CHAPTER 17 — SIREN
Morris and Michael smiled at Jane the next day as she entered the cafeteria. Morris stood and hugged her. She hesitated at first, then locked her arms around his neck, finding that she needed the embrace. He pulled away and examined her face intently. He reached up and placed his hand under her chin, holding her face to the side.
“I’m fine. He didn’t touch me.”
“He should be glad of that.” They sat together next to Michael. Morris had already selected breakfast foods for Jane and pushed the tray over to her.
“So what happened?” Michael asked.
Morris continued to stare at her, his concerned expression remaining on his face.
She regarded them both. “He tried to get me to use my abilities.” She thought about it for a moment. “You were right. I think he is looking for something.”
“What did he do, Jane?” Michael asked apprehensively.
“He pushed me. He asked me questions about my father. Things I wouldn’t have expected him to ask me about in a million years. There were things on the table: marbles, Jenga blocks, cards and a baseball. Did they have those things when you were there?”
“Yes,” Morris replied immediately. “I couldn’t do much with them, though. I just rolled the marbles around a bit. I could lift some of them, but it took a lot of concentration. They obviously didn’t turn the field down very much.”
“Well, he was prepared, and he knew exactly what to say and…I don’t know what’s going to happen if he takes me in there again,” she said, looking down at the food in front of her.
“So did you do anything? Did you use your abilities at all?” Morris asked.
“Not at first, but before the field went back up I used some of the marbles to break the glass on the wall.”
Morris leaned back in his chair. “I couldn’t have done that. I could barely roll them around the table without getting a headache,” he said, shaking his head in amazement.
“I was able to see through to the room on the other side of the glass. It was hard to concentrate, but I got a few glimpses into what was going on. I know a few things about how the dampening field works.”
Morris and Michael looked at each other, then turned back to her, leaning in closer.
“Tell us,” Michael said excitedly.
“It’s scattered throughout the complex. It’s not just one object we’re dealing with; it’s multiple devices, I think five or six of them that work for each specific section. There’s one main device that’s generating the field, and the others are scattered throughout the other sections. They’re more like carriers or extenders. They don’t generate the field.”
“That must be why we can get a telepathic signal in some places, but not others. That’s why there are gaps,” Morris added.
“Exactly,” said Michael. “So is there a way to take them down?”
“Well, we shouldn’t be going for the secondary devices; they only extend the range,” Jane replied.
“Where’s the main device? The one that generates the field?”
“I’m not too sure. I tried to locate it, but I couldn’t.”
“We have to find it,” Morris said.
“We’ll need to bring the others in on this too,” Michael added.
The three of them looked around at the tables. Sophia and Colin were seated at the far end of the room, while Joel, Carl and Ciara were sitting at a table near them. Carl and Joel looked up at them from time to time.
Jane turned back around. “Yes, we’re going to need everyone’s help. We’ll have to pool our abilities,” she said. “Where in the facility is the signal weakest, do you think?”
“The arboretum,” Michael answered without hesitation.
“Okay, we’ll go there—the three of us. We can scan the area together and try to find it. Do you think if you guys are sitting next to me we’ll have enough power between the three of us to scan the area?”
They looked at each other. “With you there? Yes,” Morris answered. “It won’t be easy, though, pushing through the field, but if we try hard enough I think we should be able to.”
“What are we going to do if we manage to turn it off?” Michael asked as his brow furrowed. He glanced between them both.
“We’re getting the heck out of here!” Morris replied.
“What I mean is, what about the guards? And the employees even—a lot of them are armed.”
“With all of us working together we can create enough fireworks to scare them. It will be enough for them to evacuate before us, and once we’re outside we’ll be able to protect ourselves. I doubt any of them are paid enough to risk their lives over anything going on in here.”
“And when we get to the surface?” Jane asked.
“We’ll be fine,” Morris said. “I can drive. Ciara can influence somebody to give us a car if she has to; I know she’s good at that kind of thing. She told me before. I know it’s not a good thing to do, but under the circumstances, I’m not too concerned about it.” He looked to them for agreement.
“Or we just take one of theirs. Can any of the others drive?” Jane asked, looking over her shoulder again.
“We’ll deal with that later,” Morris answered.
“They’ll resist us leaving,” Michael said.
“I know,” Jane replied as she turned back around to face them. “I’m anticipating that fully.”
They left the cafeteria then, and on their way through the main hallway, Carl and Joel approached from behind.
“Hey,” Carl called out to them.
They turned around. Jane had not been introduced to either of the two yet; she regarded them as they approached at a light jog.
“Hi, you’re Jane, aren’t you? I’m Carl.” He was tall and well-built with longish sandy blonde hair. Jane took his hand as he extended it. “This is Joel,” he said, and Jane took his hand too. Joel was also tall, with a slimmer, more lithe frame, and unkempt, spiky black hair. Jane guessed they were both her age or slightly older.
“Nice to meet you,” she replied, smiling as she took both of their hands in turn.
“You’re planning something, aren’t you?” Carl asked as he looked at the three of them.
Morris exchanged a glance with Jane before answering. “Yes, we do have an idea, but we’re not sure about it just yet, guys. We want to keep it as low profile as possible. Don’t tell any of the others about it for now.”
“Okay,” Carl said. “What are you going to do?”
The three of them hesitated, and a momentary silence followed.
“Let’s not talk about it here. In fact, I don’t know where it’s safe to talk about it,” Morris said, lowering his voice to a near whisper. A technician walked behind them in the hallway in front of the arboretum. She was working on a tablet, and she looked up briefly as she passed. They stared at the ground, avoiding her gaze until she was out of sight.
“Yeah, I get what you mean,” Carl said. “But you let us in on this soon, okay? If you’ve got some kind of plan in the works we want to know about it, and we want to help.”
“Sure,” Michael replied.
Joel was staring at Michael now. “Did he do that to you?” he asked.
Michael hesitated. “Yes,” he replied.
Joel shook his head as he stared at Michael’s wounds. “Why?” he asked and looked to Carl. “What’s changed? Has he completely lost his mind?”
“Maybe. And that could be an advantage, right?” Carl asked.
Morris nodded in agreement.
“Okay, keep us informed,” Carl said. They smiled and turned, walking through to the second section where the gymnasium and recreation rooms were located.
Moments later, Morris, Michael and Jane were in the arboretum, sitting on the white metal benches against the back wall. Michael told Jane that it reminded him of a small section of Central Park. He had been there once when he was twelve. It was beautiful, but still, Jane didn’t want to be there. Artificial lamps gave additional ill
umination from overhead. This aspect of it she disliked the most. The rest of it—the trees and the flowers that grew there—were actually beautiful.
The entrance to the arboretum was a glass door that, when closed, was exactly flush with the glass wall in which it was imbedded. People in lab coats and carrying digital devices walked through the main corridor, absorbed in work and paying them no attention. They probably regarded the trio as muzzled dogs, Jane thought: harmless enough to ignore.
Jane sat in the centre with Michael on her left and Morris on her right. They had already discussed what to do and were ready. With Jane expanding their vision, they knew they would have a chance of reaching their thoughts through the facility and finding the exact location of the device.
Morris turned to her as the corridor cleared. He took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s give it a try,” he said. “Jane, you first. See what you can do.”
The technical term for what they were doing was “remote viewing.” They renounced this, though, in favour of the more simple street phrase by which it had become known: Vision. Jane cleared her mind and tried to find whatever filament of energy was supposedly somewhere inside her. As she focussed, she could sense something in her radiating outward, like light, but she wasn’t sure if this was the thing she needed.
She thought now that the “something” that Michael first referred to had perhaps always been there, but had faded into the background of her awareness like white noise. The only thing that had occurred to her in the last few days was the effect she would sometimes have on people. She would shake their hand and they would hesitate or slur their words for a second, as though they had received a mild electric shock. Sometimes, people would recoil at her words, or even at her thoughts. She had always thought that this was an aspect of having vision. Had that been a misapprehension? She wondered now.
She continued to focus and looked at her friends on either side. “Can you see anything yet?” she asked.
“No. Give me a second. It’s hard. It’s like pushing myself up from the bottom of the ocean,” Morris said, closing his eyes again.
“I got into the cafeteria. I could see in there for a moment, then I lost my concentration. It’s like I weigh a tonne,” Michael added.
“Keep trying guys, we’ll get it.” Jane’s gaze drifted up to the flat series of lights overhead, and she squinted. She closed her eyes and found that the light penetrating her closed lids helped close off the chatter of her basic thoughts. With her mind clear, she began to drift.
As she continued to move into this unusual stillness, she had the sensation that her arms were wings and that her body was that of a bird’s. Her mind was moulded into this shape like hot, flowing wax, and then suddenly—from some unknown source—life was breathed into it and she took command of the shape. She was flying over the still waters in Wexford, with the crimson disc of the summer sun over the water. She flew rapidly across the landscape, the warm wind caressing the feathers under her wings that had so recently taken shape. That was when she found the ability inside her; it did exist and it had an on switch. She pushed it.
She felt the wave extend from her in a silent vibration. Right in front of her she heard the screech of the eagle that had become her body; it sounded like a beautiful, organic siren.
“Whoa. What did you do?” she heard Michael say. “Whatever it is, keep doing it. I’m getting farther through the facility.”
She could only barely hear him, as the wind had taken her beyond the ocean and past the cliffs she knew by heart. She kept the switch in the “on” position; she found this easy to do now that she had found her focus. The ocean was below her now, and she went down close to it as her speed increased. The blue passed by her rapidly and became a blur as she felt the endless warm wind underneath her. White streaks of foam exploded up towards her, but she rocketed past them, drifting from left to right with incredible ease. She only had to tilt her wings by a couple of degrees to make a huge turn. Morris then began to speak again from the world that was now aside from her.
“I’m going through the metallic door to the control room,” he said, his voice trembling. He paused. “I see it, Jane. The main device is in there at the back of the room. It’s a cube. It’s got a digital display and some kind of simple antennae.”
“Nice going,” she said. Her voice sounded distant, as though she were in a dream. Now she pulled her wings back and flowed upward towards the sun. “Can you find more of them?”
“I think I’ve got one,” Michael said, the struggle evident in his voice.
She heard Morris gasp. The exotic vista that Jane had been flying through so peacefully faded from her view like vanishing watercolors. She turned to him and squinted in the bright light.
“There are six devices in total, from what I can tell,” Morris said.
“How did you find them?’ Michael asked.
“It was you, Jane—it was whatever you were doing. I was able to see through the facility so clearly. There’s one in the science lab at the end of the main corridor, just out here to the right. The main device is through the metallic door at the back of the second corridor. That’s our best bet. It leads to the control room, and there’s another section beyond that leading to the surface. We’ve seen already that the science staff and the other employees can come and go as they please. They have those implants in their wrists. From what I can tell, the field diminishes in proportion to distance.”
“So,” Michael said, “we need a way into the control room.”
“Yes,” Morris said.
Just then a woman whom Jane had noticed in the facility previously walked past the window in front of the arboretum. She looked in at them—specifically, at Jane. The woman had a concerned expression on her face, and Jane thought she could detect sympathy. Jane took a chance and smiled. The woman smiled back, hesitantly but warmly. She kept on walking slowly past the arboretum until she was out of sight. She had the gait of somebody who was burdened with guilt.
“Do you know anything about that woman?” Jane asked, turning reflexively to Morris.
“Her name is Charlotte. I think she’s some kind of administrator: some sort of assistant to Lucas, but I’m not sure to what extent. I’ve definitely seen him ask her to do stuff for him. I don’t think she likes him too much…and I kind of get the distinct impression that she doesn’t like being here.”