Crystal Mind: A novel in the Projector War Saga

by K. A. Excell

  I focused on projecting a sense of understanding and hurried to do as she said.

  When the card left my fingers, the world went silent and the colors in my vision dulled. I stood and looked down at my shaking hands in complete silence. Would Ms. King notice all that much if I just brought the card with me?

  The blue lines in my vision blinked at a 90% certainty she would notice. Still, even after so small a time, I hated to leave that card in the cubby. I still didn’t have control of my powers—I knew that. The outside world would feel too loud, and I would be battling sensory overload for the rest of the day. I was willing to risk it, though. That card was an extension of my blue lines. Even though I was still figuring it out, it was like a module of analysis tools. Leaving it in the cubby left me more vulnerable—and more stupid—than having it with me.

  “Even if you were to take it, the card wouldn’t help you outside of this room or the arena in the back.”

  I looked up to find Ms. King studying me from across the room.

  I took a deep breath and closed the cubby. I’d lived in a silent world for twelve years. I could handle it a little longer.

  I hurried to Mr. Barnes’ Biology class, careful to keep an ear and a tendril of thought out for Berry or Houston. Berry, because he would ground me for running in the halls, and I had no intention of staying here Friday, and Houston because, even after what Robbins had told me, I didn’t trust him to act rationally. If he did come here, I wasn’t sure what would happen if we ran into each other after he tried to kill me earlier. Did I have enough experience to defend myself against him, even for a little while? I thought of the gleam of anticipation in his eye as he advanced on me with the knife. Until I had better control over my abilities, Houston would take me down just as easily as he’d destroyed Smith in the ring.

  When I made it to my next martial period, Mr. West watched me with cautious eyes. When I reached out to his mind, it was covered in a sort of glassy dome that my mind just slid off of.

  “Castillo, take the class,” he said, and made his way over to me.

  This was the man who must have recruited Houston for the company—and yet he’d stood between us earlier. A retro analysis of his actions showed that West knew that Houston was a threat just as well as I did. So what did that make him?

  I followed Mr. West into his office behind the mirror. It was sparsely decorated and mind-game free—a stark contrast to Ms. King’s room. I sat in a solid wooden chair on the other side of Mr. West’s desk, and watched him cautiously. Did he know what Houston had tried to do earlier?

  Mr. West only looked past me—like he was trapped in a bittersweet memory. Finally, he shook himself loose. “I heard what happened yesterday.”

  Was he looking for information? I stayed silent.

  “I’m sorry you had to make that choice.”

  Which choice? The one between letting Houston kill me and my friend, or potentially killing him? The one between having my memory erased or joining the Agency? Neither of those were much of a choice. Zachary had taught me that I couldn’t sit still and watch people get hurt. I would fight—even if it meant breaking my own mind. Now, there was only one way to keep Houston from hurting people, and that was working with the Agency. It was a simple calculation.

  Mr. West’s hands were clenched on the desktop. He took a deep breath. “You deserve to know more than I can tell you but, Crystal, please be careful. This game is bigger than you know.”

  “That’s not what I saw.” The Company let people like Houston run free, hurting others. The Agency locked those people up. If that wasn’t high enough contrast, I didn’t know what was.

  He raised an open hand. “What did you see?”

  “That there are lots of people who use their power to hurt others.”

  “People you think we helped put on the streets.” Mr. West rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “Isn’t that what happened?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  I directed my blue lines to his body language, and cross-referenced that with the new data from Ms. King’s Social History class. Mr. West was confused, and agitated. His frustration, I could understand—but his confusion?

  “Houston is strong. He’s dangerous, and you just taught him more about how to use his power.” It was pretty simple. If the Company hadn’t recruited him, Houston wouldn’t be such a threat.

  “And you think all powerful people are dangerous? Look at yourself! Powerful people have the potential to be dangerous, but that capacity for violence is held in check by two things. Control, and respect. You have no control, which makes you at least as dangerous as Houston.”

  “Houston isn’t disrespectful, he’s a monster. You had to have seen how much he enjoys hurting people when you recruited him—and then you gave him the tools to violate minds!”

  Mr. West stood abruptly—startling my blue lines into defense mode—only to start pacing. “We have places to use individuals like him—places that minimize the risk. In the end, we don’t have the option to be choosy. We recruit whoever we can get—or we try to, anyway.”

  A question flashed on my vision. “Then why didn’t you try to recruit me?”

  Mr. West stopped, and stared at me. “What?”

  “If you need every Psionically inclined individual you can recruit—if you’re desperate enough for people that you’re recruiting here, inside the Agency’s territory, taking their cast-offs—then why didn’t you try to recruit me?”

  He swallowed. “My mission was to observe and report.”

  “That’s the real reason you got me a scholarship to this school, isn’t it? So you could watch me?”

  Suddenly, he looked very tired. “The world is getting more and more dangerous, Crystal. I didn’t want you to have to be involved in this war—but I guess I never did have any control over that. Just be careful. The Agency doesn’t understand everything that is going on, here. Not everyone there is what they seem.”

  I looked at his eyes to try and figure out exactly what he meant by that, but his mind was still shielded. He sighed, and motioned toward the door. “We should get back to class.”

  I had chosen my side, and that was that.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Houston was nowhere to be found the rest of that day, or even that week. By Friday, the prefects had redistributed the load and it was barely noticeable. Many of the Prefects had to change which classes they helped teach—like Vera Hunt, who took over for Castillo in Mr. West’s classes. She drove us harder and faster than Castillo ever had—demanding absolute excellence in everything. Outwardly, she seemed unconcerned about Houston. The more control I gained over my ability, though, the more I could tell how much it bothered Hunt. She wasn’t the only one. The teachers were distracted—especially West. He started showing up less in class—and when he was there, he mostly stood and watched. On Wednesday, Hunt took over all his classes while he hid away in his office.

  I wondered how much of it had to do with Houston, and how much of it had to do with that mysterious war he’d mentioned the last time we talked. The shield on his mind never wavered, though, and I certainly didn’t know how to circumvent it. There was no way to know exactly what the problem was.

  I had resolved to ask Ms. King about it when I walked into Social History, only for her to immediately wave me over and hand me the biocard. Thoughts of Houston fled as the world lit up and the minds around me came alive.

  ::Your abilities as a telepath are coming along far more quickly than we anticipated,:: Ms. King said. It took a while to get used to her always talking in my head—but it did make a certain amount of sense. If no one ever physically talked about the secret Neurodivergent agency in the basement, the only people who could possibly find out were neurodivergents like us.

  ::Yes, quite.::

  I bit the inside of my lip. While getting used to the idea o
f telepaths and teleprojectors wasn’t that difficult, getting used to one almost always being inside my head was harder than I’d expected.

  ::If you don’t want me to read your surface thoughts, then school them, Miss Farina. You are a powerful teleprojector, but that does not mean your natural shields will protect you from everyone. In fact, the sheer strength of your shields means that if anyone does invade your thoughts, they will almost certainly have the ability to modify them at will. The only telepaths with a strong enough gift to get inside your head, Miss Farina, are projectors.::

  Which was important information—and might even be useful if I hadn’t already figured that much out—but what was this all-important difference between telepaths and teleprojectors?

  ::You have already attempted several of the things that separate projectors from their less powerful cousins. Projectors have the ability to modify thoughts—although everyone accesses that ability in a different way. Some of my students have used sounds to do it. They merely talk while they are inside someone else’s head, and the other can hear them—of course that approach makes some other things much more difficult. Other students of mine send the equivalent of mental e-mails. Regardless of how the process makes sense in your mind, there are some important things to remember. If you are already inside someone’s walls, sending them a message—like I am doing with you—is simple and makes relatively little telepathic noise for others to pick up on. Sending a message to someone while you are not inside their walls is telepathically noisy. While thoughts—any thoughts—are outside someone’s walls, any telepath that can reach the mental height you sent the message at can read your message.::

  I thought about that for a moment, then formed a response, tucked it in an envelope, and sent it to Ms. King. ::So communication like this can be picked up by a telepath, while a teleprojector is the only one who can send it?::

  Her walls accepted the message—and they changed colors as they did so. I sorted back through my videos of the last three days working with Ms. King on my abilities, and noted a similar color shift every single time. Did thoughts have frequencies, like light? Could that be what I was seeing there?

  ::Perhaps. As I said, everyone perceives it differently. Walls have different heights and thicknesses—which could certainly be described as the amplitude and frequency of a light wave. Thoughts can also be sent at these different frequencies. Faster thoughts sent at steeper heights are more difficult for others to intercept—higher velocity waves with higher frequencies, in your analogy.::

  And more powerful telepaths and teleprojectors had access to a wider range of frequencies they could send or use to listen in—which was why some telepaths could get through some walls. If the walls operated on a higher frequency, only a high frequency telepath—say an S5—could get in. If the walls were a lower frequency, anyone above—say an S2—could get in. The PS ratings for Projector telepaths were similar. Although they all had a telepathic Strength rating of above S8, the frequencies they could project were different. A PS1 could only project very low frequency thoughts, and so would be easily picked up by any telepath in the vicinity.

  ::Yes, but PS1s can be very useful. Emotions exist at low frequencies, and so any projector telepath can manipulate others—just like you did with Houston, earlier. He couldn’t see you in the hallway because you convinced his subconscious mind that you weren’t there. Mastering low frequency projection is harder than you might think, though. Your encounter earlier was beginner’s luck.::

  I bit down on a sigh as I guessed Ms. King’s intention. She was going to have me practice emotional manipulation for the rest of class.

  ::Correct—and impressive. You have been paying attention in class, it seems. Only a few weeks ago, you never would have been able to accurately guess someone’s intention like that.::

  I grinned in spite of myself. Ms. King was right—she had been all along. This class had opened up so many more doors than just telepathic ones. It really was helping me to understand society.

  I accepted my assignment from Ms. King to sway Smith into saying a few key words during class, and started trying to split my attention between my assignment and the class’s topic—field communication during a tactical operation. One way or the other, I was going to earn my permanent biocard so I could use these abilities whenever I needed them, and not just in class.

  Halfway though the period, Ms. King paused her narration. Her eyebrows drew together—she was annoyed. I reviewed my actions to see if I’d done anything wrong, then stopped as I felt her inside my mind.

  ::Someone downstairs wants to talk to you,:: she said. There were only traces of frustration in her mental voice but, now that I knew what to look for in her thought frequency, it was there.

  I wondered, briefly, what it was about, and then stopped. If someone was interrupting Social History, it meant we were on a limited time frame. I had to be back to the school before the end of the period, or risk missing Biology next period.

  ::Very good, Miss Farina. Now, why don’t you persuade someone to send you on an errand back in the arena? Miss Smith, perhaps?::

  I tried to plant the idea that Smith had forgotten her pencil, or something, in the arena, but she just shook the idea off.

  Ms. King sighed inside my head. ::Perhaps that is too much for your first day. It is much easier to shift memories, and alter perception than it is to grow an idea out of nothing. Keep working on it.::

  Ms. King dismissed me from the class, and I hurried along a path Ms. King projected to me. There were stairs in the back of the arena—eight flights of them. As I entered the stairway, my temporary biocard I kept in my bra powered down—just like she’d said. The temporary biocard really was useless outside of the classroom.

  Someone was waiting for me as I emerged into the rotunda. He wore a white shirt, like the last time I’d seen him. But where had I seen him? I ran a search, and came up with a nameless individual talking to a tactical agent in a hallway, but my surroundings were fuzzy.

  The nameless man with the goatee stuck out his hand. I took it without prompting—that one had been covered in depth during a Social History class. Apparently, a handshake could have all sorts of meanings. All I got from this man’s handshake was a business-like respect.

  “Miss Farina, it’s good to officially meet you. My name is Joseph Medina.”

  Medina—the man Tolden had worried about explaining me to when he found out I wasn’t part of the Agency yet. I swallowed hard.

  “My reputation is a little more severe than fact. Don’t worry, kid, I’m not going to bite. I just have some questions about your family history. You’re newer than most recruits when they’re introduced to us, so I decided to handle your background check personally. If you’ll follow me, I’ve got a private place we can talk.”

  He led the way to an elevator labeled “InDep”, swiped his card, then turned to me with a grin as I wondered what InDep stood for.

  “Most people find Intelligence and Interrogation too big a mouthful, so they call the department InDep,” he said.

  I frowned. Was he inside my head, too?

  Medina chuckled. “I don’t need to read your mind, Miss Farina, it’s all over your face.” The elevator opened, and we stepped inside. A laser—too quick for most people to probably detect—flashed over me. The door froze open.

  “Temporary access detected. Elevator locked. Please input code to continue.” The lights in the elevator dulled to red.

  “Recruiter access: Medina, Joseph.”

  The elevator lights came back up, and the door closed. Medina tapped a button on the elevator, and we started to go down.

  “You’re a recruiter?” I asked. I hadn’t seen him around the school—and wasn’t Ms. King the Agency’s recruiter?

  Medina gave me a slight smile. “Not currently, no. I had the post before Ms. King joined our organization. Unfortunately, my skills were n
eeded elsewhere. Now I dabble here and there, and help out when someone who is—let’s say more statistically improbable than the other recruits—comes along.”

  I frowned. Was that why Ms. King was so annoyed with him? He was doing part of her job? Ms. King said people could get territorial, and that sometimes helping out—even when you mean well—could make others mad.

  The elevator dinged before I could finish my analysis on whether or not to ask Medina that, and soon we were in a small conference room. Medina offered me a glass of water, and I took it—mindful of Ms. King’s lessons.

  Medina sat, just looking at me, for a long time. I checked the frequencies in my own thoughts, but there was no indication of Medina in there. Was he reading my body language, then? Could that be what made him different?

  Finally, I couldn’t stand the silence anymore, but before I could find a random question to blurt out, Medina leaned forward.

  “You seem to be a very straightforward person, Miss Farina. You’ve been shaped by some very specific circumstances, but you haven’t let them—rather, him—swallow you.”

  I jerked upright. “How do you know about Zach?”

  Medina only smiled. “It’s my job to know about the people we hire, and to give that information to people who need to know. Miss Smith is certainly glad I did my homework, isn’t she?”

  So was this man how Tabitha had known about Zach? But if he had already been digging into my past, why had Tolden been so worried about him?

  I dismissed the question, absently. At the time, Tolden had been worried about a completely unknown telepath riding in the back seat of his car. I would have been worried about security, too, if I had been in his place.

  “Past relationships can tell a lot about a person. The car—and the engineering abilities that incident displayed—was impressive, but that relationship is not the one I’m concerned about. What about your mother?”

  I clenched my jaw. “Leave her out of this.”