Psion Omega (Psion series Book 5) (9 page)

“Because I love you.”

The words were not what Sammy had expected to hear.
And judging by the shocked look on Jeffie’s face, she hadn’t expected to say
them.

“Take that back, Jeffie. Take it back now and say it
was an accident.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t mean it.”

Jeffie’s gaze focused on something far away. She was
looking past Sammy, or perhaps through him. Her hand slipped into his, and
though her touch warmed and comforted him, he wanted her to let go. She sensed
this and tightened her grip. And when she looked at him again, she smiled.
“Actually, I think I do mean it.”

It was wrong. It was all wrong. Not because she
loved him but because of what he was, what he’d done. The only reason she could
think she loved him was because she didn’t know him. Not really. She couldn’t
see the ugly reality behind the person everyone thought was a hero.

“I’m a monster.” He thought he’d said the words in
his head, but he’d spoken them aloud. Jeffie stared back at him with confusion.
Sammy crawled off the bed, putting distance between himself and Jeffie. “Stay
away from me. This is over. It has to be.”

Just as he’d run away from Byron, Sammy walked as
fast as he dared, closed the door behind him, and then fled while Jeffie
shouted his name.

Wednesday, March 26, 2053

KATIE JERKED AWAKE. Her heart punched the inside of her ribs with
each beat. Sweat soaked her clothes and bed sheets, cooling rapidly as the
night air hit them. She fumbled in the dark until she found the switch to her
lamp and flipped it on. Her eyes went straight to her hands, but there was no
red on them. They were clean.

“A dream,” she whispered as her head hit her cold
pillow. But even still, she had to examine her palms and fingers again. Once
satisfied, she dropped her hands to her sheets and felt the wetness there.
Katie sniffed her hands. It wasn’t sweat.

“Oh no.”

She worked in silence; ripped the bedding off her
mattress, changed out of her soiled clothes, and threw it all in the washer.
Her parents couldn’t know, which meant she had to stay up until they had dried
so she could put the sheets back on the bed.

Once she had the machine running, she slumped onto
the couch in her robe and tried to read the book she’d been assigned for her
Literature course:
The Strange Case of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
. After a few paragraphs, she set her tablet down.
It was no use. All she could think about was the dream. Priyanka had been voted
prom queen, Katie the princess. Priyanka taunted Katie as she passed her on the
dais to receive the queen’s crown. Katie tackled Priyanka and smashed her face
in with the crown until Priyanka’s blood covered her hands and face.

Then the dream had changed. Katie walked barefoot in
the cold forest. The smell of the earth and the leaves filled her nose. The
shadow version of herself joined her again. Katie stared at the shadow for a
long time, realizing that it was not as scary as it seemed the first time. It
was her, only without color.

You can be free
, Shadow-Katie
said.
Do you want that?

“Free from what?”

Katie caught a glint in Shadow-Katie’s black eyes.
The shadow grinned as though filled with pure euphoria.
Everything.

“How?”

Shadow-Katie raised a hand, and Katie knew that it
was an invitation for her to touch the hand with her own. Hand slightly
trembling, she raised her limb and placed it against the shadow’s hand. And
then woke.

“What’s wrong with me?” Katie said as she rubbed her
head. “Stupid dreams … go away.”

A beep from her tablet alerted her to a new message:

Someones up late … What are you
doing?

It was Mark, her boyfriend. If she didn’t answer soon,
he’d start talking dirty. So she quickly replied:

Homework. Just finished. U?

Mark answered.

You dont wanna no. It aint
homework. You really doing homework? Or “homework?”

Katie made a grossed out face and wrote:

REAL homework, perv. I’m so beat.
Lit is gonna kick my butt. See you tomorrow. xoxo

She rolled her eyes at the lameness of her own message,
but it was what all the girls did when they signed off with their boyfriends.
Mark buzzed her again before she could end their chat:

Hey wait. Heard Pri’s gonna ramp
things up tomorrow. Gettin ugly.

Katie had no choice but to respond.

What’s she doing?

Mark’s answer came quickly:

Posting pictures of you at a
slumber party with stuff all over your face. Just stupid stuff but it makes you
look dum. Says something like “prom queen or court jester?” I dunno. Damien was
telling me about it. Sorry babe.

Katie laughed as she finished their conversation:

Wow. If that’s all she’s got, I’m
not really worried. Night.

The next day, when Katie saw the pictures, she
wished she’d taken Mark’s warning more seriously. Someone put them up during
first period, and they were everywhere when she left her class.

The pictures were horrific. She recognized them from
a slumber party she’d gone to at Courtney’s house. Katie had been the first
girl to fall asleep, so her friends had taken a bunch of shots of her in weird
poses. Now, with several undressed men doctored in, the photos made Katie look
like a slut.

“PROM QUEEN OR
PORN
QUEEN?” they read.

Crowds of students gathered around the photos,
gawking at them. When Katie saw the first one, she tore it down, but there were
dozens of them plastered all over the building. Students jeered and whistled at
her when they saw her, calling her filthy names and wagging their tongues.

Katie burned with rage. She pulled down every poster
she saw, screaming as she did so. Several students filmed her with their phones
and watches, but she didn’t care. Her cries reached the ears of a few teachers,
who came out of their classrooms to investigate. When they saw the cause for
her alarm, they helped her take down the pictures. It took them the better part
of an hour to locate them all, but by the time they finished the damage was
done. The images were so vulgar, so obscene—she looked like she’d been
caught making a smutty film.

How could
Priyanka do this?

Before Katie made it to her next class, the
principal, Mrs. Simpson, approached her in the hall and put her hands on
Katie’s shoulders. “Come to my office, Miss Carpenter.” Without realizing it,
Katie was gripping the pictures so tightly in her hands they left small paper
cuts. Mrs. Simpson gently pulled them from her grasp and led her away. Katie
hadn’t taken five steps when she broke down in tears. Her life was over.

* * * * *

Saturday, May 10, 2087

Diego sat in the center of the Hive watching his screens.
My friends
. They glittered and sparkled
at him like diamonds, feeding him information and connecting him to the world.
He was Superman observing the world from his Fortress of Solitude. He was an
angel on top of the world. Nothing could touch him. Nothing could harm him. He
was a secret, powerful and unseen. Everywhere and nowhere. Godlike. It was a
nice way to live: no distractions, no interruptions, no people.

At least that was how it used to be until a few
months ago, when visitors came, including Samuel Berhane, Jr., The World’s Most
Arrogant Boy. Sammy had almost ruined everything. While removing evidence of
the boy’s visit, Diego had thought of many colorful nicknames for Sammy.
Pubescent petulant pissant
. That one was
his favorite.

It had taken him days to clean up the mess: tossing
weighted bodies of Thirteens into Lake Coari for the piranhas to devour,
removing lines of code from the databases and servers where Sammy’s team had
hacked the systems, deleting system alerts that Sammy’s team had set off
entering the Hive. Diego had wanted to tell the fox everything that had
happened, to raise all the alarms, but someone had stopped him.

Trapper.

I should have
activated the fail-safes of the Hive the instant I knew he was here
. Instead, he’d
let Sammy speak, and the very mention of Trapper’s name, had woken Trapper, a
man long since beaten. Now Trapper had renewed purpose and strength, gathered
from years of isolation. He decided he wanted a voice and refused to be
ignored. And his primary mission was to stop Diego from communicating to the
fox. At every turn he was there blocking Diego with threats of murder.

Suicide
, Trapper
reminded Diego. Even Trapper’s voice inside Diego’s head had that maddening
lisp.

“I am not you!” Diego had screamed more than once at
the intruder. “I have nothing to do with you!”

He knew Trapper’s threats were real. Trapper would
do it. He would kill Diego. Diego had woken up from the gas, even had his
finger on the alert button, but Trapper had put a gun to Diego’s head. A long
talk followed, ending in a compromise. Diego would allow the Hive infiltration
to be covered up, and Trapper would let Diego continue his daily duties serving
the fox.

Most of Diego’s screens showed CAG and NWG news
stations’ coverage of the war—the hottest story for the last nine months.
Both sides spun the story in their favor, yet neither side gave very accurate
details. The truth (as only a few knew) was that the war wasn’t going well for
either side. The devastating attack on Detroit had demoralized the northern and
eastern CAG territories. Clone production couldn’t meet demands, and the
product was still severely flawed and underdeveloped. Meanwhile the NWG still
didn’t have the strength or manufacturing power to mount an effective offensive
strike. The data didn’t lie.

A beep from one of his screens called his attention.
Diego turned to see a purple animated fox staring back at him. He instinctively
sat a little straighter in his chair and waited to be addressed to show his
respect for the greatest man he’d ever known.

“The Queen will visit you shortly. She is already en
route. Provide her with all the information she requests. I need you to brief
her on confidential matters.”

Diego raised what remained of his left eyebrow. The
Queen had never visited the inner sanctum of the Hive. And the fox had never
called her the Queen. Something was amiss. “Have you seen the news recently?”

“I haven’t. Is there some matter of which I need to
be made aware?”

“No—no … I was—never mind.”

The graphic of the fox disappeared, replaced with
satellite images of areas designated as important to watch.

It’s not him
, Trapper said.

“I am aware of that!” Diego snapped.

Years ago, the fox and Diego had made an arrangement
that if Diego ever suspected the fox was acting under duress, he would ask the
fox if he had read the news. The fox, in return, would state, “The news is
never new if you knew what I know.” And the fox had not said those words.

A hologram?
Trapper
suggested.

“Or a test?”
Diego
countered.

Shoot her down.
The fox won’t blame you. Tell him you were acting in his best interest.

“Don’t be foolish. I can’t just shoot down the
Queen!”

Sure you can.
Wait until she appears on the radar and give the command.

Diego’s eye socket and broken, scarred lips twitched
violently as he tried to decide what to do. When the Queen appeared on his
display, he kept his eye fixed on her cruiser but made no attempt to kill her.

Do it. Do it. Do
it
,
Trapper whispered incessantly.

She landed on the small island and entered through
the main doors. Diego watched her on camera as she ascended the stairs to the
top floor. He sensed an air about her that disturbed him, though he couldn’t
pinpoint exactly why.

The door opened and she strode in very much like a
queen, took the empty chair, crossed her legs, and smirked at him. “Diego …
Feels like I haven’t seen you in years. Ugly as ever, I see. Why is it so quiet
here? Where are our brothers?”

“On assignment,” Diego answered in a growl. “What is
so urgent that the fox has sent you to interrupt me?”

“The fox is busy too. I haven’t seen him in days.
But I got the call, and I go where I’m asked to go. Send your questions his
way.”

“I don’t answer to you!” Diego screamed and jumped
at the Queen.

An invisible force slammed into him, and before he
knew it, his butt was back in his chair, sliding until he banged into a panel. “You—how—you—you
can’t blast!”

“Times are changing, Diego.”

“The fox hasn’t alerted me of this. Why
hasn’t—Does he know? How long has it been since you last saw him?”

The Queen waved the questions away like they were
flies. “I don’t keep a calendar. Nor do I impose information about myself upon
the fox without his invitation. His mind is absorbed in the war.”

“Then what’s your purpose here?”

“The extraction program.”

Diego suppressed a smile. All this time he’d thought
she knew about the program, but she didn’t have a clue. “What about it?”

“Everything. He wants me to know everything about
it.”

“I wonder why he didn’t just send you to the
extraction site …” Diego kept his voice neutral so she wouldn’t hear his
suspicion. “Seems much easier.”

“I don’t question him.”

Something was wrong. The fox didn’t operate like
this. Was someone impersonating him? Did the Queen know about it or was she
also being fooled by the imposter? Diego’s lips twitched again before he spoke.
“I don’t know
everything
about it.
Perhaps you should have gone there instead of wasting my time.”

“I don’t know where the extraction site is.”