War_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

  There wasn’t even anything to push against, really.

  All that met him was an impenetrable silence.

  Pacing back and forth across the open areas of the cage, he fought it anyway, unseeing with his physical eyes, his aleimi bleeding clouds of hotter light.

  More than the construct or the Barrier currents he could see, he struggled with the structures of his own light, fighting to harness it, to direct it in the way he knew he should be able to direct it. Without access to those parts of himself he needed for the telekinesis, it was like grasping smoke. He couldn’t force the right parts of himself to work in concert much at all.

  He definitely couldn’t at the level of precision he needed.

  His jaw hurt from clenching it.

  Every muscle in his body hurt––his chest, arms, legs, torso. Everything in him was clenched, taut as a bowstring, even his feet.

  He’d been watching the healing progress of his telekinetic structures for weeks, pretty much from the instant he came back to consciousness on that floor in Argentina. He’d seen signs of improvement, flickers of awareness, even parts of his structure he could move and flex in isolation. Those glimmers had gotten steadily brighter since they’d gotten back to New York and he’d spent more time in Allie’s light.

  The repairs still felt painfully slow, even before this. And none of it was anywhere goddamned close to what he jurekil’a davos needed right now.

  When more concussive blasts went off, the vibration perceptible under his feet, all he could do was stare at the ceiling again, trying to listen with his ears.

  His heart pounded in his chest.

  Somehow that sound, more than any other, filled his awareness.

  He tried to reach Allie again through the headset link. He’d been trying compulsively, every few seconds, for the last forty or forty-five minutes––basically from the moment he discovered the cell door locked, and none of his controls worked.

  He got nothing but a dead line.

  As he paced and tried to force his light to work, useless thoughts repeated, things that didn’t help him at all now.

  Like the fact that he should have left with her––taken her out of this cursed hotel. He should have listened to his instincts and taken her somewhere else, just the two of them. He probably should have left with her from Argentina, much less Albany, or New York City itself.

  He never should have let her talk him into coming back here.

  The whole gods-damned city was probably under Shadow’s control.

  Both of them had known that, but Allie didn’t want to leave the others unprotected, especially the humans on the List. Allie thought New York was still their best option, at least in the short term, until the disease had run its course.

  She didn’t want to leave Balidor and Wreg to protect the hotel on their own.

  In her words, one telekinetic seer was still better than none.

  He should have overruled her. Hell, he should have drugged her, taken her out in the middle of the night, whether she wanted to leave or not.

  He should have asked for forgiveness, not permission.

  He’d been tempted to do it, even knowing just how mad his wife would be if he did something like that to her, if he basically ignored her wishes––and orders––entirely. He knew her well enough for that. Even if he’d told her about the pregnancy, she still wouldn’t have gone along with him on that. She wouldn’t have done it even for their child.

  He frowned, staring at the wall.

  That wasn’t fair.

  She’d simply believe the child was safer here.

  She’d believe all three of them were safer here. She believed in safety in numbers, in family, in friends. Sometimes he even thought she knew she was pregnant. Even her pushing him to talk never came with any real anger at his silence. She’d let him off the hook, in her own way.

  Hell, she could have ordered him to tell her. She didn’t.

  Why wouldn’t she, unless she already suspected the truth?

  Either way, she wouldn’t want to leave here. She wouldn’t want to leave Jon, or Tarsi, or Wreg, or Balidor. She wouldn’t want to leave Chandre, Yumi or Neela.

  He would have had to force her––which is why he didn’t do it.

  He’d thought about it, though. He thought about it as recently as that morning, when he got bent out of shape after she hadn’t waited for him before going up to the roof with Vikram, who wanted to show her a new signal-catching disk he and Dante had been experimenting with.

  It was ridiculous for them to be joined at the hip all the time. Revik knew that, logically-speaking––except, well, a part of him didn’t really think it was ridiculous at all. He’d been struggling to give her any kind of personal space for weeks.

  Really, if he were being honest, it had been an issue since the wedding.

  He’d woken her deliberately when he got up, coaxed her into the shower with him, coaxed her down to meals, pulled her into his work and his day-to-day schedule in ways he never had before. He knew he’d probably been driving her crazy, although she’d been a good sport about it. She’d been a good sport even not knowing for certain what his problem was.

  He hadn’t even really connected the dots around his protectiveness in terms of logic.

  His mind could do it in retrospect, of course, reminding himself of the intelligence leaks they’d caught already, the likelihood that Shadow had more people here, the likelihood that he had at least one at a fairly high level.

  If this was a hit on her, they’d definitely want him out of the way.

  He threw himself against the door, ignoring the pain that bloomed in his shoulder. He immediately did it again. And again.

  The material didn’t so much as tremble.

  A cold fear washed over his aleimi.

  His light never stopped trying to get past the organic shields.

  He barely paid attention to Maygar, who watched him warily from one side of the cell.

  He didn’t look at Jon, either, who stood across from Maygar. Jon had been locked inside with them when he came downstairs to bring Revik up to the same conference room where he’d escorted Allie. Whoever had eyes into the construct must have been waiting for him; once Jon entered Maygar’s cell, the organic cell door closed and locked behind him, audibly, lighting up the high security light by the DNA scanner.

  That same light indicated the high-grade organic locks had been engaged––the same ones they used for Ditrini, and before him, Raven. Those locks shouldn’t have been engaged for Maygar, and hadn’t been until now.

  Thinking about that now, Revik found himself reminded of the cruise ship, when Terian’s people trapped him in that residential corridor on deck five.

  They’d done that to go after his wife, too.

  He slammed his body against the door again.

  “Revik!” Jon’s voice held a thread of fear. “Calm down! You’re going to break your fucking back… or your arm. I’m sure Wreg is on his way down here, or––”

  Revik slammed himself into the door again, not even glancing over.

  When Revik did it again, Maygar seemed to reach the end of his rope.

  “Stop, goddamn it! You really think you’re getting through four inches of organic paneling? With your damned body?” Frustration leaked into his voice. “Talk to us, damn it! Talk to one of us, anyway. What is this? What the hell is going on?”

  Revik forced himself to step back from the door. His eyes scanned the walls, looking for any irregularities, anything that might help him. He fought to think.

  “Dehgoies!” Maygar snapped. “Take this fucking collar off me, okay? Unchain me! Let me help you, goddamn it!”

  Revik ignored him.

  Forcing Maygar, Jon and everything else out of his mind, he concentrated with all of his being, fighting to ignite the telekinetic structures in his aleimi.

  Everything inside him went totally still, like an inhaled breath. He couldn’t think in the usual way at all––where hi
s mind, emotion and personality worked and interchanged fluidly, in overlapping layers that colluded, took turns, recombined.

  Instead, he simply flatlined.

  He descended into a space of pure logic, stripped of all but bare, clinical thought.

  The world around him flatlined, too. It turned into grid lines and dimensions, volumes and angles, stress factors, tensile and compression strength, chemical components and properties. Everything felt dead, distant, unreal, yet his view of it grew sharper than glass. The intensity he’d battled in his light for weeks now––pretty much since it occurred to him what the changes in Allie's aleimi meant––now gave him a crystalline focus, even as he struggled to stop himself from physically trying to tear down the door.

  His eyes glowed as he stared at the one-way mirror. His mind fought to make sense of it all, tracing events backwards in tiny, precise increments. It happened fast––pretty much the instant Jon opened the door and came inside the cell.

  The door closed, and then––

  No. It started before that.

  It started when Jon came to get Allie.

  His mind tried to fit everything together like puzzle pieces, looking for the picture. Why let them go in Argentina, only to yank them all over again in New York? Given what they’d done to him when he tried to use the telekinesis, it was abundantly clear they could’ve used the construct to knock them all out.

  Why wait? Why go to all the hassle of coming here?

  His mind clicked back to the practical side of their situation.

  There was no way the hotel wasn’t in full lock-down mode. Allie would be on her way down here, assuming she could. Wreg and Balidor would be coordinating an assault, trying to get to them. The explosions had come from down here, so they’d be coming here, too, assuming they weren’t already cut off.

  Revik wanted the thought to reassure him, but all he could think about was the fact that his wife was pregnant, that even if she wasn’t currently blindfolded, chained, drugged, and being loaded into the back of a van, she’d be walking into a trap trying to save him.

  Shadow would want the baby, more than he wanted Allie or him.

  If he knew she was pregnant––which he did, if he had a mole in the hotel––he’d want to secure her first, before he did anything else.

  Maybe the baby was why Shadow hadn’t tried to take them in Argentina. Maybe they discovered she was pregnant and didn’t want to risk harming the baby or causing a miscarriage with whatever they used in the construct to knock him out. If Allie was right, and Menlim really was alive, he would approach this methodically, by the numbers.

  Lock down Revik. Take Allie and the baby.

  Move to secondary targets: Maygar, Revik, Wreg, possibly Varlan and Balidor.

  Ditrini––unless they freed him early to help coordinate teams on the ground.

  Maybe Shadow wanted Jon for Wreg. If Menlim thought he had a chance of converting Wreg back to his side, he’d want Wreg’s mate for leverage. Shadow could have seen the preliminary bond structure in Argentina, or the mole might have passed on that intel, too, since Wreg and Jon had gone public with their engagement.

  Revik fought to make sense of it, to decide which move resonated with what he felt now.

  Allie would be blind. She’d be totally helpless, even with the telekinesis.

  The idea of Menlim having Allie now, when she was so vulnerable, when their child was so vulnerable, stopped his mind briefly.

  Perhaps in self-defense, he returned to the facts.

  Fact, the hotel had been breached in force, likely before or directly after the first explosion. If they were coming in this hot, they had numbers, or else a way to lock down the relevant parts of the hotel, or particular individuals. With the block on the cell, Revik couldn’t see where they were, but the explosions definitely happened underground, which was fact number two.

  As for entry points, there were the doors leading down to the old subway tunnel and the aquifer set up by the hotel, or someone already in the hotel may have planted the bombs as a diversion, signaling for a breach on a higher floor.

  Fact three, they were cut off from the hotel's security construct; in addition, all of their headsets were inoperable, fact four.

  Fact five, the breach alarms would be going off now, and different groups of high-priority targets would be in the process of being moved throughout the hotel and possibly off-site. Tarsi would be handling that. Wreg and Balidor would be handling the military side, or one of their subordinates, if either of them were incapacitated. Being cut off, Revik hadn’t received the Barrier intel dump from the breach alarm, but he had to assume whoever was coming for him, they knew a lot more than he did about what they were up against.

  The organic controls and aleimic fields were all walled off, so there was no way to talk to the machines, fact six.

  He glanced at Jon. “Who knew you came down here?”

  Jon jumped a little, then frowned. “All of them.”

  “All of who? Who did you talk to directly?”

  “Wreg. Jorag was there. Hondo.”

  Jon was watching him cautiously, almost warily, which reminded Revik that his eyes were glowing. Ignoring that, he looked at Maygar next.

  The younger seer, who was even starting to look like Revik to Revik at this point, hadn’t said a word since his last outburst. The wary look remained in his dark eyes, but Revik saw something else there, too––an openness, possibly even a willingness to put the majority of his personal shit on hold so they could get through this together.

  Whether that last part was true or merely Revik’s wishful thinking, Maygar clearly grasped the basics of their situation, seemingly better than Jon. Revik sensed fear bordering on a panic reaction on him; he could feel it without even reaching out. That fear vibrated Maygar’s light, intensely enough that the young male was trying to hide it, even wearing the collar.

  Pain came to Revik’s chest as he looked at him.

  He remembered what he’d gotten off the med-techs relating to Maygar’s condition after they’d left Shadow’s castle.

  Based on marks they’d found on his body and things they’d picked up in his light, they had a pretty good idea of what he’d been forced to endure during his few months’ stay in Argentina. They’d beaten him with blunt objects, cut him, pulled his light apart, electrocuted him, burned him, broken his ribs and fingers, deprived him of sleep, starved him, subjected him to several forms of water torture…

  Clenching his jaw, Revik walked to him.

  Triggering his headset, he was relieved to find it still worked inside the cell.

  He sent a series of commands once he verified it was operational. After a few minutes of working with the creatures in the internal, low-grade security system that still worked inside the cell, he persuaded them to unlock the chains around Maygar’s wrists and ankles.

  As soon as the locks had fallen open, he used the headset again to release the collar from around his neck.

  He didn’t have time to worry about Maygar turning on them.

  He also couldn’t bring himself to leave him defenseless.

  If the young seer was surprised, it barely registered as a flicker in his dark chocolate eyes.

  He winced, likely from the strands of the collar retracting, and averted his gaze, giving Revik a short, red-faced nod of thanks. Revik watched as Maygar rubbed his wrists with his newly-freed hands, pulling the collar carefully off his own neck. He tossed it down on the cot once he’d gotten free of it, frowning at it briefly.

  Standing stiffly, he glanced at Jon, then at Revik himself, as if not sure what to do with himself, or either of them. Or maybe he was waiting for his sight to kick back in, now that he was free of the collar, so he could assess the situation for himself.

  Jon seemed to approve of Revik’s actions with Maygar––or at least, to not disapprove. Giving the Chinese seer a brief once-over, he looked back at Revik.

  “What do we do now?” he said. “I assume you can
’t get through, either?”

  Revik didn’t bother to answer.

  “Is there any other way to signal someone?” Jon said as Revik resumed pacing. Jon followed him with his eyes. “Tools? Is there anything in here we can use?”

  Revik scarcely gave him a glance. He heard him, though. He was thinking again, trying to decide what options had been left them, if any.

  Then, somewhere in that haze, something clicked.

  His mind sharpened, even as he kicked himself for not thinking to ask it earlier. Turning, he faced Jon, his face tightening as he stared at the other man’s face.

  “You said Wreg sent you down here? Knew you were here, at least?” He frowned. “Why? Why did he send you here? Did he tell you?”

  Jon gave him a bewildered look. “What? What do you mean? I came to get you.”

  Revik clicked at him, gesturing dismissively. “You’d already been down here once. I told you I was coming. Why would Wreg send you a second time, and not just call me himself? As head of security, he has access to every holding cell down here.”

  “I told you,” Jon said, frowning. “Your headset wasn’t working.”

  “So? Wreg still has access to the intercom system. So does Balidor. And Yumi. They didn’t need you for that. If the intercom was out, they wouldn’t have sent you, they’d send down a fucking combat team, if I know Wreg at all. He would never have sent you alone, not with two systems failures in the security area of the hotel… both of them involving me.”

  Pausing, he thought aloud, adding, “They didn’t need you to come down here for Allie, much less me. Why did you come down twice?” His frown deepened. “Are you sure it was Wreg who sent you? Both times? Or just the second time?”

  Briefly, Jon’s eyes looked confused.

  “I brought her upstairs,” he said, frowning. “They said they needed you…”

  “Where upstairs? Where did you bring her? You said the bar, right? Allie pinged me, said you were bringing her to the higher floors… but you were supposed to go to the bar after, weren’t you? Is that where everyone else was meeting you? Is that where Wreg told you to come after me? From the bar?”

  Jon’s eyes cleared. “Yeah. That’s right. We went upstairs first. Then the bar. That’s how it happened. Wreg was there.”