Psion Omega (Psion series Book 5) (16 page)

“Power supply intact. Other functions offline.”

The Queen swore as she scrambled out of bed to
dress. The penthouse elevator took her to the rooftop of the Orlando N Tower
where a cruiser waited. Minutes later she was in the air and cruising at top
speeds for Lake Coari.

What are you up
to, Diego?

The flight to Brazil felt like an itch that could
not be scratched. A maddening two-hour itch. She sent no advance warning of her
arrival, hoping to catch Diego off guard. Something was fishy.
Has Diego turned? Has he figured out what
I’ve done to the fox?

No. How could
he?

Yet Diego had fired rockets at someone …
Who? Who has figured out the location of the
Hive? That secret is
—

How many other
secrets have the resistance exploited? San Francisco? Detroit? They know the
location of our cloning facilities
.

What if the
resistance is there now? Or Sammy?

As the dense forests of the Amazon appeared beneath
the cruiser, her knees started to shake in anticipation. Her imagination
blossomed like a summer rose, and she saw herself matching Sammy in combat, and
besting him. She raised his body above her head and threw it down to the
unforgiving floor, shattering his bones like glass. A small firework of pain
went off inside her own body at the thought of it, and she closed her eyes
until it passed.
I’m ready.

Three minutes from the Hive, Diego hailed her via
radio. “To what do I owe another unexpected visit?” he asked with a strange
lisp she had never before heard. “Shall I roll out the red carpet? Is this a
sign we’re becoming fast friends?”

“Missiles were launched from the Hive and
deactivated. I want to know why.”

There was a long pause before Diego’s answer came.
“A private aircraft flew near the area. At first I suspected it to be the
enemy, but they immediately turned around after the missiles were launched.
Rather than making a mess in my otherwise pristine jungle, I deactivated the
projectiles.”

Liar
. His newfound
lisp threatened to drive her mad.

“Certainly no need to fly down to visit unless you
missed me that badly.”

“Prepare for my arrival,” the Queen said.

“I’m always prepared.”

The building was quiet when she entered, certainly
no Thirteens were in the building other than Diego. She recalled there had been
none the last time she visited, too. Diego had said they were on an assignment.

Something’s not
right.

The Queen was on edge as she took the stairs up to
Diego’s lair. The door to the third level was unlocked, but the Queen entered
ready to blast should Diego try to ambush her. Instead she found him in his
chair typing furiously at his keyboard. One of the screens displayed lines of
code, which Diego’s one eye was fixed on.

“Always a pleasure to see you, Queen. Please make
yourself at home. There’s coffee in the kitchen if it suits you.” His eye
stayed trained on the screen.

“What is this? What are you working on?”

“Rewriting some code,” he said very
matter-of-factly, the lisp still present. His fingers raced over the keyboard
like a demon had possessed him.

“The fox gave you this assignment?”

Diego paused before answering. “No. He asks me to
keep the Hive up to date. Should I start asking his permission to relieve
myself, too?”

The Queen walked around the room to where she’d
planted the box. Diego’s eye followed her reflection in the screen. She faced
his direction while her hand secretly searched under the console until she
found the device exactly where she’d placed it … but the hair was gone, the one
she had trapped between the console and the box to inform her if the box was
moved.

He found it. Now
he is lying, lying, lying
.

She took a step toward him. His eye flickered to her
reflection, then back to his codes. Her attention shifted toward his work. The
Queen had enough experience with writing and editing computer code that she
understood the gist of what Diego was doing. She caught bits and scraps, and
started piecing it all together.

He’s deleting
activity. What activity?

The Queen’s eyes raced over the screen.
He made a file transfer, a large one
.
Suddenly that bit of activity was gone.

“STOP!” She reached for his chair and yanked hard on
it, but Diego stood and let it slide out from underneath him while he continued
to type. The Queen blasted him with two powerful hand blasts. Diego’s head
smashed through the screen. Then she grabbed him by the legs and yanked him
out. His face bled from multiple lacerations, but he grinned at her as though
he’d won a gold medal.

“You’re too late.” He jammed a button and several
more lines of code disappeared. Then he spat his own blood in her face.

The Queen struck him across the cheek. “What.” She
smacked him again. “Did.” She hit him twice more. “You. Do?”

“Keep swinging, Queenie,” he sputtered.

Enraged, the Queen picked Diego up and threw him
into his screens. His precious screens that he’d always loved to watch for
hours and hours, day and night. Diego hit the floor with a crunching thump that
told the Queen some of the screen’s glass had embedded itself into him. The
sensation of needles deeply piercing her own skin shocked her, but she ignored
it and rolled Diego over with her foot so that he faced her. The bleeding was
much worse now.

“Queen …” he whispered. “It was him. Not me. It was
him.” Then he clamped shut and squirmed on the linoleum. “Stop it!”

The Queen kicked him with savage force, feeling his
ribs bend and snap beneath the toe of her boot. Her own ribs ached when she
drew her next breath. Then she knelt next to his head and put a knife up to the
canal of Diego’s ear. “Tell me everything I need to know or every centimeter of
this blade will worm its way through your brains.”

“Trapper,” Diego hissed. “He’s here.”

“Who?” the Queen asked, standing up as fast as a
bullet, knife at the ready. “Where?”

“He’s in me. The fox knows what I’m talking about.
He knows Trapper. Sammy and the girl—they were here … asking questions.
He told them things.”

“WHAT?” she screamed. “How long ago?”

“Fff—” Diego’s teeth bit down on his lower lip
until it left oozing bite marks. “He—trrrr … NOTHING! Go to hell!”

The Queen was back on her knees next to him, knife
still in hand. The steady amount of pressure of knife-on-ear helped Diego get
better control over himself. He groaned loudly with pain as his ear drum burst.
“He told them about the ext—
gurrrk
.”
Choking noises erupted from Diego’s throat followed by gagging sounds.

“The extraction site?” the Queen asked.

Diego nodded.

“Is that all?”

There was a pause before Diego nodded again. “It
wasn’t supposed to be like this. My death was already planned. I had a purpose.
The fox … will be … disappointed.” Disgusted at the filthy weakling lying
before her, the Queen jammed the rest of the knife home and ended his pathetic
life. Diego twitched like he was having a minor seizure before a single word
escaped his lips in a faint moan.

“Emerald … ” And he died.

The Queen stared at him for a long time. Her eyes
watered, not from guilt or sadness, but from the sudden sharp, biting pain in
her own ear, pulsing and radiating like the ticking of a clock.
What is this?
The pains were happening
more frequently and more acutely. So she forced herself to look at Diego as he
bled out.

When the pain finally passed, she removed her knife
from his head, wiped it on his shirt, and left him on the floor.

* * * * *

Friday, April 25, 2053

Priyanka was right about not getting caught. The cyber investigation
task force lasted a week and found no evidence that she had doctored or posted
the photos of Katie. Still, the pictures were all the school talked about.
Katie tried to ignore it by focusing on her schoolwork, but too many things
reminded her of the incident. When she used the toilet in the girls’ restroom,
she discovered graffiti about her, the mildest of which said that she had her
own strain of Chlamydia or that she had memorized the Kama Sutra. Her best
friend Courtney demanded that the principal have the graffiti removed
immediately, but it took three days for the janitors to get around to it.

Almost a month after the incident, it was time for
the second round of voting for Prom Court, where eighteen candidates were
whittled down to eight. Katie finished in eighth place while Priyanka finished
in first. Only six weeks remained before the final vote. Every time Katie saw
Priyanka’s smug little smile she wanted to smack it until Pri’s nose broke. She
imagined herself doing it so many times, it seemed to be all she dreamed about.
That and the cave …

Every night she dreamed the same thing. Touching the
shadow version of herself, the knife appearing in her hand, and the choice. The
house or the cave? She had gone to the brightly lit house, looked through its
windows, watched the activity inside for hours. The scene never changed: inside
the home her mother and father waited for Katie to come for dinner. A large ham
sat on the table, still needing to be carved. The table sat six, but only two
chairs were occupied. Katie’s dad would get up to look for a knife to slice the
ham, but never found it. Her mother called for Katie, her voice growing more
urgent each time. The scene was a loop that replayed over and over.

The house did not interest her and the cave
terrified her. Just standing at its mouth she could sense its unfathomable
depth and vastness. The smell from within was not good, but not foul either;
something heavy and thick, foreign and familiar all at once. Katie could not
place the scent—not without entering the cave. She’d spent several nights
staring into its mouth, her feet right at the edge of the darkness, and she
listened, smelled, tried to peer into the black yet discerned nothing.

Days after the vote, Katie’s gym class was forced to
run a 5K in the pouring rain. Fortunately, Katie had Courtney, Vivian, and
Rachel to keep her company as they jogged around with sopping clothes stuck to
their bodies and dripping hair plastered to their pale, clammy faces.

“I don’t know why I spend an hour doing my makeup in
the mornings,” Courtney groaned as she glared at their teacher. “And look at
her watching us from under her umbrella. She’s probably laughing at us.”

“Isn’t this like illegal or something?” Vivian
responded.

Katie was one of the fastest girls in her class,
though she hadn’t run track this year in order to focus on her studies and
avoid shin splints. Through a megaphone, the instructor yelled at them to pick
up the pace. Some of the students, Priyanka included, responded by slowing down
even more just to spite the teacher. As Katie and her friends gradually caught
up to Priyanka and her posse, Katie’s eyes bored holes into Priyanka’s
backside. She wanted to slam Priyanka’s head into the pavement until it cracked
open like an egg.

Katie stayed on the inside lanes. The outside lanes
had hurdles scattered throughout. As Katie and her crew passed Priyanka, Katie
gave Priyanka a nudge, pushing her into the hurdles. Priyanka’s arm caught on
it, and she tripped, landing on the track as the hurdle crashed down on her.
Courtney and Vivian snickered as Priyanka growled in frustration behind them.

Not wanting to look guilty, they didn’t even look
over their shoulders until the sound of shoes slapping onto the wet track
caught up to them.

“Think you’re all that, Porn Queen?” Priyanka
shrieked. “I’m going to—”

Katie grabbed Priyanka and drove her into the soggy
grass. When they hit the turf of the football field they slid two meters,
tearing up the turf and covering themselves in mud. The instructor was on the
far end of the field and didn’t notice the ruckus. Katie took advantage of
this, jamming her elbow into Priyanka’s gut, then rotating her shoulder to
bring that same elbow into Pri’s chin. However, it didn’t matter, Priyanka had
no fight in her. After the blow to her stomach, she tried to curl into a ball, but
Katie was all over her. A voice in Katie’s head told her,
Hit harder! Harder! HARDER!
She obeyed, raining fists and elbows
until the instructor pulled her off.

The gym instructor hauled both girls into the
principal’s office, caked in mud and grass. Mrs. Simpson, the principal, was in
a meeting with another student, but glanced several times out her window with
increasingly disapproving expressions. Priyanka wrapped her arms around her
stomach, sobbing and shivering, but Katie felt a strange warmth and sense of
satisfaction.

And she knew that tonight would be the night she
dared to enter the cave.