Allie's War Season Three

by JC Andrijeski

  She wasn't into white-bread usually, but Jon had something, and not only because he hung around all of these icebloods. Anyway, growing up with the Bridge had to be a trip.

  Glancing at Tenzi, she said, "Has anyone heard from them?"

  Tenzi nodded. "Yes."

  "They’re okay?” she said, casual. “Jon? That guy, Wreg? They’re together, right?"

  Tenzi gave her a half-smile, one that held a degree of knowing. He didn't look up.

  "Where Jon is, there is Wreg, too,” he said. “Both are fine."

  "How long?" Dante said, keeping her voice casual. "The two of them, I mean. How long have they been a thing?"

  "Not long," Tenzi said, making that clicking noise with his tongue. "Weeks...maybe this many." He held up five fingers. Seeing something in Dante’s expression, or maybe her mind, Tenzi firmed his mouth. "Wreg is not okay for you, cousin." He pronounced the words carefully. "Not Jon, too, my lovely friend. I would not thinks about this...dangerous. He and Jon...is much light. No other peoples..." Tenzi frowned, as if trying to think of some other way to phrase it. Shaking his head and clicking again, he essentially repeated himself.

  "No good," he said, glancing up. "...Dangerous."

  He made what almost looked like the universal hand gesture for crazy by his head.

  "Mind and light," he repeated. "Understand?"

  Dante shook her head. "Not even a little. You’ve got to give me more than that, Holmes. You're saying one of them is crazy? Both of them? What?"

  "Yes," Tenzi said, nodding emphatically.

  Dante laughed, refolding her arms. "Really? He didn't seem crazy...Jon."

  Looking at her blankly for another few seconds, Tenzi shook his head then, as soon as his eyes clicked back into focus.

  "No. Okay." He took a deep breath. "I explain bad. Seer thing. Not broken. Not crazy like that. Seer is okay. Crazy for human. But only short time..."

  Likely seeing Dante’s puzzled look deepen, Tenzi sighed, making that expressive clicking noise that all of them made, right before he seemed to concede defeat, switching from his stilted English to his normal, clicking and purring tongue. Dante listened to him speak, waiting out the pause. When the translation kicked in with her headset, Tenzi was still speaking, punctuating his words with hand gestures, pauses, and more of that clicking sound.

  "...Jon and Wreg aren't just having sex," the program translated. "...They are together. In the seer sense of together. Seers have a lot of casual sex, it is true...but mated pairs are exclusive. When this kind of coupling is at its beginning, the affected seers tend to go a little crazy. This can manifest as paranoia, hyper-possessiveness, violence. When I said 'crazy' I meant only this. There is nothing wrong with them. They are not sick...but we seers know to be cautious around new pairs of this kind. It's not really good for you to have crushes on either of them, cousin. It could be dangerous for you. Do you understand...?"

  "But Jon..." Dante said, confused. "He's human, right? I mean, his parents were human. He told me they were."

  "Maybe not so much now," Tenzi said in English. "Not so human."

  "‘Not so much now’?" Dante said, bewildered. "What the fuck is that? You mean being a seer is catching?"

  "No," Tenzi made a negative gesture with one hand, laughing a little. "No...not catching. Not like disease. Not so easy to explain, this. Jon change, very rare. Very, very rare. Only happen ones other times...on lists. Like people you find. Understand?"

  Dante pulled apart his words, still half-sure she'd heard him wrong.

  Not just about what he'd said about Jon somehow 'changing' into a seer...but the whole crap about seer pairs and being monogamous and whatever else. She'd always heard seers were big, walking piles of hormones, that they'd do it with pretty much anyone.

  Or anything.

  "Myth," Tenzi said, without even sounding offended, or contrite about reading her mind for like the millionth time. "Jon and Wreg...marriage. Like marriage. Like Bridge and Sword..."

  "Jon and Wreg are married?" she said, dumbfounded. "After five weeks? They're married?"

  He made a different hand gesture, tilting his palm back and forth.

  "This is close," he said. "Complicates. But yes...is okay."

  "Complicated," Dante said, but at least she understood him that time.

  He made the hand gesture she now knew meant 'thank you,' presumably for the correction to his English. She sighed, folding her arms.

  "...So what's the crime for today?" she said.

  Giving up on the Jon and Wreg thing, she slumped into the open seat with a sigh, kicking at the carpet with her sneakers to make the chair swivel. Reaching behind her, gripped the back of the chair, without taking her eyes off the screens generated by her headset, or his open monitor.

  "...More government databases?” she added. “Or were we going to knock over a bank? Not that we'll need to in a few weeks..." she added in a darker mutter.

  Tenzi gave her a curious look. "You saw this on feeds? Today?" It wasn't really a question, more like surprise. "...Already they are saying this? That the currency is failing here? That is very bad news..." came the delayed addition.

  "Yeah," Dante said, once the translation program finished. She tried to keep the rest of her thoughts hazy and in the background, like Jon had started to teach her before he took off, but some of what she'd been thinking must have leaked through, enough for Tenzi to get the gist. That time, he didn't bother trying to speak to her in English, but rattled off words in that other language, his voice noticeably agitated, his dark eyes serious.

  “You will not die here,” he said, via the translation. “Do not think we will allow anything bad to happen to you, cousin! We will keep you safe, always...dearest of our friends. It is our most important job now, to keep safe all of those named on the Displacement list, so that your race will be able to evolve to its new, most desired form...”

  Dante tried to keep her eye-roll internal, but kicked her toe at the carpet anyway, a bit harder than necessary. “Right on,” she said, not managing to keep the sarcasm out of her voice, either. “So we’ll have front row seats when the tsunami comes, and wipes our asses off the board...”

  Tenzi smiled unexpectedly, making that soft clicking noise with his tongue.

  “She will like you,” he said then, in English.

  “Who?” Dante said, staring down at the cuticles of one hand again, as she swiveled the chair absently with her sneakered feet. “Who will like me?”

  “Bridge.” Tenzi turned, smiling at her. “She has same humor, same smiling. She laugh when things are dark...the Sword, too.”

  “Awesome,” Dante muttered. Turning, she stared out the window at the gathering clouds, the beginning hints of yet another tropical storm getting ready to slam the city. “Well, they must be laughing their asses off now, then, wherever they are...”

  Tenzi didn’t answer. Dante saw his eyes shift to take in the same view, though, and in those few seconds, his smile faded.

  4

  THEORY

  CHANDRE WALKED UP to stand beside me at the catwalk’s guardrail. She glanced over at my face only after she’d leaned her palms on the metal railing, studying my expression without speaking. A faint smile touched her dark, sculpted lips when I met her gaze, and I found myself smiling back, almost grinning at her. Still, her red eyes remained pensive as she glanced back towards the watery view through the glass.

  She cleared her throat, motioning towards the bridge below the catwalk.

  "This is economical, compared to your recent plans,” she said, inclining her head. “...Or so I hear."

  I grinned wider. I couldn't help it.

  "It should have a better chance of succeeding, then," I said, inclining my head, seer-fashion. “...Especially since I had almost no hand in designing it.”

  Chandre’s lips rose in another of those faintly mischievous smiles.

  "I don't know, Bridge," she said, tilting her hand in a seer’s shrug. Her eyes continued to fo
cus down, on the seers working below the railing where we stood. "From what I hear, you’ve done all right. Especially under the circumstances.” She gave me a slightly more meaningful look. “...I certainly have no complaints about my own rescue."

  I blinked, a little startled by the sincerity I saw in her eyes.

  "Well...good," I said, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice.

  There was another silence. Hesitating, I faced her directly. "Balidor didn't tell me, you know,” I said, my tone apologetic, despite my words. “Not for months..." Pausing again, I added, even more awkwardly, "...I wouldn't have left you there, even if you did work for Salinse. I’d never leave you, Chan. I hope you know that."

  The tall, muscular seer didn't answer me, but I saw something in her dark eyes soften, enough to throw me again. She looked away in the next set of seconds, pushing back her corn-rowed braids and staring back out over the crew.

  "I appreciate that, Esteemed Bridge,” she said formally.

  I nodded, but couldn't think of anything else to say.

  The truth was, Chandre and I hadn’t really talked in over two years. So much had changed since that time, probably for her, too, that I barely felt I knew her anymore.

  I was embarrassed, too, I guess. Despite what I’d said just then, I’d been so sure she’d followed Revik, bailing on me in Delhi to join Salinse’s rebellion at her first real opportunity to do so. Moreover, I’d been mad at her before she left, too, mostly because of that thing with Revik in D.C., which I partly blamed her for, I guess...and pretty unfairly, under the circumstances. I’d been so mad at anyone who went along with Revik’s plan, maybe because it was easier to focus on that initial sting in D.C. and not what Revik turned into afterwards. I yelled at Cass once, too, who wasn’t even there, for not being there to talk Revik out of it.

  But thinking about Cass wasn’t exactly helping things, not now.

  When it came down to it, I’d thought Chan chose Revik over me, in pretty much every instance, including when he worked for the rebels.

  When I finally heard the truth from Balidor, about how she’d been working for us that whole time, as a double-agent, I felt like a real jerk, especially when it hit me just how dangerous that must have been.

  Chandre and I hadn't gotten an opportunity to talk much since we’d left South America.

  I'd been trying to ease back into things until we had time for a real heart-to-heart, but we needed to talk, I figured, about a lot of things. After Revik, Chan had been my first real friend among the seers. She was about as no-nonsense as a person could get, but she had a huge heart, was as loyal as Wreg, and truthful to a fault, to boot. She didn't pull any punches, either. I missed her as a friend, but it occurred to me more than once that I missed her in our strategy sessions, too, where she wasn't afraid to say the things no one else wanted to voice aloud.

  Also, there were few people more badass than Chandre in a fight.

  I hadn’t shielded my thoughts very well for any of that, and I saw Chandre smile, right before her reddish eyes slanted towards mine. She gave me a short bow.

  “You’re quite the flatterer today, aren’t you, Bridge?” she smiled.

  I rolled my eyes. “Flatterer. Right. That’s me.”

  Chan’s smile faded. “Even so. Thank you.”

  “You heard the other part too, right?” I snorted. “The me being a jerk part?”

  Her eyes met mine more seriously. “I did. And I am sincerely sorry I did not fight him on his plan to play prostitute with those worms...” Trailing, she shrugged with the same hand as before. “...If it helps, we were none of us thinking very rationally, your husband least of all. I should have realized that working under the same construct with him would bend us all to his will. Jon noticed this. He tried to warn me that I was being unduly influenced by his trauma, even then. I did not listen to him...”

  Blinking a little, more in surprise that time, I just nodded.

  “Trust Jon,” I muttered.

  “Yes,” she said, glancing at me more sharply. “I have been meaning to ask about this. Does Shadow know what he is? Jon?”

  I pressed my lips together. “I honestly don’t know. I guess we were hoping you and some of the others might be able to tell us that.”

  Chandre nodded, but her sculpted lips pulled into a grimmer look. “Our host was not particularly forthcoming. While we were guests in his home.”

  “Did you ever see him, Chan?” I said, looking up. “Shadow? Or an image of someone or something that claimed to be Shadow?”

  Chandre’s eyes grew more opaque. “Only what you saw, when you came to that hall.”

  “Menlim, then,” I said.

  She nodded, once. “Yes. Menlim.”

  Silence fell between us, but something about it felt a little less awkward that time. I realized again how happy I was to have her back, despite everything else going on.

  “Thank you, again,” Chandre said. She gestured with a hand, as if indicating the rest of the room. “I admit, it feels very good to be missed here. It has been...isolating. Working my last assignments.”

  In the silence that followed, she cleared her throat, gazing back out the view port and into the greenish-blue water.

  I found myself studying her face. Emotionality, even covered over in dry humor, wasn’t exactly Chandre’s forte, so it made me pause. I knew the thing with Cass had to have hit her pretty hard, maybe as hard as it did me and Jon.

  As War, however, and the final of the Four, Cass wasn't just important to me and Jon and Chan and Revik anymore. She'd become the strategic and military priority of our whole group.

  Moreover, we still had absolutely no idea what she was capable of, now that Shadow had begun to wake up her abilities. Hell, we didn't even know what Cass was, exactly.

  The thought made me incredibly sad.

  In fact, the grief that came over me when I thought about Cass with Shadow was almost debilitating at times. It was more than just being afraid of what they might be doing to her right now, or even grief around what had happened to her before, when she, Jon and Revik had been Terian’s captives in Russia. Being the Bridge hadn’t ruined my life, not exactly, but it had been really hard at times. Being Syrimne hadn’t done Revik a lot of favors, either.

  Nor had being Rook done much for Terian, when all was said and done.

  For some reason, I already saw Cass on a lot more difficult of a path than the one I’d walked. Maybe because I’d had Revik, or maybe because I’d had Vash, I suddenly felt strongly that I’d been a lot more cushioned than I’d realized at the time, even back when all three of us still lived in San Francisco.

  I only hoped Cass’s path wouldn’t be anywhere near as hard as Revik’s.

  We still hadn't had time to process much of what we saw and heard in that chateau in South America, much less determine which parts might be truth versus fiction. We chased Cass and Feigran to Ushuaia, but we'd already been hours too late by the time we found the landing strip where they made their escape. Feigran appeared to have wiped the memory of every human working air traffic control, too, so we had no idea where they'd gone.

  Anyway, by then, humans were dying all around us, in Ushuaia, too.

  I already knew Revik wanted to go after Cass and Feigran personally.

  I knew that even before he voiced it aloud, while we were still working to get out of that nightmare in Argentina. He would have wanted to go after Cass, regardless, but I knew him well enough to know that impulse strengthened exponentially as soon as he found out she was one of the Four.

  Hell, he didn't want Feigran with Shadow, either, and probably wouldn't have left him behind intentionally, even if there wasn't the danger of him becoming Terian again. I knew that in Revik's mind, despite what he'd done to all of us over the years, Feigran was still one of us.

  That feeling would be even stronger with Cass, who he already thought of as family.

  Revik was a bit more old-school about that whole 'Four' thing than I was
, though. Maybe because Menlim had been the one to pound that into him relentlessly when he was a kid, I still couldn't decide if that was a good or a bad thing.

  My own feelings on the Four were more confused.

  I hadn't been raised seer. I also still didn't know that much about what it meant to be one of the Four, not enough to feel that strongly about the title, anyway. I'd already decided that when and if we made it back to New York City, I was going to hit up Revik, Wreg, Balidor and maybe Loki to give me a real education on the Four and their exact roles. I needed to understand what Cass being War really meant––in a practical sense, I mean. The few things I'd been told weren't exactly promising, or helpful, really.

  There were other things that bothered me, too.

  From what Vash told me, the person and the role weren't exactly the same thing.

  In fact, they could be diametrically opposed, something I'd witnessed in Revik more than once, and even in myself. So essentially, the Cass I knew in San Francisco might not be the driving force in her mind anymore. The Cass I knew in those days was probably the person, not the being, War, who now rode her like a bad suit. Whether Cass was still technically a human being or not, I also had no idea...or even if it mattered. Galaith was born human, but he’d shown up on the intermediary list as a ‘crossover.’ We were pretty sure War had been on the list of intermediaries, too, but without knowing any of the stats on Cass's blacked-out details, we had no idea if she was a crossover like Jon and Galaith, or just a regular human being who happened to house the soul of an intermediary.

  Or, yeah, if it really mattered.

  All of that was just the intellectual crap, anyway.

  It didn't come close to helping me think about my best friend since pre-school, Cass, or what any of this meant for her. The fact that she'd willingly left with Feigran was disturbing enough, given that his alter-ego, Terian, had tortured and raped her repeatedly over a period of more than six months, as well as disfigured her face and cut off four of her toes.

  Watching Cass let Feigran paw at her at Shadow’s house nearly made Jon and Revik sick. Given what they’d likely seen Terian do to her when they’d all been imprisoned, I couldn't exactly blame them.