Chapter Forty-Four
Forty-Four
Luke fell into the dreamscape staged with the characters and data he had assembled and let his intuition tell him a story.
Sophy has vanished into the maze. He tried to follow her but now he is lost. He can see in the way that one does in dreams, but he has nothing to guide him.
The walls of the narrow corridors tower upward into nothingness.
The intersections are endless. Every time he turns a corner he is met with a blank wall.
He must find Sophy.
He turns another corner. For the first time he is not confronted with a wall.
Instead, he sees the silvery doughnut sculpture.
The polished finish of the alloy is blindingly bright.
It’s like looking into a sun-splashed mirror.
There is a reflection in the bright surface but he cannot see it clearly.
The one thing he’s certain of is that he is not seeing his own face in the mirror. He sees someone else, someone he knows but can’t quite recognize.
“Who are you?” he says. “Where is Sophy?”
The reflection laughs.
Before he can ask any more questions he senses a presence behind him. He turns, hoping to see Sophy. But she is not there. He is facing Hatch’s personal security team. The twins are wearing their stylish tuxes.
“You have become a problem,” one of them informs him.
“I get that a lot,” he says.
“Grant has also become a problem,” the other blonde says.
“I know, but he’s your problem, not mine.”
“Your uncle is a problem, too.”
He turns back and tries once again to focus on the sculpture. He must figure out why it is significant, because if he doesn’t he will lose Sophy forever…
He came out of the dreamstate on a rush of knowing. When he opened his eyes, he saw Sophy standing beside the bed, regarding him with an anxious expression. Bruce was beside her. He did not appear anxious—he looked as if he was anticipating action.
“I thought you might be having a nightmare,” Sophy said. “I didn’t know whether to try to wake you or not. I’ve never been around a lucid dreamer when they are actually in a dreamscape.”
He frowned. “What did you call me?”
“A lucid dreamer. Why? Do you have another term for your talent?”
“No.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. “I don’t have any particular word for it. I just…dream.”
She smiled. “You dream to order and you make connections in your dreams. That’s the working definition of a lucid dreamer. It’s certainly a useful talent for a CEO who has to make decisions that will affect people and a business far into the future.”
Behind the lenses of her glasses, her brilliant eyes glittered with a little energy.
He could feel the tension shivering in the atmosphere and knew her senses were slightly heightened.
The reading lamp next to the recliner was on and Tobias Harper’s journal was open on the table.
It was clear she had spent whatever time had passed reading.
“Tell me about your dream,” she urged.
“You were lost in the Maze Gallery.”
“You dreamed about me?”
“Indirectly. There was a lot going on, but now I have to interpret it. That’s the hard part. How long was I out?”
“Not long.” She glanced at her watch. “Maybe fifteen minutes.”
Evidently concluding the situation was under control, Bruce pushed his nose against Luke’s hand, waited until he got an ear rub in exchange, and then padded across the room. He settled on the carpet, head up, ears alert, eyes intent. Eager for the hunt to begin, Luke thought.
“Not much longer, pal,” he said.
“What?” Sophy asked.
Bruce grinned.
“Never mind,” Luke said. “About my dream.”
“Right. You said it has to be interpreted.”
“Dissecting a dream is like working with a deck of tarot cards. So many possible ways to read them.”
“I understand.”
“I think my intuition was trying to tell me something important about the doughnut sculpture.”
“Maybe I can help.”
“How?”
“By doing what we librarians do when we talk to patrons—ask the right questions so that we can point them in the right direction.”
“Go for it.”
She went back to the reading chair, sat down, picked up a notepad and a pen, and adjusted her glasses. “Let’s start at the beginning. What do you remember about the dreamscape?”
She was in professional mode, he thought. He almost smiled.
“I was in the maze, looking for you,” he said.
She looked up, frowning a little. “Did you find me?”
“No.” He studied the sculpture. “I found the doughnut. It was mirror-bright. Glaringly bright. I wasn’t able to look directly at it. There was a reflection but I couldn’t identify the person. And then the twins showed up.”
“Hatch’s personal security team?” Sophy tapped the pen against the notepad and narrowed her eyes. “If you’re going to tell me that you were having a hot sex fantasy involving that pair, I’m rescinding my offer to help you analyze your dream.”
“Trust me, there was no sex involved. They said I had become a problem. Then they said that Vincent Grant and my uncle were problems. The only thing all three of us have in common is a close connection to a Harper woman.”
“My aunt in your uncle’s case. Me as far as you and Vincent are concerned.”
“Which tells me that you and Bea are the critical factors in this situation. And there is only one reason for that.”
Sophy took a breath. “Someone really does have Pandora’s box. They want the crystals unlocked.”
“Yes. But we have already considered that possibility. It’s the other two elements in the dream that need to be interpreted.”
“Which ones?”
“The reflection in the mirror-finish surface of the doughnut that I couldn’t see clearly and the blinding brilliance of the sculpture.”
“Do you think the reflection might be the Alchemist?”
“Maybe.”
Sophy tapped the pen against the notepad again. “We have already concluded that the Alchemist is someone here in the compound.”
“So, my dream was trying to tell me that he is someone I’ve seen here? That is logical but not helpful. As you said, we already knew that much.”
“What is it about the overbright doughnut that is important?” Sophy asked.
He looked at her reflection in the polished metal sculpture. She was perched on the reading chair, pen in hand, the notepad on her lap. Very intent. Very serious. She watched him through the lenses of her black-and-crystal glasses, her eyes fierce and beautiful…
…Eyes that she concealed behind mirrored sunglasses when she worked a crime scene. Mirrored glasses that hid her secrets.
And suddenly a few more connections appeared.
“The mirror-finish,” he said.
“We know that the Kaleidoscope weapons work on mirrors,” Sophy said.
“Yes, but that’s not what’s important here. I think my dream was trying to tell me that it’s the alloy that’s key.”
“Isn’t that sculpture made of polished stainless steel?”
“Looks like it, but I’m not talking about the doughnut. It’s the mirrored tile embedded in it that is important. It’s not stainless steel. It’s a very different material but it is mirror-bright and it is hiding secrets.”
“What kind of secrets?”
“I think they are actually batteries. The hypnotic message is infused into the crystals but the battery is the power source. It stores human psychic energy, at least for a time. Someone has to recharge it periodically. That’s evidently Grant’s job.
But once it’s on, it activates the crystal.
Someone is using the crystals and the batteries to broadcast hypnotic suggestions, but that’s not nearly as significant as the technology of the tiles. ”
Her eyes widened in understanding. “You said the lack of a battery that can store paranormal power is a major reason why that kind of energy hasn’t become mainstream.”
“Exactly. The mirror tile batteries aren’t very strong—the range is only a few feet and I’m sure they drain quickly. But that’s partly because human-generated energy isn’t very powerful. Pretty sure the Alchemist thinks he can store serious vortex energy in them.”
“In those little tiles?” Sophy shuddered. “That can’t end well.”
“He’s been running experiments somewhere here in the compound. That’s why the para-rad levels have been climbing.”
Sophy put down the pen and the notepad and picked up Tobias Harper’s journal. “According to my great-grandfather, the third engineer involved in the Kaleidoscope project, Maxwell Coburn, was obsessed with his theory that mirrors were the key to creating paranormal batteries.”
“Did Harper have a problem with that?”
“Yes. Tobias wrote that it would be extremely dangerous to store a large amount of paranormal energy inside mirrors, given our lack of understanding of the physics involved.”
“No shit.”
“But evidently Maxwell Coburn was convinced that the six crystals in Pandora’s box were capable of channeling large amounts of paranormal energy into the mirror batteries and releasing that energy on demand.
Coburn never got an opportunity to test his theories, of course, because of the disaster that destroyed the Fogg Lake lab. ”
Luke flattened a hand on the surface of the sculpture. “Now Hatch and the Alchemist and their buddies are not only trying to construct Coburn’s batteries, they intend to charge them with vortex energy.”
“So foolish,” Sophy whispered. “No one can control that kind of raw power.”
“When has the risk of trying to control the forces of nature ever stopped people from attempting to do just that? Think nuclear energy, dams, solar power, hydrocarbons. In Iceland they tap into the energy of volcanoes. One way or another, all the power we use comes from nature.”
She took a long breath. “Yes, but this is different. We know almost nothing about vortex energy. We don’t even have a way to measure it.
If it’s possible to tap into it, I doubt if it could be controlled.
There’s a theory that all the various vortices around the planet are connected by ley lines.
If that’s true, attempting to channel the energy of one vortex might lead to a chain reaction. ”
“I think it’s safe to assume that the Alchemist, who seems to be pulling the strings on this project, is not entirely sane.”
“And Vincent Grant isn’t what anyone would call stable now, either,” Sophy said. “I wonder if his brother is.”
“Hatch? No way to know if he qualifies as sane, but judging by his personal security team, he has a skill set that is required for the project. Someone wants him protected, at least as long as he’s useful. We need to go into the maze. Now.”
“Wait. Let’s slow down and think this through in a logical manner.”
“That’s supposed to be my line,” Luke said.
“You weren’t using it, so I am. I came across something else in Tobias’s journal that might be important.”
“Go on.”
“There were three engineers on the team—Xavier, Tobias, and Maxwell Coburn. But there was also a fourth person.”