Gemini Cell: A Shadow Ops Novel (Shadow Ops series Book 4) (9 page)

Schweitzer had taken a similar oath when he’d pinned on his trident. It was who he was in life. It was who he was in death as well.

He said nothing, but he knew that Eldredge had already won.

Eldredge mistook his silence for defiance and smiled, folding his arms across his chest. “All right. What do you want?”

“Sarah. Patrick . . .”

“They’re gone, Jim. Jawid’s abilities don’t allow him to . . .”

Schweitzer was already shaking their shared head. “Who kill?”

Eldredge froze. “We don’t know. We’re still trying to find out. I can promise you that when we . . .”

“I find,” Schweitzer said, batting aside Ninip’s scorn. “Me.”

“Jim, you’re an Operator, not an analyst. You don’t know how to find them.”

“You find. Send me.”

Eldredge nodded thoughtfully, stroking his moustache. “I’ll take it up with the director.”

He lies,
Ninip said.

I know, but it’s a start.

Schweitzer made them nod, allowed Ninip’s eagerness to move their shared body forward to the workbench. The armorer stepped back, stopping only when Eldredge put a hand on his shoulder. “Show our newest Operator what we have for him.”

The armorer forced himself to take a step forward. Schweitzer could feel the fear in him, taste it in his breath, smell it emanating from his pores. He felt himself instinctively leaning toward it, muscles responding to the scent, coiling to spring.

The armorer was a big man, wearing the navy uniform that Schweitzer had known and loved all his career. But Ninip’s senses addled his own, and he saw only a weaker being, ripe for the kill. Ninip exulted, taking control of their shared limbs, balling the hands into fists, raising them.

Eldredge’s own fear began to mist the air, his eyes widening. Schweitzer followed his gaze to their hands.

Their gray fingers had lengthened, the bone sliding out, piercing the fingertip, tapering into four-inch claws, the ends jagged and yellow, sharp enough to pierce flesh, tear it.

Ninip threw his presence forward, pulsing the image of the claws rising, falling, rising again, trailing gore. Before Schweitzer could stop it, the jinn had taken control of their arm, raising it over the armorer’s head. The man leapt backward, Eldredge with him, shouting.

Schweitzer struggled to pull the arm down.
Stop! What the hell are you doing?

But he already knew. The predator joy was coursing through him, shouting in his dead nerves, trilling in bones. It felt right. It felt . . . alive. All he had to do was close his eyes and let it take control.

The arm froze, trembled. He battered himself against Ninip, felt the jinn fighting to strike the men.

Idiot! Coward! Let me . . .

His vision went white again, overlayed with images of throats laid open, hearts plucked still beating from human breasts. Schweitzer pulled with all he had. Their body shook with the effort. He was barely conscious of a low groaning escaping their shared mouth, could just make out Eldredge’s widening eyes, his fear stink abating.

Slowly, the arm began to lower.

Ninip raged. No words now, just an incoherent animal scream.

Schweitzer’s vision cleared. He saw guards flooding the room, spreading out along the walls, sighting their weapons at him. Flamethrowers, large-bore shotguns. Two carried axes.

Eldredge jerked his chin at the guards. “We can’t kill you, Jim, but we can render your body . . . inoperable. The dead don’t die, but they also don’t heal.”

Ninip’s madness sobered somewhat at the words. His fight for control over their body eased.

“Okay,” Schweitzer said, pinning his arms to his side. “I okay.”

He met Eldredge’s eyes. Whatever he was now, he wasn’t an animal. He wasn’t a murderer. “I okay,” he repeated.

Eldredge waved the guards back, awe etched on his face. “I believe you, Jim.”

Eldredge put his hand on the armorer’s back, tried to move him forward again. The man wouldn’t budge. Eldredge finally gave up and stepped up to the workbench himself, extending a hand. “I believe you.”

Ninip flashed an image of Eldredge’s wrist, grasped, pulling the old man over the workbench, the claws coming down into the back of his neck. It thrilled him, made him shiver with anticipation, but Schweitzer fought it down. He reached out, took Eldredge’s hand. He clasped it quickly, released it, not trusting his ability to hold Ninip at bay.

And in a tiny square not covered by armament, caught his reflection in the stainless-steel surface of the workbench.

The claws were retracting, as were horns and spines, protrusions of yellowed bone sprouted across his body. Their jaw had lengthened, the dead tongue lolling from it, the muzzle of a corpse wolf bent on the hunt. Their teeth were daggers, razor stalactites overhanging their shrinking jaw.

Within moments, he was himself again, as much as a dead man could be. But in that moment, there had been nothing about him remotely human.

He pulled back the shared hand, staring.

“That is the jinn,” Eldredge said. “It is a form . . . useful in the field, in tactical contingencies. At other times, we find it counterproductive. I have never seen an Operator rein it in before. Once loosed . . .”

Once loosed, we rule,
Ninip said,
as we were meant to.

Schweitzer continued to stare at his hand, the slit tips of his fingers where the claws had been. “Why?”

“We don’t know,” Eldredge said. “All jinn were once human, that much Jawid is sure of. But the time they spend in the beyond changes them.”

Humanity is weak,
Ninip said.
Tearable meat and breakable bone. What we are after is greater, purer. And the longer we tarry in the void, the stronger we become. It purges us, distills us. Our form becomes perfect. Better suited for the fight, the hunt. Stop thinking of yourself as a man. Start thinking of yourself as half of a god of war.

The jinn surged, and Schweitzer felt as if he were being pushed from his own skin. He gritted his spiritual teeth, struggling anew to keep the demon in check.

Eldredge frowned, reached into his pocket, and lifted out a small length of chain, raised it in front of Schweitzer’s face.

Sarah and Patrick smiled at him, the beginnings of brown rust forming in the depths of the etched lines that made up their faces.

“I was told you carried this with you everywhere you went. I see no reason that should change.”

Ninip raged anew, shrieking.
Baubles from a life beyond us. It will hurt us. It will make us weak!

The jinn still fought for control of their body, but now it struggled to pull away, to move as far from the etched talisman of Schweitzer’s past life as it possibly could.

He was not letting the demon take him now. It would not rob him of this.

He shouted silently, pushing back with all he had, shooting the arm forward to snatch the dog tag from Eldredge’s hand, lift it over their head, settle it around their neck.

As soon as the metal touched skin, the demon quieted, the voice receding to a low muttering.

Schweitzer swore he smelled the faintest whiff of rosewater.

The guards along the walls lowered their weapons for a second time, visibly relaxing as Eldredge waved a placating hand. “We thought that . . . a focus from an Operator’s life would help them maintain control. It never worked.”

“It works,” Schweitzer said, grappling with grief, feeling the phantom touch of Sarah’s hair. Ninip went silent under the onslaught of memory: cool sheets against his skin. Patrick laughing as Schweitzer tossed him in the air, a tattooed arm hooked through his. Paintings. Haunting watercolor marshscapes of the land rolling around their home, populated with sunbursts and puffs of flame that hinted at serene intelligence, knowing faces hiding in the flickering luminescence if you just looked hard enough.

“It works.”

ROSE TRAIL

Sarah Schweitzer floated above a field of rose petals. Her body was folded, a budding flower yet to bloom, legs intertwined, heels nestled against her crotch. Her hands were loosely curled, thumb and forefingers touching, resting on her knees.

It was quiet here, the gentle dark shutting out grief and loss. Somewhere in the distance, water trickled. She relaxed into the cotton comfort of half sleep. A vague sense of urgency tickled her, a feeling of loss, the knowledge that something terrible had happened to her. But that was outside this sphere of calm, this blanketing dark, broken only by flickering starlight and the low moan of the wind.

She pushed away from the horror, burrowed deeper into the peace she had found. But the wind would not let her be. It swept across the plain, sweeping the loose petals into the air, spinning them into a broad path, arcing out from where she floated, moving off into darkness.

The wind carried the petals’ scent to her, faint and sweet. It reminded her of something. Something wonderful she had known, a piece of who she was. But it brought the horror with it, carried her a step closer to the knowledge of what lay beyond the protective walls of the dark.

She shook her head, her center lost. She tried to push the petals away. She shut her eyes tight. She pinched her nostrils shut against the smell.

The wind picked up, behind her now, drilling between her shoulder blades, pushing her a step forward.

When she opened her eyes, the path of rose petals was still there. She stood on it, her nose filled with the rose scent, the horror of what had happened drawing nearer. She pulled away, trying to retreat back into the dark, but the wind would not be denied. It howled across the field, pushing her forward again, knocking her a couple of steps farther down the path.

“Fine,” she said. “Give it a rest.”

She walked, the path rising higher and higher, the petals giving slightly, a tight weave that kept her steady, springing gently with each step. The darkness, the stars, the wind, the water, the field all vanished, and she walked through a nothing filled only with the path and her body, the only sound the steady pulse of her beating heart.

There was no light at the end of the path. The void merely stopped, the nothing becoming a tiny patch of something, a dot in the distance, growing larger.

The horror swirled around it, convalesced into a knot of pain and memory. She tried to pull away, but the wind was there, waiting to drive her on. It howled urgently, icy against her neck.

She stepped forward, the something growing larger still. A child was crying in the distance, calling for his mommy. She knew that child, loved him. The horror coiled around his cries, the memory she struggled not to face.

And then she was close, and the something resolved into a man. A lean line of jaw. Soft gray eyes. A dimpled chin. Strong shoulders.

The man grew, blotted out her vision, the child’s cries becoming screams.

The petal path connected them, a wavering umbilicus, the steep scent of the roses nearly overwhelming her.

She knew the smell. She’d daubed it behind her ears, on her wrists. A daily ritual to welcome the sun.

She knew the man. His name was Jim.

She loved him.

—

Sarah woke crying, the dream reverberating in her mind, making her bones ache.

Jim. She lay back on the pillow, shut her eyes, willed herself back into the dream. To see his face. She hadn’t had a chance to say anything to him.

Patrick’s screaming. She bolted upright. Leapt out of bed. She couldn’t go back there. Couldn’t hear that sound again.

Patrick.

She raced down the hallway of their Navy Lodge suite, threw open the door to his room.

Patrick lay on the little bed Steve had bought for him, a tiny thing in the likeness of a dark blue car, headlight eyes shining, grill of a mouth grinning welcome.

His body was covered in gauze bandages, the burn gel beneath staining them yellow. He’d managed not to upset them in his sleep, and that was good. His arm was lashed along his side, looking tiny despite the huge cast enclosing it, cartoon animals cavorting across its pink-and-orange surface.

Sarah restrained the urge to kneel beside him, to hear his breathing, to smell his hair. She couldn’t risk disturbing his sleep. Not when it was so rare these days. She stared at him a moment longer, her little boy who must now grow up without a father, who must learn too soon what horrors the world had in store for him. She bit back tears at the thought, sadness over Patrick’s losses, the scars he would bear into adulthood, rage against the nameless, faceless enemy that had done this to them, against the government for asking her to be silent, for denying her the voice she needed to grieve.

A gentle knock on the door, almost a brushing of fingers, scarcely heard. Sarah went rigid, adrenaline dumping into her system. She winced as her tightening abdominals aggravated the gunshot wound, healing cleanly but slowly.

Don’t be an idiot,
she said to herself.
Do you think that if someone were coming to hurt you, they’d bother to knock?

She shook her head, biting back tears again, absorbing the realization that she would always be like this, jumping at shadows, looking for the enemy hidden behind every corner. Like Jim.
Oh God. Sweetheart, how did you do it?

She shook herself, took a deep breath and went to the door, looking through the peephole, fighting back the premonition that she would see men on the other side, prepping assault weapons while they tightened the straps on their body armor.

Instead, it was Steve Chang, looking winded and sad, a brown paper shopping bag dangling from one hand. She tried to square the image of this man, lost and bewildered, with the grinning warrior who’d spent half his weekends drinking beer with Jim on the apartment stoop or walking alongside the Chickahominy, Patrick squealing from his shoulders. Seeing his strength fade in the wake of this tragedy terrified her, galvanized her to be strong. He wasn’t an enemy, and it was good to not be alone. That was something.

She opened the door, relief flooding her, swept him into a hug. “You idiot, you scared the shit out of me. Why didn’t you ring the bell?”

“Little guy’s sleeping, right? Didn’t want to wake him.” Of course he didn’t. Steve might have been hurt badly by Jim’s death, but it didn’t change who he was at his core, summed up by the tattoo along his rib cage, alongside his blood type and serial numbers, block letters reading SO OTHERS MIGHT LIVE.

“How’s he doing?” Steve asked, setting the bag on the counter, the contents making a clinking sound.

Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know, Steve. How can I know? He’s breathing. He eats. He poops. He knows who I am. I’m grateful for that much.”

Steve frowned. “He screaming? Crying? Nightmares?”

She shook her head. “That’s what scares me. He’s . . . not catatonic. He talks, he asks for things . . . food, the potty, but he doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t ask what happened. He doesn’t ask about his bandages. He hasn’t . . . he hasn’t asked where his father is.” She swallowed hard, bit back tears. She was so damned sick of crying.

Steve pulled her into him, stroked her hair as she cried against his chest, feeling the valve of his air tube tickle her nose. Being so close to the wound should have put her off, but it only made her feel closer to him, a reminder of their shared experience.

“Shh,” he said. “It’s okay. It’s normal. You can’t expect him to be . . . like he was after this. It’s going to take time.”

She leaned into him, so grateful for the warmth, the solidity of his body. Weak and broken-looking as he was, it still held the fear at bay. Steve knew her grief, truly shared it, the only man who was remotely as close to Jim as she had been. “I’m going to take him to see a child psychologist, but the doctor said he needed to heal more first.”

Steve nodded. “That sounds about right.”

She cuffed at her tears with the back of her hand. “What’s in the bag?”

“Mixed greens in a bag, couple of chicken breasts. Bottle of cheap wine. I figured you wouldn’t be up to cooking.”

“Oh, Steve. Jesus. You didn’t have to do that. I’m not an invalid.”

Now it was his turn to bite back tears. “I didn’t do it for you. I just . . . I don’t want to be alone.”

“Of course,” she said. “Let me just grab a recipe off the Internet. You know what a lousy cook I am.”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “Enough not to trust you with the recipe selection. Get your laptop and leave the rest to me.”

He watched her while she went to the couch to retrieve her computer. “You been sleeping?”

“Too much,” she said. “All I want to do is sleep. I know that’s the first sign of depression, so I’m fighting it. Only allowing myself eight hours a night, no matter how I feel.”

“Not sure that’s the best plan. What do you do when you’re up?”

“Stare at blank canvas. Stare at Patrick. A lot of staring. Besides, it’s the dreams.” She shuddered. “They’re awful.”

“Nightmares? That’s normal.”

“Not really nightmares. Just . . . vivid dreams. They’re more sad than scary.”

“About Jim.”

“Of course. I never talk to him, I never even really see him . . . I just . . . I keep feeling . . .”

“What?” Steve asked, folding his arms across his chest, taking care to keep them clear of his wound.

“I dream of roads, Steve. I dream of paths that always lead to him. I know it’s crazy, but I can’t shake the feeling that he’s alive.”