It belched out blue and dark green flames while she watched and Chandre gasped, in spite of herself. The fire slammed into a group of humans running away, lighting clothes, hair and skin on fire. The screaming grew louder, shifting into higher screeches of pain.
Chandre watched a woman beating at a male’s clothes with her bare hands, screaming as the lizard belched out more fire at them both, engulfing them in blue-green flames.
Chandre’s fingers dug into the rock until her knuckles whitened as the creature crawled over their burning bodies while they still screamed.
Hitting the call key on the headset, Chandre spoke the instant she felt someone pick up.
“There’s a breach,” she said. “Main corridor on the ops level. Telekinetic. They’re attacking refugees. Some kind of aleimic fire, it’s acting like napalm––”
“Chandre?” Revik’s voice sounded bewildered.
“Use my eyes!” she said, sharp. “Use my eyes, sir! I’m looking straight at it. I can’t send it to you because of the collar––”
“Got it.” His voice was all business that time. “Give us one sec.”
Chandre didn’t bother to tell him she might not have that long.
The dragon crawled closer to her over the ceiling, expelling more of the green-blue flames. That time, the creature caught a group of older humans on fire, bringing more screams as they shoved and pushed and tried to get by. Chandre was crushed deeper into the wall where she stood behind the curve, but the fire was close enough now it was changing the temperature of the cave, making her sweat.
Revik’s voice rose.
“Okay, we’ve got it. Stand by.”
Chandre watched in disbelief as the dragon-like creature vanished.
It didn’t go all at once.
It was more like it was ripped apart by unseen hands.
Its jaws, eyes, tail, head, claws, arms, and body broke apart in disparate chunks, dissolving in a thick cloud of blue-green light. The bleeding clouds of aleimi impacted the walls like iridescent water on either side and on the ceiling above, pooling off in all directions before it slowly began to dissipate.
Chandre found herself panting, her back to the wall, as she stared down the corridor.
Bodies still burned on the rock floor.
Humans continued to stream past her, tears streaking their faces, some with singed clothes and hair, some with blood on their hands or trickling down their foreheads. She saw one teenaged girl who looked like she’d broken her nose.
They continued to scream and cry, moving as fast as they could down the rock corridor. Chandre saw some of them carrying half-burned bodies of their wounded, supporting them in their arms as they tried to move forward.
But the crowd was moving again. The logjam had let up.
Chandre just watched them all pass.
As soon as the traffic in the corridor started to thin, leaving only smoke and the corpses of burning humans and seer bodies on the floor, she took a breath and began to run, once more aiming for the northern passage.
“WE’VE GOT LIVE telekinetics up top,” Revik said, the instant Balidor picked up. “At least a dozen. They’re using shields to obscure their position, but they’re also using handheld sensors to target the tunnels where they see the most people. To do that, they have to be close. Chandre just reported multiple casualties and injuries in the southwest corridor, about two clicks from where you are. We managed to neutralize the aleimic projection they used.”
Revik paused, letting his words sink in.
He already felt a flush of frustration off the Adhipan seer––then anger.
“Gaos, Nenz,” he said, his voice reflecting that frustration. “Gaos. I should have given you a head’s up. I got a report of an air vehicle approaching. Dante was looking into ways to shoot them from above––”
“We’ll need that,” Revik said, cutting him off. “Now. We can’t penetrate their shield to get to them ourselves. If you can’t do it via satellite, you might have to risk sending up a team, with Maygar and Cass as protection. Maygar’s working with the clones to get a better handle on the shields to keep them from attacking in the immediate future, but they’ll break through eventually. They’ll do it through sheer numbers, if nothing else.”
Again pausing to let his words sink in, he let his voice turn grim.
“In addition to networking amongst themselves, they’re using some kind of feeding pool. Something the Dreng are supporting structurally from the Barrier––likely drawing light from humans and seers inside the Shadow Cities. We think they’re using the networked telekinetics, possibly even the Barrier door machines, as the Earth-based component of a kind of psuedo-network to channel light and structure.”
He flashed the images of what he, Maygar and Cass had managed to map so far.
He felt Balidor take them all in, and immediately begin to look at them.
“Got it,” the Adhipan seer said. “Sending to the infiltration team now.”
“Did you tell Wreg to avoid the north entrance?” Revik said. “His team’s heading back that way, right?”
“We diverted them. I called him right after Dalejem told me the story with the micro-flyers.”
“What about the southwest passage?” Revik pressed. “Is anyone working the constructs down there? Jorag? Anale? There are kids roaming around down there, from what I saw through Chandre. Seer and human. A number of them got hurt by the weapon the telekinetics projected. I don’t know about the casualties, but we need someone to attend to the wounded––”
“We’ve got it, brother Sword,” Balidor cut in. “Don’t worry about that level of things, I beg you. I’m sending four seers to deal with the corridor now. Jorag and Raddi are leading them. They’ll deal with the construct issues, too.”
“What about Dante?” Revik’s voice held more of an edge. “We really need these clones knocked out. They’re trying to find the door. If we could hit them with a satellite, that would be fucking ideal. I know you’re trying to save some of these heavier weapons, since the Mythers can probably take them offline once they know we’ve hacked them, but I think we need to make an exception for telekinetics. We can only confuse their scans for so long.”
“I understand, brother––”
“I know. I know you do. But it’s pretty fucking urgent right now.”
There was a pause, then he lowered his voice, infusing it with a deeper meaning.
“We need the time, ‘Dori. And I need to be helping her. I can’t spend all of my time on combat shit. Not now. Not with them so close.”
The silence deepened.
Then Balidor clicked softly.
“Agreed,” he said. “Once you finish closing off the corridors with Chandre, consider yourself officially off combat duty. I’ll contact Maygar and Cass directly after this, so you can assist your wife.”
Pausing, he added more carefully,
“How is she doing? Allie?”
Revik gritted his teeth.
Glancing over his shoulder at where his wife stood in front of a smaller, oval-shaped cave entrance with his blood aunt, Tarsi, along with Kali and Uye, Allie’s biological parents, Revik fought to keep his light calm.
“Not great,” he admitted after a too-long pause. “Tarsi thinks we have a serious light problem. They’re looking for a way around that now.”
“What kind of light problem?”
“Not enough of it. Nowhere near enough of it, in fact.”
Balidor frowned audibly through the line. “What if we found a way to tap everyone in the group, maybe even the army––”
“It won’t be enough,” Revik cut in. “There’s a reason Menlim created these cities. There’s a reason they’re dragging every living light they can find to the vicinity of those doors. The door is partially alive, from what we can tell… but more like a tree than an organic. Or maybe like a chakra, or a black hole… some kind of interface between two states of existence. It responds to light, but fades quickly when the v
oltage is too low.”
Exhaling, he combed his fingers through his hair, gesturing vaguely at no one.
“…Allie, Maygar, Cass, Feigran and the rest of us down here threw everything we had at it, just to see what it would do. The door didn’t open, but it reacted strongly to light. Unfortunately, that reaction also flickered and died in seconds. There’s no way to open and stabilize the door for the numbers we have without a huge influx of light.”
“How huge?”
“Like… huge. I’m not even sure how big, to be honest.”
There was a silence.
In it, Revik could almost see the Adhipan leader frown in thought, although neither of them activated the visuals in their virtual sets.
Baldior exhaled a few seconds later.
“Gaos, Nenz. What about the feeding pools you just told me about? The Dreng’s. Can we tap those? If so, we should have access to the same source as the Dreng, which might include every living being in those Shadow cities. It would have the bonus of draining off some of the power the telekinetics are using. It might buy you some time, in addition to the rest.”
Revik grimaced, resting his hands on his waist.
“Yeah, about that,” he said.
He glanced at his wife a second time.
She was nodding now, to something her biological father, Uye, was saying. Her light green eyes were concentrated, intent on his words, likely reading the images he sent behind it. Turning slightly, she nodded to something Kali said, too. Lily had sidled up to her now, and Allie was rubbing her back absently as she listened.
Looking at the two of them, Revik fought a sharp pain in his chest.
Stepping away from where the five of them stood by the Barrier door, he switched to sub-vocals on his headset.
“Look,” he said, glancing at his wife in spite of himself. “‘Dori… there’s a good chance it will kill them, if we take as much as I think we’ll need.”
“Kill them?” Balidor’s voice sounded briefly blank. “Kill who? Allie and Tarsi?”
“No.” Revik shook his head, clicking under his breath. “No, I mean all of them. Every seer and human in the Shadow Cities. We might have to drain them dry. We might have to actually kill them to open the doors. It’s possible that’s why we saw so few humans and seers passing through in Kali’s vision. The Dreng’s telekinetics might have killed most of the seers and humans making up their feeding pool.”
“What makes you think this?”
“Kali,” Revik said, blunt. “She hasn’t told Allie yet. When I looked at it from my higher structure, it felt like she was right.”
There was a silence on the line.
“Gaos,” Balidor muttered.
“Yeah,” Revik seconded. “Gaos d’ jurekil’a di’lalente guoruem."
“Do you think that’s what the Ancestors intended?” Balidor said, cautious. “For Alyson to drain most of the Earth’s living light to open those doors?”
“I think it doesn’t matter one fuck what the Ancestors intended,” Revik said. “I don’t see my wife intentionally killing a few billion people… do you?”
Balidor hesitated. “She might not have any choice, Nenz. If it’s that or letting every world in creation be consumed by the Dreng, she may have to. They would all die anyway, if the Dreng do what we saw in that vision––”
“Yeah,” Revik cut in, waving a hand. “Yeah. I know.”
He exhaled, once more glancing at his wife’s back, at her long dark hair spilling down over her armored vest and past her shoulders.
Biting his tongue at the reaction that rose in his light, he looked away.
“I know,” he repeated. “I’m hoping she and Tarsi can find some other way. After all, she’s the Bridge. We have the Four. That’s something the Dreng don’t have. Anyway, the Dreng wouldn’t have used the sun in the first place, if they had the ability to do it on their own…”
His words trailed as they left his lips.
Briefly, he clicked out, looking at something higher in his light.
The longer he stared at it, the more he felt that pain in his chest worsen.
“What?” Balidor said, his voice sharper.
“I’ll get back to you,” Revik said, clicking out all at once. “Let me know when Dante has something working on that satellite. I’ll be waiting for Chandre’s call, but I need to go help my wife right now.”
“Nenz––” Balidor began, frustrated.
But Revik was already clicking off his link.
56
WINNING AND LOSING
DANTE STARED DOWN at the lines of code scrolling on the display coming off her handheld, looking for the set of lines she needed.
Cracking satellites was still a new gig for her, relatively-speaking.
Luckily that dreamy seer with the weird green eyes with the violet ring around his irises had done it before. He was working out of central ops now, along with Sasquatch, Crieg, her mom, and a few others.
Gar always handled that kind of thing before, back when she’d first been running comps and walking the dog into organics back at that New York hotel.
She missed Gar. The big seer was a fucking miracle-worker with the comps, especially the organics. She’d never worked with anyone so good.
This guy, Dalejem, or “Jem” as most of the seers called him, was almost as good, but his style was pretty different. She was still figuring out the way he thought. Gar was one of those purely intuitive types, like he felt his way through everything, talking to the machines and getting to know them individually, almost like they were people––or animals maybe.
Dalejem seemed to become a machine in a way.
It was like he touched a machine, and everything in his mind just converted automatically to ones and zeros.
Once inside, Jem turned into the alpha dog.
He crashed into those machines like he’d claimed them as his pack––like they’d better bend the fucking knee or he’d swallow them whole, maybe erase their minds altogether with his alpha machine brain. Once he had them shit-scared, he proceeded to order them around.
It worked, too.
They sure as hell jumped when he said jump.
The organics seemed willing to do anything they could to please Jem, to keep him happy, to await and follow his commands. They listened to him like he was their parent.
Or their god, maybe.
Feeling a presence standing over her, she looked up.
The same seer stood there now, his green eyes narrowing down at her.
“How are you coming with the laser?” He jerked his chin towards her handheld, his expression hard. “Revik needs it… the Sword. He says we’ve got ten minutes maybe, before they break through his team’s shields and start hitting us again.”
Swallowing, she nodded.
“I have the satellite,” she said. “The weapon’s targeting system has an encryption I’ve never seen before. It’s not responding to any of the prompts.”
“Let me see.”
He moved to her side before she could take a breath, linking her display with his headset so he could see what she was seeing.
“It’s a dead-code encryption,” he pronounced after a beat. “That’s why. No organics.” He paused, quirking an eyebrow at her. “I’m surprised you missed this, cousin. Shouldn’t this be your specialty? After all, being a seer does us fuck-all favors with dead tech.”
Dante felt her face grow hot.
Granted, it might have been from the most handsome seer she’d ever seen in her life looking down at her from about two inches away, his muscular body brushing up against hers.
He separated the two of them at once, stepping back.
“Do you need my help?” he said, blunt.
Flushing hotter, she shook her head, biting her lip. “No. Thanks. I got it.”
Looking down at the code, she shook her head, annoyed at herself when she realized it was right there, in front of her. The coding was static. Definitely non-organic. She’d gotten so
used to looking at these fancy, living machines, she’s almost forgotten what the regular ones looked like. Exhaling in annoyance, she started to work on breaking the encryption, using a program she’d designed back when her partner was a slacker son of a coding whiz named Mavis, and she used to work out of an old abandoned building on lower Manhattan.
Vik helped her beef up the program a bit, but the bones of it were the same.
Less than two minutes later, she hit pay-dirt.
“Got it!” she said, triumphant.
The tension in Dalejem’s face relaxed the tiniest bit. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was the closest she’d seen on anyone in this unlit, dust-filled shit-hole in probably two hours.
“All right.” He touched his headset. “I’ve let the Sword know. His team is sending coordinates now. We’re going to need a series of direct hits––”
She waved him off, queuing up the targeting system and opening up portals for multiple targets.
“Way ahead of you, Holmes,” she grunted, still staring at her virtual monitor and opening targeting slots. “Targeting system can accommodate up to one hundred targets at a time. Just give me the numbers.” Glancing up at him, she grinned. “In fact, maybe give me the coordinates of a few of those diggers, while you’re at it. Since we’ve only got one shot at this, maybe we can kill a few birds with one stone.”
Jem glanced down at her, his eyes shrewd, just before he quirked an eyebrow.
“An outstanding suggestion, my young cousin,” he said.
That time the smile curved his perfect lips just the tiniest bit, just enough to start a small flutter in her belly.
Again, the seer looked away, his mouth firming.
“Okay,” he said, businesslike. “First set of coordinates coming at you now––”
HOLLOW, BOOMING EXPLOSIONS rocked the cave walls, forcing Chandre to skid to a halt, forcing her eyes up and scanning the tunnel’s ceiling. She listened as the explosions died off, heart pounding in her chest, her breath coming faster and harder as she waited for more.
No more came.
The shaking and shuddering stopped after what felt like only a handful of seconds.
Sun Page 76
