Allie's War Season Four

by JC Andrijeski

  The first one had been in the basement of the House on the Hill Hotel, in New York. The second had been designed and created in San Francisco. For both of those, Balidor, Vikram, Tarsi and Loki had been the primary architects. In the months where I was out of commission, those prototype designs had been refined, adjusted and recreated, utilizing two different test versions. Then a third, upgraded version had been built inside a secondary cargo hold on the aircraft carrier, utilizing what they’d learned from those preliminary designs.

  Balidor seemed pretty confident now that they’d reached the level of quality that Galaith attained with that first version we’d used to cut Revik off from the Dreng. Which meant the current iteration of the tank had so few leaks, it could simulate death, well enough to kill both sides of a bonded pair by cutting them off from the Barrier proper entirely.

  Balidor speculated that it might even do so more thoroughly than real death did, at least in the initial stages of a true biological passing between realms, where the aleimi tended to linger for days, weeks...sometimes even months following the death of the body itself.

  Initially, Balidor and the other infiltrators wanted their own tank so they could better interrogate and identify agents of Shadow.

  At the time, and especially after Dorje, the fear of leaks, sabotage and further assassination attempts had been high; identifying potential enemy agents still remained a priority in the minds of Wreg and Balidor. Tarsi helped them with elements of the design, as well, with Wreg and Yumi serving as their primary testers, at least when either of them could be pulled. In San Francisco, they’d even used Jon as one of their test subjects, since he had strong ties to both me and Revik, and because he’d been used as a sleeper agent by Menlim already.

  Anyway, we’d learned a long time ago the value of being able to cut people off from the light of the Dreng, even temporarily.

  For the upgraded version on the ship, they actually built four tanks.

  Well, really, they built one giant tank that took up most of the hold and then broke it into four separate and mutually-exclusive constructs. The complex came to be affectionately dubbed ‘T-cubed’ by the seers working on it. As far as I could tell, the name had stuck.

  Of course, Lilai had to be held in one of those constructs.

  The security team put Cass in another.

  Revik was in a third tank.

  Maygar, the fourth.

  So already, our mobile, anti-Dreng constructs were at full capacity.

  There was some discussion about whether to house Jon with Maygar, at least until he’d been detached from Revik and me, but Balidor ruled that having Revik and Maygar in separate constructs from the rest of us should accomplish that goal well enough on its own.

  Balidor also mentioned that Jon’s nascent bond to Wreg should provide him some protection, along with the shielding skills he’d learned since he’d been infiltrated by Shadow’s people the first time. Balidor seemed to think that any risk of Jon being compromised was low anyway, with Cass in our custody. He also told me that he’d talked to Wreg, and that the military infiltrator had promised to keep a close eye on Jon’s light, too.

  Of course, Balidor said that last with a quirk in his lips.

  Anyway, that disconnection between the four of us––meaning me, Revik, Maygar and Jon––had already been scheduled.

  All of us, I think, felt some relief at the idea that we might have a bit more privacy in our lights and thoughts once more. I also felt a not-very-subtle exhale of relief on Wreg when the subject came up in our one and only planning meeting on the aircraft carrier so far.

  Wreg and Jon seemed to be pretty much connected at the hip again, I noticed.

  I’d already heard from others that that hadn’t been the case for most of the time I’d been out of commission, so I was glad to see it. Even on the flight from New York, Wreg sat in the seat next to Jon, his tattooed hand wrapped around Jon’s fingers. Wreg hadn’t done anything else, really, just held Jon’s hand, the one that Terian cut the thumb and forefinger off of, but I saw the relief in the seer’s high-cheekboned face as he slumped in the adjacent padded chair, looking exhausted. If I’d had anything to drink handy, I would have gotten Wreg one, too. As it was, I just watched him sprawl there, unable to help being touched by the utter relief I felt in his light...and not only because of me.

  He’d smiled at Lilai a few times, too, blowing light on her with the others.

  I could tell without asking anyone really, that things got pretty dark for everyone over those few months I’d been out of it. I figured I’d probably hear more about that, too, sooner or later, but for now, I was more than happy to let it lie.

  I wanted them to forget, as much as me.

  We had bigger things to think about, anyway.

  We knew Shadow could probably track us, tank or no. Really, the tanks were more to keep our people’s light free of the Dreng, not the other way around. Meaning, the tanks were meant to protect them––meaning Revik, Maygar, Lilai and even Cass––not so much to protect the rest of us from them, or even from Shadow.

  Anyway, so that’s where Revik was.

  He was in his corner of the tank. The construct they’d dubbed ‘Tank 3.’

  Not surprisingly perhaps, it sat adjacent to both ‘Tank 2,’ where they held Lilai, and ‘Tank 4,’ where they were keeping Maygar. No one wanted him anywhere near Cass. Even if he couldn’t feel her light, it just struck all of us as a really bad idea. The other seers seemed to think Cass would be lucky to live out the month, once Revik had been cleared to leave his own tank.

  I was less sure. But it was too early to think about that, too.

  In any case, when I went to find him, I didn’t knock.

  I didn’t even hit the intercom to let him know I was coming in. In fact, in the course of telling Torek to shut off the surveillance inside of Revik’s portion of the tank, I specifically told him not to tell Revik I was outside, much less that I was planning to come in. Torek, who had the bad luck of working the security console right then, seemed less than thrilled at my request.

  But then, heck, so did Balidor, when I told him I was going to find Revik.

  I mean, I got it.

  On a certain level, going in there without giving Revik any kind of head’s up, much less asking his permission, was really rude. Husband or no, yeah, it was probably a boundary violation, possibly even a big one. Moreover, Jon informed me that it was presumptuous, domineering, borderline obnoxious, possibly bratty and definitely inconsiderate. I was essentially deliberately ignoring a loved one’s professed wants in favor of my own.

  And Jon was right. I get that...I really do.

  But the thing is, I already knew what Revik would say. More to the point, I felt pretty strongly by then that I needed to break through that stubborn wall of his in some way...even if it meant listening to him yell at me for the next hour or so.

  Or even the next few hours.

  Or possibly days.

  Honestly, him yelling at me would have been a relief at that point. And really, maybe, that’s what needed to happen. Maybe I deserved a few months’ worth of venting, anger and frustration given all he’d gone through. I certainly couldn’t blame him.

  I didn’t know what Tarsi had told him by then, but I knew Revik must know I’d interacted with her in some way prior to this...meaning before Revik himself found out I was alive. He must at least suspect that I’d done a number of things, including recruit Anale, Dante and Surli, all without informing or including him...albeit via Tarsi and more from the ‘Bridge’ part of me versus the ‘Allie’ part of me.

  I doubted that either of those things would really wash as an excuse, though.

  Whatever Revik did or didn’t know about how things went down, he probably felt like he’d been the last one to know, and during a time when he’d ostensibly been in charge. I knew that, whatever his rational mind told him, it would bother him that I’d been running a secondary op alongside his. I knew that it would bot
her him that I was alive, that some part of me had deliberately deceived him, intentionally or not, in order to get in the back door.

  The fact that I’d done so to rescue our daughter may or may not have hit him yet.

  The fact that I’d done it from a somewhat ‘less-conscious’ part of my mind and light may or may not fully make sense to that more emotional side of his, either. The fact was, whatever I told myself, some part of me let him believe I was dead. To add insult to injury, that same part of me opted to include Surli in my plan, but not Revik himself. I honestly had no idea if that end of things bothered him, but I knew it couldn’t have helped.

  So yeah, to say I didn’t blame him for being pissed off was an understatement.

  Truthfully, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Revik told me to leave him alone for the next few weeks, if not months.

  I mean, I did try to talk to him as soon as it was safe...as soon as I had Cass knocked out, and I had Lilai in my arms, I tried to contact him. The very second I felt him after that, I tried to tell him I was alive, that I had our daughter, that everything was going to be okay.

  But still, yeah. Going from thinking your wife is dead to hearing her voice in your head, especially after the nonstop headfuck he’d gotten from Shadow in that Tower...

  Did I mention that I really get it?

  I really, really do.

  At that point, I didn’t even know for certain that he was angry per se, or more really confused and hurt and needing time to himself. I didn’t know if he saw all of this as something I’d done from my ‘Bridge’ persona, or if he blamed Allie, meaning me, his wife...meaning the person down here, on the ground. Truthfully, I didn’t know the first thing about what had been going on in his head. I hadn’t known since I first saw him stare at me from the open doors of that blood-filled elevator, a collar around his neck, his eyes only half-focused. I didn’t even know what he’d been thinking while he’d argued with me in that busted up lobby of the Tower. He hadn’t let me anywhere near him...or his light...to find out.

  But now, I figured, the impasse had to end.

  I also figured he wouldn’t be capable of ending it on his own, even apart from being housed in his own private construct inside the tank.

  And I couldn’t handle being separated from his light, not anymore.

  It had been long enough, I figured.

  And these last few months hadn’t exactly been a party for me, either.

  HE LOOKED OVER only once.

  That was when the door first opened.

  Seeing the door open, his narrow mouth curled into a frown, his eyes hardening to glass. Once he recognized me standing there, though, his eyes widened. I saw the clear irises take me in, saw his gaze slide over me and then away, almost as if he’d been burnt.

  The frown vanished, unlike what I’d more than half-expected. He didn’t look angry, or even all that reluctant to talk to me. He didn’t order me out.

  Hell, he didn’t say anything at all to me, not at first.

  When Torek closed the door behind me, swinging the lock shut with a still-audible twist of the wheel, even outside the nearly three-foot-thick door, Revik didn’t even look up. I glanced back just in time to see the light over that door go from dark red back to green. Once it had, I found myself exhaling, right before I looked back at Revik. Only then did I realize he’d activated the transparent pane between his segment of the tank and the one next to it.

  I knew, just by which side of the room it lay on, which tank he was looking in on. He didn’t glance over at me again, not for what must have been a few minutes.

  “Why aren’t you in there?” he said finally.

  He pointed at the window, not looking at me.

  Even so, his voice shocked me briefly into silence. It sounded exactly the way I remembered it. Maybe that one thing was enough, given how little we’d spoken since I had any idea of who, or even where I was. Maybe it was that deeper tone he used, the one that seemed to come out of his chest as much as his throat, his German accent blunting the syllables.

  “I would be in there,” he said, into my silence.

  I followed his eyes and fingers to the other tank, where Lilai lay in a crib.

  I watched her sleep, her tiny fingers gripping the plush arm of a stuffed elephant that Balidor, of all people, had found for her somewhere. She’d been wrapped in footed pajamas that had elephants on them, too, presumably a hand-me-down from one of the humans on board who had small children. Lilai looked peaceful in sleep, even if I could almost see the denser currents of light around her form. I knew if I was even a little more aware of myself, and of the reality of her, just watching her there might have terrified me.

  The fact of being a parent at all might have terrified me.

  Looking back at Revik, I saw his eyes on her, unwavering.

  Without trying to interpret his expression, I stepped deeper into the room. I focused back on our daughter when Revik’s eyes remained on that transparent wall. I couldn’t help swallowing at the tension I could see in her tiny face, even as I made a vague gesture with one hand.

  I felt almost defensive once I’d thought about his question.

  “They wanted me to wait,” I said.

  “Why?” he said simply.

  I shrugged, tearing my eyes off her with an effort. “They wanted me to wait until they’re done checking her light...until they know what Shadow did to her.” I swallowed again, harder that time. “Because I’m her mother, I guess. They say we’re likely...you and I...we’re likely to light bond with her at a deep level, as soon as we spend even a small amount of time together. They say the Dreng eradicated any trace of my light from hers, from before...”

  I trailed, not really wanting to talk about my brief pregnancy, or the untimely C-section.

  Hesitating, I shrugged with my hand, feeling my face warm as I added,

  “...Balidor’s worried Shadow might have done something to her light. Something that could harm her...or even kill her, if we’re not careful. Tarsi seemed to think his fears are warranted. Both of them think Shadow had big plans for her...”

  I trailed again, seeing Revik wince.

  He didn’t answer me, not at first. He didn’t move, either, but continued to lean his body forward, his face close to the thick organic partition. I watched his clear eyes stare at our daughter on the other side, his chin resting on his arms where they folded over the guardrail under the observation window.

  Then he let out a humorless laugh.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  He still didn’t look at me.

  Standing there, I fought with whether or not to approach him. Most of that giddy, half-out-of-my-body thing had finally dissipated from when I’d first come awake in New York. Even so, I couldn’t pretend by any stretch of the imagination that I felt normal. I could feel the distance between us being stretched by that oddness in my light, amplified by it, maybe.

  Even so, I had to fight not to touch him, or to step any nearer.

  I forced myself to just look at him, instead.

  He looked lean. Maybe leaner than I’d ever seen him, without being starved, the way he had been when he first got away from Terian in that mountain prison. Meaning, he looked like he’d spent more time running and in the ring than he had lifting weights; I didn’t see an ounce of excess flesh on him anywhere. He looked like he’d defaulted back to his hyper-practical mode, including with his eating habits...which didn’t really surprise me, either.

  He wasn’t yelling at me, but somehow, this felt worse.

  I continued to watch him, looking periodically at Lilai through that transparent window only to look back at him. We just stood there like that, not talking, for what felt like a long time.

  When he finally straightened, I jumped a little.

  I watched him hit through a sequence of keys on the edge of the window. He did it soundlessly, almost in rote, barely seeming to pay attention to what he did.

  Slowly, like paint dripping down from the
top and sides of the screen, the image of our daughter in that dimly-lit, greenish-tinted room disappeared. I felt myself flinch a little when it happened, a kind of sickness in my light when I could no longer see her, even though I knew she was still there.

  I felt something similar touch Revik’s light as well, but he hid it from me quickly...so quickly that I wondered if I’d felt it at all. In any case, I couldn’t feel it on him now, and Lilai was gone, too.

  Now it was just us.

  He faced me. I couldn’t help noticing he didn’t look at me, though.

  “Do you want to explain?” he said.

  He made a vague motion with one hand, his other one still gripping the guardrail under the observation window, which now just looked like regular wall. Still avoiding my face and eyes, he motioned delicately again.

  Again, I found myself following his hand and fingers with my eyes.

  Pain coiled through my light, even from that simple thing.

  “Allie?” he said. “Are you going to explain? Or not?”

  I swallowed. It felt like something hard had suddenly gotten stuck in my throat. Shaking my head, I clicked softly, barely conscious I did either thing. I wasn’t sure what I meant by either thing, either, other than maybe a subconscious part of me that didn’t want to explain at all, but wanted just to skip this part, and what I suspected his reaction might be, so I could just slide my arms around him instead. I looked at him again, in dark pants and a white shirt, and I just wanted to touch him. I had to fight to keep that want out of my light, to keep it away from where he might feel it...and probably misunderstand it.

  Or maybe understand it better than I wanted to admit to myself.

  “Allie?” he said.

  I nodded that time, barely noticing I did that, either.

  Clearing my throat, I nodded again.

  “There isn’t a lot to explain, Revik,” I began, taking another breath. “I mean...you know what they did to me.”

  He nodded, but that look in his eyes didn’t waver. “Tarsi?” he said.

  He didn’t bother to say more. The question was pretty self-evident.