Socket 1 - The Discovery of Socket Greeny (15 page)

“What’re they going to do?”

“The medical mech will install a suppression
clamp.”

An appendage grew from the center of the red
servy. It looked more like a talon than it did a hand. It held a
c-shaped ring.

“The suppression clamp,” Spindle said, “will
fit between the third and fourth vertebra.”

“You’re going to put that thing inside
me?”

“You will not feel it. The servys will render
you unconscious for the nine-minute surgery.”

The servy’s fingers were sharp as scalpels.
My fingers twitched. The awakening stripped away the mystery of
timeslicing. I saw inside myself, how it all worked. I clenched my
hands to timeslice, but that’s not really what did it. The fingers
were just a crutch, what really triggered the timeslice was a
signal from my brain, altering the metabolism throughout my body. I
could turn it on or off with a thought.

And the clamp would take that away.

I needed a minute. I had to talk with the
Commander, there had to be another way. I would stay in the
Preserve, if that’s what they wanted. Maybe I could find Pivot. I
didn’t have to go home, as long as they didn’t put that thing in my
neck.

The surface of the red servy glittered like a
magical orb. A halo engulfed all three of them as I timesliced.
Spindle had his hand raised. Maybe he anticipated what I was about
to do. I just wanted out of the room. I could figure out how to
operate that leaper. All I had to do was
reach
inside its
circuit panel.

Legs emerged from the leaper door,
multi-jointed with sharpened tips. A crawler stepped into the room,
bright and glistening in the timesliced light. A red eyelight
burned on the front, directed at me.

They’re watching.

I let go of time and the crawler vanished,
returning to its post, waiting to see if I was foolish enough to
try it again. Spindle stood at the corner of the table.

I scanned the room for a weapon. Fighting was
a ridiculous thought, sure, but I had to exhaust every possibility
before I gave in to what was about to go down.

“Lay down.”

“You’re going to have to make me,” I
said.

Spindle did not move. Instead, ten more
servys entered the room. There was barely room to move, but I would
stomp them until I couldn’t stomp anymore, if that’s what it took.
But it didn’t take the servys to disarm me. It was a scent.
Jasmine
. I could sense her before she entered the room.

“I know it’s hard,” Mom said, touching my
arm. “But there is no choice. Without the clamp, the Authority and
his committee will not agree to a continuance. They want to send
you home to keep you out of the Garrison. They want you disarmed
and far away. It is the only way, Socket. It is the only choice we
have.”

She pushed the hair behind her ear. Despite
the pale look, she was strong. I would fight every Paladin before
doing what they wanted, but it only took a look from her, and a
gentle touch, to change my mind and to fill the empty ache.

The table reformed to fit my body. My face
fit in the opening and didn’t restrict my breathing.

“The medical servy is going to place nighter
gear on the back of your head,” Spindle said. “It will only take a
moment.”

Mom held my hand. The medical servy pushed my
hair around and slid something cold against my scalp.

Her hand was warm.

The nighter gear whined.

My head vibrated. My teeth, lips, and tongue
became numb. And then, like a switch, it was night.

* * * * *

I was sitting up. I think.

“I’m going to stay with Socket tomorrow,” Mom
was saying. “I’ll make the meetings by projection. I’ve already
forwarded apologies that I can’t return in person, but I think they
will understand. If all goes well, I’ll be back the next day.”

She was right in front of me, digging through
her briefcase. Spindle was next to her, standing at full attention.
His face was dull.

My blood was like syrup. I was afraid to turn
my head. It might fall off.

On a floating chair.

In a hallway.

Mom wasn’t standing, she was walking.

We were just in a room. Now we were going
through a doorway. We entered the dank stalactite parking garage.
Mom’s car was at the bottom of the steps. Servys stood at the open
doors. One of them took Mom’s briefcase and loaded it into the back
seat. Appendages grew from the ones next to me and took my arms.
Their fingers were soft and tacky. They helped me inside the car
and shut the door. When I looked out, Spindle was already gone.

The car banked sharply to the left and we
flew through the wall and over the boulder-strewn field. A crescent
moon was fading in the sky as the sun was about an hour from
rising. The dashboard was illuminated with instruments, casting an
orange glow on Mom’s face, accentuating the lines pulling her eyes.
We drove without lights.

“Spindle had to be washed out.” Mom pretended
to steer. “The Authority wanted him deactivated for his involvement
in the incident. They suspect he somehow helped you escape the
Graveyard through an unmarked exit. They think he had something to
do with Pivot’s disappearance, too. The Commander had to compromise
with the Authority. Spindle’s personality was deactivated.”

I rubbed my neck, felt the raised line where
the clamp was surgically implanted. The seat sensed my discomfort,
wrapped tightly against my neck and applied heat. Live oaks blotted
the moon from view in a black sky. We were already in South
Carolina. I couldn’t remember going through the wormhole.

“I don’t like this.” I touched my lips. They
didn’t feel right. “My voice sounds weird. This doesn’t feel like
my skin.”

“Your body is adjusting. It’ll take a few
hours for your nervous system to accept the limitations of the
clamp. Soon enough, you’ll feel just like you did before all this
started.”

“Why’d you let them do this to me?”

“Many Paladins aren’t in favor of your
awakening. The clamp bought us time to change some minds.”

“You
want
me to be a Paladin?”

She sighed. “If they vote to permanently
disable your awakening, you won’t be the same. You’ll be alive.”
She wouldn’t look at me. “Just not the same.”

Just like Spindle.

She took her hand from the steering wheel and
plunged her thumb into the moody. I was tempted to pull it away
from her and make room for my thumb. I’d try anything to take this
deadness away. If the moody helped, then a big fat thank-you goes
out to the drug companies. The Paladins had me.
Check
.

“That’s illegal,” I said. “They can’t operate
on people against their will. There are human rights that protect
people from that.”

“No one even knows we exist.”

She said ‘we’. She’s one of them.

“You have to understand, they can’t let
someone with the ability to timeslice back into the general public.
If a cadet is considered unsuitable, unstable, or incapable, they
will alter the nervous system to squelch his or her abilities.”

“I didn’t ask for this.”

“No one does.”

“You’re one of them.” I said it like a right
hook.

Mom took a moment to dig her thumb in deeper.
Her next breath trembled.

“You have no idea what lurks in the world,
what kinds of danger threaten our very existence every single
second. As reprehensible as the Paladins seem, they’re our only
hope. I don’t expect you to understand.”

We passed an exit that connected to a
northbound Interstate, lights flashing. The road was open and long.
If we went north without stopping, we could be a thousand miles
away by daybreak.

“We can’t run,” Mom said. “They’d find us
within the hour.”

And checkmate.

We turned onto the highway heading home. Few
cars were in the way. It was close to the middle of the night. Mom
let go of the wheel and let the car drive in auto-pilot.

“Broak said they assassinated Dad.”

“Your father was respected in the Paladin
Nation. If there was even a hint of foul play, the Commander
would’ve investigated the accident until the day he died. You’re
father was in an accident. Broak was merely taunting you.”

I tried to
reach
out to see if she was
telling the truth. The clamp slammed against the bottom of my
brain. I moaned.

“Don’t try that,” she said, taking my hand.
“Any attempt to do
something
, it will hurt.”

I was normal now. I had no
power
. It
was what I wanted, to be normal, but now that I had a taste of the
awakening, normal didn’t seem all that normal. I wasn’t sensing
Mom’s jasmine-flavored energy anymore.

Off the Interstate, Mom took the car out of
auto-pilot. We turned left, waited at a stoplight, then made the
last right home. Almost eight months had passed. The azaleas were
in full bloom in front of our house. Our porch was lit. We silently
coasted up to the driveway. Someone was on our front steps. I threw
the door open before the car stopped, ran across the grass and
crashed into Chute. She crushed me in her embrace, weeping into my
shoulder, her chest heaving against mine.

“I didn’t think you were coming back.” I
could barely understand her. “I didn’t think I’d see you
again.”

My heart was clutching. Suddenly, I realized
just how much I missed her.

“Glad you’re back,” Streeter said. He didn’t
hug me. He sort of punched my shoulder while Chute squeezed me
until I couldn’t breathe. “It hasn’t been the same without
you.”

“Come inside,” Mom said on her way to the
door. “It’s too late to stay out here.”

* * * * *

Chute and Streeter stayed the night. We
talked until 3:00 that morning. Never once did they ask where I’d
been. Maybe Mom prepped them; those questions were off limit. Or
maybe they didn’t care, they were just glad to see me. Maybe
both.

Chute slept in my bed. Streeter and I crashed
on the couches. For once, Mom slept in her room. It didn’t take
long to fall asleep. I was glad to be home.

* * * * *

Every self-aware intelligence eventually asks
the question: Who am I?

There is a yearning to know the answer, to
find out what we are and where we fit in. Do we matter?

There was some discussion whether I should go
back to school. Truth be told, Mom didn’t care either way. In fact,
I think she wanted me to stay home. In my entire life, there had
never been a morning I woke up excited about going to school. Not
one. I didn’t care about what field trips we were taking or movies
we were watching, I’d just rather do something else. But when I was
home alone and everyone else was at school, what else was I going
to do?

I slacked off around the house for a week. It
took that long just to feel halfway normal with the thing in my
neck. I could feel it when I turned a certain way or thought about
something that had to do with Paladins. Once, I imagined telling
Streeter and Chute everything and the damn thing about knocked me
out. Most of the time it just wiggled and vibrated like something
crawling under my skin. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I had
to get out of the house. I packed my book bag and caught the bus in
late April.

* * * * *

Two freshmen were whispering in front of me.
Occasionally, they looked around the cafeteria, pretended to search
for a friend as an excuse to look at me. I pretended not to notice.
They went back to whispering. The line moved forward. One of them
grabbed a lunch tray first; the other had to run to catch up. They
looked back, one last time, not bothering to whisper anymore.

There’s rumors about where you went,
Streeter had told me. Yeah, I heard the rumors, too; whispered
behind hands when I walked down the hall and in the locker room
when they didn’t know I was there. I was under CIA investigation
and got locked up in juvenile detention. I lost my mind in the
virtualmode journey and had a nice long stay in a psych ward. I
joined a secret cult worshipping technology and was building a
space craft in a secret hideaway. That wasn’t too far off,
really.

Streeter waited for me to say something about
the freshmen. When I didn’t, he stared at the menu with an unspoken
question left on his tongue. Every day he wanted to ask the
question, but he didn’t. Where
have
you been? He never
asked, but every day he came a little closer.

I stepped up to the window. “Um, give me a
three, eleven and a twenty-two.”

A metal tray rolled out. Applesauce,
cheesecake and chicken spilling over the sides and mixing together.
The servys would never let that happen. I followed Streeter into
the cafeteria. Chute was at a table by herself, wearing a purple
jersey. An
athletic
jersey.

“Nice jersey,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said. “You were on vacation
when I got it.”

Vacation
. That was what she called it.
I went on vacation for six months, just didn’t bring back any
pictures.

Chute smoothed the front of her jersey,
showing off the holographic lightning bolt across the front,
illuminating our mascot: a fox stomping through the swamp. In the
time I was gone, tagghet had moved into the high school system and
teams were formed and a stadium built. Spindle wasn’t shitting; the
sport was exploding. Chute told me how her dad nearly knocked over
a light when she made the team. The more she talked, the more her
freckles crunched in her dimples. If I could feel her energy, it
would be vibrant and tingly. I imagined it smelled orangey. But the
clamp stopped all that. It was an ever-vigilant fairy that stole
the words from my mouth when I even thought about saying something
that might reveal the existence of Paladins or dupes. Instead of
sitting on my shoulder, this fairy was buried in my neck and turned
me into a robot.
Follow orders, Socket. Or else.