“Gods,” Revik said then, still looking at Jon. He said it almost like an exhale, like he’d been holding his breath until then. “...I expected this. I fucking expected it...”
“I know,” Jon said. “We all did. That doesn’t make it any easier. Don’t blame yourself, man. Seriously. I felt the same way, and I wasn’t married to her. Just don’t open your light to it, okay? It’s not her. They’re fucking with your head, Revik...remember that. It’s not her. It will never be her. She’s not coming back...”
Revik nodded, his jaw still hard.
“You okay, man?” Jon said.
Another pause. Then Revik nodded a second time, rubbing his face with a hand.
Jon couldn’t help noticing that Revik’s hand shook while he did it, or that he still wore their father’s ring. Even so, he could feel Revik coming back. He could feel the Elaerian’s light reconfiguring, even before he could see it in Revik’s angular face.
The clear irises sharpened more, until they once more belonged to the man Jon knew. They clicked back into more of a military-like sheen a few seconds later, almost business-like, even as glimmers of anger at himself remained fleetingly in the background. Revik seemed to have his balance back, though. He gripped Jon’s arm, tightly for a beat, then looked at Wreg, without glancing again at the woman in white in front of them.
“Hit me next time,” he said to Wreg, his voice holding a thin humor. “Really hard,” he added, pointing to the back of his head with a smile. “Don’t hold back, brother.”
“Sure thing, laoban,” Wreg said, quirking an eyebrow at him.
Jon felt the Chinese seer’s relief though, even as Wreg sent a grateful smile in his direction, along with a denser pulse of heat.
Fuck, I love you, he sent. Stay with him, okay little brother?
Jon nodded, feeling his face flush. That time, the distraction was welcome.
It grounded him somehow, too.
Taking a breath, Jon looked back at the image of Allie, which had also come to a stop in the middle of the stone floor. That time, when Jon looked at those sharp, green eyes, he found himself seeing the lie behind it, or at least the half-truth. It did feel like her...he hadn’t been imagining that. There was something of his adopted sister there...somehow...but it felt fake to him now, as well...like a memory of her, rather than the real thing.
A carbon copy.
Maybe a reflection, even.
They’d dressed her in that same white outfit Jon remembered from the Forbidden City in Beijing. Jon couldn’t help thinking the clothes had to be for Revik’s benefit, as well.
Her ghost wore the same thin, almost-sheer top Jon remembered from that day, hanging from a collar-like strap of cloth that cinched her throat, just above where the real sight-restraint collar had once sat. The top left her arms completely bare, along with most of her shoulders and her back...assuming the back of this outfit had been designed the same as the clothing Allie wore in that reception hall of the Lao Hu.
Her midriff showed from just below her breasts down to the bottom of her belly, and the skirt she wore below that had wide slats cut in the sides, slats that revealed bare skin all the way up to a belt-like loop of gold cloth that hung low on her hips.
Jon couldn’t help thinking that she looked more naked than if she’d actually been naked.
The only difference in how they presented her here versus Voi Pai’s little show involved the style of her hair. From what Jon knew of Revik, that difference was likely for his benefit, too. Rather than being up in the complicated set of braids and loose strands that Jon remembered from China, Allie’s dark, heavily-curled hair hung straight down her back, only a few, crimped waves in front keeping it off her high-cheekboned face.
Jon glanced at Revik again, in spite of himself.
The other man had let go of his arm.
Revik’s hand now rested on the gun on his right holster instead, and he faced forward once more, his clear eyes narrowed, hard as glass. Jon considered touching him again, trying to assess his state of mind that way, but when Revik glanced at him, his light appeared to be locked behind a shield so dense that Jon almost flinched. Revik had erected the second shield inside the one Jon held for him, and behind it, he looked intimidatingly cold, as if every part of his light had been stripped of any feeling whatsoever.
“You all right, man?” Jon said.
Revik nodded, once. Hesitating, he said, “Stay with me, Jon.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jon confirmed. “What do we need to do here? Do we just walk past that thing? Talk to it?”
Jon kept the pronouns deliberately in the non-person realm.
Revik seemed to hear him on that, too. That cold look faded slightly from his eyes, replaced by a more strategic-looking glance in the apparition’s direction. He seemed about to answer Jon, then Jon saw his jaw firm again, even as he seemed to make up his mind.
His expression turned back to stone right before he turned.
He spoke as much to the corridor as he did the apparition in white who stood about twenty feet away from them still.
“So what next, Cass?” Revik said. “Is this thing supposed to lead us to you? Or do we play hide and fucking seek now?”
The woman in white smiled at them, faintly. Again, Jon felt the expression like a kind of dagger to his heart. He shoved the feeling aside, feeling his own jaw harden alongside Revik’s. Revik’s words had reminded him of something else, too.
Cass was behind this. Cass was showing them a walking, talking, blow-up doll of Allie.
Allie, who had been her best friend.
The anger that rose in Jon’s light made it difficult to breathe.
He spoke almost before he knew he meant to.
“Classy, Cassandra,” he called out, hearing the anger in his voice as he raised it. “Really...high class move, I got to say. Bravo. And really interesting how easy you forgot just how much Allie did for you over the years. You’re forgetting, though...I was there for all that, Cassie. I remember. I was there when Allie begged mom and dad to let you crash at our house...and that weekend your uncle and dad showed up and threatened Allie. I was there when Allie let you move into her place after college, too...oh, and didn’t even charge you rent. I was there when she got you jobs. I was there when she got threatened at knife-point...again...when that drummer asshole you dated came looking for you. I was there when she got in fights at school to defend you when that dipshit, Jack, started spreading rumors about you...”
Jon’s voice turned harder, even as he raised it more.
“You’re going to dress up her corpse now, Cass?” he said. “That’s the thanks she gets, for being your friend all of those years, putting up with all of your drunken, stupid bullshit with men and whatever else? It’s not enough to kill her? You get to use Allie’s corpse to screw with the guy who saved our lives in Russia? To screw with me? Really, Cass? Really?”
Jon’s voice rose more, filled with fury now, emotion that seemed to want to pour out of him, that stemmed from someplace deeper in his light.
“Allie was the only person who did anything for you back then...remember, Cassie?” Jon said, practically shouting. “She did more than your mom. A hell of a lot more than your dad...much less the rest of that fucked up, miserable family of yours. Allie loved you. She loved you even back when you gave her absolutely no reason to love her...when you stole from her and talked shit about her and thought she didn’t know it. She saw past that bullshit image...how badass you pretended to be. Allie defended you even when everyone else told her you were shit...a back-stabbing, female-hating, boyfriend-stealer who would turn on her. A liar. Allie used to tell me they just didn’t know you, that they weren’t seeing you clearly. Well...maybe they were seeing you. Maybe Allie was the one who missed a few things...”
Jon felt his throat tighten more, even as he swallowed.
“The thing is, she made me believe it, Cass,” Jon said, gripping the gun tighter in his hands. “She made Revik belie
ve it...and Balidor. She made you family...she really did. She would have done anything for you. And she made your life better, Cass. You can pretend all you want that she didn’t...but she did. I know she did. I was there...”
Jon swallowed again, right before his voice got louder.
“And now, here you are. Badass Cassie again, right? The queen in charge? And all you can do is whine and stomp your feet that Allie didn’t do more. She didn’t magically make your life better than hers. So I guess she just had to die, right, Cass? And now the badass is a full-on murderer. But really you’re just a pawn. A duped, brainwashed puppet for some soulless fuck, just because he patted you on the head and told you how ‘special’ you were. It’s pathetic, Cass, really. And you know what? She’s still better than you. If Allie was alive, she’d still be trying to save your ungrateful, self-centered ass. But you killed her, Cass, and none of the rest of us give a damn anymore. The rest of us aren’t as good as her, either...”
Laughter broke into his tirade.
The sound echoed down the hall, dying against the mold and moss-covered stones.
Cass’s laughter, Jon realized.
Even so, something in Jon’s words seemed to reach the other seers in their group. When Jon glanced at them, reddening slightly when he realized how long he’d been shouting down that corridor, he met smiles from a few of them, and tears in the eyes of Neela and Jax. Jorag thumped him on the back, right before he squeezed Revik’s shoulder with a muscular hand.
Revik was looking at him too, Jon realized. That coldness had faded slightly from his clear eyes, even as he caught hold of Jon’s arm again, squeezing it briefly, but warmly.
Thank you, brother, he sent. Thank you for reminding me.
Jon caught his hand, squeezing his fingers back.
Still looking at him, Revik nodded, once.
He released Jon then, and began walking towards that figure in white.
The rest of the seers followed.
All of them had their guns out again, Jon noticed. All of them looked angry, too...but more than that, determined. Even Jax’s face looked more set than it had when Jon last saw it. Jax also seemed to be limping less as he followed after Revik.
As they approached the fake Allie, Jon felt the hair on the back of his neck and his arms rise a second time, though. Those green eyes focused on Revik the longest, but Jon happened to be looking right at her when they swiveled to meet his, too. The apparition smiled as she looked at him, and Jon grew aware once more of that shimmer of not-real that stood inside the light he felt coming from her eyes...from her very skin.
“Hey there, little brother,” she said. She grinned at him faintly, wearing that uniquely off-kilter grin he’d only ever seen on Allie. “Long time, no see.”
Jon was about to retort an answer, when Revik shocked him.
Barely changing the pace of his long legs, the Elaerian swung his arm, moving so fast, Jon could only flinch. He saw a few of the other seers flinch, too...but not before Revik punched the Allie-lookalike right in the face, hard.
Fake or not, his hand didn’t go through her, like Jon half-expected.
Instead, fake Allie reeled, moving as if she’d really been hit, and Revik’s hand acted like it had encountered resistance. Revik swiveled on his feet, stepping out of the way in rote, almost as if he expected to be hit back. His eyes narrowed when the fake Allie just stood there, half bent over as she touched her face. Revik watched her, his hands up but relaxed, like he’d suddenly been thrust into the ring.
The image of Allie straightened. Blood trickled down from her nostrils. She wiped it with one pale hand. As she regained her full height, Jon saw the chain necklace around her neck, with the silver ring looped into the low part of the chain. Something about seeing a replica of Revik’s ring hanging there, just that one detail, made Jon want to hit the thing, too.
“So it’s not a complete hologram,” Jorag muttered.
“No, brother,” Revik said, glancing back at the other man. He held up his hand, where his knuckles looked red. “...It’s not.”
“So what is it?” Wreg said, frowning. He stepped around it, too, his eyes thoughtful.
Neela stepped closer, too, when she saw Wreg looking at it, her mouth puckered in a frown.
“Some kind of machine?” Jorag ventured.
“I don’t think so,” Wreg said, shaking his head and clicking. “Maybe. Maybe more like the OBE...presenced energy, that is. Like AI in energetic form...”
Jon looked around at all of them, understanding suddenly. They were using this thing to get a sense of their surroundings, to test the construct maybe.
The apparition looked only at Revik.
Revik didn’t answer any of them, or lower his hands.
“Something you want to talk to me about, husband?” the fake Allie said to him.
Jon couldn’t help noticing that the thing’s voice still sounded maddeningly, frustratingly like Allie’s. The light, jade-green eyes followed Revik as he circled her, her mouth still touched with that faint grin.
“...Or is this just your way of flirting?” she added, quirking an eyebrow.
Revik smiled, but no humor lived in that look. The coldness in his eyes didn’t waver. “It’s close, Cass...really close. But that flirting comment was all wrong.” He glanced back at Wreg then, then around at the rest of them. “Any luck tracing the signal?” he said. “Should I hit it again? Or did that not do anything?”
“It didn’t, really,” Wreg admitted, his hands on his hips.
“You could try anyway,” Neela said, that wry humor in her voice once more. “Or let one of us do it...like me.”
“Husband,” the fake Allie began, clicking softly. “What is this? What are you doing?”
Revik didn’t bother answering her that time. Lowering his hands somewhat, he looked around at the rest of them. “So what do you think?” he said. “Do we just ignore it?”
“We could,” Jorag said, still frowning, his expression puzzled as he stared at it.
“What is wrong, husband?” the apparition asked Revik. “Are you angry at me?”
Revik’s jaw hardened that time. He stared at the thing. “Now you aren’t even trying,” he said. “What are you? You’re not just a hologram. You’re not even just Cass.”
“I’m your wife. Don’t you recognize me?”
“My wife?” Revik retorted. For a second he looked like he might say more, or maybe hit her again. Stopping himself, he clicked softly instead, the sound disgusted.
“Did you feel any blood, laoban?” Jax said, also staring at the Allie-looking thing.
“No,” Revik said, without looking away from it. “It was solid. More like hitting a heavy bag. Some sense of contour, but not enough.”
The fake Allie continued to ignore the rest of them, looking only at Revik.
“Revik,” she said, softer, her voice cajoling. “Come on, baby. I thought we were past all of this distrust stuff now. Didn’t we talk about this...?”
Jon couldn’t help noticing Revik visibly flinch at the endearment.
“Maybe we should just ignore it,” Jon said. “It’s creepy, whatever it is.”
Wreg snorted a short laugh. “That’s the fucking truth.”
Revik continued to stare at the thing, though. Jon strongly suspected the tone of voice the apparition used when it last spoke to him bothered Revik, and while Jon didn’t recognize that tone personally, he could imagine it might be one Allie could have used with her husband alone, and likely in their more intimate moments. Jon found himself looking between the two of them again, wondering if he should intervene, pull Revik out of this.
“I’m fine, Jon,” Revik said.
“You sure, man? I think we should just go.”
“I’m sure. I just want to know what the fuck we’re dealing with...”
“This thing isn’t going to tell us that,” Wreg said, glancing at Jon, as if noticing his reaction to Revik. “He’s right, laoban. This fucking machine
is wasting our time.”
The fake Allie clicked at all of them, her eyes faintly incredulous. “Machine? Seriously, Wreg? Jesus, why are you listening to them, Revik? I’m telling you, I’m fine. Quit with the domestic violence thing, okay? Just talk to me, baby...”
Revik flinched that time, too.
That harder look in his eyes didn’t change, however.
“Domestic violence?” Revik stared at her, his voice openly contemptuous. “I think you’re mixing my wife up with someone else. She loved to fight...”
Something about the way he said it made Jon grin.
When he glanced behind Revik’s back to Wreg, he saw a sharper gleam in the Chinese seer’s eyes, as well, along with a faint smile.
“...She especially liked to fight me,” Revik added, his voice colder.
The fake Allie folded her arms, giving him a coy smile. “Are you sure that was about the fighting, lover?”
Revik’s jaw tightened, pushing out a muscle in his cheek. He looked about to answer, then didn’t, but Jon saw the anger that rose briefly to his eyes, flashing hotter right before a coil of pain left the other man’s light, strong enough that Jon stepped back, swallowing. He fought the impulse, but ended up glancing at Wreg anyway, feeling his face grow hotter when he saw the look of discomfort on the Chinese seer’s face.
“Uh-huh,” the not-Allie said softly, clicking again. “Okay.”
“Don’t listen to her, laoban,” Wreg advised. “She’s just a cheap copy. They’re trying to fuck with your head, is all.”
The apparition’s eyes slanted, glancing coldly at Wreg. Her irises turned a sharper green before they shifted back to stare at Revik.
“Well?” she said. “Are you really not going to talk to me, husband?”
“I’ll talk,” Revik said. “But I want you to hit me, first. Try anyway.”
His voice came out quieter that time, deathly quiet.
He stepped gracefully to one side as Jon watched, circling in front of her again, his steps casual, but holding that catlike grace Jon remembered from the few times they’d been in the ring together. The fake Allie’s eyes followed his movements, but she didn’t try to mimic them, only turning her head as Revik stepped around her in a slow arc, his eyes measuring her face. A kind of impatience lived in the way Revik moved while he fought, Jon thought. It was as if he didn’t want to fuck around with preliminaries, but just wanted to get down to it, as soon as possible.
Allie's War Season Four Page 44
