Chapter 25
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S teele sat down on the only chair, realizing, even as he did so, how foolish it was to consider that it was really a chair, considering the simulation they were in.
She laughed, noting his face. “Oh, it’s a chair, all right,” she quipped, “and it appears to be the only chair we get to access from here.”
He stared at her and said, “You do realize—”
She held up her hand. “I know. We’re in the twilight zone of the bizarre,” she announced. “However, everything has been off since this whole thing started, and I, for one, am willing to trust Terk.”
Steele stared at her for a long moment and then nodded. “Yeah, I guess I do too.”
“That’s progress,” she noted immediately, “and I’m proud of you.”
He rolled his eyes and muttered, “Don’t push it.”
She chuckled. “I wasn’t planning on it, but we do need to consider that, as far as the Beacon is concerned, you’re not safe to let through. Of anyone here, you would think that we would be the ones best able to figure out why, right?”
He scrubbed his face and asked, “How is that even a thing?”
“Maybe we should look at the Beacon’s parameters.”
He just stared at her and asked, “And you’ll understand more how?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, “but we have to at least consider the fact that, if the Beacon made a decision, and you didn’t come out looking great on that—”
“I noticed it’s just me, not you and me,” he pointed out.
She nodded. “Yeah, I know. Sorry, except that now what you have going on will affect me since our energy has blended so much. Which also means we should sort this out between the two of us.”
He rolled his eyes again and muttered, “Somehow I don’t think sorry is quite how you’re feeling.”
She flashed him a grin and added, “Hey, I’m in this too. That’s the problem. So we both need to figure it out. Otherwise, we’re both stuck here.”
He winced at that and nodded. “Not to mention there’s a good chance that we can’t even go back the way we came.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” she muttered. “That would mean a fail-safe was built within the Beacon.”
Steele pointed out, “And yet the Beacon wasn’t built for what it’s even doing right now.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Terk stated, suddenly beside them, making them both turn, “but, as we have learned, something has triggered its protective instinct, and I, for one, have to honor that aspect, even as we try to figure out how and why.”
“Of course,” she replied, with a wave of her hand. “Now, if the Beacon is correct, how would it know? That’s what we need to figure out. If something is happening, how would the Beacon know?”
“It can only survey energy. I don’t think it can read our minds or hear what we say and all that,” Terk shared, “but, yes, that has been tossed around.”
Steele stared at him in shock. “And yet you’ve decided it doesn’t?”
“Yes, that is what we’ve decided,” he stated, with a smile.
“And I get that this isn’t exactly encouraging for you, but it could be way worse, and I’m just thankful it’s not.
What isn’t fine-tuned yet is the Beacon’s discernment of that energy he’s perusing and the dissemination of what he’s found.
He’s withholding information as his data is not complete.
He seems to feel it’s not helpful unless he can hand over everything all at once.
Obviously, we want the information as it comes to light, so those tweaks are in progress now. ”
“Even what you’ve managed to build is incredible,” Steele interjected, “and would be more so if it hadn’t pinpointed me as the issue.” He groaned as he stared at Terk. “I didn’t think there was anything nearly this developed out there.”
“I’m not sure there is,” Terk replied. “And that remains one of the other issues. Just because we have this happening here and now, it’s not a done deal by any means. Things have been evolving, and we obviously have more issues to deal with.”
Steele and Cyan didn’t say anything, just stared at him.
Terk smirked. “Yes, I do get that this all sounds rather bizarre.”
“Let’s get back to the question here though,” Cyan interjected, turning to Steele. “If the Beacon is reading energy, you know what that means.”
“No, I don’t know that at all,” Steele snapped, turning to her in frustration. “What does it mean?”
“That the Beacon can see this Brent person’s energy inside your system. If you’re deemed to be the problem, and the Beacon is seeing your energy, then this issue is in your system . That’s the only energy the beacon has access too.”
Both men froze.
She nodded. “That’s the only way the Beacon would recognize the dangerous energy. The Beacon has to see it and to read it.”
“Which means that I’m carrying some of that bastard’s energy?
” Steele snapped, with more force than he intended.
He wanted to punch a wall but of course there wasn’t any real walls here in this simulation.
He stared down at his clenched fists, his anger surging through him, even as he also recognized that something had been off for a while now.
Something so familiar that he couldn’t sort out who or what.
Feeling betrayed yet also foolish, he had to consider the truth. How long since he’d done the last full-body scan? Years, if not a decade. His psychic guards had been decent, so he’d never felt the need to check. Sloppy . And that pissed him off.
If Brent’s energy had been in there a long time and was one he’d known well, then it would be hard for him to discern its presence—even as a threat—especially if he didn’t go looking for it.
What Steele did know was that Brent’s presence wasn’t obvious.
It wasn’t causing issues, as far as he could tell.
Until now, now that someone, something, with a much higher ability to scan energy had scanned his.
An ugly queasiness filled his gut right now, but was that a reaction to this possibility or was it a reaction on the part of Brent’s energy, now understanding it was suddenly in danger?
Cyan broke the long silence, facing Terk. “Now the question is… Well, I have a couple of questions. Let’s start with why would Brent’s energy be there? How would it have gotten there? And how long has it been there?”
Terk gave her a one-arm shrug. “While that would be an interesting exercise, none of that matters,” Terk stated. “At this point, all you need to do is figure out a way to get rid of him.”
“Do we know it’s a him ? Are we assuming it’s Brent just because that name came up?” she asked Terk.
Terk said something, but Steele just shook his head.
He’d blocked out so much of that time of his life.
He’d lost good friends during that time.
The pain, the anger of the betrayal back then had been so hard to deal with that Steele wanted to investigate, to hunt down the perpetrator.
At the time, Brent’s name had been brought up as the killer, the one who’d put everyone’s life on the disposable list and then took them out.
But there’d never been any proof. All Steele’s instincts at the time had been AWOL, as he himself had been such a mess.
The leaders at the time had shipped him right back out, rather than giving him a chance to look into the incident.
So, when Brent went missing to never be seen again, it closed the file.
At the time everyone assumed Brent was dead.
Steele had been in the middle of a war zone, where he barely had time to survive, much less consider what had happened to his friends and to the person who had killed them.
If that bastard was alive right now, Steele might take him out himself.
That’s when the conversation going on around him filtered in, and he pulled back from the red haze of anger to understand what was currently being said.
She nodded in agreement with Terk. “You’re right. Getting rid of this is absolutely what we need to do, but also to stop it from happening again. Many people carry other energies in their system. To have them caught in the Beacon because of it…”
Terk interrupted, “However, not everyone is carrying an energy that could hurt my family. Being able to sort the energies based on frequency would be ideal, but that one frequency can bring down a normal person’s higher frequency but not so low as to recognize the danger.
I would love to think of that as being possible,” Terk noted, “but, given where we’re at right now, let’s just focus on what we can do and what we can access. ”
“And that would be my energy,” Steele muttered.
Cyan nodded. “That would be my guess. The Beacon could have formed any impression, but it chose to classify the energy as dangerous .”
Steele stared at her, feeling the world yanked out from under him. He stared at her, his mind spinning with possibilities. And the one who kept rising to the top was one he didn’t even want to consider. Brent . “I guess that makes some sense,” he conceded.
“It makes a lot of sense,” Terk stated, with a nod, “and I would have to agree with her.”
“Yeah, I get it,” Steele noted. “But how am I supposed to find out how it’s hurting me? Because I wouldn’t have said that it was.”
Cyan nodded. “Exactly. If Brent were hitching a ride on your energy, he wouldn’t want to alert you to that, right?” she asked, turning to him.
Steele frowned, shaking his head. “And yet you didn’t see anything. I mean, you were healing me. You had access to my energy, to my history.”
“And yet,” she added, “there was one weird thing that I didn’t understand. When you were attacked the first time, all the energy was being drained out of your feet,” she shared, turning to Terk. “That was a very strange thing.”
“What do you mean, attacked?” Terk asked, his voice cutting through their thoughts to bring their attention right back to the most important point to him.
Cyan explained, “Some elements of your Beacon were less than pleasant. And we didn’t realize at the time that somebody else was potentially in the space we were in.”
“So, what happened?” Terk asked.