Times Square was blocked off. The barricades kept anyone from getting too close to the sphere. Miranda was just at the blockade, watching as several people in hazmat suits checked for radiation.

Skylar was next to her, holding the Dominion rod and keeping the soul jumpers in check. They were brought along for any kind of explanation they could offer on the situation.

Miranda didn't care about them anymore. She had all the information she could glean from them. The dark sphere in front of her was all that held her attention.

The team ahead was sent by the government. Some of them wore camouflage apparel, some carried guns, and some carried medical equipment.

Not that anything could be done for the victims. Since the sphere burst into the scene, there had been twenty fatalities and no injuries. All who had made contact with it were vaporized.

The man, or creature inside the sphere had made several attempts to get out. But it seemed stuck. Even now, it stood at the edge of the sphere, watching those around it.

The team tried a few different tactics. They drove a drone and a driver-less car into it. Both were equipped with cameras, both were vaporized at the moment of contact. They tried all kinds of sensors on the outside, testing for radiation, different types of light, responses to energy and heat. Everything had to be brought in, New York was still without power. Everything electrical was fried.

Miranda had a few tests she would have liked to run. The response to this crises was unbelievably fast. By the time she got to the sphere, a team with guns was clearing her out. She would have put them all in a trance, but there were so many bystanders recording the event on their phones. She was curious, but not at the expense of her safety and anonymity.

Still, there were a few things she could try from her spot. She held out the Ancestral branch and shot it at the sphere itself, and at the man inside. The orb shot at the sphere evaporated. The orb shot at the man held on his hand for a moment before puffing into non existence.

Nothing. There were no return memories to pull. She would have to get closer.

Just then, a helicopter flew over head. The helicopter centered over the sphere, and a glass ball was dropped.

Miranda shot the ball with multiple orbs. The ball landed in the sphere, and Miranda began pulling the memory spheres back just before they were disintegrated.

The spheres returned, and Miranda moved them to her archive stone to get a better look. From there, she patched together the memories into one small projection.

The glass ball was actually a series of glass balls, one inside another, with a camera in the middle. As the ball hit, the outer layers evaporated one by one, until only the camera was left. But the camera stayed intact. Until the man inside the sphere came over and touched it.

The helicopter touched down and three people got out of it. The helicopter took off again and the new people started talking with the old people. Miranda shot more memory orbs from the branch to find out what they were planning.

"The camera survived the outer shell." One person said.

"It's the special material we're using. We have a guy here suited up with it."

Eventually, they agreed that they would send the guy in, shielding him first with a car. Miranda shot that guy in the head with an orb before he put a helmet on. The guy got in a car, and drove into the sphere.

The crowd gasped as the car disintegrated, and cheered when they could see an outline of the guy who drove it standing up. Then the man in the sphere made his way to the new guy.

There was a struggle. The man in the sphere grabbed the new guy and it was hard to see exactly what was happening, but after the struggle, the new guy was vaporized.

Before that happened, Miranda pulled the memory orb back with the branch, and put it into the archive stone.

The memory was brief. The man drove into the sphere, and fell to the ground when his car vanished around him. Inside the dome, it was dark. Pitch dark. But his arms and body glowed red like the other man. Bits of light flashed from the edge of the sphere, and the man inside it made his way to him.

The new guy tried to talk, tried to scream, but no words came out. When the man inside the sphere grabbed him, Miranda knew what his intentions were. He saw the jacket made it through the barrier. Maybe if he had it, he could get out.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

The new guy struggled to break the grip, but it was no use. The man inside the sphere tore off the jacket and helmet, and the memory was retracted before disintegration.

Miranda looked at the sphere, and was relieved to see the man in the sphere still stuck in there.

"There's nothing more I can test from here." Miranda backed up a little bit. "Let's go tap into the legion league’s network and see if we can find our friends."

Skylar nodded and they moved through the crowd, a pair of soul jumper's in tow. Once clear, Miranda guided them to where the legion league's memories indicated the hub existed. In a high rise building, near the top floor.

The view outside the window was not nearly as impressive as her former penthouse lab in the Illorium building, but it was new. She looked at it briefly and then walked into the room where the legion league connected around the world.

The room was bare; wood floors, shambled lights, stucco walls and a rectangular table with two chairs were the lounge furniture pieces.

On the table were the hubs. Two identical cubes made out of metal. Each had grooves in it that looked like they articulated.

She knew how it worked. The memories were clear. A soul jumper held the device, and their soul hooked up to a hub that brought all of the world together. A sort of metaphysical internet.

"Skylar, you can release our hosts." Miranda nodded. "But keep watch on them."

Skylar waved the Dominion rod and the two soul jumpers collapsed to the floor.

"Where did you get that thing?" Nose ring girl said.

"What matters is that we can activate it during any soul jump. There is no way for you to overpower us while we have it. Now, I need to you active the network."

Nose ring girl got up and sat at one end of the table. The other soul jumper sat opposite her. They clasped the two machines and they started to hum. Several pieces of the hubs moved and the inside of them were glowing.

A small red wispy beam of light passed between them, occasionally small flecks of green would also pass through. Miranda held out her archive stone and collected all of the green bits into it. Dozens of memory transfers over great distances. It was marvelous.

After a minute, she realized the memories and messages were repeating. She pulled her hand back out and turned to the door.

"Come on Skylar. We've got what we needed."

"Where are you going now?" Nose ring girl said.

"None of your business. Now stay out of my way and you can go back to wasting time doing whatever it was you were doing."

On the way back down the stairs, Miranda played her new memories on her archive stone in fast motion. She was getting better at taking in vast amounts of information in fractions of the time this way. Each post was like a video post on a computer, but just a hologram on her wrist.

One message was about the missing Alaska people. Someone was trying to reach them, but they were far away. Another group posted their findings in Nevada. Someone came in and killed the crew and made Pavarti's base of operations there more secure. Meanwhile, Scott, Dixon and another elderly woman was spotted in China, and the local people there managed to communicate that Scott and Dixon were looking for Miranda and trying to get to America. Good, she could wait for them to find her.

People thought for a while that Scott and Dixon must have done something in Alaska and then moved to China. Without all the information, someone else guessed that Miranda split up from them and went to Nevada because later it was found out she'd been in Ohio.

Nose ring girl and crew had been unable to update their findings here in New York. Latest Intel put her in New Orleans. Apparently there was a large scuffle there, and Pavarti's base of operations there had recently been activated. Others from the area were now congregating to try and find out who was behind this.

And by this, they meant the occurrence of these dark spheres all over the world. With the power out in New York City, there had been little talk of this happening anywhere else. But most of the major cities were without power and were dealing with some mystical ball of doom.

And the legion league thought it had something to do with the New Orleans secret base.

"We need to find a way to get you on a plane." Miranda looked at Skylar's sharp, bony arm.