The Crystal Bridge (The Lost Shards Book 1) by Charlie Pulsipher

black glass panel inlaid into the wood, accompanied by a high pitched tone that made his eyes twitch.
“Visual off!” The tree disappeared, leaving the office sparse and sterile once more. Vander waved a hand over the noisy, insistent light. A pretty face appeared inches above his desk. Vander’s personal assistant smiled at him and then looked away. She’d started two days earlier. The attractive, red-haired young woman reminded Vander of his youth, made him yearn for it, giving him purpose and resolve.
The floating face looked up and then away again, a tiny smile on her lips. “Sorry to interrupt, sir, but Dr. Stephens is here to see you.”
“It’s perfectly fine. Send him in, I’ve been expecting him.” Vander kept the annoyance over the interruption out of his voice for his assistant’s sake. Poor woman doesn’t know what a dangerous job she has. Might as well keep her ignorant a little while longer.
Dr. Stephens stepped past the dark mahogany door like an animal catching an unfamiliar scent, slow and cautious.
Vander forced a smile. “Please sit down, Stephens. We have much to discuss.”
Stephens looked frail for his age. He was in his mid-forties, but appeared as old as Vander himself, though less dignified. He hunched over from years spent over a microscope, a computer, and a desk, and his light gray hair clung to his sweaty balding head in strips. Stephens’s ghostly skin appeared almost translucent, which wasn’t surprising since the man hadn’t seen the real sun in six or seven years.
He’s too valuable to let out very often and he’s been very, very busy. It had taken a fair amount of time and energy to integrate the latest stolen technologies into all the other work. The quantum computer’s decryption capabilities seemed endless and its retrieval protocols continued to find more information, ideas, prototypes, software, and discoveries daily. We’re just barely keeping up with all the fun new goodies it finds for us.
“Dr. Stephens. I’ve heard some distressing news concerning project 413 and our latest guest, Dr. James Iverson. Is everything alright in Section Six?”
“A few hiccups, sir, but he’s doing fine now.” The man blotted his sweaty face with a handkerchief.
“I don’t like hiccups, as you call them. They annoy me. You’ll also understand if I don’t trust your assurances. I’ve heard them before. I hear scaring someone can cure the hiccups. Do I need to send you downstairs for some special treatment?”
Dr. Stephens visibly shivered. “Please, sir. There were a few problems with the anesthesia and the new interface triggered a few unusual side effects, but this is all good news. We’re already seeing progress, sir.”
“Unusual side effects? Good news? The man almost died, Stephens. Mind you, I care little if one man dies, especially incompetent men,” Vander paused to let that sink in, “but this man and this project both have promise, and I don’t want to start over with either one. Do you know how much time and money we spent getting him here? Buying off those experts? Ridiculing his book and his findings? Blacklisting him so no one else would dare hire him?”
“No, sir…I mean yes, sir.”
Vander Carlson leaned forward, frowning while inwardly relishing the joy of seeing the younger man cower and squirm before him. “Explain yourself, Stephens, or I will replace you.”
“So sorry, sir, but I couldn’t have foreseen this. No one could have. His brain fought the latest nano-interface immediately. We designed them to trigger a defense mechanism, make the brain active where it had not been, but not right away, not like this. No other test subject had anything close to this reaction. The devices didn’t know how to compensate and just kept following their programming. They’re doing exactly what we wanted them to do, sir, just too well and too early.”
“Ah, that is encouraging. Will this affect future implementations?”
“No, sir, we’ve already begun