by Myke Cole
They had lied to him, they had imprisoned him. They would keep doing it if he let them.
Ninip pulsed, and Schweitzer let the jinn have full rein. I’m sorry, he started to say to the soldiers around him, then realized he was not.
He wasn’t sorry. He was angry. He was desperate. He was not going to miss this chance.
Schweitzer rolled them to their feet as an axe blade whirled past their head to rebound off the wall beside them. He caught the flicker of a blue pilot light out of the corner of their eye, and once again allowed Ninip to surge to the fore, the jinn’s bloodthirsty edge suddenly utile. The jinn flooded their limbs, and their warming arm snapped out so quickly it was a blur even to Schweitzer’s augmented eyes. It closed around the barrel of the flamethrower, bending it upward, the metal crumpling in their dead hand, some slick liquid sheeting across their knuckles, catching fire as it was exposed to the air, racing back up the line.
Schweitzer pushed off again, leaping them forward as the man detonated, the corridor suddenly engulfed in white-hot flame, dancing with screaming figures, little more than black blurs dissolving in the fire, so that the fire seemed a living thing itself, screaming at him to run.
And so they ran, Ninip casually decapitating Mr. Axe as they passed, his burning body slumping to the ground, the jetting blood sizzling and popping in the heat.
The jinn let their shared body flee now, knowing there was nothing behind them but flames, any slaughter to be had lay ahead. Schweitzer could feel their back smoking, the skin doubtlessly badly burned, but they had only been seconds out from nearly freezing solid, and the dropped temperature had spared them the worst of it. The flame had even done double duty in partially cauterizing the split in the skin along their spine, melting the gap closed in sections. What mattered was that the bones had held, that the muscles were connected enough to keep them moving and fighting.
Because the echoing screams reminded him of the finality of the move. His captors burned behind him, soldiers, G-men. The good guys. Those deaths would have to be answered for. There was no capturing him, no putting him back in a cage. There was no more partnership. They would destroy him if they could.
But they couldn’t. Because Sarah and Patrick were alive, and hellfire and wild dogs and all the firepower on earth wouldn’t stop him from getting back to them.
He gave his body over to Ninip and let the jinn take up his loping knuckle-walk, moving faster than Schweitzer could drive them upright. The corridor ended at a pair of steel doors just beginning to swing open. Ninip and Schweitzer barreled through them, knocking them apart and feeling the weight of the people on the other side. Shouting, panic, then Ninip and Schweitzer were among them.
Schweitzer turned away and let the jinn do his work. He turned his attention inward, trying to square the layout of the place. He remembered the detention blocks at the Forward Operating Bases he’d deployed from in the past, cheap structures of barbed wire and plywood meant to provide a quick and convenient means to detain and debrief those enemies the SEALs managed to take alive.
He felt their body whirling, pushed away Ninip’s intoxicating exultation, the hot blood washing over them, the bone spurs lengthening into teeth and claws. The screams were a buzz in his ears, waves crashing on a distant shore. Schweitzer was dimly aware of the callousness of turning away from the carnage, knew he should be trying to restrain the jinn, to protect the lives of innocent people just trying to do their jobs.
But they had lied to him and kept him prisoner while Sarah and Patrick had been alive. When he could have been with them. Could have protected them. Instead, he had been . . .
They had created the thing that now gibbered and shrieked and drained their blood. Let them enjoy the fruits of their labor.
When he finally returned to their shared eyes, there wasn’t a moving body in sight. The steel doors had swung shut behind him, shutting out the screams, the flames already beginning to die down. They stood in a wide, plain room. Rows of benches marched out until the far wall stopped them, another identical door splitting its otherwise blank face. A giant whiteboard was covered with dry-erase scribbling in bright color. An American flag stood in one corner. An orange light hung from the ceiling, spinning out its warning beams, reminding the severed heads and limbs that the Schweitzer-Ninip Operator was coming to kill them.
They galloped through the opposite pair of doors, turning sideways to skid through a second set of sliding gates just before they slammed home behind him, before louvering down and turning abruptly solid, seamlessly blending into the wall, so that any normal human would have to squint to see that the surface was unbroken.
They were standing in the lobby of an office. It looked for all the world like they’d come into the receiving room at a software company. A pleasant-looking secretary in a smart suit was slowly rising from her swivel-backed chair, hand going to her mouth. A fake plant spilled the banks of a cobalt blue ceramic pot. Raised stainless-steel lettering behind it arced across the wall: ENTERTECH/PHASE III, INC. Below it, smaller letters read: SERVING THOSE WHO SERVE.
The fear stink hit their nostrils and Ninip lunged for the woman, but Schweitzer caught him and hauled him back. It was a struggle, but far easier than it had been. The jinn howled and shook, but Schweitzer was able to back their shared body away, heading for the second set of sliding steel doors, a spray of glowing pinpricks showing through the double thickness of glass.
Stars.
They’d put him on the first floor after all.
Schweitzer stepped in front of the doors, waited for the electric eye to recognize his presence and slide them open. Nothing.
He turned them back to the woman behind the desk. Raised a finger, pointed at her, took a step. She screamed, hand hammering something behind the desk.
The doors slid open behind him, and they were out into the coolness of night.
—
Schweitzer left the body to Ninip, allowed the jinn to take them at a blurring pace while he examined their surroundings.
The building behind them was low and long, with an arcing roof like an airplane hangar. Orderly rows of box elder had been trimmed to form a green fence around the front entrance, gap-toothed now from the hole that Ninip had punched through rather than simply change their course to make for the deliberate opening.
Beyond was a parking lot with only a few cars squatting between the freshly painted white lines. Solar-powered sodium lights rose on twenty-foot poles, dark for now. The corporate logo Schweitzer had seen inside was written across the building’s front as well.
The parking lot stretched off into the distance, where Schweitzer could see the beginnings of what looked like an office park, carefully manicured lawns surrounding low, glass-fronted buildings so deliberately inconspicuous that it screamed the government’s hand to any who saw them. Thick woods lined the parking lot on the remaining three sides.
Schweitzer put energy into their legs, guiding Ninip as the jinn vaulted them over a car and made for the office park.
No, Schweitzer said. That’s going to get us taken out.
The jinn responded with a feral grunt. He didn’t need to speak. That was where life was likely, where the most blood could be spilled. Schweitzer pressed again, and the jinn turned, not wanting to risk being shoved back into the far corner he’d occupied since Schweitzer had gained the upper hand. They sprinted into the trees, disappearing under the thick canopy just as rotors began to beat the air overhead, and Eldredge’s voice began to call over a loudspeaker. “Jim! Come back! You’re making a mistake!”
Ninip tried to turn them instinctively at the sound, angling back for the building they’d just escaped, responding to the sound of prey reflexively. Schweitzer pushed him back on course, and they forged deeper into the woods as the rotors began to beat the air directly over their head.
In movies, the fugitive was always hounded by barking dogs, dod
ging between bright circles of focused light. Schweitzer knew that in real manhunts, the dogs were trained to move as silently as their handlers, that the men in the helos above him were staring through night-optical devices, the world below them tinted green and in perfect focus, their night vision preserved for the ugly work ahead.
He knew, because he’d done it. The green haze of the night-ops world had been one of the foremost colors on his palette, right next to the ochre red of blood.
The rotors came louder, lower. Two birds, keeping pace. They weren’t flying a search pattern, and that meant they’d seen them. The softer patter of the rotors told him they were light helos, Little Birds most likely, which meant there was probably a sniper broadside, lining up his shot. .50 cal rounds or 20mm airburst ammunition if they wanted to make sure there weren’t any pieces of him left big enough to cause any trouble. Schweitzer had trained for months to fire broadside out of a moving helo at an obscured target. It never took him more than a few seconds to get the shot off.
The clock was ticking.
Schweitzer funneled the images to Ninip, the helos above them, crammed with beating hearts, pulsing blood, lungs expanding and collapsing. He mainlined the coppery smell of gore, the canvas-ripping sound of flesh coming apart.
Ninip shivered, shrieked, scrambled in a circle looking for the carnage he so desperately sought.
Up, Schweitzer pushed to him. Up.
Ninip went up.
The jinn leapt them in a straight line, clearing twelve feet before grasping a thick limb above them. The limb drooped and cracked under their weight, but the jinn was already swinging them up and off, the pressure tearing the tree limb free but sending their shared body sailing another ten feet in the air to impact with a thicker section of tree trunk before launching off it.
Ninip leapt them from tree to tree, sometimes springing, sometimes swinging from branch to branch. They soared faster than if they’d been fired straight in the air. Schweitzer could see the trees shaking around them, knew the pilots would be seeing it, too, but by then it would be too late.
They exploded from the canopy, launching skyward with a shout.
Schweitzer had been right, two little birds hovered alongside one another. The sniper was seated at the edge of the cabin, boots on the skid. He cradled a carbine in the crook of his elbow, sighting down it toward the canopy that rapidly receded below Schweitzer-Ninip’s feet. The sniper’s finger was indexed along the trigger of the grenade launcher below its shortened barrel. He was already coming off the sights, eyes widening as Schweitzer-Ninip arrowed toward him. Ninip extended their arm, claws lancing out from extended fingers.
Schweitzer felt the man’s eyes pop under the pressure of the bone spikes, punching the skull plate behind to slide into his brain. He flopped like a fish, jerking back into the cabin and into another man, who leapt for the tree canopy rather than face the monster suddenly in his helo. Ninip turned long enough to skewer one of the pilots through his helmet. The second pilot fired a pistol blindly over his shoulder, and Schweitzer felt the helo lurch, spinning.
He shouldered Ninip aside, grabbing control of their body and gripping the cabin’s edge. He swung them out of the open door and caught the tail boom, their weight dragging the helo earthward. He could feel the wind from the spinning tail rotor, cutting the air inches from their mockery of a face. The helo canted over and began to spin wildly. Schweitzer opened their hands, letting go and falling backward down into the canopy.
The leaves covered them, but not before Schweitzer saw the helo whirl sideways, the blades of its main rotor shattering against the cabin of its partner before both blossomed into bright balls of flame.
Schweitzer felt the heat of the blast, the patter of smoking debris bouncing off their head and shoulders. He let them turn then, just as the first tree branch snapped beneath their weight, reached out a hand, and gripped the trunk, fingertips wedging into the grooves of the bark and locking expertly on, the inhuman strength already slowing their descent as they scraped along it.
By the time they reached the ground, all was silent save for the crackling of flames from the burning canopy above them.
The jumper had gambled and lost. He lay on the ground, one leg bending the wrong way, the trouser leg dark with blood. A splinter of tree branch projected from his arm.
Schweitzer knelt them over him. Ninip raced to the fore, leaning their head in, long tongue extending.
Schweitzer hauled him back. The jinn shrieked and fought, but it was much easier to control him now.
What are you doing? If you do not kill him, he will tell where we are! Ninip said.
They already know where we are, Schweitzer said, unbuttoning the man’s shirt and stripping it off him. It was filthy, soaked with blood and sweat, but the ripstop fabric was only moderately torn. It would be clear that something was wrong, but Schweitzer knew it was better than standing nude before an onlooker, their corpse flesh burned to a slurry, digits snapped off, the flesh split from their skull to their buttocks as if someone had been attempting to cut out their spine.
And if he was going to find Patrick and Sarah, they would need to walk among people again.
He deserves death, worse than death! He kept your family from you, he was trying to destroy you! Ninip shrieked.
As if he could hear their conversation, the man groaned, and said, “You better fucking kill me, because as soon as I knit up, I’m going to light your freak ass up, you little bitch.”
Schweitzer didn’t doubt he meant it. He was a hard operator, unused to losing. He believed in his cause. He would attempt to follow through on his threat.
He was the kind of man that, in life, might have been Schweitzer’s friend.
He lives, Schweitzer said. He knew how it worked now, that to slaughter this man would be to restore Ninip to control. That the jinn wanted it was the surest sign that it was the wrong move.
Instead, Schweitzer stripped the man of his trousers and boots, rushed them into the clothing. They were tight, but they fit. They stood to go, looked down, knelt. Ninip raged while Schweitzer forced them to grasp the man’s thigh just above the knee, and the calf of the broken leg with the other hand.
He did the bellows dance again, working the air into a wheezing cough through their shattered voice box, hoping he made a convincing enough sound. “Hurt.”
The man looked at him, nodded. “I know, get it done.”
The leg snapped back into place with the sound of splintering wood. The man didn’t scream, only went unconscious, head lolling back and eyes staring sightlessly.
It was all Schweitzer could do. The man’s colleagues would be here soon enough. Schweitzer sprinted them off into the foliage.
The ground rose sharply, the trees beginning to thin as the stony soil gave under their stolen boots. Their augmented ears began to hear the sounds of car engines, the whine of air conditioners.
They crested a ridge, bursting through the foliage and stopping short as the ground fell away. A river moved below, current ripping hard under the nearly full moon, white-topped wavelets dancing under the light.
In the distance, a city thrummed with life, twinkling lights blotting out the stars. A highway snaked past it, a double loop of traffic, moving smoothly at this late hour. They heard distant snatches of music. Ninip took it in, awe momentarily replacing his desire to kill. Schweitzer remembered that the jinn had never seen a modern city before, even one as small as the patchwork of buildings that sprawled below them.
Then Ninip stared through their shared eyes at a single spire rising from the low field of lights, more than twice the height of anything around it. Recognition flared. Where are we? the jinn asked, his boyish tone so out of step with the situation that it almost made Schweitzer laugh.
Of course he recognized it, Schweitzer thought. Of course. It’s not what you’re thinking. That’s a replica. It’s built
to imitate . . .
The lighthouse, Ninip said.
They named the city after it, Schweitzer said. Or, maybe they built it because of the city’s name. It’s Alexandria.
Ninip tried out the word. It was called Ra-Kedet. And the lighthouse was ten times the size.
They renamed it after Alex . . . after a guy who conquered it. And yeah, it’s only a replica.
This was no time for history lessons. Schweitzer forced their eyes away from the tower and back down to the river again. He knew it now. It was the Potomac, the current ripping south, winding past Maryland and out to the Atlantic beyond.
He was looking north, the Pentagon squatting just out of view, the dome of the nation’s capital beyond.
He knew where he was. What he didn’t know was where to go.
But he knew what his best bet was if he wanted to throw off the hunt.
Schweitzer grabbed control of their legs, leapt. The cliff face disappeared behind them, the wind rushing in their ears, the sparkling line of the river stretching below, still for a moment, then rushing up to meet them.
Schweitzer extended their hands, tucked their head, locked what remained of their abdominal muscles. They arced gracefully down toward the water, and Schweitzer felt something rising inside him, strange and familiar, a distant memory, faintly recalled. It felt fantastic. It felt like joy.
The silver surface of the water expanded in his view. He felt their hands cut the surface.
And then his vision blacked out, their nerves dead, their body suddenly refusing to report to him. Even Ninip faded into the background, as all Schweitzer’s senses tuned to a single signal.
Sarah’s voice. Forlorn. Lost. But alive.
Jim, I’m here.
The sound shivered through him, more felt than heard. It seated in every cell of his dead body and rooted there. I’m here, and I need you.
