by Myke Cole
But Schweitzer would not be moved. Jawid lay open to him, his thoughts and memories bare, just as Schweitzer had been vulnerable to Ninip when they first woke up together, sharing Schweitzer’s corpse. This was what Ninip must have seen. This was what it must mean to be the jinn in another’s form. Schweitzer could feel the sense of violation, the gut-wrenching revulsion gripping Jawid. This violation, the raping of memory and experience had been the worst of what Schweitzer had suffered since he’d been paired with the jinn. He knew that to delve into Jawid’s mind was cruel.
But Jawid was part of the reason that pairing had happened in the first place.
The Gemini Cell had been a labyrinth since Schweitzer had awoken under its thrall. He had backed Eldredge into a reluctant partnership, held him there only through the promise of his future utility. And now Jawid came to him with another op decided on, Schweitzer’s cooperation assumed. What else would he do? What else was there he could do? He was a monster, a dead thing created to make more dead things.
The truth wasn’t much, but it was something. Maybe that it was different from what he had was enough.
Schweitzer reached out, felt the membrane of Jawid’s memories resist him, felt the Sorcerer’s defenses shift from the futile attempt to push him out of his body to a scrambled defense of his mind.
Too little, too late.
Schweitzer plunged into the stream of Jawid’s thoughts. The images of Jawid’s memories flashed through Schweitzer’s mind now, all but blotting out his vision, faster and more vivid than they had ever been in any communication Jawid had willingly sent.
Schweitzer replayed Jawid’s memories. He saw through Jawid’s eyes as the Sorcerer stood in the command center beside Eldredge, watching the silver triangle that represented Schweitzer’s movements track across a map sketched out in black and glowing green. Schweitzer flashed to another memory of Jawid standing beside Eldredge and a young woman in jeans and a T-shirt, talking animatedly over an open file with Schweitzer’s picture paper clipped to one corner. His psych reports. The young woman was a “human terrain” analyst, trying to predict Schweitzer’s motivations, to explain to Eldredge why Schweitzer thought the way he did, to decode who he was.
As with all of the analysts, she was young, plucked from one of the best schools in the nation. Jawid’s memory told Schweitzer that the Sorcerer had been terrified of her, obscenely aroused by her. Schweitzer realized that Jawid had been thrust from a world in which he never saw women at all into a daily routine where he was surrounded by them, and in dress that in his homeland would have been considered scandalous.
And as with all of the analysts, her name was not her own. Jawid called her Jack.
Schweitzer didn’t stick around to learn more, he pushed further back through Jawid’s memories, going deeper into the Sorcerer’s past, not sure what he was looking for, pulled on by the satisfaction of finally learning about the events surrounding his resurrection.
Schweitzer left that memory and moved to another one. Jawid red-faced and arguing with Eldredge. I did everything you asked me! Jawid had said. It is not such a great request. Let me go back, just for a night. You can send soldiers with me.
Eldredge’s sad eyes, looking old and tired. I’m sorry. We can’t risk that. You know I’ll push for it. I’ve been pushing for it. We’ll get there Jawid. You just have to be patient.
Schweitzer pushed on, examining an older memory. Jawid sitting cross-legged on the end of his narrow bunk, feeling the currents of magic flowing around and through him. Jawid cast himself out into the void, feeling his way through the darkness, drifting along the wave tops of the currents of magic all around him. The Sorcerer slowly became aware of other consciences, whirling in the distance, tumbling over one another, so that Jawid only caught a snatch of each presence before it spun away to be replaced by another.
Schweitzer knew what Jawid was seeing: the soul storm, the whipping, screaming chaos that had almost claimed him.
But where Schweitzer was dead, his disembodied presence moving through the void, Jawid was alive, and using his magic to project his will outward. Jawid hovered along the edges of the void, unable to push farther, feeling the long miles, a distance between planets, still separating him from whatever lay beyond.
Then, a pulse. One voice growling deep and low and stronger than all the others, clawing its way to the surface of the storm of souls, reaching out. Powerful, wicked.
Schweitzer could feel the fear curdling in Jawid’s gut. Sweat tickling his neck, his spine, before soaking into the band of his trousers. Jawid remembered warnings from his grandfather. Superstitious cautionary stories about the evils of magic. Old tales to make children obedient, until they’d become real.
The memory was as real as if Schweitzer were living the experience himself. He could feel Jawid swallowing, forcing the fear into a tight ball that sat in his stomach. Schweitzer could feel Jawid reminding himself that without magic, he was a goatherd. Without magic, he was a victim, shivering under Abdul-Razaq’s sweaty bulk, biting down against the pain. You’re so beautiful, the Taleb had crooned over and over again, like a deer. My little deer. Abdul-Razaq had conjugated the nouns in the feminine. Jawid shook, knowing that to relax would make it hurt less, but fearing that if he let this bastard make him into a girl, he would be one forever.
So Jawid had let his muscles fight. And he had suffered.
Magic put an end to it. Schweitzer could feel the reminder giving the Sorcerer steel, Jawid reaching out to the stronger voice in the storm, extending the magic, pushing a tiny thread of his presence across the fathomless dark. The magic obeyed, the arcane currents ceased their aimless eddying, moving purposefully now, carrying Jawid’s signal on and out, a hand extended in invitation.
Schweitzer saw it all. The hand at the other end, grasping, locking on. Jawid reeling in.
Schweitzer saw through Jawid’s eyes, open now, looking down at a corpse on a cold, metal gurney, hand on its chest. Jawid’s magic current flowed out, the jinn, the presence out of the storm, moving past and through Jawid, reaching out strong arms and digging in, trying to find purchase in Jawid’s body, preferring the pulsing of his living heart to the cold emptiness of the dead one on the gurney before him.
The memory played on, and Schweitzer could feel Jawid grinding his teeth together so hard that his jaw hurt, the coppery taste of blood flowing into his mouth, pushing the jinn on, until it was past and through, flailing and clawing as Jawid’s magical current bound it into the corpse. Jawid felt the faint signature of the soul of the original owner of the corpse still clinging to it, haunting its former home, as it would for a few days, or a few hours, before moving off into the storm. Jawid performed the final binding, linking the ancient soul from the void to the newly dead one in the corpse.
Schweitzer watched through Jawid’s eyes as the memory went on. Jawid examined the corpse: a Caucasian with epicanthic folds on his eyes, an indicator of steppe heritage. The dead body jerked, fingers flexing, chest rising and falling once.
Schweitzer stayed with the memory while Jawid waited for his latest experiment to wake. Hours passed in the memory.
At last, the eyes opening, flames dancing in the depths.
Silver at first, but flickering faintly, slowly overcome.
Then, at last, gold.
An axe rising. Falling.
Schweitzer abandoned this memory and pushed deeper, delving further back, trying to find something of himself, of his family of . . .
He saw through Jawid’s eyes as the Sorcerer stood beside Eldredge, watching video-camera footage of a hospital room. The image was grainy, distorted, but Schweitzer could see a woman sitting on a bed, cradling a child in her arms. She was weeping. A doctor crouched at her side, trying to find comforting words, clearly failing.
Schweitzer felt Jawid fight harder, flailing desperately as Schweitzer replayed the memory fully, focusing on
the figures on that hospital bed, reconciling the chronology of the memories, playing them back in order.
Back further, to Jawid observing the wreckage of Schweitzer’s home just after Schweitzer’s corpse had been carted off.
Fast-forward to the memory of Schweitzer’s psych profile. Back again to the wrecked apartment, forward slightly to the hospital room, to the grainy image of the woman and child, hauntingly familiar.
The haunting dissolving into sudden certainty.
Schweitzer pulled back from the stream of Jawid’s thoughts, snarling. He hovered just outside Jawid’s body, at the very edge of the link that connected them. Jawid pushed against him, but sick rage had made Schweitzer unmovable. They’re alive! Schweitzer screamed at the Sorcerer. You fucking little motherfucking bastard! They’re alive!
Schweitzer poured his anger out through the channel connecting him to the Sorcerer, white and hot and senseless. Ninip leapt at it, riding the emotion up through the link and scrambling gibbering to the very edges of Jawid’s soul. Schweitzer let him, holding the snapping, ravenous presence of the jinn mere inches away from Jawid’s inner space, letting the Sorcerer feel his nearness.
They’re alive, Schweitzer said. Where are they? Why did you . . . ?
Jawid’s body was moving, Schweitzer could see through the Sorcerer’s eyes now. The Sorcerer jumping up from his desk, eyes scanning the wall, coursing over a field of buttons set in a stainless-steel panel, finding the palm-sized red circle, square plastic shield clapped over it.
White letters etched in the surface: BLOCK-6E—BURN.
Schweitzer lunged, tried to force himself back into Jawid’s body, to stop the Sorcerer’s thighs from engaging, to stop his arm from reaching out. But the Sorcerer was a living thing, and Jawid’s magic was still pushing back against Schweitzer, gaining momentum now that Schweitzer had left the Sorcerer’s memories.
Schweitzer felt the steady drumming of Jawid’s heart, felt the pulsing flow of his blood rousing Ninip to madness. Jawid’s soul fed on that vitality, that pulse of life, enormous, transcendent, filling every last particle of the Sorcerer’s body. Schweitzer’s beachhead in Jawid’s conscience was powerful enough, but the Sorcerer’s living body was another matter. It thrummed with power, bursting with the energy of electrochemical signals. Muscle fibers expanded and contracted. Cells divided.
Life.
Schweitzer changed angles, scrambling for Jawid’s mind, struggling to find something to freeze the Sorcerer in his tracks, to make him sleep, to give him doubts.
Nothing. Jawid’s memories came thick and fast, images from his past, flashes of emotion, but observation was not control. Schweitzer could read, but he couldn’t write.
At last Schweitzer gave Ninip full rein, allowed the jinn to slip out of his sliver of their shared space and come surging up the link to Jawid.
At Coronado, they’d taught Schweitzer never to take desperate gambles. Each decision point should be like a marriage proposal, Master Chief had said. Before you pop the question, you should already know the answer.
Schweitzer didn’t know the answer here, wasn’t sure he could rein Ninip back, regain control of his body again. He didn’t know if it would help at all.
But he was determined to try anything, no matter what the cost.
Because Sarah and Patrick were alive.
Ninip surged, ballooning into his sudden freedom, mad with the nearness of Jawid’s vitality. Schweitzer felt the jinn arc through the link to Jawid, the jinn’s presence so great that Schweitzer had to fight to maintain his connection to the Sorcerer, to not be pushed out by Ninip and back entirely into his own self.
Schweitzer watched through Jawid’s eyes as the Sorcerer ran the few paces to the wall, scrambled for the plastic cover, fumbled the catch, buying Schweitzer a precious second.
Ninip blazed against the perimeter of Jawid’s self, burning with bloodlust, a blooming red flower. He shrieked, pouring himself into the link, driving himself into Jawid’s body with all he had.
The jinn surged, lunged.
And rebounded.
Ninip’s power was tremendous, his pent-up aggression burned so hot that Schweitzer’s spirit reverberated with it.
But it couldn’t change whatever strange laws magic obeyed. The jinn could share a dead body with its owner but not a live one.
Ninip could read enough to know what the word on the red button meant, what it would do if Jawid pushed it. He redoubled his efforts, hurling himself into Jawid with greater and greater frenzy.
Schweitzer watched in horror as Jawid flipped the plastic case open. Not like this, he pleaded, not now. Not when I know they’re alive.
I’m sorry, Jawid sent back, hovered his fist over the domed red surface, punched it home.
As much as it was possible for a soul to wince, Schweitzer did. Ninip howled, anticipating the wash of the flames that would scour away their link to the land of the living and send them both back to the void and the shrieking storm that awaited them there.
Instead of the whooshing roar of fire, Schweitzer heard a whining hiss.
He pulled back from Jawid, Ninip coming with him. Schweitzer fell back into control of his own body again, turning his head.
The freeze nozzles were firing, liquid nitrogen smoking into the atmosphere. A patina of frost was already spreading along the wall behind the stainless-steel heads, blue-white spikes crackling outward. A few of the nozzles were jamming, the tips silent as whatever mechanism drove them failed under the pressure of the gas.
Schweitzer felt Jawid’s shock as the incineration protocol didn’t fire, observing from a video feed in his cell, most likely.
Ninip cooperated as Schweitzer threw their shared body as far from the nozzles as possible, slamming into the narrow door.
We are not . . . He did not . . . Schweitzer had grown used to the tinny faintness of the weakened jinn’s voice. This new Ninip, stronger and nearer, was a shock.
Schweitzer didn’t show it. Eldredge didn’t trust Jawid, he said. He wasn’t going to let us be burned. Not when we could be saved.
Schweitzer was dimly aware of an alarm sounding, the flashing of a Klaxon through the thick panel of transparent palladium alloy that gave him his view of the corridor outside. He felt the cold already taking effect, stiffness in the tips of their shared fingers and toes, the glycerol in the cells struggling to keep them pliant, but failing rapidly as the temperature in the room plummeted.
Shouts reached him, boots pounding in the hallway outside.
He flattened their body against the door, compressing as much as he could, as if the mere inch he gained could somehow save them. The cold gripped them mercilessly, the outer layers of his body refusing to report to him, their joints going rigid. As Schweitzer watched, the frost blooms spread to encompass the entire room, leaving it a sparkling cavern of diamonds. The burn nozzles crackled and popped as their internal pilot lights went out.
Ninip tried to seize their shared fist, pound it against the door behind them. Schweitzer could feel the increasing fragility of the cells, going hard, brittle. He swatted the jinn back, pushed him further into a smaller pocket of their shared space. Stop! You idiot! You’ll snap it off!
Perhaps Ninip’s resurgence had regained some of their lost sensory ability, perhaps he imagined it, but Schweitzer heard a tiny cracking sound from beneath their fist. The jinn ignored his warning and pounded again before Schweitzer could push the jinn back again.
Crack. Definitely not his imagination. The sound came from higher up over their shoulder. Not their body. The wall.
Schweitzer poured all his will into their legs, forcing them to taking a lurching step forward. Their frozen limbs obeyed as best they could, but didn’t lift as high as he needed. Their toes curled under, and Schweitzer felt the two smallest snap off, the arch of the foot breaking. It didn’t matter, he didn’t need it.
He planted their still-solid heels and launched their body high and backward.
They collided with the door, and Schweitzer felt the skin all along their spine, their neck to the base of their skull, split open with the light sound of breaking glass. The tracker sizzled and broke away from its anchorage against their spine. The door shuddered. Schweitzer felt their bones shiver, the momentum straining a structure suddenly gone brittle. He channeled his rage and frustration into the hit, railing with an abandon that would have made Ninip proud. Their frozen body would break. The fragments would scatter. His family would be lost to him again, just as he’d learned there was hope. The thought made him insensate with rage, eroded the quiet professionalism that made him who he was.
Schweitzer gave in to it. For the moment, the animal ruled, and he lost himself in a cry of rage that shattered the stretched remains of their lips and sent a shivering crack through their face.
Then there was a wrenching, a splintering sound, and he felt their body sailing through a wall of cold, rolling out into the corridor behind and a sudden heat that felt like an inferno.
The shattered door top pelted down around them as their cells suddenly expanded, took on moisture, fought their way back to their original shapes, missed, became something lumpen, a grotesque imitation of their prior form. A living man would have howled and died in agony.
Their shared peripheral vision picked up the shapes of men, guards racing into the corridor around them. They were men and women just doing their jobs, contractors and uniformed service members dedicated to defending their country, just as he had been, as he still was. Schweitzer knew they saw him as a monster, as a threat. They were good people.
But they were people who wanted to stop him from getting back to Sarah and Patrick.
And for that, they had to die.
Schweitzer rifled through his options. Disabling wounds or an effort to render them unconscious would require exposing himself, leaving to chance the possibility that their shared body would be damaged too badly to escape this facility and get back to his wife and child. There was no way he was going to take that risk.
