by Brandt Legg
Larsen swirled around and split into billions of points of light.
“I am able to appear as you remember me by connecting our auras at a subatomic level, the makeup of human form as occupied by the energetic particles far smaller than what physicists call quarks and leptons. I mean infinitely tinier.”
His voice filled with excitement, but still came out as a loud whisper. Gale couldn’t decide if it was a dream.
“The soul is real, and it consists of trillions of universes within each of us. It’s a circle both within us, and what we are within.”
And then he was gone.
Her thoughts went back to Rip and what they still had to do. ExSpheriences were one thing, but somehow they needed to find the missing layer of the Cosega Sequence and answer the five Cosegan mysteries.
Recent discoveries by Rip and the team in Hawaii might bring them much closer to all of it, as well as the solution for stopping the Death Divinations. Rip had made his latest trip to confirm the new theories which might finally grant them full access to the ultimate power contained within the Sphere.
It holds everything ever, Gale thought. Surely it can save my daughter, too.
—O—
Harmer, a cigarette held tightly in her lips, met them on the helipad. The stocky woman, who looked older than her age of thirty-nine, was like a second mother to Cira. A special bond had formed as she escorted her to and from school every day.
Always on guard, always knowing there were threats that could destroy them in a blink, Harmer had never figured the incident would be a kid with scissors on the playground. Gale could see the pain in her eyes as Harmer relayed everything that had happened and then stamped out her cigarette.
Kruse checked the sky again as they ducked inside the modern, one-story building. He knew time was working against them. While they probably still had a couple of hours, there could easily be a surprise at any moment.
He eyed everyone they passed. Anyone could be an agent, a leak, a mistake. He could feel it all crashing in on them. They were wasting time. They needed to get Gale out of there. The only thing working in their favor was that all the enemies coming toward them would attempt to take Gale alive because they needed the Eysen. Otherwise, the hospital would have already been leveled by a cruise missile or a drone strike.
“I don’t understand,” Gale was saying to Harmer as Kruse tuned back into their conversation.
“They will not let you into the operating room,” Harmer replied as she led them quickly through the maze of hospital corridors, all of them looking identical.
“I’ll wear a mask. Other than school, she’s never been away from me. I’m her mother! They aren’t going to do surgery without me in the room.”
“No exceptions,” Harmer said calmly.
They corralled Gale into the surgical waiting room, a large open area adjacent to an outdoor garden, filled with fake plants and old magazines. Harmer left to try and hunt down the doctor who had first seen Cira, but returned smelling of fresh nicotine ten minutes later without success. “We’re lucky, Gale. The surgeon is a good one, trained in Australia and an eye specialist.”
“But you said the admitting physician told you that Cira could lose her vision.”
“Cira was a mess when she first came in. They had tried to clean her up in the chopper, but she was screaming so much it was hard enough to stabilize her. By the time they finally got her sedated, we were here.”
“Oh, my poor little girl,” Gale gasped.
“The doctor was giving the worst case, but the surgeon believes there’s a good chance he can save her vision in at least one eye. Possibly both.”
Gale thought of the time the Sphere had shown the inside of a flower as it grew and bloomed – the pulsing energy, the colors, the passion of nature. Later they saw what amounted to a time-lapse internal view of an oak tree growing from an acorn to a hundred year old giant. The Sphere had shown them nine months inside a woman’s womb, even the creation of planets and stars. Gale knew nature had the power to heal anything. She pictured those events in the Sphere and silently begged for her daughter’s eyes.
Another excruciatingly slow hour dragged by. Kruse spent most of the time on the roof, watching for trouble, listening to Booker’s updates through a receiver fitted into his ear. The US government had mobilized a team of Navy SEALs. Their escape window was closing – fifty-seven minutes.
“Get her out of there!” Booker warned.
“She won’t leave Cira,” Kruse said.
“Once the SEALs get them, Gale will be confined to an offshore military prison and they’ll use Cira to make her talk.”
“I know, but she won’t listen to reason.”
“Then drug her,” Booker ordered. “Just get her out of there.”
Kruse returned to the waiting area at the same time the surgeon appeared. He was younger than Gale had expected, still in faded green scrubs, a surgical mask pulled down on his neck.
“Cira is okay,” he said. “The procedure went well.”
Gale let out a long breath. “Her vision?” she asked.
“Too soon to tell for sure. It’ll be a few days before we can test that, but I’m extremely optimistic.”
Gale closed her eyes, saying a silent prayer of thanks. “I don’t know what to say. I’m so grateful for what you’ve done.”
He nodded, smiling slightly. “You can go back and see her now, but she’ll be under the anesthesia for at least another hour or so.”
Gale looked at Harmer, who had tears in her eyes, and then back at the surgeon. “We want to take her home right away.”
The surgeon looked confused, as if he hadn’t heard her correctly. “Right away?”
“We want to take her home. . . now.”
“What?” the surgeon said, suddenly irritated. “That’s out of the question. She can’t be moved for at least forty-eight hours, and she’ll need to remain here for a minimum of two weeks. Maybe you don’t realize exactly what she’s been through. Any movement would dramatically increase her chances for blindness.”
Gale looked back at Harmer, and then followed Harmer’s glance to Kruse.
“Doctor, could I speak with you alone for a moment?” Kruse asked.
“Come on, Gale. Let’s go see Cira,” Harmer urged, ushering her away.
The scene wasn’t as bad as Gale had imagined, but it was still difficult to bear. Cira’s entire head was bandaged down to the tip of her nose. Her limp little body, hooked up to monitors and an IV, appeared tiny and lifeless. Gale took her hand and kneeled next to the bed until Harmer found a chair for her. She tucked Earth, the little cloth cat, in the sheets next to Cira. Harmer, knowing Cira’s attachment to the animal, smiled.
A few minutes later Kruse came in and met Harmer’s eyes. Kruse had already notified Harmer of the plan in her earpiece. “Gale, we’re just about out of time. We have to leave Cira here for a few days, but Harmer will stay behind and bring her to you as soon as the doctor says she can move.”
“I’m not leaving her,” Gale declared with the conviction of a wounded tigress as she turned back to her daughter.
“Gale, I won’t let anything happen to her,” Harmer said. “I promise.”
“You’ll be dead, Harmer,” Gale said without even turning around. “At least they won’t kill me. They’ll keep Cira and me as bait for Rip, but at least we’ll be alive and together.”
“What makes you think they won’t move her?” Kruse asked.
“Because. I. Won’t. Let. Them!”
Harmer grabbed her from behind as Kruse jabbed a needle into Gale’s upper arm. After about twenty seconds of struggling, Gale slumped onto her daughter’s bed. Eight minutes later, Kruse and a still unconscious Gale were on a helicopter heading to a small airstrip on the far side of the island. Booker had alerted him that Suva’s Nausori Airport had just been shut down and all flights grounded. The Americans were on the way.
Chapter 6
Stellard, part of the origina
l group that had started the Aylantik Foundation, looked like a distinguished banker. His hair was graying at the temples of a square and sturdy face, etched with lines formed from serious deliberations. He was in charge of stopping problems before they became problems.
He’d long worried about Gaines and the Sphere. If they still existed, they could ruin everything, as in life as they knew it. Those thoughts kept him up nights, that made him constantly cold. He knew that if they could just launch the Phoenix Initiative, he would finally be warm.
More than anything, he believed in the organization’s mission to save humanity. The world is such a mess, he thought as he stared at the giant globe which occupied a dark corner of his spacious office. The lighted globe, the size of an automobile and amazing in its detailed depictions of the Earth’s geography, had been custom-made for him. It spun slowly by way of some brilliant mechanism he didn’t understand, but the data it displayed—numbers of births, deaths, total population, airline flights, currency fluctuations, disease rates, wars, all manner of data—was something he definitely could comprehend. Through the Eysen-INU interface on his desk he could isolate and manipulate the date. A digital countdown clock on the wall above the globe displayed the number 364.
“It’s fitting that three months before the Phoenix Initiative commences, we finally locate Gaines,” he muttered to himself as he cleared some of the “clutter” from the globe. He shook his head, took a moment to try to warm his icy fingers, and then pushed the button.
The airline flights, represented by streams of clustered lines streaking across the world, made the planet appear scarred, and the pulsating population points reminded him of impact craters on the moon. With the globe clear, except for the final filter, the borders, which he kept in place, he marveled at the beauty of the planet. Another command entered into his Eysen-INU made the giant globe spin until Fiji was displayed front and center.
“We won’t get there in time,” he whispered to himself. “Where will they go?”
The phone buzzed, jarring him away from his thoughts. It could only be one person. His assistant had implicit instructions to block everyone else.
“Stellard,” the familiar voice that always sounded like a college quarterback giving a locker room interview began on the other end of the secure line. “We’re ahead of you, but it’ll be only with military assets that we get them.”
The voice belonged to Jeff Wattington, the Foundation’s highest-ranking undercover contact within the US government. Stellard wasn’t surprised. The CIA, NSA, and FBI had kept a small but well-funded group continuously searching for Gaines, Asher, and, more importantly, the original Eysen-Sphere, just in case any of them had survived. Just in case the blown chopper had been what they now knew it to be, an elaborate cover-up.
Immediately after the morning meeting with Taz, Stellard had sent a control number that would let Wattington know to call in. It had been a couple of years since the two men had communicated, but Stellard expected daily exchanges now. Now that the sky had fallen.
“How high?” Stellard asked, wanting to know how far up the chain of command the crisis had risen.
“It’s a joint CIA/NSA operation,” Wattington answered. “The President will be briefed only if and when they locate the Sphere.”
“We may have to remind the President that she owes her position to the Foundation.”
“This is not even on her radar yet. She wasn’t in office when Gaines found the Sphere.” Wattington paused, as if reading something. “She was an uninformed US Senator from California then.”
“What about her connections to Booker?”
“As you know, Booker has influence, but with the history, specifically his corporate army engaging NSA operatives in Mexico and the southwest . . . ” Wattington paused. “We may not be able to prove he was behind the killing of all those federal agents, but it’s made everyone wary of getting too close to the rogue tycoon. And now that it’s clear he was involved with the cover-up—”
“He’s a snake,” Stellard interrupted. “And clearly he’s received more than just blueprints for the Eysen-INU from the Sphere. Who knows what Gaines has been feeding him for the last seven years!”
“Yes, it’s extremely unnerving to the power structure.”
Stellard nodded silently as he reached into his pocket for a hand-warmer. He knew that the power structure Wattington was referring to wasn’t the current administration in Washington, or even a specific government from any other country. The real power structure was comprised of the wealthy elite who operated behind the scenes, the “string-pullers.” Many belonged to the Foundation, some of them among its founders. They’d all seen what a relatively small amount of information from the Eysen-Sphere had done to the world’s once great and mighty religions. It ended them. The fear within the US intelligence community lie in a single question.
What else did Booker have? What did he know? Although, after seven years without any new revelations, other than producing ever-smaller and faster commercial Eysen-INUs, Stellard had started to believe that the Eysen-Sphere might really have been destroyed.
Until today.
The Foundation had an even greater reason to worry about Booker and his Sphere. He would know the future. Not just the one originally “scripted” one, but the one the Foundation had carefully designed. He would know how to stop it. He was surely already trying to do just that.
“That’s why we’ve never ended the search,” Stellard said, shivering. “Booker without the Eysen-Sphere is a formidable foe, but with the Sphere he’s the devil.”
“On that, the Foundation and the US government agree,” Wattington said.
“What else can you tell me about the government’s pursuit?”
“We’ve got SEALs targeting Fiji right now.”
“Damn,” Stellard said.
The Foundation’s tentacles reached far into the corridors of Washington, including the Pentagon. Its influence, a product of the collected wealth of its members, knew almost no bounds, but the special ops were controlled by General Guster Gunnison, who described himself accurately as a “stone-cold patriot.” He believed America was the rightful world leader, and he opposed anyone or anything that might impose on her sovereignty, including, and especially, organizations such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the Foundation.
“Is anyone closer?” Stellard asked, frustrated, looking at another pop-up window of the weather, noting a cold front.
“Negative. Fiji is down in that dusty corner of the world where nothing ever happens.”
“So what’s the plan if the SEALs get Gaines, or . . . the Sphere?” he asked, nearly choking on the final word.
“Not much has changed in seven years,” Wattington replied. “There are factions within the government that work for others, and some of them, such as the Foundation, can be quite persuasive, but it would be my guess that if the SEALs get it, especially with Gunnison in charge, it would get fast tracked to HITE.”
HITE, short for Hidden Information and Technology Exchange, was a super-secret government entity so classified that most US presidents did not usually learn about it unless they got a second term in office. HITE had been established after World War II to handle captured Nazi secrets, technology, and even metaphysical data and artifacts. If a UFO of extraterrestrial origin really did crash in Roswell, New Mexico, during the summer of 1947, HITE would have wound up with the wreckage and whatever it may have contained.
The name was a bit of a misnomer because the hidden technology and/or information were never exchanged. Instead, a select committee made up of top US intelligence leaders with security clearances much higher than the President of the United States decided who, where, when, and if the information would be released. HITE was the ultimate strategic advantage because its members could ignite huge shifts in power and wealth by introduction of new technologies, be it nuclear weapons, computers, satellites, pharmaceuticals, etc.
In this case, howe
ver, the Eysen-Sphere was more than just technology. It was a view into the future. HITE would have the power, along with whomever they decided to share it with, to destroy the Phoenix Initiative, and with it, the Foundation.
Stellard had to find a way to get to Gaines first. He had to stop Gunnison. “What are the options?” he asked, trying to mask the desperation in his voice while grasping a hot cup of coffee with both hands as if it was keeping him alive.
“I don’t see any.”
“Damn it, Wattington, there are always options. You’re on the inside. We have you there for a reason.”
“Gunnison is untouchable. Anything I could do is way too risky.”
“Risky? Risky! Doing nothing is risky!”
“I’m not just talking about possibly losing my job. It could mean prison, even the death penalty.”
“You’ll be protected.”
“Will I? If the Foundation is powerful enough to protect me from charges of treason and espionage, then they should be powerful enough not to need me.” He chuckled nervously and rubbed a hand over the stubble on his face.
“Do you have the ability to stop the SEALs?”
“It would require everyone we have inside . . . We might be able to slow them, maybe an hour.”
“Do it.”
“You want to risk the entire operation, possibly blow cover for twenty-two Foundation moles, to gain one single hour, which won’t even be enough? That’s crazy.”
“If HITE gets the Eysen-Sphere, then we won’t need the operation anymore. The Foundation will be done.”
Chapter 7
Now closer to fifty than forty, Rip’s appearance had hardly changed in the years since discovering the Eysen. He sported the same rugged good looks, same shaggy, unkempt hair, same stubbly face, always a few days between shaves, and maybe a few more laugh lines, but otherwise, not much had changed. Gale, too, had hardly aged, in spite of having had a child and the stress of living on the run. They joked that perhaps the Eysen was the fountain of youth, and on some days he believed it.