They always sat in the same chairs now.
It felt like they lived in this damned room.
The table itself was probably an original, given the millionaires who used to live here. Now burn marks marred its otherwise-burnished surface, probably from drug pipes and cigarettes from when thieves and looters squatted here.
Wreg cleared his throat.
The sound pulled at Jon, but he found himself avoiding the large seer’s nearly-black eyes. He focused on Revik instead. He watched the Elaerian’s lean, hard-muscled body fall in a near-vertical line as he sat himself at the table’s head.
Still, he didn’t quite meet the Elaerian’s gaze, either.
In spite of what Jon had told Balidor, Revik had been drunk the night before.
Too drunk, as it turned out.
Somewhere in that inebriation, he’d made his way to Jon’s room. Jon had no idea if anyone else in the construct overheard the conversation that followed from Revik’s late-night visit, but he sure as hell hoped not. He especially hoped Balidor missed it, as the Adhipan seer seemed to hear everything––much less Wreg.
Hell, he didn’t want to explain that conversation or what followed to anyone, much less revisit it with Revik himself.
Honestly, he hoped Revik was too drunk to even remember it.
Jon looked away, catching the edge of Wreg’s eyebrow-raised stare.
He didn’t miss the coldness that shone there, despite the brevity of his glance.
Exhaling, Jon watched Revik again surreptitiously, maybe to avoid looking at Wreg, noting that Revik had been eating less again, but clearly hadn’t let up on his time spent at the building’s improvised gym. The Elaerian had been running every morning too, Jon knew, often well before dawn. Sometimes he ran around Alamo Square itself, but more often, he ran to the panhandle and into Golden Gate Park.
According to Jax, who often sat at the station tracking “the boss’s” movements for security purposes, sometimes Revik ran all the way to the ocean and up the coast to the Golden Gate Bridge.
Jon hadn’t personally been working out with him in the sparring arena, but he knew Revik had an open challenge out there, too, in an attempt to get himself into shape and pick up new fighting techniques.
So far, only Jorag, Wreg, Yumi, Neela, and Balidor took him up on that challenge on a semi-regular basis, although Jon overheard Torek saying he’d fought him a few times as well, along with Maygar and Chandre. Some of the cockier seers among the new recruits had taken their turns as well, but as far as Jon knew, none had been stupid enough to try more than once.
Even so, more than one seer came out of there with broken bones, including one shattered cheekbone, a broken hand on Jorag, at least one dislocated jaw. Revik had barely recovered from what that sadistic fucker, Ditrini, had done to him in New York, or the injuries probably would have been worse.
The Elaerian only seemed marginally aware of the rest of them again, Jon noticed.
Truthfully, he wondered how much of Revik was even in the room. His clear eyes focused past them, almost as if he were conversing with someone in the Barrier. A lot of the time lately, the bulk of his consciousness seemed to exist on some other level, where nothing down here fully touched him, or disturbed his focus.
After everyone found a seat, and the shuffling and scraping of chairs, mugs and whatever else had finished, silence fell over the dimly lit room.
Wreg cleared his throat, laying a tattooed hand on the table.
“Laoban,” he began, aiming his words at Revik. “Everything is set up for the link. We have Al…” Seeing Revik’s eyes dart towards his, Wreg stumbled, correcting his words. “The Bridge is ready, sir. We tried the amplification methods you suggested. We are set up to test the first of these, using the Barrier records you requested.”
Revik nodded, but his face showed him to be elsewhere again.
When he faced them once more, he looked first at Wreg, then at Balidor and finally Yumi.
“Did you determine if I’d need a wire hookup?” he said. “Will it boost my ability to resonate with her at all?”
That time, Balidor spoke up. “We did test it, Illustrious Sword. It is not a good idea.”
“Explain,” Revik said, his voice still empty.
Balidor let out a sigh, glancing around at the rest of them before answering in a more subdued tone. “It is simply not worth the risk, Illustrious Sword.”
Balidor used Revik’s full title––twice, Jon noticed––despite the harder lack of compromise in the Adhipan seer’s voice. Or perhaps because of it.
“…It is unlikely to help,” Balidor added. “It puts you at considerable risk, in more ways than one. It could also very well hurt her. If nothing else, by putting you too close to the specific parts of her that were damaged by what…” Like Wreg, Balidor struggled briefly over names. “What the being, War, did to her, Illustrious Sword. We all agree, it is an unacceptable risk.”
“Define unacceptable,” Revik said, his pale eyes leveling on the Adhipan seer’s.
“Unacceptable as in, we might lose you,” Wreg said, blunt, drawing Revik’s eyes back to the opposite side of the table. “As in, we can’t afford to lose you, too, laoban. And it is unlikely to do what you want anyway.”
“How unlikely?” Revik said.
Even Jon gritted his teeth a little, though he knew this was just Revik’s way.
The Elaerian wasn’t being argumentative. He simply didn’t want subjective opinions. He didn’t want their fears, or their emotional reactions. He wanted facts. He wanted facts down to the last damned percentage point if he could get them.
Jon knew Revik didn’t even want advice, not when he was like this, not unless he asked for it specifically. Balidor knew this. Wreg knew it even better than Balidor did. Wreg had worked with Revik longer than any of them, and he understood the way the Elaerian’s mind worked better than any of them, too.
“We ran extensive tests on eight different inducement wire configurations,” Wreg said, shifting his tone to that of a military report, almost as if he’d heard Jon’s thoughts. “One produced a minor increase in resonance over a period of several hours, but only when the simulated subject had been subjected to that resonance multiple times and at a dangerously high setting. By then, that subject was already preliminarily hooked on the wires––”
“Did you calibrate for Elaerian aleimic differences?” Revik asked.
“Yes,” Wreg said at once. “We did, to the best of our ability. A gradual approach still didn’t work to produce a perceptible resonance, despite multiple tries. We were forced to increase the signal to dangerous levels every time, which meant we had zero success with improving resonance without addicting the user to the devices.” His voice got harder. “I’ll break every machine we have before I let you do that, laoban.”
Turning his head, Revik stared at him.
His eyes shone briefly but unmistakably with a cold anger.
Jon flinched at the look he saw there, but it vanished a second after Jon saw it.
Shifting his gaze away, Revik nodded, his face smooth. He laid his long fingers on the table, raising them only to gesture vaguely in the direction of Wreg and then Balidor. Jon in no way saw agreement with Wreg’s position in any one of those motions.
“Other options?” Revik said, his voice as dead-sounding as before.
That time, Yumi cleared her throat.
She glanced at Neela before she spoke, the latter having entered the room without Jon even seeing her, much less feeling her with his light. As one of the original Rebels, Neela had some punch as an infiltrator, although Jon didn’t know her exact sight-ranking. She crouched behind shields multi-faceted enough to make her ninja-like at times, though, and Jon often found himself practically walking into her in the halls.
At times, something about Neela even evoked kind of a “young Tarsi” vibe to Jon.
Tarsi, who had been leader of the Adhipan prior to Balidor, wasn’t the soft, warm cloud of smi
ling heart that Jon remembered as Vash, who led the spiritual and governmental arm of the seers. Tarsi looked and felt like what she was––fucking dangerous. A military commander, first and foremost, Tarsi had been a high-ranked infiltrator prior to that.
Unlike Vash, Jon never really figured out how to talk to Tarsi.
For possibly similar reasons, he didn’t know how to talk to Neela, either.
Even more than Revik, Allie was always the one closest to Tarsi, apart from maybe Balidor––and, of course, Vash himself. Even Balidor had more of a teacher-student relationship with the ancient seer, as opposed to any kind of real friendship.
“…We did have another idea,” Yumi said, her fingers curling together on top of the heavy table. “Something we thought you might want to try first, laoban.”
Revik looked at her, his eyes prompting her to continue.
“We thought perhaps Jon could go in with you.” Yumi’s eyes darted to Jon, giving him a faintly apologetic look. “With his closeness to Allie, as well as his proximity to her during different time periods in her life…” She trailed, looking back at Revik. “Well, we figured, between the two of you, you could cover the vast majority of her timeline. This one, anyway.”
Yumi swallowed at the unreadable look on Revik’s face.
“Then there is Cass––War, Illustrious Sword,” she added, anger blazing briefly in her eyes. “Jon has a longstanding relationship to her, too. We thought that might be of benefit. In, well… both things, sir. Resonance and intelligence.”
Revik’s face remained unreadable as his eyes shifted to Jon.
Jon felt a part of him stiffening, fighting not to jump out of his skin, or maybe just shout “NO!” in a really loud and inappropriate voice.
He wasn’t going to weigh in on this, though––not now.
Maybe not ever.
Like Maygar, maybe Jon was willing to do whatever it took, no matter how he felt about his role in things personally. Maybe he was more than a little willing to take whatever Revik might feel the need to dish out right now, too. Remembering the night before in the same set of seconds, Jon felt his skin warm, forgetting that Revik still focused on his face.
“All right,” Revik said, his eyes flickering away. “Is there anything else?”
He looked at Yumi, then at Wreg, narrowing his colorless eyes.
“No, Illustrious Sword,” Neela said, surprising Jon by being the one to answer.
Revik only nodded, his expression as unreadable as before.
There was another silence.
Then Revik rose smoothly to his feet, moving with that strange, feline grace of his, so different from Wreg’s, but strangely compatible, too.
Barely a second passed before the others stood up to follow him.
6
THE SOUND OF SILENCE
JON WATCHED AS Revik laid his body down in the coffee-brown, leather chair.
They’d literally converted the “jump seat”––as the other infiltrators called it––from an old recliner.
Jon continued to watch Revik’s face as two other seers, Garensche and Loki, strapped him in with canvas and organic-paneled straps, beginning their work soundlessly, and only seconds after Revik situated his long form in the scored leather.
The blank look remained in Revik’s colorless eyes throughout the process.
He tolerated the ministrations of the others without seeming to be present for them, although Jon saw him correct them with minor adjustments to anything containing a sensor panel, including the one that rested in the middle of his chest and another across his throat.
That last panel had a retraction belt on it, Jon knew, in case he convulsed during the jump, or had a panic reaction and tried to free himself. The danger of choking would have made it more practical to use electrodes, like in the old-style chairs Jon had seen back in Seertown, but these new straps worked better, Balidor told him.
Jon remembered seeing the old jump chairs while they’d all still been in New York. He’d seen images of the old set-ups on one of the research feeds he’d been trolling with Wreg, learning how infiltrators actually worked.
He remembered how that particular lesson had ended, too.
That had been after Revik and Allie’s wedding.
He and Wreg were already dating at that point, although Jon hadn’t admitted it to himself yet. He told himself it was just sex, or maybe just comfort. He told himself any number of bullshit stories, anything that allowed him to not think about it very much, or at least not very deeply.
In any case, they’d ended up on the floor of the media room that day, too.
Most of their “practice sessions” ended that way in those weeks, with Jon losing control of his light, pulling on the other man, or Wreg asking him outright for––
Cutting off the thought, Jon shoved the memory from his mind.
He got it out, too, but not before it brought an unwelcome ribbon of nausea-inducing pain, separate from Revik’s for a change.
Distracting himself, trying anyway, Jon glanced around the room, which contained the same mish-mash of objects, textiles and furniture as the rest of the house. Rich, modern upholstery and drapes covered couches, chairs and windows, giving it a goth feel, but the truly expensive version, not like what some of his friends used to cultivate in their renovated Victorian flats back in the pre-apocalypse days of SF.
Most of the latter consisted of second-hand finds from the street or the odd sidewalk sale of thrift store Victoriana so common in San Francisco.
Here, heavy, blood-red, velvet curtains blocked most of the daylight through the reinforced storm-windows, which, despite the cloud cover, could still reflect significant glare from the hidden sun. Wallpaper with burgundy and cream-colored stripes covered the walls, and the built-in, walnut bookshelves remained stocked with all of their original––and highly-expensive––library of leather-bound paper books.
Next to wall-to-wall and sometimes ceiling-to-floor monitors that probably cost a good twenty thousand dollars apiece, Jon could see what had to be genuine and probably ridiculously expensive antiques and original paintings.
Now that the seers had taken over the space, their own high-tech gadgets, illegal organic-modified components and weapons had been added to the mix, left on decorative tables, book shelves and even resting on the carpet by one of the four, high-ceilinged walls with their elaborate baseboards and sconces.
Because they’d only recently converted this particular room, there also remained a more sunk-in shabbiness that hadn’t yet been eradicated, that struck Jon as more likely a token of the squatters and looters who were the house’s more recent tenants before they arrived. Jon could see more obvious evidence of the same in carpet holes and smoke damage, burns to one of the couch armrests, along with green spray paint of a sloppy, teenaged-looking tag over what looked like an original oil painting. A spray-painted yellow smiley face stood out on one of the burnt umber walls, too, right next to the stone fireplace.
Really, though, the damage was pretty minimal.
The same hadn’t been true of all the houses on the square, Jon knew.
He’d personally toured a number of them, and helped move furniture and set up bedrooms and semi-apartments for group housing. Most of that had been to accommodate local seers who moved to the square once they found out Revik was in town.
Jon didn’t know if they moved to be near the Sword for religious reasons, or in the hopes he might protect them from the seer purges still occurring periodically in other parts of San Francisco. In any case, it began to feel like they’d created their own city within a city, a miniature seer Mecca on the West Coast, complete with machine guns and armed patrols.
Jon had been warned already by Jorag and Neela not to leave the confines of their “territory” for security reasons. In particular, he was told never to go to the Mission District, but Chinatown was off-limits too, along with most of Pacific Heights and North Beach, as well as the Marina. Downtown San Francisco and th
e Tenderloin areas were completely out of the question, according to Garensche, and so dangerous even most of the competing gangs steered clear.
Revik was more blunt––and more specific.
He laid a map out on the mahogany table, pointing out the limits of their staked territory. Indicating the various cross-streets, he told Jon not to cross Fillmore to the east, Geary to the north, Oak to the south or Stanyan to the west, even if he went heavily armed. According to Revik, he’d worked out deals with human gangs running each of those areas, and that they’d be well within their rights to shoot, if Jon or anyone else crossed those lines without obtaining explicit permission.
According to Revik, permission meant payment.
More or less.
Revik also told Jon that he was well within his rights to shoot anyone who crossed into seer territory. Jon hadn’t asked Revik whether that was an implied order or not.
Thinking about that now, Jon glanced down at his brother-in-law’s angular face.
He watched absently as Garensche and Loki continued prepping him for the jump. He occasionally watched Revik’s hands, as well, as the Elaerian motioned in sign language for a secondary tech––Kandash, Jon believed it was––to record everything that happened, including any Barrier imprints they pulled once they began.
Jon had noticed Revik using sign language a lot lately.
They used to joke about Revik being reticent before––him, Allie, Wreg and whoever else knew him well enough to give him crap about his expressive silences.
Revik had taken that reticence to whole new levels in the past months. His silences maybe weren’t as expressive these days, but they were infinitely more common. In fact, the silence around Revik grew painful at times, if only due to its complete and utter impenetrability.
He rarely stayed in a room long enough past when they finished working for anyone to dig him out of that silence, either. Really, just getting him to make eye contact could be a chore, unless Revik wanted something in particular.
Jon tried, of course.
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