Allie's War Season Four

by JC Andrijeski

  Lily looked between us, her clear, green-rimmed eyes sharp. “Who?” she demanded of Revik, her mouth set in a frown. “Who is complex?”

  “Your brother,” he told her casually, going back to coloring.

  She looked up at me, as if to verify his words, and I laughed.

  “Don’t look at me,” I said. “Do you really think your father is lying to you?”

  “He said bunnies can be blue!” Lily said at once. “I looked it up, just now. I showed him, but he says he doesn’t care. Bunnies are brown...or black...or white. Not blue!” she emphasized, looking disapprovingly at Revik’s very blue rabbit.

  He glanced up, smiling at me, and rolling his eyes.

  “She is definitely your daughter,” he said.

  I clicked back, laughing in spite of myself.

  “You think so, huh?” I looked at Lily then, smiling at her. “You father doesn’t like rules, baby,” I told her. “You may not win this one.”

  She gave me a surprised look at that, then stared at Revik’s downturned dark head, as if contemplating this new information, or maybe incorporating it into the information she already had about him. Her hair had gotten longer, I noticed, looking at it from behind. As it grew longer, the curl got pulled out of it by the weight, leaving it looking even more like Revik’s. She looked older to me again, too.

  I frowned at the thought, looking at the length of her legs. Balidor said there wasn’t anything they could do about whatever Menlim had done to speed her maturation process.

  It bothered me, though. It bothered me a lot.

  When I looked up next, she was staring at me again, a sharper look in her clear eyes. Her round face reminded me strangely of Revik’s too, more from what I remembered of him as a kid when looking at Barrier images, but enough to take my breath at times. Her light was all her own, though. It had flavors that felt familiar to me, bare glimpses that I couldn’t react to with anything but emotion, but those things weren’t either mine or Revik’s.

  They were hers.

  She watched me look at her, that serious expression still on her face, even as she continued to lean against Revik’s shoulder and side.

  That only reminded me of that first day, too, though.

  She had just stared at us as Revik and I walked in here that first time. We’d stopped within a few feet of the door, and just stood there as the security team rolled it shut behind us.

  I guess we’d been letting her get a look at us, although we didn’t talk about that, either.

  Lily hadn’t seemed to blink at all during those first few seconds.

  She’d been standing in her crib, staring at us with eyes that looked a lot older to me than the body to which they were attached. I remembered wondering, even then, just how old she was at that point, in seer years. She’d looked around three or four in human years to me then, but I had no idea how that would translate...or even what it meant, really, for her, since we knew Shadow’s medical techs had been aging her artificially.

  Also, I still didn’t really get seer aging, truthfully. I still tended to relate it to and compare it to human ages, more often than the reverse.

  I also remember wondering if she was still her chronological age mentally. Given what Menlim had done to her, would her emotional growth lag behind that of her body? The thought was slightly disturbing. At that first meeting with me and Revik here in the tank, Lily wouldn’t have even been born yet until the following month.

  Well, if she’d been allowed to gestate and age normally.

  “Nine,” Revik had told me softly at the time, squeezing my hand again. “Balidor tells me she’s been aged to roughly the equivalent of an nine-year-old Sarhacienne. Which he believes should be more or less accurate, at least physically, which includes brain development. They’ve done something to speed up her experiential development, too, probably via enhanced VR...but also by speeding up the development and activation of her light structures. Either way, the age should be about right, since she’s been exposed to very few humans at this point. So even if she’s Elaerian, and able to change her development cycle, she still wouldn’t be mimicking human development, but Sark.”

  I’d only nodded, unable to tear my eyes off those clear, glass-like irises.

  I’d noted the thin band of light green around the edges, even then, so perfectly symmetrical it almost looked fake, like something out of the artificial comp-generated art of virtual.

  Mostly, though, I’d been staring at eyes that looked a hell of a lot like Revik’s.

  I remember seeing a small frown on her small mouth, too. That, coupled with the intent, very Revik-like stare in those clear eyes, had rendered me more or less speechless.

  It had both touched me and made me nervous, if only because it hit me yet again that no amount of “cootchie-cootchie-coo” was going to win Lily over, unlike some human kids at her age. Revik had already warned me that with seer kids, you needed to approach them more like an individual––if still a child––even at this age.

  Even as I’d thought it, I could see her weighing me with her eyes.

  I also felt her remembering me through her light.

  I was still distant from her, though, which hurt; a wall still stood tangibly between us. She remembered me both ways, too, as the person who knocked out Cass, the one they’d probably been brainwashing her about for as long as she’d been alive...and also as a light she carried somewhere in that far more distant memory of me, the one she might not even be conscious of. The one I so desperately wanted her to remember.

  The one I’d needed her to remember.

  Somewhere in all of that, I’d also realized I was holding my breath...and my light. Once I noticed, I’d forced myself to let both of those things go.

  Within seconds, her own shockingly bright light had hit mine in a giant wave. It made me gasp aloud, my hand rising to my chest, even as I fought to make sense of everything I felt, the distance and nearness and the complications in those high, structured strands...

  “Gods,” Revik had said from next to me.

  I’d almost forgotten he was there, but after he spoke, I’d felt his light wrapped in hers, too. I saw her looking at him, then, too, viewing him almost with fear, but knowing him somehow, too. I noticed that with Revik, her fears were both more nebulous and more concrete, related to pictures and feelings I couldn’t make sense of, impressions she must have received from Menlim, or maybe from Menlim, Cass and Terian collectively.

  Revik had squeezed my hand again, then tugged at me, walking deeper into the room.

  I’d followed him, no longer reluctant, but still worried at some of the more intense currents I could feel in her light. I could see her watching us warily, that caution and fear still in her eyes. I’d tried to open to her more, to give her more of me to feel.

  Somewhere in that, I’d felt recognition spark in her.

  Beyond that horrible apartment in New York, beyond anything she might have been brainwashed by Menlim or Cass to feel about me, I’d felt her remember me. I felt a thread of her light slide into a thread of mine, like it belonged there, like it had always been there.

  Then she’d burst into tears.

  It felt like someone had just punched me right in the middle of my chest.

  I practically ran to her then, and I’d had her in my arms before I consciously made the decision. Hoisting her up out of that low-walled crib with the fuzzy white and blue sheets covered in smiling whales, I brought her straight to my chest, enveloping her in my light as much as my arms.

  I’d barely noticed I was crying until Revik was with us, and I’d looked up to see tears in his eyes, too. Lilai had wrapped her arms around my neck and continued to cry and then Revik had his arms around both of us, and his light poured into hers, and into mine, until all three of us had more or less cried ourselves out.

  Even after I’d finished, my chest still hurt.

  I think it hurt for a few days. Weeks, maybe.

  After that, we just sat with
her on the couch––the same fuzzy green thing that I sat on now, that still reminded me more of a cartoon couch than a real one, like something from a Dr. Seuss book. That first day, I’d just sat there with my arms wrapped around her, stroking her hair, which was long, soft and slightly curled like mine, but more of Revik’s color, meaning closer to pitch black than dark brown. Revik sat next to us on the couch, too, and for a long time, I could barely think a coherent word as our lights wrapped deeper into one another.

  I’d also understood, somewhere in that, why Balidor had been cautious about letting me and Revik see her. Within five of those first ten or so minutes, I already knew there was no way in hell I was going to let her stay alone in this green cell, without us, no matter how many plush toys they gave her or fuzzy whale-covered blankets or green, mossy couches that looked like they came out of Alice’s Wonderland.

  Next to me, Revik had chuckled at my grumpy protectiveness, even then.

  I remembered seeing him wipe more tears from his eyes with the back of his hand, too, but really, the main thing I saw on his face was joy, a kind of wordless, awe-filled joy I’d never seen on him before. Impulsively––and yeah, a little reluctantly, too––I’d eventually handed Lily to him directly, plopping her unceremoniously on his lap.

  Instead of curling his arms around her at once the way I had, he just sat there that first time with her, looking at her face. He’d been smiling, but after a few seconds, I realized he was also letting her come to him.

  She had, too.

  It hadn’t even taken her all that long, really.

  Hoisting herself up into a sitting position and staring up at his face with those serious, clear-as-glass eyes, she’d looked at him for what seemed like a long time without blinking.

  Then my vision blurred again when she crawled up to his chest, pulling herself up by gripping his shirt so she could stand on his legs, and look him directly in the face.

  He hadn’t moved. He just sat there, looking back at her, unsmiling that time. His light had been more open than I think I’d ever felt it.

  I’d continued to watch as Lilai reached out to touch his face with her hands. She’d gripped his hair then, too, then his jaw, where he still had some five o’clock shadow scruff from not shaving that morning, then his arm.

  I hadn’t really realized that none of us had spoken until she broke the silence, still looking somberly into his eyes.

  “Are you my other daddy?” she’d said.

  Her voice had been as serious as her eyes.

  I remember feeling that pain in my chest again from her words, hot enough to cut off my breath, and woven into a flood of protectiveness that felt a lot more like anger. Realizing she must have heard that term from Terian and Cass didn’t help. Even then, they’d been grooming her to accept Revik as a parent, maybe alongside Terian.

  But clearly, I was never meant to be in the picture.

  Revik had glanced at me at the time, as if realizing the same thing.

  To Lily herself, he never flinched, though.

  Still holding her gaze, he’d made a “more or less” gesture with his hand, instead. When she frowned, he’d answered her question aloud, his voice just as serious.

  “I’m your only father,” he said simply.

  Pausing, as if unsure if he should go on, he’d gauged her face. For a few long-feeling seconds, both of us had watched her think about his words.

  Lily had looked at me then, still clinging to the front of Revik’s shirt.

  Her eyes turned briefly wary again as she looked over my face, but I saw the conflict there that time, and felt a denser grief in her, too. I also felt that grief and conflict strengthening, even just from our sitting so close to one another for such a short time...that connection we all shared through that multicolored thread woven between and into the highest portion of all three of our lights. I’d felt love in that thread, even then.

  I felt it from her, and it poured out of me with such intensity I saw her blink a little, right before that wariness in her eyes faded again.

  Tears rose to those giant eyes a second time. She’d reached out to me with her free hand, clutching air, asking to be held again.

  And yeah, I think some part of me died in those few seconds.

  Even now, remembering that moment––the moment I realized it might really be all right, that Lily wouldn’t hate me forever because of Cass and Menlim and Terian––a bare glimpse of that feeling could still fill me with so much, I honestly didn’t know how to express it.

  Watching her scold Revik again about his coloring choices, pausing to clutch at his shirt as she leaned on his shoulder to point accusingly at his drawing, I wiped my face again, grinning at the two of them like an idiot.

  I didn’t really listen to their words, but I felt their light interact, and I watched Revik’s eyes as he argued back with her, his clear irises serious as he looked up at her face, his expression infiltrator-still as he listened to her. Even now, when she tried to push him around, all I saw in his face as he looked at her was love. Really, given everything I could feel on his light right then, I wondered how she could fight with him at all.

  Watching the two of them, I laughed aloud a second time, wiping my eyes in some embarrassment when they both stopped their back and forth long enough to give me puzzled looks. Even then, I didn’t really stop smiling.

  In here, everything else had a tendency to just go away.

  In here, the rest of it just didn’t matter that much to me.

  I knew that wouldn’t last––that it couldn’t last––but for now, it was enough.

  WE LANDED SOMEWHERE south of what had been Arugum Bay, which Jon informed me used to be a fairly big surfing spot back in the day, a few miles north of us, at the point.

  Now, it looked pretty deserted.

  Moreover, we saw a lot of wreckage from tsunamis, too, or maybe just weird weather like typhoons or whatever else. Balidor told me they’d suffered a fair bit of “beach creep” over most of Sri Lanka anyway, as was true of just about every island and coastal area inhabited by humans that didn’t have a containment field in place.

  What might have been the remnants of a resort hotel sat on a slight rise above the beach itself, not far from where we first landed. The beach look strangely steep in parts, like a lot of the coastal areas we’d come across lately, and yeah, it was pretty much covered with fallen trees and what looked like human trash and building materials of various kinds.

  Balidor told me he’d picked this area in part because the southeastern edges of Sri Lanka had mostly been evacuated. He claimed that had been more due to erratic weather and human pirates stealing women and children and supplies than it did the human-killing virus itself.

  Either way, it was pretty eerie standing there, on what looked like a worn-down concrete slab dotted with fallen trees. I could see clothes wrapped into some of the branches and tree trunks, along with other trash, and what looked like an old advertisement sign had been worn down to a muted gray color, with only the faint outline of a woman drinking some kind of soft drink showing through the wear from seawater and air.

  While we waited, the only sounds I heard came from seabirds and crashing surf.

  I still couldn’t get over how quiet the world was these days. I might have grumbled, once upon a time, about how hard it was to get away from human-generated sound. With it gone, the Earth’s stillness seeped over everything, disorienting me, even beyond the ambient noises of animals and birds and running water and wind and whatever else.

  Of course, tsunamis were loud. So were hurricanes...and earthquakes.

  We’d had a fair few of those, too.

  In San Francisco, though, no matter where I was, I could always hear something related to human civilization. Machines. Horns honking. Airplanes flying overhead. News pundits on outdoor feeds. Sports games. Children laughing. Dogs barking. Music. Breaking glass.

  Here, there was none of that.

  I couldn’t remember the last t
ime I’d heard a plane in the sky, at least that wasn’t one of ours. We never ran into any other ships, either, apart from when we got close to one of the Shadow cities, and then we avoided them as best we could.

  The only time I ever really saw strangers anymore was during field ops.

  It felt eerie to be here, on the shore of Sri Lanka, watching our motorboat bob in the waves with only Jorag in it, managing it against the currents to keep it ready in case we needed to leave in a hurry. I watched dark clouds where they clustered over the ocean and found myself hoping like hell that an earthquake didn’t hit while we were out here.

  Revik grunted a little, from next to me.

  I glanced at him, smiling, but found myself staring at his face more closely than usual.

  He was nervous.

  I could feel his nerves. He’d been acting strange since we’d set up this meeting, and while I was trying really hard not to connect it to the whole Dalejem thing, it wasn’t easy. For one thing, Revik was trying a little too hard to hide his nerves from me, and to pretend everything was perfectly normal. I felt myself shielding from him more than usual because of it, which didn’t exactly help.

  I fought to focus back on why we were here...and how I could keep this short.

  I knew Jon, Wreg and a few others were already in a second boat, heading further north to find Loki and his team and signal them when it was safe to fly the Chinook in to the carrier. They weren’t bringing Dante along, Jon told me, right before they left. Apparently some of the tech geeks, and even Wreg and Jon themselves, wanted to surprise her, by bringing her mom to her.

  I knew that wasn’t all of it, though.

  In truth, they didn’t want to risk her.

  Dante was increasingly becoming the real tech chief, even if Vikram held that role in name, mostly due to his age and his background with the Adhipan. After losing Garensche, they were all feeling protective of their teenaged whiz kid. Some of that was personal, too. In fact, whatever their military reasoning, I knew a lot of it was personal.

  Either way, I knew they should have Loki’s team back on the carrier, along with Dante’s mother, long before we got back there. Which meant I’d miss the reunion itself, which was kind of a bummer, although I knew we’d hear all about it when we got back.