Allie's War Season One
Page 90
He, himself, would go after Allie. That part, he wasn’t willing to discuss.
She’d be with the boy, anyway; he could even argue that going after her was contractual on his part...part of what he’d promised Salinse as a measure of their agreement. The rest of them would take down the White House security system and the construct itself, which was what they wanted to do anyway. It hadn’t escaped his notice that Salinse’s people were enjoying this op on more than one level. They wanted Allie back, sure…she was the Bridge. But they also loved the idea of taking down one of the humans’ more enduring modern symbols. He could leverage that enthusiasm, and get what he needed from them at the same time.
He knew that if the grid truly went down it could start an actual shooting war in the middle of Washington DC, so they had contingency plans for that eventuality as well.
It could spiral out of control anyway, but again, he was willing to take that chance. The truth was, there was no way in hell Terian wouldn’t be expecting him. He could plan to delay that knowledge as much as he wanted, but at the first sign of any disturbance, Terian would deploy assuming it was him. He couldn’t help but build in redundancies, but still only had two real backups for his first idea, and both were risky as hell...and none changed that naked fact.
Besides, a certain amount of guesswork was unavoidable without a contact working on the inside. Any one of the contingencies he’d mapped would depend a hell of a lot on whatever he eventually found once they breached the perimeter. Whatever that ended up being, it would contain at least a few surprises.
Knowing that didn’t help him a damned bit, really.
Wreg still seemed to find the approach strategy for the primary team amusing, but Revik had noticed he wasn’t as naive about human culture, or even American culture, as he would have expected given the Rebels’ isolationism. He found himself wondering just how many ops Salinse’s seers had pulled on this continent over the years from the Barrier, if not actually on the ground.
He decided he didn’t really care about that either.
In any case, Wreg was fully on board with the plan now.
Leaving the main equipment store, Revik pushed aside a beaded doorway, and found himself in the parlor of their secondary “safe house.” That part, Salinse’s people hadn’t provided; Revik handled that end himself with contacts he had in the States. Upon entering the room, he found himself face to face with Kat before he knew who he was looking at.
It had been a long time since he’d seen her in her full regalia. His eyes drifted down out of habit, settling on the high heels under the silk dress that barely covered her crotch. She smiled at him coyly and he frowned, looking away.
His eyes passed by Jon and settled on Ullysa.
“What the fuck is she doing here?” he said.
Ullysa raised an eyebrow. She lounged liquidly on the velvet sofa, her dark red hair spilled over her neck and decolletage. She seemed to be artfully arranged no matter what the occasion, even in their makeshift war room, but it didn’t make her any less valuable of an infiltrator.
“You said to bring my infiltrators, Revi’,” she said, her eyebrow still arched.
He glanced at Kat. “I didn’t mean her. Why the fuck would you bring her? You know damned well I can’t trust her with this...” he said, not bothering to look at Kat as he spoke. “I want her out of here. Now.”
Ullysa clicked at him softly. “You can trust all of us in this, Revi’. You know that. Kat will do her job.”
Unconvinced, Revik turned on Kat, his mouth hard. “Anything happens to my wife and you’re anywhere near the cause and I’ll kill you.”
“Or I will,” Jon muttered.
The Russian seer looked hurt for an instant, but it left her face, leaving a colder mask. She glanced at Jon contemptuously, then up at Revik.
“So I get death threats now? Is that how it is?”
He didn’t lower his gaze.
After a pause, Kat seemed to see something in his expression.
She retracted her light. Clicking, she blew bangs out of her face, shrugging with one hand as she rolled her eyes.
“Relax, Dehgoies. I am being paid, aren’t I?”
Revik pointed at Ullysa. “I don’t want that bitch anywhere near Allie. I mean it. I’ll hold you responsible, ‘Llysa.”
“Revi’...”
“No arguments. Just agree with me and say, ‘yes, sir.’ She can mindfuck Terian’s humans if she needs to get her claws in something...”
Ullysa looked a bit startled, but after a pause where she glanced searchingly at Jon, she looked back up at Revik. Making a conciliatory gesture, she exhaled hiri smoke as she gave him a puzzled look.
“Yes, sir,” she murmured.
He walked past them into the staging room beyond the parlor. Seeing Jon rise to his feet, he stepped aside to let the human enter in front of him, but not before he heard Kat mutter to Ullysa in Prexci,
“Yes...this Bridge bitch is holy all right. Making Revi’ look and act like a Rook again...or is it only me that notices?”
“Shhh,” Ullysa murmured. “His wife’s been stolen, Kat.”
“Fuck that. It’s no excuse for—”
Revik let the door swing shut behind him, forgetting their words before he’d stopped hearing them. Watching Jon out of the corner of his eye, he focused on Wreg, wincing a little as he slumped into a chair to rest his leg. He couldn’t afford to be limping when they entered the building. It was the little things that might get him caught, and he knew they’d have gait-recognition software in the White House security feeds too, along with everything else.
Knowing Terian, he might even think to flag anyone with a limp, just on the off chance he picked him up that way.
Wreg was arranging weapons on a long, wooden table.
“You ready for your disguise?” he said, smiling at Revik.
Revik ignored that, too.
“Is the regular here?” he said instead.
Wreg nodded towards a side door. Rather than get up, Revik pinged the seer in the other room through the construct. He waited, still massaging the top part of his thigh, until the male appeared in the doorway.
“Okay,” he said, grinding his jaw against the pain in his leg. “Talk.”
“Talk?” The seer’s sea green eyes widened a little.
At Revik’s expression, his rounded face tightened, his smile wavering a bit as he glanced at Jon, then more reluctantly back at Revik. His blond hair was long, winding down the back of his neck. His face was almost feminine it was so pretty, but he didn’t carry the markers of a homosexual trick only, despite his obvious interest in Jon.
His body was close. Not perfect, but close. Revik found himself thinking the unwilling was in better physical shape than he was.
Still, it was easier to modify in that direction than the other.
The young seer cleared his throat, folding his long hands. He’d been schooled around humans all right; even his mannerisms were flawless. Revik found himself looking the male over again, scanning his light.
Wreg had chosen well.
He motioned for the young seer to get on with it.
“What do you want to know?” the male said.
“Everything,” Revik said, still focused on his leg. “Tell me what you can, but mostly I want you to let me into your mind. Don’t keep a damned thing from me...not out of false modesty or national security or anything else. You won’t get a cent if I find out there was anything less than full disclosure. Further, I’ll make sure SCARB finds out about your little operation here if I’m not completely satisfied...assuming you don’t really piss me off and I just shoot off your cock and watch you bleed to death.”
Letting a pause hang in the air, he held the unwilling’s gaze.
“...Are we clear?” he asked.
Jon flinched, staring at Revik.
The boyish face of the male unwilling faltered still more. He glanced at Jon, again seemingly looking for reassurance. He gestured af
firmative.
“Okay.” He straightened in his chair. “Where should I start?”
“I said everything,” Revik growled. “...Preferences, cutesy nicknames, rituals the two of you have...all of it. Walk me through a normal visit, and picture it in your head. Don’t spare a single detail, from the security guard at the front gate to whatever happens when you leave...”
The boy, stammering somewhat, began to speak.
As he did, Revik leaned back in the chair, entwining his light in that of the unwilling’s so he could not only hear his words, but see it, feel it, smell it along with him. He wove a map of the young seer’s light as he listened, storing it in the construct as he created it, so the team could map it too, ensure he didn’t miss anything. Whenever the boy’s mental timeline skipped, he stopped him, had him rewind, take him back through the next set of sequences until he understood it all.
Once he’d gone from beginning to end, he had him describe a few more visits, noting any small variations. They were few.
About two hours later, he began to relax.
“All right.” He glanced at the seer from under his hand, stretching out his wounded leg. “Thanks. You can go. But stay available.”
The unwilling rose to his feet, still visibly nervous as he left the room. He gave Jon a last glance as he left, and Wreg gave him a reassuring pat on the back as he walked by. Jon had a look of near incredulity on his face as he looked at the unwilling, then back to Revik, but Revik didn’t bother to answer his stare.
Most humans were surprisingly naive about what went on in Sark fetish.
For that matter, so was his wife.
The thought brought a sharp stab of pain, bad enough to catch him up short.
For a moment he only sat there, a hand over his face. He knew it was bad enough that the others noticed; neither of the two men tried to talk to him while he waited for it to pass. Once it began to ebb backwards he glanced to his right, looking at the bottle on the table nearest to Wreg.
Following his glance, Wreg shook his head, clicking softly at him, his lips curved in a smile.
“Maybe Salinse was right about you,” he mused, wandering towards the table. He picked up the bottle. “You’re quite the taskmaster when you’re motivated. Did you get what you needed?”
“Most of it.” Revik nodded in thanks when the older seer poured and handed him a drink. Taking a long swallow, he relaxed deeper into the chair, rubbing his temples. “There’s still something that’s bugging me. I want to know how Terian knew where we were...in those hills. Either someone told him, someone in the Seven or one of Balidor’s...or the boy led him there.”
Jon still seemed to be fighting his equilibrium back from the interview with the unwilling.
“Which do you think it is?” he said finally.
“The boy,” Revik said promptly, although he had no evidence to back his assertion. “What I don’t know is which of us he was tracking.”
“Meaning?” Wreg said, eyebrow raised.
“Meaning...he might not need to recognize me if he already knows where I am,” Revik said. “If I’m his link to Allie, or if she’s his to me...either way, trying to fool him with a disguise might be a complete waste of time.”
Wreg pondered this a moment, his thick face thoughtful.
“So you’d be walking into a trap,” Jon said.
“Potentially, yes.” Revik drained the glass, setting it on the side table by his chair. Taking the half-full bottle from Wreg, he refilled the glass without looking up at either of them. “Unless we plan for being spotted. Unless I’m expecting him to find me...”
“He won’t have your wife with him,” Wreg said, skeptical.
“No,” Revik conceded. “Unless...”
“Unless what?” said Jon.
Revik frowned. He glanced up at Wreg. “He wants my wife to fall in love with him, right? The boy.”
Wreg frowned back. “From what you said, yes.” He stared at Revik, as if trying to read past his eyes. Suddenly, understanding flared there, as the rest of Revik’s plan suddenly made sense.
“That’s why you’re going in like this?” he said.
Revik shrugged, his eyes flat. “It’ll have to be loud. From the Barrier, I mean. Loud enough to convince him it’s real...and that it’s me. Like you said, he wouldn’t have her with him. He’d probably even hide her away somewhere.” He added, no emotion in his voice, “...Unless I give him a reason to want her along.”
Jon’s mouth fell open. He stared at Revik, his eyes showing disbelief...as if sure he was understanding him wrong. It irritated Revik more than he hoped showed that the human caught on so quickly.
Once again, Jon wasn’t dumb. Or unobservant.
Even Wreg hesitated, as if suddenly losing the desire to laugh.
“It may not work,” he said. “You’re making a leap, extrapolating what he might do faced with a particular set of variables...”
“Isn’t that what infiltrators do?” Revik retorted. “What about the variables? They make sense, right? Given what we’ve seen?”
“Who will you use? The team has to change if we’re doing this for real. We need to give them a few options...and they need to be convincing.”
“You don’t have any pros on your team? None at all?”
“No. Well...one maybe.” Wreg gave him a nearly apologetic look, one that told Revik he was making an effort to be polite. “We don’t generally do that, Commander Dehgoies...it goes against everything we stand for. Hardliners especially, and that’s just about everyone you hand-picked to come out here...”
“Do you have anyone locally?”
Wreg glanced towards the door. “You’ve got two pros out there...”
“No,” Revik said.
“What choice do you have?” He studied Revik’s face. “I understand that there’s a personal element...believe me, I do. But you’ve asked me to advise you on execution. No way can I recommend doing this solely with novices to back you up...or with unwillings who aren’t infiltrators. Either you use the two you’ve got, or we wait. Bring someone else in. You’re talking a few days’ delay at least, to weave them into the construct, brief them on the plan, establish their identity in DC...”
Revik frowned, staring at the door.
For a moment, his eyes lost focus. He tried to buy time, to think. Looking for a second opinion, he glanced at Jon. The human was watching him as carefully as Wreg, but the frown creasing his forehead held more understanding in it.
Allie must have said something to him.
Again, he couldn’t think about her without pain.
“It’s damned risky,” Wreg said seriously. “...Even if you do use them.”
“Anything would be risky,” Revik said, dismissive. “The boy is telekinetic. It took most of the Adhipan a year to best the last telekinetic seer, and I don’t have that kind of firepower...or time. I need to give him a reason to—”
“Not the boy,” Wreg said. “...Her. She might kill you, runt. Did that occur to you?”
“Damn straight,” Jon said. Outrage trembled his voice. “I can’t believe you’re even considering this! There has to be another way.”
Revik stared at the door, forcing his mind over options.
Jon’s voice sharpened. “You can’t use Kat, Revik. You can’t.”
Revik didn’t look at him. “It won’t matter who, Jon.”
“Like hell it won’t! Would it matter to you if it was Maygar?”
Revik hesitated, glancing up over the glass he’d refilled. Fighting a reaction out of his light, he took another long drink. Gesturing in acknowledgement with his fingers, he refilled the glass. He avoided Jon’s eyes.
“We do it tomorrow,” he said. “I’m not putting it off another day.”
Jon stared at him, open-mouthed.
Wreg hesitated only a half-beat, then gestured in acknowledgment. He walked back towards the main salon. Hesitating by the leather chair, he stopped to look at Revik one more time.
After the door closed, Jon turned on him.
“Revik...you can’t do this.” His face looked stricken. “Isn’t there some other way? Allie will freak out. She will totally fucking lose it...”
Revik didn’t answer. Even so, he found himself thinking about Wreg’s question long after the older seer had left him there with Jon and a bottle, in a beat up leather chair in a cramped, perfume-smelling room.
The thought had occurred to him. More than once.
Then he remembered Allie being dragged away screaming, climbing on Terian, clawing at him. He remembered the dead look in her eyes as she sat on a couch in the Oval Office, Terian caressing her collared neck with his fingers, like she were a particularly expensive whore.
He took another long pull of alcohol, closing his eyes.
He set the glass on the low table to refill it. Slumping back in the seat, he rubbed his temples as he slid into the Barrier, reworking several points of the plan over in his head, looking for flaws...running scenarios from different angles to catch anything he might have missed, anything he couldn’t account for.
He couldn’t afford to get too drunk yet.
That would come later, when he needed to force his body to sleep.
When he still hadn’t answered him a moment later, Jon left the room, letting the door close none too gently behind him.
IN THE MAIN salon, Jon sought out the only other seer he actually knew—the only one who still felt like a real ally.
Not that Revik didn’t, exactly...but truthfully, he was more like family. Even apart from his relationship to Allie, Jon’s relationship with Revik had entered those murkier, more complicated waters sometime during their shared captivity. Jon loved the guy...a lot. But like all family, that also meant he periodically wanted to wring his neck.