Dehgoies retained a hold on her as Syrimne––far more than she seemed willing to admit. Her denial of that fact only made the bond between them that much more dangerous.
Balidor held off on trying the tank until he had a good reason.
He hadn’t liked the idea of forcing a split of this kind, even a temporary one, knowing what it would do to her. From the beginning, he meant not to kill her, but only to test whether it might be feasible to separate them. Even so, he hesitated, wondering if there might be a better way.
He worried about his own objectivity, too.
In the end, he tabled the idea, thinking their time in Delhi finally convinced Alyson of the need to put some distance between them.
Seeing her face while Cass read that letter changed his mind yet again.
The truth was, they had put it off too long already.
They had to know. He had to know. If he was going to protect her in any real way, he needed to know the limits of what he could do, short of killing her outright.
Ultimately, he had not lied to her. It was his responsibility––not only to keep her person safe, but to keep the world safe from her. They all needed to know what would happen if she was separated from her mate.
Vash okayed the experiment, and gave the go-ahead for Balidor to prep it as a backup plan. The ancient seer agreed that it was better to learn the truth in a relatively controlled environment, before they attempted a severing ritual for real, where there was a very good chance Vash could kill her within a matter of days, not weeks. Following that discussion, Balidor set it up as a contingency. He’d more or less tabled the idea as a contingency, too, although he did brief a small number of seers on the procedures, should the need arise.
Then the letter came. Balidor watched the transformation of Allie’s face and light as she listened to her mate’s heartfelt pleas for reconciliation. He saw the pulls there. They scared him, but they also brought his resolve to the fore.
The opportunity existed as though made for such an enactment.
If the severing worked, meaning if it managed not to kill her, Dehgoies would think her dead, which would give them time to rehabilitate her.
If it did not work… well, Dehgoies would be incapacitated too.
It had seemed such a neat plan. It served to accomplish at least two things, and hopefully more than that, if they could make the severing stick.
Watching her now, though, Balidor fought a heaviness in his chest.
It hadn’t occurred to him how strongly he’d believed the severing would work.
She’d stopped screaming a few days earlier, but he could tell from the articulation of her limbs and body that the pain hadn’t lessened. Tension etched lines in her face as her muscles clenched against some unseen agony. Her hands seemed to be permanently balled into fists since her screams ended. Her whole body would go occasionally limp, only to tense again to an alarming degree… enough to frighten him.
She was willing herself to die.
He saw it at times, in her face.
Even so, her will to live pulsed under the despair, struggling against her more conscious want for the pain to end. He still retained some wish that it might outlast that darker solution.
In any case, he would have to make a decision soon.
“Come on, Allie,” he murmured. “Come on… beat this.”
He watched her, hoping to gods she would forgive him.
At the same time, he got a grim sort of satisfaction, wondering how Dehgoies was faring with his end of their little experiment.
21
DYING
WREG STARED OUT the hotel window, watching people walk by the Harmandir Sahib, or Golden Temple of the Sikhs.
They were still in Amritsar.
Using the old-fashioned telescopic glass, he watched pilgrims walk alongside tourists, following their footsteps without seeing their faces as they queued to enter.
“No photographs” signs stood everywhere. The ban against realtime imagery remained in effect here, as it did in most parts of the human world. The signs themselves felt almost redundant in fact, especially here, a place holy to the local humans.
It felt like they’d been in Amritsar for months.
Initially, they’d intended only to stop at the border city long enough to park the plane and transfer equipment and supplies to land transport. From there, the Sword meant for them to finish the approach to Seertown via back roads.
Their biggest concern at the time had been that the Seven might flee with her––with or without her consent. Watching from the Barrier, they’d waited to see if that would be the decision by the Adhipan, upon hearing the contents of Dehgoies’ letter. The Sword himself said almost nothing beyond telling them he wished for a broad blanket of surveillance for the hours he’d requested the note delivered.
The letter itself came as a surprise to Wreg.
He’d found it a clever move, though, as well as a damned touching one.
He could feel the boss hadn’t liked the public reading much––or the fact that she’d requested it. Yet, he hadn’t been entirely displeased with the Bridge’s reaction to what she’d heard.
It touched her, too. They all felt it.
After, she immediately asked the others if she should accept the Sword’s offer.
She didn’t hesitate to put the question before the group––it was as if she’d already made up her mind. They watched her argue with the Adhipan leader, who of course was adamant from the beginning that she dismiss the proposal at once.
She continued to argue that she should be allowed to go, or at least be allowed to consider going, to do a more thorough assessment of the option.
Wreg knew Revik listened on the edge of his seat, so to speak.
Revik heard her leaning towards taking his offer, sooner than the rest of them picked up on her preference. Wreg had seen the hope in his friend’s eyes, the relief… hell, the anticipation. Even Wreg hadn’t realized how badly the Sword had been missing his mate until he heard that letter read aloud to the rest of those bastards.
He wanted the Bridge with him. He wanted it more and apart from the necessity of the Four being reunited. He’d even offered to suspend his work while she stayed with him, and from what Wreg could tell, he’d meant every word of it.
But no one in the Sword’s army could have anticipated what would happen next.
The argument began to wind down. Balidor angered her, and she’d stopped playing the diplomat finally, instead making her position clear. When he wouldn’t go along, she did as she should. She fired the bastard.
She’d asked to be uncollared, and Wreg felt the boss react to that, too.
Then everything went horribly, horribly wrong.
That bastard Adhipan leader shot her.
He fucking shot her… right in the heart.
Wreg thought the Sword would have a heart attack himself on the spot.
When the gun went off, the Elaerian let out a cry that Wreg felt down to his bones. The Sword’s light exploded out in terror, a disbelief that rapidly bled into shock… then a grief so intense it shuddered the construct. He’d screamed again as he watched her fall.
She crumpled on the steps, eyes glazed, and the male Elaerian’s whole body collapsed inward as he watched her die, as he fought to breathe.
That had been worse.
Then he’d disappeared. He jumped away from them through the Barrier so swiftly and completely, Wreg almost thought the Sword had died himself.
Wreg commanded a group to set up a perimeter around him, to guard his light as he went after his mate––but it was too late.
Those Adhipan fuckers must have planned it.
That, or they had a contingency in place to respond to it, if it ever arose. They set up a net within seconds. A construct within the construct threw up a cloak around every Seven and Adhipan bastard there, and even the two humans who’d witnessed the event.
It rendered all of them utterly invisible.
Wreg’s team had been able to crack that, too, of course, but it took time––time they didn’t have.
During that delay, the Adhipan made their escape, taking the body of the Bridge with them.
Wreg watched the Sword look for her in vain for hours.
They made the decision to stay in Amritsar well into the third day.
By then, it was obvious her death wasn’t simply a trick of the Adhipan to confuse their trail, or to emotionally devastate the Sword. That much was clear within the first forty-eight hours, when Wreg saw the Elaerian beginning to lose the ability to control his light. Even so, it wasn’t until the fourth day that Wreg admitted to himself that the Sword’s life was actually in danger.
After the fifth day, they’d had to restrain him.
By the end of the sixth, they’d had to drug him, too.
Even drugged, he was terrifying. They had to start pushing the humans in the hotel to not hear him when he started screaming. Within a few more days, they had to push those same humans to vacate the hotel altogether. They even began pushing humans to keep from passing too close on the street outside.
They built a construct to shield him, and warded the humans away––in effect, taking over the hotel and surrounding blocks.
His light was the real danger, of course. There had been accidents already. He’d broken the neck of one of Wreg’s infiltrators when she got too close to him. He’d broken the arm of another when a group of them tried to use touch to calm him down.
Wreg even considered collaring him.
He nearly got his neck broken himself, for even thinking it.
They’d drugged him in higher doses instead, trying to cut at least the worst edges of the pain. It hadn’t really helped, but it seemed to dull his ability to use the telekinesis, which was as much as they could hope for by then.
Before things had gotten to the point where the Sword lost coherence entirely, he’d asked them to keep tracking the Seven bastard who had done it.
He’d asked Wreg to kill him for him.
As if Wreg needed to be asked.
BALIDOR WATCHED AS Dorje paced the confines of the small room, looking at the readouts on the screen set in the console. It was a distraction for Balidor, at least, watching his friend, albeit a poor one. It gave him the excuse to look away from her, to not stare at every line of pain on her face in minute detail.
Even so, the other infiltrator’s pacing was starting to grate on Balidor’s nerves.
Dorje seemed to have hit his limit again, as well.
“You have to end it,” Dorje said. “Today. She is dying, Balidor!”
Balidor felt his shoulders tighten. He folded his arms, maybe just for something to do with them while he gazed through the thick pane of organic to the smaller tank housed on the other side of the window. Staring at her, he found himself gesturing in affirmative, rubbing his stubbled face with one hand. He felt sick himself, light-depleted, exhausted.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, she is.”
He stared at her for a moment, silent. Anger nearly overcame him, intense enough that his muscles tightened all through his body. Irrationally, all of it felt aimed at Dehgoies.
“Goddamn it…” he burst out.
“You knew this was a possibility!”
Balidor folded his arms tighter, scowling through the window, not answering.
“You had to have known, Balidor!”
“Of course I knew,” he said, turning to glare at the shorter seer. “I had hoped it would not be so. I had hoped Terian interrupted them before they finished. Alyson said as much to me.”
“Well, clearly,” Dorje said. “She was wrong.”
Balidor stared at the readouts, feeling his own sick feelings worsen. “I had thought between that and the fact that she hadn’t bonded with the other parts of him…” Losing breath on his words, he blinked, realized he was fighting tears.
That he would have put them all through this, and all for nothing.
He forced himself to think, to use other, less emotional parts of his light. He looked at the infiltrator standing next to him, as another possibility slid into place in his mind.
“The boy.”
Dorje frowned. “You think the boy did it? Nenzi?”
Clicking sharply, at himself mostly, Balidor shook his head.
“Damn it. I’d nearly forgotten who he was, when he held her captive with Terian. He had her for weeks.” He stared through the organic window at her face. “Allie said he’d been desperate for affection… for contact of any kind, especially from her. He slept by her at night. He’d touch her any chance he got, even just to hold her hand. She didn’t have access to her light, so I’d assumed it was all on his end. But I wonder…”
“What?”
“Is it possible he managed to complete the bond then?”
Dorje frowned. His light exuded nausea. “Are you saying he raped her? That this little murdering monster version of him raped her?”
“Maybe, yes. But not necessarily.” Balidor continued to think, rubbing his arm with one hand where his arms were crossed. “The boy was the more Elaerian part of Dehgoies. It is possible he would not have needed sex to finish weaving the connection with her. The bond isn’t sexual at its base––it is a weaving of light. Any intense energetic interaction between them could have forged it, or strengthened it, at least.”
“It could have happened in Delhi,” Dorje suggested.
“Yes.” Balidor frowned, remembering Dehgoies’ face on the dance floor. “It could have. He seemed intent on having her. There could have been more than one motive in that. He could have gone out of his way to force a stronger connection to her while they were together. He might have known better how to do that, in his current form.”
Clicking softly again, he added,
“She felt different after. You noticed it, too. Didn’t you, Dorje? She was different. Her light had changed––”
“Does it matter now?” Dorje broke in.
For a second, Balidor didn’t answer.
Then he made a negative gesture with one hand.
“No,” he said. “It does not.”
Turning, he walked out of the observation room.
Walking faster, he slid around the corner to the wider hallway and observation room beyond. In a few more steps, he stood before the doorway of the larger, Barrier-shielded cell where the flotation tank was housed. Another set of seats lived to the right of that, just under the longer of the two windows into the larger tank and another long desk covered in instruments.
On the smaller panel they’d installed to the right of the pressure-sealed organic door stood a set of readouts to the chamber beyond. A heart monitor showed a weak heartbeat that sent a pulsing, ghosting line across a small screen at each beat. Below that, a list of vitals scrolled. He squinted to read them, but knew they were a truncated version of what the machines monitored in the observation room he’d just left.
Under that lay a combination lock, with DNA encryption.
He turned to Dorje, his mouth set in a grim line.
“All right. I’m doing it. Tell the others. They need to be ready to move, and fast.” Laying a hand on the smaller man’s shoulder, he added, “Make sure they understand, Dorje. This isn’t a drill. We need to be out of here in two hours, maximum.”
Dorje was already on his VR link.
Looking up after a pause, his eyes clicked back into focus on Balidor.
“Tenzi wants to know. Do we inform the others of our status? If we go to them without prior warning, they will not understand the degree of urgency––”
Balidor gestured negative. “No. Do not tell them anything. Contact them, yes, so they are forewarned of our arrival, but for now, just tell them Dehgoies’ people are on their way and they should be ready to move.” Clenching his fists under his crossed arms, he added, “That’s not exactly a lie. We will tell them as soon as we are able, but we cannot have them know what happened before the Rebels figure it out. I
also do not wish to deal with their emotional reactions until we are fully in transit. It will just give Dehgoies an easier trail to follow.”
“We’re taking them with us? The humans, too?”
“We have little choice.” Balidor gave him a grim look. “He will go after anyone who was there, brother. For now, they come with us.”
Seeing Dorje’s worried look, he clasped his shoulder in reassurance.
“If we can leave them somewhere in safety, we will. In the meantime, I do not think they are in danger of Syrimne the way the rest of us are.”
Gesturing in affirmative, Dorje relayed all of this, as well. He clicked out a moment later, his eyes clearing as he vacated the Barrier.
“They are in motion,” he said. “Tenzi said thirty minutes.”
“We will need longer than that, before she can travel,” he said, nodding. “But good.”
“Start, then,” Dorje prompted, gesturing towards the panel. His eyes remained worried as he peered through the transparent pane to the flotation tank. “Start, brother. Please.”
Balidor nodded, taking a breath.
Turning, he began keying in the code that would open the door to the thick-walled, organic room. The walls, even the pressure door itself, stood at close to five feet of dense organics, exuding a Barrier signal that effectively cut her out of the lower realms entirely. It was an odd thing, really, the idea of simulating death in such a way, with her body so obviously alive.
Yet clearly, it had worked.
The only proof needed was to look at her wasted limbs.
Dorje remained, shifting his weight between his feet in nervousness, watching through the transparent section of wall to the right of the door. His face remained pinched as he focused on the tank. Once Balidor had the combination in motion, his eyes followed Dorje’s.
Even in those few seconds, her breathing seemed more shallow, her heart beats softer and fewer in the monitor on the panel.
“We’re losing her!” Dorje cried.
“No. She’ll be all right.”
Still, Balidor realized these were only words. He too stared through the window at the female in the tank, his body wound with adrenaline. Dorje might be right. He might have waited too long.
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