The Hypnotist: The White Lotus
Part Two Chapters 36 & 37
Previously on The Hypnotist:
Mills and his squad breach the Mods’ sealed door using proton packs, uncovering an eerie, multi-level underground fortress—and glowing eyes watching them from the dark. Meanwhile, on the surface, Juno inserts the rune into the platform, unleashing electric beauty and childlike awe… before the entire mountain—and universe—goes black.
Chapter 36
There was no conceivable way to start the platform or for the transporter to descend. None of us could locate a set of controls. There was nothing in the room other than the platform and the electricity cascading across the metal.
We were at a loss on what to do.
“Why is it so big?” Carter was studying the platform and the electricity gliding across it. He turned to Jo, whose stare was fixed on the ceiling. “Jo?”
Obviously, his question didn’t help with our current task. Jo never took her eyes off the ceiling when she answered. “If I had to guess, it would be to transport multiple people at once, or perhaps even starships.” Now she locked eyes with Carter. “How else are they going to move freely around the planet when they’re far from another transport?”
Carter just shook his head in response when I had an idea and stepped closer to the platform. The energy was powerful, like standing inside a power grid filled with nuclear power. I reached my hands out and the sensation from the electrical energy amplified tenfold. I looked up at the ceiling.
“Find something?” Jo was standing beside me.
“Yes.” I turned to Jo and the team. Carter was directly beside her. Amber behind her and Raven was walking up to join us. “What’s faster than the speed of light?”
“Nothing,” said Raven and shook his head. “What’re you getting at?”
“The platform…” I gestured to it. “It reads thoughts and transports the recipient to whatever location it’s thinking instantaneously, no matter how far away it is.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Raven again. He had this look on his face that I wanted to smack. “Try again hypnosis dude.”
“No, he’s right.”
Thank you, Jo.
“It makes sense. Every thought we have has an electrical charge. It makes sense that’s how the transport would work. Reading thought energy to provide the transport.”
“Which also means we’ll need to know where we are going.” I turned to the platform. “If not, we can end up floating in deep space.”
“Or on another planet.” Jo was looking at the ceiling. I always appreciated her nonchalant means of communication. Carter looked like he just swallowed battery acid.
Amber finally chimed in. “If you’re right, then how do we turn it on?”
Jo answered. “We step on with a clear intention of where we want to go. Then the transport will descend and take us there.”
It was Raven who said what everyone was thinking. “But if we’ve never been where we want to go, how do we… think it into existence?”
Jo gestured in my direction.
“Me?”
“Yes, you Logan. You’re the only one who has been here. The rest of us have only seen pictures, but you stepped foot on the mountain and know what it looks like. You can bring us there.”
“But I was only there for a few minutes and never went inside the mountain. I was only on the platform, and if I take us there, we’ll end up in the middle of Vlad’s experiment. I don’t believe that is a good place for us to be without proper intelligence on what is happening on top of the mountain. We can end up surrounded by a horde of Vlad’s soldiers.”
Jo stepped forward. “But you were on the platform. Do you remember what you saw when you were there?”
I bent my head, thinking, flitting through my memory of Devil’s Rock. I remember vividly the mansion built directly into the mountain, which was housed behind a wall of sliding glass doors and an opening into the mountain. That is where my commander went inside. I had followed him until he descended a staircase built inside the mountain when he told me to wait outside.
Amber said, “Logan, we have no other choice. Other than going back down the way we came, there’s no other way up.”
Jo stepped closer and took my hand. “Clear your mind,” she said. “Bring up your memory of the mountain with clarity. You can do it. I trust you.”
“And if I fuck it up, we can all end up dead.”
Carter smiled. “Then don’t fuck it up.”
“There is no other way,” said Jo.
I looked up at the ceiling, then across the platform. I did not want to have to do this, but they were all right. There is no other way. Going back down would not make sense.
“Well, Logan? What’s it going to be?” Raven, he rested his weapon on his shoulder.
I nodded. “Let’s go.”
There was a collective sigh of relief followed by renewed tension as everyone realized what we were about to do.
Jo stepped up to me and grabbed my shoulders. “Clear your mind. No thoughts other than where we are going.”
I nodded as Carter went to take a step onto the platform by way of the steps when Jo called him back, to Carter’s startled surprise. “Logan should go first.”
“Why?” Carter shook his head.
“Because it reads thoughts, Carter, and we want it to read his first, since he knows where we’re going.”
Carter looked up at the top of the platform and nodded before stepping back down. Jo gestured for me to go first.
“And here we go!”
I took the steps up to the platform and stepped on top of it with an immediate electrical buzzing in my bones. With every step towards the center, electric waves coursed across my skin, slithering its way up to my head. My mind was clear, maintaining the visual of the staircase inside the mountain. Jo and the others followed me on from various steps around the platform, forming a circle around me.
No one said a word. The same electricity rifled up all their bodies. Electrical waves turned frenzied across the platform, raging blue and white in large waves that rose above our heads, and I closed my eyes, keeping the image as clear as a blue sky in my mind’s eye when I felt a rumble beneath my feet and looked up to the ceiling when the transporter descended. It looked like a hollow cylinder made from nine rusted-it could be bronze-metal slats three feet high and thick with a one-foot gap between each slat. As the transport descended, it spun, widening as it came closer to the platform until it was as large as the platform itself, where it hovered a few inches above the platform and spun at lightning speed.
The spinning felt like a pull in the center of my chest. Electrical waves reached high over the transport and when I looked at the team, what I saw was surreal.
Their bodies were dissipating, falling apart one tiny atom at a time. Turning into a vaporous mist that was captured by the spin and transported to places unknown.
Well, I hope I know because the same was happening to me. The sensation is best described as weightlessness or the moment when you lose and find yourself in some spiritual awakening.
It felt like floating.
And then everything went black.
And inside that black depth existed suffering.
Chapter 37
The lights went out the moment Fisk and Mills led their team down the adjacent staircases.
Mills clicked the flashlight attached to the barrel of his assault rifle, but nothing happened. They were doused in darkness with only the hum of the mountain to prove they were still alive.
“What is this?” He heard Fisk say.
“I don’t know. Something happened. Something’s wrong.”
Then silence. Quiet as the team tried to figure out what happened.
“Nothing’s working,” Fisk said. “No lights, and the radio refuses to work. Everything electrical is down.”
Mills looked over his shoulder at the entrance where they had set up two floodlights. He couldn’t see them. Then again, as he looked around, he noticed he didn’t see anyone, for that matter. Not even the soldier who was standing directly behind him.
A scuttle now, up ahead, down the stairs. It sounded like something rattled across cement. Mills snapped his attention to it, aiming his weapon in the dark.
“Did you hear that?” Fisk again.
Mills looked toward his voice, but again, all he saw was darkness. “Yes,” he called into the darkness. “Go with night vision.”
Mills let his rifle hang from his shoulder while he took his night vision goggles around his neck and secured them to his face, turning them on when everything turned into a greenish hue.
He had to take a second to understand what he was looking at. Tiny beams of light were floating from the bowels of the mountain towards them. There seemed to be hundreds, and as they passed, they bore shapes reflective of geometry, with patterns overlapping into multiple dimensions. “Lieutenant, are you seeing this?” Cubes, triangles, squares, tetrahedrons and spirals, all moving in concentric patterns.
Fisk’s voice echoed from the darkness. “Yes. What are they?”
Mills cleared his throat. “I have no idea.” He followed the shapes to the open door where they stopped as if they were guarding the entrance to the mountain when the soldier behind him glimpsed in the corner of his eye.
He didn’t look good. Something was dragging across his face, and Mills pushed his googles to his forehead. He craned his head, squinting in the dark, but the soldier’s pale complexion offered a reprieve. Nothing was dragging across the soldier’s face. Nothing but the soldier’s skin. His face looked like it was melting. Mills’ jaw hung open. The soldier’s skin was melting, disintegrating, in front of his eyes in a bloodied tangle of flesh and bone and blood when he dropped to the ground, followed by the line of soldiers behind him.
“Mills,” said Fisk. “We need to get out of here. Something’s not right.”
Mills was in awe. His jaw hanging open when he turned to Fisk’s voice. “We have orders, soldier.” Honestly, the second the words jumped off his lips, he regretted it. He felt like a pawn.
“I think we are the sacrifice.” Fisk’s voice faded with his final word when Mills’ heart twisted in his chest, rifling pain up his spine to his skull.
Then burning as if his cells were caught on fire.
His last thought-before hellfire disintegrated his cells-whispered off his tongue,
“I believe you’re right.”
