It has.
Yes, I say, unnecessarily.
Galaith smiles, but I feel no humor there. Well, perhaps this will give you more reason to forgive your mate for what I showed you before...
An image appears out of the dark.
I see Vash and Revik sitting on a sandy floor, inside what looks like a high-ceilinged cave. They are talking seriously, hunched together over food and drink, with papers strewn about them on the sand. I cannot hear their words, but Revik wears a German infantry uniform, a swastika band around his arm. A third seer is with them, a middle-aged male with sharp, gray eyes, chestnut hair and chiseled features. He is handsome, almost startlingly so. Handsome enough to be a movie star, if one a few years past his prime.
It was all planned, you see, Galaith says. Vash and the Adhipan deliberately planted Dehgoies in Germany. He encouraged him to work for the Nazis...to fight for them, even if it meant watching his own people be put to death.
He smiles, and the mirage disappears, to be replaced by the image of a gothic church.
I feel my light tense as Revik appears in the doorway of that church. He is wearing a tuxedo, smiling, holding the hand of Elise, who wears a wedding dress so stunning she looks like a living doll. Her hair is sleek and filled with what look like tiny diamonds.
They both look so happy it is difficult to look at their faces for long.
Revik raises a hand, waving at a crowd throwing flower petals.
He was placed there to be recruited by me, Galaith continues. To infiltrate my burgeoning network. But then the Seven stood by while his wife was killed...
The image of Revik and Elise fades, leaving Galaith and I in the dark.
As a result, your husband rethought his allegiances, and who would blame him? The Seven could have intervened. They did not...believing interference to be “immoral.” Dehgoies realized that no matter what the method, it is better to try and make things better, to not stand idly by while atrocities are committed...
I am fighting my own emotions, staring at Galaith’s morphing face.
He shrugs with one hand, and I feel sadness on him.
Something happened to make him want to return to them, he says. I do not know what. I even considered sabotage by the Seven themselves. What I do know is this: by then, I thought of Dehgoies as a son. I was devastated when he left me.
The image of Revik in that tux won’t leave me. He looked so...happy. I’ve never seen him happy like that, not in person. Not even in the Barrier.
Galaith pats my light arm. He shakes his head in sympathy, clicking his tongue.
Vash and I made a pact. After we separated your mate from that part of his life, we each agreed to leave his mind alone. His voice sharpens. You broke that promise, Liego. I don’t know how you did it, but you managed to give him back some portion of what he lost...
His voice turns grim, openly accusing.
I sincerely hope you have not hurt more than helped him in this, Liego...
Looking up, I glimpse the dark clouds of the Barrier.
I ask for a nudge in one direction or the other, something to tell me what to do, what will do the least harm. I know this is childish too...but I feel lost in all of this, all of these things I only partly understand.
Revik was right. Anything I thought I was doing was likely just me being manipulated, me falling for the same machinations as everyone else. I would never be smart enough to beat these people. I’d been kidding myself. Or distracting myself, maybe.
But I still cannot bring myself to give in. Even if I should, I can’t. I know that I’ve been wrong about almost all of it so far...but it doesn’t make any difference.
I cannot give in. I cannot.
I realize this, and it is almost a relief.
...and then I am somewhere else.
It is not where I would have hoped.
No great flash of insight or understanding greets me. Instead, it is ordinary, mundane memory. I stand before a leaking espresso machine. Wet coffee grounds cover the front of my waitressing uniform as Revik watches me from a corner booth. He looks tired, and I know him now, so I see it in him. Still, he is watching me, and I see other things there, too.
He watches me minutely, I realize.
I make him nervous, fascinate him, but he feels he knows me, too. He wishes he could approach me. He wishes he could just tell me who he is. I still manage to embarrass him. Hearing me and Cass speak to one another, he feels foolish for having bought the shirt he saw me admiring in that shop, and something in this touches me deeper than I can express.
Over me, the television blares.
Suddenly, I know what I am supposed to see.
...and then the image vanishes.
A stone holding cell morphs around me in its place.
Dark and dirty, it feels more mundane to me now, too, as if I am there in a less emotional reality, one that lives outside of Revik’s subjective mind. Two men enter that dim, dank-smelling space, pausing at the door to stare at the prisoner chained inside. One of them has no face. Revik raises shackled hands, blinking against the shock of light. As I watch, the blurred lines of the faceless man begin to clarify.
Features appear behind a sheen of liquid light. I see the outline of a handsome face, not completely young, but a young middle-age.
He studies the man on the bench, smiles.
“Rolf Schenck?”
...and then the four of us stand on a hill above lines of SS, where the third of three gasoline tanks already burns. When it explodes, the shock rips holes in the turf, throwing wood and iron as shrapnel, tearing into the bodies of the standing men.
Terian hits Revik playfully on the chest, then starts down the hill at a run.
“What are you?” Revik asks Galaith.
“Perhaps you should ask yourself that question, Rolf...”
I know who you are, I breathe, softer.
...and again, I fight with an espresso maker. A television blares over the bar, where the President of the United States smiles at a press conference. Young, charismatic, the whole world looks up to him. Cass walks up to me in her waitressing uniform, and she looks incredibly young to me now, an overgrown child compared to the woman I was jealous of in London.
“Jon's here,” she says. “So is your buddy.”
...and I stand in Revik’s study, pointing a gun at Revik.
My eyes glow a pale green, faintly visible in the sunlight from the windows.
“Allie.” Tension vibrates his words. “I would tell you, I swear I would—”
Revik! I step closer to him, inserting myself between him and the version of me holding the gun. I remember that moment in Germany, where the younger Revik seemed to look at me, too. I had thought he was dead then, but he wasn’t.
He’s not dead now, either.
Revik, I’m here! I wave my arms idiotically. REVIK! Look at me!
“...Even if I did,” he says to the other me. “I don’t remember—”
REVIK! I scream, desperate. I slam into him with my light. LOOK AT ME!
He turns, staring at me. The echo fades.
For an endless pause, he just stands there, looking at me through clear eyes, staring at me from a few meters away. His eyes shift between the past me and the present...
For the moment, Galaith is gone.
It is only us.
Revik...I’m here! I run forward, grasping hold of him with my light. When he tries to look at the past me again, the one holding the gun, I shake his arm. No! This already happened! Where are you now? Can you show me?
The London apartment melts. I feel him slowly come back awake...
Positive flashes to negative.
He hangs in a dark space, immobilized by silver strands. They feed on him. Eyes roll back in pleasure as they draw on his light, a near sensual repose. In terror, he cries out...
...and in the study, Revik staggers.
I hold his arm tighter, supporting him with my light. He looks back at the version of me frozen in time, the d
etermination on my face as I grip the Lugar in my hand. Cass, Jon, Eddard and Maygar all stand frozen in various poses as they react to a scene that can no longer be played out, that is already over. Then Revik looks at me, and his eyes change.
This time, he sees me. He really sees me.
Allie? Where are we?
Revik. You’re really here... Looking at him, my happiness fades. I feel the weakening of his light, the hunger of the beings behind him. He is dying. I clutch his arm tighter. Revik, listen to me. Can you get out, if I distract them?
Allie, he says. No. No, I won’t leave you...
I kiss his face. You won’t have to. The succession order...do you remember how it works? How the pieces fit together?
Confusion darkens his features. I don’t have it, Allie.
I have it, I tell him. You gave it to me, remember? On the ship? But all I have are the numbers. I need you to make sense of it. Can you remember enough to do that?
His eyes shine with a faint light. But something is there, some glimmer of recognition. I can only hope it is enough.
Yes, he says. ...I think so.
I kiss him again; I can’t help it. As I do, I hear it, the whispering of the numbers, the sound I haven’t stopped hearing for months.
I look up at Revik. Seeing the distance in his eyes, I shake his arm, gripping him tighter. Revik, listen to me. You were working for Vash. You were a Nazi for Vash. Do you remember? You let them recruit you. You’ve carried the succession order ever since...for Vash. For all of us.
Doubt fills his face.
After a pause, he shakes his head. No, Allie.
Don’t argue with me, Revik, I send. I know this is true. Just trust me. Trust me on this, please. You’re one of the good guys. Don’t let yourself die...please.
I slide my light into his, and feel him react as I show him the numbers. Even inside his confusion, his light connects with them easily, with a familiarity that is clear in the space. I watch him unlock the key to the succession order, until I can see it, too. It expands around us in clean, geometric shapes, rotating with a visual mathematical dance I cannot look away from.
Relief fills my light. Awe, too. I see it. Do you?
When the numbers light up around us, a faint wonder touches his eyes.
Yes, he says.
They’re ready, I tell him. Vash and the others. I think I can get a signal to them. Wait for me. I kiss him again. I love you. Wait for me...please.
His eyes change. Then, before he speaks, his outline fades.
Terror reaches me, that feeling of being ripped in half. I feel it fleetingly in my heart, that I may never see him again.
Then I am alone, in an endless chasm of dark...but light lives in the tiniest of fragments, and I finally know exactly what I’m supposed to do.
Drawing the numbers, Revik’s numbers, up and out of my light, I superimpose them over the model of the Pyramid itself...
...and imprint the succession order simultaneously into every seer in the Rooks’ network.
As I do, I realize I know.
I’ve known all along who the Head is.
ONE SEER WATCHES quietly, from a dark, remote corner of the Pyramid where he hides.
There are crevices even here, even in the group mind. Places to hide inside the inter-connectivities that the Pyramid cultivates. Places where the others don’t often go, where constructs live inside constructs and one can disappear into the silver strands, become a bare whisper inside the intricacies of the landscape.
The structure rotates in a prismatic dance, every light connected to every light...from Galaith to Xarethe to Dehgoies to himself.
He hides here, still as death.
It is not easy to remain unseen while crouching inside these lit strands, yet the Pyramid is his home. It encompasses everything he knows, terrifying and magnificent. It keeps him from the void. The shining, silver strands play a slow, intricate dance, one he knows better than the beats of his own heart. Its music lulls him, singing to him in the dark.
For the same reason, he feels it when she comes. Her music is different than his...so different, he knows the precise instant when she enters his home. He feels the conflict, the chaos she evokes...but at base, she is a tourist. Her husband is all that truly connects her to them.
Then, out of nowhere, he sees it.
The succession order is laid out neatly before him, a map of light connecting one Rook to the next, spread before him in perfect, beautiful lines. Like his brothers and sisters, he looks for the Head, tries to count how many steps he is from that highest, most coveted spot.
The Pyramid shakes.
Reflexively, he makes his light even more dim.
It takes him another moment to understand the cause of that instability, too.
They are killing one another. All around him, seers are attacking seers, hammering blows at one another, trying to destroy one another. Lower-level seers attack the lights they see above them, pausing only to defend against those seers who strike at them from below.
He sees lights flicker and snuff out. He sees death and pain. He sees fighting and screaming...but also silence and rippled light, places where Rooks are dimming themselves as he has, trying to disappear. Already, though, more than half have joined the fray.
Terian is lucky. Lucky he will not be missed.
Lights flash brighter, then wink out. He feels the structure tremble, shuddering more seriously that time, more dangerously. He still cannot see the successor’s chair, but he is getting closer, rising higher all the time as he seeks it, ever-groping through metallic dark. He counts each place in the hierarchy, follows each place as one fits into the next. He ignores the chaos in his single-mindedness, as he traces them all the way up to where his light hovers...
Until he can see no further.
It is quiet there, and he is alone.
Eventually, the reason dawns on him.
Excitement flares his light, so that Terian makes himself briefly visible. He barely feels the ensuing blows, barely hears the cracking in several branches of his aleimi. They can’t touch him...not anymore. A smile lights up his being.
He occupies the successor’s chair.
He. Terian alone.
As the realization hits, he is already giving the signal.
31
PYRAMID
PRESIDENT DANIEL CAINE blinked to clear his vision.
Frowning, he stared around at the mostly older faces. Something was wrong. He could feel it, with every particle of his living light. He needed someone else at the table who felt it, too. Someone besides Ethan, who was, for obvious reasons, in absentia.
Caine barely noticed the silence as he surveyed the room.
That is, until the Secretary of State broke it.
“Sir?” As usual, the man sounded as if he were about to go into cardiac arrest. “Sir,” he repeated, as Caine knew he would until he turned and met the man’s gaze directly.
Once he had, the Secretary resumed in the same, caught-breath voice.
“The terrorists have been isolated, sir,” he said, flushing a darker red. “They no longer appear to be fighting back. The Prime Minister is asking whether you still recommend an air attack, sir. They now estimate twenty to fifty-five possible civilian casualties from that approach, sir, even with the evacuations...and they no longer feel it’s necessary. Their Home Office Security is now recommending gassing the top floors, prior to any gunplay. I really think you should consider this approach, sir. I really do...”
Caine rose to his feet. Normally he would smile here, even tell a joke, but his ability to play that role evaporated about thirty minutes earlier, when the Pyramid network reported that his friend, Doctor Xarethe––meaning the real one––could not be located. He was now forced to assume that Terian, in one form or another, had killed her, too.
The thought more than displeased him.
To call Xarethe irreplaceable was an understatement in the extreme.
Other complicat
ions remained as well. Alyson managed to evade him somehow within his own network. That left the outstanding issue of what to do with Dehgoies if Caine found himself backed into a corner, forced to kill yet another of Revik’s mates.
Further, as much as he hated to admit it, Terian was right.
The entire cycle would be disrupted if he killed the Bridge now.
Making up his mind, Caine walked to a telephone sitting on an antique wooden cabinet to the right of the conference table. Without thinking, he picked up the old-fashioned receiver, held it to his ear and waited. Feeling eyes focused on the back of his head from the direction of the oval table, Caine realized only then that he could have used his earpiece to make the call. Or, more efficiently still, his newly implanted impulse-activated network receiver chip, or IAN.
He ignored their collective stares anyway. At least, until it struck him that the old land line might be purely decorative.
It was one problem with long life. Old habits had a tendency to return under stress.
Caine lowered the handset to hang it up, when a voice rose, sounding tinny and far away. He returned the receiver promptly to his ear.
“You needed something, sir?” the voice repeated.
“James?” Caine felt his shoulders unclench. “Where’s Ethan?”
“Sir?” His security chief’s puzzlement wafted through the line.
“Ethan. Our Vice President. Where is he?”
“The Vice President is still housed at his residence, sir,” James said. “You said not to wake him.”
“Yes, well, I’ve changed my mind. I want him brought here. At once. To the bunker.”
The bunker. It was what his wife nicknamed the Cabinet’s main conference room when she first saw it, and the moniker stuck. She also called it the War Room, after that Peter Sellers movie mocking the 1950s paranoia about the Russians hoarding telekinetic seers.
Like a faraway strain of music, Caine felt something crack. He knew it was another piece of the Pyramid fissuring off. He realized James remained on the line.
“Wake him, will you?” Caine said. “As soon as possible. Tell him it’s an emergency.”
He was in the process of hanging up the old plastic handle, when the door to the bunker slammed open.
Allie's War Season One Page 45
