Socket 1 - The Discovery of Socket Greeny (13 page)

Broak was expressionless. He worked his lips
but stopped the words. I was on the verge of timeslicing. He could
feel it. The spark burned, tendrils of energy pulsing through my
nervous system. My fingers dug deep into my palm.

He stepped back. The tension between us
eased. He knew his limits. Whether he could kung fu or not, it
wasn’t going to do him any good when I froze his ass in time. He
parted his lips and bit down, his teeth clicking together.
Something shot between his lips and stung my neck. A pin-prick. I
rubbed the left side of my neck, the spot already numb.

“What the hell did you just do?”

“I am sorry, dear Socket. The message has
been delivered.”

Something wiggled inside, bumped against my
throat. I turned, pressed harder. My entire neck was numb.

Broak backed further away. I swung wild and
fell to one knee. The wiggling went to the back of my neck and
pierced my spine. I tried to scream but my throat was dead. My lips
worked silently. I tapped my cheek, activated the nojakk, attempted
to call Spindle. I couldn’t make a sound. I crawled on my knees,
reaching for the tower, but Spindle was thirty feet above the
ground.

Broak watched. I drooled a long string onto
the floor. The wiggling sensation penetrated deeper. Numbness
traveled down my spine. It reached the bottom and exploded. Fire
erupted.

On my back. Colors bright.
Timeslicing
.

And I wasn’t controlling it.

In timesliced silence, I lay still. I could
see the ceiling now that the hovering platforms had thinned. It was
a hundred feet above. It was blue. Like the sky. I could not feel
the hard floor beneath me or the wiggling sensation in my neck. I
couldn’t move and I was alone. I’d die like that.

Just wish I could say goodbye to someone.

Unconsciousness came like a black fog,
rolling in from above, eating up the remaining hovering platforms
and gobbling up the walls. It came for me, creeping over my face.
But something was moving within it. There was sound.

Pivot crawled over me and the black cloud
scattered. He slid his fingers behind my head, probing a spot
burning on my neck. I trembled, hoping he would get the message TO
STOP DOING THAT!

He picked me up. The room spun.

In several blurry moves, we dropped into a
dark, musty tunnel where the light was gray and the ceiling smooth.
He put me down and his hair fell over his face. He listened like a
morning bird, pressing his fingers on the back of my neck, again;
this time harder and deeper. Like driving nails. Pain burned into
my skull and down my spine. I was helpless to stop him. Unable to
scream.

The source of pain was in my neck, branching
like lightning, searing me from the inside, until Pivot pulled
something out. I fell limp and relieved, taking tiny gulps of air.
Pivot leaned against the wall, his knees pulled up. Something
squirmed in his hand like a long crystalline horsehair.

[An accelerator.]
His face was slick
with sweat.
[Your energy centers are now attempting to
prematurely bind.]

“Broak did that.” My teeth chattered.

[Yes.]

“Why?”

[Your awakening is failing.]

I pushed off the floor and winced. Small
sparks shot down my back, crackling just under the skin. “I can
still feel… things happening.”

Pivot gently pushed me back down, placed his
hand on my chest, turned his head and listened. He touched several
spots. The Adam’s apple in his throat bobbed up and down and a low
hum vibrated through his hand. The humming was soft and numbing but
the sparking pain fought back. I closed my eyes while Pivot moved
his hand across my chest and hummed in different pitches. Sometimes
loud. Sometimes soft. It tried to carry me off to a dreamy place,
but jagged rips of pain yanked me back. He hummed louder to soften
the blows. And then I would drift again.

Mmmmmmm.
The sound traveled into my
bones.

Warmth oozed inside and the pain receded.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

I floated away and left the hurt in my skin.
I saw Pivot hunched over my body with his hand on my chest and
humming. I continued to float upwards and away. I tried to swim
back but I was helpless. Despite the pain and agony back there, I
wasn’t ready to leave. Not yet. Please.

I went through the ceiling and into the
ground above. I rose through the compacted soil and red streaks of
iron. Roots appeared, branching out with little white tendrils,
tiny hairs sucking moisture from the pore space. Higher still,
there were more roots and insects feeding on them. I passed through
it all and emerged above ground, into the sunlight.

A breeze rustled fallen leaves across the
slab. Pivot was against the grimmet tree. Grimmets crawled down his
arms and hung from his fingers. His lifted his head. A man walked
up the stone slab with a bundle of blankets. He wore the uniform of
a Paladin but his hair was long and face unshaven.
Father
.

He knelt next to Pivot and pulled the
blankets open. A baby struggled in the light, his eyes clenched. He
opened his toothless mouth and let loose a cry that woke every last
grimmet hiding inside the tree’s hollows. They shot from the
branches and stormed overhead, casting an ominous shadow over the
child.

Pivot turned his face up and grinned, his
sightless eyes searching. While my father looked young, Pivot
looked exactly the same. He touched the baby’s chin, stroked his
cheeks and touched his nose. The child stopped crying, wrapped his
whole hand around Pivot’s finger. Pivot’s laugh came out like a
hoarse bark.

The grimmets shifted and laughed, too. The
child’s gaze moved through the colorful cloud and the grimmets
wrestled to get in front, sticking out their tongues, thumbing
their noses for attention. Fights broke out. They whipped each
other with their tails and pulled each other’s ears. The baby
squealed with delight. The grimmets crowded closer, making goo-goo
and ga-ga sounds. Pivot waved them off.

“He’s got my eyes,” my father said. “And his
chin’s square, too. He’s going to be strong. And independent.”

That was me in the blankets. I hoping this
was a dream and I wasn’t watching my life pass before me.

My father placed the bundle in Pivot’s arms.
Suddenly, I was swaddled in the blankets. I’d become the baby. I
could feel Pivot rocking me side to side. I felt his chest heave
when he barked out laughter and the grimmets’ wings beat the wind
onto my face. I reached up for his face and caught a handful of
hair. I pulled his face closer, felt his breath stream onto my
cheeks. I felt so safe.

Pivot rubbed his nose against mine and cooed
a lullaby, a sound humming deep inside his throat. It started with
a single note, vibrating long and low, and then drifted up and
down. He closed his eyes, moving his head to the rhythm of his
wordless song. The grimmets joined in, their little voices humming
a higher pitch.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

There was nowhere to go. Nothing to do.

MmmmmmMMMMMM.

The world was perfect in that moment.

Mmmmmmm.

mmmm.

The ground quaked. I jerked into the rock and
resurfaced. The tree was empty. Pivot was gone. My father was, too.
A dust cloud swept over the rock carrying fallen leaves.

I went down again, hard this time. Past the
insects, roots and rocks, and slammed into my skin like brick on
brick. My teeth clamped. Something hardened like an iron fist in my
groin. I convulsed. Another knot tightened in my stomach. My chest
knotted. My throated constricted. Electricity ripped through me.
Pivot’s touch faded in the gloom.

The awakening had arrived.

* * * * *

I couldn’t remember Pivot picking me up or
how long he’d been carrying me. I could only see the tunnel fall
away behind us. His legs were blurred below, moving inhumanly fast.
The walls were flying by. My hair was plastered to my face, but I
no longer felt fiery pain. I was just numb.

Where are you taking me?

[You must awaken.]

The tunnels were endless and all the same.
Sometimes we took a left turn, sometimes a right. We passed through
an archway outlined on the wall and dropped, then we went through
another archway and dropped again. Vertigo churned my stomach. With
each drop, the air turned colder and heavier. Pivot slowed, turned
the last corner and put me on my feet. He held me up so I wouldn’t
fall.

I faced an archway at the end of a tunnel.
The last stop.

Somewhere deep inside, I felt a quiver.
Something I couldn’t ignore. It was time to face my demons. “I’m
scared, Pivot.” My lips were fat. “I admit it.”

He held me firm.
[Even heroes experience
fear.]

“I’m no hero.”

The archway buzzed. I pushed back into Pivot.
He held me tighter, then let go. The doorway drew me closer. My
feet scuffed over the gritty floor. I reached back for Pivot but I
was sucked through to the other side.

Agony returned.

* * * * *

The room was small and the walls etched with
symbols. Blue light pulsed at the other end. BOOM-boom. BOOM-boom.
Voices came from the light. They wanted me to come closer. I locked
my knees but my right foot slid forward. I tightened up, leaned
back, but the voices pulled. My left foot moved. Left, right, left
I shuffled toward the light against my will. The voices were a
jumbled crowd, talking among themselves, but the closer I got, the
clearer they became.

[Who is it? This is unexpected. He is
young... so young. This isn’t right. Should he awaken? It’s too
late for him to turn back.]

They argued in circles, no voice sounding the
same. Meanwhile, the room was volcanic. I was afraid to look down.
Is that my skin dripping?

There were hundreds of voices now. Unseen
fingers probed my body; feeling and studying. Deciding. Their minds
penetrated me, looking through all the dark corners of my past.
Memories opened, flipping too fast to recognize. They consumed the
entire catalog of my life and all the intimate details, the ones
I’d forgotten and the ones I wanted secret. I was completely
exposed. Naked.

The voices stopped. The probing halted. In
unison, they spoke one last word.

[Awaken.]

The blue light freed me from my skin. There
were no walls. No ceiling or floor. I was somewhere in-between. The
light was a ball the size of my head. Or maybe it was the size of a
planet. There was nothing to compare. Maybe
I
was as big as
a planet. The surface swirled blue and white. Liquidy. It pulsed,
alive. I’d seen this before.

A virtualmode portal!

I reached for it. I don’t know what I reached
with, I didn’t have hands, and I don’t know why I did it. Something
urged me to. I reached and reached, through endless space.

The voices chanted far away. They buzzed
inside me, built tension until it felt more like humming than
buzzing. The more I reached, the louder it felt and the tighter I
became. The thinner I was until I felt so thin I didn’t even
exist.

There was a warm sensation when I merged with
the portal. It filled me. Then I knew that I was not breaking, I
was not thin, but I was full. I was everything, as if I was
dissolving into the universe.

blip.

There was nothing. I think I screamed, but
there was no pain. There was just nothing. I continued to dissolve
into deep darkness until, for once, I felt complete peace. For
once, I understood what this life was all about, and yet I couldn’t
say what it was. I could only be there. I could only experience it.
I understand.

I faded into a dreamless sleep. Part of me
hoped I would never have to go back to the skin, but I knew that
wouldn’t be. There was still so much to do. And so many people I
couldn’t leave behind.

It was sometime later, I woke. A dim light
radiated under the bed. All kinds of things came out of the dark.
Lookits hovered over me. Long mechanical arms extended from the
walls, tending to a thick band wrapped around my left arm where
tubes came out, one filled with blood, the other blue. I licked my
lips. A lookit pressed against my mouth and squirted something.

They did their jobs like a surreal nightmare.
Maybe it was the blue fluid pumping into my arm or I was just too
tired to make sense. Or maybe the abnormal just seemed normal.

One of the mechanical arms touched my
forehead and I was sleepy again. I woke a few times but no one was
there. I dreamed that little creepy things crawled inside my head,
went through my memories, putting everything back in place before I
woke.

Then one day, I woke fresh and clear. The
room was bright. I threw my legs over the bed and sat up. I touched
my nojakk and asked for the date. Thursday. Three days had
passed.

Broak tried to kill me.

I didn’t ache or burn and none of my skin
melted. I felt light and strong, my spine solid as a hundred year
oak. Hot spots hummed along my back from my tail bone to the top of
my head. And there were smells. Lots of them. The air was filled
with thousands of distinctive scents. There were traces of people,
servys, and food in the air and places they touched along the wall.
There was a distinct tangy, steely scent.
Spindle
. And
another scent mingled with it, another person was in the room with
him. She smelled like jasmine. I sensed her on my wrist, the back
of my hand, my shoulder. Mom was here.

I’ve awakened.

A tray extended from the wall with neatly
folded clothes. I pulled the shirt off the pile, held it by the
sleeves. It was dark, dark purple. The pants, too. I got dressed
and the tray folded into the wall.