by Jacob Gowans
Byron had been here many times, though not recently—not in the last few months. It was in this kitchen, however, that he’d spoken with Wrobel about his son’s entrance into the academy. It was here they’d discussed over lunch the ethics of forcing Anomaly Fourteens who wouldn’t join the Psions to take a pill to suppress their abilities. It was here they’d debated over the wisdom of sending Maad Rosmir to medical school. In all those years, Victor’s tastes hadn’t changed much. He kept a clean house, bordering on immaculate. Thick carpet padded the floors. Expensive. The pieces of furniture had been selected more for their design than their comfort. Also expensive. In the kitchen, all his appliances were elegantly shaped and gold-plated. On his walls hung many frames with photographs of scenery of Western Europe, their frames large and gilded.
He left the living room and walked down the hall. The door to Victor’s study was ajar. The carpet in this room, though the same pattern as everywhere else, was less worn, the white much brighter. The study, however, had been torn apart. Drawers opened, documents confiscated, and computers gone. Byron brushed his fingers along the massive walnut desk in the corner of the room. Above the desk hung a picture of Claire, identical to the one Wrobel had kept in his office at Psion Command. In another corner rested a large safe, big enough for a grown man to curl up and hide in. The door to the safe hung open, and on its front, written in chalk by whomever had cracked it, were the numbers to unlock it.
03-01-68. The day Emily and Claire died in the sewers.
After snooping around further and finding nothing, Byron moved to the main bedroom. This room, too, had been well searched, but the damage didn’t look as bad: mattresses overturned, drawers opened, furniture pulled back from walls a half meter. Yet the same theme prevailed here as elsewhere: a well-kept bachelor’s home with classy, pricey tastes in decoration. Nothing in the room hinted at what Byron had discovered only days ago—that Victor Wrobel had driven himself insane over the last several years and turned to the CAG to help him wreak revenge on his friends.
Everything Byron saw in the house indicated that Wrobel had somehow walled off the insanity from his home and personal life. There was nothing here, nothing at the office, nothing at all to prove that he’d been working against the NWG and the Psions. It didn’t add up. There had to be something, somewhere, some place Victor went to escape his phony life among the Alphas. Somewhere he felt safe.
The answer came to Byron as if someone standing next to him had whispered it. The safe.
He went back into the study and looked around again. He stared at the carpet, the walls, and the baseboards. The coat of paint in the study was fresher than the coat in the hallway. He walked over to the safe. It was empty.
“Retrieve the record of all items confiscated from the residence of Victor Wrobel,” he told his com. He scanned the report. Nothing of importance had been taken from the safe: pictures and keepsakes, no confidential documents nor anything personal like a journal or data cubes. It might as well have been empty.
Byron grabbed the safe and shook it; it wouldn’t budge. He tried again, this time with more force. Same result. He went to the wall and grabbed the carpet, ripping it up savagely. The carpet tore up to the safe and went around it, its edges perfectly flush with the edges of the safe. Byron looked inside the safe again, running his hand along the base. It felt solid.
No, no, no. There must be something here.
He put a hand inside against the base and blasted. The bottom moved ever so slightly, accompanied by the sound of a pop. The floor of the safe was no longer flat against its frame. It was tilted inward.
“General Wu,” he told his com. He heard two rings, then the general’s voice. “Sir, I think I found something at Wrobel’s residence. I need a recovery team over here immediately.”
Byron forced the heavy base piece of the safe up by turning it at an angle. Then he slid it out of the frame. Doing this exposed a man-made tunnel going through the bottom of the safe and through the foundation of the house into the earth. He shined his com light into the hole to make sure it was free of traps, then turned around and climbed down a surprisingly sturdy ladder made of thick wooden beams.
“Lights,” he ordered once he had hit ground. “Lights on.”
Nothing happened. With the help of his com light, he found a light switch.
“Victor,” Byron muttered as he gazed at his surroundings, “what on earth . . . ?” The room was about half the size of the study above it. The walls were made of more wooden beams covering the dirt, jammed into placed and covered with some kind of plaster. Over the plaster walls, Victor had hung at least sixty or seventy pictures of Claire. They were all different poses. Some were of Victor and Claire together, but most were only of her. On the far side of the room from the ladder was a computer unit. The screen was intact but the towers looked as though Victor had tried to destroy them as quickly as he could, but had done a rushed, sloppy job. He imagined how quickly the former commander must have acted in order to flee Alpha headquarters while still covering as much of his tracks as possible.
In less than five minutes, four Elite officers appeared with three civilian computer techs and began the task of removing everything from the premises. Byron took one of the Elite officers aside and said, “I want to know who was assigned to search this place. Slothful work. It took me less than thirty minutes to find this from the time I walked in the house. There is no excuse for missing something like this.”
The officer gave Byron an angry, “Yes sir,” and went back inside. Byron watched him go, praying that today wouldn’t reveal yet another traitor in their midst.
Victor Wrobel. Junko Sokama. Two Elite stationed at the prison facility. Who else?
4.
Tested
Tuesday May 7, 2086
The first thing Sammy saw as the medusa helmet lifted from his head was Dr. Rosmir. Sammy’s entire body shook violently, and sweat soaked through his gown. The scream he had let out upon seeing Stripe’s mutated face still burned his throat, which stung as though he’d gargled acid.
“Sammy, calm down. It’s ok.” Dr. Rosmir repeated these words several times as he gripped Sammy by the shoulders, trying to keep him on the exam table. They were the only two people in the examination room, but Sammy noted the mirror and cameras for the first time and realized there had, indeed, been an audience all along.
He reached up and yanked the suction cups from his forehead. “You abandoned me!”
Dr. Rosmir tried to renew his hold on Sammy, but Sammy pushed the doctor’s hands away. “Sammy, I—hey, wait a second.”
“Don’t touch me!”
“It wasn’t real.”
“I know it wasn’t real,” Sammy shouted, “but I’m still angry!” He rubbed his forehead to get rid of the itchy, sucking sensation on his skin. So what if it wasn’t real? It had felt, smelt, and sounded as real as anything else, far more real than any of his dreams. “How do you know what Stripe and Katie look like?”
“I only know because you know.”
“You—I—you took the sensors off me! I remember you taking the sensors off me after I saw that white flash.”
Dr. Rosmir shook his head with an expression of a caught puppy. “That was one part of the test, Sammy—to make you think we had. They never came off.”
The door opened and seven new people came into the room like a battalion of marching white coats. “That’s a solid baseline,” the first doctor announced behind Rosmir.
“Good work, Maad,” said another one of them.
Sammy closed his eyes and wished they would all go away. His face was hot and sticky, partly from the exertion of the simulation, but mostly from embarrassment at his reaction. Half of the people who came didn’t stay long. They simply flicked their reports from their own holo-tablets to Rosmir’s and left the room without a word to Sammy. The ones who did stay, however, were introduced to Sammy one by one. All of them had Doctor in front of their name, but Sammy had no desire to remembe
r who they were or what they would be doing to help him.
Unfortunately, he had no choice but to get to know them. Using his baseline test as their starting point, the doctors spent the next few days running him through a barrage of tests. Rorschach tests, questionnaires, one-on-one conversations that lasted hours, group discussions, panel examinations, reaction tests, psycho-sexual response exams—they seemed to go on and on. Near Sammy at all times was Dr. Rosmir, who kept a watchful eye on his patient’s physical recovery and often gave feedback or interpretation regarding what the other doctors had to say about him.
Nine times in ten, Rosmir’s feedback, to Sammy’s chagrin, could have been recited verbatim: “They were very impressed with you. Keep up the good work.”
Day in and day out, in his ridiculous gown, Sammy ate his meals alone in the hospital cafeteria. Once, Rosmir took Sammy to see Al, but the visit was short and Al was too heavily medicated to say much. At night, Sammy tossed and turned fitfully through bad dreams. Dark thoughts came when he couldn’t sleep. During the days, with no friends to keep him company, he forced himself to tolerate the endless tests and sessions. It was difficult knowing that his real home was close and his friends waited there for him. He wanted to go to sims and instructions; he wanted to hang out with Brickert and Jeffie late into the nights.
On Sunday, first thing in the morning, Dr. Rosmir went through the familiar routine of inspecting Sammy’s wounds. “Your leg appears to be fine. You should start walking on it from now on, but don’t run for about three days. All of your major cuts from the glass are healed. Any soreness?”
“Nope. Everything’s good.”
“Let me see those thumbs. Burns gone yet?”
Sammy offered the doctor a look at his hands.
“No sign of scarring. Both have healed very nicely. What did you do to get those? Try to grab the blitzer disks?”
Sammy stared blankly at his thumbs and realized he had never said anything about it. He had completely forgotten.
“I—uh—I shot a blast out of them and—and it must have been super-concentrated or something because it burned through the locks on the cuffs. It melted through them.”
Dr. Rosmir chuckled politely. “Seriously, Sammy, what happened?”
“No, I—I’m being serious.”
Still holding onto Sammy’s thumbs, Dr. Rosmir’s face changed. “That’s impossible.”
“I shoot energy from my hands and feet. So do you. Most people think that’s impossible.”
Sammy saw on Dr. Rosmir’s face that he’d made his point. “Did—did it hurt?”
“Yeah. It felt like my thumbs were on fire.”
“This is incredible. There’s nothing in the scientific literature—that doesn’t mean—so—so you’re saying you shot a superheated blast of energy that actually melted metal?”
“I think so.”
Rosmir looked at his watch and ran his fingers through his hair. “We’re going to need to run some tests. Byron wants you back at headquarters by Monday so you don’t start back mid-week. If we’re going to make his wish come true, we’ve got to get busy pronto. I have to make calls. I’ll—I’ll be right back. You stay here!”
Sammy dropped back onto the exam table. “Where else am I going to go?”
“Look on the bright side,” Rosmir said, returning to peer around the doorframe, “you get to wear normal clothes now!” And then he hustled away.
In less than an hour, Sammy was taken to a different building on the NWGMC campus. More tests, more scans, more people wanting to hear descriptions of what Sammy had purportedly done at Baikonur. Three of the Psion commanders arrived along with some of the higher-ups in the Tensai and Ultra corps. When Commander Byron appeared, he checked on Sammy and asked about his recovery before speaking at length with Dr. Rosmir and the other commanders about how they could have Sammy demonstrate the unique blasting method without reinjuring himself. They decided to bring in a team of medical engineers who debated the problem for over two hours while Sammy played basketball by himself in a gym and tried to get his leg to loosen up. Finally they brought him into a room marked LABORATORY that looked more like a giant, messy shed with expensive, advanced equipment. The engineers had set up two liquid nitrogen canisters that would spray ultra-cooled air on his thumbs as he blasted.
“Any burning sensation at all, Samuel, and I want you to stop,” Byron said.
“Or biting cold, for that matter,” one of the engineers said.
“Right,” Commander Byron agreed. “No need to injure yourself again.”
Sammy nodded and let the engineers position his hands as they wanted. The other commanders, doctors, and unnamed people stood back and watched as laser sensors were set up to measure the temperature around Sammy’s hands. Sammy looked to Byron for reassurance. The commander gave him a nod.
“Okay,” one of the engineers announced, “we’re ready!”
Sammy focused on his thumbs, concentrating on putting a blast solely through them. He felt the energy shooting from them, but it wasn’t hot. He screwed his face in concentration until his head and neck muscles, taut and aching, trembled like he was having a seizure.
“Nothing so far . . . ” an engineer said with a tone in his voice that betrayed heavy skepticism.
This made Sammy angry and he bent his mind even more on the energy moving to his thumbs. His body stiffened as he focused every particle of his mind to the task. The liquid nitrogen sprays turned on as heat shot from his thumbs, not burning him at first, but growing steadily hotter as if he held them over a candle.
“That’s it!” the same engineer cried. “That’s it!”
Sammy stopped as soon as the pain became too much to bear. Commander Zahn, who’d been watching computer displays over the engineers’ shoulders, let out of a cry of shock. “Did you see that?” he asked Iakoka.
“Of course we saw it,” Commander Iakoka responded tersely.
Sammy looked at his thumbs as Dr. Rosmir approached. They were red and throbbing and his left had a small blister on it.
“Second-degree burns,” Rosmir muttered with a tsk.
“Fifteen hundred degrees Standard!” the engineer announced. “Easily hot enough to melt through steel.”
Byron came over and looked at Sammy’s hands with the doctor. “Why are his thumbs barely burned?” he asked.
Dr. Rosmir shook his head as he continued to look over Sammy’s skin. “Did the liquid nitrogen help?”
“Yeah,” Sammy answered, “for a bit. It kept getting hotter until—”
“Let me try it,” Byron said.
“Commander . . . ” Dr. Rosmir began.
“I only want a shot at it to see if it can be duplicated. You have any tips you want to offer me, Samuel?”
Sammy explained to his commander what he tried to do to make it work. The engineers set the test back up and Sammy stood back to watch as Dr. Rosmir treated his thumbs with cooling injections. After fifteen minutes had gone by with no success for Byron, Commander Zahn asked to give it a go. He had the same result as Byron, despite his face turning red and muttering several Arabic swear words. Iakoka attempted it next. Sammy had to turn away as she tried in order to not laugh at the constipated expression on her face. When Iakoka failed, Havelbert declined an invitation.
The engineers wanted Sammy to perform a “heat blast” again, but Dr. Rosmir advised against it, pointing to Sammy’s new burns and the fact that he’d already confirmed that it could be done.
“Maybe we could try a thermal imaging system,” another engineer suggested. “That would give us a better idea of how to prevent burns in the future once we know how everything works.”
Dr. Rosmir again interceded, this time with more force. “Unless any of you are willing to submit your own digits to second and third degree burns, I suggest we let Sammy recuperate and decide on his own if he wants to try again later. He has more important things to do than char himself.”
The engineers said that they would work
on some prototypes for channeling Sammy’s ability, and Dr. Rosmir promised to coordinate their efforts with Psion Command so Sammy could be brought in for more testing at a future date. After a few more minutes of chatting, most of the observers departed until Sammy was left with Commander Byron and Dr. Rosmir, who spoke with each other at length while Sammy sat by himself, waiting. When they were finished, Byron gave his attention to Sammy.
“Doctor Rosmir wants one last word with you, and then I will take you home.” Then Byron added with a pat on the back, “To Beta, of course.”
Feeling instantly more cheerful at the news, Sammy got up and went with Dr. Rosmir into a small office in the back of the engineering lab.
“Have a seat, Sammy,” the doctor said. Once they’d both sat, Dr. Rosmir put his hands together and watched Sammy happily. “So you’re going home. Excited?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Good. Listen, about your baseline exam, I know I’ve said it before, but I’m really sorry we had to trick you. We had to see how you would react—”
“Without knowing I was being tested,” Sammy finished for him. “I know. I get it.”
“Anyway, the only reason we can let you go so soon is because your baseline went so well. The results were very positive—”
“Positive?” Sammy exclaimed. “I practically peed all over myself. I turned my back on my most dangerous enemy and went after Stripe! Where do you see a positive in all that? And you kept me here for nearly a week? How is that soon?”
“There’s more to the test than how you react to the pinnacle of the exam. Anyone would react how you did given everything you went through. But we looked at more than that. You did well.”
“If I did so well then why—?”
“A week isn’t that bad, Sammy. Another one of the Psions on your mission to Rio de Janeiro spent several weeks here in mental rehab. Consider yourself lucky.”