by Myke Cole
No thanks, Schweitzer replied. Even contorted into snarls, their black muzzles were a whisper of the life he had known. They had been weapons, yes, but also comrades.
Ninip said something, but it was lost in the buzz of the barking and the hissing of the air vents, drowned by Schweitzer’s focus as the first real target finally did pop with a loud thunk, wood reverberating against its metal housing.
The superhuman run and jump had taken Schweitzer by surprise, but as soon as the man-shaped piece of wood slid into view, he was back in his element. The carbine popped into its familiar spot on his shoulder, finger brushing the trigger, easing out the slack even as the weapon came up, eye dropping onto the sights. I’ve got this.
Red target. Engage.
Ninip slid aside, releasing their shared limbs to Schweitzer’s control. The first target was only twenty feet away. At that range, the high-caliber round obliterated it, leaving a smoking shower of splinters. Schweitzer fell into the old groove instinctively, grateful for the familiar space, a shred of the known in the strangeness that had become his world. Ninip shared that space, marveling at the precision of his movements, the firm ease with which he let the trigger slide forward until he felt the slight click of the reset, keeping just the right amount of tension to hold it there. His eyes narrowed, his shooter’s vision alert for threats, moving, moving, never settling. Contact right. Red. Turn, sight, fire. The target exploded, and Schweitzer moved through the wreckage, the front sight post the only point of clarity in a blurred world. Bang. Bang. Single shots. Each impacting in the tiny triangle where he’d put them all his professional life.
Impressive, Ninip said. Schweitzer ignored him. This killing space had always been his refuge, the immediacy of combat shutting out all distractions, giving Schweitzer the only true peace he’d ever known, his mind surrendering to the reptilian repetition of move, sight, shoot. The irony was one only other SEALs ever understood, that there in the midst of the maelstrom of battle was the only real rest they ever truly got.
He felt Ninip ingesting his experience, absorbing his skill. He shuddered internally, tried to shrug the presence away. Ninip laughed. We are one. Will your hand deny your arm?
Both are dead, Schweitzer said.
One of the dogs found its courage and leapt for them. Schweitzer was too absorbed in his shooting dance to react. Ninip seized the moment to lunge, moving them with lightning speed, throwing the carbine down to hang by its sling, reaching out to snatch the leaping animal out of the air.
Schweitzer strained against the jinn, but Ninip already had the momentum, bringing the dog down across their knee so quickly and with such force that the animal nearly broke in half.
The rest of the pack scattered at the sound of the dog’s final yelp, and Schweitzer shouted inwardly. You fucking bastard!
The outpouring was unforgivable in his line of work. SEALs succeeded precisely because of their ability to maintain professionalism no matter what horrors unfolded around them. Schweitzer’s concentration broke just as his wide shooter’s vision caught a target springing up, so close he could feel the air stirring over his elbow. Too close to take a shot. His mind switched the action, immediately moving to drive the carbine butt into the head-shaped top of the board.
But Ninip blotted out his senses, the jinn’s filter sliding across his eyes. The hangar-sized room suddenly slid close, the cameras gleaming targeting lasers, painting Schweitzer’s forehead. Even the wooden target had changed, painted now with a mad grin, a malevolent clown smile showing razor teeth. Schweitzer’s nose filled with the copper smell of blood, making his mouth water. Anger swamped him, an animal need to escape the suddenly tiny room, slaughter anything that stood between him and the exit. His training receded to a splinter in his mind, dominated by the jinn’s feral presence.
It was the antithesis of how he’d always fought. No professionalism. No cold precision. Only red, raw rage. Was the target red? He couldn’t concentrate enough to tell.
He felt their shared throat flex, jaw unhinging, dropping until it touched the bottom of their sternum. Their tongue whipped out, lashed around the target’s neck, yanking the wood toward them. He gave in to the passion of the fight, and their head whipped forward, snake’s jaw snapping closed. He felt their teeth, dagger huge now, punch through the rough wooden outline simulating a man’s shoulders, upper chest. Ninip thrilled within him, drowning in animal joy, jerked their neck, tearing the top of the target off, ragged shreds of wood following like entrails. The terrified yipping of the dogs sounded all around them.
Schweitzer felt himself slipping away, a grain of sand drowning in a sea of the jinn, howling in predatory exultation. The room was close as a womb, the chewed wood in their mouth gobbets of flesh, the splinters blood spray. Ninip spit out the mouthful and howled just as two more targets sprang up, almost slapping them in the face, painted grins alive now, mocking him. Schweitzer felt the scythe claws extend, arms sweeping up to form a brief X before their face, then the muscles in their arms engaged, sweeping them down again, shearing the targets in half along the waistline.
Ninip was all. The jinn turned, eyes sweeping the dogs, cowering now against the edges of the room, as if by pressing themselves hard enough against the walls, they could pass through them. Their beating hearts and flowing blood were not human but were still far more interesting than the wooden targets.
Ninip stalked toward them, taking his time, savoring their animal terror.
Schweitzer was horrified. His entire life he’d thrown himself at challenge after challenge. Some had gone down easy, some he’d had to wear away. But they always fell. Ninip swept him away like a tsunami.
Schweitzer dug deep and pushed back against the jinn. Ninip pushed back briefly against him, then sullenly gave way. Now you have seen what it is to fight.
Schweitzer’s vision slowly returning to normal, the room resuming its normal size, the targets shredded wood once again. Schweitzer could feel Ninip’s coiled strength. He knew that the jinn hadn’t really fought him, didn’t doubt that it would have beaten him if it had.
Schweitzer looked up, noted the countdown on the LED clock: five seconds remaining.
A buzz and click indicated a steel door swinging open at the far side of the room, four soldiers entering through it. Two held carbines at the ready, the other two carried what Schweitzer was beginning to see as the ubiquitous flamethrower and fireman’s axe.
“Let’s go,” one of them said, jerking his head toward the door. The man’s eyes swept the wreckage of the targets, the broken remains of the dog in the center of the room. He looked up at Schweitzer, shook his head in disgust, motioned to the door again. “Move.”
Schweitzer recognized the curt bravado for the fear it sought to mask. A moment later, he realized this was more than just experience. He could smell the man’s fear, a thick, ammonia odor like stale piss. Ninip smelled it, too, and Schweitzer tensed himself to push back against the jinn, but the presence made no move.
“Where?” Schweitzer asked.
“Cold storage,” the man with the axe said. “Cool your heels for a bit while we decide what to do with you.”
—
Cold storage turned out to be a stainless-steel refrigerated unit that looked like a restaurant meat locker. It was completely featureless save the omnipresent red nozzles that told Schweitzer the room’s contents could be incinerated with the touch of a button. These were interspersed with other, smaller protrusions, brushed-chrome knobs with tiny holes in their tips. Schweitzer began to examine one, then realized that his heightened senses could pick up the cold emanating from them, along with the slightest whiff of oil. Liquid nitrogen likely, or Freon. If they weren’t in the mood for burning, they could freeze him solid.
Chill air fogged the room, emanating from louvered vents ringing the walls. Schweitzer knew he was cold, could sense the temperature, but there was no discomfort. His se
nses still functioned but reported at a remove, a secondhand story.
Why are they trying to freeze us? Ninip asked.
A dead body rots, Schweitzer said. They’re trying to preserve us.
We do not rot, Ninip said. I see to that.
Guess you can’t be too careful.
You are too careful. It is cowardly.
Yeah, wish we were brave like you. You sure showed that dog who was boss.
It was an animal. You mourn it as if it were your betrothed. Do you fuck dogs in your armies?
Schweitzer didn’t bother responding. Ninip was silent for a moment before trying again, his tone conciliatory. You fight well. Your rifle is impressive.
It’s a carbine. You need to pay closer attention.
Still, you kill at a remove. I will teach you valor.
No thanks. All valor does is get folks killed.
Don’t be a fool, valo—
Dude. Shut up. Your way of fighting is millennia in its grave. There’s a reason it didn’t survive. War isn’t chest pounding and reciting lineage. War is teamwork and professionalism. War is workmanship.
When Ninip finally replied, his tone was thoughtful. I am a lord, a god.
Yeah, I’ve run with guys like that. They make lousy warfighters. A Saudi prince once tried to get me to carry his rucksack. I laughed at him. Rank and privilege might fly at the Marine Corps ball, but on an op, how good you are is all there is.
Ninip considered that. You are a footman.
Schweitzer laughed. We’re all footmen. Even our officers had to suck sand in BUD/S. Nowadays, footmen are all there is. You’re a lord? Good for you. I’m an American. We don’t kneel to lords.
Ninip was quiet for a good while after that. Schweitzer liked that even less than his predator binges. Evil, insensate rage was simple, loud. A quiet, thinking enemy crouched in the dark came at you when your guard was down. Your woman, your child. They keep you weak. Even in battle they are with you. Even though they are gone.
Schweitzer instinctively moved their shared hand to their chest, held up the engraved dog tags. Sarah and Patrick stared back at him. Was the rust deepening already? For now it made the lines of their faces stand out in starker relief, but it wouldn’t be long before it crossed the line from help to hindrance.
They keep me going. He could still smell the rosewater, so faint it was barely a whisper of a scent. He closed his eyes, tried to visualize it, a path leading back to her, but the smell seemed to come from everywhere at once.
How long have you been dead? Schweitzer asked.
I cannot mark the sun. A very long time.
What’s it like outside a body? It’s different, right?
It is . . . chaos. There are many of us there, but the strong know their own. Only the greatest of us can find our way back to the few like that goatherd who can speak to us. It took me a long time to learn how, but I did.
This is what you came back for? To kill people?
There is nothing there. Here, there is light, and speech, and the rush of the wind. There is . . . life. Killing is still life.
Schweitzer pictured Ninip, stranded in darkness, the millennia ticking by. A chord of sympathy sounded in him, and he felt the presence shudder in anger at the touch of it.
Is that where Sarah and Patrick are?
Ninip shrugged. I suppose. I know of no other place. I was like you, believing in priests’ bleating promises. There is only the storm, and it is nothing like the stories.
We call that purgato—
I know what you call it, Ninip said, conjuring up the image of Schweitzer’s first Bible, dog-eared, child’s scrawl in the margins. Schweitzer tensed in revulsion at the stolen memory. It is the prattling of shavepate divines seeking to wring gold from their betters. Only merchants lie more than priests.
And only jinn lied more than merchants, Schweitzer thought. Ninip’s entire perception of the world was a membrane of falsehood pulled over their collective eyes. If you can reach out, you can reach back, right? You can help me find Sarah and Patrick.
Impossible, Ninip said. The dead are legion. All but the strongest are whirling in panic, they know nothing but the storm, hear nothing but their own shrieking.
Goddamn it, you can try!
No, I cannot. Were this body to be destroyed, we would go back to the maelstrom together. You would be lost and no closer to being reunited with your wife and child. Your heaven is a lie. You do not reunite with your beloved dead.
Bullshit. Show me.
Show yourself, the jinn said. He felt Ninip’s presence slide aside, a void stretching out within him. Schweitzer turned into it, fumbling blind through the blackness. He recognized the void from his first moments of death, before Ninip had spoken to him. It was the deepest dark he’d ever known, not the painted black of the inside of his living eyelids, but the true night of a space devoid of even the concept of light.
The void stretched out for what seemed an eternity, then Schweitzer caught a sudden glimmer, a hint of palest light, the tiniest whisper of sound. And the smell of Sarah’s perfume. Schweitzer reached out toward it, moving through the black toward the source, Ninip laughing outright at his excitement. At last the sound crystallized, became something with a name.
Screaming.
Ninip was right to call it a storm. A tangle of whirling limbs stretched across Schweitzer’s vision. Ethereal, spinning bodies, sliding around and through one another, howling terror as they circled, tossed by some invisible tornado current. All SEALs developed a healthy respect for the sea, came to know it as intimately as a fickle lover, as likely to kill as kiss. This then was a sea, violent and storm tossed, made of people.
The scent of Sarah’s perfume led toward it.
The ocean of souls was so vast that Schweitzer couldn’t begin to take it all in. You’ll never find them in there. Not if you spent the rest of eternity looking.
Ninip’s voice softened. You cannot have them back, but we can avenge them. That is something.
Schweitzer bit down on his despair. Whatever. What the hell do you know about family?
I had nine wives, twelve sons.
No daughters?
Ninip snorted. Some. I did not keep them.
Schweitzer felt his anger rise, sensed Ninip’s satisfaction as the jinn felt it, too. You go ahead and do your whole animal angry valor dance in here. When we run an op, you let me drive. That hunger does no one any good. It’s a waste of fucking time.
No, Ninip replied. It is the nectar of what we have become together. You mock it now because you do not feel it. But you will, and soon.
CHAPTER VIII
TRIAL RUN
Their cell was featureless, no chairs, bed, toilet. Schweitzer simply stood, talking internally to Ninip, feeling the jinn continue to dig in his memories. He was aware of his body’s functions, the fatigue in the leg muscles, growing stiffness in the joints. He set their shared body pacing, keeping it limber, the glycerol they’d used to replace the blood in his veins flowing.
After a long time, panels slid aside in one wall, revealing a reinforced transparent panel that opened on a featureless gray hallway. Schweitzer could see military personnel pacing there, two guards outside his door. Beyond them, a ready room buzzed with activity, huge screens taking up an entire wall. Eldredge stood there, writing on a clipboard. Jawid was seated in what looked like an aircraft pilot’s chair, electrical leads flowing under his robes, plastering his head. His eyes were closed.
Good morning. Jawid’s voice echoed in Schweitzer’s mind. It was halting, hesitant. Schweitzer could tell he was translating someone else’s words.
Is it morning? Schweitzer asked.
It is. The sun has not yet risen.
Is it good?
Jawid went silent at this, and he saw the Sorcerer turn and speak quickly with Eldredge, who gl
anced toward the cell. At last, the old man shook his head.
Yes. It is good, the Sorcerer finally answered.
Ninip stayed silent, but Schweitzer could feel him circling the edges of the channel opened with Jawid, sniffing at it, reaching tentatively toward the Sorcerer. He felt Jawid’s wariness and concentration, ready to push back against the jinn.
To what do we owe the pleasure? Schweitzer asked Jawid. He liked the banter, there was something in it that made him feel tied to who he had once been. If it puzzled his handlers, then so much the better. He was dead. They could put up with a little snark.
We’re ready for you to go to work. Your first run, Jawid said.
Schweitzer shrugged off the images of carnage Ninip projected. The jinn shivered with anticipation.
So, you’re putting me . . . us . . . on an op?
We are, Jawid answered.
Good, Schweitzer said. Then you can explain to me how this leads to the people who killed Sarah and Patrick.
In the room across the hall, Jawid opened his eyes, had a short conversation with Eldredge.
This is your trial run, the Sorcerer said. We need to know that you are in control, that you can respond to tasking. Do this well, and we’ll send you after the people who killed you—a pause as Jawid listened to Eldredge, then the Sorcerer focused his attention back to Schweitzer—just as soon as we have good information on where they are.
Schweitzer gave Ninip just enough rein to fuel him with anger, channeled the rage down his connection to Jawid. You tell Eldredge I’m not fucking around. This is your free one. The next op better be working a lead to whoever did this to my family. It had to be the Body Farm.
He could feel Jawid’s confusion, Ninip’s frustration with the delay. The jinn knew there was slaughter once the mission was launched and was bristling with impatience to get started. The emotions hit him and scrambled his thinking; he dug deep and found his center. Ninip could wait. The Body Farm. Tell Eldredge that’s who killed me. Ask him to talk to my old lieutenant. Name’s Martin Biggs. We ran an op . . .