The deprogramming process that Revik had undergone had been violent, by all accounts, and dramatic enough that Revik remained a social pariah for decades after the event, and well after he'd officially joined the Seven.
He was still pretty much a pariah when we met, almost forty years later.
Maygar used Revik's ex-Rook status as his excuse for hating him. Even when I first met him, though, I'd always felt it was more personal under that.
I watched their faces closely as Revik approached the low cot where Maygar sat.
Maygar's hands and ankles had been cuffed loosely to the wall and one another, but they'd left him a decent range of movement, maybe half of the cell around the cot, and well within range of the chair, table and the organic toilet and shower that lived against one wall.
Revik picked up that same chair and carried it to within a yard or two of the cot itself.
I watched him set it down, then sit backwards on it, leaning his long arms on the chair's back. I still saw nerves on him, from the up and down nervous tic of one of his feet to the way he gripped the chair, right before he cleared his throat, looking Maygar directly in the face.
Maygar, for his part, continued to stare at Revik warily, his hands folded loosely in his lap. He looked almost like he couldn't believe Revik was there at all. He looked tired, too, more than anything else really, and something about the pure look of defeat that rose to his chocolate-colored eyes as Revik sat across from him brought my heart to my throat.
I don't think I'd ever seen him look so sad, or so utterly broken, yet something in that look was so vulnerable, it made my heart open to him, too. I felt Revik react in a similar way, but on him it felt mixed with guilt, an almost crippling sense of responsibility.
Given that Maygar wore a collar...albeit one of those simple, one-way-blocking types...I doubt Maygar felt any of that from Revik himself. So unless he was better at reading Revik's physical cues than I suspected, he likely had no idea what Revik was thinking as he sat there, wearing his infiltrator's mask. I still remembered trying to read that expression myself when I first met Revik, and how impenetrable it seemed back then.
After the two of them had been looking at one another for a few seconds, Revik cleared his throat, making a reassuring gesture with one hand.
"Are you comfortable here?" he said politely. "Can I get you anything?"
Maygar's expression turned even more openly wary.
He glanced over Revik's shoulder, as if wondering if Revik was actually speaking to him, or if he'd missed something as he walked in.
"Are you hungry?" Revik said. "Would you like anything to read? A portable monitor, maybe?"
Again, Maygar only stared at him.
Then he moved his arm, revealing a monitor that sat beside him, partially obscured by a blanket. Turning his head to look at it, Revik paused, reading. He let a thin smile touch his lips as soon as he understood whatever Maygar had left displayed on the screen.
When he looked down himself, Maygar's cheeks flushed a darker color. With that came a scowl, an expression on his Asian features I finally recognized.
Before seeing the two of them sitting across from one another like this, I would have said that Maygar inherited ninety percent of his looks from his mother, even down to his body type, which was significantly shorter and stockier than Revik’s.
Now, though, looking at him, I found myself re-evaluating that assessment.
The slant of his cheekbones suddenly looked a lot more familiar than I'd realized in the past. He had his mother's fuller mouth, but the shape of his eyes and even his arms started to look like Revik's to me, as well as the width of his shoulders, and the length of his thighs. I noticed it more now, too, because in the tank I'd seen more images of Revik when he’d been about that age. I knew roughly what he'd looked like when he'd been younger, and still working for Menlim.
Anyway, it hadn't really occurred to me before, how young Maygar was for a seer.
He'd actually gained a few inches in height even since I'd last seen him, and his face had narrowed slightly. Granted, he'd lost weight, so that might be part of the change to his face, but even so, he was still only roughly the same age as me, maybe just a few years older, which put him in the neighborhood of thirty to thirty-five. Forty at most.
I'd been told that seers didn't normally stop changing in terms of their physical appearance until they were somewhere between seventy and eighty years old. Then, when they got older, they started changing again, noticeably, that is, somewhere in the vicinity of three hundred to three-hundred-and-fifty-years-old.
The Lao Hu made it abundantly clear to me how immature my own body was, from the perspective of a full-grown seer.
I'd also been told that my body and face had aged rapidly since I'd married Revik. That was normal, though, too. Bonded seers tended to have that effect on one another.
I thought all of this, even as Maygar covered the face of his monitor with a blanket, scowling at Revik with an undisguised resentment.
"Is that why you came?" he said. "To ridicule my taste in reading?"
Revik held up a hand in a peace gesture. "Brother...no. The question was sincere."
"Why the hell would they send you in here to ask me that? Is this Balidor's idea of a joke? Because I'm not laughing..."
"No one sent me, brother. No one."
"Stop talking to me like that!" Maygar snapped. "What do you want from me?"
Revik sighed, running a hand through his black hair.
I watched him re-think his approach, even as he kicked himself for smiling at the book.
I couldn't help smiling a little myself when I got a glimmer through Revik's mind of the title. I'd mentioned to Revik once that Maygar was an avid reader of trashy romance novels. He didn't even just read the seer kind; he read the human variety, even the ones a lot of humans scoffed at. That had been one of the details that made Revik laugh aloud, when he started asking me questions about Maygar's personal life.
I knew Revik asked other people, too. He also looked at Barrier images of Maygar's childhood in Seertown. Some of those, particularly when Maygar's mother first left him there with Vash, bothered Revik a lot, I could tell. Maybe more than he fully let in, but definitely more than he admitted to me in so many words.
I knew Revik couldn't help but feel for Maygar as an orphan and as an outcast. He'd spent a good portion of his own life as both.
"Will you talk to me?" Revik said finally, once more meeting Maygar's gaze. "We should talk. At least try."
"Why?" Maygar said. His voice turned back into that angry sneer I remembered. "...Spare me the pathological attempts at filial concern, Rook. I think I might vomit. Seriously."
Revik's frown deepened slightly. "You know, then."
"Your pals in Argentina told me." Maygar refolded his arms tighter, glaring at Revik with an undisguised anger. "Is it true?"
Revik hesitated, then made another concessionary gesture with his hand.
"Your mother says it is,” he said.
Maygar gave a disbelieving snort. "I suppose she did it all by herself, is that it?"
"I didn't know––" Revik began.
"So fuck off, then," Maygar cut in. "If she didn't tell you, then obviously she didn't think you'd add much to my life as a parent. She must not have thought the information would be much help to me, either..."
Maygar’s jaw hardened, pushing out his cheek, and that time, I felt sparks of emotion off his light, intense enough that I might have felt them even without Revik. I was still watching his face when Maygar shook his head, clicking angrily under his breath.
"I really can't believe you came in here. I really can't..." His brown eyes once more shifted to Revik's face. "Is this for fucking real...Dad? Or am I hallucinating right now? Didn't you threaten to kill me the last time I saw you? Cairo, remember? I seem to remember my face bruising your knuckles that day...along with you threatening to castrate me if I so much as looked at your wife again. Remember? Dad?
"
Revik flinched at the word a second time, or maybe at the disgusted way Maygar said it.
But Maygar wasn't finished.
"...Did the Adhipan really throw this job to you? What? Is this supposed to reassure me, that the one guy I know for a fact wants me dead is feeling guilty all of a sudden?"
"We don't want you dead," Revik said.
"So, what, then? Am I bait? Are you trying to get Shadow here?"
Revik frowned again, leaning back heavily in the organic chair as his eyes assessed Maygar's face. "Bait?"
"Yeah, bait. Or am I not supposed to know that being your son makes me 'valuable' all of a sudden, to every evil fucker in the civilized world?"
"Did he tell you, then?" Revik said. "...Why he was torturing you?"
The anger on Maygar's face faded, replaced by a closed look that somehow made his face appear a lot older. It also made him look at lot more like Revik. When he didn't answer, Revik leaned over the back of the chair again, laying his hands on the table, maybe to push Maygar to look at them. When he spoke next, he kept his voice neutral.
"Can you tell us anything, Maygar?" he said. "Anything that might give us an idea of what he knows about you? Or what he had planned?"
Maygar shook his head without looking up, his expression stony once more. "So that's why having a son is suddenly interesting to you. I should have known." Before Revik could answer, Maygar waved off his own words, making his voice matter-of-fact. "...I'm not a complete idiot, you know. I figured he wanted to know if I was telekinetic...once he told me who you were to me.” He gave Revik a harder look. “He didn't exactly hide what he wanted..."
"He actually told you that?" Revik frowned, glancing at the mirror, and therefore at me. "What did he say exactly?"
"You mean besides calling me 'nephew' and quoting some really twisted scripture?" Maygar gave a disgusted grunt. "Guy's a sick fuck, you know that? No wonder you're such a mess, if that guy raised you...a really sick fuck..."
"Did you see him?" Revik said, his voice sharpening. "What did he look like, Maygar? Can you describe him for us? Identify an image if we showed you one?"
"Who's back there?" Maygar said, though, following Revik's eyes to the mirror. "Is it Balidor? A bunch of your ex-rebel thugs? I saw you brought some of those Neanderthals with you when you left China..."
Revik's jaw hardened, and I felt his patience ebb briefly, before he seemed to pull it back. He forced himself to sigh, clicking a little. "No," he said. Frowning, he hesitated before telling him the truth. "It's Allie. She's in there. Alone."
Maygar grunted, but I saw another look rise to his eyes, not quite anger. "Jesus."
"I asked her to come," Revik said, his voice sharper. "For personal reasons. Not for anything to do with your captivity under Shadow, or what we'd like your help with, intelligence-wise..."
Maygar grunted again, more amused that time, although that colder fire didn't leave his eyes. "Personal, huh? What 'personal' reasons would those be...Dad? You just felt like rubbing salt in the wounds? Or did she just want to be here while you put me in my place?"
Revik combed his fingers through his dark hair again, then clicked softly, his voice holding more of an open honesty that time.
"I didn't know how this would go," he admitted.
"So you wanted her here in case I ripped you a new one?" Maygar smiled a little. "I would think you'd be used to people hating you by now, Rook..."
"I am," Revik said, cutting him off with a harder look. "Allie knows you better than I do. I thought maybe she could help me.” He shrugged somewhat lamely with a hand. “...Help us. I thought she would see more than I can."
"See more?" Maygar gave him a cold look. "I thought you weren't here to interrogate me?"
"Not interrogate," Revik said, his mouth firming. "Reach you. Or understand what I'm doing wrong, at least." He gestured vaguely when Maygar made a derisive sound. When the silence deepened, Revik gave the younger seer a more serious look. "I don't expect much, Maygar."
"...Well, that's good," Maygar cut in angrily.
"...I don't expect anything at all," Revik added, his voice sharper. "But I wanted you to know that I intend to try. I also wanted to tell you how sorry I am...and how angry I am at your mother for not telling me."
Maygar's mouth hardened as he averted his eyes.
He stared briefly at the mirrored wall, maybe even at me, then frowned again, folding his arms tighter, although it couldn't have been that comfortable, wearing the manacles. His eyes grew openly wary as I watched him stare at the empty table. Maybe he could hear the honesty in Revik's voice, or maybe something clicked in Revik's actual words, but I got the impression he was more confused than he was trying to let show. Or maybe wearing the collar meant he couldn't get a read on anything, so everything Revik said was only annoying him, and making him unsure of where he stood with the rest of us. I could tell he wanted an in back with the Seven, though. It had been the only home he'd ever known, the only community he'd ever shared with other seers.
He'd had a lot of friends when I first met him in Seertown.
Even as the thought occurred to me, Maygar gave an irritated, clicking sigh, as if he wasn't sure what to do, either. Combing his fingers through his hair, he shrugged, one-handed.
"So what now...Dad? What do you want to talk about?" Grunting, he stared up at the ceiling. "Or did you just want to trash my mother more, since you seem to be under the strange delusion that I'm going to side with you on that one...?"
Leaning back in the chair, Revik sighed, too.
Staring up at the ceiling as well, he folded his own arms, unconsciously making himself look even more like Maygar, since they now essentially held their bodies in identical positions.
I couldn't help grinning...and kind of wishing I had a camera.
At the thought, Revik aimed a slightly irritated look in my direction.
"I'm not trying to insult your mother," he said, turning his gaze back towards Maygar. "I'm just being honest. I wish I'd known. I feel cheated that I was never told."
"Cheated." Maygar's eyes shifted from the ceiling, staring at Revik's face incredulously. "Gaos di'lanlente. Just how fucking stupid do you think I am? You hate me. You've always hated me. Am I really supposed to buy this sudden change of heart? This bullshit act of paternal interest, when the last I knew, you wanted me dead...and slowly dead, if I'm not mistaken...?"
"I didn't know who you were!" Revik growled.
"...Or maybe you knew better than you do now,” Maygar retorted. “Since the labels seem to have muddied your memory...or at least convinced you that I've suddenly dropped IQ points. Or were you hoping that the torture would make me more willing to embrace you as some kind of fucked up parental figure?" His eyes hardened as they watched Revik's face. Then his voice turned abrupt, almost toneless. "Let me talk to Allie."
"Why?" Revik said, his jaw hard again.
"Because however pissed off she might be at me, and however many lies you've told her about me, she was my friend at least." His eyes continued to watch Revik's face. "If you really want me to trust you, Dad, then let your precious wife in here. Let me talk to her, and let me hear what she says about all of this..."
Revik hesitated, glancing at the mirror. I sent him a pulse, letting him know it was okay with me, but after a pause, he shook his head, looking back at Maygar.
"No," he told him.
Maygar smiled, as if it was the answer he'd expected. "What's wrong, Pop? Still don't trust me with the missus?"
"She's not well," Revik said, giving him a hard look. "I don't trust you with her. I don't trust anyone with her right now...and you've never had a clear head when it comes to Allie. You're fixated on her, and I can't take the chance that you might do something stupid...or inadvertently give Shadow intel. Nor would you, if you were me..."
Maygar's smile faded. "What do you mean, she's not well?"
"It's nothing serious. But I can't––"
"What's wrong with her
?"
Revik glanced back at the mirror and at me, but I only quirked an eyebrow at him, letting him see it through the bond.
Yeah, I sent, not really in humor. What's wrong with me, husband? Are you ever going to tell me? Or are you just going to keep pretending you don't know?
He frowned at me, then looked back at Maygar.
"What's wrong with her?" Maygar repeated, sharper.
"That's none of your concern."
Maygar stared at him angrily. "Are you kidding me, Rook? You want me to trust you, and yet you won't even tell me what's wrong with––"
"She's pregnant," Revik said coldly.
There was a few seconds' delay after he spoke.
A few seconds' delay before any part of his words made sense to me, at least...and a few seconds more before Maygar seemed to make much of them, either. Then Maygar's jaw dropped, right before he clenched his jaw, glaring at Revik as though Revik had said I was dead.
Somewhere in that same handful of seconds, I dropped the hand-held that had been sitting on my lap, barely noticing the loud clattering sound it made as it hit the organic-paneled floor.
16
TELECAST
"ALLIE? HEY!"
The voice sharpened at the end, finally penetrating my awareness. It struck me in the same few breaths that it probably wasn't the first time he'd said my name. Maybe it hadn't even been the second, third or fourth time.
"Allie!"
I turned my head. Jon stood in the doorway, frowning at me.
"Hey," he said again. "Are you on drugs? What the hell?"
I shook my head as if the question hadn't been sarcastic, still fighting to get my mind back somewhere in the vicinity of my body. My heart rate struck me as unnaturally loud, almost deafening...and so distracting that I was having trouble focusing on Jon's face.
Allie's War Season Three Page 115
