Psion Omega (Psion series Book 5) (37 page)

Tuesday, November 11, 2087

THE AIR IN the forest was so hot Sammy
could taste it, bitter and metallic like the large key in his hand. His shadow
had given it to him as he did every time Sammy had the dream. To the right, a
vast lake called to him with its usual promise of a cool and refreshing
eternity. A raft bobbed and splashed in the choppy waters, silently inviting
him to use the key, unlock the padlock, and float away into infinite peace. But
to the left was the cave … it beckoned to Sammy in a whisper so faint he
couldn’t actually hear it, yet in a voice so sweet he craved more.

His feet took him
toward the cave, seemingly of their own accord. Into the blackness. It was
cooler here, especially on his wet brow, and the further in he walked, the
cooler it grew. Had he not been in abject darkness, Sammy would have seen his
breath. Yet he continued to sweat.

Finally he reached
the steps. Countless times before, he had stood on the precipice, his wet, cold
toes dangling over the edge of the first stone stair. Though he’d thought about
it numerous times, he had never gone down.

You’re going to die. Don’t you want to know what’s down there?

That one suggestion
was all it took. Step after step Sammy descended, still dripping sweat that
fell in small
plops
onto the stone.
He could tell when he was nearing the end because the scent changed, gradually
growing so fetid and rank that breathing became painful. At the bottom Sammy
bumped into what could only be an iron door. He ran his fingers along the
paneling and touched the bracings until he found the large keyhole on the left
side. Its shape perfectly matched the head of the key in his other hand.

“Sammy,” a weak
female voice called to him from inside. “Save me.”

Jeffie
.

It was her voice.
He knew that. And yet he also knew that it wasn’t her. Something in his gut
told him to get away, get out, RUN.

“Sammy … she’s
hurting me. She’s killing me!” Jeffie pleaded with more urgency. The pain in
her voice put his nerves on edge.

He held up the key
and tried to decide.

Something jostled
him. The darkness, the cave, the smell, the key, and the door … all of it faded
away. He was huddled in a small nook with Jeffie and Vitoria cramped in with
him, the girls still asleep.

Sammy swore under
his breath. He had told Jeffie and Vitoria he would keep watch. A glance at his
watch told him he’d been out for over four hours.
Stupid. Careless
. Yet he’d needed the rest.
And I didn’t wet myself for a change
. Even a few hours of cramped,
fitful sleep was better than nothing.

After a drone had
spotted Vitoria in the sewer, the three teammates had dashed to grab their
equipment packs and head down the tunnel they had carved into the city block’s
foundations. Once inside the foundation’s service corridors deep in the earth,
they ran for over two hours carrying their heavy packs. The service tunnels
were a vast and byzantine maze that connected not only to the N Tower, but
multiple skyscrapers in the vicinity. Sammy had committed the whole of it to
memory, down to the small nooks and crannies like the one they slept in now.

He sat up, dizzy
and fatigued. The air around them was thick with the scent of drilling
chemicals and body odor.
We need water
,
Sammy thought. He knew which pipes carried it, but also knew that bursting a
pipe would be the same as flashing a sign at the Aegis saying, “Here we are!”

Sammy activated his
com to check in with Justice and Thomas, but he was too far underground to get
any reception. He checked the time. 0542.

He nudged Jeffie
first. “Hey,” he whispered, “wake up.”

Jeffie’s eyes
opened, one completely blood shot, the other only half so.

“Hiya,” she
muttered, her voice hoarse and dry. “How do I look?”

“Hotter than ever.”

She laughed weakly.
“What time is it?”

“Four hours left.
And some change.” They had coordinated with Commander Byron to activate the
kill code at 1000 Rio time and 0800 Orlando time because Rio was two hours
ahead of Orlando. The march on Washington D.C. would begin at sunrise, which
would occur at 0645. By the time the marchers actually reached downtown D.C.
the CAG agents would be dead.

Jeffie watched
Vitoria for a long time. “Is she going to make it out of here alive? Will she
even go when she’s done her part?”

Sammy sighed and
tried to rub the sleep from his face. “Can we make her do anything she doesn’t
want to do?”

“We don’t have a
suit for her,” Jeffie added.

“If it comes to
that, it comes to that.”

“I can hear you,”
Vitoria muttered.

“Oh good,” Jeffie
responded. “Because it’s time to get up.”

Toad’s sister
cursed in Portuguese. “Am I in hell? Because it’s blazing hot and I’m stuck
with the two of you.” Sarcasm laced her weary voice.

“What now?” Jeffie
asked. “We still have a lot of time to kill before we need to be in the white
room.”

“We have four
hours.” Sammy kicked his large equipment pack. “It’s going to take us a while
to get back to the N Tower. I led us far away to lose the Aegis. But I bet
they’re still looking for us. Maybe Thirteens too. We need to drink as much
water as we can stomach and make our way to the elevator without them finding
us.”

Sammy pulled his
gun and fired a round to burst open the pipe. Cold water sprayed out in a wild
gush from above, splashing onto Sammy’s face, in his mouth, and running down
his neck into his clothes. It was the greatest thing he could remember. He
drank and drank, letting the water cool his body and refresh his spirit. The
pleasure of it reminded him of his dream—the cave and the lake—and
he wondered why the cave had ever enticed him. After he, Jeffie, and Vitoria
drank their fill, they picked up their packs and hurried away.

It took Sammy well
over an hour to lead them to the right elevator. The moment the lift doors
opened, Jeffie destroyed the video camera inside it with a single shot. Sammy
popped the top hatch of the box and jammed the elevator’s rails so it couldn’t
move while Jeffie helped Vitoria climb up through the top. Once they were all
on top of the elevator Jeffie lit a flare.

“How far up is it?”
she asked.

“Is what?” Vitoria
asked.

“The crawlspace,”
Sammy answered. “This elevator won’t take us to the white floor. It’s not even
part of the N Tower. It’s one of many that service all the levels of these
utility tunnels. But this one in particular runs up to the ground level of a
building across the street from N Tower. And,” Sammy nodded his head toward the
empty space above them, “up there is a crawlspace that connects this elevator
shaft to the shaft of elevator number 13 of the N Tower. Elevator 13
does
reach the white, black, and red
floors. But those floors are much deeper than where we are now.”

“So we go up, over,
and down,” Vitoria said.

“Up, over, and
down.”
To our deaths.

The air in the
elevator shaft was much cooler compared to the furnace-like heat in the utility
tunnels. As they climbed the elevator’s thick cables, the sweat and water
soaking their clothes chilled them. By the time they reached the connecting
crawlspace, Sammy’s arms and legs were cramped and his fingers raw.

They rested in the
crawlspace for as long as they dared, but getting caught or trapped inside the
small passageway would mean being turned into Swiss cheese by enemy guns. Sammy
had no idea if Elevator 13 was above or below them, but he guessed it was
above. When it was time to enter the second elevator shaft, Jeffie dropped a
flare. They watched it tumble down out of sight. Then, warily, they started the
descent. According to Sammy’s com it was 0715. Almost three hours to kill.
Or be killed
.

Halfway down, the
second elevator shaft grew lighter, the illumination coming from beneath them.
Sammy cursed; he’d been wrong. The elevator was below and moving upward
rapidly.

“Jump on it,” Sammy
said as the box approached. “Try not to make any noise.”

The elevator
reached them in moments. The car was silent save for the rushing of air around
them. The three managed soft landings, the Ultra with help from the Psions.
Vitoria knelt and pressed her ear against the top hatch of the elevator, then
signaled to Sammy that she wanted to make a move. He signaled back to do no
such thing. She repeated her request more adamantly.

With a curt nod,
Sammy gave her his gun. Vitoria stayed on her knees for a moment longer,
muttering to herself. Then she stood, aimed her gun in five places, and fired
five times in rapid succession. Sammy and Jeffie pulled open the top hatch and
found four dead Thirteens inside, each with a bullet to the head. Jeffie
dropped down and whirled to destroy the camera, but didn’t fire. Vitoria had
already taken that out too.

Jeffie glowered at
her. “Showoff.”

Vitoria smirked as
she pushed the emergency stop button. However, the elevator did not stop. Vitoria’s
smile vanished and she pushed it again.

“They’ve overridden
the controls,” Sammy said. “We have to get out!”

They worked
furiously to cut through the floor as the car rose rapidly. Once Vitoria and
Jeffie had the floor partially cut, Sammy blasted the rest away. “Take the
packs and go, Jeffie!”

After Jeffie jumped
down feet first, Sammy followed. Vitoria went last. As he fell, he used wall
blasts to slow his descent. When Vitoria caught up to him, he caught her in his
arms with an “
oof
.”

“I swear … you
don’t … look this heavy,” he groaned. Despite the joke, getting them down the
shaft in one piece was not easy. It took well-timed blast after blast off the
walls with only his feet to safely descend. When he needed a rest, Sammy
grabbed the cables and hung on with his limbs coiled around the cords, Vitoria
hanging beside him.

“Are you going to
make it?” she asked.

His arms were done,
he hadn’t eaten in hours, and Vitoria felt like a boulder. “Oh yeah,” he said.
“I’m fine.”

When they reached
the bottom, she fell out of Sammy’s arms onto the ground. Sammy sat down amidst
the hydraulics and machinery that powered the lift. His arms hung limply at his
side.

“Destroy the
elevator?” Jeffie asked.

“No. That’s
Vitoria’s only way out.”

“Sammy—”
Vitoria began, but he cut her off.

“It’s not up for
discussion.” He pointed up at the doors to the white floor a few meters above
them. “As soon as you open those doors, you get yourself to safety.
Then
we’ll destroy the elevator.”

They fell silent.
Sammy wiped the sweat off his brow, took a deep breath, and let it out as
slowly as he could. His arms still ached; the rest of his body was no better.
He climbed to his feet, slinging one of the packs over his shoulder.

“We’re here way too
early,” Jeffie said. “There’s too much time to kill before Byron and Al—”

“Things haven’t
gone as planned,” Sammy answered. “What do you want to do? We can’t risk
getting caught in the utility tunnels and not reaching the white floor. And we
can’t hide in the elevator shaft.”

He dug through his
pack and took out three packs of energy paste and distributed them to the team.
Vitoria shook her head. “You only brought four.”

“And you need one
as much as we do.” Sammy held it out to her until she took it. The paste was
bitter and tangy, but gave him a much-needed boost. Yet it couldn’t fix the
weariness deep in his bones that came from the knowledge that his time was
rapidly running out.

“Okay,” Jeffie said
with a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”

* * * * *

Byron sat in a cell in the depths of
the Orlando N Tower, waiting for the interrogation he knew would come. His face
and arms were bruised from the Aegis tackling and subduing him in the lobby of
the building hours ago. He’d hoped they would believe what they wanted to see:
a deranged homeless man raving about things he did not understand. Fortunately,
he’d gotten his wish.