Psion Alpha (46 page)

Emerald read the
expression on his face and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll talk to him.”

“Thanks.”

“How does it feel?”

“It was amazing.”

“Not the kiss.” Emerald
laughed. “You won your first golden skull. Two more to go.”

“Oh yeah,” Byron
responded somewhat breathlessly. “That was almost as good.”

They hurried up to the
tower to find their friends. Trapper was gone, but Otto had waited around to
congratulate them. Several others from the class also praised Byron’s
performance, people Byron barely recognized.

“Where is Trap?” Byron
asked.

“He left. Not gonna
lie, dude, he’s pissed.”

“I told him I didn’t
have feelings for him,” Emerald exclaimed. “I must have told him a dozen times.
He just won’t listen!”

“He also said he’s
moving his stuff into my room,” Otto added. “No offense or anything, but I
think he crossed you off his all-time-best-friends list.”

“I guess I should go
talk to him,” Byron said. “See you two later.” He turned to leave, but Emerald
pulled on his shirt.

“What?”

“One more?”

Then she leaned in and
kissed him again. Twenty minutes later, Byron found Trapper doing exactly what
Otto had said. Trapper didn’t even break his stride when he saw Byron.

“Can I give you a
hand?” Byron asked.

Trapper ignored him and
pushed by, his arms full of personal belongings.

“Trapper! Hey!” Byron
paused in the door, debating, then chased his friend down. “Come on, Trap. Talk
to me.”

Trapper ignored Byron
and walked faster.

“I know I promised you
I would leave Emerald alone. I know. I had no idea this would happen. I never
had feelings for her … until recently.”

Trapper snorted and
shook his head.

“Okay, maybe I
have
liked her for a while, but, if so, I never realized it. You did, I did not. And
I should have told you earlier! I should have told you the moment I knew, but
she said the two of you had a long talk about your feelings and stuff. She said
you understood.”

Trapper threw his
belongings onto the ground. He grabbed Byron by the clothes and shoved him into
the wall. Byron saw the same wild look in Trapper’s eyes that he’d seen only a
few times before, the look that Trapper wanted to do some real damage.

“I apologize, Trap,”
Byron breathed out. “I never meant to hurt you.”

Trapper’s face was as
red as Otto’s hair. Three tears streaked down his face: two on the right side,
one on the left. He bared his teeth as he glared at Byron with a fiery hatred.
His lisp disappeared. “I asked one thing of you. ONE THING! You remember?”

Flecks of spit hit
Byron’s face, but he made no attempt to wipe them off. “Yes.”

“Then why? WHY?”

Byron’s face became hot
as he stuttered out his answer. “Be—because she changed.”

“She didn’t have to
change for me! I loved her how she was!”

“She wanted to change
for me, Trap.”

Trapper pounded the
wall next to Byron’s head with his free hand. He slammed it so many times that
Byron was afraid he’d break a bone. “WHY FOR YOU?”

Byron knew the answer,
but was too scared to speak the words. Instead he just watched his friend with
a look of pity.

Trapper understood the
expression and shook his head. “Don’t. Don’t look at me like that. I kept your
secrets, man. I was your friend. I took you in when you had NOBODY! So don’t
ever look at me like that.”

Trapper had death in
his eyes. For a moment, Byron believed if he didn’t defend himself, Trapper was
going to beat him to a pulp. He wanted to beg Trapper to forgive him and tell
him how sorry he was, but knew he couldn’t do that. Instead he stood still, met
Trapper’s gaze, and waited to see how he would react. After a long pause,
Trapper let go of Byron, gathered his stuff, and marched away.

Byron went to sleep
that night feeling oddly alone. After eighteen months of sharing a room, being
on his own seemed wrong. Emerald chatted with him via tablet for over an hour
while he studied on his bed. Several times she asked him if he wanted her to
come up and keep him company, but Byron declined, stating that he needed to
focus on his books. Truth was, he didn’t trust himself to abide the code of
conduct alone in a room with her.

He fell asleep with his
tablet on his lap, still propped up in a sitting position. Somewhere in the
middle of the night, his phone rang. He reached around in the dark looking for
it until he realized his eyes were still closed and the lights were all on. The
phone was on Trapper’s side of the desk. Byron reached and grabbed it.

“Hello … ” he mumbled.

“Byron, it’s—it’s Otto.
Trapper … someone attacked him.”

Byron gasped for air to
avoid retching. His heart beat rampantly in his chest. His next words came out
like a whimper. “Is Trapper dead, Otto?”

Otto sounded like he
was barely holding it together, too. “Someone slit his throat. The same person,
I think.”

Byron covered his hand
with his mouth. “And he’s … ?”

“They were trying to
keep him alive as they took him to the infirmary. I don’t know if he made it.”
The voice on the other end of the line was small and terrified. “The knife? Is
it still where you hid it?”

Byron didn’t understand
how that even mattered at a time like this, but he set the phone down and went
to the spot where he’d stashed it. He pulled out the drawer and put his hand
against the underside of the top board where he’d taped the weapon. Bits of
dangling tape stuck to his hand, but there was no knife. He checked under his
socks and underwear, searching to see if the blade had fallen into the drawer
below, but it was gone.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-
FOUR
- Memories

Friday, January 3, 2086

“Sammy! Wake up! Open your eyes! I need you to
wake UP!” Jeffie’s voice echoed through the ventilation duct, stirring Sammy
from his reverie.

“
Crap!
” he
exclaimed when he finally figured out what was happening. “Nikotai, report.”

“Nothing to report,
Sammy. Locked out of the system for another fifty-three minutes.”

A new voice called from
below. The voice sounded like an ancient man trying to speak louder than he was
capable, causing everything to rasp. “You have ten seconds to climb down from
there, or I’m sealing off the place.”

“We have to climb
down,” Jeffie said. The panic in her voice told Sammy that she’d been trying to
wake him for some time. “I’ve been stalling him for five minutes.”

“I’m not going down
there,” Sammy protested. “Count all you want, Diego.”

“I’m unarmed,” Diego
said. “Besides … I wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to meet with Samuel Berhane,
the greatest Fourteen in the whole wide world.”

Sammy looked to Jeffie.
“Is he unarmed?”

Jeffie nodded. “What’s
wrong with you? Why do you keep falling asleep?”

“It’s nothing. I’m
fine. Tired, but fine.”

He could tell Jeffie
didn’t believe him.

“We need to climb down.
I’ll go first.” Sammy backed up until he could unlatch the grate, keeping his
eyes on Diego all the while. Diego didn’t seem aggressive or threatening. He
sat with his legs crossed, hands rested on the arm of his chair. His eye
flickered between watching Sammy descend and the screens around the room. His
empty socket twitched each time his good eye moved or blinked. Sammy tried not
to stare, but it was gross enough that he found it mildly fascinating.

As soon as his legs
went into a vertical position, Sammy saw a dark red stream of liquid pour from
the leg of his pants. Diego noticed it, too, with a smile. “Seems you met our
fish. Tsk tsk. Effective, aren’t they?”

“Not really.” Sammy
dropped down to the floor, but he was a bit woozy on his feet. “Didn’t stop us
from reaching you.”

Still Diego smiled. “Is
your other friend going to come down, too? The screaming one?”

Sammy looked up into
the vent at Jeffie, her eyes wide and face white. He moved his head almost
imperceptibly, encouraging her to join him. “Nikotai, we’ve made contact with
Diego. I’ll transmit again once I have the codes.”

His last statement made
Diego laugh, a gargling sound even more horrendous than his normal voice. Sammy
tried not to look at the small pool of blood his leg had made as he paced
around the perimeter of the room, examining its contents.

“I wouldn’t touch
anything if I were you,” Diego warned. “You know what will happen if I give the
word.… ” He narrowed his eyes at Sammy, then turned his attention to Jeffie. “Why
don’t you introduce me to the pretty girl?”

“We’re here for a
reason, Diego. Give us what we want, and you live.”

“And if I don’t, I
die?” Diego’s tone mocked Sammy. “You sound like someone in a movie. They said
you were smart.”

Sammy heard a click
from behind. He turned to see Jeffie holding a gun pointed at Diego’s chest.

“It’s simple,” she
said. “Give us the code, we wait an hour for the system to reset so we can get
our info, and then we leave you to your work.”

“Is it really that
simple, girl?” Diego turned his attention from her to Sammy. “Tell her, Sammy.
Tell her why it isn’t. Tell her what she’s missing.”

Sammy swallowed and
rested his backside on a wall. His legs stung still from the piranha bites. “If
we kill him, this place will automatically seal off and trap us inside with no
air. He could just give the order to seal it now, but he knows if he does that,
we have no reason to let him live.”

Diego’s lips and eye
socket twitched happily. “Now tell her the rest. ”

Sammy pulled out his
own gun and aimed it at Diego. “Shut up.”

“No.”

“If I put a bullet in
your leg or shoulder, you won’t die.”

“Correct. I’ll just
bleed to death … slowly … like you. And before I die, I’ll still seal off this
place. You are in a no-win situation, Sammy.”

“I said shut up!”

Jeffie checked her gun
and stepped up next to Sammy. “What’s he talking about?”

“Nothing!” Sammy put his
sights on Diego’s knee. “He wants to get inside our heads.”

The gargling noise came
from Diego’s throat as he laughed again. This time it lasted longer until it
turned into a lingering, bubbling sound. “For your information, girl, your
friend—”

Sammy fired once,
intentionally missing Diego’s knee by a narrow margin. Diego’s eye flashed in
fury.

“You shoot me anywhere,
anywhere at all, and I will end this little game. You hear me?” His eye turned
to Jeffie. “Anti-coagulants. The piranhas’ bites are laced with it. So unless
your friend has a medical kit on him with a strong hemostatic agent, he’s going
to bleed to death in an hour or two.”

Sammy heard Nikotai
hiss in his ear. “Is he telling the truth, Sammy?”

Jeffie’s eyes searched
Sammy’s. “He is,” she answered Nikotai. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you?”

“If we finish the
mission, there will be nothing to discuss.”

“No! I want—”

“Don’t make me regret
bringing you,” Sammy warned. “I want you to trust me.”

Jeffie hesitated, then
nodded.

“Oh, I see what’s going
on here,” Diego mused. “A case of adolescent infatuation. What a pleasant
surprise. Tell me something, Miss Girlfriend, do you want to see Mr. Boyfriend
die? Because if you don’t leave, that is exactly what is going to happen.” He
kept his eye pointed at the blood dribbling out of Sammy’s pant leg.

Sammy looked pointedly
at Jeffie. “I’m fine.”

“Then why not take a
seat?” Diego pointed to the floor since there were no other chairs in the room.
“It seems as though our standoff is going to take some time to resolve.”

“There’s nothing to
resolve,” Sammy said as he slid down to the floor. “You either want to die or
you don’t.” He grabbed his shirt and ripped it down the middle, exposing his
bare chest and arms. He wrapped it wide and tied it around his thigh to reduce
the blood flow to his leg.

“How many times do I
have to say it?” Diego asked. “You can’t win this.”

“How many times do
I
have to say it? I’m not going anywhere without the code.”

Diego’s attention
returned to his screens, giving each a moment of his time before moving on to
the next. “How many more of you are there? Do you have a whole army out there
in the water? A whole army of bleeding, half-eaten men and women? I hope
they’re all Fourteens.”

“Our numbers are
sufficient for what we planned.”

“And what is that
exactly? What do you hope to accomplish? Are you expecting to find the
locations of all our Thirteen cells? Because we can move them. You want to know
where the clones are so you can kill them in their test tubes? We can grow
more. You have nothing to gain here. Nothing.”

“Is that so?”

Diego frowned at Sammy.
“It is very much so.”

Sammy looked at Jeffie.
“Do you believe that? You think we have nothing to gain here?”

Jeffie looked confused,
as though she didn’t know whether or not Sammy was serious or just bantering.

“You think we would
trek hundreds of kilometers through this jungle full of monsters if we thought
we had nothing to gain? Because I don’t. I think if I weren’t positive, I would
have turned my team back the day one of my men had his face clawed off by a
rabid demon-monkey.”

“Ah, yes!” Diego
exclaimed. “Project Hsigo. Very effective deterrent for the indigenous
populations. Keeps them away from our base. I would have liked to have seen
that.”

Sammy stared down
Diego, forcing himself to remain calm. Diego was trying to goad him into doing
something stupid. It wouldn’t work. “I came here for your secrets. All your
secrets. I will not leave until I have them.”

“They’re not here.”

A chill ripped through
Sammy, and he shuddered. The room wasn’t cold, but his body was. “They are,
Diego. You know how I know? Because for someone with such a jacked up face, I
doubt you’re any good at poker.”

“How many minutes until
your boyfriend bleeds out, girl?” Diego asked Jeffie. “Are you ready to watch
him die?”

“You’re wasting your time
on her,” Sammy said. “She’s dedicated to the mission.”

Diego’s lips twisted
and he stood. He was tall, but shorter than Sammy. He crossed the room to a
blank stretch of wall and paused as he surveyed it.

“What are you doing?”
Sammy asked. “Sit down.”

“No. I am going to
retrieve something.” He put his hand on the wall, and a rectangle of light
appeared around it. “Something for the girl.”

A small panel opened
up, revealing what looked to Sammy like a cubby where someone might stow a
weapon or something else of importance. Sammy aimed his gun at Diego’s chest.

“Slowly.”

Diego removed something
from within the hidden cupboard.

“Show us what it is.”

Diego twisted the
object around to display an aerosol canister tiny enough to fit in the palm of
his hand. “For the girl.” And before Sammy could say or do anything, Diego
tossed it high into the air to Jeffie, who caught it. “That canister will
render unconscious anyone you choose to spray with it. Two hours minimum. You
have my word that if you use it on him,” Diego’s eye briefly pointed to Sammy,
“you will both leave here alive. Also, remember that as he continues to lose
blood, his heart rate will speed up to compensate. Knocking him out will slow
the process and increase his chances of survival. Go ahead and put your hand on
his chest and feel his heart rate. Do it.”

Jeffie didn’t know what
to do. Sammy gave her a look that told her to ignore Diego, but he could see in
her eyes that she wasn’t ready to sacrifice Sammy’s life for the mission. “I’m
fine.
Trust me.
”

“Are you? Would you
tell me if you weren’t?”

“Good question,” Diego
said.

Sammy shot him a nasty
glance and turned back to Jeffie, who slid down next to him. “Trust me.” He
touched her leg. “Nikotai, we aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Save your strength
and take a rest.”

Diego stared at Sammy
for a long time. He smoothed his black sweater and also assumed his chair. For
the first time since meeting him, Sammy noticed a small dent in Diego’s armor
of confidence. His air of superiority had vanished. This encouraged Sammy to
push harder.

“I notice that your eye
isn’t red like other Thirteens.
Are
you a Thirteen, Diego?”

“Of course I am.”

Liar.
“You’re certainly ugly
enough to be one, but that doesn’t mean you have the anomaly. You used to be an
Elite, right?”

Diego’s attention
turned to his screens once more. Sammy watched Diego’s eye as it reflected the
many lights and images of the displays around the room. “Are we playing twenty
questions now, Sammy?” He tapped his temple. “Do you want inside my head?”

“I know you better than
you think I do,” Sammy responded. A shock of pain ran up his leg. Rather than
betraying this to Diego, he took Jeffie’s hand and squeezed it tightly until
the moment passed. “I know about Omar, about you and Byron, about Trapper,
Otto, and Xian, about the murders that happened while you were at the training
center. Was it you who killed the students, slit their throats?”

Diego bared his teeth
in a grin that set his lips twitching more than anything. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“For release.”

Sammy didn’t know what
to say. While Diego continued to watch his monitors, Sammy examined the bites
on his legs to see how much the tourniquet had helped reduce bleeding. It was
slower, but not slow enough. A small puddle had formed where he rested his leg.
Based on his lessons at Beta headquarters on emergency medical treatment, Sammy
guessed he was nearing the end of Stage 1 hypovolemia and approaching Stage 2.
He casually crossed his hands so he could feel his pulse without letting Diego
or Jeffie know what he was doing. According to his calculations, his pulse was
up to ninety-six beats per minute.