Some had hopped boats for Hong Kong already, too.
Jon knew Shadow would feel Revik over here before any of those boats reached their destination, however. Whenever Revik left the tank, they always had a countdown running in the background, waiting for Shadow to find him.
That countdown seemed to limit his outings to two hours.
Well, almost three, if he was pushing it, but the Adhipan and Wreg’s security forces capped his outings at a hard, two-hour limit.
Which didn’t help Jon at all, in terms of knowing the location of the rest of the List humans staying at the casino. After feeling for Wreg briefly with his light, he worried again about the security of the construct and gave up, touching his fingers to the comm, instead. He hit through to the correct frequency in rote, then turned his back on Maygar and the others, walking a few feet away from where they stood. He stopped under an overhang between gaming tables, where he could see signs leading into some kind of bar or lounge.
He glanced down that darkened corridor as he waited, glimpsing a false front beyond that segmented wall, what looked like a strangely-proportioned replica of the front of the Taj Mahol. Written in neon script over that same set of double doors was the word: “Kolkata.”
Jon let out a low snort.
He didn’t know geography all that well in this part of the world, but he knew the Taj Mahal for damned sure wasn’t in Kolkata. He supposed most of the gamblers visiting Macau didn’t much care about that detail, though.
He started to worry when the pause lengthened before anyone picked up.
He felt a flush hit his aleimi then, right as another voice rose in his ear.
“You should use your light,” Wreg said at once.
“I know.”
“You’re supposed to practice...Adhipan has the construct up now.”
“Hey, bossy guy...I know. You’re Allie’s teacher. Not mine.”
“Even so. The boss is going to chew me out, if you don’t get better at this shit, ilyo...”
“I know, I know. I’m being...distracted,” Jon said, using the subvocals as he glanced at Maygar. At Wreg’s understanding chuckle, Jon flushed again. “Have the others checked in? We’ve got four more here. 221, 110, 42 and 180, if I’m reading the light signatures correctly. Jorag and the others are bringing them out to the ferry now...”
“Confirmed. And yes, those are the right signatures,” Wreg assured him. “There are three more, according to Adhipan’s people. We’ve got two located in upper-level rooms. The third is in a cantina or something...some kind of bar. Not far from you, actually.”
He sent Jon a snapshot with his light. Receiving it, Jon nodded, staring again into that darkened corridor past the segmented wall. Looking at the torches flickering on either side of the double doors leading into that fake Taj Mahal, Jon nodded grimly.
“Okay, got it,” he said.
He could feel a few humans inside there now. So more than just their target.
It didn’t feel like enough to be a problem, though.
Wreg’s voice shifted, growing more serious. “But say, listen...let Jorag, Yumi and the others get those, Jon. We just got the word from Adhipan. You’re being pulled. He wants you and Maygar out of there.”
“What?” Jon frowned, looking away from the double doors. “What did we do?”
“You didn’t do anything, brother. These Legion of Fire fucks got Maygar nailed on the facial-rec. They know he’s Nenzi’s son. So the two of you get the one in the bar, since you’re right there...but don’t go upstairs. The boss wants you pulled.”
“Which ‘boss’ would that be?” Jon muttered, glancing at Maygar again.
Maygar scowled back at him, obviously wondering who he was talking to.
“I only talked to Adhipan,” Wreg said, smiling through the line. “But he’d just talked to Nenz and your sister, so it probably came from one of them.”
Jon nodded, still frowning in Maygar’s direction. “Okay.”
“Everything okay down there?”
“Yes. What about you?” Jon felt his mouth harden slightly. “It took you awhile to answer...”
“I’m fine, brother,” Wreg assured him. “Just coordinating logistics for Adhipan. I swear he gave me this job just to annoy me...”
Jon felt himself relax. “Okay, got it. And we’re coming in.” Smiling a little then, he clicked under his breath. “But can I have the others knock him out, before he gets on the boat?” Jon said, using the regular vocals that time and aiming his words directly at Maygar. “Or does he have to openly resist the order, first?”
Wreg laughed on the other end of the line.
Maygar gave him a vaguely confused but irritated look. “What the fuck are you talking about? Who is that?”
Ignoring him, Jon sighed again.
“Be careful, ilyo,” Wreg said then. “From what Adhipan says, this Dulgar wants little telekinetic seers of his own. If he thinks he can’t do this through your sister, he really might go after Maygar. So protect that obnoxious fuck, if you can. And tell him if he doesn’t behave, I’ll kick his ass myself when you get back here.”
Jon nodded. Signing off, he exhaled, fighting the part of him that wanted to worry about Wreg. After the barest hesitation, he walked back to stand by the others.
“We have to go,” he told Maygar.
“What?” Maygar’s eyes narrowed. “All of us?”
“No. You and me.” Jon looked at Yumi. “Balidor wants you and Jorag to take over.” Hesitating, Jon motioned with his head back towards the bar, then, making a split-second decision. “Oh, and there’s one more list human in that ‘Kolkata’ place over there. Maygar and I will bring them out. Then we’re heading back to the boat.”
Maygar frowned, but only nodded.
When Jon turned, aiming his feet for the twin torches guarding the eight-foot-high, garishly ornate, double, black and gold doors, Maygar adjusted the automatic rifle strap around his shoulder, and followed.
“YEAH, WE’VE GOT him,” I said. I turned my head, frowning over at where Revik had Dulgar against the wall. “Not like it’s done us much good...” I added a little bitterly.
I glanced at the clock embedded in the wall, and frowned again.
We were running out of time.
These days, it felt like everything we did revolved around that damned clock.
I couldn’t feel Shadow anywhere near us yet, but then, I never could. Not until he was here. It was like radio silence...than bam. Out of nowhere, he’d be after Revik’s light. Then we’d have to turn every infiltrator we had towards protective detail, and it still wasn’t always enough. The last time he got through, Revik was down for days.
More than that, we knew he’d be coming for us in the physical shortly after, too.
This time, we were too close to Hong Kong to have much of a window. We couldn’t play with the clock at all on this one, and we knew it. Even if we hadn’t known it already, Balidor had been hounding us on that fact for days.
I still wished I knew what the precise time thing was all about.
Something about that struck me as sinister, too...or maybe just bizarre. But heck, these days we were all running on a lot of guesswork when it came to certain things, which made all of us nervous. Revik joked that it just meant I was becoming more of an infiltrator.
Infiltrators tended to avoid and dislike “guesses.”
“Alyson?” Balidor said on the other end of the line. “What does that mean?”
I glanced around at the curved stone tunnel, grimacing a bit at the smell, which more than hinted at sewage, even though the water itself looked more-or-less clear. Seeing another guard carefully rounding the corner, walking along a ledge that rimmed the canal on our side, I refocused my light, briefly forgetting that Balidor had asked me a question. The guard was clearly trying to sneak up on Revik, who had his back to him.
I sent a hard bolt of aleimi, knocking the guard unconscious.
He toppled unceremoniously, fal
ling the only direction he could fall...towards the water.
Revik turned at the splash. He stared at the canal, then at the body floating by in the rapid stream of water. I saw him quirk an eyebrow, scanning with his light, then he looked at me, grinning.
Thanks, baby.
De nada.
His hand never loosened around Dulgar’s neck.
Clicking out of the Barrier, I gave another quick scan of the area, making sure there wouldn’t be any other surprises down here.
“What do you think it means, ‘Dori?” I said then, letting out another sigh.
“They’re gone?” Balidor said.
I watched Dulgar stare up at Revik’s face, his eyes glassed. The smaller seer gripped Revik’s arm with both of his own hands, but he’d stopped struggling. I knew Revik was reading him, trying to find whatever remaining details he could before we had to leave. I knew Revik had probably sedated Dulgar with his light by now, too, at least to a degree. Those previously sharp, gold eyes had turned opaque, so that I could see very little awareness at all.
I didn’t have a lot of hope that Revik would find anything particularly helpful, though.
Beyond what we’d found out already, that is.
Then again, I was feeling pretty damned frustrated at the moment, and outmaneuvered. Again. I knew I couldn’t let myself indulge in a bunch of pessimistic crap, not even with Revik and Balidor, but I was definitely feeling it.
We were losing ground. I could feel it in my light.
Focusing back on the conversation through the link, I frowned again.
“Yeah, they’re already in Dubai,” I said, blunt.
“They have reached Dubai already? You are sure?” Balidor said. “There’s no chance they are in transit still, that we might––”
“No,” I cut in. “They’re there. In Dubai. Revik got the buyer’s name...at least the name Dulgar got.” I exhaled again, letting my frustration grow audible. “We don’t know if the name is real, but Revik said he remembered it from one of the records we’d gone through before...so it’s at least an alias that’s been used more than once.” I hesitated, then shrugged again, my voice still flat. “It’s worse than that, ‘Dor. This guy, he’s collecting Listers. Seers, at least. We don’t know about humans. But he definitely has his own copy of the seer List...”
The silence on the line deepened.
Then Balidor clicked softly, but I felt a real pulse of frustration off him, too.
“Did they know we were coming here, do you think?” he asked.
I bit my lip, glancing at Revik again. I knew what Balidor was asking me. He wanted to know if I thought Shadow had found a way to hack Revik’s light more efficiently, meaning, inside the safety protocol limits we’d set around him being in the tank.
He wanted to know if I thought we were being played.
If Shadow was only pretending he couldn’t get through, we were deeply and truly fucked.
I studied Revik’s back, scanning his light carefully with mine, looking for taps. I knew his higher structures were connected to Shadow, regardless, but I also knew those were the parts of him that Shadow couldn’t really use to pull intel from, not down here. Those higher structures operated in their own reality in a sense.
I’d often wondered if it was this “trickle-down” aspect that caused the delay between when Revik left the tank and when Shadow could actually pull usable intel off him.
We’d also speculated that it might take that long for Shadow to get past Revik himself, at those higher levels as well as down here, on the ground. We’d been looking for the trigger points Shadow used to get into his light for weeks now, but apart from the usual trauma crap that Shadow put my husband through as a kid, we hadn’t found anything new.
I knew we were missing something there, though. I could feel that, too.
“I don’t know,” I said, my voice closer to angry that time. “Honestly? I don’t think so. Revik’s still reading Dulgar himself, so maybe he’ll get a better indication of how the transaction went down. So far, he says it was just a normal sale from Dulgar’s side...if a higher-priced one than usual, and one that had more stringent specifications as to particular seers. Revik thinks that Dulgar didn’t want us to know initially because he wanted to keep up the pretense that he would sell some of those seers to us...but it’s looking like he’d decided that owning his own breeding pair of Elaerian was better business for him.”
Feeling a pulse of Balidor’s own anger through the line defused some of mine.
“Yeah, well,” I said, shrugging. “It looks like, whatever the reasons for timing the transport the way they did, the seers left Macau more than a week ago, on more than one ship. They were rerouting their light imprints and signals back to here...meaning Macau...which is why we didn’t feel them en route, but thought Dulgar still had them.”
“Why would they do that?” Balidor asked, his voice slightly sharper. “Did they know we would be looking for specific seers?”
“Maybe,” I shrugged, mirroring the expression with one hand. “But also maybe not. Apparently, there are a lot of pirates in these seas. Seers are a hot commodity right now, one of the hottest, according to Dulgar...and from his perspective, the black market is growing, not shrinking, particularly in the areas around Shadow cities. From what Revik told me, they’ve simply learned to take those kinds of precautions during transport for big sales. It might not mean anything specific to us.”
I felt Balidor absorb that information, too.
For a moment, he seemed to be higher in the Barrier, maybe talking to Tarsi.
Then he clicked back, and I could feel him more strongly again.
“All right,” he said, his voice curt. “We’re sending a boat for the two of you in that canal. We’re out of time.”
Grimacing, I nodded, fighting the impulse to kick at the wall. “Understood. Did Jon find all of the humans, at least?”
Balidor exhaled, clicking. “Most of them. A few were mysteriously ‘absent’ and Yumi tells me their signatures are reading as dead...so there are agents of Shadow on this island, too, and in the casino and probably the hotel as well. Another reason for you and your husband to get the hell out of there, if you’ll pardon my saying it, Esteemed Bridge...”
I nodded, glancing at Revik, and then at Dulgar himself.
“And Dulgar?” I said.
Balidor clicked a little louder, but I could feel him thinking.
“Leave him there,” he said, after another pause. “The Legion of Fire would never have been our friends, but at least if we do not do something unforgivable in their eyes, we might be able to avoid adding to our list of active enemies.”
Smiling grimly, I nodded.
“Understood,” I said. “And agreed. Anyway, like I said, I think this well is dry.” Feeling a pulse of agreement off Revik when he glanced at me, I frowned again, even as my mind clicked back to the rest of what Balidor had said. “Get Jon back to the ship, too,” I said. “And Maygar. I don’t want them hanging around if there are agents here.”
“We are in process with that.”
I nodded, but felt another hard tremor in my light, even as I exchanged another look with Revik.
“Good,” is all I said, though.
“WELL, WHERE DID you feel him last?” Maygar grumbled, giving Jon a hard stare with his dark brown eyes. “Or is that too complicated of a question for a half-worm like you?”
“It’s a her, actually,” Jon said, a little hotly. “And I felt her in the back area of the bar. I told you that. She was pretty much right where we’re standing now.”
Maygar frowned, pulling the rifle strap higher on his shoulder. “Well?” he said. “Where is she?”
“How the hell would I know that?” Jon said. “I told you what I saw. How about you help for a change, instead of complaining like a big jerk?”
Maygar scowled, not answering.
Sighing, and fighting not to feel discouraged, Jon looked around the dimly-lit floor a
rea with its scattering of round, black cocktail tables and red-upholstered chairs. The chairs themselves were strangely large and fuzzy, almost like living room chairs as opposed to the more spare, vinyl-seated types that Jon would have expected. Then again, everything here seemed to be about comfort. Well, that, and drinking and gambling. Either way, maybe cramming as many bodies in here as possible was less of a priority.
Jon’s eyes shifted to the stage that stood over the sunken seating area, and the green and purple gel-tinted lights that aimed at it from the ceiling. A single, old-fashioned-looking, dead-metal microphone stood there on a stand, but Jon could see what looked like a stripper pole in the darkened area behind it, too, so obviously, more than one kind of entertainment was provided here. The bar itself stood to Jon’s right and had a chrome-covered surface that shone almost like a mirror, reflecting light from small, colored, Christmas-like lights embedded in the ceiling like stars and around the edges of the racks of bottles. High stools with the same, fuzzy, red upholstry stood around the edges of the bar itself.
Weirdly, even with all of the borrows from the West, the place felt really, well...Asian...to Jon, anyway. He couldn’t have put his finger on why, or which details called it out, but he felt like a tourist in here, even with all of the time he’d spent on the continent over the past few years.
“Well?” Maygar said, shoving him lightly with a hand.
“Will you stop doing that?” Jon said, giving him a look. “Jesus. You’re like a kid, pushing at me all the time...”
Maygar frowned. He seemed about to speak when a sharp noise, like a glass falling to the ground and shattering, made both of them jump...then jerked both of their heads and Maygar’s gun towards the far end of the room.
Jon looked up in time to see a long, blood-red curtain twitch.
Realizing the curtain might not be covering the wall, but instead might be segmenting off a whole area of the room, Jon gave Maygar a grim look, then motioned towards it with his head. Seeing a similar understanding in those dark chocolate eyes, and seething through the Elaerian’s light, Jon started walking towards that same segment of curtain. Maygar followed him.
Allie's War Season Four Page 70