Semper Fidelis (2 page)

Facebook: Facebook, Inc.

Bluetooth: Bluetooth Special Interest Group

Marvel Comics: Marvel Entertainment, LLC

X-Men: Marvel Entertainment, LLC

Ford: Ford Motor Company

Captain America: Marvel Entertainment, LLC

Grindr: Grindr LLC

Iron Man: Marvel Entertainment, LLC

Saved By the Bell
: NBC Productions

Xbox: Microsoft Corporation, Inc.

Humvee: AM General

X-Men Sentinels: Marvel Entertainment, LLC

Magneto: Marvel Entertainment, LLC

Photoshop: Adobe Systems, Inc.

Chapter One

Staff Sergeant Galen Welc squinted at the screen of his government-issue smartphone. His brown eyes and dark blond hair stared back at him instead of the passcode screen he was searching for. “I don’t know how to turn this fucker on.”

Until the devices became standard, he’d avoided tying himself to anything besides a basic flip phone, but now he had no choice. Just like every other order, he was willing to roll with the tide. But Casey, a fellow staff sergeant in his platoon, was determined to make Galen
use
his phone, not just possess it.

He located the correct button to bring the screen back to life and entered his code. “Which one is it?”

Casey reached across the table and flipped the cell to face him, scrolling through the pages of apps until he came to a white blobby icon that he tapped open. “This one. Waze is like Facebook for traffic.”

“I refuse to use Facebook and I don’t mind traffic. How is this app supposed to make my life better?”

“Just use it.”

“Seems like this would be dangerous and really fucking distracting.”

“You’re so type A,” Casey goaded him.

He was as far from type A as a person could get and Casey knew it. “You’re the one with control issues. I’m decisive.”

He and Casey had become friends out of circumstance and necessity years ago, but over time, the gunnery sergeant had become one of his best friends. That they were both on temporary orders at the Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Command in Twentynine Palms, California, made Galen’s displacement easier.

Casey pretended to choke on his burger. “Decisive? How about arrogant?”

Galen smirked and leaned back in his chair. “Confident and smart. It’s all perspective and semantics.”

“Smartass is more like it. How is the whole lab rat thing going anyway?”

Galen pocketed his cell, content to move away from a subject he knew nothing about to something he was an expert at. He picked up the apple from his plate, tossing it into the air as he answered Casey. “It’s kind of cool. Besides the length of the commute, I’m enjoying myself. Don’t tell our platoon commander that, though.”

“That butter bar probably doesn’t have pubes yet.” Casey snatched the apple out of the air and took a bite out of it, talking around it as he chewed. “God forbid we like what we do.”

Galen smirked but didn’t comment on Casey’s dig on the straight out of college second lieutenant whom they both reported to. “Capitalism dies a languorous death when people are happy, Casey.”

“Languorous? Really? Anyway, capitalism isn’t dying ’cause ain’t nobody happy. Don’t you read the news? Just use the app. I promise your commute today will be shorter—or at least more informative. I’m grabbing some food from the MCX to restock my room. You want anything while I’m there?”

“Nah, man. I’m good to go. I’ll see you in two days.”

The sun was just a hint of orange on the horizon when Galen left the Sleepy Tortoise Lodge. He rolled up his sleeves, the heat of the day already settling in despite the early hour. At least he could dress like a civilian instead of in uniform for this assignment.

Galen turned on the Bluetooth audio connection in his rental car and paired his phone, securing it to the holder on the dash that kept it in a heads-up display. Most days he was waved through the main gate as he left the base, but today a Marine stepped into the road and motioned for him. He slowed and came to a stop, rolling down his window.

“You still kicking those drone asses, Staff Sergeant?”

Unlike most of his assignments, his participation in a study to improve detection of improvised explosive devices wasn’t classified. In the few weeks he’d been on base, the stories had begun to spread about his work with Synthfad. Galen’s ability to sight IEDs on a more consistent basis than the drones was a point of pride for the Corps.

He wasn’t used to being recognized by anyone besides his own men, let alone receiving praise for doing his job, though. He cleared his throat and gave an uncomfortable laugh. “Doesn’t quite work like that.”

The Marine wasn’t buying Galen’s humbleness. His grin spread wide as he stepped back from the car. “That’s what I thought, sir. You keep showing them what human eyeballs can do that robots never will. I’d trust you over the metal any day, Magneto.”

Galen shook his head and laughed off the compliment as he started to drive away. He shouldn’t have been surprised that the nickname had followed him here. He’d picked it up on his first deployment because of his uncanny ability to spot IEDs, as if he could sense and control metal, just like the Marvel Comics’ supervillain.

“Do us proud, sir,” the Marine yelled after him.

He waved out of his window in acknowledgment.

Magneto.

Okay, so maybe the nickname also could be attributed to the X-Men emblem tattooed on his forearm.

Although he was well aware how far Los Angeles was from Twentynine Palms, he switched his cell’s GPS on anyway and clicked over to the traffic app Waze, hoping it would live up to the effusive praise Casey had poured on the supposed time-saver. He entered the address for the Synthfad headquarters in Pasadena, the suburb outside Los Angeles where the defense contractor was located, and Waze popped up with an estimate on how long his drive would be today and what route he should take.

The perspective on his cell phone screen was similar to a third-person shooter video game, the map moving as he drove through the desolate area surrounding the base. Before being reassigned to California, all he knew about the state was Los Angeles, and all he knew about LA was the nasty reputation of gridlock and smog. Now that he’d experienced it in person, he could testify that the smog was brutal and driving in LA was, indeed, a shit experience.

It had only taken one round-trip commute between the remote Marine base and the city to discover just how hell-like a traffic jam could be. Add the heat of summertime in southern Cali to the equation and his drive bordered on literal hell. On a good day, usually the ones—as irony went—when the weather was bad, the drive from base to Synthfad was two and a half hours—one way. Galen had witnessed people banging their heads against steering wheels in the dead spot melee that was some people’s everyday commute. Maybe if this drive had been something he had to do every day for thirty years, then he would have the same reaction. But as it stood, this assignment was temporary. Not just as a lab rat—as Casey had so affectionately called him—but at Twentynine Palms in general.

Lab rat didn’t give enough credence to the amount of effort Galen put into this research study. He wasn’t testing a device or equipment—it was his own abilities that were being tested and ranked against potential government technology. Galen had been recommended by his platoon commander because of his ability to spot what was out of place when everyone else saw normality. He was good at identifying, targeting and disarming anomalies. In the particular case of IEDs, these were anomalies that took the lives of military personnel and innocent civilians in hotbed combat zones all over the world.

He dropped down from the high desert landscape of the base and toward the ocean, the number of cars increasing at a seeming exponential rate with each mile closer to LA. The more cars that appeared around him on the freeway, the more avatars that popped up on Waze, tracking with him, passing him, and running in all other directions around him on surface streets that the highway passed by and over. There was a constant movement to cities that amazed Galen. The stir-crazy urban life was literal miles away from the woods he’d grown up in, and a metaphorical lifetime away.

Galen ran his fingers over the buzz cut he favored while in hot climes, remembering the feel of what had once been rebellious, out of control hair. He’d been a Marine for seven years and it had been just as long since he’d last been to the town he’d grown up in. He didn’t consider that small town home by any measure of the word, and he’d embraced the idea that there may be nowhere he’d ever pin that title on. He was okay with that. Place wasn’t nearly as important as people—roots not nearly as stable as the bond that came with shared sacrifice.

He caught glimpses of the drivers and passengers in the cars around him, cataloging their appearances, making guesses about their profession and their home life based on the type of car they drove, their license plate, clothes, the overall state of dress or undress in the heat. During his deployments he’d learned that whether or not someone missed air conditioning said a lot about how much maintenance they needed and how accommodating they could be.

There were clues everywhere to an individual’s personality. Set patterns that fit them into general buckets. It was recognition of those patterns—and more importantly, their outliers—that set Galen apart.

He hadn’t lied when he’d told Casey he didn’t mind traffic jams. He’d learned how to make a game out of them that served to refine his observation skills. The beat to shit late-model Ford he was about to pass with an Om symbol in the back window likely belonged to a woman. Young. Not an air conditioner user. He slid up next to her and confirmed his suspicions. To be fair, there were quite a few women that fit this particular archetype in southern California.

He glanced to his left to check out those cars and he caught a glimpse of his cell screen. As he passed by the yoga chick, an avatar with a sparkly pink bow dropped behind him.
Was that her on the screen?

All of sudden his game took on a whole new challenge. Could he match the avatars with the cars around him?

The drive time to Pasadena ticked down faster than it ever had before as Galen got into this new game. He used visual cues along with vehicle locations in relation to his car to correlate avatar to real-life person. First there was the icon with the briefcase and the sword that matched up to the road warrior in the Mercedes, his suit jacket hung in the backseat window. Then an amorphous Waze blob with a pacifier—that had to be the dinged-up rental SUV of a pasty white tourist family, suitcases secured to the top with multicolored bungee cords. The zombified icon that zoomed past him in the far left lane was a skinny teenager driving one-handed with a cigarette hanging out his mouth. But his attention kept going back to the Captain America shield avatar that must have been in the same lane as him, because that driver never got any closer or any farther back. Galen’s curiosity was piqued and he kept looking into the rearview mirror until he almost slammed into the car in front of him. He’d been too right when he’d told Casey this app was a distraction to a dangerous level.

He spent another thirty minutes challenging himself not to even glance at this cell, then he came to an inevitable standstill about ten miles away from his destination. Traffic crawled around him and his estimated time of arrival moved further back. So Galen couldn’t resist looking at his phone when he saw a flash of red, white and blue as that Captain America shield slid closer to him. He clicked on the avatar and the username ‘
ZJR
’ popped up.

There were four lanes of cars, but he eliminated one after another as possibilities based on the movement of the Steve Rogers fan and that the car had likely changed lanes. Then there, to his right, two lanes away, Galen spotted which car the Waze user had to be driving and behind the wheel…

Dark hair, messy, falling over his bronze skin. Thick-framed black glasses grasped by long fingers. Pouty lips curled into a half smile as he mouthed the words to whatever song played on his radio…

Galen was so distracted he missed his exit. And of course, the beautiful man—ZJR—took it, heading off in the direction Galen should have been going.

* * * *

Galen pulled off the 210 freeway and waited for the light to turn so he could get back on going the right way. He hit the button on his cell to call Casey, and the car speakers pushed out a ring at top volume. Galen turned it down just as Casey picked up the phone. “Thanks for the rec, asshole,” he accused. “This app is either going to kill me or make it so it’s impossible for me to get to my destination on time.”

“Awesome, right?”

“No. Listen to me. Not awesome. Dangerous.”

Galen heard Casey talking to someone as if he was holding the phone away from him.
Shit.
He’d forgotten his friend was running a live ammo training exercise today. “Please tell me you didn’t take my call when fresh-out-of-camp boots are firing live ammo into the sandbox.”

“
I’m
the type A asshole, remember? Like I’d hand control over to anyone just to take your call. We’re on a hydration break. Now what are you bitching about?”

“Waze! Awful fucking idea, Staff Sergeant Main. You know me well enough by now. I started matching up the avatars to the cars around me, scoping out the drivers, and missed my exit.”

Galen overheard, “Yeah, give me a second,” then the sound of Casey breathing into the phone.
Was he moving away from the group?
Casey cleared his throat. “Was it a man or a woman?”

There was a faint buzzing in Galen’s ear. He had to have heard Casey wrong. “What?”

Casey coughed. “Fucking desert. Or was it both? Never was quite sure if you were gay or bi.”

Galen’s stomach dropped. That he was gay was not a conversation he’d planned to have with anyone in the Corps. Ever. Regardless of the repeal of DADT and DOMA. “Casey—”