Desired By The Archangel: Book Two (Angel Paranormal Romance) (Braving Darkness 8) (5 page)

"Thank god you're back!" Cassie said, rushing to hug Magda. "Why did you run off? We were worried sick.

"I needed a break. But I realized I've been childish and selfish. Things could be much worse. Like getting kidnapped by Pyramid Corp and almost getting raped by a soldier."

"What?" Cassie said. Michael only walked silently by her side as they made their way down the hall.

"There's a group of them at the base of the mountain. They know we're here, and they will come for us."

"This place is much stronger than anything they can throw at us," Cassie said, putting her hands on her hips.

"But maybe not the Anu," Michael said, finally speaking up.

Cassie and Magda looked at him, horror slowly crossing Cassie's face. "They will attack," she said. It wasn't a question.

The mountain shook as if from an earthquake. Dust and rock dripped from the ceiling. Screaming echoed down the hallways. Michael led Magda and Cassie through the masses of people to the front entrance of the cave. When they arrived, the main room of the cave had been largely abandoned. Xavier and Rafe stood near the entrance, looking out onto the scene outside, as did Circe and several of the dragon shifters.

"They're attacking," Rafe said, cocking his head towards the Anu fighter jets flying by. The mountain had been besieged by a legion of them. At least a dozen of the small craft zoomed around the peak.

"I'll get rid of these assholes," Cassie said, stepping farther toward the opening. She lifted her arms and used her energy-blasting ability to knock a jet out of the sky. It went hurtling through space and crashed in the forest below the tree line. She continued blasting one after the other while Xavier called on his dragons to burn them out of the sky.

Out of nowhere, a massive ship appeared on the horizon. It blocked out the sun and looked to be the size of the mountain itself. "Oh, shit," Cassie breathed just before knocking another small craft out of the air. The dragons who had assembled looked at the massive shift and began to protest. But Xavier growled at them just as he transformed into a huge red dragon and Circe jumped on his back.

"You don't have the power to take down that ship," Michael warned them. Xavier and his dragons were already in flight, shooting down the smaller craft.

The larger ship slid through the air, silently moving toward the mountain and casting the land in darkness. "We need to take the people as far as we can into the depths of the mountain and close up the entrance," Michael told Rafe. "Get those dragons back here," he said.

Rafe deployed his people to lead the masses into the depths of the mountain. Cassie gave up shooting and went into meditation, standing right there with her eyes closed. A moment later, the dragons came back, dodging laser fire from the remaining small craft. They landed just below the opening. They shifted and stormed through the doorway. Circe looked agitated and Xavier's face was deep in a frown.

"We had this," he grumbled at Cassie.

"No, you didn’t," Michael said. "Now, everyone, get into the innermost chamber. I will close the entrance.”

Everyone pushed through the main chamber and hurried deeper into the mountain. Magda stood beside Michael as he flicked holographic images on a control panel. The outer rock of the mountain seemed to push out over itself in a grinding slow motion, until it fit snugly closed.

"Come," Michael said. "We haven't much time."

The mountain shook violently as if hit with a nuke. Screaming echoed all the way up to the main chamber. The lights went out and Magda reached for Michael's hand. "Hurry," he said, running down the hallway. The air seemed to compress and
whoosh
up behind her. Dust clogged the air and she began to choke. Crashing sounded as the mountain was shot again in a devastating boom.

There was no light to guide the way as Magda clung to Michael's hand. This was her fault, but in her new awareness, she could no longer blame herself. All things had their place in the scheme of life and death. All events were perfectly orchestrated occurrences in the stream of life. Even Michael being removed from the Council was perfect. It served a purpose. She could see that now.

Finally, they reached the deepest chamber in the mountain. The meditation room. Everyone had converged there. A dim blue light still glowed from the walls, illuminating the frightened faces of the people of New San Diego. Another blast reverberated through the mountain and screams echoed in the room.

"We're trapped like rats!" someone shouted.

"Everyone, please," Magda said, stepping to the center of the room. "Everything is fine. Nothing can harm us here. Now is the time, my friends, to push through to our final goal. Now is the time for us to show the Anu and The Council of the Seventh House what we are made of. My friends, let us meditate together. I know you are afraid, but this is the perfect time. We are right on schedule with the other groups. Let this be the day we stand up and say “no more”. Let this be our moment!"

Whimpers and whispers of approval came from the crowd. Someone booed with anger, but they were shushed. The group had grown. They were learning. They might be afraid, but something inside them knew that what Magda said was true.

"Let us begin," she said. Cassie and Circe joined her at the center of the room and they touched the computer that helped them ascend as they all closed their eyes together. Magda was instantly connected to Michael and felt herself become one with the entire group. The power of it was beyond anything she'd felt with them before.

There was a sudden massive shift and Magda could feel the entire group moving higher all at once. Inside her mind, Michael called to her. In the void before worlds were created, Michael came to her in his full glory, wings expanded, dressed in white.

“Come look,” he said to her, moving his hand through the air. She took his hand and followed him through the void until it began to take shape. She could feel the minds of everyone in the room, propelling her own consciousness to new heights.

Shapes began to form before her, and she hovered with Michael in the blackness of space. Orbiting the planet below—her planet, Earth—she could see the massive ships of the Anu.

“You can reach them this way,” he told her. She didn’t understand what he meant. “Look more closely,” he said.

Her body propelled forward in the blink of an eye, and she was beside the enormous mothership, but Michael was nowhere to be seen. She reached out to him. He was always near.

“Go inside. Do not be afraid,” she heard him whisper.

“Can they see me in this form?” she asked.

“Yes. But you are stronger than they are.” She had a momentary jolt of fear. She was definitely not as strong as the Anu. “But you are,” Michael whispered inside her mind. “You are love and they are fear. Love is always stronger, my darling.”

She heaved a sigh and let her body slip through the walls of the ship. Inside, she found herself in some sort of control room. No Anu anywhere in sight. “This ship exists in both the third and fourth dimension,” Michael told her. 

“What does that mean?” she asked through their mental link.

“It means that if it is destroyed in one place, it is destroyed in the other. Touch the control panel,” he said.

She reached out her hand, her astral form glimmering in pinks and blues. As she placed her hand on the black panel covered in glowing yellow lights, she had a sudden burst of information download into her mind.

“What is this?” she asked, startled.

“Stay calm or you will lose the connection. The Anu have very little security at this level of consciousness. Their data banks are completely open.”

Schematics of the ship burst through her brain, downloading into her mind as if it were downloading onto a computer. She felt herself filling with information she couldn’t comprehend. Images and ideas filled her, thousands a second until suddenly the last bits of information filled her mind and stopped.

“Holy shit,” she said, breathless even in her astral body. She could feel the fatigue growing, weighing her down.

“Come back to your body now,” Michael said, his voice tense. “They are coming.”

She took a deep breath and felt her consciousness shoot down from the orbit of the planet, through the atmosphere, the sky, and the mountain, until it plopped back into her head.

All at once she opened her eyes with a gasp. The entire group looked at her wide-eyed as they sat staring at her in the center of the room.

“What?” she asked.

“We’ve been out for about ten minutes. Your eyeballs were going crazy,” Cassie said, still sitting beside her. “What happened?”

“I was inside the Anu ship, and I downloaded a ton of information into my brain. I can’t really make sense of it. Crap, I’m tired.”

“The bombs have stopped,” Michael announced. The earth had stopped shaking and the booms from outside had come to a halt.

“Are we safe?” one of the shifters asked. A child began to cry at the back of the room.

“For now,” Michael told them.

“All right, everyone,” Xavier started. “Back to your rooms. We’ll resume our normal schedule after we check the damage. For now, let’s everyone stay in your private chambers.”

Magda hung back as the others filtered out of the meditation room. “What was that all about?” Cassie asked her, Circe standing right beside her.

“I’ve got all this stuff in my head. It’s crazy. It was like it downloaded straight into my brain.”

“I know what you’re talking about,” Circe said. “I’ve had it happen to me too.”

“So have I,” Cassie said.

“I can’t make sense of it yet, but I think it has something to do with the Anu ships and how they are built. Seriously, guys, I’m not an engineer or anything. I can’t make heads nor tails of it.”

“Maybe you should talk to Emilia and Rafe. They might be able to find a way to help you categorize the data,” Cassie suggested.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Magda agreed.

After everyone else left the meditation room, they went to Emilia’s workshop and explained what was going on. Cassie left to find Rafe while Emilia thought about how she could download the information inside Magda’s head.

“Sit in the terminal chair and we’ll put you into The Program. That way I’ll have direct access to your mind through the computer,” Emilia said.

A few moments later, Rafe arrived and helped Emilia get Magda plugged into the terminal. She took a deep breath as she laid back with the terminal helmet securely strapped to her head. It had been a while since she’d entered The Program through a terminal and didn’t know what to expect.

“All right, Magda, you’re ready to go,” Emilia said.

Magda closed her eyes and waited for the terminal to help her descend through the vast levels of her mind. The descent happened quickly and she found herself in her starting room—the bedroom she had as a child before the war. It made her nostalgic for times past, but there was little time to waste.

She opened her bedroom door and stepped out into the scene before her. It seemed as if she’d entered a vast warehouse of computers. Lights blinked on the rows and rows of massive hard drives. Walking down the center aisle, she looked left and right for some indication of how she might access the vast storehouse of information on the drives.

Finally, Magda came to the end of the rows and found what looked like a typical computer monitor, sitting on a desk with a mouse and a keyboard. She sat in the office chair waiting there and clicked on the mouse.

“Ready for download,” it said. She rose an eyebrow. How was she supposed to do that? Looking around, she found a regular desktop computer sitting off to the side of the desk. It had normal USB ports in the front. Magda closed her eyes and clenched her hand, focusing on the information the Anu ship had uploaded into her mind.

She opened her eyes and unfurled her fingers to find a thumb drive sitting in her palm. Putting the drive into the USB port, she took a deep breath and let it out. She pressed “enter” on the keyboard and waited. A second later, a download bar appeared, showing her the progress.

Magda had no idea how this was going to make it possible for Emilia and Rafe to access the information, but that wasn’t for her to figure out. She was just the mental hacker, not a computer genius like Emilia.

“Download complete,” the screen said.

She clicked on the new file on the desktop and found organized folders labeled with the type of information available there. Looking over the folders, she read each title, most of which didn’t make any sense. She clicked on the first one that caught her eye. It said, “Central Energy System.”

The files that opened were complete gibberish to her. It made no sense. Sighing, she closed the file and stood from the chair. A few moments later, she opened her eyes in Emilia’s laboratory.

“Did it work?” Rafe asked her, his amber eyes glowing with intensity.

“I think so,” Magda said, sitting up from the reclining chair.

“The information is populating in my system,” Emilia said. “I’ll be able to access it soon.”

Everyone stood behind Emilia as she sat in front of her computer screen, waiting. When the processing bar completed, she clicked on the folder to open it up.

“What is all this?” she asked, clicking on random files.

“I have no idea. I think it’s information about how the Anu’s ships work.”

“That is exactly what it is,” said Michael. Everyone turned to look at him as he came through the door.

“What do we use this for?” Emilia asked, confusion in her voice.

“Check a file named Central Energy System,” Magda suggested. It was as good an idea as any. There had to be a reason her subconscious gave her the impulse to open the file. Events inside The Program were rarely random.

Emilia turned back to her computer and found the file. She and Rafe read through the information, not looking up or speaking as they did. Magda could see their stunned faces as she watched from the terminal chair.

“What?” she asked. They didn’t respond, but Rafe put up a finger, suggesting for everyone to wait.

“This can’t be right,” Emilia said.

“It is,” Rafe said.

“What?”

“The Anu ships are all interconnected. Their main energy source runs off something like a wireless network. Basically, if we interfere with that network, the entire armada fails. They have basic life support systems, but no weapons, no propulsion. They’d be completely vulnerable to an attack.”

“But how are we supposed to shut down the power to their ships?” Magda asked, confused.

“You see, their power system is a massive information network. They basically have no data security, essentially no virus protection. If we could install a virus into their system, we could bring down the entire armada in a matter of minutes.”

“Why don’t they have any security?” Cassie asked.

“Because they don’t expect any interference from the races they conquer. That is the arrogance of the Anu,” Michael explained.

“So what we need is a virus,” Magda said, hopping off the terminal chair and coming to stand behind Emilia. Looking at the schematics on the screen, she had no idea how Rafe and Emilia could tell what they were looking at.

“Precisely,” Emilia agreed, already typing in a new window. “It’s a simple, self-replicating algorithm that cannot be stopped once it’s started. All we need is a way to install it into the ship.”

“And you’ve already done a mental transfer of data, Magda. You can really do this,” Rafe said, putting his hands on her shoulders and smiling brightly.

“What then? They’ll figure out how to reverse the virus, and we’ll be right back where we started.”

“Your people must attack them first,” Michael said.

“How?” Magda asked. “We don’t have spaceships.”

“The Anu ships exist in both dimensions. They can be attacked from the fourth dimension. There, you need no spaceships, just your minds.”