So many here. All these psychics, most rounded up, imprisoned. Some — he saw with a surge of pride — were a greenish hue, and he quickly learned these were still unaccounted for, roaming free.
All the others were so tempting, a massive 3D tree with folders as leaves, all with familiar names.
Just one he needed right now.
Had to get the location of this one in real space, get to it and then go wireless and communicate to Nina on the secured address she had provided.
She needed this one, and Orlando was already slipping past the locks and gates, and entering the file, downloading and scanning the data at light speed.
Damn, this is fun.
Found it, he sent the coordinates and the defense schematics over to Nina’s phone.
Hopefully in time, and hopefully she hadn’t left the facility yet. She’d soon be making her way to Xavier Montross, aka Mason Calderon.
And God help whoever got in her way.
Orlando could almost feel his body — somewhere — smiling.
9
Xavier Montross roused himself from a light nap and blinked away the tug of a deeper sleep, the kind that he hadn’t enjoyed in weeks. When his vision cleared, he saw with some satisfaction that not only wasn’t he alone, but the faces of his captors — his adversaries — were far from confident.
“What’s up, kids?” He stretched his neck, rolled his head this way and that, cracking joints. Miriam was here, looking grim but trying to stay composed, and so was Mason’s old friend, General Asiro Bensari. “Can I have some water?”
Moments later he realized his mistake. This wasn’t the room he had been in previously. Not even close. A dark chamber, with an inclined area rising away from him, and staggered seating as if for a movie or sporting event. Quickly he saw the main attraction wasn’t Montross at all, but what was behind him.
He realized it first by the reflection in their eyes.
Lightning. Only, a sharper, more brilliant blue, flickering and dancing across their pupils, coming from…
He groaned and tried to turn his head. Felt like he was tugging a huge weight along with the motion.
“Let me help.” Miriam took the handles of his chair, just under the cuffs still secured around his wrists, and turned him toward the sight. “Welcome to the future.”
A stiff breeze rushed in from the open windows to his left, overlooking a vast field, the dimensions of which were lost in a haze of sparks and arcing lightning — all slicing like a witch’s jagged fingernails from what looked like a giant obelisk. A pillar, wide at the bottom and tapering to a slighter, spherical point, stood in the center of the maelstrom of electric fury. It might have been night. It might have been day. Montross had no idea, not with the intensity of the display below.
“What am I looking at? My nephew had a globe that made that kind of light. From Spencer’s Gift Store, I think.”
“You know you’ve seen this before,” Miriam said.
“Quit bullshitting,” General Bensari added gruffly. “We don’t have time.”
Montross kept his focus on the pair beside him, but let his mind drift back into the calmness of his recent sleep, like relaxing a muscle soon after use. “Yeah it looks familiar,” he said in a droning voice while fidgeting in his seat and letting his mind free. “Brings to mind…fringe science. Wacky energy theories. Universal power for all…”
“An inventor’s name perhaps?
“Actually I was thinking of the electric car, but yeah.” He looked up at Miriam, smiling. “Tesla?”
She smiled back, just slightly, as Asiro rolled his eyes. “Great, now let’s get on with it, I’m ready to try this out.”
Montross was about to start probing the device below, to see what it might mean for himself and Stargate especially, when the general’s words stopped him cold. Only then did he catch something else, down below. In the sparkling lightning bursts, he noticed the ground wasn’t empty, but filled with a collection of figures. People standing about, arms out. Hair wild, dancing in the electro-statically charged wind.
“What the hell are they doing?”
The lightning reflected in Asiro’s eyes took on a new meaning, and Montross shuddered. “What did you do?”
Miriam’s hand settled on Montross’ shoulder. Her touch was strange, wispy and vibrating almost with odd sensations. She squeezed.
Something flickered at the base of his skull and he saw it now, without asking for any such show. Not like I wasn’t about to figure it out…
Down on the field, where the figures stood now, but this was earlier. Just at dusk, or maybe the day before or the day before that, depending on how long Montross had been down in captivity, drugged and dreaming.
General Asiro Bensari, in full uniform. Tentative at first, standing with several others, heads bowed before the massive black pylon. Inert, silent and massive until a humming sound arose, along with a metallic clanking of gears turning, whirring. The stars just coming out, twinkling overhead sheepishly, as if in awe of the power stirring below.
From the huge construction: flickers, wisps of energy, then a full roaring charge that brings gasps and cries among the six men and three women. Arms out, hair wild and sizzling, eyes reflecting all the power and ferocity of the chaotic electrical-plasma arms. The very air fills with power and waves upon waves of energy fall upon the unshielded volunteers, accepting and hoping for something in return…
“Not all of us were born with powers, Mr. Montross.”
Montross’ snapped eyes open. “My god, those people. You…”
General Bensari rubbed his temples, looked down at the field longingly and jealously, then back to Montross. “Now, I have such visions…”
Miriam leaned in, and closed the curtains as the light show dimmed. “Such visions, but he does not yet know what to do with them.”
Montross struggled against the chair, still not accepting or believing anything these people said — or especially what they showed him. Although… It felt like the truth in this case. “And this is where I come in? You need training?”
“Either that,” Miriam said, “or you do our work for us.”
Montross narrowed his eyes. “Just what the hell are you people looking for?”
Later, Montross would recall the next few hours as a blur of questions and more questions, of a move to a darker room, and then a transport back to the Pentagon. At one point first however, Miriam left them, answering a call where Montross heard just snippets of her words. Something about their crow being ‘almost ready’, and the time approaching. He wondered if she had been ‘enhanced’ as well, or if she was something else entirely. It might explain a lot. But he felt if he asked, the resulting answer would have been far more complicated, or not answered in any meaningful way, like usual.
“You will finish teaching General Bensari,” she said on the way out, escorted by several armed soldiers. “Instruct him on what he needs to know to use his newfound ‘gifts’ and to then teach the new recruits. The right questions to ask, if I recall the Stargate nomenclature from the copious notes we’ve confiscated.”
Here we go, Montross thought. “Damn it, this is exactly the reason I didn’t tell you people what we could do. Not just power in the wrong hands…” He gave the general a look like he was some inexperienced kid off the street instead of a Four-Star commander. “It’s not something that can be taught in hours, or even days. Those of us in the Morpheus Initiative? We’ve had it all our lives, a muscle we’ve toned and enhanced, suffered and repaired throughout the years of our lives. It can’t be—”