“Revik...baby...we can win this! We can actually fucking win this...eliminate them down here, don’t you see that? But it involves finding all of his anchors down here, and figuring out which ones are just Rooks, or servants of the Dreng, and which are actual Dreng, living down here in human bodies. We can’t get sloppy with this. Come on...you’re contingency guy. I know you see this, and I know why you’re pretending you’re not. I get that you’re pissed off...”
“Pissed off?”
For the first time, Revik had stared directly at her.
Jon didn’t think he’d ever forget the look that had come to Revik’s face in those few seconds. He couldn’t describe it to himself in words; he’d never seen anyone’s eyes hold so much, or convey so much. Allie had only stared at him, too, along with the rest of the seers, who had backed off with their light, and in some cases, their bodies, to give the two Elaerian room to argue. The fact that it had quickly become a domestic dispute, as much as a strategic one, didn’t seem to have escaped anyone’s notice, either.
Allie hadn’t looked away from Revik’s face for even a second of that stare.
She hadn’t frowned...or even blinked. She just stood there, her hands clasped in front of her, as if restraining herself from moving, probably from touching him, or at least moving closer to where he stood. She’d seemed glued to her spot, frozen, but also unable to look away, to even breathe maybe.
Revik had been the one to avert his gaze that time, too.
Then, without another word, he had walked.
He’d turned around, turned his back on all of them, maybe Allie especially, and walked towards the street outside the lobby doors.
Jon watched him walk around and over bodies still strewn over the stone tile. He watched Revik aim his feet for that wall he’d shattered with the telekinesis, what must have been hours ago, although it felt more like days to Jon. Jon couldn’t even believe that the sky remained dark outside, that weeks hadn’t passed since they’d gone down those elevator shafts. The storm had died down somewhat in their absence, bringing a harder rain but little wind, but otherwise, minutes could have passed instead of hours since they’d descended into that hell.
Jon thought at first that Revik was leaving them entirely.
He’d worried that Revik would simply ignore what Allie said, go after Menlim himself. But then he’d seen the Elaerian cross the street, heading for the park, and realized he was going to the Chinook, to the same rendezvous point that Allie just told them about.
He still worried until Allie and the others began to follow him.
Allie stopped only once, by what remained of the transparent organic wall, staring at Garensche’s cleaved body where it lay both inside and outside of the glass doors. She’d sucked in a breath, staring down at him, and then Neela and Jorag had steered her gently away.
Jon knew they didn’t have much time, but it bugged him, that they hadn’t let her mourn the big oaf even a little. He had to suppose all of that would come later, too, when they got to wherever they were going and started to collectively lick their wounds.
It bugged him, too, that they hadn’t found some way to bring Gar’s body with them.
But Jon supposed he understood that, too. Anyway, to seers, the body wasn’t the part of a person that mattered. Jon knew they’d do rituals for him and for any others who had fallen, once they got to wherever they were all going.
Jon’s light still continued to follow Revik’s nervously as the male seer disappeared into the park. He could feel Revik’s intent now, and knew that Revik had decided to come with them despite his words to Allie, but Jon still felt his muscles clenching with adrenaline as he fought not to run after the other man. The only thing that held him back was Wreg, who laid a heavy hand on his shoulder right as they were leaving the ruined lobby of the Tower for good.
Let him go, little brother, Wreg advised. He needs the time alone.
Is he all right? Jon asked.
He knew it was a dumb question, but couldn’t seem to make himself not ask it.
Wreg gave a low grunt. I highly doubt he is all right, Jon. But he will be. Just let him make his own way around this. Your sister gets that...it is why she let him go. The two of them are going to need to work a lot of this out alone...
At the time, Jon had only been able to nod, even though every atom and thread in his body and light protested Wreg’s words.
Still, he hadn’t tried to chase after Revik. He’d let him go, just like Wreg advised. Jon followed after Allie like the rest of the seers, entering the park where he’d last left it, just north of East 79th Street, and following one of the footpaths north.
Now that they’d made a full circuit of the lake and passed the tennis courts, which lay just south of the North Meadow’s western edges, Jon’s mind returned to Revik again. He could still smell smoke as he walked, from where Revik had ripped apart the airstrip less than twenty-four hours earlier, and something about that smoke, and the denser feeling of the construct overhead, caused Jon’s nerves to start worsening once more. He found himself wondering where Revik was, if he’d already reached the Chinook or if he’d left them altogether by now.
Jon didn’t stop walking as he thought it, glancing ahead periodically at the line of trees before 97th, which he could feel as much as see at this point.
The park felt dead, unnaturally quiet.
It reminded Jon of the mess they’d found in Golden Gate Park, when the disease first started, and how the city felt like a different world, one Jon no longer felt a part of in any way, despite his having grown up in San Francisco and spent most of his life there. It hit Jon again that he’d barely had time to mourn the loss of that world. They’d been too busy trying to survive over the last year since the disease first appeared.
At the thought, he found himself remembering the first time he’d heard about the outbreak of C2-77. He’d been with Dorje, at the New York Central Library. They’d walked there together to decipher the data key Allie and Revik stole from that bank.
Remembering that day, Jon felt a nearly physical pain from the loss.
The city had been normal then...as normal as New York ever got.
Crowds of people in business suits, drinking lattes. Students carrying portable study aids and monitors, wearing designer tennis shoes and sporting two hundred dollar haircuts. Artists hanging out in the park. Panhandlers. Avatars following him and Dorj down the street, trying to sell them time-shares in Cancun...time-shares that now had probably been taken over by armed squatters, or even stray animals breaking through the doors and windows in search of food. Jon had seen billboards for new Broadway shows. Posters for bands playing. Art galleries. Tourists. Music blared from radios, and from sidewalk cafés and coffee stands.
Jon pushed those images away, but the feel of them lingered, difficult to ignore, or even to think past. He once more grew aware of Wreg by his side...not touching him, not speaking, but his warmth somehow seeping over into Jon’s light anyway, bleeding away the worst of his anxiety, or at least blunting its sharpest edges.
They walked silently over the grass and into the trees rimming the edge of the road, and Jon found himself reaching for the butt of his gun in reflex.
He had no specific fear, or even an abstract one, but the feeling of the conflict earlier that day lingered, and it tensed his muscles all over again as they broke through the trees on the other side of the street.
No one greeted them on the other side. No shots rang out.
Jon didn’t feel anyone either, even through that hyper-awareness he now had of the construct, presumably because Revik now knew how to access that construct directly. Jon felt shimmers of Maygar at the thought, and glanced over at the Asian-looking seer, catching him staring at Allie. Unlike his father, Maygar barely seemed able to take his eyes off of her. Maygar hadn’t spoken to Allie directly, not that Jon had seen, nor had he approached her directly, or hugged her like Chinja and a few of the others. At the same time, he seemed hyper-awar
e of her, almost to the detriment of anything else.
Jon found himself remembering a few key things about Maygar’s reactions to Allie before, and frowned, almost without knowing he did it. He also forgot how closely connected he and Maygar’s light remained, and the fact that he hadn’t been shielding his thoughts from any of the others in their strange quartet, either.
Even as he thought it, Allie glanced over her shoulder, giving both Jon and Maygar the barest of glances before her eyes faced forward once more. The stare Jon caught from Maygar held a lot more meaning, and significantly more anger than that glance of Allie’s.
I’m not like that anymore, Maygar grumped at him.
Sorry, man. Can’t help it.
Well, find a way to help it. Get off my back!
Jon shrugged, not feeling particularly apologetic, and Maygar hit at his light.
I mean it. Or you’ll have him crawling all up in my shit again, too...
Jon nodded that time, but still didn’t answer. Shoving that whole dynamic out of his mind, he faced forward once more, and immediately made out the outline of the Chinook. The cockpit light was already on. Jon found himself squinting at the man he could see sitting there, until he realized it was Revik.
Shit. He was going to fly them out of here.
In the same set of seconds, Jon realized he wasn’t really surprised.
Revik would want something to do right then. Preferably something that took all or most of his concentration. He also probably didn’t want to have to sit in the back with the rest of them. Thinking this through as he approached the lowered ramp in the back, Jon watched Jorag go in ahead of him and walk straight to the cockpit, probably to co-pilot for Revik.
Walking up the ramp with a few of the others, including Jax and Neela, Jon blinked into the overhead lights of the cabin when those in the passenger hold suddenly flickered to life, too. He held up a hand, gripping the back of one seat, feeling more presences dart around his awareness in that brief silence, including Tarsi...and Vash, with her. Jon took in the row of headsets slung next to each chair, feeling dazed all over again.
They were really leaving.
Probably never to come back this time.
The thought hit him strangely, almost painfully, but Jon shoved that aside, too.
Then another sound jerked him completely out of his own head, shocking him so much that Jon froze, mid-step. He still nearly fell onto the aisle between rows of seats, but caught himself, grasping a chair in one hand as he listened, panting.
It was a baby crying.
26
THERE IS AN OCEAN
WE REACHED THE ship right around dawn.
The thing was pretty much a floating zoo.
Somehow, that single fact amused me more than worried me, at least upon seeing it initially. I had to hand it to Balidor for his ingenuity. He’d taken another aircraft carrier, and while he and everyone else in San Francisco were getting ready to go after Cass, he’d spent months fixing it up and making it livable for us as a kind of moving base, until something more permanent could be constructed, likely in New Mexico or Colorado in the United States, or possibly further up in North America, in Montana, Canada, or even Alaska.
So yeah, taking a page out of Shadow’s book.
Or maybe it just made the most sense right now, to find a means of riding out the crazy on the ocean itself, given the chaos that still reigned on much of the land. Anyway, we needed to keep the humans under our charge safe. Safe and disease-free, in the event the virus mutated, or somehow transcended that magical twenty-six percent immune barrier in some way.
Pretty much everyone in the passenger cabin of the Chinook spent the vast majority of the flight playing with Lilai.
She still seemed pretty weirded out by all of us.
She cried a few times, confused and her light scattering with fear as she remembered Cass falling down in that high-end apartment. Since she’d been surrounded by cooing seers who flooded her with warmth and reassurance and light, the tears hadn’t lasted long, but they still cut at me. Most of the time she spent in Chandre’s lap, playing with her black braids, and touching her high, angular cheeks. She seemed strangely fascinated by Chandre’s eyes, and stared into their reddish-black hues for minutes at a time without blinking.
I let them all play with her, thinking they needed the downtime more than I did.
Anyway, I would have as much time as I wanted with her, soon enough.
Jon sat in the seat across from Lilai and just stared at her, stunned, for most of the flight. I think she didn’t seem quite real to him, either. Or maybe she seemed a little too real, given everything that had happened over the past few months.
Cass remained unconscious.
They locked her arms, elbows, wrists and ankles together, to one another...and to a metal bar over the emergency exit door on the back starboard side of the Chinook. Neela also put a second collar on her, which was a new one on me.
I could feel a few of them wanting to do more, but I told them that no one was to touch her. Not now...and not when we got back to the ship. I promised them that we’d deal with her, but that wasn’t going to consist of us taking turns beating the piss out of her.
I had no intention of letting them descend into animalistic behavior, no matter how upset or traumatized they were. Not now...not ever.
I couldn’t exactly blame them, though.
As for Revik, I left him alone. I couldn’t help but be aware of him, though...pretty much nonstop the entire flight. I felt sparks of his light, here and there, but for the most part, the construct over the cockpit remained deathly still, with only murmurings from Jorag occasionally breaking that silence. I could tell that Jorag had been trying to reach Revik, too, but that he hadn’t been having much success.
As for Revik himself, he didn’t direct so much as a whisper of thought towards me, or even towards Lilai. He felt locked inside a glass ball, completely outside of my reach. I tried to respect that distance. For the most part, I did. He only had to push me off him once, when I’d crept over into his light subconsciously, not even realizing what I’d done until I felt him flinch from the Barrier, asking me without words to leave him alone.
After that, I did.
The flight over New York itself was one of the more eerie experiences I’ve ever had.
I’d never seen the city so dark...or so quiet.
Lower Manhattan had flooded once more, partly from the storm, but mostly because the fields had failed in a few key points. The hotel, when we passed over it, looked completely deserted. The armored tanks that Tenzi and others had reported on the streets in front had already gone, presumably because SCARB, FEMA, and the United States military found the hotel empty, too.
Chinja claimed to have seen those tanks grinding their way up the west side of the park, aiming uptown, as we left the North Meadow.
The ocean looked dark.
I saw white crests from the wind and rain, but most of it looked like a dark blanket past the last strip of land. We saw fires dotting the shores, but not a lot of artificial light. It felt like looking out over a simulation of some primeval world, of a time before electricity, when everyone still used fire in various forms to heat and light their homes.
It bothered me, yeah, but strangely, I felt hope in those glimpses, too.
Life would overcome. Even here.
Even among those who hadn’t the resources or the luck to get to one of the high-end quarantine zones, people were surviving the disease.
Anyway, I suspected we’d seen the last of the quarantine zone over New York, too.
I don’t know if they thought they could keep the waters back forever, or if they’d simply been arrogant enough to think that they could wait things out long enough to be able to return to the mainland. Perhaps they thought they could claim what they seemed to feel was their natural birthright once the danger had passed, reaping the benefits of a depleted population and with no major losses of their own.
; Either way, I expected that a lot of the ‘better classes’ of people who’d taken refuge on the island would be leaving soon.
I couldn’t help thinking, good riddance.
I’d never liked New York all that much anyway.
Maybe in its next incarnation, it would be a different kind of place.
Or underwater. Whichever.
Even as I thought it, though, I found myself wiping away tears.
27
WALK THE LINE
I FOUND HIM where I expected to find him.
Balidor explained what they needed of him, and he’d seemed to understand... as much as he seemed to be present for much of anything since we’d landed.
In any case, Revik got the gist. He didn’t seem surprised, and really, why would he be? He’d been the one to discover the connection himself.
Still, given the associations it must have evoked, Revik likely hadn’t been thrilled. Especially since the requirement remained somewhat open-ended at this point, at least until they got more eyes on his light.
I knew I’d be pulled into that soon enough, too.
In any case, we were ready for it this time, at least. Balidor had spent months working on another version of the tank, like where we’d kept Revik in those mountains. The infiltration team had a few projects going that I’d only been marginally aware of, in fact, meaning projects that started long before I got knocked out by the wires. One of those even involved using the wires to train humans to see the Barrier––a pet project of Jon’s and Balidor’s that pretty much got dumped entirely after they found me unconscious in San Francisco.
Some of those projects had begun before Vash and Dorje died...which meant before the wedding, before the trip to Argentina and before Cass stole Lilai from us...and well before Revik transferred a good chunk of the offensive operations to San Francisco.
One of those projects had involved building a new tank.
A few prototypes had already been tried, of course.
Allie's War Season Four Page 57