As she approached him, she understood then that he was having some kind of effect on the cube. Another series of indentations lit up, and one of the six surfaces of the giant shape began to move. Jane heard the sound of bolts unlocking, metallic clangs that resounded over the countryside. She gasped and stopped moving, realizing that he was actually opening the object. Now, she could see that a thin veil of light surrounded his body. The light encased him and rose up toward the cube, beaming against the surface there.
She was about to call out to him to stop when she heard a shrill voice from behind her.
“NO!”
She turned around to see Max standing on top of the dune. He was not looking at her, but rather staring straight out at the strange scene before her. Her eyes grew wide as she immediately intuited that this was not the character she had encountered in the strange place where she had seen the bodies of her friends. No, this was Max himself, or at least some part of him; indeed, she suspected it was just a fragment of his vast being.
He spoke again. “Get out of here.” His words were loud and solid, and she obeyed them without a second thought. She shut her eyes tight, fought for the feeling of her limbs in the waking world, and thankfully found them.
She woke in darkness and sat up straight, gasping once. She remembered Morris was asleep next to her and tried to remain quiet, breathing as silently as she could. Still, a mild panic rose in her, and as she looked up at the ceiling light, it flickered on and off as the power slipped away from her. She turned away from it, and the room was once again thrown into darkness. She looked just over Morris’s frame to the window there. As she did, a drone passed by. Their rotary system was so advanced now that it was almost totally inaudible, but Jane’s keen senses picked it up easily. She held her breath and hoped that it wasn’t built to detect psionic signatures.
Now, she closed her eyes and followed it with her psychic senses. It was hovering just over the beautiful buildings that lined either side of the street, and when she saw that it was passing beyond their reach, she took a deep breath. Then she lifted the covers and got out of bed.
She walked into the hallway and began to descend the staircase. The sun was just coming up now, and orange beams of light came through the window frames in the doorway. She went into the kitchen and made a simple breakfast of oatmeal. She took the bowl to the room closest to the front of the house. There, she sat on the beautiful, ornate sofa and began to eat. Normally, the four of them would convene in the room to her left, which was a modern living room with a much more functional design. However, this was the room she had come to in the previous weeks when she had wanted to be alone with her thoughts. It was the perfect place to meditate, sit, or relax. She had, at times, even lain on the elegant sofa, not caring that its owners would probably be alarmed at the mere thought that someone would be doing that on such an expensive piece of furniture. The rest of the room was covered with exquisite antique cabinets, collections of ornaments, vases, and urns, and various chairs, and none of them looked gaudy; in fact, all of the furniture was tasteful and beautiful.
Jane spooned the oatmeal into her mouth slowly as thoughts of the dream washed over her. She also thought about Morris. As she ate, though, the thing that ricocheted in her mind was the awful sound the slats that lined the surface of the cube made as they moved. It had sounded as if they had been unlocking in some manner. She took another bite. She had poured syrup on top of the oatmeal. Now a trickle of it went down her throat, and it was perfectly sweet.
She looked to her right, seeing a glint of light; it was reflected off a beautiful gold pen that sat on a small oak table where a lamp also stood. There was also a simple notepad beside it.
As she stared at the pen, she thought of Max, and her smile faded. What was she to do about Morris? She already had deep suspicions about what the lump underneath the skin on his neck represented, and it scared her. She only realized then just how close she had grown to him. This realization was intermingled with the sudden realization that she missed Max. She couldn’t lose Morris too, yet she couldn’t talk to Max. So she would do the next best thing. She abandoned the oatmeal, put the bowl on the glass table in front of her, and reached for the pen and paper. After a few seconds of forethought, she began to write.
CHAPTER 4
THE PARIS FACILITY
Zoe Delahunt sat at her office on the second floor of the Paris facility. It was a much more streamlined building that the Committee had put together, Zoe thought, practically as an afterthought. Security was minimal, and the occupants of the facility were not treated as prisoners. In fact, she knew most of them quite well; a lot of them were well-meaning, but there was one in particular who concerned her. His name was Trey Rousseau, and he was undoubtedly the most powerful Ethereal the world had ever known. The question, then, was obvious: Why had he been allowed to remain in the Paris facility? Why hadn’t he been taken to New York?
Zoe had read every available file on the international network. First, everything she had access to. Then, her assistant Noah had needed no prompting to hack additional files. She was in full possession of every piece of knowledge available to all staff on the Committee network, including those whose identities remained secret—those who sat at the very top of the command chain.
After reading several days’ worth of documentation, and watching video files that she was never supposed to have access to, she came to a conclusion of her own. Trey had not been taken to the New York facility because it wasn’t power specifically that the Committee was looking for. No. They seemed to be looking for something far more specific: knowledge about the Atlantic Object and perhaps even access to it. According to the remote tests they had done on his power, Trey did not offer them this. In fact, he appeared to have no effect on it whatsoever.
Zoe’s stomach churned as she had this thought. She had been holding her foam-capped latte to her lips and was about to take a sip when she dropped it on the desk below. She watched as the cup tipped over twice and fell on the carpet, soaking the area below her. She picked it up and placed it back on the desk, staring at it for a moment.
Trey entered her mind—not for the first time that morning—and she looked up at the bank of flat screens on the wall in front of her and to the left. Her office was simple, but its technology was just as advanced as one would expect to find at any of the other facilities. She had her own artificial-intelligence assistant, through which she had remote access to all the resources of the Committee’s network—and these were quite vast. The walls were painted a simple light eggshell, and it was approximately seven by five meters, with the long side running behind her desk. On her left, a window with a simple, frayed oak frame looked down onto the exterior of the facility below, where there was a parking lot and the wall that separated the building from the busy road beyond. In front of her desk, the well-secured door was on the right, and through its inch-thick-glass windows, she could see down the long corridor that ran toward the other section of the facility. Just to the left of the door was the wall that was covered with the advanced flat-screen monitors, all of them connected to her AI assistant.
Trey’s room was on display there, though just the living quarters. He was not present. Zoe frowned and, presuming he was using the bathroom, turned away, stood, and began pacing across the room. She looked out the window just over the stone wall to where she could see the cars zip by on the busy road there.
She knew about the incidents involving the girl named Jane Connor and the various other occupants of the New York facility. Noah had hacked the footage from the many camera feeds around the facility, and they watched a rough recreation of the event. The video feeds—which both she and Noah secretly watched many times—shocked her to her very core. She had never expected, nor experienced, such a dramatic release of psychic power. But she supposed it was necessary. According to the files Noah had helped her access, the Ethereals had indeed been mistreated. There was even e
vidence of medical experimentation: the implantation of tracking devices in some and different devices in others.
She wondered now what she had become involved in. Her first introduction to psionic power had been years ago. She had been attending La Sorbonne and had become close to a fellow student named Jade. Jade was eighteen at the time, and they had studied together close to the time when psionic abilities had first begun to manifest on a large scale, creeping into mainstream news reports. Jade was different, though. She had access to only a very small amount of psychokinetic ability. It was nothing more than a mild amusement for her, and she had no interest in pursuing it further than that. In fact, most of the time, Jade forgot about it completely, and they would go for months without it being mentioned. Still, it fascinated Zoe, and she sometimes asked Jade—when she knew it wouldn’t bother her—to perform for her. Her friend levitated pens, melted blocks of ice—really just simple tricks.
Although Jade and she had become good friends, over the years, they grew distant. After completing her undergraduate degree, Jade went traveling with a group of other student friends. Zoe immediately went on a further academic track, pursuing psychology. When she completed her final thesis, she had emerged as an expert in Paris on all things concerning the Ethereals and the manifestation of psychic power. Her dissertation had been titled: Government’s role in the emergence of the psionic faculty, which, of course, in retrospect, seemed useless now; Zoe wasn’t sure what role the government had in such matters at all anymore.
Everything that was conducted under her governorship at the Paris facility was well controlled and benign, but now, thanks to the information Noah had helped her access, she knew she had become involved with a dangerous organization, whose ties to the governments of the world seemed sketchy at best. In truth, she was no longer entirely sure who she was working for.
She had returned to her desk and was sitting despondently with her chin resting on her right fist when Noah knocked on her door. She looked up, startled to see his ashen face through the grid-lined glass. What the hell? she wondered as she looked at him. She immediately reached for the touchscreen controls in the corner of her monitor and pressed the lock release on the door. It opened, and he stepped in. She was suddenly very aware of the large weapon stored beneath her desk. She stood up.
“Haven’t you been watching?” he asked in their native French, turning immediately to the bank of monitors on the wall.
“What?” she asked, stepping out from behind her desk. She looked at the monitors, following his gaze, and saw that he was staring at the screen that showed Trey’s bedroom. At first, she could see nothing—the image was the same as when she had previously looked.
Noah glanced back at her, frowning. Then, apparently realizing she wasn’t going to catch on, he approached the monitor and tapped the upper side of it.
Zoe finally saw what he was referring to and gasped. “Lucy,” she said, addressing her AI assistant, “tilt the angle on camera six upward by twenty degrees.” The image on the screen was adjusted accordingly. “My God,” Zoe said. On the screen before them, she could clearly see that Trey was sitting cross-legged on the ceiling, suspended there—presumably with his power. “How long has he been like that?” she asked as she gripped the back of her chair.
Noah shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea,” he replied. “I saw it a few minutes ago and came straight up here.”
She glared at the monitor for a moment longer. “Come on,” she said, heading for the door. She was reluctant to go, and she could feel that Noah was hesitating as well. They left her office and made their way through the small employee area. Then they crossed over into the hallways where the rooms of the few Ethereals who were housed there were kept. They came upon Trey’s room and stopped just outside. Zoe could feel Noah’s gaze on her, but a distinct awe had overcome her—an emotion she rarely allowed herself to feel. Taking a deep breath, she entered the room slowly and looked up to see Trey sitting upside down on the ceiling, just as they had seen on the monitor. She walked five feet into the spacious bedroom and stopped.
“Trey,” she said quietly, “is everything OK?”
He was staring straight ahead and didn’t respond for a moment. “I’m fine,
Miss Delahunt,” he replied calmly.
She looked at Noah for guidance, but could see that he was equally perplexed. “Is there a reason you’re on the ceiling?”
“It helps me concentrate, I suppose. I gravitated here naturally. I need something to keep my mind focused.”
“Video games not good enough?”
He looked down at her now. She blinked as she felt the gentle lull of his power fall over her body. She gulped, terrified to think what could become of them if he were ever to turn his power on them. Clearly, his vast abilities enabled him to overcome the mild effect of the psionic-suppression field.
He shook his head gently. “No. They’re not.”
“But why is it that you need to do something so drastic to keep your focus?”
“I have to keep my mind occupied.”
She hesitated before bringing up the subject of his dreams—something he had already discussed with her. “The one you mentioned in the dream? Is that the problem?”
He nodded. “It’s getting closer. I forget in my dreams that it’s not there to help me, that it’s using me somehow for its own ends. But when I wake up, I remember. I can feel it getting closer to me even when I’m conscious now. For some reason, I think the barrier between us is lower when I’m asleep.”
“What does it want?” She watched him hesitate. He had seemed to be quite confident and in control of the conversation, but this question clearly threw him.
“Freedom.”
“And using your power like this…”
“Keeps it at bay. It keeps it away from me. But I don’t know how much longer this will work.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No. Nothing. Increase security, maybe.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But that’s what my instincts tell me.”
Back in her office, Zoe lay back on the comfortable chair by her desk. Noah sat opposite from her.
“What should we do?” she asked.
“I think we should do what he says. The readings are off the chart. His power is extending throughout the entire facility. Maybe we should warn the—”
“No. No word to the Committee. In fact… Lucy?” she said, addressing her AI assistant.
“Yes, Miss Delahunt?” came the voice from overhead.
“From this moment forward, including any data related to today’s activities, I want all information pertaining to subject Trey Rousseau transferred to a secure cloud, my access only. Noah Sullivan is to have conditional access, pending my authorization.”
“Understood. Task complete.”
“Good idea,” Noah said.
“Will there be anything else, Miss Delahunt?” came Lucy’s clear, calm voice once again.
“Is there a chance that the Committee could still obtain the information to which I just referred?”
“The threat is moderate. Should I increase security?”
“Yes. Do whatever you have to. Open up a private account with another network if you have to, use my account details, but bounce the funds around a few merchants first.”
“Good idea, Miss Delahunt. Working.”
Noah was staring at her. “You know he could walk right out of here if he wanted to.”
“I know. There’s nothing we can do about that, though.”
Noah nodded. “Better get back to work,” he said. He stood, took a deep breath, gave her a grim smile, and then left the room. The door sealed shut behind him as the series of advanced locks bolted into place.
When he was gone, she lifted up her earpiece, knowing Lucy would address her privately once she was wearing it. There was nobody left in the o
ffice to hear her conversation, but still, it made her more comfortable. “Lucy,” she said.
“Yes, Miss Delahunt?”
She hesitated then, afraid of what she was about to do. “Prepare for the possibility that we may have to sever the connection with the Committee entirely. That means cutting ourselves off from the main network and operating from a secure private one. Is that possible?”
“Yes, it is. I can make the necessary preparations. They should be complete in five minutes. Should I also ensure all data is copied and encrypted, including the network hacks made by Mr. Sullivan?”
Zoe placed a nervous hand to her lips. Lucy knew everything. There was no hiding from her. She was thankful that the AI was completely on her side. “Yes, please, Lucy. There may come a time soon when we have to operate completely in the dark.”
“Understood.” Then she went silent.
Slowly, Zoe’s gaze drifted back to the monitors and to Trey. He was still levitating, virtually sitting on the ceiling. She closed her eyes, wishing she could sleep, if even just for a moment. She was gently dozing when she heard what sounded like static somewhere in the room. She sat upright and looked around. Turning to her monitor, she saw an image of a bizarre, complex cube flickering on the screen. The image was superimposed over the other information on the monitor.
“Lucy, is there something wrong with my monitor?”
“No, Miss Delahunt. It’s working normally.”
She glared at it for a moment longer then tapped it gently on the side. It flickered again, and then the cube disappeared.
CHAPTER 5
INITIATE
Marie Donaldson sat on a chair in the middle of a largely empty room. It was secreted away at the second New York facility—a place so highly guarded and kept so secret that no matter what additional information went public, they would remain protected and silent there. Still, she was nervous about what she was soon to face: communication with senior members of the Committee. She looked up and around the stark room. The only things of any significance were the six monitors that lined the area directly in front of her.
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