Allie's War Season Three

by JC Andrijeski

  Of course, Ditrini made a point of putting the collar on Revik personally.

  Which also meant he was the only one who would be able to take it off, apart from cutting the thing off his neck, which Revik had no doubt he would have to do, if he ever wanted to be free of it. Revik definitely got the impression that the personalized collaring was intended to be symbolic, too.

  Clearly, Ditrini wanted to continue the games he'd played with Allie while he had her imprisoned in the Forbidden City. Revik knew that, even before the seer told him as much. Ditrini made a point of painting pictures a few times, too, especially while he had Revik facedown on the floor of that cell.

  The difference was, unlike Allie, Revik had played that game before...and with sadists a lot more intelligent and twisted than this rotting piece of ridvak carcass.

  Ditrini chuckled, sparing him a glance.

  The four guards pushed Revik, Jon and Maygar rapidly down the dark hallway, using only a handful of dimly-sparking yisso torches to light their way. All three of the captives were bound both at the upper and lower arms, as well as by the wrist. Ditrini also had a second chain that circled Revik’s throat, so he could choke him unconscious if he so desired it, in addition to yanking him along like a dog.

  Revik felt the infiltrator thinking that through as he stared down at him in that cell.

  He felt more than a few thoughts about Allie in that, as well.

  He also caught something along the lines of an exchange, one that he found he understood without having to read the other seer for specifics. Ditrini was in this for Allie, in part if not in all, at this point. He wanted his toy back, since in his mind, he hadn’t finished playing with her. Whatever that spelled out in terms of specifics with Cass and Shadow, was almost immaterial.

  Revik also learned something else.

  For Revik himself to have felt even that much off Ditrini’s light, directly at least, Revik had to assume that Ditrini must have enough of the Adhipan’s drug and wires left in his system to have affected his ability to shield.

  In any case, the chain configuration itself wasn't all that different from what Revik had worn in the tank when Balidor first locked him up. Revik had already tested the bounds of those chains. He knew he didn't have a lot of hope of getting out of them without keys.

  Still thinking through this almost clinically, Revik again glanced at Jon, right as another explosion rocked the walls of the pipe, that one a lot closer. In fact, it was close enough that Ditrini stopped dead in the water-logged tunnel, jerking Revik and then Jon and Maygar to a stop with him when the guards halted alongside the other two.

  Revik found himself watching the Lao Hu seer's face when Ditrini touched his ear to activate a communicator.

  "Yes," Ditrini said. He used modern-style Prexci, adding, "They're breaking through.” A pause. “...Yes. Faster than you told us."

  There was another pause while someone on the other end spoke.

  "...Regardless," Ditrini said with another of those faint smiles, glancing at Revik as he made a slight flourish with his fingers. "Your calculations appear to be off. Our friends are feeling motivated...presumably because they found out too soon that you’ve absconded with our precious girl. I would suggest you change your strategy somewhat, my most respected friend...or neither of us will end up getting what we want from this..."

  Just then, another bang hit from overhead, loud enough that both Revik and Jon's eyes jerked up. The ground shook under their feet, forcing Revik to rearrange his stance just to keep his balance. Even so, he leaned heavily into the guard holding him on the left, and the man put out a hand to compensate by touching the tunnel wall.

  Revik felt his heart pounding from the nearness of the jolt that time, even as it occurred to him that something was wrong.

  That hadn't sounded...or felt...like explosives.

  Remembering the earthquakes earlier that week, he glanced at Jon, then at Maygar.

  Their faces had paled, probably as his own had, but he couldn’t read anything into their expressions. Feeling the receding tremble of the cylindrical pipe even as he looked back at Ditrini, Revik was surprised to see an equally wary look on the senior infiltrator's face. Of course, he couldn't trust anything the seer did or said, certainly not in terms of emotions. He couldn’t have trusted them even without the collar.

  Yet, even collared, something about the expression rang true to Revik.

  Whatever had just happened, Ditrini hadn't been expecting it.

  Revik remembered the reports of disasters in Asia and the Pacific, and felt the tension in his muscles increase. Allie always used to say that an earthquake in New York would be unlike anything they'd ever seen in San Francisco, mainly because no one in New York really planned for something like that, despite the protective walls in the event of tsunamis, and despite the recent spate of seismic activity in previously quiet parts of the world. New York wasn't really earthquake savvy in terms of building codes, and not only because those codes were violated half the time, anyway, due to bribes or union scams or whatever else.

  He and Allie had talked pretty extensively about the possibility of natural disasters when they'd been reviewing the hotel specs for security weaknesses. If Revik remembered rightly, Vash had been the one to bring it up first.

  Which, really, should have been a major clue that they probably should have paid more attention to the threat in general, rather than cracking jokes about which was more likely to sink into the ocean first...New York or Los Angeles.

  Revik glanced at Jon, but he still couldn't tell much from the other man's expression.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He’d never seen Jon look so completely lost. Well, not since they’d been in that cell in the Caucasus Mountains with Cass.

  “Snap out of it,” Revik growled. “Now, Jon. Or I really will kick the shit out of you.”

  “Go ahead,” Jon said.

  Revik felt a darker rage build abruptly behind his eyes.

  “I mean it,” Revik said. “Keep your head on straight. We’re all right.”

  Jon looked at him, his hazel eyes dense, but somehow clearer after Revik’s words. “You’re going to start that shit again, Revik?” Jon said coldly. “We’re not all right. Hate to break it to you, but we weren’t then, either. Cass certainly wasn’t.”

  Realizing what Jon meant, Revik only frowned harder. “Have a pity party on your own time,” he growled. “...Commander. Or I’ll leave you behind. How about that?”

  Jon didn’t answer.

  When Revik glanced over at Maygar, he saw him glaring at Jon, too, as if restraining himself from saying what he wanted to say.

  The ground under them shook again, harder that time.

  “Fuck,” Jon said, staring down at the ground. Even so, something in the shaking that time seemed to snap him out, more than Revik’s words had managed to do. His hazel eyes widened when he met his gaze.

  “That wasn’t a bomb,” he muttered.

  Revik only nodded, once, not answering.

  Maygar looked between them, but Revik got the impression he understood, too.

  So did Ditrini, who was staring at Jon, as well.

  The floor shook again, hard enough that Revik fell into the guard, unable to catch his weight without his arms or hands.

  His suspicion turned into fact. The last few shakes hadn’t been man-made.

  His mind slid through details even as Revik incorporated the realization into his overall awareness of the logistics of their current situation. The jolt hadn't rumbled out from a distance the way a combustion blast would have. It had been immediate, pretty much right under his feet. More of an impact concussion than an explosion, like a boulder falling off one of the buildings above and slamming into the cement...only it had been too strong, and too jarring to be anything that would be moving above ground, or even something hitting the streets from above.

  No way that had been a car accident. Or even a subway.

  It felt and sounded more
like two buildings smashing into one another.

  “We may have an act of god on our hands yet, brother,” Ditrini said, smiling at him. “Who do you think the gods are pulling for, in our little battle of wills?”

  Revik didn’t bother to answer that, either.

  Ditrini's eyes swiveled towards his, their silver irises unmoving as they assessed Revik's face. Nothing in that expression illuminated what the seer might be thinking.

  Even so, Revik found himself certain the seer was thinking about Allie.

  Revik watched Ditrini scan him, even as the silver eyes shot back down the tunnel in the direction from which they'd come, narrowing back towards the basement of the hotel. Revik couldn't tell much, but the longer he watched Ditrini’s face, the more he found himself thinking they could be in trouble, and from more than just Ditrini himself.

  Ditrini frowned at him openly that time, his silver eyes shining in the yisso torches.

  After another pause, he hit the button to open the line for the transmitter in his ear.

  "What's going on up there?" Ditrini said.

  He spoke in accented English that time.

  A silence fell, where Revik thought he could almost hear the response.

  "How the hell could that have happened?" Ditrini snapped. "Where are the SCARB teams? You must know we're cut off...if this segment floods..."

  Whoever was on the other end was talking fast. Fast enough that Ditrini eventually fell silent. After another pause, he cursed, loudly and in Mandarin.

  "What other exits do you have mapped?" he said. Another pause. "That is not acceptable! The Adhipan is right behind us! I told you, we––"

  Again, whoever was on the other end cut him off.

  "Well, we can't go back," Ditrini snapped after another pause. "Get rid of them! Or find some way to turn them around, before––"

  The voice cut him off, and that time, Revik found himself fighting to keep from trying to scan the Lao Hu infiltrator. A third party. Perhaps a fourth.

  SCARB, possibly? Or possibly NYPD. Perhaps even one of the private security teams might be tracking them by now, too. Was it possible they could be rescued by the New York branch of SCARB, thanks to Chan's new friend and Balidor's connections to the locals?

  The thought brought a mix of emotions, not all of them relief.

  Revik would go after Allie, of course, but he couldn’t help feeling sick at the thought of how long that could take without Ditrini to lead them there. When he glanced at Jon, the other man mouthed a single word.

  Floods?

  Revik looked away, feeling Ditrini’s eyes on them both.

  His mind continued to move through scenarios, faster this time.

  He could see this ending badly, in a number of ways.

  Multiple parties with guns. Now an earthquake. Floods.

  Allie already gone.

  Trapped in the tunnel. Possibly by human forces, who also wanted them dead. Ditrini could manipulate them if he had numbers behind him...but not if Cass and Shadow left him high and dry, or sent the human reinforcements themselves to take Revik, Maygar and Jon.

  Revik didn't really want to know what Ditrini might do if his back were sufficiently against the wall. Ditrini would likely just kill Revik outright, if faced with capture. Revik had zero doubt that Ditrini would want him dead, if Ditrini thought he would die, too.

  If nothing else, Ditrini would want him dead to get to Allie, if he thought he wouldn’t gain access to her himself. He would want to make sure no one else did, either.

  He was that kind of fuck.

  Jon mouthed the word at him again.

  Floods?

  Revik could only frown in reply, shaking his head in a bare warning without taking his eyes off Ditrini as the guards started once more pushing the three of them down the tunnel’s corridor. The splashing through the water at the bottom of the cement curve provided some sound cover, at least. Glancing at Maygar, then back at Jon, Revik decided to risk trying to get his opinion on what was happening.

  "5.5?" he mouthed. "Or 6?"

  Jon stared at him, blank-eyed. Then understanding seemed to reach him.

  Glancing up, then around them without slowing his steps, he looked sobered by the news, rather than reassured. "Not a good place to be, man," he said. “What would the rebels do?"

  "Shut your mouth!" a large, burly-looking Chinese guard snapped in Prexci. He cuffed the back of Jon's head with a hand the size of Jon's face, nearly plowing him face-forward into the water as he walked. He caught hold of Jon’s cuffed arms before he could fall, shoving him forward in the same motion. "...Or we'll shut it for you."

  Revik frowned, feeling the guard behind him rearranging his grip on the chains linking his upper arms together without ceasing to steer him forward. From the man's skin temperature and pulse alone, Revik could tell the guards were edgy, too.

  Even as he thought it, another hard jolt moved the floor under his feet.

  Revik found himself thrown roughly into the curved pipe wall.

  Losing his balance with his bound arms, he fell to one knee, landing painfully on something hard under the few inches of water in the pipe’s lowest curve. The shaking began to lessen, but not before the guard behind him grabbed hold of the back of his collar. The muscular seer also fell into the wall, catching his weight with one hand as he jerked Revik sideways, tearing at his neck from the connecting strands of the organic collar that wrapped around his spine.

  Gasping a curse, Revik bit his tongue against the pain.

  As soon as the shaking stopped, Revik was jerked back to his feet, before he could try to get up on his own. He couldn't help noticing that the two guards holding him seemed to be having almost as much trouble as he had staying upright. The ones holding Jon and Maygar only seemed to have marginally better luck, but Jon at least managed to stay on his feet, mostly by falling into the guards instead of off to the side.

  Revik glanced around them as they began once more to walk, feeling even more like a trapped animal.

  All of them did, he noticed. The guards and he and Maygar and Jon, even Ditrini, walked fast, but each held a different type of listening posture, their faces slightly lifted as they gazed into the darkness of the sewer tunnel.

  The only sound was their feet splashing and echoing through water.

  Revik heard the silence behind them and realized that Wreg and Balidor must be adjusting their strategy to account for the earthquakes, too. The fact that they were behind him and Allie wasn’t hit him harder that time, bringing a sharp pain to his chest, the worst he'd let himself feel since he realized they’d been breached, that he couldn’t get to her.

  Regret at how he'd told her about her condition hit him in the same set of seconds.

  Gods, what a coward he was. He was so afraid she wouldn't be thrilled to hear the news, given everything else going on, given Cass and the disease and whatever else. He knew they’d argue about what she should and shouldn’t do, whether they should even stay in New York, and he was afraid she would be angry at him, at best, or at worst that she'd have mixed feelings about having kids with him at all, given what she knew about him and his own upbringing.

  Ditrini gave him a sharp look.

  Revik forced his mind silent.

  The sickness and pain in his chest worsened though, and he couldn’t quite fight it out of his light. A part of him almost couldn't be made to care, though. If Cass had Allie, or Shadow, or both, it wouldn’t matter anymore. Menlim would know the second he looked at her.

  Of course, that assumed he hadn’t known already.

  His mouth hardened as he let his eyes focus back on the Lao Hu infiltrator.

  Revik had hardened his light against the other’s reaction, but still found himself surprised at what he saw on Ditrini’s face. Instead of being delighted with the intel Revik had just provided him, Ditrini looked angry. Openly angry, and in a way Revik hadn't seen on the older seer before, not even when Ditrini first returned to consciousness in the brig o
f that aircraft carrier and realized how Revik and Allie had tricked him and taken him hostage.

  He'd been angry then, sure...but that supreme certainty and self-confidence hadn't left him, no matter what the Adhipan infiltrators threw at him. Revik never once felt that arrogance flag the entire time he’d spent watching Balidor's team begin preliminary interrogations.

  This time, a different light shone from those silver eyes.

  His fuller lips pulled into a frown, and Revik saw something like hatred rise to his expression, what might even have been a kind of powerlessness...as if Revik had just told them that he'd killed Ditrini's mother and made her into a stew to feed his dogs.

  That cold look deepened, the longer Ditrini stared at Revik. The Lao Hu infiltrator looked torn now, too, as if fighting with whether to speak.

  Instead he punched Revik in the face, hard.

  Stopping in the tunnel, and causing the guards to stop around him, Ditrini hit Revik again. That time, he hit him hard enough for Revik to lose his balance. When the guards got out of the way, Revik dropped to his knees a second time. While he was still down, Ditrini kicked him in the ribs, once...twice...a third time.

  Revik felt something crack, and let out a gasp.

  “What makes you so sure the bitch’s pup is yours?” Ditrini spat. “I’d warrant I took a few more turns on her this past year than you have...Illustrious Sword.”

  Revik gasped, fighting for breath, half of a mind to answer him.

  He didn’t though, if only because he was having a hard enough time restraining his light, and he couldn’t afford to get knocked unconscious. When he glanced up next, he saw Maygar watching him, a look in his eyes that Revik almost didn’t recognize. Then he realized it was anger, just not aimed at him. Hell, it might have even been on his behalf.

  The conflict returned to Maygar’s brown eyes, though, even as Revik thought it, right before Maygar looked away, shifting his weight between his feet.

  Abruptly, the ground started to shake once more, harder that time.

  Ditrini himself was thrown into the wall that time, and Revik, without use of his arms, only remained where he already lay, gasping, watching the others careen and fall around him. Jon fell to the floor of the tunnel and brought one of the guards holding him down with him. Maygar crashed into the opposite side of the pipe, falling into the water with a splash. One of Revik’s guards nearly fell on him, landing half on his side against Jon and the two other seers struggling to keep ahold of the cuffs around Maygar’s upper arms.