“They’re fucking with us,” he said. “You’re not free-falling. It’s some kind of slide. We’ll be at the bottom in fifty seconds… forty-five… forty…”
“Where are we going, laoban?” Wreg gasped, sounding like he’d gotten the wind knocked out of him. “Can you see where this ends up?”
“No,” Revik said. “Thirty seconds.” His voice remained calm, but he spoke faster, conveying information in a low, steady stream. “Pull in your limbs. Get to your feet as fast as you can once we land. Guns out. I’ll try to buy us time. I can feel the rooms below, but not the seers. Loki’s team is there already.”
Using his light, Jon felt a whisper of Loki’s presence, along with Oli.
“Five seconds.”
Jon took a breath, fighting panic––
––Then crashed into something heavy and warm, hard enough to know it wasn’t another collision on the slide.
He felt a pulse of warmth, hard muscles and a hand that wrapped around his arm.
Jon recognized Wreg’s presence and realized the other seer must have moved towards him before the hatch opened beneath their feet. The lights of other seers grew tangible around him, holding him protectively, even as he focused back on the shield. He hadn’t released the shield as he fell, although it hadn’t occurred to him to think about it consciously.
At Wreg’s prodding, he climbed awkwardly to his feet, wincing against a cold, hard floor. He unholstered his gun with his free hand as he did.
Blinking against the sudden shock of light, he realized he could see again.
There was light down here. It wasn’t bright, but he could see his surroundings.
A long stone corridor stretched out in front of them––so long, the walls appeared to meet at the far end. The light flickered and glowed, casting strange shadows. It looked like they’d fallen into the dungeon of an old castle. Glancing at the torches lining the walls on each side, he found himself thinking this had to be another illusion.
Then again, knowing Menlim and his penchant for dungeon-like spaces, maybe it wasn’t. He’d kept Revik in a place like this, once upon a time.
Thinking about that, Jon swallowed.
Wreg released his arm, staring in the same direction as Jon. The seer already had a gun in his hand, the same modified Nambu pistol Revik jokingly called an “antique,” claiming Wreg had been carrying the damned thing since World War I. Jon knew Wreg had the gun modified extensively a number of times, so Revik’s claim wasn’t quite true, but it more or less was.
Revik seemed to find Wreg’s gun thing funny in general, though.
Looking at the gun now, Jon tried not to think about how long it had been, since he’d seen Revik really laugh like that.
As for the gun itself, it looked deadly enough, given the dark green organics infusing the handle and firing mechanism. Wreg told him he’d had it DNA-encoded, so no one could fire it but him. There was also something with his fingerprints in the handle.
Jon tore his eyes off the gun long enough to look around at the rest of their group.
He saw Jorag helping Jax up.
Chinja was already on her feet, rifle pointed down the oddly medieval corridor. Her curly, reddish-brown hair had fallen half out of the bun she used to keep it out of her face. Somehow, the incongruous texture of her hair and eyes only brought out her Asian features more, emphasizing the height of her cheekbones and her perfectly sculpted mouth.
Maygar, Revik and Neela had their weapons out.
Jon glanced up at the torches, frowning at their flickering and very real-looking flames where they illuminated the dark stone.
He gripped the handle of his Glock, thankful he’d put the damned thing in its holster before he fell. Glancing over his shoulder, he looked up just in time to see the gaping, square hole of the chute that deposited them in the corridor get swallowed up by the construct. The hole appeared to melt into thin air, leaving an identical view of an equally-endless corridor lit with medieval-looking, iron-bracketed torches stretching in the opposite direction.
“What the fuck is this?” Wreg said, his eyes narrowing at the same view. He turned, looking both ways down the corridor, then frowned at Revik. “What is this, Nenz? Do you know it? This feels deliberate.”
Revik shrugged, his face holding a trace of irritation. Still, something about this place bothered him. Jon could feel it, vibrating at the edges of the other man’s light.
“It’s the tower.” Scowling, he looked back along the stone corridor, muttering, “Real cute. Nice to see the old man hasn’t lost his touch.”
“Tower?” Jon looked between Wreg and Revik. “What tower? You don’t mean this tower? Gossett Tower? The building?”
Revik didn’t seem to hear him at first.
He raised a hand to his ear, without lowering his gun. “Communications are out. I can’t raise the hotel. I can’t get Loki’s people either.”
“What tower?” Jon repeated. “Revik?”
The Elaerian’s eyes swiveled to his. They still glowed a faint green.
His voice turned into a growl. “The tower where they kept that boy locked up for ninety-plus years, Jon. The one Shadow left Merenje to guard. Where I was chained to a wall in the dark for almost a century.”
Jon felt that pain in his gut worsen. He nodded, still watching the other seer, even as it occurred to him that at least part of that pain came from Revik.
“Are you going to be okay, man?” Jon said.
Revik gave him a harder look.
“It’s a valid question,” Wreg said, causing Revik to turn. The Chinese seer measured Revik warily. “What can we do? Is there some way we can help dispel this illusion for you, laoban?”
Revik gave a humorless laugh. “I don’t see how.”
“Will it get in the way?” Wreg persisted.
Revik looked at Wreg, then around at the rest of them. Finally, his eyes paused on Jon. He frowned, still studying Jon’s face.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I can only promise I’ll let you know, if it is. Until then, we need to help one another out. They won’t go after me alone.” He gave Jon a look, then Wreg. “Expect more illusions. People. Places. They’ll likely go after several of us at the same time.”
Wreg nodded. He reached out, gripping Jon’s shoulder in one hand.
“Keep the shield on him, brother,” Wreg said, still watching Revik’s face. “He’s right. We’ll get a lot more of this. We’ll split our resources between the two of you, like before. It’ll give them more targets, at least.”
Jon nodded, even as his headache throbbed hotter. He’d forgotten about it while he fell through that chute. Gritting his teeth a little, he glanced at Revik.
The Elaerian was looking at Wreg, his expression slightly less hard.
“Thanks.” His faintly-glowing eyes grew unreadable as they flickered down both ends of the torch-lit corridor. “Which direction, do you think?”
Wreg and the others exchanged looks.
Frowning slightly after he studied Jon’s face, Wreg gripped his shoulder firmly in his hand. As soon as he did, Jon’s headache began to ease. Wreg’s light enveloped his and Jon took a breath, then another, feeling his chest unclench.
Gratitude left his light in a hot cloud.
Without glancing at Jon’s face, or letting go of him, Wreg spoke to Revik.
“You can’t feel the walls, laoban? The structure?”
Revik shook his head, once, clicking in irritation. “Not anymore. Last glimpse I got was in that chute.”
“What about Loki?” Chinja said, from Wreg’s other side.
Revik glanced at her. “Same.”
After another silence, Jax made an annoyed, clicking sound. Jon turned with the rest of them, watching as the Indian seer limped up to Neela’s other side. He limped past her then, aiming in the direction Jon first faced when he picked himself up off the floor.
Feeling their eyes, Jax glanced over his shoulder, without stopping his shuffling gait.
/>
“Well,” he said. “We know what’s in the other direction, right? A wall? Chute up to the first sub-basement floor?”
“Right,” Neela said, her voice holding that odd humor. “Assuming they haven’t manipulated the visuals already… and we’re facing the exact opposite direction as we think we are, brother Jax. Or perhaps a new one entirely.”
Jax shrugged, but didn’t stop walking, holding his rifle out in front of him. “Well, we know which direction they want us to go, right? Does it make sense to argue?”
The others exchanged looks.
Then, each conceding Jax’s point in their own way, either with a hand gesture, a shrug, or a more subtle expression, they began following the limping seer down the corridor.
43
FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH
“DI’LANLENTE O’KITRE-SO’H,” Balidor muttered. “Where are they? Can you find them, Vikram? I am getting nothing now. Not on the transmitter, either.”
Vikram shook his head over the terminal where he worked.
Seeing the frown on his face, Balidor gave him a second look, reading something on his light. “What? What is it?”
Vikram let his frown deepen before he glanced at Balidor. “It’s not them. I’m getting another group. Not the Sword’s. Approaching the Tower.”
“Are they part of the FEMA and SCARB groups?”
“No. Neither.”
Vikram cocked his head, his expression an odd mixture of frustration and puzzlement, even as he seemed to be using his light to decipher whatever was on his screen.
“No,” he repeated after a pause. “It’s not them. I think…” He hesitated, then looked up. “I think it might be that seer you were looking for.”
Balidor frowned.
After a bare pause, he walked over to Vikram’s screen, his mouth set in a harder line.
“Surli?” he said. “Is Tarsi with him?”
“I cannot tell.” Vikram moved out of the way, giving him access to the terminal. “He is definitely not alone, though.”
Balidor leaned, staring at the virtual projection, which pulled aleimic signatures out of scans conducted by seers in their main infiltration unit. The program tracked those scans, compiled them, and converted them to images in the physical so their relation to the real-world landmarks could be compared.
Balidor knew Nenzi would have no need of such a thing, being Elaerian.
Most seers, however, could not see the physical world with their aleimi.
For them, such comparisons simplified things that would otherwise be difficult to extrapolate. The process also allowed for fast information sharing for location tracks, which tended to be more precise than imprint tracks, assuming the physical location of a target could be determined with sufficient accuracy.
Balidor squinted at the image on the screen.
He could see what Vikram meant. At least two other seers were with Surli, possibly more.
“There.” Balidor pointed at the screen.
Vikram’s eyes followed his fingers.
“Human?” Vikram’s voice held an open relief. “Gods above. Then he brought Dante with him. He did not kill her.”
“It appears that way, brother. It will be difficult to know for certain without a positive ID.” Balidor frowned, straightening. “Why, though?”
“Why?” Vikram let out a disbelieving grunt, looking up at the Adhipan seer. “She is very good with the machines, laoban. Very, very good. Better than most of my seers, despite her race and youth. She can cross most sight barriers already, and we’ve only had her a few months. She does it differently, using that computer language of hers, but she can speak to the machines. It is like an instinctive knowing with her––a kind of sight I have never seen. Almost like…”
Vikram trailed, his dark complexion suddenly ashen.
Balidor realized what he’d been about to say.
Almost like Garensche.
Clapping the other man warmly on the shoulder, Balidor shook him gently before releasing him, trying to tug his light out of that darker place.
“I understand.” He smiled when Vikram turned. “But if Surli is with Shadow, then why would he have need of an organic machines expert? Why take the girl? Do you think Shadow has some reason to want her? Alive, that is?”
Vikram’s frown returned at Balidor’s words. He didn’t answer at first.
“Are we sure Surli is with Shadow?” he said finally.
Balidor stared at him. Then he tensed, staring at the screen, even as the other’s words really penetrated. “No, brother, we are not.”
Before he could get any further on that train of thought, an excited voice broke into the comm system, blasting over all of their headsets.
“Breach!” Hondo cried out, from her upper-level security station. “We have a breach! I need immediate back-up! At least twenty infiltrators, along with––”
Her voice abruptly cut off.
Balidor looked sharply at the second set of screens, which were currently being monitored by Tenzi. He triggered the open channel in his headset.
“Evacuate!” he said. “Start the evacuations now! Rendezvous as instructed!”
He heard a hollow click, right before his own headset went dead. Cursing in Prexci, then in Mandarin, he looked back at Vikram. “Come,” he said grimly. “Take whatever hand-holds you have. Wipe whatever we can’t bring. It is time.”
Vikram was already working, his fingers flying over the nearest control pad, right before he took two steps to his right to use an archaic keyboard to type in the lock-down sequence. Balidor saw the warning flash on the screen––
The alarm erupted overhead.
Not a Barrier alarm that time––it was the physical alarm Tarsi ordered put in place after the last breach of the hotel. The siren keened up in the style of old fashioned air raid sirens, deafening, hard to think through, impossible to ignore.
Balidor knew it would be doing the same on every floor above and below the one where they stood. The security system was attached to a completely different power source, all dead tech. By the time whoever was attacking them shut it down, it would be too late.
Tenzi yelled from the other set of terminals, where he’d been performing his own set of shut-down actions while Vikram continued work on the mainframe side.
“We’ve got a visual,” he said to Balidor. “At least fifteen. That’s positive headcount.”
“Affiliation?” Balidor yelled back, staying out of the Barrier, just like Tenzi had done. “Do you know them, Tenzi?”
The other seer gestured a yes with sign language, even as he made a few more sharp motions with the same hand.
“Both?” Balidor said aloud. “Salinse’s people and the Lao Hu? Who’s leading them?”
“That female, Ute,” Tenzi yelled back. He grimaced then, a colder anger rising to his dark eyes. “…And Ditrini. I just heard from Hondo on the dead radios upstairs. She’s confirmed both IDs. Ditrini seems to be senior, but they’re running two squads.”
Balidor’s mouth hardened into a line.
He walked to the lockers on the far side of the room, opening the first without preamble. He was already going through the contents when the others seemed to realize what he was doing.
“‘Dori!” Vikram yelled. “We need you downstairs!”
“Go ahead,” Balidor yelled back. “I’ll meet you down there.”
“Adhipan!” Durel said, from the other side of Tenzi. “No! Come with us now! That piece of shit… he is not worth it!”
Balidor didn’t take his eyes off the row of guns racked in front of him.
Picking an M4 carbine out of the row of smaller assault rifles, he smiled humorlessly when he saw it was one of the rebel variants, meaning it had been significantly modified, probably under orders by the Sword. Part of that modification included an organically-enhanced grenade launcher, and a holographic optic with flip-down magnifier, and a laser scope.
Sending a brief prayer of thanks to the Elaerian�
�s paranoia and thoroughness, Balidor flipped the gun sideways and hit the release for the thirty-round magazine, checking that it was full of organic armor-piercers before he slammed it back in.
He grabbed four more of the same from the pile of 5.56 mm rounds, shoving them in a small backpack he also found in the locker.
Thinking a few more seconds, he grabbed four more magazines, and shoved a handgun into his side holster. He added another to his boot.
Grabbing more magazines to go with those, most of them 9mm, he filled the rest of the empty space with a flare gun, extra grenades, a flip knife, a harness and rope, and an extra gun, in case he needed to lend it to someone upstairs. He already wore a vest. Nenzi had all of them put on vests before he left, in case Shadow hit the hotel––another precaution for which Balidor now found himself more than a little grateful.
When he turned around, Tenzi stood in his way, as did Holo and Durel. The latter two had both been Rebels once.
“Sir,” Durel repeated, raising his voice above the siren. “Don’t.”
Balidor gave him a thin smile, even as he pulled on the backpack over his vest. He looped the leather strap attached to the M4 over his head as soon as he had, adjusting it so his hands were free around the backpack.
“I promised that fucker I’d see him dead,” Balidor said, making Tenzi flinch, right before his eyes widened. The surprise on the other man’s face almost made Balidor smile. “I think I should keep my promise, don’t you, brothers?”
There was a pause where the other seers only looked at one another, where the only sound Balidor could hear was the siren exploding overhead.
Then, after what seemed to be a communication of some kind, or maybe just an unspoken agreement, they all looked back at Balidor.
Holo was the first to grin at him.
“Understood, sir. We wouldn’t want to make a liar out of you.”
“Indeed,” Balidor said, raising an eyebrow at the other three. “Start the evacuation. You heard the Sword on this, same as me. Get as many to the airstrip as you possibly can. The beacon should have already been sent to the shore.”
Vikram nodded, although his violet-colored eyes remained worried. He glanced back at the monitors, which now flashed the last few seconds of the warning prior to the drives and the network being purged.
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