Socket 3 - The Legend of Socket Greeny Read Online Free Page B

report about the vision,” she
said. “About Pike.”
    “Not a happy ending, huh.”
    “What’s your feeling? Does it have
merit?”
    I squeezed the railing. The quality of
visions sometimes indicated their likelihood. When they were hazy,
it was suspect, probably due to unforeseen variables. Even the
weather could alter a vision, make someone stay at home instead of
walk across the street and get hit by a truck. But when they were
fully detailed, well, the odds were good.
    “The vision was… solid.” I swallowed hard. I
hated to say that.
    “Hmm.” She nodded, thinking. “His security
will be re-examined. Relocation may be considered.”
    “And maybe that’s when he escapes.”
    The future was tricky. Perhaps if I never had
the vision, he sits in his cell until the end of time. But then I
have a vision and there’s a relocation because of it and that’s
when he escapes. Self-fulfilling prophecy. It was much easier when
I didn’t know these things.
    “Have you opened to related visions?” she
asked. “Something that might clarify the event?”
    Opening to visions meant trying to have one,
but that never worked. They came on their own. I wasn’t controlling
them. But why did I have them at all? Was there some intelligent
force deciding what to show me?
    “There’s nothing,” I answered.
    “Report any new visions, no matter how
trivial.” She watched the ship head for deeper waters, her thoughts
coming in all directions.
    “I better go.”
    “Yes.” She took a deep breath. “I have a
dinner meeting, tonight.”
    “A date?”
    “No.” She laughed. Anything personal like
that was funny to her. “All business. Work never ends.”
    “It could, you know.”
    “And then what?”
    Work was just a word, she once told me. What
she did was her life. Why would she attend to anything else?
    Her eyes were green. She looked at mine, like
she often did. Like she couldn’t believe how big her boy had
gotten, as if she wanted to tell me to buckle my seat belt and make
sure I looked both ways before I crossed the street. That
mother-essence was strong in her, but sometimes it disappeared and
she felt like a stranger staring at me, just an employee of the
Paladin Nation, like she suddenly remembered something that chased
the mother-essence away and I was all alone in this world. A
stranger to everyone. Just like Pike said. Like he knew.
    The ship was small on the horizon.
    “I’ll call when I get back from my trip,” I
said. “Tell you how they stuffed my spleen back inside me.”
    She smiled and patted my hand. Fatigue
bunched in her shoulders, and then it faded. The details of the
room washed away. I dropped my arms. The darkness of my office was
cold. I hurried to the leaper, urged it to take me to the tagghet
field where I could see real sunlight and breathe real air.
     
     
Pink Shirts
    The days went by in a blur of commitments,
but it still felt like my day off would never arrive. I was
counting the minutes and there just always seemed to be more. But,
finally, the week ended. Finally, I’d see Chute.
    The parking garage was still a dank,
stalactite-riddled cave. The dampness was in stark contrast to the
rest of the Garrison, where the air was filtered and 85-degrees. A
black car was waiting for me with the door open. I started to get
in—
     
    I hear rain battering the roof. In front of
me there’s an angry ocean, the waves white-capped and the water
black in-between snaps of lightning.
     
    “Everything all right?” Someone grabbed my
elbow.
    I was holding onto the car door. My entire
body was quivering with the numbing sensation of a vision that
normally only trickled down my neck. My gums felt dead; I tapped my
teeth together to get the feeling back.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Just… I was, uh, just
remembering something.”
    It took a second, then I recognized the
someone that grabbed my elbow was a Paladin named Jaret. He helped
me lean against the car. I sensed he was about to call