Psion Alpha (10 page)

“Then
what is it?”

“I
can’t do it. I can’t have you on my team.”

“Yes,
you can.”

“I
can’t. Al and Marie weren’t on the same team for certain reasons.”

“I’m
not Marie and you’re not Al. Put me on your team, Sammy.”

He
closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the pleading in hers. “It’s not as
simple as you’re trying to make it seem.”

“Then
tell me what I’m missing.”

“I
can’t.”

“Tell
me, Sammy!”

He
blurted out the answer before his sense of reason told him to keep his mouth
shut. “I don’t want you around me on a mission.”

His
answer stunned her. He winced at his own words. He hadn’t meant to sound so
cold and blunt. She shook her head, her mouth still open in shock as she got up
and went to the door in silence. He watched her go, knowing in the timespan of a
half second what would happen if he didn’t stop her. She’d be so mad she’d end
their relationship. He would be hurt and crushed, but so would she. They
wouldn’t speak for weeks, possibly months. Then Sammy would go on his mission
regretting how poorly he’d handled the situation.

Or
he could tell her why he didn’t want her on the mission.

He
put his hands over his face and said the words he had to say. “I’m a Thirteen.”

After
the words came out of his mouth, neither of them spoke. Sammy’s hands still
covered his face, so he couldn’t see what Jeffie was doing. Had she left? Had
she stopped? He didn’t look. Then hands touched his shoulders and wrapped
around him in a hug. Sammy started to cry. The disgust, humiliation, and
self-loathing he’d held in the last several weeks finally broke him. He hated
himself and what he represented. He was nothing without his anomalies, even the
most filthy one of them all.

“Are
you—are you sure? When did you find out? Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?
What does this mean?”

Sammy
couldn’t get a grip on his emotions. All he could do was shake his head while
Jeffie rubbed his chest soothingly and whispered words of comfort to him.

“Breathe,
Sammy. Talk to me. It’s okay.”

He
let her hold him until he was ready to speak. “I—I don’t know what it means long
term. You know? Does it mean I’m going to struggle with keeping my sanity? Will
I inevitably turn into one of them? I want to talk to Doctor Rosmir or
Commander Byron—I’m pretty sure they both knew—but now I have no chance at that.
I want to know what will happen. I want to know why they didn’t tell me!”

He
pounded his fist against the table, and Jeffie jumped. The board game fell off
the table, and pieces and cards scattered onto the floor.

“I’m
sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“You
don’t scare me,” she said. Cupping his face in her hands, she kissed him. “I’m
not afraid of you. You may have the genes for the anomaly in your DNA, but not in
here.”

She
touched his chest with her fingertips.

“The
night we flew here from Orlando, you pulled that bullet out of me. I thought I
was going to die. Not because of the pain, but because I’d just watched Kobe
and Kaden.… ” Tears welled up in her eyes. “And there was so much horror inside
me, I couldn’t take it. Then you put that bullet into my hand, and I realized
that you’d suffered through so much worse. I decided if you could deal with your
mountain of torment, then I could cope with mine, too.”

She
pressed his chest even harder with her fingers.

“To
have gone through what you have and still be you takes great strength. That’s
what matters, Sammy.”

He
nodded. The words were nice to hear, but rang hollow. He’d seen the visions,
seen what he could become. The nightmares wouldn’t stop, nor the twilight trips
to throw up in the toilet. The anomaly had already begun to taint him. He had
dragged his friends to Orlando not to save his parents but to kill two people.
He had wanted to kill Toad on the way to Wichita. He unleashed a bit of the
darkness inside him after seeing a Thirteen kill that girl in a bedroom in
Akureyri. The darkness was real, and sometimes it seemed to be winning.

Jeffie
moved her fingers from Sammy’s chest to his cheek. “I will be with you every
step of the way … if you’ll let me.”

Sammy
took her hand as a passage came to mind. Without thinking, he recited the words
as if he’d known them all his life. “‘Entreat me not to leave thee, or to
return from following after thee. For whither thou goest, I will go. And where
thou lodgest, I will lodge.’”

Jeffie
beamed. “That’s beautiful. Where did you get it?”

Sammy
gestured over to the small bookshelf next to the holo-screen. “That old Bible.
I’ve been reading it lately.”

“Really?
You have time to do that?”

“Well,
yeah, now that my Anomaly Eleven is back, I read pretty fast. I’ve already read
it three times.”

Jeffie
giggled and kissed his nose. “Is there more?”

“Eh,
it’s depressing.”

“I
don’t care. I want to hear it.”

Sammy
closed his eyes once more and saw the words perfectly as they sat on the page.
“‘Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I
die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought
but death part thee and me.’”

“That’s
not depressing. It’s perfect. Maybe I should borrow your Bible and read it.”

Sammy
moved away from her to pick up the scattered board game pieces off the kitchen
floor. “Don’t waste your time. It’s only a bunch of nice quotes.”

Jeffie
regarded him with mild surprise.

“I
don’t want to go into it,” he said.

She
hugged and kissed him. “It’s fine. We all have our battles.” There was a
distant tone in her voice. Sammy wondered to what battle she referred. She took
his hand. “You’ve always kept things close to the chest, you know? Ever since
your first day at Beta headquarters. But you don’t have to be like that with
me. I want to hear about what’s bothering you. Don’t deal with your problems
alone anymore.”

Sammy
forced a smile. “I’ll try. Okay?”

She
smiled back, but he saw no joy in her expression. He yawned and suggested that
he go to bed. Jeffie quickly agreed. Their goodbye was stiff and awkward. He
lay in bed for a long time listening to the night sounds and thinking about
their conversation.
Life just gets worse and worse.
It was with these
glum thoughts he drifted to sleep. However, the next morning he woke feeling
better. It was as though telling Jeffie had lifted a weight off his shoulders. From
what he remembered, his nightmares hadn’t been as bad. He’d even slept through
the night without vomiting.

It
was customary for Brickert to wait for Sammy before heading to breakfast. This
morning, however, Sammy’s friend was nowhere to be found.
Probably left
early with Natalia
, he thought. He dressed and walked by himself to the
cafeteria. Just outside the meal hall, Thomas intercepted him.

“Hey!
Glad I caught you. We need to speak in private.” The tone in Thomas’ voice and
the stoic expression on his face sent off alarms in Sammy’s brain. He pointed
across the hall. “One of these classrooms will do.”

Sammy
went with Thomas without argument. Thomas forced the rackety door shut and
then, instead of speaking, he ran his fingers through his white hair as he
paced back and forth.

“Is
everything all right?” Sammy asked.

The
old man stopped and gazed at Sammy forlornly. “I don’t know where to begin.” He
covered his mouth with his fist and cleared his throat. “Apparently—and remember
this is all second or third-hand information for me—last night you and Janie
had a conversation.”

“Um
… do you mean Jeffie?”

“Yes.
Sorry. And in this conversation you told her that—that you’re—that you have
Anomaly Thirteen. Is that right?”

Sammy’s
ears started to burn and his stomach felt sick. “Who did you hear this from?”

“Wesley
Gibbons.”

Gibbons
was part of the leadership committee and had put in significant time into planning
the resistance’s next moves.

“How—why
would he say that?”

“His
daughter,
Cloudy
, is roommates with a couple of your
friends. Uh, Kiwi and Rose. Cloudy overheard those girls talking late last
night and told her dad. He told me … and not only me—see, he was pretty upset,
Sammy. And now word is getting out fast. Like real fast.”

Sammy
was flabbergasted. “Was someone spying on us? Because Jeffie wouldn’t have told
anyone!”

Thomas
shook his head, still with that same forlorn expression.

“So
what does this mean?” Sammy asked. Muted voices of people walking past the
classroom forced him to keep his tone down.

“Is
it true? Are you a—a … you know?”

The
happy feeling Sammy had woken up with vanished. In its place were frustration
and an odd sense of nakedness. He didn’t like that strangers knew his business.
They had no right to know something so intimate about him. “Does it matter,
Thomas?”

“Well
… no. No, it doesn’t.”

“Would
it change things one way or another?”

“I
can’t answer that. The news is creating a stir. People don’t know if it’s true,
as you can guess, but that doesn’t stop them from talking about it. It’s going
to come up in our meeting today. You’ll need to address this. Whatever you
decide to do, I’ll support you.” He rested a hand on Sammy’s shoulder. Sammy
fought the urge to shrug it off. “This doesn’t change anything for me, got
that? I don’t see you any differently.”

Sammy
tried to smile, but couldn’t. “Thanks.”

“Okay.”
Thomas’ glance shot toward the door as though he wanted to get back to
breakfast. “Well, I guess I’ll see you in a couple hours. And I’m … I’m sorry
about this.”

Thomas
left the room, leaving it cracked open behind him. Sammy no longer had an
appetite. He didn’t want to go into the cafeteria and sit among people who
gossiped about him or stared at him while he wasn’t looking. But how had the
girls known what he’d told Jeffie?

Did
she—?

No,
she wouldn’t have told anyone.

While
he did not doubt the voice in his head, he had no desire to see her or anyone
else. Sammy took the stairs down into the tunnels, but instead of going back to
his house, he jumped into a car and navigated himself to the building where the
leadership committee met most days to plan their military strategies.

The
building was the old air traffic tower overlooking the runways and hangars in
St. Marie, thirty-one kilometers north of Glasgow. The interior had been gutted
of the air traffic control equipment to make room for items the resistance
needed. Unlike most of the buildings the resistance used, the meeting room
looked like an organized disaster. Maps—most of them of the Territory of Brazil
and the Amazon jungle—papered the walls and tables. Several tablets and
computers dotted the area. Coffee mugs and other dishes had been left
haphazardly after their last meeting, their faint scents still hanging in the
air. Sammy couldn’t count the number of hours he’d already spent here trying to
help the resistance formulate an offensive strategy to take the pressure off
the floundering NWG forces.

Whatever
forces are left
, he reminded himself.

For
over a month now, the leadership of the resistance had been working on this
project. The majority of that time had been spent in subcommittees
brainstorming, debating, mapping, and arguing—often heatedly. Sammy had once
asked Thomas why people who all shared the same cause could get so angry about
planning a mission.

Thomas’
eyes had stared far away as they often did when he recited poetry. “Haughty,
and high, and stern … nor ever, at sweet Mercy's call, his white neck would he
turn.”

“Um,
okay. What does that mean?”

“There
are large egos in the room, all jousting for position. Everyone wants to be
important, and often they want it more than reason.”

“Egos?”

“That,
and it’s something we’re passionate about. We all want to make sure the job is
done correctly.”

Now,
alone in the planning room, Sammy closed his eyes and tried to block out all
the pain and anger he felt from having his darkest secret spread around the
resistance leadership like headline news. He ignored the part of himself that
wanted to be unleashed like a violent storm to smash and break things. The
advice Byron had offered Sammy on his last day as head of Beta still stuck,
even after several months.

Control
your emotions
.

He
gripped the large conference table tightly, grinding his teeth as he did so.
I
don’t want to have to control them anymore! I don’t want this anomaly!

Commander
Byron knew what he was talking about. Think about something else. Think about
the mission plans. How can they be improved?