The Ethereal Vision

by Liam Donnelly

CHAPTER 23 — FISSURE

  Jane entered the white room. As she walked past the door, she looked to the floor and noticed that the glass from her butterfly had not been cleaned; its splinters still sat near the doorway. She took her seat at the opposite end of the table. As she looked up at Lucas, he looked down at the glass. Then, after a moment, he looked back up and smiled at her.

  He took his perfunctory position in the chair closest to the door. He sat down and clasped his hands together on the table in front of him. Although the pain from earlier had diminished, Jane could feel a new dull ache growing in her mind. This wasn’t so much a physical pain, but more like a pre-emptive feeling of panic.

  “What is it you want from me?”

  “I want you to use your abilities,” he said flatly, slowly bringing his gaze to hers.

  “Why?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “Is it about that thing you found in the ocean?”

  He recoiled from her visibly, and his eyes narrowed to slits. “How did you find out about that?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m never going to give you what you want.”

  He regarded her again, this time with a more penetrating, knowing gaze. “You stopped using your abilities after the accident, didn’t you?”

  She didn’t respond. In her mind, the dark country road with the badly painted lines flew out of sight below her as the car skidded. She wanted to reach out for the butterfly, but it was gone, of course.

  “It was because of you. I knew you were out there looking for me and…”

  “I don’t think that was it,” he said, glaring at her. “No.” He paused and looked down at the desk. He tapped his fingers on the black glass, one after the other, making a soft drumming beat. “Do you think it had something to do with your father? With his leaving?”

  In the memory that was now rising in her mind, Jane again saw the glass shatter downward, shimmering for a moment. Then it was gone, disappearing into the night. The dull ache in her head grew worse, and she felt her eyes threaten to tear up. She was on the verge of letting go.

  “You see, I know the logical reason you would suppress the ability after the accident; you were afraid of attracting attention. That’s correct, isn’t it?” he asked.

  She stared at the desk and did her best to ignore him.

  “But I don’t think that’s all there is to it,” he said as he brought the surface computer on the desk to life again. The controls beneath her flickered on.

  The room was slowly fading; she could still hear Lucas, but he was receding farther and farther into the background. Now, in a depth she had only ever been dimly aware of, she stood on a darkened land, staring up at the dam in her mind. The sky here was grey, and the land was covered with a canopy of bare trees. The ground below her feet was green and mossy. Somewhere in the distance of this incomplete world, thunder rumbled, and there was a faint flicker of lightning. She looked up and saw that the cracks on the dam were still there from before, but they had begun to repair themselves. She knew that, somehow, this was wrong.

  No, she thought as she looked up at them. They shouldn’t be repairing; they should be opening up further. Then she did the thing she feared the most. She reached out with her mind towards the cracks. As she did, she felt something ancient rise up behind her: a power beyond power. Colossal hands moved over her, reaching out for the cracks in the dam, beginning to pull at them.

  Charlotte was glaring at Chris through eyes that were wide and clear.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked, his voice shaking. He had sunk into his chair, and Charlotte could see that he was trembling, though his head was still tilted in contempt.

  “Don’t ask me that question. You know why,” she replied. She paused, allowing herself one brief moment to have her say in the maelstrom that now surrounded her. “You don’t have a clue what’s happening here, do you? Do you think this is a game? Have you even considered what those people on the other side of this door represent? Have you considered what the object out there in the ocean represents?”

  “I….I…” he began, but she cut him off.

  “I want you to open the domestic quarters for the ethereals. Let them out.”

  He hesitated and stared at her, appearing to have difficulty understanding what she had said to him.

  “Chris,” she said, “open up the living quarters. Right now—all of them.”

  It seemed to sink in finally, and he nodded. He turned around and moved his hands across the controls. The video feed from the hallway outside the sleeping quarters flickered onto the main monitor positioned in the centre of the wall. Chris’ hands dashed across the keyboard frantically. After a moment, he looked back up at her, his hand paused above the enter key. He had already entered the sequence of commands to open the doors. Charlotte nodded with raised eyebrows. He jerked back around and hit the enter key.

  Charlotte watched the screens above as they showed the doors opening throughout the corridor where the ethereals’ quarters were kept. The individual video feeds from each of their rooms were scattered around the main monitors on smaller screens. These now showed them getting up and looking in the direction of their doorways, surprised. Chris was looking at the monitors, shaking his head slowly in disbelief. One of his hands moved to his face and he rubbed his mouth nervously. The ethereals began to enter the hallway and talk to each other.

  Charlotte turned towards the other side of the room, keeping an eye on Chris. She noticed his eyes dart to the space where the emergency firearms were kept. She stopped for a second and shook her head at him slowly. He sank back into his chair, and she continued walking across the floor.

  She passed banks of servers and hard drives and moved towards the unusual, cuboid device seated on a platform at the back of the room. Wires were connected to it on every side; they snaked away from it to power sources and computer terminals showing various readouts from the device.

  She lifted the weapon again and pointed it at the strange object. In that moment, she found herself hesitating. This was the point of no return. If she destroyed the suppression device, all hell was sure to break loose. Pages from her own thesis came to mind. She knew what some of these teenagers were capable of. In truth, it scared her a little bit. Was she doing the wrong thing?

  Two things occurred to her then that led her to fire at the device and destroy it. First was the image of the being who called himself Max; her body shivered and ran cold at the thought. The second was the Irish girl, Jane.

  Charlotte pulled the trigger. The light from the sophisticated weapon once again filled the room. She winced but pursed her lips and kept firing as bolt after bolt of electrical energy hit the device. She stepped back as it began to emit showers of sparks from the entry point of each shot. Smoke rose from the device and then thin arcs of electrical energy snaked all over its surface.

  She heard a whirring sound and the terminals around it went blank. She took a close look at it and saw that it was beyond use or repair, with obvious holes all over its surface and sparks still erupting from it. She turned around to see Chris staring at her from his chair, his jaw gaping wide open.

  “You’ve lost your mind,” he said, slurring his words.

  She ignored him and turned her gaze to the screens in front of her just as the muffled sounds from the other side of the door began to grow more serious in their tones. She heard the sound of futile bangs coming from the other side, but she knew there was no way they could get in without a skilled technician. On the screens she could see that the ethereals were entering the main corridor.

  In the testing room, Lucas was making his connections. He swiped another photograph of their old car over the table to Jane. It fell into place next to her hand. Her hand did not move, nor did the rest of her body. Only her eyes darted to examine the photograph. The information was fed into that deeper place she now occupied.

  Lucas stood up and, gritting his teeth, walked across the room to stand over her. He placed his hands o
n the table in front of her and leaned in. He was still speaking in his intimidating tones, but she could no longer hear him. She could see him looking to her for a reaction, but she had none.

  Beyond the room where her body was, those hands in her mind were gripping at the wall and prying it open.

  “I was not responsible,” she said aloud. Maintaining a dim awareness of the physical room her body was in, she saw Lucas frown. This utterance seemed to disturb him more than anything she had said previously during her time in the facility.

  Inside, a crack appeared in the base of the dam. It exploded upward through the centre. A growing light appeared from behind the deepening crevice as dust and debris began to crash onto the sodden earth below. The mental hands of her mind—figments only—pulled the rock aside. Then, as she looked into the light, unafraid, she remembered.