Crystal Choice: The Second Novel in the Projector War Saga

by K. A. Excell

  I rubbed my temples as a headache cracked over my skull all at once.

  My analysis modules must be broken. It was the only explanation that made sense. There was some glitch in my brain that had given me bad numbers. It was no wonder, after being driven to the edge for two days straight. Now, with this headache? I was tired, and that had caused a glitch.

  For a moment, I wondered which was more disturbing. Imminent death, or a glitch in my mind? My head hurt too badly to follow that line of reasoning, though, so I archived it and refocused my attention on getting home in one piece.

  Mom was already asleep when I got home. I looked into her room to find a letter open on her dresser, sopping wet with black along the edges. My lines matched it to a white residue on the kitchen counter, and I sighed. Her medication was open on her computer desk across the room, missing three pills. I rubbed my nose and started directing my lines to reconstruct the scene.

  It didn’t take long before I had a complete picture.

  Mom got a letter in the mail, tried to burn it, then changed her mind and used—of all things—a fire extinguisher to put it out. Overkill, but effective. It did leave behind a huge, sopping mess, though, because our fire extinguisher was a foam one, not a powder one. Mom obviously hadn’t been thinking straight.

  The ink on the paper wasn’t so distorted as to make it unreadable, though. It read:

  Dearest Adalind,

  I know I promised I would never contact you again, but I have news concerning an old friend. Athos is dead. I couldn’t protect him. Be careful, Love. They’re getting closer. I’ve doubled patrols and initiated the training of others who can help.

  Stay hidden, stay safe,

  Porthos

  I frowned at the Three Musketeers reference. If Mom’s old friend was Athos and the letter was sent by Porthos, then what did that make her? Aramis?

  Mom groaned and sat up, eyes wide with her mouth open in a silent scream. I jumped and scanned her mind with the barest of touches.

  She was still asleep—but not everything in her mind was quiet.

  ::Help me, Crystal,:: something projected into my mind.

  It was the voice from before—the one I’d heard in Mom’s mind.

  ::Who are you?:: I asked, still only barely brushing Mom’s mind. If I went any farther, I might get trapped.

  ::Quietly, Crystal. We cannot allow her to wake while she is this close to the edge.::

  ::The edge of what?:: I asked. ::Why are you in Mom’s mind?::

  There was a snort of derisive laughter. ::You’ll figure it out eventually, now hurry. I need your help.::

  I folded my arms. None of this made any sense! Mom wasn’t Psionic—she wasn’t part of this world. Even if she had managed to hide it from me before I received the bio card that unlocked my abilities, she wouldn’t have been able to hide it for these last few weeks. She couldn’t be a Psionic! So why was there a voice inside her head asking for help? Why was there a voice inside her head to begin with? More than that, how far could I trust it? I tried to run an analysis, but there wasn’t any data to compare it with.

  ::It’s a long story, and I don’t have time. Your mother has even less time. She’s been teetering on the edge of insanity for far too long, but I couldn’t stop it. You can.::

  My eyes widened. “My mother isn’t insane!”

  ::Quiet, child. I know she isn’t insane, but she will be if she wakes up. Just look at her—not as a child looking at her mother, but as a teleprojector.::

  I pushed through her walls and into the chaos. Her mind was littered with tools, syringes, cords, and chains. There were faces that blinked in and out of existence with distorted faces and clawed fingers dripping with acid. Every drop that left their nails hissed into green flame that started eating away at what little remained of her mind.

  Other fires of different colors danced and flickered in a silent song. A man’s face mouthed words in a red flame that tried to contain the green but only widened the destruction.

  Above everything was such pain as I’d never felt. The blue lines on my vision separated it out almost immediately and the voice grunted in approval.

  ::You see? Her mind is burning. It has been burning for a long time, but there isn’t anything left to consume now. When the fire burns out, not even I will be able to restore her.::

  I swallowed hard as a distorted image with a syringe in his hand stabbed at the air and Mom jerked. The air exploded into green flame with smoke so thick I could barely breathe.

  ::What are those things?:: I asked through my coughs.

  ::That’s not the point. I need your help fixing the hole that is letting them escape.::

  ::Escape from what?::

  My surroundings morphed and faded until I was floating in a sea of black with a glass case in front of me. Inside were nightmares. Children dying, tortured figures with sick grins, burns, and scalpels, and lumps of flesh. But in every one, there was the image I’d seen before. I started to run an analysis to try and pinpoint exactly where I’d seen it. Immediately, I was presented with the images of the two creatures who had rushed me outside the school only a few minutes ago.

  I grit my teeth. Mom was involved with these creatures?

  Suddenly, an image solidified behind the glass. It was one of those creatures, more corporeal than anything I’d seen so far. Its neck was snapped, with white bones sticking through its skin. It slammed against the case, sending silk thin cracks spiderwebbing through the glass.

  ::The Instructor must not get free!:: the voice warned.

  It rammed against the glass again.

  The blue lines sprang to my vision. Assuming it could output the same force every time, the glass could only handle two more strikes.

  The voice was silent for a moment. The Instructor gathered itself again.

  ::Just fuse the cracks together.:: There was frustration there with a note of helplessness—like she wanted to do it, but couldn’t.

  ::But how?:: I asked again. I still wasn’t sure if I could trust this voice, but that no longer mattered. Whether Mom could feel the burning in her mind or not, I had to fix it. I just didn’t know how. My lines didn’t have any answer as the Instructor slammed against the glass, and the glass shimmered. The Instructor’s head, still hanging at an impossible angle, grinned, revealing razor sharp teeth.

  The blue lines disintegrated as something moved inside my mind. The voice was inside of me, taking control of abilities I barely even knew I had. I tried to keep still as the world slowed down, and I felt my fingers reach out. No, not my fingers—something else. I touched the glass and pushed it back together.

  The Instructor snarled and clawed at the glass, but it was too late. The voice slipped out of my mind.

  The scent of smoke faded, and the ambiance lightened until the glass case was indistinguishable from the background.

  Her mind was clean. Perfect, like the safe space I created in my mind when I needed a place to rest.

  ::Thank you,:: the voice said.

  I caught flickers of blue and yellow, like a cheerful sky, but they were gone before I could analyze them and I was left looking at the empty shell of my mother’s mind.

  I returned to my own mind confused and with a screaming headache. Mom was asleep again. Her face showed no sign of the agony she’d just endured and, as far as I could tell, the voice was gone.

  ::What are you?:: I tried again.

  There was an echo at the edge of my consciousness. ::An Instance. Now go, Crystal. Beware the Instructors. Protect the hunted. Never forget—::

  Mom sat up and blinked sleep away from her eyes. The voice was gone. “Crystal? What are you doing here?”

  I stood there, grasping for some remnant of the voice, but there was nothing. I met Mom’s eyes without flinching. This time, there was no tunnel to suck me into her mind. Her eyes were c
lear. Peaceful, with a childlike innocence.

  I frowned. What was that cage I fused back together? Had I actually fixed Mom? What was an Instance? And why had it left when Mom woke up?

  “I just saw the mess in the living room and wanted to make sure you were alright,” I lied. There was barely a twinge this time.

  Whatever was going on inside Mom’s mind, she had no idea. I had to lie—that, or explain that I was a Projection Telepath who had just talked with a mysterious voice inside her head that was definitely not her, and who had just taken control of pieces of my mind in order to put out the fires that were burning holes in her mind. Yeah, that wouldn’t go over well. It was way too complicated to explain everything at this point—even if I understood what had just happened, which I did not. Best to just leave it.

  Mom frowned at the paper on the dresser. “I just received some bad news, is all.”

  “Who are Porthos and Athos?” I asked.

  She sighed and rubbed her temples. “Old friends who want to keep us safe.”

  “Safe from what?” I asked.

  Mom sighed. “The world is a dangerous place, is all. Now it’s late and you should go to sleep.”

  In spite of my exhaustion, I lay awake in bed all night wondering about the voice in Mom’s head. It didn’t matter what analysis I tried, I couldn’t remember any other time I’d heard that voice in Mom’s head. When I tried to think about the creatures who were burning her mind, my blue lines only gave me a headache.

  I gave up trying to sleep as the alarm went off, and dressed quickly. I braided my hair close to my head with practiced fingers, then stopped and stared at myself in the mirror. Whatever the stylist had done to my eyebrows was permanent. I wanted to hate what they’d done to me, but I couldn’t. There was a piece of me that missed the glamor of last night’s party.

  I shoved those thoughts away, and pulled the hood on my jacket up so shadows fell over my face. It didn’t matter how I looked. Better, worse, whatever. I was me, and the only thing that mattered about me was my brain.

  Ms. King’s lessons were ever present in the back of my mind, though. I could only flaunt the rules of society—that included the rules that governed what looked good—sometimes. Working within those rules was powerful. They could keep me hidden, help me find information, allow me to use attention as misdirection. They could also make me feel pretty.

  I hadn’t felt pretty in a very long time.

  I shoved the hood back off my head, then went to go find Mom. I didn’t have time for all this worrying about my looks. They didn’t matter.

  I asked Mom about the conversation we’d had last night in hopes I could find out something more, but she said she didn’t remember it and had never heard of anyone named Athos or Porthos who wasn’t a musketeer. I wasn’t surprised. Mom’s memory had never been great.

  What the Instance had said about insanity, though—

  I checked Mom’s mind for any hint of flame before she left for work, but there was nothing there. Only spotless white.

  That done, and Mom gone, I collapsed on the couch and let exhaustion take me. Whatever the Instance had done made me far more tired than I had any right to be, and I slept through the day. My alarm woke me the next morning with a squawk, and I hurried to check on Mom. I shoved a cheese stick in my mouth for breakfast and ran to the subway. I couldn’t afford to be late.

  Chapter six

  During school the next day, I couldn’t stop thinking about the voice inside Mom’s head. What exactly was an Instance, and why had I recognized that voice? It had sounded so different than all the other voices I’d ever heard—like a guardian angel.

  More confounding than that was how it had known how to calm the fires inside my mom’s head—and how it had used me to do it. It was like the Instance had the knowledge, but not the ability to actually fix Mom.

  How long had that voice been inside Mom’s mind? And why hadn’t I heard it before now? Was it because I was only starting to understand how to process telepathy? And, if that Instance was some sort of telepath, then what was it doing inside Mom’s head?

  I knew where to find some of these answers, but I didn’t want to actually ask Ms. King. If I dragged Mom into this mess, it would destroy her.

  An analysis report flashed at the corner of my vision as I walked toward lunch—trailing at the back of the pack. Smith and Briggs would save me a seat if I was a minute or two late, and I really didn’t want to deal with the crowds right now.

  I opened the report and scanned its contents. While I was in class worrying about it, my blue lines had been busy running situation analysis, and this was the result. If I asked Ms. King about the Instance, there was a fifteen percent chance with error that Mom would become involved. If I asked someone else in the class—someone who had been here longer than I had, and so might have some answers—that percentage dropped to seven.

  I shrugged to myself as I sat down in the empty spot next to Smith. I was just going to be careful with how I asked my questions, then.

  Smith looked at me as I sat down. “You look tired, Farina. They aren’t working you to death down there, are they?”

  I frowned at the thinly veiled reference to the Agency. Even though Briggs was the only one not already involved in another conversation—and therefore the only one likely to be listening—Ms. King was clear on the consequences of mentioning the Agency’s existence.

  “Yeah. Detention every weekend is starting to get rough,” I said.

  I half expected Briggs to suggest that I try to stay out of trouble—it wouldn’t be the first time—but he just picked at his food. There were no indications to suggest he was even listening to our conversation.

  Well, if I was going to ask, now was the time.

  “I actually had a question about that,” I said, and hoped she would understand that we were still talking about the Agency. Smith was usually really good at making those conversational leaps. “Have you ever heard about something called an Instance?”

  Smith bit the inside of her cheek, like she was thinking. “Not really. They don’t tell me much about the advanced stuff unless it’s directly applicable to me. Maybe ask Ms. King? Plus,” she shot a look at Briggs, who was still absorbed in his own thoughts. “Now probably isn’t the best time.”

  I shrugged and changed the topic—just like we’d been taught in class. “Yeah. What’s up with him?”

  Smith looked at Briggs like she expected him to hear what I said, realize we were talking about him, and respond. He didn’t.

  “Hey, Cloud Boy. Want to join us?” she asked.

  He looked up with glazed eyes. “Huh? Sorry, what?”

  Smith and I shared a look.

  “I take it back. Farina looks chipper, compared to you. What’s up?” Smith asked.

  He looked back down at his plate. “Nothing. I’m fine. Just tired, is all.”

  I could feel the lie in the surface thoughts that floated around his walls, and contemplated going deeper. Ms. King’s lessons said that it was rude to read someone’s shielded thoughts unless you needed to, though—especially a Turnip’s shielded thoughts. They would have absolutely no idea what I was doing, and that was definitely a violation of privacy. That wasn’t something I should do to a friend.

  A thrill ran down my spine at that thought. I had friends! This new reality was going to take some getting used to, but it was nice to know that I could rely on some people to support me, no matter what happened. The advice Briggs had given me earlier was only one example of that. Now he wasn’t feeling so good, and that made me sad. I focused my blue lines on his body language to see if there was anything I could do to help. That’s what friendship was, right? Noticing things were wrong, and then figuring out how to make it better?

  Smith gave him an understanding smile—like she couldn’t tell that something was really bothering him, and maybe
she couldn’t. She was barely an S1, and Brigg’s surface thoughts were at a higher frequency than most. She might not even be able to pick up his emotional state. But, usually she was better at picking up physical cues than I was.

  “You know you can tell us if something is wrong,” I said. That little bit of prompting might shift his surface thoughts to where I could tell what was bothering him, without having to go any deeper.

  The muscles in his jaw and neck tightened just enough for me to see as he continued to try and stab a grape with his fork. “Nothing’s wrong, Farina. I told you, I’m just a little tired.”

  His surface thoughts evaporated in an instant, and I was left just looking at his wall. I sent my blue lines to try and analyze that shift—what kind of Turnip could completely shield his mind at will? But there wasn’t enough data to compare his behavior with.

  “Can we talk about something else, now? Being tired is hard enough without everyone pointing it out.”

  I frowned. Trying to help had only made Briggs feel worse. Being a good friend was hard! I wondered if I should press more—something was obviously bothering him, and I really wanted to help—but decided against it. Ms. King said that it was important for trust that we let others keep their secrets until they wanted to share them. She said that sometimes friendship required believing people, even if we weren’t sure they were telling the truth, and hoping that they did the right thing. Of course, her conversation on friendship was actually designed to teach us how to manipulate our friends into doing what we wanted them to do, but that just meant I had to be careful to not try and use my friendship with Briggs and Smith to cause any problems.

  I looked to Smith to see what she would do to try and help Briggs, but she just shrugged and looked down at her plate again.

  “Sure,” she said. “What do you think about this semester’s Tournament line-up? Are you going to enter?”

  I monitored Briggs for the rest of lunch, but he was tightly guarded. He didn’t want anyone to know about what was making him act this way. Part of me said that was his right. If he needed help, he would come find it. The rest of me knew just how difficult it could be to sit there and suffer. I’d once been too afraid to ask for help because I knew that anyone who reached out to help me would only end up hurt.