The wind had been gusting in his ears for some time as Jonathan walked into the bright fog. Finally, he saw a silhouette out in front of him. Leah’s forward movement much like his own the first time he’d crossed into this strange edge of consciousness.
When she came close enough to be more than a vague shape, she pulled her hair away from her eyes and saw him waiting for her. She smiled and she tried to say something, but the wind was too loud in their ears for him to hear.
Leah shrugged, and mouthed the words. “What now?”
He raised his hand only to pause in place before he reached out to her. Behind Leah, another shape was coming out of the fog. He watched in disbelief as Rylee’s face emerged to stare back at him.
Fully clothed, Rylee gave his nudity a long once over before winking at him.
He looked to Leah, she smirked and nodded.
So, I’m not crazy. Leah sees her too.
He must have stared at Rylee too long, because eventually she rolled her eyes, reached into the front pocket of her coat and pulled out his father’s pocket watch. He smiled as she opened the watch’s face and twirled her fingers around in a circle as though saying can we move this along, got things I’d rather be doing.
“I miss you,” Jonathan mouthed the words.
Rylee shrugged casually, as though he were stating the obvious. Finally, she nudged Leah and nodded at his still half-raised hand.
He finished reaching for her, and after a moment staring at his hand, Leah interlocked her fingers with his and held on.
She was aware of her body again as she regained consciousness. She couldn’t move yet, the deactivation hadn’t fully run its course. Amidst that in-between state it came over her. A presence that didn’t belong, emotions that weren’t her own, and a feeling like she was losing herself in the storm of someone else’s mind.
Pictures began to form.
Some she thought she understood—others a mystery.
She saw Jonathan standing in front of a mirror—shimmering between different reflections. She saw him become Douglas for a moment, then change into himself again, his body seeming to stutter back and forth between them with the glowing implant in his chest the only anchor remaining unchanged.
She saw brick walls around a storage facility. Jonathan standing at a wall of racked weapons. She saw what she thought was Rylee, but then sometimes a little girl. When she was Rylee, she placed a comforting hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. When she was the little girl, she held his hand.
Jonathan never seemed to pay any mind to the difference.
She saw Heyer standing in front of Jonathan, he tore his own implant from his chest and held it out. Jonathan didn’t take it—only nodded at the alien as though something had been proven. An argument having gone a long time before being settled.
Most of these things she could only guess at, then she saw Douglas holding a child wrapped in blankets in a hospital room. No, the image stuttered, and Jonathan held the child.
His eyes were near tears, his voice a soft mantra. “I can’t fail . . . I can’t fail . . . I can’t fail.”
She remembered him sitting on the floor of The Cell. How she’d thought he was dreaming—talking in his sleep. Her memory—it seemed to pull her toward something inside of Jonathan. Leah saw—herself, not as though looking in a mirror, but as a web of memories in his mind.
The drifting in the labyrinth of his thoughts and associations, she knew in that moment—there had always been a question and this was the answer. She clung to stay in that single space of his mind. Slowly she became aware of the exact point where her and Jonathan’s minds were bridged, and no longer had to struggle to hold herself in place, was no longer swept away by the strange associations of his mind.
Leah saw herself standing in the containment shell. Jonathan’s white plastic prison deep within the facility. She stilled, felt herself become more real in this place as though she had somehow set anchor.
Jonathan was laying on the bed. He was still wearing the white uniform The Cell had given him, even though his device was active. Despite that burning glow—there was no strength in him. He looked sickly—his sheets soaked through with sweat. He grasped at lucidity the way a sick man did amid a terrible fever.
There was a clock on the wall—a clock that she knew hadn’t been there in the real prison. When she looked at it, it was more like looking at snapshots of still images, each time it changed the clock hands showed different positions. Though it wasn’t as though days and nights were flying by—rather—time was meaningless. Moving forward and backward with the same respect for consistency as a dream.
Flash.
Jonathan came to for a moment and looked at her standing over him. His face turning away in disgust. “Go.”
Leah took a single step, shivered by the venom in his voice. Yet, she didn’t obey. His eyelids flickered as he lost his grip on reality again.
Leah heard herself. “I’m not leaving you alone.”
Flash.
Jonathan was trying to hold his eyes open. There had been a knock at the prison’s door. Leah saw herself talking to a very disturbed looking Olivia. “Starting to look like he was telling the truth. All over the world, people are beginning to act—strangely.”
Jonathan’s eyes lost focus and closed.
Flash.
Leah stood over him again. Trying to get him to drink, at first his body reacted greedily for the nourishment, but as he surfaced out of the haze, he saw her holding the cup—and it was as though the water turned to bile in his mouth.
“Get away from me.”
She shivered again, but wouldn’t obey. “I’m not leaving you alone.”
Flash.
He was naked. She was trying to keep him clean—but she couldn’t get him up. He didn’t even seem to notice or care when he had to go the bathroom. She had just finished changing the sheets over him when Olivia came in without knocking.
Her hair was out of sorts. She had a black eye and was wearing a bulletproof vest over her clothes. There were splotches of blood all over her. More on her face that she hadn’t bothered to wipe away.
She was carrying a steel box.
“The deterioration. I’ve had to lock down the upper floors. The surrounding base is lost. Our agents—can’t trust anyone—more and more snap every hour—it’s accelerating.”
Leah nodded.
“You must be feeling it?” Olivia asked.
“I do,” Leah said.
Olivia looked at her strangely; her eyes turned fierce and without warning, she yelled, “Then why aren’t you crumbling!”
Leah moved slowly, putting herself between Jonathan and Olivia as the woman shivered under the strain of something unseen. Olivia had closed her eyes, seemed desperate to pull water from a well of restraint that was quickly running dry.
“So, you’re staying down here?” Olivia asked.
“I’m not leaving him alone,” Leah said. “He just needs more time to pull through.”
Olivia took her gun from its holster and Leah froze for a long moment. Finally, Olivia turned the weapon’s handle out for her. “I don’t know how much time I’ve got left.”
Leah eyed the gun warily but knew to take it before the woman changed her mind.
“You’ve got enough supplies?” Olivia asked.
Leah nodded.
“I’m gonna lock you in with him,” she said. “We see each other again, don’t hesitate. Shoot me.”
Olivia turned to walk away, leaving Leah staring at the gun in her hand and the steel box Olivia had left on the floor.
Flash.
He came to for a moment.
He’d thought he heard a woman’s scream, but he didn’t know reality from dream.
He heard grunts, soft sobs. Something like duct tape torn from a roll.
A gasp biting down to keep quiet against pain.
Flash.
He was trapped inside his own body at times. He could hear himself roaring in anguish—co
uldn’t tell the difference between hunger, pain, or grief. He was beginning to believe he’d been wrong. The bond could kill him.
Flash.
He came to when he rolled off the bed onto the floor. He felt a hand reach under him, trying to help him up. Finally managing to get him back onto the bed.
“Rylee?” he said. “Are you there . . . where, where are we . . .”
“No, it’s just me, Jonathan,” Leah said. “You fell down.”
His eyes caught sight of her leaning against the cell door, his vision clearing as he heard her voice. He felt like he should be angry but all he could manage was indifference. He was so tired.
“Just—”
“I’m not leaving you,” Leah said.
He was already fighting to hold on, but he saw Leah wince as she tried to lower herself back down onto the floor—something was making it very difficult and painful for her.
Then he saw the splint around her wrist.
“Did I . . . did I do that to you?” Jonathan asked.
She finally eased herself down. He realized then that it wasn’t just her arm. Leah was covered in bruises.
“No,” Leah said. “It wasn’t your fault. Sleep now.”
He couldn’t have argued, was already slipping back into the bond’s torture, but he knew—he knew she was lying. He’d done that to her—he was too dangerous—one violent jerk in his sleep and he might kill her—and it looked as though there had already been more than one close call.
Flash.
Leah heard her own quiet sobs in the dark.
The white light was gone. The plastics of his cell having turned clear again—there wasn’t much light.
He forced himself to sit up.
She heard herself jump when he moved, stifling her sob the moment she looked at him. “Jonathan . . . oh thank you, thank you,” Leah said. “You haven’t come back in days.”
Her voice, it didn’t sound right—it sounded like desperation holding on by worn threads. She crawled over to him, tried to hide how much pain it caused to do so.
Had he hurt her again?
He looked up on the plastic door and saw what looked like a slash of dried blood on the outside.
“We lost power,” Leah said. “But it’s okay, it’s okay . . . because I’ve got you . . . and you’re my light.”
She laughed, and he hurt so badly for her as he began to feel his mind go again. He fought to keep his eyes open.
“I think we’re the only ones left Jonathan,” Leah said. “I mean, the only real ones . . . the broken ones keep finding their way in somehow.”
He couldn’t hold himself up.
“No, please, Jonathan,” Leah said. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold on...”
His eyes closed, and he heard a voice trailing off as he slipped into darkness.
“Please don’t go . . . it gets so quiet . . . I’m all alone.”
Flash
Something had changed. This memory—it was different than the rest.
Jonathan slept, but he breathed easily, his body at peace in a way it hadn’t been in all the other memories.
That wasn’t the only change, as there was something in the room. A box—a footlocker.
Yet—no—Leah knew it wasn’t real. More like a projection inside Mr. Clean, or like something imagined placed on top of what was real. But this was a memory of Jonathan’s. He’d projected the footlocker.
She saw Jonathan’s face twitch on the bed, and a split second later, the lid of the footlocker rattled. He shivered, and the footlocker shook like . . . like something inside was trying to force its way out.
The peaceful sleep on Jonathan’s face melted away. His eyes opened to stare distantly into the ceiling, He didn’t seem conscious, yet, his expression focused, turned predatory. He had that look coming over him.
His jaw clenched, and the box shook violently, rattling on the floor.
Light escaped from inside. She could see it with each shake, bright light slipping out the gaps between the lid and the trunk with each attempt to break through from the inside.
Finally, a fist shot through the top of the footlocker and a moment later it was as though the box exploded in pieces.
For a moment, there were two of him. Another Jonathan stood where the box had been. He looked up, seemed to look at her. Then began to fade away, and as he did so, the Jonathan laying on the bed opened his eyes.
Flash
Gun shots. He heard them. “Leah!”
He sat up in bed with a start—air drawing into his lungs, filling them in a way that he had almost forgot possible. His heart pounded in his ears. He was alive.
The bond, it was there, but no longer had the strength to keep him prisoner in his mind. He could feel it dying.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. Beyond the glow of his implant, the cell and most of the black egg was shrouded by darkness. Still, it was enough to see that the door was no longer sealed. It had been ripped off its hinges.
There were three shapes on the floor—further back. Of these three he was certain. They had been men. Whatever they were now was only human in shape. Jonathan only needed a good look at the one closest to him to know he had no desire to examine the others.
In the orange glow, he could see what they had done to their own skin. Grotesquely mutilated, wounds like an animal that kept chewing at an itch. He knew what they were, and he didn’t want to look any closer. He didn’t want to recognize who they were before the deterioration had taken their minds.
However, this creature, was lying in a pool of its own blood.
“Jonathan,” Leah whispered. “Are you really stand—ouch . . . ouch . . .”
She was in the corner. The gun Olivia had given her on the floor but not out of reach. She was holding her side with one hand. He knelt beside her and saw that she’d tried to tape herself closed—it looked like what a child might try, if there was no one around to help them and they were bleeding to death.
He realized that the blood pooling under his feet didn’t all belong to the creatures in the doorway.
“Leah?” Jonathan knelt beside her.
She looked at him, and seemed to be so happy to hear his voice that she forgot her wound. She smiled but when she tried to talk blood came up and she began to choke.
“Don’t talk . . . don’t talk,” Jonathan said.
Leah, not the one on the floor, but the voyeur in his mind, knew her own shadow was fading. Wouldn’t be long before this copy of her died. Her shadow didn’t try to obey or save her strength. She took a long breath and took her hand away from her wound. “We aren’t alone in the dark . . . I kept . . . your friend.”
As her hand fell limp it opened, and the portal stone rolled out.
She wasn’t clear on when the bridge ended. When she found herself lying on the floor, it was at the end of a what felt like a long period between sleep and consciousness. There was a sense that he never fully left her mind completely. As though she could still feel his thoughts and emotions but be no more aware of them than she could the air around her. She knew he was close because she could breathe.
When she opened her eyes, Jonathan was sitting up. He looked as far away in his thoughts as she felt, but he noticed her rousing. She sat up beside him and they watched one another curiously for some time.
“I already miss knowing what you’re thinking,” Leah said. “Because you’re being so quiet.”
“I’m trying to understand what just happened,” Jonathan said.
“Was it different than before?” Leah asked.
“I’m not sure,” Jonathan said. “Because, I think, the bond was . . . it was as though it was answering a question. A question I don’t even know the words to ask. Like it was searching inside of you for the answer.”
Leah didn’t need him to elaborate—she understood what he was trying to explain.
“That didn’t happen with Rylee?” Leah asked.
“I think it did,” Jonathan said
, unsure. “But, I hardly knew Rylee when it happened with her. So, the burning question was a simple one: Who the hell are you?”
Leah laughed a bit. “Right.”
What she’d seen was far clearer to her through that lens. All of it answered a question she’d had since waking up in the cell beside him. How can he know the truth of me and still trust me?
No spoken answer would have ever been certain to her. She had to feel the change in him—see how it was he knew that she’d never abandon him.
“Jonathan,” Leah asked. “What answer did you go looking for?”
He looked at her and took her hands in his. “I don’t think we should talk about what we saw.”
Her eyes narrowed as she pretended to smile. “You’re worried I saw something dangerous. I didn’t. My question didn’t have anything to do with your big dumb secrets.”
“You can’t know that for sure,” Jonathan said.
She considered that for a moment, then smirked. “Fine, I won’t tell you what I saw. Don’t see how that lets you off the hook.”
He closed his eyes, tongued his cheek, and nodded. “I can tell you what I saw, but you have to understand that if I knew how to put the question into words I would have just asked.”
“I get that,” Leah said. “So, what was the answer to this question you didn’t know how to ask.”
He swallowed. “You were alone in a room. At first it was like you were talking to yourself in a mirror, then I realized who you were talking to—”
“Okay—stop. I . . . I know what you saw.”
She shivered, caught completely flat footed. “That . . . that was not for you. What the hell could that have answered?”
He was quiet for a long while.
“Knowing the answer, the question is very clear to me now,” Jonathan said. “What do I say to make her stay out of The Never? The answer, no such words exist.”
“Are you angry?” Leah asked.
He shook his head. “I’ve been naïve. Thought life had run out of threats to scare me. But now . . . knowing you’ll be locked in The Never with a god who would move heaven and earth to hurt me. I’ve never been this scared in my life.”
The Never Army Page 70