Only then did I realize how quiet the car was.
My eyes found Cass’s and she grinned at me, shaking her head. The scar pulled at her face when she smiled, changing its shape.
Even Eddard looked faintly amused in his one glance backwards.
Jon patted Revik on the leg. “Sorry, man,” he said. “Just wait until we get somewhere, okay?”
When the silence stretched, Maygar cleared his throat, leaning down to punch in the car’s audio feed.
“...This just confirmed,” the announcer’s tinny, avatar voice blared in an English accent. “...The President of the United States is dead. The White House physician issued a statement minutes ago, outlining how a series of gunshot wounds proved fatal after severing not one but two major arteries. The unidentified attacker first broke in and shot the Vice President, Ethan Wellington, in his state room at the Vice Presidential mansion, leaving him for dead before...”
I glanced over to see Cass gaping at the radio. Jon, on the other side of Revik, wore an expression that mirrored hers. Then all five of them were staring at me.
Maygar was the first to break the silence.
He snorted, glancing at me in the mirror.
“It was him, wasn’t it?” he said. “Galaith. El Presidente.” Reading the assent in my silence, he focused back on the road. “I don’t know what scares me more,” he said. “The idea that you’re on my side...or that you may not always be.”
“I didn’t kill him,” I said.
Maygar laughed. “No. You just made sure every seer who wanted him dead knew exactly where he was.” He muttered, “Brilliant, really. I’d have thought more would be loyal.”
“Some were loyal,” I said.
“Well at least one wasn’t,” Maygar retorted.
I glanced at Revik. He reached into my lap and took my hand, clasping my fingers tightly.
“You did the right thing,” he said.
I nodded, looking at our entwined fingers.
I glanced out the window. The sun finally peered through the overcast England sky. Even through thick pollution and clouds, columns of fogged gold cascaded down to illuminate discrete pockets of humanity and green lawn.
I thought about going back to that high perch in the Himalayas, with the monkeys and chai and golden eagles floating over strings of prayer flags and snow-covered mountains and trees. I thought about being there with Jon and Cass, hiking with them and hanging out in the markets, going swimming and exploring and making friends with the other seers.
I thought about being there with Revik...and I smiled.
When I glanced up, he was staring at me. He touched my face when I averted my gaze, and I felt a pulse of warmth off him, affection that slid into something else, that grew almost tentative as it expanded soft tendrils through my chest. It strengthened as I gripped his hand, until I was sending the same back to him, tugging gently on his fingers.
He pulled me closer, letting me into more of his light.
I could feel it by then, what he’d wanted to tell me.
That time, when he stared at me, I didn’t look away.
Epilogue
ETHAN
ETHAN WELLINGTON STOOD on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building.
A crowd of several thousands...likely tens of thousands...flooded down the steps and into the parkway below, filling every empty space for as far as his physical eyes could see. He saw them standing on streetlamp bases, on curbs, in the street, on the grass. They filled every spot not taken up by another physical object, or cordoned off by the legion of secret service and military who blanketed over half the city in the wake of the President’s assassination.
The vast majority of those in the crowd were human, of course.
Still, he’d received well-wishes from several of the seers’ delegations prior to his arrival for the ceremony, as well. They apologized for their inability to come in person, but Ethan understood better than anyone why no recognizable seer would be safe on the streets of DC today, or perhaps the streets of any major city in the United States.
Three weeks had passed since his friend Daniel Caine had died.
Since the assassin had been identified as a seer who did contract work with the Chinese, as well as who had been involved in terrorist attacks in Europe and the Middle East, the country had been in an uproar.
Still, fear and hysteria had their uses.
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court stood opposite him now, wearing full dress robes. She had only been newly appointed to the role, in the wake of the mysterious death of her predecessor, and since she was new also to the Court itself, the appointment had surprised a number of people. It broke protocol for an Associate Justice to rise to the top spot so quickly, but no one seemed willing to question precisely how it had happened, either. Of course, it would have surprised people even more to know that she wasn’t the same person who had been appointed to the Court the year previous.
The few who knew her well now all appeared to be unavailable for comment, however...one more advantage to the image ban in place for all public figures.
A few well-planned eliminations, some reconstructive surgery and a number of more thorough mind wipes and re-patternings, and no one asked any more questions.
Ethan approved the action.
Hell, it had been his idea.
Few in his inner circle even questioned it. Then again, that circle had grown smaller in the past weeks as well, by necessity as much as design.
On one thing they all agreed, civilians and government alike. The country needed to be in firm hands right now.
When the Chief Justice looked up, Ethan smiled, meeting the older woman’s eyes.
Hey doc, he thought at her with his human mind. What’s up?
Xarethe’s expression did not flicker.
“Sir,” she said. “Please raise your right hand.”
Ethan did as he was told. His left hand, which still poked from the end of a dark blue sling, the color of which perfectly matched his suit, he placed on a King James Bible.
The Chief Justice, in her outdated glasses, flashed the slightest bit of warning from her lizard-like eyes. All trace of the German accent evaporated when she said,
“Are you prepared to take the Oath, Mr. Vice President?”
Ethan glanced out over the crowd as they burst into cheers of ecstatic applause. He’d broken a conspiracy in the heart of the White House, even tried to save Caine’s life as he lay dying on the conference room rug. The applause grew more frenetic, more emotional. It was amazing how quickly they forgot.
But humans always loved a good story.
“I am,” he said. “...Ready, that is.”
She smiled, raising her right hand. “Very well, sir. Please repeat after me...”
He only half-listened as he intoned the phrases after she spoke them.
His eyes scanned faces in his nearer audience, where his wife, Helen, stood by a little girl in a purple dress with a stuffed white rabbit clutched to her chest. The rabbit was brand new, its fur gleaming a pristine white. The little girl gazed up at him, oblivious to the screams and cheers of the people flooding the steps below the balcony below her. Her small body remained entirely erect, dwarfed among the crush of staffers, family and Justices on that higher platform, along with the Speaker of the House and members of his Cabinet, cushioned on either end by a generous array of Secret Service agents.
“I cannot believe he wanted to do this outside,” the Secretary of State muttered to Ethan’s right, within the girl’s earshot.
The Secretary of Defense stood beside him, wearing a navy uniform covered in medals. She smiled, flipping back long, dark, mahogany-colored hair.
“It plays well for the press,” she said. “Especially with him injured.”
“Do we know yet, who is responsible?”
Her well-formed lips curled a little. “The same fringe group Caine was working with, we think. Wellington’s already declared war. Of course, it won’t be official
until tonight.”
The Secretary of Defense’s eyes flashed a pale yellow as she glanced over the crowd, pausing to wink at the little girl before she smiled at Ethan.
“Caine did us a favor,” she added, giving the other man a disparaging look. “If nothing else, it is clear now, what we must do to survive.”
“Really?” The Secretary of State said. “...And just what is that, Jarvesch?”
“Exterminate the enemy,” she said. “Before they are strong enough to do it to us.”
Beyond them, Ethan Wellington continued to speak into the small but powerful microphone, using the words that would make him the next President of the United States.
“...will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office in which I am about to enter,” he said forcefully.
“So help me, God,” the Justice prompted, her hard eyes smiling faintly.
The crowd erupted behind him in emotional cheering. The feed cameras ran, capturing faces and waving hands, tears wiped from the eyes of watching humans, banners waving back and forth as Ethan gazed out over the Washington Monument.
In the distance, tanks could be seen parked at either end of the mall.
Jets flashed in the sunlight overhead.
He had made it, in spite of everything.
He had reached for it, and he had finally made it.
Ethan smiled, and the cheering grew louder still, more emotional.
“...So help me, God,” he said.
SHIELD
Allie’s War Book Two
Dedicated to
The man dancing in the stars
(you know who you are)
“The time is still not ripe. But through the blood sacrifice, it should ripen. So long as it is possible to murder the brother instead of oneself, the time is not ripe. Frightful things must happen until men grow ripe. But anything else will not ripen humanity. Hence all that takes place in these days must also be, so that the renewal can come. Since the source of blood that follows the shrouding of the sun is also the source of new life.”
~ Carl Jung, The Red Book
1
WAR
I TRY TO view death objectively. Everything dies.
Humans die...that has always been the case. Trees burn. Countries go to war with one another for reasons more terrible than the wars themselves. The world is insane in a way. All of us are insane. People don’t talk about it, but we all feel it. That the insanity depicts itself as mundane doesn’t make it any less insane. I know more now, about how humans have been manipulated for years, at least since the end of the first World War.
I also know that none of us is as innocent as we pretend. We affect one another, whether we mean to or not.
But this time, it’s not abstract.
This time, I had a direct hand in starting what I’m looking at now.
“HOLD HIM!” CHANDRE caught another infiltrator by the neck.
Her braids whipped behind her like a dark tail as she slammed the smaller, Tibetan-looking female into a wall, knocking down wall hangings and flecks of blue paint. She shoved the barrel of a gun into the hollow of the woman’s throat, aiming upwards, throwing the image of her intent into the other’s mind so there’d be no mistake.
In nearly the same instant, Chandre jerked her eyes to me.
“Stay back! I mean it, Bridge!”
I held a gun myself. You wouldn’t know it by the way they were all treating me. I had six babysitters, all of them sure they were doing god’s work, protecting me from harm. Being leader wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Even so, I trained my gun on the other seer in the room, a male, even as Maygar, Dorje, Brevin, Alex and Cass came in behind me. I knew Chandre didn’t want me there at all. All of them, even Cass, would rather if I’d stayed on the plane. But I couldn’t simply sit there, imagining my instructions carried out as if I’d ordered a pizza. I pushed my calico mane of hair out of my face, wishing I’d tied it back with one of the leather thongs Cass had used.
I spoke Prexci, the only language all seers know.
“Where is it?” I pointed the gun at the male infiltrator’s chest. We know you’re holding it for him, I said directly into his mind. You can come with us. We’ll make sure he can’t retaliate. We can protect you...
The seer laughed. A young male, he had high cheekbones and violet eyes he probably wore contacts over when working with humans. He spat in my direction, not bothering with words to respond to my offer. He wore fatigues, I noticed, the uniform of Russian infantry.
I took a step nearer, wiping my face.
“Where is it?” I said again. I raised the gun, pointing it at his face.
Maygar crossed the room behind me. Walking to where I stood, he grabbed the collar of the seer I had in my sights. He proceeded to drag him across the room.
“Maygar, wait!” I said in English. “Don’t hurt him!”
The muscular seer with the sword and sun tattoo on his arm acted like he didn’t hear me. I clicked at him in irritation as he pulled a hunting knife from the sheath on his thigh, showing it to the other seer before he set it against his neck. He growled something at the seer in Russian.
I saw the violet eyes lose their confidence as he spoke.
Then I heard a word I recognized, and the violet eyes shifted to me, just before they widened in fear.
“Bridge?” he whispered in Prexci.
“Where is it?” Maygar said in English. Or she’ll create a new orifice in that pretty face of yours...without even breaking a sweat.
I lowered my gun, biting back my irritation. The seer began jabbering at him again, in Russian. Maygar listened for a moment, then looked at me.
“The other room,” he said, in accented English. He motioned with his head. “There’s a box in there. He says it’s all paper. No organics.” He shook the seer, asking him something again in Russian. The seer nodded emphatically, pointing again to the other door.
“Paper only,” Maygar confirmed.
Fighting an impulse to reprimand Maygar, I turned instead, walking to the door he’d motioned towards with his head.
When I entered the small bedroom on the other side, I passed Cass, who gave me a half-smile that stretched the scar on her face. Her delicate features showed through beneath the scar, but it still hurt me a little, each time I saw it.
Growing up, she’d always looked like a model to me, with her odd mixture of Thai, Ethiopian, Irish and whatever else she inherited from her two parents. Now she clutched a gun in her hands too, looking like something in a guns and ammo magazine with her shocking dyed-red hair and the tee shirt stretched across her chest with words that read, “Spacegirl Don’t Need a Reason.”
Unlike my adopted brother, Jon, Cass had embraced living with the seers in a way I couldn’t possibly have imagined when we were best friends in San Francisco a year ago. Of course, being tortured for months by a psychotic seer could do that to a person.
Somehow, she never blamed me. I wished I could say the same. Touching her shoulder as I passed, I entered the bedroom. A flapping rag covered the one, broken window.
Terian, the aforementioned psychotic seer, had been cleaning up, ever since he managed to come into power in the human world. Thanks to me, the craziest, smartest and most bloodthirsty seer I’d yet encountered was now President of the United States. He’d figured out a way to break his mind into pieces to spread himself across numerous physical bodies, and managed to place one of those bodies in the White House. He’d managed it because I’d killed the previous president, a genetically-evolved human who happened to be the head of the Rooks’ international network of seers.
Yay, me.
I walked to the wooden crate. It lay on a bed with broken springs that sagged nearly to the floor. The whole room smelled of mold and cat piss and rotted wood.
“Wait!”
I turned. Chandre was staring at me with her dark red eyes.
“Don’t touch it, Bridge...d’ gaos! You’re like a child wa
ndering in a wild animal park covered in blood...”
I backed away from the box, even as Cass laughed at Chandre’s visual.
“I scanned it,” I said, feeling a little put out. “No bombs, Chandre. No Barrier traps. I was just going to look inside...”
“Well...don’t. You may not value your life, but I value mine. Your husband would kill me...literally...if he knew we’d even let you in here.”
“No,” I said, warning her. “Don’t bring up Revik again...”
“Does he even know you are here?” she said, giving me a narrow look.
“No.” I glanced at Cass, then more pointedly at Maygar. “...And I see absolutely no reason why he needs to find out.”
Smiling, Maygar slung his gun over his shoulder, walking back towards the main room. He blew me a kiss with his thick fingers. “You can lie to your husband all you want, Bridge,” he said, winking. “...I don’t mind.”
I watched him go, biting my tongue.
“Well, then.” Chandre said, causing me to turn. “...As Dehgoies is the only person you let order you around, someone else should get the honor, in his absence. I figure, why not me?”
Cass laughed again from the doorway, giving me an apologetic grin when I swiveled my gaze to hers. Reaching into her vest, Chandre pulled out a small, olive green device, about the size and shape of a fist-sized rock. She laid it on the crate, where it promptly began to vibrate. Tendrils erupted from the smooth surface, making me flinch.
I still hadn’t gotten used to the types and prevalence of organic machines. According to the World Court, they were supposed to be illegal, but the seers relied on them heavily, especially for military-type ops.
Fascinated and repulsed, I watched the legs softly probe the sides of the wooden box before sliding down the slats of the crate and into the papers stacked and crammed inside.
“I don’t let him order me around,” I muttered.
“Well, you pretend to listen to him at least.”
Allie's War Season One Page 48