by Weston Ochse
It had been easier than he’d expected. Maybe having been here created muscle memory, engendering his mind to release his essence.
He glanced to where the dark sun pulsed in the Up, then searched the Down. Three pinpoints of light moved nearby. He guessed those were his team. More pinpoints of light were nearby, including two lines of them moving at speed. Since he was on a marine base, he guessed it might be a running formation. Then again, it could be people on a bus. Part of him wanted to discover which was which, just so he could become smarter about this new environment. He also realized that he was putting off doing what he’d come here to do. When he found the four huddled beings, he willed himself to move until he was right next to them.
They all looked the same, glowing white featureless mannequin faces bent forward until their heads were touching.
He knew better than to join them. Interacting with all three might just drive him crazy. So he picked one, reached out with his hand that was not a hand, and touched it.
A sizzle of electric energy shot through him as the being turned towards him. The features of a middle-aged man, North African, replaced the simulacrum. The face was free of emotion at first, and then washed into anger.
“You. What have you done with me?” it asked, speaking Berber.
Boy Scout was filled with the images of horses charging over a sand dune upon an oasis lit by a lone fire. The cries of warriors like coyote song in the night. Screams of panic by those on foot.
“I haven’t done anything,” Boy Scout responded in the same language. “You were lost in The White and came into me when I visited.”
Riding down a mountain trail in a line of armored SUVs. The second SUV explodes. Pieces of metal and men raining down on the hood and windshield. A finger bounces off the window.
Its expression went from anger to concern, then to confusion and thoughtfulness. “TheWhite. Yes. I was in a place with all white. Many of us were. It was like a nightmare and I couldn’t wake up. Then I saw something like an exit and I raced for it.”
A dinner on a blanket under the stars. Lamb stewed with goat’s milk cheese. Tea with cardamom. A breeze carrying the sweet salt of the Mediterranean.
“That exit was me,” Boy Scout managed to say, struggling with the contact.
Sitting around a table at a bar, his entire team back together, Narco standing on one side of the table telling a joke that they all laugh at.
Images came furious with the contact. Boy Scout fought not to become overwhelmed by them, thinking of them as curtains on a window to be pushed aside so that he might see past them. Not just those of the Berber, but his own, broadcast without his will, surfacing like mysterious bobbers in a lake he didn’t know he was fishing.
“But what is this place? And who are these others?” Surf crashing against the shore. Seagulls fighting for morsels. “Two of them want to talk, but another controls them.” He paused, then asked, “What am I seeing? What are these things you ride in?”
“We call them vehicles. Powered by invisible horses.”
A rifle range back when he was in basic training. Twenty-four new recruits in foxholes sweating under the noonday sun and firing blindly at 300-meter targets as perspiration smears their vision.
“Why is it that you aren’t controlled?” Boy Scout managed to ask.
“I can feel the history of those around me,” the Berber said. “Sometimes their memories. I can feel you and the strangeness of you.”
A baby cries in the other room as he snuggles with a woman, both of them naked. A jar of honey rests on the floor next to them, much of it spooned on her breasts.
“But I can’t feel the other who controls. I don’t want to feel the other.”
Boy Scout paused, wondering what it was he needed to know. The Berber was interesting, but ultimately, he wasn’t who Boy Scout needed to get to. But did he really want to interact with this other? Was he ready for it?
He suddenly found himself in a horde.
A hundred horses gallop across the sand. Cries of men raze the quiet of the night like scythes through corn. He carries a curved sword. A rifle rests in a scabbard on his roan horse. An encampment of white tents beneath tall palms lies before him. Legionnaires in sand-colored kepis are arrayed before the horde. Suddenly smoke erupts from their line, followed by the sounds of rifle shots. A bullet sizzles past him. The man in front of him sags and falls into the churning feet of his horse. He fights to control his horse that is struggling to clamber over the fallen man, the idea of hurting a rider foreign to the beast. Then he is past the broken body, now hacking into the line of defenders as he crashes through men and into the tents.
He feels a pain at the back of his head but ignores it as he continues, hacking and slashing at anyone on foot. Kepis fly as their heads are mauled. Still, the pain increases, but he fights on.
His enemy is the French imperialists who would take his country and make it their own. The sands of his ancestors will never belong to anyone else. He is Berber and he is proud.
The pain blinds him but still he swings, his sword arm pumping up and down like a furious—
Once again in a world of black and white he is confronted by the astral ghost of the Berber, whose face is planted against his own, arms behind him and tugging at the base of Boy Scout’s silver cord.
“Don’t,” Boy Scout whispers, out of breath from the charge. “Stop,” Boy Scout murmurs, part of him still swinging the sword.
He reaches up with his arms, but they pass through the Berber, his form somehow insubstantial.
He who was once Boy Scout is becoming Berber. He feels a tremendous pressure as memories begin to flood in and replace the ones he had. Who he is blends, two becoming one, one becoming none. He feels himself begin to float away and cries out weakly that he wants to go home. But there is no more home, only a vast plane of darkness and an even darker sun that pulls at him.
His essence is peeling away and he cannot stop it.
He knows what is happening, but he does not understand what to do.
He has no frame of reference.
He has no technique.
He is once again in the oasis and fighting.
He cries out in a language he should not know.
He sings the song of victory in a voice that isn’t his own as the last Frenchman falls from a vicious sweep of his sword.
Then he dismounts, his booted feet hitting the sand where his ancestors have bled for centuries.
Chapter Sixteen
Astral Plane
SOMETHING GRIPS HIM and he spins.
Standing on the sand in front of him is a woman dressed in a black and white gown.
He raises his sword to bring the blade down on her, but pauses. There’s something familiar in the way she stands, in the manner in which she holds her head and appraises him.
“Who are you?” he says in Berber.
“Fight!” she commands in English.
“What are you?” he asks in the same language.
“Your only hope.”
Then she reaches out and puts her hand inside of his face.
He can feel the fingers grab something, but there is no pain.
She pulls her arm back and he suddenly feels light.
The oasis fades and he’s once again in a universe of black.
“Imagine this is The White. Whatever you invent is real.”
“But this is black,” he says with all the effort he can muster.
“White, black, there is no difference.” Her hand became a flat piece of something shiny and she struck him with it. “Buck up, Ranger.”
At that word, Boy Scout returned to his essence and immediately understood what was going on. The other—the Berber—was hijacking him. But Boy Scout had little energy to fight. Somehow, someway, the Berber had siphoned everything from him. He could see the other man latched onto his astral projection, glowing brightly like a light-infused parasite.
“What am I?” he asked Sister Renee.
&
nbsp; “You are an astral shadow and are fading fast. You must find energy. You must fight it while I try and hold him off.”
Then she soared towards the Berber and was soon locked in battle, both of them furiously moving, their bodies shifting and changing into things that could punish and defend.
Boy Scout felt himself diminishing. He saw the other three beings that were inside him and moved towards them like a moth to their flame. He felt the warmth of their life energy, one more powerful than the others. He avoided this and sought the one with the least energy, hoping to borrow some of it, maybe to take it as his own. He felt desperate, himself a phantom eager to possess something that didn’t belong to him.
He reached out and touched the illuminated being before him and immediately smelled the scent of oranges. He smiled wide on a face with no mouth as he inhaled the scent of the sweet citrus through a nose he did not have. It was nothing more than a memory, but the sensation of it being real was enough to make him want more. He grabbed fistfuls of orange-scented dreams—walking down a mountain lane, carrying a baby goat, rolling in a sea of flowers with other boys, giggling at the wonder of it all. He took them. He took them all.
He barely heard the whisper of the boy, Poya, who asked, “What is happening?” He was so hungry for more oranges and flowers and goats that he grabbed faster, his arms now windmilling through the essence of what was once a simple Pashtun boy turned suicide bomber turned accidental traveler, until the boy was no more. He didn’t wink out—he simply ceased to be. The essence which had made the boy, the light that bound all of his memories and idea of self, now became part of Boy Scout.
Before he could stop, his essence touched that of the other—the strange one who would control—and Boy Scout discovered that there were two essences. Images of a wet gray English garden were juxtaposed with those of a land where men walked beside greater men—men who were twice the size of those who would be normal, voices booming as they commanded the lesser to do their bidding. And then Boy Scout realized that his vantage was from on high which meant that—
The other turned to him and fixed an astral gaze upon him.
Boy Scout felt the buzz of power as the other began to turn it on him, pulling out memories of oranges and eating a hamburger after fourteen days of eating MREs, both sweet and delicious snapshots in culinary time. Boy Scout managed to kick away, severing the contact with the other, knowing that this was too much and that he could never hope to defeat the duality that was this iconic essence. Although it was destined to be a battle in the future, the battle at hand was the one on which he must concentrate.
He spun away and surged towards the clash raging between Sister Renee and the Berber. For all her talents, Sister Renee seemed dimmer than before. Had the Berber taken some of her light? An image of a little girl possessed by a demon powered Boy Scout to action. How could he not protect her, even as she was protecting him? Now armed with the power of the boy, he could do damage, but would it be enough? So instead of fighting, he surrendered, imaging himself falling back into the body that no longer existed. If this Black was truly like TheWhite, then anything was possible.
And like the missing piece of a ten-thousand-piece puzzle, he snapped into place and was once again Boy Scout. But now he was stronger. Not only did he have what remained of his power, he also had that of the boy.
The Berber felt the change and his look of victory slipped to fear.
Sister Renee shot Boy Scout a glance and grinned fiercely, so much like Preacher’s Daughter that it hurt his heart. He wanted nothing more than to return to the present and the real—and the path to that reality went through the Berber.
Sister Renee’s hands were around the wrists of the Berber, whose own hands were deep inside of her chest.
Boy Scout instinctively knew what the entity was doing and shoved his thumbs into the Berber’s astral eye sockets. Instead of using them to create damage, he treated his thumbs as straws and began to draw in the essence of the Berber.
Feeling the drain, the Berber removed one hand from the chest of Sister Renee and reached for Boy Scout.
A third arm sprang from Boy Scout’s chest as he willed it into existence. The new hand grabbed the Berber’s and all of Boy Scout’s new fingers became more straws, drawing in the essence faster.
The Berber stared at the new hand, unable to fathom where the third arm came from. It was clear that he never realized he could completely change his body into something different.
Seeing this, Sister Renee did something similar, creating six tentacles that shot free from her own chest, the ends shoving themselves into the chest of the Berber.
The effect was instantaneous.
The Berber became smaller and smaller as his essence was sucked away, ingested by both Boy Scout and Sister Renee. And as he became smaller, they grew brighter, until neither were able to see the other through their combined halos of brightness.
And then he was gone.
Memories of honey and sex and violence mixed with those of oranges and birds and fields of flowers, all wedged between Boy Scout’s own memories. He wondered if he might soon forget which memories were whose. In taking the essence of the Berber and the boy, he had also taken what had made them individuals—he’d taken their selfs.
“Go back,” Sister Renee said to him.
Boy Scout stared at her, then looked back toward the other two. Only there weren’t two—there was only one, and it shined so brightly that even the dark sun was invisible. Ahmad’s Friend, the unknown Afghan soldier from the Battle of Kabul, was gone, probably ingested the way they’d ingested the other two. But while they’d done their deed in self-defense, that duel had been done because it, the last remaining entity, was merely hungry.
So what next?
There was now this single dual entity inside of him. Did that mean the thing would come for him next? For now, he couldn’t worry about that. He felt immeasurably tired.
“Hurry,” Sister Renee urged. “I will watch you, then return myself.”
Boy Scout reached around the back of his head and felt the place where the cord was affixed to his astral self. He once again imagined himself backing down a ramp and falling backwards into a brackish night sky over one of the many countries he’d HALO’d into. And as he fell back, he returned to his body, slamming into it as it fell back onto the floor. He barely had the energy to lock his chakras before the realization of what he’d done hit him.
He’d killed a child.
He’d also killed the Berber, but that was different. The Berber had died in battle, while the boy had been a victim of Boy Scout’s hunger.
Yes, the child had been a suicide bomber and had killed others.
But he was Boy Scout. He’d never willingly harm a boy, but his desperation to survive had made the decision for him: the boy or him.
The smell of oranges came to him and he thought of his mother—the boy’s mother—and how her fingers had always had the hint of the citrus upon them. Then Boy Scout curled into a fetal position and did what he hadn’t done since he was a child: he cried like one, soul-deep sobs mixed with the gentle weeping of the sorrowful.
Chapter Seventeen
Camp Pendleton Command Center
BOY SCOUT MET his crew the next morning. He hadn’t eaten the night before and had told everyone to go away when they’d offered to take him out or bring him something. He was starving, but he hadn’t felt like eating. Instead he filled his stomach with black coffee and self-loathing as he told them his plan. As it turned out, Poe was able to track a delivery to the consulate. He couldn’t be a hundred percent sure what was delivered because it came in a covered delivery truck; he was, however, able to track via customs that a cargo container recently passed through from a Turkish flagged cargo carrier, and that the container had been guarded by Turkish diplomatic security carrying heavy weapons.
They’d asked him what had gone on, but Boy Scout didn’t want to talk about it. He was too busy processing what had happened
and what sort of karmic hit he’d taken. He realized that taking the life of an entity that had already died wasn’t the same as if the person were alive. He just didn’t like the desperation he’d shown. It was as though he hadn’t had a choice. His own essence had made the choice for him, and like a vampire he’d sucked the boy dry. That he and Sister Renee had done the same to the Berber was different. Not only had he been an adult, but he was also an aggressor who would have gleefully killed either or both of them if he’d been able.
No, this memory was his to deal with and his alone.
“If we’re going to raid the consulate, we need some better intel,” he said. He turned to Poe and asked, “What have you got on security, personnel, etc.?”
“I have the layout with a date of information within two weeks ago, so I feel comfortable that it’s accurate. I have a list of all permanent employees, as well as cleaning services and food and beverage deliverers.”
“We need one. Have you run their financials?” Boy Scout asked.
“For the permanent employees, yes. There are two who are in way over their heads. One is about to have her house foreclosed on.”
“Any chance we can help her out?” Boy Scout asked.
“Legally?”
“You’re the federal government, you tell me.”
“I suppose we can help her. Special Unit 77 has a large pot of discretionary income.”
“Okay, you and Preacher’s Daughter work that angle.”
McQueen sat forward in his chair. “And us? What’s our plan?”
“We’re going trolling for dervishes.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Any way we can tip them that I’ll be at a certain location at a certain time?”