Psion Alpha (14 page)

He
ducked under the dome with every intention of leaving.

“Wait.”

Emerald
glanced away. “My father was a pilot. He died in an airplane crash a while ago.
I guess—I guess flying makes me think about him. It brings up bad memories. He
called me rude names when I was growing up.”

“I
had no idea,” Byron said, suddenly feeling like a gigantic jerk. “Sorry for
getting angry at you, but I need you to listen to me and do what I say or this
is not going to work.”

“Just
don’t tell me—” Emerald gritted her teeth and slammed her hands on the console.
“Fine. Fine! Whatever will help me pass.”

“Then
let me sit with you and guide your hands.”

“Why?”

“Because
you have no feel for flying.”

Emerald
relented and made room for him on the seat, giving him the controls. Byron slid
into the chair with her, but there wasn’t enough room for them to sit
comfortably.

“I
think you have to—to sit on my lap.”

Again,
reluctantly, she did as she was told. While Emerald had lost some of her
chubbiness since Byron’s first day at the ETC, she still put an uncomfortable
amount of weight on his legs. Worse, though, was her smell. Her hair didn’t
smell great, but the odor coming from her body was very unpleasant.

“Put
your hands on the controls.”

After
she did this, he placed his hands over hers. She twitched so badly when he
touched her that Byron thought she’d been shocked.

“Now
start up the program.”

He
let Emerald control the plane during takeoff, then eased her hands in the
direction he wanted to take the vessel. Whenever he moved her hands, he told
her what he was doing and why.

“You
feel that?” he asked her. “The movement is fluid, like I am an extension of the
plane or it is an extension of me. I forget about my legs and focus on my
wings.”

He
performed a barrel roll and laughed. Emerald smiled. It was the first time he’d
made her do so, and couldn’t believe the effect it had on her face. She actually
looked cute without a frown.

“See?”
he asked her. “It can be fun. You know the theory behind it. Now enjoy putting your
knowledge to good use.”

A
bright flash of light illuminated the inside of the simulator, blinding Byron
and causing Emerald to hide her face behind him.

“Say
‘cheese!’” someone yelled.

Byron
couldn’t see who it was because his eyes hadn’t adjusted to the lights, but
when he heard laughter, he knew. Emerald jumped off his lap, and Byron followed
her out of the simulation unit. Omar stood right outside showing Diego and his
other friends the picture he’d taken with his tablet.

“Puppy
love right here in our own class,” he commented. “Isn’t it precious?”

Emerald
went at Omar, but Byron grabbed her wrist before she could reach her target.

“Let
me go!”

Omar
and company laughed even harder at the sight of Byron restraining her. “Boyfriend
has you on a tight leash, huh? It’s about time he took my advice!” Then Omar
paused and sniffed his hands, then his shirt.

“And
what is that smell?” He leaned closer to Emerald and sniffed again. “Girl, you
are rank! Oh my—what do you spray on yourself in the mornings? Skunk stunk?
Oooo weee!”

Emerald
threw her free hand at Omar’s face, missing by several centimeters.

“You
want to have your face bruised up again?” Byron asked her under his breath.
“Because that is exactly what will happen if you go at him!”

“Come
on, Stinky!” Omar taunted her. “I’d love to paint more bruises on you. You look
a lot prettier with them. Come on!”

Professor
Wright came out of his office and approached them. “What’s going on?”

Diego
answered first. “Everything’s fine, Professor. Omar took a picture of Emerald,
and she overreacted. No harm done.” His ability to diffuse a tense situation
with a few words astounded Byron.

“Delete
it, Omar,” Professor Wright said.

Omar
tapped his tablet and showed the professor a blank screen. “Gone.”

The
teacher looked everyone over with his cloudy gray eyes. “Expensive equipment in
here, remember. If you’re going to fight each other, take it somewhere else.
Perhaps the dojo, if I may be so bold?”

“Let’s
go, guys,” Diego said. “No need to make trouble.”

Professor
Wright gave Byron and Emerald a knowing look, then returned to his office. Byron
accompanied Emerald back to her dorm. He’d never been inside, and had no desire
to change that. When she opened her door, a bad smell assaulted his nose, the
same scent he often whiffed from Emerald. Her room was a disaster, but one
thing caught his eye: a picture on her desk of her and two older people. One
looked like it could be Emerald’s mom, the other her dad. Above them was a
large sign that read, “Farewell, Em! Kick Butt At The ETC!”

Byron
peered harder at the photograph. He’d seen the man before, somewhere in
Emerald’s labyrinth of tattoos. There was no mistaking the resemblance between him
and Emerald.

Is
she lying about her father?
He decided not to say anything about it.
If she wanted to lie for sympathy, it was her problem. He wished her a good
night and quickly left to study some more on his own.

While
it seemed Professor Wright’s intervention had prevented a potential problem, he
had, in reality, been too late. The picture of Emerald sitting on Byron’s lap
went viral among the Elites-in-training. Prints of it were posted all over the
school, especially in the bathrooms and cafeterias. Labeling each photograph
was: “Baby Boy Byron and Smelly Emerald Find Love in the Flight Lab!”

Byron
tried to dismiss the whole episode as juvenile stupidity, but it humiliated
both of them. Not only did it make them look like a romantic pair, it showed
her being tutored—a fact she’d desperately wanted to keep hidden. He feared this
would be the straw that broke her back—that she would go home. He was wrong. It
drove her to study harder, train longer, and log more hours in the flight
simulators than anyone else. She demanded that he meet her twice a week in the
middle of the night so no one would catch them training. Byron obliged, albeit
begrudgingly. The only reason he did so was because of the other consequence of
the picture fiasco: Emerald started taking her personal hygiene more seriously.
Byron never mentioned anything about it, nor did she.

The
more they studied together, the more comfortable she became around him. She sat
by him at meals without complaint. Once in a while she even chose a seat next
to him instead of Trapper during lectures. Without fear of rejection or shame,
she would ask for help in their studies or answer his questions without snide
remarks. More than a few times, Byron caught himself snickering with her over a
private joke they shared from tutoring. Somehow, in a twist he’d never
foreseen, being part of a shared mortification had made them friends.

CHAPTER
EIGHT
– Meetings

Monday, October 14, 2086

SAMMY
woke
Monday morning wishing he could sleep for a few more hours. The weekend had
seemed like one extraordinarily long day. Two cruisers from Capitol Island had arrived
late Friday morning. The jubilation the Betas and Alphas experienced at seeing
brothers, sisters, and friends still alive quickly dulled when the Elite rolled
a heavily sedated Commander Byron off the ship in a gurney. Sammy noted the lack
of bulk where Byron’s legs should have been. Thomas and Lara rushed to their
son’s side, taking his hands in theirs. When they saw Al and Marie, they let go
of their son to embrace their grandson and his wife.

“What’s
going to happen to my boy?” Thomas asked the doctor.

“He
needs surgery right away,” Dr. Rosmir told the Byrons. “I promised I’d save him
and I intend to do nothing less.”

“What
do you need?” Lara asked the doctor.

“I
brought everything with me. I’ve had weeks to prepare for this procedure. The
only thing I lacked was a place to do it.”

The
doctor and a dozen others with medical experience hurried to the resistance’s
infirmary to prep a room for the procedure. Prep took a few hours. Dr. Rosmir
and his team began the operation Friday around 1900 and didn’t finish until
Saturday early morning.

During
all that time, Sammy had a chance to greet Al, Marie, Anna, and Justice, who
caught him up on the events of the last five weeks. Sammy did the same for them
while they waited for Rosmir and the commander to come out of surgery. They took
the news of his Anomaly Thirteen surprisingly well, for which he was grateful.

He
hadn’t slept well Friday night. He hurried to the infirmary late Saturday morning
hoping to have a long talk with the commander, but the nurse assigned to watch
Byron informed Sammy that while the operation had gone well, Rosmir’s instructions
forbade any visitors. Rather than sitting around fretting, Sammy gathered
Justice, Anna Lukic, Al, and others from Charlie Squadron into his living room
to discuss the plans he’d drawn up just before they’d arrived. Justice and Anna
offered suggestions, but largely agreed with his ideas.

“President
Marnyo spoke to us before Operation Looking Glass,” Anna told Sammy. “He said
if we can’t help the resistance launch a counterstrike against the CAG on their
own soil, the NWG forces will fall. The clones used by the CAG are a double-edged
sword. They can produce them as fast as we can cut them down, but they don’t
have enough time to train them for battle. They aren’t coordinated or ready to
fight. It’s our only advantage right now. But if your plan works, we could take
out their production centers, maybe even turn the tide of the war. What do you
think, Justice?”

“It’s
a wild idea, Sammy,” Justice said as he rubbed the spots on his nose where his
glasses pinched his skin. “Totally wild and reckless and brilliant. I like it.
I can see this working as well as anything else we could concoct.”

“What
are the NWG forces doing to counter the CAG attacks?” Sammy asked.

“Scrambling
mostly,” Anna answered. “The CAG hammered us relentlessly before we could get
any semblance of an army or fleet gathered to retaliate.”

“Surgical
precision, too,” Justice lamented. “They knew everything. Probably planning it
for years.”

Later
Saturday, after Sammy’s meeting with Justice and Anna ended, Brickert had returned
to the house without saying a word. His cheeks were bright red, his eyes wide
and aimless, and he sighed every ten seconds. Sammy sat at the table poring
over maps and figures when his friend came in and slumped into the chair
opposite him.

“What’s
up, Brick?” Sammy asked as he traced lines on the map with a pencil.

Brickert
put his hands over his face. “We broke up.”

“What?
Why?”

His
friend got up and poured himself a glass of water. Half of it spilled on him as
he tried to drink. When he finished, he set the glass down hard, not even
noticing his wet shirt. Sammy saw his friend’s red eyes and trembling hands,
and wondered if he’d been crying.

“Brick,
what happened?”

Brickert
sat down again, and ran his hands through his hair. “I can’t trust her! Thursday
night, in the tunnels, it was cold. I wanted to run back to get a jacket. She
wanted to come, too. Right outside the door, we heard you and Jeffie arguing. I
know we shouldn’t have listened, Sammy. I know and I’m sorry, I tell you, but our
curiosity got the best of us. We’ve never argued like that before, so we eavesdropped.
Anyway, when you told Jeffie about your—your—you know—”

“My
Anomaly Thirteen?”

Their
eyes met. Sammy saw shame in Brickert’s face as he nodded. “We left right after
that, talked about it for a while. I made her promise not to tell anyone. I
made her swear on it! So what does she do?”

“She
told Kawai.”

Brickert
nodded. “She thought our promise didn’t apply to Kawai since Kawai’s one of the
five of us. And you know the rest, don’t you? About how her roommate overheard
and—”

“Yeah.”

A
sharp exhale came from Brickert’s lips, and he kicked the wall. “We’ve been
arguing about it since yesterday. All day, practically. She keeps saying she’s
sorry, but she doesn’t get it. It’s like she can’t help but tell people
everything she knows, even when it hurts people! I just—I don’t know. It sucks,
I’ll tell you.”

“Anything
I can do?”

No
answer came, so Sammy left the subject alone. Brickert went to bed early, and
Sammy stayed up reading the Quran
to
keep his mind off missions and ailing commanders and relationships. After
reading for almost two hours, he slammed the book shut and dropped it on the
coffee table.
Nothing makes sense
. Sammy had spent Sunday with Brickert
and Jeffie trying not to think about anything at all, but Jeffie seemed to know
his mind was elsewhere: on missions, scripture passages, or Commander Byron’s
health.

When
he awoke Monday morning, all the problems he’d tried to push away came rushing
back. Before breakfast, he dressed and went down to the infirmary. Dr. Rosmir
was there attending to several patients, Commander Byron among them.

“Sammy!”
Dr. Rosmir said, welcoming him in with a wave. “You have no idea how good it is
to see you. I wanted to talk to you when we first landed. We all assumed the
worst about you and the other Betas at headquarters. How did you—?”

“Why
didn’t you tell me about my other anomaly?”

Dr.
Rosmir pursed his lips and set down his holo-tablet. “I didn’t.… How did you—?”

“Why,
Doctor Rosmir?”

“Sammy
… it wasn’t my call. But I’m still sorry.”

“Whose
was it? Byron’s?”

Dr.
Rosmir didn’t need to answer. Sammy knew.

“Can
I see him?”

“If
you promise to keep it relatively short … and no shouting.”

Sammy
left Rosmir’s office and went down the hall to Commander Byron’s darkened room.
He knocked twice before entering, but didn’t wait for an answer. The commander
lay in his bed, his ashen, worn face toward the ceiling. His hair was matted
and sweaty. He looked as if he’d recently lost several kilos of weight. This
was not the same man Sammy knew. Six monitors stood around him like guards at
attention. Some of them beeped, others did not. Sammy glanced at their readouts.
Byron’s condition was stable.

As
he approached the bed, the commander’s eyes remained closed. “I am awake,
Samuel. The medicine Maad gave me makes the light hurt my eyes. Will you keep
them off?”

Sammy
did as he was asked.

“I
am so relieved you and the others survived. Relieved and grateful. Do you want
to sit?”

With
so much anger and confusion bubbling inside him at the sight of his mentor,
Sammy didn’t know if he could sit for more than a second. “I’ll stand for now,
sir. I need to tell you why we survived.”

“All
right. I have no choice but to listen.”

Sammy
told the commander about the call he’d received from the fox and the video feed
of his parents being held hostage by the Queen. The way he related the tale
made it sound as though he’d believed the holograms to be real. He made no
mention of Stripe or how he’d been reasonably certain the video was a ruse.

“When
I reached the top of the tower, I met a man called the fox.”

“The
fox,” Byron repeated. “Victor Wrobel mentioned that name before he died.”

“He
brought me into his penthouse for a game of chess.”

“Chess?”

“And
while we played he told me things I should have already known. Things you
should have told me, sir.”

A
cloud of pain passed over Byron’s face. “Thirteen,” the commander whispered.

Sammy
tried to swallow, but his throat wouldn’t work. He surveyed Byron’s body, from
top to bottom. When Byron had been wheeled off the cruiser three days ago,
Sammy had seen bandages wrapped around what was left of the commander’s legs.
Now the limbs looked whole and strong.

“All
along?” Sammy asked. “From the very beginning?”

Commander
Byron licked his dry lips, yet his tongue had no moisture. When he finished,
Sammy noted they were as parched as ever. “Rosmir ran the tests. We screen for
all the anomalies. As soon as it came through, I was on the phone with the five
members of Psion Command and General Wu. A lot of arguing took place between
the seven of us. It was Commander Havelbert, Commander Wrobel, and I who
managed to convince everyone else to allow you the chance to train. Some feared
if you knew about the Anomaly Thirteen, you would dwell too much on it. Even if
not, we feared other Betas might discover your secret and mistreat you. Doctor
Rosmir consulted with a team of psychologists about whether we should tell you.
Most of them agreed that it should be kept secret.”

Sammy
angrily stepped forward. “I don’t care. I deserved to hear the truth from
someone other than the fox. You had a thousand opportunities to tell me.”

“I
know. All I can say is that I weighed the information I had and made a choice.
It was my call. I wavered on that decision several times in later months,
especially after your return from CAG territory. I thought perhaps you were ready
for the truth, but I chose to keep it a secret. In fact, I came very close two
or three times, but never told you.”

“Why?”

“I
have no good reason, Samuel.”

“You
owe me a better explanation than that, sir.”

Byron
raised a finger for a moment, but promptly dropped it as though the effort
exhausted him. He fixed his eyes on Sammy. “No. I do not.”

The
frankness of the answer shocked Sammy.

“I
have never held back praise or criticism when you deserved it. I am not sure I
can say the same even for Albert. Why did I do this? Because I knew some day
you would find out the truth, even though it would not be from me.”

“Why
not from you? You’re the closest thing I’ve had to a father since my parents
died.” Sammy’s tone climbed with each syllable. “
You’re the person I
deserved to hear it from!
”

“Yes,
but I knew you would never suffer from the effects of the anomaly.”

“I
do suffer from it!”

“No,
you will never embrace the madness which all Anomaly Thirteens encounter within
themselves. As with the Psions, Tensais, and Ultras, there is always a choice
of whether or not to further develop our anomalies upon their discovery.
Always. We all have evil, twisted tendencies, and we all choose whether to explore
those paths or turn away from them. Perhaps the Thirteens’ darkness is stronger
and more enticing. I do not know. I can only guess.”

The
answer wasn’t good enough. A part of Sammy wanted to shout and curse at the
commander for the deception. But another part of him appreciated the good
intentions behind Byron’s actions. It was an odd feeling, to experience such
polar emotions at the same time. Commander Byron took Sammy’s hand and squeezed
it.