Xaviers!

"Good luck with that," Natalie says, "The world that revolves around Sam seems decidedly 'mystical' in its outlook."

"Science wouldn't be any fun without a challenge," he smirked.

"I'd just as soon stay out of the mystical bullshit myself, but can't seem to avoid it around here."

"It is pretty intent on making things complicated."

"Even those crystals in the basement of the Point seem to be in on it, or at least I got a bit of that impression when I took a trip into them."

"What exactly did you see?" he asked with interest.

"It's either an exceptionally good visual interface or a gateway of sorts. It was a fortress of some sort, spires in all directions. It's called the Starlight Citadel and it seemed to connect to... other places. The Citadel's system didn't much care for me being there as I wasn't authorized and our 'dimension's' authorization token was already in use starting just prior to my arrival. I could have forced the issue, but that seemed unwise at the time."

"Is nothing safe from red tape?" he groaned.

"Wait. Back up. In use? By who?"

"I don't know. The Caretaker subprocess in the system said it might be Ashlie, but I'm not sure I buy that and I certainly don't trust it."

"Did you... tell it she's gone?"

"It's possible her code is still out there in the Citadel's system somewhere. I shared some programming containment code with her prior to the... well... I shared it with her. So she might be out there somewhere. I don't know."

"Perhaps this Caretaker can find out? Or get you some kind of guest access?"

"Supposedly, yes, to both those questions, but only if we integrate his source crystal with the rest of the crystals. And considering I trust him about as far as I can throw him, that wasn't going to happen even before I got kicked out of the Point."

"Lippincott locked you out? He's really growing quite the iron fist. It's like he wants to hamstring us. Next time a crisis rolls around, I swear he'll get someone hurt."

"Well, I presume it was because they didn't want a student admin for the Point, despite me knowing the systems down there better than most. But it sucks not being trusted."

"I should see if my credentials still give me access to the crystal cave."

If not, he could scout out the underwater entrance Lippincott hopefully didn't know about.

"I haven't had a good way to go check on it. Been keeping my fingerprint on the system intentionally small."

"It's too late to manage my footprint, so I can check."

"If you find something interesting, let me know."

"You can count on it."