Holo was the first to grin at him.
“Understood, sir. We wouldn’t want to make a liar out of you.”
“Indeed,” Balidor said, raising an eyebrow at the other three. “Start the evacuation. You heard the Sword on this, same as me. Get as many to the airstrip as you possibly can. The beacon should have already been sent to the shore.”
Vikram nodded, although his violet-colored eyes remained worried. He glanced back at the monitors, which now flashed the last few seconds of the warning prior to the drives and the network being purged.
He looked back at Balidor.
“I’d like to look for her, sir. With your permission.”
Balidor felt his mouth tighten. “Dante?”
Vikram nodded. “If I could get a few of the others, could I––”
“I’ll go,” Tenzi interjected.
“I, as well,” Holo added.
Looking between the three of them, Balidor nodded, feeling something in his shoulders unclench. “How do we know I will not find the answer to that question upstairs?” he said, half-shouting over the siren.
The three of them exchanged looks.
Watching their frowns deepen, Balidor clicked to himself, exhaling a sigh.
“Fine,” he said. “But only you, Vikram.”
Balidor gave Tenzi and Holo harder looks.
“…I am sorry, but we need you here. You are the only locals left who can help coordinate the evac for Declan. I won’t leave that to Hondo and Fley to do on their own, especially since we don’t yet know Hondo’s status. Make sure Ullysa has what she needs, and the others. Use your contacts among the refugees. That has to be our priority.”
Balidor’s voice grew openly warning.
“…And someone get a hold of Chandre. If Ditrini is here, I want to know why the hell she and Varlan didn’t warn us. I’d like to know if they’re in the city, as well.”
Holo nodded. “We’ll call in as soon as we hear anything.”
“Find Anale, sir,” Tenzi said, somewhat more awkwardly. “If you find the others, I mean. If they’re upstairs with Ditrini, like you said––find Anale. Try to discern the truth about her before you do anything drastic.” He flushed, his mouth firming. “I don’t think she’s a traitor, sir. I just can’t believe it. I really can’t.”
Seeing the look on the other male’s face, Balidor nodded.
He held up his fingers in the symbol of a promise, only thinking to hope afterwards that he didn’t end up regretting the promise, in the event it got him killed.
But he didn’t think about that for long, either.
Without trying to decide if he’d left anything unsaid, he turned, walking rapidly towards the door to the corridor.
ONCE HE’D LEFT their makeshift control room, Balidor broke into a run.
He wove around the flow of seers leaving Arc Enterprise offices once he hit the main corridor. It made things easier and harder that he was going the opposite direction as the rest of them, heading for the stairs while they aimed their feet for the elevators in the suite’s lobby.
He nodded to a few as he passed, almost smiling when he saw a number of them step hurriedly aside, eyes widening when they saw him holding the M-4.
He didn’t bother to explain to anyone what was going on.
Arc Enterprise employees had been briefed on all the contingencies, just like the seers and humans on the Lists, as well as those in the refugee camps.
Anyway, they didn’t need the details. Not right now, at least.
Still jogging against the tide of suits and jeans and wool and leather coats aiming for the elevators, Balidor hung a sharp right at the next branch of corridor. Opening a door with a basic, dead-tech, push-button pin code, he slid down a narrow secondary corridor, which led to a private security staircase only a handful in the hotel even knew about.
He didn’t want to use the main stairwell unless he had to, meaning the regular stairs whose doors and landings were located by the elevators, installed in case of fire and whatever else.
The security stairs went to all of the floors, including the roof, via a trapdoor set inside one of the ventilator hoods.
Reaching the staircase door, he flipped up a small metal panel designed to blend in with the wall, using a thumbnail switch, then a retinal scanner to gain access. Once the second panel opened to a DNA-encoded keyboard, Balidor punched through the sequence by memory and stepped back, waiting for the lock to disengage.
He could only hope that whoever had come in via the roof didn’t know about the second set of stairs. The circle was small: Balidor, the Sword, Wreg, whose idea it had been, Naldaran, the owner of the hotel, and a handful of Arc Enterprise engineers. Even so, they’d had occasion to worry about leaks even at the highest levels, as the incident with Jon proved.
Even as he thought it, an audible click reached his ears, even above the oscillating siren.
Granted, the siren was more muffled back here.
When the door popped open a few inches, he grabbed it.
He opened it wide, revealing an orange-lit stairwell, a fraction of the width of the main staircase by the elevators. One-way organic panels formed two long windows on the outside of the building, showing him a view of the city.
Balidor shut the door behind him, yanking on it to check the lock.
Without waiting, he began to climb.
44
THE WATCHTOWER
THEY’D ONLY BEEN walking for a few minutes.
Already, nerves and adrenaline twisted Jon’s insides so badly he walked strangely, even breathed strangely.
The corridor had grown darker in those few minutes, the shadows longer.
Jon knew they were close.
To what, he didn’t know. He could feel the closeness, though, like a presence lurking just out of reach of his sight.
He imagined he could feel Cass in that, but truthfully, he didn’t know that he did.
He imagined he could feel Terian, too.
Not Feigran––the man he’d spent so many afternoons keeping company in that cell in Nepal, or in the underground Tank compound, or in the upper floors of the House on the Hill hotel––he felt Terian, the seer who got off on torturing him in that prison in the Caucasus.
The longer he walked, the more it hit him just how much he’d let himself conveniently forget about that Terian. He’d more or less blocked out what the psychotic seer had done to him and Revik––and yes, to Cass.
So yeah, okay, maybe some PTSD was thrown into the mix at this point.
He clenched and unclenched his mutilated hand in a kind of nervous tic, taking it off the gun where he’d been holding it out in front of him and fisting it at his side or even in the open air, only to return it to the gun again, seconds later.
Even apart from fear, Jon felt sick. More than sick.
His migraine worsened the longer they walked that torch-lit corridor. A heavy tightness lived deep in his chest. He felt the corridor continue to slope downward, although he knew that might be another illusion for Revik’s benefit, along with the dense, airless and lightless feeling that seemed to crawl all over his skin.
Jon felt like he was suffocating slowly, getting just enough air to stay alive.
He swore he saw insects scurrying over cracks in those walls, cockroach shells and feet, worms, the eyes of rats staring out at him like black liquid, reflecting in torchlight. None of those things tended to trigger Jon normally, but he knew they weren’t for his benefit. After all, he’d never slept in a place where those things could get at him easily.
Grimacing, he tried to shove the images out of his mind and failed.
He knew that airless feeling didn’t come solely from the construct.
By now, it came at least partly from Revik himself.
The fear emanating off the male seer struck Jon as completely irrational, borderline insane in its inability to connect to anything logical in his head. So far, at least, it didn’t seem to be impeding any of Revik’s m
uscle movements, or even the workings of his forward mind––but Jon knew that could change.
None of it felt new to Jon, either, which is likely why he was able to control his own reactions, at least on the outside. The claustrophobia and fear were so familiar to some part of Jon’s light, he managed them in rote, like one might manage a longstanding physical disability, or chronic pain that had lingered for years.
He didn’t have to think too hard about where those feelings came from, either.
Glancing at Revik, he caught flickers of a less-diluted version of that panic in the other man’s light, even though the expression on Revik’s angular face hadn’t changed.
Jon wanted to touch him, to reassure him in some way, but he couldn’t think of a way to do it that would actually work, especially given where they were going. He could also imagine ways in which doing so might make things worse, by calling Revik’s attention to it in a more concrete way, or by not letting him distract himself with the military, tactical stuff his mind likely chewed over in the foreground.
Jon knew Revik well enough to know that, in addition to controlling his fear and claustrophobia, Revik was probably using some portion of his concentration not to feel the other emotions that vied for attention in his light.
He might not welcome anything that got in the way of that. He might not welcome anything personal at all, given his usual coping methods.
Jon glanced at the Elaerian, feeling his headache worsen at the blank, deadened look on his face. It hit him suddenly––he couldn’t bear to lose Revik, too. The idea that the other male would be gone soon, that he’d never see him again, caught sharply in his throat.
For the first time, it felt real.
But that came way too close to Jon’s own breaking point. It also came too close to other things––other people––he was refusing to think about yet.
Pushing Revik forcefully out of his mind, he focused on what he could feel ahead of them. He broke down the components of the corridor illusion, trying to view it logically.
Clearly, whoever designed this part of the construct did so with Revik in mind. The visuals made that obvious, but Jon realized the sounds did, too. Not all of those sounds pertained to insects and rats; he heard the sound of metal scraping rock, chains dragging over the bottom of a rock floor, water dripping, wind whistling over stone.
If the whole thing didn’t feel so real, it might have made Jon laugh, just for the sick, dark humor of it. It wasn’t funny, though. The illusion put Jon in that place with Revik, forcing him to imagine what it was like, to imagine a hundred years spent like this.
The worst thing was the smell.
He’d never smelled anything so godawful in his life. Moreover, the smell was definitely getting worse, the longer they walked. He hadn’t noticed it at all in the area by the chute, but it seemed like every dozen or so steps they walked, it got a little worse. His mind flashed to an outhouse he’d once visited in a remote part of Thailand, where dead rats seething with maggots floated on top of shit-filled water. He’d ended up going in the bushes, after dry-heaving from the smell and warning his friends not to open the outhouse door.
Somehow, the smell growing in that stone corridor was worse.
For the first time, the reality of that boy’s time in the tower really hit him.
He must have gotten infections, scrapes, bruises from the chains and the filth. He would have had health problems from lack of sunlight and fresh air. With all the fecal matter in the air, he’d have constant stomach problems, along with lung problems, parasites, lice, rat bites, worms.
It was unbelievable he hadn’t died.
Revik likely wished he had.
Picturing it, Jon shuddered, grimacing as another spike of pain stabbed his head.
“I feel something,” Wreg muttered, from Jon’s other side. “Up ahead.”
Jon glanced at Revik, maybe to verify Wreg’s words. Revik nodded, looking between the two of them. His mouth remained hard, not quite a frown.
“Yes,” he said. “I know.”
“Do you know who?” Jorag said. “Could it be Loki and the others?”
Revik shook his head, but not quite in a no. His eyes narrowed; he inclined his head, as if listening to something the rest of them couldn’t hear.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m mostly getting a lot of bullshit.”
Jorag frowned, looking between Jon, Neela and Wreg.
“Bullshit?” he said.
“You know. Interference,” Revik said, still not looking at any of them.
The rest of the seers and Jon exchanged another look.
“What kind of interference?” Jon said. “Can you be more specific?”
“Cass.” Revik made a vague gesture, without elaborating either in sign language or aloud. “Terian, too. But mostly Cass.”
“What is she saying?” Neela asked, glancing over at them from where she positioned herself beside Jorag. She walked just behind Jax, who still limped ahead of them.
Thinking about her words, or maybe how to answer, Revik exhaled, clicking under his breath. He didn’t hide his irritation when he spoke next.
“The usual crap,” he said. “Mostly about Allie. Some about our daughter.”
Looking over, Jon swallowed, again suppressing the impulse to touch Revik.
“Tell her fuck you from me,” he said, after a pause.
There was a silence.
Then Wreg, Jorag, Maygar, Neela and Chinja broke out in coarse and uncontrolled-sounding laughter. The sound struck Jon as odd in that stone-walled place, in the deadened acoustics. Their voices were strained and off-key and unlike their usual voices, but something about hearing them laugh made Jon smile anyway.
“Me, too, boss,” Chinja grinned.
“…And me,” Neela said.
“Me, as well,” Jorag chimed in.
“And me,” Maygar added. “Give a nice, big, fat, fuck you from me too, Dad.”
Jon saw Revik flinch, looking over at Maygar in unguarded surprise. The Elaerian didn’t speak though, or even smile. Rather than dissipating, Jon felt that surprise deepen in Revik’s light for a few seconds more as he walked.
“Tell her to kiss my Asian ass,” Wreg added, reaching over to massage Jon’s shoulder and give him a fleeting but warm smile.
Jon shivered from the contact, leaning into the other man’s fingers.
Something about being hit constantly in his light made him want the seer closer to him, but he resisted the impulse to follow Wreg’s hand when Wreg let go of him a few seconds later. He bit his lip instead, keeping his eyes down and letting the Chinese seer separate them when Wreg’s graceful steps pulled him further away.
Jon forced his eyes forward, looking at Jax, who still led their suddenly very small-seeming group. Jax glanced over his shoulder, giving the rest of them a strained smile.
“…And mine,” he said, out of breath.
Studying the seer’s face and body, Jon felt a flicker of worry.
Jax didn’t look good. His complexion had gotten noticeably grayer since they landed at the bottom of that chute. His light didn’t look right, even to Jon, and his limp was worse.
“Noted,” Revik said, a faint smile touching his narrow lips.
The surprise had finally faded from Revik’s light.
It left a thoughtful silence in its wake, along with a warmer pulse of his light.
Jon could still feel that panicked feeling in the background of his aleimi, but it seemed dimmer now, less overpowering. Even as he thought it, he saw Revik notice the same things about Jax’s light and body that Jon had, a few seconds earlier.
He considered speaking up again, trying to dispel even more of the tension, but before he could, Revik came to a dead stop. Jon was looking at him, not forward down the corridor, so at first all he could do was stare as color drained from the Elaerian’s face.
In seconds, it was chalk white.
The change happened so quickly, Jon felt it as a punch
to the chest.
He grabbed for Revik instinctively, even as Wreg came swiftly around to Revik’s other side, catching hold of his opposite arm. The large seer moved so quickly it caught Jon off guard. He could only stand there, gripping Revik’s arm as Wreg began to speak into Revik’s ear, holding him in a half-hug around the shoulders.
“Laoban. Nenz… listen to me. Listen, brother. Right now. Look at me, Nenz.”
Jon swallowed.
Pain rose in his light, so crippling his legs shook. He continued to grip Revik’s arm, but the pain was so bad, he could barely look at the other man’s face. Nausea rose in his gut as Revik’s muscles tightened under his fingers.
He had no idea what was happening to him. He still gripped his gun, one-handed, but he didn’t look down the corridor where he aimed it.
All he heard were the low, steadying words of Wreg. The ex-Rebel held Revik closer, gripping him around the back and shoulder.
“Steady, laoban,” Wreg murmured. “Steady. You knew this. You knew they would do this. We all did. Let yourself adjust. Let yourself remember what you’re seeing.”
Somewhere in that stream of words, Jon found himself lost.
“It’s not her, Nenz,” the seer said, firm. “It’s not her, brother. You need to hear me on this. Look at me, Nenz. Not at that fucking hologram. At me.”
Jon didn’t turn his head to see what Wreg was talking about.
He didn’t need to.
“You knew they would use her.” Gripping him tighter, Wreg shook Revik by the shoulders, lightly, gently, still crushing him in his muscular arms, despite Revik’s greater height. “You knew this, Nenz. It’s not your fucking wife, brother. I don’t know how they make it feel like her, but it’s not her. Remember that. Remember why we are here… what we are doing. Remember what they did before, with Dorje.”
Jon flinched at the name, but hearing it started to clear his head.
He still didn’t look down the corridor.
Revik nodded.
Jon could tell from his face, he only heard the barest essence of those words, and maybe believed them even less.
The Elaerian continued to stare forward. Jon watched his jaw harden, the brightness that rose to his colorless eyes, nearly making them glow in the flickering light of the torches. Those flames flared brighter in the pause, providing more illumination.
Bridge: Bridge & Sword: Apocalypse (Bridge & Sword Series Book 7) Page 45