Without even knowing I believed it, I really thought one day, eventually, we would win this war, and everything would gradually go back to normal.
The disease, Shadow, the Dreng, even the bombs falling on Beijing… none of it crossed that invisible line for me, tipping me into facing the irreversible end of all that was, all that had been. Without knowing I did so, consciously at least, I told myself that none of it was broken past the point where we could never come back.
Some part of me believed it was still fixable.
I told myself it would take a lot of work, a hell of a lot of work, but we would get it all back someday. Things could once more go back to being how they were.
Maybe not all of it, not in my lifetime––but definitely in Lily’s.
Definitely in time for the child I carried now.
Looking up at that burning sky, the images of Kali’s vision still swimming somewhere in the back of my light, I realized I didn’t believe that anymore.
We were never coming back.
All of this––it would be over soon.
It would be over, and it was never coming back.
My throat closed, my eyes still fixed on the clouds of burning ash.
Then someone slammed up against the van’s passenger side door. I jumped, turning my head, to find Revik standing there, grinning at me. Before I could recover enough to smack him, he leaned through the window, kissing me on the mouth. I smacked him on the arm by the time he came up for air, and he laughed, kissing me again.
Wiping my eyes when he finally drew away, I fought between wanting to smile and frown at him, between being happy to see him and frustrated by what he’d been up to.
“You might be a psychopath, you know that?” I said.
He quirked a dark eyebrow at me, still leaning on the car’s window sill.
“It’s been remarked,” he said drily. Smiling again, he took his hands off the window’s edge and opened the door. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve found alternate transportation.”
Before I could protest, he coiled his arm around me and pulled me out of the seat. I barely had time to look to the driver’s seat, where Stanley grinned at me and rolled his eyes.
Balidor was already opening the back doors of the truck we drove.
Before I could warn him about all of the people he would find inside, Revik crushed me in another hug, wrapping his light into and around mine. So much heat, light, affection, love and desire came off him, my mind briefly blanked out. I found myself clutching his arms then his back, even as I realized his aleimi was still flooded with light from all the telekinesis he’d been doing. He felt tired, but also amped. He was practically bouncing on his heels, his eyes faintly glassy when he finally released me, enough to meet my gaze.
“Want to see the surprise?” he said, smiling faintly. “Or are you still mad at me?”
Clicking at him, I shook my head.
Glancing to my right, I watched seers and humans stream out of the back of the van. Seeing Balidor exclaim in surprise when he saw Atwar, Jusef and Kalashi, I watched, smiling a little as he embraced first one, then the other, holding Kalashi for the longest as he beamed at her.
Then I saw someone else run at Balidor, and jerked my eyes away, but not before I saw Balidor wrap Cass in his arms, crushing her against him.
Exhaling, I looked up at Revik.
He was staring at Atwar and the others, too, amazement in his eyes. Nudging him with my shoulder, I quirked an eyebrow when he turned his head.
“You got enough room for all of us in this ‘alternate transportation’ you found?” I said.
He smiled, clicking at me. “You’ve been busy, wife.”
“Indeed I have, husband. You didn’t leave me much choice.”
Revik turned back to the crowd of seers and humans, frowning. From his eyes, he was assessing the group as a whole that time, not looking at individual seers. His pale eyes scanned over them, his eyebrows knit as if he were doing a calculation in his mind.
After a faint pause, he nodded once, decisive.
“Yes,” he said. “Should be fine.”
I rolled my eyes, smacking him on the chest, and he grinned, gripping me tighter in his hands. Before I could protest, he started dragging me towards the Vatican wall. I realized only then that Illeg stood there, holding open a door for the rest of us to come through.
As we approached, she rolled her eyes and smiled, giving me a short, respectful bow.
“Esteemed Bridge,” she said courteously.
“Hey, Illeg.” I nodded at her even as I elbowed Revik, who laughed, wrapping his arms around my waist from behind. “Glad to see you in one piece. I suspect you have the gods and sheer luck to thank for that.”
“Most definitely, sir,” she said, grinning wider. “…And you, as well.”
“Hey!” Revik said, pretending to scowl at her. “Whose side are you on?”
“Your wife’s,” Illeg said promptly. “Definitely your wife’s.”
I laughed, even as Revik pushed me through the open door.
I didn’t realize there was sound-deadening tech in the wall until I stepped through––and found myself in a thunderclap of thick, sharp heartbeats from a fleet of helicopters. I stared around at all of them, taking in their black and gold paint, decorated with the sign of the Holy See on each tail. They must predate the Myther’s takeover of Vatican City.
Once more, I felt a sharp pang at the end of the Basilica.
Revik gripped me tighter. Sorry about that, love, he sent. I had a good reason. I tried to keep casualties minimal. And I did warn them.
I nodded, sighing as I leaned back on him.
You did, I conceded.
We found some things, he added. Downstairs. Glancing over my shoulder, at the group of seers and humans I’d brought, he frowned. That’s more than was in those Lister cages, from what Stanley told me. Where in the hell did you find Atwar and the others?
Below the arena. We freed a bunch of seers down there. About ten of them came with us in total. They were all wearing those blood-collars.
I felt more than saw Revik frown.
Are you sure that’s safe? I don’t mean Atwar, Jusef and Kalashi. I mean the others. We were told what the collars do. The techs we spoke to weren’t sure if the damage was reversible.
Techs?
I’ll explain, he assured me. We found out where they were storing the last of the bodies.
He was back to steering me towards the helicopters, all of them seemingly in some stage of powering up. Now that we were closer, I found myself squinting at the forms I could just see sitting in the pilot’s seats through the tinted organic windows.
Remembering that all of our people were accounted for, and definitely not in any of those helicopters, I frowned, raising a hand to shield my eyes from the whipping wind.
“Do I know them?” I said, turning slightly and raising my voice to Revik over the helicopter-created wind. “The pilots. Do I know them?”
He laughed. “Yes!” he said.
Frowning as I tried to figure out what the hell was so funny, I followed him to the nearest of the four helicopters on the square helipad.
Revik popped the door in front of me and swung it wide, his hand on my shoulder to keep me lower than the whirling propellers overhead. I knew he was just being cautious, but I felt so much protectiveness in the gesture, I couldn’t help softening.
Gripping his fingers briefly, I climbed into the helicopter, making my way over the first row of seats directly behind the cockpit.
When I’d reached the window seat on the far side, the pilot turned, just enough for me to get a look at his whole profile, his eyes, and most of his face.
I jerked in shock, glancing to my left at Revik, who was climbing into the helicopter behind me. Taking in his face, his long hair clipped back, his clear eyes, I looked sharply back at the pilot. Without fully realizing it, I’d frozen in place, halfway to where I’d been lowering my weight into a seat.<
br />
“What in the i’thir li’dare?” I half-shouted over the sound of the rotor blades and engine.
Revik laughed. “What do you think? All kinds of possibilities, right?”
I closed my mouth with a snap, without realizing I’d ever opened it.
“This isn’t funny,” I said, looking at him, then back at the pilot. “What the fuck, Revik? Where did you find it?”
I couldn’t quite bring myself to call it a him.
The pilot blinked at me. The surprise reflected in that face disturbed me even more. Clenching my jaw, I looked back at Revik.
“What is it?”
“A clone, obviously. Of me.”
“You stole one of your own clones?”
“Six of them, actually.” He grinned at me. “I thought they might come in handy.”
“You thought they might come in handy?” My jaw clenched, right before my anger burst out. “What the fuck for? What could they possible be handy for, Revik?” I couldn’t control the fury that welled in my light, although I couldn’t fully understand it, either. “What the fuck were you thinking? Jesus Christ, Revik!”
He burst out in a laugh, almost like he couldn’t help himself.
Turning, I stared at the pilot again, taking in those disturbingly familiar angular features, the pale, crystal-like eyes, the black hair, the narrow mouth, the long neck. The pilot looked exactly like my husband, apart from the length of his hair, which was cropped short enough to be a military cut, the lack of visible scars, his clothes, and the shape his body was in, which was a somewhat leaner version compared to what Revik himself looked like now.
His light, thank the gods, was nothing like Revik’s.
“Yeah,” Revik said, obviously hearing me as he dumped his weight into the chair next to mine. “Weird, right? He’s a completely different person.”
That hadn’t really occurred to me yet, honestly.
Staring at the pilot, watching him frown, glancing back at us periodically as he flipped switches, finishing his pre-flight check, I frowned.
“Where does his light come from?” I said finally. “Is it like when a regular baby is born?”
Revik shrugged. “No idea. It must be something like that. But he’s structurally different from a normal seer, too. He has all the aleimic potential I do, in terms of the telekinesis and so on, but his actual light, meaning the part of him that’s him… his soul or whatever you want to call it… it’s completely different. From what the techs told us, a lot of them died, mostly because the soul was too incompatible with the biological matter, including the aleimic structures that come from me being a telekinetic. Also, the clones are all connected to one another in this weird way. It’s possible they did that to help them survive, too.”
I was still staring at the pilot. “That’s really fucking disturbing, Revik.”
He laughed. “It’s okay.” He grabbed my hand, gripping it tightly in his. “Just don’t mix one of them up with me, and we’re all good.”
“How the hell can you trust any of them?” My voice burst out louder that time, making the pilot turn. When he stared at me, those too-familiar, crystal-like eyes narrowing in a look I knew way too well, I bit my lip, turning back to Revik.
“Gaos di’lalente. You give me crap for freeing seers. You don’t even know what these things are, Revik. Weren’t they bred to kill us? And to open the doors and annihilate whatever remains of humanity?”
Revik shrugged, his eyes calm. “More or less. They were also bred to follow orders. Balidor seems to think they were made extremely malleable in that regard, without any kind of ideological code of their own––”
“So you’re just pushing them around with your light?” My frown deepened. “That’s your insurance that they won’t kill us all?”
“Balidor is, actually.” Revik gave me another smile, kissing the back of my fingers. “We thought it might be better if he directed them.”
“And he’s cool with all this? Balidor?”
Revik clicked softly, shrugging. He switched to my mind.
Yes, he sent. He agreed with me that they might prove useful. It was that or just kill them all. We disposed of the lab itself––that’s why the Basilica had to go.
He paused, shrugging with the same hand.
In addition to a lot of those organic-machine hybrids, he added. They had backups of Eddard, along with a few of the other network pillars.
His mouth turned grim.
They also had clones of Menlim. We disposed of those, too. He paused, making another vague, graceful gesture with one hand. Well… you know.
Well… I know what? I sent, frowning. Don’t tell me you kept one of those, too?
Turning, he gave me another sideways smile, shrugging apologetically.
“Jesus Christ.” Falling back into my seat, I looked up at the ceiling, gripping the armrests and clenching my jaw. “Jesus.”
Revik gripped my hand tighter. When I looked over, still frowning, he tapped his headset, using seer sign language to tell me the channel they were using. Once I’d switched over to the right frequency, his voice rose back in my ears, but through the headset that time.
“Balidor and Cass are taking one of the other helicopters. We’ve got Feigran with Stanley in a third. We thought it would be better to split us up, given I don’t know what they have in terms of anti-aircraft weapons.” Pausing, he squeezed my hand. When I looked up, he was gauging my face more cautiously. “I might need your help once we get airborne.”
I grunted, realizing what he meant.
“That’s not going to be low-casualty, husband,” I said, warning.
“No,” he said, blunt. “It’s not. But we can’t afford for it to be, not right now.” Giving me a grim look, he gripped my hand tighter. “They’re coming after us, wife. That monk, Deifilius, I saw his light while Balidor was talking to him. He wasn’t lying about America.”
His clear eyes met mine, holding a more somber look.
He touched my face with the hand not holding mine.
“It’s end game, wife. Scorched earth. We can’t afford to let them win. We do that, and we lose everything. Worse, we unleash the Dreng on gods-only-know how many other worlds.” Still gauging my face, he added, “You’re in charge, of course… and we haven’t talked about this. But I’ve felt in your light the same thing I feel. We both know what’s coming. We both feel Kali’s vision. We both know what she showed us is true.”
Pausing, he gripped my hand tighter.
“It’s why you didn’t argue about what I did in that cave. Our choices are smaller now. Maybe smaller than they’ve ever been.”
Looking at him, I nodded reluctantly.
I couldn’t argue with anything he’d said.
I still couldn’t quite make myself think about the full implications, though.
Revik gripped my hand tighter––so tight it hurt.
He hadn’t released that grip when he pinged Balidor through the headset, switching frequencies and sending the open channel to me in the same breath.
“Is Cass ready?” he asked the Adhipan leader. “Should I tell him to go up? Or do you want to direct the fleet from your end?”
There was a brief pause.
Then Balidor’s voice rose.
I could hear the relief in his voice, and it hit me again how worried he and Revik had been with Cass and me at the Coliseum without them.
“We’re ready,” he affirmed. “I can direct the fleet from here. It’ll leave the rest of you free to work. You have Allie set up to shield and channel light, right?”
“Right,” Revik said, quirking an eyebrow at me.
I frowned, but didn’t speak.
Revik must have felt something anyway. He hesitated, still studying my face, then turned back towards the front of the helicopter, addressing Balidor through his headset.
“How’s that looking? The link with the clones. Any issues?”
“None so far,” Balidor said. “They’re all connect
ed to one another, via a relatively simple mechanism, light-wise. It makes sense. They never intended them to operate as individuals, I imagine, but more as a unit, directed by the Mythers themselves… or possibly Menlim, if they were created specifically for his use. It’s why their light is so different, I suspect.”
I listened, trying to see what he saw.
Revik glanced at me, then opened his light.
In a series of snapshots, he showed me light maps of the shared aleimic structure between the clones, including the Menlim version. I couldn’t see it via my own light because of the blindness, but now as I looked at it through Revik, I felt myself relax.
I could see where and how Balidor and Revik were both hooked in, and how Balidor was sending impulses and “requests” through that same structure.
It looked like they’d been programmed to be slaves.
“They were,” Balidor affirmed, clearly feeling me looking. “More or less. With an emphasis on the more.”
“What if they figure that out?” I grunted. “You think something cloned after Revik is going to be okay with that?”
Balidor chuckled, but his words came out matter-of-fact. “They don’t have your husband’s light… thank the gods above and below.”
“They have aspects of his light,” I corrected, sharper, still looking at the maps Revik showed me. “Problem-solving. High structure analytical thinking. Oh… and telekinesis,” I added, letting the sarcasm bleed into my voice. “Mustn’t forget that.”
Again, neither Balidor nor Revik felt overly concerned.
“It’ll be all right, sister,” Balidor assured me. “They might look like him, but trust me, these things are not your husband.”
“You should have seen the look on her face,” Revik said to Balidor, laughing. When I elbowed him, he laughed again, as if he couldn’t help himself. “…Gaos. I so wish I’d had an image capture.”
Balidor burst out in a laugh. “Cass, too.”
“Where’s the Menlim clone?” I broke in, still struggling to find the humor in all this. “Is he with you, ‘Dori?”
“No,” Balidor said, his voice slightly more somber. “Illeg’s got that one in another ‘copter. Don’t worry, Allie… really. Your husband knocked him out. He’s also bound and wearing multiple collars. We only wanted to keep that one long enough to question it. We’ll kill it once we’ve exhausted it as a resource. I was hoping to get you, Feigran and Kali’s take on it first. I’d like to run a full scan and interrogation back in the Americas.”
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