The Crystal Tower

by Liam Donnelly

“It’s clear that this entity has a connection to her. According to the minimal psionic readings we have been able to reconstruct from the data regarding the Atlantic incident, their psionic signatures are similar in nature, though his is far more powerful, obviously. If you fail to apprehend Max, your secondary objective is to apprehend Jane Connor once more.”

  “You want to use her as bait, don’t you?” Marie knew she was pushing the unspoken boundaries between them to their limits, but at this point, she was almost beyond caring.

  They didn’t respond this time, and Marie was about to speak again to warn them of what seemed to her to be a very dangerous idea. Suddenly, her mind was filled with images of the very foundations of the building on which she now stood being ripped from the ground and the bricks that formed its walls flying into the air like confetti as some powerful being tore it to pieces. She wanted to gasp at the thought, as for some reason it seemed terribly real, almost premonitory, but she forced herself to retain her composure and keep a straight face.

  She was expecting some smart, subversive answer when the ground trembled beneath her; it was mild, but somewhere in the distance, she thought she heard something thunderous. She looked around the room and saw a trace of dust fall from the plaster in the ceiling. Stepping down from the chair, she stared at the hairline crack that had just formed in the roof.

  “Miss Donaldson? What’s happened?” asked the woman in the purple suit.

  Marie glanced back at the screen for a second, then returned her attention to the crack. “There was a tremor,” she responded without looking back.

  “I’m reading massive psionic activity,” said the man on the far left. Marie glanced in his direction to see that he was looking at the transparent digital display in front of him. It was now filled with new and different information: graphs, charts, and a shifting, detailed map. “In the area of New York City.”

  “Yes, approximately five miles off the coast,” added the woman wearing purple.

  At that moment, Chris’s voice came through overhead. “Attention, Marie Donaldson. Please report to the control room immediately.”

  “I should go and deal with this,” she said, nodding at the Committee members and clasping her hands behind her back.

  “We’ll monitor from here,” the first man said.

  “Fine,” Marie responded with a touch of unconcealed apathy. She approached the door and swiped her wrist over the security panel before they had a chance to deactivate their video feeds. Usually, when they did this, they left her standing there feeling like a mule. This time, she was outside and the door slid shut before they could react.

  In the hallway, she stepped to the side, nodding at an employee as he walked past her. Then she took a left and proceeded fifty feet down the corridor to a small recess leading to a room where biological samples were stored. The walkway to the door was only ten feet long, but of late she had found herself going there more frequently—often after these discussions with the upper hierarchy of the Committee—to think. This time, she came because her mind was literally reeling. Are they insane? she thought. Her mouth gaped open as she rubbed exhaustion from her eyes. Capture him? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. We’d be lucky to get his autograph. For a glorious few seconds, for probably the first time in months, she found herself laughing. The sound was almost alien to her.

  She had leaned back against the wall, but now she stood up straight and stepped out, her face once again taking on a steel-like edge, the veneer she wore during the vast amount of the time she spent at the facility. She walked out of the small recess and picked up her pace as she passed through the white corridors, heading for the control room. On her way, she nodded at the three staff members who were brave enough to lift their heads from their tablets as they passed her.

  CHAPTER 4

  CLEARANCE

  Marie entered through the two solid, ten-inch-thick steel doors, both of which required high-level access—something that was granted only to the most senior personnel in the facility. Immediately upon entering, her brow crossed as she sensed a palpable change in the room. She glanced around, but heard no chattering; there was no sound of fingertips crossing virtual keyboards on specially made desks. Instead, every single person in the room was staring at something on the main monitor. Indeed, Marie was surprised to see that even some of the lower-level employees had left their desks; they were now standing behind a group of fifteen or so individuals crowded around the twenty-five-foot screen that covered the wall at the front of the room. Her eyes drifted to this now, and the second they did, she began walking rapidly toward the central aisle and up the room, passing rows of computer terminals as she did. She addressed them as she moved.

  “What the hell is that?” she barked, unable to find any other question that would correlate with what was displayed on the monitor. Her eyes widened as she approached. The object on the screen—if she was estimating correctly—appeared to be over a thousand feet wide, and was surrounded by ocean on all sides. It was circular and had a crystalline structure. Its color was largely white, though traces of blue hues were spread throughout, as though another fluorescent substance had been frozen within it. However, frozen was not a word Marie would really use to describe the object, for as she drew closer, she was sure she could detect motion on its surface, as though it hadn’t fully formed. She took a sharp breath as the surface flashed in one quadrant—an enormous section that must have covered hundreds of square feet.

  Chris was standing at the front of the crowd. He didn’t turn to look at her as he heard her commanding voice speak from behind him. Several of the lower subordinates—Genine included—now turned quickly. Upon seeing Marie walking toward them, most of them stepped aside and returned to their respective terminals. Both Genine and Chris had been reassigned to this control center and debriefed after the Atlantic incident.

  “This is a satellite image of a section of the ocean about five miles off the coast of New York,” Chris said from over his shoulder.

  Marie reached the front, where only she, Chris, and a couple of others remained, their faces illuminated by the white structure on the high-definition display. “The city?” Marie asked as she turned to Chris with a concerned expression on her face. Once again, her icy veneer had cracked, as she had the immediate suspicion that what she was seeing represented something far more dangerous than the Machine—thoughts of which she was doing her best to shake from her mind.

  Chris turned to her, his face betraying a hint of regret. “Yes,” he replied, giving her a single nod.

  Turning back to the screen, she crossed her arms. She was more aware now of the clothing she had worn to the debriefing—something she would have ordinarily changed out of before coming to the control room. However, the feeling of the white blouse’s light material against her skin was oddly comforting.

  “I’m trying to get a reading on its constituents, but I can’t,” Chris said, working at the only terminal positioned at the front of the room, just to the right of the monitor. He shook his head in confusion. “It’s not showing up on any scans as a physical object.”

  “But it is a physical object—clearly!” Marie said, gesticulating toward the screen with her right hand.

  “Yes,” he replied, glancing at the monitor. “But it’s reading as pure psionic energy.”

  Marie paused and took a breath. She scanned the large monitor from top to bottom, then side to side, looking for some piece of information that might help her move the situation forward. She found nothing—just this strange object and the waves that surrounded it, crashing and splashing around its edges. “This is what caused the tremor?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Yes.”

  “It looks like crystal.”

  “Yes, but according to sensors, it’s not. If it were crystal, we would be reading it as such, but all I see is an enormous spike of psionic energy, orders of magnitude greater than anything we’ve seen.” He h
ad been leaning over his console, but now he stood, adjusted his glasses, and squinted at the screen as his eyes adjusted to the higher level of light. Taking a deep breath, he crossed his arms.

  Marie stared at the monitor intently. She lifted one hand to her right cheek and rested her elbow in the other hand, which she crossed over her midsection. Her mind raced, searching for answers. “Is it possible that it is actually some form of crystalline substance…but it’s so densely infused with energy that it’s not actually registering as crystal?”

  Chris continued staring at the monitor for a moment, then turned to face her. They exchanged a moment of silence, and he nodded. “Yes, that’s a likely possibility, actually.”

  “Do we have any drones in the area?” Her voice sounded distant. It was almost as though the mere strength of the image was dampening sounds in the room.

  “Yes—they’re on their way now. One is two miles off the coast. We have three others inbound a little farther out. ETA for the first one is three minutes.”

  “Good.” She continued scrutinizing the circular object on the screen, her instincts telling her she was missing some piece of information in the image. Her eyes darted from one section to another. Here and there, the surface still flashed with light. As her gaze drifted across the structure, every cell in her body told her it was something to fear. She took a step forward, and as she did, the light became brilliant. From behind, she appeared as a near silhouette. The elongated shadows of the few people standing around her stretched all the way to the thick, solid doors at the back of the room and rose up there, as though watching them like spectators. Her head tilted to the side. “Is that—is that a person? In the center?”

  Chris’s brow furrowed as he turned to her, then looked back at the screen. She glanced at him and turned back to it too, pointing toward the very center of the circular surface that occupied most of the display. Chris stepped forward and looked at the section to which she was pointing. After a few seconds, his eyes opened wider as the realization hit him. She was right. Indeed, standing at the very center of the structure was what appeared to be a person, surrounded by a thin veil of light.

  Marie squinted and could see other minute flashes around the base of the structure where this individual was standing. Chris immediately returned to his console. “Requesting zoom. The link to this particular satellite isn’t that stable.”

  “What happened to our primary?” Marie asked.

  “It was monitoring activity over San Francisco.” He looked up at her slowly.

  Marie glared at him. “Well, get it back into position.”

  He nodded, gulping.

  She sighed and turned her attention back to the screen. “We’re too far out from the object, Chris. I need you to get me closer.”

  Chris worked the controls on the solid, glass-like display, making a rapid tapping sound as he input commands that would be transmitted to the satellite. For a split second, Marie glanced upward, then shook her head, took a deep breath, and turned back to the screen. After a moment, the image shifted, and the sea was no longer visible. A large, central section of the rounded white structure now took up the entire monitor, and the whole room glowed with its light. For a moment, Marie lifted her arm to shield her eyes as they adjusted. “Dim the brightness by thirty percent.”

  Chris nodded, input the commands, and then looked back up at the screen as the brightness decreased to a more acceptable level.

  Silence reigned in the room as Marie was proven correct. A person was standing at the center of the object. It was a young man, perhaps not yet out of his teenage years. A few muted gasps came from the room behind them, but Marie remained focused, staring at the screen, a suspicion growing within her that, somehow, she knew this individual even though she was looking through a high-zoom factor that put her at a great distance from him. Her brow slowly creased and then she recoiled as the young man in the center of the image crouched low to the base of the structure. He pressed his hands to the surface. After a moment, flashes of light erupted underneath the area all around him, once again illuminating the room with a brilliant display.

  “Chris, zoom out—quickly!” Marie said sharply. She didn’t take her eyes off the screen as she heard Chris’s fingers tap the flat control panel a few feet away. Seconds later, the zoom factor changed, the image shifted, and on the screen the sea was once again visible, though this time, they could see just a border. The circular structure took up most of the image. Marie shook her head. “Take us out a little farther.”

  Chris obliged, and a few seconds later, the enormous rounded surface occupied only half the space on the screen; the rest was filled on all sides by the stark, blue ocean. Tense silence filled the room as the structure continued flashing with light throughout, the flares coming more rapidly with each passing second. Despite the light, Marie’s eyes opened wide and her pulse quickened as she noticed something happening on the western section of the surface, at the very edge. She leaned in, squinting. “Is that some kind of protrusion on the western front?”

  Chris glanced at the left side of the screen and took a step forward to get a closer look. He adjusted his glasses and stepped back to his monitor. “Zooming in to that section.”

  “Wait a second,” Marie said sternly, holding up her hand. A few seconds later, the entire structure began flashing even faster, pulsing with tremendous energy. Light danced across the surface, illuminating it to a degree they had not yet seen. Then the protrusion—which until seconds before had existed only on a purely speculative basis—expanded outward from the western edge of the surface. Sounds of shock and awe filled the room as the new section advanced outward on the water.

  “What the hell is this? What the hell is going on?” Marie barked. She looked at Chris, but his eyes were wide with fear, and he merely shook his head in response: I have no idea. He glanced down at his terminal again.

  “Psionic energy is well outside all known contexts. In theory, there should be a hole in the world there a mile wide, but whoever is at the center…” He shook his head and pursed his lips.

  “He’s channeling the energy,” Marie said, finishing the sentence that Chris obviously couldn’t bring himself to utter. Her voice was now filled with both astonishment and trepidation. Her gaze drifted again to the center of the screen and the young man. Though he was now barely visible, she continued to stare at him. Not much could be made of his figure now, as the energy that pulsed inside the crystal bathed him in cascades of rising and falling light. Seeing the substance growing faster at the western side, she glanced in that direction just in time to see it explode forward. An enormous arm-like protrusion was rushing across the water at a phenomenal speed. It passed outside the range of the satellite’s zoom factor within two seconds. “Zoom out now!”

  Chris was on it before he got the command. When the image shifted again, they could see both the surface of the crystal base and the flat, rectangular-shaped protrusion that was forming as it dashed across the surface of the ocean. The zoom factor was much lower now and probably showing an image that was a great deal higher off the surface.

  Reflexively, Marie stepped away from the screen. She placed a hand over her mouth as she watched this new surface dash across the water, then rested her closed fist under her chin. “Track it,” she said.

  “Looks like it’s going to impact Roosevelt Beach in…twenty seconds.”

  Marie whipped her head around at Chris, her eyes wide. “I thought you said this thing was five miles off the coast.”

  He didn’t look up to meet her eyes. Both his hands were flat against the console on either side as he consumed the information it displayed. “It is.” Now he glanced up at the screen. “The protrusion is moving very fast. It’s difficult to keep track of it.” He looked back down at the terminal. A few seconds later, something beeped on the display. “I’ve got a drone in the area—the first one.”

  “At Roosevelt Beach?”

  “Yes. Dispatchi
ng now. Arrival in seven seconds.”

  Marie returned her attention to the screen, waiting with the silent anticipation that something terrible was happening. What shook her most was that they had no way at present to determine whether this new development represented something benign. She suspected—perhaps even knew on some level—that it didn’t. She grasped her chin.

  “Image coming up,” Chris said as he returned his attention to his console and tapped a few quick commands.

  The satellite feed was replaced with a live video feed from the drone. It was hovering above the beach, a short distance from the shoreline and about a hundred feet off the ground, providing a good view of both the beach and the water. The only evidence that the video feed came from a drone was minute movement from side to side as it made adjustments. Ahead of the drone, the ocean stretched out to where, on the horizon, dim flashes of light could be seen.

  Chris was the only one to comment on the approach of the object. “According to previous records of speed and trajectory, impact will occur in…five, four, three, two—”

  The bridge appeared in the image quickly and without warning. First, a wave of what looked like blue-white energy glowed in the distance like a bulge on the horizon. Then it advanced and lurched toward the drone’s position in seconds. As it rushed toward the shoreline, it grew to a height of over a hundred feet, still glowing immensely and with tendrils of blue-white energy streaking out from it in all directions, lighting up the sky dramatically. A second later, it crashed against the shore and a veil of shimmering light—like a brightly lit, fluorescent mist—obscured most of the image for a moment. The video feed shook violently as the resulting shockwave washed over the drone. The image was then interlaced with static, making it difficult to determine what was happening.

  Everyone in the control room recoiled as the bright prominence crashed against the shore. Marie heard murmurs and gasps behind her as people began nervously discussing the situation with one another. She didn’t want to miss a single beat of what was going on, and so she remained focused on the screen, her hand still clutching her taut jaw. She didn’t dare blink.