by Myke Cole
He pictured Ninip, stripped from all he’d known, tumbling in a freezing, shrieking hell, until the screaming became his own, until loneliness and boredom and terror congealed into something he could never get out. Until the man he’d been was scattered dust, tiny fragments that only archaeologists could identify as something more than mud.
That wasn’t evil. That was tragedy.
And it changed nothing.
He turned back to Jawid, sent another thought to relay to Eldredge. What happened to the other Operators?
“I told you, we destroyed them.”
Destroyed them? We’re a precious asset. Why would you destroy them?
“They were little more than rabid dogs, Jim. They couldn’t be communicated with. Couldn’t be controlled. The first few times it happened, there were incidents. Lives were lost. We had one break out just a week before you came into the Cell. We had no option.”
You burned them.
“Most of the time. Once we had to cut one up until there weren’t any parts left large enough to hurt anyone. Crude, but effective.”
That won’t happen with me.
“I know. And if we can figure out why you’ve won out over the jinn, we can duplicate it. Then, it won’t happen to any of them.”
But Eldredge had missed Schweitzer’s meaning. Schweitzer thought of correcting him, then decided to let it stand.
—
Ninip made a few halfhearted attempts to expand his presence, but Schweitzer found it all too easy to kick him back into place. He still felt the weakness, the thrumming of his strength muted, his senses still stronger than they had been in life but nowhere near the powerful gradation he’d known when the jinn’s strength was at its height. Smells ran together now, sounds tumbled over one another. At night, when the corridor lights went down and his cold-storage cell drifted into darkness, he could still see as if it were day, but heat signatures no longer registered. It was a small price to pay, but he wondered at the cost when he was run on his next op.
Schweitzer pushed, made demands. We’re partners, he sent through Jawid. That means I don’t live in a cell.
“Jesus, Jim,” Eldredge said. “I’m not the only person involved with this program. I have superiors. I have to answer to them.”
In the end, they’d compromised. Eldredge’s boss had permitted Schweitzer a larger cell, still refrigerated, walls still dotted landscapes of burn and freeze nozzles, but several floors up. The walls were painted blue, and there was the crisped remains of a chair railing.
“This was our first attempt at a containment unit,” Eldredge said. “It’s as low security as it gets.”
The door looked plenty formidable to Schweitzer, but he imagined the sky a few floors closer, felt it as an almost physical lifting of pressure, a slice of his humanity that much closer. Stupid. Another phantom limb. But it would do until he could push Eldredge for more. Slow was smooth, smooth was fast.
As low security as it gets is me not in a cell.
“I can’t just let you wander around here, Jim. You’ll scare people.”
This is my problem, why?
“Because if you scare enough people, it could become a problem for me. Help me to help you, Jim. We’ll get there.”
We need to get there soon. I’ll stay in here, but you want to meet me to run your tests or answer your questions, you’re going to do it in another room.
“Jesus, Jim. You’re really starting to chap my ass.”
Life’s rough all over. I want to go for a walk.
Eldredge hung his head. “It’s a good thing my hair is already gray.”
It’s white. You look like Mark Twain.
“Yeah, I get that a lot. Where do you want to go?”
We can start with the command center.
Eldredge finally shrugged, sighed, and led him back down. It wasn’t anything that Schweitzer hadn’t seen a hundred times before. A busy watch floor, one twenty-foot wall covered with monitors, horseshoe-shaped long desks extending outward like ripples on a pond, busy analysts seated at terminals, ceasing all work to gawk at the monster in their midst.
The command center was suddenly still. Schweitzer could feel the shock, could smell the sudden sour tang of fear in the air. Ninip roused, pushing experimentally, the fluttering remains of his hunger stirred by the presence of so much weak and vulnerable flesh.
Eldredge folded his arms across his chest. Jawid stood beside him, looking around worriedly. “This what you wanted, Jim?” Eldredge asked.
Schweitzer nodded, tried to think of a way to reassure the analysts that he was no threat. He decided to clasp his hands beside his back as he strolled down the main, central aisle. He realized after a few feet that he looked like a dictator general inspecting troops and sighed inwardly. He was a monster. Any posture would be lipstick on a pig.
Tell them it’s all right. I’m not going to hurt anyone, he sent to Jawid.
The Sorcerer did as he was bid, but the tension in their shoulders didn’t ease, the high smell of fear didn’t abate. Schweitzer turned to his right, walked to the analyst there. She leapt out of her swivel-backed chair, making a small noise and nearly upsetting the monitor in front of her. “Sorry,” she squeaked.
Schweitzer could feel Ninip, pushing harder now, his hunger starting to fog the edges of Schweitzer’s senses. He turned inward and smacked the jinn down. No fucking way, he said to Ninip. Don’t even think about it.
Why? What good are these people to you? the jinn asked.
Schweitzer ignored him, channeled his thoughts to Jawid instead. Ask her what she’s working on.
Schweitzer bent to examine the screen. It looked like a personnel roster, overlaid against a wide map, zoomed in too far for him to recognize the locale. Three gold-colored triangles flashed on it. They were labeled, G-41, G-18, and G-22. In the upper right corner of the screen, six more gold triangles sat unblinking in two orderly rows of three.
Beside them was a single silver one. S-1.
The analyst looked at Eldredge, and the older man nodded once.
She turned back to Schweitzer, biting down on her words to keep the tremor out of her voice. “That’s you,” she said.
S-1?
She nodded.
What are the G-series?
“Those are . . . all the others,” she said. She looked young, hair cut unfashionably short, Coke-bottle glasses. Pale and soft. Not someone who worked out often, or ever. She reminded him of the code breakers and math dorks who’d helped crunch the numbers that built their targeting decks back in his living days.
Ninip pushed again, backed down at a twitch from Schweitzer. Who are the others? Schweitzer asked.
“Operators like you . . .” she said. “Only, not like you.”
These are the ones who are still under control?
“Some control,” Eldredge answered this time. “Enough for us to use them in less delicate situations than the ones we’ve run you on.”
So the “S” is for silver? He thought of his eyes.
The analyst looked askance at Eldredge again.
“‘S’ is for singular, Jim,” Eldredge answered. “You’re the first we’ve ever had where the original soul, the one belonging to the corpse, won out.”
I want to meet one of the others.
The analyst’s fear stink grew stronger. “You wouldn’t like them, Jim,” Eldredge said. “They’re not . . . as personable as you are. I said we can control them, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot.”
Still want to meet one.
Eldredge shrugged. “Won’t kill anyone. I think. Sure.”
Schweitzer turned back to the analyst. What’s your name?
The analyst’s fear stink became cloying once Jawid had translated the question. “Um . . . what? He wants to know . . .”
“He wants to know y
our name,” Jawid said again.
Why do you care what this thing is called? Ninip sneered. Schweitzer ignored him, tried to look into the analyst’s eyes. They kept roving, darting from Eldredge to him and back, finally alighting on the far corner of the room. Schweitzer turned and followed her gaze.
Six men lounged against one of the desks closer to the wall of screens, machetes casually dangling from lanyards around their wrists. Behind them two men stood by with what Schweitzer could only describe as halberds.
It was to be expected. He couldn’t be offended by precautions. People who knew nothing about war thought it hinged on risks, brave and singular acts of heroism. That was how Ninip thought. Schweitzer knew better. You won by doing it by the numbers. You won by hedging.
He turned away from Eldredge’s hedge and back to the analyst. There was probably a manual that specified the number of men and the number and type of armaments required depending on what room he was in. That was simply how the military did business.
Your name, he asked again.
“Gerald,” she said.
Your name is Gerald?
“We don’t use real names here, Jim,” Eldredge answered. “All the females have male names, and all the males have female names.”
So Eldredge isn’t your real name?
“I stay with the program, Jim. These lucky fellows might rotate out someday. Best to keep things as compartmentalized as possible.”
He turned back to Gerald. Well . . . Gerald, I’m Jim. He extended a hand, keeping a watchful inner eye on Ninip, sensing the jinn’s desire to extend his claws. It’s nice to meet you.
Gerald stared at his hand. The fear stink spiked, slowly abated. She didn’t move.
I won’t hurt you, Schweitzer sent, but she had already reached out and taken his hand in hers, her thumb sliding gently over his palm. She forgot to pump it in her fear, and they stood in awkward silence for a moment, holding hands, all eyes in the command center on them.
“It’s nice to meet you, Jim,” she said. “You really are an amazing . . . man. It’s such a pleasure to work with you.”
But the words barely registered. Schweitzer was lost in the sight of her skin touching his, healthy pink clasped to dead gray. He could feel the gentle pulse of her blood through her palm, not with Ninip’s predatory hunger, but simply as a warm thing, vital and close. Her hand was sweaty, the moisture formed a gentle seal between their skins.
He glanced up to find she was smiling.
Schweitzer realized with a start that this was the first time he had touched a person other than Eldredge, other than to kill them, since he had died.
I . . . thank you, Gerald, he sent to Jawid. I look forward to . . . working together.
He felt her grip slacken, the gentle tug as she tried to draw her hand back.
He kept ahold of it, even though the fear stink rose and she began to tug harder. Even though he had to push back harder against Ninip, surging in response to the nearness of blood.
Not because he wanted to hurt her. Not because the bloodlust surged in him as well, though it did.
But because he was touching a living person. Another living person. Not running. Not screaming. Not shooting or fighting.
Holding her hand.
What good are these people to you? Ninip had just asked him.
He looked down at the hand, tugging more frantically now.
And he knew.
CHAPTER XXV
JOB OFFER
The corridor was only wide enough to admit a single man at a time. Schweitzer could see alternating burn and freeze nozzles at regular intervals projecting from the walls, ceiling, and floor. Every twenty feet, a thick slot retreated into darkness, from which he assumed thick steel doors could drop to seal off the corridor by segments.
It felt like a cattle chute. He could feel the heaviness of the packed earth above him, the thickness of the metal on all sides.
“To the end, Jim,” Eldredge said. “Stop outside the door.”
I thought you said you had control over them.
“The ones we have the best control of are out working. You can’t meet them. This is the one you can meet.”
You can’t use this one?
“I keep holding out hope, but I don’t think so.”
Then why keep . . . him? Her? It?
“It was a him,” Eldredge said. “Air Force PJ. Was up for a posthumous Medal of Honor. Missed it by an inch.”
So . . . why not destroy him?
“I said I was holding out hope,” Eldredge said. “He’s still one of our own. He has good days and bad. Sometimes I think he’s getting the upper hand.”
Over his jinn? What’s his called? Is it another anc—
Jawid cut him off this time, saying something briefly to Eldredge before turning inward to Schweitzer. He does not speak.
Schweitzer’s senses were still amplified enough to sense Eldredge nodding behind him. “I said he has good days, Jim. You have great days. On his best day, he can’t manage speech. Whatever is in there with him, it’s not interested in the finer points of conversation. On the good days, it wants to kill what we point it at. On the bad days, it wants to kill everything.”
So, what are you hoping will happen?
“I don’t know. But I’m convinced that whatever it is, you’re the key to it. I want him to be like you, Jim. I want them all to be like you.”
How are they different?
“You’ll see.” Eldredge pointed down the corridor. “He’s an animal. More monster than man. We need Operators who can think, who can reason.”
Who can be relied upon to obey.
“A thinking creature is far less reliable than an animal,” Eldredge said. He put his hand on Schweitzer’s shoulder. “This is a partnership now, remember? I’m not some cartoon villain, Jim. There’s more administrator in me than secret agent. I am genuinely sorry about what happened to you, about what happened to your family. But the truth is that there are forces at work here that we don’t entirely understand, and you are the only way I know to keep them at bay. I am terrified of the thought of creatures like the one you’re about to meet being the only thing that stands between this country I love so much and creatures like Jackrabbit and Nightshade. Please believe that.”
And Schweitzer found that there was no guile in Eldredge’s eyes, and that he did believe him, in spite of everything.
He remembered Sarah’s face, her cheeks hot with anger, during their last argument on the night the Body Farm had shattered his home and life and family.
Why do you do it, Jim? What do you get out of it? I mean, apart from the adrenaline rush, she’d asked.
I’m good at it, he’d replied. Really, really good at it. It’s like you with the painting. You touch it, it’s amazing. You don’t even have to try. I know you do, and damn hard, but that just makes a good thing better.
If he wasn’t a SEAL, and he wasn’t a husband and father, then he didn’t know what he was.
“So, yes,” Eldredge said. “I want them all to be like you. Every Operator in the program.”
It was something that was not a SEAL or a husband or a father.
It was something that was not Ninip.
They were silent for the rest of the walk until the hallway ended at a thick, steel door, painted in diagonal stripes alternating red and yellow. Schweitzer could smell the Composition B explosive lining the edges, the ammonia stink of the nitroamine so strong that Ninip was roused. There was a lot of explosive all around him. Probably enough to bring the entire room and corridor down around them.
The burn nozzles, the control points, the pounds of explosive. Layer upon layer, what the SEALs called defense-in-depth.
Whatever was behind that door, the Gemini Cell sure as hell wanted to be able to snuff it out in a hurry.
Schweitze
r could feel the current again, the weird sense of standing in a tunnel of flowing liquid. The magic. There was magic behind that door.
Ninip was awake now, pacing his tiny corner of their shared space, looking for his chance to break out. Schweitzer ignored him, lost in the sense of the current washing over him.
“Ready?” Eldredge asked.
What was his name?
“What?”
His name. I want to know what he was called when he was alive.
“He’s not going to answer to it, Jim.”
Doesn’t matter.
Eldredge sighed and Schweitzer could feel him shrugging. “Cameron. His friends called him Cam.”
Schweitzer nodded, kept an eye on Ninip, and faced the door. Ready.
A slot in the door slid aside with a bang. It was only wide enough for a tray to pass through, and Schweitzer could smell the explosive packed around it with such strength that he tried to filter it out. After a moment, he gave up. Ninip’s diminishment had robbed him of many capabilities, this among them.
He leaned forward and pressed his eye to the slot. His view was distorted by a cinder-block thickness of transparent palladium. Beyond was a tiny room, scarcely more than a large closet. It was completely white and so clean that the angles where the walls met the floor melted into one another, joining the thick, transparent pane in giving a weird, distorted impression of a window into the interior of some round ball. The only break in the otherwise uniform expanse of white were the ubiquitous burn and freeze nozzles, interspersed with metal boxes that Schweitzer guessed contained more Comp B, or Semtex, or something else that could turn whatever was in the room to dust with the touch of a button.
There was nothing else. Schweitzer pressed closer to the slot, turning his head sideways to better see the room’s hidden corners. He could feel Ninip looking through with him, trembling with excitement.
He instinctively tried to switch to heat vision, and Ninip tried to press forward to assist, but Schweitzer pushed him back again. There was no way it would be worth it to let the jinn reassert himself just to see around a corner.
I can’t see anyone . . . Schweitzer sent to Jawid, heard the Sorcerer translate to Eldredge behind him.
