Gemini Cell: A Shadow Ops Novel (Shadow Ops series Book 4) (14 page)

“Fuck you if you think this isn’t my job. You’re not the only one who lost your family, Sarah. Jim was a brother to me, and the teams were brothers to both of us. I lost both when he died. This medical leave is purgatory. I can’t go back when it’s over. You know that. You’re all I have, Sarah. You and Patrick are all that I have.”

She stared, saw his expression shift, knew what he was about to do.
Oh God, Steve. Don’t. Please don’t.

“I love you,” he said. “I’ve always loved you, Sarah. I promised Jim a hundred times that I’d take care of you and Patrick if anything happened to him, and I mean to keep that promise. You were always the woman I thought I could never have, that I’d have to go on loving you from a distance for the rest of my life. Maybe this is the one good thing that comes out of this whole disaster.”

A hundred retorts rose to her mind, that this was grief talking, that he didn’t know her well enough to love her, that the fact he thought she needed taking care of was proof that he didn’t know her at all. But she stood frozen to the spot, unable to work her mouth, dumbly realizing that this was the first time since Jim had died that someone had told her they loved her.

She felt the first tears fall, cursed herself, unable to stop them.

“Oh, Sarah,” he said. “Oh, baby.” He went to her, pulled her into his arms.

Don’t call me “baby.” Only Jim called me that.
But she said nothing. Because as her hands came up to push him away, they found the taut solidity of his arms.

The spike of arousal hit her out of nowhere. Whoever Steve was, he was a man, and she had forgotten that she wanted a man, thought that she’d never want one again. She realized now that she had been wrong, that the hunger had crouched hidden, waiting to spring the moment the right touch triggered it. And was it wrong? Jim was dead. There was no manual that spelled out how long a widow had to wait before finding someone else. There was no rule that said it couldn’t be his friend. There might be some who’d turn up their nose at the prospect, but fuck them; Sarah Schweitzer had always lived life on her own terms.

She slid her hands across his broad back, the thin fabric of his shirt gliding over sturdy muscles, heat bleeding into her hands. No, it still felt wrong. She wasn’t sure she was ready.

She pushed against the lust, fought it down, but it was tangled now, wrapped up in the grief and rage and despair. And love. Yes, love. She loved Steve, she knew that. It was a different love than what she and Jim had shared, and she realized that she’d been trying to figure out what that love was, what it meant. She hadn’t had time, she hadn’t had energy. This was a different love. It wasn’t the kind of love that should make her feel a hot pulse between her legs, that should make her open her mouth, let the tip of her tongue graze his neck, drinking in his smell.

But it was love. And in the hell of the last month, it was what she needed more than anything.

And so she surrendered to it, giving herself over to the simple pulsing word in her mind—
good good good
—grasping at the sensations of pleasure that she’d thought lost to her forever, letting him push her down on the couch, taking his tongue into her mouth. Her body fell into familiar rhythms, stripping off his shirt, running her hands over the hardness of him, softer now with his time convalescing, but still a SEAL’s body in its roots.

She let her body work, it knew how to make love. She retreated into the tangled knot of emotion boiling within her, crawled into the heart of the love and lay inside it, luxuriating as the wanting drove her limbs, stripping off her pants, so hurried that it barely could be bothered to pull her panties aside before guiding him into her.

And then her body claimed what was left of her senses and all there was were stars and warmth and someone moaning from a long, long way away.

COLD STORAGE

They put him back in cold storage.

Schweitzer didn’t remember much about the extraction. Sated, Ninip retreated into the darkness of their shared inner world, resting in his fashion, sluggish from the blood that soaked their armor to the knees, covered the walls like the effort of an art student whose ambition exceeded his abilities.

Death was Schweitzer’s job, and he’d seen plenty of it. His second op after joining his team had been taking down a safe house used by narcoterrorists in a godforsaken stretch of South American jungle. It had been hot like a bad dream of hell, and as the fresh meat on the team, Schweitzer had the lucky job of breaching the door. His finger trembled along his carbine’s receiver, ready to show his brothers that breaching and tac-pro wasn’t the only thing he was good at.

So, of course the place was empty.

Of the living.

The bad guys had been questioning some members of the gang who they suspected of informing on them. Their remains were strung along the ceiling like Christmas lights, razor wire looped around their throats. They’d been splayed open with machetes, slit down the middle and stuffed with what looked like rotting fruit. Insects were nesting inside them, the heat swelling what was left of the gray flesh to balloon-sized, malignant cauliflower.

It was Schweitzer’s first test, and he’d passed, but just barely.

“Six-pack of Coronas says the FNG blows chunks.” Martin had laughed. He’d bet the Fucking New Guy would lose it, and Schweitzer had been proud when Martin had been forced to pay up later. But the image of those corpses stayed with him, as much a reminder that he was a SEAL as the pin on his uniform. Because if he could look at that and find a way to go on, then he was hard enough for anything.

But Schweitzer had looked at the red slurry Ninip had made of the people in that warehouse and realized he was wrong.

The fear he had always been able to look in the eye was staring him down. It had become huge beyond imagining, a freezing blackness filled with the tangle of endless limbs, a chaos of screaming voices, bullying anything but raw terror into submission. Sarah and Patrick were somewhere in there, condemned to that horror. He never believed he would hesitate to go after them, be cowed by the thought of that spinning endlessness, of not only losing them but the last shreds of himself. But he was frightened, truly and deeply.

He felt Ninip’s presence stretching itself luxuriously, and Schweitzer realized the root of his horror. Standing in that corrugated metal shed, watching the heat of the jungle do its work on those bloated flesh-flowers, Schweitzer realized what he was. It was in the killing that the SEAL distinguished himself from the enemy. Schweitzer killed with a professional’s precision, a cold calculation made holy by its service to his country’s cause. It was what made him an artist instead of a thug.

He’d fought against Ninip’s insensate rage, but a part of him had reveled in it, drunk on the power of an apex predator, a video game played on the easiest setting, his enemies powerless grist for the mill of his might. He hadn’t fought hard enough. He hadn’t dug deep enough. He’d stood knee-deep in the gore the jinn had created and realized that maybe he wasn’t so different from the men who’d strung those people up. Worse than a thug.

A monster.

Ninip’s voice was smug,
I told you I would teach you valor.

That wasn’t valor. That was slaughter.

You think because you are . . . what do you call it, a “professional,” that you are not a killer? We are no different.

We are. I’m interested in justice. You’re interested in your appetite.

Justice? Would you have arrested that man, like one of your police? Do you think justice would have held him? He would have been free in moments.

We’d be stronger if we did it by the numbers. That’s what my training is for. You can only go so far fighting like a wild animal. True warriors are professionals.

Footmen,
Ninip scoffed.

Schweitzer didn’t answer. Eldredge stood outside the reinforced glass, arms folded, chin in one hand. Jawid was saying something to him, shaking his head.

Schweitzer thought of Sarah and Patrick again, lost in that maelstrom. His hand went instinctively to the dog tags, pulled them out from behind his blood-spattered armor. Ninip didn’t even bother trying to control their shared arm, only watched smugly as Schweitzer traced the lines of his family’s faces with a gray fingernail. The rust seemed thicker, their likenesses fading into the pitted metal. It had only been a day or two, was it possible for metal to oxidize that fast? Was there something in the touch of the armor or his dead flesh that destroyed it? He felt a spike of grief. This was the last he had of them. Would he forget their faces? He reached out for the smell of Sarah’s perfume, the phantom limb of their connection that he’d sworn he sensed before. Nothing.

Ninip had lived in that maelstrom, had spent countless years in that spinning hell.

What was it like?
Schweitzer asked.

Ninip stirred, shrugged.
I told you. It was blind panic. A storm unending.

No, I meant what’d you do all day? You just . . . floated around?

Ninip sighed contentedly, ignored him. He felt the presence turn a shoulder.

If Ninip could read his memories, then maybe the process worked in reverse. Schweitzer tried to center himself, imagined himself in a lotus position, legs folded, hands on his knees. He visualized sending his mind out to Ninip’s. Nothing happened. It was ridiculous to even try. Ninip was a being of magic. What could Schweitzer do?

But he felt Ninip stir.
What are you doing?

Look, I have no idea how long we’re going to be stuck here before they run us again. Talk to me. I’ll go crazy just . . . sitting.

That is what it was like. That is what I did.

What?

Went crazy.
Schweitzer felt the jinn reach out to him, and his vision went white, a blank canvas that the jinn began to decorate with images from his life. It was the storm of souls as Ninip had seen it when he was imprisoned there, the screaming was louder, the clamor of voices running together into a hum. The crush of bodies closer, an ocean of faces rushing past, all genders, races, and ages, all wearing the same openmouthed expression of horror.

You catch glimpses of their thoughts,
Ninip said.
You pass through them, you share them, but only for an instant.

Schweitzer could see it now, the moment upon moment of recognition, of shared experience, each as quick as a camera’s shutter click, before whirling to the next. For years, for millennia.

Ninip. Churning, spinning, snatching at the brief shreds of contact. On. Off. On. Off, until his own voice joined the chorus, and the screaming was all, seeping into his soul and rooting there. The scream becoming the animal howl that Schweitzer heard him utter in the warehouse corridor.

And then, blue flashes in the mass, lines reaching out, strings of words, voices not screaming. The magic. Sorcerers like Jawid reaching into the storm to draw the jinn out. All of the souls surging toward the shred of humanity, the splinter of the life they’d known. They crawled over one another, clawing aimlessly as the gale churned them over and over and away. Ninip, snarling, pushing with everything he had, reaching out to clasp the hand that was extended along that blue path, to talk back. To let them know he heard them.

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.