Allie's War Season Three

by JC Andrijeski

  Confusing the security team bought us time, but not much.

  If we got trapped in the lower vaults, we were screwed. Revik had a contingency for that possibility, of course...he was contingency guy, really...but like with the elevators, none of our options appealed to me much. The main one involved Revik blowing a hole through the walls as close to where they met up with the sewers as possible. He'd seemed fairly confident he could pull it off...but it meant overloading the power grid to the extent that it would probably short out a good segment of the city's grid, if not ignite the gas mains of the nearby buildings and level a good five square blocks. Being Revik, he had the probabilities all mapped out, including a rough casualty count. He conservatively estimated fifty dead, if we went out that way. I was learning that planning this kind of thing with Revik meant adopting a whole different definition of 'collateral damages.'

  More optimistically, if all went well, we'd go out the front door with few to no casualties at all.

  Revik got through the lock in the seconds it took me to think this much.

  Then I was backing towards him, my gun still held at roughly shoulder level as I scanned the lobby and the sidewalk outside the one-way panes, using both my eyes and my light. It was strange to feel normal pedestrians out there, even if few and far between. It felt like a different world. Four blocks west ran Fifth Avenue, filled with bright lights and honking taxis and foot traffic heading to clubs and bars, pretty much up until dawn.

  I felt Revik's nudge and quickened my pace, still walking backwards as I entered the bank branch lobby through the organic doors. He'd already sweet-talked the organics into turning off the second set of floor sensors, but a number of non-organic security mechanisms continued tracking our movements through the bank's main lobby.

  Fitting a silencer to the end of the desert eagle he carried, he immediately shot out one of the wall cameras, then two more. Since the telekinesis caused a flare in the Barrier, even with me shielding us, he'd decided to hold off on using it until the last possible minute, now that we knew for certain that seers monitored the space around the building.

  After all, probably every seer on their team was using most of their light waiting for us to resurface. They likely hovered over the bank's construct that very moment, looking for the slightest ripple in the Barrier space. There was a good chance someone could have seen us on the cameras by then, too...or on VR feeds hooked into their headsets as part of a separate set of organics than the ones Revik now controlled with his aleimi. Revik outlined this and several other scenarios as possible during our planning sessions. Since most major financial institutions now employed seer contractors to advise them on security, they often had redundancies built into their systems. All we could do was hope that most of the team remained dispersed due the virus, looking for us on higher floors.

  I had to remind myself, too, what Revik hammered into me at the beginning of every op.

  It wouldn't go smooth.

  Something would go wrong, no matter how carefully we planned. All we could do was hope it wouldn't be anything from which we couldn't recover.

  Even being the fastidious planner that he was, Revik fully expected us to veer off plan to deal with something unexpected. He planned for this, as paradoxical as that sounded to me when I first started doing this kind of thing with him. The exact nature of the surprises we might face in any op varied pretty widely, so he always had multiple contingencies built in that didn't depend on the same factor or set of factors being present...whether that meant the telekinesis, our guns, our ability to use our sight, or whatever else.

  He told me outright that if I hadn't been along on the Registry Job, it would have failed. He either would have been forced to do something drastic (like a frontal assault on the mainframe himself, using telekinesis, for example), or he would have been forced to go after the Registry system using more conventional weaponry.

  Revik cautioned me about relying on things going 'smooth' before that job, too. He said all plans really did was provide an outline, a rough map to give the chaos some structure. A solid plan also helped you dig your way out again when things did shift off course.

  That simple fact still proved the hardest for me to get my head around. It was difficult not to panic when things veered off into crazy at times like this.

  Therefore, it took every effort of my willpower not to panic when I saw Revik suddenly vault up on top of the nearest bank counter, which stood at roughly the height of my chest. He moved so fast I found it difficult to hold the shield around him. A jolt of alarm rippled his light, and before he'd managed to turn towards me, I was already climbing on top of the standing counter nearest to where I stood.

  Unfortunately, the counter by me was a lot narrower, and decorated with plastic bins filled with different-colored forms and pamphlets, so I had to struggle a bit to hold my balance as I planted a foot on either side of the racks. I'd also been stranded too far away to jump to Revik, as the counter formed an island between the rows of ropes and poles that indicated where people queued before each bank teller window.

  "What?" I said in a whisper. "What happened?"

  He indicated for me to be silent, pointing at the floor. I tried to follow his gesture with my eyes, then gave up and used flickers of my sight under the Barrier shield I'd somehow managed to maintain despite my panic.

  Watching the space where his light indicated, I felt my stomach grow cold.

  Whatever the thing was, it reminded me of those odd, organic machines Chandre used when we were running ops against Terian a few years earlier. Those had mostly been employed to detect explosives in the materials we'd been confiscating from Rook storage facilities. One also engaged in finding surveillance devices prior to our entering buildings.

  They always struck me as more, well...alive...than most organics. The only thing I'd come across with even more of that quality was that sentient wall we'd run into while breaking into the Registry mainframe storage facility. Revik told me later that we were damned lucky that thing didn't kill us. He also said he never would have approached from that angle if he'd known it was there. But that was before we knew the basement of the Black Arrow building also housed a massive organics plant.

  The machine walking across the floor of the bank lobby now probably lived somewhere between those two types of machines, in terms of overall intelligence. Because of the way it moved, it also carried that oddly repulsive but fascinating quality of something that was close to being alive, but wasn't.

  Even as I thought it, I saw a long, tentacle-like appendage slither out the top of its head, touching the floor. The machine paused, motionless, as if feeling the ground for vibration.

  I risked a quick send to Revik.

  What can it do to us? I asked him.

  Besides pull the alarms? came his terse response. Explode. Take out the whole front end of the bank...it's also equipped with gas. We're lucky they didn't think to activate it earlier...they must keep it in stasis unless the ground floor is breached. I barely saw it in time to avoid its sensors, or we'd both be dead...

  He glanced at me, and I saw his eyes glowing in faint rings on his face.

  It's here to protect the vaults, Allie. Privately contracted...even the bank couldn't take a hit like this, not without a damned big incentive. They'd hire more seers before they'd blow up their own building...insurance covers their losses anyway. Someone paid them to put it here...

  I puzzled over his words. What does that mean?

  He smiled faintly. I could just see the expression under the glow of his eyes.

  It means that you were right. Whatever's hidden here...it's important.

  I was about to answer, when he focused back on the animal-like machine. I saw his eyes glow brighter and densified my shield over him, trying to block the flare that wanted to rise up past where I had us protected.

  Get ready, Revik sent grimly. I'm going to have to trigger the alarms...

  My adrenaline spiked. What does that mean?
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  I didn't even have time to get well and truly scared.

  Revik leapt across the aisle between us, landing precariously on the marble-topped counter and shifting his feet and arms to regain his balance. I'd barely taken a breath when he grabbed my wrist and pulled me to him, encasing me in his arms.

  His light flared out before it occurred to me what his actions meant.

  In the same instant he crushed me tighter against his chest, he threw up a shield so dense it blocked all but my faintest view of the room. A white, vein-filled egg showered down from somewhere above his head in a paint-like curtain, and for a brief instant, I experienced only a bright flash somewhere down by my feet.

  Then a denser feeling of pressure.

  Movement grew visible on the other side of the shell protecting us both, flowing streams that increased the pressure inside the small space we shared. Like watching water flow over a rock in a fast-moving river...or seeing a gale-force wind slide over the windshield of a car...I saw movement blur violently overhead without feeling any of it. I might have struggled to keep my balance on the counter, but the pressure made it impossible to move. I felt sandwiched there, more by that dense feeling of air compressed than even by Revik's arms.

  Then, abruptly, I felt those arms tighten. Grunting, Revik held onto me as if for balance, and I saw his shield waver...then start to break apart.

  Sound crashed down over us in the same instant, making me realize only then how silent it had been.

  My lungs filled with smoke, forcing me to cough. Revik still held onto me, but I felt something different in his light. My hands searched for the source of the difference, only stopping when he winced violently, moving away from my probing fingers.

  "Jesus..." The word spilled out of me, even as my fingers again touched the piece of metal I could feel embedded in his side. "Revik..."

  "...I'm fine." Holding my hand, he nudged me with his light, telling me to get down off the counter.

  But I was looking around us now, taking in the bank's reception area without completely believing what I saw. The space looked so different, I couldn't get my bearings. I stared at the overturned and debris-covered cluster of desks and cubicles where the bank managers and loan officers probably sat during the day, when a large chunk of the ceiling fell, crushing two of them and causing me to flinch into Revik. A long, L-shaped desk, cubicle walls and what looked like a photocopier fell through the hole in the ceiling with an even louder crash, raising more smoke and dust.

  Revik nudged me again. That time I jumped down to the floor. Looking up at him when he didn't follow, I remembered the piece of shrapnel sticking out of his side, and held up my hands to grab his arm and steady him. He crouched, then climbed down slowly, stiff-backed and leaning on me. I scanned him again, more deliberately that time.

  "You're hurt," I said, clenching my jaw and fighting to keep my voice level. "Not a little, either. Revik...this is serious."

  "I'll be fine," he said. His eyes grew immovable when I glanced up, my mouth in a hard frown. "We're getting it, Allie...whatever it is. We won't get another chance."

  I bit back my argument when I felt his light once more nudging mine. I looked at what he'd felt...a tremor in the construct that came from some place other than the bank itself, or even the seer partners who helped run things behind the scenes.

  The Dreng lived in that light.

  And something else, too, something that was growing increasingly familiar to me, although I didn't have a name for it yet.

  "You were right, Allie," Revik said, softer. Gripping my hand, he kissed my cheek. "Don't stop now. Whatever it is, we need it...you knew that before any of us did."

  I felt my jaw tighten again when another spasm of pain left his light. But I agreed with him. I hated how ruthless that part of me was, but when it came to this kind of thing, it rarely seemed to care about anything except accomplishing whatever it set out to do.

  I rarely seemed to be able to fight it very effectively, either.

  "All right," I said. I heard that part of me in my voice, too. "You're on surveillance. Guns only for now. I want you saving your light in case we need it for manipulation...same with your body. Tell me if you're getting faint, weak or if you're losing control of your light..." I looked up, swallowing involuntarily at his relieved expression. "They're going to be coming for us. We'll need you to get us out. Do you think you can maintain the shield again, well enough to contain the blast if we have to go through the wall?"

  There was a pause where I felt him scanning his own aleimi.

  Then he nodded, looking down at me. I saw that relief again, too, if anything more overt in his expression, even as he continued to run through scenarios in his head.

  "Yes," he said, and I knew it wasn't only to the question I'd asked aloud.

  He leaned close to half of his weight on me as we headed for the entrance to the vaults.

  He limped heavily, even so. His left arm rested on my shoulders as he aimed his right hand, the one with the gun, behind us. He kept his eyes trained backwards, too. I knew it probably hurt him to turn like that, given where the wound was located just under his ribs on the right side of his torso, but I also knew we needed him covering us, so I didn't argue.

  Instead, I walked us as fast I could around the hole in the carpeted floor, a crater nearly four feet deep at the center. That same point pock-marked the cement foundation roughly where the organic machine had been crawling when I saw it last.

  We reached the other side, and I was relieved to see that the first set of doors into the back areas of the vault had been obliterated in the explosion, too. The heavy, organic metal slab hung halfway to the floor, dragging the smoking carpet from where it sagged on its remaining, broken hinge. It was then that I realized everything was covered in white powder from the cement and the broken sheet-rock, including me and Revik. His black hair was dusted white, too.

  I didn't pause as we reached the opening, other than to help Revik navigate through the narrow gap between the hanging door and the wall.

  "I'll handle the organic locks," I told him. "Do anything you can to save your light...even with basic scans. Same with surveillance...just point it out to me and I'll get it. We don't really need finesse at this point..."

  I felt him agree without speaking.

  Without talking about it, I realized we'd both agreed on something else.

  I was in charge now.

  3

  HELP

  JON POKED HIS head into the room they'd set up as one of the main common areas for the ex-rebels and mid-level infiltrators of the Adhipan and the Seven.

  This one happened to function primarily as a feeds-watching and VR station, but the seers hung out there for more social purposes, too. The room itself, located on the fifty-sixth floor of the seer-run hotel, had been emptied of the conference table and chairs that originally filled more than half of it. The more corporate-style furniture had been replaced by couches, end tables and even a few reclining chairs, set up theater-fashion before the long wall monitor across one end of the room. The only things remaining from the room's previous purposing included a two hundred gallon fish tank filled with saltwater fish and a buffet-style table against the wall opposite the main monitor.

  Even the bland, corporate-style art had been removed, replaced by the flag of the Seven and a large symbol of the sword and sun done on a traditional-style seer wall weaving.

  "Hey," Jon ventured, glancing around the door. "...Have either of you been watching the news feeds?"

  The two seers looked up, their expressions verging on blank.

  Wreg's expression tightened somewhat when he saw who it was, right before he glanced behind Jon's shoulder, as if noting whether he was alone. Without meeting Jon's gaze, he looked back at the stack of cards that lay on the carpeted floor between him and Jax.

  Wreg and Jax didn't occupy any of the dozen or so chairs, but lounged on the floor itself, directly below the massive, wall-mounted monitor that lived
between the room's small kitchen and its in-built fireplace. The monitor was currently on, but it wasn't showing the news feeds...nor did either of the two seers appear to be watching it. The suite's lights were all off apart from the monitor itself, and the sparking glow of embers in the fireplace on the other end of the couch. Their faces appeared ghostly in that dim light, bathed in a bluish tint from the moving images of the old movie that played while they huddled over a deck of cards.

  "Are you guys on duty right now?" Jon said, when neither of them answered.

  Wreg shrugged without looking up, laying down the card he'd started to pull from the larger pile held in his fingers.

  "We're awake," he grunted. "So yes...more or less. Main detail's downstairs."

  Jon looked between the two of them, then exhaled in an impatient kind of sigh.

  "Well, you might want to check out the news..." he said, his voice a bit sharper. "And by the way, Allie's missing. So is Revik."

  Wreg looked up. He stared at Jon without speaking for a few seconds, his dark eyes suddenly focused.

  "What do you mean by this...missing?"

  Jon held his gaze, shrugging. "Meaning I couldn't sleep, so I went to see if Allie's up, and she's not in her room. Neither is Revik..." Jon motioned vaguely behind his own shoulder with one hand, towards the hotel corridor. "They're not downstairs. They're not at the gym or the pool or in any of the restaurants...they're also not with Feigran, the security station or in any of the common rooms. No one in security saw them leave."

  Wreg and Jax exchanged looks.

  Jon heard the frustration leak into his own voice. "Am I the only one who's noticed how weird the two of them have been acting lately?"

  At this, Wreg's expression relaxed. Looking back down at the cards in his hand, he chuckled a little, only pausing to exchange meaningful looks with Jax, whose face showed the same understanding.

  Jax shook his head, clicking softly.

  "You sure they didn't go somewhere to be alone, cousin?" he said a beat later, laying down a card of his own on top of Wreg's. "...Brother Syrimne hasn't exactly been hiding his discomfort in that area...not from anyone with sight, anyway." Glancing at Wreg, Jax exchanged another smile with the older seer. "Hell, I'm surprised he's lasted this long. I had money on him breaking down before the plane landed in New York..."