The Never Army

by Hodges, T. Ellery

  Without warning, a massive shape crashed down on Jonathan. The fine powder beneath whooshed into the air as the ground shook. Rivers lost his footing as he fell back in surprise.

  As the dust thinned, a face looked back at him. Its owner humanoid in shape, though massively oversized. It stood slowly, revealing a salamander red skin crisscrossed with shiny tar-like strands. If the red-black sky above could have coalesced to birth a monster, this is what that spawn would look like. Mountainous, taut muscles flexed beneath the surface of its skin as it moved, its neck craning to reveal empty white eyes. It looked at him, its mouth falling open to reveal a piranha’s smile. Metallic teeth set into black gums.

  Rivers stumbled, falling on his back as the creature lurched forward.

  “Pause,” Jonathan said.

  Everything came to a sudden halt. The creature hung in the air along with all the sand it had disturbed when it had dropped into the canyon. The wind and heat, every ambient sound suddenly ceased. The silence that followed unnaturally absolute.

  Rivers sat up in the sand, his heart pounding as he stared up at the red-black monster floating, perfectly still in the air.

  Suddenly, Jonathan walked out of the beast’s frozen shape, disturbing the projection as though stepping through a liquid surface. Rivers had known everything here was an illusion, but the detail of Mr. Clean’s projected world and the speed at which it had all played out had tapped directly into his survival instincts.

  Jonathan attempted to keep from smiling, offering his hand. Rivers did not take it; he stood up on his own and tossed a handful of black sand in Jonathan’s face. Despite the frozen nature of the rest of the world, it seemed that things that were moved by the will of those in the projection still obeyed the expected laws of physics. So Jonathan closed his eyes, as he was doused with the sand, and allowed the smile he’d been holding back to surface.

  “You’re joking around with me,” Rivers said.

  “To be fair,” Jonathan said, spitting out bits of sand. “I only agreed to go along.”

  “I do apologize,” Mr. Clean said, his voice coming from nowhere in particular within the projection. “But one only gets a good jump out of a man the first time he enters the projection chamber.”

  Jonathan wiped sand from his eyelashes, while Rivers hesitantly examined the monster floating in the air.

  “So, these are your Ferox,” Rivers said, his voice humorless.

  “One incarnation. The intermediary phase of their life cycle,” Mr. Clean said. “This specimen is generally referred to as a Red.”

  “You see, the men who disappeared were never abducted,” Jonathan said. “They’ve been fighting these creatures in The Never.”

  “The temporary dimension you keep telling me about,” Rivers said.

  Jonathan nodded. “When we win, the world goes on and no one is the wiser. When we lose, our bodies are sent to the Feroxian Plane.”

  Rivers’ gaze left the Ferox for a moment.

  “And that’s what happened to Rylee?”

  Jonathan didn’t answer right away. He looked away. “Something far worse took her.”

  Rivers paused in his circling of the creature. “What the hell is worse than this?”

  Jonathan had needed to step away for a moment, and he left Rivers alone in the locker room. Rivers was supposed to be changing into civilian clothing. He didn’t bother trying to think of a way to escape. After what he saw in the projection chamber he could have sprinted through the entire building and knew he wouldn’t find a door unless Mr. Clean made one for him.

  He was dressed by the time Jonathan returned. Tibbs was wearing his heavy leather coat. Rivers noticed—it wasn’t a new one. This was the coat Jonathan had kept in his garage; he must have had it retrieved from The Cell’s lockup during the escape.

  Rivers was hard-pressed to say why, but something had changed about Jonathan in the short time they’d been apart.

  “You look skeptical, Rivers,” Jonathan said.

  “A monster in a simulation doesn’t prove anything. This AI you’ve got could probably make me believe I was in a room with Godzilla if he wanted to.”

  Jonathan shrugged. “You’re not wrong, but I’ve got one more thing to show you before you make a decision.”

  Rivers eyed him. “Do I need a coat as well?”

  Jonathan gave him a once over. “No, you’ll be fine. But there is this.”

  He held out a small dime shaped metal disc.

  “What is it?” Rivers asked.

  “Insurance that you won’t try to run the moment we go on our little field trip,” Jonathan said.

  Rivers held out his hand. “So what, a tracking—”

  The second Jonathan dropped the disc into Rivers’ palm, it ceased to be solid. It came alive and slithered up his arm. He shivered as it didn’t stop moving until it was nestled between his shoulder blades.

  “I know, makes my skin crawl too,” Jonathan said.

  Still squirming from the sensation, Rivers asked, “What the hell is it?”

  “A piece of Mr. Clean,” Jonathan said. “Don’t try to remove it. Trust me, Mr. Clean will find a way to stay on you. He’ll be nice about how he manages it as long as you cooperate.”

  Jonathan gave him a knowing look and Rivers nodded warily.

  “Okay,” Jonathan said. “Brace yourself. You’re already familiar with how this next part goes.”

  Rivers spent a few moments lying in the grass groaning as he recovered from the teleportation sickness. Jonathan, unfazed by the jump through space, stood a few feet away waiting patiently.

  “Ain’t ever getting used to that,” Rivers said. “Why didn’t it effect you?”

  Jonathan smiled. “Sorry, only get to know that if you want to join up.”

  He sat up, and the first thing Rivers noticed about their new location was that the sun was beginning to set. When they left, Rivers would have guessed it about midday—here it was twilight. They were a little ways back from a parking lot, partially hidden in a small group of trees. Not far away was a large brick building with writing on the side, but his vision wasn’t clear enough to make it out yet. “Where are we?”

  “A community college in Illinois.”

  “Jesus,” Rivers said. “What is Mr. Clean’s range anyway?”

  Jonathan quirked an eyebrow thoughtfully. “I’ve never asked, but I don’t think distance is a factor.”

  When he finally felt he could manage it, Rivers wiped his hands on his jeans and stood. “So, you going to tell me what the hell we’re doing in Illinois?”

  “Waiting for last period to end,” Jonathan said, only to hear a school bell ring a moment later.

  They stood out in the open watching the nearby parking lot slowly begin to fill with students heading for their cars. Jonathan reached into his pocket and put on a pair of sunglasses, which Rivers found odd considering the sun was already setting. Tibbs’ eyes moved slowly back and forth over the parking lot as though miming a security camera. “Mr. Clean, you see him?”

  If the AI had responded, Rivers didn’t hear it.

  “Thanks,” Jonathan said, then took the glasses off and held them out to Rivers.

  He saw then that one side had a small earpiece. Curious, Rivers put them on, and Jonathan pointed toward a small crowd. As he followed along with his eyes, he noticed that the sunglasses’ lenses didn’t actually make anything darker. If anything, his vision seemed sharper through the lenses. One young man became singled out, the coloring of his face and clothes seeming more saturated while everyone else in the crowd faded to near black and white. At the same time, visible readings began to pop up at the corner of his vision. The effect reminded Rivers of a video game interface, or perhaps something like robot vision.

  “These alien tech?” Rivers asked.

  “More of a human alien hybrid. It’s a Heads-Up Display prototype,” Jonathan said. “During the escape, the extraction team needed to coordinate timing on a number of maneuvers. Mr. Clean
assisted by incorporating some basic AI into their face masks. We’ve continued to build on it, started training new recruits with it as soon as they’re brought in.”

  Rivers grunted, then focused his attention back on the kid. Barely eighteen, pretty average, still suffering from adolescent acne, overweight but not obese. His backpack looked heavy. He wasn’t heading for a car but making a straight line through the parking lot toward the street.

  The moment the kid was out of sight, a small semi-transparent map showed up in the corner of Rivers’ vision. It showed the layout of the local area, with two green dots he assumed to be him and Jonathan, and a red dot tracking the kid.

  “How is this tracking him?” Rivers asked.

  “Cell phone,” Jonathan said. “We’re going to keep our distance.”

  “We aren’t going to harm that kid?” Rivers asked.

  “I certainly hope not.”

  There was little comfort in the words Jonathan had chosen. “Jonathan, you try to do anything to that kid, and I will stop you.”

  Jonathan smiled. “I know you would, Rivers.”

  Jonathan stepped off the sidewalk as Rivers frowned, not much caring for the cryptic reply but reluctantly following.

  Tailing a community college kid wasn’t a particularly difficult task, but Jonathan had been right to make him change clothes. His suit and tie would have drawn attention in a suburban area. Tailing came as second nature to Rivers, he’d been trained to follow his mark without notice. What was odd was that Jonathan seemed to know the game as well, despite having no such training. Begging the question yet again of exactly how Jonathan seemed so different from the man he had watched for months.

  For the moment, although the kid was too involved with his cell phone to have noticed them, Jonathan still kept plenty of space between them.

  “His name is Micah Wakefield,” Jonathan said. “He’s a running start student, should graduate high school next year barring nothing unfortunate happens to him.”

  “Do you have reason to believe something is going to happen to him?”

  “I told you, I hope not.”

  Jonathan waited a moment before continuing his briefing on Micah. “He likes computers, wants to be a programmer. Doesn’t have his driver’s license yet.”

  “Why is he important? Why are we following him?” Rivers asked.

  “I’ll tell you when the moment feels right,” Jonathan said.

  They followed Micah onto a bus and rode in silence for a few stops. After he got off, they waited at the bus stop and gave him time to put more space between them again. As they stood, Rivers saw the HUD update on its own, seeming to anticipate Micah’s destination. The glasses even went so far as to recommend an alternative route to the expected address. This was how Jonathan and Rivers came to be already hidden behind some shrubs when Micah’s red dot turned the corner onto his street. Rivers could have guessed the kid was home outside a small duplex when he no longer bothered with the sidewalk and stepped on the front grass.

  As Micah approached his front door, a small girl was already waiting there on the porch to meet him. She looked enough like Micah for Rivers to assume she was his little sister, he guessed her a third grader. Then he noticed their words were clear in his ear, the glasses seeming to pick up their dialog. He might as well have been standing on the porch with them.

  “Hey Brat, Mom home yet?” Micah asked as he walked past.

  “No, has to work late,” the little sister said.

  “You eaten?”

  The little girl shook her head.

  “Mac and cheese?”

  She smiled and nodded, following Micah into the house.

  The entire scene so utterly normal.

  “Seems like a good kid,” Rivers said.

  “He does.”

  “So why are we spying on him?”

  Jonathan was quiet for a bit.

  “You saw what a Ferox looks like today,” Jonathan said. “Tell me, Rivers, how well do you think Micah would fair against one?”

  Rivers scoffed, but the humor drained from his face when he saw the sad seriousness in Jonathan’s eyes.

  “It . . . it would tear him apart.”

  “I agree,” Jonathan said. “You can see he has a gentle nature, that he’s way too young. What you can’t see is that he’s also got asthma. You make him fight something like a Ferox, he’d be stupid to do anything but run.”

  “Why are we talking about this?” Rivers asked.

  “I told you that you’re uniquely suited to be one of us. It’s genetics, Rivers. You, and Micah over there, share some DNA combinations. It makes it possible for both of you to take one of these.”

  Jonathan was discrete but unzipped his coat enough to let a small bit of light be visible beneath his t shirt. Rivers had seen the same sort of light before, on The Mark’s chest.

  “Only one of you can take the implant. Micah is a better match. Potentially he could be stronger than you. But then again, you’re a grown man and already built like a truck. Micah wouldn’t have months or years to become formidable if I put that device into him today. I’ll try, but I doubt I’ll be able to keep him alive through what is coming.”

  Rivers grew quiet as he watched the house across the street. He could hear Micah talking to his little sister as he cooked her dinner.

  Jonathan waited a moment, let Rivers hear before he spoke again.

  “Rivers, the things that make you a good fit for The Cell are the very same things that make you best suited to take Micah’s place. You’re combat ready, you won’t die because you panic when a Ferox steps in front of you. But, more important than any of that, you don’t have a family you’ll have to abandon. A mother who will wonder what happened to you while she was trying to make ends meet. No little sister you’ll be leaving home alone at night.”

  Rivers was quiet for some time as he watched the house. He seemed far away when he finally spoke. “The alien, he picked men with military backgrounds whenever he could. We always wondered why, because he had to know it was putting him on our radar.”

  Jonathan nodded. “He tried to avoid people like Micah—like me. See, I wasn’t a soldier, but my compatibility was too strong to walk away from. That isn’t the case with Micah. While he’s the most compatible, you’re the runner up. So, pretend you’re me, do you want to take Micah or Agent Laurence Rivers into the war that is coming?”

  The sun finished setting, and they had been quiet for some time before Rivers spoke again. “This wasn’t a pitch. It’s extortion.”

  Jonathan shrugged. “It’s only extortion if you’re the person I think you are. There is a choice for you to make here, but we both have to live with it.”

  Rivers looked at Jonathan, and he could see that in this moment the agent might well have thought him the worst human being to ever exist. “This isn’t a choice.”

  “Yeah,” Jonathan nodded knowingly. “That’s what I said.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  A FEW DAYS after Jonathan and his roommates’ arrival, Anthony woke in the early morning, left his quarters and made his way to the Mech maintenance wing. Nothing peculiar occurred until he found Collin standing alone on the catwalks over the training area. He couldn’t remember seeing Collin up and about this early, or alone for that matter.

  “Morning,” Anthony said.

  Collin acknowledged him with a nod. Anthony kept walking by until he heard, “Why Hangman’s Tree?”

  “Sorry?” Anthony asked.

  “That night we got here, you said this place was called Hangman’s Tree,” Collin said.

  Anthony stopped and turned back. “Peter Pan. In the original movie, it was what the lost boys called their hideout in Neverland.”

  Collin smirked, but rolled his eyes a bit. “Right.”

  Anthony only shrugged, “Mr. Clean does enjoy his naming.”

  Collin’s curiosity satisfied; Anthony was about to excuse himself.

  “Uhh . . . I actually wanted to as
k you something else,” Collin said. “But I’m a little unsure if it’s—appropriate.”

  “You want to take a Mech for a test drive?” Anthony asked.

  “Uh, yes please,” Collins said, eyes lighting up momentarily, before he remembered that wasn’t what he’d been about to ask. “But . . .”

  Anthony waited, and somewhat reluctantly Collin pointed toward one of the men training below. It wasn’t hard to pick out who, he was the largest man either of them had ever met.

  “Beo?” Anthony asked.

  “I . . . uh, I remembered why his face seemed familiar,” Collin said. “Couldn’t sleep after. Didn’t he . . . um . . .”

  “Murder six people,” Anthony offered.

  Collin’s expression had a seriousness to it that Anthony seldom saw outside of the war council meetings. He took a place beside Collin at the railing. “You’re wondering why a convicted murderer was given a powerful alien implant?”

  “I’m wondering a lot of things,” Collin replied. “But, that’s the one keeping me from sleeping.”

  “You may not know this, but Beo turned himself in,” Anthony said. “He did so the morning after he was implanted. The thing no trial would ever uncover, was that Beo was never a psychopath. He was very sick. Heyer knew the implant would fix the instability in his mind that was causing the delusions.”

  Collin was thoughtful. “You’re saying there was something medically wrong with him, and the device healed it.”

  Anthony nodded, then pointed down at another man just getting beneath a stack of weights. “Perth. When Heyer implanted him, he was dying, on his way to stage four cancer.”

  Collin was quiet as he absorbed this.

  “Not every man here was chosen because he was a soldier or his compatibility was too good to pass up,” Anthony said. “Not every person in this Army came to it because Heyer asked them to be a Hero, or because they weren’t given a choice. For some, it was more of a bargain. Heyer knew he could save their lives but . . . also knew that once he had, they would have to fight to keep them.”

  “Still, Beo was a special case. When Heyer located him, he was in no state of mind to understand what was being offered to him. So, Heyer had to make the choice for him. Afterward, Beo woke from the implant and began to see clearly again. Unfortunately, he also saw clearly what he’d done. He took responsibility for it. After all, being in prison didn’t keep him from killing Ferox.”