Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga (78 page)

Fear boiled inside my gut. Timidly, I
expanded my awareness to see inside the office, to prepare for the
lifeless bodies inside. But I could not penetrate the doorway. Pike
could draw the essence of life, but could not impose his will upon
the impenetrable, complex lock of the inanimate door. It resisted
his thoughts. Even as I pressed my mind through the door, I found
it difficult to navigate the complex, multi-layered security that
sent me through endless, circular protocol. When I willed it to
resolve, it transformed into another formation and ended with
another blockade. It was a 2000-cube encryption that, given enough
time, could be solved. Had Pike given up? Or had he gotten what he
came for?

I touched the doorway, attempting to make a
stronger connection, to push harder through the resistance, to let
it see that I was not the enemy. As my fingers touched the surface,
the encryption shifted. Connections were re-established. In a
silent movement, the doorway re-coded and lit. It recognized me.
Was waiting for me.

I stepped inside.

A large desk was overturned against the
wall, revealing the outline of a trapdoor beneath it. On the other
side, Mother was in her cushioned chair, facing her monitor that
took up the entire wall, curving fifteen feet around her with a
view of the tagghet field. I sensed her heart beating.

But she did not turn to face me.

L E G E N D

A Broken Heart

“Where are they?” I asked.

“Relocated to a safe room, deep
underground.”

“It’s too risky for you to be here, you
should be—”

“He wouldn’t let me out.” Her words were
distant. Dreamy.

“It doesn’t matter, you should go to the
safe room while I—”

“I wanted to go out there, in the hall, and
at least buy a few more moments for the children,” she said, “but
he locked me in here, activated the lockdown.”

“The Commander is dead, Mother.”

She knew. She watched the monitor, the view
of the tagghet field. Spindle’s body lying in the middle. She saw
the battle. She saw Pike coming, knew he’d escaped, that danger was
imminent. But she couldn’t do anything about it. She was in shock,
but it wasn’t the bodies that littered the hallway or the ending of
the Paladin Nation, the end of the world as she knew it, that
changed her. Her energy had transformed. Her identity had shifted.
Mired in images of the past. She was facing secrets that she hid
from herself for years. And now she knew.

She knows what I am.

“We had a beautiful baby.” She shook her
head, looking at the ceiling, recalling. Her voice so distant.
“Your father was in the room when our child was born. He was so
blue. You should have seen the look on your father’s face, he
thought something was wrong. I thought he was going to pass out.
But then our baby started crying.” She laughed, slightly joyous, a
little mad. “You know what your father did then? He buried his face
on my shoulder and cried louder than anything in that hospital.
There I was, just gave birth to an eight pound baby boy and I’m
comforting your father on my shoulder and every one is crying but
me.”

She spent a few moments in that memory.

“And then, one day, your father took him to
the Garrison, to show his newborn baby boy to his peers, to the
Commander and Pivot. And when he returned, I knew something was
different. A mother knows her child, Socket. She can feel him, she
knows when he is happy or when he’s in trouble or sick or hungry…
and when your father returned, something was different. You looked
the same, but there was something. I knew that wasn’t
my
baby boy…” She swallowed hard, “I knew you were an imposter.”

She started to weep but choked on the sobs.
It was so hard for her to say that out loud.

“I’d seen enough of the Paladin Nation to
know that nothing was impossible and the thought that you were some
sort of clone was… it was possible… but I ignored it. Do you know
why? Because I was an optimist.”

Darker overtones returned.

“I believed in the American dream, that one
day we would be a normal family and you would go to school and we
would eat dinner together and talk about our day and take family
vacations. I believed all that.” She wiped her face, yet to turn
around. “Did you know I wanted to get a horse?”

She always had a calendar of horses, but I
never heard her talk about them.

“That’s right, one day I wanted to get
property and have three horses. One for each of us. We could build
our own house far away from everyone, get out of South Carolina and
move someplace remote, in the mountains of Wyoming, even. Maybe
have some chickens and spend quiet nights on the back porch. Those
are the things I dreamed about, that I came to expect. I didn’t
want to be a family of superheroes, Socket. I didn’t want to be
responsible for everyone else, didn’t want to save the world. I
just wanted my family. That’s all.”

And then he died.

She didn’t say it, but the shortness of her
breath, the way she covered her mouth with the back of her hand
whenever she thought about him, was enough.

“I loved him,” she managed to say.

Her breath knotted in her throat. She
refused to sob, but it did nothing to stop the tears that she wiped
away.

“And when he died, I… I knew… I knew it was
because of
him.”

Her memory floated out, clear and lucid. It
was effortless for me to see what she had done, that after my
father’s death, after he had been laid to rest and the Commander
supported her decision to stay with the Paladin Nation, she went
out to the grimmet tree. She knew she’d find Pivot there. She knew
he was, somehow, responsible for the death of her husband. She knew
that, somehow, he’d taken her real son and replaced him with me.
She knew this in her heart and with all the grimmets watching, she
grabbed the sandy blonde hair of Pivot and she had no mercy. She
beat him. Her rage relentless. Her sorrow, uncompromising. Her
life, wrecked.

She beat him for it.

Her emotions carried enormous power, as a
mother’s broken heart does. Under that dead tree, she shook him as
tears burned her cheeks, she struck him as sobs burst in her chest.
She cursed his name, and swore never to speak with him again.

And yet, even though she knew he was somehow
responsible, she endured. Because without her, Pivot wouldn’t have
been able to succeed. He chose his pawns carefully. He needed a
mother with the strength to endure under impossible conditions, to
bear the suffering that few could tolerate. He needed a mother that
could give herself for the future of the human race, for all of
life, for the universe, despite her son. Her family.

Her self.

“I am so sorry, Socket.” She turned the
chair and faced me. Her dark eyes were hollow, her cheeks blotched
and wet. “I am so… sorry…”

She clasped her hands and bowed her head.
And the sadness escaped her control. After all those years, it
finally broke her. She could no longer bear the weight of sadness
she had lugged around for twelve years.

I knelt before her and held her shaking
hands. The salty essence exuded through her, entering my chest.
Vibrating in my core. The room appeared to illuminate. I felt light
and transparent. Mother unfolded her hands, cupped mine in hers and
shook. Then she looked up, touched my face. She traced my lips and
nose with her fingers, looked at my forehead, my chin and cheeks.
Warmth penetrated my entire being, building pressure inside,
whining with strength.

“I saw him, Mother,” I said. “I saw your son
today. You would be proud.”

She shook her head and swallowed. “You,
Socket…” She placed her hand on my cheek. “I could not ask for
something as precious as you.”

It was not me the world was lucky to have.
My mother finally found a place inside that she accepted, a place
she couldn’t find before. She found her Self.

Mother.

It was that space of pure love, of pure
essence, that sprang forth like a luminous stream from her heart.
Like Anna, it filled me. It flowed through me.

Fetter had it all wrong.

There was never any reason to take the
essence, it was only a cycle of thirst and hunger, of rejection.
The universe was boundless. Its very core was limitless. It was all
powerful. All knowing.

And that essence gushed through me until I
burst forth like the sun, shining through the planet. Once again,
merging with all things. Transparent. Open.

I saw every particle of the Garrison. I knew
every speck of dust, every leaf, stone and body. Deep underground
was a contingent of people hiding from Pike. There were three
groups of tourists and their tour guides, a multitude of civilians
that worked for the Paladin Nation. Amongst them were the kids,
sitting quietly while the few Paladins that escorted them all to
safety calmed the others. Chute was not among them. In fact, life
did not exist outside the underground safe room. Nowhere, except in
the Preserve. Under the grimmet tree, I felt them. I felt the two
identities. One was Pike.

The other was Chute.

And before I dissolved to transport my body
across space-time, my mother buried her face in her hands. Perhaps
she was relieved it was finally over. Maybe she was relieved she
resolved the bitterness and rejection that festered in her heart
for all these years. Relieved that what was asked of her was
finally done.

Regardless, it was not me the world was
lucky to have.

L E G E N D

Engorged

Sadness saturated me like a thick vapor. It
travelled with me as I dissolved, as I passed through the mountain
and into the Preserve. Sadness for my mother. Sadness for the
lifelessness of birds, insects and mammals littering the topical
jungle. Death extended all the way to the micro-organic level of
bacteria and fungi. The Preserve was void of life.

I gathered my body at the base of the stone
slab that led up to the grimmet tree. It was colder than normal.
The overhead forcefield that protected the Preserve from the
outside elements had been shutdown, the first since it had been
erected. Cool wind had already begun to wither the tropical
plants.

The grimmet tree came into focus as my eyes
solidified, its barren branches spotted with the colorful grimmets,
the only organism to survive the life-cleansing. And at the base of
the massive tree was Pike, his shoulders slightly hunched, his arm
extended with a curved dagger in his hand, the tip pushing into the
pure skin of Chute’s neck. An odd pain sliced my earlobe as it did
when Pivot showed me the black cube that contained Fetter.

She was on her knees. Her eyes wide with
terror. Her heart pounded in her chest, echoing in my own chest.
Adrenaline pumped through her arteries. Carefully, I slid my mind
around her, penetrating the knife’s point, surrounding her with a
protective grip.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Pike said. “It’s not the knife
you need to fear.”

The knife was only to strike fear in Chute.
The real weapon was standing next to her, his mind poised to pull
her mind apart. And while he would not survive such a strike – I
could obliterate his existence with a thought, he would see how
mortal he was – it would not be quick enough to save her.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said.

“Wrong, wonderboy. You don’t know what I
have to do. You don’t have even a sliver of a fucking idea of what
I have done, the depths of me. Wonderboy.” The silly expression
that had contorted his face the last several months gave way to a
dark and gray complexion that pulled on his face. He worked his
lips like he was drunk, his balance wavered. “You must listen,
wonderboy. You must
listen.”

“I’m listening.”

The blade pushed into Chute’s neck, sparking
a cry from deep in her throat. But she was held motionless by his
mind, frozen in space. Helpless if he swayed too far to the
right.

He was drunk with essence, having imbibed
every life within the Garrison in such a short time. How many lives
had he taken? How much was enough? Why would he be so greedy?
Because he could, was that it?

“I’ve spent a lifetime, you hear,” he said.
“A lifetime doing despicable things, things that no human could
fathom, things that should never have been done. That no one
deserved. I did those things.” He pulled his lips over his teeth
like he could no longer bear the pain. “I DID THOSE THINGS!”

“Don’t do it again.” I held my arms out, let
my mind open. Vulnerable. “I’m here, Pike. You can have me.”

“Oh, you have something.”

“Just let her go.”

A smile crept over his face. He looked down
at her, wavered, and back to me. “Are you afraid your precious
vision won’t come true, is that it? Wonderboy, is that it? That you
would live happily ever after with your true love here, huh?” He
caressed her cheek with the flat side of the cold knife. “Are you
afraid you don’t know everything?”

“Those visions were a lie, you said so
yourself. Pivot tricked me.”

He straightened. “Oooh, so the student
becomes the master, is that it, then?”

“Just let her go.”

“What if nothing is what it seems, eh?” He
waggled his eyebrows and his black glasses slid on his nose. “That
you know nothing.”

“What do you want, Pike?”

“What do I want? WHAT DO YOU THINK I WANT,
YOU SHIT?” His face stiffened, his lips pulled tightly over his
teeth. “I want this to end.”

Pike loved to talk in circles. He wanted to
tell me something, to reveal something about himself that was right
there, just under the surface, but he just babbled nonsense. His
mind was powerful, but the frayed ends of his previous condition
were starting to show. Not all things could be healed. Now that he
had me, what good would he be? Why exist?
Without you, there is
no me.