“Easy, brother,” Maygar said. His eyes held sympathy, maybe more than Jon had ever seen on the Asian seer’s face before. “You’re doing very, very well, brother...don’t panic. They want you to panic, it’s the easiest way in. You are not weak. Don’t believe them. Don’t let anything they say get to you...”
Jon let the other’s light sooth his, and nodded.
Taking a deep breath, he nodded again, letting his light calm.
Slowly, that feeling of presence he’d felt from Cass and Terian faded. It turned gradually into a murmur, then into complete silence. The background of Jon’s mind grew still once more, almost peaceful. Unfortunately, the headache didn’t.
Fade, that is.
“Good, brother,” Maygar soothed. “Very good. You are doing great...just remember to ask for help if they hit you like that again...”
Jon nodded, clasping the other man’s arm in gratitude.
More gunshots went off from above.
When Jon looked up that time, he saw Chinja and Neela firing back, using the rifles they’d worn slung around their bodies on their trip down the elevator shaft. Now that they’d reached the bottom and stashed the rappelling gear, they’d locked the weapons back onto their waists and shoulders with smaller, lighter harnesses that looked organic. Whatever those harnesses consisted of, they had a kind of ball-joint swivel feel to them, in terms of how they moved, which gave them a strangely animal quality as they slid soundlessly and precisely at the lightest touch, almost like an extra limb.
Jorag had nearly reached them.
In all of that time with Maygar, which felt interminable to Jon, barely a handful of seconds must have passed. Now Jax was free-falling down the shaft, too, both of them moving so fast Jon couldn’t help wincing back, fearing they would slam into the metal, beam-laden walls even before they exploded at the bottom.
He realized then, Jorag’s fall had already begun to slow.
A few seconds later, Wreg called out to Chinja and Neela. “Cover me!”
Neela gave a short nod.
Then both of them were firing up the shaft and around Jax, even as Wreg ran out to catch Jorag. He caught hold of the tall seer a few seconds later, staggered, nearly fell, then shoved the taller man roughly to his feet, pushing him in the direction of the alcove even as Wreg looked up once more, reading himself to catch Jax. Maygar moved away from Jon to catch hold of Jorag and begin unbuckling the harness from around his body.
Wreg caught the smaller male with a lot less strain, Jon, noticed, although Jax cried out as soon as Wreg had a hold of him. He was gripping one of his thighs, and the first thing Jon thought was that, fuck, somehow Chinja or Neela had...
“A little faith, brother,” Chinja snorted, giving him a hard look as she stopped firing, pretty much the second Wreg had Jax under the alcove. “...It wasn’t us.”
Jon realized his mistake, and remembered that guards had been firing down the shaft, too. He felt his face flush, although he supposed, as far as Jax was concerned, the difference constituted more of a technicality, anyway. Jon continued to focus on the shield around Revik, biting his lip at the pain in his head when it flared again.
“We need more people on Jon,” Revik said, speaking into the link. “They’ve figured out he’s the main connect for the shield...”
“We’re working on it,” Balidor answered.
“Work faster, goddamn it,” Revik snapped. “Protect him! Pull Tenzi if you have to...I need more people on him. Now.”
He clicked out before anyone on the other end could answer.
Jon gave him a grateful nod when they met gazes briefly, but Revik barely seemed to notice. He motioned Chinja over to keep an eye on Jon, then focused up above the alcove, his still-glowing eyes concentrated. Jon’s head hurt so bad by then he found it difficult to even see Revik clearly in the shadow at the bottom of the shaft, Barrier light or no.
Jon watched as Revik climbed up to the double doors just above the alcove where they stood. Wreg climbed after him within seconds, and Jorag quickly followed, practically vaulting to the top after he’d grasped the rough edge. Jon saw Neela yanking off her own belt after she got off Jax’s harness. The smaller, dark-haired seer now cinched that belt around Jax’s thigh. Jon saw Jax’s face screw up in pain, even as he gripped her shoulder, groaning when she tightened the belt still more. Jon could see the gunshot wound now. He couldn’t tell how serious it was. They got him in the leg, so likely, Revik had been right; they weren’t trying to kill them.
He wondered why.
Given Revik’s approach to their people, and what they’d done to Garensche, it struck Jon as uncharacteristically restrained, especially now.
“We’re back in the hall of mirrors, little brother,” Chinja muttered to him, clearly hearing his thoughts from where she helped protect his shield. “Best not to try and psychoanalyze things too much. I have a feeling they want us to do that.”
Jon turned, looking at her.
Chinja’s light orange eyes remained focused on the level above, and her gun on the elevator shaft above that. Revik and Wreg continued to work over the door, jammed into the edges of the metal beams on one edge of the platform to avoid the bullets that continued to rain down on them from above. The sound struck Jon as deafening now that he wasn’t focused on anything else. The bullets let off sharp reports in the near-silence as they ricocheted off metal, the sound at both ends echoing down the shaft as they set off sparks.
He had no trouble hearing Chinja, though.
He remembered her words back in that castle down in Argentina. She’d been one of the first to notice and point out the illusory nature of the construct there, too.
“Yeah,” he muttered.
He suddenly wondered exactly what they would find behind that door.
“Let us know if that shield starts to go for real,” Chinja told him, her voice slightly more sharp. “We can’t afford to let them take the boss down, like before. We go fully to guns and grenades on your mark...got it?”
Jon nodded, feeling that sickness in his chest worsen once more.
He heard a metallic clanging sound then, a lower, duller thud than the bullets, and looked up to see Revik and Wreg wedging a metal rod into the crack between the two elevator doors, the same type of tool Jon had seen Jax using upstairs. Looking at Jax, Jon saw him more or less on his feet again. His skin looked pale, almost deathly so in the dim light, and Jon could tell without using his light that the other man was in a lot of pain. Even so, Jax tested his weight on the leg with a kind of methodical focus, and after a few more minutes, he let go of Neela.
When Neela continued to stand there, watching him, Jax gave her a nod and a few more hand gestures to tell her he would be all right. He pulled his gun a few seconds later, and Neela gave him an affectionate slap on the shoulder. Still watching him, she rotated her own rifle back around on its harness, yanking it down slightly and forward so that it aimed in front of her once more, but still up the shaft.
Jon looked up as Maygar joined Wreg, Jorag and Revik at the door.
Jon couldn’t help smiling a little, even through the pain in his head, when he saw Maygar shove Revik back from the opening none-too-gently, giving him a hard stare when Revik seemed about to protest. A short, muttered discussion ensued between Maygar and his father, too low for Jon to hear, but Jon got the gist when he saw Maygar replace Revik in the door’s opening, working with Wreg to force open the doors. Revik receded deeper into the protective cavity between the beams, Jorag standing over him with a gun.
The gap in the door was almost two feet wide now.
“That’s our cue,” Chinja said. She patted Jon on the shoulder, then swiveled her own rifle forward once more, firing a few shots up the shaft. “...Get up there, brother. I’ll cover you and the others until you’re on the platform. I’ll be right behind you, so don’t wait if the boss tells you to go through that door. I’m sending Neela and Jax up, too...”
Revik glanced down, snapping his f
ingers at Jon, his face expressionless.
“Listen to her, Jon,” he said through the link. “Up here, now. You and Neela help Jax up first, if you can...”
Gritting his teeth against the pain in his head, Jon only nodded.
Jax went up first, like Revik said, with Neela and Jon pushing him up to the beam from below. Again, Jon could tell it hurt the other man like hell, pretty much whenever he put weight on that leg, but the Chinese-looking seer didn’t make a sound other than breathing a little harder than normal as he climbed up the metal beam to reach the top.
Jon watched as Jorag walked out of the alcove to grab Jax’s arm at the top, helping him up the last piece without taking his gun sights off the shaft above. Once he got Jax on the platform, Jorag released him, retreating back to cover Revik even as he continued to fire up the shaft to cover Jax until he could get to shelter, too. Jax crawled along the platform to reach the others, remaining on his hands and knees until he reached the edge of the second alcove. Once there, he used the wall to pull himself to his feet.
By then, Jon had already started hoisting his own upper body up onto the platform.
He paused once he had most of his weight on the next level, looking back to offer Neela a hand. The female seer had already started to yank herself up to the top of a second beam, though, climbing so fast Jon couldn’t help smiling. She waved off his offered hand with a head-cock of thanks and a smile, right before she vaulted the rest of the way up. Jon followed her, feeling clumsy in comparison, and gave her a grateful nod when her light flooded his, reinforcing his shielding briefly, along with Chinja’s, who still held him from below.
Neela ended up holding out a hand for him at the top.
Jon took it gratefully, along with the increased focus of her light on his.
“Thanks, sister,” he murmured.
She grinned at him.
Jon let her pull him to his feet. When the gunfire started again, Neela pulled him deeper against the wall, even as Maygar and Jorag disappeared through the opening between the two doors. Chinja was following the rest of them up now, her rifle now slung over her shoulder.
“Don’t wait for me, boss...” she sent through the link.
“Understood,” Revik said.
Jax and Jon covered Chinja as she climbed, firing up the shaft with handguns when they felt more seers and humans up there. Jon felt a signal through the headset that Revik was going through the doors with Wreg, even as he felt Revik shut down the communication channels so that they wouldn’t be using the hotel’s network. It would cut them off from Balidor and the others, at least temporarily, but Jon figured Revik must have his reasons. He always did.
Jon knew their signals could still be tapped, but also that it would be less likely when they shared it only between the eight of them.
Well, sixteen of them, assuming the other team would be meeting them on the other side.
Jon continued to fire up the dark tunnel overhead as Neela disappeared through the opening. Towards the end, Jon felt one of his bullets hit. A body started to fall down the shaft. He couldn’t yet see it, but Jon could feel it from above. Before he could react, Jax punched him playfully on the arm, even as Chinja joined him on his other side.
“Nice shooting, brother,” Jax said.
Jax’s face still looked drawn, but Jon found himself smiling back.
“We’re going,” Chinja told both of them, shoving them forward as she pulled her rifle down from where she’d slung it down on her back to free her hands for the climb. “Jax, go in front of brother Jon...I’ll cover from the rear.”
It occurred to Jon that normally a comment like that would have gotten a gleeful, sexually-ridden innuendo from Jax. This time, the Chinese seer remained quiet, merely holding up his gun as he inserted his body in the hole between the doors, gripping Jon’s vest with his free hand.
“Stay with me, brother,” he muttered.
Jon nodded, feeling his nerves ratchet up a few more notches. He glanced back at Chinja, watching her light orange eyes shift around the empty space behind them, even as she continued to push them both forward.
Then Jon fell through the opening. Once he had, he came to a dead stop.
Air got stuck in a hard lump in his throat, right before he let out an involuntary gasp.
Nothing stood beneath his feet.
Nothing.
“Gods!” Chinja let out in an involuntary cry. She grabbed at Jon’s arm, as if to pull him back, but movement to the side jerked Jon’s eyes that way. Standing in a huddled group with the others, Revik held up a warning hand, his irises once more glowing a pale, iridescent green, this time in direct contrast to a dark, star-filled night sky. He appeared to stand only a few yards away, but his feet rested on nothing but the vacuum-like black, decorated with stars so vibrant, to look at any one tumbled Jon into a near state of vertigo.
“Quiet!” Revik said, his voice unforgiving, but lower than a whisper. “We’re being scanned...”
Jon could only stare at him.
Then, he could feel it, too.
For a brief instant, he thought about Loki, wondering what happened to the other group of seers, if they had already been captured on the other side.
Then, without warning...
...the floor beneath his feet, or whatever it was that held Jon in place once he walked through those jacked open elevator doors...abruptly vanished.
20
THE WATCHTOWER
JON HEARD YELLS, all around him.
He fought to keep his body upright as he fell, but by then, he had no idea which direction that even was. Bodies slammed into his in midair, bringing grunts, cries, along with gasps of pain from what sounded like Jax, even in mid-fall.
Jon felt fingers grasp fleetingly at his arms, his clothes, but all he could see around himself was that deep-black of night...and stars, more stars than his eyes could take in.
Revik’s voice remained calm, erupting on the transmitter.
“They’re fucking with us,” he said. “You’re not free-falling. It’s some kind of slide...we’ll be at the bottom in fifty seconds...forty-five...”
“Where are we going, laoban...?” Wreg said, his voice out of breath.
“I don’t know,” Revik said without a pause. “Thirty seconds.” His voice remained calm, but he spoke faster, conveying information in a low stream. “...Pull in your limbs. Get to your feet as fast as you can. Guns out. I’ll try to buy us time. I can feel the rooms below, but not the seers. Loki’s team is there already. Five seconds...”
A bare breath after he finished.
Jon felt a whisper of Loki’s presence, along with Oli’s...
Then he crashed into something heavy and warm, hard enough to know it wasn’t another collision on the slide itself. He felt a pulse of warmth, hard muscles and a hand that wrapped around his arm. In the same set of seconds, Jon recognized Wreg’s presence and realized the other seer must have moved towards him before the hatch opened beneath their feet. Jon felt the lights of other seers around him, holding him protectively, even as he focused back on the shield. He hadn’t released the shield as he fell, although it hadn’t occurred to him to think about that fact through the minute or so of terror.
Jon looked up, and realized he could see again.
The lights were on down here.
Either that, or everything he could see was just another elaborate Barrier illusion.
A long corridor stretched out in front of him, so long, the lines of the walls appeared to meet in the middle at the far end. Wreg pulled Jon to his feet as he regained his own, and Jon realized the seer already had a gun in his hand, that same modified Nambu pistol Revik used to tease him about as an ‘antique.’ Revik claimed he’d been carrying the damned thing since the first World War. Wreg, for his part, told Jon he’d had the gun modified a number of times over the years, so that Revik’s claim wasn’t quite true, but Revik still seemed to find it funny.
Looking at the gun now, Jon found hims
elf thinking it looked deadly enough, given the dark green organics that covered the handle and firing mechanism.
Wreg also told him no one could fire the gun but him. He’d had it DNA-coded under Salinse, and there was something with his fingerprints in the handle, too. Jon tore his eyes off the gun long enough to unholster his own, pulling himself to his feet clumsily as he saw Jorag helping Jax up.
Chinja was already on her feet, too, her rifle pointed down that oddly castle-like corridor. Her curly, reddish-brown hair had fallen half out of the bun she’d had it tied in at the beginning of the op. Somehow, the incongruous texture of her hair and eyes only brought out her Asian features more, emphasizing the height of her cheekbones and her perfectly sculpted mouth.
Maygar, Revik and Neela had their weapons out, too, along with Wreg.
Only then did Jon notice the torches lining the hallway, illuminating the dark stone walls with flickering but very real-looking flames.
Jon gripped the handle of his Glock, thankful he’d put the damned thing in its holster before he fell. He glanced back behind him, just in time to see the gaping, square hole of the chute that deposited them in the corridor get swallowed up by the construct. The hole appeared to melt away into thin air, leaving an identical view of an equally endless corridor lit with medieval-looking, iron-bracketed torches stretching in the opposite direction.
“What the fuck is this?” Wreg said, his eyes narrowing down the same view as Jon’s. He turned, looking at Revik. “What is this, Nenz? Do you know it? This feels deliberate...”
Revik shrugged, his face holding a faint trace of irritation. Still, something about this place bothered him. Jon could feel it, if only at the edges of the other man’s light.
“It’s the tower,” he said, muttering, “...Fucking cute.”
“Tower?” Jon said. “What tower, man? You mean Gossett Tower? This building?”
Allie's War Season Four Page 41
