by Myke Cole
That was Jawid, Schweitzer said. That’s what it looked like.
Not Jawid. There were others. Are others. From time to time, they reached out to us. Less often, one of us would find a way to answer.
One of the spinning souls detaching from the rest, semiopaque, a broad-shouldered woman with a long stretch of dreadlocks reaching down her back. Pulling herself forward, sliding into the line of blue, rocketing down it, vanishing from view.
Into life.
Ninip. Watching. Learning.
And finally, the next flash. Words, Jawid’s voice this time. The monster howl, the animal rage, Ninip channeling it, forcing it into motion, falling into that blue highway that led back to Schweitzer’s cooling corpse.
And for the first time in an eternity, the kernel of something blossoming deep in the sliver of Ninip that hadn’t been lost to those years in the storm. Hope.
As the vision faded, Schweitzer felt the edge of that hope go sour.
What happened?
We happened. Now there is only us.
No, I mean, what did you want to happen? Schweitzer projected the hope back at him, felt the jinn recoil from it, the gorged lethargy beginning to ebb.
That. That is nothing.
It’s not nothing. What did you want? What did you think you’d see?
The presence retreated from him, and Schweitzer followed, the SEAL in him knowing to press the advantage. What? You’re disappointed. You didn’t think you’d wind up . . . here, in me. You expected something else.
Schweitzer reached out again, and this time he felt the edges of Ninip’s experience, his memories. He snatched at them, and the jinn pushed him back, angry now. He felt Ninip gathering his strength, remembered the sensation of being pushed out of their shared body, the screaming chaos ready to take him in. The fear came again, but this time he felt some of the old training take hold. He acknowledged the fear, let it pass through him, turned back to Ninip. SEALs fight as a team. None of us can do the job alone. That’s how wars are fought now. Schweitzer pushed memories back at the jinn now, hours and hours of school circle chats, pages and pages of loose-leaf-binder paper, extolling the virtues of teamwork, of the warrior brotherhood, of leaning on the man next to you. He recalled and showed Ninip planning sheets, fire-team breakdowns, each operator in his or her position, with their specific job: the pigman, the breacher, the intel weenie, the overwatch, the comms geek. Each alone, still SEALs, but together, a symphony capable of accomplishing wonders.
He could feel Ninip absorbing the information, considering.
We have to work together. He projected more images. Barbecues on Chang’s deck, Chang giving presents to Patrick on Christmas. Ahmad playing singles volleyball against Sarah on the lawn outside their home. Schweitzer on the phone with Perreto, giving him advice, listening as the Coast Guardsman complained about his girlfriend. More than a team, a family.
We have to be tight. He shuddered at the thought of being close to the black soul that had been responsible for the massacre back in the warehouse. But even if Ninip was his enemy, ignorance served no one. If we’re going to be the god of war you want us to be, we have to be like that. So, tell me.
He felt the jinn pause, gather itself. He could feel the anger shifting from smolder to burn, readied himself for the assault that would shove him out of their shared body.
But Ninip only sighed, and Schweitzer’s vision went white once again.
He saw through Ninip’s eyes, the red filter gone. Ninip lies on a bed of dried reeds, a thin white cloth draped over him. The bed is on a raised dais in the center of a cavernous room built from sand-colored blocks of stone. The walls have been painted in garish colors, stylized figures in rows, carrying jugs of water, palm fronds, spears. Crude scribbling is interspersed with the paintings, tiny, blockish pictograms, little shapes marching in orderly rows on their way to meaning.
The room is open at one end, admitting a bright sun through thick columns to pool around him, but Schweitzer can tell that Ninip is cold. A beautiful woman bends over him, a white gown leaving one brown breast exposed, a jeweled black wig hanging down to either side of her heavily kohled eyes. She holds out a dried gourd brimming with water. Ninip reaches out a hand, trembling, withered, ancient.
A younger man, still in the prime of his life, kneels at the bedside, speaking. His face is dark with concern, but the look doesn’t reach his eyes, and he strokes his braided beard impatiently. He is covered in jewels, a short sword curving like a whip along his side.
He cradles Ninip’s head gently, holds out a small fig, glistening with oil.
He is trying to get Ninip to eat it.
He told me I must eat something.
Your son.
Ninip’s silence was answer enough.
Ninip, taking the fig in shaking hands, forcing it into his mouth, knowing the oil didn’t smell like olives, eating it anyway. The beautiful woman kisses his forehead. His son sits with him, and Ninip stares at him, taking in the contours of his face, loving him with a fierce heat.
But the younger man’s eyes are set on the sun, rising past the columns now, spreading its glory across the kingdom below.
He was impatient. Ninip’s voice was flat. I lingered too long.
And you wanted revenge?
Ninip shook his head. I lingered, weak. I would have done the same. I wanted to see him. The En told me he’d had a vision, that my boy would be a poor ruler. I had him poisoned as recompense. All priests are liars. But I wanted to be certain. All men have their time to die, and this was mine, but how I wanted to see my boy rule.
That writing was nothing Schweitzer had ever seen before, certainly not Egyptian hieroglyphics. Probably older. Ninip’s civilization was likely lost to history. It was possible there was a way to find the answer, but Schweitzer wouldn’t even know where to begin.
The priests lied. They told me that the peasants would eat dust and scraps, but there would be offerings from my family, burned at the altar each day. I would still live as a king, as a god. But there was only . . . you have seen.
I’m sorry.
Ninip stopped at that. Schweitzer felt the presence bunch, retreat. Schweitzer began to ask him what was wrong, stopped himself. Whatever the customs Ninip had known in his past life, Schweitzer doubted sympathy was high on the list.
I had a son, too, Schweitzer offered.
I know. But it is your wife you remember, her perfume you still smell.
Yeah. Sarah and I had years to bond, Patrick was still new. We were still learning one another. He was just becoming a person when . . .
The jinn’s voice was softer. You will have vengeance. It will be glorious.
Thanks. And when we’re done, we’ll go check out your home. We’ll ask Jawid to look it up. Archaeology’s come a long way. Maybe we can find something. As soon as Schweitzer said it, he knew it was a mistake. Ninip reached out, tapped Schweitzer’s understanding of archaeology, surveyed the images of digs, sarcophagi behind Plexiglas, old men in pith helmets dusting at lengths of desiccated bone.
Ninip growled. There is nothing. Ashes. Do you see what comes of clinging to the past? Why moon over old loves? Children? There is only the path ahead, and we gain neither gold nor honor by looking elsewhere.
The thought made Schweitzer sad in his dead bones. He felt the weight of their shared body suddenly, dead muscles moving, glycerol-inflated veins sliding under gray skin. All of it driven by the magic of the jinn.
We’ll find who killed them, who killed me. We’ll make them pay. We’ll find out what happened to your son, to your kingdom.
And then? Ninip asked.
There’d always been a plan before. Make the next rank, see Patrick into adulthood, grow Sarah’s career. Keep the country safe. Do his twenty, then see what retirement held for him.
We see to our pasts, Schweitzer said. We se
ttle scores and close loops.
Ninip didn’t answer, and in the dark space they shared, Schweitzer could feel the jinn shaking its head.
CHAPTER XI
THE NEW NUKE
After two hours, they came to fix his arm.
Ninip was sullen, annoyed that he’d shared himself with Schweitzer, and the jinn skulked in the darkness, ignoring him. Schweitzer passed the time alternately trying to reach out for the smell of Sarah’s perfume, or to touch Jawid. The connection between Ninip and himself was clearly bidirectional, and he knew there was a way to reach out to the Sorcerer, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.
Then the door to their cell slid open with a hiss and puff of gas, admitting four men. Two were their old friends, Mr. Flamethrower and Mr. Axe. The other two wore medical scrubs and surgical masks and pushed a wheeled steel table set with shining knives, clamps, probes, needles, and a generous coil of thread.
Ninip briefly contemplated attacking them, but Schweitzer resisted, and the jinn seemed content to let it go. The men in scrubs approached him carefully and began examining the damaged joint where Jackrabbit’s bone cleaver had nearly cut the arm away from their body. Schweitzer tried to look over as they worked, but the men were too close. He could feel the bone and muscles being cinched into place, staples being put in, thread sewing shorn fibers back together.
Schweitzer was amazed at how comforting it was just to have people close, to be touched. He waited for Ninip to chastise his weakness, but the jinn only sulked, lost in whatever passed for reflection with his kind.
“How look?” Schweitzer managed to say. He tried to contort the stretched face into a smile and found the structure wouldn’t allow it.
One of the medical technicians looked up at him, eyes widening behind the safety glasses, eyebrows disappearing up behind the hairnet. “It’s looking good, sir. We can fix it.”
“Thut,” Schweitzer said, frowned, tried again. Slowly this time, deliberately flexing lungs and larynx. “Thanks.”
The man smiled behind his blue face mask. “It’s our pleasure, really.”
Schweitzer badly wanted to talk with someone who wasn’t either Eldredge or Jawid, but the man had already bent back to his work, this time producing a blowtorch and what looked like a caulking gun filled with some kind of sealant. A plastic joint was set into place, and Schweitzer could feel them working away for another two hours, until they finally stepped back and nodded in satisfaction.
The man stepped around him now. Schweitzer felt him make an incision in the back of his neck. “What?”
“Just a little something so we’ll know where you are. We had it in your armor before, but Dr. Eldredge decided it would be safer here. Just sit tight, this’ll be over in just a sec.”
“Take time. No hurt,” Schweitzer said.
The man chuckled. “That’s right. I’m not used to patients who don’t feel pain.”
But he still did his work quickly, and a moment later, the back of Schweitzer’s neck was stitched shut, and the four men left.
At the door, the med tech turned back to him, shot a thumbs-up. Schweitzer waved.
Ninip tested the arm. It swung stiffly, but it swung. The fingers moved. The hand opened and closed. The wrist and elbow bent and turned.
Shortly after they left, Schweitzer felt something open within him, and Jawid’s voice sounded. What happened?
We did as you asked, Ninip answered.
Schweitzer felt Jawid stretch down the link between them, reaching for their memories of the op. Ninip pushed against him, but Schweitzer recalled as much as he could, passing it back up the link while Ninip snarled and cursed.
Schweitzer felt Jawid’s horror as the Sorcerer reviewed the images, his emotion slowly rising to a crescendo that Schweitzer knew meant he had seen the massacre at the end.
Dr. Eldredge will want a word, Jawid said, and closed the link.
A moment later, Eldredge appeared outside the thick, transparent pane, now fogging slightly from the temperature differential of the warmer hallway outside. He looked at Schweitzer for a long time before a squawk box conveyed his words into the refrigerated cell, giving the gentle voice a tinny, antiseptic quality punctuated by static.
“How are you doing, James?”
That is not our name, Ninip said.
Schweitzer ignored him, doing his air-pushing dance again. “Good.”
“I’m looking over the after action, talking with Jawid. I’ve got some concerns. It’s imperative that you work together with your partner, but I’ve already told you that some of our past subjects have found these unions to be overpowering. It’s your work in tandem that makes you powerful. It’s critical that you hang on.”
Schweitzer thought of the cold abyss, the storm of souls as Ninip pushed him out.
What will you do without me? Schweitzer asked, but the jinn was silent.
“Why?” Schweitzer managed.
Eldredge frowned, then laughed. “I have to admit, James, you’re the first one to ever care. In the history of this program, I never had an Operator ask me a question.”
“Not ans . . . er,” Schweitzer managed. That was a longer word, harder to form. He was getting better.
“No, it’s not an answer,” Eldredge said. “I’m sorry.”
Schweitzer stepped closer to the window, Eldredge backing away with each step, until the doctor’s back was against the corridor wall.
“Ans . . . er,” Schweitzer said, “or no work.”
Eldredge sighed. “It’s control, Jim. The jinn are . . . feral. You’re the brains of the operation. The discipline. When Operators go monolithic, they lose their . . .” He paused, frowned again.
“Use,” Schweitzer finished for him. He recalled Ninip’s rage, his lust. Animal cravings, driving him to kill as animals do.
Eldredge smiled ruefully, spread his hands. “The dog tags, do they help?”
Schweitzer moved their hand to the chain, froze as Ninip struggled to push it down. Eldredge watched with interest as Schweitzer struggled through, raising the hand by inches until it closed around the etched medallions.
“Yes,” Schweitzer said. “Help.”
Eldredge nodded. “That’s good.”
“Why, kill.” The next word seemed impossible, so Schweitzer broke it into two. “Jack . . . rab?”
Eldredge’s forehead creased. “For the same reason we’ve sent you on every direct-action op when you were alive. He needed to die.”
“He . . . magic.” Ninip was perking up now, paying attention.
“Yes, James. He was a Sorcerer, not unlike our Jawid. Only, his magic is different.”
The warping body, the cleaver hand. “How?”
“We’re still figuring that out,” Eldredge said. “For now, we call it Physiomancy. Jackrabbit had the ability to manipulate living flesh. So, you can see why you were particularly effective against him.” The current, focusing on him. Jackrabbit frowning as the expected effect didn’t materialize.
“Why, kill.” Schweitzer recalled Jackrabbit’s words. And now they send the dead after me. You do realize my answer isn’t changing. It won’t change no matter how many innocent people you kill. He tried to put steel into his clumsy croaking. “Why?”
“Because we asked him to come in. We offered to help him control it, to help him understand it. He refused.”
Schweitzer began to work his throat again, but Eldredge held up a hand. “Before you go indignant on me, let me ask you something. Let’s say that a very ethical and intelligent friend, someone you trust implicitly, were to come into possession of a particularly virulent and contagious strain of Ebola, or a small megaton nuclear warhead. Do you think it’s okay to just let him keep it? Without supervision? Without the government’s getting involved?”
Eldredge paused to let Schweitzer answer, then went on at his silence
. “Jackrabbit could enter a room and kill everyone in it in less than thirty seconds. He could tear off your head with a thought, make your heart jump out of your chest by snapping his fingers. He’d drawn a group of followers who thought he was the messiah. Those were the men you killed back there. Religious fanatics who called Jackrabbit Jesus because he had the power to heal. But what he didn’t show them is that he also had the power to kill. That’s why we had to stop him. Let me show you something.”
Eldredge stepped into the command center across the corridor, shooed a soldier away from a computer terminal, and began tapping away at it. A moment later, pictures began to appear on the one big screen Schweitzer could make out through the glass. They were soldiers, direct-action operators like he’d been in life, judging by their gear.
They were mutilated. It was worse than what Ninip had made him do. One of the men had simply been turned inside out, the blue-gray of his organs still in perfect place, his face a bowl of gore. Another had been stabbed to death by his own skeleton, the bones projecting through his ragged skin, making him into a literal pincushion.
“There are more like Jackrabbit,” Eldredge said, calling up more images. “More every damn day.”
The screens scrolled by: an older woman, head thrown back under a sky crowded with dark clouds, lightning coiling around an outstretched arm. A young man in a smart suit, standing in a parking lot covered with twinkling frost extending from his fingertips. A little girl sitting Indian-style in a cemetery, a hint of mischief in her eye, surrounded by hundreds of the newly risen dead.
Eldredge walked slowly back to the glass, folded his arms again. “That’s what you stopped, James. You wouldn’t let a private citizen have possession of a nuke. Jackrabbit was a nuke. That’s what magic is. That’s why we have to keep it under control.”
Ninip reached for Schweitzer’s memories, but Schweitzer beat him to the punch, pushing him away and funneling the images to him. Einstein and Oppenheimer, Fat Man and Little Boy, START and SALT. Mushroom clouds. Radiation sickness. Doomsday.