Psion Omega (Psion series Book 5) (33 page)

“How do you know that?”

“I am the NWG liaison. That is
the kind of information they
liaise
…”

Albert took another long sip. In
the nighttime shadows the steam rising from his mug made him look almost menacing.
“Why didn’t the leadership committee invite me back after I got sober? They
never asked me to return.”

Byron blew on his drink. What his
son said was true. Albert had sobered up quickly after he moved in with Byron,
but was never invited back. “Probably because I never recommended it.”

“Why not?”

“It seemed you had more important
things to focus on.”

“You know what sucks the most
about being your son?” Albert asked. “You always being in charge of me.
Everyone thinks you’re perfect. They trust every decision you make. But I know
better. I remember how everyone else in Psion Command wanted the Betas armed on
their training missions except for you. Your arrogance cost Psions their
lives.”

“Albert—”

His son slammed down his mug and
splashed chocolate on the window. “You can’t sit here and tell me that I wasn’t
good enough to be back on the committee because we both know that isn’t true.
I’m one of the best.”

“Was that ever in question?”
Commander Byron tried to mask the anger boiling inside him at his son’s accusations,
but couldn’t do it.

“Sammy has been on the committee
since day one. He sits on two of the three subcommittees. His poorly designed
plans in Detroit brought down the tower, but that didn’t matter. He stayed. I
start drinking and I’m out.”

“It went beyond your drinking and
you know it.”

“That’s garbage!”

“Go ahead and rage. It will not
change anything.”

“You’re as bad as Marie! You
think you can make decisions in my life without my approval! No one cares what
I want. No one wants to know what I have to say.”

“Marie cares! She made a mistake,
Albert. You have your mother’s resentment and your grandfather’s stubbornness,
but you have to find it in yourself to forgive her. Would you ruin your
marriage and your life rather than let this go?”

“She had no right to get pregnant
without discussing it with me first!”

“Marie was scared. She allowed
herself to get pregnant because she thought it would protect you. Is that
mistake really worth the hurt you have put her through ever since then?”

“She used a baby to
trap me!” Albert stood and yelled.

The commander
refused to let his voice rise in response to his son. “And you love your
daughter, so why are you so angry?”

“Because Marie had
no right—”

“When those sirens
went off, you
ran
to Marie and your
daughter. Why do you think you did that? Because you are trapped?”

“Marie didn’t want
me to come on this mission. She doesn’t want me to do anything. She doesn’t
want anything to do with the Psions anymore.”

“I know exactly how
she feels. What do you think I went through for years after your mother died,
not being in contact with my parents? All I had was you. But Marie does not
even have that because you refuse to support her.”

“See? I knew you’d
take her side. I’m always wrong, aren’t I, Dad?”

“Always? No. Often?
Yes.”

Albert snarled, but
snickered at the same time. He didn’t seem to know whether he wanted to shout
or laugh. Then his lips twisted and he fought back tears. Byron saw nothing but
a scared twenty-one-year-old boy. “I’ve lost control of my life. All my
attention is supposed to be where? On my daughter? On fixing things with Marie?
On the mission? I don’t know. It’s like everything is saying to me, ‘Look here!
No, look here!’ But the world has become so dark. Ever since Marie told me she
was pregnant … it’s been nothing but dark.”

Commander Byron
closed his eyes and exhaled with a lighter heart than he’d had in months. “You
finally see, son? You are not mad at Marie. You are terrified for your
daughter.”

“No, I’m
not—” Albert said thickly, his eyes glistening now. “I’m not scared.”

“I had the same
fear—”

Albert gripped his
mug so tightly his fingers blanched, and for an instant the commander feared
the mug was going to fly at his head. “I don’t know how to be a father! I’m not
ready. Every time I look at my daughter I think of the kind of world she has to
face … I can’t handle it. She’s a Psion. And what’s the survival rate of
Psions, Dad? Huh? How many of us are left?”

“She does not have
to be a Psion. Your daughter can be anything she wants.” Commander Byron set
his mug down and spoke with great care. “Albert, you will be a fine husband and
father.”

Albert’s eyes grew
redder. He swallowed hard and shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“No one does at
first. I still learn things from you. I still make mistakes.”

A puff of laughter
burst from Albert, but there was no mirth in it. “Your mistakes are nothing.
Look at me! Look what I’ve done to my family the last few months. At least your
mistakes can be fixed.”

“That is only true
if you believe it. Marie loves you very deeply. Why do you think she has
repeatedly tried to repair your marriage despite your attempts to wreck it?”

Tears now fell down
Albert’s face. “What do I do, Dad?”

“When you get home,
acknowledge it. Own what you have done. Tell her things will be different if
she will give you another chance. Let everything you do be motivated by love,
and you will not go wrong. Keep your focus on your family and your faith.
Everything else is ultimately a distraction.”

Albert picked up
his mug again, but stopped before it touched his lips. His eyes widened and he
set the mug down. “That’s it, Dad! A distraction. I have an idea.”

“About Marie?”

“No, the mission.
But you’re right about her too. When—if—I make it home, I’ll do
what you suggested.”

After clearing
Albert’s new plan with Justice and Thomas, they spent their last day of
preparation running through scenario after scenario, plotting minute by minute
their plan as best as they could. They worked all through the day and into the
evening, stopping only to eat or make a run for supplies. When it was done,
they got a few hours of sleep, and then rose late in the night.

Wearing disguises,
Commander Byron and Albert left their hotel across the street from the N Tower.
Keeping eyes on the patrols around the building, Commander Byron and Albert
split up. Albert heading for the alleys while Byron walked up and down the
street for twenty minutes before marching into the N Tower lobby. He wore a
robe made of sheepskin that they’d found in a rundown second hand store. He
hadn’t shaved since they arrived, and he smelled like someone who’d been
working with pigs quite intimately. In his hands he held a sign which read:
God does not agree with CLONING! CLONES are
an ABOMINATION! Exodus 20:4-6
.

To ensure he had
their attention, he shouted at the top of his lungs as he rushed forward,
brandishing his sign like a banner of war. “Devils! Sons of perdition! Creators
of the unnatural! Burn in hell for your sins, you abominations!”

Less than five
steps into the lobby and the woman behind the security desk was on her phone.
Thirty seconds later, a hoard of Aegis tackled him and dragged him toward the
elevators. The tip of a needle stung his neck, and the world went blurry and
then dark.

.

Saturday, November 8, 2087

THE AIR IN the sewers clung to Sammy
like hot, foul breath. It permeated his clothes, hair, skin.
I’m going to die smelling like crap
.
Literally.
Jeffie and Vitoria worked
next to him. They all smelled and looked their worst, hair and clothes
plastered to skin as they worked the drill which tunneled through the sewer
walls and created an angled descent into the foundation of the skyscrapers in
downtown Rio.

The city made his
flesh crawl. Even the air brought back memories he had never wanted to revisit.
The scents of Rio had assaulted him the moment the cruiser touched down in
Cemitério São Francisco Xavier on the city’s northern outskirts.
I’m back
, he thought as he looked at the
city.
My first mission and my last. You
tried to kill me once, but I dodged that. I guess I was on borrowed time since
then. You win, Rio
.

The sights, the
smells, the sounds … they fed the darkness inside him. He could feel it deep in
his soul, simmering, roiling, waiting. Sammy, Jeffie, and Vitoria entered the
sewers of Rio in the western Centro. It took an hour to make their way to the
spot where they would drill.

The team worked
around the clock, drilling and pumping their way through ten, then twenty, and
finally thirty meters of concrete with many, many more to go to reach the
network of tunnels that serviced the major towers in downtown Rio. Sammy and
Jeffie operated the drill while Vitoria manned the pump that sent water in and out
to remove the slurry residue the drilling process created. The bitter smell of
the acid spray from the drills was almost as unbearable as the heat, which blew
in steady waves off the machinery, drenching Sammy’s masked face and chest in
an acrid-smelling sweat. The length of the tunnel they had to dig was almost a
hundred meters, its diameter well over a meter. Sammy’s skin was raw from the
splatter of chemicals and his back ached from crouching inside the tunnel.

“Break!” Jeffie
called out over the whining and grinding sounds of the drill.

Sammy nodded and
switched off the machine, which gradually whirred and groaned to a halt. “I’m
starving,” he said.

“Would you like a
sandwich?” Jeffie said.

“Whatever.” Food no
longer interested him. He had to satiate his hunger, but nothing he ate had
taste. Jeffie donned her construction worker jacket and left to buy the food.
Vitoria turned off the pump and sat down against the sewer wall.

“You should let me
go down there with you instead of her,” she said once Jeffie was out of
earshot.

“We need a Psion,
Vivi. That’s always been the plan.”

“I’m as good as any
Psion. You know that.”

“It doesn’t
matter.” Sammy sighed. The weariness went everywhere: his muscles, bones,
brain, even his soul. It seemed as if the whole world weighed heavy on him.

Vitoria rested her
head on Sammy’s shoulder. “Please, Sammy. Let me do it. Spare Jeffie and let
me.”

“I can’t change the
mission.”

Vitoria got up and
surveyed the hole, sniffing several times in succession. “Thirty meters, huh? We’re
ahead of schedule.”

“Thirty meters.”
Sammy’s voice was lifeless. He didn’t want to look at the hole. The deeper the
tunnel, the closer he came to his own grave. He closed his eyes and tried to
push those thoughts away, but they had become part of him. Death had become
part of him. Barring desertion and fleeing for his life, he was already dead.

When Vitoria sat
back down, she slipped her hand into his.

Sammy pulled his
away. “Please don’t, Vivi.”

“Why? Because you
love Jeffie?”

“I—I
don’t—it doesn’t matter how I feel.”

“You won’t hold my
hand because of the way you feel about her,
and
you won’t let me take her place so she can live. You have a skewed sense of
morality, Sammy.”

“She chose this.
You think I wanted it? It was supposed to be—” He cut himself off before
he said something he couldn’t take back, but he’d already said too much.
Curse my stupid mouth
.

“Anna,” Vitoria
finished. “It was supposed to be her, wasn’t it?”

Sammy fidgeted with
his ventilation mask. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does. I killed
Jeffie when I killed Anna. I just didn’t know it then.”

“It wasn’t
you
.”

Vitoria started to
cry. This angered Sammy. What right did she have to shed tears? She wasn’t
going to die. Sammy wanted to smack her across the face, and the instant the
idea crossed his mind, Vitoria scooted away from him.

“What?”

“That look,” she
said, scooting to her feet. “The look in your eyes! Stay away from me!”

“Vivi—”

She started to run
away, but Sammy threw himself at her and snagged her foot before she got away,
not an easy task given her Anomaly Fifteen. She scrambled, but he managed to
get on top of her and pin her down. With strength that surprised him, she spun
and brought her knee up into his thigh, barely missing his groin.

“GET OFF ME!” she
screamed.

Sammy clamped a
grimy, wet hand over her mouth. Her eyes widened and she pummeled his ribs with
the viciousness of a boxer. Rage flared in him again, and the grip on her mouth
tightened until he was squeezing her jaw with his larger hands. But the terror
in her eyes helped him regain his sanity, and the fury dwindled and shrunk like
a deflated balloon. He took the hand off her mouth and wrapped it around her
head, hugging her even as she continued struggling.

“I’m sorry, Vivi. I
won’t hurt you. I’m sorry.”

Vitoria cried
harder. “You are all I have. Don’t you get it? I’ll kill myself before I let
you die.”

“No, you won’t,”
Sammy said emphatically. His breath was hot and his lips were right next to
hers. His ribs ached enough that he wondered if she had cracked them. “You
won’t kill yourself because that would be a piss poor way of repaying me for
what I’m trying to do!”

Vitoria shook her
head. “When the Aegis came for my family, Dad fought them. They killed him in
front of us. They dragged Fabiana, my sister, away while she screamed. I didn’t
give them any trouble because Mom snapped when she saw Dad die. She went blank
and stiff. They carried her out like a mannequin. My mom …”

Sammy held her
tightly. “I’m sorry.”

“I had nothing. I
tried to kill myself when I was in the Aegis’ custody in the tower. When they
put me in S.H.I.E.L.D. I had nothing left but hate. They beat me, raped me,
humiliated me. Made me …” Vitoria put her hand over her mouth and stifled a
shrill scream. “I’m a monster, Sammy!”

“You’re not.”

“I am. You don’t
get it. I killed. I shot a boy in cold blood. Just because they told me to.”
She sobbed and shook. “I’m a murderer.”

“They messed with
your brain. You didn’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a
choice. I could have let them kill me. I could have stopped myself from killing
Anna and Croz and those others.”

“People want to
survive. They’ll do anything. You were terrified, lost, alone, empty. You had
to grab onto something to make sense, so you accepted their brainwashing. You
have nothing to feel guilty about.”

“I don’t want to
live.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I don’t want to
live!” Her anguish echoed off the sewer walls, and Sammy pulled her to him to
shush her. As he cradled her, he kept up a steady stream of encouragement about
how things would get better, how she could go back to Rio, find her extended
family, and rebuild her life. He held her until she calmed down. Then she put a
hand on his face and turned his head toward her. The gold in her eyes flashed
at him, and she drew in closer until her lips were a few centimeters away.

“No,” he told her.
“Please don’t.”

She stopped and
sighed, then pulled herself away from him. They sat in silence until Jeffie
returned with the food. As they ate, the conversation stayed on the drilling.
Sammy took little enjoyment in his meal. It had no flavor or smell. It was
energy and sustenance. And when it was gone, the work resumed. The day finally
ended when they were too tired to continue. Sammy called Justice and checked in
via com, then fell asleep with the smell of rot and filth still clinging to his
skin.

* * * * *

At 0213 the Queen’s com rang. She was
staying in her mountain home in the Grand Tetons for the first time in months.
Outside of the penthouse in Orlando she could relax and sleep. Being in her own
home felt right. Before answering the com, she activated her voice disguiser.
Then she saw it was Chad at the Hive. “What?”

“We have something
… I apologize for bothering you, but it doesn’t make sense.”

The Queen cursed
Chad silently and turned off the disguiser. “What is
something
?”

“Diego has hundreds
of these alerts set up all with different priority assignments. Some of them
are instant, and some are daily, weekly … you get the idea. He has so many that
it takes time for me to go through them all. I’ve just come across one for an
alert in the sewers in Rio near the N Tower. Some kind of work going on down
there and we have no record of work permit requests or prior authorization.”

“Who is it?” the
Queen growled.
This is not worth my time
.
“What kind of work?”

“I have no idea.
”

“Call the city
offices. Tell them you represent the N Corp’s security team. You’ve been
alerted that someone is lurking in the sewers around your premises and want
them to send someone to check it out. Let me know what you hear.”

* * * * *

The drill pushed deeper into the earth
through concrete and steel. The second day passed without incident until the
late afternoon when, during the hottest hour of the day, a man carrying a
flashlight appeared. Vitoria signaled them to stop the drill and climb out of
the hole, not an easy task given the tunnel’s stretching length and angle of
descent. Sammy couldn’t get a good look at the newcomer, but he was prepared to
blast if need be. The rays of the flashlight hit Sammy’s feet, then traveled up
his legs until it stopped at his face, blinding him.

“You three working
down here?” the man asked in a thick Brazilian accent.

“We are,” Sammy
said, trying to make his voice as deep as he could without sounding phony.
“Structural correction for J and G Construction. How can we help you?”

When the flashlight
finally pointed away, Sammy saw the man’s face. He had a bushy mustache and
eyes that darted between Vitoria and Jeffie. “You’re a bunch of kids. What are
you doing down here?”

“Kids?” Sammy tried
to laugh the comment away, but it ended up sounding small and nervous.

“We told you …
we’re working,” Jeffie said with much more authority than Sammy had been able
to muster.

“I’m with the
commercial zoning board. I need to see your permits.”

Sammy tried to think
of a solution that didn’t involve incapacitating the man. He looked at Jeffie
and Vitoria. “Which one of you has the permits?”

“I do,” Vitoria
said. And before Sammy could see what she had, Vitoria pulled a gun and shot
the man three times in the chest.

“NO!” Sammy
shouted.

Jeffie blasted
Vitoria backward with her hands, but the damage was done. Sammy picked the man
up and examined his wounds, but he was dead in seconds. Vitoria’s aim was
impeccable. Jeffie jumped on her and pinned her down.

“I’m sorry!”
Vitoria cried. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She was
crying again, hysterical and nearly hyperventilating. “He’s not dead, Sammy!
He’s not dead!”

Sammy had brought
restraints in case Vitoria proved uncontrollable. He grabbed them from his pack
and slipped them around Vitoria’s wrists and ankles. When they locked, Vitoria
didn’t fight them. She only cried more. Once she was secure, Jeffie pulled
Sammy away.

“What are we going
to do?” She had an edge to her voice that told Sammy she was barely keeping it
together.

“We have to keep
working.”

“She killed him!”
Jeffie hissed.

“And we can’t deal
with that right now. We have a job. Let’s get it done.”

“But—”

“I don’t know how
long we have before someone comes down here looking for that guy. Could be an
hour, could be a week. But if that does happen, we have a bigger problem. So
let’s drill.”

Without Vitoria’s
help, the drilling process slowed. Sammy had to be more careful because Jeffie
wasn’t able to help him steady the drill, she had to stay back with the pump
and its extensions. By the end of the day, they had reached a length of sixty
meters. Sammy had hoped to be at seventy-five. The drill blades were slowly
dulling, and they didn’t have replacements. It had been hard enough to procure
just the one machine.