Free Psion Gamma by Jacob Gowans Page A

checking up on me. I hope I grow up to be just like him. I love you, Dad.”
    A large smile broke out on Byron’s face. He opened his eyes to see his son looking back at him. He’d never felt so proud of anyone in his entire life. It was one of those rare occurrences when he knew he’d done a decent job raising his son.

6. Disorientation
     
    January 8, 2086
     
    S AMMY HAD NO IDEA what kind of gas the Aegis injected into his compartment, but it stunk like burned toast and paralyzed his muscles. Wearing gas masks, the Aegis dragged him out of the van, patted down every inch of him, and then propped him up on a dolly. One of them buckled straps around his waist and shoulders before wheeling him behind the others.
    Through drooping eyelids, Sammy saw that he was in a well-lit, underground parking lot. They passed two security cameras, which meant there were probably more, but he had a feeling whoever was watching those cameras didn’t care about some kid being wheeled into the building on a moving dolly. Every pillar they passed had a large purple ‘N’ with a golden circle wrapping around it. Some of the walls bore this symbol, too.
    They brought him to an elevator. Each Aegis except Stripe and the one pushing Sammy had a gun trained on him. When the doors slid closed behind them, Stripe pressed his thumb to a scanner above the columns of floor buttons. The panel of buttons swung open to reveal a second panel set into the elevator wall. Only three buttons were on this new panel: black, red, and white. Stripe pushed the black one.
    The steel box descended for a long time. As it dropped, the effects of the paralyzing gas began to wear off. After coming to a smooth stop, the doors opened. Sammy expected to see a filthy, dark, dripping hallway straight out of every slasher film he’d ever watched late at night when his parents thought he was asleep. Such was not the case. They came to a pristine, almost gleaming, corridor. The walls were covered in a cream and gold wallpaper with a deep purple trim. The carpeting was a light tan with rich embroidery. The long hallway stretched on before them. Somehow this scared Sammy even more.
    They went halfway down then took a right into another hallway, this one shorter and narrower. It was lined with four skinny doors on each side, each with a small circular window about two-thirds of the way up.
    A thin, breaking voice screamed out from behind one of the doors. “Let me go! Let me out of here! I want to go home!”
    Through the second window on his right, Sammy saw the source of the shouts: a thin girl with short black hair. She was on her hands and knees in the corner of a white room with a metal ring around her neck that chained her to the wall. Sammy thought she couldn’t be any older than Jeffie. She looked up at them as they passed and screamed even louder. The Aegis made no sign that they heard her. At the end of the hall stood a tall black door. Stripe scanned his thumb again. There was a click, and the black door swung open.
    The room beyond the door was scantily furnished. There were two chairs, one with heavy-duty arm restraints built into the rests, and one without any restraints at all. The second one looked more like an office chair. A table stood against the nearest wall with a white sheet concealing the identity of the oddly-shaped lumps atop it. Hanging from the ceiling was a helmet similar to the one Sammy used when he played virtual reality games at Psion Beta headquarters. The room was immaculate, probably even sterile, but despite the lack of smell, Sammy sensed death in this room. An awful chill ran up his spine and ended at the base of his skull.
    While two Aegis removed the magnetic cuffs from Sammy’s arms, three guns stayed trained on him. They shackled him firmly into the restraints on the armrests of the chair and his feet were placed in ankle-cuffs. When everyone seemed satisfied he was secured, all but Stripe left the room.
    Stripe walked behind Sammy,