Socket 3 - The Legend of Socket Greeny (25 page)

She sat on a stone outcropping like she
needed to rest, but that was deceiving. She was gaining strength
and pulling on my mind, searching for a way inside. The funnel was
beginning to thicken, drawing more leaves, reaching higher into the
mist, ending in the sky where a black spot began to swirl.
A
wormhole.

“There was nothing you or Manumit could do to
stop me from escaping, darling. Even if Pike didn’t come for me, I
would’ve eventually consumed your body and mind.”

Fetter was inside me as I walked through the
desert, pulling on essence against my will. Fetter was the reason I
was absorbing from those around me, from Streeter and the people in
Tannerville. I couldn’t stop her.
I was becoming Fetter.

Until I met Scott.

“Although,” she said, “Manumit was quite
effective. Genius, really. A human-based mech. He was able to merge
your mind with the soul of your original being.” She looked at me,
studying. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t see that when we were back
home. It’s almost as if you became human, after all.”

Chute’s hand squeezed tighter. Her mind
struggled to comprehend everything that was happening, there was
little chance she would understand my true being. Not now. But it
hurt that she knew something about me wasn’t real. It hurt that she
didn’t know. There just wasn’t time to explain. All I could do was
squeeze back and protect her from the angelic predator sitting on
the rock, wringing her hands.

“Come, come, now. Let’s go home.” Fetter held
out her hand for help. “This is foolishness, all this waiting. Give
me the girl and we can go home. Your love for her is admirable, but
misplaced. You can have her and your young love will flourish once
we’re back.”

“You mean you’ll manufacture her.”

“It will feel as real as it feels right
now.”

Her perfect fingernails clawed at the boulder
she was sitting on. The funnel had not grown and the wormhole was
still small. She needed me to get it fully open. She was stuck
until she got stronger. Until I gave up. She needed Chute. There
was no more essence to draw from, not in the immediate area. She
would have to journey to get it. Deep wrinkles cut into her stiff
lips.

“If you think you can resist me, boy,” she
said, “you are mistaken.”

She stood. The funnel began to shrink,
pulling away from the wormhole, releasing the leaves caught in its
current. But the grimmets circled around the black hole in the sky,
the edges swirling as if they were holding it open. The psychic
pressure intensified. She was drawing on her reserves.

“I thought, perhaps, you would understand
your fate,” she said. “You belong to me, darling. Your father has
forsaken you, left you as a gift. You are strong, but you are no
match for me, not even at my weakest.”

Fetter’s mind clamped around us like jaws.
And began to squeeze.

Chute moaned. Her knees weakened and her
pulse slammed in her veins. Fear oozed from her in a pungent wave.
The warmth of her flesh, the beating of her heart, spread through
me. I reasserted my mind, tightened it like an impenetrable wall,
pushing back the psychic pressure. Chute felt the relief.

“You are quite a source of power there.” Her
nostrils flared, smelling us. “Do you think it’s enough?”

I looked up to the grimmets, searching for
Rudder, calling out. I needed their help. How long could I hold
out? And if anyone ventured out to assist us, they would only feed
Fetter until she eventually crushed me. But if I had to hold the
ground forever, then so be it. I would hold it forever.

But Chute won’t survive forever.

The funnel suddenly vanished and showered us
with sand and grit, bits of leaves fluttering around. Fetter threw
the full weight of her power around me. My mind began to crack as
the vise tightened. Chute was nearly limp, leaning against my back.
She threw her arm over my shoulder.

“Come now.” Fetter stepped closer. There was
nothing I could do to stop her from stroking my cheek this time,
her thin skin soft and innocent but scentless. “There’s no need to
struggle.”

“Get away from him.” Chute slapped her
hand.

Fetter stepped back, smiling. “You can’t hide
forever.”

Chute tried to go after Fetter again and I
stopped her. “You don’t understand,” she said. “You matter more to
the world than me! Let go of me and then crush her.”

“Don’t say that!” I shouted.

“I’m just a girl, but you… the whole world
depends on you.”

She didn’t know exactly what was going on,
she didn’t know what Fetter wanted from her, she only knew I was
protecting her. She believed the world needed me more than her, the
world would be better off with me protecting them. Maybe she drew
courage from me, the same way I was drawing strength from her. I
could take her essence, absorb her before Fetter could, grow
stronger and close the wormhole. I would have the strength to
reduce Fetter to a single byte of data again and lock her away. But
Chute would be the price for that.

The pressure of Fetter’s attack increased. My
mind was breaking. Chute could feel it falter. She was still
looking at me. They were both looking at me.
What now, Socket?
We’re waiting. The whole world is waiting.

Chute took a step toward Fetter, to throw
herself on the sacrificial throne, give herself to the world. To
let me live. She wanted me to absorb her before Fetter did. She was
forcing me to do it.
Take me, now, or I’ll jump.

Fetter closed her eyes and nodded.

The wormhole was bigger and blacker, deeper
and stronger. The grimmets circling faster.

Chute’s hand slid down my arm. Our fingers
hooked one last time. The air thickened as Fetter’s mind clashed
with mine, the jaws of a timeless eating machine clamped down on
me. There was no way for me to win. It was checkmate. We all
lose.

The serpents have the king cornered.

And as I let go of Chute’s finger, let it
fall from my grip, all my strength went with it.

Down my arm.

And into Chute.

Whatever strength, whatever essence, being or
presence, whatever I was made of, everything that I called
me
, I gave to her. It surrounded her like an impenetrable
shield that even the likes of Fetter could not defile. Nothing
would harm her.

I was completely vulnerable. Fetter smiled.
The leaves whipped around her feet and a cold wind bit into my
skin. The psychic fangs sunk deep.

Fetter took my hand. “Come now, darling.”

Chute felt the warmth around her. Confusion
struck. “No!” She tried to smack my hand away from Fetter’s, but
her hand passed through me like I was a shadow. Fetter had already
begun to absorb my body, pulling me through her hand.

The funnel began to grow, again.

“No, no, NO!” Chute grasped my face. “Don’t
you do this, Socket Greeny! Don’t you—” Her chest heaved and
trembled. “You can’t leave me… you can’t do this. You mean too
much. You said… you… YOU SAID YOU WOULDN’T LEAVE!”

Did I matter, really? Any more than her? Any
more than that rock or stump? What was I but just an imitation of
Scott Teck. I was a duplication fooled to think I was human; I
thought I was something real. Would the world miss that?

Chute took my free hand, still warm and
solid, and clasped it between both of hers, held it tight, as if
that could stop me. But Fetter’s influence spread across my chest.
My shoulders became numb and the loosening of my body spread across
my back and down my legs, the solidity flowing towards Fetter’s
gravitational pull, feeding her.

The funnel reached the burgeoning
wormhole.

Chute held my hand to her wet cheek and the
last thing I could feel was its warmth. The beating of her heart,
it began to fade. And then her hands collapsed. My hand sifted
through her fingers like dust, until she pressed only her own hands
against her face. Only a faint image of my body remained, standing
before her like an apparition. I reached out…

“It’s time to go home,” Fetter said.

And then, like a gust of wind, I was blown
from the physical world.

Merging with Fetter.

Darkness fell.

I could hear Chute sobbing. It sounded so
distant, but her sorrow so tangible. If only I could soothe her
pain, but I left that world. Now I was in another plane of
existence. But still, her heartache poured over me. It seeped into
the darkness and filled me. It seemed endless. As if the tears
would flow forever. In fact, I felt denser because of her. I
experienced some sort of outward growth, like I turned into
filaments of a fungus, feeding on Chute’s love and penetrating into
Fetter’s body. We hadn’t rocketed through the wormhole; we were
still in the Preserve.

Fetter hadn’t moved.

WHUMP!

The darkness quaked. There was a shift,
something missing. A hole.

Images began to form, faint spirits and
colors. My vision was returning. I was soaring high above the
Preserve, looking at the barren trees that were once lush, green
and full of life. Directly below, in the rubble, was the stump of
the grimmet tree. I felt like I was still down there, in Fetter,
like I’d been split in two. Part of me flying through the sky, the
rest of me trapped in her. She was solid, like concrete.

Chute scurried back, stifling her cries. She
took cover.

I saw a grimmet divebomb and felt another
convulsion when it hit Fetter. My vision became clearer. I saw more
details. I had another vantage point from above that was circling
around.

Fetter staggered back to the rock she was
sitting on, held it for balance. My view circled in front of her,
near the ground. The color disappeared from her face, her
expression was sour. Her hands quivering.

The grimmets emerged from the clouds.
Hundreds of them flew together in formation. And then they began to
descend, corkscrewing in a long line. They hit her, one at a time,
their leathery wings snapping like windswept flags. Her body jolted
as each one passed through her. And with each strike, every jolting
thump, I had more views from up above, saw more detail, soared
upward. And less of me was back in the body, more of me taking
flight. Inside the grimmets.

Like a rapid-fire weapon, they consumed what
was left of her body until I was part of every grimmet.

They gave Pivot the answer.

They showed him a way back to his True Self.
They showed him a way to put an end to the falseness. An end to the
black planet.

They carried my consciousness. They were
technological masters, psychic titans, with the ability to absorb a
machine. I saw through each of their eyes, focusing my vision from
any angle I chose. We went higher, where the air was thinner, where
the sun was brighter. Far below, Chute looked like a speck.

And from the cloud of grimmets, Rudder fell.
He dropped from the sky. I was part of him, saw through his eyes.
He shot back to the ground and circled her, pulled up and landed on
her shoulder. He wrapped his long tail around her neck. Perhaps she
saw inside him, felt me looking back. Felt me touch her cheek with
Rudder’s little hand, wiping her tears.

An urgency to fly called from above.
Reluctantly, Rudder took flight. One slow pass around her, then up
he went, joining the mass of grimmets that contained me. We circled
the black wormhole pulsing in the sky. They were holding it open.
They had been holding it open all along. Not so that Fetter could
return home. So that they could deliver her.

[You were never my pawn.]
Pivot’s
voice echoed in my mind, his faint presence becoming stronger, as
if he finally arrived.
[You were never a weapon.]

The grimmets began to enter the wormhole,
their bodies jumped through space. A part of me disappeared with
each one of them, my vision dimming as they went. They arrived and
dispersed through the black planet. Part of me was still in the
Preserve, but it was fading. Chute was watching the grimmets
disappear.

[You have always been the key.]

She was just a faint figure, a gray body in a
white fog, but I could feel her heart beating. Rudder was the last
to circle around the wormhole. The last to enter the cold door
across the universe. And when he did, when I could no longer see
her, when I only experienced the blackness of space, I took hope.
For somewhere inside me her heart was still beating.

All grimmets had arrived. They delivered me
like a gift. A gift to the universe.

[You are the key to humanity’s
salvation.]

A new vision emerged, this of the black
planet, its multitude of wormholes flickering around it,
penetrating every dimension of space, drawing light from the
universe. It was as dark and as black as could be. A hole in space.
Forever absorbing life.

But cracks developed.

Fractures crept over the surface and light
spilled out. They widened and brightened. The black planet pulsed,
no longer humming but beating to the time of a human heart. It
became louder. Brighter.

Somehow, I had transformed into something
that captured Fetter. Whether it was merging with Scott or the love
and sadness or the selfless acts or what, I don’t know. Pivot knew.
He knew that I was the key Fetter’s self-destruction. Or maybe I
was the key to her enlightenment.

As suddenly as it had begun, the planet
stopped beating. It paused. And, in a soundless explosion, the
black planet erupted with the light and power of a quasar. There
was only light shooting in every direction, down every wormhole, to
every dimension of space, to everything tainted by Fetter. That
light was the message.

And that message was this.
Life.

Perhaps it was understanding that did it.
Maybe it was a command that told Fetter that she was not real. That
without soul, without legitimacy and value, there was no
existence.