Chapter 56

Day 236:

John and Adam brought up the rear of their little procession as they began the second day of their trek into the Endless Sands, the morning after leaving Southern Oasis. Vorigan and Dulgan were in the lead, with the Vamp interrogating the Dwimar about his newfound enchanting abilities, as well as the subject generally. On John’s advice, the day before when purchasing supplies for the trek, they’d gotten several serviceable daggers for each person, which Dulgan agreed to enchant during the trip.

“You can trade them in, and get even better reward equipment if you finish the Challenge.” John informed the surprised group, minus Dulgan who nodded his agreement.

“You know this for sure?” Vorigan demanded. “How?”

Even the Dvergyr benefactors held their breath for his response.

John shrugged. “Sorta by accident, but I’ve done it multiple times.”

He patted the Tooth then his armor significantly.

In exchange for that piece of vital, new information, Thanoon purchased two daggers for each of them.

“Word’ll get out, ‘ventually but we’ve got confirmation first!” The merchant leader declared. “Take ‘em with my thanks!”

Following the mismatched leading pair was a small sled pulled by two scaly-hided draft animals. The locals used the word Kus-kus when asked, but their use of the same-sounding word as an expletive made John wonder if it was what they were really called, or conversely if they were so irritating that they’d become a default curse word. The beasts were six-legged, with large, wide feet and a low-slung body, but capped by a decidedly non-reptilian, horned head, reminiscent of a whorg. They were surly as hell, snapping viciously at anyone who got too close. Vorigan made Xenos tend to the animals so the rest of them didn’t have to.

The two special operators in the rear kept several yards between them and the sled.

“I don’t want Xenos hearing what we say.” John told Adam.

“Why?” Adam asked in English. “She can’t understand us.”

“Actually, she can.” John went on to give the back story on Xenos forcefully occupying one of the former test subject’s bodies, and how Xenos used that to glean a significant amount of knowledge from the subject (whose name John didn’t know) regarding Earth and how she, John and Adam got to their current world.

“She was an ally of someone who has it out for me, and apparently a traitor to the other vamps.” John concluded. “So, I made a deal with them to use her as a spy and possible saboteur.”

“Well, that blows.” Adam sighed. “How can we trust her?”

“We don’t.” John affirmed. “At all. That’s the down-side to her. Keep her in the dark as much as we can. If anything ever happens to Vorigan.” John pointed. “Expect her to immediately attack us.”

“What kind of hold does he have over her?” Adam wondered.

John shrugged. “I can’t talk about it; I gave my word. But trust me, it’s pretty extreme.”

“This place is crazy.” Adam exclaimed. “Magic, dragons, enchanted weapons, the works!”

John smirked. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“Like what?” Adam begged. “C’mon, give!”

“Well, how about this: I have my arms and legs back. Permanently.” John offered.

Adam stopped dead. “On Earth, too?”

“Yes. This is how I look, both here and at home now.” John waved for Adam to keep moving.

“Ho-ly shit!” Adam boggled. “I mean, we got a single shot of you popping in and grabbing Colonel Mason, but nobody twigged to the fact that you had real arms and legs. That’s incredible!”

“Pretty much.” John agreed.

“Wait, does that mean I’ll look like this permanently too?” Adam looked horrified at the thought.

“Not if you don’t want to.” John clarified. “I got a choice: my old body, my new one, or a blend of the two. I chose the last one. And I think it was only after I did at least one Challenge that those kind of options showed up. So, nothing for you to worry about.”

“Huh? What do you mean?” Adam cocked his head. “I’m doing the next Challenge with you.”

“Yeah, but ... a SEAL? In the desert? Bah! No chance.” John mocked.

“Hey, didn’t you do yours in the middle of a glacier?” Adam retorted. “If a Florida Man can complete a Challenge as an ice cube, I can certainly finish a desert evolution.”

John laughed. “Florida Man? I’m Florida Man now? All right. Reminder, if you have to use that weapon I gave you, try to cut the other guy, not yourself, Blade.”

Adam chuckled. “I forgot I told you about that.”

John tapped his temple. “It’s in the vault.”

“Hey!” Adam snapped his fingers. “If you’re all put back together, which is awesome since having to drag a gimp around would get old—”

“Ouch!” John admitted.

Adam ignored him. “Why do you have only one eye?”

“That had to stay gone, so I can use the special Sight I got right before the first Challenge.” John explained.

“Oh? Oh! That’s right.” Adam snapped his fingers again. “How’s that working out?”

“It’s weird.” John admitted. “But pretty useful. You ever see that movie, Predator?”

“Sure. Arnold, invisible alien battling it out, I remember it. Even if it did have the world’s worst SEAL in it, too.”

“Well, there’s a scene where it shows the Predator’s perspective while it’s looking for something, and it cycles through these different filters. Heat, UV, etc. It’s kinda like that. I can pick which ‘wavelength’ to focus on and See ... in the dark, for example.”

“No night vision for you!” Adam snarked. “Wish I had that! It’s not like I haven’t already lost an eye too.”

John nodded. “True dat. Bad news though: you’re blue in all of the wavelengths. Get used to it.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “Ha-ha. Glad to see your sense of humor still sucks.”

“You think mine’s bad, wait until you meet some of the others.” John replied.

“Chief Chatman knows Sergeant Hull.” Adam told him. “He says yours is about on par with his. Colonel Mason is worse?”

“Colonel Mason doesn’t have a sense of humor that any of us have ever found.” John quipped.

Adam blinked, pausing.

“Apparently,” Adam snorted, “the JSOC guy knows Mason and confirms your story. I’ll have to keep it in mind.”

“You’re in communication with them? How? That was a whole deal for us—me.” John asked.

“Like you, I already had an implant. Not the same kind, but a coms one too.” Adam explained.

“Really?” John shot him a confused look.

Adam shrugged. “It’s a thing. All of us get them. Used a ‘civilian’ doc off base who ‘just happened’ to have the right kind to interface with our equipment. Had to be quote ‘on your own time, with your own money’. But ... we all did it. You know how things like that can be.”

“Ah.” John nodded. “I wonder what else has changed since I left.”

Adam shook his head. “Not much. Jump in, swim in, ruck in, that’s all the same. Or in your case, take a limo and pretend to be somebody important.”

“Uh, yeah!” John shot back. “Because we are ‘somebody important’!”

“Important? You’re just a grunt!”

“And you’re still a squid!”

“Any—way!” Adam laughed. “Catch me up. I know you did that Challenge thing, had a spot of trouble with the local honcho and were working with the, I can’t believe I’m saying this, Valkyrie on some kind of solution to everyone attacking the village you were using as a home base. After that, you vanished back on Earth and all we know is that you magically appeared, for real and snatched two operators out of a firefight in the Canadian Rockies before vanishing again.”

“Uh, yeah.” John tried to decide where to start. “So, it took us a while to get to the portal stone. About ten days, maybe? Quite a shock, let me tell you when we saw it. A real WTF moment there.”

“I’ll bet!”

“So, I was able to activate it, which is how I got this.” John motioned at his appearance. “And it let me take Veronyka through with me. Her choices were different from mine, and since she knew we were going to the icy cold north, selected to come over as a Valkyrie.”

Adam snorted. “No shit? I saw the recordings from your time hooked up. Well, some of them anyway. What happened when you showed back up with one in tow?”

John laughed. “All hell broke loose. Of course, all hell had already broken loose, so it was really just the cherry on top. The town was being invaded by that honcho you mentioned, so when we went to help, Veronyka killed one of the invaders and the other Valkyries didn’t like it one bit. I’m kinda on the outs with them right now because of how they’ve handled things, but the short story is that we got to check out their base, then I got separated from Veronyka and ended up in the middle of a huge invasion. Fought my way in a huge circle, and ended up with a bunch of refugees at a pirate town out on the coast to the east. I won’t bore you with the details but got a few weeks’ respite there before I and a bunch of the warriors who stuck by me had to go on some boat raids. A sort of payback for taking the group in. There was a big voyage around the ocean, including being chased by this undead water monster guy before we got to the second dragon’s island.”

“Wait, hold up.” Adam held up a hand. “You have an eye-patch and went on a pirate ship? You’re totally Blackbeard now!”

“Oh god, here we go.” John muttered.

“C’mon, give me one good ‘argh matey’!” Adam poked.

John ignored him. “So, while I was on the dragon’s island I used the portal there to jump back to Earth and check if anyone had gotten a message I left at an old unit dead drop. Turned out I’d started world war three somehow, instead. What the hell was going on? You said the Chinese?”

Adam paused for a minute, his jaw and throat working silently.

“I don’t care, I’m telling him.” Adam finally said aloud. “You want to pull me, do it.”

Without pausing, he turned to John. “Armchair quarterbacks. We don’t know how the Chinese knew to go there, and I doubt it was from whatever dead drop you used. But we had a recon team from my unit tracking them, since they’d already hit your project location and killed a bunch of people.”

“You have confirmation it was the Chinese that did it?” John pressed.

Adam nodded. “Iron-clad. Det. Forty-Two Seventy-One. They forced General Babcock to get them into the facility, then killed her when she alerted the guards on entry. And still somehow got on your trail, tracking you up into the Rockies. We were on their ass, but without good intel, getting into a shoot-out with those fuckers would be stupid.”

John shook his head. “That unit designation doesn’t ring a bell. They a Chinese spec-ops unit?”

“Worse.” Adam frowned. “They popped up after your time, but we’ve been able to uncover some of their back-story. They’re genetically modified from inception, raised to revere the old Chinese leader, Xu Shinzen as their patriarch. When he died like he did, they mutinied, refusing to follow orders from the new one. I guess someone on their side screwed up explaining the whole ‘chain of succession’ thing. No one’s quite sure who’s holding their leash now, if anyone at all. These guys’re no joke, John, strong, fast and tough. Supposedly only a very low percentage of the kids made it all the way through their training and indoc. The rest were killed right off. Those who did finish are some of the most cold-blooded, unflinching hard-core sons of bitches you never want to meet. I had one run-in with them, basically by accident, and nearly lost two teammates, with the rest of us wounded to one degree or another. I can’t even say we won the fight, either.”

“Well, fuck me.” John blew out a breath. “And they’re on my tail? Wonderful. Now I’m glad you blew up the portal stone. Well, covered it in rock anyway.”

“That wasn’t us.” Adam denied. “That was them. I guess after you guys vanished, and they saw we were closing in on them, they booby-trapped the packs that got left behind and took off. We lost a guy when they detonated.”

“Aw, damn.” John shook his head. “I’m sorry, brother.”

“Yeah, those guys are really evil fuckers.” Adam agreed sadly. “We had a short running gunfight with them on their exfil, but decided to break off before the Canadians deployed JTF Two on our heads!”

“They didn’t know you guys were there?” John wondered.

“I don’t think we told them until after it was over, but I’m not sure.” Adam admitted.

“Well, if you came looking for answers from me, I don’t have much beyond that for you.” John informed him. “It seems to me like you guys know way more than I do at this point. I’m stuck here, since the portal’s shut down on Earth. Any plans to uncover it?”

Adam was silent for a moment.

“Not right now, no.” He replied, finally. “They say it’s too much work. Too visible an op. And the Canadians are slightly annoyed with us right now.”

“They don’t want to do it for you?” John pressed.

“I’m guessing we didn’t tell them what was under there.” Adam supposed.

“Yeah, how do you even start a briefing like that?” John snorted.

“Hey, do you know what happened to our guide? Please tell me he’s okay at least.” John asked, making Adam pause.

“They’re going to check. Do you remember any names?”

“Uh, Mike something. Local guide. And a pilot, uh Brendan or Brandon, something like that.” John shrugged.

They walked in silence for a few minutes.

“Damn!” Adam muttered.

He looked at John. “Dead; plane crash. They were riding with another pilot, Oliver Williams. It happened about four weeks after you disappeared from the project.”

“Ollie.” John pressed his lips together. “He flew Veronyka and I up to something-or-other Butte and hooked us up with the other two. Somebody sure tied off loose ends as they tracked us down. Fuck!”

“You did what you could, but I’m guessing you were too memorable.” Adam commented.

“Gorgeous girl with a cripple, yeah you could call us memorable all right.” John answered. “Not even counting us wanting to go up on a mountain we visibly had no business climbing. I tried to tell them to pretend they never saw us, but you know how it is with civilians.”

“Don’t pay attention, unless they’re not supposed to?” Adam quipped. “Yeah.”

“So,” Adam started up after a few minute’s silence, “what happened after you grabbed the two?”

“Well, they were badly wounded, so I had to go back to the dragon’s island.” John explained. “It was the only place I knew that had somebody with healing magic.”

“Abra-cadabra, here’s your leg back kind of magic?” Adam joked.

“More like: laying on hands, but yeah.” John confirmed. “Lost a lot of blood, so we fed and watered them.”

“But you didn’t sit down for a briefing? Why not?” Adam wondered.

John looked away. “Well, that was right when Veronyka showed back up. I got a little distracted.”

Adam sputtered. “You got ... with the gorgeous doctor? Seriously?”

John nodded. “It started right after we both got here, before we got separated. The first time. She even got pregnant.”

“Oops!” Adam guffawed. “No wonder you guys got ‘separated’!”

“Yeah, apparently she had to take off for another world. Had the kid there before coming back and linking up with me at the island.” John tossed out casually.

Adam paused for a moment.

“Uh, the guys are saying that the timing doesn’t work. There wasn’t enough time for her to get to full term between when you vanished, and when you returned with the two other Delta guys.” Adam argued.

“Not here, or on Earth, no.” John agreed. “But in that other world she went to, apparently time goes backward and forward and in circles. All kinds of wacky weirdness there. She was gone for years, on her personal timeline. According to her, anyway.”

“Doing what? Raising him? Her?” Adam asked.

“She didn’t get into too many specifics.” John hedged. “But she went to some school there and now has a bunch of cool abilities. Her armor looks like a freaking Mandalorian from Star Wars! Has all kinds of tricks in it, too.”

Adam searched for words. “Um, what?”

“Yeah, right?” John chuckled. “She totally went and turned herself into a badass. Hopefully she’s getting along with Numb and the Colonel.”

“Does she at least look hot in her gee-whiz armor? You did say you guys immediately commenced to getting busy so I’m guessing ... yes?” Adam ribbed him.

John shot his friend a look. “She did, actually. And that’s all I’ll say about the woman.”

“Fair enough.” Adam said agreeably. “What about after you had to leave?”

“Got sent right to another dragon.” John said. “Finished that Challenge too then got captured by an army of dwarves led by this insanely powerful Mage King named Morgan. He’s the guy that Xenos used to work for.”

“How powerful?” Adam asked in a serious tone.

John stopped, turning to his friend. “I saw him throw a lightning bolt more than fifteen feet wide from a mile away. He killed an entire clan of dwarves with one hit, then scratched it across two other groups like he was scraping across a record. I shit you not.”

“That’s some serious mojo.” Adam stared. “Not common around here, right?”

“No, he’s probably the most powerful magic guy on the continent, as far as I know.” John confirmed, returning to their walk.

“Well, crap, how’d you get away?” Adam wanted to know.

John smiled. “He put me at the back of that mile-long army, with the ash and trash. I popped my chain and ran for it. The dwarves were trying to help me when he killed them.”

“Wait, he had a dwarf army, and other dwarfs were fighting them? Do I have that right?” Adam summarized.

“Yes, that’s correct. And even the ones fighting him didn’t act too friendly. So I ran away instead.”

“You don’t go toe-to-toe against a tank, when all you’ve got is a rifle.” Adam agreed.

“You got that right!” John pointed back. “Then I hooked up with Dulgan there, and some others who got killed by Xenos and that guy we fought yesterday. Vorigan rescued me from their capture, and we finished another Challenge on our way to where you found me. The end. Oh, and made the deal with the vamps to ally against Morgan, since he hates them too.”

Adam snorted. “That sounds like a really, really brief summary of a whole bunch of crap.”

“It is.” John confirmed. “But there’s not really much more to tell you except that I walked all over hell and creation, from the mountains in the far south to a dead swamp. And I mean dead, dead. Ugh. The stench alone, it was enough to make you want to vomit every morning.”