The Defector

by J. C. Andrijeski

  Revik came to a dead stop at that.

  He stood there, fighting his way through the other’s words, but Dalejem kept walking, only glancing back at him long enough to chuckle.

  “Gods. You really weren’t kidding about the paranoia.”

  Revik only stood there, watching him.

  He continued to watch as Dalejem moved away.

  Realizing the other wasn’t going to wait for him that time, Revik turned possibilities over in his mind, even as it occurred to him that some part of his light had reacted inappropriately to the other’s words… meaning, he’d taken them as a sort of proposition.

  But why would Dalejem have brought that heavy bag along, if all he was looking for was a blow job? No, that couldn’t be what this was.

  That was probably just wishful thinking on Revik’s part, if he were being honest.

  He frowned at the thought, even as his light reacted again. He knew he probably wouldn’t be able to hide any of his reactions for long out here, no matter how inappropriate they were, but after a few more seconds’ hesitation, he shook his head, clicking at himself in irritation––along with embarrassment, anger and a number of other emotions he probably wouldn’t have been able to put easily into words.

  After a few more seconds, he shoved it all aside.

  He began walking again––faster, that time––to close the distance between himself and the other seer.

  When they’d been walking for another ten or so minutes, Dalejem led him to the edge of a wide clearing.

  The space opened up so suddenly, giving him a view of marshy grasses and blue skies, Revik came to an abrupt halt. At the edge of the tree line, he receded back into the shadow of the nearest thick trunks, even as he held up a hand to shield his face from the sun.

  He glanced over as Dalejem yanked the strap from around his shoulder and head, and dumped the heavy black bag on the jungle floor.

  Standing just outside the trees, his hands on his hips, Dalejem clicked at him softly when Revik lowered his hand.

  “Gods,” the other said, his voice still holding that friendliness. “You really are paranoid. Who do you think might shoot at us out here?”

  “Humans,” Revik said at once. “An outer patrol sent by the camp’s guards. A SCARB scouting party, if they already felt us out here. Black Arrow. Drug farmers.”

  Clicking bemusedly, Dalejem seemed to give in.

  Revik could feel the near eye-roll in his light, however.

  He wondered what made the other male so confident.

  As if hearing him again, the handsome seer sighed.

  He placed his hands on his hips, surveying the surrounding hills.

  “They cannot penetrate Balidor’s shield,” Dalejem explained, glancing at him.

  When Revik didn’t move, Dalejem turned, walking back the way he had come and out of the tall grasses, reaching the place where Revik stood in the protective shadows of the tree line.

  “It is all right here, brother,” Dalejem said. “It is perfectly safe. I promise.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Revik said, his voice holding an edge. “I just don’t see the point of standing out in the fucking open if I don’t have to.”

  The other gestured diplomatically. “It is smart to be afraid here. Especially for you.”

  “I’m not afraid––” Revik began.

  “Of course you are,” Dalejem cut in, matter-of-fact. “With good reason, brother. You are a traitor to them, are you not?”

  Revik looked at Dalejem directly.

  Although the other seer stood in the shade of several palm trees, along with a handful of Brazil nuts and floss silks, sparks of sunlight found Dalejem’s green eyes, illuminating their color as well as the slightly darker ring of violet around each iris.

  “I am a traitor to a lot of people,” Revik answered, refusing to look away.

  Dalejem smiled.

  Stepping closer, he laid a hand cautiously on Revik’s arm.

  “Did you bring your own gun?” he said, seemingly out of nowhere.

  Revik blinked.

  Then, nodding, he reached for the holster under his left arm, pulling out the Glock-17 Balidor had given him. He flipped it out, handle first, and started to hand it to the other seer, but Dalejem waved him off.

  “No, no,” he said, clicking softly. “Don’t give it to me. We’ll start with that. Presumably, you know how it works, if you’re carrying it.”

  He stepped out of the way, opening up Revik’s view of the grassy marsh that stood before them. Revik realized only then that the “field” was likely a product of deforestation. He wondered if it had been done to expand cattle grazing, or for some other reason.

  He could see no cattle on it now.

  He was about to ask Dalejem––again––what the hell they were doing out here, but the other spoke before he could, using a sharper, more business-like tone.

  “Pick a target,” he said. “One hundred feet. Mark it to me verbally before you try for it.”

  “What is this, brother? What are you––”

  “What do you think I’m doing?” Dalejem said, puzzled. “I’m trying to see if you can shoot. We’re going on a live op tomorrow. You’ve been in a cave for five years, brother. Mostly learning not to kill things. We need to know if we can depend on you.”

  Revik blinked at him.

  Then, putting that together with the rest of what the other had said to him on their walk out here, he let out an involuntary laugh.

  “Are you offended?” Dalejem said, his lips pursing.

  “No.” Revik shook his head, raising the gun to more or less shoulder height. “No, brother. I’m not offended. Do you want a moving target? Or stationary?”

  “Stationary.” Dalejem gave Revik’s light a rebuking nudge. “Did you think I brought you out here to harm defenseless birds, brother?”

  “No,” Revik said. “But maybe to bring back dinner.”

  Dalejem clicked at him, but Revik heard amusement there that time.

  He felt more tension dissipate from his light.

  “Do you have a target yet? You are very slow,” Dalejem said, his voice openly teasing.

  “I have one. I was waiting for instructions, brother.”

  “Instructions you already received.”

  Revik rolled his eyes in exaggerated seer-fashion. “The white leaf there. On the small cashew tree nearest.”

  “That’s not a cashew,” Dalejem said, squinting.

  “Yes, it is.”

  Dalejem raised a hand, shielding his eyes. “Okay, so it is.”

  “Do you want me to shoot?”

  “Will it get you to stop talking?”

  Revik let out a snort, then used his light and eyes to aim. Without belaboring it, he squeezed off a shot, flinching a bit from the echo of the report, in spite of Dalejem’s assurances of their safety out here.

  “Satisfied?” Revik said, lowering the gun.

  “Not yet.”

  Dalejem walked out into the open field.

  Revik tensed as soon as the other seer left the protection of the trees, yet remained where he was, holding the gun, knowing he was covering the other male, although Dalejem hadn’t asked him to do that, either.

  Revik’s light snaked out over the field, examining the nearby Barrier space for anyone who might be watching what they were doing, focusing especially on places where someone might have a clear shot at the two of them.

  As soon as he looked from his aleimi, he felt flavors of Balidor and the others, and realized that he and Dalejem remained inside a protected part of the construct, that Dalejem had taken him to the edge of it, but not outside of it.

  Revik’s light mapped the boundaries of that construct, following the course of the lit border wall around the territory marked out by the Adhipan in the Brazilian jungle. He watched how that light radiated outwards from the central camp he and Dalejem left about an hour ago. He followed it to the harder edge, where he and Dalejem stood now.

&
nbsp; Then he realized there was a fainter version of that construct that stretched out even further, to the trees across the meadow, nearly all the way to the foothills he could see in the distance––

  Revik let out a gasp, his vision slanting out.

  Everything around him grayed, darkened, even as his shoulder hit something––hard.

  He grew aware of a distant voice.

  Someone was shouting.

  Someone was shouting at him.

  He fought to come back, to answer them. He struggled against the pain that overwhelmed his light, tried to claw his way back towards that voice––

  A wrench in his gut nearly made him lose consciousness altogether––

  Then he was looking up, blinking into dappled sunlight.

  His chest compressed in a hard knot.

  He fought to breathe, fingers gripping his own shirt and vest in a sweated fist. He felt nauseous from pain, but he could see again; he could almost move his mind. He realized that some new kind of shield constrained his aleimic light, holding it tight to his body.

  He felt Balidor in that, along with flavors of the man standing over him, his tall form and broad shoulders and chest blocking the sun.

  Revik was still looking up, fighting to focus his eyes, when the sound came back on, even as the man fell to his knees in the cluster of tree roots over which Revik lay.

  As soon as Revik realized that much, he found himself understanding a few more things.

  He was lying on his back, and his back hurt.

  It likely hurt because he’d connected hard with those tree roots when he hit the ground. He let out a low gasp, fighting to get up, to pull his light even closer to his body, when Dalejem laid a hand on his chest, gripping his arm with his other hand.

  The male seer flooded Revik’s light with warmth, with his own light, and Revik groaned, writhing under the other’s touch.

  He fought him off, hitting out almost violently before he’d made a conscious thought.

  “Fuck,” he gasped. “No. No, goddamn it.”

  Dalejem immediately withdrew his light.

  As if to make his intentions clear, he also raised both of his hands.

  Once he had, he stared down at Revik, his expression bordering on wary.

  After a long-feeling pause, Revik’s eyes clicked into focus.

  He realized only then just how completely he’d closed his light off to the other male. It wasn’t wariness he’d seen in the other’s face, but something closer to caution––laced with a sympathy that stood out prominently in those jade and violet eyes.

  “Are you all right?” Dalejem asked.

  Revik realized he continued to clutch his own shirt over the front of his chest. He continued to struggle for breath, sweating and gasping like he’d been running. He felt light-headed, overly warm yet also like he had a chill.

  It felt like his blood was low on sugar. He felt like he’d fainted.

  He had fainted, he realized.

  Fuck.

  “Yeah. I’m okay.” He wasn’t looking at Dalejem now, but down at his own hand, the one holding up his body on one of the exposed, rounded roots of a Brazil nut tree. His hand still gripped the Glock somehow, and it occurred to him the thing was live, and still had ammunition in it. He clicked the trigger safety in rote, setting the thing down on the ground.

  It was a miracle he hadn’t shot himself.

  It was even more of a miracle he hadn’t shot Dalejem.

  “I’m okay,” he repeated numbly.

  He sat up, and stopped again, immediately light-headed. He wiped sweat from his brow, realizing only then that his hands and arms were shaking.

  “Sorry. Gods.” He looked up at the other male, his voice reluctant. “Are you all right? I didn’t… do anything. Did I?”

  Dalejem gave him a wry smile, that worry still prominent in his green eyes. “You fell like a stone, brother. Does that count?”

  Revik didn’t answer. He continued to fight to gain control over his light, and his body. He wondered if he should risk trying to stand.

  “I should have warned you, brother,” Dalejem said, his voice gentle. “Balidor connected our construct to her last night.”

  Revik didn’t speak, but felt his body stiffen.

  He fought with the part of himself that wanted to deny that as the cause for what he’d just done, how crazy he was acting, but he couldn’t do that, either.

  Unfortunately, Dalejem didn’t seem willing to let it go so easily.

  “Balidor is right, then? You are fixated on her?” he said.

  The other male’s voice was deceptively casual.

  Revik felt his jaw harden more, enough to hurt his face.

  “I’m not trying to embarrass you, brother,” Dalejem said. “But we should talk about this. Balidor had concerns about this with you. So we can either talk about it here, you and I… or you can go back to camp, and Balidor can examine your light himself. You can discuss it privately with him. Or the three of us can talk about it together, if you prefer.”

  Revik glanced up, feeling the light in his chest grow dimmer.

  “Is that the real reason you brought me out here?” he said.

  His voice came out cold. He regretted his words almost the instant he said them, but he couldn’t seem to make himself take them back.

  Dalejem shook his head. “No, brother.” He paused, still gauging Revik’s face, and seemingly his light now, as well. “Are you not going to talk to me, then?”

  Revik stared at the trunk of the tree without seeing it, fighting back his emotional reactions, the shame that still wanted to take over his light, the deeper feeling of anger and resentment.

  Why the fuck hadn’t they left him in that cave? He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t fucking be here, and he’d told them that. But they dragged him out here anyway, and now they wanted to give him shit for not being able to handle it?

  “No one is blaming you, brother,” Dalejem said, quieter. “I am only asking. Do you not want to admit that much? You are fixated.”

  Revik shook his head, but not in a no.

  Dalejem frowned slightly anyway, looking over Revik’s body, and again doing what must have been at least a quick pass over his light.

  “You are not fixated?” Dalejem said.

  Revik exhaled, feeling that anger sharpen in his light, even as he forced his fist to open, for his fingers to release his own shirt. Staring down at where sweat had dampened the front of it from his hand, twisting it into an odd pattern from the intensity of his clutching, he felt that shame twist deeper in his gut, even as he forced himself to speak.

  “I honestly don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what it is.”

  “You have been fixated before?”

  Revik looked up. He bit his tongue, hard enough for it to hurt. “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “My wife,” he said, looking away again. “During the war.”

  He slid back on the mud and ferns, but stopped when he got light-headed. When his eyes found Dalejem next, the other seer only nodded.

  “This is different?” he prompted.

  Revik nodded. “Yes.”

  “In what way?”

  Revik exhaled, letting his irritation be audible. “I don’t know. I fucking don’t. This is more about light. It’s worse this time. Worse than it was when I met Kali the first time, in Vietnam. I didn’t react like this before.” He stared down at the mud and let out a humorless laugh. “Fuck. I didn’t do this before. I just wanted her.”

  “Sex, you mean?”

  Revik glared at him. “Yes. Sex. I nearly raped her. I told her to leave Saigon, or I would rape her. It wasn’t an idle threat.”

  Dalejem didn’t blink at the news.

  “Would you rape her still?” he said neutrally. “Even with her pregnant?”

  Revik felt a kind of horror at the idea.

  He recoiled, physically and with his light. Nausea came with it, a feeling that had nothing to do with s
eparation pain, and everything to do with revulsion. It didn’t come with a conscious thought, but when he glanced up, he saw relief in the other male’s eyes.

  “Well, that is good,” Dalejem said, exhaling a held breath. He rested back on his heels, so that he was more or less kneeling in the mud and bracken. “So what happened just now?”

  Revik glanced around.

  As he did, he realized that it wasn’t only Dalejem asking this.

  He could feel the rest of the Adhipan squad with which he’d been traveling for the past two days. He felt Balidor’s light the most prominently, but he felt the others there, as well. He felt their eyes on him, their aleimi.

  He felt them weighing him, trying to decide if they could trust him. Trying to decide if he belonged with them on this thing after all, no matter what Kali had said, or that she had asked for him by name.

  “Kali thought it wasn’t her I was reacting to,” Revik blurted.

  He said it without thought, before he’d decided if he wanted to tell them that, either. Still, it was too late to pretend nothing was wrong with him. Maybe they could even help, if they knew what caused it.

  Forcing another breath, he fought to open his light, to show them, at least in some part, where he was speaking from, what he was remembering.

  “…I don’t remember a lot of things well,” he admitted. “Vash and the Org erased a lot when I left. But I remember how I got back to the compound in Seertown. I remember what happened in Saigon, before I defected.”

  “So tell us about that, brother.”

  Revik shook his head, but again, not in a no.

  “I have told you. I wanted her. I told her to leave Saigon. But then fucking Terian and Raven took her, after I tried to let her go. They tied her up, and Galaith wanted me to kill her. So I defected… and brought Kali with me. For part of it, at least. I brought her most of the way to Phnom Penh.”

  “Did you hurt her?”

  Revik shook his head. “No.”

  Another silence fell after he spoke.

  Revik felt the Adhipan infiltrators conversing in the Barrier space around him, but he couldn’t pick out anything of what was said. He lay there in the mud, half propped up on one arm, feeling them look at him, assessing and discussing his light. He got the feeling at least some of them worried he was unstable––a half-feral animal that might go on a violent rampage if they didn’t chain him at night. He didn’t feel any maliciousness in their assessment, though.