Crystal Choice: The Second Novel in the Projector War Saga

by K. A. Excell

  “Agent 92, I’m glad you’re back in one piece. You have the intel I requested?” His eyes were focused on 92 with an intensity that made me shudder, and I found myself looking down at the floor to avoid his gaze. He seemed different today, now that I knew he was the third ranking individual in the Agency. Even from outside his shields, I could feel his mind. He was so powerful that he couldn’t help spilling out to take in everything around him. If I found his eyes, I could get trapped in that mind the same way I got trapped in Mom’s.

  “Sir?” The Tac agent raised an eyebrow.

  “Let them in, Anderson,” Medina said.

  Anderson stepped aside and tensed to a sort of attention. It was less formal than Castillo’s military stance, but every bit as present. I wondered where he’d learned that mannerism. The Agency tended to try and stay as separate from governmental militaries as they could. One of the reasons the Agency regulated neurodivergents was to keep Turnips, and governments, from finding out about us. As such, the Agency could hardly recruit from militaries. If they did, it would have to be far more subtle than the recruitment process at Martial Academy. Of course, it was possible that Ms. King’s program here was far more subtle than I gave it credit for. Not all the individuals at Martial Academy had my arsenal of analysis skills.

  I archived that train of thought for later as Medina led the way into his office.

  The room wasn’t large—perhaps half the size of Ms. King’s office upstairs—with only a single cabinet on the right wall that held a variety of weapons. Most of those were things that had been on the neurotypical market at one point in time. I recognized a Walther PPK mounted next to a larger caliber weapon I’d never seen before. The wall behind the desk felt subtly wrong so I pulled the blue lines to the forefront of my vision. They matched it with my mostly complete map of the facility and reported a ninety-six percent chance that it was a false wall. It was missing three feet of space, oddly reminiscent of the false wall back in D.C..

  I shuddered and banished the blue lines as my headache from earlier threatened to crash over my brain—which was only my just desserts. The mess inside my mind wasn’t quite cleaned up, and every time I pulled on my blue lines, I had to create bypasses to bridge across modules that were still missing pieces, which only further lengthened the time until I was back in one piece.

  92 seated himself in one of the two chairs across the desk, and motioned for me to do the same. I just stared at him as I battled growing dislike. He had made me walk here with a chunk of building stuck in my leg, and now he was telling me to sit down, like a good little girl. Well, I was fed up with it. I clenched my jaw and folded my arms over my chest—waiting for an explanation.

  Medina closed the door, then found his way to the other side of the desk. His eyes studied mine, although I tried my best to avoid him by looking down at the desk. I wondered if he saw the building anger in my mind, or if the walls I was working so hard on learning to hold actually kept him out. Finally, he looked at 92. “She isn’t one of my agents. What’s she doing here?”

  What a great question! I glared at 92. Evidently I hadn’t been keeping anyone waiting. 92 must have made it up just to get me here. I opened my mouth to ask him a scathing question, but a twitch of Medina’s finger silenced me.

  92’s expression went bland. “This is Crystal Farina, Agent 32. She’s a Projector Telepath with PS 7, currently located at TacDep.”

  Medina nodded. “I know that, but it doesn’t explain what she’s doing in this briefing.”

  92 held up a hand. “She’s also a visual eidetic with an impressive amount of analysis skill. She’s here to supplement the report.”

  “Ah.” That seemed to mollify him. “So what about my Doe? Over the comms, you promised me a full report.”

  92 looked down at his hands, clasped in his lap. “Tac 47 and I entered the base around 16:25.” He looked at me to verify the time, then waited while I sorted through the video files.

  “16:32.” I made the words as terse as I could. Some of my audio tools were still mixed in with the rest of the broken machinery, so I couldn’t tell how successful I was.

  Medina arched an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

  “The entire base appeared to be deserted until Agent 32 picked up an area she couldn’t sense. We met at the doors. I used override codes to open the door. This is what we found.” 92 produced a tablet and laid it on the desk. “Sir, requesting use of your interface device.”

  Medina rocked back in his chair and thought for a moment. Then he frowned. “Granted.”

  A device that looked like a hand-scanner floated off the bookshelf and onto the desk. 92 connected it to the tablet with a thin, spiderweb-like wire.

  “Agent 32, if you would place your hand here please?”

  “Why should I?” I addressed the question to 92, whose eyes hardened.

  “Because the Director of InDep asked you to,” he said mildly. I couldn’t tell which was worse—the fact that he’d dodged the question, or that he’d used Medina to do it. Again.

  Medina pushed the device closer to me. “This interface device will allow us to see through your mind’s eye. Working with someone who is not a visual edetic, it would let us see what they saw during the mission. In this case, it will let us see everything, down to models you constructed in your mind.”

  Which was the easiest way for me to pass on the analysis I’d done during the mission, I conceded.

  That didn’t mean I had to like 92’s attitude about it.

  I put my hand inside the imprint on the side of the device. “What next?”

  Medina gave a gentle smile. “Just go back in your memory to your analysis of the first room.”

  I didn’t bother to hide my groan. This was going to leave me with a headache of massive proportions.

  Medina’s eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”

  I glared at 92 again. “I got blown up, sir. These analysis tools you want to see? I have to dig each one out of a trash heap of broken machines, then fix and reinstall it before I can do anything.”

  Wordlessly, Medina pulled a little white pill from the top drawer of his desk and offered it to me.

  “What is it?”

  92 snorted. “A fast acting stimulant. It’s what we give our analysts when they’re on a time crunch. Perfectly safe—even for newbies.”

  I grit my teeth and took the pill. A moment later, my blue lines perked up. Soon, my mind was more-or-less back in order. The stimulant might have helped me fix myself, but it wasn’t as good at smothering my headache as I had hoped. My head throbbed in time with my heartbeat as I finally found my way back to the start of the mission.

  I sifted through the video feed as quickly as I could and started playing at the beginning of my analysis. I skipped the part where Tolden pulled a gun.

  The tablet displayed a projection of the memory, which Medina watched with interest. When I pulled the simulation of a Superior physical structure, he held his hand up.

  “Stop there.” He frowned at me and sought my eyes again, but I looked down at his desk. The last thing I needed was to be caught up in his mind. My forehead already felt like it was being slowly crushed in by gravity, and I wasn’t sure I could keep a hold of myself this time. “Did you ever actually see one of these with your own eyes?”

  I nodded—slowly so I didn’t further agitate my head.

  The intensity of his mind only grew.

  “Three times. Once during the fundraiser, once outside the Academy on my way home from school, and again while I was in another one’s head.”

  I pulled the second instance of the Superior priming its launcher to shoot the helicopter down.

  I felt portions of Medina’s surface thoughts turning to another, similar creature we had in the Agency right now. Then his walls snapped up hard enough to give me whiplash. In an instant, the sense of his mind va
nished, leaving me blind. It took a moment to blink away the shock. When I’d recovered, Medina motioned for me to move on. While he must have known what had just happened, he didn’t look at all sorry for the way he’d just doubled my headache.

  I sped through most of the next piece, until I found the image of Jane Doe. I showed them what analysis I’d completed while I fought off my churning stomach—although I couldn’t tell how much of the nausea was from the memory and how much was from the pain building in both my head and leg. “If you’d like, I can run a deeper analysis.” Later. Much later. When my head didn’t feel like it was going to fall off.

  But he was already shaking his head. “That’s enough. My analysts can take it from there. I want to know what you think of the whole thing, though.”

  I clenched my fists. The only thing I thought of that encounter was that I was glad it was finished, and I was free to get to MedDep—oh wait. I couldn’t get proper medical care until Director Medina let me go. “What I think is all there in the analysis, sir.” It was a struggle to keep my tone civil.

  His eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me you don’t have any theories about what happened.”

  I risked a quick look up, to find his face as unreadable as ever. If I wanted out of here, I was going to have to give him something. I took a deep breath, hoping that the extra oxygen would calm my screaming head. It didn’t.

  “Well, she was tortured. I can say that with ninety-nine-point-nine percent accuracy. I didn’t have much time to evaluate it, and all the evidence is gone now, but I’d like to draw your attention to the device attached to her heart.” I pulled the image and let it play as a recording for several seconds. Then I snatched my hand back. “Her heart was still beating. My guess is that she died from blood loss. The cuts on her arm, and her face, and the way her skin and muscle was pulled out like that make bleeding out inevitable. Otherwise, she likely would have still been alive when we arrived. Similar technology was used in the bomber.”

  92 and Medina exchanged a meaningful glance, but both their minds were shut up so tight I couldn’t tell what they were saying.

  Finally, Medina sighed. “Thank you, Agent. Now report to MedDep and see to that leg.”

  I winced as I put pressure on my leg. The painkillers were definitely out of my system, and the stimulant was not helping. I could see why they didn’t hand those out to analysts in the field. I went back down the hall at my best pace without thanking them.

  Despite the knowledge that keeping my analysis of the previous conversation to a minimum was my best chance at calming my headache, I couldn’t help myself. Medina and 92 had known something about the Superiors—more than they were letting on. Was the Agency connected to them somehow? Why had the Superiors tortured Jane Doe? Could it have something to do with the asset the Superior at the fundraiser was looking for? What about the missing prisoners? They hadn’t even asked about them.

  I choked down the bile as an image of that blood washed room invaded my vision. Suddenly my analysis of the Superiors outside the Academy made more sense. Without Ms. King’s intervention, I wouldn’t have made it home alive. But why? And if they were so dangerous, then why wasn’t the Agency regulating them? What even were they?

  I swiped my card and stepped into the elevator. Robbins, the teleprojector who had vetted my memories during my first time at the Agency, was waiting inside.

  I pressed the button that would take me back to the rotunda and ignored him. Maybe he would go away.

  The social niceties program pinged at me, and I contemplated tearing it out of the framework and hurling it against the wall of my mind—except that would hurt. Why, of all the programs to be already repaired, had my blue lines made the social niceties program a priority?

  It pinged a second time, and I growled at it.

  “Is everything alright, 32?” Robbins asked mildly. “You seem distressed.”

  I ran a hand through my hair. “Not distressed,” I lied. “Just tired.” And not feeling up to having a conversation right now. There were too many puzzle pieces I needed to connect, and too many pieces of my mind that hurt.

  Robbins nodded. “I’m glad I ran into you,” he said as the elevator door opened and I tried to limp away. He followed me. “I wanted to see how you were settling into the Agency. You seemed overwhelmed the last time I saw you. Are things making a little more sense, now?”

  More sense? Every time I turned around, there was another puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit. Human-esque monsters calling themselves Superiors? What was next, aliens? It didn’t help that Medina was being cagey, and my brain resembled the wreckage of the base we’d left behind.

  I bit down all the words I wanted to say and took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m settling in fine.” That was certainly what he wanted to hear. Maybe he would leave me alone long enough for me to find my way to MedDep before I passed out in the middle of the rotunda.

  Robbins caught my arm as I swayed on my feet. “Here, let me help you to MedDep, and you can tell me about what you think of your new team.”

  A moment later, I was standing in front of the counter at MedDep, blinking at the waiting room. I looked around for Robbins, but he was gone. I shook my head. I must have spaced out for a while. I limped forward a few steps to catch the attention of the white-uniformed man at the front counter.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I think I have a piece of building in my leg.” I suppressed a bubble of irrational laughter. It wasn’t really funny—but it did hurt.

  The man’s eyes widened as he punched a few numbers into the computer. “Crazy tac lad…” he murmured as he came around the counter to take a look.

  Chapter thirteen

  The next few days were filled with headaches and incomplete data as I tried to sift through the analysis I had stacked up in my queue. Part of it was due to the damaged machinery in my mind—which was mostly healed, but still disordered enough to cause occasional snags. I could trace the rest of the incomplete data partway through my mind, and then the trail stopped. Inevitably, chasing after the holes in my mind left me with a headache, so I stopped looking after a while.

  To distract myself from my still healing mind, I thought about Briggs and the servers he wanted me to break into. I’d snooped around some after my last mission with Tac 47, and found that the security measures weren’t quite as heavy as I’d anticipated. Between the codes found on the Agency card that let me move freely in the base below, and Steele’s hacking skills, it wouldn’t take much to remove Briggs’s records from the system. Now the only thing I needed to do was convince Steele to help.

  I checked the time at the top of my vision and winced. Ms. Graff was getting better at timing her errands. The seven minutes I’d been counting on to be able to go down and ask Steele about helping break into the server had dwindled to two—which was enough time to get to the rotunda if I ran, but hardly enough to ask Steele to help, then get back to Martial Academy in time for my next class.

  Perhaps I could just miss the first part of Mr. O’Brien’s Psychology class today. He would give me detention, but I would probably get detention from Ms. King anyway. Of course, there was a huge difference between getting detention from a happy Ms. King and an unhappy Ms. King—and she wouldn’t like it if I started skipping classes for anything other than Agency business.

  I turned around to start back toward Mr. O’Brien’s class as the gong rang. My phone gave three short buzzes against my leg, and I stifled a sigh. Those buzzes indicated an Agency-related alert. I pulled it out of my pocket, expecting some sort of notification from Steele’s messaging app. Instead, it was a message from the little black bug I’d stuck on the back of the phone. There had been movement in Ms. Graff’s office. I tapped the notification and watched as the external door to Ms. Graff’s office opened to admit Ms. Green.

  Well, that was odd.

  Ms. Gr
een was the director of both Martial Academy and the Agency. As such, she was the single most powerful person in the building. So what was she doing in Ms. Graff’s office?

  The bug notified me every once in a while, but Ms. Graff did a very good job of separating Martial Academy business from Company business. She hadn’t been up to anything useful so far, so I usually ignored the feed. The blue lines on my vision flashed a ninety-eight-point-two percent chance that Ms. Green wasn’t there to talk about Martial Academy business as the gong rang to signal the end of the martial period. Another quick computation showed that Ms. King wouldn’t have a problem if I missed the first part of my next class. Agency matters took precedence over the schoolwork I could always make up this weekend.

  I hurried back to the dormitories so no one would catch me skipping class while I watched the phone. Ms. Graff entered her office just moments after I made it to my bed.

  Ms. Green turned so I could see her lips. “What is so important that we couldn’t meet in my office?”

  Ms. Graff said something I couldn’t see. Ms. Green’s lips thinned. “Ambushing me in my own school is hardly wise.”

  Ms. Graff moved to the other side of the desk, and motioned for Ms. Green to sit down. She did so—and then her back was to the camera.

  “Besides, if you really thought this was an ambush, you wouldn’t have come alone—so let’s dispense with the allegations. You’re here because you want to know what we’ve been doing, and he’s here because we want to be taken seriously.”

  Ms. Green looked over her shoulder, toward a corner of the room where the camera didn’t reach. She paled. “I see. Well, I’m listening.”

  Ms. Graff smiled. “You’ve been picking up some of our operatives—ones who haven’t done a thing to you or anyone else. That needs to stop now.”

  Ms. Green turned back to face the desk, so I couldn’t see her reply, but Ms. Graff nodded.

  “That is understandably unfortunate, and something we intend to remedy. You see, we aren’t chasing you. Your agents and donors just happen to be in the way of our actual targets. There is an organization that exists in the shadows. You’re only starting to get a taste of what they can do, but they have destroyed dozens of our bases, and killed thousands of our operatives. We have no illusions.”