Dom uses telekinesis to open Thunder Hill's inner door

Dom uses telekinesis to open Thunder Hill's inner door, turning an impasse at a high-security entrance into the group's passage deeper into the installation. The feat is both a practical breakthrough and a test of Dom's still-uncontrolled power: the door gives way, but only after he chooses to act despite the danger he believes his ability might pose to Jack Twist and Ginger Weiss.

The security barrier and the danger of failure

Jack explains that the inner door is controlled through a glass panel set into the tunnel wall. An entrant must place a palm against it so the security computer can scan palm and fingerprints; only an authorized person can open the door through the ordinary procedure. Jack adds that anyone unauthorized faces the gas jets. The panel is therefore more than a locked entrance: it makes failed access potentially fatal.

The outer door adds another layer to the problem. Jack believes that the computer's attention and the clearance program are probably activated only after that door closes. The steel also muffles sound, so he doubts a guard beyond it could hear them, even if they shouted. He speaks barely above a whisper as he points out the glass panel, describing a system that makes noise and human alarm unlikely to help them.

Jack has some knowledge of this kind of installation, but not the authorization needed to pass. He says the locks were just beginning to appear in high-security facilities when he left the service eight years earlier, and admits that he cannot open this one himself. His proposed alternative is uncertain: Dom might be able to make the door move without using its scanner.

A test of Dom's control

Jack's suggestion rests on what Dom has already done with his telekinesis. He recalls Dom peeling thousands of paper moons from walls and sending them through the air, as well as levitating a score of chairs and moving a salt shaker the previous night. To Jack, those acts make it reasonable to try reaching into the door's mechanism. To Dom, they are evidence of a power he cannot reliably govern.

Dom objects that he does not know how to operate a sophisticated security system and cannot control the power. He worries that an attempt could run wild, injure Jack or Ginger, or inadvertently activate the gas jets and kill them all. His refusal is not a denial that he has power; it is a warning that the power's effects may exceed his intentions. The group's need to enter and the possibility of causing immediate harm meet at the same sealed door.

Jack presses him to concentrate and repeat what he did with the salt shaker. Dom hesitates, then looks to Ginger and asks her to move as far out of the way as she can. She steps back beside Jack. That precaution makes the danger tangible: before attempting anything, Dom tries to put the others beyond the likely reach of a failure.

The door opens

Jack prepares for what may follow. He keeps one hand raised over the heat-sensitive switch that would close the outer door, and tells Dom to move quickly if the inner one opens. A guard is somewhere inside, he says, and could be surprised by an opening before the entry-clearance program has run. Jack intends to follow Dom and silence the guard, improving their chance of getting farther into the installation before they are caught. The plan depends first on Dom's ability to open the door, then on speed and surprise.

Dom studies the steel frame and moves his fingertips back and forth over it, in the manner of an old-time safecracker feeling for the vibration of tumblers. He then examines the glass panel marked for palmprints and fingerprints. His gestures borrow the patience and tactile attention of conventional lock-picking, although the obstacle is an electronic security system and his means of overcoming it are supernatural. The scene holds the result back while he inspects the door and Jack watches the entrance.

The inner door abruptly whooshes open. Dom is startled by the success of his own action and jumps back instead of immediately crossing, as Jack had instructed. He recognizes the delay and leaps over the threshold. Jack presses the outer-door button before Dom is fully across, then runs after him; Ginger follows. The sequence converts a risky experiment into a narrow, decisive opening, while Dom's momentary surprise shows that success does not mean he has gained full control of his ability.

Entry into the installation

Ginger expects to hear a struggle or gunfire after crossing, but neither follows. Beyond the concrete entry tunnel lies a much larger passage with natural rock walls and lights suspended from scaffolding. The tunnel is about sixty feet across and at least a hundred yards long, running from the massive steel blast doors toward what appear to be banks of elevators. A guard's table stands three yards inside; a watchman's log is chained to it, with recent magazines and a computer terminal nearby. Yet no guard is visible.

The passage is entirely deserted and silent. Its scale and infrastructure suggest a facility built to withstand World War III, not an ordinary corridor, and the absence of the guard Jack anticipated leaves the immediate encounter unresolved rather than confirming his plan. Dom's opening of the inner door gets the three intruders across the threshold; it does not reveal who or what lies deeper within Thunder Hill. As an event in the infiltration, the action changes the group from would-be entrants blocked by an access system into intruders inside the installation, and demonstrates that Dom's power can affect a mechanism far removed from the objects he has previously moved.