“Ah, but that’s only the beginning, Mr. Syrimne,” the human smirked, folding his arms across his chest before he motioned towards the horizon. “There’s a lot more to come, believe me. All of your friends will get a chance to test their swimming skills pretty soon...”
As the helicopter lifted higher, Revik saw what the human meant.
A literal wall of water was approaching the city.
Revik had read about tsunamis before. He’d even seen images on the feeds once or twice, as well as in VR simulations during disaster training. He’d never actually seen one before, though, not with his own eyes.
The sheer magnitude of the wave brought a base, almost animal terror to his body, shaking his limbs as he stared at it. He could see the rising swell approaching faster and faster once the Sikorsky rose above the main skyline and began accelerating in the direction of the wave itself. Seeing the height of it, even before it had crashed into the first buildings facing the ocean beyond Staten Island, Revik felt his throat go completely dry.
That sick feeling in his stomach worsened.
He fought to push it out of his light, to dim it before he panicked for real and ignited the collar, but all he managed was to keep it from getting much worse. When he looked at the man next, the human was still smirking.
“There are humans down there, too,” Revik said. “A lot of them...”
The man shrugged, his eyes cold.
Not Ditrini cold, but cold enough to piss Revik off.
“I guess you don’t have family in town,” Revik added, his tone biting.
“It’s tough all over right now, iceblood,” the man said, his eyes turning colder as they held Revik’s without flinching. “Maybe you hadn’t heard? That little disease you and your whore decided to dump in the water supply of half the civilized world has kind of made this a zero-sum game for the rest of us. No time to cry over the rich assholes of New York, sorry.”
Revik didn’t answer that.
Instead, he let his eyes return to the window.
When he glanced at Jon and Maygar next, he saw them staring at the same view, a kind of numb blankness in both sets of their eyes. Maygar looked like he felt mostly sick, however, while the look in Jon’s face bled terror, a kind of helpless fury and confusion that Revik strongly suspected had more to do with Wreg being down there than the annihilation of the city itself, or even the vast numbers of humans who would likely die in the next fifteen or so minutes.
Revik couldn’t judge his brother-in-law for that, though, either.
Staring back at the view in front of them, and at the wave that rose higher even in those few seconds he’d looked away, Revik felt his chest go entirely numb as it occurred to him again, that wherever they were taking him, it wouldn’t be to reunite him with Allie.
He didn’t feel the pain from what Ditrini had done anymore, either.
The lower edge of the wave hit the first buildings at the edge of the city’s skyline.
A thunder-like clap of sound ricocheted between buildings as the wave crossed the line, right as the city’s containment field exploded in a brilliant flash of blinding, white light.
The helicopter was already rising, however, lifting them up past the tallest of those buildings as the wave crashed down on that lower end of Manhattan.
It was the last view Revik got before the wall of water engulfed the skyline.
IT SEEMED LIKE they flew for hours.
Really, it couldn’t have been more than an hour or two, given the range of the helicopter itself, but Revik didn’t see much of the flight, so didn’t count off landmarks the way he would have normally. His eyes remained open. He stared out at the landscape as it flowed beneath his eyes, but he couldn’t make himself see any of it. He couldn’t make himself care enough to pay attention, although some hardwired part of him did track direction, as well as any changes in the same...pretty much without him knowing consciously that he did it.
He didn’t think until later how stupid that was.
The not paying attention part, that is.
Then again, it was difficult to convince himself it really mattered, even later. He couldn’t make himself think about much of anything right then, apart from how he might get free at the first possible opportunity.
None of the humans bothered to update them on what had happened in Manhattan.
Revik didn’t ask. Neither did Jon or Maygar, so maybe they were thinking along the same lines as Revik himself, that they were better off not knowing until they were in a position to act on the information. Revik had already guessed where they were likely taking them.
Still, he didn’t get a huge amount of satisfaction when he got confirmation he was right as the helicopter began to descend over some very familiar-looking landmarks in Langley, Virginia.
He watched the ground grow closer as the helicopter dropped.
He barely felt the change in his equilibrium that time, and only glanced at the man sitting across from him for a heart beat before looking back out the window. In that brief look, his eyes fell to the lettering on the man’s dark rain slicker, however.
“NYPD?” he said with a grunt.
Revik didn’t expect the man to hear him, much less answer him, but he did both.
“Yeah,” the man said. “And I suppose you’ve always been aboveboard about who you are, too. Right, iceblood? That’s how you managed to disappear for a half century or more, right? By telling everyone who you really were?”
Revik didn’t bother to answer.
“That’s what I thought,” the agent smirked.
The Sikorsky was already touching down.
Revik winced a little at the landing, realizing again he was more banged up than he’d let himself think about, much less feel. Looking down over his bloodied shirt and the swelling stretching his pants on one leg, he winced again, that time at the realization that he was down to half speed, at best. He glanced at Jon and Maygar, for the first time appraising them.
Both of them looked significantly healthier than he felt.
The CIA agent climbed out first, and Revik watched as a group of uniformed military-types clustered around the agent on the landing pad, all of them bent down under the helicopter’s decelerating blades. A few had hands held up to their ears for what must have been links to others in the building and elsewhere. One of the agents was red-faced and flustered looking, but the rest had that calm veneer of career military, sort of the human version of an infiltrator’s mask.
Revik watched them talk for a few minutes more, able to lip-read a few words, but not getting enough to come to anything conclusive.
Well, other than the fact that an emergency situation existed over most of the lower-levels of the Eastern Seaboard.
Then the agent who’d brought them here was motioning towards the powering-down helicopter, pointing specifically at Revik.
Another group in uniform, these looking more like grunts, climbed into the passenger section of the helicopter and began unchaining them from the seats.
They jerked Revik out through the doorway first, shoving him roughly enough that he would have fallen if not for the grip one of them had on the back of his collar. The chain Ditrini had left around his neck still hung loose from around his neck, but none of the soldiers seemed to notice it or care. The group might have its sadists, but for the most part, they were all business.
Revik only found that mildly comforting under the circumstances.
Even so, he scanned faces, trying to get some sense of them, if any stood out as being more reasonable or even less hostile than the rest.
He was still doing that when he stopped short on one face, barely able to suppress the shock that ran through his aleimi before he jerked his eyes forward once more.
The same man grabbed his bound arms, gripping him tightly as he shoved him towards the building just to the right of the helipad, careful to avoid any of the bloodied spots on Revik’s body despite the surface roughness of his muscular, tattooed hands.
“Eyes forward, iceblood,” the male grunted, his hands tightening on Revik’s shoulder.
Revik glanced slightly to his left, anyway, assuring himself that the guards had hold of Jon and Maygar, too. Revik didn’t dare look back at the agents on the helipad, though. Instead, he lowered his head against the buffeting wind and rain, forcing himself to walk at a normal pace towards the glass doors into the main facility.
No one spoke until they’d gotten inside.
Revik found those same hands shoving him sideways down a narrower corridor with doors lining the wall to the left. The only windows sat high in the wall, and well above eye-level.
The whole facility seemed to be painted the same yellowing white, but Revik barely took that in, or the old-fashioned door handles, before he was being shoved through one of those same doors followed quickly by Jon, Maygar and at least six faces that Revik knew well enough that their mere familiarity almost brought him to tears.
“Gods, brother...” he gasped, overcome in spite of himself. “Get this off me.”
Wreg clapped him on the shoulder, then motioned for him to turn around.
Within minutes Jorag had sawn through the collar Revik wore with a cutting tool, and had started to work on the binders holding his arms together behind his back. Revik watched as Neela cut off Maygar’s bonds in the same set of minutes, and Illeg sawed through Jon’s, all the while Wreg caressed Jon’s face, kissing him in a relief so open and genuine that Revik felt it close his throat.
Tears ran freely down Jon’s face as he kissed the seer back, and as soon as his hands and arms were free, he’d wrapped his arms around Wreg’s larger body, too.
At any other time, Revik would have looked away, given them their privacy, but he couldn’t afford to do it now.
“Where’s Allie?” he said.
Wreg looked at him at once, but didn’t release Jon’s face.
“We need you for that,” he said. “What the fuck do you think I’m doing here, risking my damned neck?”
A faint pulse of happiness touched his words as he gripped Jon tighter, but Revik ignored that, hearing only the grimmer note underneath.
“How much time?” he said. “How much of a lead does she have?”
Wreg’s eyes met his again, and that time, Revik saw the understanding there.
“So you know about Cass?” Wreg said only. “You know who has her?”
“I guessed,” Revik said. “How much time, Wreg?”
Wreg looked at his watch, his face unmoving that time. “Two hours.”
Revik felt that sick feeling return violently to his chest.
He’d known, of course he had.
His internal clock would have even guessed somewhere along those lines, too, if he’d let it, but hearing the words spoken out loud still sent a dense feeling of pain directly into his gut. He receded into the Barrier at once, looking for her.
They would have her collared of course. She would be blind, too, to most things at least. Even so, Revik found himself thinking that they wouldn’t be able to keep him out, not entirely. Not without something akin to the tank, that would cut her off from the Barrier totally.
He needed to find her before the thought occurred to them.
Or before they could transport her to one they already had set up.
Maygar and Jon were completely uncuffed now, too, and Maygar was rubbing his wrists, giving Wreg a wary look before he moved closer to where Revik stood, maybe to watch his face while he looked for Allie. Neela stood waiting, too, a fierce look on her face, and Illeg watched Revik’s eyes as closely as Maygar did.
All of this slid through his awareness in the background, though.
Realizing they were all waiting for him, even Jon, Revik honed in on the points of connection he shared with Allie, and put every bit of his concentration on what he could feel, stripping back every emotion that wouldn’t help him, anything that might get in his way.
He forced himself to breathe as he did it, to not let anything else in.
He stood there, in that interrogation room in Langley and no one made a sound as they watched him look for her, as if each of them held their breath.
For a long moment, Revik thought he wouldn’t find her.
He thought they’d cut her off from him already, put her someplace where even his light couldn’t resonate with hers.
Then, out of nowhere, he got a glimmer.
That glimmer grew into a brighter spark, like a hot coal lodged somewhere in his chest. He could still barely feel her when her terror washed...then exploded over him, a feeling like nothing he’d ever gotten from her before, so intense that tears rose immediately to his eyes. He groaned aloud, clutching his chest, and Jon grabbed hold of him, looking into his face.
“Gods, Revik...what is it?”
He shook his head, fighting to breathe.
He didn’t let go of her.
His sight slanted out again.
She screamed for him in the dark.
She screamed and screamed...
He felt that darkness around her, how lost she was. She couldn’t feel him, but he felt her crying for him. Adrenaline slammed through his system, making it impossible to stay still. Somewhere, barely at the edges of his awareness, he felt the other seers clustering around him, holding him in place, warming him with their light, trying to calm him.
He pushed and shoved their aleimi out of the way, fighting to stay with her...
She screamed at him again, and that time, he couldn’t hold it back, he let out a choked sob, gripping the arms of whoever stood in front of him. He felt her desolation, a grief too large for him to feel in its entirety. She cried and he cried with her, devastated beyond anything he’d felt in longer than he could remember. He clutched at her in the space, wanting her to feel him, to know she wasn’t alone. He couldn’t reach her, though. He couldn’t...it was like a thick pane of glass separated them, something that lived on her side, not allowing him to get through.
Revik found himself thinking it was too late, that they were already dead, that all he could do was convince her she wasn’t alone...
A hand hit him across the face on his good side, hard.
Hard enough to bring more tears to his eyes, but he barely felt it.
“Where is she?” a voice barked. “Nenz! Where is she?”
Revik fought to answer the question, to even think.
He started getting lost in that dark again, hearing her cries. He choked on another sob. The hand hit him again, harder, snapping him out, just enough that the outline of a larger body swam into focus in front of him.
“Nenz!” the voice snapped. “Where is she?”
Revik fought past that feeling again, looking for landmarks, anything that made sense to him. Then he felt her. Not his wife, the other one. She smiled at him in the dark, and for those few seconds, he’d never wanted to kill anyone so badly in his life.
When he finally spoke, his words came out in a forced gasp, barely understandable, even to him.
“San Francisco,” he said. “They’re taking her to San Francisco...”
“Are you certain, brother?” the voice said, his words hard.
Revik looked up, found himself looking at Wreg, who held him as tightly as Jon. Behind him, Jorag rubbed his back, along with Oli on his other side, and Neela.
“Nenz!” Wreg snapped.
Revik’s head turned. He fought to breathe.
“Yes. San Francisco.”
“Are you sure?” Wreg repeated. “Are you positive she will be there? They could not possibly be there yet...” He checked his watch, his mouth a frown. His other hand never left Revik though, still holding him near, tightly by the arm. “...It could be misdirection. Are you sure they are not sending you in the wrong direction?”
Revik shook his head, closing his eyes against another flush of that unbearable pain.
“No,” he said. “No, it’s not. I’m sure, brother.”
“How?” Wreg said. “How do yo
u know?”
“She wants me to come,” Revik said, feeling that sickness worsen. “Cass. She felt me there. She wants me to come...”
Staring at his face, that time, Wreg only nodded.
Giving Jon a worried look, Wreg glanced at Revik again before he motioned for Jorag to continue holding Revik up. Wreg was back in military mode, though, and he walked towards the door to the interrogation room, holding it open for all of them to leave in front of him, even as he used hand signals to convey his intentions.
Revik watched the motion of the other seer’s hands without being able to make sense of any of it. Feeling Jorag’s hand on his arm, and Illeg’s on the other side, Revik followed as best as he could, fighting not to let the limp slow him down.
He wouldn’t make them wait for him.
As he walked, he found himself tugging on the telekinetic structures above his head, fighting an urge to scream at all of them, maybe even threaten them when he couldn’t get those structures to move, to do more than spark idly in the darkness behind his eyes.
Instead, he tried again. And again.
He put every last reserve of his light into trying, until he lost track of where they were, or even whether they might need him on the other side.
No one bothered him. When he finally stopped, he found Maygar staring at him, his brown eyes holding a worry and grief almost on the surface. Revik looked away from him, but found himself seeing more of the same, seemingly in every face around him. He fielded sympathetic looks on dirty, haggard faces. He counted them, tried to decide if it would be enough, or if that even mattered anymore.
Eight infiltrators. Eleven with him, Maygar and Jon.
Cass would have more. She would have whoever Shadow gave her. She would have Terian, possibly Ditrini...likely members of Salinse’s network.
Whatever they had, it wouldn’t be enough.
Nothing they had, nothing they could bring, would be enough.
But Revik no longer cared.
Pushing it from his mind, he reminded himself it didn’t matter. He couldn’t be rational about this...he didn’t want to be. He was going to tear Cass apart with his bare hands. He would kill anyone who had touched her...any one of them who had helped make Allie feel those things he’d felt on his wife.
Allie's War Season Three Page 125