"...She was concerned that the unattractive seer wasn't Salinse at all," Feigran said mildly. "She told me in her dream, it was someone else. She didn't want the Sword to find out..."
"She didn't want Revik to find out?" Jon said. "But she didn't mind you knowing?" When Feigran didn't look up, Jon pressed, "Who, Feigran? Who did she say it was in her dream?"
Feigran continued to sketch, his lips pressed together in concentration.
"Feigran?" Jon said again, hiding his impatience badly. "Did she tell you who she thought the seer was?"
"Of course she did, Jon." The seer looked up, smiling at him once more, his eyes bright with that innocent, boyish expression. "She told me that in her dream, the ugly seer was Menlim of Purestred. The same seer who raised her husband and trained him as Syrimne. She said that in her dream, it was he who hid something in that bank's metal box..."
"THAT’S NOT POSSIBLE," Balidor said, his voice blunt.
His eyes grew briefly blank, however, probably because he went far enough into the Barrier that it actually showed on his face, Jon thought.
"...No," he said, gesturing more adamantly, his eyes clearing. "He's dead, Jon. The records on that account are complete in every way."
"I didn't say I believed it," Jon said, exasperated. "I said you should probably talk to Feigran. And maybe ask to see those drawings...his and Allie's."
Balidor shook his head, clicking. Still, Jon could tell from the frown on his face that he was thinking about Jon's words.
"What did Allie tell you about what she was doing?" Jon prompted after another moment.
Balidor's frown turned into more of a scowl.
"...About that," he said, his voice grim. "I need a favor, Jon."
"From me?" Jon said, perplexed. "Really?"
Balidor never factored Jon into his plans. Never. In his own way, he was more of a snob about humans than Revik was, even though Revik would say things openly sometimes and Balidor remained always and unerringly polite.
At least Revik gave Jon a chance to give him shit about being a racist dick...and, ironically, Revik never treated Jon himself as inferior. Balidor seemed oblivious both to his own racism and his unfailing consistency in treating the humans around him as furniture.
"Yes, Jon...really," Balidor said, his voice annoyed enough that he must have heard at least part of what Jon had been thinking.
Reaching into his front shirt pocket, Balidor pulled out a small green and gray device, what looked like a data chip for a laptop, but so old-looking that it had to be something made prior to personal computers. He tossed it to Jon, who caught it reflexively.
"This is what Allie nearly killed her husband to get," Balidor said, his voice holding a hard edge. "I need you to take it to the New York Public Library, Jon. Dorje will go with you...in case you need to push anyone. As far as we know, Dorje's real face has never been on the feeds."
"Why the library?" Jon said. "Isn't it encrypted?"
Balidor sighed, running a hand through his chestnut-colored hair.
"Not in the usual way, no," he said. "We thought so at first, but the code it was spitting out kept nagging at me...until I cross-referenced it with codes from World War I..." Seeing Jon's eyebrows go up, he clicked at him, sharper. "It is a coincidence, Jon...perhaps it is the same coincidence to which Alyson's dream referred..."
Balidor was probably the only person Jon knew who generally spoke in grammatically correct sentences. Smiling, he shook his head.
"So?" he said. "Again, I ask...why the library?"
Balidor sighed again, this time sounding more tired than annoyed.
"Because it's not an encryption at all," he said after he'd exhaled. "It's actually a data set from a computer based on a language system other than binary. Only a handful of them were ever made...they were actually predecessors to those based on binary language, if you want to get technical. The Rebels used them..." Seeing Jon's eyebrow cock once more, Balidor cut him off, this time in open irritation. "...The Germans had one, too, Jon. We also had reason to believe the Russian KGB used something similar in World War II..."
"And the library has one of these machines?"
Balidor nodded, once. "It does. As importantly...it has a printer that can handle the conversions. I want you and Dorje to go down there and print out whatever data is on that key..."
"Will they even let us use it?" Jon said, skeptical. "I mean, the thing's got to be an antique, right? It can't possibly be living on the floor with all the other terminals?"
Balidor clicked softly, shaking his head as if his mind was somewhere else.
"You will pose as a student, Jon," he said.
"I'm 35 years old, Balidor."
"...A graduate student, Jon," Balidor said, his voice openly annoyed once more. "Dorje will help, if there is need for suspension of disbelief. If you have any trouble, we'll take more drastic measures, but right now, I'd prefer we did this as quietly as possible...and as soon as possible. Before whoever owned this box is notified that their property was stolen..."
"So...now. In other words."
"Yes," Balidor said. "Now. I want you both there the minute the library opens." He checked his organic watch. "...Which is in about thirty-seven minutes, so you'd better go."
Jon pocketed the data key and nodded. Leaving the room, he headed straight for the elevators, not bothering to call Dorje on his headset. When it came to requests like this, Jon knew Balidor didn't screw around. Which meant Dorje would already be waiting for him in the lobby, probably armed to the teeth with weapons that wouldn't set off the beeper when they went through the library's public security system.
Anyway, Jon had to admit, he was pretty curious. Whatever was on this data chip, both Allie and Feigran had dreamed about it.
Which was either a really good thing, or a really bad one.
By the time Jon reached the lobby, Dorje was already checking his watch, sitting in one of those plush, gold-colored couches in the elegant, high-ceilinged lobby with the waterfall sculpture and the massive glass windows looking out over 5th Avenue.
Jon found himself looking at the seer's lean, muscular arms, and his dark brown eyes as he scanned faces out on the street. Since they'd been in America, Jon had seen a different side of his boyfriend than he had in Asia. Something about Dorje seemed sharper here. He even spoke more quickly, and his eyes always showed him to be hyper-aware of his environment. Although it took Jon a week or so to adjust to the change, he found he liked it. In some strange way, it made it easier for the two of them to relate.
Dorje joked that he had just hooked into the American construct...meaning the one that covered the country as a whole...which Jon hooked into naturally as a result of having been raised as an American.
In any case, Jon thought it suited Dorje...even if it meant they tended to fight more, and that Dorje tended to fight more with the other seers. Especially Wreg for some reason. In fact, there was something going on between the two of them that Jon hadn't quite figured out. Whatever it was, it was serious enough that Dorje got pissed off whenever he found Jon hanging out with Wreg, no matter how innocently...including the night before, when Jon went out with Wreg and the others to look for Allie and Revik.
Wreg didn't like Dorje, either.
Jon could read the ex-rebel even less well than he could Dorje, but he'd seen a few looks exchanged between them that told him the hostility was definitely mutual. He'd even overheard them fighting in one of the common rooms once, although they'd both shut up as soon as he walked into the room. Really, most of what he'd heard had been threats...from Dorje to Wreg as much as the reverse, which surprised Jon more than a little at the time. Whatever it was, it was clearly personal, which also puzzled him.
He hadn't known the two of them even knew one another before all this.
That added sharpness in Dorje's light made him a bit more aggressive, anyway, which Jon couldn't help but find sexy, although he knew he probably shouldn't.
"I heard that, cou
sin," Dorje said, smiling faintly without turning his dark head. His voice grew slightly more subdued. "...Have you forgiven me then?"
Jon shook his head, smiling faintly. "Absolutely not."
Dorje glanced up at him, tensing. When he saw his expression, he relaxed, smiling back. "Well, in either case, if you're done thinking about jumping my bones, can we go? Balidor is screaming in my head like an old woman...probably because your sister was smart enough to run away from him..."
Jon laughed, walking up so that Dorje could see him without craning his neck.
"I'm ready," he said, motioning at him, seer-fashion. "You're the one who's lounging there...looking like you're waiting to have your bones jumped."
Still smiling, Dorje stood in a fluid movement, clicking softly. He chucked Jon's chin affectionately as he walked past, and even then, Jon found himself thinking the Tibetan-looking seer took up more space than he had when they were still in China.
"Get your mind out of the gutter," Dorje joked. "At least until we're off the clock."
Jon saluted him, but his eyes never left the other's body. "Sure thing, cap'n."
They made their way to the curb together, deciding by mutual consent to walk, rather than mess around trying to get a cab at that time of morning. It was only around fifteen or sixteen blocks. Since they were street blocks, not avenue blocks, that meant about as many minutes. Jon walked fast anyway, as a general rule, so he had no trouble keeping up with Dorje's jerking, seer-like gait, which always reminded Jon of an animal walking through hostile territory. He looked like he was ready to bolt at any minute, like his energy might burst out under his skin.
Even so, the fact that Jon himself could see it so easily made him nervous. It made Dorje seem dangerously and conspicuously not-human.
Dorje must have felt some portion of Jon's observations, because the seer's gait adjusted, growing more fluid, yet somehow clumsier-looking.
"Better?" he said over his shoulder. "Do I look sufficiently confused and unsure of myself to be human, now?"
Jon snorted, throwing up his hands in mock exasperation. As he did, he saw a woman who had been checking them both out flinch when she saw his mutilated hand, where Terian had cut off his thumb and forefinger in that same cell in the Caucasus Mountains.
Jon couldn't help but notice her reaction, although he did his best to ignore it.
Shoving that hand back into his jeans pocket, he quickened his pace so that he was moving alongside Dorje again. The seer grabbed his free hand, tugging on his fingers affectionately.
"You're beautiful, Jon," he said with a smile. "...And I happen to know still very talented with that hand, missing fingers or no..."
Jon snorted again, laughing at the seer's innocent expression, even as Dorje pretended Jon had misunderstood his words.
"Mulei, Jon!" he insisted with a grin. "I meant mulei! You dirty-minded human..."
"Sure you did." Jon kissed the seer's cheek anyway, still smiling.
They reached the library in under fifteen minutes, still a good twenty prior to when its doors opened, which wasn't until 10 a.m., since it was a Sunday.
It turned out that Jon and Dorje weren't the only ones waiting for the doors to open. A handful of twenty-something students and what looked like a lower-level library employee waited outside as well, reading monitors and talking via their headsets until the time-lock disengaged. From what the employee told the rest of them, the locks only opened at the start of a new shift, so no one inside could let them in even if they wanted to, not until the official opening time, when the night shift turned over to the day crew.
Jon had thought he knew the layout of the library fairly well from prior visits, but changed his mind when Dorje shared via his headset the blueprints of the lower levels during their walk. The map he'd gotten from Balidor was detailed, especially in relation to the passageways that connected the main branch to the underground storage areas under Bryant Park.
Jon had a vague recollection of those flooding once, but that was the only knowledge he'd had previously that they even existed.
"Is that where we're going?" he asked Dorje nervously.
He was already thinking to himself that there was no way in hell they'd get in there, not without Dorje using some serious mind-muscle to convince the staff they had a legitimate right to be down there. Dorje also shared their cover with him as they waited out front, standing a ways away from the other early-birds. Jon was to request access to the printing area, to check on a project in which one of his thesis advisors from Columbia University was collaborating.
The project was real, apparently...as was the social science professor's involvement.
They hadn't gone so far as to establish a firm alias for Jon, given the time constraints, but it should get them downstairs to the relevant part of the library's basement. From there, Balidor only knew roughly where the old Cypher Computational, as they used to call them, would be located. Two main storage areas lived downstairs, one right beside the printing area, and another directly across from it, around the corridors that formed a U-shape below the lower courtyard. The storage area by the main printers happened to be the one located not far from the mouth of that passage that led under Bryant Park.
Balidor said to work through each room systematically until they found a machine that was still operational, and then tell the staff they'd received permission to investigate the contents of an old key they'd found in some war relics collection or another.
In Jon's view, it was an iffy story, at best.
Really, Jon wondered just how often Balidor actually interacted with humans, given some of the lame cover stories he came up with. This particular strategy also required one story for the front desk and another for the basement...along with a number of pushes to make the whole thing credible...which didn't up their chances of slipping in and out unnoticed.
Still, given how quickly Balidor pulled the whole thing together once he knew what Allie brought back from her and Revik's bank heist, Jon couldn't help being impressed.
"Think quieter, cousin," Dorje cautioned him, smoking a hiri as he leaned against the base of one of the stone lions.
It was the lion called 'Patience,' Jon was fairly sure. Some part of him found that funny.
Probably the part of him that hadn't had any coffee yet.
"Does the library have its own seers?" Jon murmured, leaning against the cement base next to Dorje. Dorje glanced at him, nudging him with his shoulder.
"No," he said, smiling. "Well...the boss doesn't think so. I more meant about what happened last night." The infiltrator made a vague gesture towards the surrounding parkland and open sky beyond the staircase. "They'll have a few nets out there...Manhattan's not that big, and we're right smack dab in Midtown..."
Jon nodded, feeling his face warm as he realized what Dorje meant. Folding his arms across his chest, he leaned against the lion next to Dorje, the leather of his jacket tightening across his back and holding him further upright. Once Dorje voiced it aloud, the caution seemed pretty obvious. Jon even knew what the seer meant by 'nets'...well, more or less. They'd be scanning over the city, looking for key words...like 'bank' and 'heist' and 'explosion,' for example...also 'Allie,' 'Alyson,' 'Revik' and on and on. They'd be looking for people who had seen anyone meeting the description of Revik or Allie. They'd also be looking for anyone who might have seen something in the vicinity of the bank itself, people who...
"Jon," Dorje said warningly.
Jon flushed a little hotter. "Okay. Yeah. Gotcha."
"Don't worry," Dorje said, patting his leg. "This will be good. Easy. In and out."
"Who's worried?" Jon muttered.
He turned his head as he spoke, hearing the massive click of the timed lock as the bolt slid back into the wall where it had held the front doors in place. The employee they'd overheard talking to the students stood up from where he leaned against the cement divider near the main entrance doors, stuffing the portable monitor he'd been reading under
one arm. The man blew on his hands, shivering, though it wasn't all that cold, at least not from Jon's perspective.
Still, the air was cooler than it had been the day before. Jon knew it would heat up by noon, and possibly get downright hot by the mid-afternoon, but he could feel the change in the air. Something had shifted, turning the seasons, changing the sky.
It wasn't even October, yet it was starting to feel more like winter already.
Dorje stubbed out his hiri as he took his weight off the cement. "Come on. It'll be easier the faster we do this...and I'm hungry."
But Jon had stopped to stare at the monitor under the human guard's sweatshirt-clad arm. Dark words continued to flash on the lit screen, visible from where he had clamped it against his body, just above his elbow.
"Hey!" Jon said, waving at the man.
Dorje touched his shoulder in warning, but Jon barely felt it.
"Hey...you!" Jon waited until the man turned, finding Jon with his eyes. The man appraised him in one quick look that told Jon he was probably gay. Ignoring the interest he saw there, Jon also ignored the man's appraising glance at Dorje.
"What are those headlines?" Jon said. "Did something happen in San Francisco?"
The man looked startled for a moment, then his expression cleared.
Within seconds it was replaced by a kind of excitement, but not the good, happy kind of excitement one got from hearing good news. Instead he looked like someone who wanted to talk about something he couldn't quite believe, something he hadn't absorbed yet emotionally. It reminded Jon of how people got after earthquakes, or other natural disasters.
"Yeah, man...there's something on in SF. You haven't seen this?" The guard held up the monitor, and Jon tried to read the words. "It's all over the news. People are already worried it might be here in New York, too..."
"What might be here?" Dorje said, his voice sharpening around his accent.
The guard barely seemed to notice him, still looking mainly at Jon. "They have no idea what happened..." he added. "I have friends that live in the neighborhood where it started. Right near it, anyway...I grew up in the Bay Area..."
Allie's War Season Three Page 10
