Allie's War Season Three

by JC Andrijeski

  Knowing how thrilled she must be to be going anywhere with me and my terrorist seer pals, she’d probably been screaming bloody murder since she woke up on that aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

  Angeline, who I'd known since art school, along with Frankie, one of my tattoo shop pals, just looked really stoned. They stared at me, glassy-eyed, as if Revik and I were ghosts, or maybe some program on the virtual feeds. It was difficult not to stare back as I fumbled to strap myself into one of the jump seats across from them. They'd provided us with crash-seats, essentially, like you might see in a stock car, I assumed in case they had to invert the crate.

  I glanced over at the rest of them as I finished buckling the last safety belt, fighting to get comfortable in the hard organic foam. Sasquatch looked pretty out of it, too. So did the handful of other humans we'd pulled because their names were on the list.

  Jon was supposed to be the commander of these people.

  As I thought it, I glanced at Wreg, watching him strap himself in on my other side next to Jon. Despite his seeming imperviousness, Wreg looked pretty exhausted now, too, despite the relief in his light now that he’d seen that Jon was all right. That last week of stress and no-sleep, periodic jailbreaks and battles thrown in, boat rides, flights, treks through the Andes and jeep rides across a bullet-ridden and half-crazed New York state...it was taking its toll on all of us. From Wreg’s face, I could tell his arm hurt him, too.

  Feeling a different set of eyes on me, I turned, looking for the source.

  I met a pair of dark blue irises before my mind caught up enough to identify their owner.

  Once I recognized him, I stiffened.

  Jaden's stare remained glassy, like Frankie and Angeline’s, yet he seemed to be trying to think through the drug, to concentrate. He focused the bulk of that effort on me for some reason, as if I were a puzzle he couldn't quite solve. When I tried giving him a reassuring smile, he flinched, even as recognition flickered across his features.

  "It really is you," he said. “Allie.”

  I glanced around at the other faces nervously, even though Balidor had assured me the crate was soundproof. When I glanced at Balidor himself, who sat on the opposite side of Revik, he only raised an eyebrow at me, glancing at Jaden.

  When I looked back at Jaden, his expression hadn't changed from that puzzled stare.

  "Do I really look that different?" I said quietly with a smile.

  "Yes," he said without hesitation. “At first I thought those pictures must have been doctored on the feeds...or else they were talking about someone else...that there’d been a mistake..." He squinted, again seeming to be trying to concentrate. "You're...taller," he said finally. "Your body's totally changed..." He stared at my chest, and I felt a pulse of irritation from Revik, who sat beside me on the opposite side as Wreg. Jaden didn't even glance at him. "...You look completely different, Al. Your face, everything. Even your eyes are different..." He hesitated again, staring at my mouth, and again I felt a ripple from Revik, one holding more overt aggression that time.

  "...Your smile," Jaden said. "Your smile is the same. Your voice is...close. But something about that is different, too..."

  I shrugged, honestly more indifferent to his appraisal than anything.

  "Yeah," I said. "Well...seers age different than humans. You knew that. Some of mine happened a little later, is all. I changed when I found out what I was."

  Jaden shook his head, his eyes still puzzled.

  "Not like that," he said. "They don't age like you did, Allie. You should have been a kid when I met you, right? I looked it up on the reference feeds. The pictures they showed of seers had them looking like kids until they hit their twenties. I saw pictures of an eighteen-year-old and she looked about ten, in human years..." He hesitated, still staring at me. "Did you know? Did you know what you were...even when we were together?"

  Again, I felt anger on Revik, that time dense enough that I flinched.

  He looked away when I glanced up, folding his arms, even as his light coiled a little deeper into mine.

  "No," I told Jaden, fighting to hide my puzzlement at the intensity of Revik’s reaction. "No, I didn't know then. I didn’t know until I left San Francisco."

  “How did you find out?” Jaden said. He turned his head, looking at Revik as if he were some kind of cartoon villain. “Did he tell you?”

  “Yes,” Revik said, his voice openly hostile.

  Jaden barely seemed to hear him.

  He stared back at me. I clasped Revik's hand when he lowered his arm, pressing my leg against his where we were strapped into the crate.

  “How I found out doesn’t really change anything, does it?” I said, sighing a little. “...As far as the aging thing, you're right...what you’re describing is the usual aging pattern for seers. Mine happened differently. It's complicated, Jaden, but it's a lot of the reason why I didn't realize what I was."

  The confusion returned to Jaden's dark blue eyes, even as he glanced at Revik, as if remembering again that he was there. Feeling another pulse off Revik as he noticed the other's stare, I gripped his fingers tighter, adding,

  "...I'm a seer, but I guess you could say I'm a different breed than most seers. So is my husband." I emphasized the word ever-so-slightly, without thinking much about why. "...The kind of seers we are, we're able to adjust our maturation cycles to fit that of the species primarily responsible for raising us..."

  At Jaden's deepening frown, I made an explanatory gesture with my hand, one that Jaden followed with his eyes.

  "...My parents were human, so I grew up human...more or less. But my whole growth cycle changed once I got around other seers. Particularly once I got married..." I added, again hitting that word a little harder than strictly necessary. "That, and I just caught up, I guess. It had a lot to do with the fact that I started using my aleimi...my seer abilities..."

  I faltered a little, seeing Jaden's confusion worsen, even as I wondered why I was trying to explain this.

  "Yeah. Why are you trying to explain it?" Revik muttered.

  Glancing up, I squeezed his fingers, fighting not to smile that time. When Revik only rolled his eyes at me, I glanced back at Jaden.

  "Look," I sighed. "Jaden. Everything will be explained to you, okay? To all of you. Just like we promised. I know this is pretty weird, but you and Angie and the others will be safe now. We got you out of the infected areas, at least..."

  Jaden was staring at Revik again, though, his eyes openly wary, his expression exaggerated by the drug. He seemed to be seeing him as real now, anyway. He’d gone from looking at him like a comic book villain to seeing him like a caged tiger, or maybe a poisonous snake.

  "Is he the one who taught you the rest of it, too, Al?" Jaden said. "How to kill people, using that ale-emi stuff? How to throw people out of skyscrapers?"

  Revik abruptly tensed.

  "No, Jaden,” I cut in, feeling almost like I’d stepped between them. “...He's not," I added, my voice flatter. "Please...you really don't understand what you’re talking about. You're also thinking things happened the way you saw it on the feeds..."

  "You're saying that didn't happen?" Jaden said. "I saw you, Al. We all saw you.” He motioned around at Frankie and Angeline and the others. “You killed people. You killed a lot of people. You made that one guy practically explode..."

  Feeling my jaw harden, I averted my eyes.

  Even so, I had to concede his point.

  I even knew what people he meant.

  They’d caught most of that op in São Paulo on camera, especially the part where I lost control of the telekinesis trying to get us out of that mess with the heavily-armed Black Arrow security team. For months following the incident, they played that damned recording on a loop, airing it on every major feed station, pretty much worldwide.

  I'd been in the tank with Revik for a lot of that, thankfully, so missed most of the human commentary that must have followed in the wake of that mess. I wo
ndered if everything would start up again, now that the feeds were naming me and Revik as masterminds behind the human-killing disease. That was assuming anyone remained to listen to the feeds, or to broadcast them in the first place.

  Either way, I didn't answer Jaden.

  I began to wonder if we should just knock him out.

  "I'll do it," Revik muttered under his breath.

  I suppressed a smile in spite of myself, glancing up at him.

  But Jaden wasn't done, apparently, and now I could see the others watching us, too, listening to the exchange between us.

  "So what is that...list?" Jaden said. "You said our names are on some list, right?"

  I nodded, leaning back on the padded bench. It hit me how tired I was. I found myself fantasizing briefly about one of those special redeye, mocha coffee drinks they used to make me at the Third Jewel restaurant in the lobby of the hotel.

  "Yeah," I said with a sigh, combing my fingers through my hair. "That's another long story. Maybe it should wait until you're all a bit more...awake."

  "But they already told us," Angeline spoke up. When I looked over, she glanced at Frankie, then Sasquatch. "...They said it was a list of people you think are important. For the future, right? There's some big war or cataclysm coming...and we're supposed to fight?"

  I shrugged, giving her an apologetic look. "More or less." At the alarmed look that came to Sasquatch's face, I held up a hand, the one that wasn't holding Revik's, and added, "Look, we don’t know much about the lists yet, but I don't think most of you will be fighting, not the way you think...like an army or whatever. There are these designations, like skill sets. Most of those don't exactly fit an 'army' vibe..."

  "So what kind of 'vibe' do they fit, Allie?" Frankie said, her lips pursed.

  "More like a..." I waved a hand vaguely, my face warming. "...a society-type vibe."

  Frankie's mouth opened, her eyes still glassy. "Like we'll be rebuilding society, after you and your boyfriend wipe out this one?"

  My tiredness edged me into irritation again.

  "We have nothing to do with this," I said, hearing anger creep back into my voice. "I've been trying to stop this, pretty much since I found out I was a seer."

  "But isn't it your job to end the world?" Angeline said. She looked at me intently from the other side of Sasquatch, her pupils larger than normal. "You're the Bridge, right?" she said. "And he's the Sword? Doesn't that make you, like, the senior two members of the Four?"

  I blinked at her.

  "Yeah," Frankie said, staring at Angeline, then pointing at her, as if she'd just remembered something. "Yeah...the Four. That's the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, right? I read that. I remember. You're the head honcho, right? And he's your lieutenant or whatever...?"

  I found myself staring at both of them, fighting for words.

  It hadn't really occurred to me until now that my friends had all been hooked into the feeds and the media hype around me and Revik for the past four years.

  The fact that they knew me would only have added to the local hype.

  They would have heard all the extremist newscasters ranting about nuking Asia off the map to wipe out the 'seer menace.’ They would have heard all the theorizing about how I'd supposedly killed my mother and those innocent people on the cruise ship that Galaith blew up. They would have seen vids from that fiasco in D.C. and the accusations that Revik and I killed the President, Ethan Wellington. They would have followed Revik’s and my estrangement and the back and forth postulations about whether I was working with him while he conducted terrorist attacks against major Western targets while he led the rebels.

  They would have seen articles about me working as a prostitute for the Lao Hu.

  They would have seen the fan sites for me and Revik, too.

  They would have seen the crazy Myther prophecies that twisted the whole Bridge and Sword thing into some story of avenging angels against the sins of modern society.

  Angeline had been interested in seers and seer mythology and religions even back when I knew her. I don't know how I'd forgotten that, but somehow I had. When I went missing, she was probably the only one of my friends who even knew what the newscasters were talking about, when they first started naming me publicly as 'The Bridge.'

  "It's not that simple, Ang," I just said with a sigh.

  "So...smarten it up for us," Frankie said, that edge still in her voice, even with the sedative slurring her words. "I mean, you kidnapped us, right? Don't we get to know why?"

  I sighed again, shifting my head on the padded wall to look at her.

  "I just meant, that whole Four Horseman thing isn't exactly a one-to-one translation from the seer myth," I said. "I don't 'cause' the apocalypse. My coming is supposed to signal the Displacement is coming, yeah, but I’m not the one who makes it happen...”

  Wreg cleared his throat delicately.

  I glanced at him, flushing when I saw his quirked eyebrow.

  I knew Wreg was probably our resident expert on the Myths, now that Vash was dead, but at that particular moment, I really wished he wasn’t.

  I didn’t particularly want his input right then, in any case.

  “...Well, not in all of the interpretations, anyway,” I added, a little more grumpily.

  Hearing Revik snort next to me, I went on without looking at either of them, my eyes and words focused on Angeline. “...Either way, the Myths agree on my purpose. I’m supposed to be here to help humans, not kill them off. The translation from Prexci to English on this is mostly crap, so I get why human scholars wouldn’t see it that way, but they’re wrong. The seer language imputes a lot of concepts around the evolution of light in all beings, not just seers and humans. Animals, too, and beings from other planes of existence...even other galaxies, and creatures that haven't evolved yet. A big idea behind the Myth of Three is that all of these species, at key moments in their history, are given opportunities to quickly advance their evolution. This can happen peacefully, but usually, they need a little push...or sometimes a big push..."

  I trailed, feeling Revik's attention on me again. When I glanced at him, he smiled faintly. Realizing I'd been quoting Vash, along with books Revik himself had given me, I felt my cheeks flush a little.

  What? I sent. Was that not right, either?

  It was right, he confirmed, still smiling.

  Are you just shocked that I've actually read a book or two since we met?

  His smile grew, even as his eyes held a more intense light. You're just really turning me on right now, he sent, along with a pulse of heat. Is that wrong?

  I rolled my eyes at him, but laughed.

  The others stared between us through the silence and my laugh, and I found myself wiping the smile off my face, realizing it probably looked pretty weird from the outside, for me to be smiling while I explained this stuff. Maybe they thought I was screwing with them.

  Probably, given the way Angeline frowned, glancing first at Revik, then at Wreg.

  "So what does any of that actually mean, Allie?" Frankie said, pulling my eyes back to her. "Is this disease supposed to 'help' us evolve? Just a little helping hand for the human race, courtesy of you and your boy-toy...?"

  I exhaled in some impatience. "I told you...we had nothing to do with this. We were trying to stop it. That's where we were just now...trying to stop the guy who unleashed it in San Francisco in the first place."

  "Well, bang up job," Frankie shot back. "Stellar, Al."

  Revik let out a low snort of humor. So did Balidor on the other side of him. I even felt Wreg smile from where he was massaging Jon’s shoulder with his good arm and hand.

  I felt my face grow hotter though, even as I shrugged.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I really am."

  There was a silence where all of the humans sitting across from us stared at me, maybe expecting me to say more, or maybe wondering what to ask next. When I glanced to my other side, I realized Loki was listening, too, a faint frown etched into his f
orehead. Truthfully, I'd assumed he was asleep. I found myself wondering if any of the others positioned on benches on the other side of the crate, had been listening to me, as well.

  Just then, a sickening drop roiled my stomach.

  Something lifted the crate straight up without warning.

  Talei and Balidor had described the lifts to us before we were locked inside the crate, so I should have remembered it would happen like that. Really, I should have warned the others, too, although presumably the seers who strapped them inside would have done that already.

  In any case, the motion caught me completely off-guard, bringing bile instantly to my throat. I managed to control it, but probably only because I’d dealt with worse in the last week.

  Turns out, not everyone has my gag reflex.

  Sasquatch was the first to lose it, emptying the contents of his stomach within seconds of the crate leaving the submarine's deck. Frankie followed.

  A few seconds after Frankie, Jaden coughed, shuddering in a kind of exaggerated wave before his body convulsed violently, too. He threw up on the floor of the crate right next to where Sasquatch had already decorated the metal ridges with bright yellow bile and chunks of what must have been the regulation navy food they fed him earlier that day.

  Angeline looked overly pale through that first lurch of motion and flight, but she managed to hold hers down until the other three got sick. Then the smell must have hit her, because eventually she vomited too, her body wracked in a painful-looking arc as she forced out water and more brightly-colored bile.

  I closed my eyes. I tried to close my nose to the smell, too, but it wasn't easy.

  I found myself burying my face in Revik's side, trying to breathe in him, instead of the fumes, but it only half-worked. Hearing the scattered chuckles and giggles from the seers strapped down around me didn't exactly help, because then I wanted to laugh, too.

  From my other side, I heard Jax mutter, "Oh, that's great. That's just fucking fantastic...I thank you all very much for this experience..."

  At that, Revik, Wreg and Balidor lost it, bursting out in real laughter.