War_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

  “Can he spare you down here?” Jon said. “Revik. Can he spare you? We need you upstairs. Now. As in right now.”

  I stood up, but my legs didn’t seem to want to work right. Gripping the back of the chair, I nodded.

  “Yeah.” I blinked, trying to force myself out of whatever weird dead zone my brain was hiding in. “…Yeah. What is it, Jon? What’s wrong?”

  But Jon seemed to have given up on talking to me the usual way.

  Walking directly up to me, he grabbed hold of my arm. Pausing to lean over the console, he hit a switch, speaking into the microphone on one edge of the smooth organic.

  “I need your wife,” he said, curt. “Not an emergency, but it can’t wait. You can find us upstairs when you’re done. At the bar. No hurry, okay?”

  Revik looked over, his light eyes narrow, and slightly hard from whatever was going on between him and Maygar. He seemed poised on the edge of a question––maybe more than one question––but changed his mind after a few beats, nodding to Jon instead.

  “Ten minutes,” he told Jon.

  “That’s fine. We need her now,” he said.

  Revik nodded again, but his expression remained wary, bordering on dangerous, really. Without being able to read anything off him specifically, I could tell he didn’t want me leaving the rough area of his proximity, especially after what he’d just told Maygar.

  I found myself understanding why now, too.

  In fact, I found myself understanding a lot of things suddenly.

  But I couldn’t let myself go there. Not now.

  “Are you sure we don’t need him?” I turned to face Jon, feeling my focus beginning to return as I struggled to wrap my head around the present. “Why me and not him? You must know my sight’s not great right now, and––”

  “It’s Cass, Allie.”

  At that, together with the look on Jon’s face, my mind finally clicked into gear. I got up from the bolted-down chair, leaning down for my hand-held and configuring it to wrap back around my wrist. Jon watched, me, stepping back to give me space.

  “…And yeah,” Jon added. “We do need him. We’re going to need everyone in this pretty soon, but right now, just you. Wreg’s not even in on this yet. I left him asleep upstairs. He’s still having problems with his shoulder, and he pushed it again yesterday––”

  “So who is there?” I said.

  “Just you and me,” Jon said promptly. “More are coming. We’re meeting on sixty-four.”

  “That high?” I said, puzzled. “Why? I thought that was all storage now?”

  “It’s secure,” was all Jon said.

  Giving another puzzled nod, I didn’t bother to question him further.

  I saw his eyes dart to Maygar and Revik a last time, but I didn’t read anything into the glance. I assumed he was just wondering what was going on, why they were in there together. Jon witnessed Maygar’s claim attempt in Seertown, so he knew the history there.

  Then again, he also knew Maygar was Revik’s biological son, so maybe seeing the two of them together didn’t really strike him as all that weird.

  In any case, I didn’t try to explain.

  Regaining my feet, I simply headed for the door to the corridor. Jon followed. We walked in silence to the elevator, and I don’t think I even looked at Jon again until he leaned down to punch the button for the sixty-fourth floor. After the round key lit up, Jon glanced at me, his hazel eyes sharper than usual, almost wary.

  Maybe to head off the question I saw forming there, I asked him one, instead.

  “So you’re not going to tell me?” I joked. “What’s up?”

  He shook his head, shoving his hands into his pockets. “No need,” he said, giving me a faint smile. I noticed it didn’t touch his eyes. “You’ll know, soon enough.”

  Something else hit me. “Didn’t you tell Revik we’d be at the bar?”

  “We will be, by the time he meets us.”

  Puzzled, I didn’t argue, but found myself turning over his words anyway.

  It would take a few minutes to get up to sixty-four, then another few to get back down to the bar. Revik said ten minutes. It didn’t really add up, but for some reason, I didn’t press the point with Jon, maybe because my brain was still on Revik in the basement, and the fact that I’d just learned I was carrying his baby.

  Maygar would be his or her half-brother.

  The thought made me smile for some reason.

  After another pause, I did send our preliminary destination to Revik via the headset, in case we didn’t finish up there before he headed to the bar, looking for us.

  Apart from that, I didn’t speak to him, though.

  I wasn’t particularly surprised when he didn’t press me for additional information, either. From his curt acknowledgment, I heard flickers of his irritation at Maygar, what might have been worry aimed at me, but not much else. He probably wanted to give me enough space to absorb the information before we talked about it for real.

  As I stood there, in the elevator, I found myself smiling.

  Revik had been happy the last few weeks.

  He’d been paranoid, hyper-emotional, hyper-protective, horny as hell, territorial, possessive, borderline smothering of me a lot of the time… but really, really happy.

  The numbers lit up on the terminal, rising steadily as the elevator car climbed.

  As they did, my fear gradually began to fade.

  My heart went back to normal, my light.

  Weirdly, it was like I breathed a sigh of relief.

  It wasn’t just the knowing.

  It wasn’t even that I finally believed Revik, that there was nothing seriously wrong with me, that the blindness I’d been experiencing wasn’t anything to stress over.

  It was the sudden realization that, despite the world ending, Shadow stalking us, Ditrini, the disease, the earthquakes, tsunamis and storms, governments collapsing throughout the world… I still felt hope. Even after all that, I had enough hope left in me to want to be a mother.

  I wanted to bring a life into the world––our life.

  Revik and I were going to have a family.

  The thought blew my mind, filled me with wonder, fear, disbelief, anxiety. Yet, the more it sank in, the happier I felt. On some level, that fact alone helped me believe.

  Everything really was going to be all right.

  We were going to be a family. All of us.

  Jon, Wreg. Balidor.

  Even Maygar.

  We were going to be a family, and everything was going to be all right.

  37

  TELECAST

  BALIDOR STOOD AT the far edge of a white-walled room, staring past heads and bodies up at a monitor that covered an entire wall of their largest conference room.

  The room continued to fill with seers as Balidor stood there, eyes glued to the feed. He found himself faintly grateful Nenzi hadn’t joined them yet––although he knew they would have to pull him into this, and soon.

  The thought only registered in the dim background of Balidor’s mind.

  The other ninety-nine percent of his attention was absorbed by the gaunt face that took up most of the monitor. The distinct features erased the rest of the room. He concentrated with all his being, taking in every detail, lost in the other’s eyes and light as he tried to feel the living being behind them, if only to confirm that what he was seeing was real.

  It was Menlim.

  Born of Clan Purestad. Guardian of orphan, Nenzi Algathe. Infamous creator of the deadly Syrimne d’ Gaos. Notorious in the seer world even prior to that, for having stolen documents detailing the lost military arts of the Adhipan and teaching them without permission to uninitiated seers.

  Whatever else he might have been, Menlim nearly brought on the Third Displacement single-handedly, and over one hundred years too soon.

  History listed him as having died over ninety years ago. He’d committed suicide in the Rebel caves of the Bavarian mountains, in front of multiple seer wi
tnesses.

  Yet, the longer he stared and used his light, the more sure Balidor was that it was really him. Even after that hall of mirrors in Argentina, even after all the games they’d endured at Shadow’s hands before now, he couldn’t dispute what his light knew.

  This was no projection. It was Menlim of Purestad, alive and in the flesh.

  Balidor would have sworn to it.

  After everything, Allie had been right. She’d believed Menlim was still alive; Balidor felt it on her light and in her mind more than once, even before she brought that belief to the rest of the group. She’d seen it, and she’d been right.

  He fought to keep his attention on the live telecast, to keep his mind off what everyone around him was saying, which wasn’t exactly easy as they argued back and forth across the polished wood table––a wood table that must have cost a fortune, given the cost of hard woods these days. Staring at the monitor as the seers around him reacted and shouted at one another, Balidor pushed carefully on different aspects of some of the densest Barrier shields he’d ever encountered, trying to feel the beings behind them.

  Those beings pushed him off as easily as if he were a buzzing mosquito.

  Balidor remembered Menlim from the war, although they’d only met once.

  Even with his seer’s photographic memory, that single meeting in Germany in 1917 wasn’t why he believed Menlim was really standing there, on the steps of the Capitol Building in Washington D.C.

  No, it was something else––something Balidor sensed from the higher layers in his light. Despite the subtlety of that feeling, he trusted the hit, perhaps more than he trusted his more concrete aleimic impressions, or even his physical senses. He knew that intuition would need to be assessed and argued, researched, sourced, mapped, tracked, confirmed, re-confirmed.

  But he already believed it.

  The how of it still eluded him. Whether Menlim was truly Sark, an intermediary, or even a reanimated corpse, like Feigran’s bodies, Balidor did not know. He suspected the truth lived in some other explanation––something they had not yet seen––but he had no way to verify that intuition, either.

  Next to the tall, skull-faced seer, Feigran stood in a casual but alert pose, hands folded in front of a tailored suit.

  Physically, Feigran was almost unrecognizable.

  Instead of the thin, nervous, half-wasted seer Balidor remembered, a well-built, handsome, strong-jawed male stood there, recognizable only in his eyes, mouth and cheekbones. A light shadow touched his jaw from a half-day’s beard. His auburn hair was tied back in a clip, accenting high cheekbones in a squarish face. His shoulders were broad and muscular over a built chest and a still-narrow but thicker waist. The dark blue suit he wore with the crimson shirt and tie looked brand new, and expensive.

  He looked like he might have been reconstructed genetically in some way.

  Despite the familiarity of his amber eyes, something foreign lived there, too. That mad light that shone from within had disappeared, but so had much of the gentler quality Balidor remembered from the Feigran who’d been their captive at the hotel.

  Some element of Terian lived there again.

  Balidor couldn’t put his finger on the exact difference, or even say for certain what it meant, in terms of whether it came from a re-splitting of Terian’s personality or not, but that darker feeling of misgiving worsened the longer he stared at those yellow-tinted eyes.

  Feigran’s light hung protectively over the older seer’s. His expression was alert as he scanned faces in the nearby crowd. He looked like expensive private security. Watching his light, Balidor wondered how much of the shield around Menlim came from Feigran, as well.

  The implications of that relationship disturbed Balidor even more than what he’d heard about Cass and Feigran in Argentina. Something about Feigran’s energy and face carried sanity again, even if that sanity came coupled with significantly less kindness and heart in those intense and sharply intelligent eyes.

  A pain hit at his chest when his thoughts returned to Cass.

  Where was she? Why wasn’t she on that stage, too?

  Pushing the thought from his mind, as well as the emotions that wanted to rise with it, he focused back on Menlim’s words.

  Those words seemed to come from another era, evoking memories Balidor would have preferred to leave behind. He recognized the flavor and even some of the content of those words, although the first time he’d heard them, it had been Syrimne who’d spoken them, back during the worst fighting of World War I.

  “…My friends.” Menlim’s voice was smooth, a rich velvet.

  He lay white, bone-like hands on either side of a steel-colored podium. His words echoed, amplifying past the concrete pillars to the plaza below.

  “We are at a critical moment.” His light eyes reflected a circle of stage lights over the raised platform. “All of us know we are likely seeing the end of our world. We are perhaps witnessing the fall of the human race itself, and the civilization it carved out of the earth and stone caves of our ancestors…”

  Anger ignited in the pale gold eyes.

  “Up until now, we have only sat back and watched. We have watched and we have done nothing, even knowing the probable––if not certain––source of this nightmare.” His voice strengthened, growing harder. “We all know this is no disease. It is a weapon. A weapon designed to annihilate our species, down to the last person. And it is accomplishing its goal, my brothers and sisters. Daily, it is beating us. Hourly. Every minute.”

  Menlim focused on the camera, his sallow skin sweating lightly in the glaring lights.

  For the first time, Balidor noticed the ring of network feed reporters surrounding him.

  Where in the gods was Cass? Why wouldn’t Menlim use her in this?

  Balidor would have guessed Cass would be standing right at his side, enveloped in his light even more completely than Feigran/Terian. If this message was indeed aimed at the Bridge, as Balidor suspected it was, why wouldn’t Menlim use his most effective weapon?

  Menlim gazed out over the crowd below the hovering reporters. His features contorted in a convincing-looking grief, despite the anger that shone in his eyes. The emotions felt almost real, but for the complete wall around the being’s aleimi, and the hardness of the light that reflected back, pulling on the crowd like steel cables.

  Balidor felt that pull, too.

  He recognized it; he knew its power.

  It had frightened him, that power, when he first felt it in the trenches during World War I. It frightened him now, even though he only tasted the edges of it. He remembered how it affected his own men, confusing them as they fought, sometimes even making them turn on one another.

  The tangible amplification of that network terrified Balidor, if only because he could feel a part of himself that could get lost inside it, too––so lost, he might never climb out. The sheer subtlety of the emotions it manipulated made him nervous.

  “…Whatever the reasons given for this horror, do any of us really care anymore?”

  The crowd shouted “NO!”

  Even some of the reporters shouted it.

  Menlim’s voice rose to meet theirs. “The reasons don’t matter. Not anymore. All that matters is this: It. Must. Stop!”

  More yells rose, briefly drowning out those at the top of the steps.

  Balidor scanned faces, still looking for Cass, looking for any hint of her in the bodies pressed up against the ropes around the podium. He didn’t see her.

  His mind skirted around Menlim himself, getting close without letting that metallic light pull on him, without letting it confuse his sight. He glanced at Jorag with a frown, and saw fear in the ex-Rebel’s dark blue eyes, as well.

  “We’re recording all of this?” Balidor muttered, glancing at the others.

  Scattered heads nodded.

  Only then did Balidor notice the silence.

  All of them were staring at the monitor now, arguments forgotten. None looked away from the
screen when Menlim resumed speaking.

  “The Bridge will get her war.” Menlim’s light eyes shimmered with a harder pulse of metallic light. “She wanted this… or so the iceblood scripture tells us. She wants this war. She wants us to rise up. To evolve. To change. She wants the human race’s back against the wall.”

  Menlim paused for a weighted beat, eyes lingering on faces.

  The silver light above him brightened, descending over the crowd like a sparking cage, enmeshing even tighter into their aleimi. As it enfolded them, their eyes shone with the silver light, too.

  Balidor watched, disturbed, as they breathed as one organism.

  “Well, Esteemed Bridge…” Menlim’s voice hardened. His cold eyes bored into the camera, into the crowd beyond. “Our back is to the wall. I suspect you may not like us in this state as much as you think…”

  More yells erupted through the crush of onlookers and reporters. Those yells held pride now, rising in an angry war cry as Menlim gazed down from the podium.

  “Yes!” His voice rose above the swell. “The infamous Bridge, Alyson Taylor, and her brainwashed band of cowards will get their war… at last. She has forced us to take a stand. So we will. Like it or not, we are all in. She has taken all we have… so now, we have nothing left to lose. I wonder if this Bridge truly understands what that means?”

  The crowd erupted in shouts and cheers.

  Menlim stared around, waiting for the yells to die down.

  His voice grew more militaristic.

  “…With our president now fallen from this cursed disease,” he continued. “We do not even have law and order to restrain our demand for justice. We are our own people. Alone, but brave. Frightened, but immovable. The last remnants of a free world… the last remnants of a superior race! We will avenge those who have fallen! We will survive this!”

  More cheers exploded in the surrounding crowd. Humans clapped, hooted, pumped fists in the air, screamed, yelled in triumph.

  Jax’s eyes shifted to Balidor. “Is that true? Is Brooks dead?”

  Balidor shook his head, but not in a no. “We have been unable to confirm or to refute that assertion. We’re trying to get eyes into the security bunker below the White House, but the construct is complex––more so since Dehgoies’ extraction op a few years ago. We had a hard enough time breaching it when talk of war with China began. Now they have it reinforced in several areas, including the sub-basements, where the medical center is located.”