Socket 2 - The Training of Socket Greeny (19 page)

He emphasized my name, as if to remind me of
something I forgot. I took another deep breath. When I was clear
and focused, razor-sharp and deadly rapt, I stepped through the
wall to the other side.

No going back now.

An arena.

The center was flat and bare. Circus-like.
Seats so steep a man would tumble to the bottom if he fell
forward.

There was no roof, but the illusion of the
sky. It smelled like a transformable room. The staleness of
filtered air confirmed it.

The seats were filled with hundreds of
Paladins. And not just Paladins, but the elite, highest commanders;
the most powerful men and women in the world sat expressionless
wearing dark uniforms, cleanly pressed and snugly fit with various
bands of color depicting the origin of their facility.

None were projecting their presence; they
were all there in the skin. All humans emitted an energy — an
unmistakable essence — that many called an aura, but now I was
seeing it around the Paladins like never before, blazing around
them.

The floor was spongy, but the silence was so
dense that my footsteps echoed. The closer I got to the center, the
hotter the room became. Not a cough or a fidget, the silence was
pristine.

My Commander was in the front row next to
Chief Com, but there was no way to recognize his rank since they
were all impeccably dressed the same, their expressions identical.
Their thoughts were like the desert sun, pricking my cheeks. Sweat
popped up along my forehead. I remained resolute. Still.

What do you want?

It was psychic heat. They were frying me like
a bug. I closed my mind to deflect the pressure. I wouldn’t survive
long if I didn’t. If they wanted to see how many punches I could
take, then they had their man. I could take a beating.

My mind clanged like sheets of metal, warding
off the psychic pressure that drilled through my pores. But the
heat continued. I took a chance, closed my eyes for just a moment
to refocus but my mind felt like an eggshell, fissures appearing
like spider webs.
Ice shatters.

Suddenly, a cold sensation washed over me,
providing an instance of relief until I realized it was running
down my back.
Hahahahahahah.
Pike’s laughter rumbled like
thunder.

The floor shimmered. I took the chance of
closing my eyes again, to draw on every bit of strength to solidify
my mind, to build a wall. The laughter receded.

When I open my eyes, the Paladins are glowing
like beacons. Energy beams from most of them in waves. But others
almost look pale and lack the pulsing quality, almost like they are
lifeless projections. Maybe they aren’t here in the skin.

Distractions
.

A fleeting motion disrupts my focus. The
already fraying fabric of my mind quickly begins to tear. The icy
wave returns, along with Pike’s laughter. It echoes around the
arena. And then another voice joins it. Chute’s calling.

Socket! Please, don’t go,
she says.
You said I wouldn’t forget you!

I’m sinking to my knees but my feet are still
on the floor. The voices are still there. Pleading, calling, and
laughing.

These are just hallucinations, I’m not
really hearing anything. These aren’t real. Just focus.

“You will fail, Socket Greeny!”

I spin on my heels, sweat flicking off my
face. Someone stands and shouts for real, then ducks out of sight.
It’s a brown-skinned man, but now he’s gone, like he evaporated.
All is still again. I wipe my chin with my sleeve. The fabric is
searing.

Socket, don’t fight,
Chute’s voice
calls.
Why do you always fight?

Yeah,
Streeter chimes in.
Just
relax.

Chatter, chatter, chatter. Laughter. More
voices. Two. Then ten. Mother. Pon. Spindle. Teachers, strangers,
neighbors—

Socket, are you listening?
Chute says
above them all.
I need you! Just come
withmedon’tleavejust—

“SHUT UP!” I shouts.

Something scurries under the seats, Paladins
shift like it’s tunneling beneath them. I run after it and point.
“I see you! I see you up there!”

The Paladins don’t change their expressions.
Some of them are still glowing in waves and others are dimmer.
Darker.

I finger the evolvers on my belt and follow
the gopher around the arena. I’m about to climb over the front row
and into the seats to catch the bastard—

“Father?”

I wipe my eyes and look again. My father,
he’s there, in the crowd, arms folded, staring with the rest of
them. It’s him, but I’m sweating sheets. It’s hard to see, but now
he looks like just another face in the crowd, just another
Paladin.

“FAIL, SOCKET!”

The heckler is on the other side of the
arena. I blink heavily, nearly tripping over my own feet. Someone
stands up and slowly reveals his face. His skin is brown. Eyes
almond-shaped.

Pon.

I’m trying to talk, but my lips are
quivering. I manage to say something like, “I thought you…” And
that’s it. Sweat is stinging my eyes and Pon is gone. I unleash the
evolver and snap a handful of whips into the crowd, their bodies
exploding in a cloud of white dust that settles like gravel.

“FAIL, SOCKET!”

Something thumps off my shoulder. A stone
rolls across the floor. I activate an evolver shield.

“FAIL!”

Now they stand and shout, one at a time,
chucking rocks. Each one utters the single word.
FAIL.
All
with hatred, pulling stones from their pockets and hurling them. I
drop to my knees to increase the shield’s power, but the stones are
relentless, thudding like granite hail.

They’re all on their feet. All of them except
the two in the front row.

I stand.

Walk to the edge. “Father?”

The arena falls silent. The last of the
stones trickles past my feet. He’s sitting solemn next to my
mother. Arms crossed. His graying hair hangs over his ears and he
has a week’s worth of whiskers. His eyes are set in wrinkled
pockets.

“Do you see the predator?” he asks.

“I don’t understand.” My hand reaches slowly,
like it doesn’t belong to me. I just want to touch his face, feel
the leathery cheek, make sure it’s really him. I’ll know if I touch
him. If I sense his musky essence, feel his security, then I’ll
know for sure.

My hand moves through an eternity of space,
and as my fingers brush his chin, he dissolves. The seat’s
empty.

“WHERE ARE YOU?”

I stumble back to the center, stones rolling
under my heels. I fall, catching the jagged edge of a rock with my
mouth. Blood spots the floor. I pull myself up. I pull myself.

Up.

Pon is standing there. His eyes are black and
empty.

Pike’s laughter roars.

It’s the predator you don’t see…

I reach for an evolver, but the atmosphere is
too thick. I watch Pon lift his hand.

I cannot move. I cannot—

It’s Pon. It feels like my father. But it’s
Pon. His hand swings in slow motion.

My father. He was my Paladin.

Pon’s finger lightly touches my forehead with
the smacking metal-on-metal sound of a three-pound hammer on a
steel plate.

“Journey deeper,” he says, “into the
night.”

And night comes.

Night stays.

Downtown.

I don’t know how I got here. I don’t
care.

The market is vacant. Even the vendors’
tables are gone. Not a person anywhere.

The street lights cast a yellowish glow on
the littered streets. My breath is thick and white but I don’t feel
cold. I don’t feel anything.

A stoplight clicks from red to green. My
footsteps echo. Inside the five-star corner restaurant, menus are
propped on the tables and the napkins neatly folded, but no one is
sitting at them. A television above the bar flashes highlights of a
tagghet game.

Around the corner, a neon sign splashes
electric red light on a fat man on a bar stool. He’s staring at me.
I go over, the sign going
bzzz-zzzz
.

“He’s up there.” The fat man points at the
door below the flickering sign.

“Who?”

“You know.”

“Pon?”

He doesn’t answer, just thumbs at the door. I
check the evolvers on my belt. Fat man doesn’t seem concerned that
I’m armed. I stop at the peeling red door.

Bzzz-zzzz. Bz.

The door opens on its own. I walk up the
creaking steps, the walls covered with graffiti.
Ice
shatters,
one blurb reads. Seems like I’ve heard that
before.

Another behemoth at the top of the steps, the
heels of his boots wedged on the bar stool. He jerks his head at
the crystal-knobbed door behind him. The door thumps,
rhythmically.

“In there,” he says.

“Who?” The word puffs out of my mouth.

He does the same jerky motion with his
head.

A black fog rolls in through the door at the
bottom of the steps. It stops, but continues to swirl, the tendrils
twisting and curling and waiting like it’s just cleaning up behind
me.
No hurry, take your time
.

The man sees the cloud, too. “Too late,
now.”

I wrap my hand around the angular doorknob.
It jiggles with a pounding bass, vibrating in my palm, sending a
tickling line through the tendons in my wrist.

Music bursts from inside in loud synthesized
dance beats, vibrating deep in my chest.
Dssssszth-dssssszth-boom.
Over and over. The black cloud
roils on the top step behind me.

The club looks the same, but the crowd is
different. They’re younger, packed together with their hands in the
air, hopping to the mad, driving beat. The bartender stands with
his arms crossed, the vivid red light illuminating his white shirt.
He jerks his head towards the crowd and mouths the words
over
there.
I don’t hear anything over the drowning beat.

The crowd notices me, one at a time, as the
rumor of my arrival spreads. They’re expecting me. It doesn’t slow
them down, but they’re looking. I know them. A girl leans over and
shouts, “Come on!” It’s Carmen, from my eighth grade history class.
I had a crush on her, but she moved to California. She’s waving at
me, like she wants me to join the party.

Dssssszth-dssssszth-boom.

One person isn’t dancing. I see the top of
the brown head ducking behind the ocean waves of the dance floor.
Without breaking stride, the crowd parts. Pon has his arms locked
behind his back. His expression is hard. So many times I’d seen
that look push me harder, challenge me, tell me time was precious
and it was running out. But this time the look mingles with
something else, something that shouldn’t be there. It’s a smirk,
one that belongs to someone else. It belongs to a traitor.
Pike.

He mingles into the crowd behind him, getting
lost in the hard bouncing bodies. Hands in the air.

Dssssszth-dssssszth-boom.

I follow.

The crowd cheers my first step, reaching for
me, the roar of their approval rising above the music. Slaton, a
lanky kid that was in one of my gym classes, scruffs the top of my
head. Then there’s Jane, my old babysitter, rubbing my shoulders
and celebrating with a
wooo-hooo!
Next to her is Albert, a
quiet kid that was my bunkmate at summer camp. He never said more
than ten words a day and picked his nose when he lay in bed. But he
was making plenty of noise now, smacking me in the back.

The black cloud gobbles up the bartender and
crystal-knobbed door.

Up and down the crowd goes, sloshing back and
forth. They gently tug at me, congratulating me, hugging me.
There’s Shelly right in front, his blond hair bouncing in his face.
He reaches into the crowd and pulls a girl out by her wrist, spins
her around and grinds his hips into her. She turns her head.
Chute
. She doesn’t look happy, doesn’t look sad. Shelly’s
hands crawls up her belly, over her breasts—

I blast him.

It’s effortless, just a thought exploding
from my gut, hitting him like a telephone pole, driving him through
an endless corridor of dancing bodies, arms flailing, until the
crowd swallows him up. Chute is gone.

Deeper I go.

I reach the end. It’s the silver podium where
Streeter inserted the key. An arching outline is on the wall. The
party rages on behind me.

“He’s in there.” Streeter’s on my left.
I’ve heard him say that before.

“Who?”

“Your teacher. He went through the
doorway.”

“What’re you doing here?”

“We’re all here.” Chute’s on my right. “You
have to follow him,” she says.

“I don’t want to.”

“Too late for that, now,” Streeter
answers.

The thumping fades. My ears ring as the music
stops. The sea of people have solemn expressions. The black cloud
roils at the far end of the room.
Any day now.

“You have to follow,” Chute says again.

“Why?”

“It’s the only way.”

She’s sad. But it isn’t her. Not really. None
of this is really here. Right?

I step to the podium. The surface is cold and
smooth on my fingers. The podium connects with my nervous system,
recognizing me. The archway on the wall begins to glow.

Whatever is on the other side seems more
frightening than anything I’ve ever faced. I don’t want to go, but
the black cloud is losing patience. It furls over the crowd,
obscuring their faces as it advances. I slide my hand off the
pedestal.

“Goodbye, Socket.” Chute doesn’t wave. Part
of me wants to run back and hold her. But that’s not Chute. The
black cloud is going to take her from me.

I have to go through that door.

It’s too late for anything else.