Psion Beta (28 page)

Both games were hands-free, meaning the players only needed helmets to play. Sammy chose his cubicle and got his helmet from a small cubby built into the floor. The helmet was all white, but scuffed from months of use. It had a long metal visor that blocked out all light once it was worn. Reaching up blindly, he found the twelve screws on the helmet and tightened them until he could feel a dozen metal pads touching his scalp.

When he turned the helmet on, he could see again. This time, however, it was not with his eyes, but rather through the electrical impulses being transmitted into his brain via the metal pads. Although he had a general understanding of the technology of brain wave manipulation, “seeing” through blinded eyes took some getting used to. The game booted up and linked the five players together.

“
CHOOSE YOUR CHARACTER!” the game said.

Mentally, he selected his character. After waiting for the others to choose, the game opened onto a random setting: Stonehenge.

Sammy’s character was a tall, powerfully-built Mongolian man with long flowing black hair and a matching beard: Genghis Kahn. He wielded a long wooden staff with deadly metal spikes embedded at each end. Across the rock formation, standing under a rectangular arch of stone, he saw William Wallace—Brickert, no doubt—toting two large swords. Kawai appeared as Hannibal of Carthage, and Natalia was a small but agile ninja in traditional black garments. She carried with her a dazzling assortment of daggers and stars. Jeffie arrived as a beautiful Amazon warrior clad rather scantily in an ugly, B-movie leather bikini, expertly holding two wickedly curved scimitars. A blinding bolt of lightning violently struck the ground in the middle of the sacred site, signifying the start of the blood bath.

Now able to mentally give his virtual body commands, Sammy rushed straight for the ninja amid the smoky remains of Salisbury Plain. The scent of burning grass and dewy moss filled his nostrils. The ninja threw a deadly star at him, mid-stride. He was just able to dodge it by sliding on the grass underneath. In his peripheral vision, he saw William Wallace and Hannibal locked in their own raging battle. Reaching behind her lean black-clad body, the ninja pulled out two more stars and flung them at Sammy. One of them he was able to evade, but the other had a truer course. Using his fat wooden staff, he blocked the disc just before it hit his face.

The wood vibrated in his hands, and he almost lost his grip. With one of his giant hands, he jerked the star out of the wood and whipped it back toward the ninja. A spry leap was all she needed to sidestep the danger. The ninja advanced menacingly on Sammy, armed now with two crooked daggers. Before Sammy could even engage the ninja, the busty Amazon woman sprinted silently from on top of the rocks. With a soaring leap, the Amazonian flew into the air and ran the ninja through with one of her wicked scimitars. Even more impressively, she used the momentum of the falling ninja to cartwheel neatly onto the ground only a few meters away from Sammy, still clutching both weapons, one gleaming silver, the other now dripping with crimson red.

Sammy let his barbaric cry echo across the plain, and raised his staff in challenge to the ravishing gladiator. Her lovely face etched in fury, she dashed toward him, scimitars ready. Genghis Kahn met her with a ferocious swipe of his staff, blade aiming at her chest. She parried his blow with surprising strength and struck with her free blade at his neck. In one continuous movement, Sammy used the top of his staff to knock away death. As the battle intensified he became oblivious to everyone else at Stonehenge, focusing solely on Jeffie’s Amazonian avatar.

Their furious battle raged over and under slabs of rock. Sammy had never seen Jeffie play with such passion. He could scarcely find chances to go on the offensive despite his greater size. Each time he used his brute strength to beat her back, she redoubled her efforts, returning stronger—deadlier. Steel clashed against wood over and over again until her blade sliced his staff into two. One half of his staff hit the ground, and Sammy was forced to give up turf as she pressed her attack.

Jeffie, what has come over you?

But her wrath continued and he had hardly any room to maneuver. A glint in the grass called his attention. He risked a glance to see one of Natalia’s stars lying nearby. Desperately, he kicked up an anthill into Jeffie’s face. She raised one arm to block the dirt and ants from her eyes, then swiped the air in front of her. He had little time to act before she regained her composure.

He seized the star and raised his staff just in time to ward off her next blow. Just as she attacked, he hurled the star at her. It struck her in the sternum. Horrified at what he’d done, he watched as she gazed down at the small star protruding from her chest.

Jeffie threw herself upon him with such ferocious blows that he was forced back once again until his back hit solid rock. Jeffie raised her left scimitar and struck the remains of the staff out of Sammy’s hands. She put the other to his throat. Helpless to do anything, he watched her pull the star out of her chest; blood pouring freely from the wound. Her face twisted as she jabbed the star into his chest, forcing it between his ribs. Her expression morphed into one of pure triumph. Sammy was amazed at the depths of anger Jeffie displayed. She stepped back on her left leg and kicked the star deep into him with her right.

The game ended, the screen went black. Sammy took off his helmet, extremely disturbed at what had just happened. Half expecting to feel the star in his ribs, he looked down and ran his hands over the area just to make sure he was okay.
Still alive!
he reassured himself. But what had made Jeffie act so primal? He left the cubicle and went into the common area to watch the rest of the match. Natalia was already there amusing herself with ping-pong, so Sammy sat down in a gel chair in front of the screen.

Wallace had just laid waste to Hannibal (who lay dead, impaled on his own triton), and was locked in combat with a very bloody Amazon-Jeffie. Her movements were slower now, the avatar unable to respond to her mental commands. Her virtual body was dying. This put her at a huge disadvantage to Wallace, who was nearly unscathed.

In a beautiful dance with two weapons apiece, they battled across the terrain for nearly five minutes. Jeffie, paling visibly, nearly stumbled to the ground, but quickly caught herself, parrying a blow to her head. As Wallace pressed down harder on her, she fell to the ground, twisting her body around as she did. In one gruesome, but fluid motion, she sliced off Wallace’s lower leg. He, too, fell to the ground, but not before sticking his sword through Jeffie on his way, impaling her to the grassy floor. Jeffie’s look of fatal surprise stayed on her face until the game ended, Brickert the victor.

Brickert whooped loudly from his cubicle and jogged out to take a bow. Jeffie gave him a playful push. She didn’t seem at all angry. Instead, she had that glow about her—the one Sammy recognized every time she won. Yet something deep inside told him that all was not well with her.

“
Well, tomorrow’s Monday, and I need sleep,” Kawai said.

Others agreed. Sammy still wanted to talk to Jeffie, so he stayed to straighten out the gel chairs and tidy up. “Hey, Jeffie!” he called out, just as she was leaving with Brickert and the girls.

She turned.

“
Can you give me a hand with these?” he asked, pointing to the chairs. He tried to appear as if his request was innocent, but doubted Jeffie would buy it.

She said goodnight to the girls. When Jeffie had turned her back, Natalia rolled her eyes at Kawai, who answered her with an exasperated smirk. Sammy wished he knew why girls had to do that. Once they were out of earshot, he asked Jeffie: “Are you okay?”

“
Of course I am.” She straightened up the gel chairs without looking at him.

“
That was an intense game, don’t you think?”

“
Wasn’t it fun?” When she glanced at him, her face was in that tight smile again, the one she’d worn while everyone had been congratulating Sammy for getting picked for Al’s mission.

“
I—no, not for me,” he said as he surveyed the room for anything else to do. It looked pristine.

She stood with her arms folded, tapping her left foot against her right, and stared at him. “Mad because you lost to me?”

“
No, of course—” He wasn’t going to play her game. “—you know me better than that.”

Now she seemed torn between dropping her façade and putting up an even stronger front.
Competitive to the end, aren’t you, Jeffie?
He met her stare and waited. The depths of her eyes went on forever. In them he saw her powerful will and an indomitable spirit. A great part of her was wild and exciting and beautiful. Finally, her face relaxed some. He’d won the battle.

“
Sorry, Sammy. I was just taking out some frustrations on you, that’s all. I’m not angry.”

He believed her. Over the last few months, their friendship had taught him many things, some of them more valuable than others. One of the most priceless pieces of information he’d learned was that when her eyes shifted back and forth between his, she was lying. And she did it every time. He guarded this little tidbit from everyone, even Brickert.

“
Do you need to talk?” He felt stupid as he asked it, but nothing else came to mind. “About whatever is bothering you?”

“
No. Not right now,” she said with a sigh. “Thanks, though.”

Sammy was tired, but not ready to sleep. They walked downstairs together and said quiet farewells. In his room, Brickert was just getting into bed. Sammy was glad his friend was still awake. He needed a guy to talk to. For a while, they lay on their bunks and mulled things over out loud. Sammy lamented about the strange behavior of the female sex while Brickert complained about how none of the girls he liked ever reciprocated the feeling.

“
You’re the youngest guy here and you like older girls, what do you expect?”

“
I don’t know,” Brickert answered. His speech was slurred and heavy. “Girls are so . . .”

Sammy waited for Brickert to finish his sentence. When Brickert didn’t, Sammy leaned over the edge of the bed. Brickert was sound asleep.

“
Stupid,” Sammy finished. It was Brickert’s favorite phrase. “Girls are so stupid.”

16.
Walls

“
Good morning, Psions.
Good morning, Psions. Good morning, Psions.”

“
I hate you, woman!” Sammy yelled huskily while Brickert laughed at him from below. “Gotta start getting more sleep.”

He forced himself out of bed and barely made it through morning exercises. In the cafeteria, Brickert pushed something in front of him, and Sammy ate it. He had a vague feeling he was forgetting something as he sat down in the Teacher, but pushed the thought away. Just as he selected a subunit, his com screen flashed out in front of him displaying a message from Albert:

Sammy, are you coming? I’m in sim room five.

Sammy let out a colorful string of curses and dashed out the room, still swearing at himself all the way up the stairs. When he knocked on the door of the sim room, Al ordered it to open.

“
That was fast,” Al commented with a friendly smile. “Forget?”

“
Yeah, sorry.”

“
No big deal. Let’s get started.”

“
Sure . . . right. Do you want me to just show you what I do?” Sammy asked.

“
No. That won’t work. The sim room is configured only to me, the Thirteens won’t respond to you being here.”

“
Oh, right. Duh. Go ahead and start it up, I’ll just stand in the corner and give you some suggestions.”

“
Make sure you put on a zero suit,” Al said, pointing to a closet door in the corner.

Sammy opened the door and saw a light blue suit hanging amongst other equipment. “What’s that?”

Al grinned broadly. “You’ve never worked with Commander Byron, have you?”

Sammy shook his head as he pulled the suit on, complete with a thin metallic mesh that zipped around his face.

“
If you don’t wear a zero suit when you’re in someone else’s sim, you could get killed by a stray bullet or something. Zero suit makes you immune to holograms.”

Al started up the sim Sammy had faced countless times. Even now it amazed him how fluidly the Thirteens moved. He tried to shout instructions as Al battled the four Thirteens, but everything was moving too fast for Al to react properly to everything going on. If Sammy had not already known Al was a great fighter, his first impression would have been dismal at best. The Thirteens killed him in under two minutes.

“
I’m sorry, Al, I—I really don’t know how to teach. I’ve never done anything like this before.”

Al waved him off. “Don’t worry. I didn’t think about how difficult it would be for you to coach in the middle of a trial. I don’t think it will work that way.”

“
Well, let’s watch the replay and talk through it. Is that okay?”

They reviewed Al’s recording together. Sammy saw several things Al could do better. “You can’t let them get around you like that, you give them too much target,” he said as they watched his fatal mistake of allowing the Thirteens to surround him. “You either need to back up or go high.”

“
But they’re so fast, how do you prevent it?”

“
You’ve got to be faster.” Sammy explained the rigorous exercise routines he forced upon himself to quicken his movements.

“
This is going to be harder than I realized.”

“
Ready to try again?”

“
Yep.”

Sammy spent the next few hours watching over two dozen fights, then discussing each replay. Sometimes he was afraid of being too blunt, but Al encouraged even brutal honesty. It took time for Sammy to accept that Al sincerely wanted help, but once he did, he molded into the role of instructor smoothly, answering questions, demonstrating techniques, and offering criticisms. Al learned quickly and showed mastery over most of what he was taught after two or three trials.

Of course, it helped that Al had more skill than any other Beta. He was fast, smart, adaptable and, like Sammy, he threw himself—mind and body—into the fray. The reckless abandon with which Al fought struck a familiar chord in Sammy. Something deeper pushed Al to perfect his technique. He already possessed the ability to defeat four of them, he only lacked refinement and raw speed.

His progress was tremendous. He worked tirelessly. After a few weeks of intense training, Sammy witnessed what he had told Brickert would happen: someone else defeated the four-Thirteen sim.

“
You did it!” Sammy shouted. Al was bent over, hands on his knees in the middle of the room, catching his breath. His clothes were stained with sweat and blood and pieces of Thirteen. He stared down at the four bodies that would quickly disintegrate into nothingness.

“
Yes!” he growled in a primal voice, and pounded on the floor. Then he straightened up and clasped hands with Sammy. “I spent months on this unit, maybe almost half a year. Marie finally convinced me to move on, reminding me that there was more to being a Psion than just fighting Thirteens. But the day I stopped I felt like I’d done something wrong. So every so often, maybe twice a month, I gave it another go. That feeling is finally gone.”

“
I knew it,” Sammy exclaimed, his face glowing. “I knew other people could do it.”

“
Can you give me more time?” Al asked. “A few more days?”

“
Do you think you need it?”

“
Well, I’ve only done it once. I want to be able to beat them consistently. You said you beat five, right?”

Sammy nodded with only a touch of the old embarrassment he used to feel.

“
I don’t think I can do five.” Al massaged his ribs as he said this.

Sammy knew well the ache and exhaustion that came from hours spent on the trial. He also knew that Al was right. He might be able to beat four Thirteens, but not five. “Okay. First, let’s talk about what you did right.”

Al threw his head back and let out a tired laugh. “That’s a very tactful way of putting it.”

To prepare for the upcoming mission, Sammy began covert operations in his own sim time. It was unlike anything he had experienced before.

It was fun.

Gone were the room’s bright white walls, the appearing and disappearing enemies. Rather, with each different trial, the room transformed into a new setting. Byron gave him one or more assignments to complete within an allotted time. In his first trial, the sim placed him in an old building with no cameras or motion detectors.

“
Your objective is to enter the guarded room without your face being seen,” Byron informed him.

The floors were littered with moldy paper and broken tiles and the wallpaper peeled back in several places. A flickering light bulb hung over Sammy’s head, swinging in its socket each time a puff of warm air ejected from an air vent on the ceiling. Sammy smiled at the dramatic effect. He crept down the hall keeping close to the wall. Around a corner, he spied a guard standing in front of a doorway marked “Restricted Access.” Sammy doubled back to the light and smashed it with a simple blast.

The guard cursed and called in the damage while turning on his flashlight. Sammy stole farther back down the corridor until he came to a fire extinguisher hanging from the wall. Quietly, he detached it and gave a test spray. A white fog burst out of the nozzle, filling the hall with a heavy chill. Sammy sprayed the fire extinguisher ahead of him as he walked the rest of the distance.

“
What’s going on? Someone there?” the frightened voice called. The flashlight’s beam lit the fog up like lightning in a heavy storm.

Sammy heard the guard’s footsteps running toward him and dropped onto his belly. The moment he saw the man’s feet, he blasted them. The guard hit the ground with a dull, “Ooof.” Sammy grabbed the man’s head and forced it into the dirty broken tile, ignoring the muffled, panicked cries. With his other hand, he yanked the keycard off the guard. No sooner had he crossed the threshold of the restricted room, then the entire hologram disappeared.

He progressed through dozens more of these trials quite rapidly. They grew more challenging as past units had. Sometimes the missions focused completely on stealth; occasionally a Thirteen or Aegis would surprise him; and other times Byron asked Sammy to pull off several objectives with nearly perfect timing. Sammy enjoyed them all. They were a nice break from the constant violence-demanding combat units. He was careful to learn the principles involved, knowing they would be needed not only for his own Panel, but during Al’s mission to Rio.

Between the covert sims and training Al, the weeks flew by. Sammy’s feeling about the mission was like a pendulum swinging between apprehension and excitement, changing hour by hour depending on who was speaking to him.

And if the looming mission and all its pressures weren’t enough, Sammy also worried about Jeffie’s increasing distance from him. Since their disturbing duel and the cryptic conversation that followed, she’d noticeably withdrawn from their group of friends. She spent more time with her roommate, Brillianté, went to bed early on the weekends, and though she was just as friendly, Sammy felt that spark they had between them had been lost.

Sammy could not, as Brickert suggested, pass this off as a bizarre side effect of Jeffie’s menstrual cycle. He looked for moments during the week to get her one-on-one so they could talk, but they never seemed to be alone at the same time. When the weekend came, he hoped to find an opportunity during their ample down time, but Saturday’s Game was long and grueling. And on Sunday, Jeffie fell ill and didn’t come out of her room.

“
How do you know she’s sick?” Sammy asked Brillianté when she gave him the news. “You’re not a doctor.”

Brillianté gave Sammy a sour look. “Duh, Sammy, she’s been in the bathroom all day.”

“
Doing what? Throwing up?”

Her expression turned impatient as she turned to leave. “As if it’s your business.”

He kicked the wall, sending a dagger of pain up his leg, and wrote it off as a bad day.

Monday morning, Sammy’s com informed him of a change in his schedule. He would be let out early from simulations, have a half-hour for dinner, and then meet the mission team in sim room ten for special training. He knew he should’ve been excited about the mission training sessions, but all he saw was less time to spend around Jeffie. And so, later that day, after wolfing down a lonely dinner, he ran up to the sim room to find everyone already there and waiting for him.

The sim room was much larger than Sammy’s normal training space. He wondered if it was designated specifically for this type of use. Everyone became quiet as Al spoke.

“
We have two solid weeks to run through the most accurate simulations Command can give us before we go to Rio. We’ll be branching out to different sim rooms to work out the finer points of your individual assignments. But today we’re going to spend the majority of our time working together in this main room.

“
We need to learn how to react to different scenarios as a team and in our smaller groups. We’ll start by learning every step of the mission together, so everyone knows exactly what everyone else is doing. Let’s plan on spending at least three hours here each night.”

They spent the first training session walking each step of the mission as the sim room replicated different parts of the building using the reconnaissance of NWG satellites and intelligence photographs. Al led them up to the security room to show Gregor and Li exactly where their work would be taking place. He took them to the control room where Martin and Cala needed to be to turn off localized power systems so the other four could do their work, and he made sure Sammy, Kaden, Kobe, and Marie knew where each bomb-camera would be placed.

The factory had three floors. Sammy and Kobe’s had to plant four bomb-cams on the top level. The entire floor was a large, open manufacturing center with an enclosed inner room in the middle. Sammy was in charge of the left side, Kobe the right. Both the outer floor and the inner room were designed for mass-production: a vaulted ceiling with large skylights, dozens of automated robotic arms, conveyor belts, and other modernized factory equipment were all there. Sammy and Kobe had to ascend the walls and place the bomb-cams where the wall met the ceiling. The demolition of the building required the bombs to be set exactly right.

The climb reached about seventeen meters. The only tools they had were their blasts and a pair of slivers. Their slivers were razor sharp and fortified with tungsten carbide, shaped into long, thin daggers with thick handles. The super-hard blades easily plunged into reinforced brick or anything softer. Al also gave them special shoes with two-centimeter-long spikes built into the toes. Between blasting, the slivers, and the climbing shoes, they wouldn’t have any problem scaling the wall. The trick was learning to stay balanced on the wall while mounting the explosives in the dark corners.

It was impossible for the room to simulate the height of the factory walls, so Sammy and the others couldn’t practice the climbing. Instead, they focused on mounting the cams while using their slivers a few meters off the ground.

Staying up was tricky. If Sammy leaned back much at all, his center of balance tipped, and recovering it was almost impossible. His movement had to be slow and deliberate. The four of them spent several hours practicing and laughing at each other when they fell. Once, Sammy even saw Kobe chuckling with him. But for the most part, the two partners spoke as briefly as possible, and only when needed.