Psion Gamma

by Jacob Gowans

Riveting.

  A little red box popped up in the corner of his screen. Wrobel swore and hurried to save his work. Then his computer instantly turned off, and he bent under his desk to disconnect a wire from his hyper-drive, reconnecting it to a small black box no bigger than a domino. The small box was well-concealed in a corner underneath his desk. His computer came back online with a flashing red text on an otherwise blue screen:

  Transmission incoming.

  Beneath the message was a countdown from nine. When the countdown reached zero, the transmission went live. On his screen, Commander Wrobel saw the ugliest face he’d ever seen in his life. Severe burns had left the head completely bald and pitted. The face was mutilated with thick deep scars that would never lose their red tinge. One particularly nasty scar ran from the right side of the chin, across the lips, leaving them split and twisted, up into the nose where the left nostril was completely missing, and into a hollow pit where his right eye should have been.

  “Diego, you handsome devil,” Wrobel said. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  Diego’s voice was high and raspy and the lower lip twitched badly when he spoke, probably from all the screwed up nerve endings. Worse than that, however, was the empty eye socket twitching each time he blinked. It made Wrobel queasy.

  “I just spoke with the fox.”

  Wrobel maintained his composure, but a wave of fear washed over him. Diego held a special place in the Thirteen hierarchy. He was supposedly one of few people who knew the location of all the Thirteen cells, as he acted as a sort of switchboard operator between them all. If a cell needed to get in contact with another, they went through Diego. He also was the only person Wrobel knew of who had regular direct contact with the fox.

  Commander Wrobel had a pretty good grasp of the Thirteen organization after his dealings with them over the last few years. But the fox was still like the boogey man. People rarely dropped his name, but when they did, Wrobel knew there was some serious crap flying around. The fact that Wrobel had gotten a call from Diego immediately after Diego spoke to the fox . . . that was bad news.

  “Samuel Berhane is alive.”

  Wrobel’s stomach dropped, and he let out a very pretty curse. “That’s—” He was going to say that’s impossible, but he knew better. Diego. The fox. These people don’t tell jokes. He swore again. “Whose fault is that? Mine?”

  “The fox isn’t assigning blame to you at the moment. But I assure you, there’s plenty to go around.”

  “I told you in November that I couldn’t confirm his death. I recommended that you send in a full team to sweep the factory!” Wrobel’s breathing quickened as his temper flared up. “You didn’t listen to me!”

  Diego snarled as a nasty chuckle gargled from his throat. “That shouldn’t surprise you. We lost a whole cell in Rio. Around here we call that a debacle. You’re telling me I should have trusted your word after one of your teams wiped out a whole cell?”

  “I warned you in my report that the kid was dangerous!” Wrobel was yelling and he didn’t know why. He pulled his collar away from his neck which suddenly felt very warm. His large index finger pointed back at Diego. “You check it. I wrote that!”

  “Shut it, Fourteen,” Diego drawled. “Just shut it. Here’s the straight point. Your kid is out. Fell into a hole in the floor that went straight down into the basement.”

  “Your cleanup crew got lazy.”

  “I sent in three Aegis to do the job a week after the battle. They didn’t find a body, so they got out fast. They thought you were setting them up for another ambush.”

  Wrobel laughed an off-kilter chuckle. “Ironic. Psion Command thought the same thing about you.”

  “You don’t understand, yet. It gets worse. We created a new cell and moved them down to Rio in December. The next month, Aegis picked up a kid downtown on a questionable complaint. They held him in an interrogation room for two months with no idea who he was. The kid insisted his name was Albert Choochoo. We had one of our best interrogators down there. The kid got loose and turned on the interrogator. Poured torture creams all over him and down his throat. Then he killed eight more on his way out the door. Got a picture of him on a surveillance camera leaving the building.”

  Diego held a picture up so Wrobel could see it, but the commander had to really squint to make out what was going on. It was Samuel—Samuel and someone else the commander didn’t recognize.

  “Holy—”

  “Now you see why I’m coming to you.”

  Wrobel shook his head to himself. Byron. Byron knows about this and hasn’t told anyone. He thought of Claire again. He thought of Sisyphus. Later, Victor. Later. This was worse than filling out forms. He cracked his knuckles again and shook the stiffness out. “So what am I supposed to do about it? You want me to fly to Rio and find the kid?”

  “The kid isn’t in Rio,” Diego snarled. The angrier he grew the more his eye socket twitched. “We tracked him to an air rail hub, and he bailed out in Texas, north of Dallas.”

  Wrobel didn’t know much about Texas. And he wanted to keep it that way. “Excuse me for a second.” He stood and went to the small water fountain on the back wall near the door to his private restroom. It was a small chrome bowl polished to a high shine. The jet of water was nice and strong, the way he preferred it. He swallowed a large mouthful and felt three drops splash onto his shoe.

  Drip. Drip. Drip. It was Claire’s voice he heard in his head, not his own. Sounds like this whole place has a bad plumbing problem.

  He rejoined Diego at the computer screen with a friendly smile.

  “Where were we?”

  Despite the difficulty in reading Diego’s face, Wrobel could see that the Thirteen’s expression was one of pure anger. “This problem is yours, you realize that?”

  Wrobel disagreed with a simple gesture of his hand and a long blink.

  “Your job was to fix the mission.”

  “I put everything on the line for that, too, didn’t I?” Wrobel’s patience snapped like a brittle bone. “I flew out there myself and gave you information as a gesture of good faith. The fox told me he wanted Samuel, so I handed you his head on a plate. Your men screwed this up—your people. If you can’t handle less than a dozen kids, then that’s your problem. I’m not cleaning up this mess.”

  “The fox says you will.”

  Wrobel’s fury died like a candle being snuffed out in a hurricane. He swore silently. The fox says this. The fox says that. He couldn’t do anything but say yes. “Fine. But I want that number this time.”

  Diego laughed. It wasn’t a pretty sound, an awful mix of a grunt and water being sucked down a pipe.

  Sounds like this whole place has a bad plumbing problem, Claire’s voice said again.

  Wrobel buried his anger. Long ago, his psychologist had told him he shouldn’t do that, but he’d done it anyway. For years he’d buried his feelings one grave at a time, until he’d become a mental cemetery.

  “Listen to me, Diego. I said I’d take the job. I asked for her to be in on this clear back in November. You said no. Now look where we are. Same situation; different place. If you want this done, you give me that number I asked for last time.”

  “You wiped out a whole cell in Rio,” Diego growled. The deep scars grew redder as he got madder. “Now you’re demanding the Queen’s number?”

  “That cell was wiped out because you didn’t listen to me!” Wrobel let his voice rise, now undaunted by Diego’s status with the fox. Enough was enough. “You know what happened there. Give me the number and I’ll be out of your . . . hair.”

  An animal-like shriek came from Diego’s mouth as he whipped a knife out of his belt and took a long lick of the blade. Wrobel watched with disgust and fascination. Diego punched numbers into an unseen console.

  “There!” he screamed with frothy red spit flying from his mouth and more blood pooling on his lips. His voice was almost all rasp now. “If I ever see you in person, this knife will be in your back. I don�
�t trust your loyalties, no matter what the fox says. You have now sent two dozen of our men to their deaths, Newgie filth.”

  “Thanks. But if you’re so mad, why insist on always winking at me?”

  As another terrible, murderous screech rang out, Wrobel pushed two buttons, and the screen went blank again. Grinning to himself, he rubbed his lips in thought. Was he doing the right thing, bringing the Queen into this? Rumor was that no one bested her in tracking. She was impeccable, her ruthlessness unmatched. He’d also heard some call her a wild card. But she was in the fox’s inner circle.

  His fingers hovered over the keyboard.

  What are you doing, Victor? Bringing in these animals to kill a kid? Who are you?

  Victor’s hands shook, and he had to get up for another drink. His mouth felt like he’d been sucking on a sponge.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  Suddenly Wrobel was back in the sewers. Water was dripping around him like a thousand leaking faucets.

  “Drip,” Claire said as she and Wrobel crept through sewer pipes large enough they barely needed to bend over. “Drip. Drip. Drip. Sounds like this whole place has a bad plumbing problem.”

  “Tell me about it,” Wrobel responded. “My waterproof boots are already water logged.”

  Walter’s voice came over the radio. “Check-in please.”

  In succession, the Psion team checked in over their mikes. Blake Weymouth was one. Emily Byron was two. Victor Wrobel, three. Claire Greenwall, four. Muhammad Zahn, five. Annalise Havelbert, six. Jason Ling, seven.

  “I have everyone’s position on GPS,” Byron said. “Claire and Victor, you are closest to the refugees. Move in.”

  “Moving in,” Claire replied. She looked to Wrobel and winked. “Beat you to it.”

  Wrobel held an automatic rifle in one hand and a handkerchief in the other to cover his nose. The water he trudged through was murky and thick. Each step seemed to stir up new scents that assaulted his nose, even through the fabric stuffed up his nostrils. The moon above sent only the most fragile rays of illumination down through the storm drains. Lights adorned both Wrobel’s and Claire’s automatic rifles.

  “You’re such a silver spooner,” Claire told him. “Probably the only soldier on earth who walks into a potentially deadly situation with a handkerchief over his nose.”

  “That’s what you like about me,” he retorted. “My quirks.”

  He flashed her a grin and she laughed at him. They pressed deeper into the sewer for another hundred yards until they heard some small sounds, like paper being rubbed against the wall. Claire put her hand on his chest to stop him. When he looked at her, she tapped her ear and pointed ahead. Wrobel nodded.

  “This is a rescue party for a group of refugees seeking political asylum with the NWG!” Wrobel announced. “We are carrying deadly force. Please reveal yourselves!”

  He exchanged a glance with Claire, knowing his face looked as worried as hers. Neither Psion had been in battle before, and neither knew exactly what to expect.

  Byron buzzed in over the radio. “Move in on three and four’s position for reinforcement.”

  A pair of hands appeared around a corner that Wrobel could now just make out with his light. In the distance, maybe thirty yards away, was a small alcove. Wrobel and Claire started forward.

  “We’re coming to you!”

  As they drew closer, Wrobel saw a small crowd of people, almost thirty in total, hunkered down together, squeezed into a space no larger than a modest bedroom. They were a dirty, haggard, miserable looking bunch. The hands belonged to a man of about twenty-five with fair blond hair. With his unsteady hands, he grasped Wrobel’s shoulders.

  “Thank you,” he said. “God bless you. We’ve been down here almost a week. Our food is about gone. The women have gotten most of it. My wife—she’s pregnant. Help us. Can you help us?”

  “We’re going to do everything we can,” Claire told him. “We can get all of you out of here today.”

  A woman and man in the back started to cry along with exclamations of gratitude from the rest of the bunch. From behind, more of the team came sloshing through the water. Byron and Emily were the first to reach them.

  Walter spoke into his radio. “Have you got a fix on our position? Good. What is the closest you can get? Copy that.” Byron shook hands with the same man who’d spoken to Wrobel. “Are you Robert Reynolds?”

  The man nodded. “We weren’t sure anyone was coming. I sent that message over a month ago to the embassy.”

  “We have got to get moving,” Byron told the team. “Transport cruiser will land one block east behind that closed school. One through four stay here and keep watch. Five, six, and seven escort them up the nearest ladder to the cruiser.”

  The voices disappeared as Commander Wrobel relived the rest of that day in the sewer. He punched in the number and waited.

  “Hello?” a female voice answered before he’d had a chance to mentally prepare himself for the conversation.

  No image appeared on the screen, which meant the Queen chose to block it. His own image wasn’t visible either. Her voice was soft, ageless in quality. She might be twenty, might be fifty, he couldn’t tell. It carried a sweet, sultry undertone that he instantly found attractive.

  “Hello, this is—”

  “I already know. I hoped you’d call.”

  He found himself able to relax. Listening to her voice was like watching his mother knit in her rocking chair in front of the fireplace.

  “And you know why I’m calling?”

  “I do.” He heard a touch of humor in her voice. “There’s been a lot of talk . . . not about you—not all about you. You are connected to Rio, though, right?”

  Wrobel rubbed his lip while his free hand scratched an itch on his thigh. “The Rio incident is complicated. Talk is talk, right?”

  “Maybe,” she answered, still with that humor in her voice. “It depends who’s talking.”

  “Apparently the fox has put me in charge of this. I need help.”

  Not her, a voice told him. She’s not the answer to this problem. Why are you doing this, Victor?

  He closed his eyes and pictured Claire. Her Psion uniform torn to shreds. Bullet holes in her back. Streams of blood curling and uncurling in swirls of filthy water under the light of his gun. It gave him all the resolve he needed.

  “Give me details. I’ve been bored.”

  15. Kobe

  March 5, 2086

  SWEATY AND TIRED, Jeffie emerged from her sims with a lukewarm shower and dinner on her mind. Anything to get her thoughts off Advanced Combat. As usual, she’d spent an extra half hour in the room before calling it quits. When she turned the corner of the hall, she saw a figure about ten meters away walking with his back to her. He was wearing stylish jeans and a fitted shirt. Jeffie didn’t recognize him, which made her suspicious. No one around here wore street clothes on a Tuesday.

  “Hey!” she half-yelled down the hall. “Who are you?”

  The young man turned to face her and smiled sheepishly. “Are you kidding? You don’t know me?”

  When she heard his voice, the rest fell into place. “Kobe!” She ran forward and hugged him.

  “How are you?” she asked. Already she could see that he looked better than those first weeks back from Rio, particularly in the eyes. That barely-contained rage was gone. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been mentally unglued. It bothered her a little that her chief reason for expressing concern about his well-being was to see if she should ask him about Sammy or not.

  His hands stayed in his pockets. “I’m fine. Excited to meet the nukes.”

  She stared at him expectantly.

  “Really,” he insisted wearily. “I’m fine. Don’t I look fine? How are you?”

  “I’m okay.” In reality she was very frustrated. Seeing Kobe helped defuse her emotions a little, but she had just spent several miserable hours having her butt kicked around by Thirteens in the sims. Her growing wrath at her in
ability to defeat two of them had begun to wear down her optimism. She reached up and wiped a trickle of sweat from her hairline.

  “Been working hard?” Kobe asked, watching her hand move.

  Jeffie didn’t answer right away. She was wondering why Kobe looked so different. They’d known each other for a year, even dated briefly, but now she saw a whole new side of him she’d never seen before.

  “Sims,” she told him.

  “Yeah, I kind of figured since you came out of the sim room all sweaty-like.”

  She laughed. It was nice to see a bit of his old sarcasm again. “Couldn’t pull one over you. Not that I was trying or anything.” Her hand jerked for a second, rather awkwardly. She almost playfully punched him but realized that would have been border-line flirting. With Kobe, that always came so naturally.

  “No, don’t take the credit. I’m just quick.” He gave her a small smile, smaller than the old Kobe’s. “What unit are you working on?”

  “In sims?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Two Thirteens.”

  “Yikes. How long?”

  “Just a week,” she answered with a phony, toothy smile.

  “Not going well?”

  She shook her head slowly, looking him in the eyes. “It would best be described as a thorough butt-kicking.”

  The small glow that had come over him the last two minutes faded away. His eyes became distant and haunted. She decided it would be tactless to push him for information about Sammy right now.

  “You okay, Kobe?”

  “You already asked me that,” he said. “I’m fine . . . not lying, either,” he added the last part because of the doubtful look on her face. “My head is screwed on just the way it’s supposed to be.” With a small sigh, he added, “But I better get used to answering that question because everyone’s going to be asking me for the next month. Maybe I can get a recorder. Every time someone asks me, I can just push play: ‘I’m fine. I’m fine. Really, I’m fine.’”