He didn’t want to look, but couldn’t seem to keep his eyes from shifting in that direction. Before he’d made a conscious decision, he found himself following Revik’s stare, focusing on the figure standing there.
She wore all white.
Jon let out a low cry, involuntary.
He couldn’t help it. The reaction was visceral, outside his control. His heart hammered in his chest. Adrenaline shot through his veins, pooling a denser nausea in his gut––a pain in his heart he almost couldn’t stand.
He heard Wreg’s words, comprehended their meaning. He understood everything; he just couldn’t make himself feel any of it as he looked at her.
She didn’t just look like Allie.
She was Allie.
Worse, she was Allie before the wires. She was Allie before they’d found her hollowed out and unconscious on that bed in San Francisco.
She was Allie before Jon gave her to Cass.
He tried to tell himself how impossible that was. He clenched his hands into fists, biting his tongue until he tasted blood, fighting to force himself to remember where he was, who and what lay behind the illusion. There’s only one place that “real” feeling could have come from. Cass did this. Cass, Menlim, Terian. They’d done it to him before.
They’d done it to Revik. They’d done it to Wreg.
They’d done it to him.
He tried to bring those memories back, the immediacy of those illusions, how they’d felt the first time, in South America. Just like he felt Allie now, he’d felt Dorje’s presence. He’d felt his light, saw him in his eyes, heard him in his voice.
He’d felt Dorje––somehow, inexplicably.
That presence hadn’t made Dorje any less dead.
This presence wouldn’t make Allie any less dead, either.
Revik tore his eyes off her.
He turned, staring at Jon. The pain in the other man’s expression was briefly more than Jon could bear. He gripped Revik’s arm tighter––so tight he must be hurting him by now. Revik scarcely seemed to notice, even when Jon grabbed the other man’s hair, refusing to let him turn, refusing to let him stare at that other Allie.
“Revik, man,” he managed. “No. No, goddamn it. Wreg’s right. It’s not her. She’s dead. She’s dead. We both saw it.”
Revik stared, his clear irises nearly opaque. Still, some element of Jon’s words must have reached him. His mouth firmed, that pain in his chest worsening.
Jon swallowed, shaking his head. “Revik, remember. Remember what happened in South America. Remember what they did to you before. With Menlim.”
Revik nodded, once. His eyes didn’t really clear. He tried to look at her again, but Jon’s fingers clenched tighter in the other man’s hair.
“Don’t. Don’t look at her. Give yourself a minute, okay? And don’t open your light. Stay with me… with Wreg. Stay with all of us. We love you, man. We love you.”
The other seers had fallen silent.
Jon realized only then that they’d all stopped in the stone corridor. They’d surrounded Revik while Jon talked, forming a kind of living shield. Now they all just stood there, touching him with one or more of their hands.
All of them touched him, even Neela… even Maygar.
Jon didn’t look at the ghost of Allie either, not for those few seconds. He stared only at Revik, looking for any sign the other man was coming out of his shock at seeing her.
He knew what devastated Revik, and it wasn’t her body or face.
It was the same thing that devastated him, that look in her eyes––the faint whisper of humor and compassion, sharper glints of intelligence and heated presence. They’d captured something in the illusion Jon wouldn’t have been able to put into words before now, mainly because it had always been there, until Cass wiped that part of Allie away.
There’d always been a lightness to her, despite the leadership thing she carried.
Maybe it was her actual light Jon felt, only he hadn’t realized it, hadn’t recognized it for what it was. It was something he hadn’t known how badly he missed, not until a being stood in front of him emanating what felt like the exact same frequency.
But it wasn’t.
It wasn’t her.
It could never be her.
Revik winced, closing his eyes. He tensed against his and Wreg’s hold, and Jon tightened his fingers, gripping him around the back of the neck, realizing only then that he still held the gun, only now he had the side of the barrel half-pressed against Revik’s neck.
“No, man,” he murmured, still holding his gaze. “Come back. We need you to come back. Remember your daughter, Revik. Remember her. Remember why we’re here. She needs you. Your daughter needs you.”
Revik’s jaw hardened.
Something in his eyes changed, sharpening into focus like a light being switched back on. Abruptly, Jon felt Revik’s light densify.
He realized only then, it had scattered like smoke for those few minutes.
“Gods,” Revik said, still looking at Jon. He said it like an exhale, like he’d been holding his breath. “I expected this. I fucking expected it.”
“I know.” Jon gripped his hair tighter. “I know, man. We all did. That doesn’t make it any easier. I felt the same way, and I wasn’t married to her. Just don’t open your light to it, okay? They’re fucking with your head, Revik… try to remember that. Whatever you see or feel, it’s not going to be her. Allie’s gone. She’s not coming back.”
Revik nodded, his jaw still hard.
“You okay, man?” Jon said.
Another pause.
Revik nodded a second time, rubbing his face with a hand.
Jon couldn’t help noticing his hand shook while he did it, or that he still wore their father’s ring. Even so, he could feel Revik coming back. He could feel the Elaerian’s light reconfiguring, even before he saw it in Revik’s angular face.
The clear irises sharpened more, until they once more belonged to the man he knew.
They clicked back into a military-like sheen a few seconds later, even as glimmers of anger at himself remained fleetingly in the background. Revik seemed to have his equilibrium back, though. He gripped Jon’s arm, tightly for a beat, then looked at Wreg, without glancing at the woman in white.
“Hit me next time,” he said to Wreg, his voice holding a thin humor. “Really hard,” he added, pointing to the back of his head. “Don’t hold back, brother.”
Wreg quirked an eyebrow, a faint smile ghosting his lips. “Sure thing, laoban. Although I suspect you might regret that order.”
Revik grunted, straightening back to his full height when Jon released him.
Wreg flashed a grateful smile at Jon, along with a denser pulse of heat.
Fuck, I love you. Stay with him. Don’t leave his side… okay, little brother?
Jon nodded, feeling his face flush.
That time, the distraction was welcome.
It grounded him somehow, too.
Taking a breath, he looked back at the image of Allie.
It just stood there, looking at them from the middle of the stone corridor. That time, when Jon looked at those sharp, green eyes, he found himself seeing the lie behind it, or at least the half-truth. It did feel like her––he hadn’t imagined that. There was something of his sister there, but it felt more like a memory of her than the real thing.
A carbon copy.
A reflection, maybe.
The clothes she wore had to be for Revik’s benefit, as well. They’d dressed her in that same white outfit Jon remembered from the Forbidden City.
The same sheer top Jon remembered from that day hung from a collar-like strap of cloth around her throat, just above where a real sight-restraint collar once sat. The top left her arms bare, along with most of her shoulders and her back––assuming the back was the same as the Beijing version.
Her midriff showed from just below her breasts down to the bottom of her muscular belly. The skirt had wide slats cut in t
he sides, slats that revealed bare skin all the way up to a belt-like loop of gold cloth that hung low on her hips.
Somehow, she looked more naked than if she’d actually been naked.
The only difference in how they presented her here versus Voi Pai’s little show was the style of her hair. From what Jon knew of Revik, the difference likely lay in his preference. Instead of the complicated set of braids and loose strands Jon remembered from China, Allie’s dark, heavily-curled hair hung straight down her back, only a few, crimped waves in front keeping it off her high-cheekboned face.
He glanced at Revik, in spite of himself.
The other man had let go of his arm.
Revik’s hand now rested on the gun in his right hip holster. He stared at the apparition of his dead wife, his clear eyes narrowed, hard as glass.
Jon considered touching him again, trying to assess his state of mind that way, but when Revik glanced at him, he flinched. The Elaerian looked intimidatingly cold, as if he’d stripped every shred of feeling from his light.
“You all right, man?” Jon said, swallowing.
Revik nodded, once. Hesitating, he said, “Stay with me, Jon.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Jon frowned, looking back at the Allie-thing. “What do we do here, do you think? Walk around it? Try to talk to it?”
Jon kept the pronouns deliberately in the non-person realm.
Revik seemed to hear him on that, too.
That cold look faded slightly from his eyes, replaced by a more strategic-looking glance in the apparition’s direction. He seemed about to answer Jon, then his jaw firmed, as if he’d made up his mind about something.
His expression turned back to stone right before he turned.
He spoke as much to the corridor as he did the apparition in white.
“What next, Cass?” Revik looked around and up, frowning. “Is this thing supposed to lead us to you? Or do we play hide and fucking seek with it?”
The woman in white smiled faintly. Again, Jon felt the expression like a dagger to his heart. He shoved the feeling aside, feeling his own jaw harden alongside Revik’s.
Revik’s words had reminded him of something else, too.
Cass was behind this. Cass was showing them a walking, talking, blow-up doll of Allie. She’d reanimated the corpse of her best friend.
The anger that rose in Jon’s light made it difficult to breathe.
He spoke before he knew he meant to.
“Classy, Cassandra.” His anger grew more prominent as he raised his voice. “Really. High class move. Bravo.” Clenching his jaw briefly, he added, “Really interesting how easy you forget just how much Allie did for you over the years.”
Swallowing, he made his voice louder still.
“…But I was there for that, Cassie. I remember. I was there when Allie begged mom and dad to let you crash at our house. I was there that weekend your uncle and dad showed up and threatened her. I was there when Allie let you move into her place after college… oh, and didn’t charge you rent. I was there when she got you jobs. I was there when she got threatened at knife-point––again––when that drummer asshole you dated came looking for you. I was there when she got in fights at school, when she got beat up in Geckos defending you after that dipshit, Jack, spread rumors about you.”
Jon’s voice turned harder. He raised it louder.
“You’re going to dress up her corpse now, Cass? That’s the thanks she gets, for being your friend all these years? Putting up with all of your drunken, stupid bullshit with men and whatever else? It’s not enough to kill her? You get to use Allie’s corpse to screw with the guy who saved our lives in Russia? To screw with me? Really, Cassie? Really?”
Jon’s voice rose more, pure fury now. Emotion seemed to want to pour out of him, welling up from somewhere deep in his light.
“Allie was the only person who did anything for you back then. Remember, Cassie? She did more than your mom. A hell of a lot more than your dad… much less the rest of that fucked up, miserable family of yours. Allie loved you. She loved you even when you gave her absolutely no reason to love you. When you stole from her and talked shit about her and thought she didn’t know it. Allie defended you when everyone else told her you were shit. A back-stabbing, female-hating, boyfriend-stealer who would turn on her. A liar. Allie used to tell me they just didn’t know you, that they weren’t seeing you clearly. Well, maybe she was wrong. Maybe they were seeing you. Maybe Allie was the one who missed a few things.”
Jon felt his throat tighten more.
“The thing is, she made me believe it, Cass,” he said, gripping the gun tighter in his hands. “She made Revik believe it––and Balidor. She made you family. She really did. She made your life better. You can pretend all you want that she didn’t, but she did. I know she did. I was there. I fucking remember.”
He swallowed, right before his voice got louder.
“And now, here you are. Badass Cassie again, right? The queen in charge? And all you can do is whine and stomp your feet that Allie didn’t do more. She didn’t magically make your life better than hers. So now the jealous, wannabe-badass is a full-on murderer. But really, you’re just a pawn. A duped, brainwashed puppet for some soulless fuck, just because he patted you on the head and told you how ‘special’ you were. It’s pathetic, Cass. Really. And you know what? She’s still better than you. If Allie was alive, she’d still be trying to save your ungrateful, self-centered ass. But you killed her, and none of the rest of us give a damn anymore. The rest of us aren’t as good as her, either––”
Laughter broke into his tirade.
The sound echoed down the hall, dying against the mold and moss-covered stones.
Cass’s laughter.
Jon frowned. Glancing at the other seers, he reddened slightly when he realized how long he’d been shouting down that corridor. Meeting smiles from a few of them, and tears in the eyes of Neela and Jax, he winced when Jorag thumped him energetically on the back, right before the blue-eyed seer squeezed Revik’s shoulder with a muscular hand.
Revik was looking at him, too. That coldness faded slightly from his eyes, even as he caught hold of Jon’s arm, squeezing it briefly, but warmly.
Thank you, brother. Thank you for reminding me.
Jon caught his hand, squeezing his fingers back.
Still looking at him, Revik nodded, once.
He released Jon then, and began walking towards the figure in white.
The rest of them followed.
All of them had their guns out now. All of them looked angry, too, but more than that, determined. Even Jax looked determined, despite his pallor. He also seemed to be limping less when he sped up to follow Revik.
As they approached the fake Allie, Jon felt the hair on the back of his neck and his arms start to rise. Those green eyes focused on Revik the longest, but Jon happened to be looking right at them when they swiveled to meet his. The apparition smiled as she looked at him, and Jon grew aware of that shimmer of not-real behind her very real-feeling light.
“Hey, little brother.” She grinned at him faintly, wearing that uniquely off-kilter grin he’d only ever seen on Allie. “Long time, no see.”
Jon was about to retort an answer, when Revik shocked him.
Barely changing the pace of his long legs, the Elaerian swung his arm, moving so fast, Jon could only flinch. He saw a few of the other seers flinch, too––but not before Revik punched the Allie-lookalike right in the face.
Fake or not, his hand didn’t go through her, like Jon half-expected.
Instead, fake Allie reeled, moving as if she’d really been hit.
Revik’s hand also acted like it had encountered resistance. He swiveled on his feet, stepping out of the way in rote, as if he half-expected to be hit back. His eyes narrowed when fake Allie just stood there, half bent over as she touched her face. Revik watched her, hands up but relaxed, like he’d suddenly been thrust into the ring.
The image of Allie straig
htened.
Blood trickled from her nostrils. She wiped it with one pale hand. As she regained her full height, Jon saw the chain necklace around her neck, the silver ring looped into the low part of the chain. Something about seeing a replica of Revik’s ring hanging there, just that one detail, made Jon want to hit the thing, too.
“So, not a complete hologram,” Jorag muttered.
“No, brother.” Revik glanced back at the other man. He held up his hand, showing them his reddening knuckles. “…It’s not.”
“So what is it?” Wreg said, frowning. He stepped around it, eyes thoughtful.
Neela stepped closer, too, when she saw Wreg looking at it. Her mouth puckered in a frown.
“Some kind of machine?” Jorag ventured.
“I don’t think so.” Wreg shook his head, clicking. “Maybe. Maybe more like the OBE. Presenced energy. Like AI in energetic form. But how did he do it?”
Jon looked around at all of them, understanding suddenly. They were using this thing for intelligence-gathering, and to test the construct maybe.
The apparition looked only at Revik.
Revik didn’t answer any of them, or lower his hands.
“Something you want to talk to me about, husband?” the fake Allie said.
Jon couldn’t help noticing the thing’s voice still sounded maddeningly, frustratingly like Allie’s. The light, jade-green eyes followed Revik as he circled her, her mouth still touched with that faint grin.
“…Or is this your way of flirting?” she added, quirking an eyebrow.
Revik smiled, but no humor lived in his look. The coldness in his eyes didn’t waver.
“It’s close, Cass. Really close. But that flirting comment was all wrong. Guess you don’t know your friend as well as you think… or relationships, for that matter.” He glanced back at Wreg, then around at the rest of them. “Any luck tracing the signal? Should I hit it again? Or did that not do anything?”
“It didn’t, really,” Wreg admitted, hands on his hips.
“You could try anyway,” Neela said, that wry humor back in her voice. “Or let one of us do it. Like me.”
“Husband,” the fake Allie began, clicking softly. “What is this? What are you doing?”
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