War_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

  When we opened the main hatch, we got pretty much the reception we’d been expecting.

  Meaning, the whole land-facing side of the submarine was instantly surrounded by guns.

  The line of black-clad soldiers stood there, unmoving apart from loose pieces of their clothes and hair whipping in gale-force winds. They blinked stoically against the pounding rain.

  The reception party concentrated mainly around the hatch we’d opened, but smaller groups clustered around the aft hatch, as well. None of us dared lift our heads above the lip of either of the two openings until we got clearance to show ourselves.

  Of course, I wasn’t allowed anywhere near the top hatches.

  Neither was Revik, although we both saw the whole scene unfold later when Balidor shared the outer hull image captures with us.

  Because of those same cameras, I saw our preliminary landing party exit cautiously through the hatch once they got the go-ahead from the city’s customs officials. They walked out onto the docks with hands up, surrounded by all of those guns and buffeted by wind and rain hard enough that they winced and huddled as if from multiple blows to the head and body.

  Those guns barely wavered.

  It was unnerving to watch, even after it had already happened. I could only imagine how high tensions were in our group in the moment.

  Jax and Illeg, who’d offered to be the first two to poke their heads out of doors, at once found themselves faced by that closing line of humans in wet suits and military-grade rain gear. Those same humans all held automatic rifles and yelled above the wind and rain for them to keep their hands in the air and not reach for any pockets or weapons or they’d be shot.

  Talei and Chandre, from just inside the hatch’s tunnel, managed to calm everything down, not by using their light, which was restricted via some kind of Barrier field the border authorities had erected, but by flashing official credentials and pass codes related to their status in SCARB and the White House Secret Service.

  Throughout all of that, Yumi and Poresh continued to flash the passwords and sequence of orders Talei arranged for us, claiming we had every right to be there.

  The Barrier field itself caused a bit of a stir among our infiltrators.

  None of them had ever encountered anything like it before.

  Since it acted almost like a sight restraint collar, but appeared to be localized to a particular area, rather than a specific seer, the implications were a bit ominous. While definitely not as strong as most sight-restraint collars, the field limited enough to be a problem.

  Fields that could control seers based solely on geography would change the game, and in more ways than one.

  Shadow and his lap-dogs at Black Arrow had been busy.

  Luckily, Chandre, Balidor and Talei planned for a more straightforward approach, via the business permit papers we’d acquired from Talei, along with Talei herself, who immediately calmed everyone down once she proved she was still a functioning agent of the D.C. branch of SCARB, as well as being a member of the White House Secret Service and Construct Security.

  Chandre passed muster not long after, since her status with SCARB remained active, too, just at a lower security level.

  Between the two of them, we managed to obtain clearance for the rest of our seers to proceed to the quarantine center.

  That sight-restraint field baffled and disturbed Balidor and Revik a lot, along with Wreg and just about every other infiltrator who felt it when the submarine first breached.

  In addition to impairing all of our sight, the field meant I could only perform basic skills with the telekinesis, as well––so if they needed backup upstairs, I wouldn’t be able to help as much as we’d hoped. That wasn’t because the field could block those higher structures in my light (it couldn’t), but because I needed Revik’s help for anything beyond basic combustion explosions and throws. Given the damage to Revik’s higher aleimic structures, the field effectively cut us off from one another.

  I was reasonably confident a few exploded guns and throws, however dramatic, wouldn’t be enough if we had to force our way through a military-grade barricade like this.

  We couldn’t do much with the sight-restraint field at the time, of course, for a lot of reasons, but I knew Balidor would check it out with Arc Enterprises, the seer organics company at the hotel, at the earliest possible opportunity.

  The mere fact that no one knew anything like this was in the works had everyone nervous.

  Luckily, we’d already decided to run the majority of our seers through the standard, quarantine check-in process on the docks.

  The quarantine had been designed and set up by New York’s Homeland Security Department, with the help of FEMA and SCARB, as well as private security consultants provided by a number of corporations housed in the city. Luckily, because we had contacts in several of those places, we had some idea of the protocols in advance. Most of our seers were likely to pass those protocols, since they were immune to the disease and could show proof of ownership by humans with significant financial assets.

  Our illegally-obtained but very convincing-looking permits extended to all of the seers except me, Revik and a few others in our group with outstanding warrants issued by the World Court: Wreg, Neela, Loki, Jax, Jorag, Illeg, and Varlan, among others.

  Of course, assuming Shadow had even more connections than we did––which was likely––risk remained that others in our group could be ID’d as ours while passing through the grid. We had few illusions that our return to New York would go unnoticed by that camp for long, but we didn’t stopped crossing the quarantine line, either.

  Moreover, we weren’t sure what they’d do.

  Shadow let us leave Argentina, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t lock our people up in Riker’s Island here, or worse, shoot them on the spot, claiming they were terrorists.

  The ownership papers and aliases Balidor arranged were of high quality, so we had to hope it would be enough. He’d utilized another of our contacts from the House on the Hill for those, a smaller and lesser-known company which provided “registration problem-solving for seers” as a profitable side-wing of their more legitimate operation as couriers and communication systems specialists.

  It helped, of course, that for once, the human authorities weren’t looking for seers.

  The only other exception to our “front door” policy was Balidor himself, since we knew he would be a priority target for Shadow. We’d started to value our high-ranking infiltrators a lot more since Vash’s assassination; Revik insisted on putting Balidor on protected status, even above the Adhipan leader’s protests.

  Wreg agreed vehemently, which I think surprised Balidor so much, he stopped arguing with us at that point. It surprised me less. All of us had a whole new appreciation for Balidor’s skills after that mess in Argentina, Wreg included.

  Therefore, all four of us––Balidor, Revik, Wreg and I––entered through the back door along with the humans and our other high-visibility terrorist seers.

  That back-door consisted of Garend sending us through cargo protocols on the other end of the docks, accompanied by Talei and Chandre, who claimed the enclosed military equipment was “sensitive” and needed to be escorted personally by SCARB agents.

  Of course, we all knew we still might have to shoot our way into the city proper. A lot would depend on what kind of toys they employed to scan the crates.

  Talei seemed confident it wouldn’t come to that, though.

  Since I didn’t really know Talei, I didn’t find that terribly comforting.

  Also, it was difficult not to be paranoid, since we had no idea what was going on outside the submarine at the time. Those of us locked in the cargo hold had to maintain total radio silence, and not only in terms of the Barrier. None of us wore headsets or wraparounds, carried hand-helds, or even wore implants. Everything had been removed, either on the ship or in transit on the plane to avoid setting off any ID scanners on the docks.

  Along with our human
cargo, Revik, Wreg, Balidor and I were strapped to the inside walls of one of two organically-shielded crates, waiting to see if we’d need to use the guns we’d brought with us in case of emergencies.

  It was an awkward way to come face-to-face with the humans we’d brought back with us from San Francisco. Jon was there, too, but down for the count. He hadn’t so much as stirred since we’d entered the cramped, seer and human-filled crate.

  Most of the humans I knew from San Francisco sat directly across from us.

  Yeah, it was awkward.

  I’d gone to see them a few times on the aircraft carrier before we left for Argentina.

  I hadn’t talked to them even once on the plane ride back to the States, though, or even across the few weeks we’d spent in Albany.

  It seemed like there was never enough time, what with absorbing intel and reports, talking with the infiltration teams about preliminary tracking of Cass and Feigran, letting them spend hours pulling my impressions of Cass, watching the dark feeds for news in other countries.

  Then there were the endless discussions about how best to get back into Manhattan, what to do with the List seers and humans trapped in other parts of the globe, who we could even trust enough to give the names of those on the Lists we hadn’t yet located.

  Of course, I knew that was a bullshit excuse.

  I spent way too much time staring at the carnage outside our windows in Albany for the “not enough time” excuse to hold much water.

  The truth is, after Argentina, I just wasn’t up to hanging out with people I’d been friends with along with Cass. I wasn’t up for the reminder of my life in San Francisco, or how completely alien that life felt to me now. I wasn’t up for even one of them asking me where Cass was, and why she wasn’t with us.

  I couldn’t deal with it, so I avoided them.

  I hadn’t seen them on the submarine, either, since Balidor took the precaution of locking all humans in the disease-free crates prior to our leaving.

  Wreg had been pissed off that Jon was housed with the other “worms” during our trip through New York Harbor and the East River. Looking at Jon now though, passed out cold in his jump harness, I really couldn’t see how it made much difference.

  It was probably a good thing, really, since Jon wouldn’t have let himself sleep if he’d seen Wreg with a bullet in his arm.

  Well, good for me, anyway.

  Jon still had an ambiguous Barrier signature anyway, according to Varlan and Balidor, and “ambiguous” blood and organ placement according to the lab techs––so we had to be careful with him until we know how he’d show up in security scans.

  Varlan seemed to have a great deal of curiosity about Jon, I’d noticed.

  After quite a bit of staring after they were first introduced in Argentina, he cleared his throat and openly asked him, “What are you?”

  As Jon fumbled for an answer, Varlan turned to Balidor, asking the same question of him.

  “What is that?” he said, curiosity audible in his deep, melodious voice.

  He stared at Jon as if he were some exotic pet owned by the rest of us.

  He might have kept asking that, or something similar, but about then, Wreg lost patience. An edge in his voice, he explained that “it” was off-limits, and that Varlan had best keep his damned aleimi to himself if he didn't want to lose something he’d miss.

  I couldn’t help giggling at that, which earned me a dark look from Wreg, too.

  None of this seemed to satisfy Varlan, but he made a respectful gesture to both of them and took himself politely away.

  Revik found all of this extremely funny, of course.

  I wondered sometimes if it was a “misery loves company” thing, at least to a degree.

  Wreg and Jon, if Balidor could be believed, were smack dab in the middle of that awkward, volatile and hyper-sensitive stage of an intense seer coupling that hadn’t yet figured out where it was going. Those kinds of couplings usually either resulted in messy breakups involving death threats and a lot of hard feelings––or else an actual mated pair.

  Honestly, I wasn’t sure which possibility scared me more.

  Brushing that out of my mind, I tried to focus back on where we were now, and, more importantly, where we were going. Since no one managed to talk to anyone at the hotel in the past few weeks, we really had no idea what we were walking into.

  Whatever they’d managed in our absence, in terms of security and self-sustainability protocols, I worried it wouldn’t be enough.

  I didn’t have any solid hits around that, though––it was purely my paranoia talking.

  New York seemed to be making that paranoia worse, somehow. As soon as we docked, the Barrier seemed to grow heavier, as if New York’s whole aleimic field had altered in our absence. In that heaviness, I felt eyes surrounding us, as if everything and everyone here was under surveillance, pretty much all the time.

  Thinking this, I glanced at Revik and saw him frown.

  “Yeah,” he said only.

  “You’re not supposed to be reading me here,” I reminded him softly.

  He gave me a faint smile. “When it’s you, and we’re sitting this close, it’s not reading, wife. It’s listening. Especially when you can’t shield.”

  Unconsciously, I reached for him with my light, but he caught my hand, indicating for me to stop. He kissed my palm.

  “Hey,” he cautioned. “Be careful, okay? We’ll be at the hotel soon.”

  I nodded, but let go of his light only reluctantly. In that brief taste, I’d felt a glimmer of that “something wrong” blanketing the city even more strongly.

  It felt almost like a construct.

  “It might be,” Revik admitted, squeezing my fingers tighter. “And you’re right. I feel it, too. It feels a little like the Pyramid. But different, too.”

  I nodded. Resettling back in the jump seat, I made myself let it go for now.

  Still, the thought that someone might have placed a functional construct over the whole of New York, given the sight restraint mechanism we’d just encountered, as well as everything that happened in Argentina, made me tense all over again.

  The crate wasn’t comfortable, either.

  Running lights shone dimly around the base of the floor––dead, not organic. The seats were hard, and the straps cut into my skin, even wearing an armored vest. The whole crate smelled sharply of disinfectant, strong enough to make my eyes sting.

  Lately I’d been a lot more sensitive to chemicals in general, though, especially poisonous ones. I couldn’t even handle smoke very well, which didn’t bode well for me, frankly, given that half the country seemed to be on fire.

  Someone had sedated all the humans.

  I’m sure they’d done it mainly to keep them from hurting themselves or trying to get free, but I suspected they’d also done it to keep them quiet.

  Whatever they’d been given, it didn’t knock them out entirely, probably so they could be shepherded through decontamination on the other end. The single exception was Tina, Jaden’s girlfriend, who lay even more motionless than Jon.

  According to Balidor and Jorag, they pretty much had to knock her out.

  It was that or strong-arm her, just to get her strapped inside.

  In Tina’s defense, she’d seen most of her city murdered recently, she’d been shot in the leg when Revik used her as a decoy, and we’d essentially kidnapped her to bring her here.

  Oh, and I stabbed her once with a broken wine bottle.

  So yeah, her encounters with seers hadn’t exactly been stellar so far.

  She might be in shock, or even suffering from post-traumatic symptoms.

  Knowing how thrilled she must be to be going anywhere with me and my terrorist seer pals, she’d probably been screaming bloody murder since she woke up on that aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

  Angeline, who I’d known since art school, along with Frankie, one of my tattoo shop pals, just looked really stoned. They stared, g
lassy-eyed, as if Revik and I were ghosts, or maybe some holographic 3D vurt program on the feeds. It was difficult not to stare back as I fumbled to strap myself into a jump seat across from them.

  They’d provided us with crash-seats, like you might see in a stock car––I assumed in case they had to invert the crate.

  I glanced over at the rest of them as I finished buckling the last safety belt, fighting to get comfortable in the hard foam. Sasquatch looked pretty out of it, too. So did the handful of other humans we’d pulled out of San Francisco and the surrounding cities because their names were on the Displacement List.

  Jon was supposed to be the commander of these people.

  As I thought it, I glanced at Wreg, watching him strap himself in on my other side next to Jon. Despite his seeming imperviousness to all physical hardships, Wreg looked exhausted. That last week of stress and no-sleep, periodic jailbreaks and battles thrown in, boat rides, flights, treks through the Andes and jeep rides across a bullet-ridden and half-crazed New York state… it had taken its toll on all of us.

  From Wreg’s face, I could tell his arm hurt him, too.

  Feeling a different set of eyes on me, I turned, looking for the source. I met a pair of dark blue irises before my mind caught up enough to identify their owner.

  Once I recognized him, I stiffened.

  Jaden’s stare remained glassy, like Frankie and Angeline’s, yet he seemed to be trying to think through the drug, to concentrate. He focused the bulk of that effort on me for some reason, as if I were a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve.

  When I tried giving him a reassuring smile, he flinched, recognition glancing across his features.

  “It really is you,” he said. “Allie.”

  I fought a frown off my face. Balidor assured me before we got in here that the crate was soundproof, so I knew it wasn’t a big deal if Jaden spoke, but even in my few, short interactions with him, the staring was really getting old.

  When I glanced at Balidor himself, who sat opposite Revik, he only raised an eyebrow at me, glancing at Jaden.

  When I followed Balidor’s gaze, Jaden’s expression hadn’t changed from that puzzled stare.