The broken shards began to swirl around each other toward a central point. After a moment, the center of the room was occupied by a vortex of debris. Then, there was a blaze of light as it all came together, and she fashioned the remains into a butterfly. The pieces of gold became the outline of the wings. The center was composed of the ceramics, while the wings themselves were composed of azure-blue glass. The ornament itself, when finished, measured about thirty centimeters from one wing tip to the other. She lowered the butterfly onto the table and kept reading as the heavier, more robust pieces of furniture—tables, chairs, and lamps—began to move, lifting off the floor and slotting into place with heavy thuds.
I don’t know where you’ve gone, and I don’t know when you’ll be back… Dare I say it—if you’ll be back. They took Morris, Max. I’m going to do what you showed me and stand up for my friends and myself. I’m going to fight them; I think it’s what you would tell me to do.
The larger pieces of furniture swirled around the room, rearranging themselves. A large cabinet that stretched almost to the ceiling rose up off the floor and slammed back into a recess. Some ornaments that still remained intact rose into the air and took their places back on the shelves, then the doors on the cabinets closed. Jane sighed. She was breathing heavily now.
I’m terrified that I’ll never see you again, but I’m more afraid for you. I know you can handle yourself, but still, I’m concerned. Wherever you are, I hope you’re doing OK. I hope you’re not outnumbered, like us. I know it’s not your style, but… wish me luck, and… the same to you.
The last of the furniture righted itself just as Jane finished going over the letter. She stood up. On the floor now there were only glimmering specks of dust—the only remaining evidence of the fight. The room looked quite close to how they found it. The butterfly was beautiful, but it was not for her; it was a gift for the occupants of the house.
She felt stronger now, and she stood tall—her stance rock solid.
She made her way into the other room where she had placed her backpack. She put on a lined denim coat she had found in one of the wardrobes upstairs, picked up the pack, and placed her arms through the straps. As she made her way into the hallway, she found Ciara coming down the stairs.
Ciara stopped near the bottom of the stairway.
“Food?” Jane asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Ciara said, frowning. She glanced toward the room nearest the front of the house, just behind where Jane stood. “What was the noise in there?”
“Nothing.”
Ciara looked over Jane’s shoulder. The door was wide open. Jane saw her frown at the sight of the clean room, and she grinned, but still, reached out behind her with those mental hands (stronger now) and pulled the door closed gently.
“OK,” Ciara said. “Let’s get going… I guess.”
“Mike?” Jane yelled as she glanced up at the second floor.
“Ready,” he called from upstairs.
Jane and Ciara exchanged a brief smile. Ciara descended the remaining steps and walked toward the kitchen.
“What were you doing in there, Jane?” Ciara asked now.
The question caught her off guard, and it only now struck her how easily she had righted the objects in the room.
“Just, um, fixing the room.”
“Fixing the room?”
“It was nothing,” she replied as Ciara turned back around and they faced each other in the dark hallway. The morning light was not bright enough to illuminate it properly. Although Jane knew there was little she could hide from Ciara—her telepathic senses were unparalleled—she still had no desire to discuss the scope of her expanding power. Not yet, at least. Still, she exhaled and released the straps of the pack, lowering it slowly to the ground. She glanced down at the floor, glaring at the beautiful boards of wine-red oak there.
“OK,” she heard Ciara say warmly.
Mike bounded down the steps. “That was some noise, Jane. What were you doing? Marking your territory?”
“Funny,” Jane replied. “Eat, and then we’re leaving.”
He glared at her, although he proceeded toward the kitchen and did as she said.
A short while later, they were ready to go, and Ciara had volunteered to carry the only backpack. The three now stood in the hall, staring back into the beautiful house that had been their home for the previous weeks.
They looked at each other.
“Just a safe house, guys,” Jane said.
Both Ciara and Mike nodded their agreement.
After a moment, Jane sighed and turned toward the door. She focused on the lock. It clicked, and the door swung open in front of her. She walked out into the bitterly cold morning light. After the others had followed, Jane pulled, and the door clicked closed behind them.
Inside the house, down the hallway, in the dim light of the kitchen, a single sheet of paper sat on the table with Jane’s letter addressed to Max.
Outside, they walked the hundred-meter distance past the beautiful houses to a corner that joined the residential area with a busier street.
“OK. How are we going to do this, Jane? We have no money, and we’re off the grid. I don’t know if you can even get transportation anymore without tech.”
“No. There’s not much left,” Ciara said.
It was true. Much traditional transportation had been replaced as self-driving cars had become the norm over the years of that decade. Now, the only remaining cabs were there as much of a novelty as anything else.
“But most people don’t have our advantage.”
Jane watched as Ciara stared off into the distance down the right-hand side of the road. Among the cars there, one began to blare its horn. It was an old-style yellow taxi, and the driver was desperately cutting through the perfectly coordinated traffic toward them.
The three exchanged smiles as the old vehicle pulled up on the street beside them. Jane opened the back door and got in first. Ciara sat in the center, and Mike got in last. The driver glared at them in the rearview mirror, obviously suspicious.
“Where to, friends?” he asked, although he was still frowning slightly.
Jane hesitated. “Eh, my friend here will tell you,” she said, glancing at Ciara.
Ciara looked at Jane, then quickly turned toward the mirror, meeting the driver’s eyes. “Yes. This is where we’re going,” she said simply as her gaze dipped and her eyes narrowed to slits.
The driver’s eyes widened, and his mouth opened slowly. Then he squinted and shook his head just a little.
“Please follow this route,” Ciara said.
A gurgling sound came from his mouth. “OK,” he said as he looked out toward the road in front. “That’s going to be about forty miles—way outside the city. You got the fare?”
“Don’t worry about that, please,” Jane said as she looked out the window at the pale-blue spring sky. “Just take us there now.” She could see the driver glance at her once, then return his attention to the road. The engine revved, and the vehicle pulled out into the mostly automated traffic. A large, black surveillance drone passed by the window, just fifty feet above Jane and to her right. She immediately turned toward her friends and ducked her head down as she heard the low buzz pass by over her.
When she looked up, they were on a different street entirely, and the beautiful red brick houses of the Upper East Side were passing by them rapidly.
Have you thought about what we’re going to do when we get there? Mike asked. He looked between her and Ciara, his brow furrowed. I mean, we’re pretty sure at this point that we’re walking into a trap, right? T hat they engineered this scenario somehow?
At first, Jane didn’t have a response.
“We might have underestimated them,” Mike said aloud then, attracting the driver’s attention for just a moment.
Maybe to some extent, yes, Jane replied. But I still wouldn’t put
that much stock in Lucas. Maybe the Committee; there’s a lot about it that we don’t know or understand.
This worries me, Ciara interrupted. It makes me wonder what else they may have done to us while we were in there. It’s like having a disease that you’re not aware of.
No. I don’t think there’s anything else like that that we’ll have to worry about. I think Lucas did this, and I think it was very deliberate. He saw that Morris and I were building an unusually strong rapport, and he knew it was his best bet of getting me back to them in the event of their losing control over us. He’s not intuitive, but he’s smart enough.
But it wasn’t just Lucas, Mike added.
No. He just arranged it. Somebody else was still pulling the strings.
But he suggested it, Jane, Ciara added.
Jane turned to her and regarded the suggestion. Then she nodded her agreement. Probably, yes.
The three of them looked at each other, and their silence spoke of all the things they were still not aware of. What was the Committee’s true agenda? What was the Atlantic Object, and what connection did it have to them? Why did it all seem so personal to Lucas?
They fell into a pensive silence as they watched the road in front. As the taxi left the city, the high-rise buildings on either side began to recede gradually, and soon they were only visible through the rearview mirror. Every now and then, the driver looked at them. A quick glance from Jane would silence his concerns, and his eyes would return to the road.
Ciara, scan ahead again, Jane said. I need to know as much as we can about what we’re walking into. Try to find Morris if you can.
Ciara nodded and took Jane’s hand.
Jane needed no prompting, and quickly accessed the energy that allowed her to enhance the power of other Ethereals. This time, she focused on Ciara’s thoughts, following her as she left the taxi. She gasped, astonished as they flew through the front window and the world around them took on a strange, orange hue. The dim, industrial buildings had a shimmer around them, and the grass at the sides of the road swayed as though in slow motion.
They flew over the tops of the fast, moving cars and zoomed in and out of traffic. Then Jane felt Ciara’s hand grip hers tighter, and the speed increased. Now they moved upward and were flying over the terrain below them at phenomenal speed. After a moment, their gaze drifted toward the sky and then toward the right. As they dipped back down, Jane could see gates below them, and they moved toward them, rushing through them and into an industrial estate of some kind.
Their movement slowed, and Jane could feel Ciara’s grip loosen. Suddenly, Jane was out of the vision, and the taxi became clear to her once again.
I’m there, she heard Ciara say, although she could no longer see where “there” was. There’s nothing on the outside. It seems almost too quiet—like they should have more security here. There are no drones. Nothing. Empty, derelict buildings surrounding the area. A fence—electrified, I think—surrounding the building, and beyond that… a hill… just grass… and then the facility. Two guards at the front and a barrier that moves up for cars.
What’s it like? Jane asked.
Ciara frowned. It’s just a square building, and it’s ominously quaint. Like, if it weren’t for the fact that that fence surrounds it, you wouldn’t think much of it.
OK, Jane said. Leave it for now. She looked at the driver. “Sir, how much longer will it take?”
The driver glanced at her in the rearview mirror. He squinted, seeming confused for a moment, then nodded. “Just another few minutes,” he said.
Ciara opened her eyes and released her grip on Jane’s hand.
The taxi took a right onto a road that was lined with large, apparently empty industrial buildings. Some of the windows were smashed in. As they proceeded further down the road, Jane was surprised to see a large military drone crashed on the side of the street. She stared at it as they passed, then turned and looked at Mike. He nodded at her, seeming to know exactly what she was thinking; apparently, nobody ventured here for scrap like that, and so the expensive piece of extremely advanced technology had been left there—abandoned.
Ahead of them, through the windshield, Jane could see the fence that she presumed Ciara had been referring to. She looked at her, and Ciara nodded. “Sir,” she said, “if you could please just pull up in front of that fence at the end of the road, that would be great, thank you.”
The driver squinted again. “Are you sure?” he asked. “We’re pretty much in the middle of nowhere here, guys. Most of these factories seem abandoned, and you don’t exactly look the right age to be walking around this kind of—”
Ciara held up one hand, palm facing the front of the vehicle.
As though struck by electricity, the man immediately stopped talking, his mouth hanging open mid-speech.
Ciara looked between Jane and Mike, smiling, and Jane couldn’t help but let out a brief giggle.
Mike smirked next to them, but their laughter faded quickly as the driver approached the fence. The car pulled up against the footpath that went to a distance of ten feet from the fence.
Jane glanced out the window to the barrier of wire mesh. Beyond it, the green hill that Ciara had mentioned previously rose up, blocking her view of the facility below it. She sighed and turned back to the interior of the vehicle, where she saw that the driver was staring at the meter.
“Eh, two hundred and eighty-six dollars… please,” he said doubtfully.
Jane took a rectangular piece of paper from her pocket. It was totally blank but cut into the exact shape of a bill. She handed it to Ciara.
“Oh. You’re paying cash?” he asked, surprised. “No problem, I’ll just have to verify it…”
“That won’t be necessary,” Ciara said, cutting him off. She focused on the driver, staring at him in the mirror. Smiling, she reached out her hand toward him, holding the piece of paper and offering it to him. “There you go, sir. It’s five hundred. Please keep the change,” she said. Ciara focused for a second more, and then they watched as the man’s eyes beamed first with first shock and then delight.
He was turning to address them when the three of them quickly exited the vehicle. At this point, he was so under their control that he didn’t know what was happening, and wouldn’t until he was well outside the range of their influence—thirty miles back and heading for the city.
“Well, here we are,” Jane said, almost whispering as the taxi headed back down the empty road.
“Yeah,” Mike added. “What now?”
“Jane?”
Jane turned toward Ciara at the sound of her voice, for it was filled with barely concealed fright. “What?” she responded.
“Don’t look around.”
“Why?” Jane glared at her, and she could see the fear in her eyes now.
There are people here, Ciara said, deftly switching back to telepathic communication.
Where? Jane asked, resisting the urge to turn.
I… I don’t know how I missed them. They’re all around us. They must have used something to block their presence. I couldn’t see them.
How many are there? Mike asked.
Ciara hesitated. At least forty. Maybe fifty.
Jane’s eyes grew wide, and she felt her neck beat with a quickening pulse. What do we do?
I don’t know what we can do. They have technology too.
Well, we’re not going back. So?
The three exchanged glances.
I guess we go forward, Mike said. Jane, you take down the fence. We’ll turn around and draw them out. We’ll cover you if we have to.
Jane and Ciara nodded at him, Jane’s breaths coming in thin gasps.
Ready? Mike asked.
Both she and Ciara nodded.
Go!
Jane heard the air around her rip and resound with energy as she reached forward with the power and turned it on the fence. She gripped the wires
there—almost a quarter of an inch thick—and pulled as hard as she could. One by one, they began to rip apart. She watched as the thin rivulets snapped and sent shockwaves down the length of the fence. This is taking too long! She glanced behind her to see Ciara and Mike hiding behind the wall of one of the abandoned buildings. As she turned back around, she was shocked to see one of the guards Ciara had referred to emerging from an open broken doorway on the far side of the street, fifty meters away. He was a tall, slender man dressed in black fatigues. In the brief second she had seen him, she caught sight of his lips moving—clearly he was addressing someone.
Adrenaline surged through her now as the wires continued to break apart. She knew she would never break it down in time, and now she felt terribly exposed. Instead, she pushed at the entire fence and watched as the whole structure moved forward, the beams that supported it coming up out of the ground, taking large chunks of brown earth with them. Now she wasn’t just breaking wires, she was pushing the structure that held the fence together down toward the earth, and the pressure was immense.
She heard a shot behind her and felt air brush nearby. What was that? she asked, still pushing.
Someone on the roof. They fired a dart. I caught it, Mike said. They’re coming out of the buildings. I think I can stun them. How are you coming on the fence?
Eh… not bad, I guess. Another minute. She pushed harder. Now the fence was down by forty-five degrees, and the pressure was decreasing. Somewhere down the street on her left, one of the wires snapped, sending shockwaves up toward her location. Just on her left, another wire broke and snapped backward, narrowly missing her face. Another gust of wind brushed her neck. She saw the dart this time, derailed from its trajectory. It hit the fence on her left and bounced harmlessly off the support structure there. She returned her attention to the fence and gave one last, fierce push. Thankfully, it moved forward, and the wires met the grass on the other side, just as she heard the sounds of multiple darts being fired at them.
Rise (The Ethereal Vision Book 2) Page 9