Emergence (50 page)

“I know it’s a lot to take in, Mister Stoner, and I know it’s been a long day. The thing is, time is always of the essence. With the severe losses we’ve suffered recently, we need more fighters, and we need more leaders. You fit both requirements. I am offering you a place with us. A position that will allow you to fight back. A place of both safety and danger. A chance to belong, as you seem to have been sadly lacking of late.”

I wondered just how much more he knew about the events that led me away from the military. The things that still haunted my dreams. I thought about it all for a minute, during which White sat looking at me, a knowing smile on his face. I wanted to erase that smile, but I was still too shaken up by what I’d seen and by what he’d just told me. An honest-to-god evil society, intent on bringing down the government and ruling over all the normal, lurked among us, and most people had absolutely no idea. It gave me hope for the human race. Maybe we weren’t such self-destructive assholes. Maybe a lot of the violence and horror in the world was actually committed by real monsters among us.
Maybe
.

“Fine,” I said. “What do you need me to do? Where do I sign?”

“Oh, there’s no signature required, Mister Stoner. Your life is your contract. You live with us, and you follow the rules, or you die. If you try to betray us, I’ll have you killed.” He looked serious.

“Whatever. Just tell me where I bunk down.”

An alarm sounded, like a ring tone from one of the new smartphones, but louder. The overhead lights flashed three times, then settled back to normal. White hit a button on his desk.

“No time for that, Mister Stoner. I’ll have someone take you to meet your new team and to grab some equipment. You’re about to get thrown into the deep end.” He pushed another button on that damnable remote, and the door opened. Dumb stuck his head through the door and grunted an inquiry.

“Mister Stoner is joining us,” said White. “Take him to meet the others and to suit up. We’ve got an alert.”

“Yes, sir.” Dumb looked at me. “Follow me.”

He led me out into the hall, where Dumber fell in line behind us as we walked toward the other end of the hall.

“Okay, I’m part of the crew now, so what’s your name, man?” I asked Dumb.

“Harley,” he said. He gestured behind me with a thumb as he walked. “That’s Enrico.”

“Leon,” I grunted in response.

“We know,” said Harley.

“Yeah. So, where to now?”

“Time to load up and kick some ass,” Harley said, grinning. He seemed much more personable now that he wasn’t being all passive-aggressive with a cattle prod.

“No rest for the wicked.”

“No, sir,” said Harley, “just a quick death, if we’re lucky.”

He stopped at a gunmetal-grey door and pressed his palm against what seemed to be some electronic scanner. A light ran the length of his hand, like a miniature photocopier. With a
ping,
the door opened.

I followed Harley, and Enrico followed me, into a whole new world of guns and evil. Ten minutes later, I was suited up in combat gear, carrying a brand new HK416, and loaded for bear. They gave me precisely three minutes on an indoor range to make sure the rifle shot well. I was happy enough; HK made good gear.

Now, I had time to think back on what I’d been told earlier.

#

“Normally we just shoot and loot, taking any trophies we can,” White had said to me in the room, “but that was before things changed. The criminals, the drug-runners, the thugs. Like any normal person, chimerics can be good or bad. We take out the bad ones. It wasn’t that hard, because they usually worked alone or in small numbers. Recently, they stopped working independently; we’re seeing something that comes close to teamwork for a lot of them. Now, we need to know what’s different.”

“Why not just shoot all the shitheads and let God sort `em out?” I asked.

“That works in the short term, but we’ve been hearing rumors about some sort of guiding force. Something, or someone, is bringing them into line and working toward a common cause. That’s dangerous. They never used to
do
common causes; they’d just kill, rob, and break the law for the sake of it. It was hard enough to stay on top of things when that’s all they did.” White sat up. “We need to get ahead of the game instead of playing catch-up, Mister Stoner. We have operatives working all over the globe, snooping and checking for
HumInt
.”

My raised brow forced him to clarify. “Human intelligence,” White said, “from boots on the ground. We can’t trust satellite imagery.”

“So, what are you?” I asked. “Some sort of deep-cover bullshit agency?”

“We have nothing to do with the government. That’s how it needs to stay. Those fools have no idea what is really going on. They think they can control the chimerics. In truth, it’s
us
that’ve managed to maintain control.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said. “Everything they touch goes to shit anyway. So, you’re nothing to do with the government?”

“No. We’re a
private
group.”

“You must be well-funded to keep the sort of shit you do this far under the radar,” I said. “Been around long?”

White paused, obviously for effect. “Our group was formed over a thousand years ago,” he said.

For the first time that day, I had nothing to say. No amount of smartass could possibly match that claim.

“For the record, we are called the Varangians. Our order was founded as an elite guard for the Byzantine emperors, but our forebears’ skills were soon better utilized hunting monsters. Turns out chimerics have shown up for a lot longer than anyone realizes. Where do you think the myths and legends come from? Vampires. Werewolves. They were all explanations for the very real monsters in our midst.”

“Wait…what? Are you trying to tell me you’re some super-secret group that’s been fighting chimerics for over a thousand years, and no-one knows about it?” I shook my head, unable to accept this, which was weird considering everything else I’d seen today. “Really? A left-over from the fucking Middle Ages?”

“By the end of Middle Ages, we’d already been established for approximately five hundred years.” White pressed another button on the ever-present remote control. A minute later there came a knock at the door, a small dark man entered once bidden, pushing a tray bearing empty cups into the room.

“Wanley, this is Mister Stoner,” said White.

Wanley gave a shy grin. “Would you like to be coffeed, sir?

“Coffee me up, Wanley, and the name’s Leon. My dad was Mister Stoner.” I smiled at the man’s obvious good nature. He was tiny, barely up to my chest, and built like a teenager. His two shoulders together were not much bigger than one of mine. I dismissed him as any threat while noting that he seemed a nice enough guy. And I liked him even more for making coffee.

“Do you believe me, Mister Stoner?” asked White.

“Well, what choice do I have? Either chimerics are going bad more than ever, or I’ve gone stone cold fucking crazy and I’m sitting sedated somewhere, imagining all this shit.”

Wanley handed me a coffee. It looked like a flat white. “How did you manage?” I asked, looking around for an espresso machine. “I didn’t hear any steamer?”

“Wanley is our resident thermo-geek,” said White.

I looked at him. No words. Just looked. I’d heard of thermos before. I knew they could control temperatures, locally, and sometimes in larger areas.

“What’s the problem, Mister Stoner? Is that too far a jump, even after all you’ve seen today? Even if the heat is just another gift?”

“Well, chimerics who grow claws are one thing,” I said. “That can be explained away by science and the DNA. Controlling temperatures outside of the body? That’s a whole different ballgame.”

“As Arthur C. Clarke stated, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’,” said White. “We’re still examining the concept, but the systems of magic we’ve found so far seem to be an ability among certain individuals to channel the natural forces of the universe, as distinguished in the new quantum science, in ways we are yet to understand. Just another chimeric gift, albeit a rare one.”

“English, please,” I said.

“Don’t yank my chain, Mister Stoner. My day has been as long and disruptive as yours,” said White, finally showing some emotion. “I lost good men and women today.”

I leaned back in the chair, finally able to put a human face on the previously-inscrutable Mr. White. There was a crack in the façade. He cared for his soldiers, that much was obvious. A good quality for a leader of men and women. “Yanking chains is how I roll. Don’t like it? Don’t listen.”

“What it comes down to, Mister Stoner, is that there’s a brave new world out there, and we need soldiers to fight the dangers that most people in the government don’t believe exist. Are you that brave?” White leaned back in his chair, waiting for my answer.

“Well, I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

“Everything is a choice, Mister Stoner. Some choices are easier than others, but that’s the nature of the beast, isn’t it?”

#

I came back to the present as three others walked into the room. Two guys and a woman. I noticed them all, but her in particular. She was plain to look at, but at the same time seemed more alive than most women I knew. I couldn’t judge, I guess, as I was pretty fucking plain myself. She had a slim and tight body, outlined well in black combat gear with distinctive electric-blue trims, but no curves, more like a guy than a girl. Short black hair and dark eyes. The guys with her were more notable, that’s for sure. One Asian, with the whole Bruce Lee-dangerous thing going on, and the other looked like an escapee from a Wild West show.

They all carried the same equipment I’d been issued: HK assault rifles and Compact Tac .45 pistols. Nice equipment. These guys knew what they were doing. I looked around as I checked load and safety on both my weapons, stowing the pistol in the holster on my thigh and holding the rifle like an extension of my arms. Warriors never fully sling a rifle, and never bothered with safeties.
As the Delta operators say, my finger is my safety.

I followed the others back to White’s office. We all filed in and sat down at the table. It didn’t look like White had moved since I’d been gone. He waited until we were all sitting down.

“Right. You lot know what you’re doing. In case you haven’t already been introduced, this is Stoner. He’s joining us. Make him feel at home, and try not to let him get killed.” White leaned back in his chair. “Torres, Jameson?” The two goons I knew perked up. “Any word on Martinez?”

Enrico –
must be Torres
, I thought – shook his head. “Nothing, sir.”

Harley –
Jameson
– shook his as well. “Nothing at all,” he said.

“Gullan, Katana, Bill?”

The three I hadn’t met yet shook their heads.

“I doubt we’ll be seeing him again, then.” White straightened and grabbed his remote. “This was the last thing he sent us.”

A large screen slid down the wall behind him. It showed a picture of an idyllic tropical scene, like a snap from a smartphone. A holiday resort on the shore of some lagoon, some top-end cabins scattered loosely around the water, surrounded by lush jungle plants and palm trees. Beautiful at first glance. I looked closer, and saw that it wasn’t as idyllic as I’d first assumed. Blood and body parts stained the cleared area at the center of the cabins. I leaned forward, trying to get a better look. White must have pressed a button at the same time, because the image zoomed in on what I was looking at. Yep. Blood and guts, arms and legs. With the occasional head tossed in. I saw bones stripped of flesh, and others that looked undamaged except where they had been ripped from torsos.

“It’s a mess,” said White. “I need you to go in and clean it up. Find our guy, and find out what happened.” He pressed the remote again; the screen switched to a satellite view of an island. There was a circle around what appeared to be the same group of buildings.

Must be the same one
. The clearing in the center of the resort looked, well…clear. Google Earth was a bit behind. For now. I looked at White. He looked at all of us.

“Get your asses moving. Transport is waiting below.”

INTERIM

Darkness. Not the dark of night, but of deep underground cavern, lit vaguely by glows from various lumps resting around the walls and ceiling. If one looked closely, the lumps were twisting and squirming. Look closer again, and the individual organisms that made up the lumps could be discerned.
Grubs
. Crawling all over a glowing fungus that coated parts of the rock walls and the ceiling. Eating the plant matter, and, in turn, glowing themselves.

Within this vague lighting, little more than a bioluminescence, deeper shadows moved. Sounds, shuffling and squelching, seeped from the darkest corners of the almost-square cavern, and the things moving certainly weren’t human. If anyone was here to observe the unobservable, they wouldn’t survive long. The creatures here were some kind of augmented chimeric things that crept through the darkest nights, the haunters of dreams and the hijackers of sanity. These things were evolved from humans, yet no longer part of humanity. Chimerics that had been the stuff of legend, until the human race had started spewing out more and more mutants. Things that looked like werewolves, vampires, lesser demons, creatures of myth and legend and folk-tales, all mixed with things never imagined by humankind.

Until now, they had merely existed in shadow, hiding their true natures in order to go unnoticed, or hiding themselves if they couldn’t blend in, aware of each other, yet never mixing, never meeting in one place.

Dornasian had changed that.

He had united everything that crawled in the darkness. He had created something unstoppable. Now he had to follow his dreams, his plans of conquest, of ruling not only the darkness, but also the light.

Dornasian leaned back and surveyed his disciples.

One man
, he thought.
One fucking man and my unstoppable army can’t take him out. Who the fuck is this White, anyway?

“Jonah.” Dornasian looked down at his lieutenant from the heights of his seat, carved from a stalagmite. “What the
fuck
happened?”