Psion Omega (Psion series Book 5) (46 page)

“Sammy …” she said. “I can’t breathe—”

“Get back to the computer!” he said as he charged
the Queen. “I’ll take care of her. Just tell me when it’s 1044!”

The Queen tried to stop Jeffie, but Sammy blasted
the Queen back against the wreckage of the elevator door. Jeffie spat out more
blood and phlegm, then began to crawl, pulling herself by her arms while her
legs dragged. The force of the floor against her body burned her insides.
Jeffie could hardly breathe, hardly talk, hardly move. She didn’t know how to
tell Sammy that she didn’t think she could make it across the room, let alone
live another fifteen minutes.

* * * * *

The Queen swung the blitzer at the blonde girl’s head as though the
gun was a baseball bat and the girl’s head was a ball sitting on its tee, but
Sammy stopped it with a blast. It flew from her hands and landed in the
elevator amongst the bodies.

Grunting, the girl continued to crawl at a snail’s
pace.
She can’t reach the computer. She
can’t
. But Sammy now blocked the Queen from getting to her.

The Queen blasted, dove, charged and spun, but Sammy
would not let her pass. He blasted at the Queen again, but she met him with her
own blasts, angled to push his aside. Sammy tried to adjust, but she was
faster, her blasts stronger. Her elbow met his chin; her fist rammed his gut.
Air rushed from his lungs. The Queen tried to bowl past him, but he snagged her
foot and pulled her down on top of him.

“Let go!” she shrieked.

When the Queen tried to blast Sammy’s head and snap
his neck, he gripped her hands in his, locking their fingers together. She
yanked and pulled but couldn’t loosen his grip. Then he blasted them both into
the air, and their heads connected with the ceiling. A tremendous pain filled
the Queen’s skull.

Sammy’s eyes rolled back as he fell to the ground.
The Queen’s thoughts turned hazy.
This is
my chance … to kill …
She crawled toward him even as her vision blurred and
darkened.
Must … now
. She put a hand
on his head. One blast, it was all she needed to finish it. Then the girl would
die so easily.

Do it! Before you
black out!

The pain growing in her head debilitated her. It was
not only from the collision with the ceiling, but from what she knew Sammy
would feel if she were to finish it. Sammy was no longer visible in all the
blurriness. The Queen tried to ignore the pain, fought to remain conscious, yet
the darkness won.

When her body collapsed on the floor, she was no
longer in the white room, but the cave. Whereas before the cave had always been
black as pitch, now it was light and filled with glass windows. Each glass
window was a stained and muraled face. She recognized the first ones: her
parents. Her first victims. Seeing them made her stomach roil uncomfortably.
The condensation on the glass made their eyes weep even as they followed her,
their expressions frozen just the way they’d been when she killed them. She
turned her eyes away from their faces and walked down the steps faster.

Next were the Queen’s victims at school, the girls
and boys she’d found who had laughed at her at the prom. She began to jog down
the steps, taking them two at a time.

Following her classmates were guards and officers
and others she’d killed in prison. Then came other inmates, then
civilians—people the fox had sent her after. Face after face after face,
each in horror, agony, or disbelief at the notion of their own deaths. All dead
by the Queen’s hand. The last faces at the bottom she knew well. They belonged
to Sammy and the pretty blonde girl. Even though she hadn’t killed them yet,
they were as good as dead when she woke.

When the Queen finally reached the black door of
flesh at the end of the cave, she found it still locked. The girl’s voice, the
Queen’s own teenage voice, still pleaded from the other side to be let out.

“What do I have to do?” the Queen screamed in
frustration as she beat at the door. “Where is the knife?”

No one answered. The Queen slammed her fist into
Sammy’s glass face, sending shards of blue, black, and white onto the cave
floor. She picked up the largest of them, one of Sammy’s eyes still visible,
and stabbed it at the door. Unlike last time, when the knife’s blade had sunk
easily into the flesh, the glass shattered against the door. The Queen found
another shard and tried again, but this attempt also failed.

She remembered the last time she had entered the
cave, and what she had found inside: the altar, the fire, and the pot. Within
the pot had been a heart.

“No.”

Even as she said the word, she realized what the
cave demanded. From among the glass shards, she found the longest. Her quaking
hands held it up high until the light from other windows made the glass glow,
and then she plunged it deep into her own chest. And after minutes of work, she
finally removed her own beating heart.

Holding it up to the door, the blackened flesh began
to turn brown, then pinkish. It gave a quiver and started to pulse. And when
she touched the heart to it, it fell away like a curtain that had been ripped
from its hanging rod. Swallowing hard, the Queen re-entered the room for the
first time in almost thirty-five years.

Young Katie sat on the floor, her hair covering her
face. Her skin was a pale yellow and tight like a mummy’s. When the Queen
entered, the girl looked up at her, and the Queen recoiled. Katie’s eyes were
sunken in, her face sallow with hollow cheeks, and her lips dry to the point of
cracking.

“Are you here to save me?” she asked when their eyes
met. “I—I made a mistake.”

“No,” the Queen answered, still clutching the
beating heart in her hand. “
I
made
the mistake. I tried to have it all.”

“Please …” the girl moaned, struggling to her feet
only to have the Queen push her back down. “I want to go.”

A clanging sound came from the far end of the room,
drawing the Queen’s attention. It was the white pot. She dragged the girl over
to have a look at it. As expected she found it empty. That was when it all
clicked.

“I can turn it off,” she muttered to herself. “One
or the other.”

Two Anomalies.
Set at odds against each other. The empathy of the Anomaly Eleven. Or the cold
power and fearlessness of the Anomaly Thirteen.

She looked at the heart. At the pot. At Katie. And
at the altar.

The choice was easy. She yanked Katie by the arm and
threw her atop the altar. Katie screamed. “What are you going to do?”

The Queen tightened her grip on her own heart. “I’m
going to finish the job.”

* * * * *

Sammy blinked awake just as the Queen pounced. His head throbbed, but
he was cognizant enough to roll away and get back to his feet. A glance at his
com told him it was 1039. He and the Queen had only been out for a minute or
two. He shook his head to chase away the thick cobwebs.

Across the room Jeffie was still trying to drag
herself to the computer. Her pace had grinded to a halt. She couldn’t seem to
pull herself any further. Fresh blood trailed behind her, and she sobbed as she
tried to crawl.

“Hurry, Jeffie,” he said. “Get to the computer! Five
minutes!”

“I can’t make it,” Jeffie cried from behind. “You do
it. I can’t.”

“You have to do it, Jeffie!”

The Queen rushed and blasted at him. Sammy tried to
blast jump, but was too slow. She caught him by the legs and flipped him over.
Sammy barely prevented himself from slamming his head into the floor by using
hand blasts to steady himself.

The Queen used the opportunity to attack Jeffie, but
Sammy blasted himself off the floor at the Queen, driving into her less than a
second before she reached Jeffie, who was only halfway to the computer. The
Queen and Sammy tumbled to the ground over each other. The Queen rammed her
elbow into Sammy’s face and tried to blast the side of his head, but Sammy
rolled over and kicked.

The Queen caught his foot and twisted, trying to
break his ankle, but Sammy let his body turn. As his other foot crossed in
front of her face, he blasted and shoved her backward. He hadn’t expected to
catch her off guard with that move, but it gave him an opening to tackle the
Queen and buy Jeffie more time.

As he did so, he climbed onto the Queen’s back and
wrapped his arms under hers, taking away her hand blasts. She tried to roll and
shake him off, but Sammy held strong. She fired her foot blasts, but without a
surface to push off, the blasts only made Sammy and the Queen rock up and down.

Sammy angled his palms at the Queen’s neck. One good
blast would kill her. But when he did it, nothing happened. He tried to blast
again. Nothing came.

I’m too tired
, he realized.
Gonna have to do this the old fashioned way.

“Keep going, Jeffie!” he shouted. “Four minutes!”

“She can’t!” the Queen cried out with exultation.
“She’s weak. You’re both weak.”

“Go, Jeffie!” he urged while the Queen tried to slam
her head into his. “Go!”

He had never felt so much emotion for anyone as he
did then, seeing Jeffie squirm on the ground like a worm, agony wracking her
body. Many would have given up. But not Jeffie. She loved him. She had told him
so more than once, but he had never returned the words.

Why? Why didn’t
I?

The Queen raged and jerked and spasmed in attempt to
throw Sammy off her. Sammy felt the energy leaving his limbs.

“What if I can’t?” Jeffie was in tears as she looked
back at Sammy.

“DIE!” the Queen screamed. Blood dripped from her
face, and she sucked down air. “Both of you … die.”

A deep burn crept up Sammy’s arms to his wrists and
fingers as he tried to contain the Queen’s struggling. He wouldn’t be able to
hold on much longer. He was too exhausted to blast. Too drained to fight. Too
spent of energy to do anything but hold on. “You can, Jeffie,” he breathed.
“Because …”

He’d wanted to be sure of it before he said the
words. He’d wanted some kind of sign. Something meaningful. But this was it.
This was meaningful, that they were willing to die together. Living together
would be better, but that wasn’t an option.

“Because I love you,” he croaked, voice still hoarse
from being choked. “Because I know you can.”

Jeffie turned back and continued to crawl. The
Queen’s eyes filled with horror. Her face paled. She screamed and grabbed at
Sammy’s hair, threw herself from side to side. Finally Sammy’s arms gave out
and the Queen squirmed from his grip. She tried to get her footing to blast at
Jeffie, but Sammy darted forward and slammed her into the wall.

The Queen blasted, but he hung on to her until they
fell to the floor. Sammy struck the ground first but rolled on top of her. As
she raised her hands to blast his face, Sammy jerked his head aside and drove
his fist into her face. The skin split in her cheek. Her eyes rolled back only
to refocus on his face. She brought her hands up again, but Sammy seized her
wrists, butted her head with his own, and punched her twice more.

She yanked her wrists from his grasp, but he locked
his fingers with hers in both hands. The Queen blasted with her feet, trying to
flip them over, but he anticipated it and twisted around so she landed on her
back once more with a heavy thud. Her hand came loose and she jammed it into
his face. Bones cracked and new pain exploded as his left eye went dark. Then
Sammy returned the favor by pummeling her again.

The Queen’s face swelled grotesquely, but he knew
his was no better. Sammy turned his good eye on Jeffie, who was now three-quarters
of the way across the room, lines of blood tracing her movements like red ink.

Taking advantage of this moment of distraction, the
Queen blasted Sammy up, and he slammed into the white surface of the ceiling
and fell back down in a shower of dust. He tried to break his fall with blasts,
but still couldn’t summon them. Instead he crashed into the floor and felt his
ribs crack.

Kneeling on the floor, the Queen panted from the
effort. Sammy didn’t want to move but necessity compelled him. He pushed himself
up and walked toward her. She fired blasts at him again and again, driving him
back. Still he kept coming. As he did, her own blasts began to weaken. The
Queen gritted her broken white teeth and curled her bruised, swollen lips but
couldn’t summon the energy to stop him.

When Sammy reached her, he grabbed her hands and
shoved her against the wall. Looking in her eyes, he saw something he’d never
seen before.

Defeat.

“You cheated.” She muttered the words like a curse.

He let his fist fly into her gut. “You forgot,
didn’t you?”

The Queen doubled over and groaned. “Cheater.”

Sammy hit her again. “Pain.” His knuckles ached, but
he did it again. “Suffering.”

The Queen fell to the floor, and her mouth moved
soundlessly.

Sammy knelt over her and struck her again. “Pain
gives us strength. Stripe taught me that. Here. In Rio.”