Psion Beta (8 page)

The screen changed from a world map half red and a half blue to amateur film footage of a man and woman—presumably a couple—ragged and thin, taken into a bunker wearing thick magnet cuffs. The camera followed them down a dilapidated gray-yellow hallway and into a room where two men sat in chairs laughing as if one of them had just told the funniest joke in the world. One man was skinny in a wiry way with thick black hair on his head and the rest of his body covered in tattoos. The other man was burly and had a bald head covered in dark scabs. Sammy wondered if someone (maybe the Thirteen himself) had ripped out all the hair from his scalp. Both men wore matching uniforms: blood red tunics that melted into black pants. Above the left breast was a jagged black thirteen emblazoned onto the tunic.

The mirth ended when the couple was forced into the room. When Sammy glimpsed the men’s eyes, he saw more red. They had dyed their sclera to the color of blood. The soulless red eyes combined with the multiple scars on their faces and arms made them a terrifying sight. They stood and smiled at the couple. The smiles had no warmth. A tangible jolt of fear went from Sammy’s head to the small of his back. He did not know these men. He could not comprehend them. Men without feeling or remorse. The couple must have sensed something similar because when the woman saw their smiles she screamed and fell helplessly to her knees. The man sat on the floor silent and defiant. The Thirteens laughed again; their laughter made Sammy sick.

The bald, scabby Thirteen made a small jerk with his head, almost as if he had a spasm. The tattooed Thirteen saw this, walked out of sight of the camera, and came back with a weapon that Sammy recognized from the old movie
Moby Dick
. A rusted harpoon gun. The woman saw it and shrieked louder, begging for mercy. She groveled on her hands and tried to tug on the tattooed man’s pants when he kicked her with the steel toe of his boot in the face. She fell back and recoiled to the wall like a wounded dog, hands covering her face. The screaming stopped, and she simply collapsed into the corner bawling hysterically. Blood oozed out between her fingers.

The tattooed Thirteen aimed the harpoon gun at the man’s leg and shot the harpoon clean through it. Sammy closed his eyes as the man’s screams filled the air. He did not want to see this. He already understood what these people were capable of. More shots were fired and more screams of pain, but he did not look at the screen.

The sounds ended, and the screen on the wall disappeared. Natalia had tears in her eyes. Jeffie’s face was flushed. Brickert and Kawai’s eyes were still closed. Sammy’s thought a large rock had been dropped in his stomach, and his mouth had gone dry.

“
This is what we face,” Byron said. “I will not water it down or make our work sound glamorous because it is not. They are deadly. Even our trained Alphas never survive when alone with more than three of them. No one in the history of our training simulators has beaten four of them. They epitomize the words ferocious and merciless. Thirteens have never taken a Psion prisoner. They are always heavily armed. Unlike normal people who have visceral centers in the brain to tell them when they are fatigued or pushing their muscles past capacity, Thirteens have none, allowing them to fight longer, harder, and faster than normal people.”

“
How many Psions have died, Commander?” Brickert asked in a hoarse whisper.

“
Fifteen.” Sammy noticed the commander clench his hands hard while answering. “We have lost fifteen of our soldiers to these people. That may not seem like many, but there have only been eighty-nine Psions, including each of you. There are forty-eight Psions in the Alpha group, five more in Alpha Command, twenty in the Beta group including all of you, and myself. The majority of those deaths were in the early days of the war, before we started the simulations and the Game.”

Sammy’s mind buzzed. Byron had said a Psion’s life would be dangerous, but this was too much. Everyone else in the room seemed to be thinking the same thing. Brickert had his head down. Kawai stared at her hands. Natalia looked on the verge of tears again. Jeffie was less affected. She gazed hard at the commander, ready to hear more.

Byron seemed to read their thoughts. “I told you all this was a deluge of information, but I have learned the best way to introduce this is at the start. It is why you are here and why you must give your very best every day. You are each here for a purpose. Your training will be hard, it will stretch you to your very limits, but I promise you that if you give everything you have, you will leave here prepared to face whatever comes.”

He paused, as he had already done so many times, to look each of them in the eyes and show them his sincerity.

“
Do any of you have questions or comments before we go on to an equally serious matter?”

Sammy shook his head, as did Brickert. None of the girls responded.

“
Do any of you now object to taking upon yourselves an oath of service to the New World Government as Psions?” he asked.

Again no one objected.

“
Please stand, raise your right hand, and repeat after me.”

They followed his instructions. Byron began the oath and paused after each line so they could repeat it. Pride swelled in Sammy’s chest as he repeated the words. He thought of everything that had happened to him in the last year and hoped by making this oath, he could atone for the mistakes he had made. He thought less about his friends and more about his parents for the first time in a while.

“
I am a servant of the people. On my own accord I declare my life is not my own. I will give my mind, my strength, and my heart to the service of the government so long as the government serves the interest of the people. With justice as my strength, I will protect the freedoms and liberties to which my people have a right. My life is not my own. I am a servant of the people.”

“
All right,” Byron said, his eyes now a tinge redder. “I am so proud of each of you. Let me give you a tour of this fine building.”

5.
Racing

The recruits followed
the commander around headquarters for the better part of an hour. Psion Beta headquarters had six floors and was shaped like a giant cube. According to Commander Byron, the perimeter of the building was almost two kilometers. Betas had access to the first five floors.

Combat simulations took up all the space on the fifth level. Byron briefly demonstrated how to operate the control panels in each room. All rooms employed state-of-the-art interactive holograms. The fourth level held a library and several classrooms each with a strange-looking machine Byron called a Teacher. On the third floor they saw the exercise facility, a huge recreation hall, and what impressed Sammy most: the cafeteria.

The cafeteria boasted a fully-automated RoboChef. Sammy had heard of these amazing machines in his dad’s tech magazines. All he had to do was enter in a recipe, and the RoboChef could prepare almost any dish. Even Jeffie seemed impressed. As they moved on, Sammy looked back forlornly and his stomach grumbled.

The next level down was the girls’ dormitory, while the first floor belonged to the boys. Although a stairwell connected the two dorms, only an eye-scan allowed access inside them. When he showed them the eye-scans for each dorm, Byron looked at them all gravely. “You are not
allowed in the dormitory of the opposite sex. Do not try me on this. Most of you have already agreed, but I will repeat it anyway: sexual contact of any kind is not allowed. My job is enough work without dealing with your relationships. While you are here, practice strict abstinence. I will say no more about it.”

Jeffie, Natalia, and Kawai grinned at each other when Byron turned his attention to Brickert and Sammy.

“
The boxes you carry contain your communicators. Or coms, as you probably call them. You can use those for texting or to speak to me and anyone else in the building. It will not make outside calls, but it will hold your daily schedule. Follow it as best as you can. The different simulators and classrooms are scheduled in rotation to allow everyone equal use during the day. If you have an emergency—medical or otherwise—just say your name and ‘emergency.’ It will activate the program. The personal statistics menu will show your rank based on your simulation performance in comparison to others. I feel competition and feedback tends to increase individual performance. If you do not wish to know your rank, that is fine, too. Any questions?”

Among all the little curiosities bouncing in his brain, one stuck out to Sammy. “Why are there no rooms on the inner walls?”

“
Of course—thank you—I almost forgot. The whole inner part of the building is the Arena. You will learn more about that soon. Any others?” he asked, looking around. “No? Then, I will take my leave, and you can get yourselves settled in your rooms. They will be marked for you.”

With one last glance at the girls, Sammy went down the stairwell to the first floor with Brickert behind him, banging his suitcase on each step. Sammy eye-scanned himself and Brickert into the dormitory floor. Like everywhere else, the layout was a perfect square, and each hallway had several doors on the outer wall.

“
What’s in the bag?” Sammy asked Brickert. Unlike the others, he had no luggage and was curious to see what Brickert had brought.

“
Clothes. Pictures. Some other personal stuff. Where’s yours?”

“
I didn’t need to bring stuff from home,” Sammy lied to avoid awkward questions.

Brickert muttered something under his breath that Sammy couldn’t quite hear. They walked the hall in silence looking for their rooms. After a moment, Sammy realized he had not been listening properly when Brickert had introduced himself. His mind had been on other things.

“
Where are you from again?”

“
I’m from the Irish Territory,” Brickert answered, and for the first time Sammy noticed a slight accent in Brickert’s voice. “Near Killarny.” His words came tumbling out, giving Sammy the impression Brickert had been eagerly waiting for a chance to talk about home. “My parents were shocked when they found out about all this. My dad had more than half a mind to not let me come here, I’ll tell you, but my mom insisted that one of her children amount to something more than a factory worker.”

“
How many children are in your family?” Sammy asked.

“
I’m the ninth of ten children,” Brickert replied.

Sammy swore loudly. “Ten kids?”

Brickert made it sound like everyone had ten kids. Sammy’s parents had tried to have more children after him, but he had never met anyone from such a large family.

“
Yeah, it’s kind of a lot, huh?” Brickert admitted with an embarrassed look.

Sammy stopped walking when he realized he had made Brickert uncomfortable. “I mean . . .” he hurried to say, “ . . . there’s nothing wrong with that. I was an only child, so . . . you know, anything more than one seems big to me.”

“
Really? No brothers or sisters?” Sammy heard more than a hint of jealousy in Brickert’s voice. “That must be really nice.”

“
Actually I always wanted a little brother,” Sammy told him. “You know, to play sports with or chess or something. I had friends, but sometimes I only had my parents for that stuff.”

“
You can have one of mine . . .”

They continued walking again. Many of the rooms in the dormitory were vacant. The halls were all white, just like everywhere else, except near one room where a large chunk of wall sported a mural of two boys wearing VR helmets faced off in some sort of fight. The door in the middle of the mural said Reynolds/Reynolds. The one after it read Hayman/Petrov, and finally Berhane/Plack.

“
Cool! That’s you, right?” Brickert asked pointing at the names, and smiling for the first time since they had met. “We’re going to be roommates.”

Sammy saw the relief in Brickert’s face.
The poor kid’s probably been terrified he’d get a roommate that would eat him
. Rooming with Brickert was fine by him; at least he would not be stuck with some anal-retentive wacko.
Unless Brickert turns out to be some anal-retentive wacko
. But from the little they had already spent together, Brickert seemed okay.

“
I don’t think that I can reach that eye-scan,” Brickert mumbled at the door, and he was right. He had to jump just a little to get his eye over the scanner.

“
You’re the youngest person here,” Sammy pointed out quickly, “it’s no biggie. It’s not your fault someone didn’t plan better.” He put his eye over the hole and heard a click.

They went inside their new bedroom. It was much larger than Sammy had expected. A bunk bed stood against the left wall. He guessed he’d probably be sleeping on the top given Brickert’s size. Two large desks stood at the back wall with a chair apiece, and spacious closets with mirrors were on the opposite side of the room from the beds. The furniture all seemed high quality and looked recently cleaned and polished.

“
Wow!” Brickert said. “I can’t believe I’m going to be living somewhere so—so posh!”

Posh was not the word Sammy chose to describe it, but he was still impressed. “Yeah . . . it’s pretty nice.”

“
Let’s see if they’ve brought us those suits Byron mentioned we’re supposed to wear during the day.”

In the closets, they found their personalized flight suits. All of Sammy’s suits were white and light blue, but to add a little flavor, each had different colored embellishments on the sleeves and legs. He grabbed the one with gold trimmings, and pressed the collar tabs. When he stepped inside and pressed the tabs again, the front sealed seamlessly. He looked over and saw that Brickert’s jumpsuit color was white and a soft green; Brickert had chosen one with white trimmings.