The Never Army

by Hodges, T. Ellery

  Paige turned as the door swung open, and as she laid eyes on them her anger softened. For a moment, Hayden forgot a lot of his questions. Whoever Paige was yelling at and why, didn’t matter. The three ran to one another and found themselves embracing in a triangle of tangled limbs.

  “You idiots scared me so much,” Paige said, her head resting between their shoulders as she held back tears. “I’m not crying . . . and you both smell awful.”

  Hayden laughed. She was probably right, The Cell hadn’t exactly let them shower. Still, it felt so good to know she was okay that he held on for quite a while. Then, somewhat suddenly, he felt Paige stiffen.

  He opened his eyes, and as he looked over Paige’s shoulder, he found himself frozen as well. Collin hadn’t spoken for a while, and Hayden suspected that he was seeing it too.

  Most of the cargo container’s interior was unremarkable, reminding Hayden of a high-end RV minus any decoration but possessing an overabundance of bunk beds. They were lined up one after the other along the sides of both walls. Obviously, none of that was what made them grow still.

  What had caught him by surprise was that there was a display hanging down from the ceiling. It had not been there before he hugged Paige. He was sure of this because he’d have remembered a bald cartoon man—whose resemblance would have led Hayden to connect a number of dots had he seen him there a moment earlier—and it was watching them.

  Seeing as Paige was facing the opposite direction, the reason she had stiffened was uncertain until she spoke. “Um, Mr. Clean, were we not in a forest when I got here?”

  Mito walked behind Beo, carrying Leah to what looked like a rusted and weathered cargo container. The exterior didn’t advertise for the interior accurately at all, leaving her surprised to find herself in a well-lit, sterile looking, fully-equipped mobile medical bay. The shelves and drawers were organized and stocked such that she wondered if she was the first patient this place had ever seen.

  That said, she wasn’t very focused on these sorts of details.

  Since appearing on that platform, she had been fighting off a fog. Everything blurry, bright, and spinning. Still, she understood that there had been people standing around them. They had been wearing masks, yet they now stood in front of her with no particular care that she could see their faces.

  She’d smelled forest. At least, she thought she had, now she wasn’t sure.

  A moment ago, she’d been looking up at a night sky that was moving in ways that left her wondering if she’d been drugged. In addition, she couldn’t remember when they had gone indoors, let alone how she’d managed to miss this giant warehouse.

  Maybe she’d lost consciousness for a bit?

  “Red, hey . . . Red.”

  It took her a moment to realize that the man, snapping his fingers to get her attention, was addressing her. She knew the accent. He’d spoken to her during the escape. “Ain’t nowhere da run. Jus trus me, id’ be pointless to try.”

  She noticed as he said this that the smaller one, Mito, had just freed her hands. While he wasn’t being rough, he was rather quick to re-secure her using zip ties to keep her wrists and ankles strapped to a chair.

  Still gagged, Leah looked at the big man’s face—he was finally in focus. He took in the state of her and sighed. Then reached for a communicator in his ear.

  “Aye, Tam, got Red Fury wit da Doc. Gonna be a bit, ain’t started patching ‘er up yet.”

  There was a pause while whoever was on the other end spoke.

  “. . . Yeah, I’m aware—”

  Another pause.

  “. . . Right, den’ what? Babysitting? No way JT want’s us da’ let da’ spook roam ‘bout on ‘er own.”

  He listened again.

  “. . . Well, it ain’t da sort of detail needs runnin up da chain right now.”

  The big man sighed impatiently as he listened.

  “. . . Well, thank ya. Ya’s been slightly betta’ den useless.”

  As Beo pulled his hand away from his ear Leah tried to speak but only made unintelligible sounds through the gag. He leaned closer, and she was sure they had never met—yet she recognized him. It was the sort of familiarity of seeing a C-list celebrity in a movie. She knew the face—but couldn’t place where she’d seen him.

  “I ain’t been told ta keep ya muzzled, Red. Ba, we ain’t here fo ya mind voodoo. Start askin questions and da gag goes back.”

  Her eyes blinked a few times but she nodded. Beo nudged Mito. She didn’t recognize the shorter man’s face. He looked at the giant, seeming unsure of what he wanted. Finally, Mito said something. She had no idea what, the language sounded Japanese, but Mito looked annoyed.

  “Would ya jus do it, please,” Beo replied.

  Mito sighed, shook his head, then nimbly untied the gag.

  “Thank you,” Leah said.

  Beo nodded, turning to a third man she hadn’t taken notice of before now.

  “Doc, got dis? I’d like ta step out before any needle work.”

  She took a good look at him, and ‘the Doc’ smiled kindly at her. He was wearing scrubs—looked the part of his name at least. When he replied, Leah scowled in frustration. Greek maybe. Whatever the language, it didn’t matter, she didn’t speak it.

  “ight den, ‘preciate it,” Beo said.

  She scowled at all of three of the men.

  Apparently Mito, The Doc, and Beo were all multilingual but each was still choosing to speak in their own first language. That seemed off. The only one she could understand was Beo, and his English seemed too unpolished for him to also be fluent in Greek and Japanese.

  While she was curious what the story was with him, she shook it off, their peculiar communication ranking rather low on her priority list for the moment. There were a thousand bigger questions.

  Where the hell am I? came to mind most often, but she desperately didn’t want the gag to go back on. She had to start small—innocent. Something that wouldn’t feel like probing.

  “Why did you call me Red Fury?”

  Beo and Mito swapped knowing looks, as though they found this funny. Neither gave an answer. “I’ve done everything you asked.”

  “Sha-yeah,” Beo chuckled. “Maybe dis go aroun’.”

  She frowned, but whatever that meant he didn’t elaborate.

  “Do I . . . recognize you?”

  Beo’s smile disappeared. He tongued his cheek, then held the gag up and gave it a small shake.

  She got the message and nodded. “Sorry.”

  The Doc came toward her carrying a metal tray. He spoke, and Beo gave a nod before seeing himself out. Mito leaned back against the wall while the Doc started assessing her cut.

  “Is . . . is he afraid of blood?” Leah asked.

  Both the Doc and Mito looked at one another and shrugged.

  “No English,” Mito said.

  Leah frowned at the two and sighed. “Okay . . .”

  Talking having suddenly become a dead end, her mind wandered as the Doc set about inspecting her arm.

  So, I’ve swapped being The Cell’s prisoner for being . . . what exactly? Jonathan’s prisoner? The alien’s?

  She wasn’t as upset about the circumstances as someone else in her position would have been. She’d known she had to escape The Cell eventually and hadn’t had the foggiest idea how she was going to manage it.

  But, had her situation improved or only taken a lateral shift? From the one-sided half of Beo’s conversation she’d overheard it sounded like he hadn’t wanted to bother Jonathan—or anyone ‘up da chain’ with whatever he was supposed to do with her.

  While all this fluttered through her mind, a bigger revelation hit her.

  “I teleported,” Leah whispered out loud.

  Mito and the Doc looked up briefly but neither appeared to understand.

  She stared at her knees and thought it through.

  Up until now, the only living being to disappear and ever be seen again was the alien. But clearly, humans could do thi
s. When Jonathan took her and Rivers tonight, she must have disappeared in front of Olivia just as Peter had disappeared two years ago in front of her. And, here she was—alive.

  This meant there was a chance that her brother and Rylee had done the same. Yet that hope sparked out as soon as she considered it. She remembered Jonathan falling apart after Rylee had vanished.

  She was pulled from her thoughts by a tap on her shoulder. The Doc was miming at her; a sympathetic grimace on his face as he held up a bottle of alcohol and a needle. She looked down to where he had already cut away part of her sleeve.

  She’d been right. A stray bullet must have slashed open the skin over her triceps. Now that she could see the wound was worse than she’d expected.

  “I get it,” Leah said. “This is gonna hurt.”

  He was alone when he reached the center of Hangman’s Tree. There, on a raised platform, Mr. Clean had shaped a large pavilion enclosed with glass windows. Not far off to one side, the large black egg was held in place by two massive vises that rose out of the floor.

  Where the egg’s front entry had once been there was now a large hole. Jonathan had heard Mr. Clean cutting through the exterior. Now that he saw the perfect circle, it left him to picture that some elaborate series of guided lasers had done the work. He knew the reality was less exciting. Mr. Clean had a precision no human being could match and could have cut that circle with a rusty chain saw.

  As he made his way up the pavilion’s stairs, he stepped over the oversized steel shackles The Cell had placed on Heyer’s body. They clearly hadn’t given the AI much trouble either. He was still barefoot, the cut over his eyebrow needed stitches, and he hadn’t even changed out of the bloody prison outfit.

  Finally, he reached the glass and saw Heyer lying on a small exam table inside. The alien was covered to the chest with a white sheet. Anthony Hoult stood by, his concerns thinly veiled. Mr. Clean’s cartoon avatar displayed on a halo of screens over the alien’s exam table.

  Anthony looked up when Jonathan slid the glass door open. He wore a measure of uncertainty as he offered his hand. “I know you’ve met me a dozen times by now, but this is the first time I’ve had the pleasure.”

  “Pleasure is all mine, Anthony,” Jonathan said, shaking the man’s hand.

  It was a strange experience, interacting with someone who is—to you—a stranger. Olivia and Rivers hadn’t believed him when he told them he’d been friends with their shadows in The Never—Anthony had the advantage of knowing it would be the case. Jonathan had exchanges with everyone on these premises. His friends, his new allies, those he would have as his allies, people who hadn’t ever heard his name—even Mr. Clean. Jonathan had come to know things about all of them that they didn’t, or in some cases couldn’t, know about themselves.

  Jonathan wasn’t immune to the experience. All the men who’d had a part in his rescue had met at least two different versions of his shadow. The one deteriorating beneath the influence of the severed bond, and the one who walked away from twenty-eight fights with the Ferox miraculously cured of it.

  Jonathan took a place opposite Anthony at the exam table. Heyer was in far worse shape than when they had been captured. His breaths were so shallow that from one moment to the next Jonathan was uncertain he hadn’t ceased breathing altogether. Cheeks and eyes sunken, cracked dry lips, a pale purple to the tips of his fingers. Truth be told, the body looked more like a corpse than a man in a coma.

  That, and his cuts and wounds from inside The Never hadn’t healed. They had scabbed over or been stitched shut like they would for any normal man. If they pulled him through this, Heyer would have scars.

  Jonathan turned his attention to the three thick cable-like connections that hung down from the ceiling. To his knowledge, there were very few instances in which Mr. Clean could not wirelessly interface with a piece of Borealis technology. For somewhat obvious reasons, the bracer was one of them. His species had designed the bracer primarily to inhibit a Borealis prisoner—one wouldn’t want a pair of handcuffs that could be hacked and disengaged from a distance.

  Two of the cables were fused to the bracer. To the human eye, the cables appeared to have been welded rather than connected. The truth was more complicated. Like the bracer, Mr. Clean’s physical body was Borealis technology. As such, the AI could mimic the molecular makeup of the bracer as he made contact. This allowed the AI to communicate with the device almost as though it were a part of him.

  The third connection ended in a flat triangle that rested across the surface of Heyer’s chest. The shape crossed all three lines and glowed with the same white energy that radiated from the alien’s implant when it functioned normally. There was an almost organic quality to the point of connection, as though that segment of Mr. Clean was temporarily a hybrid of biological and nonbiological components in order to interact with Heyer’s implant.

  “How many of Cede’s encryption matrices remain?” Jonathan asked.

  “I will be through the last in a few moments,” Mr. Clean said.

  There was nothing left for Jonathan or Anthony to do. They watched helplessly, waiting for Mr. Clean to tell them if he’d succeeded or failed. It was no accident that they were the only humans present. Jonathan had given each member of the extraction teams tasks. Mostly things that they all likely knew could have waited, but he wanted them all busy somewhere else when the dampener came off. The truth was, the six who had been most involved with the rescue likely knew as much as Jonathan. He had no control over what possible outcomes they had seen in their various runs through The Never. But the shadow version of Heyer often succumbed to complications associated with the removal.

  The problem wasn’t the dampener alone, but the containment field he’d been kept in. The shell interfered with the Borealis implant’s ability to replenish its power supply from its surroundings. Coupling that with the dampener, Heyer’s implant had been rationing its remaining energy to sustain minimum life support. Should the worst follow, it wasn’t just the morale of everyone setting foot in Hangman’s Tree that he had to protect. If Heyer died, the last thing they wanted was for Malkier to learn of it.

  For Jonathan, there was another harsh reality. He knew the men who would sleep in Hangman’s Tree tonight were decent people. They would do what Heyer asked of them because the alien was the hope they’d put their faith in.

  But they didn’t know him.

  Heyer, he fit a mold in the men’s minds. He was wisdom, immortality, and power. He was more than a man. Just being what he was, and siding with humankind, gave them hope.

  Jonathan knew the one thing they didn’t.

  While Heyer would do all he could to save humanity, he wouldn’t have needed Jonathan if he was going to be there to fight this war beside them.

  Some would accept Jonathan’s leadership for no other reason than Heyer had told them he was their salvation. But too many of them had too much in common with Jonathan Tibbs himself. They had survived as long as they had against the Ferox because early on they decided not to wait for someone to come save them. These men, they were Earth’s greatest assets. But, if Heyer died tonight, they would also be the hardest for Jonathan to bring in line.

  “I’m through the final matrix. Beginning extraction,” Mr. Clean said.

  The sight of what began taking place beneath the skin of Heyer’s arm was unsettling. Small thread like appendages, hundreds of them, released their grip on internal fibers, disconnecting from muscle, veins, and nerve endings. It was like watching a fistful of tape worms all suddenly migrate in one direction toward the bracer.

  Jonathan looked down on Heyer’s face and saw the alien twitch as though feeling pain despite being unconscious. A second after the things moving inside his arm disappeared beneath the band, there was a sudden clank. The metal had split unceremoniously down the center and fallen on to the table. Heyer was bleeding beneath, the skin looking like bloody Swiss cheese all around the arm. Anthony was quick to start placing a bandage.


  For a while, Heyer’s condition didn’t change. They waited as the seconds ticked by in a cruel malaise. Finally, they saw the relief in one another’s eyes when ever so slowly the lines of light across Heyer’s chest stopped thrumming in and out. The muted blue light steadied and began to glow brighter. Beneath the cable connecting Heyer’s implant to Mr. Clean, the soft yellow glow Jonathan remembered began to return.

  Wounds began to heal before their eyes, but the skin left behind was not left unmarred. Rather, for the first time in two decades Heyer’s body would have new scars. As the sickly color faded from his face, his breathing grew stronger.

  Soon, there was a fluttering beneath his eyelids.

  “How’s he doing?” Jonathan asked.

  “The Borealis device is undamaged. Life signs are improving. I don’t think it wise to make any attempt to wake him,” Mr. Clean said. “We should allow him to regain consciousness in his own ti—”

  “I am awake . . .” Heyer whispered, though he’d hardly moved. “Jonathan . . .”

  “I’m still here, Old Man,” Jonathan said. “Don’t try to talk, just take it easy for a bit.”

  The alien’s eyes tightened briefly, but then seemed to relax, and he drifted back off.

  A moment later they were alone outside the Pavilion.

  “Let’s not let anyone see him until he’s himself again,” Jonathan said.

  “I agree,” Anthony said.

  “How did things go with the rest of our people tonight?”

  He didn’t have to ask which people Jonathan was referring to. Jonathan had ordered every man under surveillance extracted—regardless of what country or who the people doing the watching were.

  While The Cell was primarily based inside the US, it had operations all over the world. That said, they were not the only clandestine organization with eyes on Heyer’s contacts. Equivalent entities with equivalent directives reported to foreign governments all over the globe. Investigations much like the one that had monitored Jonathan had been ongoing—at least until tonight’s escape went into motion.