Free Psion Gamma by Jacob Gowans Page B

who craned his neck to see what Stripe was doing. With great care, Stripe took off his hat, coat, and tie and hung them on a small, thin stand. Then he removed his glasses and placed them in the front pocket of his coat.
    “Not the most comfortable clothes for traveling, you see. Especially in the middle of the summer.” He began unbuttoning the cuffs of his white shirt, then rolling them up his arms in careful fashion. “But the rules are the rules. And I obey the rules.”
    “Why am I here?” Sammy asked. He checked the sturdiness of the restraints as subtly as he could.
    Stripe did not answer immediately. When he came back around in front, Sammy got a better look at him. He had neatly trimmed and combed hair ending above his ears. His gray eyes, confident and intelligent, were not kind.
    “You won’t get out of those without help.” Stripe gestured with his head to the restraints. “I saw you pulling at them. They’re built to withstand six hundred kilos of pressure. So unless you have supernatural strength . . .” He let his words hang in the air as he measured Sammy up with a stare. “Why do you think we are here?”
    Sammy lied as best he could. “I don’t know. Did I do something wrong?”
    Stripe frowned as if he found Sammy’s words to be troublesome. “Wrong is a very awkward word, don’t you think? Very arbitrary. You see, you may not have broken any laws, but you did do something that needs correcting.”
    “What do you mean?” Sammy asked trying to sound scared, like the girl he had passed in the hall. “What needs correcting?”
    “No details. I just want to speak very clearly to you. I want you to understand every single word that I say. Are you listening to me?”
    Sammy nodded, his eyes wide. The closer Stripe got to him, the more he could sense his own fear crawling across his skin like an army of spiders marching up his arms and shoulders toward his brain. Stripe’s sharply cinnamon-scented breath hung in the air around Sammy’s nostrils.
    “Good. You seem like a smart boy. You’re not screaming like most of the crap we get. We ran a DNA search for you on the way here. Nothing was found. It’s happened before. Your family is one of the unregistered pieces of gutter trash, probably from the slums judging by the stench on you. I don’t really care. The point is, one way or another, you will tell me who you are and where you are from. It’s such a simple thing. If you tell me now, I can go have a talk with your family, and everyone will be happy. Including you. If you don’t tell me, I have to make you unhappy.”
    Pieces fell together inside Sammy’s head. They kill Anomaly Fourteens . . . and probably their families, too .
    “Do you believe in God?”
    Sammy hadn’t decided one way or the other, but since he was pretending to be Al, he answered in the affirmative.
    “Good for you. Do you pray?”
    Again he nodded.
    “If you don’t answer every question I ask, you will come to realize through significant pain that there is no God. Have I made myself clear?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you understand every word that I said?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then tell me your name and where you live.”
    Sammy said nothing, but his mind raced furiously. If he lied, they’d figure it out. What would be the point? Cold hard calculations flashed before his mind’s eye and he resolved that the only way of getting out of the situation would be to wait for a chance to escape. That moment was not now, not in this chair.
    Dread rose in him, filling his chest and settling over his heart. He would be tortured. He knew it. He wanted to cry. More fear hit him in a way he had not felt in over a month. This is real. This is really going to happen . He steeled himself as best he could against whatever was coming.
    The Aegis smiled. His perfect teeth, end to end, side by side, framed by bright red lips was all Sammy could see. And for the third time in his life, Sammy prayed. God . . . Please God, if you’re