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

  I stepped between them before Tolden could finish forming his response.

  “No one is going to shoot anyone,” I said. “Black, Tolden lower your weapons.” If they put their guns away, the rest of the team would follow suit.

  Black glowered at me. “You don’t get to give me orders, Farina.”

  I shrugged. “Well, if someone doesn’t give ground somewhere, I’m going to get filled with a lot of holes. So, if this petty feud is more important than taking down the Institute, then go ahead.” I turned and caught his gaze as I spread my arms wide. “But neither organization reaches the other unless it’s through me.”

  Are you sure they’re on our side? Tolden asked silently.

  ::What side?:: I responded. ::They’re all human, and that’s the only side that matters right now.:: I didn’t tell him that Hunt was actually working for Medina. I was about to break a dozen Agency rules, but outing Hunt was not going to be among them.

  He nodded, then holstered his gun. “Lower your weapons.”

  I could feel Black’s indecision as Steele and Smith holstered their guns. “Farina, they don’t intend us any harm?”

  I nodded.

  The Company’s weapons dropped.

  Black snorted and shoved his gun into the holster strapped to his thigh. “Let’s hope your gift is still as impressive as it was when we went after Houston. It might be the last day of my life either way. I’m in.”

  I turned to Elaine Graff. “You’ve briefed Hunt?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s much appreciated.” Then, turning to Steele, “You got the device I sent you for?”

  The curiosity in the room spiked as Steele nodded and produced a square box with two knobs—almost like a pair of handles. He tossed it to me so I could inspect it.

  “Cal seemed pretty shocked when I asked for it,” he said.

  I turned it over to let my lines get a better look. A few moments later, my blue lines spat out the device’s function and I nodded. “According to Medina, telekinetic abilities—like teleprojection—are multiplicative.” I brushed away a stray image of the group of PS1 projectors at the fundraiser. “The problem is actually interfacing the two sets of abilities. Any gaps, and suddenly it’s just two people pulling on the same object. This is supposed to help make that interfacing easier. Our best intel puts Ms. King as an E 100,000 and, if I’m not mistaken, we have an E800 and an E300 here.”

  Black’s jaw stiffened as I mentioned his telekinetic abilities. “You aren’t putting me on the sidelines, Farina. No way.”

  Ms. Graff held up a hand. “Even if we can interface our abilities, it’s not that simple. We’re going to have to figure out where Ms. King is focusing her telekinetic power, and then work together to push against it. We won’t be able to do that until whatever object she’s using starts to move, and someone with that much ability will have the target object where she wants it before we can even start to push against it.”

  I decided to ignore Black’s objection for the time being. “That’s where Tolden comes in. Once I get her shields down, he’ll be able to get inside her head and tell you where to go. Meanwhile, Hunt and I will try to keep her busy, while Smith covers us.“ There were nods around the room, so I took a deep breath. “We’re only going to get one shot at this. Let’s make it count.”

  “Miss Farina, would you please stay a moment?” Ms. King’s voice was worried, so I reinforced my shields again. As much as I’d tried to subdue the feelings of betrayal that surged every time I looked at her, I couldn’t be sure nothing had leaked through. She still stood tall, with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue—looking exactly like the teacher who had guided me through learning to control my gift, and sent Mom a new couch to replace the one Smith had bled on. Except now I knew her secret.

  It was hard to reconcile the image I saw in front of me with the vision of Briggs down on all fours, bleeding from a dozen bullet holes as he charged us mindlessly. Had Ms. King been modified like the Superiors? Like D?

  Sure, she was tall, and perhaps her forearms were slightly longer than average—but she certainly didn’t look inhuman. She looked like my teacher.

  “Of course, Ms. King.” I realized I’d been quiet for a fraction of a second too long, and tried to recover by keeping my voice as light as possible while the other girls filed out the door. I’d made it through the entire class without tripping any of Ms. King’s alarms—that I could tell, anyway. We were too close to mess it up now. Using the cover of the table, I pulled the electropulser glove on. It had stunned the last Superior long enough for Tabitha to get a shot off. Hopefully it would work this time, too. I didn’t have a gun—it would be too much of a risk. We’d been instructed by Ms. Green to carry weaponry everywhere, but Ms. King had made it clear after the declaration that those who were full agents could put their weapons in the cubbies underneath the counter during class time. That meant there was no way for me to remain armed during class without Ms. King figuring out that something was wrong—which might just provide the incentive she needed to look past my surface thoughts and tear down my mental walls.

  “Are you feeling alright?” Ms. King asked. Her face was twisted into a concerned mask, but her eyes shone. She suspected something was wrong.

  I mentally checked Tolden’s position. He was almost there—and hopefully the others were too. Tabitha was circling around to Ms. King’s office. Tolden and Black were at the door to the arena. Ms. Graff was waiting with Hunt in the hallway. I resisted the urge to wipe the sweat from my forehead.

  “Yes, why?” I asked Ms. King.

  “You’ve been asking tense, is all. I wanted to make sure everything was fine. If the Agency’s been giving you problems—”

  Tolden reached the door, and I crumpled to the floor in a maneuver we’d practiced in Social History a dozen times. I flipped the switch on the electropulser, and grabbed Ms. King’s face as she tried to catch me.

  The teacher started convulsing as the electricity tore through her body.

  “Now!” I shouted, and Tolden dove into Ms. King’s mind. I followed, seizing control of the centers in her brain that controlled her gift, and smashing down her walls.

  Then there was an impact that tore me out of her mind and sent me spinning into my own body, only to groan. Blood trickled down the side of my head, into my eyes. I wiped it away.

  “Where’s the Defect?” Ms. King roared.

  I picked myself off the floor as Hunt charged.

  “You’re never going to get her.”

  Ms. King whirled, batting Hunt out of the way and coming around to stare at her office. I could feel her reaching out to the weapons in the cubby where I’d put my gun at the beginning of class.

  ::Got it?:: I asked Tolden. He nodded and started shouting directions to Black and Ms. Graff who were holding the box between them.

  I watched as the concentration on Ms. King’s face increased. Sweat dribbled down her face, but she was far from done.

  “You!” The Instructor pointed at the team of three busy thwarting her efforts.

  I felt the disturbance before I saw it. A crackle of energy in the woman’s finger. The blue lines flashed red on the box that linked the telekinetics—but there wasn’t time to warn them. If that box got broken, we would all be dead!

  I dove between them to catch the blast on my shoulder. The force propelled me backward and my face smashed into the floor again.

  I brought the blue lines in my vision back to life and assessed my injury. The adrenaline pumping through my system kept me from feeling the full brunt of the pain. My nose was broken from the impact, and my shoulder wouldn’t hold pressure well, but the blast hadn’t hit anything life threatening. I jumped to my feet and scanned the room again. None of the telekinetics had been hit, and Ms. King was still playing with them, even as she was busy taking Hunt apart. Smith joined the fight as Ms. Kin
g smashed Hunt out of the way and charged towards Tolden and the others.

  ::Smith, get out of there! She’ll kill you.::

  But she didn’t even acknowledge I was there.

  I tried again. ::This isn’t helping Briggs. Go grab a weapon and try to get a clean shot. That’s where you can do the most good.::

  I stepped into the fight next to her, and pulled her out of the way of Ms. King’s claws. I dropped her on the ground and pulled the WATCH module. Every blue line I had was assessing her, plotting intercepts and avoidances, watching for patterns in her mind that would tell me what she was trying to do.

  I put my brain on autopilot while I dove into the Instructor’s mind once more. It wasn’t easy this time—the walls were almost back up far enough to keep me out, but I was determined. Hunt rejoined us, then got knocked back out. I altered the pattern to compensate as I smashed Ms. King’s walls down for a third time.

  ::Tolden?:: I sent a tendril of thought to his mind to make sure he could get back inside Ms. King’s mental defenses, but his mind was full of thought shards drifting outside of a fractured mind—overshadowed by agony. He was hurt bad.

  I redoubled my efforts, wrestling for control of Ms. King’s entire body. The battle came to a standstill. My eyes were locked on hers, and she was locked on mine. Then my concentration lapsed, and I was fighting for control of my own body.

  I tasted blood as I bit my tongue, but that didn’t really matter. I threw up wall after wall to protect the inner core of my mind. I shifted frequencies until I’d cycled through more colors than I’d seen in my lifetime. I wasn’t looking through my eyes anymore. Not really. But then there was a flicker in my vision and that changed. My walls came down as I saw the face in my vision.

  I stumbled back, hypnotized by the familiar lines and curves of the man that suddenly, incomprehensibly appeared.

  “Daddy?” The whisper was quiet. Raw, and full of anguish. I could see his face—the black stubble below his lip. The scar on his cheek. The curve of his chin.

  The walls of my mind shot back up, and Ms. King was gone.

  It was the face. The face I could never remember. I stared into his golden eyes and delicately placed the image where it belonged in my memory. The room around me faded to a charcoal grey, completely unimportant now as the man in front of me shrank—or maybe I grew. He was still taller than I was by two inches as he stood there with his back to me. I wasn’t a child anymore. Somehow this wasn’t a memory. I stood in the greyed out husk of my childhood living room with my father in front of me, and every moment was real.

  He turned.

  The black hair framed his tanned face. His nose was just slightly crooked, and his eyes were the shape of almonds. And gold. Very gold. He had black fuzz on his chin from not shaving, and his cheeks were thin and drawn. The scar that ran from his eye to his cheekbone was still raw—maybe two weeks old. What had happened to him?

  “Why?” The breath escaped my lips before I could snatch it back. “Why did you leave?” The sounds echoed in my ear, crisp and clear like a bell. This was the sound of my voice. It was different from the voice I remembered hearing as a child. I was older now.

  He didn’t answer. He just stared at me with mournful eyes.

  “Did you know I was different? Did you know I was a telepath?”

  He still said nothing.

  “Tell me!” I couldn’t keep it in any longer. I screamed the words. My hands were fisted at my side. I wanted to cross the gap and pound his shoulder with my fist. I wanted to grab him in a hug and never let go. I wanted him to come home! I never wanted to see him again. Instead, I just stood there, staring at him.

  He looked back at me with the answer in his eyes. ::Yes.::

  The grey world shredded itself, and I smashed into the hard wooden floor of Ms. King’s classroom. My eyes snapped open and I looked around. Everything was different. Colorful. Panic set in at these unfamiliar surroundings as I wiped the wetness from my cheeks. Gasps and moans filled the air around me, tearing at my heart. Who were these people littered on the ground like broken dolls? Where did he go? Where was Dad?

  A woman with a blistered face struggled on the ground against something or someone I couldn’t get a clear look at. The blistered woman was between us, growling to herself—or at her opponent. The sound of bone sinking into flesh passed my ear, followed by a gasping gurgle. No one else was here—or, not anyone awake. Bodies littered the floor, unconscious but alive.

  I met the green slit eyes of a cat staring at me from across the room as the woman with the blistered face turned her attention back to me. The person—a human woman—she had been struggling with was dead behind her. Her throat was ripped open even as she still gasped for air. The woman with the blistered face had blood smeared on her arm and chest from where the arterial spurt of blood had drenched her. No, that was wrong. This woman with the blistered face had a strangely shaped mind. It wasn’t a she. It was different.

  I looked up at the thing as it rose to its feet. A smile curled on its face. It expected me to fear it—I could tell that much. But what was fear? Why would I be afraid? A cold smile settled on my face.

  ::What are you?:: I asked.

  It stopped and looked around.

  ::You aren’t like me. You are…an Instructor.:: The word came suddenly, and I rolled it around in my mind. What did it mean?

  I found the barriers between me and my memories deep in my mind. I shattered them with a flick of my fingernail. I gasped as everything came flooding back. I recognized the people around me, and I knew where I was. Everything came back but the fear.

  ::I am a genetic anomaly,:: the thing countered, but its mind was full of lies. I could see the truth buried in its head. There were more Instructors. There were dozens of brothers and sisters, all bred from the same eggs.

  It lunged for me, but I wasn’t there. I’d moved before the thing could even finish planning its attack.

  More memories came back to me—tools that helped me use my mind. Where were the blue lines that usually decorated my vision? I stepped out of the thing’s way as it moved again, and it landed where I’d just been. I paid it no heed, too busy exploring myself to do more than notice it.

  The blue lines hadn’t gone anywhere. I pulled the visual representation of my mind up onto my field of vision and then banished it again. I didn’t need those lines anymore. My mind did everything those lines used to do, only it was automatic. I was so much faster than I used to be.

  I moved again as the thing thought of attacking. It howled in frustration. “Stand and fight, girl!”

  I looked back at it, freezing its motion with a thought. “Is that what I am? Certainly, my biological chemistry resembles that of humankind, but do I act human?” I let down my shields and pulled her mind inside my own. ::Do I think like a human?:: I snapped my shields back up, expelling the other as something inside its mind broke and immobilizing terror flooded through its veins.

  “You are human. You are neurodivergent. You have evolved past the idiot masses to see the world in a different light. Your mind is more powerful than any Turnip’s weapon of war. You have the power we wish to give the Alpha-Superiors. You didn’t think the Zetas were the end product, did you? It’s this magical evolution. Do you really think my overlords would concern themselves with people as weak and stupid as you for any other reason?”

  I felt the stench of fear wafting from the Instructor as it stood there, frozen.

  Interesting. This thing that had once commanded fear was now afraid. Somehow, that was fitting.

  I looked at the people scattered around. Most were still alive. The two telekinetics were sprawled on the floor, the box smashed into pieces and scattered around them. The telepath wasn’t much farther. His mind was beginning to fail him. He hadn’t been strong enough to tell the telekinetics that the thing had intended to hurt them. I reached out and grafte
d some of my gift into his mind so he could live. After all, that was what I was doing here, no? Protecting the lives of humans from those who wished them harm?

  I pulled the other minds from their stupor and they began to awaken little by little.

  ::When you are gone, who will carry on your mission?:: I asked, and it halted its futile struggle against my grasp. I would release it when I wished, and not a second before.

  ::The traitor Defective will be brought before her siblings, and then we will continue the Harvest. Death will be gone as all are reborn as the Superior race. There are more like me, and they are coming. You won’t survive this, girl.:: It hissed, but I wasn’t interested in its words. I grasped the map of their bases and plucked it from her mind to examine it for myself. The thing was correct. There were sixteen more Instructors, each in its own position around the globe. I stored the map in my memory. It would be needed later.

  “32, watch out!” Black shouted from behind me, where he was only now gaining consciousness.

  ::Do not be alarmed. It isn’t a threat anymore—not now, anyway.:: But the warning brought the Instructor back to the forefront of my mind. Memories filtered through the cracks, reminding me of why I was here. Before Ms. King’s tampering had fixed my mind, I had come to subdue her. Before, I had been fueled by feelings of betrayal, tempered by revenge. This thing had manipulated Houston into killing Mr. West, and had fed Briggs to the Institute to be changed. What would I do with it? I didn’t want to kill it—I’d managed to get this far without any deaths on my conscience. But it couldn’t be controlled by anyone else while it retained that much mental power. I closed my eyes and sent my mind careening inside the twisted pathways of Instructor neurology. It was structured much like the human mind, but there were portions that were designed to facilitate faster and heavier loads of processing. I pushed through the shields that encompassed it, trailing shards of shattered walls behind me as I explored.

  There. I dug my mental fingers into the cluster and ripped it out. Ms. King didn’t deserve that power. She couldn’t control it all, anyway. If it wasn’t useful, what was the point?