by Carl Damen
The outermost layer of armor bowed inwards, but the faceplate held, the padding absorbing the blow and the gel redirecting its force away from Ken's head.
Jack rebounded, twisting again, landing splayed on the ground, catlike, his gaze locked onto Ken.
For his part, Ken jerked forward, sending himself into a forward flip over Jack's back, his legs impacting on the far wall and sending him caroming at Jack, an elephantine bullet screaming at the pale flesh before him. Jack was just able to leap over his adversary, to twist and swing down with his right fist, to strike the concrete as Ken passed under him.
Jack gritted his teeth as his arm buckled under the force of the blow, even as cracks raced through the concrete under the force of his will.
Across the room Ken stood, pirouetted, faced Jack who was now racing at him, his arms extended to strike at the base of the reinforced collar—a desperation move. Ken raised a fist to connect with Jack's oncoming head, only for Jack to drop back, his feet skidding and shredding on the rough ground, his right arm catching on the floor as well, his left arm swinging up to dig into the joint between Ken's arm and body. The fingers of the left hand, held in a tight blade, impacted the unarmored padding, pushed deeper into the gel, spurred on by psychic force even as they buckled and jammed deeper into the hand from which they grew. A bulge of gel formed around the impact site, rippled up and around the arm, came together in another bulge that sent the massive shoulder plate jerking upwards.
There was a pop as the arm inside the armor dislocated from its socket, and Ken cursed as he pivoted, grabbed Jack's extended arm with his left hand, twisted it, felt the wrist break.
Jack screamed as Ken let him fall limply to the floor, then moved to stand over him.
"You did... you did good, Dolad."
Ken clumsily reached around to grab his own wrist, jerked it upwards, and inhaled sharply as the arm popped back into place.
"You did good..."
One by one they were returned to their home room, either hurt or well, grieved or elated, terrified or stoic. They had all tested themselves against the greatest fighter they knew, all had managed to survive, to hurt him a little. For all, that had been cathartic. To most, the catharsis only made them hate themselves more.
One by one they were sent back out into the dark halls, past the endless doors to the one empty chamber, the one bright cube with the two chairs.
The cool leathery material of the chair felt strange to Jack, reminding him of a life he no longer thought of as his own, reminding him more of a decision he had made that still tickled the back of his mind. At this moment, death seemed like such a pleasant opportunity.
Across from him, sitting in Suzanne's chair, was Allen. He was leaned forward, chin resting on hands, arms resting on knees, staring intensely at Jack.
"Why did you bring me back to this place?"
"I wanted to see how far along you were on that building of yours."
"Does that even really matter?"
"More than you could possibly know."
Jack sneered at him. "So nice to see you're hinging everything on my imagination. And what about them?" he gestured to the walls. "What are they going to think about my little building? Or better yet, the reason I'm building it?"
"Anything said here is in confidence. Yes, I'm relying on your imagination; but also relying on theirs. Right now the General and his cronies see what they want to see."
Jack leaned forward, grimaced as his skin pulled against the dark fabric. "Why am I here?"
Allen quirked an eyebrow. "Generally? You're here because of a stupid coincidence. That was one of the criteria for the program, actually. You were in a car accident with a military officer who looked nearly identical to you. One of you died, the other was in a coma. The EMTs' report was enough to get you on the lists. But specifically? I'm here to tell you my plan."
He dropped his hands and sat upright. Taken aback at the sudden revelation, Jack mirrored his movements.
"The General's initial plan was to make you up like foreign terrorists, use you as an impetus to go to war. That's been scrapped. Right now, the plan is the Vice President's. It was a contingency to the original, to have all memories of this place and your powers wiped from your mind, then have you reintroduced to the world. From there, you'll discover your powers naturally and then voluntarily offer them to national service. That's still a ways in the future, though. Until then, it looks like you'll be used covertly for Mistaren's purposes."
Allen balanced one leg on the opposite knee, then folded his hand in his lap and stared intently at Jack. "Right now, I'm planning on all of us breaking out of here just before the memory scrubs. We get out quietly if we can, kill if we must. Ken'll have to die, one way or another. From there, we get out, we expose everything, then we step up and become the Q-bomb; peace on earth."
"What do you want me to do?" Jack sat straighter now, his body tight with excitement. For the first time things seemed to be moving forward, to be nearing an end.
"When I get the order to begin the scrubbing, I'll signal a group of messengers: Naomi, Shara, Cyd, and Vince. I've already spoken with them; they'll organize everyone else to begin securing the halls. I'll be going after Ken." He leaned forward again. "When you get the signal, I want you to come and find me. Chances are Ken will still be a threat. I need someone beside me, someone who believes in me but doesn't trust my judgement. The others are yes men; you'll be my no man."
Jack slowly nodded. It felt good knowing Allen trusted his lack of trust.
"But."
Jack stopped nodding.
"That's all assuming all goes right. I've had plans in the past, and they haven't all worked out as intended. If for whatever reason this doesn't work out and you get scrubbed, I've taken measures to ensure that certain memories remain, and you may be able to break your programming. If that happens, and if I'm not there to guide you all, I'm putting you in charge. I feel you best know our goals, best know what I would've wanted. You're the E.H.U.D. arbiter."
"Why me?"
Allen's eyes flicked away, and he shrugged. "Dunno; fate?"
"That's not very reassuring."
"I didn't mean it to be. Now," he glanced at a thin chronometer on his wrist, "I believe our time is over. Congratulations; as far as the General is concerned, you just proved yourself a competent operative."
He stood, Jack did the same, and Allen ushered Jack out the door.
One by one they were returned to their home room, each hopeful or comforted or merely shocked as Jack was to see an end in sight...
After the evaluations were done and the General left a new equilibrium came to the Defenders. Now they were left alone, the only remnants of their previous lives the brightening and dimming of the lights that marked day and night and the bowls of food and water that appeared each day, though now only once in the morning.
For the first few weeks they were apprehensive, for the first few weeks they waited for the other shoe to drop. But it never did. Weeks grew to months, months to years, and the fifty Defenders in the one large room grew from frightened savages into something else, a community held by no possessions, possessed of no privacy either physically or mentally, separated by nothing. Even the concept of the individual slowly drifted away until nothing was left save for the gestalt, the Defender, the one mind of many.
So time passed. They lived, they loved, they sang and they storied. Mythologies and cosmologies sprung up around the three shared figures in their lives: Allen the Light, Mistaren the Dark, Ken the satellite who gleefully played in the General's shadow. Through this the Defenders ceased to be people, and became a people. The only thing kept from them were children...
Scattered throughout the years of this idyll were the missions the General would send them on. Every few months they would awaken to find a Defender gone, a piece of memory missing from the great whole. They would go about their normal routine, wait for a time, then awaken to find their missing member, freshly shorn and s
unburned, with fresh thoughts to share with the mind.
One night it was Jack who disappeared. He fell asleep curled around Cyd, her long hair tangled into his beard and flowing down his chest; he awoke sitting upright with something coarse rubbing across the entirety of his body.
Metal scraped on stone as he lurched awake, gasped at the sudden brightness around him. He blinked, felt for his beard, found it missing. Reached to feel his hair, found only a thin stubble. He looked down at his body, was horrified to see a bright red rash with with small purple tumors covering his torso, and loose flaps of dark skin covering his thighs, then relaxed as he remembered what theses were: clothes.
"Been a long time since you weren't flapping in the breeze, huh?"
Jack looked up to see Ken seated across from him, wearing a light tee-shirt and a wide-brimmed hat.
"Course, it's been a while since you've had a breeze."
There was that. A feeling of constant motion, of an open world all around. Jack breathed in a deep lungful, sneezed, felt his head clear as years of constant pressure he hadn't noticed were suddenly gone from his sinuses.
Around him was the green of a park, beyond that a late 20th century city, the buildings blocky and functional looking. Overhead, a brilliant blue sky. He and Ken were sitting in spindly metal chairs around a small table on a limestone patio. It smelled like a restaurant. Jack's mouth instantly watered.
"Alright, architect, you see that building across the street?"
Jack didn't look; instead, he latched onto the building Ken had seen in his mission briefings. A central tower, its top blossoming into a helipad. Around that, a blocky building of glass, most of one wall opening into a courtyard around the tower.
Ken nodded. That's the offices of the General Staff of the IDF...
He leaned over the side of his chair, came up holding a small satchel.
I want you to take this inside, then look around until you find someone with access to their nuclear arsenal... Keep looking until you hit the top of the food chain then plug whatever's in here to whatever the headman happens to be holding... Then, I want you to dump some things into the headman's head...
A flurry of commands and conditions flooded into Jack's head, a distinct packet of memories that he would pass on, use to surreptitiously control whoever was unlucky enough to receive them.
After you do that, wait five minutes, unplug, and come back...
Jack sat silently for a moment, running through the command memories again. You're going to usurp their arsenal...
Ken frowned. What I'm ordered to do is none of your business... This is my assignment for you... You don't ask question...
Jack knew he shouldn't argue, should just bide his time until Allen was ready, but this seemed like the kind of abuse of power, of blatant warmongering, that Allen had trained them to stop.
Even before the thought was expressed in words, Ken was quashing the rebellion. Remember that bitch of yours? What's her name...
Unbidden, the image of Cyd floated to the top of Jack's mind, but there was no response from Ken. Then, the image of Lauren; he hadn't thought of her in years.
Yeah, that's her... Remember what I threatened to do to her all those years ago? Just thought you should know that I made good on those promises while I was on leave over the last couple of years...
Images of Lauren, her sweaty face framed by pillows, her bare back arching away before him flooded into his mind. He gasped and kicked out at the table. It gonged hollowly and rocked a little.
Mmm, but she's a good one... Now I wonder, though, since I've made good on that threat, what more can I hold over your head? I could give you a full playback, but... I like those memories a bit too much myself... Can't kill her, either... Wouldn't think it, but I've fallen in love with her... Even thinking of proposing...
His smug smile was too much. Jack looked away and saw his target in the physical world, rising behind a stand of trees.
I know... I'l start taking your memories, one at a time... Little ones first... What was she wearing on your first date? When was your first date? Then, we'll get a bit bigger... What kind of music did she like? What about you did she like? Before you know it, all you'll remember was that there was something you were supposed to remember, the most important thing of all, and it'll be just out of reach... And by God, it'll itch...
Jack snatched at the satchel, then crossed the street and passed inside the building. He strode invisibly past security, felt through the minds of military officers until he found his first target, followed a chain of memories up the chain of command until he came face to face with an ancient woman with grey hair and green fatigues. He took her tablet, infected it; took her mind, infected it. Five minutes later, he was back on the street, staring at Ken who stood to greet him with open arms.
"Good job, Johnny-boy, you finished off the set! Thanks to you the United States now has complete access to the world's nuclear arsenal! And you know what you get as a consolation prize?"
A sense of betrayal towards the one person who's taken pity on us in the last decade? Jack answered in the relative privacy of his mind.
"You get to go home!"
There was a brief moment of elation as Jack misunderstood his words, then his eyes opened and he was laying naked on a now-smooth concrete floor, tremendous pressure threatening to crush his skull.
Around him was the mind of the Defender, welcoming him back, clamoring for any news of the outside world. What did you do? What did you see?
What did I do? I betrayed Allen... What did I see? The prelude to apocalypse...
Spindly columns of liquid stone rose from the ground, forming a lattice that supported the sparse weight of the spindly little man wearing nothing but a tangled beard. Etched into the floor before him was a circular trench, ten feet wide with a tower rising stalagmite-like from the center. Around the edges were six smaller towers, arcing up and away from the center, then disappearing into the trench.
As Jack continued to stare at his creation portions of it began to vibrate, glow red with heat, melt and reform, adding detail to structure. His tower was almost done.
Lips brushed against his ear, a whisper tickled the hair that poured down to cover it. "It's time," Naomi said. "Go to Allen; he needs you."
Even as Naomi ran off to gather more, Jack stood, his chair dissolving back into the concrete it had been formed from. He took a final longing look at his tower, then turned to go find Allen. As he waked away the tower began to crumble, to fill in the trench, to become smooth floor once more.
The other Defenders stood around one of the thin doors that pierced the room. There was a loud grinding noise, a clunk, and the door swung slowly inwards. The Defenders filed out, turned to the left to follow the trail to the administrative wing of this subterranean complex, to find the soldiers who guarded the door out. Jack turned right, followed the hall to another door: it was unlocked.
Inside he found a long ward, milky plastic curtains separating off individual beds to one side. At the far end was another door, another room. This one was as different from the small clinic as the clinic had been to their living quarters. Off-white walls, pale green trim, a couple of recliners, a large television. In one corner, a refrigerator, a microwave, a sink. This could have been any small apartment in the living world above. As Jack continued to the door on the far side of this room, he mentally scanned the two rooms that split off from this one to either side. Bedrooms, pure and simple: comfortable beds, desks, personal bathrooms. This is where Ken and Allen lived.
Through the last door and—Jack didn't know what to expect, but not this. A storeroom, filled with luxury goods the likes of which he never could have dreamed of: toilet paper, paper towels, liters of soda, bags of fruit. Everything he had so taken for granted...
"Dolad? What the fuck—" Ken was abruptly cut off by a blow to the back of his head. He crumpled to the floor, Allen standing behind him, holding a mesh sack of oranges.
Jack almost laughed.
That was easier than I expected...
Allen actually did laugh. Then he flew backwards through the air, impacting a metal shelving unit, the shelfs springing apart and wrapping themselves around him.
Ken leapt to his feet, caught the oranges, flung them at Jack. Jack leapt over them, spread his legs, caught himself on two facing shelves. Immediately the metal sprang away from him, heating and liquifying, twisting into white-hot tentacles that whipped through the air at him, cut through his swirling hair, burning it.
It was getting hard to breath...
He fell to the ground, dodged again, focused on the ground immediately beneath Ken. A puff of smoke surrounded the man as he sank ankle-deep into molten stone, his boots and pants burning. He didn't scream.