“Simultaneous kill orders?” Garcia muttered from behind her.
Brooks glanced over her shoulder at him, even as Preston spoke up on her other side.
“All of our intel confirms the feed.” He sounded like he was reading off intelligence sheets. “They’re targeting civilians. Humans mostly, although there isn’t significant evidence of racial profiling when the size of the population is taken into account––”
“But why?” Manzares said, his voice as lost as his facial expression. He looked around at the rest of them, as if waiting for someone to explain. “Why would they do this?”
Brooks shook her head, not taking her eyes off the screen.
“I don’t know,” she muttered.
That cold feeling in her gut got a lot colder.
Swiveling on her heel, she faced Preston and the others.
“Get whatever’s left of the Bridge’s seers in here right now,” she snapped. “I want to talk to their leader, Chandre. Assuming she’s still alive. They need to explain this to us. Right now. Or we’re going to have to act on Beijing.”
“Sir?” Osake said, causing Brooks to turn.
He met her gaze, eyes grim.
“We’re getting reports from Beijing now. Whatever this is, it’s happening there, as well––in fact, it likely originated there. The Lao Hu are currently in a shooting war with someone on the ground. The few SCARB agents we still have access to from the Beijing office believe the trouble started inside the Forbidden City, although it’s now spread to other parts of Beijing, as well. According to their seers, there was about a twenty minute delay between the fighting erupting in China and it spreading to the other cites in the blackout network––”
“How?” Brooks said. “By what mechanism?”
“Unknown, sir.”
“Is he leading them now?” Brooks said. “Dragon? Is he leading the seers?”
Osake shook his head, his hand still on his headset. “Unknown, sir.”
“Any news of the Bridge?” she said. “Of her husband?”
Osake shook his head again. “We’ve got facial-rec on it, looking for her as well as for her mate, now that the satellite lines are open. So far no hits. She hasn’t been spotted by any of our teams, either. Of course, they could be under disguise, given who they are.”
Osake gave Brooks a direct look, still holding his earpiece.
“It’s also possible she’s dead, sir,” he added. “I’m still getting reports of a full-blown firefight happening on the City grounds. We’re getting images… it’s a lot of seers shooting at other seers, sir. Very little human involvement, from what we can tell. The bulk of it appears to be between the Lao Hu seers and what the Beijing office terms an occupying force of seers from the West, possibly South America. We’ve seen no evidence of Dragon or any of the other telekinetics participating in the fighting so far––”
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 nodding. “Yes, sir. And for what it’s worth… agreed.”
He keyed in another code.
Images and sound exploded out over the main feed wall, at twice the previous volume. Every set of eyes in the room, Brooks’ included, swiveled to take in the larger landscape spread out over multiple screens, at nearly real-life levels of sensory input.
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.
Brooks saw Asian seers running barefoot across the grounds of a City she’d only ever seen in virtual images. Most of those had been from carefully-crafted, propaganda-department-approved virtual tours the Chinese government occasionally provided, usually to boast of their loyal population of infiltrators and civilian seers.
The images she saw now had none of that carefully choreographed gloss.
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 there, too, and human bodies running alongside seers with their greater height, more dramatic features, and odd-colored irises.
The fear on those faces looked more or less the same, though.
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. She stared, transfixed, as what had to be seers from their height and vivid eye colors continued to fire on the black clad soldiers.
These had to be Lao Hu seers, 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 black-armored seers below. They never let up the barrage, even as they adjusted their footing, dislodging tiles with booted feet as they compensated for kickback from heavy, organic-modified rifles.
They looked angry as hell, she couldn’t help noticing.
Gritting her teeth, Brooks looked back at the secure comm console.
She was about to go back there, to shout into the open line at Alyson’s people, 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 turned to meet the gaze of 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––”
Osake didn’t answer her, however.
The red-eyed seer did.
“I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible, Madam President,” she said, a polite 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, mistrusting her own eyes.
Then the reality
of what she was seeing sank in.
She let out a shocked gasp, stumbling backwards, away from the muscular seer. 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 made, even as she tried to think her way out of it.
Had Alyson sent her? Had the whole thing been a set up?
Or had this seer betrayed Alyson in some way, too?
The room remained strangely still as the two women looked at one another.
The live feed from 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 am sorry to be doing it this way, sir,” the red-eyed seer said. 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 fell to a graceful crouch, reaching down to pull a gun out of a side holster worn by Osake. She barely seemed to look at Osake himself before rising smoothly back to her feet.
She walked directly up to Brooks.
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 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.
“Call?” Brooks 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 gently.
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 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.
55
THE WALL
I WATCHED HIM warily, unable to keep my nerves from flaring when I saw how pale he 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 wear 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 noted again his lack of jacket. My breath steamed from my lips, even as I shivered. “Revik, 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 Declan yet,” I said.
Revik shrugged, still not looking up from the gun. “I’m sure everything is fine. There must be ripple effects from the loss of the network all over. They’re probably in lockdown mode, with the rest of Langley, trying to figure out what happened. You should go, Allie. She won’t calm down until she hears it from you.”
I bit my lip, knowing I was being dismissed.
I knew it, but I didn’t move anyway.
I began, “Revik, you shouldn’t go back in there alone––”
He cut me off.
“––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. Calm things down. It’s better to have her willing cooperation––before they 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. 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.
“All I can feel is that fucker in your light,” he muttered, still not looking at me.
I felt pain spark and ripple off his light, 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? 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.
His eyes glowed with light, standing out in his too-pale face as he met my gaze.
He had the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow and looked so goddamned pale and tired it was hard to look at him. 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 we were already. There was no way we wouldn’t both be off-balance––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 through both of our aleimi.
“We worked it out,” I said, throwing up my hands.
That time, a harder pulse of anger left him.
“Yeah,” he grunted. “I got that, wife.”
“Revik,” I warned. “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 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 surface.
I felt his emotions grow confused, a flicker of regret on him, but he didn’t seem to be able to control the intensity in his light, or the irrationality that came with it. I felt him thinking instead he needed to move, to get the fuck out of there.
I also felt him hesitating, unsure how to leave.
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 stuck 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.
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.
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