Page 69 of Shadow Boxed (Shadow Warriors #2)

Aiden walked away from the war room in a daze.

When had his life spun off its axis? Had it been up in the hills above Karaveht as he’d watched his best friends annihilate each other in a burst of bullets, blood, and bone? He thought about that and shook his head. No. Not then.

As horrifying as those moments were, they’d been.

..recognizable. A familiarity he knew well.

Sure, it was shaped by greed and horror.

But that was the reality he lived in, the darkness he endured because of his career.

God knew the world was full of psychopaths, monsters who put their own wants ahead of others.

Terrorists or cultists willing to kill anyone who stood in their way.

Cruelty...murder...selfishness...that reality was one he recognized.

But the reality he’d stepped into when he walked through the cafeteria doors...? That warped... fucked up.., deja vu of a reality...? That was not familiar. It wasn’t his reality. It wasn’t the truth he lived in...or lived with.

It was his nightmare—at least part of it—playing out during the day.

Sure, his dreams had been whacked for weeks now, even months off and on.

But the one from last night—the one that had bled into the cafeteria during the day, the one that had detonated a bomb inside his brain—that dream could not be his subconscious at work, no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise.

He didn’t believe in telepathy, so there was no way, no fucking way, his subconscious would sense that telepathy was in play on base.

Nor had he seen indications that the warriors on base were communicating without their tongues.

He’d never noticed the periodic glazing of eyes.

He’d never witnessed a warrior doing something without a verbal request. And then there was Kait and Cosky.

They’d been on base for years. Yet neither had mentioned that the warriors on base acted. ..oddly.

If the warriors of Shadow Mountain could communicate without using their goddamn mouths, wouldn’t someone notice? Wouldn’t they mention it?

When he awoke that morning with Benioko’s telepathy allegations ricocheting around his head, he’d dismissed the claims as nonsense. Dream nonsense. Like the freaky woman who’d turned into a mountain lion and screamed in his face.

He stopped walking long enough to scrub his palms down his face. At least the second half of that nightmare hadn’t leaked into the day. He could do without a cougar stalking him across base.

It wasn’t until he entered the isolation chamber that he realized where his feet had taken him. Not a surprise. When he had a free moment, he found himself here more often or not.

Squirrel broke away from the rest of his zombified brothers and sidled toward him.

The coiled rattlesnake flashed as he halted in front of the window, directly across from where Aiden stood.

The cottony substance was more pronounced, filling the missing portions of his face and skull.

It looked like someone had packed the wounds with wads of gauze.

Even his eye sockets were full of white.

“I see that one still responds to you. Has it said anything yet?” O’Neill asked from behind him.

Which was a dumbass question. If Squirrel had spoken, everyone on base would know.

“Seriously bro? That’s what you want to ask me?” Aiden scoffed without turning around.

“For now. We’ll get to the rest later,” O’Neill drawled as he stepped up to Aiden’s side.

Aiden focused on Squirrel, watched the rattler flash as his former best friend cocked his head. And he wished, with an intensity that left him hollow, that he could talk to the dude—lay out all his problems, all his uncertainty, at his best friend’s feet.

Squirrel had been more than his buddy, more than his brother. He’d been his sounding board. Someone who listened without judgement, without interruptions.

Aiden missed that. He wished he could dump this whole fractured reality at Squirrel’s feet.

He couldn’t discuss what happened with Wolf.

To Wolf, there was no fracture. To Wolf, telepathy and ghost shamans were reality.

At least his reality. His brother served a different truth than Aiden.

And O’Neill? Hell, the dude was born and raised on the Kalikoia reservation.

Indoctrinated into the culture of the Kali people.

He would be no help either.

“Who told you about the Neealaho ?” O’Neill asked.

“Pretty sure you already know the answer to that,” Aiden said flatly, staring hard into Squirrel’s gauze-packed eyes.

“Probably,” O’Neill agreed.

There was a hint of tension in the dude’s voice, rather than the gloating Aiden had expected.

“Did Benioko speak of my daughter? Of her spirit animal, or why it was gifted to her?”

The question penetrated Aiden’s daze. He turned slightly to the right, catching the tautness on O’Neill’s face. For the first time, annoyance didn’t flare at the question. Just exhaustion. “No. He didn’t speak of Gracie.”

O’Neill frowned. “What of Wolf’s Jillian?”

“No.”

Before O’Neill had a chance to continue with his questions, a sound came from behind the glass. A voice. Or more like the approximation of a voice. One robotic and grinding...like metal on metal.

Aiden jolted, his attention flying back to the isolation chamber. His gaze landed on Squirrel, on his dead friend’s open mouth.

“Aiden Winchester. This existence identifies you.” That grinding, robotic voice came out of Squirrel’s gaping mouth.

Aiden jolted again, his scalp tightening in horror. That was not the voice of a human. Not the voice of his best friend.

Had he gone crazy? Considering what happened in the cafeteria, it was a fair question.

“Did you hear that?” Aiden asked, his throat strangling the question.

“Unfortunately...yeah...I did.” O’Neill’s voice didn’t sound any smoother. Ditching his impression of an ice carving, O’Neill stepped forward. “Who are you?”

The Squirrel thing’s white eye sockets remained locked on Aiden’s face. It didn’t respond to O’Neill’s movement or his question.

His body tense, O’Neill took another step closer and tried again. “What are you?”

No response.

How were they supposed to question this thing? What were they supposed to ask? Maybe start with the basics?

“The one you inhabit is called Squirrel,” Aiden said.

“That is not the existence we identify.” The robotic voice said immediately.

Aiden frowned. Existence? Did that translate to the host it occupied. “What existence do you identify?”

“We identify this existence as Thomas Acker,” the grinding, metallic voice said without moving its mouth or tongue. And the whole time, its cotton-stuffed eyes remained locked on Aiden’s face.

Aiden glanced at O’Neill. “Squirrel’s given name.” Aiden turned back to the window. “How do you know of the Acker existence?”

“We identify it from before the namespace.”

Before the what?

What the fuck did namespace mean?

And how had it identified Squirrel’s given name? Nobody called him Thomas. Not on the hills above Karaveht, not through the radio, not ever. The bots wouldn’t have heard the name. Could they have accessed Squirrel’s memories? But even if they had, they wouldn’t have found the name there.

So how did this thing know it?

Maybe because of the Karaveht insertion? Capland had found the mission camera footage on Nantz’s hard drive? There was video from all six crew members, each tagged with the corresponding special operator’s given name. Squirrel was listed as Thomas Acker on his footage.

Did the nanobots know about the files on Nantz’s laptop?

“We need Embray and Cap,” O’Neill said, reaching for his phone. “Maybe they’ll know how to communicate with it.”

His gaze fixed on Squirrel’s gaping mouth, Aiden called Wolf.

“Squirrel’s...talking...” Aiden said tightly, although talking didn’t quite fit.

“On my way.” The line went dead.

“It keeps identifying itself as we .” O’Neill said, after they’d ended their respective phone calls. “Ask it what this royal we is.”

“You call yourself we,” Aiden said. “What does we refer to?”

“We are this existence.” That eerie, disembodied voice responded from somewhere inside Squirrel’s zombified mouth, or throat, or maybe its chest.

“What of the existence beside you?” Aiden asked. “How do you identify that existence.”

Squirrel’s head didn’t move. “We identify all existences as we.”

“A hive community?” O’Neill asked quietly. “The notes Cap found on Nantz’s hard drive mentioned he thought they were communicating telepathically.”

Telepathically. Aiden scowled. He hated that word. Although, if these things could communicate telepathically, could they do so over a distance? Could they communicate with the creatures in Nantz’s labs?

Aiden turned back to the zombified Squirrel. “Are you able to sense all of the existences you identify as we?”

“We recognize all of we.”

“Do you know the location of all we?” Aiden asked.

“All we are identified.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” O’Neill muttered beneath his breath. “That they know where each infected host is?”

The pounding of footsteps sounded in the corridor leading into the chamber. Aiden turned as Embray practically skidded into the room. His legs looked shaky. His face white with shock. He stopped dead and stared at the window, at Squirrel’s gaping mouth. “What has it said?’

Aiden turned back to the window, and the weird-ass conversation he was having with a dead dude. “They call themselves we.”

“Like a collective?” Embray took a step closer to the glass.

“Looks that way,” O’Neill said. “But the damn thing is rather fussy and only speaks to Aiden.

Embray offered a thoughtful hum. “Ask it what its purpose is.”

The billionaire had recovered from his shock remarkably fast.

“What is your existence’s purpose?” Aiden relayed the question. It was a good one—the million-dollar one.

“We exist to bring existence.”

To bring existence . Aiden exchanged a tense look with O’Neill. Translation: they existed to infect more people.

Embray let out a tight breath. “It must mean they exist to spread the nanobots.” He touched Aiden’s elbow. “Ask it how it intends to bring existence to others.”

Just as Aiden opened his mouth to pass the question on, Wolf’s voice called out behind him. “Can it identify other infected? Pass on their locations?”

Another excellent question, and one Aiden had planned to ask anyway. If these things were a collective, a linked hive, maybe Shadow Mountain could use Squirrel to hunt the rest of the infected down.

He was about to turn back to the window and ask Squirrel Wolf’s question when a woman stepped into the isolation chamber. She was the browned haired, brown eyed, crazy lady from his dreams. The one who’d turned into a cougar and chased him.

His legs started to shake. An electric hum rolled through his head. His sight turned silver at the edges.

This wasn’t possible. Couldn’t be possible.

He’d never seen her before. There was no reason for her to haunt his nightmare. Or...in this case...his day.

What the fuck was happening to him. Was she real? Was she a dream? Had he gone certifiably crazy?

Hell, maybe none of this was really happening.

“Aiden? Aiden?” Wolf’s voice. A hand tightened over his shoulder. Wolf’s hand. He heard the one...felt the other. But the woman remained.

“What’s wrong?” The question came from O’Neill. It carried the same concern that shone from Wolf’s eyes.

Aiden looked toward the back of the room. She was still there. The woman. Still watching him.

“Do the rest of you see her?” he asked, his voice cracked and desperate. He indicated the lion lady with a thrust of his chin.

Wolf and O’Neill turned to look.

“Jillian?” Wolf sounded almost as shocked as Aiden felt. “You should not be here.”

Aiden’s jaw dropped. Jillian? Wolf’s shadow woman?

Jillian stepped forward, her dark gaze still locked on Aiden’s face. Her eyes were wreathed in mystery and shadows...shadows that reminded Aiden of his nightmares...of that twisted, bleached forest shrouded in mist.

“I am here because the screaming mother sent me,” Jillian said, her voice matter of fact. “I am to tell him that the howling father grows impatient with his missing voice.”

The fact her gaze never left Aiden told everyone who she was talking about.

“And to remind him—” her gaze finally broke from Aiden’s face and drifted to the window behind him “—the stakes of this war against the trickster’s children.”

To be continued in Shadow Bound