Grabbing a towel off the chair at the end of the bed, he headed for the shower without giving the female so much as another glance. Her laughter followed him out.
…at least until the closing corridor door cut it thankfully off.
REVIK BLINKED BACK sweat.
Reinforcing his grip on the Chinese-made QBZ-97 assault rifle they’d given him, he held it in both hands as he walked through the trees.
It had been a long time since he’d done this kind of field op.
He’d also never favored this particular gun.
He preferred the LR-300s and M16s, where he could fire sighted from full cover; he couldn’t do that easily with the 97. He also didn’t like where the magazine sat on the gun; it made for a slower reload, and the safety was oddly placed.
Not like he’d need that much out here.
The Adhipan moved fast, and nearly silently through the forested hillsides.
Revik was less than a third of the age of most of the seers tracking with him, but out-of-shape from his time with Terian and almost no real exercise in the months since. He found himself limping along like a late middle-ager, fighting to keep his breathing quiet enough to avoid pissing off the rest of the team.
His muscles had started to protest less than halfway through day one.
Now, on day three, he was doing marginally better. He’d been going out of his way to eat a lot and then powering through, pushing himself when it hurt. The least he could do was start building back some muscle while he was out here.
They hadn’t had a lot of solid hits, but they’d had a few.
Those might have been intended as misdirection, but if so, it hadn’t worked––the Adhipan were still maintaining a consistent track.
That fact alone told Revik one thing; whatever it was they were following, it likely wasn’t a Terian body. Unlike Galaith, Terian wasn’t totally adverse to improvisation or theatrics, but to indulge in either when the stakes were this high struck Revik as deeply unlikely. If a telekinetic seer really had been housed in that underground dungeon, Terian would be even more cautious than usual.
He likely would have gone dark entirely, waited for a way out.
Well, unless Terry wasn’t the one calling the shots.
Only two seers left the Sikkim school on this particular trail. The Adhipan picked them out initially because among all those who survived, they alone left with human guides. Their emotional signatures didn’t match those of the rest of the survivors, either, and instead of heading south with the other refugees, towards Nayabazar or Darjeeling, they headed due north, into the mountains.
Later, the Adhipan trackers found a resonance between one of those seers and the origins of the blast.
The day before, Revik had walked the interior of a cave with the others.
They’d found evidence of a campfire and discarded bedding, as well as imprints from humans and seers having slept there. The imprints were already a few days old, but blood stains on the cave floor made a trail into the trees.
At the end of that trail, they’d found two rough graves, only half-finished, illustrating the end of the two human guides. Revik and several in the Adhipan found child-sized footprints in the dirt. They’d done extensive scans, but came up close to blank.
Someone was protecting the two seers they followed. Whoever was doing it, they were likely operating from elsewhere, not with them on the ground.
Sensing movement, Revik glanced sideways.
Balidor met his gaze, then motioned to him with his eyes.
Revik followed the seer’s fingers as they indicated up the nearby bank. He was being asked to scout the ridge. Nodding once, he kept his feelings to himself as he turned and began vaulting, as quietly as he could, up the hill.
He knew he was clumsy by Adhipan standards, but he’d already gotten better in the days he’d been out here. Balidor made it pretty clear he wanted Revik along for his own reasons, at least in part––both to test him, and to get a sense of how he fit in with the rest of the group. Given how rarely they admitted new seers to the Adhipan, as well as Revik’s reputation with the Rooks, Balidor also likely hoped Revik might prove himself to his team.
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 ridge line 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 around 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 in style. 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. 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 snapshot with his light.
She disappeared into the trees.
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 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 an image of the boy again, 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, though still vague, more of a flicker than anything concrete. 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. 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 twenty 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. Revik 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 dark eyes, the predatory one. But I’m not alone now. And I’m not stupid anymore. So you can tell your dogs to go home. I won’t go anywhere with you. Not this time.
A tremor rippled Revik’s spine.
Yes, 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, 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. When he could focus again, another seer was running between him and the downed female.
“Laren!” the male screamed.
Grent ran for his mate.
He moved so fast 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 to 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 r
ealization 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 as 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 rifle 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.
22
FAMILIAR
FIRE BLOOMS OUT in crimson waves over a field.
I watch the bodies blown back, the ghosting whisper of light that trails 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.
Shield (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #2): Bridge & Sword World Page 21