The Ethereal Vision

  ***

  The dam was wide open, and a blinding light poured out of it.

  Jane opened her eyes in the white room.

  Lucas had returned to his seat and was staring at her; his eyes were filled with abject terror. A red light fell all around them, bathing their faces in strange, crimson hues. A klaxon began blaring overhead.

  She raised her head higher as she spoke to him. “Do you want to know what power is, Mr. Johnson?” she asked in a grim, flat tone. The marbles rose from the bowl in front of her, approximately two hundred of them, and began to move in a circular motion over their heads. The air circulated with them as they created a cyclonic breeze. Lucas was staring at the marbles as they flew through the air above, illuminated by the flashing red lights. He began to tremble visibly and turned towards the door, but she grabbed him easily and kept him pressed down against the chair. He squirmed, unable to move, locked in her grip.

  “LOCK THE FACILITY DOWN!” he screamed.

  The marbles began to circulate in a more violent fashion as their locus of motion grew. Some of them impacted the reflective glass, which broke yet again, shattering all around them. Jane saw three technicians on the other side of the room scurry towards a door. They were gone from the room before she had a chance to react.

  She turned her focus back to Lucas.

  “Power is what I have…and what you don’t.” She picked him up from the chair and threw him backward. He slammed into the wall at the far side of the room and fell to the floor in a heap, unconscious. She looked up at the cyclone of marbles over her as they flashed in the light from the pulsing red beacons. She withdrew her power from them and they dropped to the floor all at once, scattering everywhere and bouncing and rolling all over the room.

  Then she walked slowly from behind the table and approached Lucas. She looked to her left at the glass from the destroyed butterfly. An idea came to her.

  She reached out a hand towards the floor, palm facing down, and the shards of glass began to swirl and rise into the air. She turned her palm upward when she had collected all of the remnants. They remained there above her palm, swirling in a vortex, reflecting the red lights from overhead and casting tremendously unusual spectral dances around the room. She easily recast the butterfly, watching as the trail of bright, white light passed over its form and the glass fed into its structure. She smiled when it was fully formed, and she ran her fingers across it, thinking of Max.

  She stood and looked into the room on her left. She saw advanced computer systems and rows of monitors in the small, rectangular space. She wanted to go and look at them, to see what they had been doing in there, but she didn’t think there was time for that, and she didn’t feel like taking any further risks.

  She went to the door and pulled the handle. It was locked. She remembered now; Lucas had given the order to lock down the facility. It didn’t matter. She walked back across the room, stopped and then turned and walked towards the door. The psychokinetic force rose in front of her like a wave, and the entire door frame exploded outward into the hallway, cracking into two pieces that ricocheted off the opposite wall. She didn’t stop walking. She stepped over the remains of the door, wondering, as she returned to the main section of the facility, who had deactivated the suppression device.