Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga (72 page)

He considered again. Anyone else in the
world and he would’ve called security. Instead, he sat at the
mainframe monitor. “I’ll get the transporters ready.”

“No need.”

He looked over his shoulder. “You still have
the imbed transporter in your neck?”

“I’ll explain later. Promise.”

“Sure.” He spun on the seat and crossed his
arms. “Then launch when you’re ready.”

I didn’t need the transporters or any sort
of gear. In fact, I really didn’t need to ask Streeter to use the
school’s virtualmode portal, but I didn’t want to get him in
trouble without him knowing. I’d already penetrated the entire lab,
followed the circuitry and routers down to the school’s portal that
powered the virtualmode experience that communicated with millions
of portals all over the world like a network of ethereal pipelines,
where people existed in virtual reality.

I only needed the portal to access the
Internet network so I could spread my influence worldwide, like
pouring my consciousness into a system of veins. I wouldn’t be able
to expand as far without it. I needed to feel everything, searching
for the one person that could answer my questions. I moved my
awareness through the portal and instantly stretched across the
planet, knowing and feeling everything without leaving my body. I
closed my eyes, whispering his name.

Pike.

His essence was as unique as his
fingerprint. I could distinguish the difference between every
person, every machine, everything that was operating on the
worldwide virtualmode network. Suddenly, the school’s portal
contracted.

“
Artificial intelligence has breached
virtualmode.”

I forced it to open back up, sniffing the
mental realm like a bloodhound. I was around the world in a second,
sensing a strong presence somewhere in a mountainous region. I
focused my attention, brought Pike’s essence into view, honed in on
his location. It was a dead end.

The Garrison.

No way he was in the Garrison. I was sensing
the leftover memories of where he spent most of his life. There was
little chance I would find him, even with the inexhaustible power I
had. The Paladins would have him so secluded that no one could
locate him.

I contracted back into my body. Lights were
flashing everywhere, along with flickering sounds and high-pitched
alarms. The lab door swooshed open and Buxbee and Peter came
rushing inside. Streeter was already at the mainframe monitor,
shouting that he had it under control. I willed the alarms to quiet
and restored the original status of the security. Streeter
explained the crossover error of the locator and apologized. He
threw the locator in his pocket, promised to work on the coding
outside the lab. Buxbee stared at him, then he and Peter turned
back to the monitor to assure the integrity.

Streeter grabbed my arm and marched into the
hallway. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

L E G E N D

Located

I followed Streeter to the elevator, but not
before a security guard named Jeff Baker stopped him. “You got a
pass?” he asked.

Streeter flashed the badge strung around his
neck. “Um, we’re going to the library.”

The security guard looked around. “Who’s
we?”

Streeter shrugged.

“Better check in with Mr. Buxbee if you go
anywhere else,” Jeff said.

We took the elevator up two flights to the
top floor. Streeter’s leg shook while we waited. We stepped into
the circular floor of the library situated on top of the school’s
tower with windows in all directions. The librarians, still talking
in hushed tones even though the floor was empty, looked at Streeter
as we exited the elevator. Streeter held up his badge. They went
back to talking.

We headed straight for a back room. The
windows were wide and clear, overlooking a long wide field
stretching out toward the Interstate. The football field was to the
left and the tagghet stadium to the right, but between them was a
view of the live oaks beyond.

He paced back and forth, muttering to
himself while his fingers twittered at his side. It didn’t seem
like a good idea to tell him the truth, but somehow I owed it to
him. Someone should know. I just needed to get it out of me.

“I’ve known you forever,” I said. “You
should know this.”

“Know what?”

“Have a seat.” I pointed at the cushioned
chair positioned in front of the window.

“Why? What’re you going to do?”

“Just sit down, will you? You don’t want to
be standing when I show you this.”

He sat down, slowly, not taking his eyes off
me. “Show me what?”

“Relax, this isn’t going to hurt. But it
might freak you out a bit.”

Tension gripped his body. His muscles were
rigid, like I was going to pull a tooth. Lactic acid dumped into
his muscles, his body quivered. I had been holding myself tightly
wound up, avoided merging with the people around me, avoided
siphoning their essence but now I released it, feeling the carpet
below my feet, the furniture and dry paper in the books. My
awareness exploded outside the window, all the way to the
Interstate and the cars speeding toward Charleston.

But I focused on Streeter, his eyes wide
open. I willed his body to relax, his mind to open and accept the
coming vision. What he saw, what he felt, was the humming in my
chest, the regeneration of my fingers and the revelation of my true
nature. He saw Pivot tell me I was cloned from a human, that I was
created to help him avenge Fetter.

I receded from his consciousness, forced
myself to disconnect from the sweet taste of his essence that
whirled in my belly. Forced myself not to take from him or anything
else within my reach, even though it filled me and tingled
inside.

His fingers did not nervously twitter. His
leg didn’t bounce. Instead, he looked at me with a soft expression,
then stood, slowly came over and took my hand. He turned it over,
studied the back of the light-colored flesh and looked at the
palm.

“Are you playing with me?” he asked.

“I wish I were.”

He went to the window and leaned his
forehead against it. His breath was short. A lightness surged into
his experience. His foot slipped off the windowsill and his head
began to slide across the glass. I caught him before he fell. It
was too much. I should’ve just told him, giving him a vision was
too surreal. Even though he’d known me all his life, saw me when I
first sliced time and read thoughts, when I became a Paladin and
developed telekinesis, still he was having trouble assimilating
this. Even after everything we’d been through, this was a lot.

I placed him in the chair and allowed myself
to get inside his mind, again, this time blotting out some of the
detail. I left a faint memory of my true nature: I am not human,
I’m a product.
Congratulations, your best friend is a
duplicate!

He fidgeted after a few minutes. Snorted
from a short nap and smacked his lips. I was gazing out the window
when he opened his eyes. It took a bit for his awareness to catch
up to the present moment and the truth of what he was looking at.
He was watching me. He considered running. I couldn’t blame him.
After all that time together, he didn’t owe me anything. Maybe he
should run.

He leaned forward, then slowly stood, walked
next to me. We watched the traffic in the distance, all driving
somewhere so unimportant. He propped his leg onto the windowsill
and pointed toward the football stadium, leaving a smudge on the
glass.

“Remember our first day of school? Jared
Miles shoved me down the steps during gym and you pummeled him
right there in the bleachers, right in front of the coach and
everybody. You remember that?”

“Got suspended three days.”

“And he never messed with me again.” His
eyes darted around. Memories flipped through his mind. “You
remember, over there? Remember when Alex Deeter dared me to moon
the lacrosse team at practice? You remember that?”

“They came after you with sticks.”

“Yeah, and you stood up to all of them.”

“They would’ve beat me senseless if the
coach didn’t stop them.”

“But you took the blame.”

“I have a higher pain tolerance.”

He tapped the window, punctuating a set of
memories as if to validate this moment, to anchor his beliefs about
who he was. Who I am. Then he stepped away, scratching his chin. I
leaned back against the window, let my head bump against the
glass.

Then he said, decisively, “I know who you
are, goddamnit.”

“I showed you the truth.”

“That’s not what I mean. I don’t care
what
you are. I’ve known you all my life. You’re Socket.” He
stopped pacing. “Socket Greeny.”

He resumed looking out the window. The
moments stretched out, silently. The librarians were talking
louder, now, mostly about Tommy Fletcher and how he needed to get
counseling for his severe attention deficit disorder.

Streeter turned his head. “So what now?”

I shrugged.

“You going to the Garrison?”

“No, it’ll just be madness if I go back. I
mean, if your alarm system recognized me, I’m not going to make it
within a hundred yards before a dozen crawler guards gang-tackle
me.”

“You can come to my house.”

“I… no. Not a good idea.”

“Why not? No one will know you’re there.
Besides, you got to eat.”

No, I don’t.
“It’s not that. I’m…
evolving into something, I think. I don’t think it would be a good
idea if you were around me until I figure it out.”

“What? You mean, you’re becoming one of
them?”
He meant duplicate.
“You planning on taking over the
human race?”

No, it was the temptation that bothered me.
The taste of his essence lingered around me like an addiction. Like
a shark smelling blood. I could resist, but for how long?

I faced him. “You feel that in your
belly?”

He rubbed his stomach, sensed the fear of
falling, the removal of his essence as I let myself for just a
moment to reconnect with him, automatically absorbing his essence,
leaving him with the twisted missing sensation of a void.

“I think I’m stealing from you,” I said.
“Kind of like charging my battery with your… life.”

He tensed. “Dude, that’s cold.”

“Sorry.”

“Can you stop?”

“Yeah, but… I don’t know for how long. I
just need to go somewhere with no one around, just for a while,
anyway.”

The sun hung lower in the sky. Streeter
didn’t run, but he didn’t take his hand away from his stomach,
either. His mind was working. After a long minute, he said, “I know
where you need to go.”

“The North Pole?”

“You need to find your clone.”

Now I laughed. Streeter was mentally tough;
he assimilated more than I gave him credit for. “I have no idea
where he’s at.”

“I know exactly where he’s at.” He pulled
the locator from his pocket and, fearlessly, took both my hands and
placed it in my palms. “Do it again, like you did at the tagghet
ceremony. Locate yourself in time and space.”

I turned it over, saw my distorted
reflection in the black convex surface. It invited me to connect
with it, almost like it was thinking to me.
Like we speak the
same language
.

“Go on.” Streeter nudged me. “Do it.”

He had rewritten the code; it was tighter
and more efficient, merging with my consciousness as I opened to
it. A holographic planet projected from the surface, rotating
between us.

“He’s there.” He stuck his finger on the
spot of light in the middle of Illinois. “When you used this at the
ceremony, in front of all those people, it knew you were just a
copy, it found the original.”

A copy.
I cringed.

“It worked,” he said. “The whole time, it
was working.”

My chest fluttered. He was right, the
locator simply considered me a mirror projected from the original
identity. Streeter had done it.

“You should go.”

I looked up. “Why?”

“Why? He’s you. You’re him. You’ve been
separated from who you are all your life. You’ve got to go see if
something will happen.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know! What else are you going to
do, sit in the desert and meditate the rest of your life? Just go
and find out.”

Suddenly, I didn’t feel in control of
anything. And that was my answer. I wasn’t in control; I was swept
into the current of the unknown, flowing with the mystery of life.
I handed the locator back to Streeter. “You’re right.”

“Hell yeah, I’m right. You can use my car,
if you want. I’ll tell my gramma you needed it for a couple days.
She won’t care.”

“I won’t need it.”

“Are you kidding me? Illinois is like 800
miles away unless you’ve got a ship or something out there in the
trees.” He looked out the window. “Do you?”

I looked at him. He’d really like to
know.

“I’m right, aren’t I? Or do you have some
kind of teleportation thing.” His eyes were wide. “You’ve got
teleportation?”

Maybe I shouldn’t do it, I didn’t want to
overload him again. But he’d want to see it. I held up my hand and
let it dissolve. My fingers were the first to fall away, dissolving
into the air, followed by my hand, wrist and arm. I gathered the
molecules at my waist and my arm reappeared.

“That is badass.” He stared at my arm,
blinking heavily. The overload was dulling his consciousness
again.

“I got to go, Streeter.” I washed the
thoughts from his immediate awareness, let him keep the memory for
later digestion.

“Am I going to see you again?”

“I don’t know.”

We shook hands, fingers up, then I jerked
him close and we hugged, patting each other’s backs with the free
hand. “You should probably get back to Janette.”