“I’m thinking the fucker is trained,” I said, short. “Maybe we should talk to him.”
Cat acknowledged that, too, without words that time.
She didn’t bother to point out that my words directly contradicted what I’d said only a few moments before, either... which I appreciated.
My attention shifted from her back to my virtual view of the work camp prisoners by the fence. I split my light and focus between the VR version and what I could see behind the Barrier, looking for overlap so I could begin to construct a marker map.
I could see Cat now, too, in the trees... with my light, anyway.
Just then, Ondati’s voice rose over the sub-vocal.
“Sir. You need to check this guy out.”
“Send me the specs.”
“I... can’t,” Ondati admitted, his light shimmering with confusion.
“Why not?” I said.
“He’s...” Ondati hesitated again. “He’s blocking me, sir. Completely. I can see him. I can even see his light now, but he won’t let me send you any imprints...”
I tensed, my fingers tightening on the butt of my gun. “Who’s blocking you? The tattooed seer? The big guy?”
“No, sir. The primary target. The one standing outside of the fence.”
I frowned. I hadn’t felt anyone standing outside of the fence. I still felt the target, but I figured he was somewhere out in those trees. Now, staring at that space with the virtual where the prisoners all stood, I realized I could make out the outline of a sixth figure, and he did appear to be standing on the opposite side of the fence as the prisoners.
“Di’lanlente a’ guete,” I swore in Prexci, half-under my breath. “What the fuck is that?”
“Don’t know, sir,” Ondati said frankly. “Should I try to talk to him?”
“No.” I felt my patience fray, even as I clenched my jaw. “I’m almost there.”
“We’ll cover you, sir,” Cat affirmed.
Biting my lip in irritation, I sent her a ping of acknowledgement. I felt Ondati listening, too, and sent a wordless pulse in the Barrier, telling him to remain where he was, but keep his eyes open for that shield.
“Drop the grid down on their heads if you have to,” I said, throwing caution to the wind when I added, “You don’t follow protocol to a T on this one, and I’m writing you up. I mean it. We’re being watched, goddamn it...”
No one answered me at all that time.
I felt them acknowledge my words, though.
What the hell was going on here? Who were those jokers by the fence? And who the fuck were they talking to? How had he gotten this deep into the camp without setting off the alarms? I would never have thought such a thing could be possible. People didn’t just walk up to enclosure fences at military-grade work camps, goddamn it.
Either way, there was no point trying to sneak up on them now.
I half-jogged the rest of the way around that section of fence, through the fresh snow that continued to sift down, making visibility with my eyes alone almost nonexistent. Strave and Ringu jogged behind me to keep up, and I realized how dim the light had gotten out here already, as the snow grew more intense. We probably only had another hour or two before being out here could become a security issue of its own, solely due to the weather.
I passed by the area of trees where I felt Cat crouching with two of the others, and felt her fall in behind my smaller group.
All of us had our weapons raised now towards the same section of fence.
I saw Nulu crouched down in the snow right in front of me then, only a dozen or so yards from the seers clustered on either side of the fence. I realized Cat must have sent him ahead to act as a sort of sniper, maybe to take out the trespasser if he tried to flee.
Made sense, since no one seemed able to read past this guy’s shield.
My eyes shifted to the group by the fence, even as two of the guards next to me pulled out stunners, flipping them open with sharp cracks of their wrists so the telescoped batons lengthened. I only noticed that with one part of my mind, though, since I could see them now, even with my actual eyes.
THE GROUP OF collared seers stood at the fence, gripping the chains in pale hands.
Two of them were cuffed, I noticed, in addition to the collars. Dead metal, but likely tied to the same impulses as the collars.
Flight risks.
Either that, or they were being punished for something.
The one in front, the black-haired, Chinese-looking monster with all of the religious tats, was talking in a low voice to the seer standing directly on the other side of the fence. The muscular seer had strange eyes, I noticed. Coal-black in color, they shone so dark the pupils seemed to be nearly swallowed up in those obsidian irises.
Whoever the seer was they were talking to, he wasn’t wearing a guard’s uniform.
In fact, unless I was hallucinating, he wasn’t even wearing a jacket.
I couldn’t see the man’s face, though, not well, anyway.
Something about that slice of profile had a strangely fox-like angularity to it, however. I studied the single large, light-colored eye I could glimpse, and the reddish hair that hung down from the male’s head, dusted with snow as it curled past his ears and down the back of his neck where he had it wound into a male seer’s hair clip at the base of his skull.
The male stood huddled by the fence, his long, deathly-white arms clasped around his own chest. I didn’t see him shiver, though. He merely stood there, gazing through the holes in the fence at that muscular seer with all the tattoos.
As I watched, the strange, inappropriately-dressed male seemed to be nodding very intently to something the seer prisoner was saying to him. Even from the side, his face appeared rapt with attention, those large, amber-colored eyes focused unwaveringly on the man who reached for him, clasping his arm through the chain-link fence as though he was a life-preserver, some kind of savior.
Or maybe just a sympathetic ear.
I looked at the tattoos on that hand and frowned.
From what I could see of the interaction, I couldn’t tell if the two males even knew one another. Obviously, the prisoners inside wanted to communicate something to the male with the auburn hair, but I couldn’t get any sense if he even heard them.
Realizing the man wasn’t armed–-that he couldn’t be armed, not in that get-up, at least not with anything that remotely construed a threat––I held up a hand to my guards, pinging them not to do anything drastic, at least not yet. Whoever the seer was, he didn’t look like much of a flight risk, either; I told Ondati and Paulo to keep looking for the source of the shield.
“We think it might be... him, sir,” Ondati said in the sub-vocals.
“Him?” I said. “The one outside?”
“Yes. He seems to be the only source, boss,” Paulo added.
I frowned at that, too.
Still gripping my rifle in one hand where it rested on the swivel-harness attached to my belt, I walked forward, using my light cautiously to scan the outer edges of the aleimi of the male standing outside of the fence.
As soon as I tasted the male’s light, though, I froze.
My own light jerked back in the same set of seconds.
I just stood there, confused, breathing harder... at the same time, fighting for breath. After what felt like a moment where I’d fallen into some kind of void, I reached my light out again.
That time, when I tasted the other male’s light, I didn’t withdraw.
I lost myself there, staring up at structures I’d mapped before.
Structures I’d only ever seen on one seer, in all of my life.
I heard a whispered ghost of Varlan’s voice, a memory, but oddly clear in my ears.
I am told he even shows signs of being a true prescient, Varlan had sent to me. I am not immune to the pull there, either, brother, I assure you––
“Sir?” Cat said from my other side. “We could hit him with a stunner...”
Again, I
held up a hand, signaling no.
That time, my heart pounded in my chest, seemingly in my very throat.
I was still standing there, fighting my composure back, fighting to even focus my eyes, when a voice rose in my headset.
That time, the voice cut through all protocols. It echoed, strangely loud, and I could tell from the frequency that all of my people could also hear it.
“Agent Quay. We have you on visual,” the seer from Central said.
I jumped, then felt my jaw harden.
Still, I didn’t hesitate. Training was training.
“Copy, Central,” I said in reply.
“You have acquired a high value target who has been under pursuit by security forces. Do not kill him...” the voice warned. “He is a resident of the labs at the camps. Please return him to that location as soon as possible. Alive,” the voice repeated. “Please confirm understanding.”
I fought to answer that time, couldn’t.
“This is a high-value target,” the voice repeated. “You have a no-kill order. Repeat. This is a no-kill scenario. Bring him in alive... confirm receipt, agent.”
Again, I found myself unable to speak, or even to tear my eyes off the seer huddled by the outside of the fence.
“Did you read me, agent?” Central said into my headset. The voice grew colder. “Do not kill the male you have in your sights. He’s a valuable asset... currently suffering from an illness that will display as a form of mental instability. It is unlikely he will attack you, but if he does, just subdue him, and bring him in...”
I nodded that time.
Nodding again, I forced myself to send a faint ping of acknowledgment.
“Understood,” I said. “Copy, no-kill order. Subdue and return to base.”
“Good.” The female voice sounded openly relieved. “Thank you, Agent Quay. He shouldn’t cause you any trouble... he’s not generally violent.”
I nodded, but didn’t speak.
I found myself wondering who I was talking to, but didn’t ask that, either.
Whoever they were, they had already disengaged. At least from where I could feel them.
I was still fighting to think past the shock to my light, to wrap my mind around following the instructions I’d been given...
... when the male seer standing at the fence turned, staring directly at me.
I felt something in my chest relax abruptly once he did.
I didn’t know that face.
I’d never seen it before.
I’d swear to never having seen it before, at any point in my life, so I relaxed into the other differences, as well. I didn’t know the body that face attached to, either. I’d known that, while staring at it, but somehow, it hadn’t registered in any real way once I got that first taste of the alien seer’s light. The relief I felt was palpable... at first.
The longer I stared at that narrow, lupine face, however... the longer the other male stared at me... the more my doubts returned.
I might not know the exact dimensions of that face, but I knew the smile that lit up those fox-like features. I knew the amber-colored eyes staring out of that high-cheekboned face, and not only for their color.
Moreover, even if I didn’t know the body’s proportions, I knew the strangely sensual slant with which the seer held it, the way his light coiled into and around his form, almost as if reminding himself that he existed. The way he tasted my own light, I knew, too... in darting, strangely sparking touches, filled with an intensity that made me flinch, even as it drew me nearer to him.
Of course, there were differences.
The charge there, in that light, had lessened some. The colors had dimmed slightly as a result, leaving the touches more probing than overtly compelling, more persuasive than demanding. That odd, off-kilter, veering-out-of-control feeling had diminished, too... the up and down charge that seemed to pull everyone in his near vicinity like a vortex... or a magnet, perhaps... into his every mood and fluctuation.
That light, though...
Gods, his light.
His light was what made it nearly impossible for me to breathe.
I felt my own aleimi react to it, drinking it in, like water to one dehydrated.
I wanted that light so much. I realized then, that I’d been lying to myself, too. For months I’d been lying to myself... ever since Manaus.
I missed that light. I missed it so badly I’d scarcely slept since that last night I’d spent in the jungle with the red-haired seer.
My mind drifted there now, as if that magnetic light drew me backwards in time still.
I must have left far more of my body behind than I realized, for when the male seer spoke to me, I nearly jumped the rest of the way out of my skin... and not only for the single word that the other initially emitted.
“Revi’!” the seer cried out.
Nothing but sheer delight lived in that voice.
That delight stabbed at me, almost as much as the unnervingly familiar cadence. The accent I’d never pinpointed. The odd, lilting, educated tone... almost classically educated, like he’d been an academic once, or some other kind of scholar.
It more than shocked me. Every detail of that one word reverberated somewhere deep down in my light, drying the spit in my mouth and throat, rendering me mute.
“Revi’, my friend!” the male called out. “Gods, brother! I’m so glad you are here...”
I stared at him, hearing my blood rush in my ears.
My heart pounded the veins of my own neck.
The seer began to walk towards me then, wading through the thickening snow.
I let my arm with the organic shield fall to the side of my body, where the bottom edge pressed against my uniformed thigh. Before the male had reached me, I retracted that shield altogether, triggering its withdrawal back into my sleeve-band with a mental trigger in my headset. The seers standing just behind me reacted to that act with slight aleimic quivers of alarm. I felt them looking at one another, asking silently what was going on, but I found I couldn’t look away from the seer walking towards me, not even to reassure my pod.
The other male didn’t seem to notice any of this.
He didn’t seem to notice the shield, either... nor when it disappeared.
He walked right up to me, his arms still wrapped around a narrow but muscular-looking chest, wiry in build, like that of a Thai ring fighter, I thought absently. The features were strange... seer-like, but he almost could have passed for a middle-eastern human, too, even with the auburn hair and his paler skin. I noticed only then that the male seer wore what looked like medical scrubs and an oversized undershirt, like pajamas. His feet were bare, too, and crusted with mud and what looked like blood from walking on sharp rocks under the snow.
The male seer didn’t seem to notice any of that, either.
The SCARB agents directly to either side of me, who happened to be Cat and Paulo, raised their rifles, aiming at the new male’s head as he approached their superior officer.
The male seer didn’t react to that, either.
He walked directly up to within only a few feet of where I stood, that grin nearly splitting his face now, the sheer joy and affection in his expression hitting me somewhere in the middle of my chest, like a shard of ice.
“Revi’,” the other male said, his voice close to conspiratorial now.
He unfolded his arms, clasping hold of my left bicep with his fingers, the same arm that recently supported the shield that I’d carried. The guards next to me stiffened again, but that time, I sent them a sharp, warning pulse to stay back.
When they didn’t move, I strengthened that impulse, telling them to fall back.
Lowering their rifles, they did as I asked, albeit reluctantly.
It took me a few seconds more to focus on the man gripping my uniform jacket.
“Revi’,” the seer said, smiling up at me. “...Revi’... you’re just in time.”
Blowing on his hands, which were nearly blue in the cold, t
he shorter male seer gestured eloquently towards the seers who stood on the other side of the fence behind him. My eyes followed the direction of the gesture, almost in spite of myself.
The five or six seers who stood there were staring with unveiled hostility at the guards in their black uniforms, and especially at me. They seemed confused by the male seer’s actions, too, but mostly I saw frustration there, even anger. Their eyes shimmered with different colors in the reflected blue light of the electric prods Jaela and Ringu held, but strangely, they didn’t withdraw, either. They seemed almost to be waiting to see what the male seer might do, to see if he still might be on their side, perhaps.
I noted the seer who felt like their leader in a glance, feeling what might have been Lao Hu markings in his light. I filed the face away in rote, but then the male seer holding my arm was speaking to me again, jerking my eyes off that small crowd, and out of the more linear workings of my mind.
“Revi’,” the fox-faced seer said, his voice still friendly, still almost conspiratorial. “I need your help...”
“With what?” I blurted.
“...I am quite at a loss,” the male continued, not seeming to catch my tone. He smiled up at me, his eyes shining with light. “These fine brothers of ours, they’re in need of our assistance, friend. They want me to help free them, Revi’, and I’m not quite sure how to go about it...”
I stared down at the angular, strangely-lupine features, at a loss. It felt now as if that ice shard had gotten lodged somewhere in my throat.
“Can you help me, Revi’?” the male said, twining his own fingers together. “You’re always so good with these sorts of things, and I seem to have misplaced my tools...”
The seer looked down at his own body as he said it, touching his ribs and chest over the thin, cotton shirt, as if expecting he should have some kind of equipment hanging there. When he finished inspecting and feeling over his own upper body, he held out his arms one by one, too, as if noticing his own clothing for the first time.
He frowned down at his pale, bare arms, and then at his bare feet as I watched.
A flicker of some denser confusion shone out of those amber eyes. His full mouth puckered in a frown as the silence ticked by in seconds.
Allie's War Early Years Page 44
