“I did this,” Caleb admitted. “And I’ll find a way to solve it. But I need my team. I need access to them. Bring up Victoria and the shadow remnant.”
“What?” Edgerrin asked.
“Yeah, when you guys rounded all of us psychics up…”
“Wasn’t my doing,” he said, hands raised. “Government infiltrated by that UN Council member, and her watchdog Boris, and…”
“Regardless,” Caleb interrupted. “Phoebe helped find a recruit named Victoria Bederus, a talented psychic who should have been on our team if not for Boris’s false visions tainting her test results. And she gathered other psychics to help us out and run objective hunts while we were incapacitated.”
Edgerrin nodded, seeing the wisdom and respecting the move. “Should be able to find her.”
“Church of St. Joseph,” Phoebe said. “Georgetown. Link her up to here if you can. I tried phoning her but…”
“Most wireless is down. Overloaded or sabotaged by internal workers.” Edgerrin shook his head as he worked on a tablet device. “We’ll get it done. I’m sending a tech over there now.”
“What’s the status of recovering communications?” Caleb asked. “Surely there’s got to be some way. Some working satellites, even for limited communication?”
Phoebe held his hand and met his concerned look. He knew she was on the same wavelength. “We’ve got to check in with Alexander.”
“Nina, Jacob and Aria too,” Phoebe said. “They were all on their way to Nan Madol. What they find — if they find it — may be the key to stopping all this.”
Caleb shook his head. “I’m worried. Miriam knew about their trip. It’s probably a trap. Or a fake vision designed to separate us, get us a world apart and… pick us off.”
“Don’t think the worst,” Phoebe said.
He squeezed her hand back, and spoke to her, as well as to Edgerrin and Xavier.
“I have a plan, such as it is. And I admit, some of the motives are selfish, but these are the people we need if we hope to stop this whole thing before it’s too late.”
“Tell me,” Edgerrin said. “But first, Caleb, you have to go live. Right after the President’s mock speech for calm. We need you to be the voice of this psychic business. To assure people it can be controlled. That the visions aren’t all true, and not every spouse is acting on unfaithful thoughts, and not everyone is out to get them, and their dead aren’t around every corner, haunting them…”
Caleb nodded. “I know. That’s my priority and that’s why we will be delegating. Phoebe, you need to find Orlando.
“I had a vision,” she said. “He was… something else. Somewhere beyond this reality, and very much different than here. He may be…”
Caleb shook his head. “I know, he’s in trouble.”
“I felt him,” Phoebe said, “was right there with him, and yet lost him. But he’s… close.”
“And the twins,” Caleb said. “We need to get to them. Fast.”
She nodded. “Of course. Couldn’t stop me from looking for them if you wanted to.”
“But they have the sphere, blocking our visions.”
Phoebe swallowed hard. Her expression turned grave and her eyes pleaded before she spoke. “They have a part to play, a big one. The Custodian warned me, and I sent them away…”
“—To be safe. Don’t worry. We’ll get them.”
“But Orlando’s mother… What if she’s dead or insane? And they’re all alone. Alaska…”
Caleb cleared his throat. “Edgerrin, can you secure a plane or send a trusted unit up there?”
“Yeah, we should be able to.”
“Please…” Phoebe said.
Xavier coughed and tried to get back into the planning. “What about Victoria and the other team, once we’re online?”
“They’re going to remote view the prescription medicine you saw. Find its connection, if there is one, to all this. And dig deeper. She knows the drill by now.”
Phoebe nodded. “Her team found Nan Madol…”
“Although that might be a ruse?” Edgerrin asked.
“Maybe, maybe not.” Caleb turned to the screen. “Either way, can you scramble a pilot and get a rescue flight out there?”
He sighed. “I’ll see if there’s anyone free and clear of the psychic scourge.”
“Thanks.”
“What about him?” Edgerrin asked, pointing to Xavier.
“Xavier is going to be our testing rod, in a sense,” Caleb said. “Right now, he can’t be relied on for anything, being incapacitated by visions of his own death, in a variety of scenarios that can’t be avoided. He’s given us some tidbits, like the medicine—”
“And a man in red,” Xavier blurted out, without turning around. “A samurai mask. Not sure if that’s real or just symbolic in my mind, pointing to a location, but he’s behind some of this. Maybe the pilot’s actions, maybe something with the twins. And…”
He turned around. “Antarctica?”
“What?” Caleb shook his head. “Too much to process right now. One step at a time. The medicine. Orlando and the twins. Alexander…”
“The pilot, though,” Phoebe brought up. “Anything else from his background? I mean, he could have killed us all at any time.”
“I don’t know,” Caleb said. “But it was strange. He moved slowly, awkwardly, almost like he was acting under the influence of something, or like he was being controlled.”
Edgerrin shrugged. “There was nothing in his file that I saw. Exemplary public servant, pilot of countless missions.”
“Okay. In any case, let’s move. I’m ready when you are for the broadcast. Assuming you can upload it and people are able to view it.”
“They will, in limited areas, and as we restore service, we’ll keep it in a loop, trying to calm people down and buy us some time to figure this out.”
Caleb grabbed a nearby chair and sat down. He looked to Xavier and Diana. “One more thing. This… shield around the Earth. We have to talk about it.”
“What shield?” Edgerrin asked.
“Later. But just… we are going to have a choice to make. A similar one made by our predecessors thousands of years ago.”
“Which is?”
“Protection from a rogue species-annihilating comet, or the suffering we’re currently undergoing.”
Edgerrin blinked at him incredulously.
“Can you shut it down?” Phoebe asked. “With the Emerald Tablet?”
Caleb sighed without looking up. “There must be a way, but I can’t see it yet.”
Phoebe clapped her brother on the back. “Then let’s go. And figure it out along the way.”
Rolling his eyes, Caleb nodded. “As usual.”
6
Victoria left the chapel after one last prayer. One more moment of reflection in front of the candles flickering behind their scarlet glass votives, and she moved back as the church’s patron saint looked on with an expression she thought seemed like pity.
Justifiably so.
Pity for us mortals locked here in this sad struggle. What did it all mean? she wondered at just this moment, and she thought about the generations that had come and gone since his time. Thought about how some maybe had it easy comparatively, and that every age had its own struggle. World wars, plagues, natural disasters and looming cosmic threats. They all had their battles to wage, their dragons to slay.
This is ours.
As she finished her prayer, she had a fleeting thought: that maybe this wasn’t her first go-around. Maybe not her first epic rodeo, and how it wouldn’t make sense if some people got born into the world and only suffered war, plague and death and knew nothing of peace; never got to grow old and watch their children thrive and have nothing of the hell others had thrown in their path.