Maybe because he was genuinely beginning to like the Adhipan leader...or maybe just pride...Revik found he was trying to meet Balidor’s expectations.
Or, at the very least, to not embarrass himself.
Reaching the top of the hill only slightly out of breath, he remained in the trees dotting the steep edge of the highest point. He kept his silhouette off the ridgeline as he scanned the valley below.
Splitting his consciousness between his eyes and the Barrier, with some small portion still with the Adhipan in the ravine on the other side, he looked for movement. From the Barrier, he looked for any sign of life bigger than your average monkey.
He got nothing.
He made roughly the same sweep twice, just to be certain. He was about to make his way back down the same incline...
When something pinged his consciousness.
It was sharp enough, and near enough, that he jumped. He turned his head as if it had been pulled by a puppet wire.
...and found himself looking at a very young, very dirty seer.
Maybe twenty years of age—so appearing closer to thirteen in human years—the boy stared at him from less than fifteen feet away. His face wore strong, Asiatic features.
His black eyes seemed to bore into Revik’s.
The boy gripped the bark of the nearest tree with corpse-white hands that might have been completely untouched by sun. He wore what looked like misshapen adult’s clothes, also Asian, and human-made. He’d belted the shirt and pants around himself to keep them up, but his feet and head were bare. Red with scratches and coated in mud and bits of greenery, his feet had swollen from walking.
Revik blinked in surprise, sure he was hallucinating.
When his blink ended, the boy had gone.
Revik felt the seers in the valley below reacting before he fully believed what he’d seen. He hadn’t lost his connection to the Adhipan throughout the brief encounter, and now he felt them vaulting up the hill behind him, faster than he had—a lot faster, he realized.
The part of him that had felt a brief flush of pride at how quickly he was regaining his speed realized he’d been kidding himself. Now that they were motivated, they moved through the trees almost too quickly for his light to track. Watching them close the gap, he thought he’d need to train every day for months to be able to match even the slowest of them.
The female, Laren, reached him first.
Without a word, Revik pointed to where the boy had been, sending her a more detailed imprint as a snapshot from his light.
She disappeared into the trees without hesitation.
Revik stood there a second longer, then followed to cover her even as four other seers reached the same part of the ridge, Grent and Balidor among them. Embarrassed now that he’d hesitated, Revik fanned out with the rest of the team down the opposite hillside, following Balidor’s commands from the Barrier, doing his best to move as quietly and as quickly as the rest of them. As the fan spread down the hill, he kept his consciousness split, scanning and shielding more tightly as he was forced to cover more ground.
Then Laren signaled all of them, and he got the image of the boy again, clearly, standing on the branch of a tree above ground, on the other side of a grassy clearing. The boy stood about thirty yards away from her.
Like the rest of them, Revik shifted direction at once, running through the trees at top speed to reach where she stood. He’d been closer than over half of them, but he still reached the clearing dead last, and the most out of breath.
He approached the area where Laren and four others had their guns trained on the kid, moving cautiously until his physical eyes pulled the boy’s outline from the trees.
He studied the dirty face.
That feeling of familiarity was back, although still vague, more of a flicker than anything. He was still trying to decide its source when he realized the boy was staring at him, too.
In fact, the boy stared at him alone...ignoring the Adhipan seers.
That fact didn’t go unnoticed by the others.
They looked between him and the boy, and Revik felt a few in the Adhipan scan him—less than politely, in that they neither asked nor were they open about it—in an attempt to discern if Revik recognized the boy as well. He let them in, partly in irritation, but mainly to see if they could determine the nature of the connection.
None did, at least not that they were willing to share with him.
The boy’s expression remained flat, but the intensity of his interest in Revik shimmered off him in waves.
Revik found himself moving closer in reflex, when Laren and then Balidor each held up a hand, motioning unmistakably at Revik to remain where he was.
Hold your position! Laren sent, sharp. Look at the structures!
Revik focused above the boy’s head.
Blinking his way from the Barrier to his physical eyes then back again, he focused his aleimi, sure he’d scanned him wrong. Convinced at his second look, he watched the crystalized geometries rotate in awe.
When the boy didn’t seem to be blocking him, he tried to get a closer look.
He recognized some of the basic shapes from Allie’s light, but not in the configuration he could see now. Aleimic structures changed from use; they grew, but they also reconfigured and clustered when specialized functions were exercised, particularly if those functions involved using more than one structure at the same time. The geometries that spiraled up from the boy’s head looked like a fountain of mathematical fireworks, highlighted from recent use...but also from repeated use, over a long period of time.
From the Barrier, he looked like Allie would look after about fifty years of manipulation training, followed by ten more in the field.
There was no way the boy standing in front of him could be old enough for what lived above his head.
STOP! Balidor sent sharply.
Revik hadn’t realized he’d taken another step.
His eyes remained on the boy. Somehow, the emotion that rose in him came closest to pity.
Laren took a step forward, too, shielding Revik.
The boy switched his focus to her.
Revik tensed. He watched Laren rearrange her hands on the gun. Her aim never left the boy’s head. He looked between Laren and her target, then focused back on the boy, studying his mirror-like eyes.
Laren took another step and Revik felt it—without knowing exactly what it was, or where it originated above that small head.
He lowered his own gun reflexively, raising a hand.
“Stop!” he said aloud. “Laren! Don’t move!”
Holding his own gun out, away from his body, Revik raised his other hand, straightening out of a combat crouch. He stepped out from behind Laren.
“Hey!” he yelled in Hindi, drawing the boy’s eyes. “Over here! Will you talk to us? We won’t hurt you!”
For a moment, no one moved.
Revik felt the charge of light snake around the boy’s head.
He felt the other members of the Adhipan focus on those same structures, watching light flicker in concentric rings through minute geometries above the small, dark crown. He felt the same tension in the other infiltrators that had risen in his own light. Like biting a live wire, it flowed from one of them to the next, sparking their own aleimi.
Revik held the gun further out from his body.
On impulse, he tried sending to the boy.
Are you all right? he sent. Are you hurt? What can we do for—
You, he sent. I know you.
Revik felt the Adhipan looking at him again. He swallowed thickly, but kept his thoughts even, and unshielded.
Are you sure? he sent.
The boy smiled. His eyes looked cold, predatory.
Okay, Revik sent. Okay. I don’t remember everything, I—
You can’t hurt me. Not anymore!
Revik gestured in agreement. We won’t try...I promise.
Anger curled out of those detailed structures.
‘We?�
� he snarled. You’re a ‘we’ now? You left me there! You did it! You promised you wouldn’t, and you did it anyway!
Revik tensed. At a loss, he glanced at the Adhipan hunters. He didn’t have to scan them to know what they were thinking. But explaining to this kid with the nuclear bomb hovering above his head that he had probably left him while he’d been working for the Rooks—and that since then he’d had his memory wiped and had been doing everything he knew to try and make amends—probably wouldn’t help.
Not given what they’d found at that burnt-out school.
Not a school, the kid sent. You know it’s not a fucking school! You lied about that too! You lied about everything! The older look returned to his eyes, the predatory one. But I’m not alone now. And I’m not as stupid anymore. So you can tell your dogs to go home. I won’t go anywhere with you...
A tremor rippled Revik’s spine.
Yeah, he sent to the boy. You don’t seem stupid to me. He fought to think. I’m sorry. I really don’t remember...
I should kill you.
Revik felt light spark around him dangerously once more. Holding his free hand higher in the air, he set his gun down on a flat rock near his feet.
I’ve got a mate. Do you want to kill her, too?
The boy’s eyes narrowed. Revik hesitated at the look there. When the boy’s eyes remained ice, Revik raised a hand.
No cave, he sent. No guns. No wires. No schools. No one will take you anywhere you don’t want to go. No one will hurt you...
Liar, the boy sent. You’re a liar!
Not this time.
You killed me! You destroyed me!
His words hurt Revik somehow. You’re still here, he sent.
You’re a bad man...a bad fucking man!
Not anymore, he sent. Whatever I did before, I’m sorry.
The boy gave a thick laugh, older than his body’s years. The hatred in his thoughts grew more palpable.
Nervous, Revik glanced at Balidor. The older seer signaled with his hand for Revik to keep going, but to be careful. Revik gestured in affirmative.
Then the woman, Laren, rearranged her hands on her gun. As she did, she took a half-step forward.
The movement swung the boy’s eyes back to her face.
Before Revik could warn her, something slammed at his light.
His energy dropped so severely that his knees crumpled. It came out of nowhere, pulling at him from above...like a vacuum to his light from above his head. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw several members of the Adhipan stagger as well. He held out a hand in a daze. His knees hit the dirt as his fingers smacked the same rock where he’d placed his gun.
He heard Laren give a strangled cry...
Just before there was a loud cracking sound.
Then something flew past him, pushing air out of the way so quickly he ducked, flinching from its path in reflex. When he could focus again, he saw another seer between him and the downed female.
“Laren!” the male screamed.
Grent ran for his mate.
He moved so fast that Revik couldn’t follow the motion with his eyes. He couldn’t move, in fact...he watched the other male in shock as his mind replayed the sound of bone cracking. He realized what Grent had already felt.
Laren lay where she’d fallen in the undergrowth, blood on her lips.
Grent cradled her in his arms. Her neck hung at a wrong angle. Her eyes remained open, staring up at the trees.
The male screamed, a sound that ripped open Revik’s heart.
None of the Adhipan moved.
Then, slowly Revik staggered to his feet.
Dazed from the hit at his light, he stared at Grent and Laren.
Fear, then rage wound through him. He saw the shock hit Grent’s light in concentric waves. Unable to watch the male’s realization of what had occurred, he looked for the boy. Finding him standing motionless beside the same tree, Revik focused on the smile playing at the bow-like lips. Without thinking, he snatched his gun off the rock and raised it to his shoulder...
The metal stock ripped out of his hands.
Something slammed him in the middle of the chest. Whatever it was, it had the weight of a thick, oak plank. The force behind it was almost mechanical, like being hit by a wrecking ball.
It threw him off his feet.
Arms and legs pin-wheeling, he tried to slow himself. Greenery streaked by as he experienced another sharp drop in his light.
Then his back hit something hard. His head, too.
His body crumpled to the wet ground. Protruding objects met his back, legs and arms. Everything around him started to gray. Warmth covered his head and neck; he smelled his own blood. He looked up, fighting to focus his eyes as a tall form stepped out of the trees near him.
The female seer looked down at him, her blue eyes shining a turquoise that was nearly iridescent. Like the boy, her face was Asian, with high cheekbones. She held a long gun fitted with organics that made the Chinese models carried by the Adhipan look like children’s toys.
Blowing hiri smoke through straight black hair to get it out of her eyes, she walked over to the tree where he lay.
She dropped the thin cigarette, grinding it out with the toe of her boot.
“Hello, lover,” she said in Russian.
Raising her heel, she aimed it at his face.
Everything went dark all at once.
14
HUSBAND
FIRE BLOOMS OUT in crimson waves over a field. I watch the bodies blown back, a whisper of light trailing around the second tankard before it ignites...
He is here, with me.
It bothers me, how familiar he feels...
How much I know him already.
He watches the devastation from above, directing like a mathematician conductor, all of his focus inside elaborate geometries of light. They rise above us in a column, sparking and igniting as he combines and recombines their intricate threads.
It is beautiful. My admiration is heartfelt, almost shy.
He is beautiful, in his orchestration of this precise work.
The work is still work to him. It requires concentration, will, purpose...yet it fills him with such freedom, of muscles flexing, utilizing complexities in himself heretofore unused. It allows him to breathe. After years and years of repression and hiding and pretending to be what he is not, he lets it exhale outwards rather than eating him from within...
It makes my heart hurt, this freedom.
An explosion rocks the ground nearer to where he stands in the physical world. Shrapnel flies towards him and the two seers protecting him.
I fear for him for an instant...
Then he throws up a shield of white light. It is dense; it pushes the force outward, protecting him and the two males beside him. Fire and iron and wood slide over and around them in a hot wind of explosive air. They are like rocks in the midst of a fast-moving stream. I feel the gratitude of the two seers with him.
They adore him. They absolutely adore him.
It is what he is born to do. He knows nothing else for which he is suited. Here it is less a question of right or wrong, but of untapped functionalities expressed outwards to some purpose...even if that purpose is not really his own.
He knows now, that these potentialities had to come out eventually. In one way or another, they would have been forced to express. While he can’t trust those for whom he exerts himself now, he trusts himself even less. So he works for them, and considers himself lucky.
He has a purpose.
He helps to make the world better, somehow...if only temporarily.
Memories break inside my mind, pieces of him mixed with pieces of myself, or maybe just memories of his memories. A historical moment lives here, as well...something of import, that lives beyond what any one seer or human remembers. A knowing imprints all of them, like a notch in their collective DNA, all of those who witnessed those years.
Somehow, we are all responsible.
He i
s not born. He is created...through indifference, through patience and intention.
A man holds a gun to his head.
It is a small head, only slightly larger than the one I know from the forest. Dark hair obscures his round face and slanted eyes. I can’t see his eyes though; they are invisible to me, as are most of his features.
It is not only other seers who work to break him. This one is human. Young. Mean. He works for the other, but he is devoted, not a slave.
“Disarm!” the human snarls. “Disarm, you fuck! Do you think he’ll let you live if you don’t? Disarm or I’ll blow your head all over this wall—”
It shocks me, to hear him talk that way to the boy.
But the boy is both strangely old and strangely young for his years. He copes and shuts down and learns and strategizes, all in turn...or perhaps all at once.
He fights them, too. His mind fights, for his body is fragile.
His tormenters writhe through his aleimi like metal snakes, but he fights them anyway. He holds onto memories of parents, some glimpse of what it was to be loved. He remembers affection, but it slides out of his grasp so easily.
It isn’t long before he questions if any of that had been real.
The human’s name is Merenje.
“You snot-nosed prick...you don’t care about your life, eh? What about your little girlfriend? How many of us do you think it would take to break her?”
I feel something in the small chest give out.
They find his weakness...they always find it.
I see her then. Large eyes, dark hair. A prostitute they brought him; she is young, almost as young as he is. He knows she was sold to him; she doesn’t care about him, either...but she is all he has. She begs him for protection. She begs him, touches him when he wants it. She tells him lies...
She knows...he is her only hope of getting out of there alive.
Allie's War Season One Page 68