Revik

by J. C. Andrijeski

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “Most of them are young. Not babies… but young.”

  “Do they listen to you?” Revik said.

  Hesitating again, she nodded. “Yes. I’ve been with them since they got here.”

  “Tell them to come out. All of them.”

  Her steps faltered. She stopped in the middle of the warped plank floor, turning her head to look back over her shoulder at the open hatch. Revik noticed she kept her hands up and visible, even now. She wasn’t a fool at least.

  She also seemed eager to prove to them she wasn’t a threat.

  She rattled off words in a pidgin Prexci-Hindi Revik was familiar with. He knew similar dialects were in use at most of the slave and refugee camps in Asia, mostly so the humans couldn’t understand them.

  “Come out,” she said. “It’s him. It’s the ghost. The one with the glass eyes. He is here for us. He is taking us from the humans––”

  Terian chuckled.

  Blanching, she turned, looking first at Terian, then at Revik, her eyes and expression mortified.

  “Sir. I’m sorry, sir––” she began, stuttering again.

  Revik cut her off with a wave of his hand.

  “It’s fine, ilya. If it gets them out of that fucking hole, tell them whatever the hell you have to tell them.”

  Even as he said it, more heads poked up in the hole in the floor, along with eyes.

  Four of them came up the stairs more or less at once, all of them seers in their early teens, from what Revik could tell with his eyes. To humans, they would have looked around five or six years old, given the difference in the way seers aged compared to humans.

  To his seer eyes, they still looked heartbreakingly young.

  The girl was wrong. They were babies.

  His voice came out gruff that time.

  “Come on,” he said, motioning with his head and hand, speaking Prexci. “Come out. Come over here, so your brothers and sisters can come out too.”

  “It is only girls,” the girl, Pilea, said. “No males, sir.”

  Revik felt his jaw harden more.

  He didn’t have to ask why the premium was on girl seers.

  Motherfuckers.

  “Okay,” he said only, keeping his voice neutral. “Bring them here, little sister.”

  Revik looked over his shoulder as a flash of light illuminated the room. Squinting at Grevlin and his human mercs, Revik motioned at him with his hand and head.

  “Get on the radio,” he said. “Tell them to send a truck. There are twice as many as we expected. And call ahead to base. Tell them they’ll need to find accommodation for the night at least, until we can find a way to transport them to one of the training facilities.”

  Grevlin nodded, once. Looking at the human merc standing next to him, he motioned with his head for the man to follow him back outside.

  When Revik turned back towards the hole in the floor, more of the young seers were climbing out. He counted thirteen already. They walked towards him, and towards the adolescent seer, Pilea. More of them kept coming out as he watched.

  They climbed out and saw the human dead on the floor, then looked around until their eyes found Pilea, then him.

  They barely looked at Terian, Revik noticed.

  They stared at him.

  The ghost.

  Next to him, Terian chuckled, lifting an eyebrow in his direction. It’s interesting to me, brother, how visible you are, given how hard you try to be invisible. Already here, you are a mythological figure. A dead one, at that.

  Revik scowled in his direction.

  Shrugging, the amber-eyed seer added unapologetically, As far as nicknames go, it could be worse. It probably scares the piss out of the humans.

  At the other male’s words, Revik frowned.

  His eyes returned to the humans standing outside the hatch.

  Somehow, he doubted Pilea’s only duties were to build construct shields and play nursemaid to baby seers on their way to the slave auctions.

  Glancing at the young female, he noted more about her physically that time. He also saw the marks on her neck where she likely normally wore a sight-restraint collar. They must have taken it off her so she could work the construct shields and keep their inventory hidden.

  “Are you the only seer here?” Revik said, blunt, addressing her in Prexci again. “Who works for them, I mean. Any contractors? Mercs?”

  She looked up at him, reddening.

  He picked up from her light that just talking to him intimidated her.

  Clearly they did know who he was.

  Thought they did, anyway.

  “There’s another,” she said, her nerves reaching her voice. “Hurek.”

  “Hired, or––?”

  “Hired,” she blurted, nodding. “He works for the C.I.A.––”

  “Shut up, you stupid girl,” the older Vietnamese man snapped, speaking English.

  Revik didn’t hesitate.

  Turning, he aimed the rifle he still held in his arms, pointing it at his target even as he squeezed off the shot. Hitting the older male in the throat, Revik only looked long enough to confirm the shot was fatal.

  A few of the young seers shrieked, reacting to the loud noise as much as the source. Most of them just froze, however, going totally still.

  Revik ignored that too.

  The man hadn’t even hit the wooden floor when his eyes returned to Pilea.

  “Is he here?” he said, gruff. “Now. In the village. This Hurek.”

  She stared over her shoulder at the human Revik had just killed.

  He wondered at first if he’d upset her.

  As she stared, however, he felt wonder plume off her light… followed by relief… and then by a near-joy that was palpable. When she looked up at him next, sheer adoration stood out in her eyes. She looked up at him like he really was some kind of avenging angel.

  “He’s here,” she said.

  That time, her voice had lost its tremble.

  She sounded sure of herself.

  Better yet, Revik thought to himself––she sounded angry.

  She also sounded borderline triumphant.

  Yes, little sister, Revik thought, looking at her. Sometimes karma twists around faster with a little help… and I’m happy to be that help for you.

  …more than happy, his mind added grimly.

  “I’ll take you to them,” she said, as he continued to look at her.

  Refocusing on her face, he only nodded.

  He was still staring at her, when something bumped against his leg.

  He started, looking down.

  A young seer stood there.

  He hadn’t even heard her approach. She was so small that his light, still on high alert, had barely tracked her presence in the room.

  Oblivious to the rifle he held, to the fact that it still smoked from him using it to kill that human, she reached out a hand to him, making a grasping gesture with pudgy fingers. She looked at his face, her reaching fingers and pursed lips insistent.

  She couldn’t have been more than eight years old.

  To a human, she would have looked closer to three.

  Revik stared at her, shocked by her fearlessness––of him, of what he’d just done.

  Pale, ethereal eyes stared back at him.

  Her irises were a riveting, sharp green, the purest jade.

  He was still staring when that small hand found his, wrapping itself around three of his fingers. She looked up at him, as if waiting.

  All he saw in those eyes was trust.

  Pain rippled Revik’s light, cutting his breath.

  For a moment, he could only stand there, staring down at that soft face, at those pale green eyes staring up at him, looking at him as if she knew him.

  It felt like someone had taken an ice pick and plunged it right into his heart.

  Two

  Saigon, 1974

  HE WAS SWIMMING.

  Lost in a clear, gold and blue, diamond-coated oc
ean, he was swimming.

  His arms stroked hard into the waves. His legs kicked hard, his muscles and lungs straining, his chest and heart straining, his eyes straining, trying to find––

  He didn’t know what he was trying to find.

  A blue-white sun shone overhead.

  It was paradise here.

  Paradise.

  He didn’t belong. He shouldn’t even be here.

  He saw dolphins, fish––

  Green eyes flashed with sunlight, a wide, laughing smile.

  His heart hurt, his whole body hurt.

  He grasped for it, reached for it, hands and fingers outstretched––

  But it was gone.

  There and gone, the presence eluded him.

  It taunted him… stabbed at him.

  He heard laughter. Her laughter rang, filling his ears, his head, making him dizzy, making him hard, making him sick with want, with longing, confusing him––

  He breached in the waves.

  He blinked to clear his eyes, looking around, twisting around, sucking in a mouthful of air and getting salty sea as a wave smacked into his face. Gasping, he turned his head to scan the waves and the shore as he treaded water.

  An endless stretch of sand met his eyes.

  Cliffs rose overhead, silent and still.

  Nearer to him, a tree-covered rock stood in the ocean, maybe twenty yards from shore. He heard birds, saw them wing overhead, making patterns like living smoke and clouds below that shocking white sun. The sky was such a vivid shade of blue it caught in his throat, nearly brought tears to his eyes.

  He didn’t know where he was.

  He didn’t know where he was.

  He didn’t know how to find her––

  REVIK PERCHED ON a barstool, waving a hand by his face periodically to brush away flies.

  He scowled at the glass of beer that sat on the teakwood bar in front of him.

  The beer was piss, and overly warm.

  Glancing around the dimly-lit space, he looked for his contact.

  He used his eyes first, then switched to his seer’s sight when he couldn’t make up his mind about a few of the faces he saw at various tables scattered around the bamboo wood floor. Staring was never a good idea in a place like this, especially now, with how high tensions were in Saigon since the American troops had pulled out.

  Even with his seer’s sight, he kept it to a lighter touch than usual.

  He’d felt eyes on him lately, from more than one quarter.

  He knew it was paranoid to think it had anything to do with him personally.

  He’d heard rumors that others of his kind were in Saigon––seers not working for the Org, but for those monks in the mountains, or for one of the government agencies not yet under the Org’s control. He knew there would be freelancers and mercs here as well, working in the shadows, looking to make money off the chaos.

  Scavengers of all kinds had been showing up in Vietnam in the last few months, human and seer. Still, even knowing all this, he was a little paranoid.

  Something about the eyes on him did feel personal.

  Well, some of the time.

  Given who he was, he couldn’t afford to dismiss that as a possibility entirely, even if he wanted to. For the same reason, he had to pay attention to those gut feelings, at least long enough to determine what caused any sudden spike in attention and adrenaline.

  Galaith warned him of the same, even before he sent him here.

  Revik could tell his mentor and boss had misgivings about sending him here at all, though. It wasn’t the first time Revik noticed Galaith didn’t want him in Asia. Galaith didn’t even seem to want him in a relatively remote corner of it, far away from the seer enclaves to the north and west of Saigon.

  This was Revik’s first posting anywhere on the continent since he joined the Org back in the forties. That might not have been strange if he were human, or if he held a lower rank within the hierarchy of the Org. As it was, it was strange. The vast majority of seers still lived in Asia, as well as most of the trafficking centers for their people.

  For Galaith to cut him out of most of the action on that front, while still giving him the responsibilities he gave him, was beyond strange.

  It verged on bizarre.

  Revik tried not to take it personally.

  He knew he had a name in the seer world, a reputation.

  Some of that predated his involvement with the Org.

  Like a lot of seers who’d just been trying to get by, he’d been blamed for colluding with the Nazis in the last big human war. Revik found that ludicrous, of course. Even apart from the fact that he’d nearly had his head cut off in a Nazi prison, he’d left their employ long before der Fuhrer started gassing seers alongside his own people.

  Revik would never own the atrocities of that war.

  He had plenty of things to atone for, but that wasn’t one of them.

  Anyway, these stupid squabbles among seers were the main reason humans continued to rule over most of the world––and over most of the seers––despite being an inferior race. Those kneeler hypocrites hadn’t done jack shit to free their people from slavery, but they certainly felt free to finger-wag and cluck their tongues at seers who did what they had to do to survive it.

  Regardless, earned or unearned… Revik had a rep in the seer world.

  Since the last great war, that reputation had grown.

  Revik knew a lot of the things said about him by his brothers and sisters weren’t particularly flattering––or particularly friendly––or particularly kind. While Revik’s position within the Org protected him, far more than most seers, there would always be ambitious up-and-comers looking to make a name for themselves, as well.

  Revik wasn’t about to be a feather in someone’s cap.

  The knowledge that the Org would retaliate by wiping out the entire family, circle of friends, acquaintances, and work associates of anyone who dared to so much as give him a black eye was cold comfort if a confrontation ended up with him dead.

  Galaith had more or less said the same thing, the last time they spoke.

  Revik knew his boss’s warnings weren’t just words.

  He knew Galaith was genuinely worried for his wellbeing.

  Revik also knew how easily a life could end.

  He’d been the one holding the gun more times than he could count.

  All it took was dropping your guard on the wrong day, being too drunk or too stoned in the wrong company, taking a wrong turn, falling asleep at the wrong time or in the wrong bed. All it took was a series of small accidents or miscalculations… a distraction, a hard-on, a sneeze, a misunderstanding… or even just one lucky bullet.

  He felt eyes on him, even now.

  When he mentioned feeling like he was being watched to Terian, the other seer told him he was definitely being paranoid.

  Well, first Terry laughed.

  Then he told him he was being paranoid.

  Then he told him he was doing way too much blow.

  Terian advised him to switch to pot for a few days––or, better yet, heroin.

  When Raven showed up, a few minutes later, and Terian summarized their conversation to the third agent on their detail, the female seer only rolled her eyes. Dismissing Revik’s concern about eyes on them, she launched into one of her “things” about how useless they both were whenever they indulged in heroin.

  She ended her rant on how Revik, in particular, annoyed the crap out of her on that drug. She accused him of becoming “depressing,” “broody,” and “even more of a dick” whenever he did more than two lines of the stuff.

  Overall, in terms of where the conversation started, and what Revik actually wanted to know, their back and forth wasn’t particularly illuminating.

  He hoped Terian was right.

  He hoped it was just drugs and too many late nights catching up to him.

  As for there being more seers in Saigon in general, that part was definitely true. Galaith a
nd he had discussed that as well, and Revik’s boss seemed to think it was mostly kneelers. Now that the Americans were decreasing their presence and aid in Southeast Asia, they were trying to take the opportunity to push both sides towards peace.

  It was definitely a kneeler thing to do.

  They were such fucking hypocrites.

  For all their preaching about “noninterference” with the human race, the Council of Seven certainly did plenty of meddling when it suited them.

  The Org might play those games, but at least they were honest about it.

  “You Dehgoies?”

  Revik turned abruptly in his chair, alarmed someone got so close to him.

  In rote, his hand fell to the gun he wore.

  Measuring the man standing there, he frowned, if only because the human walked up from behind him rather than approaching him from the side. He could just be stupid, but it might have been done to throw him off balance, too.

  One pass of his light told Revik it was stupidity, not posturing.

  Ignorance, anyway.

  The blond male gripped a murky-looking glass of the piss-tasting beer, his voice holding a touch of a Russian accent.

  Scanning him a second time, Revik nodded belatedly to the man’s question, clicking out of the human’s mind as his fingers released the handle of his gun.

  “I’m him,” he said, hearing the German accent in his own words.

  It was stronger than usual, probably because this asshole managed to startle him.

  He watched the sweaty human plunk himself down on the adjacent barstool, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief which he stuffed back into the pocket of his fatigues.

  “You the one looking for people selling glow-eyes?” the human said, looking at him.

  Revik scowled, glancing up and down the bar.

  “Don’t use that fucking language in here,” he warned, his voice cold. “Most of them speak English.”

  The man flinched a little, his expression surprised.

  He looked up and down the length of the bar, as if noticing for the first time they weren’t the only two people in there.

  Revik noted the man’s flushed face, his nose covered with spiderweb veins, the sweat stains at his armpits and on the upper chest of his light-colored suit. He wasn’t overweight, but he didn’t look good, health-wise.