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

  Pain flushed through the Instructor’s body as it suddenly became mindblind. ::You will never hurt anyone again.:: I said coldly into its mind. It shuddered away with a whimper.

  Just then, I heard a door open. Guns cocked around me. I bared my teeth in a cold smile as I reached out to their minds and froze them as well. If Ms. Green wished to speak with me, then she could do so without the threat of force.

  ::You are the one who has allowed the Institute to blind the Agency,:: I said as I sifted through her thoughts. I felt her intention and almost laughed. ::You want to kill me.:: Blinding fear and anger slashed though Ms. Green’s consciousness. I dulled its bite as I sent feelers to assure myself that this woman was indeed human though and through.

  That resolved, I allowed myself a cold laugh inside her mind. ::You are terrified of the power I hold. You believe my existence threatens the human race, and so you wish to destroy me. I suggest you rethink your options.::

  Her thought frequencies shifted to show concern for the thing I held motionless with my thoughts. She catalogued the burns and slashes with ever mounting worry.

  ::Do not be concerned,:: I projected as her fear reached its peak in spite of my soothing. ::I have not killed it. It is simply unable to control itself in the same way your agents are incapable of firing their weapons.::

  I finally opened my eyes and turned to face the Director of the Agency.

  Ms. Green stood there, shock palpable on her face. “H-how can you—? You are rated PS7. No one has ever gotten through my shields.”

  ::I suspect my rating no longer bears any relation to reality.:: I let the icy humor leak through into the projection.

  Ms. Green’s curiosity began to tint her fear.

  ::This thing is an Instructor created by the Institute. It is not a ‘she’, nor is it human—despite its looks. It is a human shell with everything that made it human scraped out and replaced with a monster.::

  Ms. Green took a shaky step forward. “Is she dead?”

  I chuckled. “What made it so powerful is now gone. It is just another Superior. Do with it what you will.” The sound of my voice slid around my ears like an unanswerable question. Whatever had happened during that desperate fight for my mind had left my voice untouched. Strange.

  I turned away to crouch over Tolden. Blood pounded through his veins with every beat of his heart as he struggled to piece his thoughts back together. An angel, his thoughts sighed as he peeled his eyes open. Have you come to take me away? I smiled and removed the wall I’d erected between myself and my emotions. As the pains from my injuries flooded through, so did my kindness.

  ::I am no angel, Carter Tolden.:: I projected it softly so it wouldn’t scatter the drifting pieces of his mind. Then I reached out and guided his mind back to where it belonged. I felt his recognition as I stood back up.

  “I have done what little I can for all of them,” I said. I turned back to Ms. Green and spread my arms, palms out. Then slowly, I released the other agents. “Your medical facilities will have to offer them what I cannot.”

  Ms. Green nodded. “O-of course.” Her mind was still not finished processing the scene in front of her, so I waited. Then her thoughts shifted as her eyes took time to consider the mix of agents on the floor. “I see your teammates.” Ms. Green motioned to the rest of my team and then Ms. Graff. When her hand shifted to Smith, I recoiled. The memory of how Ms. King had ripped out her throat played behind my eyes. I hadn’t felt a thing when she died. I hadn’t even recognized her, and now she was dead. Now the Institute had taken two of my friends, and I hadn’t been able to save either. Grief flooded in, hot and thick—combining with belated adrenaline to try and drown me. I held it at bay as best I could, but I couldn’t stop the tears in my eyes.

  “And you’ve thrown in with the Company.” Ms. Green gestured to Hunt and Ms. Graff, who were beginning to stir. Ms. Green’s thoughts hardened, but I smoothed away the sharp edges.

  ::The Company is here with me because the Institute is their enemy, too. They’ve extended their hand as allies. Please don’t break what fragile peace we’ve created. You won’t get another chance, and war between the Agency and Company is exactly what the Institute wants.::

  I turned my thoughts to my shoulder as it sent another wave of agony through my mind. It wasn’t life threatening unless it got infected—and the same was true of my broken nose and the slash across my abdomen I’d gotten from the thing’s claws while I was battling in its mind.

  Ms. Green nodded. The shock still wasn’t gone from her system, but she’d managed to process the more important pieces of information.

  One of the agents in tactical black leveled his gun at me.

  I prepared to pull up the wall against my pain. If Ms. Green decided that she wanted a fight, then her agents wouldn’t be able to even scratch me—but I didn’t want it to come to blows again. I’d already lost too much today without hurting my fellow agents. Ms. Green was still in a stupor, and I could feel the incipient confusion rising in the agents with guns. They’d just heard her call me a traitor. Trigger fingers were getting itchy.

  Rather than wait for it to boil over, I reached out and wiped the shock from Ms. Green’s mind. Then I dumped everything I knew about the Superiors into her mind and withdrew.

  The Director shook her head and looked up abruptly. “Agent 75, get these people to medical. Agent 2-83, lower your weapon.” She looked me in the eye. “I don’t know what you’ve done here, but don’t think you’re going to get away with it, Agent. I’m instructing you to surrender yourself for disciplinary action.”

  Agents rushed past me to help Hunt, Tolden and the others. They pulled those who couldn’t walk from the floor and carried them back through the door. When all the injured agents were gone, I looked at the thing I held captive with my mind.

  Ms. Green had asked me to surrender because she knew there was no way for her to actually take me down by force. Whatever had happened to my mind while I was fighting the Instructor had healed it. I no longer had to wait for my blue lines to process my surroundings, then react to the messages they sent me. If I wanted to, I could hold the whole room captive and walk away. Still, there was something Ms. Green didn’t know. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, and I never had. If I didn’t surrender, then I would have to hurt more agents when they were inevitably sent to subdue me. At the end of the day, I’d known this was coming.

  I had nothing against turning myself in. They’d trained me, and given me a home. The problem came with the Instructor that I still held in my grasp. I couldn’t just release it. Nothing the Agency had could subdue it. Even with its gift neutralized, it was three times as powerful as the Superior we’d fought before. It would happily kill everyone in this room just to get to the Superior Medina held. I couldn’t surrender and control the beast at the same time.

  I closed my eyes against the throbbing pain in my muscles. “When I release this thing, it will attack—and no amount of physical pain or restraints will stop it. You thought bringing down D was difficult, but this one is different. It will not fall to the same mental attacks.”

  Ms. Green nodded. “Let it do its worse. My agents can handle it.”

  I frowned to myself, but released control of the Instructor and moved out of its reach. It turned immediately to lunge at the nearest tactical agent. It raked its claws up his back as it absorbed shot after shot from the others’ handguns. His screams echoed like death in my ears. The agony in his cry aside, his injuries weren’t life threatening—merely debilitating.

  “That’s enough.” I dove back into its mind to stop it mere inches from the next agent’s throat. “I told you that no amount of physical damage will stop it. This thing was created to destroy neurodivergents.” I put it to sleep with a thought and watched as it crumpled to the ground. Then I put my hands behind my head. I’d done what I could. I didn’t want to hurt these people. Now it was time
to take my medicine.

  I replaced the wall between me and my pain as I sank to my knees. Now was not the time to let emotions rule my mind. I’d done what I could to help them, but I had no illusions about the consequences. Black had spelled them out all too clearly at the overflow facility in D.C.. By taking control of the Instructor and the other agents, I had forfeited my place in the Agency. Now it was up to them.

  Epilogue

  I sat on the park bench admiring the trees as they swayed in the evening breeze. I couldn’t feel their simple minds anymore—they were just out of reach. The transformation that had happened during my fight with Ms. King had been almost completely undone when they removed my biocard. My mind still moved faster—but the overwhelming mental power that had terrified both Ms. King and the Instructor was now gone. My abilities were shattered. My mental defenses were destroyed. I was everything but mindblind.

  “I thought I would find you here.”

  It was Director Medina’s voice. I could recognize it now. Sounds weren’t as clear for me as they had been for Tabitha, but they were present. I felt a slash of pain as I thought about her. She was dead because of me.

  “Yes. I do come here often. There isn’t much else to do. School’s out, and I’ve been fired from my job.” I didn’t even try to cover the ice in my voice. Part of me wanted to go home to Mom, but I knew deep down that I couldn’t. The more exposure she had to the neurodivergent world, the faster her mind would burn. Dad had known that—I was sure that was part of the reason he’d left. Maybe he thought that, if he wasn’t around, I wouldn’t learn to use my psionic abilities and Mom would be safer for longer. Regardless, I couldn’t be around Mom without hurting her, and I couldn’t ask any of the neurodivergents I knew for help. My only chance of helping Mom was to find my father and demand answers. If he already knew about Mom’s Instance, maybe he could help fix her.

  Still, he could be anywhere, and I had no idea where to start looking. Going off half-cocked while the Agency was still in turmoil was a good way to get locked up, so I’d used the knowledge I’d gained from Ms. King’s classes to steal another identity and holed up in a hotel room for the time being. I had enough money saved from my time at the Agency to stay there for a few months, if needed.

  Medina chuckled as the sound of his footsteps in the grass grew closer. “Yes, I suppose we did fire you, didn’t we?”

  I slid over on the bench to allow him to sit. I ignored the Tactical agents I could hear behind the trees and see in the reflection of the cameras they’d installed to watch me. “If you have something to say, then say it.”

  Medina pulled a card out of his pocket. “I came to give you a warning—and an update on your team’s condition.”

  I looked at him. “I’m listening.”

  “This is a card with two million dollars on it. You would be wise to take the money and disappear.” I took the card, and Medina pressed a second package into my hand. “The Company and the Agency have convened talks to decide how to deal with the Institute—that much is public knowledge. What they aren’t saying is that the Agency has discovered major Institute tampering inside the upper echelons. If the corruption runs too deep, we won’t be able to salvage the Agency. Ms. Green is in favor of merging the Agency with the Company to create one Organization, and I have a feeling that you aren’t far away from being on one of the kill-lists once the Company’s Director takes the reins. You’ll need these.”

  “What?” I slammed the gate down on my emotions, and my senses sharpened as I started to calculate the possibilities.

  Medina’s lips thinned. “The Agency has been infiltrated once. What’s to keep it from happening again? A detailed audit has revealed that the Institute has been covertly bankrolling over half our operations. When you attacked Ms. King, you cost a lot of people money and effectively destroyed the Agency as you knew it. We can’t just dissolve. That would let too many neurodivergents loose into society—which would do more harm than good unless we can screen every single person for Institute tampering. Beside that, we’ve promised stable employment to half a million people.”

  “So you’re creating a fresh Organization designed to combat the Institute. I understand that much. But why are you coming after me?” I hated that plaintive note in my voice—but hadn’t I given these people enough already without letting them hunt me down like an animal?

  “Well, to be honest, there are a lot of people in the Company who think you’re more dangerous than the Institute. Your display of power back there didn’t go unnoticed. Also, in the four months you were with the Agency, you jumped our research and development programs ahead by three years. They don’t want you selling to the highest bidder—not even in purely Turnip settings.”

  I grit my teeth. “What about my mom? Does she need to disappear too?” If they went after her when I left to find my dad, I would never forgive myself.

  Medina’s eyes softened. “Adalind Farina should be safe enough. We will watch her, but that’s more to protect her from the Institute, than the Organization.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief, and returned my attention to the card in my hand. “I’m not stupid. The card will be traced, and I will be found the moment I use the money.”

  “Yes, if you use that card. The money is transferable to any account you want. I’m sure Ms. King has given you a comprehensive tutorial on how to make money like that disappear.”

  I frowned. “You really want me out of your city, don’t you?”

  He smiled bitterly. “No, but there are others who do. Your friends are recovering, and they will be allowed the choice of whether or not to continue their work with the Organization. The Company agents are up and about, and Tabitha Smith’s funeral will be tomorrow. Agent Hunt asked me to extend an invitation to you. She said you were the only one conscious when Agent Smith died.”

  I winced as he said Tabitha’s name. The memory of my confusion as Ms. King tore out her throat was all too fresh in my mind. I hadn’t felt anything at the time—hadn’t even recognized her.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he said softly. “You’re the only reason we’re all alive.”

  My head snapped around. “Then why did you take my biocard?” All the anger and frustration came out, and more than one plasma weapon cycled to readiness behind the trees.

  Medina’s expression drew cold. “You gave classified information to enemy agents, you attacked a teacher, and you aided in the escape of a prisoner. You’re lucky we didn’t take you to a back alleyway somewhere and shoot you. But here you are, still alive. I was kind.”

  “No.” Something in his sentence was very wrong. I retraced his words in my mind.

  Medina cocked his head. “No?”

  “No,” I repeated. “What prisoner?”

  Medina didn’t bother to hide his confusion. “The Superior we captured—D—is gone. I assumed you had merely neglected to tell me about that portion of your plan.”

  It took a moment to click, but I allowed myself a smile when it did. “She’s out there somewhere now, huh?” With the Instructor gone, she was free to continue sabotaging the Institute.

  “We’ve ordered an Agency wide search, but—”

  “—No. Let her go. She’s where she can do the most good.” I slipped my rings back onto my fingers. “It’s your choice, really, but she seems better suited to independent operations, and we need all the help we can get.” Then I stood and pulled my newest creation off my belt. “Thanks for the update—and the warning. You might as well take the camera down, I’m not coming back anytime soon.”

  I fired the device and held tight as I flew through the air to land soundly on top of a nearby tree. I fired it a second time and made the top of the next building. I tucked the card into my pocket and turned the second package over to read the back.

  “I’m listening -Carter Tolden,” was all it said. I placed the card into my pants
pocket and ripped open the package. It was a semiautomatic—the same one he’d had Black give me after we’d brought Houston in.

  A smile caressed my face as I closed my eyes to focus what was left of my tattered gift. There, in the distance, I could feel him standing and thinking my name as loud as he could. I pushed the gun into the holster I still wore strapped to my thigh.

  ::Thank…you.::

  Thank You

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for taking the time to read Crystal Choice. I hope you enjoyed Crystal’s journey.

  Before you go, please take a moment to leave a review of my book. Tell me what you liked, what you loved, and even what you hated—I just want to hear what you think. Reviews aren’t easy to come by, which means that you—the reader—have the power to help Crystal’s story reach the people who most need to hear it. Here’s a link to my author page, which includes all my books on Amazon:

  amazon.com/author/kaexcell

  Thank you again for spending time with Crystal. I hope to meet you again between the pages of another book!

  Sincerely,

  K. A. Excell

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  About the Author

  K. A. Excell uses her experiences gained from growing up in an autism-rich household to create a world where Neurodivergence really is a superpower. She blends her years of martial arts study with the complexities of Autism Spectrum Disorder to create a world with realistic characters and challenges. She lives in Utah.