Knowing Revik, that was the real reason he was doing it.
The reasons he gave his team were more straightforward. Jorag told Jon they were doing it primarily so Revik could access those higher structures of Allie’s out in the field.
Meaning, Revik wanted access to Allie’s light for combat purposes.
Whatever the truth of Revik’s hopes and goals, the way Jorag described it reminded Jon of listening to Wreg talk about construct design.
Not like that helped Jon much, in terms of understanding. He couldn’t claim any but an extremely high-level and probably inaccurate blueprint of how that worked, either.
The gist of it was pretty clear, though; Revik wanted to be able to piggyback on Allie’s high-octane telekinesis and shielding abilities. In theory, such a connection should allow Revik and some of the other seers to access functionality Allie had in other areas, as well––including a handful of skill-sets Allie herself hadn’t tapped yet.
It made Jon uncomfortable when he realized the strategy wasn’t that dissimilar to how Revik once described the Pyramid of the Rooks working––with seers accessing the abilities of other seers, sometimes without them even knowing it.
Revik told Jon he’d done that, as a Rook.
He’d used the structures of other seers in the Rooks’ network when he worked for Galaith. Apparently, Terian would even mark out seers with abilities he admired, so he could steal their bodies and aleimi wholesale later. In that same conversation, which took place one night at the bar at the House on the Hill hotel, Revik told Jon that a lot of abilities he’d personally envied in Menlim as a kid, Vash later explained had been stolen from Revik himself, meaning from his own aleimic structures.
Parasites was the word Vash used.
Then again, from what Vash told Jon, the Dreng stole pretty much everything they had down here, since they had no abilities of their own in the physical world.
They had no light of their own, so they stole that, too.
This thing with Allie wasn’t the same.
Jon knew it wasn’t the same––at all––but he could feel himself reacting to the undercurrents in the room anyway. Despite the fact that Jon was pretty sure Revik was driving this whole “reconnection” exercise, he felt a lot of misgivings on Revik himself. Those feelings remained intense enough that Revik’s reluctance permeated the room’s construct.
Clearly, something about this process didn’t sit well with him.
Jon wondered why.
He felt misgivings from others in the room, too.
Wreg and Balidor, in particular, emanated barely disguised worry.
Jon found himself thinking it wasn’t for the same reasons as Revik. Given how they stared at Allie and Revik whenever Revik wasn’t looking, Jon suspected neither of them would like any plan that strengthened Revik’s connection to Allie’s light––and not only because they worried Revik might develop a wire addiction of his own.
Jon got the feeling Balidor, in particular, worried about Revik’s mental state.
Both Wreg and Balidor appeared disturbed by how often Revik and Allie seemed to be together since she’d regained consciousness.
The Elaerian leaned over Allie even as Jon thought it, saying something in her ear when she writhed and jerked awkwardly on the padded bench where they had her loosely tied.
She gripped Revik’s shirt when he leaned down, and seemed reluctant to let go of him when he tried once more to straighten. He gently untangled her fingers, kissing them before laying them back down on the padded bench. When she visibly calmed, still looking up at him, he tugged a sheepskin-lined leather strap gently around her wrist and began to buckle it. Something about the slow, careful movement of his fingers forced Jon’s eyes away.
He had trouble watching them together, too, truthfully.
Since Revik already reamed him a new one on that score, and more than once, Jon tried to make himself get used to it, regardless of his own feelings.
He didn’t know how successful he’d been, though.
Revik remained beside her even after he had all of her limbs restrained.
His fingers remained on her at all times, too, Jon noticed––caressing her hair, touching her shoulder, stroking her neck or cheek. He talked to the other infiltrators without missing a beat, even as his light remained entwined with and mostly focused on hers.
What Jon might have found touching before, only brought a pain to his chest now.
The grief that lived there, in those small, insignificant touches, the careful and gentle uses of his light, the looks he gave her, the patience––all of it and none of it could take Jon’s breath, without him even being able to articulate why exactly.
The very normality of it made it worse, the feelings he glimpsed from Revik when he let his mind go there: the sum of all those subtle and delicate threads, the complete lack of any feeling of sacrifice on Revik’s part himself. At times, it struck Jon as one of the most profound examples of unconditional love he’d ever seen.
At others, it seemed so deeply deluded as to constitute a kind of sick parody of their marriage, whatever Revik told himself.
Jon still couldn’t even bring himself to think of her as Allie.
He didn’t know precisely who the woman was who lay there now, looking up at Revik with those clouded, confused eyes, but he didn’t see his sister in her anywhere.
She wore Allie’s face, and Allie’s body.
At times, she even seemed to move like her––at least in those brief moments where it happened more like muscle memory than anything determined by her current mental state. At times, she outran the cloudiness of her own light, and then it was like watching ghosting echoes of the woman he remembered.
Mostly, though, Jon looked at her and saw a stranger.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, Jon receded deeper into his corner of the room, wondering again what exactly he was doing there. He knew his personal connection to Allie must be why they wanted him to be a part of this, but he almost wanted to refuse.
He looked at Maygar, maybe to distract himself.
Revik’s son had gradually gained back some of the weight he’d lost while he’d been held captive in Shadow’s house in South America. He still looked thinner than Jon remembered from when they’d first met, but his shoulders looked broader again, his biceps bigger.
Maygar looked taller, too, which threw Jon at first, until he remembered the same thing happened to Allie when she first discovered she was a seer.
Finding out he was Revik’s son, an Elaerian––and telekinetic––seemed to have accelerated something in Maygar, too. It was subtle, but he looked different now, and not only in relation to his height. Even his face looked different. His features appeared narrower, more angular, his light more silent somehow, his eyes sharper in that way Jon associated with Revik and Allie.
It was even happening to Jon himself now, if to a lesser degree.
He’d grown a few inches in the past six months.
He’d been told he looked different in other ways, too, although he couldn’t really see it himself, apart from a slight lightening of his irises.
Of course, both of them were labeled “young” for seers, so that might be part of it. Seers generally didn’t reach physical maturity for almost a century.
Whatever the reasons, the changes in Maygar had definitely accelerated since they’d gotten to San Francisco, probably due in some part to the extensive work he’d done with Revik and the time spent in Revik’s light, working on the telekinesis.
The combined effect was sort of interesting, though, in that it made Maygar resemble Revik a heck of a lot more than he had before, especially when Jon first met him in Seertown.
Jon could see quite a bit of Revik in his son now.
Maygar’s eyes were significantly darker than either of his parents’, a chocolate brown color that could contain surprising depths. His black hair hung long, wound into a male seer’s clip at the base of his neck, but it was the
same color and texture as Revik’s.
His chest was broader than his father’s, stretching the dark green T-shirt he wore under a thicker black flannel, but Maygar’s body had grown to resemble Revik’s more, too. He still stood a good four inches shorter than his father and wore a more compact frame, but their arms were similar, and the shape of their legs. Their spines curved similarly, too.
Maygar still had the more Asian features of his mother, Elan Raven, who looked like a Chinese human––a tall Chinese human, with shocking, turquoise-blue eyes, but a Chinese human, nonetheless. Even so, something lived in the shape of Maygar’s face that now reminded Jon of Revik, too. He saw it particularly around the cheekbones and forehead, and in the shape of Maygar’s jaw. His mouth was markedly different from Revik’s––full and sensual where Revik’s was narrow––and Maygar’s face still appeared significantly wider than Revik’s, but their noses were similar in shape, and they had similarities in the set and shape of their eyes.
Realizing suddenly that Maygar was watching him stare, and now frowning at him in some irritation, Jon flinched. He saw Maygar’s dark eyes flicker down Jon’s own body in the pause, and when Maygar glanced up next, Jon gave the male seer a half-assed smile.
Snorting openly, Maygar rolled his eyes.
Really, Jon couldn’t blame him.
“Sorry, brother,” he murmured.
“You’re not my fucking brother,” Maygar shot back, his voice equally low. “So do me a favor and piss off.”
Irritated in spite of himself, Jon held up a dismissive hand. “Yeah. Well. Technically, I’m your uncle-in-law, dickhead.”
“Technically, you’re a worm.”
“Not exactly––” Jon muttered.
“––You’re a worm to me,” Maygar cut in coldly. “And to the rest of us, too, or you wouldn’t have gotten your ‘sister’ fucking killed.”
Jon felt the words like a punch to the gut.
No one had said that to him. Not to his face.
None of the other seers had so much as mentioned to Jon his role in how Allie had been taken by Shadow and Cass. The closest had been Revik himself, in one of his drunker, darker moments… and even he had bitten back his words, walking out of the room when he couldn’t seem to control his own mind.
Jon could only look at Maygar for a moment, feeling sick to his stomach.
“They should have killed you on the spot,” Maygar added, his voice dangerously low. “He should have killed you. He probably would have, too, if your name wasn’t on that fucking list.”
At that, Revik looked over from where he stood next to Allie.
“Shut up, Maygar. Now.” He gave Jon an equally hard look. “And you. Eyes to yourself. We’re starting in two minutes. Get your head in the game. Or else.”
Jon nodded, feeling his face warm.
Looking away, he happened to catch a look from Wreg, who stood on the other side of the room with Yumi and Gar. Seeing the darker thread of anger there, Jon felt a flood of disbelief hit his light when he realized what the look meant.
Wreg had seen him staring at Maygar, too.
Jon almost couldn’t let himself believe how Wreg had interpreted that stare, but he could feel it, practically on the surface of Wreg’s light.
Jesus Christ. Wreg thought he’d been checking Maygar out.
Feeling his face go from warm to hot when it occurred to him that Maygar might have taken his stare the same way, Jon winced, clicking under his own breath. As he did it, a warm hand fell on his shoulder and he jumped, turning his head.
Jorag smiled down at him, giving him a sympathetic look.
“We don’t want you dead, brother,” Jorag said.
Jon let out a surprised grunt. “Yeah. Okay. Great.”
“I mean it,” Jorag said, sending him a harder pulse of warmth, even as he opened his light, making sure Jon could feel that he meant it. Squeezing his shoulder tighter, he leaned by Jon’s ear. “As for your other problem,” he added softly, nudging Jon’s mind towards Wreg. “Well, you’ve got our sympathy there, too. Believe me, little brother.”
Jon shook his head, clicking softly, but somehow, Jorag’s words managed to amuse him.
“Fucked if you do, brother,” Jorag added, still by his ear. “No matter what you do, right now. And don’t think the rest of us don’t know it.” Grinning, Jorag thumped his shoulder affectionately. “Poor bastard. You didn’t pick an easy one, brother.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Do you? Do you know I’m risking my life right now, then?” Jorag grinned.
Jon couldn’t help it. He let out a surprised half-laugh, even as he gave Jorag an over-the-shoulder grin. “All of you seers are just a bunch of mental cases, aren’t you?”
“That we are, little brother,” Jorag replied in mock-seriousness, sending him another pulse, that one holding a pale breath of cheerfulness. “…That we are. Damned fine-looking ones, too, the whole lot of us.”
Jon let out another snort.
Jorag winked at him, giving him a last pat before he moved off, aiming his feet in the direction of the door.
Jon watched the seer leave, feeling an irrational wave of affection for the other man, who’d taken it upon himself lately to try and keep up morale, given that Revik was hardly in a mental state to do it. Jon knew Revik got pissed off at Jorag on occasion, mostly for his being a little too focused on Allie, but otherwise, they were friends.
And yeah, Jon had seen the thing with Jorag and Allie firsthand, so he understood Revik’s complaint, and even sympathized, but it occurred to him suddenly that Jorag was his friend, too.
Whatever his issues, Jon couldn’t help liking the other man.
Thinking about the last time Jon had seen Jorag staring at Allie, in that armored truck on their way into the quarantine zone in San Francisco, Jon felt his chest clench before he shook it off. As he did, he caught another dark look from Wreg.
The ex-Rebel didn’t stare at Jon long that time, but Jon saw the hardening of the other man’s jaw, felt the pulse of anger leave Wreg’s light. Feeling more of that emotion seething behind the dense shield around Wreg’s aleimi, Jon fought a wave of frustration that made him want to leave the room entirely.
Jorag really hadn’t been kidding.
Wreg hadn’t liked their interaction much, either.
Seeing the tension in Wreg’s long jaw and dark eyes, even past the other emotions clouding the room, Jon felt the remnants of his brief levity with Jorag dissipate.
In its place, that darker feeling returned, the weight that barely left Jon’s mind or light since they’d arrived in San Francisco.
The only good thing about that was, it made it easier not to care.
About any of it.
“All right.” Revik glanced over at Jon and Maygar, his clear eyes narrow. “You’d better sit down. We’re ready to start.”
17
RECONNECTION
JON DIDN’T KNOW what to expect.
No one really told him anything before they started.
Based on that, he assumed his role would be nonexistent, in terms of mechanics.
He knew his light constituted one of three “hubs” to be connected to Allie’s light. Maygar’s light would be performing essentially the same function, although they’d likely connect him at several levels, given that Maygar was Elaerian, and telekinetic.
Revik, who already had a light-bond to Allie, would be connected more specifically––meaning, structure to structure, likely at the highest levels, with an emphasis on those structures associated with telekinesis.
Jon figured he was probably the most “place-holder-y” of the three. He was likely only there because he’d known Allie for so long, and thus had a strong line into her light.
He found out he was wrong, though.
Well, partly wrong.
Balidor explained a few things as he and his team worked.
Yes, you will be connected at different structures than the other two, pr
imarily on the lower end of her structure, the Adhipan seer murmured in Jon’s mind, his consciousness clearly split as he worked. That’s not solely due to your childhood connection to your sister, Jon. For one, we need a counterbalance to all of that high structure. You will help stabilize the other two, and keep Allie more grounded in her body. This will potentially strengthen Allie’s ability to connect to all of us down here. Two, she added things to your structure that are highly compatible with the advanced shielding she does––
What? Jon stared at him. She added things to my structure? What does that mean?
Balidor gave Jon a level look, his expression stern.
Don’t worry about that now, Jon. You’ll be taking point with the shielding end of things. Focus on that… and on keeping her grounded. Potentially, you will aid her in connecting to her own structures as well, he added. …Or so her husband hopes. At the very least, it will make her less likely to wander too far from her body during all of this high-structure work.
Jon felt his jaw harden.
Swallowing thickly, he nodded.
Balidor was talking about Allie dying. He was saying she could wander off in the Barrier and just not come back, as happened to more than one wire-addicted seer.
Balidor rubbed his shoulder, sending a pulse of warmth.
Do not worry, he sent softly. This will help, Jon. A lot.
Jon nodded to that, too.
Anyway, Balidor added, as he moved away to check something on Maygar. You consistently underestimate yourself. Many of these connecting structures on you are considered “high-level,” brother Jon… especially for the shields.
As he spoke, Balidor highlighted the areas in Jon’s light that he was talking about.
Jon stared at them, bewildered. What the hell are those? Allie put those there?
You are not familiar with them?
Jon blinked, then frowned.
They feel familiar, he admitted after a beat.
He continued to stare at the highly detailed, multi-colored structures Balidor was highlighting.
What do they do? he asked finally.
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