“Allie, it’s okay,” Jon said. “It’s fine...”
He was holding my other arm now, and worry leaked into his voice, making me flinch again.
“...You can sleep in our room,” Jon added, looking at Wreg. “It’s fine. Isn’t it? We’re both totally good with that, Allie...”
“Of course, princess,” Wreg said, stroking my hair back from my face. “You can stay with us. For as long as you want. It is no trouble at all...”
I shook my head, though, trying to extricate myself from both of them.
I could feel their light around me, suffocating me now.
They wanted to help, I could feel that they wanted to help, but I felt the rest of it, too, the wanting to put me somewhere, to manage me, to call Revik and Yumi and whoever else. I could feel them calling Balidor in the background, talking to Yumi, to Chandre, to Tarsi...
I felt Kali in that somewhere, and winced again, grimacing that time.
“No,” I said. My voice came out forceful, loud, even to my own ears. “No,” I said again, shaking my head. “Please. Just leave me alone...I’ll go up on the deck.”
“Allie,” Jon said, at a loss. “No. You can’t go up there. You’ll freeze...”
She can’t sleep right now, either, Wreg murmured to him. It’s not a good idea, brother. Balidor says she could go into the stasis, and we can’t afford that right now...if she goes somewhere where we can’t find her and falls asleep...
I understand...we can try and keep her here. Jon sent, frowning at me, his hazel eyes shining in the oddly green organic lights. Where the hell is Balidor? Is he bringing that seer with him? Kali? Or the other one?
I don’t know. They’re coming though...him and Tarsi and Yumi at least...
I shook my head, shutting my eyes against the voices swirling around me.
Jon caught hold of me with both of his hands. He gripped me, harder when I closed my eyes. When I refused to open them, he shook me a little, making my stomach lurch more, my head go loose on my neck.
“Allie!” he said, his voice sharp. “Allie! You need to stay here. Don’t go to sleep, okay? Wreg says you can’t go unconscious right now...it’s not good for you...”
I hadn’t realized I’d been trying to leave until he stopped me. I fought to get free of him, to get free of both of them, but Jon only tightened his hold on me.
“Allie,” he said. “We need you to stay here, okay?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. I pushed at him. I wanted to go up on the deck. I wanted to look at the water, get away from all of the voices, but I knew they’d only follow me.
“Yes,” Jon said, his voice firm. “Stay here, okay? Please, Al. Please.”
He sounded nearly in tears.
I tried to pull away a third time, and he yanked me closer to him, away from the door.
I didn’t think that time.
I slammed out with my light, letting it explode out of me.
It happened so fast, I don’t even know when I opened my eyes. When I did, I saw the effects as they happened, slow motion, the sound once more sucked out of the room, or maybe just out of my head, out of any part of my body that might hear it.
I watched Jon stumble backwards.
I saw his arms move, his hands grasp open air as he skidded across the floor. A weird déjà vu came over me as I watched him. I pictured glasses falling, bouncing and shattering on and around a rubber mat behind a diner counter...a younger Jon, with slightly different eyes, more meat on his body, a rounder face.
But there were no glasses this time.
He wore different clothes, his shoulders were broader, he no longer had two of his fingers, and his eyes shone with a faint light I could see even as he moved away from me. He let out a low grunt as he hit the wall by the espresso maker.
And suddenly, the room was really really quiet.
I blinked my eyes, fighting to see through the light in my irises.
Once I had, I saw Wreg standing between me and my brother, his black eyes wide, his whole body trembling, shaking with adrenaline and fight. He held up one hand towards me, putting the entirety of his muscular bulk between me and Jon. Tears filled Wreg’s eyes as I watched, confusing me. Behind him, Jon leaned against the wall, gasping. He had his arm wrapped around his own chest, and I saw fear in his face, and in his eyes as he stared at me, fighting for breath.
I felt pain on him, physical pain, although he fought to control it.
“Esteemed Sister,” Wreg said, his voice loud, holding light, enough light to confuse me again. He raised his hand higher, his expression openly fearful. “Please! Please do not hurt my mate. He wants only to help you...please...do not hurt him. Hurt me...please, hurt me, instead...”
“Wreg, get away from her!” Jon said loudly, his voice holding fear, even as he continued to fight to catch his breath. “Get away from her...now, goddamn it!”
I stared at Wreg. Blinking, I looked at Jon standing behind him.
Some part of me couldn’t really put the two things together.
I couldn’t make sense of what Wreg was saying to me, either. Whatever caused that fear on his face, I knew I’d done it. Whatever made that pain and fear come off Jon’s light, I knew I’d done that, too...and now Wreg’s body and light exuded pain as well, as he stood between us, protecting Jon from me. I fought with my mind, trying to make it work, even as a denser anger slid through me, as I could feel them converging on me now, coming for me like I was some kind of wild animal that needed to be tranked and thrown into a cage.
Maybe they were right.
I thought about Revik downstairs, in his own kind of cage, and tried to remember what I’d said to him. Something about trying to remember that, the exact words that passed between us when I last saw him...it just kind of killed my anger, though.
It left me tired again, and kind of lost.
I looked around at all of them, feeling them staring at me.
I saw Ullysa sitting there, watching me, her eyes wide, holding more understanding than the rest of them. I looked at her, at her flawless face and violet eyes and long, perfectly coiffed red hair, and it hit me that the two of us had sat there, in that same booth along with Chandre and Hondo and Neela, just a few nights before. We’d been playing cards.
Drinking drinks and playing cards and talking about the op in Macau.
Speculating about how that seer got ahold of a copy of the Lists.
I remembered Ullysa telling me about a boat ride she’d taken to Victoria with her last lover, and how I should still try to go with Revik sometime, whenever we...
But my brain didn’t want to complete that thought, either.
I was still staring in her direction when Ullysa rose slowly to her feet.
Moving carefully, but still with that grace of hers, that perfect, feminine way she moved and her movie-star body...she kept her eyes on my face, her light exuding grief as she began walking towards me. Her long red hair hung freely down her back, and I found myself staring at it, wondering if she’d worn the same dress with Revik.
He liked my hair down, too.
He liked dresses, I knew, also.
I didn’t wear dresses very often these days, but Ullysa seemed to wear them no matter where we were, or what we were doing. She still looked like a movie star to me, just like she had the first time I’d met her in that seer brothel she ran in Seattle.
Even in combat situations, she looked like that to me.
She was my friend. She’d been to my wedding.
“Sister,” Ullysa said. She held out a hand to me, her eyes filling with tears. “Sister. I am so sorry. I am so sorry...I thought...” She half-choked on the words, still staring at me. “I thought you knew about this. He told me you knew...that you approved of it...”
I fought to understand her, to make sense of her words.
“I thought you knew,” she said, softer. Tears ran down her face. “He told me you knew, sister...that you’d spoken about this. I thought he had permission...”
Before I could get past the look on her face, Wreg raised his voice.
“Sister!” he growled. I heard understanding in his words. Even more, I felt it in his light. His voice grew harsh, openly angry. “Get the fuck away from her. Now!”
Ullysa stopped in her tracks.
She didn’t look away from me, though.
“Do you want to be dead, sister?” Wreg snapped. “Is this a death wish you have?”
I felt her wanting to talk to me still, but she listened to Wreg, reluctant. Or maybe she felt the same thing he did. Maybe she saw it in my face...I honestly don’t know.
In any case, I felt what Wreg felt.
On me. In my light.
By then, I felt all of it.
I looked at Ullysa herself, understanding more every second, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be here anymore. Morever, it made sense to me now, what Wreg was saying. She really shouldn’t get close to me. I remembered Kali looking at me on the beach, and the pain in my chest worsened, until I couldn’t breathe. I remembered Dalejem staring at us, and the look in Uye’s blue eyes...Revik squeezing my fingers until they hurt.
“I’m so sorry, sister,” Ullysa said, her voice almost a whisper.
She was crying again, but I couldn’t make sense of that, either.
I have to go, I thought to myself. I may have said it aloud, or only in my mind, repeating it louder, until the words penetrated, impelling me into action.
I had to go...to get out of there. Now.
Somewhere in that, I acted.
I moved, turning away from all of them.
I moved through the room, aiming my feet for one of the doors.
I felt Jon’s light on me again, that pain in him, somewhere, coupled with a worry that was almost cloying now, that fought its way into panic. I felt Balidor coming, Yumi, Wreg, Neela from the booth, Ullysa...
I felt the seer with the green and violet eyes. I felt Tarsi...Kali.
The one person I didn’t feel was Revik.
All of them...all of us...bottled up in thick walls and one-way windows.
I started walking. I didn’t know where I was going, but I wasn’t sure if that mattered, either. I have a memory of standing on the deck of the carrier, but I don’t know if it’s real or something I simply wanted. I think it was real. I remember feeling the wind and air go through me. I remember looking at the ocean, listening to the pounding of the engines through the wake...but at some point, someone came towards me there, too, and I left before they could reach me, feeling their light as it approached.
I could tell I wasn’t acting right, that something was wrong with me.
I couldn’t sleep. They said I couldn’t sleep.
So I needed to go somewhere to think.
I needed to go somewhere where I didn’t have to feel their lights, where I didn’t have to feel their emotions pounding at me like the engines pounded the surf. I could feel myself being hunted by all of them, all of them wanting to pull me back inside my own tank, back into a cell where I could bang my hands on the walls and no one would hear me anymore.
I don’t know how I ended up at the door I did.
I don’t remember deciding to go there. I’m not even sure how I knew whose room it was. But I knocked on the outside panel, hitting it with my fist and fingers until someone opened up, and when I saw the person standing there, I felt an inordinate amount of relief.
“Allie!” Angeline stared at me in bewilderment, wearing fuzzy pajamas and a t-shirt from a human band. “Allie...it’s the middle of the night. Are you okay?”
I don’t know if I said anything to her.
All I know is, at some point, I wasn’t standing outside in that green and gray hallway anymore. She pulled me inside, and shut the door behind me, and for the first time, it felt like things stopped spinning in the light and dark corners of my mind.
For the first time, everything went still.
19
SMASHED
I HEARD THEM at the door, of course.
Hours had passed.
It was daylight again. I mostly just sat in the back area of their connected rooms, relieved beyond words that I didn’t have to be the one to talk to any of the people who had come there, looking for me...that I didn’t have to answer the door, either, but could sit there, on the couch, watching Sasquatch play first-person-shooter games on the wall monitor of the larger room they’d turned into a common space.
Every now and then, someone would hand me a beer.
Sometimes, they’d hand me something stronger than that.
I’m not sure what I told them exactly, in those first few hours.
I still hadn’t slept, but I felt calmer now, if only because no one was bothering me for anything, or trying to get me to do anything, or asking me to decide anything. Four bedrooms connected into the common space where I spent most of the night. The occupants that lived in those rooms came and went, along with those of the four rooms across the hall and a few others also in this part of the human residency area. I should have known but didn’t know, not until then, that my old friends from San Francisco had formed a kind of social focal point for some of the younger crowd on the human Displacement List.
They were mini-celebrities among the human Listers, too, I found.
Jaden lived in one of those four rooms.
Being my ex-, working for Dante, he was already high up on the food chain. Sasquatch and him shared a room. Angie and Frankie shared another.
The humans were doubled up, just like most of the seers, especially those who weren’t in sensitive positions. I knew some of the seers were four to a room, so this wasn’t unusual, but it still created a feeling of unreality, like being transported back to the dorms at SF State.
Every now and then, someone knocked on the door.
I heard voices I recognized.
Usually Angie answered, and when I shook my head after the first few, she stopped asking me if I wanted to see them, and just told them to go away.
I heard them tell her things, too.
Don’t let her sleep...not until she starts to act more coherent, Balidor said.
She should get checked out by one of us before she sleeps...a seer, I mean... I heard someone else say, maybe Yumi.
It’s a form of light shock, maybe connected to the events of the previous year...
Someone else said that. A male voice that time, maybe Balidor again, or Wreg, or Jon.
I heard Jon there again, not long after.
His back still hurt, his light, but I felt his frustration more than anything, his wanting to talk to me. I felt him mad at Revik, at Balidor, at Kali, at Ullysa. I felt him wanting to talk to me, but I told Angie not to let him in, either.
Someone else came to the door, too...later, I mean.
Hours later, I suppose.
That person didn’t say much, at least not where I could hear it.
I didn’t hear his actual voice at all, not at first, but I felt his light.
He stood there for a long time, and I felt him arguing with Angie, trying to get her to let him in. I felt him tell her that she wasn’t helping me, that none of them were helping me, whatever they thought, and whatever I told them. I felt him threaten to force his way in. I felt him say that one of the seers had to see me, that they had to let at least one of the higher-ranked seers check me out, to make sure I was all right...that it didn’t have to be him.
Jaden heard or felt something, too, because he frowned, looking at me. He sat on a different couch in the same room, across from the one where I sat.
Not long after that, Jaden went to the door, too.
He slammed it not long after, and locked it, but before that, I heard voices raised. I heard Revik’s voice that time, loud, angrier than maybe I’d ever heard it, but I felt the fear there, too.
I didn’t care. I closed my eyes through most of that, and just willed him to go away.
Eventually, he did.
Truthfully, I was surprised none
of them had forced their way in by now.
I’d been expecting one of them to. I was relieved beyond words that they hadn’t.
Angie stayed with me most of that night, and Sasquatch, although he didn’t say much. Frankie sat on the floor and laughed and complained about men being jerks and told me I should let Revik stew until he figured out he couldn’t be such an asshole and get away with it. Jaden played video games with Sasquatch when Frankie wasn’t playing, and did things on a hand-held and talked to Dante on the comm about things to do with the Displacement Lists.
I felt him watching me through most of it, though, staring at me, even when he wasn’t looking at me with his eyes. I felt his attention on me, and after awhile, I struggled to deal with that, too. Mostly, I fought to ignore it.
The night passed slowly into day that way, and Sasquatch handed me a blunt somewhere in that, and I smoked it, unthinking, then coughed because my lungs hated it...hated the smoke, and hated the taste of it...and then I worried I might fall asleep after all.
But I didn’t fall asleep.
A few more hours must have passed, another interval, another period of time on the clock where they freed Revik from his cage.
He came back and pounded on the door again, but no one answered it that time. I told them it wouldn’t do any good, that he could unlock it with his mind, which seemed to make all of them nervous, maybe even scared, but he didn’t open the door that way, either.
I felt grief on him. I felt him trying to talk to me.
I don’t think I was angry, even.
I just wanted him to leave me alone.
I wanted silence, and in this room, even with Frankie chatting mindlessly about the guy she had a crush on from down the hall and the explosions and music from the monitor as Sasquatch kept playing video games and the sound of Jaden talking to Dante on the comm, it felt quiet in here, almost weirdly peaceful, maybe just with the mundanity of it all.
I knew it wouldn’t last, this vacation from reality.
But after Revik went away the second time, he stayed away longer.
Another night came. Then another day.
Kali came by, somewhere in that, but I told them not to answer the door that time, either, and eventually, she went away, too.
Allie's War Season Four Page 102