Broken Pixels (Broken Realms, #4)

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 16Blinking several times, Mara willed herself to withdraw from the Sig-net and the stilted image in Cam’s memory. With a shake of her head, she found herself now in the church at night, standing under the spinning, floating crystal that illuminated the remains of the sanctuary. She continued to hold Cam’s head in her hands. A loud clatter from the front doors startled her, causing her to jump and tighten her grip, squeezing his cheeks and forcing his lips into a pucker.

Cam’s eyes widened and said, “Sop sashing I ace.”

Mara turned her attention from the door to him. “I’m sorry? What did you say?”

Sam reached out and took Cam’s head from her. “He said, Stop smashing his face. It’s best if you hold him up by his temples. That way he can talk, and it doesn’t look like you are about to smooch him.”

She gave Sam an exasperated look and was about to say something when a loud wail of frustration cut through the night immediately outside the front doors.

The racket suddenly stopped with the loud clatter of the door swinging open, slamming against the wall. A guttural growl filled the air as an elderly woman with a tangled nest sprouting from her head staggered into the building. Stopping short and wavering, she stared wide-eyed at the floating crystal among the rafters. Her mouth sagged open. Raising her cupped left hand into the air, she said in a dazed monotone, “See the light! Shine the light! Be the light!” Her head twitched at an odd angle, as she mouthed the words over and over, more quietly with each repetition, until she uttered no sound but simply expired breaths as her lips moved.

Mara stepped toward her, and the old woman swung around, curling her raised arm down to her chest. A hint of purplish light shimmered across the woman’s torso.

Pointing to the spinning yellow crystal suspended in the air above them, Mara said, “I can see the light. See it? Up there?”

The old woman c****d her head sideways, looking up. Her head jerked back and forth, and she hissed, “No. That’s a bad light. It doesn’t work.” She looked directly at Mara, and the old woman’s eyes shimmered like a cat’s, except the light they emitted was lavender. After the radiance swam away, the woman’s brows knitted lower into disappointment, then confusion. “You don’t see the light. You can’t be the light. It’s not for you.” Seemingly dejected, she squatted on the floor. She held her hands beneath her chin and muttered to herself, “See the light! Be the light!”

Ping and Sam, still carrying Cam’s head, approached from behind and stood next to Mara. Ping pointed to the woman’s hand and said, “She’s got one of the crystals, like the man we saw earlier on the street. The hue of the light appears to match what is coming from her eyes. I wonder if that is significant. I had not noticed that earlier.”

Cam looked up to Sam and said, “Let me see.”

Sam fumbled for a moment and then turned Cam to face away from him, toward the old woman. “What is she carrying?” Cam asked.

“It’s some kind of tiny crystal,” Mara said. “Earlier we encountered a man on the street with one. He was chanting the same phrase about ‘the light.’ Does that mean anything to you? It sounds almost like a religious chant or something.”

“It can’t be that. Religions died out a long time ago, after humankind made the transition to synthetic bodies,” Cam said.

Ping looked up to the rafters. “So that is why this church is in such disrepair.”

“Assuming this building was ever used as a place of worship,” Cam said. “It has been a very long time since any religions—”

The old woman’s head snapped up, as if she suddenly recognized Cam’s voice. She held out her hand toward him, purple light shining between her fingers. “See the light,” she hissed. Cackling, she added, “He can see the light!”

Mara turned and looked at Cam’s face. His eyes were round and still. Flickers of lavender light danced across his cheeks. The muscles of his face went slack. “See the light,” Cam whispered.

Alarmed, Mara yelled to Sam, “Get him away from that light!”

Sam froze and asked, “What?”

Mara ran up to him, placing herself between Cam’s head and the outstretched arm of the old woman. Nodding at Cam, she told Sam, “Don’t let that light shine on him.”

Sam spun Cam’s head around so it faced Sam. Looking dazed, Cam’s eyelids slipped half closed. “See the light,” he slurred.

Mara ran to Sam’s side and looked at Cam’s face. “Cam! Are you all right?”

The head shuddered in Sam’s hands, and Cam’s eyes fluttered. “Huh?”

A scream tore through the cavernous room.

“Mara!” Ping yelled.

The old woman launched herself toward Mara, like a tigress protecting her young, talons extended and scratching at the air as she pounced. Ping jumped in her path and exploded into a cloud when the old woman clawed at his eyes. The swirl of dust stung Mara’s eyes, as she leaned away from the woman, while using her body to shield Cam and Sam.

“What happened?” Cam asked.

“Later,” Sam said, staggering backward from the melee.

Over Mara’s shoulder, Sam could see the old woman writhing and swatting at Ping’s particles as they swirled around her. When Mara stepped out of the storm, her heel caught on a dismembered leg, and she tumbled to the floor. Scooting on her backside, she had just about cleared the swirling dust when the old woman stopped spinning and faced her, snarling. Again the old woman pounced. Mara raised her hands defensively and yelled, “No!”

The old woman froze in midair, her feet off the ground, her torso lunging forward with her arms extended, stopped in mid-tackle just a foot above where Mara lay on the floor.

Knocking a couple legs and arms from her path, Mara rolled from beneath the hovering old woman, grabbed the edge of one of the tables and pulled herself up. Sam ran to her as she straightened and brushed herself off.

A few feet away, dust swirled but consolidated into a smaller space. After a few moments it molded itself into Ping’s profile and then solidified into Ping. For a second he was statuelike, and the next he was animated, walking toward them.

“Sorry about that. I wasn’t sure if you saw her coming in time to deal with her,” Ping said. “For such an elderly woman, she has extraordinary reflexes. Although I see my efforts were not completely successful.”

“The distraction was much appreciated,” Mara said. “It kept her from ripping my eyes out.” Mara walked up to the woman and pried open two of the fingers of her frozen left hand. In her palm, Mara found the tiny crystal, its surface reflective, but no light came from it. Using two of her fingers, she plucked the crystal free and turned to Sam. “Give me my book bag.”

Sam turned his back to her, where the bag hung from one shoulder.

Mara unzipped the side pocket and dropped the crystal into it. “We’ll take a better look at the crystal when we get to the repository. Maybe Dr. Canfield or someone else can give us an idea what it is and why these people seem so taken with it.”

She stepped around to face Sam and looked at Cam’s face. “Are you okay? What did that purple light do to you? You fell into some kind of trance or something.”

“I’m not sure, but it felt really great,” Cam said. “Like someone flipped a switch and the world seem to be a wonderful place, and I didn’t have a care in the world. It was ... inspiring. That’s the closest I can come to describing it. It was intoxicating, a happy floating feeling.”

“Euphoria,” Ping said. “What you felt was euphoria.”

“That’s what they are calling the drug making everyone so crazy,” Mara said. She nodded to the stilled woman and added, “She might be on it.”

“Perhaps there is no drug. What if it’s the crystal, or rather the light from it, that is affecting everyone,” Ping said. To Cam he said, “How do you feel?”

“I’m light-headed, but I think it’s dissipating. I’ve never felt anything like it before,” Cam said. “It was very pleasant. I didn’t get the sense that it was threatening in any way. Show me the crystal again, and let’s see if we can repeat the experience.”

Mara shook her head. “That’s not going to happen. It might not be a drug, but you were clearly getting some kind of buzz from that light, and we’re not returning to the repository with a drunken head.”

Cam looked disappointed.

Mara narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. It looks like you blocked out the light before I got the full effect of what it was doing,” he said.

Ping said, “Apart from the feelings of euphoria, exactly what was it doing? Can you determine what part of your physiology it affected?”

Before Cam could answer, Sam interrupted and pointed at Mara. “Ah, sis, you are beginning to flicker. You better decide what to do with the crazy lady before you fade away completely.”

Mara looked at herself. Sure enough, her body was subtly transparent, growing more so each time she blinked into nothingness. She felt the familiar fatigue sweep over her. “That’s strange that it is happening so soon. I’ve not been tapping into my abilities that much.”

“We did travel here from another realm earlier today, and you’ve been lighting this church with that crystal for about an hour,” Ping said. He pointed over their heads and then looked down. “Not to mention the Time-frozen woman here. It might be a good idea to—”

Mara disappeared, and the room went black. The loud thump of the old woman hitting the floor, quickly followed by a grunt, filled the darkened church. The spinning crystal clattered to the floor a second later.

“Mara?” Sam yelled into the blackness.

Next to him, Mara said, “I’m here. No need to panic. We just should keep an eye on our visitor. She might want to get her purple crystal back.”

“I don’t hear her moving around,” Sam said. He turned toward where Ping had been standing and pushed Cam’s head toward him. “Here. Take this so I can dig out the flashlight.”

Following the sound of a zipper, some rustling and a soft click, a beam of light shot up toward the ceiling. Sam swept it to his right toward Mara. “You’re still fading in and out some but not as much.”

A shuffling sound on the floor immediately ahead of them made him jump. Before he could turn and point the light downward, a hollow voice spoke to them, as if from the bottom of a well, “Hey, dude. I see you found my little laboratory.”

The flashlight landed on the face of the crazy woman, who now lay face up on the wooden floor between two of the metal tables. A severed hand reached out from the edge of the light toward her cheek, her features frozen in a mask of surprise, her mouth agape. Though the woman’s lips did not move, the voice continued to come from her mouth.

“Sorry I couldn’t make it in time to greet you personally, but I’ve had a few errands to run.”

Ping whispered, “Do you know that voice?”

“It’s Abby,” Mara said.