I found myself looking closer, staring at some of the structures I could see higher up in her aleimi.
Careful, wife... Revik blew at me softly.
I felt my irritation return at that, but not at him.
I sent a pulse of something along the lines of fuck the rules back at him, and felt a glimmer of amusement from Revik in return.
But Lily wasn’t having any of my distractions that time, either. Climbing directly into my lap, she wrapped her arms around my neck and began talking quietly into my ear. Of course, she was no where near as stealthy as she seemed to think she was, so I could tell Revik heard most of what we talked about.
“Are you mad at Daddy?” she said in my ear.
I smiled, shaking my head at her. “No.”
“Not even a little?” she said, frowning that time, and forgetting to be as quiet.
“Not even a little,” I told her, still smiling.
She pursed her lips, thinking about my answer.
“Was he mean to you?” she said then, trying to get at the truth by a different angle. “Is that why you were gone?”
I thought about that. Then, not wanting to lie to her, I tilted my hand, a seer’s form of ambivalence, what bordered on a shrug.
“Maybe he said some things at a bad time,” I admitted.
From the couch, Revik grunted.
Lily glanced over at him, then back at me. “Uncle Wreg and Uncle Jon are really mad at him,” she informed me.
I nodded to that information, glancing at Revik.
“They are, are they?” I said, quirking an eyebrow.
“Yes,” Lily said, looking at Revik, too. “They think that’s why you went away and didn’t come to visit me for so long.”
Revik didn’t look up that time, and his light remained quiet. I saw him shifting his weight on the couch, though. I also saw his mouth tighten under the shadow of his arm.
“Are you mad at Daddy?” I asked Lily then, turning back towards her. “Is that why he has to take a nap?”
From the couch, I felt a softer pulse of humor. I felt the sadness underneath that, too.
I only looked at Lily, though.
After a few seconds, she shook her head. I felt relief in her light, even as her arms tightened around my neck.
“No,” she said. “No, I’m not mad at him. I just didn’t want him to be mean.”
I laughed, hugging her back. “He’s almost never mean, honey.” I glanced at Revik then, still grinning. “...Although he has his moments.”
“So does Mommy,” Revik grunted from the couch.
I felt the relief in his light, though, and again found myself wondering what had been going on for the past few days. I definitely got the sense that Revik himself didn’t want to talk about it, whatever it was. Well, not then, anyway. Knowing him, probably not until at least some of the emotional fallout had blown over.
Lily was playing with my hair though, and I felt her light weaving back into mine, a near relief in her as she relaxed into my arms and aleimi.
Remembering again just how young she was, and how often Revik and I weren’t in here, I fought back another ripple of pain on my own light. Thinking about my friends back in San Francisco with their kids, and what their lives had been like––at least before the nightmare of the last few years––didn’t exactly help. They spent most of their time with their kids, especially when they were this young.
In fact, they were with them pretty much 24/7.
On the other hand, I knew that most seers were forced to give their children up even younger than this, and had done it routinely since World War II, when trade in live seers had exploded out of Asia. Most seer parents had their kids sent to schools with military-grade protection, usually at least half-run by the Adhipan and the rest run by monks.
That had been true right up until the whole C2-77 mess.
It was still true, in some parts of the world. In fact, some of our people––meaning ‘Dori’s people, operating out of Asia––still worked at seer schools located in the mountains.
Thinking about this, I found myself sliding deeper into Lily’s light, almost without knowing I did it. I felt Revik hovering over the two of us from the limited Barrier field inside the tank, and gently pushed him back, if only to get a better look at Lily herself. I only realized I was targeting the structures that Shadow had put there once Revik moved accommodatingly out of my way. Once he did, I found myself following threads across and through the higher structures in Lily’s aleimi, looking at things in her that I’d never seen before, and not only because I’d been following security protocols and staying away from that part of her light.
I could see more now, for some reason.
From the couch, Revik grunted again.
I looked over at him questioningly, but instead of speaking to me, Revik addressed Lily.
“Mommy’s light is different now, isn’t it?” he said.
I looked at Lily, startled.
Lily only nodded, though, that serious look on her round face, a face that looked so much like Revik’s suddenly––at least, the younger version of Revik I remembered from the Barrier––that I grinned, squeezing her impulsively.
“I do?” I said to her. “I look different?”
Lily looked up at me, squinting at the empty space above my head.
“It’s different,” she agreed, talking mostly to Revik. She continued to look up, her small mouth pursed, jutting out her lips. “It’s...more colors now.”
Revik grunted again. “Yes,” he said only. “What else?”
“It’s more...” Lily paused, and I could almost see her thinking about words. “...More high up. More pictures in it.”
Revik nodded. “I see more pictures, too,” he told her.
I glanced at him, but he didn’t meet my gaze.
“Her eyes look different, too,” Lily said, her voice more confident that time. She turned, staring up at my face. “Do you see that, Daddy? Mommy’s eyes are different...”
Revik nodded again, settling his head back on the armrest. “Yes. I saw.”
I frowned a little, but didn’t try to get his attention that time.
“What happened to her?” Lily said then.
Revik clicked softly, under his breath. He made a vague motion with one hand, one that came off like a shrug, but had a more nuanced meaning in seer, something along the lines of, only the gods know for sure, from what Wreg had taught me.
Lily continued to look at him where he was stretched out on the couch. As she stared, I felt a flush of pain off her light. That time, it felt aimed at Revik.
I realized that she’d missed Revik, too.
Not because he hadn’t been in here...I could feel from both of them that he had been, at every time increment they allowed him to be. I more got the sense that Lily herself had remained aloof from him during those sessions. I glimpsed pieces of the last few times he’d been in here, and I could feel her avoiding him with her light.
I didn’t probe either of them too deeply for specifics. It felt like it was between the two of them. That being said, I was pretty pissed off at Jon and Wreg.
From the couch, Revik clicked again softly.
When I looked over, I saw that relief in his light again, along with love in his eyes.
“Don’t be, wife,” he said, his voice soft.
I nodded, noncommittal. I didn’t answer him outright, though.
I was looking at Lily’s light again.
I could see everything now, including those fine, dark threads Balidor warned me and Revik about, the ones that had been woven there by Shadow. I could see where they spiderwebbed around the natural light structures over her head, like an infestation of micro-fine plant roots. Looking at them made me feel sick. I could see them structuring and rechanneling Lily’s light, even here, cut off from direct contact with the Dreng.
Those tiny threads were the reason Lily remained a prisoner inside her tank, unlike Revik and Maygar. We knew that if we gave Shadow and th
e Dreng access to her light, they’d continue to warp her development. Eventually she wouldn’t be able to do anything without them... just like how Revik was after Menlim broke and rebroke and regrew structures in his light.
From what Balidor said, it had been different with Revik. He’d been older when Menlim got his hands on him. Even though he’d still been ridiculously young, he’d previously lived with parents who loved him, who coccooned him in protection and light, who helped him develop those most basic, primitive structures that tied him to this world.
It had taken repeated traumas to break Revik’s light enough to give Menlim the same level of control over him.
But Lily, he’d had as a tiny embryo, long before she would have been born, if she’d been allowed to develop normally. I could feel now just how early he’d started planting and nurturing those metallic threads in her. He’d started it long before she’d been viable, even with how he’d manipulated her development to speed it up.
I could see her there, floating in a tank, surrounded by his fucked up scientists.
I could see Terian there, too.
I shook off the image, but not before it brought another flush of pain, and a denser feeling of helpless and grief-filled rage. I fought the memory of Cass’s words to me, right before they put me under in my mother’s bedroom in San Francisco. I fought out the image of her face, smiling down at me, the satisfaction in her expression. It was too much.
Even now, it was just too much.
And anyway, thinking about all of that wouldn’t help Lily.
Going closer to those dark threads, I frowned again, following with my eyes and light where Shadow had deliberately wound the new structures into her aleimi, breaking down parts of her natural framework in the process. I could see now, what he’d done... beyond just the cloud of shadowy spiderwebs that Balidor had shown me before. I could see the actual mechanics of what he’d removed and replaced and shifted around.
It quickly became clear that Shadow had deliberately targeted the threads that tied Lily’s light to her physical body. They were the most “semi-dimensional” aspects of her light, those that powered the body itself as well as providing the interface between Lily’s physical body and the parts of her that existed solely inside the Barrier. Rather than allowing those connecting threads to grow naturally––as they did in normal seer children––he’d disrupted that development process entirely.
In looking at her, I also remembered what Revik had told me about seer children, long ago, while we were still on that cruise ship along the Alaskan coastline. He’d told me young seers lived only halfway in their bodies, even compared to seer adults. He said seer children were scarcely here at all until they were about twenty or thirty, and didn’t fully develop until they were closer to forty. He also told me most of those connections between the Barrier and the physical were developed through practical application––meaning as the muscle flexed versus sprouting up fully-formed.
In other words, it happened as seer children learned to operate their light.
As they were taught to split their consciousness, shield, read minds, use pushes, time jump, share light, and all of the other Barrier skills seer children learned as they got older, those same skills––in some ways, ironically––strengthened their connection to their physical bodies, too.
Revik only explained the how part to me briefly, but I remembered him saying something about it clarifying the whole “me” / “not-me” bipolarity, which was intrinsically physical, since those kinds of distinctions didn’t exist in the same way inside the Barrier.
I’d sort of understood that, too, even back when Revik first explained it.
Now, looking at Lily’s light, I could almost see it.
I could see the places where Menlim had broken threads, burning them out of existence before they’d been allowed to grow and thicken under the natural resonances of Lily’s light. After altering, breaking and removing those fluid, light-filled, living threads... he’d replaced them with the cloying, metallic, rigid and somehow dead light of the Dreng.
I stared at those connecting points, looking at where they began and ended.
I looked at how he’d fractured pieces of her light, fusing them with the strands of the Dreng, and how those strands had grown right into the structures through forced resonance.
It was like grafting the branches of a tree together.
Or maybe more like forcing that tree to grow into the side of a steel skyscraper.
In any case, I could see why Tarsi and Balidor warned me not to get my hopes up.
Unlike with Revik, that forced resonance with the Dreng wasn’t even the main issue.
The real issue was that nothing apart from the Dreng held Lily’s light to her body.
In literal truth, the Dreng now kept Lily alive.
Without those natural light connections, Lily needed them. Not just how Revik needed them, to keep his sanity by unifying the fractured parts of his personality––Lily needed them to exist in the physical world at all. Removing those Dreng structures without replacing them would kill her. From what I could tell by scanning Lily’s light, those structures wouldn’t simply regrow on their own. Not in time, anyway. Not before she died.
The problem was absolutely structural.
It was tied to the very fabric of who Lily was.
So yeah, Balidor was right. About Lily... and probably about Revik too, since apparently Balidor and Tarsi had seen something similar in Revik’s light. I hadn’t heard yet, whether Maygar or Cass suffered from the same problem.
I had to assume they did, to a lesser or greater degree. Cass especially.
Thinking about that, I frowned more.
I was still looking at those structures when a low tone came from the higher portion of one wall. The organic speaker there sparked to life a half-second later.
“Esteemed Bridge.” I recognized the voice as Balidor’s. It rose slightly, as if he’d twisted the volume knob on the speaker from the security station. “What is it that you are doing, exactly, my dearest of sisters?”
He must be monitoring the security console from the CIC.
Meaning the Barrier signature component.
Rolling my eyes, I continued to keep most of my attention on Lily’s light. “Examining my daughter’s light. Is that all right with you, my lovely brother?”
From the couch, Revik let out a low snort.
“Not really,” Balidor said. “Esteemed Sister, we discussed this––”
“No,” I said, cutting him off. “You did, ‘Dori. You discussed it... and I listened. Now, I’m overruling you.”
There was a silence.
When I glanced over at Revik, he raised an eyebrow at me in question. He didn’t speak though. More than anything, I felt curiosity on his light. Lily remained quiet, too, tugging on the necklace I wore with Revik’s ring on it. I could tell she was listening, too. I may have imagined it, but I swear I felt a vague glimmer on her light, something that felt like hope.
Maybe it was that. Maybe it was that bare whisper of faint, questioning hope I felt on both of their lights, but I sharpened my voice, making up my mind.
“What’s the current state of the construct?” I asked Balidor.
There was another pause.
“Meaning what, Esteemed Bridge?”
“Meaning...what is its current state? Any leaks? Is Shadow able to see past it, from what you can tell? From what any of the others can tell?”
Again, I got a curious ping from Revik.
It was a slightly more insistent one, that time.
I didn’t look at him right away. I continued to focus on the speaker in the organic wall.
“Why are you asking me this, Esteemed Bridge?” Balidor said.
Clicking a little under my breath, I shook my head. Smiling wryly, I glanced at Revik that time, meeting his gaze as I told Balidor the truth.
“I want to know if Shadow would be able to see my husband and daughter outside of the t
ank,” I said. “...If I were to remove their specific light connections to his construct that allow him to penetrate our construct now.”
Revik flinched, staring at me.
Allie... he sent, soft.
Seeing the sadness in his eyes only brought a flush of anger to my light.
“I’m tired of this bullshit!” I said, maybe to all of them. “I think I can get rid of the structures in Lily... and probably in Revik, too. But it’s going to mean taking both of them out of the tank. I can’t have either of them cut off from my light. Ideally, I’d like to use the other half of the Four to really strengthen this. What I can do on my own might not be enough to get them to regrow the structures they need to connect on their own...”
I felt my jaw harden more.
“They’ll need to be connected to my light until then. As in all the time,” I warned. “So no tanks, okay? Until I can figure out the rest. Is that clear enough?”
When I glanced at Revik that time, his eyebrows had gone up.
I could see him listening though, probably to hear what Balidor would say.
“Alyson,” the Adhipan leader said, clicking through the loudspeaker. “You could kill them. Both of them.”
“I’m aware of that,” I said. Even so, his words hit at me, hard enough to make me pause. I shook that off, too. “But I don’t see a good option. My...” I bit my tongue on the word, then refused to say it. “...Kali. She said that Lily wasn’t safe here anymore. That we were going to be targeted on the ship. If that’s true, then we need to be able to get Lily out of the tank. I want Revik with me in Dubai and we absolutely can’t risk that if he’s still tied into their construct.”
I looked at Lily, coiling my arm more snugly around her.
“I know it’s risky. I know that. But I really think I can do it. I wouldn’t be suggesting it, otherwise.”
There was another silence. I didn’t look at Revik in that one either, but felt him listening again, almost holding his breath.
I heard Balidor sigh, clicking, but there was a grudging admission in it now.
“You will also lose whatever intelligence your husband has managed to feed us off that connection,” Balidor reminded me.
“Yeah.” I grunted, giving Revik a look. I smiled for real that time, when I saw Revik roll his eyes, seer-fashion, showing his dismissal of Balidor’s words. “Intelligence that’s probably being tampered with,” I said, looking back at the organic speaker. “...If not fed to us outright. As you yourself have reminded all of us again and again, ‘Dor.”
Allie's War Season Four Page 108