Somehow, that depressed me almost as much as the actual disease.
“How are we even going to get inside?” I muttered.
I suppose I was speaking to him, to distract myself as much as anything.
Revik stared past me out the window, frowning without answering.
I could tell from his expression he’d heard some if not all of my thoughts.
I also could feel him worrying about the damage to his aleimi again. Even with those few weeks in Albany, most of the damage to his light structures hadn’t been repaired. I knew he was worried about the loss of the telekinesis in particular, given how easily we could find ourselves in a serious situation where we needed to fight our way out.
Unfortunately, the structures he used to perform the telekinesis were the ones Balidor and Tarsi estimated would take the longest to repair.
“Does ‘Dori have that worked out yet?” I said, watching his face. “Our re-entry plan?”
That time, it was me trying to distract him.
He looked at me. After a short pause, he shrugged. His eyes flickered down my body after he did, and briefly, I saw a different look rise to his eyes.
I stared at the expression there, a little thrown.
“Seriously?” I said. “How? How can you be thinking about that right now?”
He smiled, wrapping a hand around my hip and tugging me closer.
With his other hand, he caressed my face and throat, and I felt a slow tugging there, in his light. His pain worsened, enough that I knew it had to be real. He might be using it to distract me, or maybe to keep my eyes off the view outside the Humvee’s window, but it wasn’t a totally made-up thing, either.
“You’re unbelievable,” I said, laughing in spite of myself. “Or a full-blown psychopath, I’m not sure which.”
From his other side, Wreg smacked Revik roughly on the shoulder with the palm of his hand. The slap wasn’t entirely playful.
“Cut it out,” the ex-Rebel growled. “Seriously. I’m not up for it right now.”
Revik turned slowly, quirking an eyebrow at the other male, his expression deadpan.
Wreg scowled in reply. “You really are a fucking pervert, you know that? Where’s your sense of decorum? You’re going to start shit here? Really?”
Revik smirked, glancing at the head in Wreg’s lap. “Decorum?”
“I am perfectly capable of being appropriate. Unlike some people.”
Revik clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “Liar. You’re only angry right now because your man’s asleep, and you can’t act on shit.” When Wreg smacked him again, Revik flinched, but only smiled wider. “You know, I’ve been pretty restrained, brother Wreg, telling my wife and Jon stories about the old days.”
Wreg’s glare turned into a death stare. “Do it, and I’ll return the favor… exponentially. And by the way, fuck you very much, Illustrious Sword.”
Revik laughed, and Wreg hit him again, harder.
“Shut up, goddamn it!” he said, his voice still low. He pointed at the man sprawled in his lap. “You’re going to wake him. And I finally got him to sleep… so keep your damned opinions about my light to yourself. You’re one to talk, in any case. If memory serves, you’ve had the self-control of a drunk adolescent since you were a drunk adolescent.”
Revik laughed again, but quieter.
He still didn’t let go of me.
Truthfully, I couldn’t help agreeing with Wreg, at least in part. Those same pulses of heat continued to slide through Revik’s fingers as he maneuvered his hand under the armored vest I wore, and then the shirt underneath that.
If he was trying to distract me, it was working.
Then again, he’d been in a pretty weird space with the two of us since we’d left Argentina. I’d thought it was from all the light we’d been sharing since Shadow’s construct injured him. The light-sharing hadn’t been much of an issue for at least a week, though, and if anything, Revik was only acting stranger around me.
Truthfully, I was starting to wonder about him a bit.
He was the first to admit he’d been having “issues” with his aleimi around me, pretty much since the wedding, although he wouldn’t tell me why, or what he thought it meant. I also couldn’t shake the impression there was something there Revik wasn’t telling me.
As much as he bitched about me keeping him out of my light when it suited me, I’d noticed he was damned good at keeping me out, too, when he wanted.
I’d already asked him if the injuries from Shadow were affecting him in that area, but he never really answered me. I considered asking him again now, especially when I saw the rings of his irises glowing faintly in the low light from the armored vehicle’s floor.
“Or maybe you’re just overthinking it,” Revik murmured in my ear, his hand tightening on my hip. “Maybe it’s just those damned sleeping conditions in Albany, with five of us to a bed and not a damned minute of privacy.”
Flushing a little, I glanced around him at the other seer.
Wreg took the opportunity to scowl at me, pointing down at his lap.
“Keep your man under control, Esteemed Bridge,” he advised me curtly.
“You say that like it was a remote possibility,” I sighed.
Revik chuckled, right before he leaned closer to kiss my neck. When he started putting light into his tongue, I felt myself flush warmer and glanced at Wreg.
“Hit him again, would you?” I said.
“Hey.” Revik raised his head. “Loyalty, wife. Does the word mean nothing to you?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but had trouble holding onto my train of thought when he pressed against me again. Frowning, I stared up at him.
“Seriously, what is up with you? Am I going to have to get Jorag to hit you with the dart gun the next time traffic gets backed up?”
Revik chuckled, but only gripped my hip tighter.
If only to distract myself, I glanced around him again, that time to look at Jon.
My adoptive brother lay half-sprawled in the lap of Wreg, who continued to frown at both of us. I knew why Wreg was annoyed. I’d seen how exhausted Jon was when we were loading the Humvees. I knew how little sleep he’d gotten in the past few weeks, even less than the rest of us with our ridiculously cramped sleeping conditions.
Then again, Jon had pretty much been a wreck since we reached the first population center outside that private airport in upstate New York.
“Don’t worry,” Revik said into my ear. “We won’t wake him. Wreg knocked him out.”
I raised an eyebrow, gazing down at my crashed-out brother’s tense-looking face.
“Boyfriend therapy,” Revik said, smiling. “You don’t approve?”
I grunted. “Do you do that to me, too?” I said, without looking away from Jon. “When I’m being a pain in the ass?”
Revik chuckled, kissing my face. “Jon isn’t Elaerian, wife. Besides, according to his hyper-possessive and psychotically overprotective boyfriend, Jon hasn’t slept in four days.”
“I’m right here, you know,” Wreg grumbled. “Not like you’d notice.”
Revik smiled, but didn’t look at him. “We might need Jon later today. And we can’t afford to let him make himself sick.”
“So you ordered it?” I quirked an eyebrow at him.
“No. But you could say I didn’t disapprove when the option was raised.”
“Still sitting right here,” Wreg muttered.
Shaking my head, I smiled, rolling my eyes at both of them.
Still, I got what Revik was saying. Like I said, none of us had gotten much sleep.
Revik slid his arm tighter around me. I hadn’t realized I was cold until I found myself burrowing deeper into his jacket.
“Allie,” he said, soft. “You’re in the red zone for sleep, too… as soon as we get somewhere where you can catch a few hours, you’re getting some rack time. Hopefully before we head into the city.”
I nodded, shifting my back around to burrow deep
er into his coat. I studiously ignored the flare off his light in response, much less the physical reaction that accompanied it. For his part, he seemed to be consciously dialing it down a bit. I felt him actively controlling his light, or at least shielding more of it from where I could feel it.
I pretended not to notice that, either.
“So Jon really hasn’t slept for four days?” I spoke to Wreg as much as Revik. “That’s… impressive. Even for him.”
Wreg grunted.
I glanced over in time to see the ex-Rebel give me a wan attempt at a smile. He was stroking Jon’s hair, but I felt the worry in his light, along with sparks of something that reminded me a little too much of what I’d just been feeling on Revik.
Great. Him, too.
Revik hadn’t been entirely kidding when he’d been teasing Wreg. Clearly, Wreg’s issue was sexual in some way, and clearly, it was aimed at Jon.
I had to admit, I sometimes understood why a lot of humans thought all seers were nymphomaniacs who didn’t have normal emotions compared to humans.
“You guys have seen way too many wars,” I muttered, closing my eyes as I leaned into Revik’s chest. I felt Revik’s fingers tighten, but Wreg only grunted.
“Ain’t that the truth,” he exhaled.
Wreg, my brother’s new boyfriend, or whatever they were to one another, was a good guy. He really was, I knew that, and I liked Wreg a lot. Truthfully, though, I was still adjusting to their relationship. The Chinese-looking seer was muscular, handsome, covered in tattoos and had stunning, obsidian-black eyes. I knew he’d hardly been a monk over the years, but he didn’t exactly have a rep for sleeping around, either.
Truthfully, I knew next to nothing about his relationship history, and that wasn’t why I worried about him with Jon.
My real worry was, he’d once worked for Menlim, just like my husband.
In fact, he’d worked for Menlim for longer than Revik had. He’d once been considered Menlim’s most loyal lieutenant.
Even then, I didn’t worry about Wreg’s loyalty to us, per se. Wreg was like the most loyal guy on the planet, and I knew his change of heart was sincere.
I did worry that a good chunk of our leadership team might be vulnerable to Shadow, however. The things I saw in Argentina didn’t exactly calm those fears.
I tried to push the thought from my mind.
“So what about you, brother Wreg?” I said. “Have you slept at all?”
Wreg gave me another look, his lips quirked, but the humor didn’t reach his eyes. Instead he shrugged, glancing down at Jon. “I’ll sleep when we get there.”
Nodding, I found myself looking out the window.
Back when we first landed, we hadn’t really known what we’d find in the States.
The private airport outside Albany was more or less deserted, although trying to land was still chaotic, given the lack of a functioning Air Traffic Control and the number of planes coming out of nearby Albany International Airport. A lot of wealthier and more connected people still seemed to be attempting to flee by air, given the chatter over the radio picked up by our pilots, so we had to be damned careful on approach.
We ran into a squad of military planes near D.C., too.
Luckily, they had no seers with them, and none protecting the cockpits remotely, so Wreg was able to push them into thinking we were one of them.
“We’re nearing the rendezvous point,” Revik told me in a murmur, kissing my temple as he continued massaging my neck.
I nodded, looking outside without pulling away from where I rested inside his coat.
I had to look, I told myself. I needed to have some idea of what we were in for when the vehicle stopped. I was our one and only telekinetic seer right now.
“Training starts as soon as we get back,” he reminded me.
I nodded, barely hearing him. “None of them can get near Jon.”
Revik held me tighter, rubbing my shoulder. “No one is getting near Jon, wife.”
I nodded, still thinking about the day we’d landed here.
The gas station at the end of the private airport’s access road was where it started. That was where we’d seen the first signs of what we were in for.
Balidor warned us, of course. He’d seen things degenerate even in the forty-two hours since he and his team arrived. They’d gotten back to the States before us, and were already set up in the brick apartment building in Albany by the time our plane landed.
Even with Balidor’s warning, I still hadn’t been prepared for what I saw.
Maybe I was still too fried and emotionally drained from everything that went down in Argentina, or maybe it was just too up close and personal. Either way, I cried out in horror when I saw my first act of real violence in this new America.
For me, it was a guy in his thirties, wearing jeans and a polo shirt like some soccer dad from the suburbs, slamming a crowbar into the face of a woman wearing khaki pants and a silk blouse. Crying out again in shock, I watched him hit her two more times in the back of the head, saw her skull crack and a spray of blood and brains splash across the front of his polo shirt.
He slammed her at least once more in the face before he tore the gas hose out of her dead, twitching fingers and started trying to use it to fill up a gas can he’d fashioned out of what looked like an empty oil barrel.
He’d loaded the back of his pick-up truck with at least five more of those barrels already, so apparently this guy fancied himself some kind of survivalist.
Fires burned in the field behind the gas station itself.
I saw five or six shadowy forms in the station’s office, pulling things off racks and fighting over the cash register like a pack of wild dogs. Even then, a part of me couldn’t help thinking how ludicrous it was, fighting over currency that had already been on its way out, even before this whole mess started.
The main carnage happened over the gas, though, even apart from polo-shirt guy. The attendant lay facedown in a long splatter of what had to be his own blood. I didn’t see the puddle growing any bigger, so mercifully, his heart had probably stopped. Two pumps over from the soccer dad, three other men fought with their bare hands over another pump.
I also saw a petite, Asian woman in a business suit holding a semi-automatic handgun on three more people, two men and a woman, while she filled her Mustang's tank up using the third pump.
All I could think was, it had only been 72 hours.
Not even four days had passed since Shadow unleashed his deadly virus on the world. I was watching the only civilization I’d ever known crumble to dust around me.
We hadn’t even started running out of things yet.
Multiple cities were hit in their water supplies, just like we were told in Argentina. I don’t know if the number was really twenty or closer to two hundred, but every continent was hit, and the emphasis was clearly on major travel hubs and high population centers.
It didn’t include New York, but they hit Chicago, Houston, Miami, Los Angeles and Seattle. The Bay Area of California had already been hit, of course. I was told Denver got a pass, but Omaha was hit; so was Phoenix.
In the rest of the world, it was as if they took the top fifteen or so cities by population and systematically wiped them out, starting with Shanghai, Istanbul, Karachi, Mumbai, Delhi, Cairo, Bangkok and Moscow, and working west and south from there.
The list of infected cities kept growing, and faster than it likely could be spreading organically, which told us a second wave of attacks had likely followed the first. We had confirmed origination points in only a few of them, however.
Because the contaminant was in the water, everything moved really fast.
Human governments, in addition to pointing fingers at me and Revik, also began pointing them at one another.
The United States blamed China, at least behind closed doors. After their military obtained intel about the heavy Lao Hu presence in San Francisco, they floated the theory that Revik and I worked for the Chinese milit
ary. A number of our top infiltrators, led by Yumi, was currently trying to hack the White House construct so they could reach the minds of key decision-makers, including the President, in an attempt to dial back the hostilities.
I wasn’t sure how much luck Yumi’s team was having, though.
Balidor informed me we weren’t the only players involved. The Lao Hu were in the mix, although they seemed to be trying to prevent things from going nuclear, too. Balidor saw evidence of another group of seers sharing that Barrier space, as well––seers with a decidedly different agenda than the Adhipan or the Lao Hu.
Whoever they were, they seemed to be deliberately inciting paranoia, overreaction and aggression in Washington decision-makers.
Clearly, someone wanted Beijing in D.C.’s sights.
Running my fingers through my hair, I tried to shove that out of my mind, as well. It aligned a little too closely with dreams I’d been having for roughly five years now. Anyway, there wasn’t much we could do from here. We needed to get back to the hotel, and a real construct.
I looked out the window again.
The highway was relatively clear when we first got outside Albany’s city limits, apart from a number of cars that appeared to have been run off the road.
Well, and a shooting we witnessed on the shoulder.
Given that electricity remained out in most places, mostly all we saw were fires in that penetrating dark, at least until we’d gotten to where actual towns abutted the highway. After we passed through the first major road blocks, mostly by flashing miraged military IDs at confused and frightened human soldiers, we found ourselves in bumper-to-bumper traffic filled with increasingly desperate humans, most of whom seemed to be trying to make their way to the same place we were: the quarantine zone of New York.
Of the others, we figured most probably hoped to reach one of the remaining open coastal ports, where they might book passage on a boat.
Wreg said they’d received reports that boat owners and captains of all kinds were advertising “quarantine cruises” from points up and down both American coasts. Most charged somewhere in the neighborhood of a million dollars per seat, and promised to ferry their charges out onto the open ocean, presumably to wait out the worst of the outbreak. Half those ships were probably tug boats and commercial or private fishing vessels, not luxury liners.
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