Xaviers!

The workshop in the Point was going mad.

Every screen, every computer console, everything was flashing. Pulsing. Now quickly, and now slowly, and now quickly again. A pause, and the pattern repeated.

The signal spread out, now taking over computer terminals and consoles outside the point, heading across campus. Even Will, not connected to the network, found his eletric diodes flashing.

Flashflashflash. Flash Flash Flash. Flashflashflash.
Flashflashflash. Flash Flash Flash. Flashflashflash.

Nailah has stopped in the hallway of the mansion between classes, looking at her phone flashing.

"What the... Is anybody else getting this?" she asks, looking around at the other people in the hall.

"Yeah," Tereza says, thumbing irritably at her phone, then looking at one of the informational monitors on the hallway wall. "Looks like some sort of network-wide thing."

FlashFlashFlash. Flash Flash Flash. FlashFlashFlash.

Pause.

FlashFlashFlash. Flash Flash Flash. FlashFlashFlash.

Then there was some static, coming out of anything with a speaker.

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zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzlo?  Hezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

"Wait. Is that... morse code?" she wonders before a staticy voice interrupts her train of thought.

"Yes, hello! Who's there? Do you need help? You're breaking up!"

"Yes, this is Xaviers. I don't know what's going on, you called me. Or... all of us, I guess?"

"You. Are. Breaking. Up." Nailah says slowly and loudly as if that would make the signal clearer somehow. "Who. Is. This?"

"Was that 'stop your attack'?" Tereza asks, frowning as she listens to her own phone.

"But we're not attacking anybody. Are we? I'm so confused. What crystals?" she speaks the last part directly into the phone.

"Was that surrender the Lighthouse? We're not attacking anyone. What are you talking about?"

"Uhm... what?" Nailah follows almost nothing of that, but it sounds bad enough to make her nervous anyway. "We're not... doing anything. We're not even in the lighthouse right now. Is this about the ghost tiger in the dorms? I don't think it's us doing that!"

Tereza looks at Nailah, "Just like Ashlie was talking about the other night. Something's going on. Although, if this is affecting the network, we should probably check on her."

"Yeah... Fudge, this is all way over my head. What's the lighthouse got to do with any of this?"

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Lighthouse is the key.  Go there, go down below, and reset thzzzzzzzzzz

Static.

"Well, it's something," Tereza says, "I'm headed to the lighthouse. You coming?"

"You bet!"

"Come on then," she says as she runs down the hallway.

*** One running screen wipe later ***

Despite the dash across campus, Tereza enters the lighthouse a little more carefully. "Hopefully things are okay down here."

Tosh ran in at about the same time.

"You guys got all that too, huh?"

"Yeah. I think everyone got it." Nailah says as she pokes around the first floor of the lighthouse. "Although I don't think I 'get' it cause there's nothing here."

"The message said to go down below? Maybe it's on one of the sub-levels?"

"That would be my guess," he said, bringing out his scanning device to check for dimensional disturbances.

The dimensional disturbance detector was detecting dimensional disturbances.

Specifically, a large space below the lighthouse was going crazy, with a massive amount of confused signals, larger than anything seen to this point, firing left and right.

He perked up. "Oh! Oh! I know where to go!"

"Lead the way, Science-Man!"

"I... umm... hope you don't mind swimming," he said, heading to the beach.

"I'm really not dressed for it," Tereza says irritably.

"This is no time for convenience! The very fabric of reality is at stake!" Nailah proclaims before amending "Apparently."

At the beach, Tosh told them about the crystal cave as he stripped down to his shifting suit.

"Great, a cave full of crystals," Tereza says, pointing the palms of her hands towards the ground as ice ripples up her legs, covering her in a close-fitting 'suit'.

"That can't possibly be comfortable..."

"More comfortable than sea-water soaked clothes and more pleasant for the two of you than switching to fur."

It's a cold and wet, but thankfully short trip through the waters and up into the cavern.

What opens up in front of them is a large cavern, filled with a faint glow and the thrumming of electronics. Thick pipes run along the ground, carrying water towards the enormous super-computer that fills the back half of the cavern. The rest of the cavern is empty, a thick layer of dust on the ground and all around them they can spot the jagged edges of crystals protruding from the walls, ceiling and even the ground. As if larger extrusions once reached into the room but have been shattered. Here and there tiny fragments still lie on the ground.

"Well, it certainly looks like there used to be crystals here," Tereza says, morphing the ice into something a little more like armor.