Dragon_The Final War

by JC Andrijeski

  Dalejem seemed to think about that. Then, conceding my words with a grunt and a flip of his hand, he relaxed his posture, taking his hand off my arm.

  It wasn’t exactly an apology, but I felt his light back down.

  We passed a few more clusters of uniformed soldiers.

  We were walking through fairly crowded corridors not long after, where more soldiers and even a few civilian-types walked by in uneven streams, more or less constantly as we made our way across the residential common spaces between halls filled with sleeping quarters.

  Most of the humans we saw on this side of the compound were military, however, and most were on duty, despite being so close to the residence area. So while I got a few nods and even one salute, no one really gave us more than cursory looks.

  They all looked preoccupied in one way or another.

  In fact, the overall tone of the place had more of a buzz than I’d expected, coming in here at this time of night. They felt like they verged on some kind of alert status.

  It made it more likely they’d find our handiwork at the back entrance a lot sooner.

  Luckily this place was big enough and still had enough new people coming and going that no one cared that they didn’t recognize us. Brooks informed us over twenty bases still existed in different parts of the United States and that they still rotated people in and out, in part to transfer intelligence safely, including via in-person drops, since the network wasn’t reliable in large swaths of the country.

  That meant it was unlikely any humans would notice us, unless we did something stupid.

  In addition to the uniform, I wore prosthetics, as well as contact lenses that made my irises dark brown instead of green. The former felt weird when I made any kind of facial expression and the latter made me blink too much, but I knew I looked nothing like my image on the feeds. I’d also lightened my complexion with this spray-on paste Dalejem applied.

  We didn’t bother disguising Dalejem’s physical appearance apart from contact lenses to make his eyes a muddier hazel color.

  That was mainly to hide the violet ring.

  He had no official record with the Dreng agents or SCARB or the United States government as far as we knew. He was entirely unregistered––off the grid––he’d informed me, something to do with being Adhipan for so many years and then a member of the Children of the Bridge.

  Truthfully, until he told me that, I had no idea a seer could be unreg’d to that extent anymore, meaning in the pre-C2-77, modern human world I grew up in.

  I knew seers like that still existed in snow caves in Asia, but from what I’d learned of the Children of the Bridge, that hadn’t been them.

  Meaning, they’d operated in the human world, pretty much full time. Uye, my biological father, confessed to me they’d lived in Santa Cruz, California for years, only about seventy-five or eighty miles from where I grew up.

  That blew my mind, frankly.

  And yeah, it hurt, too.

  Dalejem couldn’t have been hiding out in the Pamir that whole time, either.

  How the hell had he flown anywhere? Stayed in hotels? Rented cars? Used a headset or logged onto a feed terminal? He must have adopted aliases, accessed illegal portals, worn blood patches and whatever else, but gaos, what a pain in the fucking ass that must have been.

  I hadn’t exactly gotten a chance to ask him about it in detail, though.

  In addition to my shielding and our physical disguises, both Dalejem and I wore cloaks over our aleimi, displaying structures other than what we normally would have shown in a Barrier scan. Some of that consisted of projections of the aleimi of real-life seers, some of whom had worked with the United States Government in various capacities.

  Some came from Barrier spaces that Balidor and Tarsi helped me reflect as a part of my shield.

  But yeah, I knew it would be our light that got us in trouble, long before our physical appearances ever did. It was a lot harder to disguise a seer’s light, at least reliably, at least for any length of time. And yeah, we were in a high-grade security construct monitored by at least thirty trained infiltrators.

  Moreover, I’d used my telekinesis on the way in.

  I’d made sure to do it outside the construct, but I knew that might not keep me invisible if the recent use made those structures too visible from behind the Barrier.

  If someone noticed those parts of my light had been recently used––or even that they existed at all––Barrier alarms would play the equivalent of a seven alarm fire dance over our heads.

  The hope was that Dalejem and I would be in and out before that happened.

  With Novak out of the picture, my remaining team would help Brooks regain control over her command and weed out any other Shadow agents.

  Then we would either help Brooks and her people relocate––or they’d leave her here, depending on what Brooks herself decided.

  That was another reason I didn’t want the inside team directly involved with eliminating Novak. I wanted them to have alibis in case their identities were questioned in the aftermath.

  I also wanted there to be clear suspects on hand to blame.

  Namely, me and Jem.

  In other words, I wanted us ID’d as intruders––but only after Novak was down and we were well on our way to being long gone. That hope had been considerably diminished given the mess I’d been forced to leave on their back porch.

  But heck, I’m an optimist.

  “Left,” Dalejem murmured to me.

  I knew, but I only nodded, following the gentle touch of his hand. I realized he was touching me a lot all of a sudden. The thought was there and gone, but even as I felt it, I realized I was feeling pain on his light, too. More than I’d really let myself notice until now.

  I didn’t have time to think about that, either.

  Moreover, I knew it might be my fault.

  My pain had gotten a lot worse lately. It was really bad today… bad enough that I worried it might even hit the construct in some form.

  There wasn’t much I could do to reign it in, though. It was bad before the events of that day. It had transformed into something well beyond fucking horrible since I nearly blacked out on the lawn of that abandoned farmhouse.

  “Relax,” he murmured.

  He had his hand on the butt of his rifle again, but left the rifle itself slung over his shoulder.

  I bit my lip, not answering.

  When I glanced at him, feeling his stare, I saw him frown.

  “That wasn’t a judgment,” he said. “I understand. I was expressing support.”

  I let out a low laugh in spite of myself. “Right.”

  Even so, I was focused back on the job, so if he’d been trying to distract me, it worked. My eyes scanned the long corridor we’d just entered, off the furthest branch of residency halls on this end of the complex. Some part of me wondered what the hell Novak was doing way out here, if she was part of Brooks’ inner circle. Why wouldn’t she be closer to the action?

  Another part of me wondered if she knew and we’d been lured out here.

  “We knew that was a possibility,” Dalejem murmured.

  I exhaled, acknowledging that, too.

  Even so, the sense of déjà vu persisted.

  The realization that a part of me was still back in that underground city below the Denver Airport resonated somewhere in my light, making it hard to concentrate. I don’t think it was shock exactly, not anymore, but I definitely wasn’t as clear as usual.

  Hell, my back still hurt from that first knock into the wall.

  “You and me both,” Dalejem muttered.

  I looked at him, letting out a low laugh. “Do you mind?”

  “Do you?” he said at once. “Gaos… I can hear and feel fucking everything.”

  More pain left his light as he said it, along with a glimmer of frustration.

  He still seemed more focused than me, though.

  He kept his voice lower than a murmur as he scanned the corrido
r in front of us. We hadn’t encountered anyone since we deviated into this branch of hallway, but I noticed Dalejem kept his mouth movements minimal. He tapped his temple with one long finger.

  “With that fucking shield of yours I feel like I’m more in your light than my own,” he added in a soft exhale. “…It’s like having a goddamned twin in the womb that I can’t eat.”

  I fought another inappropriate laugh, knowing it was nerves as much as anything.

  What the fuck was wrong with us?

  “I think we’ll be noticed down here,” he muttered suddenly.

  I followed his gaze to the eye of God cameras over each doorway, and realized he was right. We were in a different level of security here. We were in a different kind of construct too, I realized. The change happened so subtly and seamlessly I hadn’t noticed, which told me whoever made the construct knew what the hell they were doing.

  “No access doors?” I murmured.

  He shook his head, once. “They didn’t want to call attention to it.”

  I nodded. Was this the weird laboratory-type area Declan referenced? Because I wasn’t sure I was up to another creepy lab filled with cut up specimens.

  Dalejem let out a low snort from next to me, almost like he couldn’t help himself.

  Glancing at him I raised an eyebrow.

  Before I could say anything, he caught hold of me around the waist, pushing me up against the nearest doorway. If we’d been anywhere else I might have let out a shriek––but given where we actually were, I was more bewildered than anything, so I didn’t fight him.

  Instead, I assumed he’d seen something I missed. I fought to rein in my light as my survival instincts kicked in, looking for whatever set him off.

  But I didn’t have long to think about any of that.

  His mouth was on mine as soon as he had my back to the door.

  He kissed me, hard, gripping my hair and the small of my back in his respective hands as soon as he’d lowered his head. Pain rippled through me, more from being caught off guard than anything to do with him––at first at least.

  I felt his light react sharply before he let out a low gasp against my mouth, pausing from the kiss, gripping me more forcefully in his hands.

  His eyes on mine, he pressed the full length of his body against mine.

  His pain worsened as he watched my face. Before I could catch my breath, he kissed me again, pressing me deeper into the door. By then, I was holding his arms, conscious of the rifle digging into my back as he reached up to caress my cheek and jaw.

  He was hard by then––hard enough that I couldn’t entirely keep my mind off him pressed against me. He wasn’t small, either. I didn’t want to go there, but somehow my mind went there anyway––to the fact that he’d fucked Revik with that cock.

  Revik had his mouth on it. More than once.

  Seemingly the second I thought it, Dalejem ground into me, making me gasp.

  I nearly lost control of my light when he did it again.

  “Whoa…” He lay his mouth by my ear. “Don’t lose the shield, sister.”

  He kissed my ear after he said it, then my neck, his hands kneading the muscles around my spine. The motion made my back arch, even as I grew softer against him. I felt his pain worsen, nearly blanking out my mind as I fought to hold onto our light. His mouth returned to my ear once I’d regained control over the shield.

  “We were being scanned,” he said, soft. “They wondered what we were doing down here. I gave them a cover story.”

  My eyes opened as he spoke.

  He kissed my neck as I turned over his words, fighting to get my brain to work, or at least to move in straight lines. My face flushed with embarrassment the longer I stood there, embarrassment that began to shift into the beginnings of a denser anger.

  I found myself remembering what he’d seen earlier that day.

  “I apologize,” he said at once, his voice still a murmur. “It wasn’t an ideal cover story, given today’s events. But it was the best I could do on short notice.”

  I fought to ignore the implications of his words.

  “So now what?” I murmured back, meeting his gaze from a few inches away when he raised his head. “Is that the extent of it? Our story? That we just wandered down some random corridor to fuck? Not very original, brother.”

  “It was a little more involved than that,” he assured me softly. Lowering his head, he kissed my jaw, caressing my neck with his fingers and palm as he pressed his body into mine, causing me to close my eyes again, in spite of myself.

  “It involved you being my superior officer and married,” he added, returning his mouth to my ear. “…and me having a spouse in D.C. And friends of both of our spouses working here… and a few other things. You bucking for a promotion…” He pressed his lower body against mine deliberately and I bit my lip, avoiding his eyes.

  “…You know. The usual human drama. They seemed convinced we had no idea where we were, other than in a place no one normally comes.”

  Hearing the double entendre there, too, I grunted humorlessly, extricating myself from his hands, even as I fought to hold onto the cover he’d passed to me via his light.

  I could tell he was trying to use humor to diffuse things, but it didn’t really work.

  Well, not for me, anyway.

  “Are they still watching us?” I said, looking up at him.

  “No,” he said, his body still pressed against mine. “It seems we were convincing.”

  I let out a disbelieving sound, shoving at his chest with my palm.

  He stepped back that time, following the push of my hand. Even so, I felt a hotter coil of pain leave his light as soon as our bodies separated. I couldn’t help noticing he was still hard. Visibly so, even wearing combat clothes.

  Looking at him, it hit me that I was more fucked up from that day than I’d realized.

  Maybe both of us were.

  Revik told me more than once that seers had a tendency to want to be in one another’s light when they’d faced death together. It was part of the reason military units bonded the way they did. They did it for security reasons, sure, but they also did it to satisfy that overwhelming need for contact following difficult missions together.

  But thinking about Revik right then really wasn’t helping anything.

  I tore my eyes off Dalejem when I realized he was staring at me, too.

  Taking a breath, I focused down the corridor without seeing it for a few seconds more, feeling that anger seethe through my light like a living force.

  But I had no reason to be angry, really.

  Dalejem had gotten us out of that. That’s all that mattered.

  The op was still on because of him.

  I didn’t glance at him when I started walking. He didn’t speak at first either, but he followed me, adjusting the rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “How close are we now?” he murmured after we’d made another turn down the corridor. “We can’t expect them not to check back, Esteemed Bridge.”

  I could feel what he meant. We were out of time.

  According to the map we’d started with in that security booth, Novak should be in the last room on the left at the end of the corridor. Of course, we couldn’t use our light to check that information in the time since, so as far as we knew, she could have left by now.

  More and more, this was striking me as a stupid fucking plan.

  I should have let Declan shoot her in the head as soon as he got her alone.

  I increased the length of my strides and Dalejem followed.

  We got to the relevant door in just under four minutes after Dalejem’s “cover story.” Once we stood directly outside her door, I stared up at the eye of God, wondering if she was on the other side of it, watching us, even now.

  Something about the thought twisted my light into an almost uncontrollable anger.

  Without thought, I clicked on the telekinesis.

  I didn’t give Dalejem time to react. I ra
ised my boot heel, that anger spiraling out of me as green, flame-like light as I faced the God’s eye camera, glaring up at it with my now-glowing eyes. I knew that light would be visible even through the contact lenses.

  I felt Dalejem’s alarm spike into panic.

  I didn’t look at him. Using my light and the metal heel of my organic boot, I swore under my breath in Prexci––

  Right before I kicked in lizard-lady’s front door.

  33

  BOOK AND LIZARD

  IT WASN’T EVEN locked.

  The door, I mean.

  The room on the other side also wasn’t a lab, which was a relief. Sort of.

  It definitely wasn’t the stainless steel table and specimen kind of lab. It also didn’t have a bunch of dead bodies in cages like the lab we’d visited earlier that day.

  I suppose it might have been a computer lab of sorts––if a much more high-tech and sterile version than Dante’s sweatbox on the ship had been, with her tubs of live squids, boxes of spare parts, plant-based food sources that smelled like mold, dinosaur toys, junk food, pingpong paddles, outdated monitors and spotty VR displays.

  Dante’s comp-tech room always managed to smell like the ass-end of a sewer mixed with a men’s locker room.

  In contrast, Novak’s room was pristine, with nothing but softly humming tech built into the walls, the floors, and several terminals in the room. A row of monitors ringed one corner, flickering with different sets of images around a console seat in the middle.

  My eyes went there, focusing on a narrow-shouldered body with gray hair.

  She sat in a low-backed chair, facing away from me.

  I watched the back of her head, then glanced up at the VR projections. They were the only thing in the room that moved; the woman herself was as motionless as the equipment around her. She didn’t look over when I walked deeper into the room, but sat perfectly still in her padded swivel chair, her nearly white hair molded to her small head like a helmet.