Crystal Mind: A novel in the Projector War Saga

by K. A. Excell

  Still, I let it go. After a long silence, she shifted. “What now?”

  That was a good question. How was I going to explain to Mom why my friend from school was beaten bloody on the couch?

  Perhaps she wouldn’t notice. She never was very observant—except when it came to me. She’d seen my limp when I’d come home from Zach’s house that first time, and she’d nearly suffocated me with questions I didn’t dare answer. After all, what was to stop Zach from doing to her the same thing he’d done to me—or to any of the people he’d cornered?

  Mom had enough problems with her panic attacks. She definitely wouldn’t be able to defend herself and, with how fragile her health and mind were, he might even accidentally kill her. No. Whoever had done this to Smith was serious. Mom couldn’t know.

  I grabbed a make-up case from the bathroom and helped Tabitha apply it to hide the bruises. I was good at that.

  When Mom came home, she was ecstatic that I’d made a friend, though somewhat puzzled that I hadn’t told her Smith was coming over.

  We stayed quiet all that night, and went to bed early.

  When I woke up in the morning, Tabitha Smith was gone.

  I ran through the video from last night looking for some indication of how long she’d intended to stay, but there was nothing. I dismissed the video from my vision, then froze as I saw the paper taped to the door.

  “Thanks for the help. Just went for a walk with Zach. No need for worry. See you at school.”

  It was scrawled in a hurried hand, and hung cockeyed on the door.

  It had to be from Smith, which left a question. How did she know about Zach, and why would she leave a note like that for me?

  I found the answer even while I was asking the question. Because she was in trouble again.

  My blue lines swept through the room, picking out signs of new disorder that had appeared last night while I was asleep.

  Papers were shifted on the desk, Smith’s bed was in three pieces around the room. The carpet—well, that was interesting.

  I pulled up my latest picture of the carpet and compared the two.

  There had been three unfamiliar people in my room last night leaving minute imprints on my carpet.

  Tabitha was in Zach’s kind of trouble.

  Chapter Eleven

  My stomach twisted as I sat there, the need to help her warring with nightmares of Zach. Finally, I clenched my jaw and stood. I crossed the room to my desk and pulled out the second drawer. I pulled out the papers and then the false bottom.

  Inside was a ring box. I flipped it open and twisted it on to my second finger. The second ring was in my jewelry box. The third was in a compartment in the couch. The fourth was in the bathroom in the makeup kit, and the fifth was in the handle of a screwdriver on my workbench. The two chains I needed were hanging as decorations on the wall. The battery bracelet was in Mom’s jewelry box under the ring compartment.

  Soon I was ready. I assembled the components with trembling hands and then checked the charge. All five rings began to tingle when I closed my fist. I released my hand and sighed.

  The plasma pulser wasn’t really a long-term weapon. It was my response to a specific need, and it had worked. I had no way to calculate the probability of it working now.

  Still, I pulled up the data sheet and scanned over the specs.

  The plasma pulser gathered specific, stable gasses in the air then condensed and heated it into a plasma using a field generated between the rings and chains on my hand. The plasma blast was unstable and hotter than a Bunsen burner. If it hit someone straight on, they would die from dehydration. A missed shot would land them in the hospital burn ward.

  The biggest limit was the fact that it took seven minutes to charge. The second limit was that it took a major amount of the heat required to get the gasses past their critical point from my body, which left me a quivering mess.

  Still, it was better than nothing. I headed for the door.

  “Where are you headed?” Mom asked

  I spun around, careful to avoid her eyes.

  “Tabitha wanted to go to the park. I’m headed down there—she already left.”

  The lie was sour on my lips, and I nearly gagged, but Mom could not be involved in this. Who knew what would happen to her?

  Mom accepted the lie. “Alright, have fun.”

  I grabbed my bike and hurried off while my blue lines started compiling a list of places Zach had frequented. I started at the alley two blocks from my house but Smith wasn’t there. I checked two more places before I saw signs of passage in the alley behind an old, abandoned movie theater. I swallowed hard and pushed away my twisting stomach.

  Instead of vomiting all over the street, I dismounted the bike and leaned it carefully against the wall. I slipped between the buildings and crouched behind a large dumpster, on top of some dubious green sludge.

  There were sounds coming from the area on the other side of the dumpster, but I couldn’t identify them other than to add them to the evidence that there were people behind there. Odds were in favor of those people being the ones after Smith.

  I pulled visuals from the last time I was here and cringed as Zachary’s face came into full view. His lips formed words.

  “How many times do we have to do this, Crystal? I’m your man!”

  I cringed away from the blow.

  “You shouldn’t look at other guys—don’t you see how much it hurts me? How much it hurts them?”

  I looked past Zachary to see Isaac, a boy at my school who’d asked why I came with bruises coated with makeup every day, half unconscious on the pavement.

  Zach wound up for another blow.

  “I said don’t look at him!”

  I jerked myself free of the memory and sat there, face full of sweat, panting. I closed my fist to feel the reassuring tingling of the plasma pulser.

  I wasn’t weak like that anymore. Zach was in a wheelchair—he couldn’t hurt me.

  I set those facts securely in my mind, like a wall against the full emotional brunt of the memory and dove back in. This time, I let the memory play and focused on the alleyway. It was a small space—nine feet by seven-point-three feet—with a boarded up doorway and one window on the second story of the other building with bars over it.

  Nothing I could use to help Tabitha get out.

  I risked a glance past the dumpster, and froze.

  Doug Houston stood over the huddled mass that was Tabitha with bruised knuckles and a grin on his face. She clawed at the wall as she struggled to stand. “You don’t . . .know what you’re doing. Please—”

  He drove his fist into her kidney, and she fell back to her knees, whimpering as the organ dumped its stored toxins back into her bloodstream. “I am the only one who knows what I’m doing!” he screamed. He grabbed the front of her shirt and dragged her in close. “You think you know who I am, but you have no idea. The people I work for,” he glanced at a woman leaning against the wall opposite the dumpster with disinterest in her eyes. “Well, let’s just say that I’m not going to be a pathetic little human for very much longer.”

  He dropped her on the asphalt with disdain, and stepped on her face.

  The blue lines on my vision highlighted Tabitha’s chance of survival in red. Nineteen-point-two percent with known factors. I shifted toward her, farther outside of the morning shadows that concealed me. The woman who was watching Houston snapped her fingers as she saw me.

  I tried to run, but hands grabbed me, and no amount of twisting seemed to help. I pulled the visuals to try and evaluate who had me, but I’d only caught a glimpse. They must have been on the other side of the dumpster where I couldn’t see, and I certainly did not have enough to rebuild his musculature. I clenched my fist to start the plasma pulser.

  “Who—” Houston looked up from Tabitha and met my eyes. �
��Farina, what are you doing here?”

  His eyes were puzzled, but that puzzlement quickly sharpened into certainty.

  Recru…King…why didn’t sh…it doesn’t mat…

  “You really shouldn’t have gotten involved.”

  Tabitha struggled back to her knees. “Leave her alone. She’s just a turnip—she doesn’t—”

  “Turnip or not, we don’t need to be dodging law enforcement.” Houston kicked at her, and she groaned and folded back over.

  Then he was in front of me with a knife. There was an ugly monster in his eyes—the same one I’d seen in Zachary’s time and time again as he beat up on people who had been kind to me.

  This time, I recognized it.

  Hunger.

  The difference was that Zachary had just hungered for power. Houston hungered for power, death, and pain. I could see how he would do it spilling from his eyes and filling the air around him. He could already see the anguish on my face. He could already feel the blood between his fingers. He knew how this would go because he’d done it before.

  I tried to twist away, but he just grinned wider.

  The woman who had been leaning against the wall straightened. “Careful Houston, she’s a civilian.”

  He flipped the knife in his hands. “So what?”

  “The Company will not be pleased.” Her eyes were primed for violence, but not immediately. She would wait until it was too late for me before she acted.

  “The Company shouldn’t have been using me as Agency bait,” he snarled as he advanced.

  Tabitha struggled to get to me, but she could barely walk. I braced myself for the cut of the knife, but all the preparation in the world couldn’t erase the feeling of steel parting flesh. I gasped as the first wave of pain hit—a shallow cut on my arm, but it was enough. I could feel hot blood cool as it dripped past my elbow. Houston’s anticipation grew as he tasted the echo of my pain.

  This was different from Zach. He got caught up in the moment, and hurt me worse than he intended to. He wanted the power, not the pain.

  One of my lines flashed red, and I managed to jerk one hand free of the person holding me. I turned, got my knee up, and connected with my attacker’s groin. My other hand was free, and then it wasn’t. An alert on my vision flashed, but I couldn’t react fast enough.

  I was on the ground—or, that’s what my lines said as they limped around my vision. My head rang from Houston’s backhand, and I tried to coax my lines into moving faster, but it didn’t help. Houston dragged me back up and threw me against the wall.

  “You know, Turnips really shouldn’t get involved in what they don’t understand.” The knife was in his hand again.

  “What don’t I understand?” Obviously both he and Tabitha were involved in something. Houston said he worked for someone, and that he wasn’t going to be human soon? What did that mean?

  He slashed at my body, and I threw my hands out to intercept the strike, but the knife wasn’t where my lines told me it should be. I looked down to check the wound as Houston laughed. “Impressive brain or not, you’re still completely clueless! It’s really fantastic.” He wiped a pretend tear from his eye.

  The cut was barely a scratch across my belly, but it was enough to free the bottom half of my shirt. I grit my teeth as Zach flooded back into my mind. There wasn’t any way to win this. A six minute timer started counting down in my vision. That was how long Houston would play with me before I died.

  He crouched at my side and reached a finger toward the line of blood that spanned my abdomen. I could feel his desire to taste it—and to watch me retch as he did it. I caught his wrist in one hand and tried to smash the side of his head with my elbow. He caught the strike and pushed. I gasped for breath as his motion smashed my knuckles into my throat. He only laughed.

  I clenched my teeth as the lines on my vision flashed red. The knife was coming, and I could see where it would strike. The world slowed as I saw the force reading, and the model my mind had made. There, in my vision, was a mannequin of me with the knife in my gut, blood pooling and mixing with stomach acid that would eat my insides as I screamed. No amount of blue lines could insulate me from that pain.

  I grabbed for any other option. I didn’t want to die here!

  Another intercept in my vision flashed red next to a second timer. Ten seconds. If I could stay alive for ten more seconds, I had a chance.

  I twisted wildly away and scrambled up as the blue lines came back. Ten seconds.

  “She’s not a turnip!” Houston yelled as the other two people with him sprang into action to try and corral me. “She’s an Agency plant!”

  Intercept lines flashed as rocks lifted up from the ground of their own volition and hurled toward me. Each one of them was only the size of my fist, but if one of them hit me in the head, I’d be stunned. Six seconds.

  I dodged to the side and set my lines searching for some sort of control mechanism. Surely the rocks couldn’t just be floating there! But my lines greyed. Two seconds. No mechanism detected.

  I shoved that information into a file for later analysis as the timer hit zero.

  I unfurled my hand and directed the charge toward the dumpster.

  It took one-point-two-three seconds, but the visuals played in slow motion. I spun out of the way of a second volley of rocks, and leapt toward Tabitha. I landed against her as the blast twisted the dumpster. The heat hissed and pulled against its prison. The metal heated to white and then shredded itself with a bang.

  Contorted shards of metal hissed through the air, cooling as they flew, and sprayed the alleyway like a thousand oversized flechettes.

  I tuned out the screams of agony and counted the injuries. My lines flicked over their convulsing forms, but every one came up as non-lethal.

  Then my lines blinked out, exhausted.

  Tabitha struggled up, grabbed my arm, and said something.

  The blood and buzzing agony that filled the air was too much. I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t hear anything but the dull, aching certainty in my bones that there was no going back. I had done this. Three people screaming on the ground with sizzling metal stuck in them because I raised my hand. Because the numbers my vision computed gave me the power to make a weapon that could hurt people.

  I followed Tabitha blindly, the images of that alley stuck in my head.

  A car pulled up, and Tabitha staggered in. She dragged me in after her, and I followed blindly.

  How often would I be forced to do this? How often would I have to hurt people to protect myself and those I cared about? Was this the cost of not being a victim? Was this just who I’d become?

  I reviewed the percentages and calculated my options, but Houston had been coming at me with a knife, and there was nothing I could do. All the other percentages showed death—either mine or theirs. There was no way around the writhing, screaming, blood-speckled butchery I’d left behind. I couldn’t accept that. There had to have been another way. If I’d had more processing time, or used a lesser plasma charge, or used a different angle—I drove the blue lines on my vision faster. Harder, until I couldn’t see anything except blurs of blue marred by tears.

  Sometime later—the clock at the top of my vision was buried under frantic blue lines—I felt someone shaking me. There was motion beneath me, too. I was in a car. I fought free of the lines and looked past the vision of carnage I’d created.

  There was something on my cuts to keep them from bleeding everywhere, and Tabitha was staring at me with concern bordering on panic in her eyes.

  “Farina, can you hear me?” her lips said.

  I refocused my eyes and buried the pictures of white hot metal twisted with blood and ivory bone deep in my mind. It didn’t take away the guilt or the headache that came from pushing my lines too hard, too fast, but it did restore some of my other senses.

  The cold bl
udgeoned me over the head, and I curled up on myself, shivering so hard my bones grated against each other. Tabitha shook my shoulder again, and I managed to pull my head up enough to see her eyes again, but the moment I made eye contact, the pain in my mind increased tenfold and I groaned. The colors shifted between red and grey.

  “We need a hospital,” Tabitha shouted to whoever was driving—I didn’t dare pull the visuals for fear of making my head hurt worse.

  I grabbed her hand and then jerked it away as the heat radiating off her burned my skin.

  “No. It’s alright.”

  That was part of the problem with using my plasma pulser. The device only pulled some of the heat—a small fraction—from my body, but even a small portion was enough to send me into shock.

  “It’s not alright, Farina, your lips are going blue. You’re as cold as ice, and you’re bleeding.”

  The car didn’t turn around.

  “It’s j-just a—” My jaw spasmed of its own accord and I bit down hard on my tongue. I barely noticed the addition of such little pain, but it left the metallic tang of blood in my mouth. “It’s just a s-side effect. It will stop in a moment.”

  My words didn’t do much to ease her frown, and I didn’t dare look at her eyes to see what she was thinking.

  Finally, her jaw firmed and something around me—shifted. The temperature began to increase as the air around me shimmered like light off of hot asphalt. Beads of sweat began to steam down Tabitha’s face but, little by little, the shivering stopped and I was able to uncurl from my ball. When the shivering had subsided to controllable levels, I looked at her. She had done something—no doubt about that.

  “Can we turn the heater down now?” the person in the front asked. “And what about a mission report? Talk to me, Agent.”

  Tabitha sighed. “The mission was a failure. I couldn’t track him, find any of his superiors, or figure out his primary mission.”

  “And Houston? Where is he?”

  The throbbing in my head had subsided enough that I risked a quick blink back to the image of that carnage. With my emotions safely behind the wall of blue lines, I surveyed the last picture of the scene I had as Tabitha half supported me, half forced me to support her through the jungle of jagged metal shards, only half cooled from their white-hot state.