Unknown 9 by Layton Green (each kindness read aloud txt) 📕

More or less. But people don’t forget those kinds of things, and there’s some buzz around it. You started something, homeboy.

Let’s hope we can finish it. Hey, I need you to look into a handful of companies: Quasar Labs, Plasmek Technologies, and Aegis International.

I know Aegis is that prick Elias Holt’s company, the watchdog for the Ascendants, but remind me about the other two?

Quasar and Plasmek are likely LYS research labs. My guess is their funding will link up somewhere. But give ’em all the works. Follow the money, trace the parent corps, offshore tax havens, everything. I want to know who started them and when, who’s involved now, soup to nuts. You can add PanSphere Communications for good measure. That’s the global tech company who owned the black-site facility in Bolivia I uncovered.

I’ll see what I can do.

I feel better already.

Don’t get your hopes up. I’ve already made a go at Aegis, and learned these people have mad armor in place. Still, there’s a chink in everyone’s plate mail. Oh, and since you’ve been gone, I’ve had to beef up my own game to stay off their radar.

Good idea. Bonus points for anything you can find on the LYS or the Ascendants.

How do they fit together? You think the LYS are the good guys now?

It’s complicated, but maybe, or at least some of them are. The Ascendants are most definitely not. But at this point, I don’t really care, and it’s clear their pasts are intertwined. Blow it up, and I’ll sift through the wreckage.

Check.

Andie had lain down to rest but failed miserably. Soon after she took back Zawadi’s phone from Cal and resumed researching, she made a discovery. “Take a look at this.”

Cal hurried to sit beside her on the cloth settee beneath the window. She showed him an image on Zawadi’s phone that looked identical to the yantra the Star Phone had revealed in the Kolkata Science Institute.

“That’s it!” he said. “Where’d you find it?”

“The good news is this yantra is most definitely the same one we saw. The bad news? It isn’t specific enough.”

“What do you mean?”

Andie set the phone down. “I stopped worrying about all the exhibits and just focused on yantras. I learned that in Sanskrit, ‘yantra’ means ‘instrument’ or ‘machine,’ and is supposed to embody spiritual concepts in geometric form. Interesting, right?”

“Fascinating.”

“Maybe Dr. Corwin is telling us that from the beginning, science and religion were intertwined, technology and mysticism . . . I don’t know. Anyway, there are specific types of yantras, and this one is called the Kali yantra.”

“That does not give me a warm-and-fuzzy.”

“Like I said, Kali gets a bad rap. Yes, she’s the slayer of demons and the avatar of destruction, but she’s also the mother of the universe and the essence of divine love. Her yantra represents time, and transformation, and the energy embodied within all things.”

“That reminds me of Dr. Corwin’s fascination with the sea of energy surrounding us that you told me about.”

“I hadn’t made that connection, but you’re right. That bindi in the center—the red dot—embodies the human soul but also Kali herself, the point from which everything in the universe emanates.”

“So where does this get us?”

“I’m not sure yet. This info wasn’t hard to find; I just searched for yantras and studied the images. I suppose we’re looking for a specific one, though I don’t know how to separate them.”

“Want me to take a crack?”

“I’ve got a little steam left,” she said.

As she continued to research, Cal drifted off in a chair, a beer cradled in his lap. After a while, she took a break to pace the room, and glanced at his face. Cal’s stubble had turned into a light beard, and his large form was splayed across the chair like an overgrown puppy. She envied the ease with which he always fell asleep. Andie could never shut her mind off, unless she worked herself into a state of exhaustion through exercise. Not being able to run had impacted her mental health during the journey, and she could feel the tension building inside her like a boiling kettle.

When this is all over, maybe you need to try some of these meditative techniques you’ve been reading so much about.

Outside the window, the lights of the hotel across the street winked out one by one. The loneliness of the foreign city made her want to rouse Cal, if only to have another voice in the room.

Who has he loved and lost? What’s his story?

When she had first met him, she thought she had him all figured out. He had stayed true to form in many respects—a former jock who used his looks and schoolboy charm to ease through life—but he was cleverer than he let on, and was much more complex than she had realized. A shadow behind his gaze at odd times, a self-deprecating scowl when he thought she wasn’t looking. Why was he risking his life to be here? Most people in his position would have simply given up and chosen a new career. Returned to Indiana and studied accounting, or married a divorcée in the suburbs.

Was it simple revenge? A desire for justice?

Or did he love being a reporter that damn much?

She also found herself longing, in the dead of night in this city so far and foreign to everything she knew, to send an email to her mother. To reach out and continue the discussion cut short by those monsters at the Venetian ball who had dragged Andie away from her.

But she didn’t dare. The probability was too high the Ascendants were monitoring her mother’s email address and could track the sender.

Be strong, Mom. Somehow, some way, I’ll find a way to get you out of this.

An hour before dawn, Andie found what she was looking for. She hurried over to the chair and shook Cal’s shoulder.

“Huh?” He jerked upright, his eyes gummy with sleep. “What happened? Is someone—”

“Everything’s fine. I know where we need to go.”

“Couldn’t you tell me