He glanced around to see that everyone had fallen silent. The woman, whose name they knew now was Marie, had stopped and turned, and she was facing Jane.
To Morris’s horror, Jane floated off the surface of the vessel and moved toward the Machine. Beyond her, the Machine pieces stopped falling. For a moment, they remained suspended in midair. As Jane continued to float silently across the empty space between the ship and the central section where the Machine had constructed itself, the pieces slowly began to move upward once again, and a gentle sonic hum began to rise around them.
Jane continued to float out across the ocean. She turned slowly, and Morris could see that light was indeed shining from her open eyes, which glared upward toward the sky. Her face had become that of another being—another entity. It was the face of a million people being channeled through this one young woman. As the Machine rose again, resuming its peculiar shape, the ring sections piled on top of each other. The light from her eyes grew brighter still.
Morris turned to the man whose name he knew now was Ranger. “Do something!” he yelled in desperation.
Ranger looked at him but didn’t show any sign of responding.
A electrical whirring sound filled the air as the bottom piece of the Machine rose into position and it once again came to life. The rings began to move once more and circled one another.
Morris raised his hand, reached out with the power, and easily lifted the man off the ground.
Ranger screamed.
Morris gritted his teeth and levitated him across the deck as several people to his far right drew their weapons and trained them on him. “MIKE!” he yelled.
Still holding his grasp on Ranger, Morris glanced to his right and saw the weapons ripped from their grasp—pulled by Mike’s power—and fly into the air. Several of them dropped into the ocean.
He continued to concentrate on the man, and moved him toward the metallic wall just next to the open doorway. His jaw trembled as he slammed him into it, and the man groaned out in pain.
Morris turned and looked at the woman named Marie, who was staring at him in fear—it was the face of a woman who had lost control of everything.
“You do something now, or I’ll kill him.”
She hesitated, her chest rising and falling as she panted desperately. “Release him,” she said, her voice almost cracking, “and I’ll do what I can.”
They stared at each other in silence.
Ranger groaned out once more.
“I promise!” she yelled, taking a desperate step toward him.
Morris considered her request for a moment, still holding the man in place. He glanced out across the ocean to see that Jane had become a smaller figure now, hundreds of feet away. She was hovering with her arms outstretched beneath the Machine. He released his hold over the man, and he fell to the ground in a heap, sucking in pained breaths.
After a moment, Ranger looked up at Morris, his eyes opening and closing as though he was trying to overcome the shock. Then he glanced at Marie. Morris watched as she nodded at him. Ranger picked himself up off the ground and turned, running for the door. He stepped over the metallic frame and became a silhouette against a backdrop of advanced computer equipment.
Morris looked at Marie again. She nodded at him and followed the man into the room. As he glanced back at his friends, he saw that Ciara was staring out across the ocean, with tears streaming down her face. Mike looked terrified as he watched Jane continue to move away from them.
Morris looked out at the sea. Once again, the incredible cacophonous droning ramped up around them. It was a vibration that filled the air and permeated every cell in his body. He watched in awe as the orange-red vapor that had previously enclosed the Machine once again appeared—seemingly out of nowhere—as though it was dust, gently rising off a desert floor. Soon, it was thick like a blanket, and it wrapped around the ring sections that periodically swung out from their orbit where the metallic edge of their form could be seen for a brief moment.
He turned back to his friends, nodded at them, and the three of them walked through the door to the room beyond together.
Inside, Morris looked to his left to see a large screen, suspended above the floor that was split into two sections. The monitor must have been eight to ten feet in width. The left side showed a high-definition video feed from an external camera. This displayed an image of the Machine clearly from a camera that was at a greater distance than the ships, so he was not sure exactly where the video feed was coming from, but he guessed it was a distant drone with high definition zoom capabilities. From this angle, the device appeared to be just a large, swirling mass with a cylindrical shape. Every few seconds, he could see the side of one of the rings protrude from the edges of the swirling matter and then disappear just as quickly, continuing in its trajectory.
He sighed and glanced at Ciara, who took up position next to him. She stared open-mouthed at the screen ahead. He saw her glance at the right portion of the monitor, and he followed her gaze there. That side of the screen displayed a complex set of information. There were graphs, charts and other constantly changing pieces of data. It appeared that several displays from the monitors at the computer terminals behind them had been ported to this main screen.
“Is this your idea of insurance?” Morris asked, his voice gruff and flat.
Marie was standing just a few feet from him, staring at the screens, her face showing an intense expression. She turned toward the man Morris had momentarily held captive and crossed the five-foot distance between them. She leaned over him and began to speak.
Morris folded his arms and moved closer so that he remained within earshot.
“OK, Ranger. What the hell is going on?”
“Well, from the readings, I can tell that the signal was working fine initially. The Machine was responding to it, and there were no signs of a problem. The difficulty began when that window opened.”
“What we can only presume was some kind of gateway,” she said. “Close in on the bottom of the Machine. Fifty percent of the screen, please.”
The image on the screen shifted almost automatically as Ranger responded to her request. The image on the left flickered as the zoom factor increased rapidly. Covering what must have been a hundred meters at a time, the center of the image closed in on the very bottom of the Machine, and Morris felt his heart thud as Jane came into view. The zoom increased twice more, and then she could be seen more clearly. Morris felt a lump swell in his throat.
Jane was still floating just below the vortex. Her chest pointed upward toward the center of the opening near the bottom of the Machine, and her arms were dangling down on either side. Her legs were limp and fell at an angle just below her. Light still poured from her eyes, as she appeared to glare up into the device, her mouth gaping open, but her expression otherwise blank. Morris turned to Marie once again, resisting the urge to lash out with the power and destroy the entire room.
“Then what happened?” Marie asked Ranger, continuing their discussion.
“Well, a new reading was recorded once the gate opened. We have no classification for the specific energy signature that began to be generated at that moment, but we recorded the power levels. The moment the window opened, everything began to fluctuate. Some kind of feedback loop developed, until eventually, the artificial signal was being blocked completely.”
“Some sort of safety measure.”
Ranger turned around to face her. Apparently, he, too, had snapped. “Marie, your guess is as good as mine at this point.”
“What the hell?” Morris said as he took a step toward the screen. They all followed his gaze, but he only remained for one more second before he bolted from the room. Outside, he peered through the light at the bottom of the Machine, where he saw Jane rising toward it.
“No!” he screamed. He ran to the railing and reached out a hand, grasping at her with the power, but it was futile,
for he could not feel her body; it was like trying to grasp something that wasn’t there, and he knew then that something was interfering with his abilities. He lowered his hand and continued to watch in horror as Jane floated upward past the lip of the opening. Then her body left the center of the Machine’s axis and began swirling around with the motion that the rings had created. Her ascent increased quickly, and she began to rise faster, moving toward the top.
When she was halfway up, she drifted across the center of the vortex once again, and Morris watched as the mysterious black energy appeared again at the very top in the distance. It swirled inward more quickly this time, then coalesced to a central point and exploded outward. Morris automatically raised his arm to shield himself, although there was no need. In place of the black energy, the transparent window returned and opened onto a different skyline.
He watched in horror as Jane’s body, with her face still appearing to look directly at him, floated upward through the window and disappeared entirely.
“NO!” he screamed.
The device groaned louder and the rings rearranged themselves, shifting around each other.
Morris looked around, preparing to once again enter the room, when Marie appeared in the doorway. He walked toward her angrily, and she stepped back inside, standing aside as he continued forward until he was at the center of the room, facing the screen.
“Get her back now,” he said, but there was no response. He turned toward Marie and raised his arm toward her, readying to unleash his power on her.
Marie could do nothing but step back slowly, shrinking into the corner of the room next to the open doorway. Near the back, various support technicians stood up and leveled their weapons at him as a charged silence built up in the room.
CHAPTER 17
RETURN
The human form was slowly becoming more familiar to him, but he still couldn’t remember everything that had happened. He could see the ships, he could see the vortex, and he could see Jane, so he remained focused on those simple things. The rest of the details were not yet as clear to him. However, he was aware that the developing situation on the lead ship could have devastating consequences on the Machine, and therefore on Jane, and so, he resumed an even faster pace.
The sonic booms continued, one after another, and he strengthened the shield around him to protect his fragile human form. Now he wasn’t just passing by land below, but countries, and then shortly after, actual continents raced by him. Clouds parted in his wake, as though by his very command. At first, the surface beneath him was a white haze. Then he passed over water, and then the land below became a green and brown featureless blur.
***
“Uh, Marie… We have an unusual contact on sensors,” Ranger said nervously.
Morris had his hand outstretched toward her, prepared to exert his will on her out of sheer anger. He had done a quick psychic scan of her in the small amount of time he had, and determined that although her intentions were not ignoble, she did want the Machine. She was guilty of obsession, but not too much else. Not only that, but she answered to people who held power over her, and given the position she appeared to be in, she didn’t seem to have a lot of choice in her actions.
A quiet, tense moment passed between them as their eyes remained fixed on each other. Then Marie took a chance and responded.
“Elaborate, Ranger,” she said, projecting her voice with as much strength as she could, although Morris could hear the weakness in it.
Morris slowly lowered his hand and watched as she stepped away from the wall just next to the door. Continuing across the room, she approached the terminal where Ranger was working. Stopping beside his station, she placed a hand on the back of his chair. She glanced over her shoulder toward Morris but only made eye contact with him briefly.
Morris glanced behind him to where rows of other terminals occupied the room. Many of the people who were working there had stopped what they were doing and stared at the heated exchange between him and Marie. Now, at least half of them had returned to work. Some of them remained standing with their weapons held at their sides. Morris couldn’t help but throw them a defiant glance before he turned back around.
“I don’t know what it is. It’s moving at Mach six,” Ranger replied.
Marie hesitated. “And why are you telling me this?” she asked, a slight touch of impatience in her voice—trying to keep her cool in the face of what seemed to be useless information. Apparently, a report of an object travelling at Mach 6 was about as interesting to her as floor tiles at that exact moment.
Ranger turned to face her slowly. “Well, because… its trajectory intersects this exact location.”
Marie’s body language changed as she stood up straight and stared at the main monitor. “Put it up,” she said in a strong, commanding voice.
The two sections of the screen were replaced with a single image of a topographical representation of the earth. Morris stepped forward and stared at it, trying to find some piece of information that might prove helpful. He wanted to go back out to the Machine and somehow try to rescue Jane, but something told him to stay put. A few seconds later, he saw a green triangle moving across the terrain represented on the display. As he watched, the small, flashing shape changed and was then surrounded clearly by a grid-marked square. He felt his pulse quicken at the sight of it, for the realization of what it could be was rising up in his mind, though he was, as yet, unsure if it was possible.
“It’s somewhere near the edge of Antarctica.”
Morris watched Marie as she stared at the screen, bewildered by this new turn of events.
“Its speed has increased to Mach fifteen,” Ranger said.
“What?” Marie yelled, gazing up at the monitor, now following the object’s path.
“Its velocity is still increasing. It’s moving too fast—difficult to follow.” He paused and frowned. “Somewhere over the Southern Ocean now.”
Marie whipped her head around, looking back at Ranger in astonishment. “What is it? Some kind of hypersonic craft?” she asked.
“We have no prior information about such a craft,” he said, and paused.
The green triangle raced across the map of the world, and a charged silence permeated the room as everyone watched this unknown object dash across the terrain represented on the screen.
Ranger frowned, and for a moment, his voice became the only one to narrate this new and strange turn of events. He continued to stare at the screen. “Mach twenty-one.” He paused. “Mach twenty-two.” Then, after another few moments had passed, he spoke again. “Mach twenty-three. Now approaching the southern tip of South America.”
Morris turned to his friends, who were both staring at the screen as well. They exchanged brief, shocked glances with him, but quickly returned their attention to the small, flashing icon that was racing its way across the planet, apparently straight toward them.
“What is it? An asteroid?” Marie spat.
“Uh, not likely.”
“But the heat alone would—”
“I know!” Ranger snapped. “But I’m telling you what I’m reading, and it’s correct.”
“Could they be pulling the plug? Are they going to blow us to pieces?”
Ranger looked like he was on the verge of tears. He rubbed his forehead frantically. “Anything’s possible. But I have to answer that particular question in the negative, Miss Donaldson. There are few craft capable of reaching speeds above Mach twenty-three within the atmosphere—and not many of them can fly for a sustained length of time.”
Marie turned and looked toward Morris, but he had no answers for her either. Morris watched as she walked toward the door slowly, as if she had given up on achieving anything further inside the control room. She approached the archway, and her frame was bathed in the golden light that was cast off the incredible device. She stepped out and disappeared onto the deck.
“Mach twenty-fo
ur,” Ranger said, rubbing sweat from his forehead.
“That’s approaching reentry velocity,” someone yelled from the back of the room.
Morris turned and looked down the room as the man who had spoken stood up. Several other technicians stood too, unsure of what to do. They were all looking toward the door. Morris felt a hand grip his, and he looked to his left to see Ciara staring at him. There was something about her eyes in that moment that said everything was going to be OK, somehow. Together, they walked out of the control room and proceeded onto the deck.
Outside, everything was exactly as it had been only moments ago. The Machine still moved, and the ships were still in formation. However, there was a psychic anticipation of something building inside Morris’s mind. It was like a tidal wave approaching. For now, it was just at the edge of his thoughts, but it was slowly cresting, coming toward him like a wave that he saw in his mind’s eye.
He glanced behind him and saw that several of the other technicians had walked out onto the deck. For reasons he couldn’t quite discern, he thought that foolish, and he would be proved correct.
A whirring sound built up around them, and the wind began to stir. They all looked to the right in unison as the air was sucked in that direction. A distinct, bright ball of light appeared on the horizon where the ocean met the sky.
Ranger appeared in the doorway, though he did not step out, and Morris could only barely make out the man’s shadowed form in his peripheral vision.
“Mach twenty-five. BRACE!” he screamed as he ran from view, back toward the safety of the room.
Rise (The Ethereal Vision Book 2) Page 22