Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga (50 page)

“Spindle!” The Commander’s expression was
mildly agitated. “Step down from the cadet.”

He would’ve come across the room, but
another contingent of Paladins approached with hands to shake and
backs to pat. The Commander glanced at me and doubt crept over his
face.
Why is Spindle on protective alert?

He wouldn’t figure it out. He couldn’t see,
not yet. He couldn’t see what I was seeing. He could see the energy
around the Paladins, of course, but not the variations between
these subtle differences in energy, how some vibrated in waves and
others were dim imitations.

The Commander couldn’t see that he was
surrounded by the enemy.

Perhaps the Commander sensed something was
wrong
—
Spindle’s unexplained behavior and the insatiable
rate at which I was consuming lifepatches
—
but he was
distracted. Even if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t see what was coming. And
I couldn’t warn him.

The vision would be revealed to all of them
soon enough, just a few more lifepatches, a bit more sustenance,
enough that I could survive the revelation. After that, my life was
in Spindle’s hands.
Will that be enough?

The servys blinked with confusion and began
to send out the warning that I was overconsuming the lifepatches.
The ground was littered with them. Something was wrong. Spindle
overrode their calls and ordered them to continue and maintain
tighter formation.

A curious energy buzzed in the room.
Paladins were beginning to notice the servys’ agitation. They had
witnessed hundreds of Realization Trials and probably stood around
while the cadet recovered until he or she could stand and be
congratulated. They knew how long it took, they were aware of what
it was like to recover, and they were becoming aware something was
abnormal.

They looked more often, their glances
lingering. But it wasn’t the Paladins’ stares I sensed. The enemy’s
True Nature was about to be revealed and, somehow, they felt it
coming. Perhaps they sensed the room locked down. Their minds
quietly scanned for possible escapes, preparing for the worst. They
could handle betrayal, but not in this setting. They were sheep
disguised as lions.

Footsteps pounded. “This is unacceptable,
Spindle,” the Commander said. “Step down before you are forcibly
removed.”

Just another minute. I just need a little
extra to survive.

“Is this understood?” the Commander spoke
his last warning deeply.

Paladins now gathered. Spindle’s eyelight
spun around his head, calculating position. His body posture
readjusted as they surrounded us. The enemy, however, broke away
unnoticed and gathered in small groups.
Something’s
coming
.

“What’s the meaning of this, Commander?” a
Paladin spoke. “Your servant mech is taking an aggressive stance. I
suggest immediate powerdown before—”

“Thank you, Captain Dushawn,” the Commander
snapped.

Just a bit more.

The Commander’s lips curled, about to utter
his last order when Spindle’s eyelight focused on him. “You must
prepare, Commander.”

The Commander’s hand moved near his evolver.
He sensed it now. The room rippled with tension. The enemies had
fully positioned themselves in one large group. The Paladins sensed
the tension without knowing where an attack was coming.

Or who.

I needed more lifeforce, but there was no
time. I couldn’t let them strike first. It had to be—

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSDDOOOOOOOOHPPBM.

The sub-sonic wave detonated from my core,
rattling the floor. It went through them like gamma rays, stripping
away their subtle delusions, revealing the enemy’s true nature. The
telekinetic wave imparted a sixth sense for all to see that the
enemies among them hummed with duplicated tissues and blood and
organs. They thought with processors. Followed programming. They
were imitations of life.

A third of the Paladins are duplicated
humans.

The last thing I heard was the sizzle of
weapons.

How could this happen? The greatest race of
humans infiltrated by the very falseness they sought to extinguish.
A third of them were duplicated. Were we too busy looking to save
the weaker human race, so consumed by protecting what we perceived
as the less worthy, that we didn’t see what was in our own
house?

Half the servys were gone when I awoke
covered in lifepatches. We were overshadowed by the long legs of
crawler guards, their legs anchored around us like a prison cell.
Outside the circle the war raged on.

It was a slur of bodies and weapons. I
blinked away the moisture building in my eyes just enough to see a
dismembered arm beyond the crawler legs, the fingers still
twitching like it was trying to grasp the evolver club just out of
reach.

I blinked again.

More bodies were piled up and there were
fewer servys. I was covered in sticky fluid that tasted a bit like
clay. And there was one less crawler. I felt pressure trying to
pierce the psychic shield the crawlers had erected. Where were they
finding the strength to still attack?
And where’s
Spindle?

Another blink.

The servys were gone.

One crawler remained. And the pressure felt
like someone standing on my skull. The bodies were stacked higher.
The arm was joined by a boot with a bone sticking from the top.

The crawlers had joined the battle, spearing
men with their legs or swiping them in half. My eyes were heavy,
ready for another blink. The crawlers were battling each other like
titans, behemoths piercing each other with deadly legs.

Why would they be battling each other?

One man moved swiftly through the mob, his
weapon blazing as he cut, pounded and bullied his way in my
direction, unconcerned with the battle around him, only where he
was going.

Spindle… watch…

Spindle was somewhere; I could feel him in
the room. He would heed my call, but I couldn’t get the thoughts
clearly formed. There was too much psychic force leaking through
the barrier, shredding whatever thoughts I could form. I reached
for a lifepatch but most were spent. A stack of them was near my
waist. My fingers crawled over the slick floor.

The mysterious Paladin was still slashing
his way toward me, his weapons clashed with others and shields
collapsed under his blows. The crawler guard did nothing. His
translucent shield obscured what he looked like, but I could see
his brown skin was bloody. I didn’t need to see the almond-shaped
eyes to know it was Pon.

He crawled low to the ground, elbows and
knees up, like a leopard about to pounce, and engulfed me in his
shield, relieving the psychic pressure. Sweat streaked his face.
His scar twisted beneath his chin like a snake. He wouldn’t look at
me.

Pon spied the war outside the security of
the shield. A small group of warriors was being methodically torn
apart. The battle would soon be over but I couldn’t distinguish who
was who in the melee. Their energy was too intertwined, impossible
to distinguish one from the other. They all looked physically
identical, brother fighting brother. Pon remained crouched,
watching. He smelled like fear.

The floor quaked. The center of the room
began spewing clay. A roar knocked everyone off their feet. The
crawlers staggered. A shadow passed over us like a tidal wave.

Pon looked down. And then we were
sinking.

T R A I N I N G

the predator

Pon cradled me like a child. The space
around us was black and cool; the war faded away. I felt
weightless, like we were floating. I couldn’t see walls or a
ceiling; couldn’t even feel the wind against my face, just the
humidity gathering on my exposed cheeks and tickling the end of my
nose.

Pon’s heart beat against my ear, his chest
drawing long, deep breaths like he was working hard. His essence
burned hot. It was not the same energy when Pike was in his eyes.
Pon was back.

Did he ever leave?

I didn’t think to ask him where he was
taking me. Or why. I wasn’t sure I even had my eyes open.

Something hard pushed against my back. Tiny
points of light coalesced in strange patterns swirling with
darkness, then I realized there were knobby branches that looked
black and the points of light were stars. The smell of the Preserve
was unmistakable.

I had no strength to wipe the drops of
moisture off my face. My head was against the trunk of the grimmet
tree. Pon stood on the edge of the stone slab looking into the pond
below. The moon cast its glow through the tree, draping jagged
shadows across his face, making it appear he was wearing a mask. He
looked tired and hungry.

Grimmets scurried out of the tree, observing
us below. Rudder landed gently on my chest. I was much number than
I thought. It wasn’t just strength I was lacking; I could barely
feel the soft padding of Rudder’s feet. He lay against my neck
without a word or a thought and shared his warmth.

“They infiltrated long ago,” Pon said,
without turning.

I moved my lips but only grunted. Pon didn’t
glance over, only gazed up at the moon. I waited a moment, gathered
the momentum to push out a single word. “How?”

He nodded ever so slightly, acknowledging my
question, perhaps editing his thoughts down to the fewest words
possible.

“When I relocated Pike, I discovered
something no other minder had seen. Perhaps he wanted me to see, or
maybe he just couldn’t hide it any longer. The duplicates wanted us
to have him, they wanted him to betray them, to give up their
secrets so the Paladin Nation would win the public war, but in
reality we won nothing. They were a thousand moves ahead of
us.”

I wanted to ask
why.
Why would they
want to be exposed? Why would they want their secret agent to give
them up? But the answer was now obvious:
The game of war and
politics requires a chess master
.

“We thought we defeated them.” He lifted his
chin, exposing the edge of his jawbone. “All along, they were part
of us like a virus, silently spreading the disease of
falseness.”

He appeared lost in thought. I started to
form another question, but Pon held up his hand so I would conserve
my strength. It felt like he still refused to believe what
happened, too. How could they spread throughout a population? It
wasn’t like we could become one of them. They were more like
artificial intelligence that assumed a moldable body that appeared
human. They weren’t born and fed; they didn’t grow up like humans.
They were just duplications.

“They,” he said, slowly, “we converting us,
cadet.”

He took a moment to let me process this. He
tapped the back of his neck.

“The imbed in our necks were being
programmed to produce nanomechs like a mechanized tumor. Over time,
the nanomechs would replace our blood cells and organs until our
bodies were completely transformed into something that resembled a
human. Until we became a
duplications!
In the end, we would
become the enemy.”

It’s the predator you don’t see.

Our imbeds were nanomech factories that
could produce synthetic white blood cells and repair nerve damage
with manufactured connections. We had duplicating technology inside
us!
Am I still completely human? Would I know if I
wasn’t?

“Why didn’t the Commander do anything?”

“I didn’t tell him,” he said. “I didn’t tell
anyone.”

“Why would you do that?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered. They needed to
see the truth for themselves.”

“They would’ve listened.”

“The Garrison is lost, cadet. The Paladin
Nation is on the brink of collapse. We are the only thing that
stands between the human species and the duplications. If we
perish, all is lost.”

He exposed his eyes for the first time. He
could hide from me no longer. I saw humility. Weakness.
Vulnerability. He was imperfect, after all. He was human.

“The Paladins needed to see,” he said, “what
they were becoming. No one could tell them.”

He breathed deep, again, closing his eyes.
Rudder stirred on my neck. I could feel my toes and fingers.

“When I learned this from Pike, I returned
to force your telekinetic response the only way possible,” Pon
said, speaking to the moon again. “I put you under duress,
destroyed your identity, and exposed your true nature. I had to
bring your powers forth, for it was you that would give them the
sight. You weren’t ready for such knowledge, but time was not on
our side. I betrayed you.”

“I saw Pike in you.”

“You saw my knowledge.” He looked at me.
“You mistook it for Pike. But the Commander secretly believed I
betrayed you. He believed I was sent to assassinate you, that I was
a traitor. He sent minders to bore through my mind, seeking
information about the enemy. I would’ve done the same, but he was
not aware that the very minders he sent to harvest my thoughts were
the exact enemies he sought to expose.”

Muscles flexed along his jaw. His eyes
revealed the psychic agony he endured. His essence was faint, like
color bleached from the sun. There wasn’t much left of him. They
had drained him to find out what he knew. Only a shadow of a great
warrior remained.

“The enemy has been waiting for you,
cadet.”

“Why me?”

“You are the telekinetic one. They would
replicate your DNA and quietly infuse Paladins with
self-replicating code by stamping it into the imbeds.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. I would’ve
done the same.

“But they did not expect you to bring forth
the vision.”

I shut my eyes. What good was I, laying
catatonic on the rock? All the power in the world couldn’t save us
now, what good was the ability to see clearly? I had nothing left
to give.