“The honeycomb is a highly efficient way to arrange paranormal crystals if you’re trying to produce and generate energy,” North said. He walked to the tower and touched a couple of the stones. “I’ve never seen anything like these before. I wonder what the researchers planned to do with the energy this thing is producing?”

“Just one more lost lab mystery,” Sierra said. She studied the jeweled honeycomb. “With so much significant work going on, I wonder why the government shut down the Bluestone Project?”

“No one knows for sure, but there are several theories,” North said. “One explanation is that paranormal research fell out of favor in the last quarter of the twentieth century. People who claimed to take it seriously were considered charlatans, con artists or delusional. There’s no denying that was true about a lot of the so-called psychics of the era. Hell, it still is today. Politicians didn’t want their names associated with paranormal research, so the funding dried up.”

“What about the other theories?”

“A lot of people are convinced the reason the research was shut down is simply because it never yielded any useful technology, at least none that proved practical. The costs couldn’t be justified.”

“My parents and grandparents told me that everyone from Fogg Lake thinks the program was halted because of the explosion that took place there,” Sierra said. “It became obvious to the people in charge they were dealing with forces they could not control.”

“That may have been part of the explanation, but Victor Arganbright has another, slightly different theory.”

“Would this be one of his conspiracy theories?”

“You could call it that. Victor doesn’t think the government pulled the plug on Bluestone because of the failure of the weapons to work or because of the explosion at Fogg Lake. He thinks whoever was in charge panicked when it became evident the Bluestone Project was on the brink of creating something even more dangerous than paranormal guns.”

Sierra considered that briefly. “Bombs that might be as devastating as nuclear bombs, maybe? Radiation that might have unpredictable effects on the population?”

“Maybe. No one knows. Like I said, it’s just a theory of Victor’s. He says he’s come across hints of panic toward the end of the project. Something scared the hell out of whoever was in charge. But he’s never found out what it was that caused the program to be shut down so abruptly.” North paused. “There’s a weird painting in his office. There are a lot of weird paintings in his office. But one in particular stands out.”

“What’s the subject of the painting?”

“It appears to show an oracle—not one from the days of Delphi, but from the era of the lost labs. In the painting a hooded figure is gesturing toward a crystal pyramid. A prophecy is written on the bottom of the picture. ‘Here there be monsters.’ Victor thinks the picture was intended to re-create a scene inside the Vortex lab. He believes it was done from a drawing or a photograph. There are a lot of details in the image that indicate the artist knew the setting.”