He stared at the girl standing there, blinking at her from the lit car into the dark of the high-ceilinged business lobby. He recognized her blunt-cut black hair, but she looked thinner than he remembered, her face paler. She held a console between white, small hands, her face a blueish glow from the monitor as she keyed in commands.
His eyes followed the organic filament hooked into her hand-held, and saw it connected to a panel outside his elevator car.
He blinked at her, taking all of that in. He still leaned on the elevator wall, half-swaying on his feet, even with the support.
Then he saw Vikram standing behind her.
He blinked again.
The girl with the short, black hair blinked back, an open-mouthed surprise changing her features as she took in the vision he must have presented.
He remembered her name then, as she stared at him.
“Dante,” he said. His voice sounded hoarse. “It’s Dante, right?”
“Yeah,” she stammered at him.
She looked behind her, over her shoulder at other figures standing there.
Revik followed her gaze. He’d missed them, somehow, maybe from the collar, maybe because they blended in with the shadows.
He still couldn’t make out faces.
From the expression on Dante’s face, she was asking for help.
He realized a lot of people stood there. More than he could probably handle, if they turned out to be unfriendly. He felt his muscles tense anyway, growing taut over the handcuffs that still kept his wrists behind his back. He wished he’d finished with the damned cuffs instead of screwing around with the elevator buttons, trying to get downstairs.
Forcing himself the rest of the way upright, so that he stood more or less under his own power, he blinked into that dark, fighting to see.
He was still staring when one of the figures walked forward, stepping into the light washing out of the elevator doors.
“Hey,” she said, smiling at him.
He stared, feeling his lungs stop working, his heart.
She smiled wider, her eyes unnaturally bright.
“Hey,” she repeated. “Don’t do anything crazy, baby. It’s us. The good guys.”
When he didn’t move, didn’t speak, she frowned, looking behind her, at whoever stood in the shadows. When she looked back, confusion touched her jade-colored eyes.
“Hey,” she said a third time, lips pursed. “Are you coming out of there, husband? From the look of things, you don’t exactly need rescuing, but we should go.”
Revik stared at her, feeling his mind go blank, flatlining completely.
For those few seconds, he was pretty sure he was dead.
55
STAND BY ME
BALIDOR JUMPED DOWN the last set of stairs, landing in knee-deep, ice cold water.
The water soaked his clothes and flesh, seemingly to the bone. Staring down the tunnel in front of him, he frowned, listening. The rushing sound coming from both ends of that tunnel unnerved him, but he tried to keep that out of his light, and his facial expression.
Turning, he gripped Hondo’s arm in a friendly way when she approached him from behind. He couldn’t help but smile when her eyes lit up in surprise.
She smiled back at him a second later. “Hello, sir.”
“You made it, my sister.” Balidor sent her a pulse of warmth, making her blink again, then smile wider. “…We were worried.”
Hondo grinned back, clapping him on the back that time, an affectionate warmth coming off her own light. “You were worried? We thought we’d lost you, Adhipan, sir. Instead, I hear we all owe you a drink. Maybe a few cases’ worth of drink… and a massage.”
Balidor chuckled. “I wouldn’t be turning any of that down.” He focused down the tunnel, shivering in the freezing cold. “Although we might all prefer some hot chocolate and some blankets tonight.”
Exhaling as much to fortify himself as anything, he saw the cloud of steam his mouth exuded and frowned.
“You’ve heard from them?” he said, glancing back at her. “On the other side? There’s no problem with the OBE?”
Hondo made a negative gesture with her tattooed hand. “No problem, sir. Boss took out the harbor and river OBEs this morning, when he closed the gates. They said there’s a bit more water traffic than usual because of the downed OBEs, but it was all human. They were able to circumvent it pretty easily with pushes.”
Balidor grimaced, picking up images off Hondo’s light.
With the OBEs down in the harbor, Manhattan wouldn’t be a quarantine city for much longer. Desperation would breed ingenuity; he’d be surprised if they didn’t find a way to tear down the last OBE around Manhattan by the end of the week.
Thinking about the List humans, he sent up a silent prayer they would all prove to be as immune to the disease as the technicians believed. They could only hope it hadn’t mutated significantly since they ran their last tests.
Pushing that from his mind as a problem for another day, he motioned towards the water.
“How much has it risen?” he said.
“It only just started to rise.” Hondo’s voice held a trace of worry, despite her words. “Maybe two inches in total. But they’re saying we need to hurry. And I agree.”
“The storm is still expected?”
She nodded, once. “We’ve got an hour, tops, before it really hits landfall.”
Balidor nodded, exhaling.
“Are we the last of them?” He looked around, and realized just how quiet the hotel felt from his light. He saw Tenzi shivering on a higher stair and smiled at him wanly, despite the fact that the other man was obviously freezing.
“Tenzi? Is this it? No one else?”
“We are indeed the last, Adhipan Balidor.” Despite how cold he looked, Tenzi spoke with obvious pride. “Most of them are already off the island, sir.”
Balidor felt a pulse of relief leave his body.
He didn’t ask about the Sword.
He would deal with the bad news later.
Blowing on his hands and releasing another cloud of steam, he motioned for Tenzi to join him and Hondo on the lower stairs, just above where another seer––Balidor was pretty sure her name was Wanai––struggled to hold a thick-looking raft more or less even with their makeshift dock. That dock had been a staircase landing down to the second level sub-basement, but now those stairs disappeared under the water.
Balidor nudged Hondo, smiling as he gripped her arm, then leaned down to help Wanai hold the raft so Hondo and Tenzi could board.
“Let’s go, then,” he said, glancing up at Tenzi. “I don’t want to wait for that water to rise, do you, my friends?”
Tenzi shook his head. Even so, he made an obviously pained face when he stepped deeper into the water.
“Gods!” he complained. “I vote whiskey, not hot chocolate on the other end.”
Stopping when the water reached his knees, Tenzi began cursing much more elaborately in Prexci. Balidor couldn’t help laughing at a few of the phrases.
Tenzi gave him an indignant look when he heard him laugh. “You just got here,” he reminded Balidor. “I’ve been here for hours, El Capitan. So has Hondo!”
“Of course, of course,” Balidor said, making a polite gesture.
“Smug bastard,” Tenzi muttered.
Even so, Balidor could feel that all of their spirits had lifted since he last spoke to them. Maybe just the fact they’d gotten so many on the Displacement Lists out of Shadow’s reach. Maybe just the fact they were still alive, in spite of everything.
“Did you really shoot him right in the head?” Tenzi said, using Balidor’s shoulder for balance as he climbed into the boat in front of him.
“Yes,” Balidor affirmed. “One shot.”
“What about Ute?” Hondo said, gripping the stairwell from where she crouched on the boat.
Balidor shook his head, once.
“No,” he said. “I got two of the others. We exchanged fire for a few m
inutes, but they must have thought there were more of us up there than there were.”
“Than just one, you mean,” Hondo said, gloating with pride as she shook her long hair. “Just one Mr. Balidor, and you had those fuckers shitting their pants.”
Tenzi burst out in another laugh.
The other female, Wanai, exchanged a grin with Balidor, too. He gripped her arm, helping her balance as she climbed onto the raft in front of him.
“So what happened then?” Hondo said.
Balidor shrugged, motioning politely with one hand for Wanai to get settled before he climbed on after her. Hondo and Tenzi were both leaning over now, holding the raft to the concrete landing, gripping the metal pole of what had once been the staircase’s guardrail. Balidor couldn’t help noticing how red Tenzi’s fingers looked. He really was cold.
He wasn’t the only one. Hondo’s long, dirty-blond hair fell part of the way into the water, and Balidor heard her teeth chattering as he started to climb carefully onto the raft.
“They went over the wall,” Balidor said, shrugging.
He stepped off the landing altogether, using Wanai’s hand and then Tenzi’s back as balance. Stepping into the center of the raft, he crouched and sat where they’d left him a spot that would balance the overall weight of the boat, across from the taller Tenzi.
The placement made sense. Balidor was the largest of the three seers. Moreover, he still wore a rifle around his back, an armored vest with several magazines, armored pants, anti-grav boots. Hondo, although muscular and tall for a female, would still make a better counterweight to Wanai than either Tenzi or Balidor.
Balidor glanced down and saw a box of what looked like ammunition magazines on Wanai’s side, too, presumably to counter-balance Hondo’s greater height and weight. Between the four of them and that, they should be able to keep the raft from capsizing.
“Thank you for waiting for me, brother and sisters,” Balidor said, realizing suddenly they had done just that, risking their own lives in the process.
Glancing at the faintly blue lips of Hondo and Tenzi, and looking down the tunnel at the rising water, a pain hit his heart. He was touched, but it was more than that. Briefly, that pain in his chest made it difficult to breathe. He cleared his throat, forcing a smile.
“Thank you,” he repeated.
Tenzi waved off his words, but smiled a little.
“So they’re gone?” Hondo said, even as she released the pole.
Balidor sucked in a breath, gripping the sides of the raft as the dark tunnel into the sewers rapidly approached.
“They’re gone,” he affirmed, speaking louder over the rush of water.
A bare breath later, the raft was plunged into darkness.
Ducking down, more out of reflex than because he could feel or see the tunnel’s curved ceiling, Balidor fought to control his breath, peering into the dark with his eyes and light.
“It’ll be okay,” Tenzi assured him, raising his voice over the sound of the water in the hollow pipe. “They’ve all gone through just fine. We’ve got Ullysa on the other end, and they’re still monitoring the water levels.”
“Unless there’s an earthquake,” Balidor muttered, still crouched down in the front of the boat.
Laughing, Hondo, who sat closest to him, clapped him on the back.
“Unless there’s an earthquake,” she seconded, sending him another pulse of warmth.
56
RAMBLE ON
JON WALKED BESIDE Wreg.
He fought not to grab the seer’s hand, knowing it wasn’t the time for that, even though they were finally on their way out of this goddamned place. For the past hour or so, in that chamber of horrors under the Tower, he’d felt like his nerves had been run over a cheese grater.
Now he felt almost like he’d been drugged.
He knew some of that was probably from the adrenaline wearing off.
He also knew that wasn’t all of it.
A dense, white light hovered over the whole group. Something about it brought a crystalline clarity to his mind, a sharpness to his eyes and light, even as it wrapped him in soft, feathery wings. He felt more clear, more calm, more himself than he had for as long as he could remember. He also felt emotional, vulnerable, and nearly afraid.
He didn’t fully understand how all those different things could coexist, even reinforce one another. He didn’t understand why he wanted to cry and laugh, all in the same series of breaths. He didn’t understand any of it really, but somehow, that was okay, too.
That light was making all of them act strangely, even Dante.
Not bad strange––but yeah, strange.
He glanced at Allie, then looked away, back into the dark line of trees.
He struggled with looking at her directly still, especially her face.
At the same time, he couldn’t seem to look away, at least not for very long. He couldn’t seem to keep his light away from hers, either, or his mind. He glanced over at her again even now, then looked away just as quickly. He looked at her almost without knowing he did it, without knowing what he wanted, or expected to find. He looked at her and looked away, even as he saw everyone else’s eyes focused on her, too.
They were in the park.
Jon tried to focus on that, on what he could see and feel around him, in a location that should at least be familiar to him. Despite his attempts, his mind kept returning to the woman who walked ahead of them, flanked by Jorag, Chandre, Chinja and Neela.
Jax walked with that group too, still limping and pale, but keeping up without too much visible strain. The soft light flooding their small group probably benefited him more than anyone, given how much light he’d lost from his injury.
Jorag, who turned on his headset as soon as they exited Gossett Towers, told them Tarsi, Vikram, Yarli, Anale, and Loki’s team already waited for them at the Chinook.
There’d been a minor argument in the lobby of the Towers before they left.
Wreg, Neela, Jon and a few others wanted to go after Terian.
Revik wanted to go after Menlim.
They’d discussed whether a bomb might be more practical, but no one could get ahold of Balidor to find out if that were even possible. They had no way to reach any of the hotel seers; the entire hotel was apparently in the midst of an emergency evacuation through the sewers. As part of that, all the encrypted channels they’d shared at the beginning of the op had gone dark until they could relocate everyone safely outside of Manhattan.
Anyway, Revik seemed to think bombing the Towers wouldn’t do any good.
According to him, they needed to go after some ship he could still see and feel through the construct, before it disappeared under the ocean with Menlim, Terian and the rest of Shadow’s inner circle.
It had been one of the strangest conversations Jon had ever been a part of.
Revik wouldn’t look at Allie at all.
He answered her words a few times, argued with her––mainly through the others––but mostly just stood there, staring at the floor, his jaw hard.
Thanks to Jon’s relatively new and still mostly annoying photographic seer memory, he remembered the conversation word for word.
“We need to go after him,” Revik had said. “Now. It’s probably our last chance.”
“No.” Allie shook her head, adamant. “You don’t know what you’re saying. It would be completely pointless. Moreover, I’m positive it’s what he wants.”
Revik shook his head back, still refusing to look at her. “We have an actual chance to take him out. Right now, we have that chance. We can’t pass that up. We can’t just let him––”
“No!” Allie cried out. “No, Revik. We aren’t doing that. Not now. We have to let him go this time… we have to. Don’t you see?”
She’d sounded exasperated, Jon remembered, but he couldn’t help wondering if that was more because Revik wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t even stand next to her, and had his light locked up tighter than Jon had ever s
een it.
“Absolutely not,” she repeated, shaking her head when he didn’t answer. “We can’t. We really can’t. I understand why you want to, but it’s a really bad idea.”
“Why?” Revik demanded. “Why is it a bad idea?”
“Because he’s one of the Dreng,” she said.
Revik wasn’t the only one who looked frustrated at that.
Wreg blinked at her, too, glancing at Jon and Jorag in disbelief before he frowned along with Revik and the others. He faced Allie, still frowning.
“Aren’t they all Dreng, Esteemed and Revered Sister?” he said.
Despite the disbelief in his voice, Wreg asked the question politely.
More than politely, Jon thought with a grunt.
He’d treated Allie like a walking relic––like some kind of resurrected holy ghost, not a person at all. And really, Wreg’s reaction to seeing Allie walking and talking was milder than that of most of the seers.
The others’ odd behavior ranged from Jax touching her constantly and grinning, to Neela making religious gestures around Allie’s body and touching her hands every few minutes––again, like she was some kind of Buddha. Rig dealt with his confusion by insisting on keeping his head and face below hers, even though he stood something like half a foot taller than her.
“Yes,” Chandre said, who fell into the angry, bewildered camp with Allie, although she seemed to be more used to talking to her at least. “Yes… explain this, Esteemed Bridge. Aren’t all of our enemies followers of the Dreng? Why is this any different?”
“You’re not listening to me,” Allie said patiently, looking around at all of them.
Jon had been in the camp of just staring at her, unsure if his brain was even working.
He mainly stared at her eyes, at the person he could see there, instead of the wirehead he remembered from all those weeks in San Francisco. His mind kept returning to the naked woman in the basement who wouldn’t talk, who still managed to push Revik around, and not only with the telekinesis.
Looking at her in the lobby of Gossett Towers felt like crossing time streams, or maybe like being lost in a complex and confusing dream. At the time, he couldn’t decide if that dream was a nightmare about to go bad, or some kind of wish-fulfillment.
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