The dirty fog soon lifted, and Al’s heart almost failed him. He didn’t see either of them.
“Kobe!” Kaden yelled, seizing chunks of brick and heavy ceiling plaster. There, lying half-buried under the huge mound of rubble was a blood-and-muck covered body with familiar blond hair. Al and the others raced over to help lift the debris off Kobe. In little time, they had recovered Kobe’s bleeding and bruised and probably broken body. Kaden rested his ear near his brother’s mouth and listened.
“He’s breathing,” he announced with a relieved smile, though tears ran down his face.
Al felt some relief. “Let’s find Sammy.”
No sooner had they started digging through the mound of dirt then Gregor shouted to Al, “There’s another bomb. We have to get out!”
“Get Sammy first,” Al ordered.
“It’s a class-C bomb, Al! It’ll go off any second. We have to leave now or none of us go home alive.”
Al froze, torn in half. He could not decide what to do. I don’t want to do this. Please, God, don’t ask me to do this. He fought for me. I can’t abandon him.
Marie grabbed his arm and whispered urgently, “We have to go, Al. Now.”
Al knew she was right, but he didn’t respond. That way, at least, he would never have to say he gave the command to leave Sammy behind. Marie led him out the same way the Thirteens had gone. Behind them, Gregor and Kaden carried Kobe. Li hobbled out last. The factory’s dimness gave way to brilliant daylight. It surprised Al that it could be daytime with all the darkness inside of him.
Dead bodies of the Thirteens who had only just fled were strewn over the walkway and lawn. The cruiser’s guns had mowed them down like a nasty bit of crabgrass. Once his team was safely out, Al turned to go back to get Sammy.
Another explosion went off. It seemed to rip the very air around him. Perhaps the whole earth was being torn asunder. Al was knocked down onto his back as a fireball spat out of the factory. He gasped for air, trying to regain his wind.
“Sammy!” he screamed through coughs and sputters. Smoke filled his lungs as he stared into the flames. Thick black fumes poured from where he had stood only seconds before.
“Al, please,” Marie said in a quiet but strong voice, pulling at him, “we have to get out of here.”
Al would not budge. “He was my responsibility.”
“Please.”
He knelt on the grass, holding himself. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so terrible before. Only a day ago, he’d considered himself to be the most capable Psion Beta ever produced from headquarters. “I’ve failed, Marie. I lost Martin and Sammy. Maybe Cala and Kobe.”
“The sooner we get back, the sooner they can get medical treatment.”
He knew she was right. Save those who can be saved, cry later. Steeling himself against his emotions, he got to his feet and ran with Marie to the cruiser. Gregor and Kaden were strapping in Kobe next to Cala. Bloody and beaten Cala.
“Get us out of here now,” Al ordered. His voice broke, but he did not cry. He did not want to spend another second in this forsaken pit. The pilot took off before he had even strapped himself in.
Q q q
Somehow, despite his crushing fatigue, Sammy managed to weakly blast one final time, cushioning his fall so the landing did not kill him. He hit the floor with a smack, pain shooting through his legs and arms. A weak scream came from his mouth but seemed disembodied to him. He didn’t know what he was doing anymore. It took minutes before he realized he was lying down, he was so drained.
Bruised, bleeding, aching, exhausted, he rested his head on the stone floor. The coolness of it was blissful against his cheek, better than a pillow at the moment. For an unknown time, his mind floated freely along whatever absurd, random thoughts would carry him—in and out of sleep. Peaceful sleep in the perfect dark.
He lost track of time in the consuming absence of light. When he finally woke, he thought his head had been stuffed full of wet cotton balls that shifted around every time he moved. His body hurt from his toenails to his hair. He didn’t get up or even try to move, but lay there serenely wondering why it was so quiet and dark. His unconcerned state ended when he remembered falling down a hole. He sat up quickly, ignoring the headache that hit him so powerfully it seemed his skull had been placed between an anvil and mallet.
I have to get back to the group.
“Al!” he shouted into his com. His voice sounded like an old saw digging into fresh wood. “I’ve fallen down a shaft or something. I don’t know—it’s too dark to see anything.”
No answer.
“Al, do you hear me?” he asked. His voice started to sound more normal.
Instinctively he reached up for his com to adjust the earpiece, but only felt his ear.
My com! Where’s my com?
He groped around blindly in the dark. With each empty reach, he became more frantic, almost clawing into the concrete floor. He suddenly felt terribly alone and afraid. The darkness seemed even heavier, more oppressive somehow, as the reality of his situation hit him.
I’m stranded! They’ve left me.
Blind, hot panic unlike anything he had ever known flooded his mind. The invisible mallet continued pounding until his head felt ready to split in two. The intense pain made his stomach lurch, and he vomited onto the floor. Blood rushed from his head leaving him light and woozy. He passed out.
Q q q
Al leaned forward in the co-pilot’s chair with an idea. Something he should have thought of much sooner. “What does Sammy’s monitor show?” he asked the pilot just as they reached the shoreline of the Atlantic.
“Just a second. Let me call up the program,” the pilot answered, punching buttons on the display before him. “Okay. What’s his code?”
“Uh . . . zero-zero-nine.”
A screen came to life. Two flat bars, one red, one green, streamed across in vivid brightness. No heart beat, no respiration. Al sank back into his chair and hoped the pilot would not be so tactless as to offer the interpretation aloud.
“I’m so sorry,” was all he said to Al.
“Me, too,” was what Al wanted to say, but his mouth was suddenly too heavy to move.
He unbuckled himself from the seat and went to the back of the cruiser to check on Cala. An orange goo covered her face and much of her upper body to slow bleeding and promote healing. Her monitor showed that her heart rate was slow but steady, her breathing still dangerously shallow. It’s a miracle she survived. A true miracle.
She had been in very critical condition when Marie and Kaden found her in the blood-stained power room. They were all surprised that she was still alive after taking multiple shots to the neck and chest, and then left for dead by her assailants.
The Elite pilot, who had emergency medical training as all Elite must have, did the best patch-up job he could, and then hooked her up to an arti-blood bag. Martin had died long before help had arrived. Kaden had almost gone into shock from carrying Martin’s mangled body back to the cruiser. The massive head trauma had left their friend utterly unrecognizable.
Al glanced around the ship at the remains of his team. Kobe hadn’t regained consciousness. Kaden was watching over him closely, looking for any signs of instability. Gregor was either asleep or looking down at the ground, Al wasn’t sure which. Li sat stone-faced and silent in his seat, his badly injured foot wrapped in bandages.
It was Marie who puzzled Al. She looked sad but calm. Occasionally she looked back at him, but he always averted his eyes. He could not bear to look at her right now. What is she thinking? How is she so strong and I’m so weak? Numbly, he sat down next to her and closed his eyes.
Marie. Sweet, beautiful Marie. The girl he would marry in less than a year if their plans worked out. He knew she was ready to comfort him whenever he showed even the slightest need. But he didn’t want comfort. No, right now he wanted to scream in rage. He wanted to kill more Thirteens. He wanted to do evil things to them. That secret urge terrified him mo
re than he wanted to admit to anyone, even himself. And since he could do none of these things, and sleep was the furthest thing from his exhausted mind, it would be a long and tortuous journey back to headquarters.
Q q q
Sammy woke up hours later. His first thought was, What’s that terrible smell?
Then he remembered that he had thrown up. Then he remembered why. On cue, the same terror-laced hysteria he had felt earlier rose up inside his chest like a terrible dragon. This time he was more ready for it. He fought it back, telling himself over and over again that help would be coming, but another voice spoke inside his head, too.
They may not even know where you are.
Yes, they do, he told the voice. I have a homing signal on my chest.
His fingers brushed the spot where the beta symbol should have been and found it missing.
The second voice was quick to remind him: It fell off during the fight. The Thirteen ripped it off you.
His fingers again felt for it, touching only cold skin with dried blood crusted on. The panic grew stronger. He tasted the bitter flavor of his own blood in his mouth, and the nausea returned.
No com and no homing signal. I’ll never be found!
He cried a little, but then began sucking in deep breaths to calm himself. He felt a little better. More deep breaths slowed the panic.
I’ve got to find something to do. I need light.
He reasoned if he could smell his way back to the vomit, it could be his point of reference. He took both his shoes off, and laid them at a ninety-degree angle near the pool of vomit to point himself around the room. With careful, short steps, he walked away from the vomit, hands outstretched. To keep his composure, he counted the number of steps he took.
Fifty-eight.
Fifty-nine.
Sixty.
Sixty-one.
His fingers hit something. A wall. Sixty-one steps to the wall. He put that important piece of information away, and started counting from one again, now following the wall.
Q q q
When the cruiser was finally within distance to use its short-range communications, the pilot requested emergency medical staff to be waiting at the landing site. Minutes later, after receiving permission to land, the cruiser touched down on top of headquarters. A host of people were waiting for them.
As soon as the door opened, Al jumped out. “We need medical assistance!”
There were a few gasps and mutters of astonishment when he appeared in front of everyone. He had not even thought of what a shock it would be for them to see him with his suit bloodied, ripped, and filthy.
He quickly explained the details of Cala and Kobe’s injuries to Doctor Rosmir and his staff as they carried her from the stealth cruiser into a waiting ambulance. Next, Kobe was carefully taken out, and finally Martin’s body. It was not until after all this that Al noticed the crowd of people awaiting their return on the rooftop: government officials, Commander Wrobel, other Alphas, and finally his father, face paled and lined with worry. His father pushed through the crowd and grabbed his shoulders tightly.
“Are you okay?” he said, his voice shaking.
Al wanted to say: “Yes, I’m okay,” but he couldn’t. Everything came rushing out, and he nearly lost his composure. “No! Sir, I’m not okay. Nothing is okay right now. We lost Sammy and Martin!”
“What do you mean?” his father asked.
“They’re dead and it’s all my fault.”
“Samuel and Martin are dead?” his father repeated. His grip slackened, but his face became stone.
Al nodded solemnly, tears forming in his eyes again. He recognized the face his father wore now. It was the one he put on to control himself, to show no emotion. But Al knew how much his father cared for Sammy.
“I’m so sorry, sir. I’m so sorry.”
“This is not your fault, Albert. The best thing we can do right now is gather information. We need you to debrief us. We need to know everything that happened. Can you do that?”
Al nodded. His father put his hands back on Al’s shoulders and pulled him close.
“Albert, this is not your fault.”
“Yes, sir.” Al said it, but he didn’t believe it.
“Ho Chin?” his father called out to an Alpha nearby.
“Yes, Commander?” Ho Chin answered at attention.
“Please escort Albert to the meeting room on the fifth floor and then contact everyone else who should be there.”
“Yes, sir.” Ho Chin saluted Al’s father and led Al downstairs.
Al walked through the roof entrance and down the long flight of stairs. The door opened up onto the fifth floor, and he saw someone with long blonde hair sitting on the floor in the hall. Not Jeffie. Anyone but Jeffie right now. He stopped moving, but the man, Ho Chin, nudged him forward, oblivious as to why Al wouldn’t want see this particular girl at this particular time.
He tried avoiding her eyes, but could not help it. He saw in her eyes the same apprehension and terror as he’d seen in his father’s. Of course everyone had feared the worst. They arrived home hours behind schedule with no word as to what had gone wrong.
Jeffie jumped up and ran toward him. “Al, what happened? Is everyone okay? Where’s Sammy?”
Suddenly Sammy’s death became even more real. Everyone at headquarters had known about Jeffie’s crush on Sammy. Everyone but Sammy, at least. The irony of Sammy’s naïveté had become a joke in the circle of the oldest Betas. And now Al had no idea what to say to her.
Jeffie stopped before she reached him, staring at his battle-worn state. He knew she could read his face. The truth was in large bold words all over him; even the way he stood, shouted:
“SAMMY IS DEAD!”
She shook her head slowly, and her lips mouthed the word “no” over and over again. Her neck flushed scarlet, and her eyes dripped the tears he wished he still had. “No!” She slumped to the floor. “NO! Al, Sammy is not dead! Please say he is not dead!”
Al wished he could explain to her how badly he wanted to pull Sammy out of a crushing pile of bricks, how his team had to run out of a building to save their lives, and how it had erupted into a fiery furnace the moment they escaped. But it didn’t matter how desperately Al needed to justify his actions, he could not say anything. He knew he would choke on the words when they tried to come out of his mouth. He just wished he could make her pleas stop.
It was easy to let himself be steered into the room by Ho Chin. Her sounds followed him into the sim room. Ho Chin excused himself delicately and exited. When the door closed, cutting off Jeffie’s pain-filled sobs, a great weight lifted off Al’s shoulders. He had never been so helpless before, never in his whole life.
All too soon the door opened again, but Jeffie was not outside the room. It shamed him that he was glad she was gone. The room filled with people who were counting on him to tell them exactly what happened in Rio’s death factory. He tried putting on the face his dad used—to cut himself off from emotions he wasn’t ready to deal with—and he found that it helped to pull himself together.
Q q q
Sammy pulled again, harder this time. CHUG! Chug! Chug. Chug. Cough. Come on you stupid machine. Work for me.
He kicked it hard.
“OW!” he yelled out. No shoes on. He grabbed a hold of the generator’s power cord and took a deep breath.
Prime it, a voice said.
“What?” Sammy asked out loud.
The voice was in his head, but it sounded so real and familiar.
“You’ve got to prime it, kiddo,” his dad said to him on a hot Saturday afternoon.
Samuel Senior stood on the back porch laughing at his son who wanted badly to mow the lawn. Normally Sammy’s dad paid a guy to come to their house weekly to mow, trim, and weed, but Sammy wanted to do it just once because it looked fun.
He had even borrowed a little mower that actually ran on petrol. Their neighbor, a strange recluse named Mr. Nemosio, kept it as an antique, and Sammy w
anted to try it out. “What’s the point of having it if you never use it?” he’d asked, stumping the man.
“What do you mean ‘prime it?’” young Sammy asked his father.
“There’s a little button on the side of the engine. You press it a few times to prime the engine for starting up. Prime it.”
Sammy pressed the button several times. Then grabbed the power cord and ripped it.
VRROOM! The engine roared, coming to life.
“Atta boy, Sammy. Make sure you take that back to Mr. Nemosio all cleaned up . . . and don’t cut your toes off!”
Sammy let go of the generator’s pull cord and felt around in the dark for a primer. Sure enough, not too far away his hand touched a large rubber button. He smiled to himself in the darkness. He mashed on it several times until he was sure the generator was good and primed. Then he felt his way back to the power cord and gave one more hard pull.
CHUG! Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!
Lights flickered on, a few of them burst, and Sammy had to squint until his eyes adjusted to the blinding illumination. The large blue generator against the side wall came into view first. The room told its own story about its purpose and history: furniture scattered, ripped, and overturned; broken equipment strewn across the floor; blood stains one of the walls and the carpet. Someone here had found big trouble in a bad way. Two of the walls were lined with dusty shelves holding big plastic cylinders. He went to the shelf and opened one of the bins expecting to find more junk.
To his great delight, he found dried food and preserved water, most of it untouched. He remembered what Al had said in their first mission meeting: “CAG troops shut the factory down by force when they discovered it was also a secret operating facility for NWG resistance fighters.”
In all likelihood, the room had been their storehouse. Food and water storage, broken equipment, an empty rack that looked like it was made for rifles . . . it made sense. When the CAG ransacked the place, they must have killed everyone present and searched everything, including the stuffing of the furniture.
He went through each of the food and water containers so he knew exactly how much he had. When he finished, he set about making the place fit for human use. He didn’t know how long he’d be there, but luck favored the prepared, as his mom liked to say. How much luck he had left, he didn’t want to find out.
Psion Beta (Psion series #1) Page 30
