The Never Army

by Hodges, T. Ellery

  If this were a fair fight—I’d lose.

  She went back again.

  “You have my word, you and your family will be safe.”

  What had he meant by that? Did Jonathan know about the child Leah was carrying or was he talking about something else entirely? One thing was clear each time she watched, Leah knew his exact meaning.

  At this point, with the roughly twenty minute delay before Olivia had been able to watch the exchange and the amount of time she’d spent considering her next action, she had about one and a half cycles remaining before Jonathan would have to deliver. As long as she allowed Leah to remain in the cell until that moment.

  Don’t, you’re letting him into your head.

  Maybe it was the fatigue coupled with the alien’s diminishing condition or the stress to salvage the situation. But she was glad Rivers wasn’t here to see her failing to live up to what she’d told him.

  More words echoed in her thoughts.

  “Control . . . you’re going to lose control . . . lose any certainty that you ever had it.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you do . . . all it will mean is that my people change their strategy.”

  Leave Leah inside, she would get the information, but she wouldn’t know the price until it was too late. Take Leah out. Possibly throw a monkey wrench into his plans. Or would she? He believed he had known quite well how she’d react when he said he’d be taking away her control. So much, in fact, that she wondered if he wanted her to make this choice just to prove he couldn’t lead her around.

  “Don’t, you’re letting him into your head . . . you’re letting him into your head.”

  She simply had to make a choice.

  Everything in her wanted to call his bluff. Being honest with herself, it wasn’t the threats to her staff’s loved ones that stopped her. Olivia couldn’t risk another spelling demonstration with witnesses. She’d have to have him brought to a room with no cameras or recording equipment. She’d have to extract what he knew on her own. The thought of what might happen if they were alone together scared her. She’d be handing him the best opportunity to spring a trap that she could imagine.

  “Infuriating child!” She slammed a fist into the table.

  She closed her eyes and rubbed at the bottom of her hand. Reminded herself that she had to stop thinking of him as a child.

  A thought came to her. What if she attended his disclosure in person? She could go into the shell, disable the sound isolation on his solitary confinement. She could stand right outside his cell door waiting to listen the moment the sixth cycle began.

  He might not have thought of that.

  “. . . maybe,” she thought aloud.

  He’d have to say what he knew to the entire room. His friends and Grant hearing it all as well. Would that bother him, get under his skin?

  “It doesn’t matter what you do . . . The point is that I’m never lying to you . . .”

  For a moment, those words cast doubt, but she didn’t waver—Olivia liked this plan. When she rose from the desk, she fully intended to head to the containment shell and make it a reality. She put the last twenty-four hours as far from her mind as possible and willed the mask of unfaltering calm she wore every day back over her features.

  To her surprise, the moment she pulled open the door to leave, a fist belonging to one of her agents hung midair in the doorway. He’d been coming to interrupt her.

  “Ma’am, Command needs you in the control room,” he said. “It’s urgent.”

  The experience was called teleportation sickness, and it hit Evelyn hard. Shane showed no signs of being affected. He caught her gently as she started to lose her balance. Before she knew what was happening, she felt him carrying her.

  “Everything is okay, Ms. Tibbs,” he said. “You’re safe now.”

  Everything was not okay. Everything was a blur—a painfully bright spinning blur. “Paige? Where’s Paige? Joao? Where are the others? Why can’t I hear them?”

  She felt herself being laid on a soft surface. “Rourke has taken them to another location. They’re safe,” Shane said.

  “You said we were gonna hold hands?” Evelyn asked angrily. “What happened?”

  “Take it easy now, please,” Shane said. “The disorientation is temporary, the more you remain calm and still, the faster your equilibrium will return.”

  Holy hell it’s bright, Evelyn thought.

  She could see the blur of Shane, a black shape with a familiar voice moving in front of far lighter but equally blurry shapes that made up the contours of wherever they were. “Answer the question!”

  He may be a blur but at this range she wouldn’t miss. Then she realized she was no longer holding the sidearm.

  “I know, I took the gun,” Shane said. “I had no desire to lie to you, and I’m going to give it back, but if you fire that weapon in here then this will all be for nothing.”

  She felt around herself. As she realized she was feeling a comforter on a large mattress her surroundings began coming into focus. She was in an elegant room, something like a five-star hotel. The brightness hadn’t merely been a part of her disorientation either, it came from a window all around the room.

  “What is this? Where am I?” Evelyn asked.

  Shane was coming into better focus. She was still dizzy, but without the gun it was too much to still consider trying to assault him. Though, if he didn’t start explaining soon, the moment would be coming.

  “You’re on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean,” Shane said.

  What?

  “It was your son’s decision. He needed you out of harm’s way, somewhere you’d be hard-pressed to make yourself a distraction—where you would be hard to find.”

  Shane pulled open the top buttons of his jacket, and for a moment Evelyn swore she saw something like sunlight coming from beneath his shirt. He was quick, retrieving a large folded envelope from his inner pocket.

  “I know you have questions, Evelyn,” Shane said. “Jonathan asked that I plead with you to go through the contents of this envelope before you make any irreversible decisions. Inside, you’ll find a passport, a debit card, and various other necessities. No one will ever question the authenticity of these documents, though they do belong to a manufactured identity. These are as real as the identity you’ll be leaving behind.”

  He placed the folder into her hands. “There is also some Dramamine. Your son said you get seasick.”

  Evelyn hesitated as she held the envelope. She did get seasick, but the only person who had ever known about it was her late husband.

  “You’ll find a letter from your son in there,” Shane said. “It isn’t in his hand, I had to memorize its entirety and transcribe it, as he couldn’t write it himself while he remained a captive. Please, read it carefully.”

  Shane made a point of laying Douglas’s sidearm down on the nightstand beside her. She only stared at him for a moment before deciding to go for it. Yet, to her surprise, when she sat up and reached for the weapon, Shane was already on the other side of the room, his back to her as he looked out the window.

  He’d either moved inhumanly fast or this disorientation had made her lose time for a few moments.

  “I know I’m leaving you angry,” Shane said. “I do hope that if we see each other again, you’ll have forgiven me.”

  Evelyn finished reaching for the gun, but when she turned it on him, she was alone in the room. Shane had vanished. Evelyn’s hand began to shake as she looked about the empty room with growing paranoia. She wasn’t insane, he had been here, he was real. The envelope was right there in her hand.

  She found herself afraid to open it for quite some time. She stared at it until a knock came to her door and she was jarred out of her thoughts.

  “Room service,” said a voice on the other side.

  Evelyn was frozen, such that by the third knock the only thought going through her head was that at any moment now the woman outside her door might think the room empty and
walk in on her pointing a gun at a window. Finally, she pushed the weapon under a pillow and forced herself to pull it together long enough to get rid of the woman on the other side of her door.

  When she answered, the woman brought in a carrier. Had Shane called in breakfast on her behalf before he disappeared? How had it gotten here so quickly? Was this what she needed to be thinking about?

  When the woman left, Evelyn finally opened the envelope and found the letter.

  Mom,

  By now, you know more than I ever wished you would have to. It’s fair to be angry. I’ve sent you to the other side of the globe to keep you away. There is a person I need to be right now, and I can’t be him if you’re here. I know—better than you can imagine—that this is too much to ask of you. That if anyone would refuse to see themselves benched, it would be you.

  The thing you’ll need to ask yourself in the coming weeks, is if you believe me to be a good person. There will be news. I’d ask you not to watch. Though, I suspect you won’t take my advice. So, instead, I’ll say this. If you believe me a good man, you’ll never need to question if your son is who they say he is.

  Dad and you never got a honeymoon. You always wanted to take this trip. Never got to before he died. Why I know this is a complicated matter, but for now, try . . . for me, to enjoy it. If it helps, the credit cards in the envelope are virtually limitless.

  I know you have questions. You just experienced teleportation, and I imagine any theories you might have had about why I’m the prisoner of a covert government operation have likely been abandoned as a result. I will tell you what I can.

  The question, of course, is where to start?

  You asked me once if Dad had kept a secret. If somehow his past had come back to haunt me. It’s not fair to blame him. He sacrificed everything trying to keep me from this. He tried so hard, endured so much. Thinking of what he went through for me brings me to tears. Nevertheless, there is a story you deserve to hear.

  Dad didn’t die in a car accident . . .

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  OCT 15, 2005 | 9:45 PM | JBLM FACILITY

  THE RAIN STARTED before Fisher came on duty. As evening grew dark the ground was mostly mud. The only thing that could make his shift any less fabulous was if the weather turned cold. So far, he and his friend Cooper had only caught a few stiff breezes as they stood beneath the awning at one of the hangar’s pedestrian entrances.

  “Clown shoes,” Fisher said, as he took a drag off his cigarette.

  When silence dragged on too long, he turned to find his friend waiting for him to look. Cooper clearly hadn’t wanted him to miss just how unimpressed his expression showed he was.

  “Clown shoes,” Cooper repeated.

  “Yeah, what of it?” Fisher asked.

  “As in, having to listen to Fisher’s BS all night is clown shoes?” he asked.

  Fisher gave an unapologetic smirk along with an obscene gesture. “Just saying, the phrase never got its fifteen minutes.”

  “And this tragedy has been bothering you for some time now?” Cooper asked.

  “Nah, you remember Rolland?”

  Cooper shook his head.

  “She’s one of Harrison’s guards, has to listen to everything the prisoners talk about in their cells. Other day she overhears the skinny blond kid and the big one talking about how clown shoes never got its chance. It reminded me that I too have unresolved feelings on the matter.”

  Cooper grunted a laugh. “Yeah? Which one was pro clown shoes? The skinny blond guy or the big one?”

  “Blond,” Fisher said.

  Cooper nodded. “I was here when they brought those two in. No one has a clue how they’re supposed to be a threat to National Security. Ask me, the only danger those two pose to the country would be its internet bandwidth.”

  Fisher shrugged as he took a final drag from his cigarette. “Above my pay grade.”

  He was about to flick the butt out into the mud, but his hand stopped mid flick.

  “Hey, you feel that?” Cooper asked.

  Fisher nodded, the butt still smoldering between his fingers as he eyed the landscape. A long line of lights illuminated the nearby runway. The two of them could see all the way to the hangar’s perimeter fences. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but Cooper hadn’t been imagining things. There had been an abrupt stillness in the air.

  A moment later Fisher’s senses started having an argument. His ears were telling him they heard the rain hitting something not too far out in front of them while his eyes pointed out that, clearly, there was nothing there. That disagreement was interrupted when he noticed the trees were still swaying despite the absence of any wind on his skin.

  The hairs on his arms and neck stood up. “Don’t like this.”

  “Whatcha think?” Cooper asked. “Boss lady’s orders were to report anything suspicious, no matter how small.”

  Fisher nodded, though he wasn’t sure exactly what they were about to report. He took a few cautious steps out from under the awning until he was standing in the rain. After a moment of getting wet without having gained any insight into the matter he noticed his hand was still cocked to flick his cigarette butt, and that the ember was about to burn his finger.

  Just as Cooper was getting on the radio Fisher finally let fly.

  There was a burst in midair. A small puff of sparks as the cigarette hit a wall that wasn’t there a few feet out in front of him. Fisher blinked in surprise as the butt unceremoniously fell straight down and sizzled out in the wet grass.

  “What the . . .” Fisher said, already bringing the M4 assault rifle strapped to his shoulder up into firing position. “Did you see that?”

  Fisher, reluctant to take his eyes off what was out in front of them, began inching backwards. He froze when lights on the outside of the building suddenly went out. What was strange—only the lights on the hangar were dark. The lights lining the landing strip hadn’t been affected.

  “Cooper?”

  Again, no reply came. His eyes searched the dark furiously. The hangar’s lights suddenly came back on—the generators kicking in a few seconds after the power loss. An icy cold crept through him as the lights came back on and he found an empty space where his friend had been.

  Cooper was gone. He wasn’t alone out here.

  Fisher had seen guys capable of pulling off some crazy things during his time in the service. But no one could take a man out and disappear his body so quick and quiet that his friend standing less than five feet away didn’t hear it.

  Fisher flicked off the M4’s safety, his heart pounding in his ears as he resumed shuffling backward toward the door. He reached for his earpiece, his gaze sweeping back and forth to keep an eye on every angle of approach. “Command, need backup immediately. Cooper is missing, assumed down. Something is out here . . . repeat something is out here with me.”

  Fisher felt his back come up against the safety of the hangar door. He waited for a reply over the comm. The seconds ticked by like an eternity before his earpiece finally crackled with life.

  Someone responded, but all he heard was static and a voice too garbled to discern. He tried again, beginning to fear that no one inside had received his message. Then—Fisher froze.

  Something—he couldn’t tell what—had hold of his rifle. Words caught in his throat as he stared at the M4’s muzzle being swallowed.

  Whatever his cigarette had hit must have been inching forward the entire time. Creeping toward him like an invisible blob. Fisher started firing, and he could feel the recoil with each pull of the trigger, but the weapon hardly made a sound. Small waves were rippling down the barrel’s surface behind which the gun seemed to vanish.

  Like the weapon was being submerged into a liquid wall. As he stood speechlessly watching, he let go of the trigger. His hand went to his belt, searching frantically for the key card that would let him back into the building.

  Then the translucent boundary abruptly stopped, and he froze in place along with i
t.

  Fisher had time to take two horrified breaths before a massive hand rippled through the barrier that had his rifle. The hand wore a black glove and looked to belong to a man twice his size. It came for him so fast that it had hold of him by the jaw before he was even sure of what he had seen. He felt his feet leave the ground as he was tugged away from the wall, lifted by the chin.

  It was as though he were at the mercy of a phantom floating limb with an iron grasp. He gave up on the key card and began pulling his trigger again. More rounds unloaded into the barrier and made even less sound than they had the first time.

  His eyes bulged, and he couldn’t scream because of the hand’s grip on his jaw, as he was pulled toward the barrier. His face plunged into something cold and the rest of his body followed. It was like being dragged face first through a pool of thick syrup until he broke through a surface on the opposite side.

  Finally, he heard the deafening roar of his bullets firing. He opened his eyes and found himself face to face with the owner of that giant hand. More accurately, he was face to mask with a man standing in what appeared to be a strange hallway on the other side of the invisible barrier. The huge man’s entire body was covered head to toe in tactical black clothing. Fisher kept pulling the trigger until the M4 clicked empty, but the giant holding him hadn’t so much as budged even after taking repeated point-blank hits.

  The last thing Fisher remembered was a deep booming Cajun drawl. “Time fo yo nap, Missa Clown Shoes.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  HE HUNG UP the phone with his suspicions all but confirmed.

  When the second report had come in, Rivers told himself not to jump to the worst possible conclusion—yet. Now, he’d just gotten off the phone with an arm of The Cell’s operation in Anchorage Alaska, bringing the confirmed disappearances to ten. His nightmare possibility was beginning to play out. They were looking at the start of a complete wipe. Every known contact of The Mark—every subject The Cell had under surveillance—was disappearing tonight. They were still getting reports from teams confirming their subjects were in the wind.