He stopped when Dante gave him a death stare, his eyes holding a faint apology along with the humor, but Dante saw the smile there anyway and only scowled at him.
Apart from Dante, only Loki did not laugh.
He sat on the bed, watching Dante’s mother as she clamped both hands over her mouth, trying to kill the last of her giggles, his expression still mostly bewildered.
18
CRACKED
THE CONVERSATIONS SEEMED to go on for hours.
I fought not to react to a lot of it. Mostly, I tried to calibrate my answers and demeanor to those of the others in our group, since I could tell I wasn’t really processing things “right,” at least not right then. I needed to get away from everyone else before I could think about any of this for real. I needed to just be alone, maybe stare at the water again for awhile and try to figure out what really made sense to me in all of this.
I mean, the words they spoke made sense.
Kali, and Uye, too, I had to assume, wanted to help us move most of our people off the ship, and set up a land-base somewhere. A number of different locations were tossed around, but we all agreed that if we went forward with something like that, then Revik and I and the rest of the team who intended to penetrate Dubai couldn’t know the details, at least not yet.
Apparently Kali had been dreaming of mushroom clouds, too, because she seemed anxious to see this happen soon...and to see the Dubai op happen soon, too.
I found myself remembering the anxiousness of Terian, too, in all of that, and while I still didn’t know if I could believe anything he’d said, or how I’d felt while he’d said it, a part of me couldn’t help finding parallels with the vibe I got off Kali as she talked to my leadership team.
Also, there was definitely something different about her light.
Wreg commented on it, too, and even Jon, the one time he tried to pull me aside to figure out what was going on with me.
By then, even Revik was giving me some amount of space, although he never wandered far, at least not until he had to return to the tank when his clock ran down again.
Until that time, though, I often found his eyes on me, as if measuring me, weighing my light. And yeah, I couldn’t really blame him.
The truth was, I still felt pretty unmoored in all of this.
Not like I was being pushed or pressured or anything, but more like circumstances were unfolding faster than my rational mind could keep up.
At the end of the day, though, I could feel the truth in Kali’s words.
I knew she was right. We needed to get our people off of the carrier.
We needed to do it soon.
I couldn’t see ahead, into the future...at least not the way that she could...but I could feel this thing, whatever it was. I could almost see it when I closed my eyes, like clouds massing on the horizon. But the idea of handing my kid over to these people, who were strangers to me still, at least to my rational mind, was enough to bring a panic to my light so intense that I almost couldn’t think past it. I knew that technically, these were Lily’s grandparents. I believed they were who they said they were, and probably would have, even without Revik, Balidor and even Tarsi there to back her story up.
It almost didn’t matter to me, though.
The idea of losing Lily again, so soon after we’d finally gotten her back, felt like being asked to hack off one of my own limbs. They could tell me it was temporary all they wanted, but some part of me hated the idea more than I could express...and even hated anyone who wanted to reassure me that it was okay.
I knew it was probably for the best, that I’d be keeping her safe, that it was only temporary.
I knew all of that...I just didn’t give a shit.
So I didn’t say a lot, by the end of that first day of talks.
By the time we’d returned to the ship, with plans to meet with Kali and Uye and the rest of them again the next day, I just wanted to sleep.
Revik had been forced to return to the ship long before me, of course...in fact, by the time I’d finally wrapped things up with the Children of the Bridge, he’d been back there for over three hours, so past the two-hour shut-in period he got stuck with as part of the deal. I suspected that frustrated him somewhat, but he was pretty quiet towards the end of those talks, too, so maybe he was having his own issues around Lily and whatever else.
He definitely still seemed to have some issues with Kali, although I tried to pretend I didn’t notice that...just like I tried to pretend that Dalejem wasn’t still staring at the two of us, too.
Anyway, by the time I returned to our room in the four-quadrant tank, Revik wasn’t there anymore. Instead, I found a note in his handwriting on the night table, saying he’d gone to talk to Yumi.
I didn’t bother to wonder about that, either.
I knew he’d been going to see her ever since we’d talked about it that day.
Anyway, at that point, I almost wondered if I should go see Yumi myself. When he was finished, I mean.
I was still thinking about that when I fell asleep on top of the bed with my clothes on. The only thing I managed to pull off before I passed out were my boots.
I WOKE UP to hands on me, light pulling at mine, his fingers sliding under my shirt to caress my skin. When I turned over from where I’d been lying on my side, facing one of the walls of the tank, it was still dark. His eyes were glowing faintly, though, enough that I could see the bare edges of his face. He kissed me before I could ask him anything, and his light was softer than I’d felt it in weeks...months maybe.
By comparison, I felt hard and closed and covered in edges.
I fought to open to him in return, to be there with him, and he kissed me again, blowing warmth over my light, caressing my back and sides with his fingers, nuzzling my face.
The sheer softness of him started to melt something in me.
I started to fall into him, into his light, even as I wrapped my arm around his back...
And he winced.
I felt it, felt the shock of pain in his light...sharply enough that I pulled back.
Confused, I looked up at him.
My heart started beating harder in my chest, long before my mind could turn over the new information. My light sparked, even as I met his gaze.
“What’s wrong with your back?” I said.
“Nothing.” He shook his head even as he kissed my cheek, pausing to press his briefly against mine. Pain slid through his aleimi, pulling at me, even as he lowered his face, kissing my neck, putting light in his tongue. “Allie...relax. Just let me be here for you. Please.” He kissed me again, slower that time, his voice affectionate, warm, full of light. “Did you take a shower? I can taste salt on you still...” he murmured.
But my confusion only worsened.
I started to reach for his back again, but he caught hold of my wrist, stopping me.
“Allie,” he said. “It’s fine.”
“But what happened to you?” I said. “What’s wrong with your back?”
He just looked down at me for a second, as if hesitating. Then he exhaled, letting his weight fall to his side, so that he was lying next to me.
“You went to Yumi, right?” I said. Turning my head, I looked at the timepiece shining faintly from the edge of his organic desk. “...Were you with Yumi all this time?”
Clicking softly, he resettled his body deeper into the bed. Combing his fingers through his hair, he sighed again, as if resigning himself to dealing with me.
Somewhere in that pause, the light in his eyes dimmed slightly, too, so that I could only just see him now, and mostly via the pale, white-green lights that shone from the bare edges of the floor, mostly so we wouldn’t bang into things if one us had to get up and use the bathroom in the middle of the night. In all of that, he was only a dark shape, his black hair only slightly blacker than his skin.
“Do you really want to talk about this now?” he said.
I stared at him, at where his face was, feeling that pa
in in my chest worsen.
“Talk about what?” I said. “What are we talking about?”
“Allie...” He reached for me, taking my hand. Threading our fingers, he blew warm light at me, along with another pulse of pain. I felt deeper emotions there, too...grief, something that felt like worry, maybe even guilt, a denser caution that edged into fear. “Allie, please. Today couldn’t have been easy for you. Please...let me try to help you with it. Even if you’re mad at me about Dalejem still...or for not telling you I’d met Kali and your father all those years ago...you need to open your light, darling. Let me be with you...please. That’s all I want. I want to be the one to help you for a change. Like you do for me...”
I fought to absorb his words, to even make sense of them.
“But where were you?” I said finally. “Where did you go?”
Releasing my hand, he rolled to his back.
I saw him wince again as he did it.
Or maybe I just felt it, in my light.
“Allie,” he said. “Please.”
“Just tell me,” I said.
Clicking softly, he shook his head, but not in a no. I felt resignation on him again, but not guilt, not that time. More, I got the feeling like he thought he was being deflected, that I was purposefully distracting him, avoiding what he’d said to me.
But was I deflecting? I honestly couldn’t tell.
All I knew was that the longer he lay there, not speaking, the more that pain in my chest grew. It began to spread, too, seeping lower and deeper, crawling into my belly until I felt sick, until my thoughts stopped making all that much sense to me.
The pain didn’t feel like separation. Not exactly, anyway.
“Did Yumi hurt you?” I said finally. “Did you ask her to?”
He shook his head, clicking again.
“No.” Hesitating, he shrugged with one hand, looking up at me. “Ullysa,” he said. “I asked her. Well...” He grunted a little. “...I hired her, really. She didn’t want money for it, but I insisted...” He trailed, as if feeling something off my light.
I felt him looking at me again, in the dark.
“Allie,” he said, his voice cautious that time. “She didn’t touch me.”
When I still didn’t speak, he exhaled again, his voice bordering on frustrated.
“I was totally closed down,” he said. “I could feel you closing down, especially after you went on that walk with Kali. I couldn’t feel you at all after that. It scared me. So I talked to Yumi, and when that didn’t help, I asked Ullysa. She’d done it for me before, back in Seattle, so I knew she could do it, without holding back...”
When I still hadn’t moved, I felt him watching me again.
“Allie,” he said, softer. He shifted to his side again, moving closer to me on the bed. “I did it for you. For us...for Lily. We can’t keep doing this...circling one another like this. It’s bad enough when I’m doing it. But you’re doing it now, too. I thought maybe this would help...that I could help you with it, if I could just open up more myself...”
He reached for my hand again.
But something about that was too much.
It finally snapped me out of wherever my mind had gone, too.
I didn’t want him to touch me.
I don’t know if I pulled away or I recoiled. Either way, I moved, and I felt him flinch. Feeling him staring at me then, his breathing coming faster in the dark even though I still couldn’t see him, I slid backwards on the bed, again moving before my mind really caught up with my light or my thoughts or anything he’d said. I don’t know if I was thinking about anything at all at that point.
That pain in my chest throbbed now. It hurt, blinding me to everything else.
I didn’t really know I’d gotten up, that I’d gotten out of bed and moved towards the door, until he was standing in front of me again, blocking my way.
I looked up at him then, and I could see his eyes again, glowing in the dark. I heard him saying words, but I couldn’t really make sense of any of them. He held my arm briefly, but I did something, pushed him maybe...I honestly don’t know.
I just know I got past him somehow, and then I was punching in the code.
I only remember for sure one thing I said to him.
At some point, in waiting for them to open the door, to let me out of there, I felt the need to warn him. I don’t know if I was worried I would hurt him, exactly...I don’t think I was thinking clearly enough to have that specific thought, not then...but some part of me apparently felt the need to warn him anyway.
So I looked at him, when I heard them opening the door from outside.
I remember him standing there, his shirt open, silent, his eyes still glowing faintly in the dark. I remember he was breathing hard, staring at me, and I could feel fear on him, maybe something more than fear, although my mind couldn’t make sense of that, either.
“You shouldn’t follow me,” I told him. “Just let me go, Revik.”
When I left the room, a few seconds later, he still hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken.
Well, not that I could hear him speak.
I DON’T KNOW how I got upstairs. I wasn’t wearing shoes.
I remember someone grabbing my arm, pulling me into the common room. I think it was Wreg, or maybe Jon...they’d been talking to me, about Kali, about Uye maybe, too. I know at some point, I looked up and saw Jon staring at me, full-fledged worry on his face, and Wreg stood next to him. Neither one of them was speaking at that point, so maybe it was the silence that finally snapped me out of wherever my brain had gone, versus their actual words.
“Allie,” Jon said then, gripping my arm tighter. “God, Allie. What happened? What’s wrong with you?”
The room seemed to lurch back into focus from his words.
The sound came back on, somewhere in those few seconds.
I realized it was loud where we were, and I winced at the noise. I felt conspicuous suddenly, standing in a room filled with people, their words echoing hollowly inside a metal room that suddenly felt both too big and too small at the same time. I saw Jon’s hazel, light-filled eyes staring into my face.
I heard his thoughts to Wreg then, even as Wreg got closer to me on the other side.
She looks like she’s in shock, Jon was saying. What the fuck happened?
I don’t know brother...it’s definitely shock, though. Her light. I’ve seen this on seers before. Usually when they lose family, or friends...someone they love dies...
Is this about her parents? Jon’s thoughts grew angry. Those fucking seers from today? Aren’t they with Tarsi somewhere?
I’m calling Nenz... Wreg muttered back, his thoughts holding a dense thread of worry, too.
Something about that snapped me out again though.
I looked at Wreg, meeting his obsidian black eyes.
“No.” I shook my head, once. “No. Don’t call him.”
Wreg blinked at me, his eyes holding an open surprise. I saw him look at Jon then, who gave him a nearly helpless look, holding up his hands.
Do I call him anyway? Wreg muttered into Jon’s mind.
I called Balidor. He said they can’t let Revik out of the tank, anyway. Two hour limit. We’d have to route him up here through a comm, and I don’t see that helping much right now, do you? Not if she can’t feel his light...
Two hour limit? Wreg stared at Jon. He’s been back here for fucking hours. Did he leave again?
I guess so, Jon sent, sounding confused. Balidor didn’t say where he was...he just said he had the full two hours again. Do you think this is about him? Revik?
Wreg frowned.
Then he looked back over one of his muscular shoulders, giving a swift but somehow slow-feeling look at one of the metal and plastic booths bolted to the deck floor against the far bulkhead. Following his gaze, almost without knowing I did it, I saw a group of seers sitting there. Only one of them was watching the three of us.
Green eyes, pale with violet rings around the ed
ges of his irises.
I glimpsed his face, the long, dark hair where he sat on the far side of Jorag, across from Jax and Neela and Mika, some of whom I realized had only just returned with Loki’s group. I saw Neela look at me, too. Maybe she felt my stare after another second or so ticked by. I winced at the concern I saw bloom on her oval face as she did a double-take, her eyes widening.
When Wreg looked back at me, what must have been only a second or two later, I saw him wince as he realized I’d followed the direction of his stare. He caught hold of my arm then in his thick, muscular fingers. I followed mutely, letting him and Jon lead me further away from that booth, until I stood on the other side of the mess hall with the two of them.
Mess hall.
My brain found things to hold onto in that understanding.
Like the fact that we now stood next to an espresso maker someone had installed after we left Canada, supposedly for me and Jon. It was meant to be a joke of sorts, but yeah, Jon and I both used it, just about every day. A lot of the other seers used it, too.
My mind restructured around that, too, finding my own location in the map I carried around in my light, of the basic layout of the ship. Officer’s areas. Not far from the CIC. We were in the smaller cafeteria, the one for the infiltrators, mainly the senior ones, and those who actually ran things here. So Adhipan. Wreg. Me and Revik...
I flinched again, closing my eyes.
Wreg gripped me tighter in his hand.
“Princess,” he said. He pulled me closer to him, so that his mouth was by my ear. “I’ll call Yumi,” he murmured to me. “Is that all right? Can I call her?”
I tried to think about that, too.
But I couldn’t imagine talking to anyone right then. I really just wanted to go to sleep.
I thought about asking Jon and Wreg if I could crash in their room, then remembered they’d only just come out of their honeymoon with one another...they were newlyweds. They didn’t want someone crashing in their bed.
Allie's War Season Four Page 101