I feel like a frump next to her.
I can’t even comfort myself I’ll grow up to look more like her: I’m adopted.
More than that, there’s something missing as I stare at my reflection.
My mom looks like a woman whereas I look like a kid, even past my chronological age. A kid with all the sharp bits pointing in the wrong directions. Too small to resemble anything remotely close to one of the sex symbols I’ve seen in magazines and feeds all of my life.
No real curves. Nothing any guy would like, much less Jaden, who always seemed to stare hardest at girls who looked the opposite of me.
But this was his idea. He wanted to do this. He made the appointment, and yeah, it was at the Elvis church in Portland, but for him, that was romantic. He loves Elvis.
“You look beautiful,” my mom assures me.
I’m twenty-two years old. I’ve just graduated college. I shouldn’t need reassurance from my mom anymore, but I do. My dad’s been dead for five years now.
Five years, two months, three days.
“Are you sure?” I ask her, glancing up at her face. Her brown eyes hold so much love, I bite my lip, suddenly fighting emotion. “Mom… don’t.”
“I can’t help it.” Using her fingers, she wipes her eyes when they grow suddenly bright. She fights to smile, but all I see are those tears, the grief and love and fear that lives behind them. “I’m sorry, honey. But are you sure you want to do this?”
Her voice holds a deeper worry, a hesitation that tells me she’s afraid to ask, afraid to interfere, but afraid not to, too.
“…Are you positive, Allie-bird?” she says.
I hesitate too, feeling that thread of doubt worming into my own mind.
I nod then, looking back in the mirror. “I’m sure.”
“You’re so young,” she says. “You’ve hardly even had any boyfriends. Marriage is a big step.” Hesitating, as if still unsure if she should go on, she adds, “Are you sure, Allie? Are you sure Jaden is ready for this? That he’s the right one for you?”
Swallowing, I look at myself in the mirror.
Studying myself from a few more angles, I push my shoulders back, and decide the dress looks better that way. Of course, I know the chances are slim that I’ll remember that once I leave the mirror.
“I’m sure,” I tell her again.
I look up at her, smiling. Again, the look on her face hits at something in my heart, some shockingly vulnerable part of me, a part that makes me feel like a little girl all over again.
I see myself suddenly in her eyes, and realize that little girl is all she sees.
“I’m sure mom,” I tell her, squeezing her fingers. “I love you. And I love Jon. A lot. But you don’t need to worry about me, either of you, and anyway––”
“––I DON’T WANT to hear it,” Revik warned.
The younger seer’s full mouth curled in a frown.
He started to speak again, but before he could get out the words, Revik shook his head, hardening his jaw. He spoke over the younger male’s expression without bothering to reach out with his light for the specific objections in Maygar’s mind.
“––I told you. I don’t want to hear it,” he said.
The younger seer opened his mouth.
“––I mean it, Maygar,” Revik growled. “I don’t care.”
Maygar’s frown deepened, even as anger rose to his dark brown eyes.
“No excuses,” Revik said, reminding him of the agreement they’d made when they started these sessions. “Now, try it again. From the beginning. Or I start training you the way I was taught. No modifications.”
Maygar’s eyes hardened more, becoming brown stones in his high-cheekboned face.
“Yes,” Revik said, his voice colder. “You’ll like it less than this. Significantly less.”
Maygar glanced at the one-way window, right before he looked back at Revik. Something in the gesture conveyed helplessness, which only managed to anger Revik more. He hit at the younger seer with his light, until he had his full attention again.
“Balidor’s not going to help you,” he warned, resting his hands on his hips. Lifting one, he gestured towards the same one-way window etched into the organic face of the room’s wall. “No one’s going to fucking help you, Maygar. You said you wanted this, and I have neither the time to waste nor the inclination to pretend I give a damn about your feelings of inadequacy.”
He gestured around the broader room, a nearly featureless square cell they’d built in the basement of the four-story Victorian.
“This is a training room,” he said, giving Maygar a hard look. “We train in here. Or I leave.”
Maygar scowled, but didn’t argue. He made a short, sharp affirmative gesture with one hand.
Looking at his son, Revik frowned, trying to assess the effect of his words.
They were in the main headquarters building on Alamo Square. A good chunk of his leadership team lived in the same building, but the majority, like him, slept upstairs. Plans existed to move the whole operation a few hundred––if not a few thousand––miles inland of either of the two main coasts, sometime in the next few months.
Revik approved of the overall strategy. They’d talked about the same thing back in New York; the plan was to move operations after the initial wave of the disease died down.
He saw the sense in it––but he wasn’t leaving here until she was able to be safely moved.
Balidor understood.
In fact, Balidor hadn’t even argued, which Revik appreciated more than he’d expressed, or likely would express to the Adhipan seer. Balidor made a joke about the mountain coming to Mohammed, then put his people to work, leaving Revik to do his.
They only interrupted him when they needed something specific.
Revik appreciated that, too.
Balidor brought materials here from nearby labs and medical facilities, now abandoned by the humans that used to run them. He had his people constructing everything to be portable for when they eventually moved their base, designing most new weapons and tools as prototypes, or even as temps.
Revik kept tabs enough to know Balidor had also started recruiting more openly from the refugee population, culling whatever specialized skill sets might be needed in the coming days and weeks. He knew Balidor had Declan doing the same in New York. Some of those refugees even trained alongside their own people now, if they had a high enough sight rank, or a skill rare enough that it seemed worth the added investment.
For the first time, Revik had the opportunity to see the full array of Balidor’s skills and areas of expertise directly in action. The Adhipan leader had always worked for his wife before. Revik had never directed him like this, or needed him like this. He found him easy to work with––and surprisingly respectful of his authority, despite a tendency to be overly paternalistic.
In some ways, he was even easier than Wreg.
Not that he could fault Wreg’s performance of the past few months, either.
Balidor and Wreg had both been working tirelessly for what had to be over twenty weeks now, converting most of the houses on Alamo Square to their own purposes, setting up security and infiltration teams to monitor the Barrier. Setting up scouting teams and engineering teams to mine and create safe food and water sources, and to map the layout of what remained of San Francisco’s local population, both human and seer.
Of course, few remained in the city at this point, even among the indigent.
Those who remained had already turned it into a different kind of city, with different rules.
Scavengers carved out territory, roved in bands, and fought amongst themselves. Mostly human, they learned to steer clear of Revik’s territory pretty fast.
That same territory had expanded in the weeks since, and now included all of what had once been called the Western Addition, NOPA, Buena Vista Park and a good chunk of both the Fillmore and the Haight, upper and lower.
Allie’s neighborhood.
&nbs
p; Revik owned those streets now, just like any human gang leader.
None of those who once inhabited the Victorian-style houses at the base of the small park of Alamo Square and its hill had been around to complain when Revik took them over. He and his people found evidence of looting, broken windows, drug pipes, dead bodies, spoiled food, vandalism of the walls and furniture––but no one alive.
The area also stood far enough above the flood zones as to be relatively safe, despite the ongoing earthquakes and storms.
Still, the location was temporary, and it felt temporary.
On some level, it was utterly insane to stay here at all, given San Francisco’s location along major fault lines and its proximity to the sea.
Revik didn’t care.
Truthfully, he rarely left this specific building.
The basement cell walls glowed with organic life, shimmering with a disconcerting whisper of sentience as his eyes and light followed their snaking trails. It was the second such room Balidor and his technicians had attempted to build.
While it didn’t quite have the impenetrability of the Tank Galaith built in China, when fully activated, this room came close.
Even this constituted a prototype. Balidor had his technicians working on the next generation already, for after they moved.
Revik’s eyes returned to the other male while he thought this.
“Plenty of other seers want to be on the ground for this,” he growled into Maygar’s silence. “Plenty of other seers would kill themselves for the opportunity to help, particularly at this level. Say the word, and I’ll start training for a different approach. One that doesn’t need a second telekinetic seer.”
Maygar’s frown deepened, but something in that last speech caused his dark brown eyes to clear. He shook his head, once, while Revik watched, clenching his jaw as if he didn’t trust what might come out of his mouth if he were to speak.
Revik found himself hardening his light against the expression there.
He saw the grief behind it.
He felt enough of a flavor of Allie’s light that his pain returned, clenching into a hard knot in his chest. He felt the intensity of Maygar’s hurt, and that sadness resonated briefly with his own, enough that he had to fight back his light, to control it with an iron hand before he did or said something he would regret.
His words came out the same as before.
“Try it again,” he said, aiming his light deliberately at the relevant structure over the younger seer’s head. “Exactly like I showed you.”
That time, Maygar nodded, his expression taut, vulnerable in its determination.
“All right,” he said, unfolding his arms. “I’m ready.”
JON STOOD BY Balidor on the other side of a one-way window.
He stared into the featureless room of the new Barrier-containment room, or “Tank-Jr.,” as some of the seers had taken to calling it. He scanned the sentient walls and their shimmering green glow before his eyes returned to the two men standing in the middle of the smooth, skin-like floor.
Jon fought to keep his thoughts and his mind neutral as he watched them work, as he listened to Revik threaten and cajole, encourage and ridicule, pushing at the other’s light––slamming it, jerking on it and even breaking parts of it at times––all to get Maygar’s aleimi to move and behave the way Revik wanted.
Jon didn’t know if he found it more or less comforting that Revik would treat his own son this way, to prepare him for what lay ahead. Jon had to remind himself of the less-friendly aspects of Revik and Maygar’s relationship over the past few years.
The dynamic between the two of them seemed so different of late.
Not more friendly, exactly––but different.
Mutually focused. United. Compatible in a strange way, although Jon had never once seen them discuss anything personal.
Jon shifted on his feet as he watched them, even with his own mixed feelings about Maygar. He couldn’t help but be uncomfortable with the obvious expression of pain that came to the younger seer’s face when Revik once again hit at him with his light. Maygar had already emptied the contents of his stomach on the floor of the cell twice that morning.
Revik hadn’t even stopped long enough to let someone clean it up.
It had to smell in there.
Bad, by now, baking under those hot, organic lights.
Jon couldn’t see exactly what was happening between them. He lacked most of the requisite structures in his own aleimi to see anything remotely approximating actual telekinesis, but it wasn’t difficult to discern that the process hurt. In fact, Jon strongly suspected that whatever Revik was doing with Maygar, it hurt a lot.
Maybe more than Maygar was trying to let on.
Just watching them for the past few hours made the sight training Jon received from Wreg seem like child’s play.
Jon felt the surreality of doing this in an abandoned Victorian mansion on Alamo Square in San Francisco, only a few blocks from the house where he and Allie had grown up. A house like this probably cost around twenty million, easy, while Jon had been in high school.
More, by the time he got out of college.
Revik and his two lieutenants, Wreg and Balidor, fortified the place into a military base in the months since they’d landed, ripping out decorative landscaping, boarding up windows and even building walls to give them protection from the street.
They’d transformed the four-story mansion into a garrison, of sorts.
Jon knew Wreg even elicited help from Tarsi to build a construct around the square unlike anything seen outside of maybe the Pamir.
They didn’t want Shadow anywhere near Allie––or Revik himself, for that matter.
Jon still felt strange whenever he walked outside and remembered where they were. He knew this whole stay in SF was temporary, but being here at all felt like sheer madness, given the earthquakes, tsunamis, roaming gangs, and whatever else. Of course, Jon understood where that decision came from, too, and why no one argued it too loudly, especially around “the boss.”
Everyone was pretty careful around Revik these days.
They’d discussed returning to New York, of course, not long after they first arrived in San Francisco. Revik vetoed it, without a lot of explanation really, but Jon found he could guess his brother-in-law’s probable motives. Revik didn’t want to risk anything that might worsen Allie’s condition.
It was more than that, though, and all of them knew it, although no one voiced it aloud, not even with Revik out of the room.
Jon even understood, in a way, why Revik wouldn’t want to leave here––whether to go to New York or to the new proposed base outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Leaving here with Allie still in that coma-like state felt tantamount to admitting she might remain that way. It felt like acknowledging this as the new normal.
It also meant letting the rest of her people see her like this.
Both thoughts made Jon more than a little sick.
Pushing back the pain that wanted to rise, Jon felt his mouth harden as he motioned with his jaw and head towards the scene on the other side of the one-way glass.
He gave a bare glance to the seer standing next to him.
“Is he making progress?” Jon said. “What do you think?”
When Balidor didn’t answer right away, Jon found himself looking back towards the Tank replica’s observation window. They’d built this cell specifically for the telekinesis work. For that reason, they cut it off from anything explosive in the house.
Revik even instructed them to move a few of the natural gas lines, as well as the water heater and any ammunition they happened to be storing in the lower floors. All of the walls except the one Jon and Balidor currently looked through had extensive padding, as well.
Other than Revik and Maygar, only a table stood in the middle of the room.
On that table lay a number of objects.
One, a glass wand with intricate patterns running up and down its crystal si
des, Balidor called an urele. According to Balidor, urele were designed a few thousand years ago to help seers direct and control their light. Jon had never seen one before, but Balidor claimed he and Wreg both used them in the Pamir.
The other objects on that table were more random-seeming––and varied.
A gun lay there, the only technically combustible object in the room, presumably to help them work on igniting those elements to disarm it, whenever they got to that point. The rest consisted of various blunt objects, including a heavy-looking and rusted piece of machinery, a glass ball resting on a piece of fabric, what looked like an semi-organic or dead-metal rod––
“He is making progress,” Balidor said after another pause.
“Enough?” Jon said, turning. “How much time is Revik giving this approach?”
Balidor shook his head, but not in a no. The head shake, followed by a seer’s flipped over hand, made it into a seer’s “I don’t know,” instead.
“And what about him?” Jon pressed. “Revik? Is his telekinesis completely back now?”
Balidor repeated the same gesture as before, only with a slightly more knowing incline of his head.
“Seems to be,” he said.
“How is that possible?” Jon frowned. “Didn’t you say it would take longer? I remember you and Wreg saying years. You thought the damage was so extensive that it could take him months if not years to get his abilities back. Assuming he ever did.”
“I do not know that either, brother,” Balidor said, giving him a flat look. “Tarsi seems to think he had outside help of some kind. In any case, it won’t do him any good if he overstrains himself. Which he certainly is doing.”
“What kind of outside help?”
Again, Balidor made a noncommittal gesture.
“And Maygar?” Jon said, not willing to let it go yet. “How long will that take? Before he can do the paired thing, like Revik proposed?”
“I do not know––” Balidor began.
He was interrupted when the hard glass ball flew sideways, impacting the one-way window. Despite the thickness of the surface, the noise shook the walls.
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