Charlotte Powers 1: Power Down (15 page)

xx48.12.01 / 12:53 / Still Thursday

The last entry timed-out, some people walked right under the tree I'm hiding in. Not guards, technicians from the facility walking and smoking. I caught a snatch of their conversation:

"—should have a good time. It's not like we're paid extra for it."

"We shouldn't have to get paid extra for it, it's part of our jobs."

"Wasn't in the job description
I
read."

"So what were they gonna put, 'must have unusually strong stomach and flexible viewpoint on ethical issues'?"

"I just hate pulling that shift. Don't you?"

"Of course I do. There's no one in there that WANTS to—"

Then they were gone and I could breathe again, except then ANOTHER technician walked over to my tree and actually leaned against it. He wasn't smoking, thankfully, just looking down at the facility and kind of humming. I guess he picked this tree for the same reason I did; it has a good view of everything down below. I'm not sure why HE was looking at the facility, though, it's not that attractive. Anyway, he stayed there for at least ten minutes, then THANKFULLY he moved on, leaving me to try to stop my heart from beating so fast and write some more. Now I'm trying to

[ENTRY TIMED OUT]

xx48.12.01 / 13:33 / Still Thursday

You will NEVER believe why that last entry timed out. I got caught! Not by a guard, of course, I'm sure the first thing that would've happened if I'd been caught by a bad guy would be the confiscation of my Opal (speaking of confiscation I never got my guitar back, I guess that's kind of a petty silly thing to be thinking about now but there you go, My Mind Does Wander). No, you'll never guess who DID catch me. Give up?

It was Daniel! My brother came to get me!

I was so happy to see him I almost yelled, I managed to stop myself, though. I also almost yelled when he first appeared, RIGHT beside me on the branch, he was phased-out when he approached and climbed up then he just kind of phased back in slowly, grinning. I didn't notice until he was halfway done and then, like I said, I almost yelled and also almost fell out of the tree. Luckily he caught my arm and even more luckily I managed to stop myself from making any kind of loud noise, we're not SO close to the facility here but definitely close enough that someone might notice any kind of loud sound. Really, it was completely immature and ridiculous and stupid of him to pull such a childish stunt when we're deep in enemy territory, but that's just him I guess.

"Daniel!" I whispered, once I'd recovered. "What on earth are you doing here?"

"What do you think?" he said. "Looking for you, stupid."

"How did you find me?"

He grinned even wider. "You told me where you were."

"I'm REALLY not in the mood for your word games or whatever—"

He held up his Opal and summoned the screen: "I've been sitting here in a tree on a kind of rise in the forest for the last few hours—"

I gasped. "My journal! You'd better not have read any—"

"Relax, I went backwards from the most recent entry, you know I wouldn't read any more than I had to. Your writing style is kind of painful anyway."

I scowled, but in a good way. He grinned at me, then went back to his Opal.

"You'd better not be—"

"I already told you I wouldn't do that," he said. "I'm calling Mum and Dad to tell them where ..." He trailed off, then frowned. "I can't access the greater net, just local ones—"

"I could've told you that!" I said. "Why do you think I haven't called you?"

"We actually thought you must've gotten in trouble and been arrested or something," Daniel said. "That's if you weren't dead."

"Well THANKS," I said. "It's nice to know my family has SUCH confidence in me—"

"Calm down, jeez, it's obvious you did okay. What IS all this, anyway? Why is outside access blocked? What's this facility, you mentioned brainwashing in your entry—"

Daniel stopped himself, then suddenly disappeared—phased-out. More technicians wandering under this tree. They didn't stop, though, and soon they were gone and Daniel phased back in, frowning at me.

"Why didn't you phase out?" he asked. "I know you're supposed to be hiding your powers—"

"I lost them, your STUPID teleport took them away from me," I said. "Or maybe it was when I got intercepted by the teleporter here—I figured it out, I figured out that they must be teleporting people here, and that must have 'grabbed' me when I passed by or whatever the proper term is—"

"Well, 'ported' is pretty standard, but 'rezzed' is getting popular—"

"I wasn't asking for an explanation!" I said. After that it was me who did some explaining, telling him the basics of what was going on here and about how I'd lost my powers. I finished with my theory, about how my 'shadow' must have been split off and gone to Green Grove while the rest of me ended up here. By the time I was done he was frowning, clearly thinking.

"That ... actually isn't a bad theory," he conceded.

"So it's possible that's what happened?"

"... possibly," he said. "I'd have to do some experiments to confirm, it's an interesting idea, anyway—"

"Interesting?" I hissed. "My powers are gone, that's not 'interesting', that's TERRIBLE!"

"So you've been completely unpowered this entire time?" he asked. "You've just been normal?"

"Yes," I said, grumpily. "It's been really difficult."

"I bet, especially with this mind control thing. It's a shame you couldn't just phase out—"

"Huh?" I interrupted. "Why?"

"Don't you listen to anything I say? I've told you at least a dozen times, phasing out is an extremely effective defence against psychic manipulation unless the psychic manipulator can ALSO phase-out or otherwise make their psychic energy go out-of-phase, it's because—"

"I'm REALLY not in the mood for one of your impossible-to-understand explanations," I said. "This doesn't seem relevant, anyway. I can't go out-of-phase and that's that."

Daniel let out a slow breath. "So what now? You're pretty set on infiltrating that facility?"

I nodded. "I have to—and now that you're with me—"

"What?" he said. "Are you nuts, I'm not going in there!"

"Huh? What? What are you talking about, you HAVE powers, you have the power to BE COMPLETELY UNDETECTABLE, you're the PERFECT INFILTRATOR—"

"Calm down, they'll hear you. Look, I'm not cut out for field work, I'm barely 'support'. I'm not like you, Curls."

"So why are you here if you're so scared of field work?"

"Because I was worried about you, stupid! What did you think, that Mum and Dad and I were just going 'oh, we've completely lost Charlotte and she's not showing up on any of our monitoring equipment but oh well, I'm sure she's all right, we won't bother spending every waking moment searching for her or anything'."

I bit my lip. "Oh," I said.

"Hell, it was only desperation that convinced me to follow you here, we'd exhausted literally every other option. For all I knew I was gonna end up inside a mountain or something."

"You said the teleporter was perfectly safe!"

"
And it is
. But it was like you just disappeared after being rezzed and I couldn't explain that, not until now."

For a while after that I didn't say anything. I guess it WAS pretty brave of him to follow me through the teleporter when he had no idea what would happen to him or where he'd end up.

"But if you were brave enough to do that then you must be brave enough to help me now," I said. "There'd be hardly any risk to you—"

"What if they've got sensors tuned to the seventh field?"

I looked at him blankly.

"The seventh field, Curls—for hope's sake, you've spent enough time there, the pseudo-dimension we enter when we go out-of-phase, it's difficult and costly to build something that can detect entities occupying the seventh field but it can be done, it's possible that as soon as I stepped into that place they'd notice me."

"Oh," I said. Now that he brought it up it did seem as though 'the seventh field' was something I should know about.

"I thought you were supposed to have this 'perfect memory'," he said, "how on earth are you so forgetful?"

"It's only short-term stuff I'm perfect about!" I said. "Don't get down on me!" I took a breath and puffed it out. "But I understand if you don't want to help me, I understand if you're
scared
—"

"Hell yes I'm scared, and so should you be!" he said. "I mean, I'd be trying to convince you not to do this if I didn't know how bloody-minded you are—"

"I'm not 'bloody-minded'!"

"Are you kidding? You're the most stubborn person I know! Granted, I only know you and Mum and Dad, but still—"

"Daniel—"

"Look, I've got to contact them," he said. "Maybe if I can get far enough away from this facility I can get a connect to the greater net, how far have you gone before?"

"... not far," I admitted. "I haven't left the town."

"What? You've had a month, are you seriously—"

"Mind control, remember? I wasn't unaffected!"

"Okay, okay, whatever. I'm going to sneak down there and steal one of those trucks—"

"You can
drive
?"

"Oh, how hard can it be? Look, I know you're set on doing this, but could you just wait for Mum and Dad? This block they've got can't go too far, with a bit of luck I'll be able to contact them soon, they're on standby in the invisible jet—"

"You said that was a joke!"

"It IS a joke, it's not invisible—it's not even a jet, look, I'll explain all this later, all you've got to understand now is that you have to wait for them. Okay? I'd tell you to get away from this facility, but you're not going to listen to me about that either, right?"

"I guess I'm not," I said. "But I think something bad is happening NOW—"

"Just WAIT, for my sake, if Mum and Dad find out I tracked you down only to let you go get yourself hurt or worse they're gonna kill me." Daniel looked at me for a moment, then shook his head. "If you DO get in trouble send me an emergency signal, we should be close enough that I'll get it on my Opal even with this block in place. Okay? If you're in mortal peril, I'll come rescue you. But ONLY if you're in mortal peril, got that?"

I smiled at him. "Okay, I understand. I'm really happy you came to get me."

"Yeah, I'm happy I did too," he said. "Even if I'm not actually 'getting' you. Keep safe, Curls. None of us want to lose you again."

Then he left. I watched him drive away in the truck he stole until it was out of sight—although apparently no one else did, because it was pretty obvious it was the first time he'd ever driven anything—he IS kind of a genius though, I'm sure he'll get better as he goes. And Mum and Dad are coming, I'm going to see them soon! Until then, though, I can't just leave—apart from anything else it's probably safer to stay here up this tree than it is to try to get through the forest, I can hear the motorbike patrols pretty clearly from up here. So I'm just sitting here, watching, writing all this out, waiting for

...

There's a truck coming, for a moment I thought it might be Daniel coming back but it's not.

...

More than one truck, actually.

...

C2 is down there! The trucks were full of students from the school and C2 is one of them! They're going inside now but there are people everywhere, I'd get noticed for sure if I ran down!

Wait, the others—they're all from the self-improvement program. I recognise some of them, this must be the advanced program! They're taken here, why? What's going to happen to them, 'they never talk about what happened', C2, what are you doing here?

I have to get in there, I have to save C2, I know I should wait for Mum and Dad but my friend is in danger! I can't just wait, I CAN'T! I have to go in there now, RIGHT NOW ... sorry, Daniel. If you're reading this, if this is my last entry, just know ... you really couldn't have stopped me. No one could have. And Mum and Dad ... I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but I don't regret a thing.

xx48.12.01 / 14:22 / Still Thursday

I'm REALLY glad the previous entry wasn't my last. I'm also glad because I found C2! I'd better tell it from the start; I have some time to write, this elevator is REALLY slow.

My infiltration began well. My observation of the guards' patrol routes paid off, because the gap I'd noticed let me climb up to the roof completely unnoticed. There are cameras outside, but because of the trees there are heaps of blind spots. There are cameras inside too, but hopefully they won't be a problem because of my disguise. I got lucky with my entrance—as I'd hoped, the trees on the roof are actually growing in little internal gardens, which DO have windows. I located one that opened on to a kind of locker room, and found appropriate clothing that means I can move around basically unnoticed; a lab coat and a weird kind of safety helmet, it's bright green and has a kind of sticky mesh on the outside. Still, even 'bright green' is inconspicuous when EVERYONE is wearing it, and this facility has a LOT of people working in it, all running around the place almost like they're panicking. I didn't have time to find out why it's so busy, though, and the activity helped make me even less noticeable—another good thing is that a lot of the staff here are younger, not much older than me, so I didn't stand out in that way either. Above ground there are only two levels to the facility, mostly big rooms with low ceilings filled with complicated-looking monitoring equipment being attended to by serious-looking people. The inside of the facility is very white, and very shiny.

To cut things short (because I think this elevator is FINALLY going to arrive at the bottom), I made my way through the upper levels, searching for C2. I found the 'advanced self-improvement' group in a room that was laid out like a science lab, they were sitting and listening to a woman in a lab coat give some kind of lecture. C2 wasn't with them, though. I'll go into more detail about what she did later, for now I'll just put that SHE found ME, and she's the one showing ME what to do now.

One more time: C2. Is. Amazing.

Elevator's reached the lowest level. Got to go. More later, hopefully.