Allie's War Season Three

by JC Andrijeski

  Wreg grunted a little at that, too.

  He shook his head then, gesturing with one hand as if conceding a point. Jon wasn't entirely sure if Wreg was referring to what he'd actually said, or what he'd been thinking just then. He supposed it didn't really matter.

  "Only the Sark one," Wreg said, still smiling. "...And only in part. Several of the names were familiar to me, brother...but only a few you would know."

  "Who?"

  Wreg made a noncommittal gesture with his hand.

  "Now is not the time," he said after another beat. His words weren't a dismissal though, at least not entirely. "You will know, brother. Sooner than most."

  Jon nodded, but gave the seer another curious look. He found himself wondering again, what the deal was with Wreg. He could be almost warm at times, which confused Jon more than the seer's gruffer exteriors.

  "What about that book?" Jon said. "The one Revik had on him? That came from the vault too, right?"

  Wreg made an affirmative gesture, clicking softly. "Yes. According to Adhipan, we have translators working on it..."

  "And?"

  "And what?" Wreg said. "Adhipan is holding on to these artifacts tighter than a weasel's asshole, brother. Do you really think he's consulting with me on this book...or even letting me see it?" Exhaling, he gave Jon a direct look. "I don't think they've had much luck. He thought about giving it to you, actually...to show to your friend." At Jon's blank look, Wreg shrugged with one hand, looking away. "...The Third of the Four. That crazy fuck who draws all day long in his pajamas and masturbates whenever you visit him..."

  Jon felt his face grow hot. "What?"

  "You know." Wreg made another vague gesture, his eyes still on the wall monitor. "Feigran. The Rook. Your friend..."

  Jon considered following that one, too, then clenched his jaw, deciding against it.

  "What about the intermediaries?" he said after another pause, still studying Wreg's face. "We'll have to go find them, won't we? That's got to be the priority, right?"

  "I honestly don't know, Jon," Wreg said, sighing. "Did you miss the 'tighter than a weasel's asshole' part, brother? Who knows when or if Adhipan will deign to involve me in extraction planning? In any case, the Sword and the Bridge will need to see these names, first."

  "But chances are, he knows who's on the list, right?"

  "He says he only knows a few."

  Jon's lips pursed. Still, he was surprised Balidor had told Wreg that much. Brushing aside his own reaction, he rearranged his weight in the couch, letting his eyes settle back on the waterfall in the middle of the high-ceilinged atrium.

  "That's unusual, isn't it?" he said. When Wreg didn't answer, Jon slouched deeper, planting his feet on the floor, folding his hands in his lap over his jeans. "I mean, from what Gar told me, you guys usually know the high level infiltrators. Their names, anyway. Something about their reps...who they've worked for over the years..."

  "You are assuming those on the list would be infiltrators."

  "I'm assuming they would be more visible in the Barrier than your average seer," Jon said, glancing at him. "I'm assuming they might stand out, unless they had pretty decent infiltration skills...or someone helping them," he added, without taking his gaze off Wreg's.

  Wreg chuckled, as if in spite of himself.

  "A safe assumption," he conceded, still smiling.

  "Is that what's bugging you?" Jon pressed. "You figure they've got some hardcore alliances somewhere...people you think you might know more about than 'Dori?"

  Wreg gave him another appraising look, that one sharper.

  Jon found himself thinking he'd caught the infiltrator off guard, though. There was another silence before Wreg shrugged, giving him one of those denser appraising looks. Jon was still trying to figure out what it meant when Wreg rose from the couch, walking over and sinking his weight into the cushions only a few feet from Jon.

  Jon felt himself stiffen at the seer's proximity, but didn't flinch away.

  "Speaking of help," the muscular seer said, turning and curling a leg under him so he could sit forward, facing Jon directly, as Jon had him. "...And of infiltration. Aren't you supposed to be receiving training yourself, brother? Seer 101, na? That's what Nenz told me."

  Folding his arms, Jon snorted. "Whatever, man."

  But Wreg continued to measure him with his eyes, unsmiling.

  "He was quite insistent about it," he said, his dark eyes still taking in Jon's face. "He told me he wanted you working with a variety of seers on this. He seemed to think there was some urgency involved, as he wanted to begin giving you work..."

  "So? What's your point?"

  "So...I am in charge of recruitment," Wreg said. He leaned back slightly on the cushions, but didn't move away. "...And training, young brother. Why haven't you approached me?"

  "I figured you were busy," Jon said, glancing back at the monitor with a shrug. "There hasn't been a slow week around here for awhile, if you hadn't noticed..."

  "I am not always busy," Wreg said.

  "Well, sometimes I am," Jon said, giving him an irritated look.

  Wreg smiled again, but that sharper, more appraising look remained in his dark eyes.

  "You are not busy now," he said finally.

  "Are you asking?" Jon retorted. "Or telling?"

  "Whichever is required to get you to comply," Wreg said with a smile. "I can force you, if you like, brother. Would you prefer me to do that instead...?"

  Jon found himself staring at the Asian seer, thrown a bit by the look he saw in his dark eyes. He couldn't pinpoint the meaning of the look exactly, but the glint of a predatory stare behind the calmness of his face brought Jon up short, if only because he'd never seen Wreg look at him like that before...or at anyone else, really. He was still staring at the seer's eyes when a voice from the other side of the couch jerked his head backwards.

  "What the fuck is this?" Dorje said, staring between him and Wreg.

  Jon jumped, startled.

  Before he could comprehend the angry look on the Tibetan-looking seer's face, Wreg smoothly regained his feet, moving away from the couch and Jon before Jon finished staring incredulously at Dorje's expression. Seeing the anger growing on his boyfriend's face, right before Dorje turned to face Wreg in a near-fighting stance, Jon found himself at a loss, suddenly wondering what the hell had just happened.

  He stood up when he saw Dorje strike out with the flat of his palm, shoving Wreg backwards a few steps as the larger seer had been about to leave the atrium.

  "Whoa!" Jon said in alarm, holding up a hand. "Dorj, jesus. Calm down, man. You can't seriously be picking a fight with Wreg..."

  But the seer didn't even look in his direction.

  "You motherfucker..." Dorje hissed at Wreg, making Jon jump again, hearing the fury in his voice. Dorje's accent worsened as he spat out words. "You told me you would stay away...you fucking promised me, you scumbag prick..."

  "Back off, brother," Wreg said, giving him a death-like stare. "Right now...get your hand off me before I remove it for you..."

  "Explain yourself, you lying, ink-soaked, Dreng-addict..."

  "I don't have to explain anything," Wreg said coldly. "The Sword asked me to train your pup. I don't give a damn if you like it or not...it changes nothing..."

  Jon stared between the two of them, feeling like he'd walked into the middle of a play, and had no idea what his role was supposed to be.

  Wreg turned then, looking directly at him, his dark eyes flat, his face a harder mask.

  "Come with me, Jon," he said. "I'm not asking anymore."

  Dorje shoved again at the larger seer's chest, his stance now openly aggressive. "He's not one of your charges. You have no right to order him around..."

  "I do when the Sword demands it."

  "Don't you dare hide behind him! I heard what you said just now...don't think I don't know exactly what the hell you were implying..."

  Wreg caught Dorje's wrist, staring into his face. "T
he promise holds, brother. Don't test me, or I might really have to revisit our agreement..."

  Dorje glared back at him, his dark face contorted with anger.

  Again, Jon could only gape at the two of them. He'd never seen that exact expression on the Tibetan-looking seer before, nor the one that came to Dorje's eyes when he turned to look at Jon instead of Wreg. The look that time bordered on desperation, along with what might have been fear, a thread of powerlessness over something that he didn't know how to stop.

  Wreg released Dorje, stepping back.

  His eyes shifted to Jon, too, his expression unreadable.

  "Come with me, brother," he said. "I meant it about the training. If nothing else it should keep you out of trouble until your sister and the Sword awaken..."

  "What...now?" Jon said. "As in right now?"

  Wreg's expression didn't flicker. "Orders are orders."

  Jon glanced at Dorje, who had stepped back from Wreg when the larger seer released him. He trained his eyes on the floor, his skin flushed a dark red.

  "Is anyone going to tell me what the hell just happened?" Jon said finally.

  "No," Wreg said, giving Dorje a threatening stare.

  The other seer frowned, but seemed to agree with Wreg, glancing at Jon and giving him an even blanker look. "No," he said, mirroring the ex-rebel in a hollow voice.

  Staring between the two of them, Jon felt his shoulders tense.

  Regardless of whatever had just gone down, being trained by Wreg wasn't exactly his idea of a good time. He knew from Allie that training meant, in part, getting smacked around by another seer's light until he could manage to keep them out well enough to protect himself. It meant nosebleeds, headaches, dizziness for hours afterwards...even throwing up when he missed the mark. It also meant he would be exhausted at the end, drained of light, pissed off and probably ready for a meal and sleep and not much else.

  But none of that explained the look on Dorje's face right then.

  Looking between the two of them, Jon saw the immovable expression on both faces and shook his head, clicking without noticing he was doing it. When Wreg gave him another pointed look, Jon gave in, walking in the seer's direction, his eyes still warily on Dorje.

  "Fine," he said. "Whatever. Where? Do you want to do it here?"

  But Wreg was looking somewhere above Jon's head. His eyes narrowed slightly as he continued to scan Jon with his light.

  "Nenz was right about you," he said a few seconds later.

  "About what?" Jon said. He glanced at Dorje again, but the seer still wouldn't return his gaze. He continued staring at the carpeted floor, his expression stone.

  "We will make a seer out of you yet," Wreg said, not looking at Dorje at all. "...a badly crippled one with shitty sight. But a seer nonetheless..."

  "Yippee," Jon muttered under his breath.

  He'd said it that way in part to get Dorje's expression to change, but the Tibetan-looking seer didn't crack a smile, or even look up.

  Without sparing Dorje or Jon another glance, Wreg walked in the direction of the lobby and the nearest bank of elevators, motioning for Jon to follow. After a frustrated sigh, along with another flush of stress when Dorje refused to look at him, Jon found himself trailing after the ex-rebel somewhat warily.

  Keeping pace with his long strides across the swath of tiles leading back to the lobby, Jon found himself staring at the broad back of the seer without really seeing it, watching Wreg's long, black braid hit between his shoulder blades as he walked.

  "You're really not going to tell me what that was all about?" Jon said, glancing back at where Dorje watched them leave. "Seriously?"

  "Seriously," Wreg said, without looking back.

  Giving Dorje a last glance right before he disappeared out of sight around the corner, Jon exhaled again, clenching his jaw as he wondered if it had been a mistake to go with Wreg without trying to talk to Dorje first. Wrestling it back and forth in his mind after Wreg punched the elevator call button with his thumb, Jon decided to let it go until he got back to the room.

  Hopefully by then, Dorje would have calmed down, too.

  He tried to push Cass from his mind as well, but the worry around her only seemed to intensify the more he tried to think about something else. He found himself wishing again that Allie was awake, wishing that Revik was, if not her...one of them at least.

  Allie was going to freak out when she found out that Cass had gone back to San Francisco in the middle of that mess. Jon wasn't even sure if Allie knew about the outbreak, given that the news didn't hit the feeds until the morning of her bank heist. From what Wreg said, it was a safe bet she didn't know...apparently, there had been some fiasco with Revik where he refused to take light. Jon didn't know details, but he knew they'd eventually involved Allie, which was how she'd ended up in that stasis with him. Anyway, Jon was fairly sure it all happened before either of them had time to check the latest news feeds.

  He'd been trying to reach Cass on her headset since the quarantine had been announced, but he'd gotten no response. Not even a text or a note, telling him where she was, or where she'd been when SCARB descended over the city. He'd also tried her a few times before the news hit, and she hadn't answered him those times, either.

  He'd even tried calling Baguen, Cass' Wvercian boyfriend. Considering the guy mainly spoke in monosyllables the few times Jon had succeeded in getting him to talk at all, that had been an act of desperation on his part, too.

  Baguen hadn't answered his headset either, or contacted Wreg's people, so he'd fallen into the same black hole Cass had. No one made a big deal about it, but it was pretty clear that Bags worked for Wreg again...if he'd ever stopped working for him...as soon as Allie and Revik were on the same side once more. He'd only left the rebels in the first place because of his and Cass' thing, and Jon knew Balidor never trusted him not to be reporting their every move back to Salinse. The Adhipan had been blocking and intercepting every communication the Wvercian sent since he became a regular fixture...and long before Revik came back into the fold.

  Either way, no one had heard from either of them since they'd left for San Francisco. The traces the Adhipan maintained on the Wvercian's communications had gone dead around the same time the quarantine fell over the city.

  No one even knew for sure if Cass made it to San Francisco. There was no confirmation of her arrival there...much less any concrete evidence that she'd been locked inside the quarantine walls. Jon called Cass' mother on the off-chance he might be able to reach her through the blackout, and was surprised when Mrs. Jainkul picked up on her headset at once. It turned out that Cass' mother's new boyfriend worked as a nurse practitioner at the hospital in question, so the two of them had advance warning about the spread of the disease. They escaped the city right before the official quarantine, and now hunkered down in Arizona with friends.

  They got out about six hours before SCARB began closing all the roads, airports, train stations and ports...effectively locking over 85% of the city's residents inside. Since then, SCARB, FEMA and the SFPD had been reinforced with tanks, barbed-wire fences...even some kind of organic enclosure system in the hills that Dorje told him would actually kill people who attempted to leave.

  Mrs. Jainkul hadn't even known Cass was coming to see her. In fact, Jon's call only managed to freak Cass' mother out completely, sending her into a tailspin panic...possibly for no good reason at all.

  Balidor had seers looking for both Cass and Baguen in the Barrier, but he told Jon there was some kind of Barrier shield over the borders of the quarantine area, too.

  When Jon asked why on earth they would do this, Balidor only shrugged. He said it could be any number of reasons...but that he suspected it was either because SCARB suspected a terrorist attack and had closed the site down as a crime scene...or, it was a terrorist attack, and whoever orchestrated it closed the city down for their own purposes.

  From the way he said it, Jon suspected Balidor thought scenario one and two could a
lso be one and the same...meaning that SCARB could be affiliated with whoever was behind this, and using their official guise as cover.

  Balidor seemed to think Black Arrow, the genetics and organics company, could be connected, too, but he hadn't shared with Jon why he thought that, other than the fact that they always seemed to be in the middle of any big moves where SCARB was a player. Jon knew Black Arrow operated partly as a front for trading that went on in the organics business, too, as well as security for a number of seer work camps that remained operational following Revik and Allie's attack on the Registry mainframe.

  Jon had trouble imagining what the move would be against a group like that. They were connected with the most powerful players in the human world...as well as whoever they'd allied with among the more corrupt seers. From what he'd overheard from Dorje and Balidor, there was a good chance Salinse had ties to Black Arrow, as well, which was pretty interesting since Salinse sponsored Revik's move against the Registry in the first place.

  Jon knew it was all an elaborate game of chess though. Allie had done her best to explain how the Dreng had a tendency to pit the different groups against one another, even allies supposedly working on the same side. Their goals seemed to be more about stabilization of the systems of control over both races, not the dominance of any one group.

  And money, of course. Whoever was making the calls behind the scenes, they definitely seemed to be the players with some serious funding...both human and seer.

  Even before, Allie seemed to believe a mass culling of the human population was being planned, either to compete for scarce resources or simply to reduce the number of 'undesirable' elements in the human population. If this was the start of what Allie had been talking about...if this was the beginning of some massive land, capital and power grab through killing off large numbers of humans, Allie and Revik needed to wake the hell up.

  Which brought Jon back to Cass.

  It had also crossed Jon's mind that Cass might not have been totally honest with him about her reasons for going to San Francisco. Hell, she might not have gone to SF at all. There was no way to know, not until they got word on whether she'd been caught in the lockdown. He couldn't for the life of him think why she might have ducked out without telling anyone, or gone on some mission of her own, but he knew it was possible.