Allie's War Early Years

by JC Andrijeski

  Not since Dehgoies had anyone held a position comparable to Terian in the Org, at least no one whose name I had ever heard.

  Even Varlan reported to Terian.

  Ostensibly, at least.

  “You’re late,” Terian said.

  He lifted a bottle I had missed with my physical eyes, raising it from where it rested by his left hip, the one that leaned into the wooden door frame.

  I frowned, glancing at the others in my pod.

  Was he drunk? Already? It wasn’t even ten in the morning.

  The others in my pod glanced around, too, but none dared speak, or even change their facial expressions. All of them, me included, returned our eyes to Terian in under a second.

  Raising the bottle the rest of the way to his perfectly-sculpted mouth, Terian took a long drink, swallowing the reddish-brown fluid effortlessly through his now-exposed throat. He drank as if it were water, or maybe sun tea, although I highly doubted it was either.

  He really was drunk. He must be, to drink in front of us like this.

  Perhaps he was still drunk from the night before?

  I watched him take another long draught from the square bottle, and found myself more amused than appalled. Another shiver of separation pain sifted subtly through my light as I watched that long throat move... and more so when I noticed the male seer’s bare chest through his open jacket. I also realized why the unprofessional demeanor might not be bothering me overly. The muscles of that chest moved slightly with the motion of the seer’s arm, well-tanned and lean, if not overly large.

  I would need to control my reactions to the other male, if I was going to avoid being rude. I couldn’t risk annoying him... or, worse, pissing him off, if my attentions were received as an indication of disrespect.

  Realistically, though, brother Terian must be used to evoking reactions of this kind, whether from males or females under his command.

  Something about the way he moved, and that light he carried...

  I searched for words in my mind, but came up mostly empty.

  Sensuality.

  There was an obvious and very particular form of sensuality there, but also something harder to define, a feeling as if the seer constantly teetered on the bare brink of losing the last vestiges of his self control. That could have been from the drink, too, but I found myself doubting it. Something about that lack of control mixed with his sensuality and his high-voltage living light created a form of charged, unpredictable-feeling wantonness that I had to admit was damned sexy. Really damned sexy.

  The more I tried to define it, the worse my separation pain got, and the more I found myself looking at what I could see of the other man’s body under his too-large clothes, and wondering vaguely if he had a lover.

  I needed to cut that shit out, and fast.

  We’d be inside the seer’s construct in less than a minute. No way would the top-tier seer fail to miss my stares and separation anxiety then.

  It had already occurred to me that perhaps I would need to take advantage of the work camp drones before I did anything else, deal with my deprivations for a few hours in the pens, if we got any down time prior to deployment.

  It might clear my head, at least.

  I noted that the auburn-haired seer wore military fatigues, the same uniform I’d seen on the local militia back in Manaus, as well as on the television, in my hotel room in São Paulo. I saw the stars of a general on the seer’s muscular shoulders, and a corresponding number of bars on his chest. I wondered who Terian had killed to obtain the thing.

  I supposed it didn’t matter.

  Either way, he wore the jacket open, with no shirt underneath, and the tan pants hung low on his waist, showing a good stretch of his tanned abdomen.

  Fuck. I needed to stop staring at him.

  “Apologies, sir,” Varlan told the younger Terian smoothly.

  Varlan had stopped, a few yards away from the shaded opening of the building. He positioned his body in a formal stance, folding his long, pale hands at the base of his back.

  The rest of the pod stopped when Varlan did.

  I realized we must be at the very edge of the construct, meaning standing just outside where it began. Varlan must have stopped there as a form of asking permission for the pod’s entry.

  I couldn’t help wondering why I didn’t see any sweat on the older seer’s face, nor in his iron gray hair, even though I saw it on the face of every seer around me, even Naragi, and she normally seemed immune to temperature changes, whether hot or cold.

  Terian didn’t respond directly to Varlan’s words.

  Instead he continued to stand in the doorway like a feral cat, looking around at all of us. He took his time, I noticed, gazing around at our faces and bodies, one by one.

  He stared particularly hard at Karenti.

  I couldn’t help but notice and it pained me slightly, but didn’t surprise me. She was definitely the best-looking seer in our group, male or female.

  So yes, he stared at her... right before those amber eyes fell on me.

  Once they had, the lean-bodied seer did an actual double-take.

  On that second look, the expression on the seer’s face grew more intent, almost predatory. He studied my face and eyes for what felt like a full minute.

  In a strange flash, I found myself thinking that he had been looking for me among our sixteen-seer group specifically, feeling my light before he connected that light to a specific body and face. Now that he had attached that light to my person, the feeling I got from the other male came closest to disbelief... or even incredulity. Terian took his time measuring the length of my shoulders, looking over my chest, lower body and legs, his mouth pressed into a thin line of near puzzlement as he leaned languidly against the doorframe.

  He didn’t hide his appraisal, but I never felt so much as a whisper of the other man’s actual reactions to me.

  The combination was unnerving.

  Terian kept returning to my face, however, above everything else about me... and, though perhaps it was my imagination... to my eyes and mouth, even more than the rest.

  As Varlan commented earlier, I am tall, even for a seer, taller than all but Varlan himself in my own pod. My commanding officer, being even more unusually tall than I am, still had a few inches on me, but I knew of no other seer who could claim as much, apart from one of my childhood friends from Asia. As a result, I’m not normally physically intimidated by other seers, but I could feel my light and body reacting to Terian’s stare with an almost animal-like charge of fear... or perhaps excitement... or more likely, both.

  I was still watching that handsome face warily when Terian took another drink from the bottle, without averting his gaze, his features still stuck in that countenance of predatory curiosity.

  Do I know you? a voice asked inside my mind.

  I flinched. Then, in a moment of panic, I realized it had to be Terian himself.

  Clearing my throat, I adjusted my stance, keeping my light deferential.

  Respectfully, I don’t think so, sir, I sent back, after the too-long pause.

  You’re quite certain we are not known to one another? It feels like I do know you, brother.

  I felt my skin warm from the intimacy of the question, even under that tropical sun.

  I don’t think so, sir, I repeated. Hesitating, I added, ... again, respectfully, sir... but I do not think I would forget meeting you.

  Terian started a little at that.

  He glanced up at my eyes, which are a light gray, almost blue.

  After the barest pause, a smile warmed the edges of those full lips, subtle in that high-cheekboned face. He looked over my features a final time, then winked at me before breaking into a much more expansive and genuine-looking grin, that time aimed at the group as a whole. Rather than being reassuring, the dramatic change the smile caused to the seer’s narrow face struck me as more disquieting than not, even before I felt a denser flicker of the seer’s light coiling around my own, now in u
nnervingly intimate ways.

  You look hungry, brother, the voice said teasingly in my head. ... Are you as hungry as you look? Or are you trying to flatter me?

  I flinched, feeling my skin abruptly heat, even apart from the humid air.

  Terian’s grin widened.

  Those amber eyes shifted away from me, that smile still teasing his perfectly sculpted lips.

  “Well?” he said, addressing the group as a whole. His voice grew lazy again, carrying a disinterested kind of friendliness, as well as that smooth thread of understated charm.

  “...What are you all waiting for? A formal invitation?”

  Waving us forward, Terian receded into the darkness of the doorway, disappearing into the brick, windowless building.

  The last thing to leave the light was his tanned hand holding the bottle’s neck.

  “...Come in out of the heat, at least,” his voice trailed behind.

  I hesitated.

  I felt the hesitation in the rest of my pod, as well.

  I glanced at Karenti, then at Gregor, feeling as much as seeing them staring at me. I hadn’t been the only one to notice Terian’s interest in me. Shaking off that somewhat unnerving but weirdly intense interaction, I had just made up my mind to take the lead, to follow Terian into the brick building, when Varlan beat me to it. Keeping his hands folded at the base of his long back, the middle-aged seer began to do as Terian had invited us to do, walking towards the Black Arrow command center without glancing at any of us.

  Taking another deep breath, I followed, planting a boot in the dusty road towards the building with a purposefulness I couldn’t quite feel, not anymore.

  I had to admit, I was off-balance.

  I could still feel Terian’s light, and still had to fight not to react to the darting probes and flickers exploring my own with a seemingly methodical ease. I could not miss the alternating flavors of predatory and proprietary in that light, either, or the message that lived behind those more subtle touches.

  I felt the others notice, too.

  I sensed them backing off from me with their aleimi already, as if Terian had marked me in some way as no longer one of theirs.

  As I walked, I also grew conscious that all of us, meaning myself and every member of my pod, were, in fact, crossing a near-dimensional boundary as soon as we moved closer to that doorway. I felt the far denser and more complicated construct envelop me as soon as I’d taken more than two steps.

  It might have begun its work on me even sooner than that, though; I soon realized that this new construct worked on my light with an insidious intensity. That intensity crept up on me, almost like Varlan’s shield had earlier. This time, however, the change took my breath, making my heart pound in my chest as I felt the sheer level of voltage and intention that lay behind those first few touches of foreign light.

  I didn’t realize just how much the new construct impacted me until I was already most of the way to the door.

  By then, I was actively fighting to retain my equilibrium, to keep my own light integrity intact inside a construct that clearly intended to dominate how that light moved and operated. The power behind that insistence both impressed me and scared the shit out of me. It certainly didn’t feel remotely like any Sweep construct in which I’d operated before, no matter what the security designation.

  This new construct had to have been woven by Terian himself.

  As soon as I thought it, I realized that the flavor of light even felt like Terian.

  It had that same charged, faintly out-of-control tremor, too.

  At the thought, a thick pulse of separation pain left my light.

  The intensity of that pain caught me off guard.

  It also came through with so little shielding that I knew it must have been felt by the construct as a whole... including Terian... a thought that got my adrenaline up, turned me on and embarrassed me all at once, especially when I remembered the top-tier seer teasing me for looking hungry already.

  Forcing those things out of my mind, I brought down my infiltrator cloak.

  I felt the new construct easily enfold and overpower the light of every seer in my pod, including mine... including Varlan’s. It shredded the smaller construct Varlan had been using to hold us together like a cat’s claws through tissue paper.

  In seconds, I couldn’t feel a trace of it.

  I wondered if Terian had built this construct specifically to keep Dehgoies out, knowing that the defector might see through the usual security-level constructs used at the camps.

  It struck me, too, that Varlan had warned me about this, as well.

  He’d more or less told me we would be blind here... that all of us would be blind, even Varlan himself, and that was saying a lot.

  The idea unnerved me more than a little, especially when I felt those probing strands of light grow more intimate in mine. It occurred to me also that Terian would have heard me thinking all of these things, even now, and that the seer might have taken that as an invitation, too... or, at the very least, as an admitted vulnerability.

  The realization brought another wash of confusion in my light, one that pulled me in more than one direction. I knew I could hardly mistake the flavor of interest in Terian’s light, either, or the fact that he’d already seemingly determined to aim at least some of that interest at me.

  I also couldn’t deny that I’d already more or less admitted that I wanted him.

  Realizing that a part of my light was already approaching Terian as a potential lover, that I was treating the top-tier seer as I might a seer I intended to seduce... or, more accurately, that I intended to let seduce me... I felt my face warm again. My pain worsened the more I fought it, seemingly outside of my control and apart from my conscious mind. I noticed the other seers in my pod following my and Terian’s interactions in the Barrier a second time, and my embarrassment worsened, although I could do little about that, either.

  In those same set of seconds, I felt my pod back away from me further.

  They could already feel what was being asked of me.

  Perhaps more than asked.

  They might even have felt what it meant, in terms of the parameters of our mission, or maybe that was just paranoia on my part, too. I, myself, couldn’t see any of that clearly.

  I couldn’t even see Terian clearly, not anymore.

  I fought to push all of it from my mind, my consciousness of being overheard heightened by the intensity of the Barrier light inside Terian’s construct. I didn’t succeed, but I was clenching my jaw by the time I finally passed through the doorway of the brick building, and could no longer deny to myself what was happening to me.

  By then, I was so lost and ensconced in Terian’s Barrier space that I actually felt dizzy, almost physically unbalanced by the difference in my light.

  I felt my pod-mates reacting to that construct as well, adjusting to it in some ways, like me, although seemingly with a lot less effort. I also felt them notice when the separation pain began to grow once more in my own aleimi.

  I’d already resolved myself to accept this role, however, whatever Varlan’s warning.

  Assuming the offer was real and not simply another test of my reactions.

  Above all, I was a member of the Org.

  I would do what was required of me by my superiors.

  Somewhere in the distant background of that dense, mind-warping construct, behind the light of all my pod and of Varlan himself, as well as the silence of the higher levels of those multicolored, hair-fine Barrier strands...

  I heard Terian laugh.

  3

  FLIRTING WITH DANGER

  WE STOOD INSIDE moments later, in a much cooler room.

  I glanced around that room surreptitiously, at least where I could without being rude.

  It contained little to hold the interest of either my eyes or mind.

  An underground bunker, it came equipped with the requisite low ceiling and cement-brick walls. At some point, it had been conver
ted from what might have been officer’s quarters into a makeshift common room, although the space had clearly been allowed to fall into disrepair in the time since. I tracked details as I glanced around, my eyes skimming over metal folding chairs, a scuffed linoleum floor, stained throw rugs, yellow and black water and mold marks on the ceiling, a hotel-generic painting over a couch with obviously broken springs.

  I was distracting myself, I knew.

  Even so, the bulk of my attention remained primarily on our host, even when I didn’t look at him directly.

  The fact that Terian had chosen to debrief us as a group rather than pulling Varlan into a separate room struck me as outside the norm, too.

  Even as I thought it, those amber eyes swiveled back in my direction.

  I looked away at once, forcing my mind back to the matter at hand, but I still felt a reaction ripple my light, and probably reflect in my expression.

  Varlan’s voice was the first I could hear again coherently.

  “...The Adhipan?” the older seer was saying. “You really believe the Adhipan participated in this extraction, sir?”

  I swiveled my head to look at Varlan.

  The older seer didn’t seem to notice, however. His violet-tinged eyes stared directly at the significantly-younger Terian instead.

  “...What is the relevant evidence to that effect, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?” Varlan continued, his voice unerringly polite, even deferential. “I apologize for asking, but it is a highly unorthodox protocol for the Adhipan, as you know, to involve themselves in such an interventionist capacity. Much less to risk exposure when so few lives are at stake. Particularly given the number of high-ranked seer guards employed at this site...”

  I felt surprise flicker through my own light, as well.

  Not only that they were speaking of the Adhipan, but that Varlan entertained such a thing as a real possibility, not something purely mythological.