Psion Beta (Psion series #1)

by Gowans, Jacob

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “Good. You get the idea,” the man said, no longer smiling. In fact, he almost looked sad, and his hand trembled for a second or two. “I cannot exaggerate the gravity of the duties you will acquire. I have lost people very close to me in this work. But as I said, it is worth it.”

  “And you’re sure I’m an anomaly whatever number you said?”

  “One hundred percent,” the man answered.

  A week ago, Sammy would have ridiculed anyone who had told him he would join the government. And now he was here sitting across from this man, a man whose name he did not even know. There was something about this man . . . Sammy liked him, and he had not met an adult he liked in a while. In the back of his mind he knew that no matter what dangers he faced, this man wouldn’t let him go unprepared. Sammy took a deep breath and blew it out.

  “Okay, I’m in.”

  “Excellent. The pay may not be great, but you cannot beat the benefits package we offer.” He paused as if he had told a joke and waited for Sammy to laugh.

  Sammy did not get the humor. With deep sincerity, the man put a hand on Sammy’s shoulder and told him, “You made the right choice.” He offered his hand to Sammy, who took it. He had a firm grip. “By the way, my name is Commander Walter Byron. You can call me ‘Sir’ or ‘Commander.’”

  “Commander of what?” Sammy asked.

  “Psion Beta.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Come with me and find out.”

  4. Orientation

  Commander Byron showed Sammy out of the room and into a brightly lit hallway with white walls, ceilings, and a white foamy floor. Doors lined one side of the hallway, but the other side had none. Nothing Sammy could see satisfied his growing curiosity. They climbed two flights of stairs and came to an almost identical floor.

  Silver numbers adorned each door here. The commander stopped in front of the door marked #1. Like all the doors Sammy had seen, only an eye scan would open it. Commander Byron showed Sammy inside and then said, “We have a meeting in about …” he looked at his watch, “… fifteen minutes. Four other recruits are waiting for me on the roof. Do you mind if I go get them?”

  “No problem.” Sammy looked forward to having a few moments alone.

  Room 1 was very large but plain, furnished only with five straight-backed chairs and a simple podium. On the seat of each chair was a small box made of black wood. Each box had a name engraved into the lid. Sammy scanned the names. Samuel Berhane, Jr. had been branded into the box on the chair farthest from the door. He opened his box. Inside, he found a sleek new com, much more impressive than even the newest models Sammy had seen kids at the mall drooling over. He had never owned one.

  He held it delicately. It had been over a year since he had gotten anything new without stealing it. He took it from the box and sat down in the chair. Despite the chair’s stiff appearance, Sammy thought it was comfortable. He tucked the com neatly around his ear and activated it. A holographic screen appeared over his eye showing a menu with several different options:

  1. Schedule

  2. Text Message

  3. Personalize

  4. Personal Statistics

  5. Emergency

  Maybe it had something to do with the fact that these were government coms, but the options seemed much more basic than his mom’s and dad’s had been. He chose option three, and a program came up asking him to enter his voice into the computer. It told him to pronounce several words and sounds so the computer could memorize his vocal nuances. It only lasted a few minutes, but it was fun. The rest of the time he spent browsing through the other menu options: the Schedule option came up blank, as did the Text Message and Personal Statistics. He didn’t dare mess with Emergency.

  The door opened and Byron led a boy and three girls inside. They followed Byron closely, looking around the room with anxious faces and toting various amounts of luggage. The commander gave each of them reassuring smiles as he gestured them to sit.

  The other boy was several centimeters shorter than Sammy, and appeared to be the most scared out of the bunch. He had a pale face with brown hair and blue eyes, almost like a younger version of Feet except this boy walked with his head down and shoulders slumped. The boy read all of the names on the boxes until he came to the one resting on the chair next to Sammy. The boy caught Sammy’s eye and then looked at the chair as if he needed permission to seat himself. Sammy offered a weak smile, and the boy sat down quickly.

  Actually, Sammy wanted a better look at the three girls. Only boys got sent to the Grinder, and Sammy hadn’t seen one up close in weeks. One was black, much darker than him, with a nice face and pronounced cheekbones. She wore a dozen wooden bracelets on each wrist, and her hair was done up in different colored ribbons with feathers sticking straight up, making her look pretty in an exotic way, but also weird.

  The next girl was shorter than the black girl. Her skin had a light olive color; she had bright, poison-green hair and big brown eyes that roamed constantly, never staying one place for too long. She examined everything in the room, from the chairs to Sammy’s face. This did not bother him as much as that she stood blocking the third girl from his view. When the door closed, Byron asked the girls to sit down. The green-haired girl did so, and the last girl came to view. The air left his lungs, maybe even the whole room.

  Her features were so soft that Sammy had no other explanation than that the hand of a Creator had sculpted her face to perfection. She had fair skin, colored only by a dust of red on her cheeks, framed with a gentle pronouncement of her cheekbones and jaw line. Her vivid green eyes danced with an intelligent light enhanced by her dark blonde eyebrows. Even her red lips curved perfectly.

  “Samuel?” Byron asked. “Samuel, are you all right?”

  “Huh?” Sammy jerked out of his trance and looked at the commander.

  Everyone in the room looked at him, even the blonde girl. Oh no. How long was I staring? Hot blood rushed to his face, burning his ears.

  “Sorry, Commander.”

  “Are you all right?” he repeated.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Sammy quickly replied, though his voice cracked again. This forced his face to grow even hotter.

  He stole a glance at the girl again to make sure she was not looking at him. Luckily, she was talking to the green-haired girl and didn’t seem to notice. He needed to get her attention again somehow, get her to look at him, but everything that came to mind seemed stupid.

  Commander Byron spoke, pulling Sammy’s thoughts away from her: “Will each of you introduce yourselves? You will all be on the same footing as far as training goes, so you can lean on one another more than the students who have been here longer. Just stand and say your name, your age, and where you come from.”

  Sammy waited to see if the blonde girl would stand up first, but she watched him, as did everyone else. When he stood up, he realized he was the only person in the room besides Commander Byron wearing a com. Not wanting to stand out, he hastily took it off, and returned it to its box. In his nervousness, he shut the box too hard, and it tumbled off the chair and onto the floor. Awkwardly, he bent down to retrieve the box and replaced it on the chair. He looked down at his hooded sweater, the same one he had been wearing for weeks, and realized how much filth and stain had collected on it.

  I must smell terrible. All of the things that had not seemed important with his friends, like personal hygiene and grooming, now mattered a great deal. He wondered if he’d become immune to his own stench after spending so much time in the abandoned store.

  “Er—I’m Samuel Berhane.” He glanced at the blonde girl who looked back at him indifferently, almost impatiently. “My parents—well, just call me Sammy. I’m fourteen and I grew up in South African Territory. Is that all?” he asked Byron.

  Byron nodded.

  The small boy next to him stood up, looking not nervous, but mortified. “My name is Brickert Plack.”

  He sat down immediat
ely.

  “Anything else you want to say about yourself, Brickert?” the commander asked him.

  Red spots formed on Brickert’s cheeks as he realized he had forgotten to finish his introduction. He stood again and said, “I’m from Ireland, er, the Territory of Ireland, and I’m twelve, almost thirteen.”

  Without missing a beat, he dropped back into his chair.

  “Yes, Brickert is the youngest Psion we have ever trained in this facility,” Byron added, beaming down on Brickert, whose red spots grew and flushed to an even deeper red.

  The first two girls introduced themselves as Kawai Nujola and Natalia Ivanovich. Kawai was almost sixteen and came from a smaller west African territory Sammy vaguely remembered from school geography, and green-haired Natalia had been recruited from Samara, a Russian territory.

  The blonde girl stood up. Sammy couldn’t help but notice her perfect posture. “My name is Jeffie Tvedt. I just turned fourteen, and I’m from Oslo in the Territory of Norway.”

  Sammy experienced a sudden strong connection with the Territory of Norway. I’ve always liked that place. Very beautiful. Jeffie . . . Nice name.

  “Thank you,” Byron said. “I hope you all become fast friends and help each other whenever needed.” He cleared his throat as if to begin a speech. He surveyed the new recruits with a look of satisfaction.

  “I think what you are all about to experience can be likened to putting your mouth over a fire hydrant to take a drink of water. I hope you can handle the deluge of information. Anytime you have questions, please feel free to ask.”

  Sammy understood this to mean “get comfortable, we’ll be here for a while.”

  “Life at the headquarters of Psion Beta will be different than anything you have experienced. I briefed all—well—most of you about the daily routine here.” Brickert glanced over, no doubt guessing that Commander Byron was referring to Sammy. “You will be trained for four to seven years to prepare to join a Psion Alpha squadron. Alphas are the most specialized task force under the NWG and consist solely of persons with Anomaly Fourteen. I want to elaborate on this anomaly so you understand precisely what you can and will be able to do with it.”

  Byron paused briefly to stress his next point.

  “But first I wish to begin by saying this, because I feel it is most important. As a government operative you are above most laws by which civilians must abide, similar to police breaking speed laws while in pursuit. This is not because we are privileged or chosen, but because of the work we do. It is easy to slip into the pitfall of thinking we are above everyone else, or even detached from them. While you will have little contact with the outside world, make no mistake, we are servants. We never use our abilities to put ourselves above others even though, ultimately, you will never receive thanks from the people you serve and protect.”

  Protect from what? thought Sammy.

  “How about a history lesson?” Byron said, as if he had read Sammy’s thoughts.

  A transparent square appeared in the wall exactly like the one Sammy had seen on the ceiling in the white room. As Byron spoke, pictures appeared.

  “Late in 2054, the first Psion was discovered in the Mid-American Territory. Like all new anomalies, the government brought him to a NWG research center for study. Doctors found he had a unique enzyme that interacted with carrier proteins in the mitochondrial matrix throughout the cells in his nervous system.”

  Sammy recalled learning about mitochondria in school, and he recognized the one in the picture that appeared on the screen. The picture looked like a green jelly bean with a section removed to see several internal membranes sandwiched and folded against each other.

  “The mutation in these organelles acted as super-catalysts in energy production, manufacturing thousands of times more energy than a normal mitochondrion. But the spontaneous adaptation of energy emitting channels in eleidin found in the stratum lucidum of the dermis . . . scientists called it a wonder of evolution.”

  The stratum whatsidum? Sammy wondered. The others around him all looked equally confused.

  A picture of a section of human skin divided into layers appeared on the wall. Highlighted in red were certain cells in a particular layer of the skin.

  “Stratum lucidum is a layer of the skin found only on the palms of hands and soles of feet, so these are the only places on the body where energy blasts can be emitted.”

  “What happened to the boy?” The question came from Natalia, whose eyes were wide as her finger twirled knots in her poison-green hair.

  “He trained with the Elite in Siberia. Over the years, as the government discovered other Anomaly Fourteens, the boy suggested employing them as a second operative group independent of the Elite. The little group grew and named themselves ‘PSIONS.’ In 2060, they founded the Psion Corps. This building used to be the original headquarters until Psion Alpha and Beta formed in 2070. Now it is used only for training the Betas.”

  “Is the boy still training Psions?” Sammy asked and glanced over to see if Jeffie was looking at him now. Dang.

  The screen behind the commander went dark and Commander Byron smiled. “Yes, he is. In the beginning, the Psions worked mainly as a special task force, taking on missions too dangerous for the Elite.”

  The screen behind Byron flashed images and clips of both peaceful and violent protests, debates in the World Congress, and ended with a world map. He spoke for several minutes about the Scourge’s impact on social politics and how human life became more precious after over forty percent of the world’s population died from the supervirus. Bombs, abortions, guns, and even armies became deeply unpopular as the world moved toward global peace. Byron’s lecture so far reminded Sammy of the classes he had been forced to attend in the Grinder—classes about not only math and reading, but also making the world a better place through service to humanity.

  The videos changed to show news cuttings during the Second Scare. Some were famous clips Sammy recognized from history in junior high. Most of the shots contained mob violence and protests at government offices around the world.

  “None of you were alive during the Second Scare,” Byron continued. “Scare is really too small a word to describe the terror people felt at the idea of a second, deadlier virus wiping out the rest of humanity. Every day we heard about riots and mayhem. People wanted to protect their homes, pharmaceutical companies wanted to protect their factories. But no one legally owned guns because of the weapons ban. So in 2058 several northern and southern American territories passed laws allowing their citizens the right to bear and manufacture arms. Superior Court challenged the laws and ruled them unconstitutional, and levied heavy sanctions against the territories.”

  “Wasn’t that a little harsh?” Jeffie asked. Natalia stopped twirling her hair and stared at Jeffie, whose question sounded a little confrontational.

  Commander Byron’s smile seemed to invite the challenge. “What do you think?” he asked her.

  “My dad says people should be allowed to have guns.” Her tart tone made it clear her dad’s opinion was the final word on the matter.

  Byron nodded noncommittally. “It depends how you look at it. Regardless of how anyone felt about the issue, being a government means working together to solve problems, not just promoting the interests of one group. Whether or not weapons should have been allowed is less important than knowing the majority of people did not want them. As part of a larger community, or team, they should have together worked for a solution. Do you agree, Gefjon?”

  Sammy used this as an opportunity to steal another glance at her. Gefjon? Her name is Gefjon?

  “I guess so, but call me Jeffie.”

  The tension diffused; Jeffie seemed supplicated, and Byron resumed.

  “Americans have always had a superiority complex, just like almost every other culture,” Byron continued, wearing his little smile again. “I know, I grew up there. You guys probably know most of this stuff from history classes. After the Berkeley Weapon Debates in 2
062 and 2063, all but five of the North American Territories shocked the world and seceded from the NWG. Then every Central and South American Territory, but two, followed. Leading to the formation of . . . ?”

  “The Continental American Government,” Kawai answered. She spoke it like a dirty word. It reminded Sammy of kids in school calling each other a variety of names that all had “cag” in them: cagger, cag-head, and cag-lover were all common.

  Byron nodded. “We call that the Schism. For a time, a few North and South American territories stayed with the NWG. Quebec was one of the few territories that didn’t secede. And what you probably don’t know is that when the CAG invaded Quebec, it marked the beginning of the Silent War.”

  “The what?” Natalia asked. She wasn’t the only one confused. Sammy had no idea what Byron was talking about.

  “The Silent War,” Byron repeated. “A war fought only by operatives—specially trained soldiers that are not part of an army. No war in the history of the world has been fought this way. During the twentieth century, the Cold War was a race to build up nuclear arms. Not a single bomb detonated nor one bullet fired between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, but they did fight via smaller proxy nations. Since the Scourge, standing armies and weapons of mass destruction have been deeply unpopular in both governments. Human life is viewed as sacred. We are assured the CAG does not intend to build an army unless we build first. So when these rare exchanges take place, like in Quebec, we fight anomalies against other anomalies.”

  Sammy and the other recruits stirred uncomfortably in their seats and exchanged glances. Brickert paled and swallowed hard. Byron had not said that the Psions were in the middle of a war. Byron’s repetition of the words “extreme danger” now took on greater meaning.

  “How come I’ve never heard of the war?” Jeffie asked. Sammy liked watching her lips move as she spoke.