Psion Alpha (27 page)

“Then
let’s get some sleep,” Aaron finally stated. “We’ll all feel better in the
morning.”

Sammy
wanted to point out that they had decided on nothing, that the meeting had been
a waste of time, but he let it go. His Anomaly Eleven could do many amazing
things, but it couldn’t show him how to lead a group of people or boost their
morale. He lay on his cot and pulled his net over his body. Despite his
fatigue, it took him a long time to fall asleep, and when he woke, it was to
the sounds of screaming.

When
he first opened his eyes, Sammy thought he was in a bad dream again. In the dim
lighting of the jungle, a man’s high-pitched cries rang out, filled with horror
and anguish. A second voice—this time female—joined the man’s. Soon four or
five people were shouting or screaming. Sammy blinked three times before
realizing it was coming from near him. He turned and saw through bleary eyes
something sitting on Aaron’s chest. It looked like a monkey, but it was covered
in something very un-monkey-like. The monkey was eating Aaron.

Blood
drenched Aaron as he yelled long and high like a wounded child. Most of the red
wetness seemed concentrated around his face and head. Levu screamed, too,
staring at her own bleeding hands. Several long black quills protruded from her
palms and fingers. The monkey-like animal was oblivious to the commotion, its
focus on Aaron. Sammy scrambled to his feet and fired several blasts, knocking
it to the muddy ground. Stunned, the monkey rolled two or three times in the
muck before finding its footing and launching itself back at Sammy, howling
furiously. Again Sammy blasted it down. The monkey prepared to strike a third
time, but an arrow struck the monkey’s chest. Its eyes bulged and it gave a
second howl as it fell over and stopped breathing.

Dr.
Rosmir ran to Aaron. Li and the Hudec brothers examined Levu’s hands. Sammy had
to look away once he got close to Aaron. His face was a raw, bloody mess. The
monkey had bitten and clawed his skin to shreds. Aaron continued to sob, this
time calling for his mother. Kawai’s hands clamped over her eyes as she turned
away from the sight. Jeffie stared with wide, teary eyes, hugging herself
tightly.

“Calm
down, Aaron,” Dr. Rosmir said. “Please calm yourself.”

Aaron
either wouldn’t or couldn’t listen. As the doctor tried to examine him, Aaron
started to thrash about violently.

“Don’t
touch me!” he yelled. “Get off me!”

His
words were mangled and wet as blood seeped into his mouth, emphasizing each syllable
with a wet spatter of red specks. Then all at once, his body gave a great jerk,
his muscles froze up like a cadaver, and he became very still.

“I
need my pack,” Rosmir said, snapping his fingers. “SOMEONE GET MY PACK!”

Nikotai,
still carrying his crossbow, hurried it over. Sammy put his fingers on Aaron’s
throat to check for a pulse while the doctor fumbled through his medical pack.

“Doctor.…
” Sammy mumbled. “He’s—he’s not—”

“He
needs a shot of epinephrine and dendrobatidine. Let me get it, and he’ll be
fine.”

“His
heart stopped,” Nikotai said. “His face has been mauled. Even if we manage to
restart his heart … the infection will set in.”

“This
man’s under my care. I’m the doctor. He is alive until I pronounce him dead!”

“Levu
needs your help. Her hands.” Sammy looked at the doctor pleadingly. “I don’t
think you can save Aaron.”

“
I
can save him!
”

Rosmir’s
face twisted into an angry snarl so nasty that Sammy backed away to help Levu.
She had at least twenty long, thin, black quills embedded deep into her palms.
Dave and Duncan had already removed a dozen of them, leaving oozing red spots.

“Hold
still, Levu,” Dave said, soothingly stroking her hair. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Levu
tried to hold still, but her sobbing and quaking made it difficult for the men
to help her. Out of the corner of his eye, Sammy observed Dr. Rosmir exhaust
himself in his efforts to revive Aaron, who was clearly dead. The blood on his
face had begun to congeal, and what little exposed skin he had left was waxy
and white.

Nikotai
and Lorenzo went over to assist the doctor while the others aided Levu. All
counted, they pulled thirty-nine quills from her palms. Duncan disinfected and
wrapped her hands while Sherwood watched, muttering to himself and spinning the
generator on his radio. It took another fifteen minutes for Dr. Rosmir to
accept that Aaron Lewis was gone. The Hudecs, who’d been friends with Aaron for
years, began to dig a grave while Sammy, Kawai, and Wesley Gibbons inspected
the creature that had attacked.

Gibbons
picked it up by the shaft of the arrow still impaled through its chest. “I
don’t think I’ve seen anything like this before, have you?”

Kawai
shook her head, but Sammy continued to examine it. “Those look like porcupine
quills,” Sammy said as he pointed along the monkey’s back. “But check out those
claws.”

Kawai
reached out to touch the monkey’s paw.

“Don’t!”
Sammy warned her, jerking her hand back. “For all we know it’s laced with a
poison. Something had to make Aaron go all stiff like that when he died.”

“You
think a monkey laced its own claws with a poison?” Kawai asked.

Sammy
shrugged. “The Amazon rainforest contains thousands upon thousands of species
of animals. It’s possible this is some rare breed of monkey. Maybe hunted to
near extinction a long time ago.”

“Those
claws,” Kawai stated, “I’ve never seen anything so sharp. I mean, they
seriously look scary.”

“The
teeth aren’t very friendly, either.” Gibbons pulled back its gums and revealed
nasty, sharp canines to complement its other teeth. “I hope you’re right about
it being rare, Sammy.”

“Me,
too,” Sammy stated.

Gibbons
touched Sammy on the shoulder and pointed to Jeffie, who was huddled under a
blanket on her cot, clutching herself. She was muttering something, but Sammy
couldn’t tell what until he got closer.

“Stupid
… stupid … stupid,” she repeated.

Sammy
sat next to her and put his hand on her head. “You okay?”

Jeffie
stared into the jungle, tears ran down her face, but she wasn’t exactly crying.
“Stupid … stupid—”

“Jeffie,
what’s stupid? Talk to me, please.”

“Stupid.”

“What’s
stupid?”

“I’m
stupid.” Her words came out in haunted whispers.

“What?
Why?”

She
rolled onto her back. “I shouldn’t have come, Sammy. I can’t do this. I need to
go home. I need to go home now!”

She
started to sit up as though she had every intention of walking home that very
instant. Sammy put his hands on her and forced her back down.

“What
do you mean? You can’t.”

“I
have to!”

She
sat up so abruptly that she knocked Sammy off the cot and into the mud. Before
he could grab her, she took off into the jungle. Kawai tackled her before she
could get far.

“Get
off me! GET OFF!”

Jeffie
blasted Kawai off of her, and started to regain her footing in the slick earth,
but Li grabbed her from behind, hooking his arms under hers so she couldn’t use
her hands to blast him. Jeffie screamed like a wild animal and cursed at Li,
but he held strong until Dr. Rosmir injected something into Jeffie that made
her pass out.

Sammy
picked her up from the mud and held her tightly. “What’d you give her?”

“Don’t
worry,” Rosmir said. “She’s fine. I don’t want her to hurt herself.”

What
have I done?
Sammy asked himself.
I should have known
not to take her. The stupid person is me!

After
laying Jeffie in her cot and covering her with a blanket, Sammy helped Hudecs
and Sherwood dig the grave. As he worked, he observed the faces of his team. He
saw anger, fear, resilience, and confusion, but not hope.

Before
burying Aaron, they held a short ceremony. Sammy didn’t know what to say, so he
asked Duncan Hudec, a religious man, to say some words on Aaron’s behalf.
Duncan read several passages from a small, red Bible that he carried in his
breast pocket. Two verses in particular struck Sammy, and made him shake his
head.

“‘Fear
thou not for I am with thee. Be not dismayed for I am thy God. I will
strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right
hand of my righteousness.’”

Why
wasn’t God with Aaron while he slept? What did Aaron do to deserve such a
death?

“‘My
sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give unto them
eternal life. And they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out
of my hand.’”

This
one stuck in Sammy’s brain. He knew the passage, had read it multiple times in
the last six months. As he listened to Duncan speak, he saw Aaron dying again.
The memory was like a video playing in his mind, something he could slow, speed
up, reverse, or pause with perfect ease and clarity. After Duncan finished, his
attention shifted to Sammy.

“As
our leader, would you offer a prayer in Aaron’s behalf?”

“Prayer?”
he repeated. He remembered all the times he’d seen Aaron pray before eating his
first bite of a meal. Had he asked God for protection during those moments? If
so, what was the point? They had gone unheard or unheeded. Sammy shook his
head. “No, Duncan, I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”

Disappointed,
Duncan nodded and said the prayer instead. During it, Sammy thought about all
the times over the last several months he’d nearly died: a mudslide, being shot
multiple times, finding that store of food with Toad in an abandoned
neighborhood, leaping from a skyscraper in Orlando, sleeping over at a friend’s
house the same night his parents died.

Luck
, he
decided it was.
Some people are just lucky. Others aren’t.

I’m
sorry you weren’t as lucky as me, Aaron. We still need you.

Soon
after the service ended, Jeffie’s drug-induced sleep wore off. The group
marched on, rarely speaking. The loss of Aaron was real and noticeable. He had
often walked ahead of the group or alongside the Hudecs, so he could shout out
warnings of what was ahead. He’d liked giving Sammy advice on which paths they should
take for easiest passage.

Sammy’s
attention, as well as several others, frequently flitted to the trees in uneasy
glances, searching for signs in the canopy of creatures like the one they’d
encountered. Cutting through the sounds of the forest was the radio, powered by
Sherwood. Late in the afternoon, he caught another signal. The group stopped
moving and gathered around to listen. Sammy hoped for good news, anything
really, to boost the spirits of his team.

“—first
reports out of Sydney are that the gathering NWG forces were devastated by a
CAG military strike in the earliest hours of the morning. Cruisers flown by
clones approached from the west and east, reinforced by hundreds of drones that
blanketed the government installation with bombs and paralyzing gases.
Witnesses estimate the death toll reaching the hundreds, along with millions of
dollars in property destruction. Nothing, however, compares to the crippling
loss of NWG battle cruisers and jets. The NWG has already admitted it cannot
absorb the loss of any more military weaponry. How this will affect the war
effort, we can only guess. Also devastating to the NWG efforts is we can now confirm
from multiple sources including Senator Harsh Kansagra that at least six
territories have engaged in talks with the CAG officials regarding secession.
More to come on this development later in the day.”

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
- Flames

October 2055

“
SORRY
I’m
late,” Emerald said as she sat with Byron in their flight simulator. Byron
glanced at the clock. She was fifteen minutes behind schedule, but he motioned
to her it was no big deal.

“What
kept you?” he asked.

“Talking
to the Head of the Infirmary about Xian’s recovery.”

“Anything
new?”

“She
said the stem cell treatments are working on the damaged parts of his brain
even though he hasn’t woken up yet.”

“How
do they know?”

Emerald
shrugged. She looked tired and worn. They all did. “Something about electrical
activity in his head improving … I don’t know.”

“Thanks
for going for me today. I know it was my turn to check on him, but I have a
hard time finding a free minute some days.”

Byron
wasn’t lying. Ten months into his training, and he’d discovered new levels of
how hard he could work and how far he could stretch the hours of a day. On a
good night, he got seven hours of sleep. On a bad night, three or four.
Occupying his schedule was his daily hour of punishment with Nicoletta
Clardonsky, group study sessions, visits to Xian in the infirmary, six to eight
hours of class, and an unhealthy obsession with the flight simulators. Sleep
simply sunk to a lower priority.

The
rest of Team Oddball was no different. Xian’s comatose state pushed them all to
a higher level of effort and focus. Trapper spent a minimum of two hours a day
in the dojo, sometimes even skipping other studies to work on his fighting
technique. Emerald had gone from being one of the worst combatants in the class
to a top forty or fifty fighter. Even Otto had developed a mean kick that could
knock almost anyone on their backside.

They
visited Xian as a group at least once a week. Doctors and nurses were good
about keeping them informed on his progress. They all anticipated Xian would
make a full recovery. Rather than flying him home to his city of Shíji
ā
zhu
ā
ng, a surgeon traveled
to the ETC and performed a facial reconstruction in the infirmary. Commander Wu,
whose investigation of the matter still hadn’t resulted in any expulsions,
insisted that once Xian healed, he’d be qualified to finish his commitment to
the Elite.

“What
are we working on today?” Emerald asked. “More emergency landing tactics?”

“I
was thinking that might be a good idea seeing as how—”

“Seeing
as how I took out a whole city block last time?” she asked, sticking out her
tongue and rolling her eyes.

“Yep.
Exactly.”

“Not
my fault the stupid landing gear jammed up.”

“No,
but there was a giant cornfield where you could have landed.”

“I’d
rather kill people than corn,” she responded with a grin. “Corn never hurt
anyone.”

Byron
and Emerald’s flight sessions were filled with fun and intensity. December
lurked just around the corner, and with it, the next round of final exams. One
of these in particular had Byron excited: the qualifying tests for aviation.
Once they passed this test, the Elites would be clear to fly the jets and
cruisers of the Elite starting in January.

“Can
you believe exams are so soon?” Byron asked her as he started up the simulator.
“Just think about it. In two months we will be flying actual planes!”

Emerald
turned a pale shade of green. “Don’t remind me.”

“I
promise, you are going to do
fine
.”

“Says
the guy in the running for two golden skulls.… ” Emerald retorted.

“Emerald,
we spend ten to twelve hours a week focused solely on this class. You score
consistently among the top thirty each test.”

“I
know. I just wish I was doing as well as you.”

After
ten months in the program, the academics race remained as tight as ever. Byron
held the number five spot in his class, only two-tenths of a point separating
him from the third and fourth ranked students. And holding firmly to the top
spot was Diego. He stood a solid half point above the number two ranking
Elite-in-training. While one abysmal test score could topple him, such an event
seemed less likely to occur the longer classes went on. Byron rarely saw Diego
study, but it didn’t matter. Diego scored perfect or near perfect on every test.

“He
cheats,” Otto had explained once to the group, “One time, I heard him and Omar
talking about hacking with some of their friends when I was behind them in line
at the cafeteria. He’s got a way to hack into their systems and guarantee
himself top scores.”

Despite
Diego’s success in academics, Byron was the top dog in aviation. His hard work
and natural gifts had paid off. He held a one point lead above the next closest
student, Diego. Being in the running for skulls in both academics and aviation
meant Byron still had to worry about the combat skull. Strangely, the part of
the day Byron looked forward to most was his hour with Clardonsky, not because
he enjoyed getting tossed around or punched repeatedly, but because she devoted
fifteen minutes of the hour to developing his abilities, which she called
“psionic.”

When
Byron asked what this meant, she explained in her thick Slavic accent, “It’s
the only word to describe your powers. You have an incredible mind, so powerful
that it can explode energy out of your hands and feet. This is why you do so well
in classes despite your age.”

The
term stuck, and Byron began thinking of himself as a
Psion
. Trapper
liked the name, too. Clardonsky’s flattery drove Byron to excel, which led to
notable improvements in his fighting. Impressed with his development, she
taught him several styles of combat: jujitsu, boxing, krav maga, and four
different urban fighting methods. However, she never let an opportunity pass to
remind him that she was adept at almost a dozen other forms of martial arts.

“You
ready to do this?” Byron asked Emerald.

“Yep.”

They
took turns watching the other fly and critiquing performances. As usual, Byron
noticed Emerald was always more critical of him than he was of her. But knowing
her personality, he knew not to let this bother him. After their session ended,
they sat in the observation room and reviewed videos of their flights. As they
watched one of Byron’s recordings, Emerald turned to him and spoke.

“I’m
leaving for the holidays.” She said the words so quickly it took Byron a moment
to realize what she’d said. It was obvious she’d been trying to tell him this
for a while.

“Really?
How did you manage to make that happen?”

“My
mom,” Emerald explained. “She was willing to pay the fees. Only a couple dozen
of us are taking the planes out. Mine is going to Dallas. From there I’ll take
an air rail back to my hometown. She’s excited to see me, my mom.”

The
Elite Training Center had a two-week break following the final exams of the first
year, but few people actually went home because travel to and from Siberia was
so expensive. Otto’s father had refused to fly him home, despite their wealth,
because Otto wasn’t the top ranked student academically. It was a subject Otto
refused to speak about.

“Are
you excited?”

“Yeah,
I guess. It’ll give me some time to decide what I want to do with my life.”

“What
you want—wait, aren’t you coming back?”

Emerald
blushed and glanced away from Byron. “I—I guess that’s what I have to decide. I
need to get away and clear my head from all this madness.”

“What
is there to decide?” Byron’s tone grew louder the longer he spoke. “You want to
waste this whole year and go spend the rest of your life in a tattoo parlor?
The fines for dropping out are—”

Emerald
gave Byron her patented glare. “Why are you getting angry? This is my decision.
I need to talk things over with my mom. She’s being generous by letting me come
home.”

“And
what about your father?”

Her
glare transformed into something even more menacing. “That’s cruel and sick. You
know I don’t have a father. I can’t believe you’d sink that low.”

“Yes,
you do.” Despite the intense expression she wore, he didn’t back down. Her lies
about her father had been bugging him for months. “Are you going to speak to
him about the decision, too?”

A
deadness crept into Emerald’s voice as she repeated herself. “
I don’t have a
father.
”

“You
do. I saw pictures of you and him together right before you came to the ETC.
The picture sits on your dresser.”

“That
man isn’t—”

“Will
you be honest with me?” Byron begged.

“My
father—my father—” Emerald’s eyes were wide and bewildered. Was she trying to
think up another lie?

“Is
the man in the picture!” He reached over and grabbed her arm, sliding the
sleeve up until the face on her skin was in view. “The same person on your arm!”

“NO!”
she cried in a shrill voice and jerked her limb from his grip.

“Tell
me the truth, Emerald.”

“Why
are you doing this?”

“What
makes you this way? Why does everything have to be such a mystery?”

“It’s
not a mystery. It’s just none of your business!”

“It
is my business, Emerald.”

“Why?
Because you’re a nosy little boy?”

The
words felt like a slap across the face. “And you are how many months older than
me? Four? I guess that makes you a bratty little girl. I want to know because I
am your friend, not because I hoard personal information on people. Geez! What
is wrong with you? How many hours do I have to give you of my own time before
you trust me?”

Emerald
shook her head at him with a look of pure disgust as she raced out of the room,
but not before throwing a chain of colorful obscenities at him over her
shoulder.

From
that one conversation, Team Oddball lost one of its founding members. As October
wound down and rolled into November, Emerald ate by herself, studied by herself,
and ignored Otto and Trapper’s pleas to rejoin them. Her refusals infuriated
Trapper, and he blamed it on Byron. And though Byron tried to put all the drama
out of his mind and focus on his studies, it wasn’t easy. Seeing Emerald alone all
the time filled his gut with guilt, but he wasn’t sure why. After all, she had lied
to him, not the other way around. More than once he thought about making
amends, yet every time he had an opportunity, he thought of an excuse not to
talk to her.

Soon
enough, October became November. With it came a major announcement: Omar had challenged
the current holder of the combat golden skull, Feliz Karimani, to a fight.
Feliz was set to graduate in December, and had to defend his title one more
time. Byron had yet to attend any of the golden skull fights, so he made sure
to reserve good seats for himself and his friends now that they were taking
combat more seriously.

By
late November, with finals only days away, Byron’s anxiety about his exams started
to mount. He often wondered how Emerald was handling her own course load, but
never asked her. Finals week hit hard and fast. Byron sat for written exams in
combat, aviation, mathematics, engineering, political science, crisis
management, and psychology. In between tests, the students sat in the lounge,
half of them obsessively reviewing questions they might have missed, while the
other half crammed for the next test. All the students except Diego. He, Omar, Markorian,
and two other friends played foosball, talking and laughing loudly about how
easy the tests had been. Byron, Trapper, and Otto tuned them out while quizzing
each other on the tougher subjects to come up on the engineering final.

“Hey!”
Diego shouted. “Hey, turn that up! Turn up the TV!”

Markorian
obediently rushed over to the television and cranked up the sound. Several
people complained, but Diego ignored them.

“Just
let me listen, and I’ll turn it down.”