BLUEMONT, VIRGINIA
151217RJUL31:
“It wasn’t until a few days later that I finally got to speak to Penny,” Jessica continued. “And by then, she’d done some digging. And honestly? I don’t know if this is the world I’m originally from and got switched with another Jessica Aomori, or if the world was moved to a different timeline or anything like that – I don’t understand any of it at all. It feels right to me, though.”
Lewis looked at her subordinate with a glazed look. “This is so much unbelievable sci-fi crap I’d expect it to be a Space Force training manual.” That earned a brief laugh out of everyone, and her a glare from the Space Force chief of staff.
Jessica continued. “Regardless, though, that’s not the point. What I’m trying to say is that my friends and their mother, the elves that I had known, were gone. And not just gone, but as if they’d never existed. Their home in Eastbury and the store? Goodness Grocery closed in 2008 and was replaced by a Wax Stax record store, which itself went under in 2011. The building got torn down in 2013 and was replaced by a bunch of apartment complexes. I did some searching on the internet for anyone named Benison and you know what I found? Nothing of which I knew. There’s an English noble house by that name and some family members align from it, but nothing that fits the family that I know – that I knew. I even tried talking to James, Tessa’s boyfriend, but he didn’t remember anything about her – and worse, he said he was dating Catalina Perez. A girl that neither Penny or I knew and yet now somehow had always been a part of my life.” She shook her head. “It’s no wonder people thought I’d lost it.”
President Lucas looked over the table at her. He’d leaned back in his chair, looking all-too comfortable for Jessica’s liking. “And did you?”
“No, sir. I wouldn’t be a SEAL if that was the case.” But she knew that was a lie; truthfully, she didn’t feel like one right now. As she’d stopped telling her tale, all eyes were on her, and she felt far from the battle-tested warrior she was. She’d opened all her wounds, revealed so much of herself to strangers that she felt again like the sixteen-year-old girl whose life had been spun out of control. She’d lost so much, in the process she wondered if she’d ever get it back.
She wondered if she even wanted it back.
“Assuming any of this is true,” Lucas began in a terse tone and snapping her attention back to the present, “if I had known any of this and been in politics back then, I would have every available force at my disposal crawling through every ass in Colorado probing for this so-called magic. Just revealing it to the world probably would have gotten me elected in a landslide with no problem. And it’s very clear now that this is magic – there’s no ifs, ands or buts about it. However, it’s rather obvious that I can see what she can do, Commander. What I’d like to know is: What do you have to back this all up? For all I know, this is all just bullshit, the Queen is a second alien engaging in gang warfare with the Others, and you’re just some brainwashed cunt that I have on the Navy’s payroll. What proof do you have that you’re telling the truth?”
“As I said, sir, it’s because I have a benison,” Jessica told him.
“Oh, yes: that tattoo you have by your cunt?” Lucas said, his rough words indicating to her even more why she didn’t think he was qualified to be President of the United States. “Well, fortunately for you, it’s probably in your service record, so I’m not going to have you do pornstar and show us.”
“Aside from that, sir, I don’t think that’s rather appropriate, if I may,” Lewis added.
Meanwhile, Jessica tugged at her collar, really wishing at that point that she’d chosen to wear dress blues instead. “I, uh, appreciate that, Admiral,” she admitted.
Lucas was quiet for the longest time, before he finally looked around the room and called out, “Okay, keyword-cleared personnel only. Anyone else, get out, go do your jobs and make sure my country is still running.” Most of the personnel in the room began to disperse, while only a handful of others remained in their seats. Once the room had emptied out, the man glared at Jessica. “I don’t know whether to call you a hero or a traitor, Cmdr. Aomori. For over a decade you had secrets that were vital to the United States’ interest. You’ve hidden information that should have been made public and have been part of a massive conspiracy that you had absolutely no right to keep silent about, and that’s just on the Federal side. If we want to get into the weeds, you started this by claiming to be something you’re not – the person who saved Hallenbeck High and it’s all been bullshit and fraud from that point. I don’t care if you were some sweet little young fuckable thing or not, forgive my French – you committed treason.” He paused and added, “Oh, and if that bit about you somehow transferring realities like this is some Goddamn sci-fi show is true, that would make you technically an illegal alien as well. So, no matter how you slice it, you are screwed.”
“Any sane politician would be willing to execute you right now or throw you in a supermax prison and melt down the fucking key. That’s assuming that a sane politician would believe any of the shit you just told me to begin with. But right now, I don’t have that luxury.” He got out of his chair, letting the height difference between his standing form and her seated one cause a natural display of power, the unassailable hierophant atop the ziggurat screaming down condemnations at the heretic.
“I know you don’t like me, Commander; it’s clear on your face. Maybe you think you’re hiding it, but my experience tells me you’re an extremely shitty poker player and you wear honesty on your sleeve like it’s your favorite t-shirt. Meanwhile, truth is probably the least thing I’m acquainted with,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Yes, I’m probably not the best politician ever, but keep in mind I never wanted to be one. Do you know what they called me back in Nawlins? ‘King Lucas, Lord of the Slums.’ Yeah, I owned a bunch of rundown tenements and charged too much for rent from poor people, you don’t think I know that? But it got me rich, and it got me right where I could get the ear of the governor, and my money got him into the fucking White House. Not anyone else - me. And do you know what I wanted? I wanted my Southern Empire project to be cleared by the government. I wanted the White House to lean on the Louisiana state government so I could get my own little fucking playground, where I could build an amusement park that would make me enough money to go piss right in the eyes of Disney and Cedar Park and all that shit!” He grinned at the nostalgia. “Just imagine that: mommies and daddies lining up with their sperm droppings on legs, just to give me enough Fuck You money to do what I wanted.
“But instead, I got offered Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. What a fucking joke, I swear! How Goddamn important is HUD? I’ll tell you – not fucking much. Look at the stuttering moron I have in that position right now! I don’t even remember his name, and the last thing I recall of him is that he’s such a bullshit bureaucrat that the man can barely tie his Goddamn shoes, much less keep his wife satisfied! But to get back to my point: I left DC just before Decimation happened, because I wanted some time to write up a convincing enough reason why I was going to resign from being Secretary. And next thing I know I’ve got monsters falling around my ears, the Army coming in to save my ass and someone from the Secret Service telling me that Washington no longer exists and that congratu-fucking-lations, I’m now the Goddamn President of the United States.” He laughed bitterly. “Let me tell you, I nearly shit my pants at that moment. I came from a poor Baton Rouge family, don’t even know my real father, and now suddenly I’m in charge of 330 million lives? There’s an epic joke if I’ve ever heard one.
“But I didn’t get a chance to do what I wanted to do, I got stuck with shit I had to do. I’ve made deals with the devil in order to get where I am, and I’m going to do so time and time again, because that is why I have to - I no longer have the luxury of doing what I want to. And at the admission of being a complete and utter dick, if I don’t get to have fun, no one else does, either. Which is why I’m going to give you a personal pardon for whatever you’ve done in the past – and ordering you to go find the Queen of Knives, whether she is your old friend or not, because the surviving 800 million lives on this mudball depend on it. So, anything you have to say, Commander?”
Jessica sat in her chair, her arms crossed. Finally, she said, “Permission to speak freely, sir.”
“That’s a negative,” Lewis told her, knowing full well what the junior officer was about to say.
“No, I want to hear what she has to say,” Lucas countermanded. “So yes, Cmdr. Aomori, you can say your piece.”
“Well, you are absolutely right, sir, I don’t like you. One of the properties you own outside of Louisiana was my uncle’s cattle ranch and you nearly drove him into the poorhouse a dozen times because of the fucking loopholes on the mortgage you had on the grounds,” Jessica hissed. “I can’t tell you the number of times my own parents had to step in to save it and each time every check was signed, someone in the family swore that if they ever saw you in person, they would tell you what you could go do with yourself. And so, since I’m here, right in front of you now, you can go fuck yourself. Find a way to shove your own dick up your ass so far in there and break it off so hard that you won’t be able to tell whether you’re spitting saliva or sperm. And for the record, I didn’t vote for you, and you couldn’t pay me enough to do so. In fact, I was hoping that Senator Thorne would stomp your ass in the election.” After a heated second, just to cover her own ass, she added a quick, “Sir.”
To her surprise, Lucas laughed out loud, clearly amused by her retort. “That has got to be one of the most unique insults I’ve heard in quite a while, I must admit. Admiral, you should be proud of this girl; clearly, she’s kept up the Navy tradition of coming up with some of the most fascinating cussin’ I’ve come across.” Lucas then grinned and said, “And you know what, Commander? Funny thing that you should mention Emma Thorne. She’s a good woman, a really good one. One of the best souls I’ve ever met and that’s why she’s vice president now – because she keeps me honest.”
“But isn’t she—?”
“Yes, she’s in the other party, but as you can see, we’re at war right now, so we somewhat disposed of political pleasantries in favor of efficiency. Plus, if truth be told, if you were going to ask about my now-former vice president, we haven’t made it public yet, but Vice President Kenneth Bascome cracked under the strain and decided to take some painkillers – of the 9mm, to-the-head variety.” Lucas shook his head. “His wife found him dead at the Vice-Presidential Evacuation Site at the Greenbriar two weeks ago. I asked Speaker Samuels if he would step in, but he turned me down, saying that the government could ill afford such a massive change given the situation. And while generally Thorne and I don’t agree on a single damn thing, as I said, well, she’s an honest woman and a true patriot and so she put aside our differences to step in. And that’s why she’s vice president now. We’re going to make the announcement next week once the furor from Rome dies down. Our country – our world – doesn’t need any further chaos than it already has. And believe me, we’re in trouble.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“Of course you don’t; you haven’t been briefed on the current situation,” Lewis said. She looked at Lucas, asking, “If I may, sir?”
“Be my guest; our party participant deserves to know just how the festivities are going.”
The admiral nodded, then continued. “Before you came in this morning, we received word that the Indians lost the INS Vishal and her battlegroup. As of now, there’s nothing currently in the Indian Ocean and neither the Chinese nor the Thai can get to the base that we believe the Others are building in Antarctica right now. We have no satellite assets in orbit in the area, and the ones that are there belong to North Korea, who is being rather…lackadaisical in sending out information.”
A nearby Marine general scoffed. “Still can’t believe that shit: the Octos are trying to kill every living thing in the world and the assholes in Pyongyang are still playing scum-fucking little weasels.”
Lewis continued. “Beijing has considered going in and doing a regime change, but both the Australians and the Russians have convinced them otherwise so far.”
Lucas grunted. “Personally, I think a regime change would be good for what’s left of their population, which was going to hell in a handbasket before the Octos showed up, but I get the part about how it looks bad for interhuman cooperation.”
Jessica wondered about the admiral’s earlier statement. “I figured the Chinese have something they can dent the Octos with, but do the Thai? Last I heard, all they had was a lot of our own older stuff that we sold to them as hand-me-downs.”
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“We were counting on the Vishal and her escorts to nuke the fuck out of them, to be honest – we handed over several glowsticks in order for them to do the job,” Lucas admitted. “And yes, that’s another secret that the world doesn’t need to know, another deal with the devil that I made. The world doesn’t need to know that the United States is arming other nations with nukes that they’re not supposed to have, because it’s either that or we can bend over and wait for our asses to get fucked without the benefit of lube.” He sighed theatrically. “I need a Goddamn drink. I really do. Too bad my wife is a saint who won’t let me.”
“So what now, Mr. President?”
“The Fifth and Seventh Fleets will give the Chinese carrier Fujian the support it needs to go turn part of Antarctica into a smoking, radioactive hole in the ground. The Chinese offered to do so, and I know why: even now they want to show off, to prove to the world that it doesn’t need just us to save it. Frankly, I don’t give a damn if they want to wave their collective dicks around, so long as the job gets done. I might be a shitbag myself, but even I want to make sure my wife and kids live to see tomorrow.”
“I get that. I mean: what about me?”
“Oh, that’s simple: As of now, you’re permanently off the books. You don’t belong to the Navy, or Special Operations Command or to anyone. You and your little platoon are going completely black – you won’t exist. Your chain of command from now on is me, then Adm. Lewis here and the subordinate of this little shindig they’ve got planned. I want you down in Sublevel P in ten minutes. Anything you have to add?” When she shook her head, he said, “Okay, get out of here.”
Jessica nodded, saluted and said, “Fuck Six, sir.”
As she left, Lucas looked at Lewis. “You going to explain that?”
“It’s a…term of art that DEVGRU has. Basically, ‘can do’.”
“Okay, but fuck?”
Lewis couldn’t help but grin. “It’s an adulteration of phoque – the French word for ‘seal’.”
=+=
TERRA NOVA, AMAZONIAS
151322RJUL31:
It seemed peaceful at first, as if hell and horror had not descended upon this place time and time again. But for now, all was still and silent, an artificial calm placed upon the area. Whether it would last, she didn’t know. But it was there, and she wasn’t happy about it in the least.
Several people, even long before the invasion of the Others, had tried to make this place their home, and when the parent government had not listened, they tried to make themselves independent. Terra Nova, the capital of Amazonia, was once just a small town in a mostly ignored state in western Brazil. But then in 2012, there had been a short but brutal civil war that had caused the state to secede and with the help of neighboring Colombia, they had managed to survive and successfully become their own nation. That was, at least until less than a year later, when Colombian forces attempted to take over the fledgling nation as well. And a second war had been fought, one that left Amazonias free, but in desperate straits.
And then came Decimation. And for the capital, Terra Nova, a place built with American and Chinese investment and hope for a brighter tomorrow, well...there was no more tomorrows. Even the Brazilians, who had briefly come back to officially reclaim the place, were letting it rot and be reclaimed by the rainforest, a modern-day Fordlandia that the world couldn’t support anymore.
The Queen walked alone though the crumbling ruins of buildings. Once, this area had been Las Arboles, the financial center of the country. From what she could tell, at one time, this place had been a microcosm of the financial world, and Amazonias had made its relative fortune via cryptocurrency and burgeoning artificial intelligences. Granted, the nation would probably have ended up like so many other developing countries, with a small amount of haves and far too many have-nots, but as the Amazon Rainforest once again began to claim the concrete spires of the skyscrapers and other buildings that had been here, it would be a reminder of the fragility of life. Not just human life, not just elf life, but life in and of itself. The world was in peril and if humanity didn’t win the war, who knew what the ultimate fate of Earth would be.
She entered one building, one that seemed a little more intact than the others. Ignoring the wildlife, they afforded her the same courtesy in return; she wasn’t small enough to be considered prey, and her motions hinted strongly that she was a predator instead, so they gave her a wide berth. It was for the best, anyway; where she was going, they wouldn’t do so well. She walked through to what would have been the center of the building, and within the center was an untended pond, its surface covered with algae and muck, a far cry from the pristine marble fish pond it was supposed to be.
No one in their right mind would come near it.
Wordlessly, she dived in...
...and emerged, on the other side, swimming out of a pond the same size, but much cleaner. The teleportation pools were something that had been developed by elven mages but had not been used at the scale that she was using them, mainly because they were worried about “thaumic contamination and pollution”, which was, she suspected, their way of wanting to keep it out of the lands of lessers.
Even in “enlightened” society, there were still the have and have-nots, she sighed.
Looking around the room to make sure that it hadn’t been invaded, she felt a sigh of relief; while there was little chance of anyone bothering her in this place, her sanctum sanctorum, she couldn’t count on that. She’d once read that during a war between two human nations, one group had been taken out by their opponents because they’d been able to do accurate triangulation of the location just based on an internet still. She didn’t know how the Octos operated, but if ordinary people could do it, advanced aliens from another world could most likely do so as well, and it wouldn’t be a good thing for her hideout to be destroyed – especially while she was in it.
She removed her cloak, then tapped a few pressure spots on her helmet, removing that, breathing non-filtered air in what felt like centuries, even though she knew it had only been a week or two, tops. She’d spent more and more time in her armor as of late, and while at times it felt like the second skin that it was meant to be, at times it also felt like a prison that went along with her, a carbon-fiber and yoctophase aluminum iron maiden that kept her from the outside world just as much as she was meant to be kept.
Her last bit of armor removed, she then stripped off the bodysuit she wore, threw that in a pile in the corner, and headed off to the shower. It was time to feel like a normal person again, at least for a few hours. A few hours of peace and quiet where she could hold on to what little vestiges of reason she had left still about her and remind herself that she was still herself, not the superhero that the world thought her to be or the traitress that her own people accused her of being.
Turning on the hot water and letting it slide all over her, she scrubbed herself down, the soap bubbles hiding her muscles and slight scars from her view, even if temporarily. She wasn’t the same person she was when this had all started, and those marks and features were the proof of it, as was her age. She also looked at the reddish-black mark on her inner right wrist, the mark that all were given when they were exiled. She was lucky; it was an exile’s mark and not the mark of someone to be executed.
The Queen, despite herself, leaned against the wall, letting the hot water wash over her and hiding the tears that had come unbidden. She had the mark of the exile because she had the blood that had saved her. Her mother had not been as lucky and had been executed for the “crime” of facilitating the creation of the “Autumn Witch”. And as said witch slunk to the floor, feeling the emotional pain all over again, she wondered if it would ever end, if she was eternally damned to this hero-and-villain yin-yang balance that made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
She’d never even had the chance to say goodbye to her mother. She’d never had a chance to do anything. She was just thrown into a cell, and then told what had occurred, as if her warden had talked to her about the weather or some other thing of unimportance.
Because that’s what her mother – her own beloved mother – had been to her father in the end: a thing of unimportance. And by the time the Queen had figured it out, it had been far, far too late.
They call me the Queen, but it’s just a title. I’m no queen, I have no real political power. And that which has been offered to me is beyond obscene.
Far better to have taken the path she did, working to save countless others that she would never know, to endlessly toil against the actions she had set in motion, than to have accepted the offer before her. To say that it was easy would have been true, but at the same time, it would have cost her very soul.
And that’s something that I have wonder if it’s still intact, she mused to herself.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d laid there, but if there was one advantage that magic had over traditional plumbing, is that she wouldn’t be running out of hot water anytime soon. Unfortunately, her skin had started to wrinkle, so she quickly finished up with her shower and left it, the magics of the shower room wicking away the water from her body as steam and vapor puffs, vanishing eventually into the air as water molecules normally did.
A few minutes later, she was dressed in simple clothing, feeling somewhat human – an irony, that – for the first time in a while. Food had already been laid out before her on the table; she wasn’t sure how that happened and had often considered looking into that, but she guessed that it was a magical result of this ensorcelled place, an automated sort of prisoner feeding time so that the guards could focus on other tasks. After all, she was not only the Queen – to them, she was instead the Autumn Witch, a danger that had to be forever watched carefully.
Ignoring that, she went over to her bag and pulled out a tablet. She’d purchased it in Gifu shortly after her time there, and though it was somewhat outdated, it still let her tap into information networks she needed without being exposed in certain ways. After all, how many people surfed the net for news and data they needed? Here, she wasn’t the Queen, but just another face in the crowd.
She first looked into the fate of the South African soldier she’d saved the other day. Said soldier was being hailed – and rightfully so – as a heroine, for making the last stand for her country against impossible odds. And because of that, she’d been promoted to being an officer of the South African Army and would undergo training for that at the makeshift military academy that they’d created in the provisional capital in Van der Spuy. And of course, there were the inevitable complaints about that, because she survived and so some believed that she’d hidden herself and cowered in a corner, or that she hadn’t done everything she could because she was the lone survivor, right? That the South African military couldn’t use someone like her, never mind that she was military trained, already a member of the South African Army and that the situation was desperate.
Seeing that last part made the Queen realize the fate she’d unintentionally placed on the poor girl: that newly promoted lieutenant would have to, like the Queen herself, be a hero to others even as she had to deal with the slings and arrows of her own kind. There was no justice in this world, as far as that went, only recriminations and allegations, and far be it that anyone had a valid opinion! She only hoped that there was more strength in that woman that she’d seen; she was going to need it.
Moving on, the next thing she looked at was a censored but otherwise publicized report on the fall of Rome. The Americans were being blamed for it, even though it was an Italian operation. The SEALs, oddly enough, however, were being praised for their actions in the evacuation, with most of the blame going to the US Army for not quite being up to the job. That puzzled the Queen, because honestly: this was a war against an alien species that humanity still didn’t really comprehend after nearly half-a-decade: who could be prepared?
But her presence at the battlefront had brought with it a welcome moment for her: her dearest friend Jessica had survived the years and Decimation. She was clearly a far cry from the soft-natured fashionista that the Queen had recalled; she had never expected to see Jessica in uniform, much less muscled, steel-eyed and as one of the foremost combatants for the United States. It was a cruel irony: once, Jessica would have been the kind of person who would have found fascination with the designs, materials and colors of her battle armor. Now, that same girl was a woman that was probably easily a match for the Queen, enough so that she could probably fit into the same armor.
But this wasn’t a life that the Queen would wish on anyone, much less someone that had once been one of her best friends.
And that was another thing: was her best friend. Something had happened that had changed it all. To the world, she didn’t exist, and no doubt, without looking any of it up, she knew that Jessica had suffered the slings and arrows of it all. So, too, Penelope, most likely. And most heart wrenching of all, likely James had as well.
Her heart ached at that, and she knew why. And she hated herself for it all the more. It was Fortuna’s spin of the roulette at work: as the Queen, she’d been propositioned so many times, by both men and women, who didn’t care a whit of what she looked like under the armor. To use the old term, she could have been a “butterface” and they would have been fine with it. But she didn’t have time for that sort of thing in her life, not now, not when the world was under the metaphorical and literal sword of an alien menace.
In a second direction, was an enticing offer that she had been made, and all she had to do was to say yes, and the world would be her pearl. But that, too, was a horrible and terrible lie. She knew what that would entail and what would be required of her, and she refused. Not only was it obscene, but it would justify all the accusations of her being the Autumn Witch and, most of all, she wasn’t interested, not in the least.
And then there was the direction that was now forever closed off, so long ago that the metaphorical pathway was now choked with the weeds of time, space and whatever she’d done to block off that path. Was James happy now? Who was he with? And was he even still alive, or was he just one of the countless names that humanity had lost in the years since the Others invaded?
In the end, it really didn’t matter anymore, did it? She was the Queen of Knives and the only love she could spare was for mankind, to save it from this evil they had no fault with. She was the Autumn Witch, accused of abominable crimes and bringing down demons on the world, and her troth would be to save the world and everyone in it, even if it meant her own personal and perpetual sacrifice.
But at the very, very end, she knew she was neither. She knew who she was, and she hated herself for every part of that, because it meant she was forever without her sister. And that hurt the most. They were twins and were meant to be together, happy and free. And even if they found other people to love and live life with, in the end, the bond would always be there.
Some days she could barely feel that bond, like an atrophied, calcified remnant of something bold and beautiful, but other days she couldn’t. And that brought utter horror to the furthest corners of her soul. It was a reminder that, even though she’d been accused of being both the problem and the solution to this whole undertaking, at the same time, she was also its victim.
She had once had a normal life, with normal friends and a normal future. And now, even though those were long gone, and she’d had an existence that many would have envied for so many different reasons...
...she would have done anything to go back to that old time and just moved from there.
And maybe that’s why she was damned. Because she’d tried that, and the results had been too much for the world.