Psion Alpha (39 page)

Piranhas.
A
large school of them swam toward him, big and fast. He remembered the mechanical
sounds they’d heard when they first cut the fence. S
omething must have
released them.
Once Jeffie and Nikotai crossed, he shot through with
blasts. His efforts knocked back some of the fish, but dozens more poured into
the hole. Sammy took Nikotai’s hand and blasted, but not before feeling multiple
painful bites on his legs. He blasted again and again, trying to look back but
unable to see his legs properly in the gloom. The stinging continued even after
they left the piranhas behind with their superior speed. He asked Nikotai
through hand signals if he and Jeffie were all right, and got a yes for both. Sammy
supposed he was “all right” too, though he had no idea how long that would
last.

There
came a point when Sammy knew they must be nearing the island facility. He had
to take longer puffs from his breather to get the same amount of air, and his
suit began to feel stiflingly warm. One thing he and his team hadn’t been able
to plan for was how long it would take them to find the underwater access point
and enter the building. Finally, a wall appeared out of nowhere.

They
had reached the Hive. Its base was comprised of brown cement made to look like
dirt or mud, effectively disguising it until they drew close. Sammy touched the
wall and followed it around toward the west side where, according to the dated
blueprints they’d studied, the air filtration system expelled its output into
the lake. After going clear around the west side and onto the north, Sammy
started to panic. He told Nikotai to surface. All three heads popped out of the
water and took their breathers out.

“Getting
hard to suck down enough air,” Nikotai said. “We’re nearly an hour out.
Breathers aren’t going to last much longer.”

“Suits
aren’t going to hide us much longer, either,” Jeffie said.

“They
probably already know we’re here,” Nikotai said. “After the fence, it seems
unlikely that they don’t know.”

“Nothing
we can do about that now,” Sammy said. “We’ll find the entrance. I just needed
a decent breath.”

“My
legs feel like rubber,” Nikotai added. “And these bites still sting.”

“Mine,
too,” Sammy said. “You okay, Jeffie?”

“I
wore my piranha repellent,” she joked dryly.

Sammy
peered all around. There was nothing but water and cement. The facility was
difficult to see well from their low vantage point. All he could tell was that
it seemed bigger than what the blueprints had shown. He hoped he was wrong.
Their plans had little wiggle room.

“Everyone
ready? Let’s go.”

Breathers
in place, they submerged for the final time. Still hugging the wall, they swam
around the north side, but found nothing. Sammy noted that his dark blue wet
suit was beginning to take on a green tinge, the sign that its internal gel
could store no more body heat. He noticed the same thing on his companions, and
communicated it via hand signals. If they didn’t want to find out what would
happen when the Hive could “see” them, they had only minutes to find an access
to the interior.

Sammy
tried to quicken the pace, but his legs were tired and sore. His lungs ached
from having to take such large breaths in order to get enough oxygen.
We’re
in trouble if we don’t
—

At
that moment, he noticed a small but steady stream of bubbles floating up from
the eastern wall of the facility. He pulled Nikotai and Jeffie toward it.
There, they discovered a circular vent about the size of a manhole, sealed and
welded to the outer wall.

Jeffie
knew what to do as soon as they reached this juncture. She swam up to the
surface so she could retrieve the tools from her pack. While she was gone, Sammy
worked his hands around the perimeter, searching for some place to insert a
lever to pry off the cover, but the joining between the grate and the walls was
too well made. She was gone for only a minute, but during that time Sammy and
Nikotai’s suits turned from dark forest green to a green closely resembling a
newly budded leaf. She handed the lever to Sammy, who tried a final time to
find some place in the joining to jam it in, but he couldn’t get it to stick.

He
knew what he had to do. Closing his eyes, he put his thumb against the edge and
concentrated his willpower on making a blast of pure heat. Nothing happened. He
tried again, his face screwed up tightly in an effort to focus everything he
had, but still nothing. Meanwhile, the green in his suit turned more and more like
the color of limes. He doubted he had even three minutes left.

Come
on, Sammy. You have to do this. Come on!

But
his third attempt was an equal failure. He slammed his fist against the wall
and thought back to the other two times he’d successfully done it: first on
Wrobel’s cruiser, then in the lab full of commanders, doctors, and engineers.

Why
could I do it then and not now? In Wrobel’s cruiser I was scared, desperate,
and angry. But the second time, at the hospital, I was none of those things.

Wrong,
those engineers watched me like I was a circus animal. I tried more than once,
then someone made a snide comment. The comment pissed me off.

That’s
the common link. Both times I was angry.

But
how do I make myself angry?
He glanced down at his wetsuit.
So
little time.…

He
closed his eyes and thought of Katie Carpenter. He saw her face perfectly:
beautiful, young, and evil. She aimed her hand cannon at him. Toad jumped in
front of her, absorbing the blow of almost every piece of shrapnel the cannon
could dish out. It ripped into him, tearing him apart. No chance at survival.
Sammy imagined himself jumping, blasting her over and over again, knocking her
down. Then, once he incapacitated her, he wrapped his hands around her throat
and.…

Ignoring
a sudden light-headedness, Sammy concentrated intently on the blast coming from
his left thumb. Searing heat erupted from his skin, melting through the
wetsuit. The water vaporized into steam, thick, white, and boiling. The moment
he felt pain, he ended his burn-blast. From behind them came noises eerily
similar to what he’d heard right before the piranhas attacked them at the fence.
He turned and saw a cloud of mud billowing from the lake floor, a faint green
light illuminating it from within.

Crap.

Sammy’s
vision grew hazy and dark as his brain suffered from a lack of oxygen. His
breather had run out.
Come on! Finish it!
He jammed the lever into the spot
where he’d used his heat blast. A swarm of green fish erupted from the cloud,
all heading straight for Sammy. A sharp sting shot through his left thumb,
making the blurriness in his vision recede ever so slightly. Nikotai moved over
to help with the task. Jeffie saw this as her cue to defend against more
piranhas. Fortunately, she didn’t need to use her blasts. Between Sammy’s and
Nikotai’s efforts, they popped the cover off the air duct and entered the Hive.

I
need air!

He
led his team at a frantic pace up the passage. Behind, Jeffie propelled herself
and Nikotai up the slender passage with her blasts. Everything was terribly
dark, much darker than it should have been. Moisture and mildew slickened the
walls of the vent, and a strong downward pressure of air slowed their movement.

AIR!

But
time was out. Sammy found himself incapable of blasting. Nikotai and Jeffie swam
ahead of him. In the fogginess of his mind, he thought he was still moving, but
his limbs had frozen, his eyes fixed on a spot above him. Then he felt
something tug at his shirt and the water rushed around him. At the top of the
tube was a sharp bend. Sammy reached the bend last, squirming his way along as
Jeffie and Nikotai towed him. Once they passed the bend, he breached the
surface.

“Gaahh!”
He gasped as he spat the breather from his mouth and inhaled fresh air.

A
deafening noise and an incredible pressure greeted them as he realized they
were inside a giant pump. A large turbine spun at a steady pace, forcing the
air into the pipe through which they had just swam. From the schematics Sammy had
studied, the pump was large enough to suck all the oxygen out of the Hive in
mere minutes. By timing their movement, they were able to navigate across the
pump and exit through the intake duct on the opposite side, gaining access to
the air ventilation system.

The
stinging in Sammy’s legs returned as he maneuvered his way up the duct. After
crawling about ten meters up and over, they found a grate in the duct with a
latch that could be flipped from both sides. He pressed his ear to the grate
and listened. Hearing nothing, he opened it and dropped down. His companions
followed.

They
landed in a utility closet, cramped and packed with cleaners, mops, and small appliances.
Sammy found a light switch, and they peeled off their wetsuits as quickly as
possible. Sammy noticed that both he and Nikotai were still bleeding from the
piranha attack. Some of their wounds looked moderately deep.

“Energy
supplements,” Jeffie said as she removed three small pouches from her pack and
handed them out. Sammy tore his open and sucked the contents down, instantly
feeling revived.

“What
a bloody mess,” Nikotai said as he examined the bites on his legs. Then he made
a small hissing sound. “Still burns, too.”

Sammy
retrieved the med kit. Applying orange goo to their wounds and wrapping them up
in bandages took only a few minutes. Then they pulled all-black clothing over
their swimming suits. Jeffie tied up her hair and tucked it into a black skull
cap. After the three of them painted their faces and ears black, thin black
gloves and slip-on shoes followed. When they were finished, they looked like
three thin shadows.

“Why
was the air duct on the wrong side of the building?” Nikotai asked.

Sammy
glanced around the closet to see if he could spot anything useful. “They expanded
the Hive. Remember we thought this place could only house ten or twenty? Now
I’m thinking that number is more like thirty or forty. We might run into
trouble. That’s what we get for relying on old data.”

“Does
the plan change?” Jeffie asked.

Sammy
shook his head. “The core of the building is probably still the same.
Everything we encountered on the way here was biological weaponry. No cameras,
no drones, nothing but sensors that reacted by releasing more bio-weapons.”

“Why
is that?”

“Lots
of possibilities. Main reason, I think, would be the fox’s personality. Look at
how he exploited the NWG. Took over our technology, used it against us. I think
he trusts creatures of his own creation more than he trusts machines.”

Each
person carried two pistols and extra ammo, a com, and flexiscopes. Sammy turned
off the light in the utility closet and slipped his flexiscope under the door.
The gadget was a bendable periscope that could be turned in any direction using
its thin, flexible stem, which flared out at the base where Sammy put his eye.

Through
his scope, he examined the area outside the closet. It was a hallway. The
floors and walls had a minimalist, industrial appearance of burnished metal
surfaces. To the left was an area that looked like a common room. It had three
couches and a chair surrounding a holo-screen that looked so badly damaged,
Sammy would have been surprised if it worked. The cushions of the furniture had
been ripped in several places, and bits of stuffing covered the floor. Food debris
stained the furniture and littered the area. Someone had painted several crude
and disturbing images on the walls, most of them reddish-black like dried
blood. A digital clock on the wall with a shattered cover displayed the time: 0427.
To the right were several small rooms like cells. Sammy counted at least a
dozen of them. Some of the doors were cracked open. He stared again at the mess
in the common room. The overall condition reminded him of the house where the
Thirteens and Aegis had holed up in Akureyri.

Satisfied
no one was around, Sammy stowed the flexiscope away and opened the door to the
utility closet. While the closet had smelled of chemicals and detergents, the
air from the common room stunk like garbage mixed with bodily fluids. The
others noticed it, too. Nikotai kept puffing air out of his nose and waving his
hand in front of his face, while Jeffie put her left hand under her nostrils as
they crept into the hall.

They
tiptoed to the right, where the small cell-like rooms lined the walls. At the
first open door, they halted. With his gun at the ready, Sammy checked the
room. It was a small bedroom with two beds, one above the other, mounted on the
far wall. A Thirteen occupied each bunk. It struck Sammy as odd to see them
sleeping. He thought of them as something like vampires, creatures never
needing rest. If their uniforms hadn’t given them away, their scars and tattoos
did. Like the common area, trash and other squalor covered the floor and every
other surface, making any attempt to sneak in the room nearly impossible. This
didn’t stop Sammy from wanting to creep in and put bullets in both Thirteens’
skulls.

He
motioned to his teammates to move along. As Sammy stepped away, his shoe made a
slight squeaking sound, as though he’d stepped in something wet. He looked
behind him and noticed blood on the floor where he’d been standing. His gaze darted
to the ceiling, but he saw nothing there. Then he looked down at his leg and
cursed under his breath
.
They passed several more rooms, most had more
Thirteens slumbering. Once they cleared the hallway, the walkway bent left.