Psion Omega (Psion series Book 5) (38 page)

After sedating him,
roughing him up, and searching him, the Aegis found no weapons or contraband,
so they chucked him in a cell without performing a more thorough examination.
But soon they would return. Once they realized he had two rather expensive
bionic legs, they’d draw blood and run a DNA test. Being an operative in the
NWG before the Schism meant his DNA was still on file in CAG records. In
minutes, they would know exactly who he was.

Still a little
groggy, the commander lay on the floor wondering how many other people had been
trapped in the same four walls surrounding him. Sammy had spent weeks on the
black floor in Rio. How many other terrified children, broken parents, and lost
souls who ran afoul of the Aegis and Thirteens had been imprisoned here? He ran
his fingers on the smooth surface of the white wall, and stopped when he felt a
series of scratches.

He peered at them
in the dim light. It took almost a minute of squinting and running his fingers
over them before he made out the words:
We
are alone.
Each letter was fainter than the one preceding it. Some poor kid
had gouged the words into the wall. Had Sammy carved something similar almost
two years ago? Byron touched them again and nearly lost his composure.

“God … what have I
done with my life?” he asked in a whisper. “I have led children … even my own
son … to the slaughter. Is this what you wanted from me?”

Not two years ago
Commander Byron had possessed such vigor and enthusiasm for his work. All the
way up until he was removed as the head of Beta headquarters. He had trained
all the Betas, the best fighters and the worst. He thought of Victor. Could
Wrobel’s betrayal of the NWG and subsequent madness have been prevented with a
little more attention and care from a friend? It both amazed and terrified
Byron to think that in the great and vast river of life, he’d had enough
influence and power to shape the course of events large and small. It was a
burden so few men and women ever experienced.

What if I could have prevented this war? What if one decision
somewhere along the way made the difference?

Before Commander
Byron could ponder on these questions further, the door opened and two Aegis
grabbed him under the arms and led him out of the room. To keep up appearances,
Byron mumbled incoherently to himself in Amos’s voice. “This ain’t no bread
house. Where’s Marjorie? She said they got the best bread at the bread house,
don’tcha know?”

“Shut up, old man,”
one of the Aegis said, twisting Byron’s arm so hard he nearly broke it.

Byron groaned and
complained in character, though his arm pulsed painfully each time he moved it.
He hoped he hadn’t torn a muscle.

They led him down a
hall to a room with a black door. Inside was a chair, which they thrust him
into and slammed the door shut. Then they stripped off his clothes leaving him
naked and cold. As he’d suspected, they quickly noticed his bionic limbs. The
Aegis who first spotted them drew his weapon and pointed it between Byron’s
eyes.

“Move and you’re
dead.” Then, using the jerking and shrieking language of the Thirteens, he told
his fellow Aegis to secure Byron and call in back up. Minutes later, seven more
Aegis and a Thirteen arrived. One of the Aegis, under the Thirteen’s orders,
removed the commander’s bionic legs while another drew his blood. His method
for extracting the blood was crude. He cut Byron with a knife and caught some
in a vial.

The bionic legs
that Dr. Rosmir had fashioned for Commander Byron after the battle on Capitol
Island were beautiful and well-designed with an implant attachment surgically
integrated into the commander’s bone so the limbs themselves could be removed
easily for updates and reparations. Had they not been so easy to disconnect,
the Aegis might have simply hacked them off with a butcher’s knife.

It wasn’t ten
minutes before the DNA test identified him as Walter Tennyson Byron, former
Elite-turned-NWG government agent. They even had access to his pre-Schism
classified medical files, which revealed that he was a Psion.

The atmosphere in
the room changed. The Aegis drew their guns and pointed them at the commander’s
chest. The sole Thirteen in the room fixed his blood red eyes on Byron’s. He
had burned a ring of triangles onto his face, all pointed inward, making his
face look smaller and more menacing. His teeth were ground into sharp points as
well. The scars on his throat and the deep, raspy voice told Byron that the
Thirteen had badly damaged vocal cords.

“Why are you here,
poet?” Triangle-Face asked. “Another bomb? Planning to take down our towers one
by one?” He shoved a knife up into the commander’s nostril, but didn’t put
enough pressure on it to open the skin. “Your D.C. diversion won’t work. Every
tower is guarded. We already have a team sent to detain the infiltrators at the
Rio Tower.”

The pressure from
the blade increased until the commander felt a stream of blood tumble down onto
his lip. Commander Byron blew it onto the face of the Thirteen, who grinned and
licked at it. Then he pulled the knife through the commander’s skin, creating a
flare of pain. “Remember those creams we used to use on our more stubborn
prisoners?” Triangle-Face asked one of the Aegis. “Why don’t you go find some
so we can use them on this one? This poet will tell us everything he knows
rather quickly.”

“Wait!” Byron said,
now through thick blood covering his lips. “I will tell you! I am a decoy.”

“From what?”

“The white floor.
They wanted access to the white floor. Needed a high profile target to draw
your attention.”

“No one can get to
the white floor, poet,” the Thirteen growled. “Not without our knowledge.”

Byron said nothing.
Instead he met the Thirteen’s gaze and waited for him to make the next move.

“If what you say is
the truth,” the Thirteen growled, “you’ll get a quick death. If you’re lying,
the creams … and a death as slow as I can make it.”

“The team is
already there. Check for yourself.” Byron’s voice carried a mixture of distress
and pride, hoping to convince the Thirteen that what he said was true.

Triangle-Face
growled, frustration in his red eyes. The white rooms had no cameras, no
surveillance systems. A team would have to go down and check the doors for
signs of forced entry. Commander Byron watched him closely.

Following a series
of jerks and shrieks, the Thirteen left the room. If Byron had to guess, he’d
say Triangle-Face’s orders had been to kill the prisoner if he moved. All the
Aegis kept their guns trained on him. The bloodlust shone in their eyes.
They may not wait for an order to kill me
,
Byron thought as he counted methodically in silence.

When he reached one
hundred, he smiled at the Aegis around him. “I thank you all for being so
hospitable. I feared my interaction with you would leave me much more injured
than a simple nose piercing job gone bad.”

A couple of their
fingers twitched.

“But as I simply
cannot sit here all day, I leave you with one parting word …
Emeralds
.”

A soft click came
from one of his bionic legs resting two meters away from him. Byron doubted
anyone else heard the sound. He took a deep breath through his nose and then
counted upward from one, praying that the Aegis didn’t stab him before he
reached ten. At eight, everyone in the room except himself dropped to the
floor. He took another deep breath through his nose, clogged with deeply
implanted nasal filters, and waited until the gas dissipated enough that he
could safely speak.

“Albert,” he
ordered the com built into his bionic leg. He waited half a minute, but no
answer. A brief flare of worry rose in his chest. He quickly extinguished it by
reminding himself of his son’s skill and capability. “Albert.”

Still no response.

“Albert.”

Byron pulled at his
restraints while his stubbed legs dangled over the end of the chair, the
metallic attachments gleaming whenever they caught the light. Each second that
passed without an answer felt like an hour.

“Albert.”

He tried to tug
himself free again but lost his balance and fell to the floor, his face smacked
hard on the tile. Stars burst in his vision and pain blossomed in his skull. He
lay on the ground unable to move, his cheek mashed against the floor. He could
do nothing but hope the Aegis did not wake. Byron had never felt so helpless or
pathetic.
It can’t end this way
.
Sammy and Jeffie are counting on me
.
Their deaths will not be in vain
.

The door swung
open. He strained his muscles to get free, but it couldn’t be done.

“Dad?”

“Hurry!” the
commander hissed.

Several rounds were
fired as Albert gave a bullet to each of the Aegis in the room. Then he
uncuffed his father.

Byron rubbed his
wrists where the skin had peeled away from his attempts to wrench himself free.
“What kept you?”

“It’s only been a
few minutes, Dad. I gassed the Thirteen, cut off his thumb, and shoved him up
out of the elevator hatch. Then I got here as fast as I could. I thought I
worked pretty efficiently, thank you very much.”

“Is everything in
place?” the commander asked as he reattached his legs to their mechanic joints
and donned the uniform of a dead Aegis.

“Yep.”

Albert had been
atop Elevator 13 for hours. While Byron had entered the lobby dressed as a
belligerent homeless man, Albert had killed an Aegis patrolling outside the
building, taken his clothes, and entered the tower in the Aegis’ uniform. Once
inside the elevator, Albert had covered the surveillance camera with a tiny
screen that showed a twelve-hour recording of people getting on and off an
elevator from the same angle as the existing camera. Then he slipped through
the top elevator hatch and waited for the signal.
Emeralds
not only triggered the gas from the bionic leg, but told
Albert to come immediately to the black floor and retrieve the commander.

Byron checked the
time. “Two hours until launch.”

They left the room
with the black door and checked the rest of the cells on the floor for prisoners.
They found none. Albert had propped open the elevator with the body of
Triangle-Face. Using the dead man’s finger and eye, they ordered the elevator
to take them to the white floor. Just before the elevator passed the red floor
on its way down, the lift abruptly came to a halt.

“What’s going on?”
Albert asked.

“I think our plan
has failed.”

Albert grabbed his
pack still atop the elevator, next to the dead Thirteen, and retrieved from it
the plasma blade. He fired it up and jammed the blade into the floor where it
slowly began to cut through the thick plate of tempered steel. The commander’s
son was nearly halfway done cutting a hole when the elevator began to move
again.

“Hurry,” Byron
muttered.

Albert looked up.
“What’s happening now?”

“They have taken
control over the elevator.”

The lift finished
the descent to the red floor. Byron jammed the
DOOR CLOSE
button, but it didn’t stay closed. As the
commander crouched low and took cover behind the right door side panel, his son
did the same on the left. A grenade flew toward them just as the doors opened,
but Byron blasted it back the way it came. The shrieks of Thirteens followed.

BOOM!

Debris and smoke
filled the air accompanied by a heat wave that dampened Byron’s face with
sweat. Using a flexiscope from Albert’s pack, he peered around the corner.
Through the smoke and ash he saw figures moving about. Some Thirteens were
dressed in their red-melting-to-black uniforms, jagged 13 symbols blazoned over
the breast, others had fully mutilated bodies in wanton displays of undress.

“Finish cutting the
hole,” the commander ordered. “I’ll keep them back.”

They were a swarm
of bees, angry, humming, and constantly moving. Each time the commander thought
he had one in his sights, he fired his syshée, but missed. With his other hand
he blasted a shield wide enough to protect himself and Albert, who crouched
behind him. Not for the first time, he wished he had his real legs, and the
ability to jump-blast. He was an old man now, slow, and needed every advantage
he could get.

Albert resumed
cutting with the plasma blade. Meanwhile, the nearest Thirteens worked their
way in closer. Byron finally clipped one of them in the leg, but she hardly
reacted. Two more Thirteens launched into the air trying to jump over his
shield. Commander Byron shot at one, but the Thirteen twisted around before the
gun even fired. The other he blasted back with a strong hand blast, leaving
Byron momentarily defenseless. In that instant, a bullet punched through the
tricep of his left arm.

“Albert!” the
commander cried as the nearest Thirteen kicked him in the face, breaking his
already badly cut nose and sending an explosion of sparks through his vision.

Before the
commander could recover, a gun was in his face. Without hesitation, the
Thirteen holding it began to pull the trigger when his head jerked and blood
spattered in the commander’s bleary eyes. The Thirteen fell on top of Byron. If
not for the gore pouring from the Thirteen’s head, Byron might have left the
body there for cover.