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

One hundred five
… one hundred twelve, one hundred twenty.

Sammy dropped down to the floor and used his left
hand to shield the bullets coming from the Thirteen who’d been more
conservative with his ammo. With his right, he pulled his syshée from its
holster and fired five bullets into the other Thirteen. The Thirteen had just
finished reloading when the barbs hit him in the chest and gut. He hit his
knees and sprayed his clip wildly around the hall. Sammy fired again, this time
making a headshot.

The other Thirteen didn’t have time to watch his
comrade die. He backed away, still firing at Sammy, who used his shields as he
pursued.

It’s like taking
candy from a baby
, a dark voice sang in Sammy’s head.

Sammy hummed as he fired a shot into the Thirteen’s
kneecap. The Thirteen staggered, but stayed standing. Sammy aimed again and
shot, this time hitting the other knee. The Thirteen’s weight nearly brought
him down to his knees, but the remarkable ability of the anomaly allowed him to
stand, his face in a twisted grimace of effort and fury. Sammy crossed the
distance between them, easily blasting away the last of the Thirteens bullets.

“You’re out,” he told the Thirteen.

The Thirteen shrieked and hissed at him. His face
was so screwed up with hate that his scars looked like wrinkles. He lunged as
soon as Sammy drew near enough, but Sammy caught his head and twisted hard
until he felt a snap. As the Thirteen slumped to the floor with a twitch, the
door ahead to the common room closed and locked.

Sammy checked the time.
Six minutes until the bombs go off.

Urgently, Sammy tried the door handle and found it
would not give. His holo-screen showed him the feed from the camera on the
other side of the door, and he watched as the Thirteens lined up around the
room, their guns aimed and waiting for him to enter. Using super-heated blasts
from his left thumb, Sammy melted the three hinges on the door. The stench of
liquid steel and burnt flesh smelled like melted sugar and vanilla. He looked
at his thumb and noted the raw, peeling flesh, but the pain was not as severe
as he’d expected.

Third degree
burns. May need a skin graft.
The thought hardly bothered him.

He knocked on the door with his syshée. One of the
Thirteens on the other side stepped close. “Who is it?” she asked in a sweet,
girlish voice.

“I’m here to negotiate the release of the prisoner
in exchange for the bomb codes. I have the detonator. I will give it to you
with the code to deactivate the weapons.”

Through the door and over the screen, he heard and
watched them communicate in their bizarre language of body jerks and shrieks.
After about thirty seconds, she returned. “Slide the detonator under the door.”

“Release the prisoner first.”

“Slide it under the door or he gets a bullet in the
skull.”

Via the holo-screen on his com, Sammy saw a Thirteen
put a gun to Brickert’s head. Brickert made no sign that he felt the nuzzle
press against his temple. Sammy set the detonator on the floor and eased it
slowly under the door with his foot. The girlish Thirteen bent down by the door
to pick it up.

Sammy watched her over the camera. Just before she
stood, he blasted the door with both hands using maximum power. The door, no
longer held in place by its hinges, flew inward, crushed the Thirteen, and
slammed into three more behind her. As he walked in the room, Sammy glanced at
his com.

Five minutes
.

Bullets greeted him like flies to a cut of meat. For
the moment, Brickert was forgotten by the animals. They all wanted the new guy.
One of the Thirteens screeched to the others, and in all the noise, Sammy heard
one say, “Berhane! Berhane!”

He smiled at the idea that they were aware of who he
was, that word had spread about him. He felt powerful and larger than himself.

At a glance, he counted ten Thirteens in the room
with him. Four had been knocked down by the door, but besides the girl nearest
to it no permanent damage had been done. He chose the angle that would give him
maximum shielding ability from as many enemies as possible. In his left hand,
he held the syshée with twenty-two rounds left in the magazine. Even with his
weapons—his Anomaly Fourteen and Eleven—he could not beat so many
enemies. Not without help.

Release me
.
Use me
.
Then you can put me away again and forget about me
.

Sammy had no choice. He exhaled and embraced the
darkness, the rage, the cold. Energy surged into his limbs. The pain in his
thumbs vanished. His fear melted.

His first shot found its mark in the forehead of one
of the Thirteens who’d been hit by the door. The second missed. The Thirteens
fanned out at once, quickly attempting to surround him. Sammy didn’t care this
time. He only wanted their attention on him and away from Brickert. He let them
move around the room, his body tensed, coiled, ready to spring when the time
was right. Though the camera had been set down, it was still on, broadcasting
the events in the room. Sammy positioned his body so that he could see behind
himself by watching the camera feed on his com screen. Without moving, he could
see around himself in almost 360 degrees.

For a brief moment, everything stopped. Sammy stayed
completely still, and the Thirteens froze, waiting to see if he would make a
move. Sammy, however, was content to be patient. He saw a Thirteen’s fingers
twitch and knew this would be the first one to fire. Sammy shifted his weight
ever so slightly, turning his body as he did to put himself in between two
Thirteens.

The moment the trigger finger twitched again, Sammy
blast jumped up to the ceiling. The bullets flew under him harmlessly, striking
the Thirteen behind Sammy twice in the chest. Now using hand blasts, Sammy
pushed hard off the ceiling at an angle and landed directly in between two more
Thirteens. He paused only long enough to allow them to fire at each other
before blasting again. As he shot forward toward the wall to his left at an
upward angle, the bullets passed through the space where he’d stood. One
Thirteen took a bullet to the shoulder, the other dodged, receiving only a
graze across his cheek.

Sammy hit the wall and bounced off. He jetted around
so quickly the Thirteens couldn’t keep up. To protect himself, he kept his
shields placed at angles providing the most coverage. He sent his body toward a
Thirteen, who thought she had a good shot at hitting him. Sammy dropped his
shields at the last instant and slammed his fist into her neck, crushing it.
The sensation of breaking bones and cartilage under his blow was glorious. As
she crumpled, he blasted away again.

Midair, Sammy saw in the holo-screen that a Thirteen
had a gun trained on his back. Two upward blasts pushed Sammy back down to the
floor, where he slid, shielding himself and shooting the syshée’s deadly barbs
into another Thirteen. The sounds of firing guns and shrieking enemies
assaulted his ears like an orchestra turned up too loud.

Less than three
minutes left.

Die. All of you.

It was a game. The whole battle was a game, and
Sammy held the best cards: speed, energy, superiority, strength, and
intelligence. With all three of his anomalies, plus his precise training and
formidable physique, how could he not? The Thirteens were always a step too
late. The bullets always just missed him. The combination of his three
anomalies made him better, uncatchable. It let him do things he normally
couldn’t have done, bend himself, twist himself, throw himself, and break his
own bones on their bodies without consequence.

A small voice inside his mind whispered,
Stop this. There are consequences …

Sammy ignored the voice like he would a bee buzzing
in his ear. The Thirteens did not go down without a struggle. Despite taking
numerous shots to the chest or abdomen, they fought on. In some perverse way,
Sammy found this admirable. But it didn’t stop him from killing them.

One minute left
.

Sammy wasn’t going to make it in time. He had to
just keep fighting and hope for the best. If his calculations were correct, the
Joswang Tower would be fine.

Keep fighting to
save Brickert
.
To win the war.

Wrong. You’re
doing it because you enjoy it
.

His heart rejoiced each time he saw the lights go
out in their eyes, and he reveled in the way their fluids splashed across
walls, ceiling, and floor as the syshée did its deadly work. At some point
during the middle of the battle, his five minutes ran out and the bombs
detonated. Sammy was so far below the earth that he heard no detonation. But he
knew something had gone wrong when he felt the tremors in the building. If the
bombs had been placed correctly, no tremors should have been felt this low in
the structure. All the damage was supposed to be contained to the upper floors.

Sammy cursed.
This
building can’t come down. I didn’t plan it this way
.

Six Thirteens still remained of the original ten.
Two of them were badly injured, one of which had absolutely no chance at
surviving the next twenty minutes without immediate medical attention. Sammy
had eight rounds left in his last magazine.

One of the Thirteens paused to reload. As fast as he
was, Sammy was faster and put a bullet in his throat. The Thirteen died as he
finished reloading and fired one last bullet into the ceiling as he stumbled
backward into the table where the camera sat. His body crashed and sent the
camera to the floor and his gun clattered at Brickert’s blood speckled shoes.
By then Sammy was already five meters away attacking two more Thirteens.
Another tremor ran through the walls and floor. Sammy cursed again.

Can’t you wait
until I’m finished?

He focused his energies on the two weakest
Thirteens. The game was becoming easier now with so few players remaining.
Boring almost. They gave up trying to surround Sammy, instead trying to shoot him
with sporadic and chaotic movements and angles, using helter-skelter tactics in
attempt to confuse him. But it didn’t work. They bounced off the walls, dove,
jumped, and threw things at him. Sammy countered by keeping them off balance,
never staying in place for more than a second or two.

One by one the remaining five fell. The first of
them threw half of a broken dining table at Sammy. Sammy blasted it back,
impaling the Thirteen on the metal leg, and finishing him off with a bullet to
the head. Two other Thirteens became so enraged that they emptied their clips
at Sammy from opposite sides while a third took careful aim at Sammy’s head,
and the fourth tried to get back to his feet despite massive blood loss.

Sammy shielded the two on his left and right flank
and waited until the last moment to jerk aside and avoid the bullets from the
third Thirteen—something he could never have done without using the
Anomaly Thirteen. The forward Thirteen adjusted and fired again while the other
two reloaded. Sammy shot multiple blasts at the Thirteen, hitting him and
shoving him backward into the wall. As Sammy got closer, the strength of his
blasts increased. The blasts crushed the Thirteen’s body while behind Sammy the
two Thirteens finished reloading and fired at his unprotected back. Again he
surprised the Thirteens by jumping out of the way and leaving a crushed,
defenseless enemy to receive the full fury of his brothers.

Three left
, a gloating
voice reminded him.
Finish them.

Stop using the
anomaly!

Sammy shielded with only his left hand now, the
other held his syshée.
Seven bullets.
He
fired at one Thirteen while blasting at the other. Both missed. He jumped with
a medium blast and turned midair, firing the syshée twice at the one behind
him, while shielding in the direction of the one he’d missed. One bullet struck
the Thirteen’s shoulder while the other hit his lower abdomen.

“And then there was one,” Sammy said.

The Thirteen snarled at him. He was one of the more
normal-looking Thirteens Sammy had seen. For some reason, this made Sammy hate
him even more. Sammy flicked the safety of his syshée to the “on” position and
dropped the gun. The Thirteen must have found this insulting because he roared
with rage and shot at Sammy. Sammy taunted him with his blasts, mixing up
shields and strikes to push around the Thirteen like a toy.

“Sa—y, hurry,” Al urged, his com signal
distorted by the depth of the tower’s sublevels. “The b—ding is
c—mpr—ised—! Get Bric— and get—!”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Sammy growled through
gritted teeth. He continued to screw around with the Thirteen, keeping him off
balance with blasts to his legs and chest.

Two veins bulged in the Thirteen’s forehead, another
in his neck. His deep red eyes fixed murderously on Sammy’s throat, but he was
powerless. Finally he charged, a stupid and reckless decision. Sammy stepped
forward and clotheslined the Thirteen at the neck. Before the Thirteen could
recover, Sammy sat on his chest, pinning him to the ground. The Thirteen bucked
and tried to kick Sammy off, but Sammy punched him in the mouth.