Psion Alpha (54 page)

Byron could only nod,
but Emily spoke freely. “But what if we want out of this work?”

Wu only shrugged. “I
will make it worth your while to stay. You may go now.”

Byron had one question
he had to ask. Still unable to speak, he scribbled it down and put it on
Commander Wu’s desk.
So you are letting Diego get away with it? Four deaths
and no punishment?

Wu read it and stared
back at Byron with a chilling gravity. “No one gets away with anything. It all
comes back around. Bad things have way of doing that.” His tone told Byron the
conversation had ended.

Byron couldn’t speak
properly until a week before graduation. It was a long month. Sometimes he felt
like he and Emily were alone on an island surrounded by shark-infested waters.
Other times he felt like nothing really mattered as long as he had her. That
island might as well be a tropical paradise. They grew closer over the last
month, exploring their blasting powers together, freely discussing what the future
might hold for them after they graduated. Finals came and they both did well.
So did Diego, of course. With the scores he received, Byron knew the third
skull was out of reach. Then grades came.

At first Byron thought
there must have been a mistake. He had received all A’s. No one in the history
of the Elite Training Center had received all A’s since Clardonsky had arrived
because no one had beaten her. Yet there it was. An A in combat for all four
semesters. That score was high enough to put him at the top of his class and
earn him the third golden skull.

Later that day he
received an email from Clardonsky:

You are probably
wondering why you received such high marks. While you never beat me in our
sparring sessions, you had no trouble when allowed to use your blasts. It’s not
your fault you have them. It changes the game in your favor. Good for you. Now
go out and use those blasts to change the world.

FEAR IS YOUR CLOAK.
PERFECTION IS YOUR DAGGER. EXCELLENCE DRIVES YOU. YOU ARE THE BEST. YOU ARE
ELITE.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
– Hive

Friday, January 3, 2087

Trapper’s entire demeanor changed when Sammy
called him by his real name. His expression softened, and he appeared less
harsh and more like the Trapper that Sammy had come to know through Byron’s
memories. Sammy found it surreal to look at the scar on Trapper’s face after
witnessing Emerald carve it into his skin.

“Help me understand
what happened, Trapper,” Sammy said in a gentle tone despite how rapidly his
heart beat. With a sigh, he subtly took his com out of his ear. “Tell me why
you killed Xian. Was it the Anomaly Thirteen?”

Trapper’s eye stared
back at Sammy. It quivered harder than ever. He glanced down at the bleeding from
Sammy’s leg. “Diego Newblood was a smart man.”

Sammy noticed how
Trapper suddenly pronounced his words with a distinct lisp. As he held eye
contact with Trapper, Sammy began tapping on the microphone of his com.

“He was especially smart
when it came to people. Diego is dead now. I took his name when I went to
prison in Wyoming because the old Trapper was dead, too. Diego seemed more
appropriate since he had fashioned me into something different than … Trapper
Jones, my former self.

“Semi-dissociative
identity disorder with partial Anomaly Thirteen—that’s what doctors call my
condition. It’s a one-of-a-kind thing—a split personality I developed to deal
with my Anomaly Thirteen, preserving the rest of me from its effects. It
emerged when I was sixteen, that other side of me. Before I met Diego, I never
brought myself to kill. I beat up a few boys in school pretty badly. I couldn’t
handle the teasing anymore. My lisp. Such a little thing can define a person
when his peers never let it go. My last fight landed me in a lot of trouble. I
was given a few options, one of which was to go to Elite Training.”

“You beating on people
encouraged the Elite to invite you? I have a hard time—”

“Katie Carpenter’s
anomaly was discovered only a year or two before. Commander Wu wanted to keep
an eye on someone who shared her anomaly, but hadn’t killed. He hoped that the
rigid discipline of the Elite would help shape me into a formidable weapon
instead of a lawless killing machine like her.”

“Wu knew?”

“Why do you think he
questioned me after every death?”

“You told Byron you
wanted to be an actor. Was that a lie?”

Trapper paused, as
though remembering the conversation to which Sammy was referring. Then he
looked up sharply at Sammy. “No. A half-truth. I didn’t become an Elite just to
‘toughen up.’ They sent me there to learn restraint. I did want to become an
actor.”

“And Diego … how did he
know about your condition?”

“He hacked into
classified government files to learn more about his anomaly and others. Through
the ETC’s records, he found out about my condition within the first month.
That’s why he took such an interest in me. Part of that stemmed from his
fascination with the Katie Carpenter case. He knew all along about Byron’s,
too. Emerald’s, on the other hand, that one caught everyone by surprise.

“Diego understood
people in a way you and I can’t imagine. He read them like books and knew how
to get them to do things. He knew how to push my buttons. I hated him. I hated
his cruelty, but it didn’t matter. He still convinced me what needed to be done
about Xian. And once he got me to kill Xian, it was like being under a spell.
Every now and then, he’d come to me. He got me to do whatever he wanted. He
took the knife from me—so I wouldn’t get caught after I killed Xian—and planted
it in Otto’s room. He told me to set up the search in his room, that way he
could tell Byron where to find it. Once it was back in my room, it was easy to
find while Byron was away.”

“And Omar helped him,
huh?” Sammy asked.

“No. It was all secret.
I don’t think Omar ever knew what Diego was doing to me. Diego loved that—the
secrets. For some reason he trusted Markorian, but not Omar. Like I said, he
knows people. He knew Byron wouldn’t turn in the knife when he found it.”

Sammy put the com back
in his ear. “So then the fox broke you out of the prison, along with a bunch of
other Thirteens, and now you’re
his
right hand man? You’re loyal to
him?”

“I am.”

“He reminds me of
Diego, the fox does. Not in appearance, but their abilities to read people so
well. Is that what attracts you to the fox?”

Trapper only smiled.

“You know a lot about
me, don’t you?”

“I know everything
about you, Sammy.”

Sammy looked at Jeffie,
ignoring the worried expression on her face. “Don’t say everything. Jeffie
knows me better than anyone, and even she doesn’t know everything about me. She
doesn’t understand why I’m willing to sit on this floor until I bleed to death.
Do you know why I am, Trapper?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“Because you view
Walter Byron as a substitute father figure. You assimilated his political
indoctrinations as your own due to an intense feeling of loyalty caused by
multiple tragedies during your youth. These events shattered your sense of self
until it was rebuilt at Psion Beta headquarters … headed by Walter Byron.”

Sammy slapped the floor
as if Trapper had made a funny joke. “Seriously? Did you memorize the fox’s
internal memo or something? Is that the best he could do?”

Trapper said nothing,
but twisted his lips into a weird smiley-frown.

“I will paint your
floor red with my blood because I believe in a cause. I believe in things
bigger than me. I believe that stopping the fox—the Thirteens—the CAG from
winning this war is worth my blood, every drop of it, if it means victory,
because I believe that while the NWG isn’t perfect, it’s better than what’s
going on here.”

“The fox wants to
reshape the world. He wants to make it better.”

“Yes, he told me. He
wants to end disease and suffering and make everyone’s life perfect. But it
can’t be done, Trapper. He’s chasing fool’s gold.”

“For someone so smart,
you know so little.”

“Says the man spending
his life on an island, isolated from everyone.”

Trapper shook his head.
“I’ve been around a lot longer than you have. I’ve seen horrors you haven’t.”
Sammy snorted and exchanged a disbelieving look with Jeffie. “You may think I’m
kidding—”

“I’m sure you’ve seen
some things, Trapper. But I have suffered things. I have suffered agony for
this cause, and one thing I’ve learned is that the more you give for something,
the deeper you believe in it, the more you love it. For a while I thought my
suffering meant that life had no meaning, that it meant we were alone in the
universe, that God was either dead, hiding, or non-existent. But I recently
figured something out.”

“What?”

“Someone recently
taught me that part of life is pain and suffering. The fox wants to remove from
the world the very thing that makes us alive. Pain, sorrow … these things, as
unpleasant as they are, connect us to each other and remind us of something
greater than ourselves. The fox can’t take away these things. All he’ll do is
create a world with more of it.”

Trapper let out a
condescending laugh that made Sammy want to blast him in the head. His lisp was
no longer present as he spoke: “Listen to you. Talking like a battle-hardened
man.”

“I feel like one sometimes.
I’m ready to die right now; I know that. And I’m willing to bet.… ” Sammy used
Jeffie and the wall behind him to help him get to his feet. He swayed for a
moment before feeling a little more like himself. He held out his hand to
Jeffie and glanced pointedly at the air canister. She put it in his palm. “I’m
willing to bet you aren’t. We’ve got your code; we’ve got the data we came for.
Now we’ll leave.”

“You haven’t gotten any
data—” Trapper turned to his computers and tapped several keys on his keyboard.
One of the screens to his right changed. His eyes grew wide, and he drove his
fist down into the keyboard so hard that his skin broke. “How?
How did you
get it
?”

“There are no
coincidences, Trapper,” Sammy answered. “Byron wanted me to have his memories.
He said he felt
impressed
to give them to me. Me. Not his son, not his
parents. He strongly believed I needed them, and he didn’t know why. And so
against the wishes of my doctor, I took them. The memories nearly killed me a
couple times when I blacked out. But without them … I would never have known
your code.”

Sammy tossed the
canister back to Trapper. He caught it.

“Your move,” Sammy said
as he walked toward the door. “Take the gas and let us walk, or die right now.
You can tell the fox we overpowered you. Or, better yet, don’t tell him
anything at all. Why does he even have to know about our visit?”

Trapper watched Sammy
and Jeffie as they went to the door. It fascinated Sammy to see the battle of
emotions playing out over Trapper’s face. For a split second, he looked like
“Diego” and then a moment later, he was “Trapper.”

“March 1, 2068,”
Trapper said, his lisp back again, “I gave the intel to the fox that Byron’s
team of Fourteens were in the sewers trying to rescue about twenty CAG
refugees. By then, I never expected to feel anything again. I hadn’t felt fear,
sorrow, regret … or love for over ten years. Only hatred for the world. But
when I heard that a Fourteen matching Emerald’s description had been killed by the
Queen, I felt something.”

He pointed a bleeding
finger at Sammy’s heart, then jabbed it at Sammy’s head.

“You carry Emerald
inside of you. I hope you make it out of here alive. The Thirteens will be
awake by now.” Finally he put the canister into his nostrils and jammed down
the nozzle. Five seconds later, he hit the floor.

“Everything good,
Nikotai?” Sammy asked as he and Jeffie left Trapper.

“I have the info,
transmitting it now to home. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“What was in the
canister, Sammy?” Jeffie asked as they descended the stairs. “Not poison, I’m
guessing.”

“No, not poison.
Probably a gas that slows the heart rate down enough that a person who used it
on himself could survive being in a room with very little oxygen for two
hours.”

“So something to let Diego—Trapper—whoever—survive
a lockdown?”

“That’s my guess.”

“Why didn’t you just
tell me that?” Jeffie asked.

Sammy grinned because
he thought the answer was obvious. “I didn’t want you to be tempted to use it
on me.”

They reached the second
level, a place much different than the floor above. It was dark and filled with
towers of computer machinery. Sammy didn’t understand much of it, and was
thankful that Nikotai did. They found him leaning against one of the towers,
his pack on his back, ready to go. His degree of pallor shocked Sammy. He
looked closer at the floor and counted at least three small puddles of blood.
Nikotai noticed this and reached for Sammy’s hand to help him up.

“Orange goo and
bandages didn’t help the bleeding as much as I thought they would. Those fish …
they might do us in, Sammy.”

“Don’t talk like that,”
Jeffie pleaded as she and Sammy supported Nikotai until he was steady on his
feet.

“Have you gotten in
contact with the others outside?” Sammy asked.

“Tried. Their radio
isn’t on. Keep getting dead air. Good idea tapping the password in Morse code
on your com. Never thought I’d use that part of my training.”

Sammy set his pack down
and took Jeffie’s off her shoulders. “According to Trapper, the Thirteens will
be up and about downstairs. That means we have two options: go back in the
vents or go out the front door.”

“I’m not going back in
the water,” Nikotai said. “One more piranha bite, and I’m dead.”

“So we risk going out
the front door? We have to go past the Thirteens to get there.”

“I second that,” Jeffie
said.

“Sounds like a plan,”
Nikotai said. “Don’t know how much good I’ll be in a tight spot. Can you two
cover for me?”