Crystal Choice: The Second Novel in the Projector War Saga Read online

  I scanned the room for others who needed help, but it came back negative. Black, Steele, and Tolden had all circled up in the remains of the doorway, but they all looked unharmed. All the immediate threats were resolved. For the first time since I’d regained consciousness, I let myself take a deep breath and pushed the blue lines away. Maybe I could take a second to calm the screaming headache pounding through my head.

  Except the moment the blue lines vanished, the world started to spin again. I took a quick step backward to catch myself against the wall before I fell, and narrowly missed a partially melted piece of rebar.

  “Farina, you’re hurt.” Black surged forward to help, but I waved him off.

  “I’ll be fine.” There was a fragment of something—I couldn’t tell what—embedded just below my hip. Blood had soaked my tac suit around where the debris had entered, but the suit had sealed itself the way it was supposed to, meaning that the wound was hardly visible.

  I bit down a surge of hysterical laughter. Someone really needed to change the way these suits reacted to blood. The color scheme made it entirely too easy for agents to pretend they were fine while they were bleeding out. Or, if they had an abnormal pain response like I did, completely miss the fact that they were injured!

  “Don’t be stupid.” Black said, and pulled something out of a pocket on his tac suit. It was a make-shift bandage. “You’d better report to med dep when we get back, too. But for now, this should do.”

  I let Black put the white, gauzy pad on my leg. It sucked in tighter with a jerk and sealed itself. I didn’t need my lines to tell that this seal was more secure than the one the suit had provided.

  “Thanks,” I gasped, and fumbled for the painkillers in the top pocket of my tac suit. After I’d taken them, I turned around. “Now what?”

  Tolden was looking at me. “How did you know it was a bomb?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t, at least not for sure. But he didn’t have a pulse. Their technology was the only thing keeping him alive. Then, when I felt the timing device, I made the logical jump.”

  “What logical jump?” Tolden asked.

  “Don’t you see? We were supposed to put him on life support. The deadman’s switch wouldn’t have been triggered until he was in medical care at the primary holding facility. He would have blown up, and our largest holding facility would have been compromised. There would have been casualties, and it would have let the creatures inside that base, too.”

  “No.” It was Black. “There were casualties. The guy we left. We ran away from him. We could have saved him.”

  I shook my head. “He was already dead, Black. He was being kept alive by machinery. His heart had already stopped, he was becoming unresponsive. He was already dead.” But a chill ran down my spine as I said it. It had been logical. Do the greatest good for the greatest number. Trying futilely to save an already dead man was stupid, so why did leaving him feel so wrong? “Getting ourselves out of the line of fire was the best course of action.”

  Black looked up sharply. “That’s another thing. You didn’t get yourself out of the way. Instead, you—” he broke off, lips pursed in anger. He looked at Tolden, then back at me. “I could have your biocard for that, if I reported it.”

  My eyes widened. “I pulled you out of the line of fire!”

  Black’s eyes flashed. He looked at Tolden again. “You’re going to want to take a walk before you hear something you have to report.”

  Tolden nodded and stepped into the partially blown-up room. “I’m sure I can’t hear you from here.” His surface thoughts revealed that, although he would love nothing more than to actually take a walk—leaving right now was hardly safe.

  Black nodded and continued in hushed tones. “There is one absolute rule for strong projectors. You do not ever control anyone else. The only possible violation that would ever be acceptable is if you were controlling an enemy combatant with the alternative being the death of you and your team. This wasn’t that case.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “The consequences are very clearly spelled out. If we were going to report it, our job would be to put you under guard and escort you back to Academy base, where R&D would remove your biocard. Your teleprojection abilities would be crippled, and your walls would be shattered. Then, you’d have a fair trial and pending the outcome you’d be shot, or imprisoned—released if, and only if, you’d controlled an enemy under the correct circumstances. This isn’t a laughing matter, Farina don’t let it happen again.”

  My throat constricted and I nodded solemnly. This was really something Ms. King should have told me before they gave me my permanent biocard. “You aren’t going to report it?”

  Black nodded. “The way I see it, you put yourself between me and the explosion. You got hurt because of my dumb mistake, so you shouldn’t have to pay anymore than you already have. But, we’ve got to have the agreement of everyone here. Anybody could report it.”

  He looked at Steele.

  “I didn’t see anything. I didn’t hear anything.”

  Black’s gaze shifted to Tabitha.

  “Who, me? My ears are still ringing,” she said, with a grateful glance at me.

  Finally, Black looked at Tolden.

  “If I heard anything, I would be contractually obligated to mention it in the mission report. Fortunately, I was checking the perimeter, and am only now getting back.” Tolden stepped back into the room. “Farina, nobody else could have identified that bomb. If not for you we would all be dead, and so would a lot of other people. Now, can you check the facility one more time? I don’t want to miss anything before we head back to the chopper.”

  I nodded thankfully at his change of subject. “Yes, sir!”

  I sent my mind zooming around the facility, making sure I checked my location with the blueprints so I went down every single corridor. Then I felt it. There were two living things heading towards us at an impossible rate. I had only to brush their minds to feel the violence and identify them as the creatures that had killed all two hundred personnel. I clawed my way back to my own mind.

  “Two creatures, heading our way. We need to get out of here now!”

  Tolden wasted no time getting everyone moving. “Black in front, Steele, take Smith. Farina, you’re with me. Keep me updated as to their movements. Do they know where we are?”

  I followed Tolden at a run, setting up subroutines so I could keep going as I checked the creatures’ position. “They’re headed directly toward—”

  “Just answer the question, 32,” Tolden growled

  “Yes. And they’re speeding up.” I suppressed a surge of annoyance at being interrupted. Still, there was too much to do for me to waste energy on being annoyed. I re-focused on keeping pace with Tolden.

  We were getting closer to the facility’s exit, but one of the creatures was right behind us. The other one had peeled off—presumably to investigate the explosion—but that didn’t exactly even the odds. If seven of these things had destroyed the entire base, one would be more than enough to destroy my team.

  I used the reflection off a shattered camera dome on the ceiling to duck an incoming energy blast. ::Tolden, down!::

  I pulled the semi-automatic and moved sideways behind a desk with a smashed computer. I looked back up at the camera to try and get a location on the beast, but the angle had changed, and it wasn’t reflective enough. ::You got a mirror?:: I asked Tolden. He was just in front of me, behind another desk.

  Nope. Not in the standard field kit.

  I bit back a snarl. There was a thing down there with three times the muscle mass, claws, teeth, and a killer instinct and all he wanted to do was make jokes?

  I took a chance and closed my eyes. The aura of violence permeated everything around the creature. There! I dug mental claws into its shields, which, unlike the crystal walls or frozen soap bubble shields I’d s
een earlier, were remarkably normal. It tried to change frequencies to shake me off, but I was far more powerful. Rather than tried to slip inside by matching frequencies, I gathered my strength and smashed its walls. Its shields cracked under the force of the first blow, and shattered after the second. I forced my way inside its head and screamed. I poured everything I had into that sound, overwhelming the other creature’s mind.

  “Out, Tolden!” It was all I could do to stand as my attention was focused completely on the beast writhing in pain only four feet away. I didn’t dare open my eyes. If I lost focus, we would become more victims like the ones we’d spent the whole day investigating, and I was not going to die today. Still, I couldn’t keep it up forever. I took one feeble step backwards, then another and another.

  “…got…you.” The words outside my head were confused and garbled, but something grabbed my arm. I tried to jerk away, but it held me fast. This wasn’t good. I had no vision, and no attention to spare. I couldn’t fight two of these things!

  “It’s just me!” Tolden tried to reassure me.

  “Sir?” My mouth formed the words, but that was it.

  “It’s me. I’m going to help you out. You just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s working.”

  I stopped fighting and let him take my arm.

  Finally we were too far away for me to keep a strong connection. “This is…far enough…get to…chopper.” We weren’t far enough away to escape if I let the beast go. If I could see, the lines on my vision would be calculating my probability of survival, and they wouldn’t be good. Still, this was the only way to get the rest of the team out safely. Sacrifice one for the good of the many. I’d already made the choice once today, and it was surprisingly easy to make again.

  Chapter twelve

  It was an eternity before I felt the glow of other minds around me. The headache I’d gotten from the explosion had redoubled its efforts, and every second was filled with pounding. The creature had started fighting; adapting. It shouldn’t have been possible, but I could feel it making its way toward me step by labored step.

  ::Brace yourself, 32. Try to hold on as long as you can.:: 92 said. I grit my teeth and dug my fingers deeper into the creature’s mind.

  Suddenly, something was pulling my body backward. My feet lost contact with the cement, and left me dangling in the air.

  The connection I’d forged between my mind and the creature’s stretched taut, then cracked. Somehow, they were dragging me away from the base.

  Sensations exploded in my vision and in my body as the connection exploded into a billion pieces. Pain smothered fear, and I gasped. My face and hands were ice cold, interrupted only by the searing hot rhythm of blood. The colors in my vision faded to grey every time some invisible monkey hit me on the head with a baseball bat. The whirring of helicopter blades assaulted my ears. Some reasonable voice in my head, unhindered by the pain of living, told me I wasn’t safe yet. I was dangling from a cord hooked into the back of my tactical suit, being pulled up toward the belly of the aircraft.

  Then I wasn’t dangling anymore. Black and Tolden hauled me into the chopper. A hand grabbed the front of my tac suit and pushed me into a chair, then started on my harness straps as Steele jerked the helicopter farther into the sky.

  “You’ve got two life-forms down on the pavement below us,” 92 said as Tolden finally got my straps fastened.

  “Take us up higher, Steele.”

  “I’m giving it everything I’ve got, sir.”

  I closed my eyes again and sent my mind back down, separating myself completely from my body. My blue lines would have been going wild with warnings if they hadn’t disintegrated halfway into my screaming match with those things down there, but it was the only way to cross the distance. I forced my way back into their satisfaction filled minds.

  Inside their thoughts, I found a name to go with their gloating. They were superior. No, they were Superiors. That’s what they called themselves—Superiors.

  I knew that name. I’d heard it before—or seen it before. Something like that? I grasped for the memory, but it wouldn’t come. Some machinery in my mind—something I didn’t remember building—redirected my attention.

  I looked through their eyes in time to see one pull a rocket launcher the size of a metal chair and look through the sights. It calculated the trajectory with ever increasing satisfaction. The explosion would hit the helicopter.

  I jumped to the Superior operating the rocket launcher and waited until it was just about to pull the trigger. Then I screamed. I dumped every emotion left in my mind. All the pain, fear, and horror I’d felt in my whole life into its brain. It dropped to the ground, and its hands went to its ears. The next Superior shoved mine aside and picked up the launcher, but it was too late. The helicopter was out of range. I let go of the Superior’s mind and wandered back through space. I remembered parts of the way there, but the colors were faded and it took everything in me just to move an inch. When I finally reached the point I’d left my body, despair gripped me. The helicopter was gone.

  “Crystal Farina, get back here you idiot!” Tolden was shaking me back in the helicopter, and I could feel it, just faintly. I held onto that connection and moved towards it as quickly as I could. It pulsed, fading in and out with the beat of my slowing heart. Then I felt them. I locked onto the feeling of their minds and traced them back to myself.

  I jerked up in the seat.

  “Thank goodness, Farina! How many times do I have to tell you not to do that!” Tolden sat back in his seat and re-secured his harness.

  I could see 92’s speculative face. I took a deep breath and shook my head. “One more time than the situation requires it. You should know that by now, sir.” My voice was dry and gravelly. I opened and closed my hands, trying to restore feeling, but they were still ice cold.

  “We were almost out of range. We would have made it,” Black growled.

  “You were two seconds from being a falling hunk of metal. They were locked on and ready to shoot us all out of the sky.”

  Black’s expression darkened. “You didn’t—” He cut off and looked at 92 in the seat across from him.

  I shook my head. The situation hadn’t required me to take control of the Superiors. “It turns out that no one likes being screamed at, not even Superiors.”

  92 latched onto that term. “Where did you hear that name?”

  I frowned as another memory beat at me, but I really didn’t have the attention for it right now. I brushed the thought away. “That’s what they called themselves. I’ve seen them before.”

  “Really? When?” he pressed.

  Tolden shot him a dirty look. “It’ll all be in the report, now give her a break.”

  I looked at him thankfully. All I wanted to do was go to sleep.

  It wasn’t very long before darkness closed over my vision.

  I managed to get my eyes open as the chopper settled on the helipad back at Martial Base. The straps were heavy and awkward on my chest, but I waved Tolden away when he tried to help.

  “I may have needed help getting on this chopper, but I can get off it by myself.” I found the release and stood up—careful to keep one hand on the siding of the chopper for balance. I checked the bandage on my leg. Still painful, but whatever Steele had handed me back there was doing its job. It hadn’t started to bleed through yet. I could get real medical care in a few minutes. I checked the pile of destroyed mental machinery and was pleased to see that it had shrunk while I was passed out on the ride from D.C.. My mind wasn’t whole yet, but it was healing.

  I followed Tolden and the rest of the crew through the doors. Inside, 92’s mind brushed against mine.

  ::Agent 32, you’re going to need to come with me.::

  I looked up at Tolden, then back at 92, who was staring at me with his arms folded.

  ::Medina doesn’t like
to be kept waiting, Agent.::

  My frown only deepened. What would the Director of InDep want with me? He’d already dug into my personal life and cleared me to be hired as a full agent. For a moment, I wondered if he’d somehow found out about what happened earlier with Black, but I dismissed that thought as soon as it surfaced.

  ::Look, 92, I just got blown up. What’s so important that it can’t wait until I get this piece of building out of my leg?::

  92 didn’t bother to hide his annoyance. ::You aren’t going to find out unless you come.::

  I shelved thoughts of MedDep and followed 92 down to the rotunda and back up the InDep elevator—my leg throbbing the whole way. Why couldn’t they just connect the four sections of the building and have done with it? My map of the base showed that the chopper pad was only a four minute walk to the InDep section, except there was a wall in the way. With the wall, it took almost fifteen minutes to take the elevator up to the rotunda, then back down into InDep.

  I shoved away the calculations that showed the increase in defensibility with a grunt. Defensible or not, I just wanted to be done with this.

  92 finally slowed in front of an unlabeled InDep door with an armed Tac officer in front. He looked at us with critical indifference as we approached.

  “Agents 92 and 32 for Medina,” 92 said, coming to a stop. I leaned against the wall a moment to take the pressure off my throbbing leg. Those painkillers were starting to wear off. I considered taking another one, but decided against it. Who knew what MedDep was going to want to pump me full of when I finally made it across the compound again.

  The Tac officer pulled a three by two inch electronic device off his suit and looked at it a moment. Then he blinked. “92, you’re assigned to the Primary D.C. holding area. What are you doing here?”

  92 pursed his lips, but his mind was closed so I couldn’t tell whether it was from annoyance or pain. “My superior officer was KIA. Director Medina has requested an in-person report.”

  The Tac officer had just looked down at his screen to verify when Medina strode down the hall in his typical white collared shirt.