Broken Pixels (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 4) (23 page)

Behind them another shadow separated from the dark pavement and stood, wavering for a moment. “Mara?” It was Cam. “What happened?”

The female silhouette turned away from Mara. Now walking to where Cam stood, she held up her crystal toward him and said, “See the light!”

Cam’s gaze shifted to the light, and he froze. His eyes widened, and a lavender light shimmered across his irises. He stared at the crystal with rapt attention. As the young woman approached him, Cam’s head followed the slight bobbing of the crystal in her hand.

Sam pointed through the three other men and yelled to Mara, “Stop her! She’s trying to zap Cam with one of those diodes.”

Raising her hands in front of her, Mara shouted, “Stop!”

The advancing men froze mid-stride. Sam walked up to them and poked the middle one in the chest to make sure he’d been frozen in Time. He then collected the diodes from the outstretched hands of each of them.

Mara approached and said, “What are you doing?”

“Well, I figure if they don’t have their crystals, they can’t go around getting other people addicted to them,” Sam said. He pointed beyond the young men toward Cam and added, “I think you might have been a little slow on the Time trigger. I think she got Cam.”

“Oh, jeez, I hope not,” Mara said. “We just got his head back. And now his brains are scrambled?”

They walked around the stilled men and past the woman whose hand was extended toward Cam’s face. Her crystal cast a faint purple glow on his face. His eyes reflected a much brighter violet.

“Yeah, he’s a goner all right,” Sam said. “What are you gonna do? Maybe you could spin back time a bit, so we can stop her from zapping him.”

Mara shook her head. “I’ll do it if I have to, but I’d rather not. Freezing Time saps my strength pretty quickly, but rolling it back really does a number on me. If Abby is up there at the transceiver node, I won’t be in any shape to deal with her.”

Sam plucked the crystal from the woman’s palm and slipped it into his pocket with the others. “Can you unfreeze Cam without unfreezing the others? Maybe we interrupted the process before she completely messed up his programming or whatever.”

“I suppose so.” Mara’s eyes narrowed as she stared at Cam.

After a moment he jerked forward in a half stumble. Extending his arms to his sides suddenly, he regained his balance and slowly turned his gaze to Sam. It took his eyes a moment to focus.

Sam smiled at him and said, “So what have you got to say?”

A violet sheen passed over Cam’s eyes, and he said, “See the light!”

Sam shook his head. “Yeah, no, so not what I was looking for.”

Cam turned away, but Sam placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “Hold on, man. Wait here until we can decide what to do about you.”

Cam stood still, with a blank look on his face.

Mara pointed at him. “Did you just prompt him?”

“Yeah, why? I didn’t want him wandering off to spread the light or whatever they call it.”

“So maybe you could undo the effects of the diodes on his programming. Could you prompt him to forget that he ever saw the light?” Mara asked.

Sam shrugged. “I suppose, but you have to remember that promptings are temporary most of the time. Most people revert to their regular state of mind after a little time.”

“Yeah, but, in this case, you are prompting him back to his regular state of mind, not away from it. Don’t you think it might stick? Ping said your ability results from manipulating the element of Free Will, right?”

Sam sort of nodded and shrugged again. “Yeah, so?”

“I’m sure, if Cam could exercise his Free Will, he’d prefer not to be under the influence of Abby’s diode. So there’s a good chance it’ll stick. Either way, it won’t hurt to try, even if it is temporary. You could just prompt him again if it wears off.”

“Okay.”

“Well, do it then.”

“All right. All right.” Sam turned to Cam and bent down slightly to get into his line of sight and locked gazes with him. “You never saw the light in this girl’s hand. It never happened.”

“There was no light in her hand. It never happened,” Cam said, in a monotone.

“And you never felt its effects. No weird chanting. And you never had the shiny purple eyes,” he added.

Cam blinked and shook his head. “What? Purple what?”

Mara smiled and said, “Good job, Opie. Now why don’t we get on down the road a bit, and I’ll unfreeze these people. Then we can continue to the transceiver node and figure out what Abby is up to.”

“What’s going on?” Cam asked. “The last thing I remember was something falling from the trees, and you pushed me off the road.”

Mara pointed to the frozen figures and said, “It was them. I think they might have been some kind of lookout for the folks up at the node. Their limb gave out, and they fell on top of us.”

“Yeah, and this chick zapped you with one of her crystals,” Sam said.

Cam craned his neck as if it were stiff. “I feel a little sore, but I don’t remember any of that. Are you sure?”

“No time for long explanations,” Mara said. “Let’s just say Sam has the ability to prompt people, and he was able to reverse the effects of the diodes, at least for now.” She pointed up the road. “We need to get going.”

“Wait,” Sam said. “I have an idea in case we run into more people with crystals.”

“Can we talk about it while we walk?” Mara asked.

“It’ll just take a second,” Sam said. To Cam he said, “Look me in the eyes.”

Cam stared directly at him.

“You can’t see light twinkle, flash, reflect or refract. You can see light and dark, but not rapidly changing degrees of light coming from a single source. Once you see a light, you can only perceive it at the intensity at which you first see it. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” Cam said, deadpan.

Sam shoved his hand into his pocket and held out one of the diodes he had retrieved. Holding it just inches below Cam’s chin, he said, “See the light!”

Cam rolled his eyes and said, “Very funny.”

The road ended at the top of the butte at a closed gate mounted onto tall stone columns. While it looked formidable, the stone walls on either side were less than three feet high, so clearly whoever constructed it was more interested in controlling traffic in and out of the facility than security. Beyond the wrought iron gate stood a large industrial hexagon-shaped building that stood at least three stories tall and was capped with a large glowing dome. The light it emitted swirled in waves, as if someone inside stirred a pot of iridescent brew. A row of what Mara took to be satellite dishes surrounded the base of the dome like a string of pearls. She was certain nothing like this could be found atop Rocky Butte in her version of Portland.

In front of the building stood about fifty people, some of whom carried tiny purple lights. They milled about in front of a bank of doors—the main entrance to the transceiver node facility—not focused on anything at the moment, apparently waiting.

Glancing over her shoulder, Mara caught Cam’s gaze, and waved him and Sam to the right of the gate, where she bent down and duck-walked along the wall for about a hundred feet. Once she thought they were out of the crowd’s earshot, she whispered to Cam, “I didn’t realize this was such a large building. Are you familiar with the layout inside?”

Cam shook his head. “Not at all. I’ve never been here before. Of course everyone knows what the transceiver node does, and you can see its dome from just about anywhere in the valley, but most people have no reason to come up here.”

“Well, we can’t just run up to the front door and bust our way in. For all we know, a maze could be inside. Or the whole place may be radioactive,” Mara said.

Sam leaned in and said, “What exactly were you expecting when we charged up this hill? A welcoming committee?”

“I was thinking something like an electrical transformer from back home. You know, a metal shed of some kind inside a chain-link fence. Not Fort Knox.”

“It’s hardly Fort Knox. We can jump over the wall in a single bound,” Sam said.

Mara turned to Cam and said, “Is there a way to access some information about this facility? Can you get to them through the Sig-net?”

“I’m sure I could locate some information if there were a signal, but everything is down. I don’t have access to any information outside my own core. And, as I said before, I’ve never been up here, and I’ve never had any reason to access that information before.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s head toward the back of the building and give me a minute to think,” she said.

She waved for them to follow, and they continued to duck-walk, sort of half bent over, along the outside wall, which eventually curved along the summit of the butte and around the side of the transceiver node building. After five minutes, they found themselves looking at the rear of the building—a blank slab of featureless concrete. Mara leaned to her right just to make sure no one had followed, then turned away from the building. From this vantage point, she would see the north end of the Willamette Valley, including the subtle reflection of ambient light on the Columbia River. She eyed an airplane make its approach to the airport not too far away.

“So what’s the plan, sis?” Sam asked.

“I’m thinking,” she said and paused for a moment. Looking to Cam, she said, “If you could get a signal, would you be able to access some information about this transceiver place? Like a floor plan maybe?”

“If I could get a signal, I’m fairly certain I could get a floorplan, photographs and probably even a video tour with the architect who built the place. But that’s a big
if
,” he said.

“Maybe there’s a way I can create a connection between you and the information, generate a sort of mini–Sig-net of our own,” she said.

“Like a Wi-Fi hot spot. You could turn Cam into a hot spot, and he could create his own signal,” Sam said.

Cam’s eyes widened, and he held up a hand. “I’m still getting used to this weird light thing your brother did to me. The stars aren’t even twinkling. It looks like there are holes in the sky.”

“No, I don’t think I need to do anything to you. I just need to think this out for a minute. How could I use my abilities to make this happen?” she said to no one in particular.

Still looking a little doubtful, Cam said, “I remain unclear on exactly what your abilities are. I’ve seen you freeze Time, and relocate people and things instantaneously. I’ve seen you travel between realities and tap into the Sig-net, even though you don’t have a synthetic body.
What
exactly are your abilities?”

“She can alter reality,” Sam said.

“What does that mean?” Cam asked.

“To be honest, I’m still figuring it out. To be
really
honest, I suspect I’ll be spending a lifetime figuring it out,” she said. “Basically, if I can imagine something, visualize it and convince myself that it’s possible, I can make it come about. Somehow.”

“Okay. So now you’ll create a signal, even though nothing is coming from the transceiver node?”

“Exactly,” she said. “Where would the information about the transceiver node building be located?”

“Community data storage facilities are located throughout the city. Usually the Sig-net would simply connect you to the closest one, and you could extract the information from there,” he said.

“So all these data storage places contain the same information? They are redundant? You don’t have to go to a specific one to get the information you need?”

“Correct.”

“Where is the closest one of these data storage facilities?” she asked.

Cam nodded toward the building. “There’s one in the basement below the transceiver node. That’s the closest one.”

“So we just need to get a signal between you and the data in the basement here,” Mara said. “All right then.” She closed her eyes and visualized the signal. Initially she found herself recalling the antique radio Ping had used to trick her into tapping her abilities for the first time, when she had caused a radio program to broadcast from an empty radio casing. That made her wonder how Ping was doing in his tube …

“Mara?” Cam asked.

“Shush!” she said. “Just another minute. I keep getting distracted.”

She slipped her hand into her jeans and pulled out her phone. Opening her eyes, she concentrated on it for more than a minute, imagining it sending out a signal to both Cam and the data storage facility beneath the building.

Suddenly Cam stiffened. “It’s there! I’ve got the signal. It’s the Sig-net, but I’m the only one who I can sense online. It’s very strange, like walking around in an empty building, my footsteps echoing …”

“Focus, man,” Sam said. “You’re supposed to be getting the information about the building, not having some kind of sensory adventure.”

Mara smiled. “Give him a minute. I think he’s on it.”

Cam nodded. Looking upward, his eyes moved back and forth, as if he were scanning a list on an invisible page that floated above them. Sam eyed the air suspiciously, then glanced at his sister.

She shrugged. “I guess it’s working.”

“Oh, it’s working,” Cam said, not looking at them. “I’ve located the floor plans, the technical schematics of the systems inside and a few photographs. Is there something else I should retrieve?”

“Can you access the news streams? Are there any reports about what is going on up here? Like the transceiver node being attacked earlier. Is there any more information?” Mara asked.

Cam’s eyes flicked back and forth. “I’m looking.” After a moment he said, “The last reports were that a mob of people was trying to break into the node facilities. The news stream ends right after that report.”

“Okay. We’ve got what we need,” Mara said. She raised an eyebrow at Cam, and his face went blank for a moment, then disappointment swept over his features.

He blinked, as if clearing his eyes, and asked, “Is there any way you can keep that connection going? We might need more information after we get inside, and, to be perfectly honest, having the signal is sort of comforting for me.”

“I can imagine, but I don’t think I can keep my mind on the signal and deal with what’s inside the building at the same time. Besides, there’s a limit to how much I can do a one time without having problems,” she said.