Hearing his wife scream at him again from that dark spot where she lived, he had to fight to keep from screaming himself. He couldn’t pick out enough specifics to know what he was afraid of, apart from her fear. He couldn’t see where she was.
She was lost in the dark, terrified, and not only for herself.
He must have made a noise at one point, because Jorag was rubbing his back again with strong strokes of his hand, half-supporting him now, and Oli gave him a frightened look from where she walked ahead, an automatic rifle slung over her shoulder.
Jon looked at him, too, but Revik couldn’t read anything in the other man’s face, couldn’t meet any of their gazes as they gave him nervous looks, as if he were already a ghost. Revik wouldn’t let himself think about anything he felt on them, but threw everything he had at Allie, trying to give her light, love, reassurance, anything he had, everything he had, already knowing she wouldn’t feel it, that it wouldn’t be enough.
She screamed again, and her anguish broke over him.
Lost in the dark.
She was lost in the dark. Alone.
Revik could barely see by the time they led him to the lone plane standing on the tarmac. He had no idea where he was, or anything apart from that scream he could hear in the dark.
SOMEONE SHOOK HIM back to consciousness.
Revik opened his eyes, feeling like his whole face had been encased in cement. A face hung over him, eyes shining faintly in low light and blocking out the rest of Revik’s vision. He moved fast, and without thought...like an animal, breaking out of his stupor as if he’d been hit with an electrical prod instead of touched gently with a bare hand.
As a result, he jerked his hurt leg, too hard, slamming it into the armrest of the plane seat and nearly losing consciousness again when the pain ran jagged lines through his light. He groaned, panting, and looked up again to see Jon’s face.
The man’s skin looked paler and more haggard than Revik had ever seen it.
“Gods, Revik...sorry.”
Revik shook his head, gripping the armrests and gritting his teeth as he waited for the pain to subside. As soon as he could take a breath, he spoke. “No,” he said, shaking his head again. “It’s all right. Talk to me. Where are we?”
“Twenty minutes to landing,” Jon said at once.
Revik nodded, feeling the sickness in his chest worsen.
He’d asked Wreg to knock him out.
He knew he wouldn’t sleep if they didn’t force it on him, and he knew his light wouldn’t replenish much at all if he didn’t sleep. He’d forced himself to catalogue his injuries before they did it, and to allow them to do what they could to patch him up so he might heal. He’d found most of what he expected to find, and a few surprises, too.
He’d broken one of his hands, probably when Ditrini slammed his bound arms into the pipe wall. He hadn’t felt it with his circulation cut off from the binders, but as soon as they’d given him a sedative from the plane’s medical stores, he’d realized that he could barely move his fingers, even to put on his seatbelt.
They’d put a field dressing and a splint on that, taping it up to where the pain was at least bearable. They’d cleaned up his face and stitched the cut over his eye and one at his hair line. They’d taped up the broken ribs, and his leg.
Apart from trying to pull himself together physically, Revik couldn’t do anything during the flight anyway, and he didn’t want to dream. He didn’t want to feel anything more from Cass, or even from Allie, not until he could see her with his own eyes.
So he told Wreg to knock him out, which the muscular seer did, and seemingly with relief in his eyes at the request.
“Any news?” Revik managed, fighting to clear his throat. “Balidor?”
Jon handed him a glass of something.
Revik didn’t hesitate. He drank it, closing his eyes as he tilted his head back. It was bourbon, a fact for which he was beyond grateful. He handed the empty glass to Jon, nodding a thanks, even as Jon handed him a water bottle next.
“Drink that one, too,” Jon advised.
Revik nodded, twisting off the cap. He drank that down almost as fast as he had the bourbon, gasping a little for breath as he finished. He did all of it with the emotionlessness of tending to a needed machine. Rubbing his unbroken hand through his hair, he tossed the empty bottle on the seat next to him, then clicked his fingers at Jon.
“News,” he said again.
He watched with narrow eyes as Jon poured him another glass of bourbon, handing it to him wordlessly. Jon watched Revik drink it before he began to speak.
“Balidor’s pretty sure Ditrini got away,” Jon said, his voice sounding like a military report, almost like how Wreg would have said it. “No news on Feigran or Shadow. They determined that telecast they’d done during the breach took place in D.C., just like it appeared. According to some of Balidor’s contacts, Shadow’s team left from there before the wave hit...he’s thinking they might have gone to ground again.” Jon hesitated. “...He also thinks it’s unlikely they would be going to San Francisco, at least right now.”
Revik nodded, finishing off the last swallow of bourbon before he handed Jon the glass.
“What about the hotel?” he said.
Jon gave a single nod, seer-fashion. “They managed to reinforce the fields enough to keep the building structurally sound,” he said. “The basement and all of the sub-levels flooded, of course. They lost most of the armory, and worse, from their perspective, the majority of the stored seeds and food they had in the main basement. They’re hoping they can salvage some of that when the water recedes, but they have to assume the worst...”
Revik nodded, only half hearing this.
“Casualties?” he said.
Jon hesitated, until Revik looked up, then he shrugged with one hand. “Which place, Revik? They figure they lost at least a hundred thousand in Manhattan itself. At the hotel, there’re estimating at least a dozen seers...maybe double that number of humans from the lists.”
Revik nodded, feeling nothing as he stared at the floor.
“What does Balidor think?” he said. “About the imprints I sent him?”
Jon exhaled, shaking his head. “He doesn’t know, man. No one does. It doesn’t look good, but you already knew that...” Hesitating, he seemed on the verge of asking something, then changed his mind.
“What?” Revik said. He looked up, then found he knew what the other man wanted to ask. “How soon before I start to die after Allie does?” he said, his voice bitter. “If it’s anything like last time, I’ll have a few days before I start to really feel it. Weeks before it starts to kill me. Anything else?”
“Revik, man. Gods, I––”
“If you say you’re sorry again, Jon, I’ll break your arm.” Revik said it without feeling, but the other man tensed, stepping back reflexively. “...She’s not dead,” he added then, still staring at the floor. “I’ll tell you if that happens, okay?”
Jon swallowed, hard enough that Revik heard it.
Revik didn’t look up though, not wanting to see the man’s tears any more than he wanted to hear him apologize again. He shut out everything as he stared at the floor, wondering just how much he could drink before it stopped being helpful and started getting in his way.
Deciding he didn’t want to test that, either, he didn’t move, or look up.
A few minutes later, he felt Jon move away.
OLI AND JORAG landed the plane at approximately one o’clock that morning, after stopping to refuel once in Denver, and then going the rest of the way to San Francisco airport.
The airport itself was completely deserted.
No one worked the control tower, of course, but the runways themselves were also unlit and all of them nearly got killed when Jorag initially guided them to the wrong approach and landed on a piece of tarmac covered over in a scattering of empty and deserted commercial planes.
He caught the mistake before they would have crashed, and Oli pul
led them up and around for another try, at which time they found an empty lane.
Well, more or less. Empty of big objects, anyway. Revik heard them talking about bodies and cars scattered over the runway, but nothing that prevented them from landing.
Finding transportation into the city itself was even less easy.
Revik followed after the rest of them as they looked for cars that hadn’t had all of their gas siphoned already, and eventually stumbled across an electric vehicle with its battery mostly charged. They still had to wait while Wreg and the others found an outlet to finish charging it enough to get them into the city proper. Wreg eventually gave the order to drive it through the glass doors of the airport itself, where they parked it and promptly found an industrial outlet that still seemed to be connected to what remained of the grid.
Even so, they all knew it would be a one-way trip.
Wreg and Illeg were already discussing the fact that they would need to find another way back after they’d found Allie...and then likely would spend another five or six hours siphoning fuel off the remaining commercial planes to get enough to get back across the country.
That was assuming that returning to New York even made sense.
Revik overheard Wreg and Jon talking too, including about bringing the rest of their New York contingent further west, instead.
Or perhaps east, in the direction of Europe, or even Asia.
Everyone seemed to agree they’d be better off finding somewhere a bit off the coast and with some altitude maybe, where they were less likely to be vulnerable to the coastal storms, including the earthquake-generated tsunamis which had already pounded the Pacific-facing coast as well. Everyone also seemed to agree that those problems would only be worse in the areas where the tectonic plates intersected.
Like San Francisco, for example.
Revik couldn’t care about any of this.
He focused on finding them a car. He continued to limp through the parking structure even while they charged the electric one, looking for anything that might get them there sooner. He even considered trying to walk towards the city, but the others convinced him to wait, reminding him he wouldn’t do Allie much good if he got shot by vigilante humans. After all, anyone might recognize his face from wanted postings on the feeds.
Hell, even if they just ID’d him as a seer, they’d probably kill him.
So he waited. He was standing by one of the large windows inside the airport, smoking a hiri someone had given him, when Wreg finally approached him.
“We’re ready, Nenz,” he said.
Revik didn’t bother to answer. Pulling his weight off the guardrail where he’d leaned, he limped back in the direction of the glass doors after Wreg, doing his best to shut off his mind, and even his light, to everything around him now.
He couldn’t feel her anymore.
If he couldn’t feel her, he didn’t want to feel anything.
He still couldn’t be sure if she was dead, if they’d just put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger, but he didn’t think so. Even if they’d put the collar to end all collars on her, he was pretty sure he would have felt it, if they’d already ended both of their lives.
Well, all three of their lives now.
Pushing that thought away too, like he had the other several dozen times it had tried to rise, he told himself none of it mattered now.
He knew where she was.
That mattered.
He sat in the front seat while Jon drove.
The car was a hatchback, thank the gods, or they might have had to leave some of them behind, or maybe tied them to the roof. As it was, Oli sat on Revik’s lap, and Wreg, Illeg, Neela, Jorag, Maygar, Loki and Jax crammed into the back seat and trunk, which they’d enlarged by ripping out the back seats and laying cushions directly on the floor.
The car’s chassis likely scraped the asphalt as they drove.
It made sense to have Jon drive.
He knew the city better than any of them, even Revik, who probably would have insisted on driving himself if he hadn’t known that his leg would make it impossible for him to do it safely. So he sat there instead, gritting his teeth as he stared out the window, clutching the handle of the door as he forced himself to remain silent and not wince whenever Oli shifted her weight onto his hurt leg.
The car seemed to go excruciatingly slow.
Revik knew it didn’t, really.
He watched the scenery flow by the car’s window and windshield, only grinding his teeth a little more when they slowed to circle around stopped cars and other debris cluttering stretches of the road. At one point, Wreg and the other seers had to push a group of humans out of their way, too, when they came across a barricade and an ambush that those same humans had set up to trap cars and rob them, including taking the passengers themselves.
Revik watched the sick-feeling humans pull down their own roadblock, their eyes glassy from the pushes of Oli, Jorag, Loki, Illeg and the others, and knew if he’d had access to the telekinesis, he would have killed them by now.
He couldn’t even make himself feel bad about it. Whoever they were, they didn’t seem to be doing their own race a lot of favors, anyway.
Given all these things, it took time to get into the city, more time that Revik could really handle at that point. He didn’t try to mark time, not even by the sun rising above the horizon, but he knew more than an hour passed before they rounded the last curve before the city’s main skyline exploded into view, along with the first of the myriad of off-ramps that led into San Francisco itself.
Revik knew Jon had his foot jammed down on the power pedal pretty much at every open space of road they hit, mostly because he found himself looking down at that same foot compulsively pretty much the entire trip...but the desire to urge him faster grew intense enough at times that he had to bite his own tongue to remain silent.
Wreg or someone else must have told Jon where to go.
In any case, Jon didn’t hesitate.
Revik watched as his brother-in-law took the shortest route possible, heading directly to Jon and Allie’s old childhood home on Fell Street by the panhandle of Golden Gate park.
21
PIECES
WREG ORDERED REVIK to stay in the car.
He told Revik that he should wait for a minute, while he and the others checked out the perimeter, made sure no ugly surprises were waiting for them in the house.
Jon saw Revik’s face, though.
He could tell he hadn’t heard Wreg, or maybe just that he didn’t care. He’d already shoved Oli off his lap before the car had finished stopping on the trash-littered curb.
Revik scarcely gave her a glance as he opened the car door and dragged his weight out of the opening using his unbroken hand, not pausing before he began walking with long strides over the sidewalk and up to the dilapidated wooden stairs. Jon watched along with the others as he limped up to the open front door of the purple Victorian, not seeming to see any of it but looking past it somehow, as if he were already inside.
The house looked exactly the same as Jon remembered it.
From the chipped black trim to the fading purple paint, and the birds’ nests rimming the gables at the highest point, it could have been a week since he’d seen it last, instead of what had to be closer to five years.
Jon was still staring up, when a flurry of opening doors and moving bodies broke him out of his daze.
The car’s shock springs groaned and the passenger seat clacked forward loudly, hitting the dash as infiltrators forced their way out of the car as fast as they could to follow Revik into the house. Oli was already halfway up the steps behind him, catching up to him only because his leg wouldn’t allow him to go as fast as Jon could tell he wanted. Jon suspected Revik would have run into that house if he could have, even unarmed, even without any of them following behind him, and without caring if Shadow waited for him on the other side.
Swallowing, Jon pulled out his own gun when he saw Wreg do the sam
e, exchanging a single grim look with the tattooed infiltrator before he ran up the sidewalk and then the lawn after the rest of them. He leapt up the creaking wooden steps as soon as he reached their base, running past the porch he’d played Matchstick cars on with Allie when they were both too little for school.
His vision blurred as he stared around the house, seeing his mother’s familiar furniture, remembering that the property hadn’t been sold yet, that it was still held in some dispute by the city since neither Jon nor Allie had been in a position to claim it, forcing their Aunt Carol to take the city to court and file for ownership on their behalf.
Looking around at where homeless people had obviously been squatting inside, even around the police tape that still decorated the living room floor, Jon supposed it was kind of a moot point anyway, now.
Jon heard a cry then, familiar enough, yet foreign enough that he stiffened.
Desolation lived in that cry, a loss so deep that Jon felt it down to his very bones, as if someone had dipped them in ice and left him standing there, in pain and trembling.
He looked for Wreg, more out of instinct than intention, and met Neela’s gaze instead, from where she stood guard between the kitchen and the main hallway, an automatic rifle still cradled in her arms. From her wide eyes, which looked bright enough for tears, Jon’s pain worsened, if only because it confirmed that what he’d heard was real.
Jon moved mechanically, running towards the sound.
He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to be here at all, not anymore, but he couldn’t stop himself from running any more than he suspected Revik himself would have been able to stop himself vaulting up those steps, even to his probable death.
When Jon stopped in the doorway to his mother’s bedroom, his eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom. He saw a lamp broken in the corner, what looked like a dried smear of blood. Then his eyes found the bed, and saw Revik cradling a form in his arms, his face buried across the front of her.
Allie's War Season Three Page 126