“The Council of Seven. And their dogs, the Adhipan.”
Jon just looked at him for a moment, his brow furrowed.
“So Vash is a diabolical mastermind?” he said. “Really? Because he seems an awful lot like a nice old guy in a robe. I’ve seen him laugh just staring at his own toes, Revik...”
Revik gave him a flat look. “I’m saying, it’s an ideology. It’s not real, Jon. Vash is victim to it as much as the rest of them are...even with his wisdom. I mean him no disrespect...I believe he is a good man...and a gifted seer. But he is a product of his generation.”
“Really? His generation, huh?” Jon tried to wade through the seer’s words, to understand the logic that tied them together in his mind. Oddly, he recognized that Revik was actually being friendly towards him. In his own way, he was trying to teach him something again, to let him in on the secret truth that he saw Jon as missing.
“Okay,” Jon said. “So we’re clear...all that good and evil stuff, right and wrong, treat others decently...it’s just crazy, huh? Not real?”
“No,” Revik said, looking at him. “It isn’t.”
“So everything you told me before...it was all bullshit, too?”
Revik’s mouth tightened.
For an instant, Jon thought he might react, get angry once more. Then he seemed to shrug it away with his other hand, seer-fashion.
“If you mean before I got my memory back, then yes. I was brainwashed too, Jon.”
“Uh-huh. Got it.” Jon continued to look at him, pursing his lips. Then, as if conceding the point, he shrugged. “Fine. Okay. You were brainwashed. I could buy that. After all, that’s what they’re saying about you now...and if it’s true, of course we’d believe you were the one brainwashed, not us, right?” When the seer didn’t answer, Jon counted off with his fingers.
“Vash is brainwashed. Allie, too...and me, of course.”
He laced his fingers together, gazing at the Elaerian’s face.
“...I suppose it goes without saying that all humans are brainwashed? And any of the seers who follow Code? And any of the seers who work with humans...?”
Revik leveled his stare on him once more.
“I thought you weren’t going to try and fuck with my head, Jon?” he said, exhaling another drag off the hiri. “Or did you imagine that my IQ dropped about 100 points, since they locked me up in here?”
“I’m not fucking with you, man,” Jon said, exasperated. “I’m just trying to make a point.”
“Little heavy with the hammer on that one, Jon...but yes, I take your point.”
“Well, let me ask you something else then,” Jon said. “Do you remember what you told me about the Dreng, Revik? When we were still in that prison...with Terian?”
Revik shook his head. “No.”
“No?”
“I can guess, Jon.”
“You don’t have to,” Jon said. “I remember exactly what you said. I remember it perfectly.” His voice sharpened. “You told me the Dreng were soulless Barrier beings who couldn’t produce any light of their own, so they were forced to steal it from others...”
When Revik clicked at him impatiently, Jon held up a hand, raising his voice.
“...You also told me that the functionality of the Pyramid consisted mostly of scraps they threw to their faithful seer-puppets down here. That they’d built the Pyramid mainly as a way to channel light effectively to themselves...that there were these large, feeding pools of humans, and that the Dreng pretty much just fed off them, 24/7. You also said they’d feed off their own seers happily enough, if they didn’t need them to keep the humans in line...”
“Jon...”
“You said they were parasites, Revik. Soulless. Dead. Parasites.”
Revik clicked at him again. “Symbiosis, Jon.”
“What?” Jon said, his voice incredulous again. “What does that mean?”
“It means seers benefitted from the relationship, too.” Revik’s eyes met Jon’s, holding a deliberate patience. “You want things to be black and white that just aren’t black and white. The world is more complicated than you want...than most seers in the Seven want. Than Allie wants. Many seers were rescued by the Rooks. Many, many seers. They did a lot of good.”
“Rescued?” Jon stared at him. “From what? To what?”
“You are talking about things you don’t understand.”
“I understand just fine. I just wish you’d just listen to yourself, man...”
Revik’s anger sparked. For the first time, his control over it snapped.
“So you are saying I did no good, just now? No good at all?” His accent grew stronger again, harsher. “You are saying the Registry job...this is all bullshit? That I saved no seers? That no one has a better life because of this?”
“No, man.” Jon shook his head. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what? I am the bad guy now? I do it the wrong way, saving lives?”
Jon gripped his own hair in frustration, then let it go with a noisy exhale.
“I’m saying that you can’t live off another being’s scraps,” he said finally. “That’s not free will, man. That’s slavery. And there’s no way you’re going to convince me that a bunch of parasites like that have your best interests at heart. They’ll reward you, like a good dog...no offense...but they’ll shoot you just as fast if you do something that pisses them off. I don’t think that kind of short cut ever pays off, Revik. Not in the long run.”
Rather than being offended, Revik only smiled, clicking again.
It was an indulgent, condescending smile.
“You have learned well, Jon. Speaking of dogs.”
“So,” Jon prompted, refusing to rise. “You’re going to tell me that beings like that...beings who aren’t alive, strictly speaking...who are just looking for ways to suck light off humans and seers, and to do so permanently, with a bunch of seer lackeys and a few thousand all-human light smorgasbords to supply their bottomless light habit...you’re telling me that every job they give you is going to be a Mother Theresa type thing?”
Revik turned on him, his eyes blazing. “You are missing the point, Jon.”
“Am I? Enlighten me, O Mighty Syrimne...”
“The Registry job was mine, Jon!” he snapped, slamming a fist against the floor. “Mine! Not the fucking Dreng’s! Not Salinse’s! It was my idea! I planned it! I executed it...”
Jon flinched as the chains smacked the organic floor.
Then playing back his words, he shrugged, unimpressed. “So they let you plan your own ops? How nice of them.”
“I’m nobody’s fucking slave, Jon!”
“Bullshit. You’re lying to yourself, man!” Jon said. “How do you explain how you ran back to them like you did? You abandoned your wife...your friends. You abandoned everything you claimed to care about. And for what? Allie told me Menlim tortured you. For years, he tortured you...he did everything but kill you in an attempt to break your will.”
Revik shook his head, clicking impatiently. “She is exaggerating.”
“Bullshit,” Jon snapped. “Don’t lie to me, man!”
“She doesn’t know. She wasn’t there, Jon.”
“Yeah, so if anything she doesn’t know the extent of it,” Jon said. “I saw you with Terian. I believe her, man...I think you could have withstood ten Terians, after what those sadistic fuckers did to you. And you go to them for help? You decide to join that little army again?”
“Menlim wasn’t there!”
“So you go to his family? How does that work?”
“You are a child, Jon,” Revik said, his voice cold. “You want a child’s explanations for things that are more complex...things that require more gradations in meaning. They had the resources I needed to make a difference. They were different people...under different leadership. They put me in charge. I’m not a goddamned child anymore, Jon! These aren’t the people who did that to me! I know Allie never understood that, but it is because she is
a child, too!”
Jon watched the anger worsen in the other’s eyes, but he saw the confusion there again, too. Gradually, both began to recede behind one of the harder masks.
Finally, Revik shrugged with one hand, taking another drag of the hiri.
His voice grew calm.
“Even if any of what you are saying is true,” he said, gesturing dismissively with his fingers. “...She can’t help me, Jon. Not if I’m understanding your meaning of ‘help’ in this context.”
He exhaled another plume of honey-scented smoke.
“In fact,” he added. “...I honestly don’t really know what that would mean. Before, the Council tried to do a number of things to me, and none of it – ”
“Yeah, I know,” Jon broke in. “I know all that, what they tried and what happened. But she’s going to do it herself, man. That’s why Vash thinks it might work. Before they couldn’t reach you. They had no access to your light that time...but you can’t keep Allie out. You can’t, even if you wanted to. She’s already a part of you.”
There was a silence.
Revik only stared at him through it. Crouched over his chained ankles, he held the recently lit hiri in his fingers, forgotten as it burned down to only a single, glowing ember, like an eye in the dark weed.
“What?” he said then. “What did you say?”
Jon hesitated, staring at the Elaerian’s face.
He saw the fear again in the other man’s eyes. It wasn’t a shadow that time, or a shimmer in the background, or hidden behind one of the Elaerian’s many masks. It stood out on the other male’s face like a shell, a hard visage that changed the set of his jaw, even the way his skin seemed to configure around bone.
Looking at him, in that moment, it crossed Jon’s mind that no matter what Allie told herself about what she was doing, or how hard she thought it would be...it would be harder.
He recognized the set of the face in front of him.
Not from Revik himself.
He’d seen similar things before, though, in students of his when he’d been a martial arts instructor in San Francisco. From time to time, he got sent people who were recovering from traumas of whatever kind...war veterans, police injured on the job, or police who had shot people. He got mugging victims, rape victims...even someone from SCARB once, although he’d been human, not seer. Jon started to learn a few things, in terms of who he could work with, and who he couldn’t, who might soften, and who would hold out, who would become a reliable fighter, and who needed a few years of therapy before they could be trusted in the ring.
Looking into Revik’s face, Jon knew, from the very core of his being, that the Elaerian wasn’t going to cooperate with her attempts to reach him. Whatever lived there, it scared him worse than any desire he might have to get better. It scared him more than torture, more than being locked up, more than anything they could do to him.
He would fight her, every step of the way...to the death if he had to.
Jon had another grim thought, as he stared at the male seer.
There was no way in hell Allie would succeed with him until that changed.
5
CHANDRE
CHANDRE WANDERED INTO the locker room behind the military-style barracks.
Without looking up, she stopped in one of the narrow aisles of the segmented room, unhooking the front of her vest and tugging at the heavy nylon tongue of her weapons belt.
Two other women, also seer, stood by lockers on the aisle across from her, each having just gotten out of the showers. Without looking over, Chandre listened to them speak with the back part of her mind even as she opened the metal locker in front of her.
“...The coup is still going on in the East,” another seer was saying. “But it's skirmishes mostly, now. My guess is, the rebels are using whatever resources they have left to look for their leader. They don’t have the numbers to go after the Lao Hu now...”
Chandre’s hand halted in its path.
Hesitating only a heartbeat, she lay her gun belt on the bottom of the locker, glancing over at the seers only for half a breath.
“...The Bridge still hasn’t surfaced.” The woman gave a scornful laugh. “She won’t, either, if she’s got half a brain. She’d be lucky to live the day in a major city with any seer population at all. Especially after that debacle in Hong Kong. She hasn't claimed responsibility, but who else could have pulled that shit? Spraying the demonstrators with some kind of deadly nerve agent?” Exhaling with a snort of disgust, she shrugged. “...Anyway, she's bonded to the Sword, so the rebels won't kill her at least. They'd probably just torture her for a few years, then throw her in a work camp for the rest of her life, once they found her mate..."
"So you think he's still alive then?" The woman's companion said. "The Sword?"
That time, Chandre turned.
The first woman shrugged. "He has to be, right? Even if she's as cold as they say, she'd have to be suicidal to kill him outright..." She smirked. "No, she's probably got him locked away somewhere. Playing with him when she gets bored..."
Chandre frowned. She couldn't help herself.
As she did, she focused her dark red eyes on the two females sitting on the opposite bench.
The one who had spoken the most, a younger, willow-thin brunette, looked familiar to Chandre. She remembered her name as Draya, and knew her to be one of the agents who worked directly with Secret Service. She helped guard the White House shields. Not many seers were allowed free access within the White House walls since the incident with the last president, so Chandre knew she had to be well-connected within SCARB’s hierarchy.
Even a seer like this would have human handlers, however.
Given that she was female, the likelihood that she also took human lovers within the hierarchy was likely. It wasn’t a cause for accusation, or even disapproval, from Chandre’s perspective...merely a statement of reality.
Anyway, the female seer was attractive. She also seemed to know it.
Draya turned her dark blue eyes to the side, shuffling through an identical-looking locker that stood opposite a narrow alcove. She wore only a bra and a short skirt that looked like the bottom half of a business suit.
“...Lao Hu against the rebels, d’Gaos! It should solve our problems here, yes? But nothing is so easy. And who knows what that bitch will do next? She seems to follow no codes at all, not of any of the affiliated seers...the hierarchy is going crazy, trying to figure out her strategy." Draya arched an eyebrow at her companion, snorting. "They don't seem to understand she simply may not have a strategy. Or perhaps her only real strategy is to look out for number one...the hell with whoever gets in her way, even if she happens to be married to them.”
Chandre had frozen again, unable to hide her emotional reaction.
Feeling her chest constrict, she glanced at the woman’s companion, a dark-haired, Asian seer named Talei. Talei’s dress marked her as an insider, too. Neither of these women were running field ops, or jogging beside limousines.
Noticing her stare, Talei gave Chandre a warning look.
Draya clicked softly, a humorless sound that pulled Talei’s eyes back to her.
“What do you think?" Draya said. "She still has him, right? It has to be her...his wife. She either has him, or has sold him to the Chinese. It has to be true, yes?”
"I don't know," Talei said, noncommittal. "Perhaps."
That time, when she turned, Chandre found Draya looking at her, too, having noticed the reaction in her light this time.
“Is our conversation entertaining you, kneeler?” she said, her voice faintly hostile.
Chandre didn’t answer. Pulling the braids out of her face, she tied them with a scrap of cloth she’d left at the bottom of her locker, then sat down on the metal bench, unlocking the straps holding the high leather boots to her feet. She didn’t glance up as Draya continued speaking.
Still, Chandre heard every word.
“...They think now the whole alliance was stag
ed.” Draya spoke more loudly, knowing Chandre was listening. “She infiltrated his compound, tranked him in his own bed...”
She snorted in low amusement, shaking her head.
“...I don’t know if the cunt deserves a medal or the gas chamber. I suppose it will depend on who she sells him to in the end.”
Talei frowned, her light gold eyes narrowing slightly.
Again, she glanced for the barest breath at Chandre.
“Gaos,” she said. “That’s cold. She did that to her own mate?”
Draya shook her head, clicking softly. “From what I hear, the Bridge isn’t exactly a warm one with any of her brothers and sisters.” Her blue eyes shifted to Chandre. “...She let that Lao Hu bitch clean up. They stripped the rebel fleet, took their weapons, all of the equipment they had assembled. The seers they took, they gave a choice...the high-ranked ones were offered a position in their infiltration teams...”
Chandre felt the woman’s eyes on her back once more.
“...The low-ranked ones had to swear off their allegiance to the Sword.” Her voice grew even colder. “She burned the tattoos off them, sister. The sword and sun, a sacred brand...she burned it right off their arms. The way they do those tats, they’d lose a good quarter-inch of flesh getting those off...”
Chandre felt her jaw harden, but she didn’t look up, rolling socks over her feet. Standing, she threw a sweatshirt over the T-shirt she’d worn under the armor during exercises, then sat down again, picking up her lighter shoes.
“What about you, kneeler?” Draya’s voice rose from the bench. “You must have seen her over there, when you worked for those hypocrites, the Seven?”
Chandre considered not answering. Tugging on one of her tennis shoes, she tied the laces, yanking them tight over her socks.
She conceded then, with a flowing gesture of her hand.
“I saw her, yes.”
“Could she have done this?” Talei, the Asian with the gold eyes, asked.
It struck Chan that Talei’s voice held shock, rather than anger...shock and genuine wonder. Thinking about her question, Chandre felt her jaw harden.
Keeping her thoughts shielded, she shrugged again.
Allie's War Season Two Page 62