The Never Army

by Hodges, T. Ellery

  Heyer swallowed.

  “In the case of your brother, we lost a powerful ally. His genetics were—special. They gave him a compatibility to the implant that would have been second only to Jonathan and . . .” Heyer groaned momentarily, as though the name only reminded him of another troublesome problem on the horizon, “. . . Grant Morgan.”

  “Grant . . .” Leah said, her voice echoing his own distaste.

  The alien nodded. “When Peter passed, his device went to the next best candidate. Unfortunately, his successor will never possess the strength Peter would have.”

  Leah was quiet a moment, her eyes jumping about as she absorbed something that had not yet occurred to her. “Someone has my brother’s implant?”

  Heyer, realizing what he’d done, closed his eyes, but nodded. “I fear what you are thinking. Peter’s device was not altered like Jonathan’s. Your brother’s memories are not—”

  “Who is it?” Leah interrupted.

  Heyer took a long breath. “Leah, he has no knowledge of Pete—”

  “Who?” she repeated.

  Reluctantly, Heyer’s lips flattened into a line, but he looked about the floor below, and finally pointed. “Though he calls himself Bodhi, his real name is Dale. I have never asked why he prefers the former.”

  Heyer watched her running a gauntlet of unclear emotions as she stared at the young man. He suspected he knew the feeling. Sometimes you’re given information and how you are supposed to feel about it is not clear. Like trying to figure out if a thought should be filed under important or things to forget at your earliest convenience.

  When she finally stopped staring at Bodhi, he couldn’t tell which she’d chosen. Perhaps she hadn’t yet come to a decision.

  “If you’d known I was alive, would Peter’s device have gone to me? He was my brother. Genetically, shouldn’t I be more compatible than a random stranger?”

  “Your brother Jack would have been the most compatible,” Heyer said.

  “But he was too young?” Leah asked.

  Heyer nodded.

  “But if Jack was disqualified . . .”

  Heyer shook his head. “The implants in the armory are configured for human males. All but one.”

  “Rylee’s,” Leah said.

  “There is something I would like to show you if you would walk with me.”

  She had grown comfortable standing beside him out here in the open. But she hesitated when he offered to take her somewhere. But Heyer made no show of being in a hurry and eventually they were descending downstairs.

  “A moment ago, you asked what it meant that Rylee is no longer with us,” Heyer said. “It may come as some surprise, but I had not intended the device for her. Rylee’s compatibility was minimal. The implant nearly killed her, and never gave her the strength it should have.”

  Leah frowned. “Why force it on her then?”

  “Necessity,” Heyer slowed, then stopped on the stairs. “I believed—and still believe—that Jonathan’s survival depends on the female device having a host. As such . . . any host was better than none.”

  This gave Leah pause, such that while the alien kept descending the stairs, she had to snap herself out of her thoughts and catch back up. “Wait. What exactly are you telling me? What happens to Jonathan if no one takes the device?”

  Heyer paused, looking up at her from a few steps down. He saw the concern on her face. “That is what I am taking you to see.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  PETER HADN’T BEEN forced into the service of the alien. He’d volunteered. A moment ago, that was all she wanted to know. Now, as she followed Heyer down the steel staircases, her mind felt as though she trudged aimlessly through a swamp. No sense of where she was going—no sense of where she wanted to be when she made her way through.

  Once they had reached the bottom floor, she saw where Heyer was taking her. The only room in the entire facility that actually looked alien. The one time she’d been inside they had called it the armory.

  The entrance was a massive metal safe door—a monstrosity that looked like it was built in another time. While it possessed a combination panel, this seemed entirely decorative. The alien didn’t touch it when they arrived, the door simply opened as though sensing his approach.

  “Why does the door look like an antique vault?” she asked.

  “Always felt fitting to me,” Heyer said. “What is inside is not just antiques. Are you familiar with the term Legacy Tech?”

  Leah shrugged. “Stuff so old it’s hard to get it to work with modern technology.”

  “Exactly, see the devices on the other side of this door, Mr. Clean cannot fabricate. At the same time, humans would have put such things in a museum. On display with remnants of slavery and war. Cruelty.”

  He held up a hand inviting her to enter. Once there, she was surrounded by the walls of dormant human implants. Individually, they were no larger than the size of her palm.

  “Jonathan’s been moving quickly. I have never seen these walls so empty,” Heyer said.

  Leah nodded, having already noticed that the walls contained far more empty slots than filled ones since her last visit.

  Heyer walked to the center of the room and drew her attention to a waist high pedestal. On its surface, there were two empty sockets.

  “Mr. Clean, would you please provide a minor projection; I would like Leah to observe the state of this pedestal on Oct 14, between 8:21 and 8:22 am.”

  She recognized the time and date, knew exactly what happened during those sixty seconds. The area shimmered, as though momentarily made of fluid. Then it reshaped, and for a moment there was no observable difference. A few seconds later, one of the slots suddenly became filled.

  “Hold there please, Mr. Clean,” Heyer said.

  Leah leaned over to inspect the device; she recognized the symbol on the face of the implant. Mr. Clean’s tutorial had shown her what Rylee’s device looked like.

  “The female implant,” she said. “It returned to the armory when she died.”

  “Yes, but as you can see, it belongs to a set,” Heyer said. “Jonathan has the other half.”

  “Why are Jonathan and Rylee’s the only devices in this room that come as a set?”

  “They are paired,” Heyer said.

  She blinked. “Mr. Clean never said anything about paired implants.”

  “Yes. While I was incapacitated, Jonathan directed Mr. Clean to remove any mention of the bonded pair from the education materials that could be accessed,” Heyer said. “To be fair, you alone were not singled out, and it is not the only information he felt no one should access. To be more fair, I do not disagree with Jonathan’s decision to keep the knowledge confidential.”

  “I’m sensing there is a ‘but’ coming,” Leah said.

  Heyer nodded. “But, I do believe he intended to keep this from you as long as possible. Though he knew full well I would tell you.”

  After some time, Heyer had covered the details of the bonded pair. Much of what had occurred in the weeks leading up to Jonathan’s capture began to make sense. The strangeness of Jonathan’s behavior, his almost telepathic connection to Rylee, his utter inability to explain what he felt for her. Even the entries from her diary suddenly became clearer.

  Heyer had been watching her for some time now, silently, waiting for her to resurface from her thoughts.

  “You said Jonathan’s survival depends on the pair being complete,” Leah said. “So where do we find . . . Rylee’s backup?”

  “Rylee was always the backup,” Heyer said sympathetically. “I intended the implant to go to another. But, she . . . tricked me. Had me convinced she was dead.”

  “Dead?” Leah began to tremble.

  “Yes,” Heyer said. “She faked her own suicide.”

  Leah took a step back. “Bullshit!”

  “Leah—”

  “There are three billion women on this planet, not a single one is more compatible with that stupid thing? No! You’re
lying.”

  Heyer held up his hands peacefully. “Even if there were a hundred billion women on this planet, they would be no more compatible than Rylee. There is only one good match.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Leah said.

  “You are like your brother, Leah,” Heyer said. “His compatibility had nothing to do with his human lineage.”

  An awkward silence followed—one where Leah’s jaw tried and failed to form words. Finally, a whisper made its way out, “What?”

  “You, Peter, Jack, you all possess a Borealis ancestor,” Heyer said. “On your mother’s side.”

  “How . . .” She shook her head. What he was implying seemed repulsive. “How could a human even . . . with a . . .”

  “The Borealis in question was not in his native body,” Heyer said, slowly reaching down to undo the top buttons of his shirt. “He was a Borealis within a human host.”

  Leah was backing away, unsure if she wanted to listen to any more of this.

  “Leah,” Heyer said. “I wish I could better ease you into this, but I am not talking about some long dead member of my race. I am—”

  “You can’t expect me to believe this!” she said, incredulously. “That you’re . . . you’re . . . what? My great great grandfather?”

  “No, actually,” Heyer said, then cleared his throat awkwardly. “Grandmother.”

  “Can you prove any of this?” Leah finally asked after having been quiet for some time.

  “Yes, but all the proof in the world will not matter if you are not willing to accept it,” Heyer said.

  “Try me,” Leah said.

  Heyer addressed the AI. “Mr. Clean, please provide Leah with applicable records.”

  Three displays emerged, rising out of the armory floor, between Heyer and her. On the first she saw a Family Tree. Peter, Jack and herself listed at the bottom. At the top was Johanna O’ Sullivan, a name that rang no bells for her. She read up from her branch, but Johanna was not the only name she didn’t recognize. Truthfully, any names further back than her great grandparents were a mystery to her.

  When she moved onto the second display, she encountered a similar problem. The DNA comparisons indicated certain matches, percentages of shared genetic material, between her and this Johanna O’Sullivan. But, how was she to confirm that Mr. Clean had done any analysis at all? He could have simply flashed some data on the screen and told her to believe him.

  She began to understand what Heyer meant when he said no proof would make her willing to accept. Then she looked at the last screen and found something a bit harder to explain away.

  It was a video file from a time long before the notion of video existed. There was a woman standing in a doorway. Her clothing, hundreds of years out of fashion. What lay on one side of the open door and what lay on the other didn’t match. The room the woman was leaving wasn’t even a room but a barn that looked like it belonged in the same historical period as the woman’s clothing. Tools, buckets, and barrels, they all lacked the look of mass production. Dirt and hay covered the floors and there was no electrical lighting.

  Yet, the room she was stepping into had a great deal in common with the one Leah was currently occupying. Metallic seamless surfaces, everything possessing an elegance of construction that hadn’t so much been built by hands but simply brought into being, like one of Mr. Clean’s projections.

  The woman, Johanna, carried a bucket into the alien room. She set it down on a seamless surface that formed as though having anticipated her need for it. The same way Mr. Clean often did. The bucket was not the only thing the woman carried. She was pregnant, and by Leah’s guess, far closer to giving birth than conception.

  None of this would have meant anything if not for Johanna’s face. It was no movie fantasy, Johanna was not her long lost twin separated by the centuries, but there was no denying a familiarity—albeit one with her face before she’d undergone plastic surgery.

  “What is she doing?” Leah asked

  Heyer came around to stand beside her. A moment ago, she’d wanted to get away from him. Now, it didn’t matter. He could be on the other side of the planet and it wouldn’t make her feel any safer.

  The alien watched Johanna, looking unsure for a moment before he smiled. “I was analyzing potato samples from the O’Sullivan farm. Johanna had a proclivity for improving their flavor and texture. I enjoyed the hobby as well, combining certain strains for better yields.”

  It was a strange thing. How the alien looked at the woman, physically separated in time by hundreds of years and yet he recognized himself as though looking at an old photo.

  “This was, perhaps six months into Johanna’s pregnancy, Mr. Clean?” Heyer asked.

  “Yes,” Mr. Clean confirmed. “Based on the date of procreation.”

  “Are you saying that,” Leah paused to glance back to the family tree. “Thomas procreated with Johanna and . . .”

  She paused to give Heyer a side-eyed look, “. . . you, Grandma?”

  Heyer licked his lips as he considered how to explain. When he spoke, he pointed to his chest with both hands. “This body once belonged to a man named Jeremy Holloway. When I took it, his brain was severely damaged, and the body was soon going to perish. While my implant could repair the vessel enough to make it a habitable host, Holloway’s consciousness was beyond repair. I do not wish to take what is still useful to someone else, so this is an ideal situation.

  “That said, the Borealis implant sustains a human body for a great deal longer than its natural lifespan—but not indefinitely. I tend to drag my feet when I should be taking a new host. When I met Johanna, my previous host was somewhat past its expiration date.

  “Johanna was dying. The medicine of her time could not help her, but my implant could. I offered to take her as a host. But, there is no removing my implant without leaving the host in a vegetative state. Unlike Holloway, Johanna’s mind was intact. Her choice came down to dying, or sharing her body with an alien.”

  Leah listened, turning to watch the woman on the screen with a new perspective. Johanna did something so very human. She loosened the top buttons of her collar, she reached down her shirt the same way Leah might if she were trying to adjust an uncomfortable bra. But, while Johanna’s hand remained beneath the shirt, her chest began to glow.

  The three lines were obscured by the fabric but were unmistakably a match for those that ran across Heyer’s chest. When Johanna pulled her hand back out, she held a round clear ball in her palm. When she placed this on the counter beside the potatoes, it melted into the surface. Just like so many things Leah had seen Mr. Clean reabsorb.

  Heyer chuckled after watching the whole mundane exercise. “The clothes of that era were uncomfortable as it was, but I could hardly go about with my chest ablaze. Unfortunately, the cover Mr. Clean provided to cloak my implant itched Johanna’s skin. She and I often could not wait to return to the privacy of Mr. Clean to be rid of the thing for a short while. Mr. Clean, of course, was not Mr. Clean back then . . . but that is another story.”

  Leah considered the alien. He seemed—nostalgic—as he watched Johanna. In fact, he looked like her mother when she’d watched old family videos. She could persuade herself to question the family tree, the DNA, but if he was faking this moment, then he would make a far better spy than she ever had.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m still unclear on how you and Johanna ended up in this condition.”

  “Well, Johanna was unable to lead a normal life. She could not marry,” Heyer said. “But, she did want to be with Thomas. Had known since they were children together. I deactivated the implant for a short while, so she would not be denied this desire—and so that she could have a moment of privacy. As it turned out, Johanna and I found ourselves—”

  “Knocked up,” Leah said.

  Heyer smirked. “Had Johanna been familiar with that expression, she would have pointed out that the pot was calling the kettle black.”

  Leah stiffened, then tur
ned away, her hair falling over her eyes to hide her face. “How . . . how did you know?”

  “The same way we knew who you were. You bled on Mr. Clean when you arrived. But, other than your identity, he also learned you were pregnant, the child’s sex, and of course, who the father is.”

  Leah’s teeth clenched. “Mr. Clean needs boundaries, he has no . . .”

  She trailed off for a moment. “Wait, you know the sex? From my blood?”

  Mr. Clean answered, “The cells of a human female possess two X chromosomes. When your blood touched my surface, I detected trace amounts of a Y Chromosome. Hence, you carry a male.”

  Heyer sighed in annoyance. “Mr. Clean, one does not tell an expectant parent the sex of their baby without permission.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mr. Clean said. “Why wouldn’t—”

  “It is not a decision based on utility, some simply wish . . .”

  She’d stopped listening. The AI and the alien’s bickering now like the mumblings of Charlie Brown’s parents in the background.

  “A boy,” Leah whispered.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  LEAH HAD DAYDREAMED what the scene might look like when she learned the sex of her first child. What she imagined was the more typical sort of affair. She’d be at a hospital, her husband beside her as a doctor studied an ultrasound.

  Instead, she was standing in an alien room called the Armory. The man beside her claimed to be her ancestral grandmother, and the test results had been delivered by a cartoon mascot for toilet bowl cleaner.

  She was unsure if she should laugh or cry but sensed it could easily go either way if both didn’t occur simultaneously.

  “Does he know?” Leah asked.

  “Jonathan? If he does, he did not learn it from us,” Heyer said, then she felt the weight of his gaze grow heavy. “I do not believe we should tell him.”

  Leah frowned, taking a step back as she grew nervous. “I will not go along with that.”

  “You have not told him thus far,” Heyer said.

  Her eyes hardened. “That’s not fair. To say the right moment has yet to present itself would be a . . . profound . . . understatement.”