Rise (The Ethereal Vision Book 2)

by Liam Donnelly

  “Yeah, sure,” Jane said confidently, lying through her teeth. She reached out her hand, palm up, knowing that this was what Ciara was referring to‌—‌she would need Jane to enhance her telepathic reach in order to find him.

  Ciara placed her palm on top of Jane’s and closed her eyes.

  Jane closed her eyes too when it felt as though she was struck by electricity. It had always been obvious that Ciara had the strongest telepathic senses in the group, but Jane had no idea just how strong they were. Now, she could feel her senses expand outward to distant places, far beyond the room that they occupied.

  After a few moments of intense concentration on Ciara’s part, she spoke. “I have him.”

  Jane heard Ciara speak from beside her and opened her eyes, squinting.

  “But I can’t see inside his mind,” Ciara continued.

  “We don’t need to for now,” Mike interjected.

  “OK… But maybe if I can just…”

  Jane was about to protest, knowing what she was about to attempt, when Ciara yelled beside her, breaking the link and pulling her hand away. She stood straight up and wrapped her arms around her.

  “What happened?” Mike asked, standing up over them.

  Ciara was taking deep breaths. “I tried to scan his mind. I couldn’t. Something blocked me this time. Whatever influence has come over him, it’s gotten stronger.”

  “It’s OK,” Jane said. “We just need to find out where he’s going for now.”

  “Yeah, I know. Sorry. I messed up.”

  “No, you didn’t. He didn’t detect you. He’s completely oblivious, and we know that now‌—‌that’s a good thing.”

  Ciara nodded.

  Jane reached out a hand. “Again?”

  Ciara hesitated for a moment, then once again approached the sofa and sat down. Jane had her palm facing upward just next to her, and she placed her hand down on it.

  Once again, Jane felt the shock of Ciara’s telepathic senses wash over her, and she felt her awareness leave the room‌—‌much quicker this time. Jane kept herself firmly grounded in the room, focusing on extending Ciara’s range as best as she could. As the seconds passed, she felt her power leak out into the room around her. Jane opened her eyes to see Mike staring down at his hands as they began to luminesce, spreading white light around the room in a rippling cascade.

  “Ugh… Jane?”

  “I know, Mike‌—‌I can’t stop it.”

  His hands grew brighter still, and he stood up. He began to shake them, clenching and unclenching his fists as the light began to run up his arms.

  “Ciara, what’s happening?” Jane asked.

  “I have him again. I’m keeping my distance this time, just tracking him.”

  “Good.”

  Mike closed his palms firmly, and the light in the room dimmed.

  Jane looked at him and nodded, acknowledging this unusual new manifestation. He had previously explored it only in the dream world they had created and trained in, but it had never shown itself in real life, nor had they expected it to. Now, they had just seen their first glimpse of its reality.

  “He’s getting into a taxi,” Ciara said. Her eyes were shut tight, and she appeared to be deep in concentration.

  “Can you stay with him?” Jane asked.

  “Yes, I can. Just keep focusing, Jane. Stay with me.”

  ***

  Later, it was completely dark out, and they had the lights turned down low to enable Ciara to concentrate better. She had been following him for almost an hour and appeared now to be growing tired.

  “Just stay with him a little longer,” Jane pleaded.

  After a few moments of silence, Ciara finally responded. “I think he’s getting closer.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I can feel it in his body. There’s an excitement building. It’s not coming from Morris himself, just the part of him that’s under their control. It’s a very basic feeling‌—‌barely an emotion.” After a few more minutes, she spoke again. “We’re coming up on a building.”

  “What does it look like?” Mike asked. He had left the room for some time during the exchange between Ciara and Jane and had now learned to diminish the light coming from his palms.

  “Nondescript. No obvious features‌—‌it’s secreted in an abandoned industrial estate of some kind. It’s similar to the first facility, but less identifiable. A fence surrounds it, and then there’s a large stretch of grass surrounding the entire complex. Morris is stopping outside a gate. Barriers raising.” She closed her eyes tightly. “I think he’s refusing to pay the fare. He’s getting out now; I’m watching from a distance. There’s an armed guard coming out. He’s paying the fare for him. There are drones in the air.”

  Jane looked at Mike and he nodded; she was glad to see that he was also taking note of the various features Ciara was mentioning.

  “Morris is walking straight inside, ignoring the guard,” Ciara continued. “There’s a door rising automatically for him and… there’s a woman there. Marie… Marie something. And a man…” She grimaced. “Oh my God. It’s Lucas!” She opened her eyes. “That’s it. The door’s closed. He’s gone inside. I can’t reach him anymore.”

  Jane nodded at her. “Well done,” she said flatly, exhaling. “Can you follow the path he took?”

  “Yes, I think so. I know the way roughly. It’s a fair distance outside the city, though.”

  “OK,” Jane said, standing up. “We prepare tonight, and we leave tomorrow.”

  “I hate to state the obvious,” Mike said, “but this is clearly a trap.”

  “I know. Nothing we can do about it, though. We have to get him back. We have to help him. Are you in?”

  “Do you need to ask?” Mike replied.

  Jane smiled, then the smile faded as she looked down at his hands.

  He had his palms facing upward, and they had once again grown dark. He turned them over. “Forget about it for now.”

  Jane nodded. “We should get some rest,” she said.

  Ciara shook her head. “I can’t believe we’re walking right back into their hands.”

  “I know. And it’s obviously what they want too, but we have no choice.”

  A silence fell over them in the darkness for a brief moment before they went to their respective rooms and rested.

  ***

  Zoe hadn’t shifted her position in ten minutes, and her eyes were fixed on the monitors in front of her, their blue light illuminating her beautiful, angular features. Her head was resting on one hand, and she was tapping her fingers against her desk with the other. Noah was in his office just down the hall. She had been tempted all morning to go and confide in him, to tell him what had happened to her the previous evening, but she had no idea what to say. What could she say? That she’d had a dream? A waking vision? Was it a nightmare, or…

  She placed a hand on her chest and dared not think about the final possibility, for on some level, she realized it was the truth. As she stared at the monitors now, she could see that Trey was sitting on his bed with his eyes closed. Every now and then, he would reach out his hands to activate the video games system. He had done this twice now, but he hadn’t seemed to be able to maintain his concentration long enough, and had on each occasion returned to this meditative posture after just a few moments.

  Zoe summoned the courage, took a deep breath, and stood. She walked toward the door and ran her wrist over the security panel. The door opened, and as she stepped over the threshold and entered the main section of the facility, the truth of the final possibility rose in her mind ineffably. Her vision last night had been a kind of premonition.

  She had no psychic ability, of course; everyone who worked at the facilities had been tested for such phenomena. Still, though, somehow, through her interaction with Trey’s massive, seemingly boundless psychic potential, she had caught a glimpse of the future. The images she had seen had been incomple
te, like the broken shards of a dream. Still, there was meaning there, and that thought scared her the most. There was, most obviously, the cube, and then there was the black mass.

  The cube was benign enough, she thought. The one thing that bothered her about it was that Trey had mentioned such a thing to her before in their counseling sessions. He claimed to be seeing such a thing in his dreams. He had claimed, in fact, that something was trying to get him to open the locks on just such an object. But cube was not the word that accurately described this object. She felt the word come up inside her then, and it fell from her lips in near silence.

  “Device,” she whispered. She stopped walking in the middle of the corridor on the way to Trey’s room. The cube he mentioned‌—‌the one that she had seen in her dream‌—‌was a device of some kind. Then other words came. Ancient. Primordial. Prehistoric.

  Zoe took a breath and continued walking. Trey’s room was only ten feet away now. She looked to the left, at the wall opposite his room, and walked toward it. Crossing her arms, she stood there with her back against the surface as a young man named Reneau walked by. She smiled and nodded at him. When he had passed by her and turned down the hallway, she glanced back at Trey’s room. Pushing away from the wall, she walked toward it slowly. Upon reaching the entrance, she knocked gently on the door that was already partially open.

  “Come in, Miss Delahunt,” she heard Trey’s voice call from inside the room.

  She pushed the door open and walked inside. He was sitting cross-legged on the bed with his eyes closed. Still, he had his hands held upward, and the holographic interface that was projected from the system in front of him was wrapped around his hands: a pair of glowing neon rings. He was manipulating the controls with his fingers, inputting information into the system in front of him.

  Zoe stared at him in awe. How is he doing that with his eyes closed? she wondered.

  His eyes opened and he turned to look at her.

  Zoe’s jaw fell open, and she watched as he withdrew his hands from the holographic interface. The glowing, blue neon discs disappeared pixel by pixel, like dust scattering in the wind.

  She took a chance asking him the question directly; her boundaries with Trey had fallen so low that she didn’t think it mattered anymore. “How are you doing that with your eyes closed, Trey?”

  He sighed and shrugged. “It’s easy when you’re…” His gaze drifted toward the floor, and he began to frown.

  “When you’re… like you?” she said, anticipating his thought.

  He nodded. “Yes. I don’t even know why I do it. My mind is elsewhere, concentrating.”

  Zoe didn’t need to ask what he was concentrating on; she already knew. She approached the bed slowly and stood closer to him. “Trey, did you leave the facility last night at all?”

  “No, of course not,” he said, looking up at her. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m just curious.” They shared a moment wherein she thought he knew exactly what she was thinking. It passed quickly.

  “Don’t you mean ‘concerned’?”

  She opened her mouth to speak but then decided to ignore this. “You’re still having the dreams, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  “Again?”

  “Yes. Please. It’s important.”

  He sighed. “Not much has changed. I’m on a beach. It’s a beautiful place filled with incredible white sand‌—‌so white it gleams. It’s almost like crystal sometimes.”

  “Tell me about the cube.”

  He looked down at his lap. “The cube is hovering over the water.”

  “It’s big, right?”

  “Yes. It’s at least a hundred feet across, but it’s not a physical object. It seems to intersect our world only partially. It’s as if that’s part of the mechanism that makes it work. Its locks are scattered across the multiverse.”

  “And it requires someone like you to open it?”

  “Yes.” He sighed again. “There’s a man there sometimes. He’s a good man. He wears a black cloak. But he can’t get close to me. I want him to come and help me, but he’s too far away. I think he’s shouting, but… he never gets near me. It’s like he’s being blocked somehow.”

  “OK.” Her gaze drifted to the right as a thought crossed her mind. She only barely managed to avoid gasping as she made the connection. The footage, she thought.

  “Footage?” Trey asked, staring up at her.

  “Oh. It’s nothing,” she said, deftly muting another gasp that almost escaped her lips at the realization that Trey could very easily hear her thoughts. “Don’t worry, Trey. Please continue.”

  “OK. So sometimes he’s far down on the beach. Sometimes he’s behind me in the dunes, but he never gets close to me.” He paused then.

  Zoe stepped closer to him and placed a hand gently on his shoulder. “You don’t want to talk about the other one, do you?”

  “No,” he said. A tear spilled down his cheek. “I don’t, Miss Delahunt. Not ever again. I keep forgetting. In the dream, you see, she makes me forget. She makes me forget that she’s evil.”

  “These aren’t just dreams, are they, Trey?”

  “No. They’re not. I’m sorry, Miss Delahunt, but…” he glanced up at her. “I don’t think I can stop it.”

  “Is the cube nearly opened?”

  “Yes.” He looked at the window now. Slowly, he stood up off the bed and walked toward it. “I think you should try and make sure that I can’t get out of here,” he said as he gazed out at the day beyond the confines of the facility.

  “Can the suppression field stop you, even at its highest levels?”

  “No,” he said after a long pause. “I don’t think anything can stop me. You should think of something, though. Whatever this thing is, it’s almost got a hold of me, and I don’t think I have much time left.”

  To Zoe‌—‌and perhaps it wasn’t just her‌—‌the light seemed to fade in the room. The very light of the world seemed to be temporarily sucked into an invisible vacuum. She stayed with Trey for quite a while, knowing that her company was needed. She sat at the edge of the bed, watching him, even though he didn’t turn around again.

  As soon as she left, she contacted Noah and arranged for a meeting with him the next day.

  CHAPTER 8

  UNSENT

  Jane and her friends stayed up most of that night preparing. They were taking a single backpack with them, which contained only some basic provisions. Everything else they had gathered over the last few weeks was staying in the house. They each got only a few hours of sleep, and Jane awoke first. She showered, dressed, went downstairs, and made a light breakfast of eggs and oatmeal. Then she took it with her as she made her way to the sitting room. When she reached the door, something stopped her. She looked to the right, where just beyond was the entrance to the other room‌—‌the room where she had fought Morris. She turned toward it now and walked inside.

  The room was dark, and golden morning light swept in through the partially opened blinds on the far side of the room. On the floor, it glinted off the broken glass and smashed pieces of china. The echo struck her then. It was like a shockwave. She reeled backward a step and almost dropped her tray. Briefly, she could see herself, suspended in his grip, rising off the floor and struggling for freedom. Then she could also feel the grip of his power on her arms. She shook her head, and the psychic echo vanished. Taking a deep breath, she took a look around the darkened room. Walking inside, she placed the tray on the table in the center of the room‌—‌one of the few things that was still intact.

  Jane stood up and rubbed her eyes, trying to ignore her exhaustion and trying to avoid thinking about what was coming for them that day. She turned around, and as she did, shards of glass cracked under her feet. She ignored them. The sofa that had originally been positioned just below the window at the front of the room was now lodged in the far corner there. W
ithout moving, she extended her will out toward it and gripped it. Obligingly, it rose on one corner and pivoted across the floor, coming to stop right at her feet with a very loud thud. She glanced down at it for a moment.

  I’m getting stronger. Am not! Stop it!

  Placing the tray on the table in front of her, she ran her hands through her hair and sat down, then began to eat. The oatmeal was good. It was warm and laced with maple syrup, some gourmet brand she had found in the many cupboards that lined the walls of the large kitchen. Her eyes opened wide as the particularly refined flavor ran across the sides of her tongue, underneath, and then down her throat. She finished the oatmeal in less than two minutes.

  Next, she ate the eggs. When the food was gone, she once again glanced around the room. Guilt immediately struck her at what had happened here. This was somebody’s home; they had put great work into building it. She looked to her right, to the corner of the room where the table with the pen and paper had once stood. It was now, of course, nothing more than broken splinters of wood. The notepad was now in her back pocket, along with the pen, and she knew what to do with it.

  She reached into that same pocket, pulled out the notepad, and, taking a breath, she sat on the sofa and began to write a new letter. When she was finished, she looked up. Realizing that she couldn’t leave the room this way, she automatically reached out with the power and began to repair what she could. As she did, she went over the newly written letter to Max once more.

  Hi, Max. I have to write you a letter because we can’t log in to any of the computers in this house. In fact, we’re lucky we made it inside at all. If we weren’t Ethereals, we wouldn’t have been able to locate a vacant house, and we wouldn’t have been able to find refuge. Anyway, I doubt you have an e-mail address, so here we go.

  In some kind of strange bilateral awareness now, Jane reached out with the part of her mind from where the power arose. She looked at the floor and focused on the remains. The broken vases and similar objects were too delicate to repair, and so she lifted all of that off the floor first. A hundred pieces of glass and ceramics rose into the air, up past the light that streamed through the windows, glinting there beautifully. Dust swirled up with them and created a shimmering, golden haze as it drifted through the shafts of light that came in through the blinds. Jane could see now that some of the ornaments had contained gold, and that glinted in the light too.