“I know,” Jonathan said, though his grin suggested he felt no regrets. “But if you think that was weird, you better brace yourself.”
After staring at a door that appeared to go nowhere, but definitely hadn’t existed a second earlier, Lincoln turned back to Jonathan. “Tibbs . . . is that a freakin’ door to freakin’ Narnia?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
JONATHAN LEANED AGAINST the hallway that led into the mess. He had paused there a moment earlier and now didn’t dare step inside out of fear he might interrupt the greatest moment he’d ever witnessed.
Lincoln sat at a table inhaling a breakfast tray piled high with the staples one consumes to recover from a hangover. Meanwhile Mr. Clean, Heyer, and his roommates attempted to bring the trainer up to speed. Thing was, the crash course given to Collin and Hayden the night before hadn’t exactly answered every question they had and since getting a taste of Jonathan’s world, their questions were multiplying faster than bunnies.
“These interdimensional monsters,” Hayden said. “They’re like the Dark Overlords from Howard the Duck?”
“. . . Dark Overlords?” Heyer’s voice was incredulous as he repeated the words aloud.
“Physically no,” Mr. Clean said. “But I suppose there are some parallels.”
“There are?” Heyer asked, eyes wide as he looked to Mr. Clean.
Mr. Clean’s avatar shrugged. “Perhaps, shallow parallels.”
“Okay, so these Ferox on the other side, they step onto one of these sundial looking things,” Hayden said. “And if they’ve swallowed one of these portal stones, a Stargate opens?”
“We refer to them as gateways,” Heyer said.
“. . . it’s a bit derivative,” Hayden replied, glancing at Collin for consensus. “I think Kurt Russel and MacGyver would side with me on this.”
“Derivative? . . . MacGyver? . . .”
Not looking at the alien, Hayden remained unfazed by Heyer’s ponderous expression until he insisted, “These gateway platforms are ancient artifacts, they have existed for millennia, if anything is derivative—”
“Okay, I retract it,” Hayden said, rubbing at his beard as he sometimes did when he was too deep in thought to get sidetracked by a tangential argument.
Jonathan bit down on a knuckle to keep from being heard laughing.
“Point is, instead of simply using these Starg—” Hayden caught himself and smiled. “Gateways, these gateways as a means to travel from A to B, Mr. Clean has to cooperate with another AI on the other side to create a short-lived copy of our world—”
“No,” Collin said. “Cede is opening the gateways from the Feroxian Plane, Mr. Clean is more like the guy directing traffic to specific nodes as the gates open on this side.”
“And when you say nodes, you really mean people with implants, like Jonathan?” Lincoln asked.
“Yeah, see . . . he gets it,” Hayden said.
“I don’t have a clue what anyone is saying,” Lincoln said, his face momentarily deadpan before he went back to shoveling scrambled eggs into his mouth.
“Okay, but it’s actually Mr. Clean who manifests the Temporary Thunderdome,” Collin said.
“Nice!” Hayden said, a large grin forming on his lips. “I kept thinking of it as the Battle Bubble, but I like Temporary Thunderdome.”
Watching Heyer’s eyes bounce back and forth between his roommates as he listened to them geek their way to an understanding of The Never was something Jonathan didn’t ever want to see end. As such, he was the only one who noticed Leah lingering in shadows behind him. He gave her a glance of acknowledgment, but held a finger to his lips and whispered, “If you interrupt this conversation, I will never forgive you.”
Leah held his gaze for a moment, then took a place against the wall to wait.
“The temporary dimension is referred to as The Never,” Heyer said. “I am afraid the term Thunderdome is as lost on me as Dark Overlords . . . perhaps Mr. Clean could weigh in?”
The cartoon figure on the monitor raised his palms up and shrugged. “Well, again, they aren’t wrong exactly, but—”
“Would you say,” Hayden interrupted, his voice deepening before he finished. “That two men enter and one man leaves?”
“Incorrect,” Mr. Clean said. “One man and one Ferox enter and one—”
“Let’s just stick with Temporary Thunderdome,” Lincoln said. “My head can’t wrap around much more at the moment.”
“The Ferox refer to The Never as The Arena,” Mr. Clean said. “They aren’t aware that their battle is taking place in a temporary dimension.”
“But the human combatant doesn’t enter or exit the same way as the Ferox,” Collin said, frowning. “I still don’t get that part. Heyer, you said they’re in a state of ‘Flux’ pending the result of what happens inside.”
Heyer’s mouth opened to answer, but Hayden was already talking. “Actually, I think it’s basically like Quantum Leap. The only difference is he isn’t jumping into someone else’s body, he’s jumping into a version of himself that existed before The Never existed.”
“Quantum Leap?” Heyer mouthed the words.
“Oh, yeah, that makes sense,” Collin replied. “But are they just quantum leaping into their own shadows within Temporary Thunderdome?”
Heyer released a long sigh, seemingly unable to tell at this point if Collin and Hayden were directing these questions at him or if he’d simply become a sounding board.
“Flux,” Hayden said. “Yeah, I still don’t quite understand that part . . .”
“If I may,” Mr. Clean interjected. “It is not unlike an if/then statement in a computer program. When a human is activated in The Never . . . or Thunderdome, their physical existence is tied to the outcome of what takes place inside.” Mr. Clean said. “If they die, then they cease to exist on Earth and their physical body is sent to the Feroxian Plane in the same state that it exited The Never. If they live . . .”
Mr. Clean paused, giving Heyer a preemptive apologetic glance. “If they live, then they ‘quantum leap’ back to the moment of activation.”
Heyer seemed to see something as complex as The Never being explained with inane pop cultural references as offensive. What was funny about it, was that the alien himself appeared at a loss to understand why it would bother him so much.
Jonathan knew. The Old Man was seldom the guy in the room having trouble keeping up. Clearly, he hated it.
“Yeah, but, the time travel part, how is it that time moves forward in The Never but not on . . .” Collin had to paused for a moment. “Um . . . Earth prime?”
Mr. Clean began to explain, but Hayden cut in with a sudden burst of enthusiasm that startled everyone, Lincoln and Heyer included.
“That’s why you open The Never inside a starg—Gateway,” Hayden said. “I mean, I don’t pretend to comprehend the physics, but if my understanding of Sci-Fi is accurate, then a split second might pass on Earth prime, while inside a wormhole any manner of time might pass. So, when someone quantum leaps in and out of Thunderdome, the information actually exits the gateway before a perceivable amount of time has passed on Earth prime.”
Hayden and Collin both turned to the AI for confirmation.
Glancing from Heyer to the expectant roommates, Mr. Clean decided it best to move on. “If all this helps Lincoln understand, then . . . sure.”
Lincoln gave a noncommittal shrug.
Collin and Hayden went back to drinking coffee. Jonathan doubted they had slept, but he really couldn’t blame them. Even without caffeine their minds had probably been on overdrive after teleporting, meeting both an alien and an Artificial Intelligence, and finding out there were men with superpowers, all in one day.
Heyer took the lull as his chance to politely remove himself, but as he stood, he was hit with new questions.
“So, Roswell?” Collin asked.
“Area 51?” Hayden added.
Heyer sighed, as he walked down the hallway out of the mess. “Weat
her balloon. Military testing site.”
Both Hayden and Collin looked disappointed, but then their eyes narrowed skeptically on the alien’s back.
Lincoln scoffed, “Likely story,”
Grinning, Jonathan finally turned back to Leah, but the hallway was empty.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
AS THE MAN appeared out of thin air and almost immediately fell, Sam caught him. His name was Amar, and he possessed an implant like the one in Sam’s chest, but outside of this they were strangers.
Sam had met a lot of strangers today.
Bewildered, Amar looked at him with the same blurry-eyed disorientation that every man he had kept from falling had arrived with.
“Ne osjećam se dobro.”
Amar’s words translated in his head, I do not feel well.
“Breathe, it’s normal, it’ll pass,” Sam said.
As with each of those that came before, Amar’s eyes widened, amazed to hear language translate in his head that didn’t belong to a monster. As Sam understood it, Mr. Clean was making their communication possible without fully activating their implants. The AI said it was like turning on a car radio without starting the engine. The new arrivals weren’t as familiar with how flawed the translations could sometimes be. Sam had learned to keep his words simple.
He helped Amar off the platform to a nearby cot where he could recover. Sam spoke quietly for a minute, filling him in on where he should report once he could see straight and trust his legs. When he was done, Sam came back to his post to notice Bodhi had just returned to the platform neighboring the one he was manning.
They’d been doing the same job for hours now. Jonathan wanted each man met by a human being when they first arrived. They were, in a way, the first step in an on-boarding process as soldiers from all around the globe were gathered.
Sam, Bodhi, and a few others would be taking shifts bringing everyone in for the next few days. Jonathan wanted every soldier here as soon as possible, but he also didn’t want nearly two hundred and fifty men to disappear in unison, even if they were scattered throughout the world. Such a thing would be noticed; in fact, news reports were already reporting an uptick in disappearances from the fifty that had been brought in on the night of the escape.
While they were learning that Jonathan tended to give orders with little explanation, on this he’d not been secretive. With everything they wished to accomplish, their work remained easier if they controlled when and if mankind was given a reason to collectively panic.
“Mr. Clean, how long until the next set of inbounds?” Bodhi asked.
“Approximately forty minutes, give or take,” Mr. Clean said.
Mr. Clean was not bound by the limits of a human. This was easier to forget than one might think. For instance, right now as Bodhi asked him one question it would appear he had the AI’s full attention. The reality was that Mr. Clean might simultaneously be having ten other discussions with people inside Hangman’s Tree, and a hundred more all over the world via cell phones and text messaging.
Before retrieval, men were contacted by Mr. Clean. The AI could then assist in arranging minor back stories that made it possible for a soldier to be brought in without causing any alarm. Man disappears without trace, brought unwanted attention. Man quits job and tells loved ones he’s left town to pursue lucrative new career opportunity, that bought him some time. If necessary, Mr. Clean could rapidly provide the sort of digital footprint necessary to support such a story under modest scrutiny.
Still, there were always going to be those for which no story was practical. Beo was the best example. He had been retrieved from a high security prison. While Mr. Clean could certainly change the electronic records on a computer system to facilitate his release, that action would lead to far more unwanted questions. Humans tend to double check when a computer suddenly tells them a man serving seven life sentences is suddenly eligible for immediate release. Mr. Clean could have been more subtle than that, but in the end, there were some retrievals that couldn’t be done without attracting notice. For those, Mr. Clean arranged the extraction with little or no warning, when the man’s time zone would have most of the people around him sleeping.
This is all to say, when Mr. Clean said he would need forty minutes, it was because he was coordinating extractions for a lot of men, in a lot of different countries, in a lot of different situations, all at once.
Bodhi set an alarm on his watch and looked at Sam. “I got to do a thing. Want to come with?”
Sam shrugged and followed him out.
Bodhi was seventeen. Younger than Sam would have imagined Heyer would involve in this war. Sam was only nineteen himself, but in his experience those two years were a world of difference. However, once he looked past the way Bodhi spoke, he knew that having an implant had made him grow up quickly or die.
This ‘thing’ Bodhi had to do was quick. Sam had followed him into the Mess hall, where they loaded two trays with food and delivered them to two separate quarters. Both times, Bodhi left the tray at the door, knocked, and left before anyone came to retrieve it.
“Jonathan ordered you to do food delivery?” Sam asked.
Bodhi shrugged. “It wasn’t an order. He asked if I would. Some folks got really bad news last night. He thought it would make it easier on them.”
“Didn’t we all get bad news last night?” Sam asked.
Bodhi nodded. “Some got more than others.”
When he didn’t elaborate Sam didn’t push. “So, you just didn’t want to carry both trays?”
Bodhi grinned and shook his head. “Actually, I asked for you to be on platform duty with me.”
Seeing as they’d never met before this morning, Sam frowned. “Why?”
“Mr. Clean has detailed profiles on all of us. For instance, I know you’ve competed, and won, a few professional snowboarding competitions.”
Sam tilted his head. “Mr. Clean just shared my profile with you?”
“Nah brah, nothing like that,” Bodhi said. “I think only Jonathan and Heyer have access to the files. Only reason I even know they exist was because Mr. Clean singled out a few guys for a job recently. A job I ended up getting picked for. I got to see the list of other guys they considered. Your name was second.”
“Really?” Sam considered Bodhi for a moment. A competitive grin growing on his face. “Second, huh? What exactly was the job?”
Bodhi smiled. “Something I think you’ll definitely want to try for yourself.”
You can’t help me. Leave it alone.
A knock at the door woke her. She didn’t know when she’d fallen asleep again. She laid on the bottom bunk of a bed, inside an empty cargo container, containing little of anything that was not of immediate utility. After Sydney had seen to it that she’d been given food, clothing, and a place to sleep, Leah had been left in these new quarters. Sydney said to enjoy it while it lasted, as eventually she would not be able to have an entire container to herself.
As it turned out, that didn’t mean she was actually alone.
Shortly after Sydney left, Mr. Clean introduced himself. Appeared on her wall and offered to assist her with anything she might want to learn. She understood soon enough that this was who Jonathan had intended to teach her algebra. After coming to accept that she was standing inside the entity she was speaking with, Leah began to ask the questions that had brought her to this place.
She’d been surprised. There were very few questions the AI wouldn’t answer. In fact, there were few questions she had to ask at all. Anything she asked seemed to require the AI to start at the beginning.
“Rylee disappeared. I want to know, what happened to her?”
A simple enough question, and yet it was nearly forty-five minutes later, that Leah had absorbed enough to see how and why it came to be that Rylee died in a place that existed outside of time fighting a creature from another dimension. Once she understood this, she knew Jonathan hadn’t been mistaken or lying.
She had to f
orce herself to ask the same question again of her brother. This time, the answer was short. “Peter Delacy’s death occurred under similar circumstances.”
Delivered by a messenger with no motive to lie—that was it.
Ever since, Peter’s final words would creep up unwanted in her head.
You can’t help me. Leave it alone . . .
You can’t help me. Leave it alone . . .
Leave it alone . . .
He’d been right. The last two years of her life amounted to nothing more than her refusal to accept it. She’d allowed uncertainty to give her hope, and now that hope had been slain. She felt grief, regret . . . but what she’d never expected to feel—was relief.
Certainty, meant no hope. No hope, meant freedom—of a sort.
While the time to mourn seemed long expired, her pillow had been damp from tears, and they had begun to lift the burden she’d been carrying since Peter’s disappearance.
Certainty meant it was okay to mourn.
Still, it all left a vacuum. What came now?
She’d always thought that if she came to this moment the answer would be revenge. That Heyer would be the recipient of that vengeance. Now, she knew things had never been that simple. In fact, Mr. Clean had said that Heyer had asked to speak to her as soon as she was willing.
Asked? As soon as she was willing?
She couldn’t help how angry the invitation made her. Two years she’d chased him, running parallel through shadows, inching close enough to snare him in a trap. She’d left everything she knew behind, she’d changed her name and her face. She’d betrayed people she’d come to care about.
Now—what? The alien wanted her to join him for coffee?
You can’t help me.
Leave it alone.
Two years she’d sought the alien’s confession. Now, it all seemed such an empty gesture.
Her head rose off her pillow as she remembered what had woken her. Hadn’t there been a knock at the door? She got up and found a tray outside with breakfast.
The Never Army Page 37
