The former ended up being a pretty fancy distraction, but not much else.
The latter had gone better than I could have imagined. I could only think they must have dropped some of those retaliatory shields once they had me 'collared.' Either that, or they didn't know my light well enough to neutralize me the way they had Revik.
I leaned against the wall, rearranging my arm around Revik's waist. I fed him as much light as I could spare, keeping what I could in case we were attacked again as we fought to get outside. I had my doubts that we would be, though...attacked, that is. Now that Wreg, Poresh and Gar had the primary organics down in the main living and communal rooms in Shadow's mansion, I could feel past the construct enough to know how empty the house felt.
Still, I sent Neela and Chinja upstairs to check out the rest of the space after Balidor ordered the cease fire. So far, they'd found no one. Nothing. Nada. The house had been stripped, apart from that needed to put on their little show for us. They'd even left all of our weapons behind, in a storage closet on the first floor, to the left of the massive front doors.
Wreg, Poresh and Gar were still working on getting the OBEs down so we could leave without frying ourselves, but I didn't see a lot of reason to stay beyond that. They'd clearly told us as much as they meant for us to know. Why they'd given us Maygar, Chandre, Stanley, Rex and Varlan, I had no idea. I could only guess they didn't care if we had them. Maygar and Stanley were both tagged as intermediaries, but maybe Shadow figured he didn't need them, either, not now that he had Cass. Either that, or Shadow's people had already done something to corrupt their light. They had to know we wouldn't be able to trust any of the ex-captives, at least not anytime soon.
Not after what they'd done to Cass.
But I couldn't think about Cass yet.
I needed to get out of this screwed up place, which reeked of the Dreng and lingering whispers of their light-show from hell. I still couldn't believe we'd managed to get out with most of us alive. Halfway through that whole charade, I was sure we were all dead...especially when Revik went down the way he did. Everything ended for me in those few seconds. It had taken every ounce of my willpower to remain where I was when he first hit the floor, even though we'd talked about the possibility of something like that happening. We hadn't discussed Revik losing control like that exactly, but we talked about his telekinesis...or him...being neutralized if he felt threatened enough to go on the offensive.
It was still one of the hardest things I'd ever had to do.
The cloak and the prosthetics worked better than I would have imagined. Even Jon didn't seem to know who I was, although I'd been worried a few times when I saw him staring at me. Balidor helped with that, refining it in every way imaginable, and I worked a lot with Neela to get mannerisms right, along with both of our speech patterns, even down to what I would say if they threatened or hurt Revik. We'd talked it all through so professionally.
Just like an infiltrator, Balidor would have said.
Gripping Revik tighter, I looked up at his face. His complexion was gray, but his eyes were open, and he seemed to be seeing again. Noticing me looking at him, he gave me a faint smile.
"You did good," he said, speaking in a near slur. "Good...wife."
I clutched him tighter. "Shut up, okay? I don't want to be told I 'did good' when I stood there and let my husband nearly get killed..."
He smiled faintly, gripping my shoulder more tightly.
"Where are we with the OBEs?" I called to Wreg. He and Garensche were just out of sight under the staircase, where they'd found a panel that led into one of the main control panels for the organics of the house. I'd watched Gar pull handfuls of those slimy, tentacle-like connectors out of the hole in the wall before he began separating them out into different bundles. I knew he used his sight on them, a lot more than he did his physical eyes, but it still confounded me that he understood the hardware of the machines, too...if squid insides and hundreds of feet of raw nerve endings wrapped in quasi-synthetic tissue could be called 'hardware.'
"We're close," Wreg said back.
"Where's Jon?"
"He's here."
I nodded, feeling my jaw clench. I'd seen Jon swing at Wreg, when the seer tried to prevent him from frying himself in the OBE. I'd also seen Wreg knock him to the tile. I couldn't honestly say I would have done any different, given the alternative.
I was worried about New York, too. If they'd drawn us down here, it might be for a reason.
Revik shook his head though, tugging lightly on my hair.
"No," he said, still fighting to form words. "...Cass." He wanted us to come for Cass, he finished in my mind. He wanted us to know about Cass...he knew we'd only believe it if we saw it ourselves. He wants war. Real war.
Is it Menlim, Revik? I sent him tentatively.
He shrugged, squeezing my shoulder again, albeit weakly. It doesn't matter, Allie, he sent, sliding his light into mine. It's the same thing, either way. Same beings. Same agenda. We know what they want. We know what they'll do to get it...
I nodded, relaxing.
He was right, of course. It didn't matter, not really.
It was still a relief to hear him say it.
In any case, we'd known all along that the whole thing would be a trap. We hadn't figured on the elaborateness of the charade, put on before us like a well-staged play, but we'd expected deception and power-plays, misdirection and distractions. Shadow hadn't even been here. He'd left 'Yosef' here, or whoever he was, to play the master of ceremonies. Why, I could only guess, but I assumed so they could yank us around, hurt us, and intimidate us as much as possible. Obviously, they'd wanted us to come in person, but I found myself wondering if Cass was really the only reason.
It doesn't matter, Allie, Revik repeated. Thinking about them too much is what they want. They want us to obsess on them, on what they're doing. But we don't have to. We'll go back, find the rest of the names on the list...train the infiltrators we have. Then, when it makes sense, we'll go after Cass and Feigran. They're the only ones who matter...
I nodded, sending him another pulse of warmth.
"Okay," I said. But what about the disease? Do you think they were telling the truth? Could they really have dumped it in the water supply of another twenty cities...?
Revik frowned, glancing out the opening where the stained glass windows had been before the impact shocks shattered them in their frames.
I don't know, he sent finally. But we'll find out, soon enough. All we can do is keep trying to find a cure. Save as many as we can...
I nodded, about to answer, when Gar spoke up from under the staircase.
"Got it!" he announced triumphantly.
"You're sure?" I said. "We can't afford to be wrong about this one, Gar..."
"He's got it," Wreg affirmed. "I feel them coming down."
I sighed a little, glancing up the staircase. "Where is everyone at with recon?" I said, raising my voice. "...Anything?"
I felt Wreg's negative, even before he appeared around the edge of the staircase, making the corresponding sign with his free hand. His other hand held Jon's. I noticed Jon's eyes still looked deadened, only half there. He followed after Wreg willingly enough though, and didn't resist when the seer wrapped his arm around him, pulling him closer.
"The house is clean, Esteemed Sister," Wreg said.
I sighed, nodding. "Yeah. I figured." Glancing up at Wreg again, I shrugged. "I still say we raze it to the ground once we're all out of here..."
Wreg smiled, and for the first time since this whole mess started, the smile looked genuine.
"I'll vote for that, princess...put me down as a solid yes in that column."
"Feeling vindictive, Wreg?" I said, my voice faintly teasing.
"Most definitely." After a pause, though, Wreg's voice grew serious. "This fucking house is alive, princess," he said, glancing around at the walls as he pulled Jon closer, rubbing his shoulder. "I say we kill the damned thing..."
&
nbsp; Nodding, I found I wholeheartedly agreed.
"All right," I said. "Let's get the hell out of here."
Before Wreg could answer, Garensche appeared in the same space behind the staircase, smiling from ear to ear.
"Can I give the order to the boats?" he said. "Once we're out. I know just where to hit this bitch..." Glancing at me, he smiled apologetically. "...In a manner of speaking. I mean I know where the primary hardware lives, underground..."
"Did we check down there?" I asked, hearing my voice sharpen. "Chan and Stanley said something about an underground dock, didn't they?"
"Deklan and Pori checked it out," Wreg affirmed. "It's empty. Definitely a dock...probably for a submarine, or some other underwater vehicle...but everything was gone. Equipment too. We found storage lockers, fuel tanks, empty crates that might have held weapons, but all of it had been stripped, just like the house..."
"Okay." I nodded, reluctant. Some part of me hoped they would have left something behind that might help us, but I'd pretty much known they wouldn't. "Do we know where Terian and Cass are...?"
"Gone, Esteemed Bridge," Wreg said.
"But gone how?" I pressed. "By land, or..."
"Helicopter picked them up, in the main square of the village."
"Helicopter?"
Wreg gestured an affirmative. "The carrier saw it...but there wasn't much they could do."
"Would it take them to Ushuaia, do you think?"
"Thinking we could chase them?" Wreg said, a glint in his eye.
I glanced at Jon, then back at Wreg. "I'm thinking why not?"
Wreg nodded. "I'll notify the ship....get them to send one of the Ospreys."
"No." I shook my head. "Send Balidor. Have his team do it."
Wreg nodded, giving me a quick salute. As he did, Garensche moved towards me, offering to take Revik from me. I let him, with a sigh of relief. Even with Jorag there, Revik's weight started to pull my back unless I moved every few seconds. Even when I did, my shoulder hurt. The two larger seers supported him easily, though, carrying him towards the door.
"Be sure and scan," I said, following after them. "No mistakes."
"No mistakes," Jorag and Garensche repeated in tandem.
Wreg and Jon were right behind me, and I found myself falling back a step, catching ahold of Jon's hand on his other side. Seeing Wreg smile at me when I did it, I smiled back before glancing up at Jon's face. He still looked crazy pale.
"Hey," I said, shaking him by the hand a little. "You okay, Knight-guy?"
Jon looked at me.
He nodded, but I saw that pain in his light. Before I could wonder if I should try and do anything to help him, Wreg's light wrapped into his, even as his arm pulled him closer. Feeling Jon's light expand into the other seer's, and the relief that went with it, I found myself nodding, even as I released his hand.
Glancing at Wreg, I saw him smile at me again. He sent me a pulse of warmth even as I looked at him.
Thanks, princess...I owe you one...
I smiled back innocently. For what, brother Wreg?
He rolled his eyes, clicking at me.
And he was right. I knew exactly what he meant.
Looking ahead, I watched Revik enter the reddish light of sunset outside the door of the mansion. They were helping him down the driveway then, and I found myself walking faster to catch up. Falling in step alongside Garensche on his right side, I held up a hand to my eyes, trying to see the aircraft carrier, which should be coming around to the side of the peninsula that housed the village. I wondered if the humans there would give us any kind of a hard time for blowing up their master's castle. It turns out, I needn't have worried.
It was Jon who noticed, first.
"Oh, gods," he said. He came to a dead stop, halfway down the paving stone driveway. I looked back at him, only to see him staring down the rougher cobblestone and dirt road that led into the village beyond the gates.
I saw them then, lying on that same road.
All of us stood there, motionless, as we watched a woman stumble out of a nearby, whitewashed stone house. She clutched her throat while I watched, coughing up some dark fluid that had to be blood. She crumpled to the dirt before I could take my eyes off her, falling face forward without any attempt to break her own fall.
That's when I saw the rest of them.
Bodies lay in doorways, and alongside houses. I saw a child-sized one in a pen of goats, where the animals bleated in distress, pulling at their tethers. I saw a man with gray hair not far from the front gates of the hacienda, as if he'd been on his way to their master, to ask for his help. I stared out over the stretch of dirt and bodies, and that sick feeling in my gut, the same one I'd been fighting since we ran into those first bodies in San Francisco, abruptly returned.
I remembered the words of Yosef, and his diamond-studded hair clip, and realized things were about to get worse.
Much, much worse.
That thing that I'd been kidding myself that I could prevent somehow, or maybe delay for a couple hundred years, was here.
The Displacement was finally here.
WAR
Allie’s War Book Six
Dedicated to S.M. Johnson
Partner in crime, confidante, pal
and all around pervert...
Prologue
UNDERWATER
PAIN... MORE PAIN than she could endure, despite her body’s refusal to not endure it. More than her mind could think past. More than even she thought she could have stood without dying outright from the sensation alone. Memories of a different cage, a dark, green organic cage, being caged like a dog, raped, the only bitch in a pack of wolves...cut...beaten...burnt...no longer human. But that was the goal. That was the only thing that would save her.
To kill the humanity inside. Just kill it.
She wouldn't win. She'd already lost, and she didn't want to remember anymore.
She didn't want to remember.
She didn’t want to remember her name.
CASS WOKE.
Something woke her. A gunshot, maybe. Whatever it was, it came from far away...so far, that it sounded more like the echo of a gunshot than the gunshot itself.
Or maybe a memory.
Yes, a memory. It could be that.
An image slid through her mind, unbidden. In it, her boyfriend, Baguen, lay face-down in his own blood. A sick smell came off him, not just of shit, although that was there, too, just like it was there whenever Cass had been close to someone who'd been shot dead. Bags smelled of the disease, even though there was no way he could have had it. He smelled of death...his own, and of all deaths, of every death that would follow.
They would all die, and soon.
More images pressed on her, tried to come forward, to confuse her. They mixed with the sick smell that still lingered in her nostrils, the feeling that wanted to twist her stomach as she fought to sort out what her mind wanted to show her from the feet she saw padding bare on the cold tile.
Or maybe not tile. Maybe she was wrong about that, too.
She walked, unsure where she was going.
The floor looked like metal. Metal bars, metal water, metal green floors that breathed and warmed her feet. Floating. She was floating, she remembered. She rode an underwater aquarium where she was one of the fish. She couldn’t remember when they brought her here. She couldn't remember when any of it started anymore, or when it changed from that time when things used to feel different. Something sparked in the back of her mind.
Cass remembered...
Allie laughing from the grass in Golden Gate Park, in the middle of telling her and Jon a story, propped on her elbows as sun lightened her eyes. Jon sprawled beside her, one arm over his face to block those same rays, rolling his eyes right before he laughed involuntarily at whatever Allie said. Cass couldn't remember the exact day, or the details of the ridiculous thing Allie had been painstakingly unfolding. She remembered the look in her friend's eyes, the exact quirk of her mouth as
she withheld the funnier bits for later, the way she glanced between them as if to gauge if she'd lost them already, if she needed to make the words more colorful...
Even back then, Allie knew how to hold court.
Or maybe she’d just been blessed with the instincts of a speaker, or a storyteller at least, which Cass supposed was the same thing, when it came down to––
Christmas.
The three of them hunkered around a fireplace, not far from the bent, plastic tree Mrs. Taylor always managed to dig up and decorate, no matter how drunk she might have––
––And before that, Allie's dad, Carl Taylor, who Cass always harbored a secret crush on, but not an icky, gross, pining-after-an-old-man kind of crush, more of a dad-crush, in that she wished he'd been her own father, instead of the one she'd had, who'd been high most of the time when he bothered to be around at all, and who had––
Allie got everything...where it mattered, at least.
Allie got everything when it came to love.
She got just enough taken away to make her life sympathetic, without it being full-blown depressing. She lost the great father, but she’d had him, too...and he’d adored her, of course, thought she walked on water while he’d been alive. Allie had him through the worst parts of growing up, the times when she was most in need of a father who could be counted on to say and do the right things, at least most of the time.
Allie had the perfect life, until she turned eighteen.
Her dad had been sick, but he'd been there. She had the great brother, the rockstar boyfriend. She'd been smart and people might think she was a little nuts but everyone liked her. Men liked her, even though Cass had always been prettier than her. Well, she had been prettier...Allie changed a lot in the past few years, and Cass’s face got carved up. It wasn’t whole anymore, and Allie’s figure had even changed, too.
Allie's War Season Three Page 77