Read The Skeleton Key: A Short Story Exclusive for Free Online Page B

explosive.
    It’s a new and wild frontier. There is presently no requirement for the labeling of nano-goods, no required safety studies of products containing nanoparticles. But there’s an even darker side to this industry. This technology has a history that goes back further than the twentieth century—much further. To find out where this all began and to discover the dark roots of this “new” science . . .
    . . . Keep reading.

Prologue
     
    Autumn 1779
    Kentucky Territory
     
    T he skull of the monster slowly revealed itself.
    A shard of yellowed tusk poked through the dark soil.
    Two muddied men knelt in the dirt on either side of the excavated hole. One of them was Billy Preston’s father; the other, his uncle. Billy stood over them, nervously chewing a knuckle. At twelve, he had begged to be included on this trip. In the past, he’d always been left behind in Philadelphia with his mother and his baby sister, Nell.
    Pride spiked through him even to be standing here.
    But at the moment it was accompanied by a twinge of fear.
    Maybe that was due to the sun sitting low on the horizon, casting tangled shadows over the encampment like a net. Or maybe it was the bones they’d been digging up all week.
    Others gathered around: the black-skinned slaves who hauled stones and dirt; the primly dressed scholars with their ink-stained fingers; and of course, the cryptic French scientist named Archard Fortescue, the leader of this expedition into the Kentucky wilderness.
    The latter—with his tall bony frame, coal-black hair, and shadowed eyes—scared Billy, reminding him of an undertaker in his black jacket and waistcoat. He had heard whispered rumors about the gaunt fellow: how the man dissected corpses, performed experiments with them, traveled to far corners of the world collecting arcane artifacts. It was even said he had once participated in the mummification of a deceased fellow scholar, a man who had donated his body and risked his immortal soul for such a macabre endeavor.
    But the French scientist had come with credentials to support him. Benjamin Franklin had handpicked him to join a new scientific group, the American Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge. He had apparently impressed Franklin in the past, though the exact details remained unknown. Additionally, the Frenchman had the ear of the new governor of Virginia, the man who had ordered them all to this strange site.
    It was why they were still here—and had been for so long.
    Over the passing weeks, Billy had watched the surrounding foliage slowly turn from shades of copper to fiery crimson. The past few mornings had begun to frost. At night, winds stripped the trees, leaving skeletal branches scratching at the sky. At the start of each day, Billy had to sweep and rake away piles of leaves from the dig site. It was a constant battle, as if the forest were trying to rebury what lay exposed to the sun.
    Even now, Billy held the hay-bristled broom and watched as his father—dressed in muddy breeches, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows—cleared the last of the dirt from the buried treasure.
    “With great care now . . .” Fortescue warned in his thick accent. He swept back the tails of his jacket to lean closer, one fist on his hip, the other hand leaning on a carved wooden cane.
    Billy bristled at the implied condescension in the Frenchman’s manner. His father knew all the woods, from the tidewaters of Virginia to remote tracts of Kentucky, better than any man. Since before the war, his father had been a trapper and trader with the Indians in these parts. He’d even once met Daniel Boone.
    Still, Billy saw how his father’s hands shook as he used brush and trowel to pick and tease the treasure out of the rich forest loam.
    “This is it,” his uncle said, excited. “We found it.”
    Fortescue loomed over the kneeling men. “ Naturellement. Of course it would be buried here. Buried at the head of the serpent.”
    Billy didn’t