“Stay calm or you will lose the connection. The Anu have very little security at this level of consciousness. Their data banks are completely open.”
Schematics of the ship burst through her brain, downloading into her mind as if it were downloading onto a computer. She felt herself filling with information she couldn’t comprehend. Images and ideas filled her, thousands a second until suddenly the last bits of information filled her mind and stopped.
“Holy shit,” she said, breathless even in her astral body. She could feel the fatigue growing, weighing her down.
“Come back to your body now,” Michael said, his voice tense. “They are coming.”
She took a deep breath and felt her consciousness shoot down from the orbit of the planet, through the atmosphere, the sky, and the mountain, until it plopped back into her head.
All at once she opened her eyes with a gasp. The entire group looked at her wide-eyed as they sat staring at her in the center of the room.
“What?” she asked.
“We’ve been out for about ten minutes. Your eyeballs were going crazy,” Cassie said, still sitting beside her. “What happened?”
“I was inside the Anu ship, and I downloaded a ton of information into my brain. I can’t really make sense of it. Crap, I’m tired.”
“The bombs have stopped,” Michael announced. The earth had stopped shaking and the booms from outside had come to a halt.
“Are we safe?” one of the shifters asked. A child began to cry at the back of the room.
“For now,” Michael told them.
“All right, everyone,” Xavier started. “Back to your rooms. We’ll resume our normal schedule after we check the damage. For now, let’s everyone stay in your private chambers.”
Magda hung back as the others filtered out of the meditation room. “What was that all about?” Cassie asked her, Circe standing right beside her.
“I’ve got all this stuff in my head. It’s crazy. It was like it downloaded straight into my brain.”
“I know what you’re talking about,” Circe said. “I’ve had it happen to me too.”
“So have I,” Cassie said.
“I can’t make sense of it yet, but I think it has something to do with the Anu ships and how they are built. Seriously, guys, I’m not an engineer or anything. I can’t make heads nor tails of it.”
“Maybe you should talk to Emilia and Rafe. They might be able to find a way to help you categorize the data,” Cassie suggested.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Magda agreed.
After everyone else left the meditation room, they went to Emilia’s workshop and explained what was going on. Cassie left to find Rafe while Emilia thought about how she could download the information inside Magda’s head.
“Sit in the terminal chair and we’ll put you into The Program. That way I’ll have direct access to your mind through the computer,” Emilia said.
A few moments later, Rafe arrived and helped Emilia get Magda plugged into the terminal. She took a deep breath as she laid back with the terminal helmet securely strapped to her head. It had been a while since she’d entered The Program through a terminal and didn’t know what to expect.
“All right, Magda, you’re ready to go,” Emilia said.
Chapter Fourteen
Magda closed her eyes and waited for the terminal to help her descend through the vast levels of her mind. The descent happened quickly and she found herself in her starting room—the bedroom she had as a child before the war. It made her nostalgic for times past, but there was little time to waste.
She opened her bedroom door and stepped out into the scene before her. It seemed as if she’d entered a vast warehouse of computers. Lights blinked on the rows and rows of massive hard drives. Walking down the center aisle, she looked left and right for some indication of how she might access the vast storehouse of information on the drives.
Finally, Magda came to the end of the rows and found what looked like a typical computer monitor, sitting on a desk with a mouse and a keyboard. She sat in the office chair waiting there and clicked on the mouse.
“Ready for download,” it said. She rose an eyebrow. How was she supposed to do that? Looking around, she found a regular desktop computer sitting off to the side of the desk. It had normal USB ports in the front. Magda closed her eyes and clenched her hand, focusing on the information the Anu ship had uploaded into her mind.
She opened her eyes and unfurled her fingers to find a thumb drive sitting in her palm. Putting the drive into the USB port, she took a deep breath and let it out. She pressed “enter” on the keyboard and waited. A second later, a download bar appeared, showing her the progress.
Magda had no idea how this was going to make it possible for Emilia and Rafe to access the information, but that wasn’t for her to figure out. She was just the mental hacker, not a computer genius like Emilia.
“Download complete,” the screen said.
She clicked on the new file on the desktop and found organized folders labeled with the type of information available there. Looking over the folders, she read each title, most of which didn’t make any sense. She clicked on the first one that caught her eye. It said, “Central Energy System.”
The files that opened were complete gibberish to her. It made no sense. Sighing, she closed the file and stood from the chair. A few moments later, she opened her eyes in Emilia’s laboratory.
“Did it work?” Rafe asked her, his amber eyes glowing with intensity.
“I think so,” Magda said, sitting up from the reclining chair.
“The information is populating in my system,” Emilia said. “I’ll be able to access it soon.”
Everyone stood behind Emilia as she sat in front of her computer screen, waiting. When the processing bar completed, she clicked on the folder to open it up.
“What is all this?” she asked, clicking on random files.
“I have no idea. I think it’s information about how the Anu’s ships work.”
“That is exactly what it is,” said Michael. Everyone turned to look at him as he came through the door.
“What do we use this for?” Emilia asked, confusion in her voice.
“Check a file named Central Energy System,” Magda suggested. It was as good an idea as any. There had to be a reason her subconscious gave her the impulse to open the file. Events inside The Program were rarely random.
Emilia turned back to her computer and found the file. She and Rafe read through the information, not looking up or speaking as they did. Magda could see their stunned faces as she watched from the terminal chair.
“What?” she asked. They didn’t respond, but Rafe put up a finger, suggesting for everyone to wait.
“This can’t be right,” Emilia said.
“It is,” Rafe said.
“What?”
“The Anu ships are all interconnected. Their main energy source runs off something like a wireless network. Basically, if we interfere with that network, the entire armada fails. They have basic life support systems, but no weapons, no propulsion. They’d be completely vulnerable to an attack.”
“But how are we supposed to shut down the power to their ships?” Magda asked, confused.
“You see, their power system is a massive information network. They basically have no data security, essentially no virus protection. If we could install a virus into their system, we could bring down the entire armada in a matter of minutes.”
“Why don’t they have any security?” Cassie asked.
“Because they don’t expect any interference from the races they conquer. That is the arrogance of the Anu,” Michael explained.
“So what we need is a virus,” Magda said, hopping off the terminal chair and coming to stand behind Emilia. Looking at the schematics on the screen, she had no idea how Rafe and Emilia could tell what they were looking at.
“Precisely,” Emilia agreed, already typing in a new window. “It’s a simple, self-replicati
ng algorithm that cannot be stopped once it’s started. All we need is a way to install it into the ship.”
“And you’ve already done a mental transfer of data, Magda. You can really do this,” Rafe said, putting his hands on her shoulders and smiling brightly.
“What then? They’ll figure out how to reverse the virus, and we’ll be right back where we started.”
“Your people must attack them first,” Michael said.
“How?” Magda asked. “We don’t have spaceships.”
“The Anu ships exist in both dimensions. They can be attacked from the fourth dimension. There, you need no spaceships, just your minds.”
Chapter Fifteen
“We’ll need all the groups involved,” Michael said. “The ascension requires a large number of minds.”
“But we can’t contact them since the attack, and we’re trapped inside this mountain,” Circe said, standing near the caved-in entrance of the cavern.
“Witches are telepathic. You must contact the others that way. Any means of communication available, use it.”
“But our group hasn’t even broken through yet,” Magda protested, following Michael as the entire population of the mountain filed toward the meditation room for the second time since the attack. “They don’t even want to do this now. Most of these people are terrified and tired.”
“This is the most important thing that we do right now,” Michael told her as they entered the room. “The children will help them.”
“What do you mean? The babies?” Magda asked.
“Yes. The hybrid babies. You already know they are gifted. It is time we acknowledge that and utilize their gifts.”
Magda watched him in dread as he walked to the center of the room. The last thing she wanted was for the shifters to have another reason to fear the babies.
“People of New San Diego. I know you are tired, but we are very close. You all know, I was a member of The Council of the Seventh House. I gave Cassie her great powers and have helped Magda learn to use hers. I have been watching humanity for thousands upon thousands of years and my greatest hope is to help you throw off the chains the Anu have around your necks.
“The children born from the girls who had been inside the domes are human/Anu hybrids. These children have capacities with the fourth dimension beyond anything the average human could imagine. I know that it is frightening and strange, but I ask that you recognize these special children for what they are and allow them to help catalyze this group into ascension.”
“Why would we trust these bastard children to help us?” an angry mountain lion shifter asked.
“The Anu exist in the third and fourth dimensions simultaneously. But because of their intense negativity, they cannot move further. They needed you and the hybrid children to give them that power. But these children are loved by human mothers. They are essentially human beings. They are as human as any one of you.” He looked around the room, giving them all knowing looks. The fact was that few of the members of New San Diego were truly human anymore. Only the kids who had been kept in the domes had that distinction.
“Now, please, bring the children to the front and place them in these chairs.” Michael hit a panel on the floor with his foot and a circle of small chairs rose from the floor, surrounding the place where Circe, Cassie, and Magda usually sat.
The mothers brought their children to the center of the room and placed them in the small chairs, taking a seat right in front of them. Michael stepped back and Circe took over.
“Witches, please reach out to all connected covens and communicate we are about to begin our meditation. The rest of the shifters’ groups know our schedules, so we can hope they are with us. We are ready to begin.”
The three women sat at the center of the room with the babies in a semicircle around them. The lights on the walls began to buzz and zoom as if they had been powered up in a way Magda had never seen before.
Cassie led the group in their breathing exercises and they slowly, collectively began to move into deep meditation. Magda found herself in a field of wild flowers with an immense blue sky shining overhead.
She could feel the minds of the others in the room with her physical body, but could not yet see them in the astral realm, the fourth dimension. She continued to focus, knowing there was a great deal of intention supporting them at that very moment in time.
Suddenly, figures began to pop into the field where she stood. At first it was just Cassie and Circe, then a few of the shifters, followed by dozens more. Circe’s coven, several of Rafe’s old pack mates, the dome kids, the moms. Then the rest of the shifters popped in. Shifters Magda had never met before popped in. The field was flooded with minds. Finally, she saw the babies pop in. They had been lagging behind, helping the other minds ascend before them.
Magda was filled with a flood of glee that she had never experienced before. It was like pure bliss topped with ice cream and orgasms. She felt as if she was flying through the air but was still standing on the ground. The people around her were hugging and kissing, full of smiles. Singing broke out among the group. Magda had never felt so at one with everyone and everything ever before.
Chapter Sixteen
“The virus is ready,” Rafe said. “You just have to access it in your mind.”
“How?”
“However you did it before,” he said.
“Okay. I’ll try,” Magda said, taking a seat in the terminal chair. Ever since the group had ascended, everyone was on high alert. They completed the virus in less than twenty-four hours and had Magda in the terminal chair less than an hour later.
When she woke up inside The Program, she hurried from her starting room and into the bank of computers she’d downloaded the Anu data into before. This time, when she came to the access point, she pressed her finger to the computer the way she had in the Anu ship. In an instant, she felt the information uploading into her mind.
Once it was finished, she concentrated and felt herself moving out of the virtual computer room and into the upper atmosphere. She had to get the virus into the Anu ship so that the rest of her people could attack.
Floating in the starry sky, she could see the Anu armada orbiting her planet. Slowly, she swam through space toward the largest ship, the one she'd been in before. A sense of dread overtook her and she almost turned back.
Inside her mind, she could hear Michael's voice. "I'm right here. I will come if you need me." That gave her the confidence to keep going.
When she reached the side of the Anu ship, she took a deep breath and passed through the outer walls and into the interior. This time she was in a strange chamber where long tubes filled with liquid held suspended life forms. There seemed to be all manner of creatures and plants inside the cells.
From what she understood, the Anu had been at their breeding programs for quite some time. Millions of years. They had enslaved multitudes of races on thousands of planets in the past. It was time that they were stopped.
Allowing the Anu to continue with their experimentation on living beings was unconscionable and she didn't understand why the Council allowed them to continue at all. There were things that she didn't comprehend at her level of consciousness, but she believed she knew the difference between right and wrong. What the Anu did was definitely wrong.
As she walked through the laboratory chamber, she heard noise coming from the hallway. The Anu could see her in her astral form, even if they were in physical bodies, because they existed in both dimensions simultaneously. She had to hide. Floating behind one of the cells, she squeezed into an impossibly small crevice her physical body would never fit into.
The beings came into the room. Anu. Their seven-foot-tall frames, elongated skulls, and long slender fingers frightened her. She'd heard the stories from girls who remembered what had been done to them in the breeding room. Not everyone remembered, but some of them did, and it had left them scarred.
The Anu scientists walked past each cell, inspecting them
and reading the output from the internal sensors. Magda squeezed back as they approached and slipped through the wall into the next chamber. Luckily, this room was empty. It seemed to be some kind of Anu bedroom.
She had to find her way back to the Anu mainframe to inject the virus. Wondering around the ship like this was not safe. She searched her mind, trying to access the data she'd downloaded before. Where was the mainframe? She'd found it so easily the first time.
Scanning her mind, she couldn't come up with the files. Where had they gone? Crap. Had she transferred them completely into Emilia's computer? Or was she just not able to find them in the clutter of her own mind.
"Michael," she called out to him through time and space. "I can't find the mainframe."
"It is at the center of the ship," she heard him say. "You must be careful. If they find you, even in astral form, they can jail you."
"Now you tell me," she muttered.
She closed her eyes and willed herself to appear near the mainframe of the ship's computer. Nothing happened. She was going to have to find it by herself. At least she had some general direction to go. She just had to keep heading toward the center of the ship and she'd find it. No problem.
Moving toward the next wall, she took a deep breath, and pressed through. She opened her senses to check if there was anyone in the next room. She heard voices, heartbeats, breath. Can't go that way.
Instead, she continued through the walls, moving through metal and wire between the ship's rooms. When an astral hand pushed through the wall and grabbed her arm, she was taken by surprise. It yanked her through the wall and brought her into the light of the room. Words filtered into her mind.
"Human. What are you doing?"
"She is a threat," another one said. "Take her to the holding cell."
"Wait," she cried out. But it was no use. They didn't listen to her and didn't care. Part of her was terrified they would rape her, even out of her body. They dragged her astral form through the ship and threw her weightless body into a dark black room. When the door closed behind her, she was left in darkness.