For a second, all of the confusion faded from the tall seer’s eyes. He stared at Jon like a predator, like a wolf staring at a rival. The look chilled Jon somehow, even as it snapped him back to the present.
“Don’t,” was all Revik said.
Jon nodded.
Swallowing, he looked away, gripping the handle of his main weapon, an organically modified Glock 21. Jon looked down at it, fingering the molded triggers, including the switch on the outer barrel that gave it fully automatic capability. It looked and felt a lot like the Glock 18 Revik had originally given him, back in London. That had been Jon’s first gun––to fire, much less to own. That seemed like a million years ago now, too.
On this op, Revik advised him against bringing a rifle while they’d been arming up. Revik stated bluntly he wanted Jon to have his hands free and be more mobile and adaptable than a rifle would easily allow. Others must have gotten the same advice, because Jon could see now that only about two-thirds of them carried the heavier weapons, and most of those were in Loki’s group, not Revik’s. Revik was rifle-free, too, as was Maygar. Wreg carried one, but it was smaller than what Neela and Chinja wore attached to harnesses, and he wore it wrapped around his back by the strap, more like a bow or a quiver.
Loki didn’t carry one of the big guns, either, but even he had a larger weapon, that same completely custom, short-barreled and weirdly seer-looking rifle that he kept strapped to his back whenever he went on military ops.
Jon knew he was distracting himself, thinking about weapons, but that was okay, too.
Harboring delusions about Allie, especially where Revik could feel them, would only get them all killed.
“Fun house, remember?” Jorag muttered, on Jon’s other side.
Jon looked up at him, and found the dark-haired seer frowning under his blue eyes.
“They’ll show us things in here,” Jorag added, softer. “Things none of us want to see. You need to be ready for that, brother. Boss knows...he’s already expecting it.”
Swallowing, Jon nodded to that, too.
That pain in his gut only worsened, though.
When he glanced over at the rest of the group, he found Revik’s eyes on his again, now holding a machine-like coldness that Jon found even more disconcerting than the anger he’d seen there, only a few seconds before.
“Are you ready?” Revik said, glancing around at all of them.
The other seers nodded, but Jon knew he couldn’t be the only one to feel their uncertainty. Jon didn’t feel fear on the others, not exactly. Instead, a lower-level tension lived there, vibrating their light, their very skin like a live wire against nerve endings.
Wreg, as per usual, was the one to break that moment.
The Chinese-looking seer motioned towards Garensche a second time. As he did, the muscular seer stepped deliberately in front of Revik, without being told to do so. The clear intention behind the act didn’t escape Jon’s notice, or seemingly that of the others, either. That impression grew stronger when Neela stood to Revik’s left across from Jon, who still stood at his right. Maygar remained slightly behind the two of them, with Jorag on Jon’s other side. Jax stepped closer to the front, by Garensche and Chinja.
Clearly, Wreg saw their job––meaning that of the other seers, and probably Jon’s, too––as being primarily to keep Revik more or less alive long enough to complete his goal. Loki and Illeg stayed slightly back, but Jon saw their eyes on the surrounding buildings and street, and knew they saw their own job in roughly the same terms.
For the first time, it really sank in for Jon that he and Wreg probably wouldn’t come out of this alive, either.
Looking at the muscular, broad-shouldered seer’s back, he could only feel regret. Regret that he hadn’t said more to him, even as recently as in that high-end office in the hotel, or before they got to Revik and Allie’s suite on the sixtieth floor. Regret that he hadn’t been able to pull his shit together in San Francisco. Jon couldn’t find the words for what he wanted to think about him, or towards him, maybe to say to him before all of this really ended.
He’d waited too long with Wreg.
He’d waited too long with Allie, too.
“After you, my brother,” Wreg said to Garensche, a pale humor in his voice.
Something about how he said it dispelled the barest layer of that tension coursing through the rest of them. It wasn’t enough to relax the group, but it was enough to bring a few exhales that came closest to laughs.
Garensche himself rolled his eyes, clicking at Wreg in mock disapproval.
He did as Wreg indicated, though, walking forward without hesitation.
Jon watched Garensche walk towards the glass doors, realizing again just how large the seer was. Garensche had always reminded Jon of a pirate, with his full mouth and swarthy complexion and barrel-chested body. The diagonal scar he’d gotten in a Nazi work camp during World War II only added to the impression, as well as the way he dressed, which had even more of that nomadic, ex-Mongolian flair than how Wreg sometimes dressed.
Wreg told Jon once that they speculated that Garensche had more than a little Wvercian blood in him, and that therefore, the giant seer constituted the only known evidence that the two variants of seer could actually reproduce––a joke that made Gar scowl and cracked up everyone else who’d been in the bar that night. Obviously, it was an old joke, though, because the giant seer shrugged it off, making some crack about Wreg and his ‘human names.’
Whether part-Wvercian or not, Garensche was tall. In fact, he was the only seer in the group who stood taller than even Revik. Even Jorag was about a half-inch or so shorter than Revik, and Wreg, while being larger than the Elaerian overall, wasn’t as tall as Revik, either. Garensche, on the other hand, probably had three inches on him, which put him in the neighborhood of seven feet. As Jon looked up at the other man’s massive shoulders and back, Garensche grabbed the handle of the door with one meaty hand.
Despite the test with the plastic bottle, Jon saw the relief in the giant’s hazel eyes when he glanced back at the rest of them.
“Looks okay,” he said, grinning.
He opened the door.
A flash of light made Jon cry out in shock.
He wasn’t the only one.
He heard Chinja yell out, and Jax. Jon jumped violently back with the rest of them, nearly hitting the cement sidewalk, only stopping when Loki grabbed his arm from behind, pulling him up and back to safety. A sickening squelch of sound hit Jon’s ears, what sounded like sizzling fat, somewhere between a knife and throwing a hunk of raw meat on a grill.
Bending his knees, Jon dropped to a combat crouch despite Loki’s hand gripping his arm. He blinked, shocked by the sound, even more than by the sharp dagger of flame that seemed to come out of the door itself...and the accompanying white light.
By the time Jon could see again, his mind had already started putting it together––the sharp light, those horrific sounds, the thick inhales from the seers around him, a hard stab of pain from Wreg. Before he’d looked down, Jon could smell it, too.
Something about the immediacy of that smell hit at his mind in a more visceral way than any of the visuals or sounds, including the plumes of black smoke that rose in an already-dissipating cloud, or the sight that greeted his eyes once he could see again.
“Gods,” he heard Jorag gasp next to him.
The tall seer clung to Jon’s arm on the other side of Loki. Jon hadn’t even noticed, even though Jorag’s grip bordered on painful.
Jon couldn’t look away from the sight of Garensche. Some part of him felt sick, maybe even sick enough to throw up...but even that reaction felt far away already.
Fragments continued to assemble, turning into a coherent picture, one he didn’t really need detailed but that his mind detailed anyway. A second OBE had ignited as soon as Garensche opened the door. That secondary defense cut Garensche cleanly in half, slicing his head, neck and a good chunk of his chest and upper body off from the rest of him, and lea
ving the good-natured, pirate-like, mastermind with organic machines and notoriously perverted Garensche in two, smoking, oddly-bloodless pieces on either side of the sparking and buzzing membrane.
Jon could only stare down at what remained of the seer he’d known for almost four years, almost as long as he’d known Revik himself. He stared at that smoking, meat-smelling pile of flesh and bone, paralyzed.
None of the others moved at first, either.
Jon still stood there when a curse came from Revik’s lips, in a language Jon had never heard from him or any of the others before. Fury burst out of Revik’s light. That fury brightened, turning colder and hotter in different threads, seemingly at the same time. The combination felt irrational, maybe even completely unhinged, but Jon couldn’t disagree with any of what he felt. The other seers standing around him only seemed to mirror those feelings, too.
Then a flush of hard light left the shield around Revik.
That time, it was pure fire.
A scream broke from Revik’s lips as the light left him. Not quite a scream––too much anger lived there for it to be a real scream, at least how Jon normally thought of screams.
Jon felt it like a slam in his chest.
Not pain, but something in him just...left. A drain so severe his knees buckled, even though the light traveled through him, not from him, or even from any of the others. He felt Jorag stagger next to him, even as he gripped Jon’s arm, as if to keep both of them standing. Wreg let out a snarling kind of yell, too, and suddenly, Jon felt all of them around him, furious, but strangely focused. He didn’t feel grief, not then.
It was pure, unbridled fury.
The gap between Revik’s light leaving him and the outcome must have been short, but it felt long. Silence lived there, where Jon could only hear the loud, hollow thuds of his heart, the rush of air as Revik’s light pushed it out of the way, the gasps of their breaths...
Then the organic wall exploded.
The panes didn’t crack; they fragmented, turning to powder.
Somewhere, second and third transformers exploded in a shower of sparks. Dim, in the background, Jon knew he should stand back, that he should get out of the way, or at least shield his face, but he only stood there, staring up at that shadowed wall, feeling the construct reel and contort around him, feeling the flare of presences behind the Barrier as those inside the Manhattan construct reacted to the influx of light. For the first time, Jon grew consciously aware of what must be SCARB agents, NYPD, seers working for FEMA and the other governmental bodies ostensibly in charge of keeping order in the city...
Around them, the organic panes continued to shatter...falling straight down like water in a single sheet to explode onto the pavement just outside of those double doors.
Jon watched it fall, watched the metal twist and crack, almost in awe.
He felt a series of sharp blasts of fear ripple the edges of his light. That time, the fear didn’t come from the group of seers clustered around the Sword.
Even so, Jon couldn’t bring himself to feel vindicated by that fear, not yet.
All Jon felt was the rage in Revik’s light, along with a focus that grew unnervingly sharp as the seconds passed, inexorably slow as Garensche’s death grew permanent to all of them. Jon felt Revik’s rage pound the light of the other seers who stood with him outside the building, but it didn’t weaken them; if anything, it sharpened their own light, until the shield around Revik stood diamond hard, seemingly impenetrable.
Without fanfare, the entire building, all seventy-five stories, went dark.
It didn’t occur to Jon until a few more seconds passed that Revik had done that, too.
Jon felt Jorag’s fingers tighten on his arm again, felt wonder from him and the other seers, even as Jon continued to focus on maintaining the shield around Revik. He noticed that Wreg, Neela, Loki, Illeg, Torek, Chinja and Jax had stepped back from Revik, too, literally and figuratively giving the Elaerian space. Not out of fear of him...it felt more like they instinctively gave him the space to work. Revik worked even now, Jon realized, even as the Dreng’s construct rippled around them in a stuttered, disjointed attempt to recover.
Revik’s mind didn’t swerve from that unnerving focus; if anything that sharpness grew more pronounced as he trained it on aspects of the building and the surrounding Barrier space that Jon himself couldn’t see.
A bleak attempt at humor managed to insert itself into Jon’s mind.
Well, that was something.
They’d managed to snap Revik out of his fugue state.
19
PAINT IT BLACK
JON FOUND HIMSELF following warily behind Revik, a gun gripped now in both hands.
Revik walked straight through the now-shattered wall, entering the lobby of the Tower, his irises the only light Jon could see. The Elaerian barely seemed to notice the rest of them now, unless he needed something.
Even as he thought it, Jon saw him click his fingers, motioning sharply to get them to step back from a camera embedded in one wall, right before it exploded, showering sparks and a flaring, yellow-white fire. That fire erupted quickly then died down.
Jon flinched with the others, but didn’t lower the gun. His main focus remained on the shield, even as he broke into a trot to keep up with Revik.
Guns went off a few times, mostly from Wreg and Jorag, who’d taken forward positions and picked off the few guards who’d appeared on the lobby-level floor.
The elevators were all down of course.
Jon wondered about the cameras...then figured Revik knew what he was doing as he continued to melt and rip them apart as he passed. Maybe they had some kind of battery inside, or a separate power source Revik hadn’t yet figured out how to disable.
Jon heard a series of sub-vocals in his headset, but most of it didn’t pertain to him, and more created a kind of background noise as he watched Jorag drop another guard who came out of door marked ‘STAIRS’ behind the security station. That time, Jorag used a knife, maybe because he was too pissed off to want to shoot him. Either way, it was over quick, and the tall seer left the body by the desk that stood between two long banks of elevators.
Jon found himself listening to the back and forth in the headset again.
“...Security teams are deploying, sir,” Vikram sent. “I see mostly organic rifles, but a number of grenade launchers and at least one flame unit, probably napalm or one of the chemical variants. At least twenty, sir, coming up the stairs...”
“...Looks like you disabled the gas lines,” Balidor added through the same channel. “We can see a lot more now that the main grid is down. That Barrier snapshot you sent us just got converted over...we have two of the engineers from Arc going over it now...”
“...At least two armored vehicles approaching from the northern part of the city,” Torek said in his English accent, from a different part of the hotel. “Deklan and four of the other infiltrators here tell me they recognize the base as mostly SCARB, non-New York, so World Court branch, moved here in the last few months. He said to expect anti-aircraft. Tanks, maybe...”
Jon began filtering words out once more, catching fragments of other communications between the seers on the ground and those back at the hotel, but keeping his mind focused on Revik’s. As a result, he fell a half-step behind some of the back and forth. He was still wondering if they’d take the stairs, when Revik glanced at Wreg.
“You feel it?” he said, blunt.
Wreg nodded. “Twenty more,” he said. “They’ve got teams at six different levels below ground now,” he added. “Tick-tock, boss. They might be supplying an exit for the others.”
Revik nodded, once.
Jon felt glimmers of what they meant. He saw seers and humans in combat uniforms, filling several stairwells and the landings of the floors Wreg had pointed out from behind the shield. More than what Balidor had indicated from their preliminary reports. Jon felt Revik flash the same snapshot to Balidor, along with a brief impulse to the
group.
I’m taking out the mains. There are structural supports down there. Watch the floor...
They’ll be impassable... Jax pointed out.
That’s the idea, Revik sent, giving him a sharp look. His eyes shifted to Loki, then to Wreg. Two teams...Loki, keep the split. I want Wreg with me.
Jon noticed Wreg didn’t need to be told.
The Chinese-looking seer already started jogging towards the nearest bank of elevators, whistling and gesturing sharply for Chinja and Neela to join him as he broke into a run to reach the row of silver-colored doors. Loki took Illeg and Torek to another set of elevator doors, two down from the one where Wreg and Chinja worked. Jon overheard them talking inside their own, small construct that time, but only in passing.
Start on number four, Wreg said to Chinja, indicating towards one of the elevators. Any with cars stuck on the upper floors...
Shouldn’t we go for those with lower-level cars? Illeg sent. She didn’t slow her strides to Loki’s side. She grabbed hold of the opposite door from what Loki held, jamming her fingers into the crack between doors as he managed to separate them. ...What if they get the power up again? Easy way to knock us back out, to come down on our heads...
Wreg shook his head, even though the other seer couldn’t see him. We don’t have time to fuck with getting around a car. We’re going all the way to the bottom, sister...
Understood, she sent at once. We’ll do the same.
She hadn’t stopped working in all that time, Jon noticed.
Jon listened to them with part of his mind, watching as Jax joined Wreg with some kind of crow-bar type tool, even as Torek did the same with Loki and Illeg. Jax jammed that same tool into the opening they created while Neela, Pagoj and Raddi covered both teams with rifles. Jon saw Neela’s eyes had gone as hard as glass now, too, and felt the anger on her, along with pulses of Garensche’s light. The two of them had been friends, Jon knew.
He swallowed, fighting back the revulsion he felt around already thinking of the giant seer in the past tense.
Jon continued to hold his own Glock up, covering Revik from as many sides as he could with Jorag while the others worked.
Allie's War Season Four Page 39
