Socket 2 - The Training of Socket Greeny (5 page)

I was braced for a nojakk call from the
Garrison to return for an unauthorized
mind read,
but I
didn’t read his thoughts. It was a bare minimum movement of the
mind that could be considered an assessment of a situation, nothing
they’d censure me for doing.

“I’m sorry, Chute. I just kind of, you know,
lost my mind when he—”

“They don’t usually act like that.”

Maybe she’s not mad at me.
“They’re
jealous, that’s all.”

“They’re just friends. They don’t have
anything to be jealous about.”

I sort of half-laughed, half-coughed, and
looked away with a loud
eh-hem.

“What?” she asked.

“Have you seen yourself, lately?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I just mean, duh, they’re guys.”

“And I’m a girl, so what? That doesn’t mean
we can’t be friends.”

“No. But they’re
guys.
They don’t know
how to be friends with a girl, especially one that looks like you.
Unless they’re gay. Are they gay? Because, you know, I was getting
a vibe from Lee and I wasn’t sure—”

“Listen, we’re just
friends
.”

Friends. Okay. But a friend can mean
anything. Could be someone you call to get something off your
chest. Someone that shares notes in class or loans you money. Could
be a friend with benefits. I started to ask the question, to get a
little clarification, but I didn’t. I had to stop reacting.
Besides, the night would go up in flames if I asked something like
that. Call it a hunch. I’m not sure I wanted the answer to that,
anyway.

We waited for traffic before running across
the street. My car was another four blocks up, all alone beneath a
street light. We walked in step, the old houses crowded against the
sidewalk. Even shared a laugh. After a couple of blocks, she
reached over and hooked her finger around mine and just like that
it felt like I’d left just yesterday. Our hands were sweaty, but I
wasn’t letting go. And Chute was still squeezing.

“Do you want to go downtown?” I asked.

“It’s late.”

“We can sit at the market café and make fun
of tourists, what do you say? Just like old times.”

She had a curfew, but a quick call would push
it back, especially when her older sister knew she was with me. She
tapped her cheek and talked with her dad. It took a little
conversation, but when she tapped off, she turned and smiled. “I’ve
got until midnight.”

“Who says I’m taking you home?”

She socked me in the arm. Not hard, but
directly on the triceps wound. It startled me, felt like she put a
blow torch in my arm. The pain shot across my back and through my
other arm. I had to put my hands on my knees for a breather.

“Oh, are you all right?” She bent over,
rubbing my back. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize training had
turned you into such a wuss.”

“Oh, you’re going to get it.”

She attempted to outrun me. I caught her four
houses down, hoisted her on my hip and carried her like luggage.
She laughed and screamed. There was no one around to hear her fake
cries for help.

“Oh, you’ve got such big Paladin muscles,”
she said, giggling. “Are you taking me to headquarters?”

“Yeah, I am. Then it’s right to the dungeon
for some old fashioned torture.”

“I’m calling the police!”

“They won’t get here in time, but what I’m
about to do to you could be considered a crime. My car’s right up
there.”

“I thought maybe you parked in Myrtle Beach.
You should’ve picked me up at the stadium.”

“And leave you with Shelly?” I set her down.
“Not without Streeter.”

She didn’t laugh so much at that. It felt
like something just happened between us. She was quiet, then said,
“When’s the last time you talked to him?”

“Last time I saw Streeter? It was like three
and half months ago. Actually, I didn’t see him, we met
virtualmode. He took me to this new world he’s been working
on—”

“I think he’s in trouble.” She looked at the
sidewalk, followed the cracks with her eyes. “He’s been avoiding
me. I call him all the time and he never answers. He’s hardly at
school anymore. I’m a little worried.” She looked up. “You know,
that’s not like him.”

Two people came out the front door a few
houses ahead. I followed behind Chute to let them pass and tried to
think of anything Streeter might’ve said or done that seemed out of
character. He’d said something about a state-wide award he won for
codebreaking. What if he went codebreaking somewhere he shouldn’t
have, like national security? Or worse, a Paladin database? They
don’t have a sense of humor about that shit.

The two men approached. They weren’t well
dressed, but they had a bunch of gold chains and bathed in cologne.
I accidentally bumped the stocky one.

“I’m sorry about that,” I said, over my
shoulder. “Chute, did Streeter say anything about—”

Warning.

The men were turning.

No vehicles on the road. Twelve houses have
lights on, only nine have a view of us. No visible residents.

Their muscles tightened. I smelled adrenaline
surging through them.

Two men. One short, stocky, visible scars.
The other is muscular with tattoos. Both twenty years of age.
Cologne masking smell of perspiration.

I shifted my weight.

Chute is 4.2 feet away. The curb is 3.5
feet. Sidewalk uneven from a live oak growing 5.1 feet behind me.
House is 2.8 feet to the right.

The stocky one was driving his fist at the
back of my head. He was fully committed to the swing. I easily
moved out of the way and rammed my finger and thumb under his chin,
lifted him onto his toes. The jolt to his jugular lit him up. His
eyes rolled and, before he became dead weight, I tossed him at the
other guy.

I grabbed Chute’s arm and started around the
live oak. The car was only a half block away. If the taller one
gave chase, I’d knock him out, too.

“SOCKET!” Chute screamed. “HE’S GOT A—”

Flash.

The night lit up.

There was no choice.

I triggered a timeslice.

My metabolism went through warp speed,
dumping enzymes and adrenaline into my system. Synapses twittered
at light speed and I saw, thought and moved at a velocity unknown
to ordinary humans. For me, time stopped.

The 9mm bullet was out of the barrel,
suspended in space. I shook my head.
The night is over.

Why would they do it? Was it money? Is that
what they wanted? If they asked, I would’ve given them everything
just to keep this from happening. But now this? The Garrison
wouldn’t understand. There would be no forgiveness. I should’ve
assessed the environment, known I was putting us at risk in this
neighborhood at night. There was no excuse.
Battles are won or
lost before they begin.

Chute’s mouth was open, halfway through
warning me that he had a gun. I brushed the hair from her face and
touched her freckled cheek. My only night and I blew it. When would
be the next?
Never.

I held her hand, gently moved her out of
harm’s way. My steps echoed in the silent slice of time. No
insects. No wind. Just dead silence. The glittering street light
reflected off the bullet’s metal casing. I slapped it into the
road; it tinkled down the storm sewer.

I took the gun from his hands, careful not to
touch the flaming barrel, and placed it on the sidewalk where the
police would find it. The bruised spots behind his ears were fresh.
I pulled the scumbag down and looked into his dark eyes. The pupils
were abnormally dilated, the beginning stages of gear addiction.
Gear junkies like him forced high levels of endorphins from their
bodies with emotional gear manipulators. It was a natural high, but
there was nothing natural about it. They turned their bodies into
poppy fields, producing their own narcotics.

His breath stunk and slimy pockets of spit
stuck in the corners of his mouth. Just touching him made the back
of my throat tight. I held my breath, penetrating his mind. His
foul energy clung to him like smoke. His mind was corrupt like a
scratched hard drive, the nervous system twitching beyond his
control. His thoughts intermingled with delusions and childhood
memories and sour thoughts of crimes he’d committed, some very
recent. He was human, but seemed more like a duplication of a
human. A copy. A program that followed the orders of his addictions
and warped egotism. I was tempted to look inside him with a direct
touch just to see how similar he was to a duplicate, but that would
be too dangerous, could suck the life out of him. Even if he
deserved it.

I let go of time, felt my body tingle back to
the ordinary march of the world. Distant cars honked.

“
An unauthorized expression of abilities
has been recorded,”
a voice called on my nojakk.
“Return to
the Garrison immediately.”

His eyes darted back and forth. His senses
tried to reconnect, unsure if he was dreaming or just high. Then he
lost it, slapping at me like a kid trying to escape his father’s
clutches. I squeezed his mind, overloading his consciousness and
his body surrendered, falling weightless. I laid him on the
sidewalk next to his partner, folded their arms over their
stomachs. I made a call, gave my coordinates. The police would be
here soon.

“What happened?” Chute said.

I took her down the sidewalk, but couldn’t
get her to look away. I held her close. Her breathing was quick and
shallow. She was trying to assimilate the impossible. There was a
gun. A bullet. And then what?

Chute knew what I was. She knew what I could
do. Still, her mind was ordinary. Those were the sort of things
that happened in movies. I hated that she was trembling.

A black car pulled up to the curb. It was
from the Garrison, slicing time the moment I broke the rules and
coming for us. The driver got out and opened the back door. I
helped Chute inside. She was still looking at the bodies, wondering
if they were dead. She looked back to me, struggling.

“Where am I going? Are you in trouble? Are
they…” She looked at the gun. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine. And so are you. The driver will
take you home, now. You’re safe. We’re all safe.”

She was sorting it out now, grabbing my hand.
“You’re going back?”

I hooked my finger around hers. I didn’t have
the words to tell her what I was feeling. She didn’t need me to say
it, but it would’ve been nice. The driver fidgeted. Chute’s lips
quivered, but the words wouldn’t form.

The sirens were near.

I watched the black car drive away.
Everything I wanted was in the back seat.

I walked down the middle of the road. Blue
lights turned the corner a few blocks back and the sirens wailed.
People parted the curtains and looked out their windows, but no one
came outside. None would remember seeing black cars. None would
remember seeing the boy with white hair drive away.

“
Report to the debriefing room,”
was
the message I got when I arrived at the Garrison.

I went to the Preserve, instead. The order
repeated on my nojakk and I marched through the heart of the
jungle. The order finally stopped. Someone would come get me.
Eventually.

A few miles later, I stepped out of the trees
onto a wide open stone slab with an ancient, barren tree at the far
end. The grimmets’ vivid colors squabbled along the limbs. They
stared at me approaching, their golden eyes blinking. Their somber
mood reflected what they sensed inside me.

They knew me so well.

The slab dropped off like a small cliff into
a pond below where the tree was rooted. I sat on its ledge and
stared at the sparkling water. A red grimmet came over, wrapped his
long tail around my neck.

“It was a disaster, Rudder,” I said. “A
freaking disaster.”

I lay back. Rudder reclined on my chest and
imitated my posture with his hands behind his head. The moon was
nearly full, casting the tree’s shadow over me, but the sky was
beginning to lighten where the sun was close to rising in this part
of the world. The universe was so vast that light travelled 2,500
years just to reach the nearest galaxy. There were a billion
galaxies beyond that with billions of stars in each one. It was all
so limitless.

Why do I feel so trapped?

I had the power to do things normal people
wished for. I knew more about the mind than psychological experts,
but I was the one wearing a leash.

Steps quietly shuffled up behind me.
Spindle’s eyelight softly turned the tree trunk red. He waited
quietly while I counted stars, following the Big Dipper to Orion’s
Belt. Was there someone out there staring back, wondering why life
was so unfair, too?

“We must report for debriefing, Master
Socket,” Spindle said, softly.

The grimmets stirred, their golden eyes
sparkling like the stars beyond. “Do you know why the grimmets are
here?” I asked.

“They aid the Paladin Nation.”

“I’ve been here a year and I don’t see them
aiding the Paladins. They don’t go anywhere, they’re not involved
in training or explorations. So how, exactly, do they
aid
them, Spindle?”

“Grimmets are masters of psychic technology.
They aid cadet awakenings. You have seen them do these things,
Master Socket…”

I nodded while he read me the information in
his database. He was a company man. Rudder walked to my hand and
curled up, closing his eyes, gently purring. I held my evolver up,
the one that was damaged during the exercise. It only took a series
of thoughts and the grimmets somehow read the technological
problems inside and told it to repair itself. It warmed in my hand
and I replaced it on my belt. It was fixed. I never had to check
their work.