Psion Alpha (59 page)

“Thank you,” she
answered. “It’s a cold night, and I wanted your warmth.”

“Please take off your
shoes.” He glanced at her footwear, expensive and elegant. They perfectly
matched her dress.

The woman pursed her
lips as though she found the request mildly irritating, then she slipped them
off her feet. She wore no hosiery or socks. The fox knew this was because she
enjoyed having her bare feet displayed. Like the rest of her, they were
marvelous.

“You seem troubled,”
she said to him as she crossed the room. Before she reached the sitting area,
the fox slipped the gun into his left pocket, then put his right leg over the
left to conceal the weapon.

“Things always trouble
me,” he answered. “Pay it no mind.”

She occupied the love
seat opposite him, leaning against the right arm of the furniture and curling
her legs up. She rested her head on her right fist and let her left hand lay on
her hip. Her eyes fell upon his chess game, roving with curiosity over each
individual piece. “Does this mean you don’t want to tell me what is on your
mind?”

“Why don’t you tell me
what brought you here? It wasn’t love-making, I think. Or, at least, not only
that.”

“No, not only that. I
want to talk to you about a promotion.”

“A promotion?” the fox
repeated.

“Yes. I’ve given this a
great deal of thought. I’d like to have more authoritative duties delegated to
me. I want to be more involved in what you do. For the last several years, I’ve
sat in on meetings with you, assisted in administrative work, and occasionally
even participated. Now the time is ripe for me to take the next step.”

The fox thought about
her request before responding. “Your skill set is very specific: clandestine
operations, espionage, tying up loose ends.… At those things you are
indispensable. Perhaps it’s best to stay with what we’re good at.”

“Why not give me the
opportunity to try?”

The fox didn’t like the
tone creeping into her voice. “Why this sudden change? Are you so dissatisfied
with our arrangement of twenty years?”

“The arrangement
changed several months ago. And you are well aware of my level of satisfaction
in that regard.”

“Then why not state
what you really want? You want the
answer
to the solution.”

The woman shook her
head. “I want an apology from you for going back on your word.”

“You forget yourself—”
The fox inflected his voice to convey the maximum amount of warning possible.

She leaned forward and
stared him down. “I want you to ask for my forgiveness like an equal would
after abusing his power on a partner.”

The fox disliked this
wanton display of disrespect. He thought he had reminded her of her place last
year when humiliating her with the solution. Clearly the lesson hadn’t been
learned. Now there would have to be punishment. “If you do not wish to die
tonight, you will get on your knees and beg for your life. Then you—”

“No.”

“Then you will think of
ways to rectify—”

She laughed. “None of
these fantasies will become a reality!”

“Then we have reached
an end of our partnership.”

She sat up, uncurling
her legs from under her. He noticed the tautness in her muscles, the readiness
in her demeanor. She meant to attack.

“Diego,” he said to his
com. “Solve Katie Carpenter.”

Though the woman knew
what these words meant, she didn’t seem to care. Instead she waved at the fox
as though she were a doll on display in a toy store window, her hand at the
level of her chest. The fox waited for the telltale signs of the solution
taking effect: the profuse sweating, the bulging eyes, the severe agony. In
order to spare her life, he’d have to give the shutoff order before she crossed
the lethal threshold. It would be interesting to see if she would prostrate
herself in time for him to give her another chance at life. However, he noted
no change. She sat patiently waving at him in a robotic motion. Behind the fox,
Lacy growled.

“Diego, solve Katie
Carpenter.” The repeat of the order transformed the woman’s expression from one
of menace to one of triumph. “Fox override. Solve Katie Carpenter.”

“Looks like your toy
broke. So let’s try again with my request. First you apologize. Then
you
ask me for forgiveness for humiliating and betraying me.” Her voice rose with
each demand. “After that, YOU get down on your knees and beg
me
to spare
you—”

The fox fired the
syshée at her abdomen. He expected her to dodge the bullet with her Thirteen
reflexes. At that point he would have ordered Lacy to attack her while he aimed
the next bullet, adjusting the angle according to her reaction to Lacy’s
presence. Over the last forty seconds, he’d played out twenty-six different
scenarios of her death. But he hadn’t planned on one contingency.

She shielded the
bullet.

Now he understood her
waving. She had anticipated the gun being on his person. She had known it would
be aimed at her. The hand waving had been her way of preparing for being shot
at. The fox ground his teeth together until they squeaked.

“Clyde Engelman … ” he
spat at her through his clenched jaw. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d
felt such fury or betrayal. The look of triumph on her face only grew, and that
was when the fox felt his first real sense of the danger he faced in this
moment. She had spliced Anomaly Fourteen into her DNA.

“And Eleven, I think?”
he asked.

“And Eleven.”

He saw her plan unfold
before his mind like a blueprint being laid out on a table. The schemes, the
deception, the planning.

“How did you get past
the tracking in your system?” Though he asked the question aloud, it was more
for himself than her. “Our sensors would have detected your presence in the
building.”

Ever since forcing her
to drink the solution, he and Diego could see every place she visited at any
time since its ingestion. All the data was available at the push of a button,
stored in the Hive’s computers. She had never gone to Seattle.

Unless.…

He saw only one viable
solution. His eyes flitted back toward his office. She had used the computers
extensively while aiding him after Sammy’s escape five months ago.
Five
months.

“You hacked my
computer?”

Her eyes gave away the
answer. “The same setup Victor Wrobel used against the NWG. I’ve manipulated
the data on Diego’s servers to my liking since September. I admit the irony
still makes me laugh.”

“Brilliant, I admit.
Only one thing stops you now.”

“You?”

Indeed.

With his lips, he gave
the signal to Lacy to attack while at the same time he shot bullets at her from
five different angles. Rather than try to shield everything away, she used feet
blasts to jump over the volley of bullets and Lacy, making her body parallel
with the ceiling as she approached it. The fox continued to shoot at her, but
now her blast shields were more effective due to her decreasing the angle of his
attack.

Rather than fall
straight down, the woman blasted off the wall and over the fox, aiming blasts
at his head as she passed. The fox threw a lamp and shot at her as she landed.
From the other side, Lacy attacked again. The woman sidestepped the lamp, met
his bullets with blasts, and shielded her side from Lacy, who pounced and hit
an impenetrable wall. She fired several more blasts at him, forcing him to dive
for cover behind his own couch. Moments later, the couch was flung aside as
though by an invisible hand.

The fox fired until he
ran out of bullets.

The woman shook her
head at him. “That’s a problem.”

The fox wasn’t done
yet. He charged, letting his instincts control his movements. She favored her
right hand, which meant she would likely blast with it first. And she did. He
spun right, anticipating a follow-up blast with her left. He ducked and felt
the rush of the energy pass over him.
She will jump again.
This split
second anticipation allowed him to catch her ankle with his foot, spilling her to
the ground. She stopped her fall with a hand blast, but the fox was already
there, his foot smashing into her face, twisting her head around. She grunted
from the blow.

“I imagine for someone
immune to physical pain for thirty-five years, it must take some getting used
to,” he told her. He followed the kick with a running punch, stunning her with
a second blow to the head.

Lacy scampered through
the kitchen to get a clean angle at her target, the way she’d been meticulously
trained. The fox stayed close to the woman to inflict maximum damage with his
next attack, but she recklessly launched herself across the room, crashing into
his chess set, shattering the coffee table. Lacy cleared the love seat and
sailed toward the woman, jaws open and aimed for the back of her neck. By the
time Lacy closed the gap, the woman had blasted away, and Lacy landed on
several sharp shards of glass, deeply impaling her abdomen and chest. A whimper
was the last sound to escape the thylacine.

The woman landed about
three meters away from the fox, her hands bleeding from the broken glass. She
looked at the dying animal and clicked her tongue. “What a waste. How much do I
owe you for that?”

The fox glanced at Lacy
and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “We could kill each other
fighting like this. Nothing will come of it.” He used every bit of voice
inflection and every trick of vocal manipulation he knew to get her to calm
down and think reasonably. “Let’s call this a realization of change on my part …
and on yours.”

“Are you ready to beg?”
she asked.

Her tone and facial
expressions told him his technique had failed. He reverted to his next
strategy. Two guns. He needed two guns. Kitchen cupboard. Eight running-length
steps away. No other options would work. He turned and ran. She followed. As
soon as he pulled open the cupboard with his right hand, his left closed on the
first weapon. The cupboard swung back shut with violent force, hitting his face
and cutting him under his eye. He tried to fire at her, but there wasn’t enough
time. A blast hit him square in the chest. He lost his grip on the gun as he
flew backward and crashed into the wall. The force of his head hitting the
sheetrock left him dazed. She was right there, and she had his gun.

Rather than shoot him,
she brought down the butt of the rifle on his femur, using enough force that it
broke the bone. Then she did the same thing to the other one. The pain was
exhilarating and consuming.

“Don’t do this,” he
moaned. “Katie.… ”

“I AM THE QUEEN!” she
roared. “And this is what you call … checkmate.”

He sat on the floor
trying to block out the fiery pain from his thighs. His mind raced in circles
for options, data, possibilities, anything that might help him out of this
seemingly impossible predicament. The Queen grabbed his shirt and ripped it
open. Then she sauntered back into the kitchen and returned with several
knives.

“I always hated that
tattoo on your back. It’s big, ugly, and purple. Why didn’t you ever have it
removed?”

Through gritted teeth,
the fox answered, “The last piece of evidence of the foibles of my youth. I
always meant to have it removed, but never got around to it.”

“I’ll be happy to
remove it for you.”

The fox knew what was
coming. He had one last chance to change her mind. “Katie—Queen—listen. You
need to listen for one more minute. We are on the verge of winning this war and
shaping the world in the way we’ve always wanted it. You and I stand at the
cusp of gaining everything for which we’ve worked. Doing this—killing me—will
make it worth nothing! This is the endgame! We are right there. Can’t you see
that? Would you throw it all away? Can’t you see that we are right at the end?”

The Queen caressed the
fox’s cheek with the flat of the knife, licking her teeth as she did so. The
fox closed his eyes and prepared himself for the worst. He had lost.

“At the end? No, I
don’t think so, Mr. Newblood. I get the feeling we’re right at the beginning.”

THE END

Afterword

Fellow bookworms,

The
Psion
series is drawing to a close
with only book remaining—including the final showdown you’re all waiting for. As
those of you who follow me on Facebook or Twitter know, I’ve recently signed a
book deal to republish
Flight from Blithmore
with a new publisher under
a new title:
A Tale of Light and Shadow
. The book will be re-edited, re-cover-art-ed
(not a word), and receive some story changes. I’ll be introducing some
fantastical elements to the story, and it will be placed firmly in the YA
Historical Fantasy genre. Look for it at the end of July 2014.

In the meantime, I’ll
be working on two projects: a new series called
Super Six
, and the final
Psion novel. I cannot say for certain if
Psion Omega
will be released in
December of 2014 or not. It’d be wonderful, yes, but with so much on my plate,
it will be difficult. So, I ask for your patience and support as I work toward
finishing the series.

The best support you
can give would be to leave positive reviews on Amazon and Goodreads for all the
Psion books, share the books with your friends, and support
A Tale of Light
and Shadow
when it comes out next summer. Hopefully, if that book is
successful, it will lead to agents and publishers being interested in the Psion
series. Maybe someday these books will get picked up for wider distribution and
marketing. (Heck, maybe we’ll even get these books on the big screen someday!)

I can’t thank you
enough for your support. I have the best fans, and it’s all of you who motivate
me to write at nights, on weekends, and through vacations. I hope you enjoyed
this novel as much as the last three, or more so, and hope you continue to find
great joy and entertainment in visiting the Psion world. As I’ve stated before,
the Psion world won’t end with the
Psion
series. More books are planned,
at least two more series. They’re projects I’m incredibly excited about, but
are a long way off.

My best wishes to you, and long live Sammy!

Jacob Gowans