Brooks snapped her fingers, pointing at the main monitor. “Put the feed up. Now.”
“Sir, this information is potentially sensitive…”
“Put it up,” she snapped. “We don’t have a very long window right now, Andrew. I have to make a decision on whether or not to act. We all need to be crystal clear about the situation there…especially if this is some kind of racial purge like Preston said…”
Osake only hesitated a second before he nodded in agreement. “Yes, sir. And for what it’s worth…agreed.”
Leaning down, he keyed in another code.
Before he’d even finished, images and sound seemed to explode out over the main feed wall. Every set of eyes in the room, Brooks’ included, swiveled to take in the larger landscape even as the sounds got louder…loud enough to cause most of them to visibly jump.
Osake raised his voice to be heard over explosions and rapid gunfire.
“Keep in mind, these are unedited,” he said. “The other satellite feeds you were watching are reviewed on a five second delay…this is straight out of Army Intelligence…”
Brooks barely heard him.
Screams erupted through the speakers, echoing in the rectangular room.
She saw Asian seers running barefoot across the grounds of a City she’d only ever seen virtual images of, apart from carefully-crafted, propaganda-department-approved pictures the Chinese government provided. Most of the figures she saw wore traditional Chinese clothes. They sprinted down stone paths lined with elaborate wall carvings, cherry trees, lanterns, stone gardens with flowing waterfalls, freestanding sculptures and colorful paintings.
Some of their clothes were on fire.
Brooks realized she could see human faces among them too, running alongside the seers with their odd-colored irises. Their fear looked more or less the same.
Two children jumped into a canal as she watched, not far from where the 180 degree image capture sat. Brooks watched the younger one help extinguish the clothes of the older, dunking her in the water even as a louder explosion went off, blackening the doorway of a traditional-style Chinese building to her left and jerking Brooks’ head sideways.
The building Brooks found herself staring at was probably several thousand years old. She couldn’t help noticing it was gorgeous too, or had been before the explosion.
Within seconds, more automatic weapon fire erupted from the darkened opening, mowing down seers in black uniforms reminiscent of the ones Brooks had just seen firing on civilians on the streets of Dubai.
“What the hell is going on?” Voorheer shouted, standing under the other side of the monitor.
Brooks ignored him, watching as what had to be seers from their height and vivid eye colors began firing back on the black clad soldiers.
These had to be Lao Hu, Brooks thought, looking at their uniforms. A modified version of what looked like traditional Hanfu clothing, both the males and females wore high Mandarin collars and black sashes under armored vests and pants.
Something about those uniforms and their distinctly seer features made them look more foreign to her than maybe any army she’d ever seen…but they still had that unmistakable stamp of career military.
Brooks watched several of them skid and balance precariously on red and gold tiled roofs, firing steadily down at the armored seers below even as they adjusted their footing.
Gritting her teeth, Brooks looked back at the secure comm console.
She was about to go back there, to shout into the open line, see if she could get someone to answer her, when someone else entered the communications room.
The unannounced entrance set off a sharp tone, causing every head to turn.
Brooks found herself looking at the muscular East Indian seer with the red eyes.
Relief reached her briefly, to be followed swiftly by anger when she realized the female seer appeared to have come in unescorted.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” Brooks said, frowning at her. She looked at Osake. “Get her out of here! Now! Put her in a conference room where I can talk to her…”
But Osake didn’t answer her, the red-eyed seer did.
“I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible, Madam President,” she said, a note of apology in her thickly-accented voice.
Before Brooks could take a breath, the humans standing around her slumped silently to the floor, like puppets whose strings had been cut. It happened so fast, so completely without warning or fanfare, Brooks could only stare around at their fallen bodies at first, mistrusting her own eyes.
Then the reality of what she was seeing truly sank in.
Brooks let out a shocked gasp. Fear tightened her gut as she looked up, meeting that red-eyed stare. Her mind churned, telling her the depth of the mistake she’d just made even as she tried to think her way out of it.
The room remained strangely still as the two women looked at one another.
The live feed of the Forbidden City continued to play loudly in the background, the lights from the monitor flickering across the angular face and sculpted lips of the tall seer with the reddish-brown skin. She watched Brooks look at her, her expression unmoving.
Then she let out one of those apologetic-sounding, clicking sighs.
“I’m sorry to be doing it this way, sir,” the seer said, her voice polite. Reaching into her armored vest, she extracted what looked like a U.S. military-issue handgun, lowering it to her side without taking her eyes off Brooks’ face. “I’m afraid there was no time to do it any other way. The risk is too great…and you are human, after all.”
Glancing briefly at the fallen humans at her feet, the seer made a strangely articulate gesture with one hand, as if their current condition made the point for her.
Without taking her eyes off Brooks, the seer crouched swiftly, pulling a gun out of a side holster worn by Osake. She barely seemed to look at him before rising smoothly back to her feet. The bulk of her attention remained on Brooks.
She walked directly up to her. When they were within a few yards of one another, the long-limbed seer raised her gun, aiming it at Brooks’ face. Her expression turned to stone as she stared down at her with those deep red, smoldering coal eyes.
“I’m afraid I need your help, Madam President,” the seer said. “You’re going to have to make that call today, after all.”
Brooks felt her hands tighten at her sides. She looked up at the seer’s face, trying to read some hint of feeling or intention in those dark, inhuman eyes.
Studying that strangely vacant face didn’t help, though.
Even so, something hit her as she looked up at the tall seer.
She was probably going to die today.
“With what?” she said, her voice strangely gruff. “What call?”
“The one you wanted to make anyway, cousin,” the seer returned easily. She still held her gaze, pointing the gun unwaveringly at her face. “The one where you’re going to use the full extent of your military capability to eliminate the threat from Beijing…to end this massacre of the pitiful remains of your race, once and for all.”
“Am I?” Brooks said.
Despite the cold defiance of her own voice, Brooks felt that stone in her gut grow heavier as she continued to meet that lifeless stare.
The seer smiled.
“Yes, cousin, you are,” she said. She lowered the gun, right before her voice grew reassuring. “But do not worry, my beautiful friend…you won’t have to do it alone. I am going to help you. You don’t even have to be accountable, if you do not want. I know how good your race is at avoiding feeling responsible for what it does…”
As the seer spoke, Brooks felt her mind being pulled gently from her body.
It left easily, without resistance…without pain.
A long, sensual pull stretched her consciousness to a fine thread…she almost didn’t mind as it happened, at least in the more conscious, on the ground parts of herself…
But some more distant part of her
screamed.
It screamed again, watching everything she was get swallowed in that dark.
No one heard her.
President Moira Aisha Brooks, last President of the United States, had no memory of what happened after that.
Not for a very, very long time after.
32
THE WALL
I watched him warily, unable to keep my nerves from flaring when I saw how pale he still looked in the early morning light, how dark the bruises appeared on his neck and arms and the few other places he’d let me see them.
He didn’t have any body armor. He also wouldn’t take both of the guns I’d brought him.
He took the second gun I’d brought, a few magazines, the extra headset.
“Revik.” I exhaled, watching him check over the gun as I again noted his lack of jacket. My breath steamed from my lips, even as I shivered. “Revik…you should let me come with you.”
“No.” He didn’t look up. “You heard ‘Dori. You need to go…talk her down.”
I swallowed, feeling that pain harden in my chest.
“We haven’t heard from Deklan yet,” I said.
He shrugged. “I’m sure everything is fine. There are probably ripple effects from the loss of the network all over…I’m sure they’re just in lockdown mode, along with the rest of Langley.”
“You have no way of knowing that!” I said, knowing I was being argumentative.
“It’ll be all right,” he said, still not looking at me. “You’ll be able to make her see reason, Allie. That, or the seers there will step in. They won’t bomb Beijing…” Still without looking up, he motioned in the opposite direction of the wall, using the hand holding the gun. “You should go. It would be better if you can calm things down…so they don’t have to push her.”
“You can’t go back in there,” I blurted, fighting anger.
“I have to.”
“It doesn’t have to be you, Revik,” I said. “If you really think we need to handle it now, I’ll call in some of the others. They can––”
“No.”
I looked at him, but he only shook his head, barely glancing at me as he continued to pretend to check the gun.
“I’m the one who knows where it is,” he said.
“Then let me go with you,” I said, frustrated.
“No,” he said only.
I studied his light. He let me, but I felt that harder flinch of pain when I got too close. I’d had no choice but to tie him tightly to my aleimi again…more tightly than I had before, when I cleared his light of Menlim and the Dreng before we left for Dubai. Both of us could feel fucking everything because of that, but in a strange way, I’d never felt so far away from him. Not since we’d first met. Not since before we’d been married at all.
“Revik…” I began again.
“All I can feel is that fucker in your light,” he muttered, still not looking at me.
I felt the pain whisper off him, felt how intensely he was restraining it, even as he distracted himself again with the gun, checking the chamber a third time before he clicked it shut, shoving it into the back of his belt.
“Who was it,” he said, his voice casual. “Who did you end up going with?”
I stared at him blankly.
Then I frowned.
“Who was it?” I said. “You picked him, Revik. Not me.”
He turned, staring at me directly for the first time.
Well, the first time since he’d been himself again, at least.
I saw his eyes nearly glowing with light, standing out in his too-pale face as he met my gaze. He had the beginnings of five o’clock shadow and he looked too goddamned pale and underfed and tired. Even with the hostility seething off his light, it was still difficult to keep my hands off him. It would have been damned near impossible if he hadn’t been refusing to look at me for the last twenty or so minutes.
“I thought you said you couldn’t use him?” he said, still staring at me.
I shrugged, exhaling even as I felt him looking at me again, examining my light while trying to pretend like he wasn’t. I didn’t try to push him away, but I didn’t exactly open to him either. I told myself I didn’t want him distracted right then…any more than both of us were already, from the amount of time it had been, from being forced so intensely back into each other’s light, from all of the crap of the last eight months…the unbelievable amount of pain I could feel seething just past the barest edges of both of our aleimi.
I knew the distraction thing was even true…but I didn’t probe my thinking too closely there, either.
“We worked it out,” I said, throwing up my hands in another seer’s shrug.
That time, I felt a harder pulse of anger off him.
“Yeah,” he grunted. “I got that, wife.”
“Revik,” I said, my voice warning. “We’re not going to talk about this now.”
He nodded, his expression unreadable.
Even so, when I walked closer to him, he stepped back, a near flinch.
“Revik…”
“I heard you,” he said. He met my gaze, his clear eyes empty, even as I felt the hotter warning on his light. “We’re not going to talk about this now…I agree.”
I bit my lip, nodding as I remained where I was, watching him from the wall.
“We don’t have much time,” he reminded me.
I nodded again, but he’d gone back to ignoring me as he made his way to the near-invisible doorway in the stone and organic wall. We’d been hearing gunfire for the last hour, pretty much within minutes of the network coming down. Most of that gunfire remained distant, if increasingly loud from the sheer amount of it and the heavier artillery.
Some of it was moving closer though. I could tell a portion of the fighting had moved deeper into the City, including to the edges of the Royal Compartments.
I watched Revik as he bent down, finding the rock he’d jammed in the opening between the door and the wall. I focused on the cuts and bruises on his long fingers as he began to pry open the organic paneling. Widening the gap, he jammed his foot and leg into the opening before he tried to remove the rock.
In the early morning light, I could see just how good the disguise on the door really was. Even at the edges, the door looked like mortar and brick, unbroken except for where Revik’s pale fingers wrapped around the organic skin.
“I should go with you…” I said again.
But he shook his head. “No. I’ll be faster alone.”
“What about the Lao Hu?” I said, biting my lip. “We still might need to evacuate them. Especially with you blowing shit up underground. They won’t listen to you. They might listen to me…”
He didn’t look back, keeping his eyes on the open panel as he shook his head.
“I agree,” he said, exhaling. “But you can’t do it from here. Not now, in the middle of a gunfight. They’ll shoot me on sight…probably you, too, given who you are to me.” I felt another pulse of pain leave his light, right before he glanced over his shoulder. When he went on, his voice sounded gruffer, almost forced. “Use Brooks,” he said. “Maybe it will give them some common ground after this.”
“Revik…”
“Allie, I need to go inside…you don’t.”
“Why?” I said, frustrated. “Can’t we do that from a distance, too?”
He shook his head. “That bunker is too deep. Even nukes won’t touch it, and I’m not leaving that goddamned machine alive down there…”
“But Revik, how would you even––”
“There was a fusion reactor,” he said, answering me bluntly without meeting my gaze. “I walked right by the fucking thing the last time I was in there…I know where it is.” Exhaling, he clicked at me softly, still not quite meeting my gaze. “Allie, you need to go. Talk to Brooks. Get her to evacuate the City, if you can. When was the exit planned for?”
“Four hours,” I said. “That’s the default. They said to call to move it up.”
Rev
ik nodded. “We won’t need that much time. Give me an hour for set up. Ninety minutes if you’re nervous. That’s plenty of time. I can easily get in and out of there and to a reasonable pick up point by sixty. Two hours for full evac.”
“Jasek was going to default to the airport,” I told him. “Do you still want that?”
Revik frowned. I could almost feel him thinking.
“I’d prefer to have a backup,” he said. “In case it runs longer than I’m expecting.”
“So initial here,” I said. “Tiananmen. Secondary at the airport. I think that works better anyway. They can pick you up here and drive you there, unless you get held up.” Hesitating, I added, “Final rendezvous is some place on the coast. Dalian, it’s called…it’s in China still, but pretty close to North Korea.”
Watching him as he checked the second magazine I’d given him, I bit my lip, blurting, “I’ll tell them ninety minutes for Tiananmen, okay? You really should try to make that one. You’d have to get to the airport on your own if it’s more than that…or the pickup point outside the main gate if it’s under that. I want us out of China this morning.”
“I can do that.”
“The airport’s not that close, Revik.”
“Make it two hours for set up then, to be safe,” he said, checking his watch. “Two and a half for the evac. Oh-nine-thirty for Tiananmen. If I don’t make it, I’ll steal a car.”
I bit my lip, fighting not to tell him that might not be all that easy, either.
He knew that, of course.
I also knew he’d find a way.
When I fell silent that time, he looked over his shoulder at me, exhaling in a series of clicks.
“Allie. If I do what we’re talking about, it will take out most of the City, aboveground and below. You need to go. You need to get out of here and warn them. You know damned well they’re not going to want to abandon the City. Voi Pai definitely won’t. It will take some persuading…that should come from Brooks. Or you.”
Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine Page 63