Several planks of oak splintered and exploded into the hallway, sending shards of wood toward them. Distracted by this, Jane lost her focus. The connection broke suddenly, and the light that had been growing between them exploded outward. Jane was launched backward through the hallway. She watched the walls fly past her and was powerless to stop herself as Morris’s frame receded from her, already turning back toward the door. Even before she landed hard on the kitchen floor at the back of the house, crashing into the chairs there, she was turning her attention to Ciara. The pieces of furniture scattered on the floor behind her with a clatter. Ciara, she said as clearly as she could. She was already putting her hands on the cold floor and moving up.
Yeah? she heard Ciara’s fearful reply.
Jane turned to see her standing in the doorway on the left, staring out at her.
Jane, what the hell is going on? Ciara asked.
You have to scan his mind. Now. We need to know everything we can about what’s going on. Quickly.
Ciara hesitated for only a split second before nodding and turning down the hallway. She placed one foot on the floor just outside the door and stood up straight, facing Morris. But Morris had already approached the door once again and was reaching for the handle.
“No!” Jane shouted as she once again gripped his hand. He turned toward her, his expression venomous, but she was ready this time, and concentrating, she lifted him off his feet as she gritted her teeth with violent determination and drew him toward her down the hall. Then, she launched him into the first room on the left. She heard him crash into the room there, and the crashing didn’t stop as he thrashed around among whatever priceless objects he had smashed into.
Despite her quickly growing exhaustion—which she bluntly ignored—Jane jumped to her feet, ran past her friends, and entered the room at the front of the house, where she had previously written to Max.
Morris had crashed into an antique chair, and as he struggled to get to his feet, his face furrowed into an expression of pain. After a moment, he was standing straight in front of her, but she was blocking his exit.
“Move,” he said simply, his face once again blank.
“You’re not leaving.” She felt the crackle building between them, and it was unlike anything she had ever felt before. Once, she had been standing at the back door of her house under a sky that had been spitting just a few small streaks of lightning. She had the sudden instinct that the storm was about to get serious. At that moment, she didn’t act fast enough, and a giant bolt of lightning had exploded right over their garden, knocking her back to the floor in shock.
That’s what it felt like now.
She felt him grip her again as he reached out his hands toward her, his power falling down around her in a viselike grip. She looked down to see her feet leaving the ground once again. As she looked up at him, the same anger rose up inside her, and she drew her hands free from his grip, throwing them into the air and extending her will outward. He fell backward two feet, and she dropped back to the floor, landing deftly and lowering herself steadily, placing her hands on the carpet. She watched as he steadied himself, arms outstretched, and faced her again. She rose to her feet and circled the large table that occupied the center of the room. She moved right, and he moved left, their eyes locked on one another.
He’s going back to the facility, Jane, or one of them. I think a different one. I’m not sure exactly why. Ciara’s voice came through clearly, filled with dread.
Jane nodded but didn’t answer, saving all of her focus for Morris, who was now turning his vast psychic powers on her. As they continued to stare at one another, the cabinets holding ornaments and delicate china at the far side of the room began to rock back and forth. The glass that lined them shook in its casing. The incredible chandelier overhead began to flicker on and off, and dust fell from cracks in the plaster. Jane frowned as the many shadows shifted position around her, tilting downward. She looked up then on instinct, gasping, to see that the chandelier had drifted in its orientation toward her. As the screws began to shake and buckle, Jane jumped. The massive light broke free from the ceiling and drew huge chunks of plaster down with it as it fell toward her. She flew toward the sofa, and the mass of beautiful crystals crashed in the corner behind her as she landed on the soft cushions. Immediately, she turned to look at Morris, who was staring straight at her. Without warning, the cabinet doors flew open, their contents spilling into the open air of the now darkened living space.
Within seconds, the air was filled with a floating mass of ornamental plates, debris, urns, vases, and other pieces of exquisite furniture. Then the mass of objects began to swirl in a haphazard, circular motion. They formed rings that circled up and down around each other in ellipses. Jane reached her power out toward the rings, but could not breach them. She rose slightly, and a lamp spun toward her rapidly and almost hit her head. She ducked back down and looked at Morris, her jaw trembling. He was not looking at her now, and was instead glaring straight into the vortex of debris. As she glared at him, she realized he was gone; the Morris she knew had disappeared beneath the surface. Whoever this was, it was not the young man she had so recently fallen for, and only rarely in her life had she felt her heart heave with pain as it did at that moment. She would have shed tears if there had been time.
She had been distracted for only a second, and she now saw the surface of the plate as it moved rapidly in her direction, spinning end over end as it came toward her. Lilies, she thought as the flat surface smacked her face hard. The plate shattered. She groaned and hit the floor. Her mouth opened and closed, and she tasted blood. Pushing with her left arm, she tried to lift herself up, but fell back to the carpet once again. Her head fell to one side, and she watched through the legs of the table as Morris slowly walked out of the room, not sparing a second to glance at her. As he stepped through the doorframe, she could see sweat beads on his brow—the only minute ounce of hope she could find in this disaster.
For now, all she could do was listen as the remaining bolts on the hallway door broke open. She closed her eyes as she heard Morris’s footsteps recede outside into the cold night. Although she wasn’t trying, she watched him leave the building, listening to his heartbeat; it had become something so common to her that it required no effort at all.
Finally, his hold on the floating objects fell, and a cascade of debris crashed to the floor around her. Jane barely noticed, and she closed her eyes as some of it bounced, then settled and stopped moving.
She woke—what must have been only moments later—to find Ciara and Mike standing over her. Ciara was clutching her hand and breathing deeply, her long, black hair dangling down over her shoulders. Jane blinked and sat up immediately, clutching her hand to her face.
“Don’t worry,” Mike said. “It’s just a red mark. No scars or anything.” He smiled.
“OK,” Jane replied, trying to sound upbeat, but clearly not succeeding. Pushing herself off the floor, she was helped by Ciara to the sofa just a few feet away. Lowering herself onto it, she rested against the back. A tear was already spilling down her cheek, and she felt the sadness rise in her chest. The fire that previously rose from there was gone. Now she felt broken, and the aches in her body echoed this feeling completely. She shuddered and tried to stifle her tears.
Ciara sat down beside her, placing a hand on her back. “It’s OK,” she said, “you don’t have to be a warrior all of the time, Jane.”
Mike sat opposite Ciara on the other side on the sofa. He placed a hand on Jane’s shoulder gently. “I can’t believe he fought you like that,” he said.
Jane stopped sobbing almost immediately. She lifted her head and wiped her eyes. Looking up at him, she nodded. “Where are we, guys?” And with that, she was back. She looked at Ciara and saw her glance briefly at Mike, frowning. Jane turned and looked back at him, but he glanced away. “Come on!” she said.
“OK,” Ciara replied. “I
scanned his mind—as you know. It was very strange. It wasn’t like the person I’ve come to know intimately over the last few weeks we’ve been living in this house.” She frowned. “It was like he wasn’t there—like his personality was suppressed. There was only a very basic thought pattern, and it involved returning to the facility. That was all. There was nothing else in his mind. As you both know, looking into someone’s mind telepathically is like gazing into a flower or a gutter, depending on the person. But this was like the flower had been cut from the stem, and there was almost nothing to see. But don’t worry, Jane. I know for a fact that it’s not permanent. He’s in there somewhere.”
Jane breathed a sigh of relief. Ciara painted a very accurate picture; the metaphor was correct. Looking into a person’s mind was indeed often like looking into a blooming flower, but hearing that description of Morris’s mind truly scared her. “So the only thing you could pick up was the thought that he needed to return to the facility?”
“Yes. It was strange.” She frowned again now. She had turned to face Jane, but now looked at the floor. “It was like there was something in there with his thoughts, like a radio transmission, but not quite.”
“No. It wasn’t radio,” Mike added. “I didn’t sense anything like that at all.”
Jane glared at him. “Since when can you pick up radio transmissions?”
“I can’t. I can just sort of… sense them. There was nothing like that around Morris, but I do know what Ciara is referring to. You’re talking metaphorically, right, Ciara? It wasn’t an actual radio signal?”
“Yes! That’s it, exactly.”
“Do you know the exact location the signal was drawing him to?” Jane asked Ciara now.
“No.”
“Could we find out?”
She hesitated. “Yes, but… you’d have to help me, Jane.”
Jane nodded.
“I think I can home in on him, but I can’t do it by myself.”
“OK. We’ll make it work.” Jane glanced around the room then, realizing they were sitting among the remains of a small war zone. A shudder came over her as thoughts of him rose in her mind. God damn it, Max. Where the heck are you? A strange feeling overcame her as she thought of him. It almost felt as though he had never existed. She looked at the faces of her friends and pushed the thought aside, since it terrified her to even think about that possibility.
“Come on,” she said, standing up. She placed a palm on her face and gasped automatically in a grimace as the area she touched swelled with pain. “Let’s go to the other room. We’re not staying in here.”
Ciara and Mike nodded and left the room first. Jane was about to leave when she remembered the letter she had written. She glanced toward the corner of the room where the ornamental table had sat with the notepad. The table was upturned; that was the corner the chandelier had crashed in, and the area was now littered with glass, plaster, and shards of broken wood. Suddenly, a surge of anger overcame her, and she walked over to that area of the room. She reached out with her mind and gripped the chandelier with the power. She lifted its broken remains off the floor and sent it rocketing across the room, where it crashed into the black-marble fireplace.
“Jane, are you OK?” she heard Ciara yell from the kitchen.
For a moment, Jane didn’t answer, and merely stared down at the carpet that was now strewn with new dirt. “Yes, I’m fine, just a second,” she replied after a moment.
There, among the remains, was the notebook. She didn’t reach down for it, but instead raised her palm into the air and bid it come to her. She watched as it rose off the floor and flew into her hand. She knew then that she was getting stronger somehow. Morris had beaten her, but only because she had been holding back; she could never hurt him, no matter what. In realizing this, it felt as though her chest lit up with a dazzling light. Fresh tears filled her eyes, and for a moment, she drifted away from the room.
In a brief, strange reverie, she floated upward past swirling banks of cloud. There was lightning here, and something was spinning just outside the moving, flowing column. Up ahead, toward the sky, was a spinning pool of light, and beyond that, other places. Then the imagery shifted, and she glimpsed beneath the ocean’s depths in her mind’s eye. As she moved across the jagged surface, something came to life in front of her, and a blue light illuminated the incredible dark there.
She gasped and shut her eyes, pulling herself away from the vision as rapidly as she could to find herself once again fully present in the room. She had a feeling that she knew what she had seen, but she would not dare think about that now, and so buried the thoughts. Glancing down at the notepad, she put it in her pocket.
Just before she crossed the threshold of the now darkened room into the more brightly lit corridor beyond, she heard his voice speak to her from a vast distance, so far away, it seemed as though a whisper.
The future…
She turned around and looked into the darkened, torn room, but it was still empty. She wondered where his voice had come from. It sounded like, even while speaking the words, he had been distracted, as though staring off into the distance. She suspected he was referring to the images that had entered her mind only seconds ago, but she didn’t have enough information to speculate, and so she thought no further of it. Presently, she left the room and returned to the sitting area to join her friends.
CHAPTER 7
RECON
The three of them had prepared sandwiches, and now they sat on the comfortable sofas in the other room. Jane was looking down at her plate when she saw Ciara shift and looked at her.
“What?” Jane asked Ciara.
Ciara was still chewing a bite of her sandwich. “It just seems strange that this would happen.”
Jane nodded. “I know. I’ve been thinking the same thing.” Both she and Ciara glanced at Mike.
“Me too,” he said, placing the remaining crust back on his plate. “There’s a purpose behind it for sure.”
Jane sighed. “Last night… he showed me a lump on his neck.” They both leaned forward, listening intently as she relayed this new information. “I knew immediately that it was technology—some kind of implant. Maybe it was put there while he was at the facility.”
“What do you think it was?” Mike asked.
“I don’t know, and he didn’t know anything about it, which is just strange. It was as new to him as it was to me.”
“Which means it was likely that it was put there while we were in the facility,” Mike said.
“Yes,” Jane replied, nodding.
“Why him and not us, though?” Ciara asked.
Jane shrugged. “What’s the timeline on our capture?” She looked at Mike. “Mike, when were you put in there?”
“Just a few weeks before him. About six months before you arrived, Jane.”
She looked at Ciara.
“I was there for about the same time as Mike. I arrived shortly after you, didn’t I? Maybe two weeks?”
“Yes, that’s about right.”
Jane was considering this when she saw Mike’s gaze shift, and he turned toward the other side of the room. She watched him for a moment before speaking. “What is it?” she asked finally.
“Just something I remember. It was late one night. You remember how the main corridor outside our room was barely visible? It just had those tiny blue lights that ran along the floor.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I couldn’t see much, but I woke up in a bit of a panic, and I saw them moving someone through the corridor. It looked like it might have been Morris. He was on one of those stretchers that hover, and he was fast asleep. I remember falling asleep almost immediately afterward.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Jane asked.
“I honestly forgot about it. I thought it was a dream.”
Jane sighed and ran her hands through her growing blonde hair, brushing it back over her shoulders. “OK,�
�� she said. “So we know they did something to him, that much is obvious. They put some kind of device in his neck, near his nervous system, that shut down his mind and allowed them to control him remotely. The question is why him and not us.”
Ciara was still looking at Mike. “When did this happen, Mike?”
Mike shrugged. “I don’t know. Recently.”
“Like, after Jane arrived?”
“Yes.”
Ciara turned to Jane, her eyes wide.
“You think it had something to do with me?” Jane asked.
Ciara nodded.
Jane frowned. “What, exactly?”
Ciara sighed. “Well, clearly they want you to follow him. They must have known you would. Which means tracking him down is going to be dangerous.” She was glaring into Jane’s eyes now. “They’re expecting—even hoping—that you’ll come. And they’re going to be prepared.”
Jane glanced down at the floor. “Then it’s probably best to make it look like we’re surprised when we get there… but the exact opposite will be the case—we’ll be ready for them.”
“You want to follow him?” Ciara asked.
“Of course. I’m not leaving him in their hands. Are you in, or out?”
“In, of course. I don’t like our chances, though.”
“Probably in the region of ten percent,” Mike added with a well-intentioned smirk.
Jane shook her head. “We’ll find a way.”
Mike snickered.
“What?” Jane asked.
“We just got out; now we’re going back in. It seems ridiculous.”
“More like fate,” Ciara said.
Jane considered this and nodded. It did seem like fate. She realized now that on some level, she had known that her business with the Committee was not yet over. “So,” she said, “how do we do this?”
“Well, first I need to track him,” Ciara replied. She stood up and walked across the room to where Jane was sitting. “You up for this, Jane? My telepathic reach won’t extend that far without you.”
Rise (The Ethereal Vision Book 2) Page 7
