The Crystal Tower (The Ethereal Vision Book 3)

by Liam Donnelly

  Morris was on the driver’s side of the vehicle, leaning over it with one arm resting on the edge of the roof. He peered into the dark of the interior. “I’ve done it with this model before. It’s one of the earliest automated systems. The security aspects are easy enough to disable. They’re very self-contained, just underneath the dashboard.”

  Jane turned back around and stared at him from across the roof. Her brows drew together. “Are you serious? How many times have you done this?”

  He stood up slowly, and a trace of a grin appeared on his face. “Enough to survive.”

  “I did it too,” Mike said with a flippant tone. His eyebrow rose, and his expression spoke of a great distance to any ethical concerns regarding the issue.

  All three of them turned and looked at him. This time, even Morris seemed surprised.

  “I can’t believe you stole a car,” Ciara said, looking not just at Mike, but Morris as well.

  Mike sighed. “Are we really going to have this discussion now? Max told us to get to New York.”

  The three shifted nervously, realizing he was right. Debating the ethical implications of using their powers to steal cars was not high on their list of priorities right then.

  Jane was thinking this very thing when her attention was drawn back in the direction of the beach. She thought about the light, which they had all so recently seen. She also thought about the edifice of which Max had spoken. It was, as yet, some unspecified object, waiting for them in the future. Her eyes creased as she thought of this—of its purpose and implications. She had already seen flashes in his mind of the finished structure, and though she knew that the exact image was only one possible outcome of many, she winced at the thought of such an enormous object interposing on the fabric of the beautiful skyline.

  As she tried to decipher its meaning, one thing became obvious to her: This was no longer just about her. Her friends were involved. Max was involved. Indeed, Max was involved on a level she didn’t fully understand, and somehow she suspected he would pay a high price for regaining his mortality. She flinched at the thought and took her hand off the roof of the car, drawing in a breath and stepping back. Pushing away that idea as quickly as she could, she began to think about the further ramifications presented by the towering structure she had glimpsed in his mind. She sighed as she realized where her thoughts were leading her. This was no longer about just her, Max, her friends, and the Committee.

  It involved the entire planet.

  She experienced a brief moment of precognition as an image of the tower flickered on the skyline in the far distance. She knew she was seeing some kind of illusion, a dance with deep insight into the psychic sea where such a thing was not common for her. She continued watching it until the flickering image faded, then was gone.

  “Jane, are you OK?” Morris asked.

  Drawn from that momentary trance, she looked back at him, startled. He was still staring at her across the top of the car. They stood in the early morning light; Morris’s face was stark and clear in appearance, but partially silhouetted. His gaze seemed haunted. “Yes, I’m fine,” she replied. He frowned slightly and tilted his head. She blinked and took a deep breath. “I saw something. That’s all. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  He regarded her with concerned eyes, then nodded. Mike had come to his side of the car, and as Morris slowly drew his eyes away from Jane’s, the two of them began their work disabling the electronic locks. Jane stood back with Ciara on her right and watched the two of them place their hands on the glass. She listened to them talk to one another, as though they were identical twins.

  “OK. You see it?” Mike said.

  “Yeah, I got it. Pulling the wire on three.”

  Together, they counted down, “Three, two, one.”

  Jane turned her attention to the interior of the car, looking through the passenger window. When nothing happened, she raised her head to look at them. Then there was a loud beep, the exterior lights flashed, and she heard the locks click open. She let out the breath she didn’t know she had been holding. Someone took her hand. Jane looked to her right and saw that Ciara had moved close and was standing next to her, smiling and elated.

  “Yes!” Morris exclaimed. “Can’t believe how much easier it was with two people.” He turned and high-fived Mike. Then they both turned toward the doors and opened the front and rear sides.

  Jane approached the front passenger side. She sat on the plush, comfortable chair, which seemed to mold to the shape of her body. Morris sat next to her on the driver’s side. Mike took a back seat behind Morris while Ciara sat behind Jane.

  “OK,” Jane said, “so, you said we need to disable everything except the basic GPS functions and the systems for autonomous driving. How do you do that?” She had been staring at the dashboard. Then she turned to look at him.

  Morris glanced at her, then over his shoulder. “Uh, Ciara, I might need a little help here.”

  “Yes, I agree,” Mike said. “This part is kind of tricky. I know where the exact components are, but it’s hard to find them.”

  “How on earth did you guys figure this out?” Ciara asked.

  “On my part?” Morris responded. “A lot of trial and error, and then, if I ever got caught—which I did a few times—a few psychic mind games to escape.”

  Jane watched as Ciara reached out her hand, placing it in Morris’s. Then Morris turned his gaze to the dashboard. After a moment, his brow furrowed as he concentrated fiercely. A terse silence built up in the car, punctuated by a minute crackle—a tiny spark—just a few moments later. A thin stream of smoke rose from a small crevice in the lining of the dashboard and was gone within seconds. That was the only evidence, save for the brief hint of something burning and acrid, that they had done anything to the car.

  “That’s it?” Jane asked, her brow furrowed.

  “That’s it. It’s just one section of the circuitry,” Morris said. “The GPS should be working fine.” He reached out his right hand and held it over the steering wheel. His eyes narrowed to slits and he began concentrating. Jane had done this many times before with her mother’s car, when she had been testing herself. However, that vehicle was much older—barely road worthy by then—and starting a manual motor was much easier than starting one with this much circuitry. A brief, silent moment passed, and then the lights on the dashboard flickered on at once, revealing to Jane a much more sophisticated interface than she had expected. The dark night had revealed little of the car’s features.

  The engine came to life along with the lights. Jane heard it revving in front of her, and she felt a new vibration in the floor beneath her feet. She turned to Morris and smiled as he lifted his gaze from the lights and returned the gesture. He seemed proud. In the back, Mike clapped and let out a loud whoop. In the rearview mirror, Jane spied the trace of a smile on Ciara’s lips as she glanced at Mike and then quickly turned toward the window.

  There was a beep in front of them. A small panel lit up, outlined in red. A second later, it lit up further and revealed itself to be the GPS interface, with a detailed display. “Please state destination,” a pleasant female voice said from the embedded speaker system.

  “New York City,” Jane said immediately. The others turned to her, surprised at her sure, quick response.

  “Thank you. Please state a specific location within New York City.”

  Jane turned away from the guidance system’s interface and looked out at the brambles lining the edge of the road. They were now lit up by the car’s bright headlights. “Manhattan,” Jane added.

  “Thank you.” The engine revved again and the car reversed out of its neat position in the car park. Jane heard the sand and gravel crackle beneath the tires as the slick vehicle backed up toward the beach. Ahead of them, they could see a road that led up and curved to the right, rising against the side of a small cliff. The car accelerated and they began their ascent up that road, the sand gradually disappearing and
the flat, black tarmac passing silently beneath them.

  ***

  The entity that now occupied Trey Rousseau’s body hovered silently over the churning water. He was five miles off the coast of the city of New York, and he had spent most of the night scanning the planet for the various things he needed. He had no intention of stopping now. The only one who had any chance of getting in his way was, of course, shielded from his telepathic sight, which swept across the entire planet. Max, as he insisted on being referred to, was hiding somewhere on this world, but thus far he had easily escaped the reach of Zatera’s vast psychic vision. He had scanned every inch of Trey’s memory, and he knew the species as well as any human who had walked the earth: He knew every neuron and every synapse—every link between every thought—and he was beginning to understand emotion on both the physical and ephemeral levels. However, that was a subject his mind had difficulty with, and so for now he mostly ignored it. What possible use could such a primitive faculty be to him?

  The host body Zatera had chosen already had significant access to psionic powers—or was an extremely advanced Ethereal, as they were referred to on this world. The trace of a grin curled his right lip. Quite apt for a primitive species, he thought, finding the expression accurate. When he had finished his scans and made his final decisions about what course of action to take, he focused his vast mind on the present moment. Around him, everything became blazingly clear as the power he channeled through Trey’s senses made them all a thousand times stronger. Below him, the surface of the sea glowed with an iridescent blue light—the ephemeral aura that secretly glowed from all matter, oblivious to individuals without psionic ability. Zatera could see for miles, and he could clearly make out the individual buildings in the skyline of the city of New York. They stretched, reaching toward the sky—high indeed, but not nearly as high as some on the many other worlds to which he had been. Indeed, on those, some civilizations had built towers and moving platforms that connected to stations in the orbit of their planets. In the higher echelons, some worlds had gone further, building colossal orbital habitats, or colonizing their entire solar systems. Still others had gone even further…

  Zatera had transfigured the molecules in the ridiculous clothing Trey had been wearing so that they formed simple white garments. Now, as the wind blew around him, they fluttered across his body.

  His eyes glowed with tremendous blue light as his concentration built, and he stretched his arms to his sides, his palms facing downward. Slowly, ripples of energy formed around them as though they were submerged in liquid. Then the transparent waves moved over his body, spreading outward. Next, a low, muted ringing resounded from his hands, which were surrounded by dim white light that grew brighter as the seconds passed. His muscles tensed, his arms grew rigid, and his jaw clenched as his neck craned toward the sky, the veins popping.

  The water below wasn’t deep enough to hold the base he would need to balance the tower, and so, focusing on the bottom of the ocean floor, he began to excavate. He ripped into it with his immense powers, tearing out enormous chunks of rock, casting them aside and swirling up the muddy earth above. After only a few minutes, he had created a circular chasm in the rocky surface below the water. It stretched to a depth of a hundred feet, and it was almost fifteen hundred feet wide. Such was the enormity of his power that it was perfectly circular in formation.

  He stopped and took a breath, not yet having used his abilities in the host body to that extent. Glancing down, he saw that the water was bubbling beneath him, and mucky, brown swirls stirred about ferociously on the surface. Enormous waves, caused by the upheaval of the terrain on the ocean floor, began rushing out in all directions. He ignored these.

  Returning to the task at hand, Zatera began to build. As he focused again, he first filled in the excavated crater beneath the ocean’s surface. The crystalline substance appeared on the circular outer edges first, glinting dimly in the low level of light that reached that depth. Within moments, the crystal had reached out from either side of the chasm and met at the center, filling the void. Shortly after, the entire crater was full. The newly formed crystal was extremely dense—more than strong enough to hold the edifice he planned to construct. Then, Zatera began building on top of it.

  Watching closely in his mind’s eye, he could see the edifice forming. He was creating the substance with a complex reaction, transforming the ocean’s water and using it as the main source of matter while employing his immense psionic powers as a catalyst. This power was also the conduit for other necessary energies. To form this specific crystalline substance in such large quantities, he required exotic particles that were nowhere to be found on earth. And so, as the substance formed, he continually opened and closed miniscule gateways to other corners of the galaxy—and indeed other galaxies—where the substance could be found. Only tiny quantities were required, but still, without these specific—and extremely dangerous—elements, unknown to any scientist on earth, the tower would be useless to him. It would appear to the people of Earth as a useless piece of giant, lumpen crystal.

  He watched, his psychic sense having drifted below the surface to where the edifice had begun to form. First, the central mass spread out and took shape on the ocean floor, directly on top of the newly filled-in crater. Its diameter was well over fourteen hundred feet wide—wide enough, he thought, to hold the tower. Once that was complete, he continued focusing his power, watching as giant arcs of the crystalline structure shot out from the central mass. Some of these were massive, and they disturbed the water below him.

  The sea directly under him began churning again as the edifice grew beneath it, disrupting the water. The base grew faster as it approached the halfway point. Then, as his mind’s eye once again drifted below the surface, Zatera saw the light from above illuminate the rapidly growing crystal. It appeared to be a haphazard formation, but the base didn’t need the very precise refinement that the rest of the tower would; it was simply meant to hold the structure, and for that purpose, it had to be three things: strong, wide, and dense.

  He continued watching from beneath the surface as the crystal approached the light of the world above. He could see that gushing water now churned there, causing more high waves to spread out to a distance of several hundred feet. He returned his senses to his physical body, then slowly turned his head toward the sea below. Just as he did, the first giant tip of the crystalline structure broke the surface. Turning his palms upward, he continued drawing it toward him, and then, quickly, more of these enormous spires appeared. At first, just the largest columns could be seen. The sun reflected off them, glinting as they ascended with flashes of golden light cast against their blue-white surfaces in the morning sun.

  Eventually, a rough surface had formed, with large pieces of the crystal that stretched upward here and there, though these were mostly at the very center. Otherwise, the surface was uneven all over. Water had been captured in pools and crevices scattered across it. Now, though, as he focused and raised the entire base to a height of fifty feet over the surface of the ocean, some of these began to drain, with what appeared to be waterfalls cascading from the sides. The formation was circular and its diameter was slightly less than the rough base, which had grown from within the excavated space below.

  But the surface was too inanimate. He needed something else, and so he stared downward, concentrating. The tips of the crystal points glowed with white light that flared like stars. The highest peaks were consumed by this, and then the light spread downward toward the others, moving across the rest of the structure like a flowing, liquid luminescence. When it had reached the outer edges of the surface, the entire area was bathed in this light. The crystal began to morph, changing as the seconds passed; the large, central columns that had originally reached heights of up to a hundred feet began to shrink and coalesced back into the base, becoming a part of it. The rest of its peaks, valleys, and crevices evened out until, through the liquid white light which covered the
entire surface, a flat, empty space began taking shape. As he worked, clusters of energy bled from the top of this newly formed base.

  Zatera flinched then, as a memory that wasn’t his own was recalled from somewhere in the recesses of Trey’s mind. He was reminded of something called cotton wool. He was surprised the memory had not been automatically suppressed, for it was he who had access to and control of Trey’s mind—no one else.

  The bright, starlike formations floated off across the water, twinkling as they disappeared from view. Some of them moved in the direction of the city while others drifted to the left and right of the large base, floating out onto the water. Still others moved back out across the ocean behind him.

  As the light below him dimmed, he looked down and saw that the surface was now almost totally flat; only a few sections had slants that crested to a height of a few feet here and there. Accessing Trey’s memory, he nodded—a small, barely perceptible gesture—knowing that he now had exactly what he needed to construct the tower. Slowly, with his palms still outstretched to his sides, he lowered himself onto the platform. His bare feet touched the crystalline surface, and Zatera felt the amplification of its strange energies rise through his host body like electricity. This structure was merely a conduit, but already he could feel the potential power he could wield with it.

  Above him, the gray clouds had begun to swirl in a circular motion, although the effect was small. The sea crashed all around the edge of the newly formed base. The glinting platform was fifty feet off the water’s surface, and the waves seemed to almost begrudge its presence. He frowned and, glaring out toward the ocean, thought to silence them. A shockwave of energy pulsed from his body and dashed out across the fourteen-hundred-foot distance. As it hit the sea, the waves receded, and within moments, the water had settled to a glass-like state.