Outriders

OUTRIDERS

JAY POSEY

CONTENTS

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Legals

For Max, and for Pop

ONE

C
APTAIN
L
INCOLN
S
UH
had three minutes to live.

Two minutes, fifty-seven seconds to be exact. He wasn’t supposed to know that, but he did because in the double-paned glass separating him from the observation room, he could just make out the ghostly numbers, reversed in reflection. Numbers, ticking down.

In other situations, he might have prided himself on having noticed the detail. But given what he knew about the people in control at the moment, he doubted that reflection was an accident or a mere oversight.
They
knew the kinds of people they brought into this room… the kinds of people who were used to noticing the little things. People like Lincoln, who had been trained to notice them, were
expected
to notice them. There wasn’t much else he could clearly make out in that elevated observation room: shadows, blinking lights. But he could see that timer, counting down the last seconds of his life.

He himself was in a sterile beige room, along with two white-coated technicians. Only one of them, the woman, seemed to be doing anything useful. The other one was a beefy-looking fellow with hands too rough and eyes too sun-squinted to be a true egghead. He held a clipboard and moved from machine to machine, playing as though he were running through a checklist. He wasn’t a very good actor. Conveniently, all the machines he was moving between happened to keep him between Lincoln and the single door. Which seemed unnecessary, since they’d strapped Lincoln’s ankles, thighs, wrists, chest, and head all down to some sort of cross between a gurney and an inclined operating table. He’d thought it all excessive when they had first hooked him in, but now that his adrenaline was pumping, he wondered if it was enough. He tested the straps, just to check. They creaked a bit under the strain, and though they didn’t stretch or give him any extra room, he felt some play in the strap around his right wrist. Maybe enough to get his hand free.

Two minutes, eighteen seconds.

Lincoln couldn’t stop his mind from soaking up all the details, from formulating plans even though he knew he wasn’t going to escape. They’d strapped him to the table, but he’d noticed when they brought him in that the table wasn’t secured to the floor. There was an intravenous tube feeding fluid into his left forearm. If he thrashed enough, he might be able to tip the table. The big guy by the door would have to get involved. Get the right hand free, IV tube around the big guy’s neck… How long before the security team crashed in? Thirty seconds maybe. Call it twenty.

No. He wasn’t going to escape. Lincoln would have shaken his head at himself if he’d been able to do so; the strap around his forehead prevented him from turning his head at all. He’d spent so many years finding his way out of tough spots, it was impossible to turn it off even when he wanted to. He took a steadying breath and reminded himself that this was what he’d signed up for. More or less.

He glanced over at the lady technician, the
real
tech, and looked out of the corner of his eye to try to get some sense of what was about to happen to him. Well… he knew what the
result
was going to be. It was the process he was worried about.

She had her back to Lincoln while she worked some touchscreen. He couldn’t catch enough of a glimpse to make sense of anything, and when she stepped away, the screen blanked out. The technicians had obviously been instructed to remain silent throughout the procedure, and even though she’d probably done this so many times for it to become routine, it seemed like maybe the woman coped with the whole situation by avoiding even eye contact with her patients. She moved amongst the various displays and terminals, checking settings, making adjustments; even when she had to interact with something near him, never once did her eyes stray to Lincoln. Her face was a blank slate; focused, running through her mental checklist. Lincoln knew the state well. He was the same way before every mission.

He glanced back up at the observation room.

One minute, ten.

His breathing had gone shallow again. And he realized his hands were balled into fists so tight it was making his knuckles hurt. There wasn’t much else he could control at that point, but he didn’t want to die like a man in fear. He had made his choice. He wanted to face it like the man he was; a warrior, resolute and strong. He inhaled, long and steady for five seconds. Held for five seconds. Let it out for another five. Held empty for five. Repeated the process. These were his final breaths. He’d do it under his own control, on his own schedule, not panting it away in a panic.

Thirty-three seconds.

The female tech moved over and stood beside Lincoln, checked the straps, made a final adjustment to the intravenous tube in his arm. As her rubber-gloved hand touched his forearm, her eyes flicked up to his. It was only a split second, but Lincoln saw not the cold, clinical evaluation he expected. Instead a warm sadness reflected there, belied by the otherwise flat expression on her face. A moment before she withdrew, she rested her fingertips on his shoulder for a bare second, a show of support and comfort, undoubtedly against regulations. A kind gesture of reassurance, reminding him that he wasn’t alone in those final moments.

She pulled away and nodded to the white-coated grunt by the door.

Nine seconds.

It was true, Lincoln discovered, what they said about your whole life flashing before your eyes. But it wasn’t the way he had always imagined. The flashes weren’t sequential, they didn’t come packaged in a nice, neat recap of all the important moments and happy highlights of a life well lived. It was more like waking up in the middle of the night in a cold-sweat panic, all the scattered thoughts hitting you from every angle at once and ricocheting off one another before there was any chance to grab hold of one of them. A firehose flood of acute images and raw emotion and dreams unfulfilled.

A click, a beep, a sudden whirring sound from somewhere behind Lincoln’s head. He inhaled sharply as he fell through the bottom of the world.

Darkness descended, accompanied by a faint rushing noise, like a distant waterfall. Then, silence.

And so it was on a sunny spring Wednesday morning that Lincoln Suh, Captain, United States Army, breathed his last and died.

“
C
ANDIDATE
O
NE
S
EVEN
E
CHO
,” a voice called in the darkness. An angel, come to guide his spirit to its final place of rest. Her voice was warm and stirred his heart. “Candidate One Seven Echo,” she said again. Candidate One Seven Echo. It wasn’t his name, but they’d called him that so often over the past fourteen weeks that he responded to it instinctively as if it was the name his own mother had given him. It took conscious effort to command his eyelids to open. The lights were low, and it took a moment for his eyes to remember how to focus. When they did, Captain Lincoln Suh realized he recognized the face staring down at him. Not an angel: the lady technician.

“You’re done, candidate,” she said.

“I died,” Lincoln said. The tech nodded. “And now I’m back.” The tech nodded again. Lincoln shrugged. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about.” She let slip a subdued smile and the way it brightened up the room, Lincoln thought she might be an angel after all. Half, maybe.

“Any numbness in your hands or feet?” she asked. “Metallic taste in your mouth? Ringing in your ears?”

Lincoln took a quick physical inventory, and then shook his head. “No ma’am, everything feels right as rain. Did you do something to me while I was out? Besides kill me, I mean.”

“Any of those symptoms can indicate incomplete resynchronization with your nervous system. If you notice any of those, particularly with sudden onset, you’ll need to report it immediately.”

“What about out-of-body experiences?” Lincoln asked. The technician made a face but otherwise ignored the comment. She started towards the door while she finished the last of her obviously routine speech.

“We’ll keep you under observation for half an hour or so and if your vitals remain steady, someone from cadre will come to escort you back to your facility. If you experience any of the symptoms I mentioned, have any unusual sensations that concern you, or any difficulty recalling previously strong memories, press the button on your right.”

Lincoln glanced to his right and saw a beige rectangular box with a chunky red button on it. The whole thing seemed about fifty years older than everything else in the room with him. And it was only then that he realized he was in a different room than the one he’d died in. That struck him as the kind of thing he should have noticed pretty much the instant he’d come to.

“Any questions?” the tech asked.

“Sure,” Lincoln said. “What do I do while I wait?”

She opened the door part way. “I recommend you rest, candidate.”

“Uh oh,” he said. “Ma’am?… I might have to press this button after all.”

The tech stood at the door, eyebrows raised.

“Problem?”

“I press it if I have any memory issues?”

“Yes?”

“Well, ma’am, I can’t remember the last time I got thirty whole minutes to myself to rest.”

“You’ve been dead for an hour, sir,” she answered. “So technically they gave you
ninety
.” She flashed her quick smile then slipped out and pulled the door closed behind her.

Lincoln chuckled and laid his head back. Dead for an hour. And thirty minutes to recover. Based on everything else he’d been through for the Selection course so far, that seemed about right. He worked his jaw, flexed his fingers, wiggled his toes. He was still dressed in his T-shirt and pants. Even had his boots on. He didn’t
feel
any different. Certainly not like his entire consciousness had been taken out and stored on a system for sixty minutes while his body went cold, even though that’s exactly what had just happened.