Allie's War Season Two

by JC Andrijeski

“I am decrepit now?” he said.

  I laughed a little, in spite of myself.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m a nervous thinker.”

  “Are you sure you are all right with this?” he said.

  “Am I all right with you risking your life for an experiment? Especially since it might not even work?” I said. “No. I told you I wasn’t.”

  “I don’t mean with me...I mean in general.” He met my gaze. “Are you all right with being unfaithful to your mate, Allie?”

  I felt my jaw tighten a little. I knew he said it that way on purpose, to try and flush a reaction out of me. I was tired of the infiltrator cat and mouse though.

  I shrugged, sliding my thumb under the organic collar.

  “Any chance I can get rid of this, first?” I asked him.

  He didn’t move right away. I realized, looking at him, that he might have his own feelings about this. I had no idea what those might be, though. Being who he was, he was about a million times better at compartmentalizing his emotional stuff than I was, so maybe to him this really was just another op exercise. In that case, helping me with my little ‘problem’ would just be part of his sacred duty under the Adhipan. The thought made me smile a little.

  When I glanced at him again, I saw his eyes on mine.

  For a moment, he looked like he might speak.

  Something touched his expression then, right before he motioned for me to turn around.

  Pulling my weight off the stone wall, I did as his fingers indicated, pulling my hair over my shoulder with one hand to expose the back of my neck. I didn’t move as he leaned over me, activating the retinal scanner holding the two ends of the collar together. Since he’d been the one to put it there, his retinal imprint also caused the collar’s tendrils to retract from around my spine...right before the lock opened with a click.

  He pulled it off me, gently, caressing the skin there with his fingers. I watched him toss it to the floor, not far from the bag of clothes I’d lugged in a few hours earlier.

  I smiled at him when I turned. He didn’t move away, but remained close to where I sat, his face only a few inches from mine. I saw his eyes flicker once more to my mouth.

  “So what do you want to do now?” I said.

  The gray eyes narrowed, holding a faint emotion now. Or maybe I could just feel him more, with the collar gone.

  “Can you really shield us?” he said. “This will be a test, Allie. A test to see if you can do it...I could help you at first, and then let go, if I find no holes.”

  “So more than once then?”

  His expression tightened.

  I realized suddenly that I was needling him too much. He didn’t like it.

  “Sorry,” I said. I touched his arm. “I’m nervous. That’s all it is.”

  He looked away, as if second-thinking the whole thing. I saw conflict on his eyes, and realized I could feel his light again, despite his shields. It had crept back around me once the collar was removed, only I’d barely noticed because of who he was.

  “Do you still want to do it?” I said.

  “Yes.” His eyes remained hard. “Can you shield without my help?”

  “I guess we’ll know pretty quick if I can’t,” I said. I hesitated again, still studying his face. “Are you sure you want it to be you, ‘Dori?” I said. “I could ask someone else. Someone a bit more...expendable.”

  There was a pause.

  Then I felt pain waft off him, along with something I never thought I’d feel on him...at least not aimed at me. Truthfully, I never thought I’d feel it from anyone. No one who wasn’t Revik, that is. It took me another few seconds to feel the answer that came with it.

  I swallowed, feeling his light flicker once more around mine.

  “So not someone else,” I said, quieter. “Is that it?”

  “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t, Esteemed Bridge.”

  “You’d appreciate it?” I said.

  But his pain worsened, sliding deeper into my light.

  “Stop playing games, Allie. Make up your mind.”

  I could only stare at him after he said it. As I did, I realized I’d been kidding myself, thinking this would be clean. No way would it be clean, not for either of us.

  In the same instant, I realized I wanted him.

  He looked at me directly then, and his pain worsened. “Allie...”

  “I love him, ‘Dori,” I said. “You must know that.”

  His expression didn’t change, but I felt his light retract slightly.

  “I do...yes.”

  When he didn’t say anything more, I nodded, feeling my throat close.

  I knew he was waiting...just like I knew I was stalling. I knew enough about seers by then to know he expected me to initiate, that he wouldn’t do anything until I had. That would be true even if I wasn’t the Bridge, and therefore requiring some kind of deference for that whole thing.

  Revik told me once that he’d had to learn how to be the aggressor with humans, because he’d often found the females expected it.

  But I couldn’t think about him right then, not the old Revik, or I really would lose it.

  I watched Balidor stare at my face, waiting for me.

  As I did, I realized why I was really hesitating, what my real problem was. I recognized the emotion that lived behind it, too. It wasn’t fear, although it probably should have been.

  It was guilt.

  10

  REGRET

  REVIK STARED AT the three-dimensional map, letting his eyes blur as he slid most of his mind into the Barrier.

  He was having trouble focusing.

  He tried to push past it, to force his mind back onto the task at hand.

  A few minutes later, he realized he’d been staring at the same section of map for minutes...and without absorbing any of it.

  They’d been working for months on this job. It was the primary reason he’d been delayed, going to find Allie. That, and he’d wanted to wait...well, for his own reasons. Things had been difficult those first few months after D.C. He’d known, of course, that they must have been difficult for her, as well. But he was realizing now he might have underestimated just how much.

  He’d wanted her to see him whole, when he saw her next. Physically. Mentally. He’d been worried how she might react to him, especially after the thing in D.C. He didn’t want to complicate things by being confused himself.

  Still, he had waited too long.

  Pushing the thought away, he focused his mind back on the job.

  He couldn’t afford to put off the Registry hit, either. His team had found a window; after which time, the records facilities would be implementing a number of major upgrades to their security. Likely, in fact, due to him and his people, at least in part...and the sharp increase in seer-related terrorism since the attack on D.C. He knew the worms were still in a panic that their carefully built system of control seemed to be breaking down.

  He didn’t know what they’d expected.

  They’d stolen the fucking Bridge. Of course that would mean war.

  Still, after checking out the changes they intended to put in place, Revik realized there was a risk. He couldn’t afford to turn down an opportunity to move directly against the Seer Containment and Regulations Bureau, or SCARB. He couldn’t afford to wait a few years, either, while they found another way in. As a target, the Registry formed the keystone of everything that would come after.

  He needed it.

  The bureau itself, created in the wake of World War II, had been designed to enforce the agreements between states on the “legitimate uses” of seers and their powers following the war. Originally, of course, SCARB focused on their use as biological weapons. Later it expanded in jurisdiction to the broader “connections between the Sarhacienne race and the long-term interests of the race of human beings,” which could encompass just about anything the human powers wished it to...and often did.

  Currently, SCARB controlled not only international
law around the use of seers, but also the enforcement of the Human Protection Act, including the image ban, the ban on realtime recordings for live subjects, the registration of young seers at birth, the legal Clan affiliations and movement and travel passes for seers, as well as implantation of all seers required by their third year.

  They also ran the Sweeps, the military arm of Human Protection Services, or HPA. The Sweeps conducted all of the official “bagging and tagging” operations that occurred globally, including the mainland United States, most nation states in Europe, as well as Africa and all but a few countries in South and Latin America.

  Hitting SCARB was hitting at the mainline of institutionalized human control over seers.

  It was the biggest op Revik had attempted so far, since being put in charge of the rebel group that had previously been led by Salinse.

  He’d inherited some assets inside the bureau, which was how they knew about the planned changes in security protocols. Salinse had people he’d planted there, gotten jobs masquerading as humans. Or, more commonly, as Sweeps, whose ranks consisted otherwise of mostly traitor seers who worked for SCARB to capture renegade and unregistered seers. Some of Salinse’s people had been there close to forty years. But only one was placed highly enough to be of much use to Revik in terms of actual strategy.

  For that, he mostly relied on the memories he was slowly getting back from his time with the Rooks.

  He knew he couldn’t bring them down all at once. Galaith, his former boss with the Rooks, had a hand in creating SCARB himself...as a means of controlling the burgeoning racial tensions between humans and seers. Unfortunately, that also meant its agencies had not been poorly organized.

  Revik even understood Galaith’s logic at the time. In the wake of World War II, hysteria about seers reached an all-time high...even higher than it had been after World War I and Syrimne. Humans were able to overlook their fear of seers when they needed them to fight their wars for them...but once the immediate threat from Europe and the East had faded, their paranoia blew up to monstrous proportions. Seers were being murdered daily, their settlements massacred. Illegal trade exploded in most parts of Asia, and seer tech flooded the black markets, especially organic weaponry. The biotech associated with those products began culling even more seers...and not only the ones who were already dead.

  SCARB, initially anyway, served as a means of calming all of that down.

  By providing structure to human prejudice, Galaith had been able to moderate some of its worst excesses and give humans back the illusion of security they needed so desperately. For many years, SCARB provided a means of redress on both sides of the racial divide. Although it weighted the law heavily against seers, that had its political purposes too, in giving seers back some semblance of the moral high ground, at least in the eyes of the general public.

  More than once, that alone had proved decisive in protecting the remnants of the original seer clans...especially during their negotiations with some of the more unapologetic racists among the humans.

  But SCARB had begun to be a problem.

  Corrupted from too many years of increasing bureaucracy and a more and more elaborate system of kickbacks from “friendly” countries, it had become so heavily entwined in illegal sight slavery and seer tech manufacture as to be little more than a front company for the biggest international traders. Sweeps no longer took unregistered seers back to Asia to be “rehabilitated.” They implanted them instead, and sold them at auction.

  Or worse, threw them into work camps, or into the bio-pens for tech.

  Adding a price tag to what they brought in of course increased the incentive to find “unregistered” seers wherever they looked. It also increased the incentive to raid the seer-only settlements in Asia to grab seers who were supposedly exempt from SCARB’s jurisdiction, due to their agreement to live outside of human society.

  Technically, those seers were untouchable in a legal sense. However, in recent years, SCARB had taken to declaring some of these settlements “terrorist camps” as an excuse to comb them for inventory for their sight auctions, many of which occurred virtually now.

  Hitting SCARB was foundational work for everything that came after. The system of seer registration had to go before they could even begin to look at challenging some of the military powers behind seer trade itself. All ability to track seers through GPS and intel implants needed to be disabled, and the birth registry system and records needed to be wiped clean.

  In order to do that, Revik would need to hit the Sweeps, too, and hard...hard enough to cripple them. But before he did that, he and his people needed to go after the Registry itself, located near SCARB headquarters in Brazil. Throw their operation into turmoil and hit at them before they could recover, using their own damned work camp inventory as foot soldiers wherever he could. The implants tied seers to the grid at most of the modern camps, especially those filled with trained adults.

  Turn off the signal, and the walls came down...literally.

  Revik and his team could reach thousands from the Barrier to warn them in advance. By the time the Sweeps discovered what happened, it would be too late. The Rebellion’s ranks would have swollen to about five times what they were now.

  More importantly, at least half of the major camps would be empty.

  He keyed in another set of instructions, telling the computer nonverbally that he wanted a comparison done of all Sweep strongholds in reaction distance to the Registry offices themselves.

  While he was waiting however, his mind wandered back to the other.

  Pain seeped into his skin as it did, tightening his shoulders.

  For a long moment, he hung over the flat console, his palms on either edge. He forced himself to breathe, to move past it.

  The feeling didn’t ebb.

  It had been worse lately. He couldn’t find a specific cause, but it worried him...more than he was fully prepared to admit, even to himself.

  She’d said she would sever them.

  His jaw clenched. He clicked into virtual before the thought fully formed.

  “Anything? On finding Vash? The rest of the Council?”

  A brief silence met him on the other end.

  “Hello?” he growled. “Am I talking to myself?”

  “Sir,” Wreg said. “We’ve got a hit...” Feeling Revik’s reaction, he cut in quickly. “...It’s not the Bridge, sir. It’s Feigran.”

  “Feigran?” Revik slid into the Barrier, scanning. “Feigran can wait,” he said. “Why aren’t you looking for my wife?”

  Even so, he took in the set of imprints Wreg referenced, comparing them to his stored knowledge of the other seer.

  “Where is that?” He squinted, a reflex, even though he was looking with his aleimi, not his eyes. “Is that Seertown?” he said.

  “Yes, brother. The Old House on the Hill...”

  Revik focused on the Barrier layout inside the image.

  “When was this?” he said. “The time signature feels off.”

  “That’s the thing, brother Syrimne,” he said. “It was three weeks ago...”

  “And now?” he said. “Why didn’t you show me the imprint from now?”

  “Here’s a view of it...you’ll see why, laoban.”

  Revik took it in, confused at first as to what he was seeing.

  “There’s nothing there,” he said. “Did you track him? See where he went?”

  “He never left,” Wreg said, his voice grim. “There’s a construct there now. We found the trace entirely by accident, sir...I had Nikka looking for those artifacts you wanted. We thought maybe some of the old texts had been stored in the House on the Hill, that it might have been vandalized after the bombings...”

  “Someone built a construct around the Old Mansion?”

  “Yes, laoban. A new one. And Feigran’s imprints seem to have vanished. So we can only assume—”

  “Someone has him.” Revik straightened up from the console, feeling a reaction in his light, stro
ng enough that he heard it in his voice. “Allie.”

  “It’s a definite possibility, sir. We would never have found the construct at all if we hadn’t found the trace imprints of Feigran. The logic is sound. It is one of the last places we would have looked for the Bridge and her people, given that we weren’t looking in Asia at all at this point...based on your instructions, sir. The construct itself is high quality. Those fucking Adhipan assholes could have made it, Nenz...”

  Revik felt his light reacting, coiling around his form. He realized he was having a sexual reaction too, and muted it reflexively.

  “When can we go?” he said.

  “Anytime you want, brother Syrimne.”

  “How about now?” he said.

  He was still staring at the Old Mansion inside the Barrier image Wreg had lent him.

  He wanted to go there himself. He weighed jumping right then, scouting the location from the Barrier before he threw clothes and supplies together to travel, then decided he could do it in transit. Staring with his mind’s eye, he could just make out the edges of the construct ending at the lawn of the gardens that led down the hill.

  She might be in there. Even now, she might be in there.

  He felt Wreg smile, even as he fought another ribbon of pain in his light, strong enough to make his hands hurt.

  “Why aren’t you getting the plane ready?” Revik said.

  “Doing it now,” Wreg said.

  “One hour. Two at most.”

  “I’ll tell the others.”

  REVIK SLUMPED INTO a seat at the back of the plane. The Antonov An-32 had been retrofitted with organics for protected jumps in flight, so he immediately used the keypad to set up recording functions while he fit the headset around his two ears.

  It meant wearing electrodes, which didn’t really agree with his Elaerian light body...but he didn’t want to miss a damned thing. His seer memory, despite being nearly photographic, worked only for things he noticed.

  He wanted to record the details he didn’t notice, as well.

  The pain had worsened in the past two hours while they were fueling the plane and mapping a flightpath.