The Never Army

by Hodges, T. Ellery

  Rylee realized what Leah was doing and glared at her. “Oh, for the love of... Leah, I don’t need to relive it.”

  If Rylee were still voicing an objection, Leah couldn’t hear her. They remained only as silent observers watching the memory play out.

  The door to the small room opened and Leah walked inside. She approached the mirror, unsure as she stared into her own reflection. She closed her eyes, took a steadying breath.

  “I hope you see this, Rylee,” Leah said. “Maybe it isn’t necessary, maybe you’ll already know what I’ve been thinking, but it’s better if I say the words.

  “Fight is coming. Pretty sure we . . . uh . . . we both know the world doesn’t need me. I have my strengths, but fighting isn’t one of them. No point denying it.

  “I know . . . I’m the last person you’d pick. This would be a thousand times easier if, literally, any other woman on this planet was standing in front of this mirror . . .

  “But please, consider it.”

  She closed her eyes and put both hands over her belly. “I know you wanted this...

  “I think, maybe I want it too,” Leah said. “But for you it was never a question. The option was just taken away from you. And, I know you wanted it with Jonathan.”

  A sad smile came to her face. “It’s a boy.”

  “I know that he wouldn’t be yours, but you could still be his mother,” Leah said. “And Jonathan, he . . . he does want you. I don’t really even know what he feels for me. He’s never been . . . unkind, but I think he hurts for you in a way he never will for me. I try to tell myself it’s the bond . . . but there really isn’t any way to know.”

  Leah sighed.

  “Jonathan, he was able to merge his mind with his father. I know that it’s the last thing you’d want to do with me. If you’re seeing this, you probably already know I’m not keen on the idea myself. But, maybe another offer—a better one for everyone I think. I don’t know if it’s possible, but if it is . . . you . . . you’d have my blessing.”

  She had tears in her eyes, but she steadied herself to say the words. Somehow, they still came out as whispers. “Just take it, Rylee. If you can, take control,” Leah said. “Help him win this war, and you keep the body. You have this child. You have that life.

  “I’m not being a martyr. You know I love him. But you’re the warrior, the mother. That . . . and you’ll never have to look at him and wonder if he’s thinking of how you betrayed him . . . because you never did.”

  Leah stepped back from the mirror. She wiped tears away and nodded to her own reflection. “Think about it.”

  They had trouble looking at one another when the memory began to fade. The Leah in the mirror turned to walk out of the small room and passed right through Rylee on her way out.

  Soon the two women were standing beside one another in the garage.

  “Please, don’t do that again,” Rylee said.

  The question hung unanswered between them.

  “Is it possible?”

  Rylee’s eyes clenched shut. “I don’t know.”

  “Can we find out?” Leah asked.

  Rylee’s hand shot up between them. “Hey back off, lady. Even if . . . what you’re asking is . . . messing with my head.”

  Leah tilted her head gently. “It’s the world, Rylee. It’s the baby . . . it’s Jonathan.”

  Rylee’s head began nodding rapidly the way one does when they want to scream, ‘Please stop talking! I get it already!’

  “Rylee, Jonathan isn’t telling me everything. This plan—there are parts he isn’t telling anyone. Not even Heyer. I keep getting this feeling that he . . . he might not be planning to make it back.”

  Rylee sighed. “I know.”

  “Then how do we do this?” Leah asked, and there was command in her voice now. “You have to be the one beside him when that monster tries to . . .”

  There was a change in Rylee’s expression, one that said she didn’t care much for the amount of pressure Leah was putting on her. “Leah, it’s not like there is a big damn door in your head labeled Control Room.”

  That took a moment to sink in.

  “Oh,” Leah said. “Right. I guess I just assumed—”

  “That you’d make a big heroic gesture,” Rylee said. “Then leave me to do all the heavy lifting?”

  Leah winced. “I guess I deserve that . . . but no. I just thought that, Heyer and Malkier find some way to take over their host. So . . .”

  Suddenly there was a shift in the air. The garage and everything in it beginning to tremble.

  “How is she?” It was Paige’s voice, and it had an eerie, far away, quality to it. Her words were both muffled and yet echoed unnaturally through the small garage.

  The voice was joined by Anthony’s. “Her vitals look good, Mr. Clean stopped the anesthesia a few minutes ago.”

  “They’re waking me up,” Leah said.

  “Oh, thank effing God,” Rylee said.

  “How? How do I stop them?” Leah asked, her tone beginning to lose its calm.

  Rylee shrugged. “How the hell should I know?”

  Desperately, Leah tried to fight for unconsciousness, but whatever she did translated into the flexing of her muscles in the waking world—and made the room quake violently.

  With no clue what else to try, she yelled to Rylee over the noise.

  “Look for a way, Rylee,” Leah said. “It’s got to exist.”

  Rylee shook her head. “You ever think that maybe I haven’t seen it because you don’t want it—on a primal level.”

  The garage shattered as bright white light flooded her vision.

  “Hey, think she’s coming around,” Paige said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY FOUR

  PAIGE HELD LEAH’S hand as she stood over her.

  She was naked beneath a white sheet on the table. The glow of the alien implant so bright the thin material only dampened it.

  “How is she?”

  “Her vitals look good,” Anthony said. “Mr. Clean has already stopped the anesthesia. She should be coming around any moment. Speaking of . . .”

  Anthony nodded at Paige’s hand still holding onto Leah’s. “That might not be safe—she could tear your hand off before she remembers where she is.”

  Paige took her hand back, then took a few steps away from the table just to be safe. “I’m still here, Leah,” Paige said awkwardly. “I just . . . you know . . . like my hand.”

  “Strange how often I hear that around here,” Anthony said, though he seemed to be talking to himself.

  Leah’s body tensed for a moment, then resettled on the table. A moment later her eyelids began to flutter, then opened. Leah stared up at the ceiling for a long moment before she realized Anthony, Sydney, Mr. Silva and Paige were standing around her.

  “Don’t move too quickly right away,” Sydney said. “Most say an active implant takes some getting used to.”

  Leah slowly took hold of the sheet to keep it against her as she sat up. Despite knowing it would be there, her eyes still widened as she looked down at the light emanating out of her.

  “How do you feel?” Paige asked.

  She considered. “Really good.”

  Paige grinned. “Like . . . like a badass?”

  Leah frowned. “Um, maybe . . . but I meant happy.”

  “Oh,” Paige said. “Well, that’s good too, right?”

  Leah’s expression said it wasn’t that simple. “I feel really good. Mr. Clean, were there any opioids in that anesthesia?”

  “Negative,” Mr. Clean said.

  “Mr. Clean,” Leah said, resting her hands on her stomach. “How is . . . everything?”

  “Everything is satisfactory.”

  “You’re happy, everything is fine, figure it out later,” Paige said, leaning in to whisper excitedly. “I can’t be the only one who wants to see you take this thing for a test drive.”

  “Right . . .” Leah said, still staring at the glow emanating off her. “Let’s do tha
t.”

  She shot up through the air, rising toward the sky and unable to keep the gleeful smile of exhilaration from her face. For a few moments, she felt as though she were flying.

  As her speed slowed, Leah reached out to grab the retaining wall of the rooftop and pulled herself easily over.

  “I can go so much higher, Mr. Clean, come on—make it a challenge,” Leah said.

  The moment the words were out of her mouth, the rooftop she stood on liquified and morphed back into a sidewalk, then, a much taller building than had stood in front of her before shot into the sky.

  Her eyes widened. Seriously, how did the AI pull off these projections?

  “No way anyone in this army can jump that high?”

  “Correct, it will require more than a single bound,” Mr. Clean said. “To reach the top you will have to adapt.”

  She nodded, took a step back and studied the building the way a child did after losing a frisbee to a neighbor’s roof. A moment later, her fist broke through a window near the thirtieth floor. She didn’t find the window frame right away, not until after she began to fall back down, and her hand smashed through the glass until she found something solid and took hold.

  As she dangled by one hand, she made the mistake of looking down, and a bit of vertigo set in, but as she turned away she was amazed at how easy it was to hold herself safe from the pull of gravity. She switched hands to look at her unharmed skin.

  “Will you be completing the exercise?” she heard Mr. Clean ask, looking up to see his avatar standing on the inside of the shattered window.

  With a smirk, she grabbed the window ledge with both arms, and shot toward the sky again. She flew past the rooftop, overshot it by at least three stories and came down with enough force that, had this not been a projection, she was fairly sure she’d have put a hole in the top floor ceiling.

  As she stood from her crouch, she saw Mr. Clean on the roof beside her again. “Admittedly, the gleamers make such mobility a far less destructive affair.”

  Leah nodded. This being her first time out she hadn’t stopped to pick up her own set of tactical gear. For the moment she was just in jeans and a t-shirt.

  “How about something to hit?”

  With a nod, Mr. Clean faded away, and a circle of brick pillars emerged from the rooftop around her. Each towered over her by a few feet, but her lack of technique throwing her first punch didn’t make the result any less impressive—her fist putting a hole through the pillar as she pushed through, shoulder deep as brick debris shot out the other side.

  The hole she’d just put in the pillar reformed, liquifying for a moment as it transitioned from brick and mortar to solid concrete. Thirty seconds later, Leah stood surrounded by what remained of the circle of pillars.

  “Got anything a bit more resilient?” she asked.

  The rooftop swept itself clear, and the pillars were replaced with metal girders. She eyed them carefully but was too fascinated with discovering her new limits to pay too much attention to caution.

  She felt invincible.

  “Son of a . . .” Leah yelped, she took a few steps back, wringing her hand in surprise. It hadn’t been her knuckles so much as her wrist that hurt. Still, as she looked at the result, she couldn’t help but be impressed with the shape of the bent steel that now bore her fist imprint. She took a step back and kicked this time, the steel groaning under the pressure.

  Next she chopped at it, from the side to see the steel bending in once again.

  “Is this actually how it will be?” Leah asked. “Outside?”

  Mr. Clean reappeared. “The projection chamber is set to keep you from injuring yourself but if you’re asking if you can really kick down a wall, then yes.”

  She nodded and eyed the AI with a curious tilt of the head.

  “So, how do I measure up?”

  “In what regard?” Mr. Clean asked.

  “To the men in the army, to Jonathan?” Leah asked.

  “In raw physical strength you’ve surpassed Beo. He was second only to Jonathan and Grant. In speed you are faster than Mito, I would have to track you in a foot race to see if you’ve surpassed Bodhi.”

  “So what, I’m like tied for second?” Leah asked.

  “You seem disappointed,” Mr. Clean said.

  Leah shrugged. “I just thought—being a descendant of a Borealis, and the bond...”

  “Ahh,” Mr. Clean said. “Well, the bond is not fully established yet.”

  Leah licked her lips. “How exactly does that work?”

  “It is a matter of contact and mutual deactivation,” Mr. Clean said.

  “What exactly does that . . .”

  A door appeared on the rooftop. Within the projection it appeared to go nowhere, but the warehouse-like features of Hangman’s Tree could be seen as Paige walked inside.

  “So uh, heads up,” Paige frowned. “Jonathan is headed this way.”

  “How’d he look?”

  “Activated,” Paige shrugged. “Other than that, hard to read.”

  “What else is new?”

  “So, know what you’re going to say?”

  Leah shook her head.

  Paige gave a sarcastic thumbs up, followed by a look of sympathy before she pointed both thumbs back at the door. “I think I’ll head out and leave you to it,” Paige said.

  As Paige disappeared behind the doors, Leah closed her eyes and smiled. Well, I can’t blame her . . . I don’t want to be a part of this conversation either.

  “Mr. Clean,” Leah said. “Would you change the simulation for me?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

  JONATHAN STEPPED INSIDE the projection chamber and his lips drew into a line. He was standing on his street, looking at his garage. Leah was in the simulation he used to get away from his troubles.

  The only difference was that as he reached the foot of his driveway, his garage door was closed—the lights off. Meanwhile, one house over, Leah’s door was up, her light on, and classic rock playing loudly.

  He reached the end of the driveway, but stayed well short of the threshold. Her back was to him and his gaze lingered on the bright orange glow that emanated from the lines that crossed over her shoulders onto her back.

  She was as bright as he was.

  “Leah, would you turn the music down?” he asked.

  She nodded, her hand reaching out to turn the knob, but she didn’t turn around.

  “You should have told me before you went through with it.”

  She was staring up at that the Blind Blacksmith. “You said it was my choice.”

  “It is, but—”

  “You wanted one last chance to talk me out of it?”

  “No,” Jonathan said.

  This caught her off guard and she found herself turning to look at him.

  “I wanted you to know my terms, now you’ll just have to accept them.”

  “I’m listening.”

  He looked down at the ground, stared at her feet like he couldn’t look her in the eye and say what he had to. “I let Rylee die, I had to choose between her and the world—and I couldn’t. I couldn’t move. I hesitated and time decided for me.”

  Leah’s face softened, she expected him to be angry. Figured he’d finally explode, yell that she’d betrayed him, again. But, that wasn’t what this was, and it was starting to make her nervous. “Jonathan . . . I . . . I know. It was an impossible choice to have to…”

  She trailed off because the way he was shaking his head told her she wasn’t understanding. “I am telling you right now. Put me in that situation, I won’t hesitate. I will not watch it happen again.”

  She swallowed, because what he was saying was something a leader simply could not say. “Jonathan . . . you . . . you can’t know what anyone might have to do.”

  “I’m telling you that if it comes to it, I will not watch you die.”

  “I don’t accept those terms,” she said.

  “I’m telling you what is. This isn’t a negotiat
ion,” Jonathan said.

  She sighed. He’d never been like this, never shut the door on a discussion. When she was quiet for a while, he took his first step back, nodded and turned to leave.

  She immediately hated the distance growing between them, found herself yelling at his back. “Don’t you feel it?”

  He paused.

  “I’m happy—optimistic. Like—”

  “It’s like falling in love, you can’t wait to see what happens next,” Jonathan said.

  “You do feel it,” she said.

  He didn’t answer. Didn’t turn around but didn’t keep walking. “Is this what it was like for you that night. When you ran out on me? When you had to get to her?”

  “Not like this. This is . . . stronger.”

  “My compatibility?” Leah asked.

  He swallowed. “You’re too close.”

  Her eyes turned curious, she was about to take a step toward him, but he tensed as though he sensed it and it scared him.

  “That why you’re standing outside?”

  He turned back. And as he stared back at her, she felt something she hadn’t for some time. That she could see through him—and they both knew it.

  “You’re more afraid of me than anything in the world right now,” Leah said. “And yet you can’t leave.”

  “If you touch me,” Jonathan said. “There isn’t any going back.”

  She considered that for a moment. “Because we’ll see what’s inside each other.”

  He nodded.

  She stepped forward like it was a playful sort of game at first. She studied him with an amused smile—a beautiful smile. It dared him to leave—it dared him to stay.

  The last time Jonathan seemed this innocent to her was the first time she’d kissed him. She had to make the first move. She’d missed being able to make him this nervous.

  He swallowed and his face held so many questions. She was dying to answer whatever he wished if he would only ask.