War_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

  “Are they trying to extract the Sword, too, do you think?” Wreg asked.

  Balidor shook his head, his mind still distracted. “I don’t know. We have to proceed as if that were the case. We’ll need him to track Allie.”

  When that sick feeling worsened, Balidor tried to shake it off, even as Wreg clasped his arm, tight enough to hurt.

  “Hold it together, Adhipan,” the ex-Rebel said, his voice a near-threat. “We need you, too. You fall apart right now, I’ll shoot you myself. I swear it.”

  Balidor nodded, smiling wanly in spite of himself. “Noted.” Forcing clarity back to his mind, he said, “She might want them. Cass. She might want Nenz. Jon, too.”

  Wreg didn’t look surprised, but Balidor felt the coil of pain that came off his light, along with a pulse so dangerous, Balidor flinched. He stepped back from him in reflex, but his mind remained more or less blank.

  Without waiting, Wreg turned from the shelf, zipping up the black canvas bag at his feet. He hoisted it up on one shoulder as soon as he’d grasped the handles. By the time Balidor’s vision cleared, the ex-Rebel was already heading for the door.

  He didn’t bother to look back to see if Balidor followed.

  Somewhere in that, Balidor briefly felt Cass.

  He didn’t get enough to glean actual information, but he swore he saw her looking down at them from their own construct. Watching them. More and more, it felt like it was her orchestrating this, even more than Shadow.

  “Yeah,” Wreg said, from next to him.

  Without slowing his pace, he handed Balidor another of those small, cylindrical grenades. Both of them had already filled their other vest pocket with flares. “I feel it, too. I’ve felt her. I’ve felt Shadow as Menlim… and Feigran. They’re screwing with us, for sure. I feel that fucker Ditrini now, too. They want us to know they’ve got control of the security construct.”

  “A diversion? To keep us from following her?” Balidor said.

  “Too much bait?” Wreg said grimly. “Agreed. I’m not sure we have much choice, though. We’ll need Nenz to find her now.”

  Balidor glanced at him, and at the ex-Rebel’s obsidian eyes.

  He saw the same understanding that had reached Balidor himself.

  Wreg clearly understood that it wouldn’t make any difference, knowing they were being funneled into a trap. It didn’t change anything. Knowing they were being lured, that their construct had been breached, that everything felt orchestrated to make them so desperate that they did something stupid––none of it changed the basic facts.

  It might make them marginally more cautious, but truthfully, Balidor doubted that, too.

  “We play his little game, then,” he muttered, glancing at Wreg.

  “Or hers,” the ex-Rebel agreed.

  He didn’t slow his muscular strides down the hall.

  Without slowing his own strides, Balidor wondered how Jon must feel right now, knowing he’d likely just led his sister to her death. He wondered if Jon even knew yet. If he was with Dehgoies, he’d be lucky if the Elaerian didn’t kill him.

  He glanced at Wreg as he thought it, but the seer only shook his head, once.

  “He won’t,” Wreg said. “He might want to, but he won’t. He’ll know the priorities, as will Jon. We get them out first. Pick up the pieces later.”

  Balidor nodded, but felt the swell of grief on the other seer as he’d said it.

  Wreg knew exactly how Jon would react to this once everything fell out, especially if Allie and Revik died, or their child was stolen. He would be inconsolable.

  Truthfully, Balidor suspected it might break him.

  There was no point thinking about that now, though.

  None of them could reverse the past for Jon, any more than they could reverse it for the Sword, or for Allie herself. Whatever Shadow might do to her, pregnant or not, before they could get to her, they would just have to live with that now.

  “What about Cass?” Balidor said. “If she’s telekinetic, do we take her out?”

  “Nenz’s call,” Wreg said, gesturing dismissively.

  “It may have to be ours,” Balidor warned.

  Wreg glanced at him, without slowing his strides in the featureless corridor.

  “You’re second after Nenz,” Wreg reminded him. “So it may be your call, Adhipan.”

  Giving him another look, he added, “If you’re asking my opinion, I vote yes. Especially if she’s telekinetic. If Chan’s right, we won’t be able to reason with her, or even reach her most likely. Shadow traumatized her, brainwashed her, and activated her prematurely, just like he did with Nenz. If she’s turned on Jon and Allie this fast, he probably broke her mind and light. In my opinion, it’s a hell of a risk to take, leaving her alive.”

  Thinking about this, Balidor nodded slowly.

  He didn’t disagree with the ex-Rebel’s reasoning.

  The idea still gave him pause.

  Not only was Cass clearly an intermediary, she was one of the Four. Further, she was family to both the Bridge and the Sword––and to Jon. Allie might never forgive him if he killed her, even if they did it to save Allie’s own husband.

  More than any of those reasons, however, was another, bigger one.

  Balidor didn’t want to do it.

  The idea of killing Cassandra Jainkul, the person he’d known and cared about and worked alongside and even had a crush on, made him feel sick. Whether she was telekinetic or not, to kill Cass now, before any of them had a chance to talk to her, much less to assess whether she could be brought back, felt wrong in a way Balidor couldn’t adequately communicate to himself, much less to Wreg.

  “Yeah.” Wreg sighed. “Jon would never forgive me, either. My opinion still stands.”

  Balidor only nodded, not answering.

  “Whatever you decide, you need to be able to make the hard call, if it comes down to it,” Wreg added, looking at him. “Jon and Allie might just have to live with it. You might have to, too, Adhipan. It may come down to a simple truth: either we kill her now, when she’s only a baby demon, brainwashed and brow-beaten by Shadow and Terian and whoever else… or we face the full-grown hydra later on. A fully trained Elaerian who is loyal to Menlim and the Dreng, and a killer by birthright and aleimi.”

  Pausing, he frowned.

  “…She is War, after all. We owe her that. You can’t possibly tell me you don’t think we’d be doing her a favor, to keep her from lifetimes as a slave to the Dreng? Or do you really want to risk that Allie could pull her out, like she did with Nenz?”

  Balidor nodded, feeling his jaw clench.

  Even so, he made himself say it aloud.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice hard. “I agree. Barring a different order from Nenz, if we cannot capture her, and the opportunity presents itself, we should kill her.”

  Wreg nodded.

  They made the final turn towards the section of tunnel that had been blocked by the first set of explosions. As Wreg pinged that part of the construct to give the excavation team warning of their arrival, Balidor glimpsed the aleimic signatures of Illeg, Declan, Loki, Torek, Gunte and Oli, along with at least a dozen others.

  Some of them were so new, Balidor knew them only by their aleimic signatures, charted for security purposes.

  Seconds later, he saw them with his eyes.

  It took a few seconds more before he made out the explosives they were stacking in key pieces around the debris.

  “Are you ready for this?” Wreg asked him grimly.

  Balidor nodded, his eyes still on the explosives as he unholstered his gun.

  “Do it,” he said. “Now, brother.”

  41

  DOG

  REVIK LIMPED DOWN a curved stone tunnel, jaw clenched against physical pain.

  His light toyed with and fucked with and fought with the collar.

  He winced violently when he went too far and ignited the shock control. All he could do was wait for the current to pass, gritting his teeth harde
r as his head exploded in a series of sharper spikes. Before the pain had entirely faded, his light was already back to fighting the collar, trying to find a way through.

  A chain circled his neck, a choke-collar.

  A dog collar.

  Another chain was clipped to the sight-restraint organic that sat higher on his neck.

  He’d done his best to catalogue his injuries.

  One eye and cheek were swollen, impairing his vision on the right side. He was already struggling a bit with depth perception. They’d cracked a couple of ribs. He’d have to protect that, or he’d go down fast. He had burns on his back and sides from the electric prod they’d used. His cock hurt from the same, and his balls. So did his chest and stomach. They’d dislocated his shoulder. That last caused the majority of his physical pain now. He might have some knee damage too; his limp felt more serious than simply a bruised muscle.

  No puncture wounds that he knew of, so that was good news.

  There might be some minor internal bleeding from the kicks to his abdomen.

  He’d lost a few teeth.

  The two sets of cuffs on his wrists and arms meant he probably couldn’t do much about the shoulder until they stopped. He likely couldn’t do anything about the knee.

  They’d drugged him.

  Already, he felt the drug screwing with his light. It made him emotional, but he knew that was a byproduct of him having less control over his light. More worryingly, it contained a strong muscle relaxant, which might be cutting his physical pain down some, but also could get him killed in a fight.

  He couldn’t think about Allie. Separation sickness rose in him violently the one time he’d tried; badly enough he’d emptied his stomach on the cement pipe’s floor.

  Another explosion went off overhead.

  He ducked in instinct.

  Water, debris, mud and chunks of cement dripped and sifted from the tunnel walls, both around them and up ahead, where the yisso torches dimly illuminated their path.

  Revik glanced at Jon, who stumble-walked next to him.

  Jon’s hazel eyes were wide, his breathing shallow. He had a bruise along one cheek, but it wasn’t cutting into his vision. He shuffled his feet from the drugs, but he wasn’t limping, either. The cuffs hunched his back strangely and he winced periodically, probably from the sight-restraint collar, but overall, he was in the best shape of the three of them.

  Revik hadn’t been able to watch much of Jon’s fight in that cell, given his own issues, but he knew they’d cornered him. His brother-in-law had likely taken a lot of hits to the torso and the side of the head before he went down, but they didn’t appear to have broken anything––probably because, once he went down, they didn’t start kicking and hitting him, the way they had with Revik.

  Then again, Jon was probably better at staying down than Revik, too.

  Revik looked past him to Maygar, who probably lived somewhere between the two extremes of him and Jon. Maygar also had new bruises on his face, and a burn on his neck from the same electric prod they’d used on Revik.

  From the overly tight, pale look of his face, he was in more pain than Jon.

  He also had a limp, although it was slight.

  Despite the metal cuffs, chains and collars around all three of their necks, Maygar and Revik each had two guards on them still, armed with stunners, extractors and those burning prods. Jon had a fifth guard on him, and he walked in the middle.

  But Revik must have stared too long.

  A guard behind him wrenched his dislocated shoulder, forcing a gasp to Revik’s lips. He fought to regain his breath as his vision slanted out, making him grit his teeth to keep from yelling out. He stumbled, nearly falling to his knees when the same guard shoved him to keep him walking forward.

  Even half-blind with pain, he got the message.

  They didn’t want the three of them communicating, not even with their eyes. When Revik could see again, he stared straight ahead.

  The tunnel shivered from another concussion, raining down more silt.

  Ditrini paused his steps that time, staring up.

  Their whole party paused with him, standing in the shallow, fetid water at the bottom of the pipe. Apart from Revik, who still breathed hard from pain, no one made a sound.

  Ditrini’s silver eyes reflected the greenish-glow of the yisso torches as he listened.

  “Adhipan,” he murmured. “Well, hello to you, old friend.”

  Turning, he glanced at Revik, giving him a thin smile before he resumed walking, his heavy, organic boots splashing through a foot or so of water.

  “He is not happy, is he?” Ditrini mused aloud, aiming his words at Revik. “Your Balidor? Not happy about not being able to find you. Not happy to find your son’s cell empty. Not happy to find my cell empty. Or Raven Elan’s. Not happy to find the traitor scum Surli’s head separated from his body, the rest of him in pieces on the cell floor…”

  Revik winced at that last, in spite of himself.

  Remembering Allie’s few words about Surli, he felt sick, and vaguely guilty.

  “…Most of all, your Balidor is not happy about our father’s acquisition of your wife.” Ditrini smiled, glancing over his shoulder. “He hit me. Balidor. Did he tell you that? He hit me for what I showed him about our precious girl. His Adhipan sensibilities were most offended.”

  Ditrini’s smile widened as he gave Revik another once-over.

  “…Of course, he does not admit to himself the real reason he hit me. It is pure male rage and jealousy, brother. He wanted to do those things to her himself. Of course he did. What male wouldn’t?”

  Clicking, Ditrini let out a disgusted grunt, waving a hand forward at the dark.

  “Like most cowards, he dared not, even if it is his birthright with the female, whatever their supposed ‘rank.’” His silver eyes met Revik’s. “Like all kneelers, he snivels behind Code, behind scripture… behind whatever excuse cowardly males hide behind. He whines when others do what he does not dare to do. He whines and pouts, secretly wishing he had done this thing first, that he had claimed her for himself. He calls this virtue.”

  Clicking in more disgust, Ditrini shook his head, eyes distant.

  Revik didn’t respond.

  Even so, something must have shown on his face.

  Giving him another glance, Ditrini broke into a smile, yanking sharply on the chain he’d arranged as a choke-collar around Revik’s neck.

  Revik choked, as he was meant to. He also let it jerk him forward, not fighting him. Despite everything, even with the drugs, that crystalline sharpness hadn’t left his light––or his mind.

  If anything, it had grown more intense.

  “Don’t worry, brother Sword.” Ditrini smiled. “I fully intend to let you play this time. Our mutual friend, Shadow, promised I could play with you, too, when you’re feeling well enough… perhaps your lap dogs here, too,” he added, glancing at Jon and Maygar.

  Extending his glance at Maygar, he looked back at Revik.

  “You would not deprive your own son, would you, brother?” he said. “I am told he feels as strongly about our precious girl as you and I do.”

  Revik ignored that, too.

  Truthfully, he barely registered Ditrini at all at this point, other than as an obstacle. He remained silent because logic told him being silent made the most sense.

  “I think you will find me quite skilled at training females, Dehgoies.” He smiled wider, that dead look unmoving in his silver eyes. “…as well as their husbands. You have not yet seen her fully compliant, but I look forward to educating you. Perhaps you can take that knowledge with you, when you go looking for wife number three?” Giving him a mock serious look, he added, “I am afraid I won’t be willing to give her up a second time… no matter how you beg, brother. And you will beg before this is finished. I promise you that.”

  Revik didn’t answer.

  One benefit of his current state of mind: for once, he barely noticed the claustrophobia. So
mehow, that crystalline focus kept it at bay––at least well enough to think.

  Another low rumble shook the walls and floors of the heavy cement pipe, knocking loose more silt, sending rocks tumbling into the water at the bottom of the curve.

  Revik barely blinked. He scanned the walls with his eyes.

  They were deep––deeper than he’d been with Allie after they robbed that bank. The water smelled danker down here, older. There was more rot in the tunnel. The water smelled like seepage from the river. The air was mustier, more stale, colder.

  He’d marked every fork in the tunnel, every turn, the slope of the floors, how many steps they’d taken since they left the hotel basement, the change in temperature––

  The cement walls trembled again, growing new cracks.

  Those blasts weren’t about them breaking through the tunnel; Wreg wouldn’t risk a cave-in, not with Jon down here. No, they were under attack. They were fighting up there. Shadow’s people must be between them and the lower stretch of sewers. If Balidor and Wreg were breaking out the heavy firepower, they must be facing a decent-sized force.

  Revik risked a glance at Jon, and saw the same understanding on his face.

  Whatever they were doing, the rumbles were getting closer. The last one felt like it came from directly overhead.

  Wreg was probably tracking Jon.

  Jon spoke out in a gasp, making Revik jump.

  “Cass took her.” Pain filled Jon’s voice. “Gaos. I brought her to Cass…”

  Revik turned sharply. His light flared hot enough that he gritted his teeth from the collar. “You’re remembering? You remember what happened?”

  “Yes.” Tears filled Jon’s eyes, even as he shook his head. “Gods, Revik. Cass, she––”

  “It’s not your fault,” Revik cut in.

  That time, he even meant it.

  “What else do you remember?” he said.

  Before Jon could answer, the guard behind him cuffed his head. The guard behind Revik hit him even harder, using not only his fist, but the butt of the electric prod. Revik bit his tongue at the pain that bloomed in his ear, once more fighting to see before the pain ebbed.