Crystal Choice: The Second Novel in the Projector War Saga Page 8

  Steele groaned. “I knew I shouldn’t have given it to you.”

  I ignored him and went back to my model. Two minutes into computations, Steel tapped my shoulder. As I fought free of the numbers, I could feel his anxiety pressing on me.

  “What?” I snapped.

  He pointed to the bomb. “It ate your tablet,”

  I looked back at the sphere as the phone melted into it, too. Once again, it was a perfect sphere—if slightly larger. “Noted.” That could not be good, but it was more data.

  Five minutes later, the model was still nowhere near complete and Steele had given up on his electronics. “There’s nothing like this in the archive—I don’t care what Black says. It has the general magnetic based sealing of a C32 Intrastate, but that’s where the similarity stops. Whatever the Company is up to, it’s a lot more advanced than we gave them credit for.”

  I frowned at the numbers flashing on my vision. “The magnetic field isn’t just keeping the material inside in the intrastate phase, it’s also a timing device calibrated to the earth’s magnetic field.”

  “And?” Steele asked, “What do we do to stop it?”

  How should I know? I placed a hesitant hand on the surface on the sphere, only to jerk my hand back as I felt the prick of a needle on my finger.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  I looked down at the bead of blood on the tip of my finger and shook my head. “It shouldn’t have done that.”

  A screen unfolded onto the surface with characters all across the front. It was a code. Three of them changed as we watched. Then two. Then one. Then three again. I checked how long it took between each change and gasped. “It’s a timer.” I shoved the information into the calculations, driving my lines faster and faster. Incomplete or not, my model was the closest thing to actual data we had.

  If this bomb went off, it would kill everyone in the city. Millions of innocents dead. Mom would be dead.

  Blue lettering overlaid the display thirty-two seconds later and I let my breath out. Ten seconds left.

  “The other letters were instructions. “

  “What did they say?” Steele asked.

  I pulled the images back to the forefront of my brain and tried to decipher them.

  “Eight seconds. Seven, six. Farina, if you’re going to do anything, do it now!”

  I snarled and pushed the half-baked translation into the back of my mind. There wasn’t enough time, and I didn’t have enough of the code to jury-rig a key. It had reacted to my touch. Taken a blood sample? I grabbed a knife off my belt and sliced the tip of my finger.

  Drops of red blood beaded on the surface of the bomb, only to be absorbed. The surface of the sphere flattened, then shrank until it was the size of a dime.

  The timer hit zero.

  I held my breath and waited for the inevitable blast but, seconds later, nothing had happened.

  “No boom?” Steele asked.

  I nodded. “Looks like.”

  He released a long breath. “Why? What did the writing say?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t have enough time to figure it out. Whatever it was, blood seems to have fixed it.”

  I could feel disbelief radiating off of him in waves, but he stayed silent for a long time. Finally, he picked up the now dime-sized bomb.

  “It’s diffused?”

  I shrugged. How should I know? “Maybe you shouldn’t touch it, just in case.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “You think this cute little thing’s going to blow? With what ammo? It’s my very own bomb-puck! Heavy though…” He paused and looked at me. “Probably because—and I’m just brainstorming here—it ate my phone?”

  I frowned. “That thing’s the smallest, most dense pressurized container I’ve ever seen. Frankly, I’d be a lot more worried about it now, than before. What I did—it shouldn’t have worked.”

  “Maybe it should go on a diet. Maybe, and this is just a guess, it should eat fewer phones!”

  I stared at him. That was what he was worried about? “I’m never going to hear the end of this, am I? You know, the Agency will replace your phone.”

  Steele stuck his tongue out at me. “Do you have any idea how much time and effort it took to upgrade that thing to my specs? Any idea?”

  But he wasn’t really mad. Steele just liked complaining. It was practically written into the fabric of his mind.

  I shrugged. “I’m really more concerned about the bomb at the moment.”

  He considered it a moment, then tapped his tablet. Something in the front pocket of his tactical suit shifted. “Containment pocket. Mini version of what the bomb squads were trying to get over here. Maybe not the safest place in the world, but better than a hotel basement.” He grinned. “Now that it’s a bomb puck instead of a bomb basketball, it’ll fit.”

  I nodded again, then looked down at my cut finger. It didn’t hurt, but the blood welling on the top was dark red, almost big enough to start rolling down the side of my finger.

  It had taken a blood sample. Why? Was it interested in blood in general, or just my blood? And what could have possessed the Company to plant a bomb like this? How did they even get their hands on it? A triggering system linked to the earth’s magnetic field? Nothing I’d seen in R&D even hinted that we had that kind of technology. But, then, the Company had figured out how to create a mechanical shield. Their technology was obviously more advanced in some areas, but I couldn’t quite reconcile those facts. Just because they could make a shield didn’t mean they could make a bomb like this.

  “Come on,” Steele said, finally. “We’ve got to get back. Tolden and the others could probably use a hand.”

  I jerked my thoughts away from the bomb and grabbed a gauze pad from one of the pockets on the tac suit. There was no sense in bleeding all over the building, now was there?

  Sure enough, as we were on our way out, Black got on comms. “Where are you two? Things are getting hot up here.” There was a crackle and a grunt—I couldn’t tell if it was from Black or someone else.

  Steele keyed the com. “On our way. The bomb threat is neutralized.” Probably.

  “Good. Because the Company’s got an entire team here.”

  My eyes narrowed. If the Company had set the bomb, then what were they doing in the building when it was set to explode? They should have evacuated all their operatives from the entire city, but this was just the opposite. Did their operatives mean that little to them? Would they sacrifice an entire team to try and ensure that the bomb went off? It didn’t make sense.

  But Steele took it in stride and asked me to lead the way to where the firefights were still going. Neither of us was much use while Smith, Tolden, and Black mopped up and sedated the remaining operatives. Despite Black’s assertion that they needed our help, most of the shooting was done by the time we got there. Good, considering that thoughts and half-filled equations were ping-ponging around my head like a ricochet, and the bomb in Steele’s front pocket.

  The Agency sent a transport vehicle for the Company operatives, so we handed them the bomb, then rode home in the chopper by ourselves.

  “You’re quieter than usual,” Tolden said.

  I looked up at him. Steele was just starting his descent onto the helipad behind Martial Academy. “Just thinking.”

  He nodded, and his thoughts prompted me to provide more information, so I did. “We’re sure the Company set the bomb?”

  His eyes narrowed. “That’s what AnAd said. Why?”

  “It’s just that the technology in that bomb was more advanced than I’ve ever seen. It had writing on it—a code that didn’t match anything in the Agency’s files.” I started rerunning the language analysis behind my eyes. Still not enough information to be conclusive. “I’m not convinced. Is there any other faction that might have planted the bomb?”

  Tolden�
�s eyes darkened. “I’ll have to pass your analysis further up the chain of command. Honestly, I’m not sure. I thought it was odd when the Company dropped a squad of reinforcements. They were almost as concerned about the bomb as we were.”

  “What happened to that Company bomb maker our man saw at the beginning of this?” I asked.

  He shook his head, and his thoughts were running a mile a minute. Too fast to easily sort out, so I let it pass.

  “The Company operative was dead—plasma discharge to the back of the head. Same as our man. We found them in the same room, facing each other,” Black said.

  I frowned. “If they were facing each other, how did they end up with death wounds to the back of the head? That doesn’t make any more sense than the bomb does.”

  But Black didn’t see it that way. He was too busy calculating how high a telekenisis rating the Company agent would have had to have to bend the plasma discharge. “Our forensics people will figure it out.”

  I hoped so. There were too many variables for my liking. Something was definitely going on here, and part of me wondered how much the Agency actually knew about it.

  Chapter eight

  “Farina, get off the mat!” Ms. Graff barked as I lost my balance and fell trying to avoid Hunt’s strike. I rolled back to my feet in a move Black had shown me, and pressed the attack—but Hunt was having none of it. I took an elbow to the gut and stumbled back. A moment later, I was in an armbar. The only way out of it involved breaking my own arm. While it was a possibility in a real fight, I didn’t think the Agency would let me use a medical pod to heal an arm I broke in training. I tapped the mat with disgust, and Hunt got off me.

  Ms. Graff stepped between us with her arms folded across her chest. “That was a frankly disgusting performance, Farina. What were you thinking, voluntarily going down? The moment you’re on the ground, you’re at a disadvantage. Of all the stupid moves I’ve seen over the years, that is one of the worst.“

  I rubbed my temples to try and combat a rising headache. I still hadn’t finished processing the backlog of information from the bomb incident earlier today, and I really wasn’t up to getting yelled at right now.

  Hunt stepped forward. “Her improvisation wasn’t bad, though. She’s only been here for a semester. Surely—“

  Ms. Graff turned on her. “I don’t care how long she’s been here, a mistake is a mistake, and mistakes kill.”

  Both Hunt and I were saved from further yelling by the gong that signaled the end of class. I hurried out before she could come up with some excuse to keep dressing me down, and made it to my next class in record time. When Social History finally came around, Ms. King was waiting at the door with a little bit of a smile on her face.

  “I heard that things are getting more explosive with Ms. Graff?”

  I didn’t ask how she knew. She could probably feel Ms. Graff’s anger from all the way down the hall. Still, she didn’t make a habit of interfering in my relationships with other teachers. Not even other teachers that also happened to be Company recruiters. I couldn’t help but wonder what she wanted.

  ::You really are a cynical child, aren’t you?:: she said, then gave me a mental sigh. ::I have an assignment for you—to practice your subtlety.::

  I blinked. Not because having an assignment during class was abnormal, but because her behavior was strange. Why meet me at the door to deliver my assignment instead of giving it at the beginning of class the way she usually did?

  ::Because your assignment isn’t just practice with the other students. I had something a little more…productive in mind. Ms. Graff is going to be in a meeting for the next thirty minutes—something to do with her other job, so she won’t even be in the building. Now, the Agency has been looking for a little more information on the Company recruiter’s activities, so your friends down in R&D have put together a little bug. I want you to plant it in Ms. Graff’s office somewhere your analytics tell you she won’t notice, but that it can still see the areas of her office where she spends the most time. You can keep one interface device that will let you monitor the bug, and I will keep the other.::

  It was a visual bug, then. Exactly the kind of thing I would be good at.

  Ms. King grinned and handed me a little black square. It separated into three pieces as I held it in my hand. I handed one piece back to her. She nodded. “Be careful, Farina. Things can go wrong even on the simplest of missions, and Ms. Graff is not a creature you want to cross.”

  She projected the instructions for how to activate the bug to me, and I reviewed them as I moved back toward Ms. Graff’s classroom.

  Getting inside wasn’t hard—Ms. Graff didn’t lock her classroom door the way Mr. West used to. She said it was because she wanted to feel approachable, and maybe that worked for students who weren’t also part of the Agency. In my case, though, she was the last person I would voluntarily ask for help. I wasn’t about to turn down any advantage that made my job easier, though. I scanned the interior of the room, then slipped inside. Ms. Graff didn’t have any classes this period, so the room was empty. I pulled the sliding mirror to the side and scanned the office for anything the teacher might use to deter unwanted visitors. My blue lines lit up a tripwire at the edge of the door—tied to a paintball gun. If I set it off, the paint splash would alert Ms. Graff that someone had been inside, and the stain on my shirt would tell her exactly who it was. I scanned the room again, but the tripwire was the only threat. Either Ms. Graff was overconfident, or she didn’t much care about the security of her room. It fit with the rest of the picture, though. A tripwire was easily disarmed. It wouldn’t alert the students that their teacher paid entirely too much attention to who was coming in and out of her office.

  I stepped over the wire, then did another scan—this time for likely places to put the bug. It was a camera, so it had to have a good view of the desk. Luckily, Ms. Graff liked decor—especially wall decor. Three potential locations lit up, and I moved to each to better inspect it. The first was on the edge of a picture. The frame was black, so the bug should blend in. I placed the bug, then ran an analysis on the picture it created. Seventy-six percent chance of it remaining undiscovered. I moved the bug to where it could just barely peak out of a little gnome figurine on a shelf against the wall opposite her desk, but the positioning required to hide it better than the picture frame location would compromise the bug’s field of vision too badly. I considered the third location on the sheath of a black metal dagger, just above the shelf that held the figurine. The colors matched better than the picture. If I hid it slightly to the side, Mrs. Graff had only a six percent chance of seeing it from her desk.

  I scanned the location a second time, just to be sure I wasn’t missing anything, then stopped as a fact blinked on my vision.

  Mrs. Graff was a telekinetic. Why would a telekinetic have a set of metal daggers on her wall where they would be behind where any potential visitor would be sitting? Because she could use them as a weapon if things got messy—which meant she would be paying far more attention to the daggers than my first set of analysis had anticipated. I ran the numbers a third time, and shook my head. The picture frame would have to do. I slipped the bug onto the frame in the least noticeable spot I could find, then activated it. The other piece in my hand activated, too. I placed it on the back of my phone and pressed the button that would allow it to interface the way it needed to. I waved a hand in the bug’s field of vision, then nodded as my phone buzzed with an alert from the camera. The bug was functioning properly.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as I slid Mrs. Graff’s door closed behind me, crossed the room to the Krav Maga classroom door, and froze as I felt Hunt on the other side, waiting for something. I clenched my teeth. While I was sure that Hunt wasn’t a telepath—or not a very high frequency telepath, if she was one—she was also used to the feeling of my mind from while we were fighting, I wasn’t sure if I could convince he
r to go away without giving myself away too.

  What was she waiting for? Mrs. Graff wasn’t scheduled to come back for another twenty minutes, and no one was supposed to be in the hallway. Had I missed something when I went into the office, and triggered some sort of alert?

  I didn’t dare go far enough into Hunt’s mind to see if she was waiting for me or not, but the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. If she thought someone was in her recruiter’s office while her recruiter was away, she would have come in to try and find me. No, she wasn’t here for me.

  So why was she here?

  A moment later, I could feel someone else coming down the hall. His mind had folded in on himself since the last time I’d seen him. It was dark, and dense, full of secrets he refused to reveal but it was unmistakably still Briggs. His mind was mostly shielded, although I could sense the nervousness in the thin film over his walls. I caught one flash of overwhelming terror accompanied by the shredded image of a bloodied scalpel—as though he had clawed the image in a futile attempt to keep it inside his mind. After the image escaped, his mind pulled in tighter on itself and dulled to stormy grey.

  Hunt tried to reassure him—her mind was also guarded, but she lacked his desperate control. Her words only brought more flashes of pain. Briggs tried to put on a brave face during school, but he was desperate for help. Whatever he had told me about escaping his family’s tyrannical grasp was a lie. Someone had found him, and they were changing him.

  I couldn’t be sure just how much Hunt knew about it, but she wasn’t nearly as concerned as Briggs was—which meant he’d likely told her something similar to what he’d told me. I nearly brushed her walls aside to try and discover what she knew, but stopped. I’d been inside Hunt’s mind plenty of times before. She knew I was a teleprojector. She lived in this shadowy world the Agency and the Company had created. Reading her thoughts wasn’t a violation of her mind in the same way reading a Turnips would be, but I still couldn’t bring myself to do it. Briggs had trusted her with information, and taking it from her mind would be the same as taking it from his. I refused to betray his trust that way.