Despite his mental fatigue and physical exhaustion, now that he was out of hell and back in the real world, he needed something, anything, to push off the crash he knew was coming, and aquatic flagellation in a scalding hot shower was not enough. Everything he’d pushed back, everything he’d stowed and stuffed down over the last three days was coming back to the surface. He needed distraction. He needed something else to focus on. He got out of the shower, toweled off, and took the LF analyzer to open the meditation guide.
Even though the LF field functions were disabled, it still acted as a reference guide and compendium. Luckily, the meditation guide wasn’t exactly rocket science. In fact, it was shorter than his stat page.
- Ensure you are properly hydrated – else, drink 1 liter of water and wait 30 minutes before attempting.
- Assume a sitting or supine position in a comfortable, safe place.
- Close eyes or don a vision-blocking device.
- Take slow, steady purposeful breaths.
- Visualize a familiar, repetitive task that is comfortable to you.
- If you feel a sense of a path or direction, follow it or allow it to pull you.>
Setting the Analyzer aside, he relaxed on his bed and began to imagine himself doing the most comfortable, familiar thing he could—walking a path through the Georgia boonies.
He didn’t have anywhere specific in his mind. Just the familiar trees, the chirps of the frogs and insects, and the dappled light filtering through the canopy. As he imagined walking, step by step, breath by breath, he started to sink into the rhythm until he couldn’t tell whether he was still meditating or had fallen asleep and begun to dream of home.
The path ahead of him wound through the woods, wild and unkempt. Somewhere far ahead, he sensed a reservoir of power—just like the ones that fueled his abilities in a Lewis Field. The trail seemed to be heading toward it. He kept walking, feeling every bird and bug attuning to the rhythm of that reservoir.
A knock on Cole’s door shocked him awake. Heart pounding, he instinctively reached for a sidearm that wasn’t there before remembering that he wasn’t in any danger. It wasn’t Syria. It sure as hell wasn’t Curahee. He was at the DOR compound in Virginia. In his Billet. In the good ol’ US of A.
He checked his watch, seeing that only six hours had passed. It was close to 4:00 AM local time. So much for mando eighteen hours down. Still, that time had passed in an instant. It felt like he’d only just laid down to try the meditation.
Dragging himself off the bed, he made his way to the door, pulling on one of the cheap t-shirts Roxy had picked out. Through the peephole, Gillis's face stared back, though the fish-eye lens was only partially responsible for the man’s horrifying appearance. The lion’s share was just Gillis. Cole groaned and pulled open the door.
“Hey Cole, welcome back! You want the good news or the bad news first?”
“Good news,” said Cole.
Gillis grinned. “The good news is we’re still in the Army, and it’s another beautiful day, hooah? Bricker wants to see you.”
“Is that the bad news?” asked Cole.
“Naw, bad news is they thought you’d be more agreeable if a friendly face woke you up so they sent me. Guess no one told ‘em what happened last time I tried to wake you up early. Don’t give me a black eye this time.”
Cole barked a laugh and wiped his face with his palm. “Well when you do it by climbing your nasty ass into the bunk with me to whisper good morning sarge, I think you have it coming. Fuck, I’d do it again if I thought you’d learn better. Let me grab my boots.”
He wandered back to the latrine where both his boots and his soiled uniform were still on the floor where he’d dropped them, thinking only of a lava-hot shower. It was stained with blood, mud, orange vitriol, and all manner of nastiness. The t-shirt and jeans would have to do for now. He tugged his boots on and met with Gillis again.
“How was it?” asked Gillis as they descended the steps and headed toward the ops building.
There was a lot to unpack in that question. Where to even begin? “You like zombie movies?” he asked.
Gillis’ mouth dropped open. “You went to a zombie planet? Jealous.”
“Don’t be, it was gross and the whole place smelled like old mushrooms. What’d they have you doing here?”
“Admin assist until my flight to Erbil tomorrow. Riveting stuff. They said I could just take the time off, but there’s fuck-all to do during the day, so I was getting restless.”
Cole nodded. “What about Brennan?”
Gillis smile faded. “Psychotic episode. Couldn’t handle all this otherworld stuff. He’s getting 86’d and sent home. Service-related trauma—VA checks for life. Hell, I think half the reason I can handle it is cause I’m too stupid to wrap my head around how impossible it all is, you know?”
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Cole slapped him on the back. “Brother, I can goddamn relate to that. I pulled a rifle with a web launcher out of a spider, and it made sense to me. Tell me the world hasn’t gone insane.”
They reached the ops building and Gillis badged them in. The guard at the desk gave a bit of an odd look at Cole’s clothes but waved them through. Cole got the feeling Kickers got a lot of leeway, here. They took the elevator up to the top floor. In the ops center, several of the screens were showing helmet cam feed from Curahee, with a focus on the two invaders that had appeared.
Gillis walked Cole all the way to Bricker’s office and then offered his hand. “In case I don’t see you again before I head back to CENTCOM, take care of yourself, man.”
Cole took it. “Likewise. You got my number if you ever need anything.”
Gillis walked away, leaving Cole at Bricker’s office door. He knocked.
“It’s open!” came the director’s voice. Cole let himself in, heading back to the rear office where Bricker was staring at his computer screen, sleepless bags under his eyes. He looked up and his eyebrows rose. “Ah, Cole! Thanks for coming in early. Come in, take a seat.”
Cole circled around one of the chairs and eased himself down, still stiff from the field excursion.
“Congratulations. You all did great on Curahee, especially considering the exigent circumstances of being down a proctor and being pursued by otherworld incursionists.”
“Thank you, sir. Does that happen often?” asked Cole. “Other world hoppers, that is.”
Bricker shook his head. “It didn’t used to, outside of certain worlds where it’s expected. And never before on Curahee. It’s not a world anyone would be interested in, considering its state. But some of them have started tracking our movement between worlds—not sure how, yet. Not every world takes kindly to us jumping in guns blazing to haul our kids home. We try the diplomatic approach when we can. Ask nicely, offer limited support in exchange for returning our children peacefully. Occasionally, someone takes us up on the offer. Most of them tell us to pound sand, and we’re left to put down the carrot and pick up the stick. And we’ve got big god-damn sticks.”
He pushed back from his screen and stretched. Even without enhanced Acuity, Cole heard the series of pops and cracks from the director’s joints; the stressed ligaments and tendons of a man who had spent his life giving his body for his work. “We’re going to have to reexamine security procedures for tryouts moving forward. Curahee is too valuable to us as a controlled crucible for forging new Kickers. Especially with Last Fall Hold. Not a lot of worlds with friendly locals. A big part of the training there that informs future mission offerings is seeing how you interact with otherworld human resources. Whether you help them, exploit them, or bypass them completely.
“Why don’t we help them, sir?” asked Cole. “There can’t be more than a few thousand. We could provide them with supplies, weapons. Food. Clothing.”
Bricker tapped his fingers on the desk and pursed his lips. “We’re getting off topic. I’ll answer that in the debrief so I don’t have to repeat myself. This isn’t what I woke you up to talk about.
“So what is it?” asked Cole.
Bricker turned his screen around and queued up a clip of Cole melting down one of the arquebus that he’d found.
“Since you’ve been through Last Fall Hold, you know that Curahee was my world. I was taken when I was fifteen and spent three years there, finally managing to kill the bastard who created the fungal fever ravaging everything, along with the help of the old king and Baron Ludwig. The infection lost a lot of its bite, but Curahee was too far gone by that point. I got sent home while the rest of the world burned in my absence.”
“That must have been hard,” said Cole.
“It was, I won’t lie.” said Bricker. He steepled his hands. “They took me against my will, but they were never cruel or unkind—by their world’s standards, at least. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t grow close to people there. Still, a teenager should never be put in that position. My balls had barely dropped before I was supposed to lead a mission to save their planet. Now, by fifteen, I was already bigger than most college freshmen, playing football at a varsity level and winning teen Judo tournaments. I was what we call a moonshot—the rare spiriting away victim actually capable of surviving an otherworld apocalypse. But I digress.”
Director Bricker waved his hand to the arquebus in the case behind him. “Before it fell, Curahee was a world of clockwork and black powder. Classes and abilities reflected that. Normally, otherworld weapons and armor are discrete pieces that can’t be changed or modified without destroying them—unless you have a class specifically capable of doing so. To this day, I think the only reason we were able to succeed in Curahee is because of a rare gunsmith in the old capital who gave me that rifle,” he gestured to the case behind him, “modified with high-quality parts, all with bonuses against undead and plant-based enemies. The biggest reason we run tryouts and class assignments through Curahee, besides controlling and mitigating the required risk in order to level up, is because the local god puts his own spin on classes when he unlocks them early. I’ve been trying to get someone nudged toward that Arquebus Engineer subclass—a subclass that is incredibly valuable to the department as a whole. It looks like you’re the lucky thousandth customer.”
Cole considered. “I knew it was a good subclass when I got it. I didn’t realize it was that critical,” he said.
Bricker nodded. “It is that critical. In fact, losing it now that we’ve got it is such a risk that I’m inclined to offer you a full-time assignment to the armory. You’d be working under Jefferson to enhance Kicker weapons—only sending you on otherworld assignments with the express purpose of power-leveling your secondary class. No overly-risky missions, no direct-action rescue tasks. How does that sound?”
It was certainly a ten-ply posting. No danger, a unique and valuable skill that was in extremely high demand. But Cole thought back to Gillis, and what he’d said when offered a permanent position in facility services. Who wants to hand out linens in Virginia? That certainly wasn’t why Cole had joined the Airborne, and it wasn’t why he had signed the papers to become a Kicker for DOR.
“At the risk of sounding selfish, sir, if I’m going to be locked up in a windowless box all day here, and have other people carry my water in the field? I’d just as soon go back to my unit in Syria.”
Bricker’s eye twinkled, and the hint of a smile tugged up at one corner of his mouth. “I expected as much. But now the SecDef can’t pitch a fit that I didn’t at least ask when he wakes up in two hours and sees this footage. Still, know that I will take it very personally if you get yourself KIA on-mission and lose me my first and only Arquebus Engineer in over a decade of running the Department of Otherworld Rescue. And your collateral duty while not on-mission will still be to assist Jefferson in the armory to break down spare otherworld armaments and enhance the mission readiness of our Kicker teams. Are those two conditions acceptable?”
“Yes sir,” said Cole.
Bricker grinned and held his hand out. The two shook on it. “Welcome to the Kickers, Cole.”