, shuddering, signifying the immediate stalling. I shot her daggers. “What did you do?” I immediately thrust back the throttle to its original position.

“That’s what Jim told me to do.”

“Oh, good god, he has a name now, doesn’t he?”

“I’m just following order, Spencer. If you were so good, why don’t you land the plane yourself.” She challenged me.

“Fine.” We switched places and I contacted the radio tower. “Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Air France Flight 27 approaching Washington Dulles Airport, requesting permission to land, over.”

“Yes, Air France Flight 27. We have been notified earlier of your emergency. Do you know how to land a plane?” The man sounded much more professional than ‘Jim’. I just nodded, forgetting that he couldn’t see me. “Sir, do you know how to land the plane?” “Yes, yes, we’ve been briefed earlier.”

 The runway now stood at about half a kilometer away, and I was dead serious in landing this plane down. Instead of having a good night sleep, I was preoccupied with landing a jumbo jet, with no formal training. How many bad luck cases do we have to face for this to be over?

The time came that I have to land the plane. About three hundred meters from the runway, I got down the landing gears. The stalling thingy alarmed again because of what I did, but I ignored it. Diana and Kieran, meanwhile, were holding onto their seatbelts as if their life depended on it. Funny, as that is the case now. While counting three, two, one!, I pushed the yoke down, making the nose of the plane dive, then immediately raised it, so that the undercarriages wheels would touchdown. When it did, it made at first a metal sound of grinding. Maybe that’s the tail fuselage?

When we were on the ground, I soon, pulled back on the throttle and turned on the reverse thrusters located a little next to it, and upped the flaps. This time, it was our turn to lurch forward, brought about by the massive force trying to stop the giant: the plane that is. We kept moving back and forth, as if the plane is constantly moving and braking of its own accord until it decided to stop. I was so happy I could literally jump out of the windows because of joy. But Diana wore this troubled expression on her face.

“What is the matter with you? You look like you’re gonna lose an arm and a leg.”

“This will be publicized by the media. We’re gonna alert almost all of the Minutemen that their plans to kill us failed. So,” she concluded. “We’re gonna have a lot of Minutemen on our tails, Pratt. We gotta move. Kieran, get our bags in the cargo. Use anything that you can to get them. All of it.”

Kieran quickly nodded then vanished at the very floor below us. I stared at her, waiting for her to bark me or something. She looked at me, irritated. “What do you want? Don’t you want to move?”

“No, I’m waiting for your orders, Your Majesty.” I replied mockingly, complete with curtsy.

“Well, control the media. Could you do that?”

I nodded absently, already thinking of a plan on how to fool the media reporters and the security guards themselves. Just as I was getting an idea, Kieran popped out of the floor and climbed back into the cockpit. “We’ve got our luggage.” I looked around his person, seeing no bag. “I’ve shrunk it. Alchemyst thing.” He explained.

I saw flashing lights bouncing off the cockpit windows. Looking out, I see the media are already here and that they are schooling near the arrival area. I quickly shook Kieran. “Change my face. And my body. Now!”

He looked shocked to hear such a request. “What? I haven’t done that before. And who do you want to change in to?” I fumbled for my phone rapidly Googled the person I wanted to look like. Thank goodness for fast web access.

“I want to look like this guy.” He looked at it for a moment then asked. “Why would you like to look like Christopher Browne?”

This man is quite inquisitive today. “Just do it!”

Maybe it’s the fact that it was the first time that I raised my voice at him and my changing face demeanor that made him move. He used three fingers on one hand and another three fingers on the other to put on my face and my body. Instantly, I feel raw energy flowing from his fingertips towards me. I see myself growing a bit taller and feeling a little bit heavier than usual. My shoulders started to hunch a little bit upwards and my hair was falling by the dozens. Finally, when he removed his hands, they both looked at me in awe. I told them of my plan.

~

**People were very anxious, especially the media. I’ve been standing here for about an hour, waiting for the people in the plane to arrive. As a reporter I’d like to interview the witnesses first-hand. Rather, disappointingly, the only person that I saw was Christopher Browne, the Washington Dulles Airport Manager. He waved the media men away and gave a short, but concise statement.

“As Airport Manager, it is my duty to protect the people going in and out of this Airport, and I feel that by disclosing what really happened, it would endanger some people and may, to some great extent, be a matter of national security. I declare a media blackout regarding this incident. Consequently, all your equipment would be confiscated by waiting airport personnel, and will be released until proven that you are clean. Thank you and good evening.”

Then, being ushered by a couple of airport security guards, he rode away on a beautiful Jaguar service. Life as a reporter sure is rough.**

~

“Okay, Kieran, do your magic. This man smells!” in no time, I was changed to my own slim, and handsome self. I could tell Diana had read my mind, given that she was shaking her head, in disgust, I suppose. I gave them a big pat on the back. “What do you think? Was my plan good? Huh, huuuuh??” I increasingly teased them. “Come on, you gotta admit, you didn’t think of that?” I was really starting to feel good about myself, but when Diana looked at me like I’m conceited, I backed up.

“It was a really good idea of yours, to trick them into thinking you were the Manager. Nice job.” Kieran commented.

As we drove off to our hotel, I took a nap at the backseat.

 

Author's Note

There was a rather huge mistake! This was supposed to be the sixth. The one I uploaded earlier was the seventh. Anyway, I'm just going to upload both! Please rate and review!