Balidor sighed again, clicking softer.
For a moment she thought he wouldn’t answer her at all.
“I am not asking this merely out of hurt feelings, brother,” Chandre said. “She has no one around her. No one who knows her in any way that is personal. The seers her husband had me bring out here…” Letting her voice turn to a growl, she blurted, “…He seems to have chosen them on the basis of their inconvenience to his marriage, which is not benefitting her now. She chose her people with operational needs in mind only––”
“As she should have,” Balidor said, his voice warning.
“You know what I am saying, brother!” she snapped. “She has no one here, Balidor. No one. And she was just raped, less than seventy-two hours ago…she will scarcely even admit it occurred.”
The silence deepened.
Balidor seemed to make up his mind then, even as he clicked softly.
“Hers,” he said finally, his voice reluctant. “It was her call, Chandre, to distance you from her command. So I cannot overrule her wishes. But you should discuss this with her directly, sister, particularly given the circumstances you just referenced. I suspect it is far less about the two of you than it is out of respect for her husband.”
He paused. Then, even more of the formality dropped from his voice.
That time, Chandre thought she could hear a denser grief.
“Your concerns are noted,” he said. “More than noted…it is why I wished to speak with her tonight. I also wanted her permission to tell Jon and some of those she is closer to what happened. Truthfully, I may be forced to tell them anyway.”
Sighing, as if he were already imagining what the Bridge would say to him if he were to do that, Balidor added,
“As for you, you might still be able to…be there for her. As a sister, I mean. If she allows it. But she might not allow it, given her husband’s feelings, as I said. I do not know that she will be wholly rational about that. Further, she might be avoiding discussing the incident with anyone, from what you are saying…so her husband might simply provide a convenient excuse.”
Chandre felt her fingers tighten around her arms.
She didn’t speak though.
Gazing out the window of the four story building in which she now stood, she found herself looking over rolling hills, green from the monsoon rains that still covered this side of the country.
They’d landed at the Air Force strip in Langley, Virginia, less than two hours earlier.
A jeep ride later and Chandre and the rest of their infiltration team, the Bridge included, now hunkered behind heavily fortified walls on a long stretch of forested land owned by the United States government. Or maybe it would now be more accurate to say it was defended and claimed by what remained of that government.
“Understood,” she said finally.
Nodding absently to a few more things the Adhipan leader said, she barely noticed when Balidor ended the communication minutes later.
Still, as she looked out that window, she recognized that she was once again alone.
Once that aloneness really sank in, Chandre felt herself fighting tears.
She didn’t know which of them she even cried for.
I collapsed backwards on the bed, wincing at the creak of springs as I came to rest in the sagging middle of the ancient mattress. Adrenaline continued to make my mind run in ragged loops. I knew I wouldn’t sleep, not anytime soon.
I also knew I needed to. Desperately, by then.
Dragon hadn’t chased us.
He’d let us go.
I’d heard him laughing in my head as our teams beat a retreat away from the Rocky Mountains. A cold wind had blown wisps of dry snow at us as we left, a harsh if somewhat unseasonable burst of weather that would have made us easy to track had he wanted to pursue. By then, the sun had been coming up, too.
I remembered crouching in the back of a military truck, wincing against the stinging, dry flakes, feeling them cut my skin.
That laughter filled my head the whole time.
I could hear it still.
But he’d let us go. I don’t know why he did, but he did.
Once we’d driven to what remained of the Air Force Academy outside of Colorado Springs, the decision was made to go east, to a large compound that still existed in Virginia.
We’d landed in Langley approximately six hours later.
About half of that time hadn’t been in the air; it had consisted of refueling, collecting refugees, tending to the more seriously wounded. It also consisted of listening to Brooks scream at me and threaten me with sight restraint collars…among other things.
Being yelled at took up a good chunk of my flight time, as well.
I was pretty much on my own for most of that, with the exception of Talei, who was both a help and a source of stress. She treated me more gently than she ever had, presumably because of the incident with Dragon, but somehow, her softness with me only made it more difficult to keep the incident out of the forefront of my mind.
I’d been more relieved than I could hide when the plane finally landed.
Everyone else scattered like mice once we got here, too.
The ramp lowered on the tail end of that cargo plane where we all shivered like drowned rats without enough jackets. Everyone practically ran to the waiting ground transport. Even Brooks and I had been almost blue with cold inside that tin can of a briefing hold.
By the end we were both too tired to even argue.
I could tell she was as exhausted as I was, and probably as disheartened, when she told me we’d meet again after we’d gotten some rest and a chance to check in with our respective intelligence sources.
Upon landing here in Virginia, I didn’t bother to give any orders other than to tell them all to get some sleep. By then it was evening again, and most of us were going on forty-eight hours without sleep.
I let them find their own rooms, too.
Brooks assigned us our own building of government barracks, probably to keep us away from the humans occupying the main buildings that housed the CIA, but I hadn’t tried to find out anything about food or water yet. I didn’t want to ask Brooks herself. She’d barely said two words to me after we left that briefing cube. I knew she was still furious with me, for a lot of reasons, even though her remaining senior military leaders admitted to her that I’d probably saved all of their lives. By then they’d seen the reports of what Dragon had done to the areas of the compound with which he’d had direct contact.
I knew Brooks heard them.
I also knew she didn’t care…not yet anyway.
She might never care, not enough to forgive me. I knew that regardless of her conciliatory words at the end of our last meeting she still would have liked to throw me in a holding cell…under major sedation most likely, collared definitely.
I honestly couldn’t bring myself to care. Not yet, anyway.
Moreover, I would have liked to see her try it.
Lying there, staring up at the beige ceiling, I realized I needed a shower. Even more than I needed to lie there and not move…or more pressingly, maybe.
Groaning a little as I dragged myself up off the bedspread, I winced as my weight came down on the leg that had been branded by Dragon’s glass knife…yesterday? Or had it been the day before? I fought to remember.
As I did, I realized I was on the verge of hallucinating, I was so tired.
Limping to the door, I bent down to unbuckle the organic, anti-grav boots I still wore, fighting to kick them off and nearly face-planting into the door when I did. I finally got them off after multiple tries for each boot. I winced again as I peeled my socks off, and not only because they smelled positively vile.
I was beginning to think I might have to burn everything I was wearing once I got it away from my body.
Dropping the socks on the floor by the boots, I unhooked the straps holding my vest together next, unlocking them one by one with fingers that suddenly felt weaker than maybe
they ever had. I wanted to cry, I realized. My light still felt fucked up beyond belief. I hadn’t thought a single coherent thought since we’d left the plane. I’d finally let go of my stranglehold over my light a little as we touched down on the Langley airstrip.
Now I felt like a zombie. A weepy zombie who hurt all over.
I could barely make sense of my own clothing.
I don’t know how long I stood there, fumbling with buttons and zippers and catches of various kinds. It seemed like it took forever before I got it all off.
Then, as I stared down at the pile of the clothes on the dark-brown carpet, it hit me that I’d undressed in the wrong place. I still had to walk down the hall to reach the showers, which were military-style and communal.
I decided I didn’t care. At all.
I stopped long enough to pull a towel out of the cabinet, but I only gripped it in one hand, not wanting any part of it to touch my filthy body. Holding it away from myself somewhat, I took a deep breath, then opened the door to the main corridor.
I didn’t bother looking to see if anyone was around. Even so, I was relieved when I didn’t hear anyone in the hall, or see or hear anyone in the showers. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure if I’d seen anyone on this floor of the barracks at all. Maybe they’d decided to give them to me. We weren’t exactly hurting for space.
I reminded myself how much worse it could have been.
Somehow we’d managed not to lose a single infiltrator in that mess. Right now, I almost couldn’t think past the relief around that single thing.
I was even grateful we hadn’t lost Kat, and that was saying something.
Reaching the open shower area, I said a silent prayer for hot water and hung my towel up on the low tile wall by one set of three shower heads. Twisting the knob marked “hot” I nearly groaned when the pipe rattled and nothing came out…but after a few seconds, something in there made a gasping noise and water coughed and spluttered out of the end.
It picked up speed a few seconds later.
Then it started to warm up.
That time, I nearly groaned in the other direction. Sticking my head under the increasingly hot water, I finally conceded defeat and turned on some of the cold, too, if only to keep from scalding myself. Third degree burns would definitely take some of the bliss out of the hot water thing, and my leg had already started to ache even under the bandage.
I don’t know how long I stood there, sighing under that steady stream.
The hot water didn’t lessen, which is all I cared about. Digging a sliver of soap out of one of the trays of a shower head next to mine…stretching so that most of my body remained under the hot water while I did it…I lathered as best I could, allowing myself a single, wistful thought of shampoo. At that point, I would have settled for dishwashing liquid.
I was still standing there when some part of my light phased out.
It came out of nowhere…maybe just because I was so exhausted.
Or maybe because he’d been thinking about me…or because our light was just so damned connected he couldn’t help himself. Maybe because, like always, our timing completely sucked. Maybe because we always seemed to know how to do things when and where it would hurt the other the most, when we were the most vulnerable to the other’s light.
Either way, I felt a mind-numbing cloud of his pain…and enough from his light to know he was fucking.
He was fucking and talking…losing control maybe, although I couldn’t tell if the person he was with even knew him well enough to be aware of what was happening.
He felt alone. His loneliness swam over me, too.
He was lonely, depressed…
I felt so much emotion and just him in that, I could barely stand to have it in my light…even as those same things made me reach for him in near-desperation. Somewhere in that, he seemed to grow aware of me there. I felt his loneliness worsen…the part of him that was conscious now, that was still with me in some sense.
The pain in his light turned excruciating, more than I could stand.
I let out a weak cry, losing sight of the room around me…the white tile, the water, the florescent flicker of light tubes over my head.
Somewhere in that, I heard words.
Those felt nothing but sad too.
It’s our anniversary…it’s our anniversary, baby…one of them…the first one…
Images came with it.
The two of us waking up in Seattle…his arms around me, the first few times he regained consciousness, so much heat in his heart and light he could barely stand it.
Disbelief that he was getting to hold me.
Disbelief that I was curled up against his light and skin.
Then the last time, when he woke up from that pain to find me standing at the doorway with Ullysa, looking at him, fear in my eyes. I’d been afraid of him.
He’d wanted me, even before he’d wrapped his head around what had happened between us while I’d been feeding him light…he’d wanted me so fucking badly. Almost as badly as he’d wanted Ullysa to get the fuck away from me…to get out of my light and stop touching me with her hands. Then I’d left and he’d begged me for sex even as he kicked himself, furious with himself beyond reason for driving me away, for being an asshole when I was obviously as scared as he was…when I didn’t know anything, when I didn’t have any way to understand what had happened between us.
Memories I didn’t know crowded at me next. Things he’d never told me.
How fucking angry he’d been when Kat appeared in the doorway of that room.
How he’d considered confronting me. Chasing me down in the kitchen and telling me exactly what I could do with my goddamned “offer.” Telling me I could go fuck myself…or fuck her, if all I wanted was to hurt him. Telling me that if I saw him as a whore he’d be happy to oblige my opinion, with as many people as I cared to throw at him.
But he hadn’t done that either.
He’d been afraid he’d lose it for real if he saw me. That he might break things. Scare me. He’d known he wasn’t rational. He’d known he was so far from rational at that point that he couldn’t trust himself to even fight with me.
For those few minutes or seconds or whatever they were, I couldn’t see past his memories of that morning, or the crashing confusion of emotions roiling in his light.
It put me there, too.
Standing in that dated pink tile shower in Ullysa’s building. Standing there, wet and naked and in pain, his light wrapped into mine, nearly strangling mine…that wanting in both of us that twisted into distrust and fear and then back into longing when one or the other of us pulled away. I’d been terrified of that wanting. I’d felt so completely lost from it, from him, from just being away from his light and skin…
I remembered that confusing conversation in the kitchen.
I remembered how I’d wanted to chase down Kat too, feeling somehow that I’d fucked up, that I’d made a mistake in telling her she could see him. Trying to decide what I’d say to him, how I’d even explain ordering her out of his room. That feeling of a mistake only worsened the longer I stood there…until I knew I’d made a mistake. Maybe a big mistake. Maybe something I wouldn’t be able to take back…
His pain worsened, growing unbearable, even as I felt him reaching for me, felt emotion expand off his light.
He was coming then.
I felt it, saw it behind his eyes as his body jerked, spasming inside…
Whoever she was. Whoever the fuck he was with.
Hurry, Allie… he sent, from that higher, more silent place. Hurry, baby…please…
Some part of me fought back.
I fought him, shoved him out of my light, maybe harder than I’d ever done, even outside that farmhouse in Colorado. I used structures I normally only used for the telekinesis, slamming against his aleimi, hitting out at him in the space, punching him…anything I could to get him away from me. Anything so I wouldn’t have to hear her under him, or see her hands cares
sing his chest.
When I could see again, I was lying on the tile floor.
The water was beating down on me from above, hurting my skin, blinding me where it fell on my face and hair. When I tried to pull myself up, I let out a low gasp, fighting tears as my hand slipped on the tile. I whacked my head on the low wall behind me and let out a muffled cry, cutting it off by biting my lip. Still gasping in pain, I clenched my jaw to remain silent, mostly because I was afraid someone might hear me and come in.
But that only brought my mind back around to Dragon, to what he’d done in that underground lab.
He hadn’t explained himself. He hadn’t said anything.
I could scarcely believe it when he’d started undressing me.
Feigran stood there, watching us from the wall, unmoving. He’d looked more fascinated than turned on, but something about those yellow eyes studying mine as Dragon held my light clenched in a fist, yanking down my combat pants with hands that were both urgent and strangely businesslike.
Not long after that, he’d been inside me.
I don’t think my mind had even caught up at that point. I’d heard Dalejem let out a cry. I remembered Dragon doing something…I remembered worrying he’d killed Jem, but I could still feel him gasping, still making low cries and realized Dragon had only restrained him in some way.
Apart from the brand, which he’d done before he even took off my clothes…he hadn’t hurt me. Maybe it would have been better if he had. He’d held me still with his hands and his light, but he’d been almost gentle for the act itself. More gentle than Revik often was.
More gentle than most of my clients in Beijing had been.
Then Dragon had wound into those structures in my light…
I’d lost control. I’d totally and completely lost control.
I couldn’t help myself…any more than I could when Revik did that to me.
At some point, I left my body entirely. I think I actually came, but I couldn’t be sure of that either. I couldn’t see anything by then. Stars.
Nothing but black night and stars…
Wincing, I shut my eyes, fighting the coil of grief that wound into my gut. Shame lived there, too. I knew it was irrational. I knew it, but I couldn’t make the feeling go away. I was ashamed of my loss of control…beyond what I could even think about now.
Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine Page 38