Finally, after ten minutes of waiting, the one to Marie’s immediate left flickered on, and a man in a suit, sitting on a leather chair, appeared. His face was blurred and beyond recognition. Next, a woman appeared on the screen beside him. Her face was also obscured. Then, two other men appeared next to her, one wearing a suit, another wearing casual clothing.
“Miss Donaldson,” said the man on the left. The sound of his voice had been altered—scrambled just slightly so that it was listenable but unidentifiable.
She nodded.
“Good evening,” said the woman in the purple suit next to him.
“Members of the Committee,” she said, addressing them simply, knowing they would introduce the subject to be discussed first.
After a moment, the woman in the purple suit spoke. “Has the signal been reconstructed?”
Marie took a breath. “Using information gleaned from the first New York facility, we have been able to reconstitute Connor’s psionic signature. We have not been able to determine, however, whether or not it will enable us to successfully raise the object—”
“I think it’s prudent to try anyway,” the man on the far right said, interrupting her.
Before he could say anything else, the man on the far left spoke next. “And waste all those resources? What if it fails? If it does, we’re back to square one. Not only that, but if it works—even remotely—we could be drawing huge publicity, no matter how many surveillance drones we deactivate. It’s better to do a recall first on subject zero-four. It’s the easiest option. Connor has the closest connection to him, and she will follow him.”
“Agreed,” said the woman next to him in the purple dress. “If the artificial signal fails, or if something goes wrong, we’ll want her there as a backup. It’s a good insurance option.”
“And what kind of solution do you propose she even represents?” asked the man on the far right. “As we’ve already seen from the dramatic developments at New York one, we can’t force her to do anything.”
“It’s possible that her proximity to the device will have the desired effect if you take her with you, Miss Donaldson. Every piece of information we’ve gathered suggests that the connection they have with the device—and particularly Jane—is largely unconscious. They’re mostly unaware of it, and it’s out of their control.” This came from the well-spoken man on the left.
“Bringing Jane back into this business reintroduces subject X.”
Marie’s eyes had been drifting. She had been subjected to many of these discussions, and although she didn’t know the people behind the blurred faces, she knew a game of power plays when she saw one. Most of the discourses had been of that nature. At the mention of that, though, she refocused on the screen rapidly. This had come from the third man in the well-appointed suit, who, until that moment, had said nothing. Subject X, of course, referred to the tall, slender man who had appeared on video footage of the Ethereals’ escape, footage that had now been turned into a holographic recreation. Lucas had reluctantly identified him as the man he had seen briefly in Ireland, but Lucas’s memory of him was sketchy at best, and he had been reluctant to say for certain that it was the same man.
Lucas had even commented to Marie, off the record, that he had no definite recollection of him—that at best, he could say he thought he had seen him at one point during his pursuit of Jane in Ireland. But Lucas had been knocked unconscious during those hours, and so his memory of those events was completely unreliable.
For a moment, to Marie’s astonishment, there was silence in the room. She wanted to say something, but she dared not speak. A feed from the hidden camera from Charlotte Jenkins’s apartment—the agent who assisted in the escape and who was now missing—confirmed that she had also received a visit from this strange man. He had appeared on only several frames of footage before the feed from her apartment had been interrupted, only to resume with her sitting by herself in her kitchen, with a black shadow slowly evaporating across the other side of the room. They had no classification for him, and they had not been prepared for his appearance.
“Forget him,” the woman said curtly.
The man on the left shifted nervously. “I’m in agreement. There’s nothing we can do about that at this time, so it’s not worth talking about.”
All four of them shifted in their seats and turned to face Marie.
“We’re in agreement, then,” the man on the left continued, apparently speaking for all of them. “For now, we move ahead. You are to initiate a recall. When she comes back, do whatever it takes to win her allegiance. If you can’t, and if the artificial signal fails, force that girl’s hand by any means—be it crude or not.”
Marie forced herself to nod. It was the most reluctant movement she could ever recall making in her life, and it almost made her sick. Be it crude or not? What on earth was that supposed to mean?
“Good luck to you. We’ll be in communication frequently for updates.”
“What about Lucas?” Marie asked.
“Keep him in the loop for now. Whatever happened at NY-1, he’s a good agent, and you’ll want him on your team. This is your operation now, Donaldson. Don’t mess it up.”
She watched as one by one, they waved their hands and disappeared. The screens went blank. She took a deep breath and glanced toward the door.
***
Lucas was waiting for Marie when she exited the room that he knew was kept solely for communication with the upper tiers of the Committee members. She walked out into the hallway as the door shut automatically behind her. The bright lights glared in the background, and the gleaming white corridor stretched on behind her for fifty feet. He had his arms folded, and he approached her slowly, sensing her weariness. He was glad to be her subordinate. Denton’s erratic commands had made him sick to his stomach. Ever since the incident involving the escape, and after his extensive debriefing, he had received no further communication from him. However, he was terrified that one day a call would come through from Denton and the twisted dynamic would begin again. He watched now as Marie placed her hand on her forehead, glancing up at the bright lights and squinting. She looked back down.
“So?” he asked after a moment.
She stopped in front of him and looked up at his face. “They want us to recall him,” she replied with her head hung low and her weary gaze directed at the floor.
He sighed and watched as she moved past him, walking down the corridor. He turned and followed her.
“What is it, Lucas?”
“Nothing,” he replied.
“Oh, come on,” she said, almost laughing. She glanced over her shoulder, and reaching into the pocket of her cardigan, she pulled out a small tablet. She turned back around and began to work on it. He could hear the distant beeps from it as he followed her. “You’re not eager for another round with Jane, are you? You don’t want her coming back here at all.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Doesn’t surprise me, after that stunt she pulled at NY-1. Don’t worry, Lucas. It won’t be for long. At least, I don’t think it will.” She glanced at him one more time as she rounded a corner and walked out of sight.
Lucas sighed and remained standing in the well-lit hallway. On his right-hand side was the corridor that led to a holographic display room. Here, they had created a three-dimensional reconstruction of the Ethereals’ escape, and he moved in that direction now. He passed by a room on his right where he could see imagery inside that showed schematics of the ships that would be leaving shortly. The vessels were to depart first, heading for the designated location in the center of the Atlantic. Lucas, Marie, and a security detail were to follow behind with the Ethereals in advanced, supersonic helicopters. In the center of the room, there were three transparent, multi-colored outlines hovering in mid-air, displayed from holographic projectors. These displayed schematics of the lead vessel.
One showed t
he decks of the ship from top to bottom. Others showed details of the top deck and control room, while the third showed features like armaments and technology. There were other displays on the walls at the back of the room that showed the three other smaller vessels that would be departing along with this larger, more advanced ship.
He looked away from the holographic schematics and swallowed as acid churned in his stomach. He didn’t want to think about the scope of the mission he was about to become involved in. After a moment, he reached the display room and stood still in the corridor. He knew he should follow Donaldson back to her office, but that was not the reason he had stopped—he stopped because of the thought that entered his mind. It was the man in the black coat that he had only barely glimpsed back in Ireland. He gasped in fear as he thought of him, and his pulse raced in his neck.
He had been asked to identify the ghostly image on the holographic recreation, and despite his best efforts, he hadn’t been able to lie. He told them that the man seemed familiar to him and that he may have been helping Jane to outwit him as she evaded his capture the first time they met. This had embarrassed him greatly, but that was the least of his concerns. The man scared him. He represented everything that Lucas had come to loathe over the years about the Ethereals and the world they represented: the unknown, the unpredictable, and the ever-changing, ephemeral nature of life. It was something his psyche could never come to terms with.
He opened the door and entered the room. It was dark at first, and then the lights flickered on automatically. The interior was a light shade of gray, and as the systems powered up, a dim light began to shine from the walls. Small, black, spherical objects that emitted holographic information were fixed in the top four corners of the room. The controls were to his right; they, too, were holographic, and they lit up now as he reached his hands out toward them. He placed one hand vertically into the right control so that his index finger was at the top. Pushing his left palm forward against the other one, a transparent ring formed around the back of his hand so that he could pull and push the image in various directions.
“Access file X-005.”
A flat, perfect image was superimposed on the wall in front of him. It displayed the exterior of the original New York facility. It was a screenshot from just before the Ethereals escaped.
“Extend to holographic function.” He watched as the image flickered, and then the room was filled with the light of the image. Lucas now found himself essentially standing on the grass, facing the front door of the facility. He turned around, still keeping his hands on the controls, and looked back. Most of the information from the cameras had been intact, and the image was almost totally complete, except for one or two spots where there was simply static. The information here had been partially lost or corrupted during the carnage that had ensued as the Ethereals escaped.
“Begin playback.”
There was silence around him for a moment as only the grass below his feet began to drift slightly in the light breeze. Then, a loud crashing sound filled the area as the windows at the front of the facility exploded outward. Now, he reached his left hand forward and zoomed in on the ground where the glass fell. He could see the glass crunching beneath the invisible feet of the Ethereals as they began to move across it.
He shook his head slightly, and then pulled his left hand back. The projection moved rapidly, and the grass raced by below him as he zoomed out. Now, he was standing just twenty feet from the dangerous contingent, Ethereal End, who had threatened the facility. He watched as the visual barriers dropped and the Ethereals revealed themselves.
“Nothing new here,” he said. “Advance to two minutes.”
Now he was closer to the Ethereals, staring at them in a line that stretched from Carl at the very edge to Ciara and Michael at the other end. He watched as Carl looked in his direction. He knew he was actually looking toward the electrical cables that lined the perimeter of the facility behind him. He pushed his right hand forward and pulled his left hand back, swinging the recording around one hundred and eighty degrees. He watched as the cables were ripped away.
“Slow to twenty percent,” he said. The image slowed, and the room was filled with a blaze of light. He watched through the intense glare as slowly, the cables were pulled free. They snaked back and forth, emitting burning embers in every direction, and then slowly dropped to the ground. He pulled his right hand back once more and pushed his left forward, reverting the image to the same position. Now, he moved his left hand sideways, while steadying the image with his right. The display drifted across the grass until he was face to face with Jane. He pulled on the controls, zooming in until her frame stood nine feet high in front of him.
The light spread across her features, and in the reflection in her eyes, he could see the sparks from the exploding electrical cables. There was a sliver of a smile on her lips sneaking out through grim determination.
Lucas gritted his teeth as he glared at her. He felt something trickle down his hand and looked at it now, pulling it free from the interface. It was blood. He had been staring at her image for more than a minute and gripping his hand so tightly that he had cut his own palm with his nails.
He gasped, realizing that he hadn’t been breathing, and glared at the open wounds on his hand. He released his other hand from the controls and took one last look at Jane before he headed for the door.
“Deactivate the display.” The lights quickly faded behind him. “Delete log. Delete any logs pertaining to my access on this file.”
“Request acknowledged. Request complete.”
***
Marie was in her office, standing in front of the large display that covered half the wall at the back of the large room. To her left was a window that overlooked the dim skyline, and just underneath it, the black tarmac that surrounded the immediate area of the facility. The blue light from the display in front of her gave a warm glow to the office. She was swiping through images, specific ones that she had selected from the recordings that had been taken at the first New York facility while Jane Connor had been there. Neither she nor her friends had any idea just how much they were being monitored.
After having surveyed everything pertaining to the first New York facility, Marie marveled at their escape. The only difference now was that, after going over the readings gleaned while Jane had been held captive there, the Committee understood a little bit more about how her power worked, how it amplified the abilities of those around her. The extent of their findings about that matter was still limited, though, and Jane’s particular ability was still mostly shrouded in mystery.
Now, the images shifted in subject matter, and she was going through stills of the escape that had been taken from the high-definition security cameras. There was a shot that had been taken from a camera that had been positioned directly behind the Ethereals as they walked away from the front of the facility. Jane had her hands in the air, ready to raise their shield.
“Access video file.” The image disappeared and was replaced with a video file, which began to play immediately. “Shift angle one hundred eighty degrees.” The virtual camera quickly shifted around, moving through small bits of static where the image was not complete and data was missing. After two seconds, Jane’s face filled most of the screen. “Resume playback and zoom out two hundred percent.” The camera pulled back, and Marie watched as the translucent, rippling wall of energy spread out from Jane’s hands. She tilted her head. “Now just how the heck did you do that?”
She sighed, watching as the wall of energy spread out, covering an area that was easily half the size of a football field. Then, the rain of bullets and tranquilizer darts began. They bounced off the shield, creating ripples that caused lights to scatter all over the grass below. “Stop playback,” Marie said with a cutting tone. The recording disappeared. “Resume image playback.” The next image in the feed showed up on the screen; it was an overhead shot of Jane, Morris, and Michael that had been take
n in the arboretum. She swiped it aside.
The next image caused the light to fade and the room to go darker. Marie grimaced, having forgotten that the image had been included at all. She looked up at the ceiling as the fluorescent light there flickered once, twice. Then there was a buzzing sound as the bulb exploded. She gasped and jumped out of the way of the falling glass. Now, only the faint light from the monitor illuminated her office. Continuing to glare at the broken bulb for a moment, she refused to acknowledge the strange, synchronous anomaly as anything other than a coincidence. Surely an image couldn’t have an impact on the physical world? Such a thought was completely ludicrous.
She frowned, then looked left out the window at the late evening. The sky was a fading peach, but it was still cold and foreboding. She looked back at the ghostly presence of the man in the black coat displayed on the screen. He had only appeared on a single frame of digital film, and they wouldn’t have noticed it except that the computer had flagged it as anomalous. There had been hundreds of such flags, and most of them had been nothing, just digital noise. There were thousands of hours of film from many cameras, and such anomalies were frequently reported. Truly, they had been lucky to have found it—lucky being the questionable word from Marie’s viewpoint.
The image stayed there on her screen, because for some reason, it felt wrong to swipe on through it. There was something about the man that demanded her attention. She didn’t like this—it was just a simple image. What control could this strange man possibly have over her? She was the one in charge of the operation. Not only that, but it was just a damn picture of a stranger she had never met, quite likely nothing more than some kind of digital ghost.
Rise (The Ethereal Vision Book 2) Page 5
