Psion Beta (16 page)

“
Woohoo!” Sammy yelled in uncontainable excitement.

Ludwig went down next, but Marie seized a chance to take careful aim at his poorly protected head.

Direct hit.

The fibers in Sammy’s jumpsuit stiffened, forbidding any more movement. His com turned off, his helmet expanded over his eyes, and everything went black.

9.
Dantès

The misery Sammy endured
at the loss of his first Game was compounded by Gregor’s sullen mood for the next several days. With Gregor’s low confidence, Sammy should have been determined to carry out his honcho’s orders implicitly. He wanted to confess his fault for abandoning Li, but he was too embarrassed. And since Gregor showed no hints of anger, Sammy said nothing. The only person suspecting anything was Al.

Sammy didn’t know how Al knew, but he knew. He never mentioned it, but his attitude toward Sammy was noticeably icy for the next few days. Sammy wondered why no one got in his face and yelled at him. That’s how he’d done things with his old friends, and it worked fine. His respect for Al made him resolve never to be the cause of his honcho losing again.

Jeffie, on the other hand, was thrilled Sammy had lost. She told Natalia and Kawai she thought it was good for him—something about building character, as Sammy heard it from Natalia. Jeffie never said anything directly to Sammy, but hinted around it regularly. For the next three weeks, she took advantage of every opportunity to remind Sammy her team had beaten his in their first Game. Brickert and Sammy got very good at rolling their eyes and holding their tongues. By the Sunday of his fourth week at headquarters, Sammy was pretty much over his crush on Jeffie.

Because it was still too cold on Capitol Island in March to do much outside (“except make spit icicles on your tongue,” Brickert liked to say), most Sundays they spent inside relaxing. The Betas rarely did anything as a large group except gaming, but Al and Kobe decided to organize a slam dunk contest (“now that all the pukes aren’t so pukey anymore,” as Kobe put it). Sammy pointed out that if they weren’t pukes, then he should drop the title, but Kobe pretended not to hear.

Al and Kobe told everyone to play whether they liked basketball or not. Kaden arranged the competition into a tournament of sorts. Each round half of the Betas were knocked out by receiving the lowest votes from their peers. Sammy wasn’t much of basketball player, his experience being limited to a recreation team when he was in grade five. It was part of his parents’ theory that he should try every sport at least once. American football was his favorite.

Sammy made it past the first round using a big blast to give himself plenty of time to do a 360° turn before dunking the ball, but his ball handling skills weren’t good enough for him to stay in the mix for any longer.

“
What a waste of size,” Jeffie teased as she gave him his lowest score: 5 of 10.

Sammy went out in the second round, but he was content to watch the others. The five Betas who stood out the most were Kobe, Levu, Kaden, Li, and Jeffie.

The competition heated up as these five took the court. Of course, Sammy knew Jeffie had played basketball at the Junior Olympic level, but he had no idea she was
that
good, after all, she was still a girl. Everyone used blasts to get high enough to dunk, but she controlled the ball as well as anyone Sammy had seen. She had a graceful poise that even Kobe lacked with all his finesse. So it wasn’t a surprise when the championship round was between Jeffie and Kobe.

Kobe went first, dribbling the ball from the half court line to the tip of the three-point arch, then launching himself into the air with a blast. His movement was fluid, his body frozen in an angular pose. At the peak of his jump, he performed an aerial somersault, pulled the ball high over his head, and jammed the ball home.

Despite being genuinely impressed, Sammy barely clapped.

Jeffie had that gleam in her eye that Sammy had seen before. She needed to win. Dribbling a few times, she sprinted down court up to the free-throw line and blasted hard—much stronger than Kobe—until even her feet rose above the rim.
Oh wow,
she’s going through the hoop
. It was the perfect choice because her frame was just slender enough to fit through. Kobe, with his more athletic build, could never hope to duplicate it.

Her legs went through cleanly, but she had too much forward momentum for the rest of her body to get through so easily. She must have realized this because she tried to grab the rim to stop herself.

Use your landing blasts!
Sammy shouted at her mentally.

The panicked expression on Jeffie’s face told him enough. He threw down his score sheet and tried to cover the distance from the sideline to the hoop before she hit the ground. Jeffie’s sweaty hand missed the rim and threw off her balance even more. Several people gasped as she toppled onto the floor with a gut-twisting
CRACK
!

Sammy just missed her by a second.

Jeffie moaned in pain, squirming on the floor, trying to grab her ankle. The blood in her face was draining fast.

“
Are you okay?” Sammy asked as several other Betas ran to help her. Kobe was among the first.

“
I’m fine,” she groaned, “just give me a second to get up.”

“
No,” Sammy insisted, “Let me help you. You don’t look so good.”

“
I’m fine!” she repeated louder, but as soon as she was upright, hobbling on one foot, her face went glue-white, and she fell again. This time Sammy caught her.

He picked her off the ground in his arms, and turned to Brickert. “Can you call Byron? I’m taking her to the cafeteria.”

“
You got her okay?” Kobe asked with genuine concern.

Sammy hoisted her up to improve his grip and pushed through the crowd until they parted for him. “Yeah, thanks.”

Inside the cafeteria, Sammy lay Jeffie down on a table and made sure she was still breathing. After a few seconds, she recovered from her faint but was still quite pale. Just before she vomited, Sammy grabbed a garbage bucket and held it for her while she emptied her stomach.

“
Feel better?” he asked when she finished.

“
No,” she mumbled. Sammy could see in her face that she was determined not to cry in front of him. “Dang it. I hope it’s just broken.”

Sammy put the bucket of barf down and wiped his nose to try to change the smell in his nostrils. “Why would you hope it’s broken?”

“
Breaks can be fixed in a week; sprains take like a month.”

“
I heard a crack, so that’s a good sign, right?”

Jeffie nodded and wretched again. Sammy only just got the bucket in time. A little splashed on his hand, and he thought he might retch, too. Her face regained a bit of its color. “I looked so stupid out there.”

“
No, you looked great. You’re better than I’ll ever be.”

She lay back down and closed her eyes.

“
Byron should be on his way. Brickert called him as soon—”

“
Had you ever played it before?” she blurted out. Her eyes were still closed and her hand was on her forehead, concealing her eyes, but Sammy wondered if she was peeking at him.

He had to think about her question. Finally he asked: “You mean Star Racers?”

Jeffie nodded. He wished she would open her eyes so he could see them now.

“
No. I haven’t—I mean I have, but not before here.”

She frowned weakly, her face still pale, but attractive nonetheless. “I’m such a freaking idiot.”

Sammy dug his finger in his ear. “I think I broke my hearing. Can you say that again?”

“
You heard me,” she told him with a fragile laugh which quickly turned into a grimace. “Don’t make me laugh, it hurts.”

Sammy nodded complacently. Despite the smell of barf on her breath, he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to kiss her very badly. But all he said was, “Yeah, I’ll work on that.”

“
Thanks for trying to catch me, though.”

Her hand twitched like she made to catch something, and then the cafeteria door opened. Commander Byron entered pushing a wheelchair and behind him came a man with very brown skin wearing a doctor’s coat. Several curious Betas looked in over his shoulder.

“
How are you, girl?” Brillianté called out from behind.

The doctor’s attention went from the trash can where Jeffie had vomited, to Jeffie, and finally to Sammy. He looked at Sammy for a long moment. His strange smile made Sammy feel weird. He shined a light in her eyes and briefly examined her ankle. “Let’s get you out of here,” he told Jeffie in a voice Sammy was sure he’d heard before. “I’ll have you fixed up in no time.” He picked her up tenderly and put her into the wheelchair.

Just like that, she was gone. As she left, he wondered to himself,
What would she have done if I’d caught her?

The days at headquarters came and went a little quicker as the routine settled deeper. Every few days or maybe once a week, Sammy thought about his friends, especially Feet, and missed running the streets with them. The strict life of a Psion at those times seemed too tedious, but between the Game and sims, enough adventure was still packed within the four white walls of headquarters to keep him interested.

As Jeffie predicted, she was out of her cast in a little over a week. She claimed to use the time in her sims to become the most precise hand blaster ever. Sammy wanted to write her off as an arrogant snob, but he’d come to accept that Jeffie had claimed for herself a little piece of his heart that he couldn’t quite take back. No matter how much she grinded his nerves, he couldn’t shake her. And he hated it when she spent time around Kobe.

Kobe and Jeffie aside, Sammy’s biggest problem was the growing disparity between himself and the other nukes in instruction and sims. The burden of constantly crafting his lie and the paranoia of being caught made him feel like he was in a pressure cooker. What had started as a little lie to protect himself from Jeffie’s jealousy had snowballed into a mammoth whopper, and only Brickert knew that Sammy was actually kilometers ahead of the others.

But even Brickert didn’t know that Sammy sat back in instructions while the Teacher raced through film clips and pictures in rapid succession while his brain soaked everything in like a dry sponge. Sammy didn’t understand what it meant, and he didn’t care. He just didn’t want his friends to think he was a freak. He feared someone, Jeffie especially, might walk in and see him zipping through a subunit, listening to a chipmunk on amphetamines.

What he did care about, and quite passionately, was his steady ascent in the ranks on his per-stats. He was at least fourth now in every category. At the conclusion of each training session, he checked his stats, priding himself when he climbed another spot. He hadn’t forgotten his goal to become number one in everything.

Saturdays and Sundays were his favorite. He loved the Game. In the Arena, it was almost like being back in the grocery store. The competition swallowed him up, and he forgot all his troubles. He’d kept his promise to follow his honcho’s orders whether he agreed or not. On Sundays, with the warmer weather, the Psions almost always left headquarters. Sammy enjoyed exploring the nearby areas on Capitol Island while Natalia told him and his friends all the latest gossip.

Brickert and Sammy were like brothers. They created new blast games to play in their room and looked for ways to sneak into the girls’ dormitory. Natalia said she’d heard that two Betas tried this and once were caught by Commander Byron. Brickert, besides having grown enough to barely reach the eye-scan on the door, eventually got over his crush on Brillianté. It wasn’t hard since he’d never had a real conversation with her. Days later, he confided in Sammy that he liked Rosa Covas. As close as he and Brickert were, Sammy could not understand why his roommate fell for the older girls.

Life at headquarters took a turn for the worse after a grueling simulation focused on weapon disarming. As usual, Sammy checked his per-stats and saw that he’d earned the number two ranking in timeliness and jumped to number one in efficiency. In celebration, he ordered his favorite meal, chicken cordon bleu. When he sat down to eat, he noticed someone missing.

“
Where’s Jeffie?”

Kawai tried to hide a smile with her milk glass. “She said she’s staying behind to finish up her sim unit.”

“
Combat sucks,” Natalia said, throwing down her French fry and splashing her ketchup onto Sammy’s arm. Her hair was now a dull gray, a side-effect from too many dyes. “How the heck am I supposed to beat up people twice as big as me? They don’t even flinch when I punch them.”

“
So blast them in the face,” Sammy answered as if it was a no-brainer, only to get a kick under the table from Brickert.

This launched the four of them into a discussion on some of the finer points of combat. Kawai and Natalia were arguing over targeting the groin or the face when Kobe came bursting into the room. Jeffie came in only a few seconds later.

“
You!” Kobe said, pointing dramatically at Sammy.

Everyone in the room stopped talking and eating to watch.

“
Yeah?” Sammy asked.

“
What’s your rank in timeliness?” Kobe demanded.

Brickert pushed past Kobe with his second tray of food and asked, “What do you care?”

“
Shut up, uber-noob. This is my business.”

Brickert’s cheeks went bright red, and he sat back down next to Sammy. Noob was a rude name to call someone, but
uber-noob
was downright offensive.