"What's keeping it from activating?" He asked.

"There's a liquid barrier between each pane of crystal. It prevents the light and the vibrations from building into something dangerous. You're a very bright boy, aren't you? Kaiser said you were, but I didn't think you'd be this observant."

"Not observant enough. Is Edgar behind this? Is this what he's been building towards? The mass murder of children?" he said.

Her smile didn't waiver. "You think my husband is behind all this? Really? Well, I might need to downgrade my estimation of your intelligence. What would you say, Mr. West, if I told you my husband was dead?" She said.

"I would have to ask..." how he's causing these Events, was how Alex intended to finish his statement. But he couldn't. Instead he felt suddenly cold, as pieces fit together. "I would have to ask how, but I think I know, don't I?" Just as he knew just who, and what, he was standing in front of...and how very, very screwed he was right now.

Her smile got broader. "I want to hear you say it, Mr. West. I want to see just how smart you really are. What do you think my husband did?"

He thought for a minute. Knowing as he did that Studdard hadn't done any of this...and Kaiser had known that, all along. He'd known who was causing Events, and he'd bent over backwards to protect her. Because she was doing what he wanted, wasn't she? She was the one orchestrating it all. She was the murderer. She was the monster, and the method Kaiser used to keep his hands clean. The only question was...did she kill him?

No, he decided. Because she would still have to know that a Glass Event was survivable...and that meant she'd had to have seen someone survive by accident. "Suicide," he said.

A deep breath. A sigh. Greif trailed across her face. "Yes."

"He went into a Prism."

She did not answer at first, but stepped around the greenhouse, each footfall echoing sonorous and strange. When she spoke, it was with words that fell like tears. "After the first Event, the one at Project Ararat, my husband was inconsolable. He'd been stolen from, lied to. He watched our daughter dying slowly by inches, and that son of a bitch Kaiser used that to his advantage. He stole two billion dollars from us and used it to create that fucking laser array, and those Prism...things. And Amelie was so enthralled by their beauty that Edgar had a giant one made for her. A pretty crystal house that she could sit in and play in. That was his price for not tattling on Kaiser to the feds. He got it for her as a sign that her dreams would live on when she was gone."

"Did it hurt her?" Alex asked.

"No. We used the same system for that Prism that we're using for the greenhouse. Oil between the panes, with enough particulate to keep them from bonding together. And she never had a chance to enjoy it. She died of the disease just as it was finished. And the day she died my husband...broke. I think it all just overwhelmed him. The accident at Ararat. Amelie's dying, that whole miserable mess. The loss of his money...god, the only thing he loved more than his money was Amelie. So when we'd buried her, quietly, on our property...he undid all the safety mechanisms on the Prism and took a bottle of Jack Daniels inside of it. There was a flare of light...and now you tell me, you clever little man, what do you think happened next?"

Alex said, very softly. "He came back when the Prism returned from its vacation in another dimension. And you and Kaiser saw what he'd become."

"Yes. He became a madman. Powerful, beautiful, as young as when we first met and capable of miracles, but there was no sanity left. He barely recognized me, let alone that he could have saved our daughter if he'd just done that sooner." The hatred in that last statement flowed like blood from a wound. "Can you imagine that, Mr. West? Wanting a miracle for so long, and getting it too late? But that’s for another conversation. Edgar. He'd gone mad. He was alone for a very, very long time before the Prism brought him back to us. I suppose it was unavoidable, his insanity. And there was nothing human left for us to salvage. The man I loved, Kaiser's partner, and the greatest businessman this world has ever known perished that night, and only a wreckage of humanity was left. He should have died, and he didn't."

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"And you're going to join him." Alex said. "That's what all this has been about. The tests. You were trying to figure out how he survived."

"I know how he survived. It was the Glass energy and the Prism. It wasn't honeypots that saved him, though they did keep the gorilla more like a gorilla than whatever the hell it was my husband became. He survived because of what the Prism turned him into. But he went insane because of the isolation. If you want to survive the trip with your mind intact, you have to bring other people with you. Don't you see? I don't want his life, or whatever you can call his experiences now. I want to join him, but on my terms. I want his power, but I want my sanity. Kaiser feels the same. Or didn't you wonder why he brought you to me?"

"I didn't have to." Alex said. "I knew as soon as you smiled."

And then he sucker punched the woman and bolted back down the hallway, fast as he could manage. Out of the lethal greenhouse with its poisoned beauty. Past the lockers, past the voices of children singing, reciting lessons, answering math questions. Past the ten thousand innocent drawings, handprints that someone had turned into cranes, paper-Mache sculptures built around balloons. This place was filled with children, and she couldn't possibly—

The object that hit Alex in the head was large and cylindrical, and made of metal. It was wielded by the office girl, Tiffany, whose face was blank as she acted. He caught a glimpse of a near dozen faces behind her, and then he was reeling into the wall, stars in his eyes and most of the world gone dark with pain. "Grab him!" a voice—neither Naomi nor Tiffany—shouted, and he was restrained by large hands. They began dragging him down the hallway. He regained some control and began trying to fight back, trying to break free. But the man holding him—he caught a glimpse of a skintight polo shirt, a scowl, and arms like ham hocks—released one arm and sucker punched him in the gut, as hard as he could. There was a terrible cracking sound, like a tree-branch snapping in half. And what was terrifying was that the punch didn't hurt as much as it should have. That was a sign that he'd been hurt, bad. Maybe a broken rib, from the sound of the crack, and worse from the strange, spreading numbness that promised more agony to follow. He dropped to his knees, retching, unable to respond as the men pulled him back towards the Greenhouse.

"Don't do this," he mumbled.

"Shut up," the man holding Alex said. Then, to Naomi, "Are you sure about this? You or I or any one of us—"

"I'm not taking that risk, and I won’t risk using any of you. We'll figure out how to fix things after it's all done. Take him in the greenhouse and put him in the Prism, and let's get the others."

He was dropped, and handcuffs were produced by someone, he didn't see who. He was handcuffed to a wrought iron trellis covered in clementis, the riotous purple hitting his vision like the incarnation of a bruise. Light was flickering all around him, painfully, as if it had multiplied into shards of glass. Concussion, he thought. The world was drawing down into passive lines, his ability to act rendered impotent by pain. He retched gain, and now the pain hit. It bloomed from somewhere in his side and brought up the urgent urge to cough. When he did, he found blood on his hand. Oh, fuck, indeed. Hamhocks out there had punctured his lungs.

He felt a sharp jab in his shoulder. He yanked back just as Hamhocks finished withdrawing his needle.

"What the fuck was that?" Alex shouted. He could feel the burning spreading across his skin, winding into muscle. It was a horrifying sort of tingle. It meant the unknown was spreading through his system like night across the day.

"Just something to help with the process. I spotted your wedding ring and your cell phone. I recommend calling your wife. You'll want to say goodbye."

A wave of dizziness hit Alex as Hamhocks left the greenhouse. The greenhouse, Alex thought, that was also a prism. And now, as the doors to the greenhouse closed, he heard a terrifying sound: the slush of liquids being pumped out of the Prism's unseen seams. They were about to activate it.

And Alex was handcuffed to the base.