Psion Alpha (53 page)

Byron felt nothing but
revulsion now toward his roommate. He couldn’t believe this was the same person
he’d roomed with for nearly two years. It seemed impossible. If he hadn’t heard
the words from Trapper, he would never have accepted it.

“Now pick up the knife,
and kill Emerald. Show me you’re ready for my full trust.”

Trapper retrieved the
knife with less hesitation than before. Byron recognized Trapper’s determined
expression.

“Trapper, please, think
about what you are going to do. This is Emerald! Do you really want to slice
her open? Spill her blood? This is our Emerald! How will you live with
yourself?”

Trapper made no sign
that he’d heard Byron’s pleas. He placed the knife on Emerald’s skin, just
below her left ear. She lay on her side, squirming against her restraints and
screaming. Trapper peered at Diego, who gave him a small nod. At the sign,
Trapper’s knife began to move across Emerald’s neck. It had only traveled less
than a centimeter before Trapper suddenly flew backward, struck by an invisible
force. He hit the floor, rolled twice, and skidded to stop against a large
toolbox, which toppled over onto him.

“How in the—?” Diego
began.

Byron couldn’t believe
what he’d seen either, but he knew what it meant. He watched in awe as Emerald
blasted her hands apart, destroying the tape binding her. Then she grabbed a
tool on the table and began hacking away at the tape around her legs. Diego
yelled at Trapper to get up, but Trapper was badly disoriented after his spill.

Diego turned to Markorian
and pointed at Emerald. “Are you going to stand around and watch or tackle
her?”

Markorian ran at her with
full force, but Emerald blasted him away like he was a flimsy sheet of paper.
Despite all his work with Clardonsky on developing his blasting ability, Byron
had never gotten used to how bizarre using invisible energy blasts might appear
to an observer. It reminded him of a really bad action movie where actors fell
without being touched. Then Trapper got up, and rushed the table with Markorian
a second time. Emerald blast-jumped as soon as they reached her. She climbed
impossibly high into the air, yet she looked as graceful as a ballerina. She
landed on top of the nearest jet, the same one with Otto’s blood painted on its
underside. Diego stepped close to Byron.

“Trapper, why don’t you
come over here and kill Byron, instead. He’s not going anywhere.”

Following orders,
Trapper grabbed his knife and limped around the table to where Byron lay, still
bound and aching, now in every part of his body. Emerald stepped to the edge of
the jet and pointed her finger at Trapper.

“If Byron dies, I will
hunt you down. I will devote everything I am to finding and killing you. It
will be my purpose in life. So think twice before touching him.”

Diego chuckled as he
waved his hand at her dismissively. “Ignore that. Just get over here and slice
his throat.”

Emerald jumped off the
jet and landed near Diego, as she landed, she blasted at him with both hands.
Diego evaded her blasts and knocked her off of her feet with a sweep. Emerald
hit the ground and rolled as he tried to bring his foot down on her stomach.
While she was down, Diego grabbed a large wrench from off the floor.

“Okay,” he said, “this
should even things up!”

He swung at her as she stood.
He aimed at her head, but hit her shoulder. Emerald cried out and shot a blast
at Diego with her other hand. Diego avoided this blast as easily as the first.
His second swing was an uppercut to her skull. His arm made a large arc,
putting incredible velocity into the wrench. It missed widely as Emerald
blasted him in the chest, knocking him back several meters. She followed it
with more blasts, each one sliding Diego back across the floor. Markorian
charged at her from behind. Byron tried to shout a warning, but couldn’t move
his jaw. He hit Emerald hard, crashing with her into the table. Tools, empty
glass bottles, boxes, and other items sitting on the table, including Trappers
tablet, spilled onto the floor causing a loud clamor that hurt Byron’s right
ear as it was pressed against the ground.

Trapper ran at Emerald
with his knife held high above his head. He screamed obscenities at her as he
brought the knife down at her throat. Emerald gripped his wrist with her left
hand and slashed at him with one of the broken glass bottles with her right. Starting
above Trapper’s right eye, the bottle plunged into Trapper’s face and cut a
jagged line through his eyeball, into his nose, and across his mouth. Trapper
tried to turn away as it tore apart his face, but all it did was make the cut
look like a half-circle. He dropped his knife and backed away clutching his
bleeding head with both hands as he screamed.

Diego swung at Emerald
from behind, but she ducked, and the wrench hit Markorian in the side of the
head with a glancing blow. Emerald grabbed something from among all the items
that had spilled and used a blast to jump away from the scene, safely on the
top of the jet again. In her hands, she had Trapper’s tablet.

“Trapper, she has your
tablet,” Diego said. “Please tell me she doesn’t know the password to unlock
it.”

“Sure I do,” she said.
“He hasn’t changed it since our first month here. It’s my name.”

“And what are you going
to do, Emerald?” Diego smirked as he watched her. “This isn’t the best time to
be checking your email. I mean, come on, I’m trying to kill you!”

“I’m sending an E-chat
to administration letting them know that there’s a dead body in our air
hangar.” When Emerald finished typing, she chucked the tablet at Diego. It
missed him and shattered against the floor.

Diego’s expression
transformed into a furious grimace. He hurried over to Trapper and smacked him several
times on the face and head with an open palm. “This is your fault, so you will
take credit for all of this. Do you understand?”

Trapper nodded. Diego
took the knife from Trapper’s fingers and looked at it. Then he put the blade
back in Trapper’s hand, grabbed Trapper’s wrist, and shoved the blade into his
own stomach. Immediately after, Diego pulled the blade out and gripped the bleeding
wound. He turned to Markorian, half-doubled over in pain.

“We have about three
minutes before they get here. Free Byron and don’t talk to anyone until you’ve
spoken to me or my lawyer.” Once he was satisfied that Markorian was doing his
job, Diego waved Trapper to him and spoke directions in his ear for a long
time. When he was done, he laid on the ground sprawled out and kept still.
Twenty seconds later, while Markorian was still working at undoing the bonds
around Byron’s limbs, several Elite came in, guns at the ready. Commander Wu
followed in behind them.

“You,” Wu pointed to
one of the Elite, “take pictures.” Then he pointed at others. “You three, find
out who is wounded and how badly.”

From across the hangar,
Trapper began to laugh. It was a nasty, gargling sound that grew louder and
louder. He stood up and walked toward Wu with his knife stained in Diego’s
blood. Wu pulled out a gun and pointed it at Trapper’s bleeding face.

“Shut up and drop that.”
The knife hit the ground with a clatter. “Someone cuff him.”

Commander Wu looked
down at Byron right as Markorian finished getting the bindings off his hands.
One of the Elite helped Byron stand. Wu took a long look at Byron’s face. Then
nodded at him stoically. His attention turned to Emerald who sat on top of the
jet, watching from a huddled position. “Are you all right?” he asked her.

Emerald didn’t seem to
know how to answer.

The cleanup work began.
Diego was taken out first for immediate medical attention. Trapper went second.
Then Diego’s friend, Markorian, who’d been hit in the head with the wrench, and
finally Byron and Emerald went together. When Byron left the hangar in a
wheelchair, Elite were still taking pictures of the scene and Otto’s body.

The infirmary was busy
that evening. Bandages covered most of Omar’s face where the cage fencing had torn
him up. Diego’s stomach had to be repaired. Emerald needed stitches under her
ear, not to mention she had a fractured clavicle from the wrench. Diego’s
friend had a cracked skull. Trapper, handcuffed to his bed, also had his face
wrapped. The doctor put Byron to sleep while he worked on his jaw and teeth.
When Byron woke, he felt like his whole head had been shoved into a soup can.
Emerald sat in a chair beside him, holding his hand. It took him quite a while
to realize she was there. She wore a pair of scrubs and had a big bandage on
her neck. Her face was not that of a seventeen-year-old, but of someone much
more mature.

“Emerald,” he tried to
say, but his jaw wouldn’t move, so it sounded like, “Ehrerrow.” He would have
been able to speak better had his lips and face not been so swollen and his jaw
not splinted.

She gave him a smile,
but it wasn’t a good one. The skin around her nostrils was red and flaky. She
had bags under her eyes so dark they looked like they might have been put there
with makeup. In her left hand she toyed with a bit of tissue paper that had
been crumpled up to a marble-sized ball.

“I love you, Emerald,”
Byron said, slandering those words, too.

She smiled. “You should
start calling me Emily. That’s what my family calls me. I came up with Emerald
during my tattoo phase in high school … when I didn’t want to be myself
anymore. I think it’s time to go back to Emily.”

Then he made a gesture
asking for something with which he could write. She left and came back with a
pad of paper and a pen. He took it and wrote:
I like that even better
.

She read it and nodded.
“Good.”

Byron wrote further.
Why
didn’t you tell me about your abilities?

Emily started to
answer, but stopped. She shook her head and began to sob. Byron didn’t know
what he’d done to upset her. He reached out and touched her arm, but the
gesture seemed to give her no comfort. Finally he scribbled down:
Why are
you crying? Are you okay?

“Because my dad …
didn’t die … in a car accident.” Her face turned bright red as she tried to mop
up her tears with the small piece of tissue. “We were on the roof. Fixing it.
Dinking around. He just—he just—threw some water at me. I put my hands up.
That’s all I did! I put my hands up to block the water, and my dad flew off the
roof into our garden. We had this little fence and it impaled him! And I—I told
everyone that he jumped!”

Byron started to write
down how sorry he felt, but knew those words wouldn’t help. Instead, he ripped
the sheet of paper off the pad and crushed it into a ball. He held the ball in
his hand and waited for Emily to watch. When Byron had her attention, he used a
gentle blast to levitate it above his hand. Emily observed him with
astonishment for a moment, then the tears began again as she got up and hugged
him.

The last month of Elite
training passed by in an emotional blur. Otto’s service was never held.
Apparently his parents demanded his body back without delay. Nothing was said
or announced by the administration because not much was known. From what Byron
heard around the school, Trapper took full blame for everything. He claimed
he’d been stalking Diego because of an attraction to him he’d felt since the
first day of training. He had lured Diego to the hangar so Diego could watch
him kill Otto and then Emily. When Byron and Diego’s friend showed up, Trapper
forced Diego’s friend to stun Byron and tie him up by threatening to slit Emily’s
throat. After Emily somehow kicked Trapper backward, a large fight ensued that
resulted in Diego accidentally hitting his friend in the head, Trapper stabbing
Diego, and Emily cutting open Trapper’s face. It was a lame story, but Diego
and Markorian corroborated it. In the end it was two people’s word against
three.

The day after his
release from the infirmary, Byron had long meetings with Commander Wu and five
other members of the administration. So did Emily. During hers she informed
Commander Wu about her abilities and why she’d hidden them and lied about her
age. Byron confessed how he’d hidden Trapper’s knife because he thought he was
helping Trapper avoid false accusations. They both recounted their version of
the events several times, answering hundreds of questions until Byron’s head
pounded from so much mumbling, and his wrist ached from so much writing. The
next day was almost as bad. When the meetings finally ended, Commander Wu
brought Emily and Byron into his office. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in
three days. As soon as they all sat, he let go a deep sigh.

“I thank both of you
for enduring so many meetings last two days. I know you are tired. I am tired.
Now I brought you here to tell you what is going to happen starting tomorrow.
Obviously, Trapper Jones is arrested. No more school. I suspected him for very
long time, but had no evidence to do anything. I regret it very much, but both
of you—in your loyalty— either provided him with alibis or concealed the weapon
he used to commit his crimes. Second, Diego Newblood and Jeffrey Markorian will
return to class tomorrow—”

“But, sir!” Emily
cried. “You can’t possibly let him back!”

“I have no choice. We
have no evidence to verify your testimonies. He has nine other witnesses who
back his testimony about Trapper’s infatuation with him. He even gave me dozens
of notes written by Trapper. If I kick him out, he will sue us and make bad
press. The people above me have said to let him finish. He tells me he plans to
leave Elite after training if we agree to release him from service. He has other
interests, I suppose. I will keep my eye on him until graduation. Don’t worry.
In meantime, finish your semester and we will talk about what to do with your
abilities. It may interest you to know I have found two more like you. One of
them is younger. Good boy. Victor Wrobel. The other is girl. Fifteen. I forget
her name. Havelsomething. Both of you will train them. I have plans for you
away from Elite. Like I said, we will talk more after graduation. I noticed you
two applied for same assignments after graduation. I don’t think you need to
worry about being separated in near future.”