Crystal Mind: A novel in the Projector War Saga

by K. A. Excell

  Could it have been a dream?

  I pulled my blue lines to the front of my vision to analyze the lack of wounds. Sure enough, there were two bullet-shaped scars I’d initially overlooked.

  I leaned back against the pillows.

  So it wasn’t a dream, after all. I’d almost died, but Houston had found his justice for killing Mr. West.

  I was a hero—or, if not a hero, then an agent.

  Yes, Agent 32.

  There was a knock on the door. “Agent 32, are you up?”

  She cracked the door as I reached out to her mind.

  ::Come in.:: I projected.

  Her eyebrows rose, but she did, and closed the door behind her. She was a short, portly woman with grey hair, glasses, and a dimpled smile.

  “I’m—”

  “Here to debrief me?” I finished. I could feel her intentions drifting outside her walls. Or, maybe, her walls were just tuned to such a low frequency that they couldn’t keep her thoughts inside. She suppressed a surge of annoyance and resettled her glasses. “I’m Agent 3-22. Now, before we begin, how do you feel? Do you need me to fetch a medtech?”

  I shook my head. “Against all odds, I seem to be whole. I don’t have the data to do a full analysis, but that takes time and you’re in a rush.”

  She looked at me over her glasses. “I don’t see any patterns that would cause you an issue. Of course, you should perform your own analytics when you have a moment. For the time being, though, I’d like you to take me through what happened after you hit the ground.”

  I pulled the memory in my mind, and opened my mouth to begin describing it to her when I had an idea. I projected the memory into her visual centers.

  She gasped, and gripped the counter, but the panic levels in her mind dropped after a moment.

  “Agent 32, given the shape you were in when you came in, I’m not entirely sure I want to go through your mission like this.”

  I grimaced at the thought of verbally describing everything that had happened. “I can dampen the pain, but this will be both more accurate and quicker.”

  She frowned. “What’s your projection strength rating?”

  “I was a PS6 with the temporary card, but my abilities are more consistent with a PS7. Med Dep did not have time to conduct a full examination of my abilities.”

  “Oh, that’s right. You’re that Agent 32. I saw the complaint against Tac Dep come across my desk.”

  I started to move the scene forward, but she held up a hand. A quick foray into her thoughts showed that she was searching for a pen. I shared the location with her.

  “Thanks.”

  The pen on the counter flew toward her hand, and she poised it above the paper.

  It took sixteen minutes and thirty-four seconds to show the whole scene, and sweat drenched my skin when I was done. She looked up from her clipboard and frowned. “I wouldn’t take your collection of gifts for the whole world, 32—but you did good work. There will be a combat bonus in your account by the end of today.”

  And then she left.

  I stared at the ceiling.

  Excitement warred with discomfort in my mind. I had a job now, and one that could support Mom and I forever with a more-than-comfortable allowance for whatever we wanted, but in return, I had to use violence. I had to hurt other people. They were bad people who didn’t deserve to roam free, but they were still human beings.

  Even Houston, who had shot me twice and laughed while I lay dying, was a person with feelings, hopes, and dreams.

  But now he couldn’t do that to anyone else. Like Zachary, he was somewhere he couldn’t hurt anyone ever again. He would live with his burns for the rest of his life, though. And I would live with the perfect memory of what I had done.

  Abruptly, there was a knock on the door.

  Domnick Steele.

  ::Come in,:: I projected.

  He pushed the door open and threw a t-shirt and jeans at my bed. I stared at them a moment. Were those mine? “Get dressed, Farina. Tolden wants me to show you around. He’d do it himself, but he’s at an Agent In Charge meeting.”

  I looked at the clothes dubiously.

  Steele pulled a device off his belt, scanned its contents, and jumped. “Put it on quick so we can avoid Black’s ambush. He’s got half of Tactical looking to meet you!”

  “Ambush?” I asked.

  “Yeah. If we don’t go quick, we won’t make it down to R&D in time—and I’m not going toe-to-toe with the real Tac wizards.”

  My eyes widened as memory clips played in my mind. Ms. King had promised me a station down in R&D and, with all the excitement earlier, I had forgotten.

  I shooed him out while I changed, my thoughts whirring. What kind of technology would they have down there? Would they have all the pieces I needed to make my miniature engine I was working on? What about the shielding module? Suddenly, I was sifting through all the designs I’d set out, researched, computed, and then filed away again because I didn’t have the resources to make them. In only a few days, they had gone from a distant hope to a very near reality.

  I smoothed down the front of the t-shirt—which Steele must have gotten from the dormitory—and took a deep breath. I’d waited my entire life for this opportunity!

  I followed Steele down the elevator and into the research department where almost everyone wore one of those white lab coats I had coveted my entire life. Some of them turned to stare as we walked past. My cheeks reddened. Walking down here in a clunky black t-shirt with pi on it was silly. Of course I stood out!

  Steele laughed as my shoulders started to hunch. “Chin up, Agent 32. It’s not every day you see a woman spraying fire from her fingers. Everyone wants to know how you did it.” He made a face and glanced at his watch. “Ms. King wants you home by midafternoon, though, so most of them aren’t going to get their wish.”

  I stopped and stared at him. “Engineers want to know how my device works?”

  Steele shrugged. “How should I know—I’m a software engineer and I saw what a mess of wires you had hooked up to that computer. Programming really isn’t your strong suit, is it?”

  I shook my head. “Whenever I try to program anything, I skip enough steps that it’s hopelessly confused. Hard-wiring it was just easier and I thought I only needed it for the one job.”

  Steele clicked his tongue and started moving again. I followed. “Hard-wiring was easier. I never thought I would hear those words. You know Rube-Goldberg machines have a notorious fail rate?”

  He scanned through a glass door and we stepped into a room buzzing with activity. There were tables everywhere with bins of components, wires, and tools stuffed underneath. People stood working at the stations or chatting in groups or demonstrating things. A group of three people in labcoats groaned as a flying speck in the air sparked and then caught fire.

  “If it’s a fire hazard, test it in the safe room!” said a large-boned woman with blonde hair twisted into a bun.

  “It wasn’t supposed to—”

  The woman waved a hand. “At least stand by with a fire-extinguisher then. It’s not rocket-science, people!”

  There were pockets of laughter around the room.

  She turned and spotted us near the door. “Steele, we’ve got eight projects waiting for a software engineer. Go find something to—oh.”

  Steele put an arm around my back and pushed me forward. “You wanted to know about that thing spewing fire on the battlefield right, Cal? Well here’s the engineer herself.”

  I stared at her and tasted the numbers bubbling under the surface of her mind. She wasn’t running the calculations, but she rolled the numbers around in her mind, feeling them to figure out where they fit in the puzzle she was working on.

  A real engineer. “I-I’m not an engineer. I dabble, is all,” I managed to get out as Steele pushed me ev
en farther forward.

  Cal’s frown lightened a little as she looked me over. “Tac stole another one of my recruits, did they? You that new kid on Tac 47? Agent 32, is it?”

  I nodded.

  “First rule of nerd town is this. No fighting. Second rule is that anybody in a lab coat belongs here and we don’t take ‘dabblers’. Are you serious about engineering?”

  “Yes, of course!”

  She nodded. “That’s what I thought. You are no ‘dabbler’. You’re a newbie—no more, no less. Now get a lab coat on and go find a table. I’ll send a team over in a moment and you can show them the basics of that device you used earlier.”

  I looked over at the lab coats hanging on a rack by the door, took a step toward them, and then stopped. A quick look over everyone’s minds and memories revealed that most of the people in the room had Ph.Ds or real doctorates in everything from physics, to engineering, to chemistry and beyond. I was in highschool.

  How could I hope to work with all these people? Most of them had more years dedicated to education than I’d even been alive. I had to earn that position. To just have it handed to me?

  Cal rolled her eyes. “Get on with it 32. I told you to put a lab coat on, so put one on. Steele will help you find a station.”

  That’s all the prodding it took. I slipped a lab coat on and followed Steele to a station in the center of the room.

  “The stations are outfitted with most everything you would need—wires, instruments, tools, you name it. There’s a 3D printer and soldering iron in every group. Laser cutters, C&C machines, and complex synthesizers are in the machines room. Odds are that you’re not going to be assigned to a group project, so you’ll share one with the other independents.” He pointed to a cubic device the size of a printer on the edge of the bench table. “Anything special you need is either in the extra bins along the side of the room or in the stockroom. Beyond that, you can ask the stockroom to order it, or you can build it yourself.”

  I nodded and started pulling bins out to inspect the equipment when there was a surge of excitement behind me. I stood and whirled to find a group of men and women in lab coats advancing on us with clipboards in hand.

  “You’re 32, right?” one asked.

  Another overrode him. “Cal said you’d be willing to show us how you got a plasma engine that small. I’ve been researching it for ten years, but I can’t get the capacitors working that quickly. The math says it should work, but,” he shrugged. “Those mathematicians have it easy. All theory and no idea what the real world’s like—” he devolved into coughs as the first one elbowed him in the ribs.

  “What he’s trying to say is that we want you to show us how it’s built.”

  I looked around and then grinned as my lines highlighted the primary components located around the room. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

  With everything to hand, it only took me an hour to assemble the pieces and build the other ones I needed, but Steele interrupted me before I could begin putting the pulser together.

  “Black’s waiting outside.” He made a face. “Just leave your pieces where they sit and go grab a ‘project in progress’ sign to put on the desk. No one will bother it.”

  I looked back at the doors. Sure enough, there was a Black-shaped shadow on the other side, and his thoughts weren’t happy. I sorted the project so I could find what I needed when I came back, then followed Steele back to the doors.

  “Good luck, kid. I’ve got a chair in CIS that’s calling my name.” Steele turned around, then froze.

  “Chair?” Cal said. She was standing behind us with her arms folded. “I thought I remembered telling you there were projects that needed your attention!”

  Steele gave a good-natured sigh. “Work, work, work. Have fun out there, 32. Don’t let Black bully you too badly.”

  Outside, Black was leaning against the wall watching white-coated techs hurry back and forth through the hallway. “I see you’re walking, now. Anything still wrong that I should know about?”

  I shook my head.

  “Good.”

  I barely saw the flash of intention cross his mind before I was against the wall with his hands on either of my head. His nose was just inches from mine, and his breath was heavy on my face as he stared me down.

  “Next time I ask you if you’re alright, you answer honestly or I will kill you myself. Understand?”

  I nodded slowly, but he didn’t move.

  “I’m the team medic, and it’s my job to keep you alive. I nearly lost you on that chopper, Farina. Our med pods can do a lot back at base, but they’re stationary and not completely reliable. None of it matters if you’re dead before you get back.”

  I shivered. “That’s how close it was, huh?”

  He pulled back and nodded. “I’m not losing another member of Tac 47. Got it? I don’t care how abnormal your pain response is. If you’re hurt, you tell me. You have the analysis skills to figure it out.”

  I was silent a moment as I let that information sink in. Out of habit, I pulled the memory and watched in slow motion as the bullet exited the barrel of Houston’s gun and punched through my skin.

  Black asked me if I was hurt. The Tac suit had hid the blood well enough that he hadn’t immediately seen it.

  But if I hadn’t lied, then I wouldn’t have been unencumbered enough to save Tolden.

  “If I have life-threatening wounds, I will ensure that you know,” I said.

  When had I learned to lie with such ease? Once upon a time, it had made my stomach churn. Now?

  I refused to take myself out of a dangerous situation just because I was injured when I had the ability to protect my teammates.

  Black shook his head. “Come on, 32. I won’t insult you by making you lie again.” We walked down the hallway in thick, heavy silence. We crossed the rotunda and arrived in the tactical section.

  People turned to look at us as we walked by, and whispers followed us. I wondered what they were about this time—the plasma pulser again? Black turned into a room with ping-pong tables, video games, and pool tables around the edges, with papers lining the walls. The black-suited Tac Agents all stopped what they were doing as we entered.

  A woman with close cropped hair and petite shoulders jerked her chin my way. “Hey! You 32?”

  “Yeah, this is her,” Black said. He took a few steps away and folded his arms across his chest.

  I tensed and reached out to brush their minds, only to stop and stare in amazement as they started to applaud.

  The woman who’d asked about me stepped up to clap me on the back. “You did good, kid. Not many people here who would’ve kept going like that on their first mission as a—what grade are you in again?”

  “I’m a second-year in highschool,” I said.

  She threw her head back and laughed. “Two bullet holes, hypothermia, a second-year, and a Danger rating One in the bag. Ms. King has an eye for recruits, I’ll give her that.”

  The next thirty minutes were filled with introductions and applause. Finally, I tore myself away from the other Tac agents and made my way back to Black. There was amusement close to the surface of his thoughts, but it was quickly buried.

  “Tournament sign-ups are there. AnAd wants us to go paperless. I’m sure we’ll make it one of these days, but right now we’ve got paper taped to the wall.” He shrugged. “So sue us. More important than the paper is which kinds, and the betting pools attached. We’ve got team tournaments that double as training exercises and everything in between. Marksmanship with anything in the armory—though you have to actually go to the armory for some of the more obscure tournaments. We’ve got weapons tournaments, unarmed tournaments, full on military games, you name it. Most of us are required to enter in at least two for training purposes, but you’re still in school, so classes count. Betting pools are over there.” He motioned t
o a counter with a mob of agents around it.

  “There must be something exciting going on tonight.”

  Black laughed. “Agency games are coming up in a few weeks. That one is required for all personnel not currently on-duty. All the tac teams compete against each other, half on Ms. Green’s team, and half on Ms. King’s team. Tac Block 4 gets split down the middle, and the extra team sits out in case something comes up while everyone else slugs it out. Lists for who’s on which side came out while you were unconscious. We’re on call so we can’t play—Tolden’s pissed, but it’s his just rewards for winning against Ms. Green’s team last year. Everyone knows he was the one running coms.”

  I followed him out the door. “What’s so different about Tac block 4 to get it split down the middle?”

  He stopped, and turned. “Ms. King didn’t—how long have you been a recruit?”

  I frowned. “I stumbled into it last Saturday. Tolden brought me in, and I got my temp card.”

  Black didn’t react, but I could feel the surprise lance through him. “Well, that explains your hand-to-hand. Tac Block 4 is a group of nine flexible tactical teams. We’re the ones they send in when they don’t know exactly what they’re dealing with, and there’s always two of us on-duty at a time. We spend way more time than is healthy on-base, but we’re also the best the Agency’s got. Newbies don’t often get assigned here, either. Two assigned to the same team? I thought for a moment that they’d written us off.” He turned and walked a few more steps to stand in front of locker 32.

  “Everybody in the tac section has a locker. This one’s yours. You’ll keep a change of tac-ware here and whatever else you can’t keep on you during school. Weaponry, gadgets we haven’t released to the public, things like that.”

  I keyed it open with the passcode they gave me on my card and my eyes narrowed. In the weapons rack to the right of my plasma pulser was a polished black firearm.

  I turned to Black, eyes still narrowed. “I thought you said you wouldn’t be certifying me with one of these.”