Whatever else might happen to her here, they were definitely in the right place.
She was standing in a decontamination chamber.
IT TOOK ABOUT twenty minutes for Varlan, Rex, Chandre, Maygar, Eddard, the human security guard and the dark-skinned seer to make it through all of the decontamination protocols.
Chandre emerged on the other side feeling a bit light-headed from the two chemical baths she'd been forced to endure, as well as the high oxygen content of the air on the other side of the chamber walls. Now she found herself staring at a long, low-ceilinged space. It took her another few seconds to realize that it was larger than the shed had been. The decontamination chamber had also been an elevator...while it sprayed them off, it also brought them underground.
Now, from what Eddard told them the night before, it was really a race with time. Someone would notice that the camera had been turned off outside the lab at the next feed scan...which should be in about one hour, if Eddard's intel was sound. But long before that happened, someone would likely notice that six unauthorized persons had just gone through decontamination protocols. No matter what else happened, they couldn't go back out the front door...but supposedly, Eddard's plan had that end covered, too.
Once they entered the secure portion of the lab, their presence would be picked up by construct security. They could try to delay it, using Varlan's tap to the security guard wherever possible, but regardless, they had to be in and out before anyone could show up to stop them on the ground. But that should give them the time they needed to get through the secure doors below ground, which was where the virus was located. The security protocols would focus on locking them inside, which should also delay any team making it downstairs to intercept them.
Even as Chandre was thinking all of this, Varlan was gesturing in a swift arc, signaling them to move for the next set of doors. She found she was jittering somewhat on her heels as they waited for the guard to open the next set of secure doors for yet another elevator.
This floor's mostly storage, Varlan told them with his hands. According to the worm, labs are below. Along with residences for several of the scientists. DNA and retinal scans to get through the last set of doors. We'll have to blow those in any case...but we need to get there before the construct seers know we're here...
The security guard was disengaging the camera for the elevator. Chandre watched him, her mind whirling around the next set of steps they would be taking to destroy the lab...
When out of nowhere...she felt it.
Before she could make sense of the feeling, Varlan turned to the others.
Construct alarm, he gestured sharply.
"What?" Maygar murmured aloud. He signed, ...How is that possible?
Varlan gestured for all of them to remain silent.
Focus, Varlan signed then. Nothing's changed. They'll try to pinpoint our location first. We have four minutes before the elevators lock down. Mark time, he added, looking at Chandre, who immediately looked at her watch. And keep Barrier silence until I say so... Turning, he gave Eddard a hard look. ...You'd better be right about this, human...
Eddard looked paler than usual, but he nodded, his eyes decisive.
"Four minutes," he confirmed, his voice lower than a whisper.
Chandre jumped a little. Not many humans understood seer sign language.
She truly hoped he was as confident as he sounded.
The human security guard had the cameras turned off by the time the elevator doors opened. They all got inside the car and the doors closed. By then, Chandre's eyes were locked on her watch face. She noticed Varlan and two of the others looking at time pieces as well.
Three minutes, she signaled.
The elevator kept descending.
Two minutes, she signaled a minute later.
Weapons ready, Varlan gestured. He pulled his rifle down on its harness, so the muzzle faced the elevator doors. Four of them, waiting for us. I've got a tap on their leader. Be ready to fire when the doors open...I'll do what I can to delay them...
He looked at Chandre. I need you to monitor the construct, but wait until we're out of the elevator...if they pinpoint us now they could just shut us down. Once we're out, coordinate the shield with Rex and Stanley... He pointed at the two seers he meant, then his eyes shifted to meet Maygar's. ...I want you looking for additional security while we locate the merchandise...and the way out. Bring Eddard with you, and make sure you find it before we finish setting the charges...
But Eddard shook his head, adamant. I need to go with you, he signed. I need to get samples of the disease...and its antidote. We'll need that...all of us. Your client, too...
Varlan frowned.
He thought about the human's words, but for scarcely a heartbeat.
Fine. He looked at Maygar. You have any trouble finding our exit, I want to know within three minutes. Three...do you hear me? Any more than that and I'll kill you myself...
Maygar scowled, but nodded once, seer-fashion.
Varlan's eyes shifted to the African-looking seer, who Chandre now realized must be Stanley. Take over the tap on this worm... he signed, indicating the human security guard.
...And all of you, pull down your guns! Now!
The rest of them yanked rifles down on their harnesses, aiming for the elevator doors. It hit Chandre in the same set of breaths that this wasn't going to be bloodless. They were already off the parameters for the job. They should have gotten control of the lower security gates before the broader construct had been alerted. Now they would have to shoot their way through, and hope like hell that Eddard's exit wasn't on the main security grid.
Or worse, rigged with another OBE field.
Chandre hadn't been in a hot op since the bombing of Seertown. Now she found her hands shaking, even as she aimed the rifle at the elevator doors. She blinked sweat out of her eyes despite the air conditioning in the elevator, squinting past the yellow security light as it continued to rotate overhead, disorienting her eyes. She considered aiming with her aleimi instead, then remembered Varlan's instructions to stay out of the Barrier and felt her shaking worsen as it occurred to her she could have gotten all of them killed with that slip.
What the hell was the matter with her? Her infiltrator training seemed to have gone out the window. It hit her suddenly that she was having what amounted to a PTSD reaction. It couldn't be from Seertown...she'd mostly been helping rescue survivors with the Adhipan. She hadn't been involved with any of the on the ground action during the bombing in Delhi, either...in fact, she'd been two hotels over, looking for Revik and Allie, when the main explosion took place.
It hit her then. She hadn't seen any real action since that fiasco on the cruise ship with Allie.
That fiasco that killed nine seers directly under her command.
Just then, the elevator car landed with a jerk and a shudder on the bottom floor. After what seemed like an interminable pause, the doors slowly slid slowly apart.
As soon as they had, the sound of alarms filled the small space of the elevator. Chandre winced against the noise, looking for it with her eyes...when a voice shouted out, forcing her gaze down again.
Five guards stood there, armed with organic weapons.
"Don't move!" the man in front yelled. He held up a hand. "Hold your fire!" he said to the guards standing behind him. "We need them alive..."
The guards behind him looked startled by this, but they hesitated, fingers poised over triggers as they followed orders.
The pause wasn't long, but it was enough.
Varlan immediately opened fire.
Chandre followed suit before her brain caught up with her hands, and she heard the echoing bang as Stanley and Rex and Maygar did the same. Even Eddard was firing when Varlan finally held up a hand, signaling for them to stop.
At another gesture from him, they all exited the elevator, even as the alarm began to beep on Chandre's wrist. Their four minutes were up.
Maygar leapt out through the
closing elevator doors, barely squeezing through before he landed on the other side, looking winded.
The five guards who'd been waiting for them, including their leader, who Varlan had pushed into delaying their fire...were dead.
"Charges," Varlan hissed at once, walking for the security checkpoint. Chandre stared at the thick organic walls of the station. On the other side, she could see men and women in lab coats, shouting to one another. Obviously they'd seen the shooting, either on the interior security feeds or through the transparent panes or both. In any case, there was no mistaking the panic on their faces as they backed away from the reinforced organic doors.
"Wait!" Eddard said, as Varlan began to lay charges over the doors' locks. "They might not have shut it down yet! Use the guards!"
Chandre found herself moving almost before her conscious mind had understood his words. She picked up the leader of the guards by the arms, and started to drag him towards the security console, when someone else picked up his other arm to help her. Chandre looked over and found the seer, Rex, gripping most of the human's weight.
They dragged the guard to the console and stuck his finger on the blood prick for the DNA scanner, then held his eyes over the retinal scanner for the console.
"Is it working?" Varlan shouted from the door.
They'd all given up on being silent, maybe because of the alarms.
Chandre adjusted the man's face over the retinal scanner, and then she saw the light pass over his open eye.
"I need an answer, people," Varlan said. "We're out of time..."
He trailed when the scanner turned green, right before all four sets of locks slid out from between the organic door and the thick frame.
The seer Stanley laughed aloud, clapping Eddard on the back.
Varlan didn't wait. Wedging his body against the door, he ushered the others of them through quickly. Chandre and Rex dropped the human unceremoniously, and ran for the opening. Chandre reached it last, and Varlan nearly shoved her through before following behind her.
They didn't have time to wait and see the door close behind them.
Chandre found herself in another long, narrow and low-ceilinged room filled mainly with narrow lab tables that stretched the length of the two longest walls. Staring around at the machines and the equipment, she found herself studying the white, terrified-looking faces that lined the shadowed wall near the back, as far away from the main door as they could get. Looking to the sides she saw more of those thick, organic doors, these ones leading to pressurized vaults of some kind...or perhaps freezer units. She didn't want to know if they kept test specimens in there as well.
"Disperse!" Varlan said. "You know your jobs....Chandre, Stanley, Rex...with me."
Chandre exchanged a fleeting look with Maygar, who smiled at her grimly, winking at her in a way she found oddly cheering. Somehow, having him in this with her made her feel better, if only for a few seconds. He was a little shit in some ways, sure...but she realized suddenly that he was right, too. He was her friend, in spite of everything. Even if she never could quite forgive him for what he'd done to Allie, he was still her friend.
She was still thinking this when he turned on his heel, jogging for the corner of the room that was supposed to house the entryway to the air duct system that would allow them passage into the coolant exchange...and finally the gray water runoff tunnels that should afford them a way out of the complex altogether via the main sewer.
She didn't know at the time, that it was the last time they would see each other...for a very long time, at least.
14
GRADUATION
HE STANDS OVERLOOKING a long field dotted with hills, surrounded by mountains.
A river winds down there, but that is not what draws his eyes. It is the humans he feels, more humans than his eyes can track, although their movements are clumsy by seer standards, obvious in terms of their tactics...and their attempts to conceal their numbers. Still, he sees them moving with military skill, here and there...and a few brighter lights live within that gray. He can feel what is coming, what vibrates their light. He has not yet seen his first battle, but the promise of it runs adrenaline under his skin until he is trembling slightly, unable to stand still.
He is to remain concealed for this fight.
The others who trained under Menlim will fight on that field, but not he. He can no longer see or feel any of the other seers with whom he has been running exercises for months, albeit in a different set of hills, in a wetter countryside far to the north.
The old man alone fills the empty space beside him, a silent specter hovering as he gazes down on the same unfolding scene under the stars. Both watch, silent, as the humans' numbers gradually increase, filling the fields below. The younger seer feels the old man watching him, expectant, perhaps even wary of what he might do, but for the first time he can remember, he doesn’t feel intimidated, or afraid.
A difference lives there, somewhere.
Some change in identity and purpose that allows for a real effort to understand. More than simply understand...to be better. To push himself in ways he never contemplated pushing himself before. To be a different kind of being entirely.
He wants to learn now. He spends every spare minute practicing. He dreams about practicing, about exercises he might try...things he might do with his light if he pushed it into more and more subtle gradations. Pushing humans, even fighting hand-to-hand...all of that has lost interest for him now. It is shadow-play, distraction...nothing more. It bores him because it no longer taxes any part of him he values.
He is no longer able to pretend it is enough.
As he thinks of that, the woman drifts into his mind.
He frowns, remembering her face the night before, the eagerness in her light as she looked at him. But she doesn’t see him...no more than any of the worms see him. That's not enough for him anymore, either...even now, when his conquests no longer require him to use his light.
He wants more. He wants something real.
His mind and eyes return to the reason he is here; his concentration sharpens. He is not content now, to simply do as he is told. He fights to understand every structure that lives within his light, to find new ways to combine those structures, to get them to work together. He reads the old texts, trying to find hints and knowledge between their words.
And sometimes, to try and discern how much longer he might have to wait for her.
He throws himself into his work, looking for anything that might force him to improve, to push his limits. He practices even when the old man is not around...he practices whenever he is not forced to other duties, such as the increasingly strenuous military training he’s also now receiving from the seers and humans in his uncle’s employ.
He’s exhausted now; he barely sleeps. He runs on adrenaline and purpose, and a kind of fevered hope that if he accomplishes what he is here to do, if he succeeds in this thing, then she will find him all the faster...
But now...a test.
The first test. The first real one.
He is nervous. He stands on the grass, wearing a dark shirt and dark pants, just enough in the shadow of nearby trees that he won’t be visible from the valley below.
His uncle is still speaking inside his mind, but he only half-hears the words.
...This is a demonstration only, nephew, the old seer sends softly. We have no stake in who wins the wars the worms wage against one another...we have only to help them go where they already desire to go. To do that, we must seem to align with those who most need us...who are desperate enough to think us their allies...
Nenzi’s eyes held still on the field below. He gestures in assent to the other's words.
He has heard all of this before of course, but it still provides a kind of background comfort, a story with which he can frame what he is about to do.
It is an exercise. Like any experimental weapon, he must be tested.
...As a result, it would be expedient that we gain the a
ttention of the Austro-Hungarian forces, his uncle adds softly. ...and win their favor through something suitably dramatic, for which they have no reasonable explanation. We wish for the patronage of this group of humans at the outset...if only so they can aid us in weakening some of their rival human powers. In particular, we mustn't underestimate the threat of Russia to the east. They cannot fight this bear, not if they are divided, and forced to fight in the south, as well...
The younger seer nods again, gesturing his understanding, but he is not really listening.
His own concerns are more immediate, and more personal.
How will I know when it is right? he asks. I cannot see all of them...
When the two armies are about to meet, the time is right, his uncle responds easily. Just as we discussed. Just begin as close to that point as you are able to reasonably estimate...
What if I cannot control it?
His uncle only looks at him, his dark amber eyes glittering faintly.
“Does it matter all that much, nephew?” the seer says aloud, in old-tongue Prexci.
Looking up at him, the other swallows. After another pause, he shakes his head, clicking a little to himself with nerves.
“No,” he answers in the same language. “It does not.”
“Then begin, nephew. When you are ready.”
Nenzi’s eyes return to the field beside a river. Under the moonlight, he sees the humans massing from either side, moving swiftly but surely across the uneven ground. Some look ready to dig into defensive positions, readying themselves for the onslaught from the north, but his eyes remain with those in the rear, who carry the ammunition and the fuel. He focuses on guns, on other areas they discussed him using to target, even as he begins to feel for the different places he needs in his light, the structures he will use above his head.
Allie's War Season Two Page 88