“What?” he said, nudging her arm. “Don’t you like the Big Apple, Chan?”
“It is not a seer-friendly town, my brother.”
“Sure it is,” he said, grinning. He pointed at a marquee as they passed.
“Oh, I am terribly sorry,” she said curtly, clicking at him and rolling her eyes exaggeratedly. “I had forgotten how much they would love me if I agreed to put them in a box and whip them for a few hours, calling them a naughty, dirty boy...”
He laughed, leaning back in the beat-up leather seat of the sedan.
Chandre noticed he’d relaxed however, and seemed oddly at home in the honking and aggressive traffic of the lower part of Manhattan. As she watched humans milling on the street, seemingly an endless parade of them in all of their varieties, mixed in with VR projections from the ubiquitous ads that followed pedestrians down the street, Chandre found herself glad she'd brought her ownership papers and a gun.
She also found herself reluctant to use her sight, at least not conspicuously, where it might make her visible to other seers occupying the nearby Barrier space. Unfortunately, that meant the only people of her kind she could identify easily stood and walked on the street like overgrown dogs, wearing collars. Many even appeared to be leashed, literally, with their human masters grinning and holding leads as if they’d stumbled upon the winning ticket in some grand, genetic lottery. She had heard about this on the feeds...a new fashion trend among the rich and ethically retarded. Watching one of these rich idiots yanking on the throat of a female seer who looked only a few years older than the Bridge herself, Chandre found herself thinking maybe she should have brought two guns. Or at least a few more clips.
They passed more fetish shops, and a clothing store for human ‘sponsors’ to buy apparel for their owned seers. Chandre found herself gripping the padded dashboard with one hand as she peered through the windows of the latter, waiting for the light to change, half-hoping it would before she could see much inside the fogged windows. She glimpsed more of those leads in different colors, however, as well as what could only politely be termed as costumes. The outfits ranged from elaborate period clothing from a few hundred years back, to pink taffeta, studded leather and VR-panel minidresses with nothing but suspenders on top.
By the time the light changed, Chandre found herself biting her tongue hard enough to taste blood.
“Explain to me again why you live here, Maygar?”
Glancing in the rearview mirror at the same store, he frowned.
“Come on, Chan,” he said. “That shit is everywhere...it’s just more blatant here.”
“Which means more humans think it is okay,” she retorted.
He conceded to her words with a vague gesture. “Maybe.”
“There is no maybe, Maygar. Look at these worms..." Her eyes followed a human female wearing an expensive suit and yanking on a neon-pink lead attached to a young male seer, one of the few Chandre had seen. "...They have no regard at all for what they do," Chandre added angrily. "It is like our brothers and sisters are nothing more than shiny toys to them...”
Maygar grunted back, noncommittal.
Watching another female seer being led into an Italian restaurant by a twenty-something human wearing designer clothes and holding a metallic blue lead, Chandre felt her frown deepen. She turned, aiming a scowl at Maygar before her eyes drifted back to the window.
“Do you ever kill them at night, Maygar?” she said. “Walking the streets? Or are you too busy ‘passing’ at the local nightclubs, chasing human tail and trying to find ways to fuck it before they notice your cock isn’t quite what they envisioned on the dance floor...?”
He gave her a thin-lipped smile. “Only sometimes, sister Chandre.”
“Which part?” she snorted.
“Both.”
She smiled humorlessly, clicking at him. Leaning back in her seat, she folded her arms, grunting, “I would love to bring the Sword here. Even for one day. I would buy popcorn and simply watch from a safe distance...”
He gave her a look at that, his light exuding an open annoyance.
“What?” she said. “Tell me you would not do the same. Then tell me again how he is always wrong...and that there is never any cause for the hard path...”
Maygar didn’t answer that, either.
Chandre was still scanning faces and storefronts when he pulled the little green sedan into a side street just a few blocks east off Bowery, north of Canal. The amount of graffiti seemed to double within a block. She saw a few large paintings from the Myth archives, bordered by seer script, but most appeared to be English, and human. She supposed there weren't really enough seers with outing privileges for there to be much of a street-crime problem in the local seer community...if it could even be called that. Infiltrators and SCARB agents didn't generally tag, and house pets usually had other duties after dark. Thinking about this, Chandre felt her mood sour even further. She kept her thoughts to herself, however.
They passed a community garden bordered by a junk area, and a school that looked like it hadn't been repainted in about two decades. Chandre studied the buildings as they passed, most of them residences, until Maygar slowed the car, parking in front of a dilapidated apartment building that seemed to consist mainly of exhaust and pollution-darkened brick.
Scanning the area briefly with her eyes and her light, Chan noticed at once that the building stood directly across from what appeared to be a motorcycle shop filled with overweight and angry-looking human bikers.
“Charming neighborhood, brother,” she said. “Is there a reason you’ve decided to live in a human armpit?”
He shrugged, pulling the keys out of the ignition. “You’ve got to learn to blend, Chan.”
“I blend fine,” she said, still watching the humans warily as they stood around outside the roll-top garage door, drinking beer. “...I simply prefer not to live in places where they view seers as rabid animals that need to be raped daily and beaten into submission...”
“Here,” he said impatiently, thrusting a pair of sunglasses on her. “Stop staring and put these on...or with your bad temper, we will have a problem.”
Without waiting for her, he slid off the long seat, snapping the latch to the car door and stepping out.
Shoving the mirrored glasses over her nose to cover her eyes, Chandre took another few seconds to tie back her braids in a loose bunch at the base of her neck and then followed him out of the car. She felt the stares as soon as she straightened to her full height, but a quick scan of their light caused her shoulders to relax a little.
They didn’t know what she was. They just liked muscular women.
“Hey!” one of them yelled. “You with the braids!”
Another of his friends whistled, bringing a general laugh.
“Pretty woman!” another sang out. “Lovely lady! We’re talking to you!”
“You with poser boy over there, honey? Hey! Dark and gorgeous! Over here!”
“How about you come for a ride with us?”
After hesitating the barest breath, Chandre didn’t look up, but simply turned, following Maygar to a set of stairs badly in need of more rust-colored paint.
“Lovely lady legs...come on! Have a beer with us!”
Listening to them vie for her attention, she found herself remembering Allie in Berlin.
Chandre had been escorting her to Seertown and to Vash for the first time; the Bridge had been grief-stricken, barely able to stand, but she’d still managed to snap out of her coma long enough to scoff at what she called Chandre’s “throwing a grenade at a gnat” in her dealings with the local male humans. Her advice to Chan had been to just do what the human females do, and blow it off. Unless they come after you, pretend you don’t hear it, she said.
Chandre found herself remembering that advice with a thin smile now.
Her smile widened as she reached the top of the steep, creaking staircase that smelled vaguely like wino piss. The Bridge’s advice seemed to have
worked. The men forgot about her as soon as she made it clear she intended to ignore them.
When he turned back, Maygar gave her a puzzled frown.
“What are you smiling about? Thinking about taking me down again?”
“No,” she said, clicking softly. “Never mind.” Her voice turned business-like. “Where is this big surprise, Maygar? You have brought me a long way without telling me anything, and I still don’t see why we couldn’t have done all of this in VR...or in the Barrier...”
He stopped outside the front door to the building, his hands on his hips.
Ignoring the wrinkled brow look he developed as he stood there, Chandre glanced past him, to the door itself. Chipped rust-brown paint adorned the front of the wood, revealing an older, yellow coat of paint below. The effect mottled the front of the building, making it look like it had a skin disease. Finally, she met his gaze.
“What?” she said. “What story are you going to feed me now?”
“Look,” he said, reaching into his coat pocket for a set of keys. “I know this will probably sound crazy to you...”
She clicked at him in annoyance. “...That is never how anyone wants to hear someone else start a sentence, Maygar...”
“...But I think I’m being followed.”
“Followed?”
"By a pro, I mean." He hesitated. "Even before."
"Before what?" she said impatiently.
"Well, I did a job recently. It's part of why I brought you here...but this started before." He shrugged with one hand, giving her another nervous look. "...Before the job, I mean."
She raised an eyebrow, scanning the street beneath them. “And you bring me to your place of living? So that I will obtain this tail, as well?”
He clicked at her, unlocking the main bolt of the outside door.
“I don’t mean literally followed, Chan....I mean in the Barrier.”
“I still appreciate the favor, brother.” Snorting a little, she shook her braids, walking in past him when he opened the door and gestured her forward. “Who is it that is following you?”
“I thought it was your people...before, I mean.”
“My people?”
“You know...the Sword’s. I figured I’d end up in one of his ‘interrogation’ rooms...a few hot pokers up my ass.” Giving her a wan smile, he shrugged. “It could still happen. Knowing that asshole, he’ll never get over his little grudge...”
She gave him an incredulous look. “His little grudge? You attempted to rape his mate...when they had not yet consummated...and knowing full well that he intended upon asking her. Then you appear in D.C., as if somehow involved in her capture, where yet another seer abused her – ”
“Yes, yes.” He waved off her words, but she saw a bloom of color reach his cheeks anyway. “I know all that. I just meant, I didn’t think it was for anything but personal reasons.”
“Personal reasons are all we have,” she said, her eyes hard. “You are seer. You should know that.”
Running his fingers through his straight, dark hair, he sighed again, motioning for her to proceed up the stairs in front of him. She noticed for the first time that he wore his hair shorter than she'd ever seen it, a good few inches shorter than what he wore in Seertown. He'd grown taller, too, she realized, and his features had lost some of their roundness. She'd forgotten how young he was still, only a few decades older than the Bridge. The Bridge herself had aged rapidly in the past few years, but Chandre and most of the infiltrators of the Seven assumed that had to do with her taking an older mate and bonding with him.
She was still looking him over, noting other changes, when Maygar sighed again.
“I know, Chan. It’s just...” Hesitating, he waved off whatever he meant to say as he began to climb the wooden steps after her. “...Anyway, I stopped thinking it was about that. I mean...” He gave her an apologetic look. “I’ve been watching you for awhile, trying to figure out what you were doing in D.C. I kept an eye on a few others I knew to be working for him, too...”
“Why?” she said, more puzzled than annoyed.
Instead of answering, he gave another vague shrug.
“...Anyway, this new thing felt different,” he said. “And it didn’t add up with what you and the other Rebels seemed to be focusing on...so now I think it’s someone else.”
“Who?” she said, looking back at him.
“I said they were pros, Chan. I don’t know.”
She heard a glimmer of something else in his words. She scanned him with her light.
“You don’t know?” she said. “Or you don’t want to say?”
“Well,” he said, sighing again. “It could be more than one group. If someone's after me about the job I just did, it might be Varlan.”
“Varlan?” Chandre clicked through memories in her light. “Who is that? Is he a Rook?”
“Yes. He used to work for Galaith...but he didn’t stay with Terian when the Pyramid fell. There are quite a few who didn’t, but who still work together occasionally.”
Chan gave him a wary look, doing another quick pass over his light. Then she gave a low snort, but without humor. "You stole from him."
“No,” he said. "Not exactly." At her pointed look, he shrugged. “Well...I didn’t steal from him, but one of his people, maybe. They might have mentioned he was the head infiltrator on the job...the one working directly with the client."
"How many infiltrators on this job?"
"Four. Maybe five."
"Who is the client?"
"They didn't know." At her skeptical look, Maygar rolled his eyes. "I can't be absolutely certain, but they seemed to be telling the truth. The whole job seemed to be set up so that no one knew what it was really about..."
"And what was this job?"
"I'm getting to that," Maygar said, sounding a little annoyed with her questions. "It's why I brought you here. It's just easier to show you, Chan..."
Her puzzlement returned. “And this Varlan...he was one of Galaith’s, but not Terian’s?” At Maygar’s gesture of yes, she pursed her lips. “Is he an infiltrator of high rank?”
“High, yes. Actual at ten. Eleven maybe.”
She shook her braids a bit, exhaling in a sigh. “That is risky business, brother,” she said, clicking. “Why would you go provoking a seer of that kind?”
“Yeah, well.” Maygar shrugged. “I didn't really know who he was then. Anyway...you'll understand when you see it. It was a calculated risk..."
"Stupid, you mean," she snorted, louder.
Maygar didn't answer, but she saw his mouth harden.
Running his words over in her mind, Chandre continued to climb the steps, following Maygar’s gesturing hand at the second landing towards a door with a brass number ‘17’ nailed crookedly into the wood. She glanced down the hallway, noting the water damage on the walls and more peeling paint, this time of a sky blue color that had mottled almost to gray.
“And again I ask...why would you bring any of this to me?” she said, watching his hands as he fumbled with another key to open the locked door. “You know I am loyal to the Sword.”
Maygar glanced at her. After a pause, he gave another shrug, but she saw his eyes harden a little. “I knew you could get it to Allie for me,” he said simply.
Chandre's eyebrows shot up at this, but she didn't comment at first.
He swung open the door, and walked inside.
“Why would you want me to do that?” she said finally.
“Well,” Maygar said, tossing down his keys. He gave her an irritated look. “Who else is left, who is actually fighting the Dreng, instead of 'compromising' with them in some way?” His voice grew somewhat bitter by the end. Glancing back at where she’d hesitated at the door, he narrowed his gaze at her slightly.
“Are you coming? I’m not going to hit you, like you did me...”
After the barest pause, Chandre followed him, still puzzling over his words.
“Anyway,” he said, running a hand
through his hair with a sigh. “I'm still loyal to her, even if I'm not that crazy about her mate. You must know that about me, at least...”
Chandre barely had a chance to glance around the cluttered space, when another voice spoke up, from the far side of the room.
"I would be very careful where you admitted that aloud, brother," it said smoothly.
The voice was deep, and carried enough of an aleimic pull that Chandre couldn't help being affected by it, lowering her guard almost unconsciously. It was also decidedly male.
“...But your loyalty is admirable,” he added, softer.
Chandre froze. Even so, she nearly ran into Maygar’s back when he also came to a dead stop a half-second before her. She reached for her gun even as, behind her, someone shut the door of the small, dim room they had just entered. Her fingers had only just closed on the handle when the same voice spoke calmly from the other side of the room.
“Put it down, sister.” He paused, and she heard a long exhale, and realized she could smell hiri smoke, the dense, hand-wrapped kind that cost about twenty dollars a packet. The seer added, softer, “I hate to shed the blood of any of our race...at least when there is no need.”
Chandre started to look for the voice in the darkness in front of her, but a ping to her light drew her eyes to her left.
Standing by the curtained window, a seer held a Mossberg rifle trained at her chest.
After the barest pause, Chandre released the handgrip of her gun.
Removing her fingers from her jacket, she raised the hand they were attached to along with the other one, keeping both visible on either side of her chest. She kept her eyes on the rifle, and on the seer holding it, trying to decide if she recognized him. Because most of his face remained in shadow, she could not be sure she didn’t. Whoever he was, he wore a dark-colored tattoo that covered most of his face.
“Thank you again, brother, for this little vacation,” she muttered to Maygar.
Maygar scowled in her direction, his own hands up at chest level.
The same voice rose again, but humor threaded it this time.
“Your friend here seems to have drawn you into his troubles, sister,” it said.
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