A loud voice interrupted her search. “Ashley! Why aren’t you at the panel?”
Ashley jumped and ran back to the controls, peering again into the displays through a glaze of tears. Dr. Conner’s footsteps pounded toward her. “What’s going on?”
Ashley pressed her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, trying to hold back an emerging sob. “Only—” She gulped and took a breath, trying not to whine. “Only two presences. That third one is gone.”
Dr. Conner put one hand on his hip and shook a finger at the monitor. “You said there was an attachment. What happened?”
Ashley took another breath, finding strength in her anger. “There was,” she said, flipping a switch near the bottom of the panel. “I’ll run the data back on the screen. You can see for yourself.” They both watched the stream of numbers while Ashley pointed. “Look, there’s Bonnie. She’s at six point two, and there’s Devin. He’s at seven point five. Then, here’s the third presence, ranging from three point eight all the way to seven point two.”
He squinted at the monitor, glancing now and then at the settings on the panel. “How can that be? We’re not showing any shadow effect in the other two.”
“Some kind of multiple presentation I guess, but it’s clearly the same entity.” She pressed her finger on the display. “Now here’s the connection. Bonnie was moving up, and when she reached six point eight—”
Dr. Conner frowned and shook his head, his scowl growing once again and his voice deepening to a growl as he continued to watch the data. “It wasn’t Devin attaching to her; it was that other thing, whatever it was.”
Ashley lowered her head and replied softly. “Yeah. I see that now.”
Dr. Conner glared at her. “Are you playing me for a fool?”
Ashley jerked her head up and met his angry eyes. “Me playing you? Look who’s talking! You and your lies about Bonnie’s mom! What really happened to her? And what was all that about my grandfather dying?”
Dr. Conner stepped away from the control panel and stuffed his hands into his pockets, taking a few steps in a small circle before looking at Ashley again, the creases on his brow deepening. “You’ve been wondering why your grandfather’s health has been leveling off,” he said, sarcasm coating his words. “And now he’s sick . . . very sick. It seems that our model patient is deteriorating. Your wonderful photoreceptors don’t work. They never have.”
He waved his arm at the glass domes glowing faintly in the dim room. “The receptors I’ve been putting into your restoration engine are real ones. And all this time I’ve been using the candlestone and dragon’s blood to restore your precious ‘Daddy.’ Didn’t you notice that he stopped improving at the same time Devin took the candlestone to West Virginia?”
The two glared at each other, but after a few seconds his scowl faded and he returned his hand to his pocket. “But now that the stone’s back here, it doesn’t work. I think it’s because Devin’s in there, somehow messing up the process. He’s trying to force us to get him out. He knows I can’t leave him there if I want our research to continue. That’s why I needed Bonnie. No one else has been able to get him out.”
Ashley gripped the sides of the control panel until her knuckles turned white. This creep had used his own daughter as a glorified guinea pig! He had put her in danger just so he could keep his precious research going! Not only that, he lied about why her grandfather was sick!
Her thoughts stretched back to months ago, before her grandfather’s treatments had started. Day after day she had told Daddy how much she loved him, explaining her research and how it would help him recover. It didn’t matter that he sometimes couldn’t respond; she was willing to do whatever he needed. On his nurse’s day off, she would change his soiled sheets, clean his feeding tube, and wash his body. And every day she begged God to heal him . . . but God never answered.
She pinched the bridge of her nose to hold back her tears. Letting Dr. Conner see her pain was out of the question. She steadied her voice, but a tight squeak slipped out. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”
Dr. Conner kicked a power cord out of his way and resumed a slow pace around the lab. “Oh, come now! Would you have helped me if you knew that I needed dragon’s blood every time we treated your grandfather and every time we sent a diver into the stone?” He made a full circuit before continuing his rant. “Devin agreed not to hurt Bonnie if I got him out of the stone, but would you help set a monster like Devin free, knowing that his lust for Bonnie’s blood would never die? Yes, Daddy’s dying, but are you willing to risk someone else’s life to save him?” He stopped and faced her, a strange expression moving from his eyes to his lips, as if a light had flashed on in his brain. “Maybe you were willing after all. You knew Devin was in the candlestone, and you were easy to convince that he was trapped in ‘A’ frequency. You noticed his frequency drift, but it didn’t stop you from sending Bonnie in there, did it?”
Ashley hesitated. His questions stung like a thousand hornets. And they raised so many new questions, her brain felt overloaded again. She took a deep breath. “Where have you been getting dragon’s blood?”
Dr. Conner dug his hands back into his pockets. Finally, he sighed and nodded his head. “I guess you might as well know everything.” He started walking toward the back of the lab and gestured with his head. “Come on. Follow me. It’s time to open the Omega door.”
Karen stepped out of the hall and motioned for the other girls. She whispered hoarsely, “Let’s go! The coast is clear!”
All bundled in heavy coats, thick pants, and high boots, the four girls stole through the lab. Karen paused to pick up Pebbles, and Stacey and Rebecca crowded beside her. They skirted the central lab area, traveling the long way around the perimeter of the cavern. When they reached the door to the Alpha exit tunnel, Karen turned the knob. “It’s unlocked. Let’s go.” She tapped the other two girls with her free hand and pointed to a flashlight hanging on a hook. “Beck, you first, then Stacey. Pebbles and I’ll bring up the rear. On tiptoes, now!”
Snagging the flashlight, Beck snapped it on, and she and Stacey crept down the narrow corridor. Karen peeked out the door then closed it behind her. She blew out a long sigh.
So far, so good.
She shifted Pebbles in her arms, balancing her against her hip. Karen felt weak, and her knees wobbled.
I have to do it! I just have to! There’s a bunch of stairs, but I’ve done it before.
She set her jaw, pressing her lips together, and gave a firm nod.
Bonnie did her part. Now I’ve gotta do mine!
As quickly as it came, the shimmering hedge disappeared, and Bonnie felt her “hand” zipping back toward her like a retractable measuring tape. In a way, it was a relief to have her new body all in one place, but her returning hand brought with it a new mystery. It carried a sparkle of some kind, a dark red glow that seemed attached to her own white light.
My ring! Somehow it came through with me!
The other light, the one she thought was her mother, had fallen back, as though cowering in the distance. She knew who it was now. The glowing fence of light had touched her, and it seemed as though it had fed her information, a gentle stream of loving thoughts that flowed from mind to mind.
The first light was none other than Devin, the dragon slayer, the very one who had plunged his sword into her mother’s belly and ripped her open, the same hateful maniac who would kill Bonnie if he had the chance. Somehow he had morphed his light energy to look like her mother’s body, and now he was reshaping again, his light congealing into a radiant image of his human form.
Bonnie felt the slayer’s words, his thoughts now buzzing into her mind like irritating static as he drew closer. “You’re trapped in here with me, Demon Witch, at least for now. You’re doomed to hell, where you belong.”
Bonnie stayed quiet. She didn’t know how to talk anyway, though changes in her thoughts seemed to alter the ripples in her light pulses. She wondered if he could read her mind by watching the variations in her light patterns. Although his light had drawn a human shape, hers was still disorganized, more like a flashing blob of Play-doh than anything resembling a girl.
“I, on the other hand,” Devin continued, “plan to escape very soon. The good doctor, you see, knows that all of his plans will crumble if he doesn’t get me out of here. We got close this time. If not for that cursed phantom, I’d be out of here now.”
The slayer moved even closer, but he stopped suddenly. He took another step only to rebound, as though Bonnie had some kind of shield around her. He stayed still for a moment and then sent another stream of thoughts her way. “I suppose you want to know where your mother is, don’t you?” The slayer’s light moved away. “Follow me, and I’ll show you.”
Bonnie’s light pulsed like a frenzied strobe. She didn’t trust that liar, not for one second. It was time to search for her mother, and she didn’t need a low-life scoundrel like him pretending to help her.
She tried to sigh, tried to settle her throbbing light. If she could display a calm, trusting glow, maybe she’d be able to coax some information out of him, ask enough questions to get him to slip. Since she seemed to have a force field protecting her, it was worth a try.
Bonnie inched forward, careful to keep out of Devin’s reach. It was much easier to move now without her link to the anchor. The slayer led her deeper into the crystal’s mysterious depths, and he stopped abruptly at a place that seemed just a shade brighter. Bonnie kept her distance and waited for him to speak. His glow ing arm extended downward, and part of it disappeared into the blackness. As he pulled his arm back into place, his scratchy static filled her head. “That, my dear, is a crack in the floor, a flaw in the candlestone’s structure. That’s where your mother went.”
Bonnie sent out her reply, a thought stream of sorts. “Why should I believe you?”
“Oh, you can talk now. You’re a fast learner.” He laughed, sending a wave of skinny ripples through his body of light. “You should believe me, because it’s in my best interests to help you. This is an exit, the only exit. I use it to send encoded light to speak to your father. Normally, this stone doesn’t allow any encoded light to escape. You see, encoded light, like your body and mine, passes through that black membrane you probably felt when you came in. It gets lodged in this inner core. Fractured light, on the other hand, passes around that membrane and gets arrested and assembled before going through the exit channel that’s right below this crack.
“The doctor’s messages are encoded, so they come into this core to me. I can read that light and send it back through, encoded with my response, by sending it through this crack. It goes straight to the exit, bypassing the arresting stage.”
“If that’s a way out, why haven’t you gone through it?”
“Because the channel would put me out of phase too much. I couldn’t be restored. The good doctor’s little genius, Ashley, hasn’t figured out why yet, but it seems that the encoding of a female is not disturbed when she passes through this part of the structure. She sent both male and female animals in here, and I put them through the channel. Every female survived, and every male was disintegrated. That’s why they always used girls as their divers. If Derrick were ever to lose a diver, she could just go through this crack to get out again. Your mother was in here, but when we learned about the escape route, we were able to send her back out when Dr. Conner was ready with her cure.”
Bonnie’s light dimmed and then flashed like blinking neon. “I don’t believe you. Ashley would have told me. I know she would have.”
Devin’s light rippled from the center in tight halos, like rings from a tiny splash in a pond. “Ashley didn’t know,” he replied. “Brilliant or not, she’s as easy to dupe as you are. Dr. Conner and I have been using her for our purposes, and I’ve been speaking to them in your mother’s place ever since she left. Dr. Conner knew all along, but we had to keep Ashley in the dark. I don’t think she would want to help us if she knew what we were really doing.”
“No, she wouldn’t. That much I do believe.”
Devin’s light flashed brightly, stripes of energy passing from his head to his toes. “Well, believe this, Witch. I’m telling you this because I need you to dive back in here and get me out. Once you’re out there, I’ll tell you where to find your mother. She’s alive and restored.”
Bonnie moved closer to the crack, but she kept her distance from the slayer. As she approached, she noticed a change in the blackness, a slight gray streak in what appeared to be a floor-like structure, a fault in one of the jewel’s inner planes.
Devin continued, and Bonnie felt his voice come across in softer tones. “The candlestone is still on the pedestal outside, so if you decide to go in, you’ll go straight to the restoration process.” Devin drifted away. “I’ll move out of sight. Take your time. Your mother didn’t take long to decide, though. She hates dark places.”
A few seconds later, Devin was gone, his light vanishing more quickly than Bonnie thought possible. Did this place have secret passages or walls he could hide behind?
Bonnie slowly approached the gray streak, skirting close enough to get a glimpse into the jagged fissure. It opened into a chasm, and way below, at the bottom of a glassy gorge, a stream of soft, white light poured through. It looked like a gentle river flowing in a peaceful valley, but she couldn’t see where it went.
She felt a pull, like the candlestone’s light-drawing power was somehow stronger in the lower area. If she went in, there would probably be no way to get back up. She replayed the slayer’s explanation in her mind, piecing together the candlestone’s flow channels, and imagining this stream of light as a passage to the outside.
With all her senses focused on the newly found chasm, Bonnie heard faint voices from far away. Though she didn’t recognize the words, she could tell they were mournful, lamenting a sad existence, as though ghosts whispered eternal chants from haunted halls. If only she could understand. Were they calling her in? Was it a warning?
She pulled back and turned toward the blackness, resting her shining body and allowing her rapidly pulsating energy to settle down. As she gazed at her light, in stark contrast to the black surroundings, she thought about how much easier it would be if everything would get brighter so she could see clearly.