Allie's War Early Years

by JC Andrijeski

  “Kali thought I was reacting to her daughter,” Revik said, his voice cold. “...Her daughter’s light. She wasn’t pregnant then, but she knew she would be. She claimed her daughter’s light already hung around her person...” Revik looked up, and knew his eyes held an open challenge now, if not an overt threat. “She told me I was reacting to her.”

  Dalejem nodded to that, too, silent.

  Even so, Revik saw a kind of flinch in his eyes that time, as if he saw something in Revik’s face that made him cautious once more.

  After another few seconds of what felt like the rest of the Adhipan conversing with one another in the space around Revik’s light, Dalejem’s legs straightened smoothly, bringing him gracefully back to his feet. Once he was upright, he held out a hand to Revik, his face holding no readable expression at all.

  Revik looked up, but didn’t take the offered hand, not at first.

  He continued to gauge the other man’s face instead, trying to discern where things stood with them now.

  Seeing the look there, Dalejem’s expression relaxed, all at once.

  “It is all right, brother,” he smiled. “We will not send you to the firing squad on this day, I promise you.”

  “Then what?” Revik said, his voice blunt, unmoved by the other’s attempt to lighten things. “Will you send me back? Back to the Pamir?”

  Dalejem shook his head at that, too, clicking softly, but with a smile as well.

  “No, brother,” he said. “Nice try. But no.”

  Feeling that pain worsen in his chest, Revik didn’t answer.

  He did take the offered hand that time, however.

  Once he was upright, Dalejem clapped him on the shoulder, gauging his face... almost as if to determine if Revik could hold himself up under his own power.

  “Stay away from her light for now, brother,” he advised. “We can’t have you cracking your skull out here... and we still intend to make a move for extraction tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “We cannot wait,” Dalejem said, his voice businesslike once more. “She is very pregnant, brother... we cannot wait even for one more day.”

  Revik was already shaking his head. “I can’t go on that. Extraction. I can’t...”

  “We will work that out,” Dalejem broke in smoothly.

  Dalejem startled Revik then, sliding his fingers into Revik’s hair, right before he raised his other hand to his face, caressing his jaw and neck. He continued to stroke his skin as Revik felt his light react, as he felt himself starting to open under the other man’s touch. He fought to control it again, tensing under the other male’s fingers, but he didn’t move, or try to evade his hands. Even so, Dalejem must have felt it.

  He released him at once, stepping back from him.

  “Sorry, brother,” he murmured, his green eyes shifting away.

  His mouth thinned into a line, but Revik couldn’t read the exact expression there, if it was anger, frustration, irritation that Revik had taken the affection how it wasn’t intended, or even embarrassment.

  Fighting not to react to his own uncertainty, Revik was still searching for words when the other male looked at him once more.

  “I cannot ask,” he said. “I cannot. You understand this, brother?”

  Revik nodded, but truthfully, he didn’t.

  Was he saying to leave him alone?

  Had he been pulling on Dalejem with his light?

  Revik couldn’t trust himself to answer that question honestly, either.

  Confusion continued to shift around his light as the silence grew awkward between them. Revik still felt the other male waiting for him to answer in some further way, but he had absolutely no idea what Dalejem expected him to say.

  He got the main message. Wasn’t that enough?

  “I won’t rape you, either, brother,” he said finally, trying to make it a joke, and feeling it fall flat, even as he said it. When Dalejem arched an eyebrow at him, his eyes an obvious question, Revik felt his embarrassment worsen when he added, “...Although Balidor is welcome to post a guard by my tent, if he likes. I won’t be offended.”

  Dalejem looked away from him again at that, frowning slightly, but again, Revik couldn’t read his face. Frustration fought in his chest as he continued to stare at his high-cheekboned profile, the long line of the other man’s neck, which also didn’t seem to move, in emotion or anything else. He felt blind.

  These fucking Adhipan seers... he was so in the dark with them. With all of them, not even just with Balidor.

  Still, he supposed he’d understood enough.

  When he refocused on Dalejem’s eyes that time, the other man’s expression had changed again. That time, Revik saw only sadness there.

  He couldn’t look at that for very long, either.

  NO ONE MENTIONED what went on out in that field when Revik and Dalejem got back to the camp.

  Dalejem had kept him there for a few hours after the incident, but perhaps that had been at least partly for Revik’s benefit, too.

  He’d tested him on automatic rifles, which is what he’d lugged out in that black, canvas bag. He’d also brought a couple of laser-scoped things, as well as two organics-only guns that Revik had only used a few times even under the Rooks. Then Dalejem forced him to sit out there with him, in the mud, and he assessed Revik’s shielding, his ability to discern different types of Barrier attacks, and his ability to scout the environment.

  During that last part, Revik noted, Dalejem kept Revik’s light from getting anywhere near the other end of the construct, where it presumably had been woven into the construct at Guoreum itself, where they were keeping Kali.

  Dalejem also filled Revik in on the basics of their plans, meaning the specifics, now that they were down on the ground.

  They would be leaving tomorrow morning. Before dawn.

  So in less than ten hours.

  Now that he was back in the camp and it was dark out, Revik knew that time had been cut significantly, and might be closer to six hours now, since the intention was to leave at least four or five hours before dawn, so perhaps an hour after midnight.

  Revik knew the push was largely because of Kali’s condition, but he felt something else driving their timeline, too... something that felt more nebulous, although he suspected it only felt that way to him because he could only see the parts of the construct that Balidor and the others specifically allowed him to see.

  Revik was a tourist here, and he knew it.

  “What role will I play?” he’d asked finally, after Dalejem had explained the basics. He still had no idea why he was here at all, really.

  “Kali asked for you,” Dalejem said simply, as if that explained all of it.

  More and more, Revik was beginning to think it did.

  He couldn’t imagine that the Adhipan would have brought him here for any other reason, meaning apart from the fact that Kali herself wanted him along. When he asked Dalejem why he thought Kali asked for him in the first place, Revik knew he wouldn’t get a satisfactory answer to that question, either.

  Even so, the other seer’s laugh frustrated him.

  “You will have to ask her that yourself, my brother,” Dalejem said with a grin.

  The grin struck Revik as genuine, though, and not one of the Adhipan smiles that more and more struck Revik as cover for emotion as much as emotion itself.

  Now, as he sat with the rest of them in the dark, around an organic heater in lieu of a fire, which might attract attention with the smoke, Revik fought to shake that feeling of superfluousness again, listening to the others joke and talk quietly amongst themselves, even as he overheard some tactical discussions in the corners and edges of his sight.

  He heard his name then and turned in reflex, only to see Dalejem and Mara talking quietly in the dark behind him. They stood huddled together in a shadowed spot between two of the waterproof tents that had been strung up under the trees. Revik had examined the tents somewhat closely before it got dark, mostly b
ecause they used a rigging he’d never seen before, but now he noticed for the first time that they stood taller than he’d realized, too, tall enough that most seers, even him, should be able to stand up straight inside one of them.

  When Revik turned, however, Mara and Dalejem turned, too. Revik realized only then that the two of them had been arguing.

  Feeling his face flush with heat, Revik swiveled his head and gaze back towards the fire, pretending he hadn’t noticed them at all.

  He had a strong desire to return to his own tent, then.

  Unfortunately, the one he’d been assigned to share with four other seers happened to be one of the two directly beside where Dalejem and Mara now stood.

  So Revik just sat there, staring into the glowing coils of the heater and pretending he could not feel the fact that they were still arguing about him. He couldn’t help but follow the whispers of charge and flickers of anger as they trembled his light, however, pretty much the moment Dalejem and Mara resumed their heated discussion.

  He never thought he’d miss those caves, way up in the Pamir.

  He would have laughed at the idea, even only a day or two earlier.

  Even so, in those few, long-feeling minutes, he did.

  Miss them, that is.

  5

  SPLINTER

  REVIK STOOD BY a cluster of green-brown roots belonging to a dense grove of walking palms. Sweating. Fighting to keep his focus, to keep his light close to his body while still looking for possible danger. Fighting to keep his mind locked to Balidor’s, who told him he’d act as Revik’s anchor to help stabilize his light out here.

  They’d left him behind, just like Dalejem intimated they would.

  But not by much. Not very far at all, really.

  He was less than three clicks from the perimeter fence, so well under two miles of the main extraction team and the edges of Guoreum itself.

  Revik knew from the smatterings of memory he had of this place that the main camp where they housed the prisoners stood about a mile from this edge of the fence, which also included the military barracks and whatever functioned these days as their CIC.

  The familiar flavors of the Org construct clung to his light, pulling on him in ways that made it difficult to think. It sickened him and drew him all at once, leaving a metallic taste in the back of his throat that simultaneously made him feel manic and reminded him of doing drugs, especially in those last few months in Vietnam, where he and Terian had been high pretty much from the moment they dragged themselves out of bed in the morning until they passed out at night.

  Worse than that, he felt lights he recognized. Not only in terms of the construct structure itself, but the actual beings inside of it.

  Despite his paranoia with Dalejem earlier, it hadn’t fully sunk in that he might run into seers he used to know out here.

  He could feel Balidor shielding him from a lot of that, too, which both reassured him and ratcheted up his nerves, given how strong the pull felt even with all that shielding. Even with Revik well outside the furthest edges of the construct perimeter itself, he still felt too much, which made him even more nervous about the inevitable pursuit they’d face once Balidor got Kali out of Guoreum itself.

  They’d been gone for over two hours now.

  Revik could taste the sunrise in his light, even if he couldn’t yet see any shift in the colors of the night sky. His internal clock told him they were likely at least an hour from sunrise still, so somewhere in the neighborhood of four-thirty a.m., but it still felt like they were cutting things close if they wanted to make distance before it got light.

  Damned close.

  Then again, dark or light didn’t matter that much when they would primarily be fleeing seers.

  Even as the thought left his light, something shifted.

  The change was fast, soundless.

  Alarms.

  Revik felt the tremor hit his light even before the actual shockwave expanded over him.

  Before he’d regained his equilibrium, or even made sense of what he’d felt, Dalejem appeared in front of him, like a ghost from between the trees. The seer’s sudden appearance from between the walking palms, his face pale and sheened with sweat, even in the dark, nearly gave Revik a heart attack. He hadn’t felt his approach in any way. He hadn’t expected it at all, and the knowledge hit him, hard, how vulnerable he was out here, even as Dalejem walked directly up to him.

  The older seer spoke aloud once he was close enough, not in Revik’s mind. He used a low whisper, presumably to avoid being heard in the Barrier.

  “Come with me, brother,” he said. “Now. Balidor is bringing her out.”

  He had ahold of Revik’s arm before Revik had recovered from any part of this. In fact, Revik nearly fought the other male before he abruptly brought his light back under control.

  He didn’t speak after Dalejem released him, either.

  Instead, he followed orders, clicking back into military mode and walking as fast and as silently as he could after the other seer.

  Dalejem himself moved without making any sound at all, as far as Revik could tell; he was like a spirit passing through the jungle, moving so quickly Revik had to increase the lengths of his strides just to keep up and not lose him in the trees. He fought to follow just as quietly, too, and winced when he heard the sounds made by his feet or body, rubbing against branches or stepping on pieces of the jungle floor that made noise.

  Dalejem slid his light deeper into Revik’s after he’d done it a few more times, and began showing him with his light how to navigate the undergrowth more quietly.

  Embarrassed as he was, Revik took the instruction, and gladly.

  Within a few minutes more, both of them were making scarcely any sound at all as they walked through the trees.

  Revik’s mind continued to churn, even as he following the prodding of Dalejem’s light.

  Why had they come to get him? Was it to keep him away from Kali’s light?

  “In part, brother,” Dalejem said, his voice low, like before. “They also want protection on several sides, and to split our parties. Balidor tripped the alarms on the way out... they were forced to improvise as a result.”

  “How?” Revik said, his voice as soft as the other’s.

  “A trigger they missed,” Dalejem said with a shrug.

  Revik nodded, not speaking.

  He wasn’t really surprised, though, once he thought about it.

  Balidor had intimated more than once on the flight to São Paulo that his team hadn’t been allotted adequate time to prepare for this op, given their need to pull Revik and their efforts to get Kali’s mate out of detention.

  And the pregnancy, of course... which added a layer of urgency to everything connected to this mission, in addition to upping the ante on the time constraints for going live.

  While the pregnancy definitely forced everything forward by hours and days (possibly weeks, from what Revik overheard), Revik could feel other, more nebulous––or perhaps more Barrier-related––time pressures, as well.

  What those might be, no one bothered to share with him, however.

  Truthfully, Revik knew it probably wasn’t necessary or even important that he understand that side of things, though. From what he’d observed of Balidor, the omission couldn’t have been unintentional, in any case, so he didn’t see the point of dwelling on it.

  Whatever the true reasons for the push, due to those same time constraints, they’d cut corners on planning, and on obtaining current intel on the camp. Therefore, this whole venture had a somewhat “spontaneous” feel to it that exhilarated Revik in a strange way, even as it worsened his nerves at being so close to a major encampment of the Org.

  Even as he thought it, Dalejem’s teeth shone white in the darkness in front of him.

  “You like this kind of work, yes?” the other said. “I have felt this on you.”

  Revik didn’t answer. Partly because the question annoyed him for some reason, but also because spe
aking unnecessarily out here didn’t strike him as a particularly good idea.

  Ahead of him, he heard Dalejem chuckle.

  “You really are a soldier, aren’t you?” the other man teased, his voice quiet still, only audible because the jungle was quieter. “A highly paranoid one, yes, but a soldier nonetheless. They didn’t lie to me about that part of your make-up, in regards to who you truly are, at least.”

  Revik didn’t answer, but he frowned a little.

  He wasn’t sure if he really wanted to know what the other meant about lies he had heard about him, or what Dalejem now thought might be true about him instead. Even so, Revik could feel the other seer pulling on him lightly to ask, and while the warmth there mainly confused him, Revik felt himself reacting to it in a less closed way, as well.

  Some part of him almost wanted to ask, despite everything.

  But yeah, he didn’t.

  THEY MET UP with the rest of their assigned splinter group less then twenty minutes later.

  Once they got there, Revik was surprised, and not particularly pleased, to see Mara among the others assigned to his group. Others included the giant, half-Wvercian-looking seer Revik remembered from the jeep ride down the winding roads leading from the caves of the Pamir, and five others he vaguely recognized from the trip from Kabul to São Paulo.

  The large one, who he now knew as Garensche, or “Gar,” was the only one who smiled at him, raising a thick hand in greeting. The five others, three males and two females, didn’t look at him with hostility, but they didn’t exactly exude warmth, either.

  “Balidor was shot,” the first one said to him and Dalejem, her voice neutral. “However, they got out cleanly... and more or less in one piece. The target is unharmed. They have ten in the main extraction team now. Plus, ours and another splinter flanking them to the west. They are currently are located about five clicks west of us here, maybe half a click north...”