The Never Army

by Hodges, T. Ellery

  When that gateway opened beside them, it was not inside The Never, but true Earth.

  When the night’s horrors came to an end, Heyer would return to the Feroxian world in Holloway’s body—his own damaged beyond repair in the fight with the Ferox. He would learn that in his brother’s haste to prove he was the prophet, he had been allowing Ferox to enter the gateway.

  If all had worked as it should, they would have entered into a queue, not arriving on Earth until the appropriate time. Instead, Heyer had activated the device, and like a beacon, it drew the first Ferox in immediately. He had no choice but to stop the implantation altogether. The process would not have been complete by the time the Ferox arrived. Even if it had, Holloway would have been in no state to defend himself.

  Shocked, Heyer had only a few minutes to reason out that he had to deal with the inbound Ferox himself. That it had to be done quickly. Given the chance, the creature would make its way to a human civilization looking for its challenger. Everything might have worked out—or at least been contained—had it not been for that fuselage.

  Today, Heyer could have weathered the blast. That night, Heyer had not come to that desert prepared to fight a monster. The alien host, Johanna O’Sullivan, was nearly two hundred years old.

  This was no matter of procrastination. For a Borealis, putting off the taking of a new host for decades was hardly peculiar. There were reasons that it was never ideal for a Borealis to take a human host that was still capable of consciousness. The first being that the human mind was never designed for so long a life. The mind of Johanna O’Sullivan had aged while her body had done so at a far slower rate.

  By the 1980s, Heyer kept Johanna’s mind suppressed for the most part. She was like an Alzheimer’s patient in the last stages of cognitive decline. Her lucid moments growing further and further apart. When Heyer changed hosts, she . . . she might still be conscious enough to know she was dying. She was more than a host—they had been a voice inside one another’s minds for nearly two centuries. No matter how many times he had found himself in this spot, the alien never got any better at letting his friends go.

  Douglas often thought Heyer was no different from a human who takes a dog for a pet. They know one day that dog will die. For some, once is enough. For others, they cannot bear the absence of their pet, and end up at the pound, starting the process all over again before they’ve even finished grieving.

  But to pretend it was all selfless or a matter of friendship and loyalty isn’t the entire story. Letting go of Johanna was not the only thing that was stopping him. To a Borealis, the host body itself—it was like a home. When he moved on, it would be decades before his new host felt like home again.

  In short, Johanna, the host body, was well past her expiration.

  While he could not risk the distraction of letting Johanna into his consciousness in the middle of a life and death struggle with a Ferox, she may have been lucid enough to have understood what was happening. He never got the chance to see if she knew she was going to die that night. Never got the chance to say goodbye.

  Had Heyer not been so attached to a human, he would not have been there that night in a host that left him vulnerable. How vulnerable, he didn’t realize until the Ferox’s teeth had locked on his shoulder.

  Shocked, Heyer had felt his skin break and his blood begin to run.

  Not the last of his surprises that night.

  Heyer had never fought a Ferox. Hadn’t expected the monster to be willing to accept the risk of impaling itself just to sink its teeth in. Nor how long it would take the creature’s strength to wane with a length of Borealis steel running through its abdomen.

  For the Ferox itself, who can say. Perhaps it refused to let go of what it had sacrificed so much to gain. Perhaps it did not yet understand that it was already dead. Perhaps, it simply believed some scale was balanced if only it managed to take his challenger with him.

  Whatever the reasons, the beast bit down harder, its teeth not coming to a stop until they were locked around the bones of Heyer’s arm and shoulder. Suddenly aware of how much danger he was in, Heyer did whatever it took to free himself. Throwing the Ferox away, freeing himself of its jaws, took all the strength he could manage.

  As such, most of the damage that came to his body was done by his own strength, as the Ferox was unwilling to unlock its jaw as he tore it free of his flesh. The creature flew away from him, and he thought it would be unable to mount another attack with the length of steel through its abdomen . . .

  But, he didn’t pay attention to where he threw the beast. Right into a fuselage full of aging explosives.

  Heyer had taken one pained breath, free from the monster’s jaws, before the explosion went off. Like anything caught in that blast, he was thrown a great distance and pelted with shrapnel—most of which could not penetrate his skin.

  Except, of course, the molecular edge of a piece of Borealis steel. The very weapon he left inside the Ferox before throwing it into the fuselage. He hadn’t even realized what had happened until he tried to get to his hands and knees. His arm was already severely damaged, but when that shaft of steel speared him through the back, it became useless, a limb held on only by flesh.

  In fact, it turned out that of all those who survived that night, Douglas was the only one who hadn’t ended up with a hunk of steel in him after that explosion. He’d been running away with Holloway on his shoulder when they were caught in the same blast wave. The explosion had separated them, but by the time Douglas found his friend, Holloway was still breathing despite a thin shard of metal that had lodged its way inside his skull.

  At the same time, Heyer was in trouble. With his arm severed, he couldn’t even reach the length of Borealis steel stabbing into his implant from behind. Even if he managed to get it out, he was losing too much blood. He needed a new body quickly.

  Why, after all that had happened that night, did Douglas help the alien at the center of all of it?

  To that Heyer had smiled. He didn’t. He was trying to help his friend.

  Given Holloway’s condition the alien’s implant was the only way he might be healed. Saving Holloway meant saving Heyer.

  There was no deception. Heyer made no promises, not with shrapnel lodged in the brain. But there had been a chance that Holloway’s consciousness might survive. Unfortunately for Grant’s father and Douglas that roll of the dice didn’t go their way.

  By the end of that night, Heyer was inside Holloway’s body and Douglas had learned of a threat to Mankind. A threat only the alien inside of his dead friend’s body could ever hope to save them from.

  Not long after, Douglas volunteered. By the time he began to realize he wanted to take the choice back, Evelyn was pregnant. Jonathan was conceived not long after Douglas was implanted. At the time, his father was unaware of what a Borealis implant would do to his human progeny.

  A harmless addition to the genome. There had always been a reason Jonathan was fully compatible with his father’s implant. The device itself saw to this at his conception. Likewise, any son or daughter Jonathan might have would share his compatibility.

  An implant always prepared the progeny to be its next host.

  Most of the afternoon was lost as Heyer conveyed to Grant how his father’s death fit into the bigger picture. It was only after the man started running out of questions that the alien began to explain why Grant was now getting the truth.

  Grant came to realize that the alien in his father’s skin had not come to put his mind at ease. He didn’t react with the bitterness Heyer expected.

  “You said at the beginning that you went looking for my father because you needed to give him something,” Grant said.

  Heyer was careful with his words. “I would not see this as a gift, Grant. I have come to see if you’re willing to take something.”

  Jonathan listened, understanding the story Grant was about to be sold long before the alien finished telling it. It was a simple story.

  This im
plant was meant for your father, but he died before I could give it to him. So now the responsibility passes to you.

  But beware, an evil doppelganger of you from another dimension was given this weapon by mankind’s enemy. The doppelganger, manipulated by Malkier, tried to kill mankind’s hope. Given all that has transpired up until now, you can see why you’ve been locked up. We didn’t know if you could be trusted.

  But . . . something none of us could have expected has come to light.

  Your being here now Grant, it’s no coincidence—it’s providence. It is not without risk—but there is a chance that you, and only you, can help.

  Heyer planted the seeds so well, Jonathan wasn’t even sure if the alien knew what strings of human psychology he was using to puppet Grant. It was a version of the story Grant had been waiting to be told about himself all his life. A story told not by Jeremy Holloway, but by the closest Grant would ever get

  “You can be the hero,” Jonathan whispered.

  Why had everything gone so wrong that night in the desert?

  The Borealis were as flawed as mankind.

  Jonathan might have been more judgmental, but he had his own manipulations that had to be seen to today.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  AFTER NEARLY A day in his cell, Rivers looked somewhat relieved to see Jonathan walk into the holding chamber.

  “Agent Rivers,” Jonathan said. “I imagine you had a long night. I’d apologize, but to be fair . . .”

  Jonathan didn’t finish the statement.

  Rivers wasn’t amused. “You’ve kidnapped a government agent. It’s hardly tit-for-tat.”

  “That’s true,” Jonathan smirked. “Gosh, I hope this doesn’t mean I’m in even more trouble than before?”

  Rivers opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came. He mulled it over the next few seconds before admitting, “I suppose you have a point.”

  Jonathan nodded. “Anyhow, I did wait for an ideal moment.”

  “Something special about now?” Rivers asked.

  “They’re about to announce the winning lottery numbers,” Jonathan said with a smirk. “You bought a ticket, right?”

  Rivers looked at him incredulously.

  “Well, nevertheless . . . Mr. Clean, can you bring up a display while they announce the winning numbers?”

  Seeing as how he’d believed them to be alone, Rivers jumped away startled when Mr. Clean’s visage appeared on the cell wall.

  “Of course,” Mr. Clean said, the broadcast of the lottery numbers being picked was already in progress in a smaller window below his face.

  Rivers, too fascinated by the sudden appearance of the AI, didn’t pay much attention as the numbers were announced. When he did recover himself, he looked uncomfortably back and forth between the computer and Jonathan.

  “This why you’re visiting? To be smug?” Rivers asked.

  Jonathan shook his head. Much to the man’s surprise, he pulled open Rivers’ door, “I want you to come take a walk with me,” he said. “What I don’t want, is for you to think making a run for it is a good idea. Believe me, there is no leaving here without Mr. Clean’s permission. You don’t have it—yet.”

  Rivers looked to his surroundings with a new perspective, then momentarily at the cartoon visage watching him on the monitor. Finally, he gave an uncomfortable nod.

  When they stepped out into the greater interior of Hangman’s Tree, it was clear that Jonathan had made no effort to hide any of the goings on. The place, or at least what Rivers had seen of it the night he was brought in, was far more populated. There was a bustling of movement, like the entire facility was occupied doing one thing or another.

  Jonathan seemed to want him to see it all, such that it was beginning to feel like a guided tour. That said, Tibbs didn’t offer up answers unless Rivers asked. For a long while, Rivers walked beside him quietly. He was uncomfortable at first, as it was clear that a number of the strangers looking up to notice him walking along with Jonathan had some sense of who he was. In fact, those eyes kept him from asking too many poorly phrased questions.

  It wasn’t until they were standing in the Mech’s staging area, where there were relatively few within earshot, that he asked, “Why are you showing me all this?”

  “I’m working up to asking you to join us,” Jonathan said.

  “You can’t be serious,” Rivers said.

  “Well . . . I’ve barely started my pitch,” Jonathan said.

  “This is a pitch?” Rivers replied, arms folding across his chest.

  “Back at the facility, you wondered why I asked you to stay instead of speaking to Olivia alone?”

  Rivers shrugged but made no denials.

  “Olivia trusts your judgment. Getting her to listen to me is like pushing a boulder uphill. But, if you can confirm what I’m telling her, it’s more like pushing a . . .” Jonathan trailed off for a moment, then looked like he simply didn’t have anything clever prepared. “A smaller rock up a less steep incline?”

  “I won’t lie to her on your behalf,” Rivers said.

  “No one said anything about lying,” Jonathan said. “For that matter, I’ve no intention of keeping you here against your will much longer. After you’ve seen all you need to, you can go, if that is what you want.”

  Rivers eyed Jonathan suspiciously, but if he was trying to deceive him it didn’t show. “Fine. Show me, and then I’ll be on my way.”

  Jonathan shook his head. “Slow down. We aren’t discussing a quick PowerPoint presentation. Everything I told you and Olivia about the threat that is coming is true. The reason I brought you here, and not her or anyone else from that hangar, is that you’re uniquely suited to see for yourself.”

  “Why is that? What makes me so special?” Rivers asked.

  Jonathan sighed, though his eyes were sympathetic. “Not special. That is the last word I’d use. You, Rivers, are profoundly unlucky. In fact, so unlucky, you can barely be one of us.”

  “One of you?” Rivers said. “You think I want to be one of the alien’s henchmen?”

  Jonathan gave him a sideways glance. “By now you’ve seen too much to write off. You know something is happening. You know there’s a good chance you’ve been on the wrong side of it.”

  Rivers was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know what to think.”

  “Good enough,” Jonathan said.

  Rivers had followed Jonathan until they were standing outside a large room at the far back of Hangman’s Tree. When the doors opened, he hesitated briefly. The interior of the room was like a great cathedral, but the space was entirely empty, its every surface a flat glossy black from floor to ceiling.

  “Mr. Clean, are we good to go?”

  “I’ve selected a record that meets the instructive criteria,” Mr. Clean said, a doorway opening in the wall behind them. “Step inside when you’re ready to begin.”

  They strode in across the black panels until they were near the center. Jonathan turned to Rivers and extended his hand. “I’m going to give you a heads up I never got. If you want to hold onto your dinner, hold on to me.”

  Rivers eyed his hand. “I’ll take my chances.”

  Jonathan nodded. “Suit yourself, but I’d at least close your eyes when everything goes black.”

  The doors sealed shut behind them, then melted away as though there had never been anything but a wall where they entered.

  “Go ahead, Mr. Clean,” Jonathan said.

  The surfaces of the room gave way. They ceased to appear like surfaces at all, until Rivers had the very real sense that he was standing in an empty black void. There was no sense of where light was coming from, and yet he could still see Jonathan. The absence of any visual cues to tell his eyes the contours of the floor left his mind reeling, telling him he was somehow floating in nothingness even while his feet insisted that they remained on solid ground.

  He began to lose his balance before he finally took Jonathan’s advice and closed his eyes.

  He
felt the ground change beneath him. Not so much shifting up or down, but as though his weight was sinking into the deep sands of a beach. The air ceased to be sterile and still, becoming suddenly dry and hot. A strong wind blew past bringing a burst of heat, as though he’d just opened the lid on a hot grill. The light grew brighter and became a dark red against his eyelids. He opened them to a blindingly bright sky. Squinting to see, the brightest of the lights quickly dimmed, receding away as the world around him expanded.

  The massive walls of a long narrow canyon rose to either side of him. Obsidian-like and tall. Blurred at first but rapidly gaining detail. Suddenly, he was looking at his own distorted reflection in the obsidian-like surface.

  Soon, the true shape of the cavity occurred to him.

  This wasn’t a canyon precisely.

  It was as though he were a dust mite standing on a crystal ball. A crystal ball that had been dropped such that its surface was webbed and cracked in all directions. It was as though the entire crust of this planet was a thick layer of glass and a millennia of erosive winds had coated it in black sands.

  Above them the sky would have been a deep red, but black clouds of varying thickness encapsulated them. The haze above moved quickly with the winds, until it was almost like he looked up at a sky of flowing lava. He took his first steps and felt his boots sink as he walked, leaving a trail of footprints in the fine black sands.

  His feet had not disturbed a pristine surface. This narrow passage was well traveled—disrupted by frequent tracks belonging to something larger than a man. As Rivers studied those tracks, a shadow flashed over them. He looked up, but saw no sign of what had caused it, only heard small pebbles clacking down the walls from high above.

  “This is the Feroxian Plane,” Jonathan said.

  He strode a few paces away, seemingly mindful of his surroundings.

  “A planet that does not exist in our dimension.” He knelt to pick up a handful of the dark sand to let it run between his fingers.

  He stared at Rivers as the sand finished draining. “And . . . it is inhabited.”