by Myke Cole
Ninip saved them. The jinn resisted Schweitzer’s efforts with a sudden ferocity, his contempt at the thought of crawling on his belly breaking through Schweitzer’s defenses, smacking him aside. The jinn seized control of their arms and grabbed the back bumper of the jeep as the engine roared into life and the tires began to spin, scattering dust as they sought traction on the dry ground.
Ninip slammed their chest up against the vehicle, adjusted their grip and torqued their waist. Schweitzer caught the RPG man out of his peripheral vision, lowering the weapon, unwilling to risk hitting his master, crab stepping sideways to get a clear shot. From his other eye, Schweitzer saw Nightshade lean out of the driver’s side window, waving a pistol. Ninip locked their back muscles and heaved as the tires finally found purchase and dug in.
Schweitzer felt their shared shoulders and back, the dead muscle snapping tight across the bone. His old corpse began to tremble, and he felt certain that they would snap their spine in two and be left sprawled in the dust while the jeep sped away.
But the tires spun, clicked to a stop, spun again. Schweitzer felt the jeep’s weight shift. Nightshade screamed.
Even with the magic, they didn’t have the strength to throw the car through the air. It tumbled along its axis, rolling and bouncing, tires still spinning ineffectually, reaching for a surface continuously snatched away. The man had enough time to drop the RPG and scream before the car landed on him, knocking his companion sprawling, crushing him flat. Ninip leapt the remaining distance, vaulting over the smoking wreck of the jeep, ignoring the dead RPG man, landing on his stunned companion, driving their shared knee into the man’s stomach with such force that the wall of the abdominals gave way, his spine crunching against their patella. The man was unconscious, cheating Ninip of his sport, and the jinn snarled, rising, looking for the next victim.
No one. The compound was suddenly and eerily silent, the wind still, even the normal night sounds of animals and insects faint and distant. Ninip sniffed the air, straining their augmented ears for a tremor that would indicate more human prey. Schweitzer used the distraction to seize control, turning them back to the jeep.
Target down, Schweitzer sent to Jawid. Jackpot Nightshade.
Well done. Make sure he is dead, then get out of there.
The jeep lay on its side, the windows shattered, one wheel still spinning slowly. Schweitzer could smell the pungent odor of gasoline, was painfully conscious of the nearness of the still-smoldering patches left by the last RPG blast. But he let Ninip clamber them up the jeep’s side, sticking their shared head into the driver’s side opening, reaching in to . . .
Nightshade was alive.
The man sagged in his seat belt, head lolling, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. His eyes were opening, unseeing, his breathing coming in hitching gasps. Schweitzer saw a long, jagged shard of glass emerging from his forearm. The fluttering eyes turned, took in Schweitzer and Ninip, widened. Nightshade began to moan, trying to shrink away, held fast by the nylon of the seat belt.
Ninip grinned, flexed their clawed hand, and cocked it back.
Schweitzer raced forward, grabbed the limb, forced it down. Ninip pushed back, first halfheartedly, then with sudden violence when he didn’t break through. He began to pulse images to Schweitzer again, the same carnage-joy that had drowned him when Ninip had slaughtered the boy.
But Schweitzer’s head was clearer now. The chill of the void was still with him, the trail he’d followed home still lingering. He felt the hunger, responded to it, but with distance now, an itch he could bear not to scratch, knowing it would speed the healing.
Schweitzer hung on, and the arm didn’t move. We take him in.
Those are not our orders! We were sent here to destroy him!
He’s alive. That’s intel. Orders change.
Intel? Ninip raged. We are not spies! We are a god of war.
And Schweitzer paused because he knew Ninip was right. He didn’t care about intel, neither did Eldredge. Whatever intel the Gemini Cell had on Nightshade had already convinced them to take him out, just as it had convinced them to send Schweitzer and Ninip after Jackrabbit. Schweitzer and Ninip hadn’t been sent in to gather information, they’d been sent in to wreak havoc. They could do the damage of an army, leaving no blood of their own to analyze, no helicopter wreckage or tire tracks to study, no risk of blowing the op and getting captured, appearing later to babble on the evening news. An army come and gone in a puff of smoke, leaving carnage in its wake, a void of questions answered by the ferment of the human mind: rumors and wild speculation, talk of ghosts, or aliens, or secret weapons. The fog of war, panicked, dread-addled thinking that made sure the truth was never known.
Schweitzer didn’t want intel. What Schweitzer wanted, dearly and desperately, was to cling to what was left of himself, what tiny fragments were free of the jinn and the magic and the Gemini Cell. His life was shattered into shards so tiny, they could be confused for grains of sand. But the grains were all he had left. Here was one called “decency” and another called “standing up for people weaker than you” and another called “integrity.” Here was the grain of dogged persistence that had seen him through BUD/S and SQT. There was the grain of shutting up, listening, and not offering solutions when Sarah just needed to talk. Here was the grain of patience when Patrick stepped on his balls and put his fingers up his nose.
And there, jumbled up with them, was the grain of not killing the defenseless. Not when it wouldn’t compromise the mission. Not when it wasn’t necessary.
It wasn’t about intel. It was about identity. It was about survival.
And whatever it was about, it funneled through Schweitzer, filling him with urgency and determination, pouring what he had into that right arm, keeping it still, then slowly forcing it down. The jinn screamed and pushed, and Schweitzer ignored him, the shouts fading to a buzz, much as they had in the storm of souls. He shouldered the jinn aside, expanded his room in their shared darkness, and Ninip went quiet, struggling weakly against him as he reached out with their shared hand, sliced their claws along the nylon strap of the seat belt, cutting through it, catching Nightshade as he fell into the recesses of the jeep, lifting him out and slinging him over a shoulder. The man kicked weakly, then his eyes fluttered shut, and his head lolled along Schweitzer and Ninip’s back. If not for the faint and uneven rhythm of his breathing, Schweitzer would have thought Nightshade was dead.
I have the target, he sent to Jawid. Proceeding to exfil point.
Target is actioned? Jawid sent back. Confirm.
Negative, Schweitzer responded, Ninip’s rage suddenly cool and silent. I’m bringing him in.
CHAPTER XXII
EXFIL
Schweitzer and Ninip walked the rest of the way to the extraction point. Jawid projected himself into Schweitzer’s mind, trying to share the view through his eyes. Ninip snatched weakly at the Sorcerer, and Schweitzer pushed him the rest of the way out. What the hell are you doing?
We can’t see your tracker.
Schweitzer touched the back of his neck and felt something crunching just beneath the surface. He sliced a small flap with the tip of his claw, felt the small cylinder there mostly melted, crisped wiring peeking out from the cracked, ruggedized plastic. Got a little cooked back there. It’s dead.
Where are you? Jawid asked.
On my way. Inbound.
Stop, Jawid said, his voice taking on the wooden tone that told him he was translating someone else’s words. You may be followed.
Schweitzer thought of the trail of human wreckage Ninip had left on their way to Nightshade. Nobody is following anyone. Tell the bird to sit tight.
He did a quick check of their body as he walked, feeling for breaks in the bones, tears in the muscle, but the structure seemed whole. There was no danger of their failing to make the long walk home or to take care of any opposition they mig
ht meet along the way. Nightshade flopped on their shoulder like a bundle of rope. Schweitzer again dialed down through the spectrum of sounds until he caught the small, ragged sound of Nightshade’s breathing.
Ninip coiled in a corner of their shared internal space, sullen, silent, much as he had been after Schweitzer had intervened to save the guard outside his cell.
The fuck’s your problem? Schweitzer asked him. Didn’t get your fill of killing back there?
You bring that bag of rags back home like a bride stolen from the enemy camp, the jinn said. Will you have us bugger him next?
After Schweitzer had saved the guard back in the States, the jinn’s voice had sounded weaker, smaller, a faint vibrato echoing to him through a tunnel’s length. The same effect was back but twice as pronounced.
Schweitzer reached out, pushed against the jinn experimentally.
Ninip gave way, fluttering madly as Schweitzer moved him toward the edge of their body, the void nipping at him. The jinn was a moth in a jar, gossamer wings flapping in panic, powerless to affect the shell around him.
What’s the matter there, big guy? You spent? Schweitzer gave another experimental push, and the jinn yielded before him, an incoherent growl rising from him, faint and tinny.
Schweitzer reached inward again, feeling their muscles. Their shared limbs felt heavier, much of the magical strength he’d taken for granted leached from them. The battered bones ground together along the fissures, the tears in their flesh ripping wider as motion and chafing pulled at them. With Ninip’s diminishment, their power ebbed.
Perhaps the jinn was spent, perhaps the killing had sated him and Ninip had no energy left to hang on to his position inside Schweitzer’s corpse. But that didn’t make sense. Ninip had been stronger after they’d taken Jackrabbit, and had killed no one when they saved the guard. He’d slumped, sulking, while Schweitzer had pulled the dog tags from inside their armor and . . .
Schweitzer almost dropped Nightshade as he thrust their hand behind the breastplate of their armor, still slick from where the fluid had leaked out of the punctured cells. He could feel Ninip stir, but it was a cringing motion, the jinn making no move to stop him as he reached their hand down, fumbling for the dog tags, panicking at first when he could not find them, then finally extracting them from just above their useless prick, pulling them out and holding them in front of their face.
The lines were as clear as the day they had first been etched. Sarah smiled at him, the love and joy shining in her eyes, visible in the lift of her cheeks. Patrick was openmouthed, babbling some nonsense stream that meant, “I am happy, and I love you.”
There was no oxidation at work here, only magic.
Eldredge’s words returned to him, the solemn respect in his voice after he’d seen what had taken Schweitzer through the glass of his cell and spilling out into the corridor beyond. You did a good thing, Jim.
Schweitzer glanced over at Nightshade, marked for death but still breathing.
A good thing, indeed.
Do not, Ninip said.
The push wasn’t experimental this time, Schweitzer gave the jinn a sharp shove, pressing him steadily toward the edge of the space they shared.
Do not! Ninip shrieked.
Why the hell not? You did it to me. It’s what you were after all along. You want the whole thing, don’t you? I float in the void while you walk around in what’s left of my skin. Game’s changed, asshole. Time to vacate.
He redoubled his efforts, pushing Ninip to the brink, where the jinn dug in fast. Schweitzer could feel him holding on, as if his limbs splayed out over a doorframe, his body dangling over the space beyond. The jinn didn’t have much strength, but he was ancient and steeped in magic, he could hold.
Get out! Schweitzer shouted. Go twist in the storm, you fucking devil.
You will go with me, Ninip said. It is my being that animates your body. My magic that makes us run and fight and leap as ten men. Without me, you drop, and this shell rots. Without me, there is only the storm. You may hate me, but you need me. You need me if you want to go on.
Schweitzer felt the jinn’s magical current washing through them, had felt it engage to keep the muscles in their back from tearing as they rolled the jeep. He’d felt it when they ran and jumped the wall. He’d felt it when his vision and hearing shifted spectrums.
He felt it now, ebbing faster, weakness flooding them as Ninip’s hold on their shared body slipped with each shove Schweitzer gave him. Schweitzer paused.
Ninip crept forward, moving into the shred of space that Schweitzer gave up when he’d ceased to push. He sounded relieved. You are the body. I am the magic that keeps it moving. You need me.
Schweitzer had full control of the body now. He moved an arm, opening and closing the hand, wiggling the fingers before closing them again into a tight fist. The jinn made no move to stop him, couldn’t have if he’d tried. Schweitzer tuned their hearing, moving past Nightshade’s breathing and out over the hardscrabble plain to where the sounds of animals were beginning to return again.
Everything still worked, for now.
But that didn’t mean that it would continue to once Ninip was gone.
Jawid. Schweitzer reached out for the Sorcerer. His voice was stronger now, his sense of the pathway that linked them more acute. He had fumbled for it before, but it came clearer now, a road as vivid and sharp as the one that had led him out of the soul storm before.
Jawid.
I am here. The Sorcerer sounded shocked. Schweitzer could feel his surprise funneling down the channel that connected them.
Do I need Ninip?
What?
Do I need him? Without him, what happens to me?
The jinn began babbling, reaching out to the channel to Jawid, but Schweitzer slapped him down, sending him sprawling back into his corner. Do I need him? What happens if it’s just me in here?
Silence. Schweitzer could feel Jawid still in contact, but the Sorcerer didn’t answer. He was thinking, maybe conferring with Eldredge, the others in the command center.
At last he came back, his voice wooden. You die, he said. The great death. The last one.
Schweitzer turned back to Ninip. You will never avenge your family, the jinn said. You will be quit of this world forever.
It’s almost worth it, Schweitzer said, pushing against the jinn again, eliciting a squeal of terrified rage. Almost.
He kept the jinn there, a part of him pressed against him, keeping him hemmed into a tiny sliver of the darkness they shared. He trotted the rest of the way back to the helo, reveling in the feeling of control, Nightshade gently bumping against his back. His body was weaker, but it responded solely to him, much as it had in life. The spray of stars glowed overhead, the crunch of his boots on the hardpack sounded in his ears, the wind played over his gray skin.
It’s a beautiful night, he sent to Jawid.
He could feel the Sorcerer’s surprise and confusion. What?
I said, it’s a beautiful night. Are you outside right now? Can you see it?
Yes, Jawid answered after a long pause. There are many stars.
You’re alive, Jawid, Schweitzer sent. Don’t underestimate what that’s worth. You look up at those stars, and you remember that.
He looked up at the stars himself as he went. It was a taste of the world as he had known it, without Ninip’s poison filter hovering halfway over the experience. He had all of the sensation he wanted, without the pain or fatigue, his body reporting the injuries he’d sustained from the round through his throat, the RPG blast that had tossed him like a toy, but all of it vented, filtered, powerless to affect him. It was the world without pain, and it was glorious.
The jinn was still a splinter in his mind, hanging on the edge of his experience, a reminder of death and hell. It kept Schweitzer from truly thrilling in the world about him, a loose tethe
r, but one he could still feel.
Small price to pay for second chances. Schweitzer shifted his grip, trying to ease the bouncing of his shoulder against Nightshade’s broken bones. He wasn’t certain what it was that gave him command over Ninip, but he knew it was tied to who he was. The more he asserted his own self in thought and action, the more he became himself in the physical world. Or was it selflessness? He’d saved two lives. Each one had brought the jinn low, had made him the master of their shared form.
Is that how it works? he asked the jinn. You take lives to rule, and I save them? Is it just two sides of a coin? It can’t be that easy.
The jinn only slouched in the slice of their shared space that remained to him. Schweitzer could see the presence, sullen, an outline in his mind: drooping chin, arms hugged around a narrow torso, eyes shut tight. I do not know how it works, Ninip said, and the agony in his voice spoke of honesty. We fight for the body, it is true, but we can find balance. We will. You will teach me your footman’s ways, your “professional” war. I will teach you valor and nobility, our place at the head of all things. Together, we will make a mighty work and . . .
There is no mighty work together, Schweitzer cut him off. There is you making with the magic and me letting you stay for as long as you do. There’s you fucking with me and me punting you into the soul storm for your trouble.
We are joined, the jinn said. There is no life without me. If you push me out, you follow. The Sorcerer himself has told you.
Schweitzer leaned close, letting his presence hover over the jinn’s, filling up all but a fraction of the darkness they shared. Try me, he said. See if I’m bluffing. I’m fucking begging you.
Ninip looked at him now, eyes yellow slits in the darkness that flashed as he dipped his spiritual head.
Schweitzer turned his focus back to the outside world. He changed his grip to cradle Nightshade, head lolling against his wrist, the rest of the way back to the helo. He watched the bearded face, skin lined from hard use, cracking at the corners of the mouth. He wondered what he’d done to merit a visit from the monster that was Schweitzer and Ninip. Why was he smuggling those bodies? Had it been like Jackrabbit? Was it a deal gone sour? A recalcitrant who’d refused to play ball? What was his real name? In life, Schweitzer’s job had never been to ask questions. He was a moving weapon. The navy pointed him at a problem and pulled the trigger.
