Revik could feel the Org seers pursuing them now.
He fought to keep his light away from theirs.
Even so, he couldn’t help but feel it when those silvery, mercury-like threads tried to find ways to resonate with his. He felt them working in teams, trying to penetrate his shields, looking for dark spaces in his light where he might be less conscious.
Revik also felt Vash there, working with Balidor and the others.
He also felt Vash pushing Revik’s own light back patiently a few times, warmly reminding him to let them handle it.
Revik tried.
He tried his damnedest to ignore everything happening in different parts of his light, but he couldn’t quite succeed, at least not totally. Fear kept him watching the edges of his aleimi compulsively, which turned into a kind of self-reinforcing loop, where he resonated with them more the longer he watched them. He would see the Org seers get closer then, see them trying to actively take over his light, and his paranoia would shoot up, causing him to focus too much on the Barrier attacks… and then on the actual Rooks chasing them.
Then Vash, or Balidor, or Tarsi… or all three of them… would be forced to focus back on Revik, to get him to let go of the whole thing, to turn away.
Within minutes, sometimes seconds, the cycle would begin again.
He knew he was only making it easier for them to find him.
He knew that, but fear would take over his light, and he wouldn’t even know he was doing it until Vash shook him again inside the Barrier construct, reminding him.
He did wonder––again––what the fuck he was doing out here.
He wondered why anyone could think him coming here would be a good idea, why he’d been stupid enough to offer to approach Guoreum on his own, why he’d put everyone in his unit in mortal danger, why he’d walked into that construct with little or no shielding.
It was pure ego.
Or hubris maybe, or maybe an even more childish attempt to prove himself to the rest of them, to try and feel useful, to try and prove Kali wasn’t wrong to ask for him.
Kali.
For the first time, he let himself remember she was out here.
She was with Balidor, right now––
That time, there was no warning at all.
Everything went black.
He lost touch with his body, the jungle, his fingers and hands, the rhythm of Dalejem’s swinging machete, even the pain in his head and chest, the shakiness of his muscles and joints.
He lost all of it, before he could take a full breath.
It happened so fast, the fear never touched him.
Some part of him pulled a switch, and everything went dark. The higher parts, the parts of him that always remained awake in some way, conscious in some way, vacated his body without an ounce of friction between himself and some higher place in the Barrier.
The lower parts of himself…
Well, to them, he simply disappeared.
Twelve
Bones Of Iron
When Revik opened his eyes, he was being carried.
Not by one seer that time, but by many.
There were at least three different presences he could feel, although there may have been more. They had him on some kind of stretcher.
“Gaos, this fucker is heavy,” someone muttered under him.
“It could be worse,” another voice said humorously.
“How?” the first one grumbled.
“It could be Gar you’re carrying,” the other said.
The words brought peals of laughter, if somewhat muted laughter, from more than one side. One of those came out in a near-wheezing voice, deeper than the others.
“Fuck you all very much,” the deeper voice said cheerfully.
Revik fought to move, to turn over.
Maybe even to climb off the bouncing stretcher.
Immediately, several voices shouted him down from where they held different sides of the organic metal frame.
“Wait, brother! Wait!” came Dalejem’s voice, louder than the others. “We are nearly to the rendezvous. We will set you down there. Patience!”
Revik froze, fighting to think.
He stared up at the green-leafed canopy of the jungle, forcing himself to think, to make a decision. Then, realizing the words made sense, he did as they said, relaxing his muscles entirely into the stretchy material.
Still, the reality of being carried was strange, to say the least.
He continued to stare up, fighting to clear his mind, to think past the pounding of his head. Sunlight wafted through broad leaves, spinning lazily past green-mossed branches and ferns growing out of dark trunks. He glimpsed slices of blue, but most of the world was green––a soft, strangely still green he felt to be growing around him. He felt that sensation of growth almost tangibly, despite the dense heat and wetness in the air.
He saw faces a few times in those branches, a few of them definitely monkeys, but a number he couldn’t identify for certain.
Sloths, maybe?
He saw birds, too, winging between trunks.
Some were so colorful, with such long tails and broad, fingered wings, he couldn’t help but follow them with his eyes, entranced with their beauty.
“Maybe you are right, Jem,” one of the seers huffed under him. “He is a big softie, our Rook. He is looking at birds now, waxing philosophical while we carry his heavy ass.”
Laughter broke out among the other seers nearby, even as Revik’s face warmed.
Still, he couldn’t help but hear and feel the relief in their laughter. The tangibility of that relief relaxed a tension he’d carried in his chest.
It also bewildered him.
“Of course we are relieved!” another familiar voice scolded, female that time. “Gaos, brother. We thought we’d killed you. You fell like a fucking corpse in that road. Then, after we managed to get you out of there, you fell again, and we thought you were dead for real. We thought your fucking brain had popped––”
“That, or your aleimi decided we were nothing but a bunch of dugra d’aros and fled––” another voice added cheerfully.
“That, or you let your heavy ass drop, just to spite us,” another female muttered, more grumpily than the others, but still exuding flavors of that relief.
Revik’s mind had cleared enough that he knew most of the voices now.
The first female to speak had been Yumi, the last Mara.
The one to tease him for looking at birds had been Poresh.
They had all been teasing Garensche, the giant with the Nazi scar on his face.
“You should be kissing brother Gar’s ass,” Mara muttered, huffing from where she held her part of the stretcher. “He managed to fry part of the net they’d brought down on us, trying to pinpoint your location. He hacked their organic machines, got them to turn on their Rook owners… took them over an hour to pull their organics out from Gar’s control. They were pretty pissed, let me tell you. But by then, we’d lost both of the ground teams they sent after us.”
Revik thought about all that, puzzled.
“Really?” he said.
More laughter erupted under him.
“Brother Gar is a bit of a mystic with the machines,” Dalejem explained, his voice containing a smile. “It is quite beyond our comprehension, really. We have learned it is better just to let him do his thing and not try to understand what he does. None of us really wants to know what he promises them, to get them to do his bidding.”
More chuckles rose from Dalejem’s words.
Revik heard Garensche’s laugh among them.
Clearly this was some kind of long-standing joke within the military unit.
Revik relaxed more deeply into the stretcher, folding his hands on his abdomen and looking up at the looping vines and thick-fingered leaves that blocked and unblocked the sun above his eyes. He still saw more palms than any other kind of tree out here, but gum trees also littered his vision, along with a number he couldn’t i
dentify.
He found himself thinking they were higher than they had been, elevation-wise, and still walking up a noticeable slope.
He considered trying to use his light to determine more.
After a second of contemplation, he thought better of it.
Remembering what he’d been doing right before he passed out, he pulled his light even tighter around his form.
He wanted to ask, though.
He wanted to ask badly enough that he bit his tongue as he looked up at the sunlight-banded trunks.
“She is fine, brother,” Dalejem said, his voice more gentle than the rest.
“Did she have her baby?” Revik said.
“No.”
“You are sure?” he blurted.
Revik asked it before he could stop himself.
Once he had, he felt their living lights flickering around him, more invasively that time. Most of those light probes felt good-natured still, but Revik felt curiosity there, mixed with a faint flavor of assessment, one that indicated at least a few of them were monitoring his mental state for stability and/or rationality. He also felt flavors of amusement, particularly from those who seemed to think they knew why he asked the question.
Feeling his defensiveness worsen, Revik spoke again without thinking, breaking the silence when no one answered.
“I felt something.”
Yumi chuckled a little at that. “Well, clearly. Since it nearly killed you.”
“No.” Revik shook his head, feeling his face warm more. “No, I mean I felt––”
“We know what you felt,” she broke in. Her voice grew gentle, more like Dalejem’s that time. “It is true that she is close. Very close, perhaps. Balidor has already said that she instructed him to go deeper into the jungle for that reason.”
“What?” Revik said, turning his head on the stretcher. “Why?”
Yumi met his gaze when he turned, shrugging. The dark blue of her tattoo looked closer to green under the jungle canopy.
“I do not know that, brother,” she said frankly. “Balidor might not even know that, not for certain. Clearly, she has her own reasons for wanting to be away from the vast majority of human and seer lights when this child is born.”
Revik fought to think about that.
He fought to make sense of why she would risk such a thing.
Eventually he only nodded, unable to make sense of the threads of meaning that came to him, mostly in whispers of presence and light. He felt almost like he knew something, which in some ways disturbed him more than what he didn’t know. He felt familiarity there, some whisper of understanding that didn’t come from him, at least not directly––at least not from his conscious mind.
Whatever it was, it wouldn’t stay with him, and he didn’t dare look closer than he had already.
Kali was leading them into the jungle.
Out of nowhere, a hard coil of pain wound through his light, bringing a sickness that made him writhe on the stretcher, biting his tongue to keep from making a sound.
Even so, he exhaled a near-gasp once he could breathe at all.
He felt at least a few of the other seers react to the pain coming off him, sucking in breaths nearly at the same time he did. The wave hit them hard enough that their steps faltered around him… never in danger of dropping him, not that he could feel, but almost as if they paused on the same note and regained motion in the same breath.
“Shield your light, brother,” Yumi said from next to him.
Her voice was low, but clearly a command.
Revik opened his eyes, and realized only then that he still had his head turned towards her.
Meeting her gaze, he nodded, fighting back another swell of pain and embarrassment that struggled in his chest.
None of them spoke again until they reached the rendezvous point, just past the crest of the mountain.
Thirteen
Despised
It was nearly dark by the time they arrived.
The rapid change in light confused Revik, at first. He thought maybe a storm was rolling in, that clouds were blocking the sun above the canopy.
Then he saw pieces of sky, saw them changing colors to pinks and oranges and reds, and realized he must have been unconscious for most of the day while they traveled.
He’d lost almost a whole day.
He doubted they would have the luxury of staying in the new camp for long.
He also knew he should take his turn at sentry, given he’d already spent most of the day sleeping, and none of his companions had that luxury. Before he could voice even part of this, however, Yumi informed him he would need to get more sleep, and that he would be required to accept help in replenishing his light in the process.
He wasn’t given the choice.
When he climbed shakily up off the stretcher after they put him down on the ground, Yumi and Dalejem had ahold of him on two sides as he straightened.
It was a good thing they did.
Revik’s knees buckled as soon as he’d pulled himself up to his full height. It happened suddenly enough, and violently enough, he likely would have fallen straight to the dirt without the two of them there.
They continued to stand there with him, supporting a percentage of his weight and most of his balance while four other seers swiftly erected a rough circle of those odd, hanging tent-structures, using the low branches from the nearby trees and an organic wire of a type Revik had never seen before. He watched, dazed, as that same wire sought out connection points and weighting on six sides, then pulled the semi-organic tarp taut above the ground.
They managed it all in what felt like a handful of minutes.
Interior mats were already being inflated even as the last wires were secured and locked in place. Then Revik was informed that he’d be using the first of those tents, and that he had his choice of connectors to feed him light.
He didn’t hesitate.
He was too tired to hesitate, or to pretend he didn’t have a preference.
“Dalejem,” he said.
The male seer flinched a little.
He didn’t speak, though, or protest with his light.
He didn’t even change expression really, although Revik saw a frown touch the mouth of Mara, who looked over when Revik spoke.
Dalejem either didn’t see that, or chose to ignore it.
Instead, he grew abruptly businesslike.
Without waiting, he gripped Revik’s arm tighter, taking what remained of his weight and balance away from Yumi and leading him straight into that first tent they’d erected. Once inside, Dalejem released him, and began unhooking the armored vest from around Revik’s chest with deft fingers. He had that and the gun holsters off him with an efficiency that only disoriented Revik more, although he made no move to stop him, but simply stood there and let the other male undress him, his arms more or less soft at his sides.
When he finished, Dalejem ordered Revik to lie down.
Revik didn’t argue with that, either.
He barely paused long enough to pull the armored shirt over his head, and then only because he was so fucking hot––too hot to want the dense fabric next to his body, even with it getting dark outside. He felt more than saw Dalejem suck in a breath when the other male got a look at his back.
Revik pretended not to notice.
Then, he shoved it aside, blanking his mind.
He was used to seers reacting that way to his scars.
The reaction was a natural one––he had little cause to be offended by it. Very few seers had scars like him. He was used to the stares they evoked whenever he exposed that part of his skin to another seer for the first time. He was equally used to the questions he inevitably got about how and where he’d obtained the scars… questions he couldn’t have answered even if he wanted to.
The truth was, he didn’t remember.
He supposed that was part of what had been taken from him when he left the Rooks.
Possibly, he hadn’t remembered e
ven before he left the Rooks.
For some reason, the blank spot there felt different from the others in his light.
It felt older. It also felt more impenetrable.
Still, it could have been from him leaving the Rooks. They’d erased a lot of his memories in those early months, including ones he’d had before he joined the Org––which apparently happened at some point during World War II. Vash told him that the forfeiture of memories was part of the agreement the Seven made with Galaith when Revik defected.
Revik hadn’t asked why that was.
Hell. He knew why.
There was no way Galaith would let him share secrets with the Seven or the Adhipan. Given how high up Revik had been within the Org’s hierarchy––and Vash assured him, it had been high––he must have known things even most Rooks didn’t know.
Given that, the source of his scars struck Revik as relatively trivial. Whatever caused them, Revik supposed it didn’t really matter.
It wasn’t likely to be a pleasant story, in any case.
He’d learned to ignore both the stares and the questions over the years, but he wasn’t immune to them. Moreover, for the first time it occurred to him that it might be harder to evade those questions outside of the Rooks’ Pyramid than it had been inside it, at least with other seers.
Luckily, most humans didn’t attach as much importance to how his back looked.
They found the scars fascinating, sure, and still an anomaly, but scars weren’t as rare on human bodies as they were on seer bodies.
Dalejem didn’t ask.
He waited until Revik was down, then laid down next to him on the same mat, not touching him as he stretched out on his back next to where Revik lay sprawled on his stomach. Revik turned his head to avoid the awkwardness of having his face aimed towards the other male, but he still felt the other’s eyes on him, especially on the scars covering most of his back.
He was thankful for the lack of questions.
Even so, he could feel the seer wanting to ask.
More than that, he felt sympathy there, a heavier weight of empathy that bled understanding between them, even though no part of the male’s skin touched Revik’s own.
The Defector Page 12
