But the military thing with Jon could be especially pronounced for some reason.
Meeting Jon’s light hazel eyes, Balidor exhaled. “I don’t know.”
“We’re sure the trigger is neutralized?” Wreg asked. “Nenzi won’t turn on her and kill her now, will he?”
“Not for that reason,” Balidor said grimly.
Seeing the harder look come to Wreg’s eyes, Balidor frowned, wishing he could unsay it, but he couldn’t. He shrugged, trying to blow by it instead.
“She seemed to think Menlim had no access to the trigger with the network down,” he explained. “With no network tying the Dreng directly to Earth, he is powerless to use the trigger, as well.” Pausing, he shrugged, flipping one hand sideways. “Perhaps not being able to control Nenzi is enough of a reason for a more drastic approach to him and his mate. But there is more to it, I think. Something Alyson did not share with me. It is only a suspicion of course.”
“Meaning… what?” Jon said. “The trigger’s still there, but Menlim can’t reach it?”
“Meaning there is no dugra a’kitre trigger,” Wreg said, answering for Balidor even as he exhaled in understanding. “The trigger is that fucker, Dragon. Menlim had some way to make him do his bidding before. Now he doesn’t.”
Balidor hesitated, then nodded slowly.
He saw understanding bleed over Jon’s expression, as well. When Jon opened his mouth, Balidor cut him off, hearing the edge in his own voice.
“We don’t have time to discuss all of that now,” he warned. “We’ll take the Bridge’s word that the trigger is neutralized until we hear otherwise.” He paused, but only just. “Has anyone heard from her since she gave the order on Denver? We need to pull her and Dehgoies out of there. Now. I’m assuming she’ll still be easier to reach than he is.”
Wreg nodded, his expression hardening. Touching his headset, he receded into the Barrier.
“On it, brother,” he said.
Balidor frowned up at Jon.
“Contact Wreg’s people in China. Have them open every fucking channel we have here, including to whoever we have access to in the Lao Hu. That infiltrator Allie mentioned––Laiki. Voi Pai, if you can reach her. Find out if we still have any contacts left in Beijing’s SCARB branch. Have your people check with the Chinese government, civilian authority… anyone who will take our call.”
Still thinking, Balidor felt the dread in his light worsen as the enormity of it washed over him.
“…Have someone send a message to the Wvercians. And any other nomads or refugee encampments around Beijing. Find out if the city has an alarm system… a loudspeaker system on the walls, or in the city center. Anything we can use to communicate to large groups of people. We need to get them to move as far away from the Forbidden City and the rest of Beijing as they can…”
Pain filled his light as the sheer number of living beings grew more real behind his eyes.
There was no way they could evacuate them all out.
He could feel Wreg and Jon reacting to his pain, even as they receded into the Barrier, igniting links to do as he said.
Balidor switched over himself, first trying his private link to the Bridge before he attempted Dalejem, thinking he might be able to reach one of them via the Barrier if he was close enough, now that the construct was gone. When no one picked up after a half-dozen pulses, he split the channel and went direct to Lao Hu infiltration.
He got no answer there, either.
“Gaos,” he said, feeling that pain worsen.
They had no idea when Chandre took Brooks.
For all they knew, missiles could be on their way already.
He opened up another channel for Vik, sending a brief message to have him and Dante check the satellites without waiting to talk to the seer in person.
They had open skies again, from a surveillance perspective at least.
Someone should be able to see the damned things if they were really coming.
“What do we tell them?” Wreg said, blunt. “There will be fucking riots if everyone learns the truth at once, Adhipan. It will be as bad as telling no one at all. They will kill one another and themselves trying to get out.”
Balidor knew he was right.
Even so, all he could do was shrug, feeling his jaw harden as it hit him again.
“We cannot not tell them, brother Wreg,” he said. “We cannot.”
Feeling Wreg’s light change as Balidor’s words sank in, Balidor heard him sigh, right before a pulse of grief left him, dense in the small space of the Russian cockpit.
“Agreed,” he said.
Balidor felt Jon’s light wrap into Wreg’s, even as he moved to stand closer to him.
For a long time after that, none of them spoke aloud.
Nor did they stop trying to contact anyone they could find.
57
HATED
I WALKED FAST along the wall, trying to stick to the trees as I mulled over what made the most sense, in terms of finding my way out of Beijing.
Given that I had to get to a place where I could transmit, I couldn’t use the same exit as Revik. The airport was still inside the zone where all communication links were being monitored and scrambled.
Jem and I tossed around a few secondary exits on the jeep ride here, of course.
Unfortunately, most involved me going through Beijing, and with the fighting in the City and outside its gates, none seemed like particularly viable options for me now. Balidor warned me against any course that brought me within shooting distance of Shadow’s military. From transmissions they’d picked up, there was an active search being conducted––for me, specifically––with pursuit and kill orders for anyone who sighted me.
Given that, what made the most sense now was for me to get as far away from Shadow’s army as possible, then call ‘Dori and the others for pick up––preferably someplace outside the area directly controlled by the Dreng.
I’d already left the old part of the City behind.
The “New Wall” around the northern border of the city continued to stretch out next to me. They still called it that, even though this segment of wall had stood for several hundred years.
The new wall was built while the human Imperial Family still lived inside the City, a few hundred years before the communists came to power. That was back when the human authority remained largely in the hands of a highly-educated bureaucratic class, along with the Imperial Family.
The addition of the higher wall, which encompassed the massive gardens Revik walked through to find me, along with several lakes, acres of arable land, and a number of large housing compounds, was initially built to increase the territory of the City to better protect and grow the population of the Lao Hu.
Even back then––well before official First Contact in the West, and back when seers were still thought of as mythological creatures by anyone outside of China itself––the Imperial family treasured their growing stable of seers.
When I’d lived in the City, the “new” quadrant was where most of the humans and non-infiltrator seers lived. It was also where most of the food crops were grown, where they stored most of their fresh water, and where their hydro- and solar power lived. It was where the children went to school. It was where they built a hospital and markets.
Beyond the wall on that side, meaning to the north, was another large lake.
Beyond that lived a river––the Nanchang.
That river was my goal.
I fought to decide if I should try to contact the Lao Hu before I left. For now, I had my headset off, but I wondered if there was some way to pass a message to someone within. There would be other doors out here, doors I might be able to find and crack with the telekinesis. Now that the construct was down, I should be free to use the higher structures of my light.
I might not even need to do all that. I might be able to talk to Voi Pai directly, via the Barrier.
I knew Revik and Balidor were right, though.
> I was still too close to Shadow’s major deployments. I needed to get out of the circle of channel-screening surrounding the City––and preferably out of Beijing itself––before I started sending up any great big flares about who and where I was.
Even more than Balidor, Revik had been absolutely adamant on that point. To him, it had zero to do with intelligence concerns. Shadow’s people would hunt me if they knew where I was––if they even suspected I was still anywhere near the City. He said that would be true even if I hadn’t just brought down their whole damned network.
He hadn’t soft-pedaled that message at all.
They absolutely fucking hate you, Allie. All of them. They went out of their way to hit out at you the whole time I was there. If they caught you, they wouldn’t just kill you. They’d torture you, starve you, humiliate you… rape you for months, possibly years. They’d hurt you any way they could, for as long as they could.
No lingering sympathies remained even among the religious fanatics, nor those who in the past thought I might be brainwashed by humans. No sympathies remained with anyone who’d known me when Revik led that army under Salinse.
All of that was gone, he said.
Completely and totally erased.
They hated me like a religion now, possibly from something woven in the construct itself. A few hated me to the point of obsessive, homicidal rage.
I knew he said it like that so I wouldn’t underestimate his words.
Even so, it hurt, and not only because I could feel flickers of how that hate had affected him while he’d been there, living inside their world.
I didn’t have time to think about that now, though.
I didn’t have time to think about Revik at all.
Not in terms of the last things he’d said to me. Not in terms of what I’d felt off him, or the alien lights that left imprints on parts of his aleimi as well. Some part of me wanted to obsess on all of it, to know details I didn’t really want to know.
Some part of me wanted to pick apart his final words to me, to make more of them––or less of them––than how he’d probably meant them.
Some part of me obsessed on the ambiguity there, on any gaps it could find between the different things he might have meant. Some fearful, masochistic side of me wanted to believe the worst of all of it, maybe just to prepare myself. That same part of me heard his words as goodbye.
But I couldn’t think about that.
I couldn’t, and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to think about any of it.
Some part of me thought about it anyway as I ran.
Right up until gunshots rang out in the early morning air.
I DUCKED IN instinct, going silent as I melted sideways and deeper into the trees.
Even then, my first thought was of Revik––until my mind caught up, reminding me Revik was long gone, and probably already underground.
Whoever this was, they were definitely firing at me.
I ran faster once I was in among the trees, doing my best to align the shoulder bag so it wouldn’t offset my weight as I lengthened my strides over the uneven ground. Scanning the horizon, I aimed my feet for a dense wooded area just past the last length of wall.
I fought to remember the geography here, what I’d studied with Jem over that map, what I remembered from my tenure inside the City walls.
I would be coming on the lake soon.
The river was beyond that––at least a mile. Maybe two.
I tried to calculate precise distances based on the map scales I remembered.
Gripping the strap of the shoulder bag as I ran in the green dress, I yanked out the second gun as soon as I reached that denser cover. Pressing my back to a thick-trunked tree, I grabbed an extra magazine, wedging it in the waistband of the dress before I shoved the satchel behind my back and checked the gun, making sure a bullet was housed in the chamber.
Clicking the trigger twice to deactivate the safety, I peered around the trunk, looking in the direction from which those original shots came.
Nothing. I couldn’t see, hear, or feel anyone.
Even as I thought it, something stung me in the side of the neck.
Not from the direction of the original shots.
From the east. My right.
That something hit into my flesh, hard enough to make me gasp.
It also stung like fire as soon as it got there.
Reaching up with my free hand, I yanked it out, squeezing off three shots from my gun in the direction from which it came. I did both things without thought, adjusting my position around the tree so I’d have cover on both sides even as I looked to the west and north, making sure they didn’t have someone waiting on those sides, too.
They’d fucking driven me here.
They used the gunfire to drive me to another damned shooter in these trees.
All of that ran through my mind in less than a heartbeat.
I was still gripping the gun as the liquid started coursing tangibly through my blood. I could already feel it warping my aleimi.
Only then did I look down at what I held in my hand.
Panting, I stood stock still for a bare second, feeling my beating heart carry the poison to other parts of me, feeling it spread out through my body and limbs as I stared down at the orange-tufted dart, focusing on the striped barb still carrying a thin layer of my blood.
“Fucking whore!” a voice snarled, from the trees to the southeast, maybe forty yards away.
It had to be the shooter. The one who hit me with the dart.
I knew that voice. I knew it.
It was Ute.
That time, I didn’t think.
Muttering under my breath, I yanked my back off the tree.
I couldn’t wait. The dart would knock me out if I waited.
I wasn’t Revik. I had to run.
I ignited the headset with a thought command as I pushed off the tree, moving fast, almost due north as I fought to wind myself deeper into those trees. Now running all-out, gripping the gun in one hand, I sent a thought command to Balidor.
Nothing. I didn’t even get static.
I tried Jem next. Then Wreg. Jon. Jorag.
Finally I tried Jasek, thinking he might be closer.
On all of them, I got nothing but dead air.
It hit me after I’d cycled through the list of names a second time, then a third, that the silence wasn’t a matter of them not answering.
The signal was being blocked.
That had to be from Ute and her little pals, too.
“Shit,” I muttered, even as I ignited the bare edges of the telekinesis.
I was pretty sure the drug had already gotten too far into my system to do that with any real precision, but I was also pretty damned sure I could still scare the hell out of them if they got too close. I struggled to grasp those higher structures with my light, clenching my jaw as I fought to concentrate, to even get my consciousness high enough to feel them.
My lower-level sight was already being affected, of course––but truthfully, my lower-level sight had been shit lately anyway. I knew Jem had noticed. He’d commented on it a few times, that something was off with me there. He’d thought it was exhaustion.
I hadn’t really wanted to think about what it was.
In any case, I’d learned to rely on Jem for most of the lower-level stuff.
I’d focused mainly on using those higher structures of mine as we worked at hunting the network seers, or while we searched for Dragon. Those higher structures seemed untouched by whatever was wrong with me, but then, they seemed to operate no matter what was going on with me down here.
I did that again now, trying to get above the drug, above whatever that cloying blindness was that was hitting me with increasing regularity down below.
I continued to run through the woods as I did, although I could already tell I was slowing.
I didn’t let myself slow down too much, though––not even to fuck with my light.
; I couldn’t.
Thinking about this, I made up my mind.
Sprinting through the trees, I increased the length of my strides, still keeping to the darkest part of the tree line. Ahead of me, I could already smell water; the lake outside the wall must be close. I could see the high, crazily-steep corner of the hundred-foot stone boundary now.
As I approached the edge of that centuries-old marker, it hit me that it wasn’t going to be enough to simply reach the banks of the river and call Balidor for a lift.
I was going to have to do something more drastic.
Well, assuming I could find a means of doing it.
I just might end up trapped in a different way, of course––or hell, drowned, if the drug ended up being stronger than I feared. I knew the flooding had been intense lately, that there was a good chance the water would be too high for me to cross, no matter how good of a swimmer I was.
I could get smashed up in the debris washing down from the mountains, or I simply might not be able to reach the waterline at all.
For some reason, it was still where my light pulled me, though.
So I ran, all out, for the river.
58
COUNTDOWN
REVIK HAD NEVER run down stairs in the dark so quickly in his life.
Not even as a kid. Not even running from Gerwix.
The thought brought a morbid twist of humor to his light, a twist that never really turned into full-blown amusement. It didn’t touch the lower areas of his light, much less do much to lift the mood he couldn’t seem to crawl out of, which seemed to be gradually worsening since he’d woken up in his wife’s lap outside the City’s walls.
He welcomed the thought anyway, if only because it was one more thing to think about that wasn’t his wife.
Having an objective with a short time window helped even more.
It kept his mind running in straight lines, kept it off the walls closing around him the deeper he descended into that cave. It kept his light focused more or less on task, and on the time window he’d negotiated with Allie to do this thing.
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