They would need all the help they could get right now.
When he reentered the common room, he frowned, not seeing her there.
“Hurry the fuck up, or I’m leaving you––” he growled.
He’d barely gotten out the words when the door opened to the other bedroom.
She walked briskly through, wearing khaki combat pants, a dark green tank top, and a uniform shirt thrown over her shoulders. The bruises still showed on her hands and neck, and he felt a flicker of guilt when it struck him that he’d forgotten she was hurt.
She was in the process of tying her hair up in a ponytail when he glanced down at her feet, noting the combat boots she wore with a grunt of approval.
That was worth waiting a few extra minutes.
He handed her a gun when she got close enough.
“You know how to use it?” he said, gruff.
She looked it over, her mouth pursed, her green eyes concentrated.
A flicker of pain ran through him at the look on her face, but she was already nodding.
“Yes, brother,” she said. “I know how.”
He nodded, once, giving the room one last scan with his eyes.
“All right,” he said, motioning her towards the door. “Let’s go.”
THEY RAN into their first company in the lobby.
Bullets greeted him when the elevator doors opened.
Revik didn’t hesitate, but fell to a crouch, firing back from the elevator car, sliding behind the doors after he yanked the green-eyed seer behind him.
He hit the dark-eyed male in the shoulder.
When the seer kept firing at him, Revik shot him in the head.
He knew there’d be two. With the Org, there was always two, or multiples of two, at least in ground operations. In Barrier attacks, it was usually more like two hundred and two.
When the female Org operative appeared, he didn’t even try to save her life. He knew it could no longer be like it was with Raven and Terian in the hotel suite, or he’d end up dead, along with the green-eyed seer he was now protecting.
Luckily, he’d been well-trained for this.
With barely a breath, he swiveled after the male went down, hitting the female infiltrator right as she darted out from behind a planter to fire at the female seer behind him.
He hit her in the heart.
Then, he shot her again in the head, blowing her backwards from the second direct hit while she was still halfway to the marble floor.
He didn’t speak, but grabbed the green-eyed seer’s wrist, dragging her behind him as he stayed low, falling into a loping military jog as he brought her with him to the front doors of the hotel. His mind tracked the humans screaming, their frightened faces as they backed away from him, holding up their hands, their eyes wide and terrified.
He saw the doormen scatter as he approached, heard excited voices speaking in more than one language.
He barely saw them though, other than to categorize them as threat or not-threat.
His mind grew eerily calm, the environment around him strangely quiet.
For now, the passage was briefly clear.
Revik knew it wouldn’t stay that way.
He also knew the airport was now out of the question.
“The river,” he muttered under his breath.
“What?” the seer behind him said, panting as she fought to keep up with his longer strides, not fighting him but tugging on the wrist he held.
Revik didn’t bother to answer her.
Releasing her arm as they reached the front doors of the hotel, he motioned her behind him again, raising his gun as he paused to look through the dusty glass at the road.
He felt it then. The shift in the construct.
“Di'lanlente a' guete,” he muttered. “That was fast.”
“What?” the female said behind him, sounding exasperated. “What was fast? What did you say, brother?”
Revik didn’t look over, but continued to scan the street.
“A net,” he said after a pause. “They are dropping a security net over Saigon. To track me. To find you. It’s a function of the military-grade construct they have over the city.”
There was a silence while she absorbed his words.
“What does that mean?” she said.
He let out a humorless sound, giving her a sideways glance, a wry smile. “It means we have to get the fuck out of here, sister. Before they kill both of us.”
There was a silence.
She didn’t break it that time.
“What is your name?” he said, looking back out the dusty glass.
Without waiting for her answer, he slid behind the other door so he could stare down the opposite side of the street. His hand reached for the door handle, even as he spotted the doorman on that side, watching him with fear in his eyes, hiding halfway behind a ceramic planter filled to overflowing with a giant, dark green palm.
That time, the female seer’s voice came out confused.
“What? What did you ask me?”
“Your name. What is it?” he growled. “Or do you want me to keep calling you ‘that woman with the green eyes I want to fuck’ in my head?”
He felt a ripple of reaction on her.
A flush of embarrassment, then irritation left her light.
“Kali,” she said simply. “My name is Kali, brother.”
“Okay, Kali,” he said, nodding once. “We’re going to make a break for the river. I don’t see anyone out there, but if you really know how to use that gun, now is the time to reacquaint yourself with it. And we’re going to need to run.”
He glanced at her boots again, relieved she’d been practical at least.
Letting his eyes return to her face, he ignored her frown when he motioned towards the door with his gun.
“You ready?”
He felt her nerves spike, but she only swallowed, nodding.
“Yes,” she said.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
He swung the door outward, motioning with his head for her to walk out with him when no one opened fire. He raised his gun, aiming it towards the windows and in both directions up and down the street.
Seeing no one, he motioned her across the street and towards the riverside park.
“Run,” he told her. “Get us a way out of here. First boat you see.” When she didn’t move, he reached out, shoving at her gently with a hand. “I said run. And stay the fuck out of the Barrier, sister.”
She didn’t argue with him.
That time she didn’t hesitate, but broke into a sprint, moving surprisingly fast.
Relieved when he saw how quickly she moved, he did another sweep of the street, covering her, then broke into a faster jog after her. As he shifted gaits, he closed his light down to a bare whisper, making it identical to the surrounding Barrier space, making himself invisible.
He’d shield her too, but not yet.
He knew they’d try to track him first.
It’s what he’d do. They likely had no Barrier signature for her at all. Revik, on the other hand, had been in the Org’s network for decades. They knew his aleimi inside and out. They likely knew more about his light than he did.
They’d definitely track him first.
Anyway, they’d know she was with him.
They only needed to find one of them.
He didn’t start running all-out himself until he was on the other side of the street. By then, he saw Kali in front of a Vietnamese fisherman, her gun held up, aimed at his face. The old human had his hands up and was jabbering at her quickly in Vietnamese.
Revik sped his legs, figuring he would need to translate––when she surprised him, speaking fluent Vietnamese in response to the fisherman’s words.
“I am sorry,” Revik her heard say to him. “I am sorry… truly. But we need you to take us away from here on your boat. We need you to take us as far from here as you can.”
The man shook his head, more vehemently that time.
&nbs
p; But Revik had reached them by then.
Jerking up his gun, he shoved it right into the man’s face, pressing the barrel firmly against the old man’s forehead, and cocking it deliberately.
“Get this fucking boat moving, cousin,” he growled in the man’s tongue. “Now. Or you go in the river. And we take the boat without you.”
The fisherman paled.
“Now,” Revik repeated, his voice flat. “We do it this way, you keep your boat, and maybe even make some money. The other way, no boat. No money. Probably no life.”
The old man swallowed but nodded that time, bobbing his head up and down.
When Revik took the gun away from his temple, the man scrabbled for the back of the boat, climbing over the wooden staves to reach the outboard engine. Revik followed him inside, still holding his gun on the fisherman’s back as he watched Kali get into the boat behind him.
The fisherman began yanking on the engine’s crank, trying to kickstart the engine.
Revik felt disapproval waft off the female seer as she looked between him and the fisherman. Feeling her disliking how he’d talked to the human, Revik almost smiled.
“You knew I was a prick,” he reminded her, speaking above the sound of the fisherman’s attempts to start the motor as he glanced in her direction. “Now I’m your prick, sister Kali. Deal with it.” At her deepening frown, he grunted, adding,
“…At least now you’ve got that working for you. Not against you.”
Scanning for threats out over the slow-moving, muddy current, he grunted a second time, still aiming the gun in the direction of the human fisherman as he glanced back in her direction.
“…I’ll let you decide if that’s an improvement or not,” he added sourly.
That time when he looked up, he caught her staring at him, those shocking green eyes glinting in the early afternoon sun. Just when he thought she would frown again, or maybe turn away, she snorted, almost like she couldn’t help herself.
He flinched a little in surprise, looking up.
That time, her snort turned into a real laugh.
“You are going to be an interesting man one day, Dehgoies Revik,” she told him, clicking in amusement. “I confess… I’m looking forward to meeting that person.”
Snorting a little himself, Revik rolled his eyes.
He motioned with the gun for her to get low in the boat.
“Cover your head, sister Kali,” he said, still speaking over the fisherman’s attempts to start the motor. He motioned towards a tarp that covered part of the stern. “Cover your head and play dead for a while, so we don’t find ourselves doing the real thing.”
Just then, the engine caught, roaring into life.
The fisherman looked at Revik, and Revik nodded, motioning down the river, towards the South China Sea. He figured their best bet was probably to try and get into Cambodia, before the Org started shutting down the airports there.
That time, the old man didn’t hesitate.
The long, narrow fishing boat pulled away from the shore.
After a beat where Revik examined the fisherman’s calm stare down the flowing waters of the river, Revik shifted the aim of his gun from the old man to the river’s banks as he scanned for movement with his eyes.
The construct over the city felt nearly physical now.
He felt it clamping down over his light, a heated, suffocating blanket of buzzing and probing lights and presences. He felt them trying to reach him through his shield, trying to reach Kali through the wall he’d thrown up around her.
He pulled that shield carefully now over the fisherman, too, knowing they’d be looking for the thoughts of humans who’d been kidnapped or pushed.
In fact, after looking for Revik himself, they’d probably do that first.
Revik knew they’d have another team working as well by now, probably from a distance, examining every second of the Barrier records from the Majestic, poring over everything that transpired from the instant Revik disconnected Terry and Raven from the Org’s network.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t disconnect himself from that same network.
Only a higher-up could do that.
Unfortunately, Revik’s only higher-up was Galaith.
He needed to get to a construct.
He needed help.
Frowning at the thought, he pushed it from his mind a few seconds later.
He couldn’t think about that yet. He had to get them the fuck out of Vietnam first, and out of Southeast Asia. Until then, he could only do his best to stay out of the Barrier altogether, and hide his light from the network as best he could.
While he couldn’t construct a full-on shield, like he would have done if he was still protected by the Org, he could still quiet his light, and disguise it in simple ways. He could make Kali and the human and himself as invisible to seer light as possible.
He did that by blending his light into that of the river.
He blended his light into the humans on passing boats, into the water itself, into the muggy air, into the wooden boat, into the fish that swam by the wooden sides, into the construct itself, at least while they still operated inside it.
When he felt Org seers going after his actual mind, after the aleimic structures above his head, he did his best to project a replica of Terian’s structures and mind to overlap his, both to confuse them and to hopefully convince them he wasn’t Revik at all, but his partner, Terry.
He had no idea if it worked, but no one else had shot at them yet.
He’d killed two seers already that day. He didn’t relish the idea of killing more.
Pushing that out of his mind, as well, he focused on the immediate.
He had to get them out of here first.
He had to get her out of here.
Only then would he think about what to do with himself.
Sixteen
I’m Not Calling You Mom
HIJACKING THE MILITARY Jeep was easier.
Thank the gods of the blue white sun, it also didn’t require him to kill anyone.
Using his real rank within the United States military, rather than pushing the man from the Barrier like he normally would have done––and where it would have been seen by Galaith and probably a few dozen Rook infiltrators stationed in Southeast Asia––Revik got the driver to stop for them on the road.
They were lucky.
The squad was traveling in their direction.
It also pulled up on them only about a half-mile from where the fisherman ran out of gas and paddled them back to the river’s shore, maybe forty clicks outside Phnom Penh.
Once he got them to stop, Revik helped Kali up into the back of the officer’s Jeep and pulled himself in next to her, just behind the driver.
He’d buttoned up his uniform shirt and tucked it in before he left the suite at the Majestic, which helped. The muddiness of his shoes and his non-regulation gun––not to mention the fact that he hadn’t been here under the auspices of the military legally in about six months––helped less, but he had no reason to think they’d find out about the last part, and the other things likely weren’t enough to raise eyebrows out here.
He told the officer sitting in front that Kali was a reporter, traveling with the military. When the man looked at her in the rearview mirror, his eyebrows rising in interest, Revik also bluntly told him she was his girlfriend.
That got a low snort from Kali, but a quiet one.
He doubted anyone but him heard it.
She went along with his cover, which is all that mattered, even holding his hand in the back seat for most of the bumpy drive, but he could tell from her light that the situation continued to amuse her for some reason.
He wondered if it amused her primarily because it had embarrassed him to say it.
In any case, neither the officer nor the driver asked them any questions.
Revik continued to shield both of their lights as they bumped down the pot-hole marked dirt road heading almost due north. H
e did it carefully, without letting the shield cause a flare into the Barrier, still doing his best to disguise his own light by projecting the light of Terian.
On the edges of his aleimi, Revik felt the woman, Kali, doing the same.
She even borrowed his Barrier imprint of Terry, helping to reinforce his shield with her own light, helping to hide behind his illusion.
He knew he’d only be able to disguise himself with Terry’s light for a little while longer.
As soon as his friend regained consciousness, he’d have to find something else to hide behind. Hopefully by then, he’d be far away from Saigon, far away from the construct, and far away from most of the Rook’s infiltrators, at least those on the ground.
Apart from those light-touch shields, both of them continued to stay the hell out of the Barrier proper. Revik himself hadn’t conducted a single scan since he’d used his light to drop Terian and Raven in the hotel suite.
Of course, what they were doing was risky as hell, regardless.
If Galaith found them out here, with where they were right now, the Org infiltrators wouldn’t even need to come for him themselves. They could simply take over the minds of their new human military friends, and push the humans to take them prisoner at gunpoint.
Revik pushed that thought from his mind, too.
Thinking about the Org at all right now was a bad idea.
Thoughts connected seers, intentionally or not.
Frowning as he remembered that simple rule, he pushed all thoughts of the Org and Galaith out of his mind, focusing instead on the country they were passing through.
Luckily, the officer who picked them up didn’t seem overly curious as to what brought them out there.
Without even asking, he seemed to assume they were heading to Phnom Penh.
Then again, there wasn’t much else out this way.
He chatted to Revik about the heat, about the rumors of the protest that were coming that afternoon, about missing Halloween back home, and the fact that they might have to head back to Saigon later that day, if things got out of hand after three o’clock.
He talked about being hung over, about rumors that the Russians were planning bombing runs on South Vietnam. According to him, the Kremlin was screwing with them, trying to provoke the Americans into doing something dumb, something that would threaten the fragile balance of the cold war between the two superpowers.
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