Psion Gamma (37 page)

May 2, 2086

T
HE QUEEN DROVE HER MOTORCYCLE
back into Wichita following the GPS coordinates to the last place Sammy and his traveling companion had been seen on satellite. Downtown Wichita. A ghost city. The trail had stopped here and no matter how hard she searched, she could come up with no sign that they’d left town. Unfortunately, she had no evidence that they’d stayed, either.

Come out, come out, wherever you are, Sammy.

She’d been here seven times in the last month. Each time, she grew more moody and restless. All she wanted was something to take her frustrations out on. Driving slowly on her bike, she rode through downtown, passing building after building. As she passed them, she aimed her infrared thermometer at the windows. All of them were the same: seventy-one degrees, virtually the same temperature as outside.

Something is going on here.
She brought the bike to a stop and stared around the block. On her left was an old building that looked like a castle. On her right was a tall office building. A block away was a giant, round convention center. She revved the engine and shot recklessly toward it, pointing the device into these windows as well. Then something caught her eye.

One of the doors moved just slightly, as though she had barely missed someone going inside. She wasn’t even certain it hadn’t been a trick of the light, but checking it out seemed better than driving around the city. She pulled the bike to the curb and hopped off, jogging up to the door.

There was a scent in the air. Then she spotted the source on the ground. A cigarette butt, hastily snuffed and kicked, but not well enough.

The interior of the building was only dimly illuminated by the natural sunlight streaming in from the large street-side windows, and opened up to a large foyer with yellowed signs pointing visitors to different halls, theaters, and an adjacent hotel. A thick layer of dust covered the faded carpets. Footprints ran through them. Fresh ones.

“Sammy?” she called out as she examined where the prints led. “Don’t you know that smoking can kill you?”

The Queen stalked after her unknown prey, flashlight in hand. The tracks led around the circular building and into a giant exhibition hall. Inside, it was completely dark.
The prey runs blindly
. The thought made her smile. She put away the flashlight and retrieved a gun with a mounted light.

The tracks cut straight across the hall. She hurried onward. The air was so still that the smell of sweat mingled with nicotine and tar hung in the air. A door in the back took her into an adjacent hallway. This one had hundreds of chairs facing a stage. She kept her light trained on the floor several paces ahead of her, shining it upward every ten steps to see if her prey was in sight.

The steps went across the room, around all the chairs, and toward another door. She set her sights on it, but something told her to stop.

Either she heard it or felt it. Sometimes her intuitions were basically the same, but she sensed the faintest movement near her, behind a row of chairs. To a mind trained as well as hers, even the smallest of movements was too much.

The boy had tried to lay a trap. He had retraced his steps through the dust, and hidden like a cornered cowardly snake.

No snake was fast enough to bite her.

She whipped her body around just in time to see a tall, middle-aged man rushing at her as fast as stealth would allow with a large wooden chair raised high above him. He brought the chair down at her head, but she deftly maneuvered away and kicked him in the stomach. The chair slipped from his hands, crashing to the carpet. The man doubled over, and she sent an equally vicious kick to his face.

SNAP!

Blood gushed from his nose as his head jerked back sending him into the air and landing hard on his back. The Queen pressed her foot down his throat, closing off his windpipe. The man’s large hands wrapped around her foot and tried to push and pull it off as his face grew redder.

“Your efforts are a waste. You know it. I know it.”

Her words had no effect on him.

“What’s your name?” she asked, relieving his windpipe of just enough pressure to allow him to speak.

The man choked out several colorful words, none of which could possibly be his name. She pulled a tube from her belt and withdrew a needle from it. The man saw it and shook violently.

“Futile,” she said as she injected its contents into his shoulder.

A small burst of joy erupted in her mind, accompanied with a slow sigh of relief.

Today is going to be a wonderful day
. . .

“Hello.”

Twenty minutes later, the man opened his eyes and looked directly into the Queen’s. She saw his pupils dilate from fear-induced adrenaline.

“I gave you a small paralyzing agent so I could undress you without trouble. Do you understand?”

The man gasped sharply, stammering all over himself. Slowly he realized he was bound like a hog, wrist to wrist, ankle to ankle, and wrists to ankles. She’d dragged him near the hall door and propped it open so that the light from windows could illuminate their pleasant scene.

“If you are wondering why it’s cold, it’s because you’re naked.” The Queen held up the man’s wallet and he looked at it. “Is your name Richard Berkeley?” she asked, holding up his driver’s license.

“Yes!” he cried. “Please, I don’t understand what’s going on!”

Lying.

“And you live in Papillion, Nebraska?”

He nodded and licked his lips.

Lying again.

The Queen noted his tells.
No training in lying. He will be easy
.

“I found your little pill inside there, too. And since you’re not on birth control, I’m guessing it’s a suicide pill. That, along with the fake ID of Richard Berkeley, tells me that you are a very naughty boy. Part of some silly anti-CAG terrorist group maybe?”

The man made no sign for or against it.

“I sure hope so. We had lots of fun with those resistance fighters
from a decade back.” She fished around in her bag and finally pulled out a small device about the same size as the metronome her mom used to put on top of the piano when she was younger. She held it up so the man could see it. “Do you know what this is?”

The man nodded again.

“Good. Then why don’t you tell me your real name.”

“You know I won’t.”

“Why?” the Queen asked. “Is it nobility or stupidity? I already have a sample leaking out of your nose!” she screamed, smearing his blood over his face roughly.

His nasal bones crunched with her hand’s pressure, making him pale and groan from the pain.

“It will take about an hour to search the database for your record. Know what I’ll do during the time I’m waiting for your name to come up? I’ll hurt you. And then I’ll have your name, and you’ll be no better off than before.”

The man’s face was defiant. “Do it the hard way.”

His screams went on for seventy-five minutes. Despite his pain, the Queen knew he wasn’t broken. It didn’t worry her, she hadn’t played the trump card yet. When her device started beeping, she picked it up and read the display to him.

Doug Corri

With the name came all the information she could want to know. She removed her blunted instrument from the sole of his foot, and sat down on the floor near his head.

“So, your name’s not Richard. You’re not from Papillion. And I’m guessing you don’t like long walks on the beach. Right, Doug?”

Doug’s tear and blood soaked face jerked in her direction.

“I found this in your wallet,” she said, brandishing a picture of his family and then dropping it on his bare chest. He raised his head just high enough to see himself standing next to his red-haired wife and three red-haired daughters all wearing Los Angeles Dodgers shirts and sitting perfectly arranged for a family portrait. “I’m betting this is real.”

For the first time since he had woken naked, the Queen noted, Doug looked genuinely terrified. He sputtered a little, spraying flecks of blood, spit, and tears, but she quieted him with her own words.

“We’ve had some fun. You held out while I gave you a real strong dose of pain. But now that part is over, Doug.” As she said this, she stroked his hair lovingly, the way her father did for her when she was sick. “I don’t care about your family. They aren’t involved. In truth, I didn’t come here for you or your little band of Merry Men, either. But now that I’ve found them, I’m going to look for them. I’m being honest because there’s no use in lying to you. You’re already dead, and we both know that.”

No look of surprise came over the man’s features. His eyes stayed steady on hers.

“Right now you get to choose between your three beautiful daughters and a boy named Sammy Berhane. That’s all I care about for today. You can either tell me where I can find Sammy, or I’ll do the most evil, perverse things you can imagine to each of your three beautiful daughters.”

Doug sputtered through the slime of his own fluids covering his face, but the Queen continued.

“I won’t kill your wife, Doug, because I’ll want her to live the rest of her life having lost her entire family. However, I will tie up each of your daughters after paralyzing your wife in her bed, and I’ll do things you have probably never imagined to each of them.” She spoke to him now as if she was telling him a bedtime story, still petting him in that soothing way. “And when your little angels finally realize, after screaming and begging for help, that no one will ever come to save them, I’ll kill them. One at a time. In the most creative way I can come up with that day. Do I need to describe those three beautiful deaths for you?”

Doug shook his head frantically. “Please don’t—please—they’re innocent.”

The Queen watched him. This was the most important part of breaking the person. It was imperative that he trusted her. He needed to know she meant it deep, deep, deep down. “I have no reason to go after your family. Your wife isn’t involved in this little group here, is she?”

“No! Of course not!” Doug answered, but again she saw through the lies.

“I didn’t think so,” she whispered, but now, in her mind, the wife was already dead, too. “So it’s your choice, Doug. And if you lie to me, the first thing I’ll do is go to your home, do you understand? I know you can see your three daughters screaming and crying for you while I hurt them, can’t you?”

“Yes!” Doug cried. “Please—I beg—please—don’t hurt my girls. They’ve done nothing!”

“Look at me, Doug!” shouted the Queen, grabbing his face and holding it still. “I’m not ugly or cruel, am I? Aren’t I beautiful!?”

Doug nodded, and the Queen noted with satisfaction that he did not lie.

“Does this look like the face of someone who would lie or kill because she enjoyed it?”

Doug hesitated, but finally answered: “No.”

“I only want Samuel. Will you give me the information I need?”

Doug didn’t answer for several seconds, and right before the Queen had to say something else, he said, “I’ll tell you.”

Late into the night, Doug finally died. The Queen tried reaching her NWG contact, Wrobel. He did not answer. She tried him again with the same results.