Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga (44 page)

“Maybe one of them would.”

He looked at me for a second. His eyes were
glassy. He looked away, pacing between the still-formed crowds, the
redish light from the bar cast strange color onto his cheeks.

“You cannot act upon what feels good or bad,
cadet. Emotions will betray you.”

“I should be a calculator, is that it?” I
said. “Add up the numbers and see what lives are worth saving and
which ones aren’t. How much is a Paladin life worth, Pon? Ten
ordinary people? Twenty? You need to give me that formula so I’ll
know when it’s worth swimming out.”

“There’s no formula. As I have trained you
for the past year, the present moment contains all existence. Just
listen. Learn to listen to the present moment, do not tell it how
you feel about it.”

I slammed my fist on a round table, spilling
a drink. “I DID WHAT THE MOMENT REQUIRED!”

“Your friend is responsible for his own
life.”

“He needed help.”

“You failed,” Pon said, simply.

“I saved a life, isn’t that what we’re
trained to do?”

He picked up the fallen glass and gently
placed it on the table. “Your friends will forget you.”

“They won’t.”

“You will become a ghost in their memories.
They will recall a childhood friend, but they will not remember
your face. They will not remember the sound of your voice or the
touch of your hand.”

“She won’t forget.”

“You are slipping from the memories of all
that knew you, shedding your old life, preparing for a new one.
Your loved ones will be the last to hold onto that memory, but even
they will forget. In the end, you will be alone.”

Pressure gripped my chest. I forced myself
to breathe.

“You cannot have attachments. Would you have
saved your friend if you did not know him?”

No, I wouldn’t walk a stranger up to that
room. But what if they’re all strangers? What if no one remembers
me, who do I save then? How do I decide?

The energy in the room shifted. Pon walked
past me with his hands at his sides. His gait changed. The steps
became shorter, his balance lowered. Tension rippled up his arms,
over his shoulders. I brushed the evolvers on my belt, turned my
hips toward him and analyzed the room and the contents for
position. Pressure clamped my chest, my breath wheezed in my
throat.
Is this an exercise?

“Do you know what it feels like to drown?”
Pon paused at the bar. “There is panic, at first, when you realize
that death is eminent. Thoughts seize the muscles. You fight to
stay above the water until exhaustion sets in. You sink a few times
and come up for air, perhaps take in water, until you no longer
have the strength to stay above the surface.”

He walked along the bar, each step was
purposeful, his fingers curved like claws. I turned so he would not
see my back.

A man leaped from the booth behind me. I
shifted my weight, caught his arm and tossed him across the
room.

“You hold your breath, at first, try to make
the air in your lungs last, fighting the water that pushes on your
lips. But your lungs contract.”

The bartender pulled a gun from below. The
evolver unfolded around my arm and a burst of blue energy shot from
my open hand, melting barrel and half his arm.

“A fire burns the hungry cells in your
lungs.”

I kicked the tables away, cleared space.
With both evolvers, I crouched in the center of the room.

“Your head swells painfully.”

All the glassy-eyed patrons with their
fingers stuck in the moody bowls attacked. I cut away their knees
with a long stroke of a blue saber. Blood splashed the walls.

“Water, the very substance that gives you
life, now takes it.”

One man eluded my counterattack, got close
enough to bring a glowing dagger down on me. I activated a shield
and inserted a knife between his ribs.
Why am I slaughtering
these people?

“The useless air is expelled from your lungs
and you choke soundlessly. You thrash helplessly. You sink.” Pon
walked behind a small group of men in tuxedoes. “Inevitably.”

He did not emerge on the other side.
Instead, Streeter appeared. His hands were glowing with evolvers.
His eyes were dark and angry. Vengeful.

“Save me, Socket,” he said.

He took a step, then another, and then
leapt, hands above his head, a long spear aimed for my chest. My
heart thumped inside, ached to be released from the building
pressure. It needed space. It wanted out.

I dodged to the left, using an impact pulse
to launch Streeter across the room. His frail body cracked into the
wall, falling over the back of a booth at a broken angle.

I couldn’t get enough air. My chest squeezed
my lungs smaller and tighter.
I’m suffocating.

“Sometimes you have to let them drown.” Pon
was behind me.

I spun. He was gone, again.

“You have to surrender.”

I screamed, shoving tables and bodies away,
blasting them against the walls until I was the only thing
standing.

Pon’s bodiless voice spoke. “You have to
die!”

I rolled sideways, ignited a shield from my
left hand and sprayed bursting projectiles blindly behind me. Pon
moved deftly, his motions animal-like, lanky and graceful, blocking
my shots and advancing. I jumped onto the booths and swiped at him
with a three-headed whip, a sweeping line that he bent his body
around. The whips carved through the floorboards.

Our shields clashed and our weapon hands
locked together. I had the advantage from above, careful not to
overcompensate that he might shift and toss me. He was stuck in the
corner. Maybe it was the weight of my chest or the adrenaline or
his exhaustion, but I overpowered him. I forced him into a
compromised position. His neck was prone.

I would best him.

Spit shot from his lips and he pulled me
closer, the tip of my weapon closing in on his neck. He wanted me
to win. I smelled his breath and looked into his eyes.

His eyes.

The depth, the steel, was gone. This was not
the man that had trained me. There was something else in his eyes,
someone familiar. From another time. It was the eyes of another
man. An enemy I once knew. That was not Pon inside.

It felt like…
impossible.

I pressed the tip of my weapon closer,
touching the throbbing artery on his neck. His eyes were wide open,
as if begging me to look inside.

Pon is the greatest trainer of all time.

He leaned forward, my dagger sizzling on his
skin with no regard for life or death. He wanted me to see.

My mentor.

The smell of burnt flesh wafted up. I pulled
the dagger back. Leaned closer.

Closer to see.

It wasn’t Pon inside. It was a predator. A
deceiver. I saw inside…
PIKE.

Pon is a pawn!

Pon/Pike hooked his leg around mine, twisted
his hips and turned me on my back. I was flung hard into the
wall.

White light exploded on the back of my
already thumping head. I squeezed the shield to full strength with
both hands.

Pon’s face was inches from mine but Pike’s
eyes bore down. The tip of a dagger pushed through my shield and
touched my throat. Now it was my jugular throbbing against a deadly
edge. His eyes were tunnels that reached deep into a shell of a man
that guided me through my training, that had been with me through
my development, the man that prodded me to grow, to realize. At the
very ends was a vengeful puppeteer. A master of psychic
manipulation. Pike had defeated Pon. Through him, he would defeat
me.

“No.” I shifted my weight, squeezed the
shield tighter, pushed the dagger back, but he found renewed
strength to force the weapon closer to my neck. His lips pulled
back over his teeth. I could not stop him.

“NO!” My chest resisted the pressure inside.
There was nowhere to go. Nothing I could do to stop him.

“Your father was a pig.” His voice was
hardly recognizable, beaten and hoarse. “Pigs do not go to battle.
Pigs go to slaughter.”

I expected the killing blow to be cold and
quick like a shank that would slice through my throat. But instead,
there was an explosion from deep in my chest. My heart had been set
free, destroying the steel cage that imprisoned it. I heard
nothing. Saw nothing.

And there was great relief.

Tremendous freedom.

I fell onto the floor, exhausted. Full
surrender. Complete liberation.

Everything was broken. Across the room,
slumped against the wall, was the body of Pon, buried into a
depression like he’d been driven into it. It was limp and lifeless.
It didn’t match the vision that I had when I was with Com, but the
details were irrelevant.

That is not Pon.

Newfound life crackled through me, fueled by
bitterness and hatred. I snapped open my hands, blue flames
flickered in my palms. I would smite this traitor from the world,
take this unholy affliction from the face of the earth. No more
people would drown because of him. No more death.
NO
MORE!

I pushed off the wall, soaring across the
room. Hands together, above my head. Long, broad swords emerged to
impale the heart of evil. Anger shook my body, thirsting for the
salty tang of his blood. The death this world deserved.

I was hit with a detainment wire. Another
line wrapped around my mid-section like a thin snake and another
around my arms and legs. I crashed into the manufactured bodies
piled against the wall and carelessly cut the lashes from my skin
with the evolver, searing deep wounds in my calves and elbows.

“
NO!”
I cried.

My evolvers yelped with power, drawing from
the depths of my rage. Fireballs melted the first spidery crawler
guard that appeared. I destroyed a second one preparing to fire
another detainment line, but more entered the room. I slashed and
burned them, but they overwhelmed me with numbers. The cool, silky
lines encased me.

“Master Socket.” Spindle knelt next to
me.

“He’s a traitor, Spindle! That’s not Pon,
that’s Pike! Look in his eyes! PIKE IS CONTROLLING HIM! KILL HIM
NOW!”

Spindle took my head with both hands but I
thrashed him away. He took my head again and again until the
healing vibrations from his palms sank deeply. I strained against
the constraints, hissing through my teeth. Several crawlers huddled
around.

I let myself fall limp. Breathing came
easier. The traitor was only five feet away. I could do nothing.
But when I looked between the crawlers’ spindly legs, there was
only an indention.

Pon’s body was missing.

“He’s gone,” I muttered. “You let him get
away.”

“Pon has been transported to an infirmary.
The impact has caused him great harm.”

Impact?

The Commander’s voice resonated inside the
room. Others were with him. Spindle had both hands on my chest
sending healing warmth inside me. My body was so empty and
depleted. The colors on his faceplate ran wild. I grabbed his
wrist, unable to squeeze, suddenly aware of the complete
exhaustion. Barely able to whisper, I asked, “What happened?”

“Master Socket,” he said, his eyelight
looking at me, “you are telekinetic.”

T R A I N I N G

The Edge

They subdued me after the attack. I slept
for days. I woke with my legs bandaged where I tried to cut away
the crawler guards’ detainment lines. When they released me from
the infirmary, it wasn’t without a fight. I rebelled by trashing
the room, demanding to see Pon, or Pike, or whoever the fuck he
was. I blamed the meds they gave me for that freak out, some stuff
that was supposed to keep me calm and relaxed and open to
understanding. I understood, all right. Understood I wanted to
wreck something and everything in that room was the winner.

I didn’t see a live person that day, only
servys. The next day, I settled down. Minders came in to do some
tests, penetrate my mind and body, see how I was holding up. They
did their job like usual, with confidence that bordered on
arrogance, but they were hiding a quiver of fear. They saw what
happened to Pon/Pike. If I could do that to him… so they tread
lightly, like a bomb squad.

Spindle was the only one acting normal. He
refused to talk about the incident, citing the Commander’s orders.
This went on for days and it only pissed me off. I think I trashed
the room again. But then it was clear they were going to keep me
until I got a hold of myself. It took some effort and a couple of
days of meditation, but I disengaged from the frantic emotions and
returned to the present moment.

That’s when the Commander finally showed up,
told me the details of what had happened and what I was becoming.
He gave me another day in the infirmary and when he was satisfied,
he allowed me free range of the Garrison.
Get out, stretch your
legs, son.

I requested the leaper to go to the highest
point in the Garrison. I didn’t want illusions anymore, I wanted
something real. I wanted to feel the wind and sun.

No more tricks. Please.

I stood in an alcove five hundred feet up
the Garrison’s cliff. I had never seen it from that vantage point.
Bitter wind circled into the opening. I put my toe over the edge.
No rail up here, just me and the elements and five hundred feet to
the ground. I was cold and alone.

Pretty much how it was on the inside.

If I took a five hundred foot step off the
ledge and somehow survived, maybe I could run to the wormhole, get
as far away from the Garrison as possible. But even if I could
survive such a fall, even if I could outrun the long leash of the
Paladin Nation, there was nothing on the other side. No home out
there. A butterfly cannot transform back into a caterpillar anymore
than I could become normal again.