Revik paid more attention to the shaking of the earth that time.
Being down already, he could.
The moving rock and concrete threw his body simultaneously back and forth and up and down. It got stronger briefly, cresting before it once more began to recede.
Then the chain tightened around his neck from Ditrini's fingers as the seer climbed back to his feet. Briefly, that same chain choked Revik nearly to the point of unconsciousness, then the pressure abruptly lifted, and he was gasping in musty air filled with mold, cement powder and dirt from the pieces of pipe falling from the cracked ceiling, mixing with water rising into the air closer to his face. When he looked up, spots dancing in his eyes, Revik saw Jon fighting his way back to his feet, leaning on the pipe wall for balance. Jon was still struggling to regain his feet when the shaking resumed.
Jon fell again with a splash, closer to where Revik lay that time.
Revik barely had time to think about whether he could take advantage of that fact when Ditrini shouted a series of commands, gesturing to the guards in quick flicks of his wrist and fingers. The five infiltrators regained their feet, holding the cement walls even as another, heavier chunk of ceiling fell out of the cracked pipe in front of them, opening a hole that rained down another dump of silt and water. Revik could hear a different sound now, roaring in the background, and found he recognized that, too.
The pipes were flooding.
He couldn’t yet tell from the echoes if it was happening in front of them or behind them, or even on another floor, but the sound was definitely getting louder.
Revik glanced behind him. He found Maygar watching him, too.
Revik’s mind spun around details, even as he tried to decide if he could count on either or both of them. A part of him couldn’t help thinking it wouldn’t matter. Hell, it might not matter to any of them, not anymore, including Ditrini and his infiltrators.
They could drown down here.
Revik understood something else now, too.
The ‘wall’ that Ditrini referenced on the comm to Cass or whoever, must refer to the protection fields designed to keep the island of Manhattan above ocean-level. Meaning, the force fields that protected New York City in the event the Hudson and the East Rivers flooded due to some kind of severe jump in water levels.
Like what had been happening when they first arrived back in New York.
Revik glanced back down the tunnel, again noting the slope of the floor as he pulled himself up to a sitting position, then allowed the guards to pull him up to his feet.
Fuck. They were definitely going the wrong way.
Revik glanced at Jon, wondering if he'd put the pieces together, too. Maygar likely wouldn’t have, given that he’d been cut off from most of what had happened since they took him out of Argentina.
Ditrini might be the least of their worries. They could all be buried down here...Ditrini and Jon and Wreg and the Adhipan, too.
If he died, Allie would die.
Before Revik could fully process the thought, another rumble of the earth threw him into two of the guards, one of whom held onto the wall of the pipe that time.
The rumbling hadn't yet stopped before that same guard jerked Revik fully upright, forcing Revik’s weight off his own. The chain once more tightened violently around his neck.
It loosened faster that time, though, and Revik could breathe again, if still coughing dust and foul-smelling water from the spray that filled the air. Revik watched as Ditrini threw the chain to the same guard who held his arm, right before Ditrini repeated the hand-gestures for them to move forward. Revik wondered if he could make a break for it with Jon in the confusion, if there was a heavy enough quake.
As soon as the thought crossed his mind, his air abruptly cut off once more, knocking him into a second guard, whose grip abruptly tightened on his neck, hitting at pressure points that numbed the muscles.
When Revik could see again, Ditrini looked from him to Jon to Maygar.
"If the Sword tries to run, shoot him first," Ditrini hissed, pointing at Jon. "Shoot him in the head. We don’t need him. Or his terrorist mate..."
Swallowing, Revik glanced at Jon and found him staring at him.
Revik found he could almost read that look, too. He also knew it wasn't on Revik’s own behalf, at least not entirely. Jon was telling Revik, with his eyes at least, not to do anything completely stupid. Revik found himself thinking Allie would probably agree.
The thought closed his throat a second time, even as he looked away from Jon.
Another jolt from the cave floor threw all nine of them off balance again, but not enough to knock anyone off their feet. The ground stopped moving long enough for Ditrini to motion at the guards again, even as he seemed to be staying out of the Barrier, likely because of Balidor and Wreg, since there was a good chance ‘Dori would have hacked their construct by now.
Revik recognized the basic gist of the hand movements, although he’d developed a slightly different variant with the rebels.
Ditrini had them in full-fledged flight. Which at that point, didn't surprise Revik at all.
What confused him more was the direction the seer was leading them.
He didn't have time to think about that either, though. The guard now holding the chain around his neck yanked him forward, accompanied by the shove of the second guard behind him. The roaring sound echoing down the pipes was louder now.
Revik was starting to get nervous. The instinct was almost animal. Allie’s face flashed behind his eyes, and without thinking, he looked at Ditrini.
"Warn the Adhipan," he said. "...And Wreg. They might not know. And they might let you through. If they think you’ll let me die, rather than be caught, they might––"
"Shut your mouth!" The guard behind him yanked on the collar, bringing another fire-like bolt of pain. Even so, Revik felt the tension in the man's hands. "...Now! Or we'll shut it for you."
Revik never took his eyes off Ditrini. "Warn them!" he urged. "You don't want her dead, do you? If I die down here, it'll kill her, too––"
"Shut up!" the guard snapped.
Ditrini stared at Revik, his silver eyes shining in the half-light of the yisso torches.
"Do you want her to die?" Revik said, fighting the anger out of his voice when the guard again yanked roughly at the collar. "Warn Balidor...or you'll never get what you want from either of us. Pregnant or not, if this whole place floods––"
"Jesus, man...shut up!" Jon stared at him. "Have you lost your mind?" His eyes were wide, holding an open fear. "Why the hell would you tell him that?"
Revik gave him a hard stare. “He already knows, Jon.”
“So what?” Jon said. “He’s not going to let us die! He would die, too...”
Revik felt his jaw harden, but he didn't take his eyes off Ditrini, watching those silver eyes as the seer seemed to be thinking about Revik’s words.
Revik saw the indecision there, a flicker of the drugs confusing his thoughts. A waver lived there before it disappeared, even as Ditrini motioned the guards forward yet again. The five of them began dragging Jon, Maygar and Revik down the right side of a Y-break in the pipe, a shorter and narrower length of pipe than the one they’d just left.
Revik didn't understand why the seer would risk putting them into an even more confined space, especially one that didn't look particularly sound, structurally speaking, and then he realized that the tributary pipe sloped uphill.
Ditrini was trying to outrun the water.
Even as Revik thought it, he heard the seer speak into his headset again, once more using heavily-accented English instead of Prexci.
"We're coming up," Ditrini told whoever it was. "Get your people to control the group up there. Or I promise you, I’ll make sure that neither of us gets what we want..." Ditrini glanced at Revik then, his silver eyes glinting in the light of the yisso torch. Pulling out his gun, he aimed it at Revik’s head. “Are you understanding me, my friend? Can you now see the
meaning behind my words? And you’d better call your friends in the Adhipan, too. Unless you want the Bridge, the Sword and that baby you want so badly to die, too..."
Revik felt a flush of pain mixed with relief even as something else in the seer's words registered, bringing a cold feeling to his stomach.
He knew, now, who the Lao Hu infiltrator was talking to.
He also knew without doubt who was running this operation.
Menlim wasn’t the one making the calls, not overtly anyway. Revik doubted Menlim was even in this part of New York.
It was Cass. Cass had replaced Revik himself as Menlim’s weapon of choice.
Moreover, Cass was the one who had taken his wife.
19
WATER
BALIDOR STOOD IN the entrance of the sewer tunnel, staring into the dark. As he stared, Balidor’s mind combatted darting and conflicting thoughts that were, somewhat ironically, difficult to think past.
He could feel Dehgoies again.
Thanks to Wreg and Yumi and even Varlan, who had joined them on the lower levels a few minutes before, they had managed to hack through the perimeter of the mobile construct being used by whatever beings pulled the strings outside of the hotel. They couldn’t get much in the way of intel, of course, much less an insight into Ditrini’s thoughts, even drugged as they undoubtedly were, but they now knew Ditrini had Dehgoies, Jon and Maygar.
They could also feel them well enough to track them.
However, the ground shaking and the flickers of panic Balidor got off Dehgoies himself a few times weren't exactly helping his concentration.
Probably because he knew that the Bridge had been taken by now, Dehgoies’ thoughts and feelings came through more loudly than any of them, even those of Jon and Maygar, who had to be equally terrified, if perhaps for different reasons. Dehgoies had a strange sort of focus, even apart from the emotions that likely churned under that veneer, but all it did was convince Balidor that the op had been planned to give the captives as few options as possible.
He’d been able to get all the details of their situation off Dehgoies for the same reason, however...down to the exact chain configuration in which Ditrini’s goons had Dehgoies and the others currently trussed.
At times, Revik’s mind had also gone the quietest of the nine seers they could now feel, including that of Jon, Maygar, even Ditrini himself.
They had more information on the seismic activity now, too.
Earthquakes were being reported across all of the feed stations that Arc Enterprises could tap from inside the city, and even some of those located outside, in the contamination zone. Some reported quakes as high as 7.5 in the vicinity of Manhattan, and one that may have been as high as 8.6 a few miles off the coast.
Unfortunately, Balidor and Wreg’s team hadn't gotten a transmission from Arc in at least ten minutes, and there'd been two more tremors in the time since.
Balidor himself was somewhat relieved that most of the ex-rebels worked or spent significant time in Asia, so were accustomed to earthquakes and the associated precautions. Having spent significant time in places where earthquakes were less common, Balidor knew how crazy they could make people, if they hadn’t been conditioned on how to react. He and Wreg needed everyone focused, not panicking, especially if they ended up having to evacuate to accommodate structural damage...which was growing increasingly likely, too.
They’d traveled more than a mile from the hotel basement by now, chasing Ditrini.
Since they’d significantly beefed up the shields above, both in terms of a multi-layer OBE erected over the basement levels for the first time, as well as significant enhancements being incorporated into the hotel construct itself, it was possible there was now too much interference between them and Arc to receive updated reports, given their current distance from the receivers. Balidor had a second group of seers tracking the helicopter that had left the roof, but he hadn’t heard from them, either, despite the regularity of their reports up until the last quake.
"Do we have anyone up top yet?" Balidor asked, turning to Wreg.
The muscular seer nodded, without clicking out of the Barrier. "Two blocks. They're encountering some traffic upstairs...determining now if it's directly affiliated with the extraction team for the Sword and Jon. In any case, they're well-armed, official..."
"SCARB?" Balidor said. "Can we put Chan and Talei in touch with them?"
Wreg nodded, giving Balidor a dense look that told the Adhipan leader more than his words. Wreg didn't like handing that to Talei, since he didn’t know her. Balidor agreed with him, but didn’t see that they had much choice.
Balidor didn’t disagree with Wreg’s overall assessment, though, in terms of the confluence of events.
“What do you want to do, brother?” Balidor asked him, gentler.
Wreg looked at him. “Would you let me take a few and head up? If they’re human, I’ll push them into helping. If not, then I can’t do any worse than I am down here...”
Balidor thought about his words, then nodded. “Agreed.” Hesitating, he added, “Remember, it’s not just Jon. Don’t let them kill Nenzi, brother. However clear he feels, you know he’s probably half-crazed by now...liable to take any number of risks...”
Wreg nodded, his eyes holding a harder understanding. “Yes. I know.”
The silence between them lasted only another beat.
Then Wreg clapped Balidor on the back, his touch carrying more warmth than perhaps Balidor had ever felt from him, right before the muscular seer touched his link to pull Jorag and Neela to join him as he went aboveground.
Balidor tried really hard not to feel that last pulse as a goodbye.
I SAT IN the padded jump-seat of a military-grade Sikorsky helicopter, feeling a sense of déjà vu that almost overwhelmed me briefly, if only for the pain that wanted to blot out my mind.
Terian didn’t sit across from me this time, though.
Shadow didn’t either.
Instead, my best friend from pre-school on sat there, only I didn’t recognize her.
She smiled at me as I stared at her. Even that looked foreign, almost painfully so in that shockingly familiar face.
Someone had fixed the scar that Terian had cut into her face in that cell under the Caucasus Mountains. The skin of Cass’ cheek and mouth looked flawless again, almost inhumanly perfect. It looked how Voi Pai’s faced had looked to me when I first met her in the Forbidden City and she looked like she’d been sculpted out of some fine, pore-less clay.
Cass’s black hair hung in a long, inverted sheet down her back and forward over her shoulders. Shocking, blood-red dye colored only the lower third, blending upwards into the black as if she’d had it done in a high-end salon and paid hundreds of dollars for the privilege. The way that color streaked up the midnight black of her natural hair color made it look like scarlet flames licking up a silk mortuary curtain.
Cass wore a brown leather business suit that looked a lot more expensive than her hair’s dye job, accessorized with diamond earrings and heels that probably cost more than both of us made in a whole year of working that crappy diner on Geary...combined, that is.
Her eyes were what kept drawing me, though.
On the surface, her eyes appeared to be that same light brown that I knew, almost a coffee color, shining with a similar inner sharpness and light. Something in them had changed, though. I could feel it even before I saw that flicker of something else emitted from inside, a pale gold that edged into the lighter green of mine...or Revik’s, for that matter...whenever his aleimi got activated out of fear or lust or intention or whatever else.
Cass had gotten me pretty easily, all in all.
I hadn’t realized where Jon was taking me, of course.
Well, not until it was too late.
Maybe I would have, if I hadn’t been totally lost in what Revik had just told Maygar. Or maybe I wouldn’t have, since it never occurred to me to question Jon, just like it never would ever have occurre
d to me to question Jon, or anything Jon had asked me to do, no matter how strange, and no matter how little sense it made, in retrospect.
Maybe it was the pregnancy itself, and the fact that my spidey-sense wasn’t exactly working at its usual eighty or ninety percent.
Or maybe I’d just gotten lazy, depending on Balidor, Wreg, Loki and Yumi...and especially Revik...to tell me when I was safe and when I wasn’t.
Either way, I didn’t really get how wrong everything was, until Jon started leading me up the stairs to the roof. Even then, I didn’t fight him.
I don’t think I even thought anything bad might to happen to me, not at that point.
Instead, I worried there was something Jon and Revik and Balidor hadn’t told me. I worried that they’d kept me out of the loop...again...probably for personal reasons, or because they thought I couldn’t handle whatever it was. I worried that they’d avoided telling me something awful about Cass. I went up there figuring something bad had already happened to her, or maybe to someone else I loved.
I really thought it had to be Cass, though.
I thought all of those things pretty much until the instant I walked through the door leading onto the roof itself.
But Cass hadn’t been hurt. She’d been waiting for us on the other side.
My mind never really caught up, I don’t think. Not the conscious, directive parts of it, anyway. Instead, that other part of me kicked in. The Bridge part of me, as Vash called it, kicked into fight mode almost before I could make sense of Cass’s face. It certainly acted on my behalf, long before anything happened in my brain that would remotely qualify as a decision.
So yeah, I hadn’t thought. I’d acted, pretty much like I always did in those kinds of things.
Allie's War Season Three Page 122