The Pyramid Chronicles: Fortuna Guard (#2)

Chapter Fourteen: Apex

Wherever the pyramid fragment was being kept on the Fortuna, it likely wasn't going to see the light of day anytime soon. If he really wanted to, Malcolm could get its location from the Newmans' minds, but it wasn't something he needed right now. What he really wanted to know was whether the fragment would have the same influence here that it had on the researchers at Delta Labs.

The fragment's influence was subtle, to be sure. The lab reports from the original Delta files only told half the story, but Malcolm had a feeling much of their later work was the result of the fragment's effects. The lab supervisor had noted that a few of his ideas 'came to him in a dream.'

No one in their right mind would have conducted the alterium experiments that the Delta researchers did. And, regardless of how questionable their morals were, they certainly wouldn't have used the children of Tyche Point as test subjects. The risks of getting caught were too great.

But their theories had been correct. Maybe, if one could learn to balance the fragment's influence, it could be a valuable tool. Even back when Malcolm had worked for Andrew, living under the same roof as Andrew's pyramid fragment, he'd occasionally had dreams that seemed to be trying to tell him something. He'd learned how to control some aspects of his powers thanks to these visions.

Now, it was happening again. Or at least, Malcolm suspected it was. In the afternoon of April fifteenth—he'd made a habit of tracking the date while locked up—he had a dream where he returned to the mind of the SCI scientist he'd spoken to during his search for minds outside the ship.

And once Malcolm was inside the scientist's mind, he took control of his body.

Malcolm was skeptical the moment he woke up. If he really did have this ability, why hadn't he figured it out sooner?

But, as usual, he had plenty of time to kill and nothing to lose. So, as evening faded into night, he reached back to the SCI facility with his power, sweeping his senses over the minds that were asleep.

Instead of jumping right into one, Malcolm took a minute to focus on his options. Slowly, bits and pieces of information became clear to him, offered up by the subconscious minds he had access to. He got the sense that one of the minds he passed belonged to a security guard, and he chuckled to himself. Sleeping on the job? Really?

Beyond that guy, there were a couple of agents who had dozed off in their offices. And there was one man who fit the bill for what Malcolm had really been hoping for: another scientist. Someone who wouldn't be out of place in the lab. It wasn't the same man whose dream he'd visited a few days earlier, but this one would do just fine.

This was definitely the strangest thing Malcolm had ever tried. But if it worked, it worked.

He concentrated on the scientist's mind and slipped in.

~

Malcolm's eyes opened.

No, not his eyes. The scientist's.

It took Malcolm a moment to find his senses. As he sat up, he found himself in a surprisingly comfortable desk chair. An open door a few feet away led out of the office and into what appeared to be a lab.

It worked. It actually worked. Malcolm laughed. The scientist's voice took him by surprise. It was deeper than his, foreign and jarring.

"Well, let's see what we've got here," he muttered. Strangely enough, he could feel his real voice underneath this one. Disconnected from this body and yet still waiting to be used. Interesting.

He stood up and started his search in a nearby filing cabinet. When he found nothing notable there, he walked out of the office into the lab. None of the other researchers paid him any mind as he wandered through their workspaces. Most were examining samples under microscopes or studying graphs on computers. None of this was really Malcolm's area of expertise.