Part 14 (2/2)
The connection cut off, the actual feed of the pirate stream barely two minutes long, but it was two minutes that would live in infamy. Samantha knew that better than most. She had played at being human for her entire life and knew exactly how the registered elite would react in the face of such a reveal. The rest of the world, those who had never met the requirements of the Fifth Generation Act, would either take the stream as truth and riot, or do nothing and keep living the only life they knew.
”It's done,” Fahad said, yanking off his headscarf and gla.s.ses.
A giddy, satisfied smile sat on his face, one born of pride and antic.i.p.ation. The expression turned to horror as he watched Kristen approach one of his a.s.sistants. Kristen pressed her hand to the young man's head and ripped through his mind with her empathy. The man's scream lasted only a second or two, a sound that shredded their ears before it cut off.
”Your words are useful,” Kristen said as she turned her head to face the others, gleaming dark blue eyes full of malice. ”You aren't. At least, not anymore.”
Fahad and his people crumpled before Kristen's unwavering onslaught, the hunger for sanity driving her. Jason's s.h.i.+elds hadn't been enough. Nothing would be. The cracks in her mind were widening, and no one could stop her descent back into insanity.
Novak put his back against the wall. Five bodies lay scattered around the area where the pirate stream played in a continuous loop. It would run until someone on the government's end managed to hack it out of existence, which he doubted they could, because the damage was done.
”I knew Lucas was gonna kill us. Matron never listens to me,” Novak said, curling in on himself as he hid his face. Samantha tore her gaze from the vidscreen and the loop, to where Kristen was approaching Novak with a dreamy smile on her face.
”Don't kill that one,” Samantha reminded her sister, erecting a mental s.h.i.+eld between Kristen and Novak's mind.
”Oh, f.u.c.k, why not?” Novak asked, head jerking up, eyes wide with fear. His own or Kristen's, Samantha didn't really care.
”We needed a message people would believe in. Fahad delivered it perfectly.”
”So you killed him for doing a good job?”
”We have the message. We don't need the messenger, especially not one with traitorous thoughts. Now get up,” Samantha said, already stretching her telepathy through the mental grid beneath the s.h.i.+eld of static human minds, reaching for Lucas. ”Lucas still has use for you, so stop yelling. Kristen won't kill you.”
Kristen's smile was wide and vicious. ”Yet.”
Novak closed his mouth.
Did you finish? Lucas said as he drew Samantha into a psi link, suddenly there in her thoughts.
We're done, Samantha said. Pirate stream is running, information is uploaded, Fahad and his people are dead.
Good. Show me the others.
Obediently, Samantha looked at Kristen and Novak. Her vision doubled, the light from the vidscreens wrapping everything in halos as Lucas stared through her eyes. Lucas's telekinesis settled over her and pulled.
In an instant, all three were gone, leaving behind corpses, the voice of a dead man, and evidence of a betrayal that society wasn't strong enough to survive intact.
”They say we aren't meant for some distant alien sh.o.r.e. I say, who are they to destroy our future? Who in the gutters will fight for it?”
PART FOUR.
Clarity.
SESSION DATE: 2128.08.13.
LOCATION: Inst.i.tute of Psionics Research.
CLEARANCE ID: Dr. Amy Bennett.
SUBJECT: 2581.
FILE NUMBER: 750.
”We can find others like you,” the doctor says as she stares down at her notes. ”We're learning what makes you different from us. It's in your blood. In your brain.”
”In my mind,” Aisling concedes. ”We're different.”
”Not human.”
”Human enough.” Aisling coils a wire around one finger, never looking away from the doctor's face. ”Do you want to know a secret?”
”Of course.”
”It never works when those like me are free at the beginning.” She raises a finger and presses it to her lips. ”Shh. Don't tell anyone.”
The doctor folds her hands together over the table, knuckles white. The hum of machines fills the air and echoes on the feed. ”Your parents signed you over to us. Did you know that?”
”You told them to.”
”Where is your brother, Aisling?”
”You can't have him.” The girl smiles; a slow, precise motion beneath bleached-out violet eyes. ”You asked me once to save you. This is how I do it.”
EIGHTEEN.
SEPTEMBER 2379.
LONGYEARBYEN, NORWAY.
The government shuttle came in from the south, flying across Spitsbergen. Four teams of quads were strapped in for the flight out of The Hague. They escorted a single man into the cold of the Arctic, a man who would have preferred to remain in j.a.pan. For the first time since the government started security s.h.i.+fts after the island was rediscovered, the watch team in the north had missed their check-in.
<script>