Allie's War Season Three

by JC Andrijeski

  Balidor extricated himself with another grimace.

  "Did she tell him?" Ditrini said, still smiling as he stared at Balidor’s eyes. "Did she tell him about the house rules...? Our little dinner parties...?"

  Balidor felt his jaw harden more.

  "Here's the question, Ditrini," Balidor said, his voice colder still.

  "...How did he like my mark on her?" Ditrini said.

  "He liked the one the Bridge chose better," Balidor retorted, unable to help himself. “I will only ask the question once, Ditrini, so I suggest you listen. What is the exact nature of your relationship to the being called Shadow?”

  "I’ve already explained the house rules,” Ditrini said, his voice suddenly colder, and suddenly belonging to the man Wreg described to him. "I don't give a damn how many drugs you give me...or how many chains you use to tie me down. If you want anything from me, my precious girl is going to have to ask for it from her knees..."

  Balidor was on his feet and swinging before he could think about whether or not it was a good idea. He hit Ditrini in the face with his knuckles, twice, hard enough to hurt his own hand. Despite the sharp pain when bone hit bone, Balidor barely hesitated for the second hit.

  Standing over the other seer, he saw he’d broken his nose, and cut Ditrini’s lip on his own teeth. A thin trickle of blood ran down those pale lips to a narrow chin, until the seer licked it off, causing Balidor to recoil in disgust, stepping back.

  “You really are a psychopath,” he said, his voice a near mutter.

  Ditrini only laughed.

  Balidor glanced behind him, slightly embarrassed for having lost control.

  As soon as he aimed his aleimi in that direction, however, he immediately felt a pulse of fury from the other seers watching, especially Yumi and Tenzi, who had probably known Allie the longest of the four in the control booth. The intensity of their emotions diffused Balidor’s own anger in a strange way, calming him at once. Sending them a pulse of warmth, Balidor only nodded towards Ditrini, his voice blunt.

  “There,” he said. “You got the reaction you wanted. Happy now?”

  The seer smiled, licking the blood on his chin again. Grimacing in overt disgust that time, Balidor stepped back, regaining his seat.

  Still, the calm didn’t dissipate from his mind.

  "Brother Ditrini," he said, exhaling a bit. "You seem to be harboring some delusion that you can simply 'hold out' until your people come to rescue you. What you don't seem to know...or what you haven't yet realized, perhaps...perhaps because no one here has bothered to tell you...is that 'your people' are in no position to do anything for you at all right now, brother Lao Hu. Even if they knew exactly where you were, which I highly doubt, you're about as far from a priority for Voi Pai as you could possibly be at the moment..."

  The humor in Ditrini’s silver eyes grew more prominent.

  Balidor held his gaze, letting his voice grow colder.

  "...Surely you remember the human-killing virus?” he said. “The one belonging to your good friend, Shadow? You were present in San Francisco, at ground zero, so surely you saw the results of this wonderful creation of his.” Balidor’s voice grew more openly disgusted. “Well, perhaps you are aware that that same disease is chewing through major cities all over the world as we speak...including, if not especially, your precious Beijing."

  He hit the adjective harder than necessary, and saw that glint in Ditrini’s eyes sharpen.

  Waiting another beat, Balidor let his voice turn bored.

  "...Further, you are currently housed in a high-security quarantine structure of its own. That structure happens to reside in a locked-down city completely devoid of a Lao Hu presence of any kind. It also happens to be one of the few such cities left in the world...and when I say it is well-protected, believe me when I tell you, my brother, my words are an extreme understatement..."

  Balidor made an impatient gesture with one hand, as if he were speaking to a rather dim-witted child.

  "...You aren't going anywhere, Commander Ditrini," he said. "There will be no rescue. Frankly, none of your Lao Hu countrymen can be spared in their attempts to save what remains of Beijing...and I have half a mind to offer your mistress assistance, since we are in a better position to shelter her than the reverse. She will not be inclined to bargain for your life, in any case. In fact, I'd be surprised if she remembers you at all by now..."

  Trailing just long enough for his words to penetrate, Balidor added more coldly,

  "...So when I tell you we will put you on wires or drug you, I don't mean for a few hours, Ditrini, son of the Lao Hu. I don't even mean days. Or weeks. I mean we will do as we please with your body and mind until you have lost all sense of who you are. We will do it until you've lost the ability to use a toilet without our assistance...or to feed yourself, or even to form an opinion we have not helped you to create. I mean we will systematically annihilate every aspect of who you are, until you will literally do anything any of my infiltrators tell you to do, whenever they tell you to do it, and you will do so with only a grateful smile on your face..."

  Balidor felt a kind of gleeful silence from Tenzi and Yumi from the security booth.

  Ditrini's light grew almost still.

  Or as still as the collar seemed to permit. His eyes had grown colder as Balidor spoke, until they looked more and more like the mirrors Balidor remembered from his scans of Wreg, and the memories the ex-rebel gleaned from Allie.

  "Tell my precious girl that I plan to tell him everything," Ditrini said softly. "Every single detail...including the parts she liked more than she pretended."

  "He already knows," Balidor said, giving a bored shrug. "Some piss-ant infiltrator gets fixated on his wife," he added, using the cruder version in Prexci. "...A bully with the mind of a child, who only managed to give us the first, real reason to question the integrity of the Lao Hu. Why, under the gods, would he care?”

  "I will make sure he never forgets it...that he sees me whenever he has his Elaerian cock in my precious girl..."

  Balidor rolled his eyes, deliberately exuding contempt. "I am certain you will be the topic of discussion in their bedroom every night, brother Ditrini. They are likely discussing you right now, in fact..." Balidor exhaled in overt impatience, leaning back in his chair. "The Sword is hardly a fool, whatever delusions you harbor to the contrary. He knew there would be power-hungry children who would be drawn to the light of his wife, given who and what she is. There are always such sad lights in the world...those who pathetically hope the brightest of all will magically reflect on their own meager flames...”

  Letting the contempt grow more prominent, he shrugged again with one hand.

  “...Remember, the Sword has his own groupies,” he said. “It is not exactly a new experience for either of them, to have to tolerate hangers-on as a part of their reincarnation status. Perhaps you’d rather if he pretended it bothers him, out of compassion for a lesser being...?"

  Ditrini's gaze turned more knowing. A thin smile ghosted across his lips.

  "So he doesn't mind, then?" he said. "How magnanimous of him. I hadn't realized the Sword would be so generous with his things."

  Balidor rolled his eyes again, clicking. "He's not pleased with the abuse, Ditrini...but being angry at a rabid dog for biting a loved one doesn't equate to being jealous. He knows you had to rape her to pleasure yourself. He also knows exactly how little she enjoyed it..."

  Ditrini's eyes grew colder.

  "Does he like the tricks I taught her, at least?" he said, his lips thinning in a smile under the death in his eyes. "I would think he'd be grateful. I improved his wife significantly, from all accounts I heard about her first forays into being a consort for the City..."

  Catching images from the thoughts Ditrini deliberately aimed his way, Balidor flinched in spite of himself, already regaining his feet.

  "You get one more chance, Ditrini," Balidor said, his voice now as cold as the other seer’s. "...Then we do this my way. A
nd you become a permanent addition to our group here."

  "Do you mean like when I bonded my precious girl to my infiltrator team, the most Esteemed and holy of Bridges?" Ditrini said, his silver eyes shining. "Since he cares so little, I'll be sure and let her husband the Sword know how thoroughly we accomplished that connection, she and I...with the help of all of my brothers and sisters of the Lao Hu..."

  Anger rose abruptly in Balidor’s light, so quickly that again, he briefly had trouble controlling himself. For a few seconds, he didn’t move, but only stood there, staring at the silver-eyed seer, shunting aside the images the other continued to fling at him.

  Briefly, Balidor found himself hesitating, trying to decide.

  He thought about it, really thought about just putting a bullet in his head, right now.

  It wasn’t a difficult impulse to rationalize. On more than one level, Balidor truly believed Ditrini might be too dangerous to leave alive. If he had some kind of alliance with Shadow, with or without the blessing of Voi Pai, that danger would only increase exponentially. Moreover, Balidor found it highly unlikely that they would get much useful intelligence off Ditrini, even with the wires.

  For a few more seconds, Balidor weighed the pros and cons to either and both, trying to decide, telling himself that spending any more time with this monster was only an unacceptable waste of their valuable time and resources.

  Balidor knew Tenzi was right, too. If he killed him right now, just shot him, even without permission, Dehgoies would likely only applaud.

  But Allie had been the one to make the call to keep him alive. Balidor couldn’t bring himself to disobey her in this, especially given what this sadist put her through.

  Vash told Balidor, more than once while he was still alive, to trust the Bridge.

  "Tell my precious girl that I miss her." Ditrini’s eyes held more of that pain when Balidor’s eyes met his. “I miss her so terribly...”

  Balidor felt his jaw harden more.

  Something else had occurred to him though, something that he might have caught earlier, if he hadn’t been so distracted by Ditrini’s obsessive crap around abusing the Bridge.

  That time when Balidor spoke, it was with full awareness of what he said.

  "They're all dead," he told Ditrini. "The Bridge saw it in one of her prescient dreams...and I saw it on her as plain as I see you right now." Balidor’s voice grew even colder, his gray eyes meeting those silver ones. "...Your venerable mistress. Your human masters. Down to the last child of the Lao Hu. They're all dead, my brother. Nothing but a dark smudge of smoke where Beijing and your City used to live." Balidor glanced at the organic clock in the wall, his voice cold. "It won't be long now. Hours maybe. Perhaps days..."

  Ditrini’s thick lips curled into an expressive frown.

  Briefly, though, Balidor saw something else touch those silver eyes.

  "You're lying," Ditrini said. "No collar could prevent me from feeling that. Esteemed Bridge or no...she wouldn't see that before I did. Neither would you, famed Balidor of the Adhipan..."

  "You're so sure of that?" Balidor said.

  Ditrini’s eyes didn't move.

  Balidor nodded, letting a faint smile touch his lips. "Yes. All right, then.”

  There was a silence where neither of them looked away. Then Ditrini’s harder look devolved into a faint smirk, right before he sent another flicker of images Balidor’s way. Balidor stepped back without thought, grimacing again in spite of himself.

  Once more, he had to fight anger, along with a cloud of darker disgust.

  "Enjoy your little game, brother," Balidor retorted. "Clearly you want these last few hours to pretend you're in control, so enjoy them. They will slip by faster than you can imagine." Balidor tapped his own temple. "Tick tock, my Lao Hu brother. Remember, when your Lao Hu family dies, there won't be anyone left to which our Esteemed Bridge will be bonded. Not from your ugly little corner of the world. Not even you, my brother."

  The older seer's eyes narrowed as he stared up at Balidor, almost as if he were trying to read him again through the collar. Feeling another coil of that separation pain in his light, Balidor stepped back, suddenly wanting nothing more than to get out of the Lao Hu seer’s cell, and as far away from his light as possible.

  Even so, he’d gotten the answer he wanted. One of them, anyway.

  He was about to leave for real, when Ditrini abruptly spoke.

  "Remind my precious girl that it's not me they'll be coming for," he said. "It won’t be her husband, either. It’s her they want. It’s always been her...” His voice held a thread of that pain again, even as the smile returned slowly to his lips. "Whatever your confidence in this quaint little fortress you've built, Adhipan Balidor, you can't hide her away forever. Neither can the Illustrious Sword. I promised her I would see her again, and I won’t break that promise...” At Balidor’s disgusted frown, Ditrini smiled wider. “You know what they say about promises in war-time, don't you, brother?”

  “Easy to make,” Balidor retorted. “...Easier to break.”

  “Yes, well,” Ditrini said, smiling. “That may have been true of her husband. But I’m afraid you’ll find it’s never been true of me."

  Balidor felt his fingers coil back into fists.

  He didn’t fully get the reference about Dehgoies, but, not for the first time, he suspected Allie would, if he repeated the words to her...which he had absolutely no intention of doing. He suspected a lot of Ditrini’s words were lobbed at him in the hopes that Allie would hear them at some point; it was one of the many reasons Balidor remained grateful she had no interest in being involved.

  Even without knowing the details, Balidor picked up enough of the flavor to feel slightly sick, and to question why, exactly, they were bothering with him in the first place. Reminding himself again where his orders came from, he shook it off, taking another step backwards.

  “Enjoy your fantasies, brother,” he said. “We will have more words soon.”

  Ditrini only laughed, his silver eyes sparkling.

  Ignoring him as best he could, Balidor again opened his mind to the wider construct, specifically towards the station by the door.

  Are you still there, Tenzi? he sent.

  The door opened almost before he’d finished thinking it.

  Balidor walked directly to the opening and to Tenzi himself, who stood there, a darker fury coloring his normally light-skinned face. His fingers touched the handle of his sidearm, as if he were struggling with the same questions that Balidor himself had, in wondering why they didn’t just kill Ditrini now, before something else happened to prevent it.

  Even with Tenzi standing there, armed, Balidor didn't turn his back on Ditrini as he exited the cell.

  "You're right to be afraid of me, brother," Ditrini called after him, his silver eyes strangely vacant. "...She is, too. First order of business when I get out will be that tattoo on her back, the one her husband likes so much. I haven't forgotten my promise to my precious girl about that. Getting rid of his mark will only be the beginning..." Ditrini’s eyes turned colder, into the killer's eyes that Balidor had first seen in Wreg’s mind. "...Tell her husband that, my honorable brother of the Adhipan. And tell him I'd be happy to give him a full tour of his wife’s training. I'll even demonstrate some of the finer points, in case he's missed anything from what he's sampled so far. He seems to be fairly detail-oriented, if our intelligence on him is at all correct. He'd likely appreciate some of the...nuances...don't you agree, brother?"

  Balidor did his best not to give the older seer a reaction, but he doubted he succeeded entirely. Ditrini smirked again, including Tenzi in a sideways glance of those shimmering, mercury-colored eyes.

  "...One shouldn't be in possession of such a rare property without a detailed instruction manual,” he added. “Do you not agree, my good brother?"

  Right then, it was probably a good thing that Tenzi shut the door.

  It cut off the older seer’s voice, connecting with the
wall with a hollow clang. Once it had, Balidor gave Tenzi a grim look, opening his mind to the wider construct even as he patted the younger seer reassuringly on the back, seeing the fury still shimmering in his dark eyes.

  We might have a problem, Balidor told them, once the channel opened.

  Yumi spoke up first. Other than that sick fuck still being alive? she sent.

  Feeling the fury pulsing off her light, Balidor sent warmth to her heart.

  Different, yes, he replied, sighing into the Barrier.

  Feeling that he had all of their attention that time, he went on.

  Ditrini already knew about China, he told them. He wasn’t surprised at all when I told him of what is occurring in Beijing. Nor did this information distress him particularly.

  Pausing a beat to let that sink in, Balidor exhaled again, resting his hands on his waist.

  ...I am thinking now that Ditrini works directly for Shadow, he said, giving Tenzi a grim look. I don’t know when the switch occurred, or if this has always been the case, but his allegiance appears to be to Shadow alone at this point, with little concern for the fate of the Lao Hu. Making a vague gestured, he added almost reluctantly, ...I also suspect he knows exactly where we are holding him. His confidence in his position, which I think is genuine, could mean a number of things, but I think he truly believes he will not be our prisoner long enough to break his mind.

  He concluded more grimly,

  ...I think we need to warn the Bridge and the Sword that we should be prepared for an attack on our facility here.

  Feeling the silence this produced, he added in a more subdued flicker of thought,

  ...I also think we need to warn them that there is a good chance Shadow is in Manhattan. Perhaps he has been here, in some capacity, all along...

  10

  EARTHQUAKE

  JON COULDN’T FIND Wreg when he finally got through the quarantine protocols.

  He’d asked around, of course, if in a casual way.

  He heard that a group of seers, including Revik and Allie, ate a big breakfast in the Third Jewel, but they’d scattered by the time Jon reached the lobby. He spent a little time wandering around, partly in the hopes he might see Wreg walking from one meeting to another. He knew Wreg. The seer wouldn’t sleep until he’d ensured all the protocols he’d set up had been put in place, even if it took hours.