Gemini Cell

by Myke Cole

  Jim’s hand slapped down, faster than she’d ever seen anyone move, grasped the double barrel. Claws had sprung from his fingertips, long, sharp, the yellow-white of old bone. The tip of a long gray slug slithered from below the helmet’s lower lip, dusty and dark. After a moment, she realized it was his tongue.

  She lunged for Drew, shaking off Martha easily enough, the old woman’s grip falling away. Her arm snaked out, her rabbit punch connecting poorly, bouncing ineffectually off the old man’s shoulder, careening up into his neck. He cursed, shuddered.

  Boom.

  The old gun exploded. She felt the heat flash and smelled the rotten-egg stink of cordite, flailed backward, tumbled, fell.

  She blinked, saw only darkness. She felt something soft beneath her, was dimly aware of Martha sobbing.

  She eased herself up, straining her triceps to take her weight, keep the pressure off the old woman beneath her. She blinked again. The darkness resolved to white, then burst into splinters of shattered glass, dissolved into stars and finally she could see again. Martha weeping, curled in a ball, streaks of black powder running up her cheek, blood on her shoulder, her hands, her hip.

  Drew stood over her, hands crushed to his abdomen, horror and pain mingling in his strained expression. His eyes were fixed over Sarah’s shoulder, bulging, comically wide. Sarah crouched, followed the direction of his gaze.

  Jim alone stood stock-still, looking down at his hand, still clutching fragments of the broken gun. Slivers of metal had shredded his jacket arm, the flesh beneath. Sarah could see them embedded there, smoking, smell the cooked meat stench of his burning flesh. The jacket had been shredded to the shoulder. As she watched, he shrugged loose of it, leaving it to pool behind him.

  It landed beside the motorcycle helmet, knocked off by the blast, the visor cracked and burned where some hot metal shard had unseamed it hinge to hinge.

  The crown of Jim’s head was split, nubs of bone horn piercing the scalp, rising through rubbery skin the color of a beached fish. Slowly, Jim raised his head, looked at her.

  It was him. That much was clear. His beautiful face was still intact enough to recognize, but only just. When zombie movies had become popular, she’d toyed with an online game that allowed you to “zombify” yourself. You fed the program a picture, and it turned you into a zombie. Jim was zombified. His face was a flat expanse, his features stretched and warped. His nose was gone. What remained skewed at a hard angle over a jaw that now jutted out in an underbite that would have been comical if not for the wicked, tusklike teeth rising from it, the gray snake’s tongue lolling out the side. His face looked part dead, part mechanical, a cyborg built from stainless steel and corpse flesh.

  And his eyes. Oh God. Jim’s beautiful eyes. Gone. They were gone. They were empty holes, lit by flickering silver flames. She could feel them boring into her nonetheless, and fear suddenly gripped her. This was a monster facing her. It felt like Jim, bore traces of the face she loved, but . . . she shuddered as the totality of it hit her. She reached out again, felt with the same clairvoyant certainty that it was him, felt the same spike of love. She could feel the rose trail, the magic that linked them, shimmering in the back of her mind, flowing out to him. No matter what Jim looked like, that connection hadn’t changed, couldn’t change.

  She remembered the old C. S. Lewis quote. You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body. Her soul loved James Schweitzer’s soul with everything she had. His body was a wrapper, a suit of ill-fitting clothing draped across the thing she loved. He was Jim. Nothing could ever change that.

  His new form was terrifying, but the connection between them vibrated with the love he felt for her. A monster, maybe, but a monster who would never do her any harm.

  She swallowed her revulsion, stood to go to him, but the body around her soul demanded its due, and she couldn’t keep the reaction off her face.

  He reached a hand toward her, his expression creasing in sympathy as her horror registered on him. The shift was repulsive. His brows tried to furrow, the stretched skin only spreading and gathering around the black pits of the sockets, the corners of that vicious wood-chipper mouth dipping in what should have been an arc of concern, and instead became a hungry, predator grin.

  “S-rah,” he croaked. Sarah. He’s trying to say my name.

  She looked at the smoking shards of metal, embedded deep in his arm, his neck, his chest. She saw the ragged wound in his throat, the gray slashes across arterial pathways.

  Maybe her husband wasn’t alive after all.

  Patrick was screaming. The little boy huddled against the closet where Drew had retrieved the gun, hands over his head. If he recognized his father, he gave no sign at all. Jim’s eyes finally moved from her to his son. He froze, trembling.

  Drew shouldered her aside, standing fully over his wife. Jim showed no reaction, his burning eyes fixed on Sarah, tracking her as she staggered, shifted, regained her balance. Sarah felt a tugging tension in him. He was at war with something, but for now at least, he had the upper hand. Her body screamed at her to run, to put miles between her and this shambling corpse that had once been her husband, but Martha’s moaning wouldn’t permit it.

  She swallowed and knelt, tried to find the source of the blood. Drew was shouting. Martha rolled pleading eyes in her direction. Sarah’s hands traced the rips in her clothing, trying to locate the wounds.

  “. . . the hell away from here! You hear? Git!” Drew’s voice had taken on an hysterical edge.

  “Stop!” Sarah yelled up at him. “Your wife is hurt!”

  Drew looked down at Sarah, pausing in his ranting long enough to kick her aside, turn his wrath on her. “Get off her!”

  Jim turned, snarled. The expression suited him, far more natural to his new face than the attempted sympathy was. He cocked one hand, the blades of his fingertips lengthening as he reached out with the other, grabbing Drew’s neck, turning the old man’s shouts into a sudden choked gurgle.

  And released him.

  Jim stepped back, his head sawing, trying to look in all directions at once. He crouched deep, clawed hands out at his sides, eyes scanning the room for a defensible position.

  She heard a faint slapping in the distance, pairs of bare feet smacking on tarmac, crunching over leaves. Getting louder as they drew near.

  Something was coming.

  Somethings.

  They didn’t have much time.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  EVEN ODDS

  The signals reached out of the darkness, pulsing in Schweitzer’s mind. It felt much as it had when he had seen Jawid reaching out into the maelstrom of churning souls. Pulsing signals, the magic firing like lasers through the ether, long, glowing lines converging on a single point.

  Him.

  Ninip went mad at the signals’ touch, straining and pushing against his bonds, his strength seeming to grow at the nearness of them. He was drunk on the anticipation of battle, on the nearness of worthy opponents. Schweitzer had been with the jinn the last time he was so roused, when they stood outside the cell containing the animated remains of the former PJ known as Cameron.

  Schweitzer looked up at his son. Patrick had gone white-faced with terror, his fear passing the red line from screaming adrenaline and into catatonic paralysis. Trauma heaped on trauma. He shuddered to think of what this would do to Patrick as he advanced through the years into manhood.

  But that manhood would only come if the boy lived. Schweitzer would worry about the trauma later. For now, he was going to keep his wife and son alive, stick with them, and protect them as he couldn’t when he had lived himself.

  Sarah was coming back to her feet, ignoring the old man, screaming out his lungs in a vain effort to summon courage. Bravery didn’t work that way.

  The signals began to tighten, to converge. Schweitzer turned his attention inward, shoving Ninip back into his corne
r. The jinn seemed to be drawing strength from the coming tide. It was getting harder to contain him. Ninip was ranting, but Schweitzer didn’t take the time to listen.

  The old man turned his vitriol on Sarah, standing protectively over his own injured wife. There was no time to deal with his histrionics now. The threat was too imminent. Too great.

  Schweitzer grabbed a handful of the man’s shirt and threw him across the room. He landed on his ass and skidded across the floor to slam into the cabinets under the kitchen sink with a grunt. He wasn’t hurt badly, and, more importantly, he was out of the way.

  Schweitzer turned to Sarah and pointed at their boy, who’d slid down the wall to a sitting position, his tears dry now, skin chalk white. He squeezed his lungs, pushed the whistling air up and through his ravaged throat, managed to make a gurgling whisper: “Pah-ik.” He prayed she would understand, pushed his will down the corridor that linked them. Hide him. You can’t face what’s coming.

  Sarah nodded, ran, scooping Patrick up under one arm and flinging the closet open with the other. She cast a worried eye over at Martha. It was clear that she was torn over leaving the old woman still injured, but Sarah moved with purpose, getting a better grip on their son, rummaging frantically for a weapon.

  She’s a SEAL born and bred, Schweitzer thought. Mission over man. Triaging in a crisis. Making the hard call to protect her own.

  Schweitzer turned to face the door, scanning the room for a defensible position as Sarah found the closet empty, fled to the kitchen, stepped gingerly over a groaning Drew before giving a short bark of victory and brandishing a good-sized meat cleaver in her free hand.

  They are coming. They are coming, Ninip exulted. They are coming, and now you will see what we are.

  Something landed on the roof with a thud loud enough to shake plaster dust out of the eaves.

  Schweitzer looked up, tried to keep Sarah in his peripheral vision, pushed back on Ninip. There was nowhere to go. Maybe the door beside the kitchen led to a cellar? Maybe he could hide them . . .

  The wall exploded.

  Something heavy collided with Schweitzer’s stomach and he spun across the floor, digging his claws into the hardwood to stop himself. Straining to see through the cloud of dust where the bay window and front door had once been. He shifted through the vision ranges, some of the power returning to him as Ninip reasserted himself.

  A shape skidded through the dust, resolving as it slid into the light of the kitchen, clawed toes shredding the linoleum, bringing it to a shuddering stop.

  It wasn’t Cam.

  But it might as well have been. Schweitzer had time to make out the naked form, well muscled, scarred, twisted out of humanity by the jinn’s supremacy. This one was female. Her skull had blossomed into a ring of horns, circling her entire head like the petals of a hideous sunflower. Her breasts had been cut off, rough purple X’s marking where the surgeon had stitched the incision sites shut.

  Her eyes burned gold. Was she G-3? G-5? Schweitzer wondered who she had been in life. She sniffed in his direction, burning eyes lighting on him. He could feel her magical current reach out to him, washing over him before she pulled it away. The current scanned further, settled on Martha.

  She hissed and vaulted over him, making for the old woman, a single bone spike protruding from the back of her balled fist.

  Ninip raged, but Schweitzer wasn’t surprised. Of course she had gone for the old woman. Schweitzer couldn’t slake her lust. He had no blood to give, no screams to utter.

  He flung himself up onto the balls of his feet, took note of Sarah, beside the old man with Patrick tucked under her arm, her head sawing frantically as she searched for an exit. Then he launched them after the Gold Operator, flinging one hand forward to catch her trailing ankle.

  He knew instantly that he wouldn’t reach her. He was weak from holding Ninip in place, the jinn’s reduced presence draining his power as much as his struggle to keep him locked down. The Gold Operator sailed through the air, bone spikes growing along her spine and finally sprouting into a nub of flexible tail just above her buttocks. She shrank as the distance between them grew, her shadow falling over the old woman, who screamed, throwing her arms over her head.

  Schweitzer seized Ninip, gave over control, hauled the jinn into the fore.

  The jinn came forward with a shout. Schweitzer made way for him, feeling Ninip fill the shared space, the hunger flooding him, dulling his senses, tingeing their shared vision with red. The air seemed to reverberate, and Schweitzer could feel their left foot touch down, dig claws in, push off.

  They flew forward, missing the ankle, and instead crashing into the Gold Operator’s back. They tumbled through the air and crashed into the broken remnants of the wall. “Go!” Schweitzer shouted to Martha, heard his own voice sound as nothing more than a grunt.

  The Gold Operator hissed beneath them as they locked their legs around hers, grabbed ahold of the ring of bone spikes around her face. Ninip howled with joy, setting their shoulders wrenching, flashing visions of twisting her head off her shoulders.

  Schweitzer strained and pulled, Ninip’s strength doubling his own.

  Her neck didn’t budge. They might as well have tried to rip a building off its foundation.

  She hissed again, her tongue lashing out like a whip, wrapping around Schweitzer-Ninip’s head as she kicked her legs out, breaking their grip as if they were a weakling child. The tongue heaved, and Schweitzer felt them lifted into the air, flying end over end until they crashed into the sink, ripping the faucet from its moorings and sending water arcing into the air.

  He spun them over, leapt to their feet just in time to see the Gold Operator throw herself across the old woman, sinking her head down low, the bone spikes cutting deep, her whip tongue changing direction. The old woman shrieked, gurgled, was silent.

  Schweitzer could see Sarah throwing open the back door, slowly edging around the corner as he had taught her, refusing to rush blindly into danger no matter how frightened she was. He swallowed the spike of pride and love. The Gold Operator would be done with that old woman soon, looking for fresh prey. He marshaled Ninip, flashed an image of springing forward, claws first.

  But the jinn had other ideas. Before he could stop him, the jinn had turned their body, crouched to spring at Sarah’s back, Patrick cradled in one arm.

  Schweitzer pushed madly against the jinn, battering him with everything he had. At first Ninip resisted, their wills locking until Schweitzer felt as if their ghostly foreheads touched, sweating and wrestling in the darkness. The jinn gained ground, and Schweitzer screamed as their body began to turn again, moving in the direction of his wife.

  No! Not now. He couldn’t bear to see his wife and child slaughtered at his own hand. He would far rather spend eternity in the soul storm than that. He gave a shout and threw himself at the jinn once more, the thought of killing his own family charging him to heights approaching madness. Ninip wailed and gave way, Schweitzer battered him back and back, until the jinn clung to only the tiniest sliver of their shared body, a thread’s span from being pushed out entirely.

  You will end us both!

  Better that than you touch her.

  He heard the Gold Operator turn to face him, utter a screaming hiss, then the ceiling collapsed and something fell on him.

  He heard Sarah shout, saw her turn, and then he was borne to the ground. Spikes pierced his shoulder and chest, punching through his flesh and bone and piercing deep into the floor beneath him, the fist that drove the spikes sinking deep into the cavity occupied by his dead lungs.

  His enemy was enveloped in a cloud of dust from the broken ceiling, swirling around him. Schweitzer could make out two golden pinpoints through the swirling grit, a gray grimace slowly beginning to come clear.

  He heard another hiss, a whooshing of air. Sarah! But the scream that sounded from beside him was the old
man’s, punctuated by a wet ripping sound that drew his shouts into a crescendoing howl.

  Schweitzer attempted to grab the Gold Operator’s hips, using a combatives maneuver to throw it off, but Ninip bulled forward again, seizing more of the shared space, interfering. The jinn’s animal instincts added to his strength, his speed, but as always, they interfered with his ability to bring his training to bear.

  Instead, Schweitzer opted for a simple maneuver, punching their arm up, driving their claws into the flesh of the Gold Operator atop them, the weakness engendered by Ninip’s diminishment robbing the blow of its power. The motion cleared the rest of the dust, revealing an umbrella armature of needle teeth, cutting the lips to ribbons.

  Cam.

  Cam’s eyes focused, lost interest. Schweitzer was a dead thing, of interest only insofar as he presented an obstacle. Cam’s head lifted, sniffing the air, freezing as he found a target.

  No! Schweitzer flailed against his grip, feeling the claws rip deeper into him. Cam withdrew them, rising to kill Schweitzer’s wife and child.

  Thok.

  Cam’s head rocked to the side, the meat cleaver embedding so deeply that Sarah almost cut his head in two. He rolled off Schweitzer-Ninip and came to his feet, the cleaver still quivering where it had stuck, the flames of his eyes covered by its width like a metal hat brim. He made no sound, only tensed.

  Beside him, the female Gold Operator was rising, soaked in gore. She was slower, torpid with two kills to her tale, but Schweitzer knew it wouldn’t save Sarah and Patrick. He heard the thump of shoes on wood and knew that his wife had pelted out the back door, was running. Good, baby. Go. Go.

  Ninip was shouting, the soft buzz of his voice a gnat buzzing around Schweitzer’s ears. Schweitzer ignored him, sending them diving for Cam’s legs as the Operator sprang after Sarah.

  The Gold Operator’s knees buckled and he collapsed backward across Schweitzer-Ninip’s back, growling. Schweitzer could hear the female Gold Operator leaping over them, scrambling out the back door, racing after Sarah.