Crystal Mind: A novel in the Projector War Saga

by K. A. Excell

  “That and monitoring local chatter, finishing up some software for AnAd, and running models to figure out what strength Houston will be at when we take him on.”

  “You forgot to mention the MMORPG he’s running on the tertiary screen,” Tolden said.

  Steele brushed off Tolden’s comment and refocused on another screen. The data running through his head was impressive—and not something I could sort through without causing myself a headache.

  Tolden arched an eyebrow at me. “You’re a PS6? How large is your range?”

  I shrugged. That wasn’t something I’d ever tested, but if it meant bringing Houston to justice, I’d go as far outside my own mind as I had to. “Would you like me to find him?”

  Tolden nodded, so I let my walls down just enough to drift away, and headed to the surface we were flying over. Slowly, my surroundings filled into color and I felt other minds brushing me. At first, they were simple with thoughts of food and warmth. They had no walls, but their thoughts operated on such a high frequency that I doubted they were human. The trees, perhaps? I stowed that information for later analysis and then dismissed it. Whatever they were, they had nothing to do with Houston. Every once in a while, I’d brush a mind with thoughts of love, and even more often, I’d find a mind with shopping lists and day-to-day tasks on their mind. None of them were Houston, though. I would know when I felt his mind.

  I drifted along the ground, expanding to touch all the minds I could.

  Finally, in an area with many simple minds thinking of nothing but sunlight and breezes, I brushed past a nexus of violence. There was joy there, and images of blood and power. I jerked back and noted that place in my map. Then I retraced my steps to my own body.

  When my eyes snapped open, I gasped in a lung full of air. Inches from my nose was another face with black stubble on his chin and brown eyes full of worry.

  There were fingers on my neck, and the blue lines spun into action.

  —No threat.

  I laid my head back against the seat and moved my head away from his fingers on my pulse. “What, are you part medic?”

  Black jerked himself back into his harness. “What was that, Farina? You could have killed yourself!”

  I ventured outside my mind, only to be consumed by waves of varying degrees of panic and fear. I wasn’t gone for that long, what was all the worry about?

  Tolden leaned forward. “You detached your entire attention from your body, Farina. Don’t you know how dangerous that is? You could have been lost down there, unable to return to your body.”

  My blue lines ran the possibility. “Eight percent chance is hardly dangerous.”

  “Eight percent—” Black ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t care what the numbers say, you were only minutes away from forgetting how to breathe. Don’t they teach you these things in training?”

  What training? Ms. King was giving me the essential information as I needed it, but I was over two years behind the other girls. I folded my arms across my chest. “Look, I’m fine, and I have your coordinates. I’ll make a note to not do that unless the circumstances make it a requirement.”

  Tolden’s jaw was still tight, but he nodded. “Fine. What are the coordinates?”

  I read them off my vision.

  “DEXDA is checking…confirmed.” The helicopter banked.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Minutes later, I stood on the ground eighty feet from where Houston’s mind radiated complete pride and satisfaction.

  My stomach twisted as I brushed past his mind again. It was greasy like Zach’s had been. Still, I strode toward him. It was my job to bring him in, and I wasn’t going to him to hurt more people.

  He spun as I approached. I showed him my empty palms and braced myself to brush against his mind again.

  “You shouldn’t have come here, Farina. The Agency doesn’t have any idea who they’re dealing with.”

  I could feel his mind reaching for the weapon at his belt, even though his hands didn’t move.

  “You’re right—they don’t. But I do.”

  “Stay out of my head,” he snarled, and jerked the weapon up.

  I laughed. “I’ve been in your head this entire time, Houston. Thanks for helping with my cover—by the way. That was the only way I was getting into the Agency.”

  “Cover?” His shoulders were still set, and the gun wavered just out of his reach. He held a tendril of thought on the trigger.

  My blue lines ran a steadily updating intercept on the bullet—aimed exactly at the center of my mass as clearly as if he’d outfitted his weapon with a laser sight.

  “You don’t really think you found that Smith girl by chance, did you? She stayed just out of your hearing range the entire time. If it weren’t for a little nudge from me,” I started applying the thinnest layer of coercion I could, “you wouldn’t have ever found her.”

  HIs jaw tightened, but he didn’t pull the trigger. “You want me to believe you revealed that girl to me? Like I couldn’t find her myself?”

  I shrugged slowly—carefully—and took a half-step forward. Distance was not my friend in this game. “You need a handler, Houston. You’ve always needed one. That’s why they sent me.”

  His adrenaline spiked, and his panic rose. I reached out to smooth off the edges as best I could. “The Company doesn’t control me. It never has, and it never will.” The gun flew to his hand, and he levelled it at my chest. “Come to think of it, you’ll make a great message to that effect.”

  I laughed, projecting irony and humor as I did so. Sure enough, it disrupted his intention to shoot—for the most part.

  “Why’d you kill Earl West?” I asked, once I recovered from the laughter.

  His eyebrows scrunched close together. “I killed him because he was trying to control me.”

  His mind said something different. He’d killed West because he could, and because—there were images in his mind that threatened to suck me in. I shoved them away and refocused on what I was doing.

  “You killed him because I told you to.” I reached into his mind and planted the kernel of a memory—the memory of him meeting my eyes during Ballet class. I’d modified it so that instead of shying away, I’d stood, placed my hand on his cheek, and whispered words about control and hunger into his ear. Then I left.

  He blinked, and the weapon dropped. “W-who are you?” he asked.

  I shrugged and took another step closer. “I’m the woman who is going to set you free. Truly free. The Company has been looking for someone like you, and now we know exactly what you can do.”

  Just like that, the spell I was weaving shattered into a billion pieces as the image of a creature with jagged teeth and blood stained lips stared out at me.

  I knew that image! I’d seen it before—but where? This wasn’t the time to chase an elusive memory. I archived the information and refocused on Houston.

  “For a second I thought you were working for the Institute,” he said. I tried to take another step toward him, but the gun was aimed at me before I could move. I jerked my hands back up, palms out. “Turns out, the Agency is still too dumb to realize that there is another war going on here.”

  “Houston, you don’t want to—”

  He jerked his gun at me. “Get down on the ground, Farina. I won’t ask again.”

  I sank to my knees, careful to monitor his thoughts for the decision to shoot. There was only a three percent chance that I would be able to get out of the way—even with the early warning from his thoughts—but it was better than nothing.

  “Hands behind your head—and get your fingers out of my mind. If you try anything at all, I will shoot you.” There was cold certainty in his mind as he relished the feeling of deadly steel in his hand.

  The com in my ear crackled with a voice, but I ignored it. Taking time to process extraneous au
dio would get me killed.

  I moved my hands up slowly, but instead of lacing my fingers behind my head, I balled my fist and started the plasma pulser timer.

  My blue lines calculated the probability that the pulser would be ready in time, and it wasn’t good. I clenched my jaw and tried to find another way out.

  “What was that?” he snapped.

  My blood ran cold. Were his ears really good enough to hear the start-up sequence for my pulser?

  His eyes glazed over for half a second as he started searching for a match to the sound. When he found it—

  I was already moving by the time he returned enough attention to his eyes to sight and pull the trigger. The bullet nicked my arm, but I was on him before he could pull the trigger a second time.

  Words from Mr. West’s lessons overlayed with my vision. When dealing with a gun, distance was not your friend. Close as quickly as possible.

  Done. The blue words greyed out and faded.

  Second, separate the enemy from the weapon. The weakest part of any grip is the thumb.

  A line flashed purple over his thumb. I grabbed, twisted, and yanked as secondary blue lines started to plot intercept points. One flared red, but I couldn’t duck fast enough and the flat of his palm smashed into my neck. I stumbled back and fought for air as a third set of lines crowded up the right side of my vision with status reports. There was no real damage—it was a stun strike.

  I managed to duck under the follow-up kick and close before he brought the gun up.

  A moment later I forced the gun from his hand and landed a semi-successful strike at his knee.

  Even as the flash of pain tore through his mind, there was a glow of triumph. I checked the defensive lines on my vision, but there was nothing there. I felt the impact at the base of my skull too late and the world flashed black. Telekinetic!

  I laid on the ground for four seconds before my vision returned. Houston was standing only half a foot away with the gun in his hand. I stared down the barrel of the gun, paralyzed.

  Why had I told Tolden I could do this? I knew my abilities were new. And my hand-to-hand was only average—no matter how quickly I was picking it up.

  Ms. King, Tolden, and the others thought I was some sort of hero, but I wasn’t. I was just trying to survive.

  “You should have stayed home, Farina. You are no match for me.”

  “32! What’s going on down there!” Tolden’s voice erupted in my ear, but I paid it no heed. There was too much going on, and too many calculations to perform to divert enough attention to my almost-useless ears to figure out what he was saying

  I could feel the power tingling around my fingers, turning the rings into white-hot energy collectors. My hand burned as a rhythmic thwap filled my ears. Odds were, it was the sound of a helicopter—but they were still going to be too late. I opened my fist, which released the energy and sprayed flame at his feet.

  The smell of scorched flesh filled the air as he leapt back and sent three rounds through the flame. I fought the shivers that threatened to rack my body. I couldn’t deal with them now.

  If I’d had a weapon, I wouldn’t be in this situation. Why hadn’t Black authorized me to have a weapon? They’d all known this could get dangerous, but now it wasn’t theory anymore. Now I was the one in the line of fire with nothing more than inferior hand-to-hand defense techniques, and a weapon that was only good for one use.

  Now I’d used the one charge I had. I was practically defenseless. Still, there was a man with a gun on the other side of the flame, and my odds of survival were even lower if I waited for him to make the next move.

  I crossed my hands over my face and barrelled through the fire. Heat licked at my skin, leaving burns wherever they touched, but I sealed the pain away behind blue lines. There was no time to think about that.

  I knocked the gun from his hand and pressed the attack. He spun. His leg came up at the last moment—too fast! The hard side of his leg smashed into the side of my face, but I couldn’t fall completely. His hands grabbed my right forearm with a surgeon’s precision and he snapped it in half like candy.

  Not even I could forget the sickening sound of snapping bones. Echoes of past pain washed over me. I collapsed to the ground, cradling my arm as all the blue lines scattered. My head throbbed and all I could see was the blue sky with cirrus clouds drifting in the upper atmosphere. The flame crackled only a few inches away as I lay in a haze of pain.

  Houston’s face filled my vision, and then there was pressure on my abdomen as his booted foot came down. I screamed and clawed at the blue lines for relief, but they wouldn’t come. I was defenseless.

  “It was dumb to come alone, and even dumber to impersonate an Alpha-Niner agent.” I saw his lips move and knew what he’d said. Then the gun was above me. I could feel his relish as he shifted his foot so he could fire into my abdomen and then watch me scream as I died.

  I grasped fruitlessly for the cold, calculating state I knew could save me. I couldn’t die like this! Not here, not now!

  He pulled the trigger, and I jerked once. Twice.

  He smirked and holstered the gun.

  “You really are an idiot, Farina. Projector or not, you couldn’t have possibly thought this would work.” He kicked at me as I gasped for breath. My head slammed back on the ground, and then it was there. I didn’t know how or why, but the lines came flooding back. I dove into his mind, and dumped all the agony I felt into him.

  He collapsed on top of me, and his hands went to his ears in pain—not that it would make any real difference. I tried to push him off me, but he was too heavy, and I couldn’t keep this up for much longer. When I was spent, he would recover and finish what he started. I wouldn’t have any strength left to defend myself.

  I redoubled my efforts.

  And then he was gone, replaced by Black’s gruff face. “We got this one. You alright?” He asked.

  I nodded and set my lines to scanning the area. Steele was working with Tolden to get the cringing man into the chopper as I continued to scream in his mind.

  “Never better,” I lied. I was functional for now, but when the blue lines went away, the pain would return. For now, I was second priority to making sure Houston couldn’t do this to anyone else. “Go help them.” I said, watching Steele stagger under Houston’s weight.

  And then one of the lines turned red. I struggled to my feet and fought my blurring vision to make out what my lines had identified as a threat.

  I gasped as I finally made out the threat and the realization crashed though my mind for the second time. He was a telekinetic! I shouted a warning into Tolden’s mind as my world slowed down. Tolden couldn’t react fast enough. He would be too late, and Houston wasn’t aiming for a torture shot. If he pulled that trigger, Tolden would be dead.

  Another line flashed, and I looked down at my balled fist. The rings weren’t tingling, and the count down until my next charge was barely a quarter of the way through. I cursed Black again for not letting me have a weapon even as I hoped desperately my calculations were right and the weapon would have enough charge to travel all the way to him before Houston killed the other agents with the gun floating above the ground. I uncurled every finger except my middle one to charge all the energy into the middle ring, feeling the skin around my finger bubble and pop as the ring overloaded and tried to bleed energy. And then I let go.

  Fire erupted where Houston used to be, and we screamed in pain as one as I felt the fire smash into me. I separated myself from his mind and collapsed into shivers that spasmed though me like electric shock. It was all I could do to keep my eyes open and recording. The blue lines started to flicker, and I could feel them slipping away.

  Tolden heard the warning, and he pulled the gun from Houston’s hand as the blue lines finally vanished.

  ::You’d better find some way to keep him from using his tele
kinesis, or one of us is going to be dead by the time we get back!:: I projected into Tolden’s mind, trying and failing to push away the pain. The blue lines were gone, and they weren’t coming back anytime soon.

  “You said you weren’t hurt!” I heard Black’s exclamation outside my head and nodded. The motion sent drumbeats of pressure through my mind. My stomach twisted and fought against the nausea.

  I had to keep it together.

  I clutched my stomach, and felt the red flowing over and between my fingers, finally visible through the black suit. Darkness flickered at the edge of my vision.

  ::No…said…OK. Now…not.:: I managed. I couldn’t hold the nausea down any longer. I twisted and let my stomach contents go as another wave of agony hit—this one worse than the first. I could tell my message was tattered, but my vision started going blurry and I had other worries.

  Concerned waves radiated from all of the team members. “We’ve got to go!” Tolden shouted, “he’s unconscious for now, but that might not last for long.”

  Black cursed and knelt at my side, pulling a first aid kit from his bag. “We’ve got an agent down over here!”

  “Treat her in the chopper. Black, we’ve got to go!”

  The last thing I saw was Black’s grizzled face above mine.

  Hold on, kid.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When I came to, I was alone in the med bay. I sighed. Quiet at last.

  Images from the encounter with Houston flashed through my head. Two gunshots to the abdomen, at least fifteen minutes away from treatment? I checked the clock at the top of my vision, but it wasn’t there.

  They’d had to put me all the way out, then. There was very little else that could shut down routines I’d embedded in my mind for that long. That meant surgery.

  I pushed the blankets back, but there was not so much as a scratch.

  My arm was whole, too.

  I laid back and played the whole scene on fast-forward. Everything, the fear, the pain, the relief at the rest of Tac 47’s arrival, everything was so real. But there was no cast on my arm or dressing on my abdomen. Nothing to show it had actually happened.