Surrogacy

by Rob Horner

  “Most of our people are like me,” Iz said. “Former Army or Marine, a couple of Air Force and Navy sailors. I hand-picked a lot of them, basing my choices on what I’d seen of them under stress, or in actual combat. David over there, the tall one with the mustache, was a Secret Service agent before I recruited him.”

  Iz paused after making the statement, though it took me a moment to realize he was waiting for me to make a connection between his words and something else. It wanted to come through, and somehow, focusing on it, made some of my numbness fade.

  “The President knows about this?” I blurted.

  Iz nodded. “The Quins have been trying to prepare us for decades, starting with Eisenhower. No one took them seriously until Reagan, however, who managed to push the Strategic Defense Initiative into the public awareness.”

  “I thought that was intended to protect us from nuclear war,” I said, struggling to remember things I’d barely paid attention to in class. “They called it Star Wars and said it would never work.”

  Iz snorted. “Ted Kennedy called it that, for a lot of reasons that had more to do with politics than with him having any actual information. Ironically, he wasn’t far off with the title. It was sold as a means to reduce the threat of mutually assured destruction in order to get government funding. It was really meant to be a first-line of defense against the Dra’Gal, if they should ever send their forces here.”

  “But they are here,” I said. “So, it didn’t work.”

  He shook his head. “It was never finished because the Quins couldn’t find a way to incorporate their technology with ours without alerting the various engineers to alien influence. Hence the derogatory comments from the politicians. But there’s still time, because as far as we know, there’s been no major Dra’Gal force launched from the Quins home world.”

  “But they’re here,” I said again. The six soldiers had finished cleaning out the fifth van. The third van pulled away, making its turns to back into a parking space.

  “They’ve sent out small scouting parties, of course, little groups who slink in the shadows, testing their longevity in our atmosphere.”

  My mind flashed back to Sunday night, where I stood with my nose pressed against the dirty glass of a trailer window, watching a strange ceremony unfolding inside. Beside the carnies were smaller forms, robed and hooded, bodies moving strangely beneath the clothes. When the chanting reached its peak, when the light grew out of the black box, out of the resonator, those smaller forms attacked the carnies.

  Flesh shredded and robes tore in the slaughter, revealing twisted forms that could never have been human, hips and shoulders tilted wrong, knees pointing backwards.

  “I’ve seen them,” I said softly.

  The leader of the group, the strange figure driving the chant, who exhorted the carnies to greater volume, greater passion--he hadn’t been right, either.

  Iz laid a hand on my shoulder and started leading me around the side of the van, moving toward the front. The back doors of the fifth van were closed now. We stepped up beside it, still going forward.

  “Listen,” he said. “Only a small portion of the Dra’Gal can use the resonators. We’re not sure what that’s based on, whether it’s some measure of their position in the hierarchy, something to do with individual strengths, or maybe it’s even a limitation of the resonators themselves, like only a certain number of linkages can be maintained simultaneously. We just don’t know. But we do know that if we can destroy a resonator, it makes all their little toys, those stuffed animals and statues, worthless. We’ve done it before.”

  A sort of hope, or a lessening of guilt, kindled in my heart. For the first time since staggering out of the carnival and jumping into the van, my sense of purpose returned. I hadn’t known what we were doing when we entered the carnival. I’d pushed us to attack with no idea of the odds against us. My arrogance led to the capture of Tanya and Crystal.

  But I’d been right.

  The knowledge didn’t fix anything, but it changed everything. My perspective shifted, pulling me from my self-doubt, self-pity, and crushing guilt, instilling a drive to right those wrongs, to fix what I’d broken. I’d been right, but I’d done it wrong. I would learn from that.

  “It doesn’t purge the Dra’Gal who’ve already established in a host,” he added. “Nor does it prevent them from Manifesting. It plays havoc with their thought-network though. It might even negate it entirely, or at least separate them from any Dra’Gal not already on our planet. It prevents reinforcements and, most importantly, it gives us a goal. If we can destroy all the resonators and deal with the Dra’Gal already here, all we’ll have to worry about is stopping them from attacking from outside.”

  It sounded simple, and possible, when laid out like that. Just do these things in this order and Viola! You’ve made a cake! Or, in this instance, you’ve saved the world.

  We’d stopped at the back of the fourth van, which was now the first in line waiting to pull away. There were noises coming from inside the vehicle, mutterings and grumblings, like a bunch of people trying to avoid being woken up, if you can picture a dozen or so grown men pulling blankets over their heads when the lights came on.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

  He turned his gray eyes on me. “You needed to hear it,” he said. “And from the change in your tone of voice, I can tell it was the right thing to do.”

  The driver and passenger doors of the van opened, and two young men climbed out, one from each side. Both were soldiers with short-cropped, dark hair. They walked with that military bearing which would make picking them out of a crowd a simple matter. They smiled as they came toward us. The driver, who might have been an inch taller than me, made a motion with his right arm then immediately checked it. It appeared as nothing more than a muscle twitch, but my mind filled in the rest. The soldier almost saluted but stopped himself. I don’t know why, but that made me respect Iz even more.

  “You sure about this, Iz?” the driver asked, as he and his partner moved to the van doors.

  “You’re the first person, the first Chosen, we’ve ever found with the ability to purge the Dra’Gal,” Iz said, and now his eyes looked sad. “We didn’t know it was possible. We’ve been faced with the terrible knowledge that, in order to win, we’d eventually have to kill our own people. Oh, we’ve tried to hide that from them, taking prisoners whenever we could, but it’s something most of them have figured out. It taints every operation, every tactical discussion. It’s bad enough when a soldier has to live with the knowledge that every mission may be his last.”

  “We’re proud to do it,” the co-pilot said.

  “I know you are,” Iz replied. “But it’s even worse, almost impossible, to face the fact that every mission might be the one where your best friend is turned against you, and you’ll have no choice but to shoot him.”

  Neither of the two soldiers made a response to that.

  “So, for all that I may have helped you, John, I want you to know that you’ve helped me.”

  I didn’t say anything, just watched the older man’s gray eyes. There was a moistness around the edges that wasn’t there before. “You brought hope, with what I saw you do earlier tonight, hope like I haven’t had since being brought on to this project. And if it’s all right with you, I’d like you to show that hope to Raymond and Gus.”

  I couldn’t speak. No one had ever laid such a responsibility on me before. It was awe-inspiring, and terrifying. That creeping numbness was there, waiting, offering me a shelter to hide behind. All I had to do was say no or make some excuse.

  “Open the doors,” I said.

  “It’s always a fight, getting these captured Dra’Gal to the pens,” Iz said, as Raymond and Gus opened the double doors of the van. The low noises increased in volume, mutters and grunts turning into more voluble protests, though still unintelligible as words. The lights came on in the vehicle as the doors opened, revealing a dozen people, all men, all weari
ng the blue Polo-style shirts with the carnival logo over the left breast.

  “How many have you captured?” I asked softly.

  Three of the men looked familiar, and it only took a moment to remember where I’d seen them.

  Each line was manned by a demon dressed in Carny skin, wearing carnival blue, while a fourth stood to the side with a small metal click-counter in his hand. He eyed us as we approached.

  All three had been selling tickets and wristbands at the entrance to the carnival. A quick scan showed the clicker-guy was absent; maybe he’d run when Iz and his men arrived.

  “With these added in, we’ve got almost a hundred downstairs,” one of the soldiers said. “It’s a real strain on Ben and Danielle to keep them quiet. I don’t know how they find the extra time to help with the ammo, too.”

  Ben was the young man who could emit a purple light, like a binding energy, that not only froze the Dra’Gal in place, but could also prevent them from—what was the word? —Manifesting.

  “Ben didn’t make it back,” Iz said softly.

  A few feet closer was another helmeted form, down on its side, one of the wooden crossbars impaling him from front to back.

  “Damn,” the driver said. “I really liked that kid.”

  “Danielle’s gonna be crushed,” the other one said. “They kind of had a thing going, you know, spending so much time together.”

  The carnies didn’t look cowed. Though they sat motionless, there was a tenseness to the arms visible below the short-sleeved shirts that spoke of uncontrollable rage, not held in check by any measure of will, but forcibly restrained. Their heads were mobile, faces turned to look at us, eyes narrowed, and mouths stretched in the closest approximation that a human can come to a vicious snarl.

  “One of the cooler tricks of the Quin,” Iz said, “is the technology to distill certain abilities into inanimate objects.”

  “Ben could put his power into crystals,” the co-pilot said, “which we can send a charge through, throwing his purple light out like a paint ball.”

  The soldiers fired…something…it was hard to see. Little streaks of purplish light that spat out of the strangely shaped upper barrels. The light started at the base of the barrel, near the stock, then wrapped around it, following the circling ridges, until it collected at the tip. It wasn’t instantaneous, like pulling the trigger on a regular rifle, but it still took less than a second for the shot to ready.

  Its effect was even stranger.

  Whenever a demon—Dra’Gal, whatever—was struck by one of these glowing spitballs, the light splattered, sticking to the demon’s body in a spray pattern like a paint ball hit. The demon stopped all motion, forward momentum causing it to topple, already transforming back to human before it hit the ground.

  “It’s the goop that keep them from Manifesting,” Iz explained. “The smallest drop seems to be enough to prevent it. Making them be still takes more, and the more they get on them, the longer it lasts.”

  Knowing what to look helped. There were splotches of dark liquid splattered over the torsos of the sitting men. One or two had wet places on their heads, clumps of hair glued together like a child who’d gotten hold of mom’s mousse.

  As I stepped up to the back of the van, the faces of the nearest men changed. It wasn’t a transformation to demon form, but something more human, more disturbing. The hate-filled stares faded, the lips relaxing, eyes widening. These men didn’t know me, but they feared me. Or the alien inside of them did, which amounted to the same thing. It felt good, back on the midway, when the group of trapped demons began to draw away from me. That gave me hope, a growing realization we might be able to defeat them. But those were Dra’Gal in close proximity, who could see what I was doing and could see the effect of my actions.

  The men behind me noticed it as well.

  “Damn, Ray,” the man on my left said, “they’re afraid of him.”

  Four days ago, I was a normal teenager. I wanted to skip school to play video games. I didn’t want to go to work, but I liked getting a paycheck. My only concern involved whether I’d have to go to the junior prom without a date.

  Now I was a Chosen, joining the fight against an alien race that could take over a person, changing him or her into a monster, and could maintain constant contact with each other. None of it seemed possible, yet this was my new reality.

  These men in the truck didn’t know me. None of them had seen me use my power to banish demons, yet they feared me and what I was about to do just as much as the group had on the midway. If that wasn’t enough to demonstrate the truth of the crazy story Fish and Iz and the others told me, nothing would be.

  Trusting in the binding power that held the men in place, I stepped into the van, my hands out to touch an arm here or a hand there. Summoning my power without striking was second nature now. There was no need to hurt these men. Light flashed, strobe-like, temporarily blinding me even though I was expecting it.

  Chapter 4

  Odd one out

  From the basement garage, the only choices were up, to the administrative offices, or down, to the assembly rooms and barracks. There wasn’t a sign on the stairwell, or cute little arrows with words that spelled out my choices placarded on the walls. I got this from Iz’s running commentary. I welcomed the distraction. After purging the men in the van, I stepped out to a terrifying look of awe in the eyes of Raymond and Gus. I wasn’t ready for that reaction.

  “What else is on this floor?” I asked, letting him steer me to the stairs leading down. “This can’t be all there is to this level.”

  “It’s not,” he said. “Mandatum has a front door, and a figurative front as an investment banking institution. Anyone coming in the main door would see those offices, and if they found a way into the basement from there, it would be the typical stuff you’d find in any government-type building: storage rooms, air conditioners and heating units, back-up generators in case the power goes out. No one sees this garage from the outside unless the doors are open. When they’re closed, they look like part of the hillside behind the building.”

  There was pride in his voice, like he’d had a hand in planning the features of the building.

  The stairs were wide enough for the two of us to walk side by side. The first flight took us down ten or twelve feet, struck a landing, then switch-backed the other direction. No doors greeted us at the first landing, or at the second.

  “How far down are we going?” I asked.

  “Just two more flights,” he answered. “Remember a lot of this was designed to minimize penetration by a hostile force. We have other ways to move between floors, but this is the only way to the garage for us.”

  A little alarm bell sounded in my head, a combination warning over what would happen if the only way out was blocked, and a mild anxiety at being so far underground. “Is that safe? What about a fire?”

  Iz laughed, his gravelly voice softening. “Don’t worry. I said it’s the only access to the garage, not the only way out of the facility. We have a couple of escape routes, every one of which can be manned with a minimum of personnel to provide maximum safety.”

  “Meaning choke points?” I asked.

  All the landings were well-lit, clean, and bare of ornamentation, except for a small video camera mounted conspicuously in each corner, giving crossing views of both stairwells.

  Iz stopped us on the third landing. The last flight was before us, another twenty steps, ending in a double door. The small glass windows in each door shone with light, and the low hum of conversation reached out invitingly. The voices sounded good-natured and jovial.

  “Listen, John,” Iz began. “Ray was right about Ben and Danielle. She’s going to be hurting, might not even be in the room when we get there.” He paused, giving extra weight to his next words. “If you’re not too tired—"

  “Let’s go cure the other prisoners first.”

  Iz mumbled something that sounded like “--knew I was right about you—" but then co
vered it with a cough and said, “We will, but not right away. Again, security and all that. This stairwell gives out on a large room. We use it for meetings, practices, just to hang out, you name it. But it could also be a place to make a stand, if we needed to. The point is, that’s where most of our Chosen will be, waiting to meet you. We’ll have to go through them first.”

  “What about the other soldiers?”

  He returned a blank look for a moment, then said, “Soldiers? Oh, you mean the guys like Ray and Gus and Little Jack?”

  I nodded.

  “Look, they volunteered just like we all did, but the light that gave the others their abilities doesn’t work on everyone.”

  I tried to wrap my head around that statement and came to a startling conclusion. “Some people have had powers longer than me?”

  He nodded again, which was obviously his preferred way to answer a question with a yes. Maybe it was a way to always make sure people were paying attention.

  “Some of them, like James and Ben, have had abilities for years. Others like Gina got them six months ago or so, when the Quins decided we didn’t have enough firepower here.”

  “And me?”

  He reached up a hand and clapped me on the shoulder. “I’ll let Fish explain the rest in your briefing. Suffice it to say the Catalyst didn’t work on everyone. Those who don’t develop an ability stand guard for those who do, it’s that simple. They drive the trucks and carry the guns.”

  “Is everyone former military?” I asked.

  “No,” he answered with a smile, “though a good many are. A lot of those who aren’t were discovered in the past few days after the lights came down.”