Spanners - The Fountain of Youth Read Free Page A

every minute since then searching for you. It took until now for technology to improve to the point where you could be located and exhumed, but you are here with us, and you are safe.
    “Though it will take months for you to recover, you will recover. And once you’re healthy, you will once again lead us.”
    Their leader made a faint wheezing sound, but Balthasar couldn’t understand it.
    He could be asking who, what or any number of things, thought Balthasar. I’ll answer it all. He deserves the truth.
    “I am your steward, Balthasar, whom you gave immortality five centuries ago, and these young ones are your new crew,” said Balthasar. “Together we will complete the quest that you started so long ago, the one you had almost accomplished before burial prevented you from doing so.”
    Balthasar stood up and spoke in a louder voice, this time in English, addressing the crew more than their leader.
    “Your name is Captain Juan Ponce de León,” said Balthasar. “And when you are healthy, you are going to lead us to the Fountain of Youth. ”

 
     
     
     
    ADAM
    Kolkata, India —Ten Years Later
    As he had done every night for the past 8,000 years, Adam Parr dreamt that he was buried alive. His nightmare had him clawing at a coffin’s ceiling and he woke up with his hands in the air, sweating and breathing heavily. Burial was his worst fear; it was the fear of most immortal spanners. You can’t kill an immortal, so if someone ever wanted one gone, they’d bury them instead. Adam’s enemies had vowed to do just that, and though he was smarter than most of them , all it would take would be for one of them to get lucky once, and he’d be trapped under the ground forever.
    After he calmed down , he ran his fingers through his thick brown hair and tried to remember another dream he’d had before his nightmare.
    I was dreaming of blonde hair, he thought, and of glowing orange eyes.
    He was dreaming of Phoe, his sister. She was a phoenix -class spanner, and their kind got reincarnated. Adam had always taken care of her in each of her lifetimes; sometimes he called her his sister, sometimes he raised her as his daughter. It didn’t matter; each time she died and came back, she would always come back to him.
    Until her last lifetime , thought Adam. She didn’t die like she normally did, and she didn’t come back to me.
    Adam knew Phoe had to be alive; her class of spanner always came back . Always.
    I can’t worry about this now, he thought. There’s too much at stake.
    He shook off his thoughts and got up. He washed his face and looked in his hotel room’s scratched mirror. He had a square jaw, and though his tan face was completely free of wrinkles, he felt old; he had felt old every day of his life as far back as he could remember. He rubbed a thin towel over his face and noticed that his eyes were still glowing green, so he waited a moment until they faded. Now he could face the day and walk amongst normal humans unnoticed.
    /***/
    Adam came down the stairs and put his keys on the concierge’s table. The hotel owners were a nice old married couple named Anuj and Puja Patel, but Adam hadn’t said a word to them all week.
    “I trust your stay was good , Dr. Parr?” she asked.
    “Yes,” he said. “I’d like to keep the room for a week at least, perhaps longer. I can pay for a month in advance, but there’s a chance it could be more. I’ll keep my things there, but if you need more than a month—”
    “Can you leave a credit card?” asked Puja.
    “No,” said Adam. “I don’t have one.”
    “Do you have a bank?”
    “No.”
    “Cellular phone?”
    “No,” said Adam, “I can’t figure them out—”
    “Really?”
    “They aren’t my thing,” said Adam. “If you’d like me to pay for two months in advance or more, that’s not a problem.”
    “ One month is fine,” said her husband Anuj from the back, in Sanskrit. “He looks familiar. I think he’s been here before.”
    “ He does