Quarantine (The Shadow Wars Book 7.5) (11 page)

* * * * *

His team was not quite what he expected.

Banks, the miserable comms tech from his Lindholm mission, was there, still looking miserable and very put-upon.

Poet was there, too. Allan was surprised to see the Spec Ops soldier again.

Duncan accompanied them, a goofy grin still plastered on his face.

Greg, of all people, was there. Allan was curious about him. He could understand the others, but why Greg?

Then, the final member of the squad...

“Wilson,” he said softly. “Wilson, I...”

“I know what you're going to say, Allan, and I forgive you,” Wilson replied.

Robert Wilson had been the medic on his original team who had been brutally murdered just before the events that had befallen him on Lindholm. Wilson had been one of his closest friends, someone who he had connected to more than all the others he'd come in contact with over the past decade or so of his life.

“But that's not true,” Allan said. “I should have-”

Wilson raised his hand. “We both know that's bullshit, Allan. There was nothing you could have done. We did that by the book, we just caught some bad luck and you caught a whole heap of survivor's guilt. Come on, Allan, do you think I'd want you to be like this? Do you think you deserve to suffer because of the sacrifices you had to make?”

“Of course I do!” Allan cried. “I let my whole team die, I killed millions of people!”

Wilson shook his head. “To save countless billions,” he replied softly. “You made the hardest choice that possibly anyone has ever had to make. And you made the right choice, even knowing how miserable it would make you. You made the right choice, Allan. It's important you know that. What you're doing now, atonement, redemption...it's not a bad idea. But...there's nothing saying that you can't be happy while you do it.”

Allan opened his mouth, to respond, to argue, but Carpenter cleared his throat.

“Gentlemen, please, we're very short on time. Bring Gray up to speed so he can lead this charge,” he said.

“I'm in no shape to lead this mission,” Allan said.

“I'm afraid that doesn't matter,” Carpenter replied.

“What? Why?”

“You're the only one who
can
lead this mission. It's your head. You're basically talking to yourself here. You're the only real thing here, so you have to lead this mission. I'll leave you to it, I've got to see about damage control here.”

With that, he turned and left.

Allan sighed and looked at the others. They were all standing around a holographic display table, staring at him intently. He looked at them each in turn. They must all be here for a reason. All but one of them was dead.

Were dead people really the best to deal with this?

“Let's clear the air,” he said. “Banks, Poet, Duncan, I'm sorry you're dead. I did everything I could to keep you alive.”

“You know you're just talking to yourself, right?” Greg asked. “None of us are really here.”

“Thanks, Greg. Why are you even here?”

“Isn't it obvious? I'm your best friend.”

“What?!
You're
my best friend?” Allan replied, honestly baffled.

“Yes. You respect me and you think I might be the best at connecting with you because of my lost memories. The others, Trent, Drake and Enzo, are all so self-assured and confident in themselves. But not me, or you, and that's what connects us.”

“That...actually kind of makes sense,” Allan murmured.

“So, the next chance you get, hang out with me. Oh, and get over yourself and actually ask Callie out on a date.”

“Now, what a minute-” Allan snapped.

“Okay, look, we forgive you for killing us, can we get to work?” Poet asked.

“I don't forgive you,” Banks muttered unhappily.

“Whatever. Gray, look, here. Your insanity escaped and started making its way through your memories. This,” he said, pointing to a complex holographic display, “is a topography of your memory. The insanity is moving backwards through time. Currently, it's making its way through the
Stygian
. It has a head-start on us, so we're going to bypass the
Stygian
entirely and try to cut it off at Lindholm,” Poet explained.

“If we can do that, why doesn't it just head for Lindholm?” Allan asked.

“Although technically your insanity has been around here longer than any of us, we know a few shortcuts because...well, we're not insane,” Duncan replied.

“Wait, longer than
any
of you?” Allan asked. “What do you mean?”

“Unfortunately, we have almost no relevant data on the true nature of your insanity. We were just trying to keep the damned thing locked up,” Poet explained. “But, as far as intel reports, its quite old, years, way before Lindholm. We believe it originated on Frontier.”

“What...that doesn't make any sense,” Allan murmured.

“It probably does. Like I said, we have basically no intel on it. Which is just your brain's way of telling you that you forgot or, more than likely, repressed the memory.”

“Wait, I repressed something?”

“More than likely. Now, come on, we've got to get to the armory and gear up. We need to head this bastard off, kill it once and for all. It's the only way
any
of us are going to ever have anything resembling a happy life,” Poet said.

* * * * *

The armory was just as dusty and ruinous as the rest of the building. There were large cracks running down the metal walls and a few of the lights were out. Despite that, there was a veritable plethora of weaponry. Allan's 'team' spread out across the room, taking their pick, loading up with all manner of lethal gear.

Allan decided he should do the same. He grabbed a pair of pistols, putting on one each hip holster, then grabbed an SMG, let it hang across his back and finally grabbed a long-barrel, powerful assault rifle. He noticed everything took armor-piercing bullets. Allan finished loading himself down with ammunition for all of these, as well as a few fragmentation grenades, and looked at the others. They had all pretty much finished up.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

They all gave affirmative responses.

They left the armory.

Chapter 11

–
Lindholm Revisited
–

Their transport was what appeared to be a retrofitted jump ship.

“What the fuck is this?” Allan asked, stopping in the doorway that led to the hangar.

“Our ride,” Poet replied. “Now, hurry up. We don't have any time to spare.”

Allan sighed and kept moving. The jump ship was painted a flat black, seeming to adsorb the sparse light in the hangar. While the front of it had the normal, slightly boxy look of a jump ship, onto the back someone had affixed a huge engine. It almost looked like a cancerous growth.

“That's an FTL drive?” Allan asked as he and the others walked beneath it, towards the cargo ramp at the back that would admit them.

“Yeah. Come on,” Poet replied impatiently.

Allan sighed and walked up the ramp. He'd never seen something like that before. Though, now that he thought about it, it was a thing he'd thought about before, when he was younger, just grasping the concept of FTL flight.

But it would never work because-

“Don't,” Greg said suddenly.

“What?” Allan asked. They were settling down into their seats in the back of the jump ship. Poet had gone forward to the cockpit.

“Stop thinking about the engine, you'll screw it all up,” Greg said, sitting across from him, fixing him with an intense gaze.

“Seriously? You mean, if I think about how imposs-”

“Stop it!” Poet called from the cockpit. “We don't have time to rig up another flight!”

“Okay, okay...” Allan relented, sitting back, his head spinning.

Banks, Duncan and Wilson took seats around him, strapping in. They all wore some manner of armor, all geared up for war. The back ramp began to close as the engines cycled up. Allan closed his eyes for a moment.

“Okay, I need to...talk this out a little,” he said.

“Better if you don't,” Banks replied.

“I'm not really here, none of us are,” he said. “I'm...lying on an examination table on the
Atonement
, and Hawkins and two med-techs are looking over me.”

“Yes,” Greg replied. “That's right. And that's where we should leave it. Being inside your head requires a certain...suspension of disbelief, I guess you could call it. Everything in here follows rules, but those rules can be bent, to a certain degree. Everything must follow your own internal logic. That's why we have guns and armor, because that's how you deal with your problems. That's why this seems like a mission, with a briefing and objective and a team, because that's how you've handled problems for most of your life.”

“And this thing?” Allan asked, motioning to the modified jump ship. The engines were fully cycled up now, so powerful they were rattling the frame of the ship, but it was strangely muted within the confines of the actual structure. Beyond the windows, Allan could see the hangar give way to distant stars and space.

“We had to reach back quite a ways for this one. It was risky, because it made sense to you when you were a child. Children's logic makes sense to them...but obviously not as an adult. That's why this is all so unstable. So stop thinking about,” Duncan explained.

“This is crazy,” Allan muttered.

“Tell me about it,” Banks replied. “Like I don't have anything better to do than help you hunt down your own insanity.”

“You don't! You're dead,” Allan replied. “And even when you were alive all you'd do is skulk around the base and keep to yourself. Now, hold on-” Allan said.

“I don't like where this is going,” Banks murmured.

“If you're dead, how can-”

“-she be here? Because you believe, in your heart of hearts, that when people die, they live on in your memories. So shut up and be thankful,” Wilson replied.

Allan opened his mouth, then closed it. “Fine,” he said.

The ship continued to rattle and shake as it punched into FLT flight. Allan sat back, closed his eyes, tried to clear his mind. What could his insanity look like? His immediate reaction was to consider the thing in black armor. The killer. But apparently his insanity had begun before Lindholm, on Frontier. What did that mean?

He tried to remember traumatizing events on Frontier. He supposed there were enough of them. Having to gun down his first man. Investigating his first rape. Dead partners. Shitty relationships. That dark six months where he'd gotten fed up with the system and taken to murdering the murderers that got away with it. He supposed he was going to find out, one way or the other. For the moment, he sat back and tried to keep his head clear.

* * * * *

At some point, Allan drifted off. He dreamed of a sterilized, white examination room and several men examining him. A sudden jolt that rocked his entire body smashed him into consciousness, leaving him confused and terrified. His eyes snapped open and he found himself looking around a smoky, flickering cabin.

“What happened?!” he called, instantly remembering where he was and what he was doing.

“Someone's shooting at us!” Poet called back from the cockpit. “Direct hit to the engines! We're going down!”

“Where are we?!”

“Lindholm!”

Allan tried to get himself under control. He'd survived crashes before. Suddenly, he found himself wondering just exactly how this whole thing worked. If he did here, did he in real life? Wasn't what they said about dreams?

If so-

“Yes,” Banks said, next to him

“What?” he asked, startled, looking over at her as the ship continued to tremble, diving towards the ground that was rushing up to meet it.

“Yes, if you die here, you die back in the real world,” she said.

“Can you read my mind?” he asked.

“No...not really...it's complicated,” she replied.

“Fantastic.”

The ship slammed into the ground.

* * * * *

“Man, I hope he's not dead.”

“Of course he's isn't dead you fucknut. If
he
was dead,
we'd
be dead.”

“That seems kind of rude.”

“Shut up. He's coming around.”

Allan opened his eyes. The world slid into focus. He found himself staring up at familiar, dead gray skies. A light rain fell. Allan sighed.

“You know, when I blew this place up, I was pretty sure there was a one hundred percent chance I'd never have to come back,” he said.

Poet leaned over him.

“Hey, you made a joke,” he said.

Allan closed his eyes. “God, I did,” he moaned.

“No, that's good,” Poet said. Allan opened his eyes again. Rain beaded on his faceplate. Poet knelt, smiling over him. “Jokes are a way of dealing with your problems. You're making progress. Come on, we caught a lucky break.”

Allan groaned as he took Poet's and then Greg's hands and was hauled to his feet. He looked around. The wrecked, smoking remains of their modified jump ship lay a dozen meters away, having carved a deep furrow in the desert landscape. Behind him lay a handful of buildings next to a mountain. It looked familiar.

“How is this lucky?” Allan asked.

“We managed to get here ahead of the target, at least, we think so. He has to come this way,” Poet replied.

Allan decided that made enough sense and returned his attention to the colony.

“This place looks familiar,” he said.

“This is where you and Spec Ops faced down the killer, in the abandoned mines,” Greg replied.

“Ugh...that was a nightmare,” Allan muttered.

“Yeah, let's hope it goes better this time. Come on. He'll have to go through the mines. We should set up an ambush,” Wilson said.

“Hopefully history doesn't repeat itself,” Allan replied.

They set off, into the abandoned colony. It wasn't long before Allan found himself walking past derelict structures, staring in through broken windows. He remembered that these weathered husks that populated the area were the result of a mining operation gone bad. Although he'd never actually confirmed that, it had just made the most sense. A mining colony that had popped up practically overnight that had been abandoned just as quickly because it turned out there weren't as many resources as they'd hoped in the mountainside.

For a moment, the surreality of the situation hit Allan. He was inside his own head. He honestly wanted to know just how the hell the machine he was hooked up to worked, but also knew that it was very likely he'd never really understand it. Technology was just that way sometimes. You had to be an expert in a given field to really comprehend it. Allan stopped thinking, or tried to, and instead focused on his surroundings.

Up ahead, the mountain loomed in the grim twilight. The rain continued to fall all around, saturating the colony.

Allan looked over at the person who was walking nearest to him, who turned out to be Wilson. He drifted a little closer.

“I've missed you,” he said.

“I know. If I was still alive...well, really, if things hadn't gone so wrong that day, you'd likely be dead. You wouldn't have gone on the mission and stopped the killer,” Wilson replied.

“That's true, I suppose,” Allan said.

“It is, because we're not really having this conversation. You keep talking to us like we're really here, but you're just talking to yourself.”

“That's...also true.”

“Does it make you uncomfortable?”

“Yes.”

“I don't think it should. People talk to themselves all the time, some out loud, but basically everyone talks to themselves inside their own heads. They reason things out. This is really just a manifestation of that process.”

“I want to get out of here,” Allan said. “I'm scared.”

“Why are you scared?”

For a moment, Allan couldn't respond. All he could think of was the killer, the thing in black armor, destroying the planet.

“I guess...just being here. I don't know. My emotions kind of feel like they're out of whack again, like on the
Stygian
,” he replied finally.

“That's because they never really got back to the way they were supposed to be. And...I mean, come on Allan, you've been messed up for most of your life. Over the past year you've tried to suppress your emotions. You'd decided that you'd rather feel nothing. But you can't live that way, Allan. You just can't,” Wilson said.

“Why not?”

“Because then you drain the meaning out of your life, not to mention you make it a whole lot more difficult. Humans are emotional. Fact. You can't get around that. What drives us is our emotions. You've been suffering, you've been relishing in your suffering, because you feel guilty about Lindholm. But your suffering isn't for their benefit, it can't be. Everyone affected by your actions on Lindholm negatively are either dead or don't know you. Your punishing yourself to make yourself feel better,” Wilson explained.

“You realize that makes no sense, right?” Allan asked.

Wilson smiled and shook his head. “It does, it just sounds like bullshit at first. Think about an apology. On the surface, you apologize to make another person feel better. But at its core, you apologize to make yourself feel better. You apologize to relieve your guilt when the other person forgives you. Your suffering because you think you deserve to suffer, thus fulfilling your own inner need to punish yourself. This is your way of apologizing to the dead. But they're dead. They don't care. Their families and friends that survived don't know you. They don't blame you cause there's no one to blame as far as they're concerned. And again, you sacrificed millions to save countless billions. Not an easy call, but you made it.”

Allan frowned. “I don't know. It makes a certain kind of sense but...”

“Okay, let me appeal to your logic. You being miserable benefits no one. You at least
trying
to be happy benefits several people.”

“How?”

“It'll benefit you. It'll benefit your friends. Callie. Not to mention the people you might save on future missions because you won't be so miserable you no longer care whether you live or die,” Wilson replied.

Allan considered it. “That does make sense...but this isn't even a real conversation. I'm telling myself this to make myself feel better.”

“Yes. So? What difference does it make?”

“I don't know. My head hurts.”

They were approaching the entrance to the abandoned mines. Soon, they stood before it: a dark, ominous hole cut in the side of the mountain, famed by steel girders, unlit. Poet was in the lead. He flicked on a flashlight mounted on the end of his rifle. The others quickly did the same. One by one, they disappeared into the opening.

“What's the plan?” Allan asked.

“There's a small assembly area just beyond the rear exit, the Spec Ops mobile command. There's some ships there. He'll want to get there. He needs to take another ship to go back deeper in the memories,” Banks explained.