“What? Oh––sedate him again. No sense risking any problems on the flight to headquarters.”
“A minor dose is all I can give. Don’t want any risks.”
Sammy was only vaguely aware of the conversation, as though it had been a dream, and no sooner had the words “risks” registered in his brain then he felt a tingling cold invade his elbow and creep up his arm. Had he just been given a little more time, he might have been able to piece the bits of conversation together––he might even have felt some alarm at what was said, but the sedative took its effect and he passed back into a deep sleep.
Q q q
“Explain what you mean when you tell me they are not certain about recruiting him?” a familiar voice spoke. The man was clearly trying to refrain from shouting. “Why were these concerns not addressed by Command before I brought him to Reykjavik?”
There was a pause. Then the same man’s voice continued: “I understand his history is suspect––that’s highly unlikely––no––but he is still trainable!”
Sammy realized that this time he was hearing only half of a conversation. It was the same voice he had heard in the cold room, only now the man sounded very upset. Although unable to move his body, the unsteadiness of the room told Sammy they were flying.
“Victor, did Command even look over his file?”
Pause.
“Good. Then you know the circumstances surrounding his parents. Such a situation warrants some type of irregular behavior––No, he’s too young––he’s too young.”
Sammy took interest in the man’s words. Somewhere in the back of his semi-drugged mind, he knew this man’s conversation revolved around him. Comprehending everything, however, was still too difficult with such a thick haze over his mind.
“Yes, even attacking police. The boy also has fourteen and eleven. I am not throwing him away because of one man’s theory.”
Another pause.
“Trust me, had that been the case we would have seen far more damage.”
What are you talking about? What’s going on? He tried to say these things but his jaw felt like gelatin.
“Put me on with the general.”
A longer pause.
“Good evening, sir. I am fine, thank you.”
This time the pause was interjected with “uh-huhs” and “good.”
“Will you please talk it over with the committee and get back to me as soon as possible? Thank you, sir. Good day.”
The man muttered something angrily under his breath. Sammy heard several small beeps near his head and he tried to turn to the sound, but the only response his neck gave was a tight jerk. Someone cursed gruffly on his right.
“Kid’s awake again, Commander.”
“Again? Maad said to only give him minimal doses until we get there.”
“Yes, sir,” the gruff man’s voice replied accompanied by movement. Sammy felt the same cold sensation starting up his arm and all went black again.
Q q q
Sammy awoke with a throbbing headache. As he lay in a daze, his limbs ached as feeling crawled back into them. As the drugs wore off, he became more aware of the pain lingering in his whole body.
How long have I been asleep? He vaguely recalled snatches of conversations about . . . something. He could not remember what they were about.
Where is Feet?
Memories flooded him in a rush: the game, the Shocks, the church, the Elite. I was shot!
With a start, he tried to sit up only to find himself pinned down by metal restraints clamped over his wrists, ankles, legs, chest, and head. Where am I? He knew the processing center for juvies in Johannesburg pretty well. They didn’t have this much security. Maybe they’re trying me as an adult this time.
His head could not move side to side, and so he saw nothing in the room but the brilliant white ceiling. He spoke aloud, “Hello? HELLO? I’m awake now. Can anyone hear me?”
If he was heard, no one acknowledged him. His voice died on the walls of the room, and he felt even lonelier. “Feet?” he asked tentatively.
He felt incredibly small, even for being a larger-than-average kid. What are they going to do to me? Send me back to the Grinder? Perhaps worse. They’d warned him he could be sent to an adult prison for multiple offenses. After all, he’d shot at Shocks and Elite. Is that what they planned to do? He wanted answers. Anything was better than being restrained on a hard table, not knowing his fate. But no one came. Over and over he thought about the events that had brought him here. He dwelt longest on what could have happened to Feet and the others. Where were they? Then he heard a hiss.
Someone had entered the room.
“Hello, Samuel.” The voice was deep, rich, and familiar.
“Who are you?” Sammy asked in reply more sharply than he meant to sound. It had been a long time since he had spoken to an adult he liked or respected. “My new counselor? Are you trying me as an adult?”
“Hello, Samuel,” the man repeated in exactly the same tone as before.
“Where have I heard your voice before?” Sammy pressed. “Where am I?”
“I said ‘hello.’” The tone in the man’s voice became disapproving.
“I don’t care what you said,” Sammy continued. “I want to know what’s going on!”
His chest rose and fell rapidly. The outburst left him winded. He had sworn not to get caught again, and now he lay helpless and bound on a table like a wacko in a white room.
I’m so stupid.
“I think I will give you some time to learn proper etiquette,” the man said politely.
The same hiss sounded as the door opened.
“Wait!” Sammy called out blindly. “Where am I?”
“Close.”
A hiss again.
Sammy screamed every curse word he knew at the closed door.
Above him, a square of the ceiling turned from brilliant white to transparent. Words appeared on the screen:
Psion Training Positive Reinforcement
Session 7: Etiquette
Psion?
The movie was ridiculously old-fashioned. The female narrator sounded about a hundred years old and spoke in a too-happy, delusional sort of way. The film ran at least twenty minutes, each minute laden with cheesy catch phrases and odd-looking people acting out scenarios. To Sammy’s horror, when the film ended, the same words from the introduction appeared on the screen. When the same corny piano music began, he realized he had to watch it again. The third time it started, he thought he might die.
He wondered fleetingly if showing this movie over and over might be a tactic to drive him crazy because during the third showing, he caught himself repeating a couple of the phrases along with the film.
“If you want the peas, you must say please,” and, “Remember, nothing tells a person that you care more than verbal gratitude.”
When it ended for the third time, he stared at the screen, daring it to play just one more time.
The square on the ceiling where the film had appeared became opaque once again, matching the rest of the ceiling so well Sammy would never have guessed a screen was there. The room became very quiet again. He heard no ticking of a clock, no sound of people in a hallway outside.
It must be soundproofed. He yelled as loud as he could for no reason. Nothing happened except his throat hurt a little now. Where are the others? he wondered again. In other rooms like this one? He missed them already. He hoped they had escaped, even if it meant never seeing them again, Feet included. He berated himself for not waking Feet in the church––so many decisions he could have made differently. Thinking about them all made his headache worse until he felt very tired. He closed his eyes to ignore the punk drummer pounding away inside his skull, and almost fell asleep when he heard the hiss of the door once more.
“Hello, Samuel,” the same man said, his voice pleasant again.
“Why, hello, sir,” Sammy replied in his most faux-happy voice. “How are you? I trust you have had a wonderful d
ay … or night. Whatever time it is.”
The man gave a genuine chuckle and responded, “Very pleasant indeed. Because I have the privilege of meeting you.”
“Meeting me?” Sammy asked, dropping the stupid voice.
“You know why you are here in this room, Samuel? Here, and not in Johannesburg being brought up on charges of––let me see––” The man paused and then began to read something. “––theft, breaking and entering, resisting arrest, assault with a weapon on thirteen law enforcement officers, trespassing on private property, and assault with a weapon on Elite soldiers? The last one, I should add, is enough to put you in prison for a very long time.”
“Where am I?”
“Seventy-five kilometers east of Reykjavik.”
Sammy jerked in surprise and knocked his head into his restraint. He swore in both pain and surprise. “I’m on—I’m on . . . Capitol Island?” he stammered. This mess was deeper than he thought. “Why––why did you bring me here?”
“I can give you some answers. How much I can give depends on you. Would you like to be released from your restraints?”
“Yes . . . please,” Sammy said. The politeness came easily now.
With a small click, Sammy was free. He sat up, but his entire body ached again. Blood rushed from his head, and he nearly passed out. The grimace on his face must have been easy to read because the man commented, “You took quite a blow from those Elite back in Johannesburg. If you do not mind my saying so, firing a weapon at them was extraordinarily foolish.”
Sammy got his first good look at the man speaking to him: a middle-aged man with very white hair and powerfully built chest and arms. He wore a plain gray jumpsuit adorned only with a curious golden alpha symbol attached to his chest. His sharp face made him seem very serious, but his clear blue eyes relieved the tension from his face. They were bright with discernment.
Sammy thought he could like this man if he’d stop reminding him of his mistakes. “Why am I here?” Sammy repeated.
“You are an anomaly.”
Sammy shot the man an incredulous look and words flew out of his mouth. “You’re an idiot. I’m not an anomaly. There’s nothing wrong with me.”
The man did not change his matter-of-fact expression. “I will ask you one time to show me the same respect I show you, and if you insist on doing otherwise our conversation will be over. I will not tolerate the kind of behavior you have displayed over the last several months of your life. Anarchy is appropriate for the playground. Not here.” They stared at each other hard. Sammy saw a toughness in this man that he hadn’t seen in anyone since his dad. “Now, let me rephrase my statement; you have an anomaly. Well, anomalies, really.”
He really thinks I’m some kind of freak. He tried to explain this to the man with some sense of etiquette: “This must be some kind of––I’m not sick. You’ve made a mistake. I don’t have whatever you’re talking about.”
“I am not making a mistake,” the man said, and his smile returned. “Your anomalies were caused by the Scourge.”
“Okay, well, I wasn’t alive back then.” He instantly regretted his tone and apologized to the man. Talking to an adult civilly was going to take some getting used to.
“Your parents were. They were probably very young. The vaccine caused some changes in people. This resulted in the rise of genetic anomalies in offspring. Two days ago we received intelligence from South African Territory police that a tall, black young man––you––displayed some kind of ‘powers.’ Or as they described it, ‘a force field that attacked several officers.’ So we sent the Elite to secure the situation, track down the criminal in question, and bring him to us.”
“You sent––but I don’t––that could have been anything that happened in that alley,” Sammy cried. Even in his anger, he remembered Feet’s absurd reasoning. “I don’t have any super powers!”
“Of course not,” the man said calmly, almost dismissively. “I never said anything about you having super powers.” He turned very serious. “What I mean is that you have certain abilities that the government is interested in employing. These are not supernatural. You are not in a superhero story. This is explainable science.”
Sammy rolled his eyes, but did not insult the man as he had been warned. “I would know if I had used special abilities,” he said, using his fingers as quotes to emphasize his point, “against the Shocks.”
“I have met many people with your anomaly. Almost everyone is ecstatic. You seem upset. Why?” His penetrating blue eyes stared into Sammy’s, and Sammy felt as though the man could read into him.
“Because I don’t have any powers!”
“Then you explain what happened.”
Sammy shifted in his chair. To stall for time, he looked around the room. It was small and abnormally clean, like it wasn’t used very often. A toilet stood in one corner and a sink in the other. The restraining table that had held Sammy consumed a large portion of the other side of the room. It felt like his cell in the Grinder, only nicer. The white-haired man continued to wait quietly for an answer. Sammy gave him a feeble shrug and muttered, “I don’t know.”
“We ran DNA tests and scans. All of them confirmed your anomaly. We know you express Anomaly Eleven and Fourteen,” he said with an air of what Sammy thought sounded like excitement in his voice.
“When did you do that? Test me, I mean?”
“On the way here.”
“And what does that mean to you? An anomaly?”
“Many types of anomalies exist. The government ranks them with stars. One star means someone is born with a mild birth defect. Two stars is much more severe. Three stars always is a lethality in the fetus. One to three stars are only used to class someone during fetal development.”
The man paused as if to allow Sammy time to process the information. It sounded like a speech he had given many times before, and that annoyed Sammy.
“Four and five stars are a completely different scenario. They do not express themselves until puberty. An increase in sex hormones triggers the production of unique enzymes that react differently with certain parts of the body. I can explain the science of it later. For now, it is enough to know that the government wants people who have them.” He gestured to Sammy, “Like in your case.”
“Why would the government care about stuff like that?” Sammy questioned.
“To protect citizens from dangerous––or unpredictable––elements in the general population,” the man answered. “You can appreciate the concern the government has––and the public would have––knowing citizens are out and about with uncontrollable abilities at their disposal. People get hurt. I have seen it happen several times. To use you as an example: you injured half a dozen officers in that alleyway without knowing what or how anything happened.”
“Except that I am not one of your anomalies,” Sammy said.
“But for now, why not pretend? Especially since you are. The government is interested in you.”
“You mean the government wants to lock me up?” Sammy asked, getting to his feet. “I’ll fight you, and I’ll escape.”
The man chuckled. “Honestly, Samuel, I do not doubt you, but the reality is quite the opposite. The government wants to employ you.” Again the man displayed his ability to become very serious very fast.
Sammy walked to the sink. He looked at himself in the mirror above, and saw his brown eyes staring back at him. Is this real? Am I some sort of freak?
The man looked at Sammy gravely in the mirror. “Your talents can be put to great use. Here, and I mean where you are right now, we train Anomaly Fourteens in a state-of-the-art facility to prepare to enter into the employ of the New World Government.”
“What if someone says no? What if they don’t want to work for the government?”
Sammy saw the man’s deep concern that Sammy might not accept the offer. As the man spoke, he seemed to weigh each word.
“If you choose that, no one will stop you or force you to do
otherwise. However, as I said earlier, the government does not want to run the risk of having a free radical running about society unchecked. You will be given a drug, harmless of course, that informs us of your whereabouts and nullifies the enzyme that causes your anomaly. You will receive a visit from the Elite every other month for the rest of your life to ensure that you take this drug.”
Sammy didn’t have a response. Perhaps the man had taken Sammy too seriously. The truth was, Sammy didn’t know what to think. He felt like ice water had been dumped on him.
“On the other hand,” the man continued, “you will not be running about society since you will lose the clemency granted to you in order to become an agent of the NWG.”
“My what?”
“I had your crimes overturned on the supposition that you would accept my offer,” the man spoke as if this should have been obvious to Sammy. “If you reject it, you will be handed back over to the South African Territorial Government so they can deal with you.”
The conversation came to the point the man had warned him it would. Sammy’s decision would determine how the remainder would go. Go back to the Grinder or work for the government he hated? The choices seemed awfully similar.
Except I swore I’d never go back to the Grinder. And with this man, he would be free. “Where are my friends?”
“I don’t know,” the man told him. “What is your choice?”
They sat in silence for several seconds. Sammy needed to know what he was getting himself into. It was too surreal. He had so many questions. Did he actually have these powers? Finally he just blurted out the next thought that came to him.
“What’s your name?”
“My name is only known to those that work for me.”
Fair enough. “What––uh––what are the negatives of working for you?” he asked next.
The man gazed at Sammy, impressed. “Good question. I must tell you that I can only inform you of so much until you give consent to enlist with NWG. So I will say this: The plusses far outweigh the minuses. The minuses include very real and extreme danger, a significant part of your life dedicated to loyal service to the government, agreeing to follow a strict code of guidelines in your lifestyle. I think that might be very difficult for you given your current lifestyle. You’ll also have to live with anonymity for your hard work, and, again, there is extreme danger.”
Psion Beta (Psion series #1) Page 4
