Chapter 23
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C yan froze at a sudden shift in the air, suddenly realizing that something went wrong.
Looking around the room, she found a weird, almost a cloudiness to the air around them.
No, not a cloud. Fog . The same fog they’d seen outside, only it was thin here, almost invisible.
A real pale energy stood between Terk and the two of them. “Look,” she pointed.
“What?” Steele focused, then frowned. “He’s behind some wall.”
“Really look at what is happening here. That same fog is either protecting him or using him as protection.”
Steele turned back to Terk and asked him, “What’s going on?”
Terk gave him a wry smile. “That’s one of the questions I would like to ask you.”
She studied Terk, wondering whether they’d gotten anywhere in the woods or this was part of the same simulation. “Are you real?”
Terk laughed. “I am.”
Steele shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“No, we’re not sure that we get what’s going on either,” he admitted.
“And I understand the confusion on your part. You’re right,” he declared, turning to Cyan.
“Absolutely something is going on. The Beacon is here to protect us. I put it into motion and didn’t realize how much managing and tweaking it would require,” he shared, with a shrug. “And what that would look like.”
Cyan stared at him. “You’re not making sense.”
“No, I’m probably not,” Terk noted. “You know about the Beacon?”
“Yes, of course. We’ve literally been fighting our way through it.”
“The Beacon morphed into something other than what we originally intended,” he began.
“I don’t know how to explain it better than that, but I’m still trying to sort out some changes the Beacon itself made.
While doing that, I realized I couldn’t easily disengage the Beacon.
It’s not good nor bad, but it does need managing. Like a pet, it needs training.”
“A pet?” Steele asked incredulously. “Like a guard dog? Only on energy steroids?”
Terk’s smile widened. “Something like that. You are now behind something like a firewall, courtesy of the Beacon. This is a waystation… where we communicate in a neutral setting.”
Her breath let out with a heavy gust. “Damn! A firewall, good God. Meaning, if I try to touch you, I’ll never quite get there.
” And that’s exactly what she tried to do, only the distance never closed.
She took several steps forward, so she should have been right up against him.
Yet, in reality, she didn’t gain any ground at all.
She closed her eyes and whispered, “This is just like being inside the Beacon in the forest.”
“It is,” Terk agreed, “because technically you’re still in the Beacon. That’s part of the issue I’m trying to work out right now.”
She snorted. “Are you kidding me? We thought we got out of there. That we made it through all the gates.”
“The problem seems to be that, the more gates there are, and the more gates you successfully get through, the more intense is the perusal that the Beacon is doing of your lives. And, if it decides that one or the other of you is a danger, it’s not letting you through the final gate.
One of you two didn’t make the final grade. ”
Steele frowned. “Meaning that the Beacon thinks we are still bringing danger to you?”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “The Beacon does appear to be protecting us from one of you two.” And yet his lips quirked as he added, “And we haven’t been able to figure out what the danger is in your case. However, the Beacon has sensed something and won’t allow us to let you in.”
“Beacon not allowing us ?” Steele repeated, with a laugh. “You’ve really lost control of the thing, haven’t you?”
“No, not exactly,” Terk clarified. “We haven’t lost complete control.
It’s more complicated than that. I could override its instructions and force it to let you in, but that just goes against what I set up the Beacon to do, which is to keep all of us safe on this side of the Beacon.
So why would I override a decision it made? ”
“So, what is the Beacon exactly?” Steele asked.
“Think of the Beacon as an energy source that I created—pulsating, sending out signals to attract energy wielders. And it was just a communication device, no will,… no mind of its own.” He laughed. “What I forgot was the basic point that it is energy.”
“Right,” she agreed, staring at him in astonishment. “As energy, it’s growing, gaining.”
“Yes,” he confirmed, “growing and gaining consciousness.”
Cyan focused on his every word.
“But the growth is mental, emotional, spiritual—possibly physical too.”
She stared at him. “Good God.”
“I know,” he replied, his smile widening.
“Now, just know that you guys are safe. And, in this space, so are we. And that is what the Beacon’s trying to do,…
keep us safe.” He took a deep breath. “And I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but, according to the Beacon, something is dangerous about one of you.
Something in your history is affecting the present.
Something in your physical body has the Beacon prepared to lock you out.
I don’t know what it is, but it’s strong enough that it’s marking one of you as dangerous. ”
His voice changed, slower, more thoughtful. “Or”—he turned to Steele—“something you guys are carrying with you that you may not even be aware of.”
At that, Cyan gasped. “Somebody hitchhiking on our energy to come in here… to get to you?”
“Possibly, yes,” he confirmed. “We,… meaning, the team, which I have deliberately kept on the other side of this barrier, have not been able to assess exactly what that is.”
She groaned.
“At least not yet,” Terk added. “So, we’re working on it. But obviously, if the Beacon thinks that you’re a danger,… then the Beacon is automatically assuming it’s a danger to us.” He looked from one to the other and then shrugged. “We’re working on it.”
Steele stepped back ever-so-slightly. “And if we try to force our way through this?”
“You can try all you want, but you won’t get anywhere,” he stated. “It literally is protecting us. So please understand what is happening and why.”
“Understanding is one thing,” Steele replied, “but this goes way beyond normal. You know that, right?”
Terk immediately nodded. “Absolutely. We do know that.”
“That’s really not helping,” she muttered.
“And I get that,” Terk added, with half a smile. “What I can tell you is that our team is scanning your systems, looking for what the Beacon is tracking.”
Steele nodded. “So possibly someone came through the Beacon before us, saw a way to take advantage of your system, and has been making us seem to be the danger, when it’s them?”
Terk looked back and forth between Steele and Cyan. “That was my wife’s question, and it’s valid because we don’t know if anyone else has come through recently. And, if they have, are they on our side or not?” he asked.
Cyan, her face twisting with understanding, nodded. “In your shoes, I would do exactly the same thing.”
Terk’s lips twitched. “I know that a lot of people would consider us paranoid or worse. However, we do have very precious little people here, so nobody with a heart for children would call it overkill.”
“True,” she replied. “The question is, what are we supposed to do now? We’re caught in this limbo, this quarantined space that the Beacon has deemed close enough but no closer. It’s not close enough to what we need.”
“And that is our next challenge. We haven’t exactly figured out how to keep you safe in there, particularly when it appears that the danger is around you, possibly in you,” he admitted. “This is new to us as well.”
“It’s a hell of a welcome,” Steele noted, staring at him.
“Oh, I know. Not exactly what we wanted, I can assure you of that. And the Beacon has worked very well, up until now.”
Steele let out a breath in a gust and nodded. “So, in theory, we’re here, but we’re in a different space created by the Beacon, correct?”
“Yes, and that space is one that you do not get to leave until I can figure out where and what the danger is that you present or that the Beacon believes you present.”
Steele shook his head. “It’s hard to imagine that life has now come down to your Beacon deciding whether I go inside or stay outside,” Steele shared, with a note of amusement.
It was ironic that energy workers like the two of them were in a lockdown battle with an energetic system stronger than both of them.
Or was it? Steele frowned. “And, if I want to return to the hotel and just say, Screw this , can we?”
Terk grimaced. “I don’t know if that’ll work either. Give us a little time to sort this out. Then, if you decide to leave, we’ll do what we can to support you.”
Steele stared at him for a moment and then back at Cyan, her face a mask. “So, it sounds like we’re trapped, unless the Beacon decides we can leave.” Steele didn’t like anything about this at all.
“That’s not what I’m telling you at all, Steele,” Terk countered. “I’m sorry for the rough arrival, but I am asking you to give us a little bit of time to assess the danger level.”
Cyan snorted. “We’re inside this room, technically out of the elements, a bathroom available, plus with a place to sit and rest, while you complete your testing,” she pointed out, “so take your time. Yet, when we have had enough, we will leave.”
Terk smiled. “In essence, yes, you have all that available. And thanks for giving us some time to figure this out. We’ll be as fast as we can. The healers are scanning your systems now, so we should have answers soon.”
“But you’re not completely sure about that, are you?” Cyan asked, frowning.
“No, I’m not because… this is a first.”