War_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

  Still, it was Jon’s words that echoed in his mind, breaking through the logical veneer he’d wrapped around himself once he found himself locked in that cell. It was one thing to be able to infer what happened from the bare facts. It was a whole other thing to have it confirmed.

  Cass had her.

  Cass and Terian had his wife.

  A hard pain rose in his chest. Helplessness rose, a feeling so intense, he had to briefly fight to control it. That logic he’d been immersed in tried to reassert itself, maybe out of self-defense, but for a long-feeling few seconds, he couldn’t hold it. His mind shifted back and forth between the two extremes, one part of him screaming, in more pain than he could think past, the other so cold, he couldn’t feel anything at all.

  Slowly, everything stilled.

  Emotion receded in the same set of seconds, leaving the rest bare.

  He pulled a portion of his mind and light into the quietest recesses of his aleimi, entering the same non-dimensional Barrier structures he used for telekinesis. He’d already determined the collar couldn’t feel him in those spaces. He’d gone up there initially to try and find Allie, but he’d been met with nothing but silence. Whoever had her, they had her collared too, and with something a lot stronger than what he wore.

  Still, having access to those structures wasn’t nothing.

  He couldn’t use the telekinesis, but that part of his aleimi was awake enough for use in other ways, including multi-dimensional strategizing. More to the point, once he had a portion of his light up there, he could think without being overheard by regular seers, including Ditrini. He kept some of his mind on the lower levels, thinking separate thoughts, so the silence wouldn’t make Ditrini suspicious, either.

  With that higher part of his light, he tried to decide if it would be better to try and escape now, or let Ditrini lead him to Allie. Both options were damned risky. The more he looked at it, however, the more convinced he was that getting free now had to be the priority.

  Ditrini wouldn’t risk shooting him.

  If he killed Revik, he killed Allie.

  He must have been ordered to bring Maygar and Jon in alive, as well. Therefore, a lot depended on how important it was to Ditrini, to stay in Shadow’s good graces. Considering Shadow likely had Allie by now, Revik guessed it was pretty damned important to him. Moreover, Revik was male. His acts of defiance wouldn’t trigger Ditrini the same way Allie’s had, so he was less likely to lose control and shoot Jon or Maygar out of spite.

  Right now was likely the most vulnerable Ditrini would get. Five guards. Cut off from his military back-up. No big weapons.

  Revik needed to get free now. He had to make an opening now.

  He didn’t let thoughts of Allie’s condition enter that part of his mind, or how frightened she must have been, blind, and suddenly finding herself betrayed by her own brother. Keeping his more emotional reactions in the lower levels of his light, where Ditrini would feel them, he thought around those things instead, sticking to the spaces where he could still maneuver.

  He assessed his current situation.

  Although the collar he wore was nothing special, Ditrini had the levels cranked up to their highest setting. Revik nearly knocked himself unconscious the one and only time he’d truly tested those limits. That was bad news. He basically couldn’t use his light at all, even for misdirection.

  The good news was, the collars belonged to the Adhipan.

  That meant, while Ditrini locked it to his neck personally, he couldn’t trigger the collar remotely, using, say, a headset. Revik had to trigger the shocks himself––which meant if he ran, Ditrini couldn’t drop him without chasing him down and doing it physically.

  Remembering suddenly that he was dealing with the other half of the Four, he tried to use the higher levels of his light to reach Feigran, instead of Allie.

  He got glimpses, bare impressions, but nothing he could hold onto for more than seconds at a time. It was like Feigran was made of smoke and water, slick as ice and morphing like air. Revik tasted him, felt his presence, even felt glimmers of his thoughts, but he couldn’t get close enough to glean anything approximating information. All he got was numbers and geometrical patterns, rows and rows of lines covered in brightly lit nodes, like knots in a string.

  Something about those lines felt vaguely familiar, but as soon as Revik got closer, they disappeared too, like clouds rent by wind.

  Time, his mind told him. Something to do with time.

  Deciding that information wasn’t exactly useful at the moment, Revik refocused, trying to use those higher structures of his aleimi to feel for Cass, instead.

  He couldn’t feel her, either, but the differences were stark.

  Unlike Feigran’s amorphousness and Allie’s silence, he hit an actual barrier with Cass, one so dense it felt physical to his mind. A wall of seething, silver light formed behind his eyes, mirroring back his own light form. Despite all of his years with the Dreng, he’d never felt anything like it; it was less a construct and more like she was encased inside an organic metal ball, hot with voltage, like a Barrier version of an OBE field.

  Something told him not to try and touch that ball.

  After a few more seconds of looking at it, Revik clicked out, frowning.

  He thought about his two companions.

  Jon was in shock. He was a competent fighter, but he was still new to integrating his sight into his fighting technique. He wouldn’t stand a chance against these infiltrators, whether Shadow had trained them, or the Lao Hu.

  In the cell, Maygar fought well, Revik had observed.

  He was green. He needed formal training, but he was a natural fighter––fluid, fast, kept his head under pain and stacked odds, good instincts. With some real training under his belt, he’d be quite a few cuts above average in a few years, but right now, he wouldn’t be able to hold his own with these seers, either.

  Inside Maygar’s cell, they’d been significantly more outnumbered.

  More than half of the guards who’d originally been brought in to subdue Revik, Jon and Maygar had peeled off before they entered the sewer tunnels––presumably to join their comrades attempting to breach the higher floors of the hotel. Revik had been forced to fight seven on his own in that initial fight; Jon and Maygar fought three and four, respectively.

  Once they were down, Ditrini made a point of putting the collars and chains on all three of them, starting with Revik.

  Revik felt the ritualistic fervor behind those collarings, to the point where he wondered if Ditrini was actually hard while he was doing it.

  This Lao Hu prick was definitely a sadist––the sexual kind, and in general.

  Unlike Allie, Revik had played that game before, though––and with sadists a lot more intelligent and twisted than this rotting piece of ridvak carcass.

  He let that thought resonate in the lower areas of his light, unable to help himself from making the jab, and Ditrini chuckled, sparing him another over-the-shoulder glance.

  Before he’d turned away, the guard behind Revik shoved at his hurt shoulder, making him gasp, then grit his teeth, but also speed his steps. Next to him, Jon and Maygar’s guards pushed them along too, moving all three of them faster down the cement tunnel, ignoring their stumbles and splashes in the dark.

  Revik glanced at Jon, right as another explosion rocked the walls of the pipe, that one a lot closer. Losing his balance briefly, he regained it, glancing up as Ditrini touched a key on his headset.

  “Yes.” Ditrini used modern-style Prexci, but his words remained accented, clipped by the older version. “They are breaking through, my Formidable Friend.”

  Revik and Jon exchanged a look.

  Cass. He was talking to Cass.

  Ditrini paused, clearly listening to the other end.

  “Yes,” he said when the pause ended. “…Faster than you estimated. My people tell me they will be forced to fall back, that a true breach is impossible at this point. The cowardly scum have cra
shed their own construct totally, so we have lost eyes into the hotel.”

  He paused again, listening.

  “Yes. The old woman, they think.” At something the other person said, he smiled. “No. No, I do not think that is possible, my beautiful sister. I am told they cannot even pinpoint her location. She is encased in her own shields, something my people have never seen before…”

  He trailed as the person on the other end spoke.

  “Regardless,” Ditrini said, flipping his hand sideways. “It cannot be done now. We have time constraints to worry about. I am told the wall is in danger.”

  Ditrini glanced at Revik with a thin smile, one that struck Revik as hiding anger. Clearly he didn’t like taking orders from Cass, either.

  Not a big surprise, given his issues with female seers.

  Looking away, Ditrini made a slight flourish with his fingers.

  “Yes. I am hearing you. But your calculations appear to be off, Formidable One. Our friends are feeling motivated… presumably because they found out too soon that you’d absconded with our precious girl. Probably because the use of her human brother was clumsy.”

  Revik exchanged another look with Jon, who frowned.

  “Yes.” Ditrini’s words were patient, dripping with condescension. “Yes. I understand. I would still respectfully suggest you change your strategy somewhat, my friend. Or neither of us will get what we want from this.”

  Just then, another bang hit from overhead, loud enough that Revik and Jon’s eyes jerked up. The ground shook violently under their feet that time, forcing Revik to rearrange his stance just to keep his balance. Even so, he leaned heavily into the guard holding him.

  The guard put a hand on the tunnel wall to regain his own balance.

  Revik felt his heart pounding from the nearness of the jolt, as well as its strength. He stared at the walls of the tunnel, the ceiling, the floor.

  Something was wrong.

  That last jolt hadn’t sounded––or felt––like explosives.

  He glanced at Jon, then at Maygar.

  Their faces had paled, probably as his own had, but he couldn’t read anything more into their expressions. Feeling the receding tremble of the cylindrical pipe even as he looked back at Ditrini, Revik was surprised to see an equally wary look on the senior infiltrator’s face.

  The ground under them shook again, harder that time.

  “Fuck.” Jon’s hazel eyes, still holding a veneer of shock, widened as the rumbles and shakes began to fade. “That wasn’t a fucking bomb. That wasn’t a bomb––”

  “Shut up, worm!” the guard behind him snapped, cuffing his head. “Be silent!”

  “I lived in San Francisco! I’m telling you, that wasn’t an endruk et dugra bomb!”

  The guard hit him again, harder.

  Revik glanced at Maygar, who’d paled even more, then back at Jon, who was gasping, recovering from the blow. Revik definitely got the impression Maygar understood, too.

  So did Ditrini, who was staring at Jon, as well.

  The floor shook again, harder, seemingly up and down and side to side at the same time. Revik fell into the guard holding his cuffs, unable to catch his weight without his arms or hands. The guard cursed, falling into the wall and bracing both of them with his hands.

  The shaking continued, growing stronger briefly before it began to die down.

  It hadn’t died down entirely when it started again. It felt and sounded like two buildings smashing into one another, or like a giant hand shook the tunnel with them inside it.

  Ditrini raised his voice, speaking in a near shout.

  “We may have an act of the One True God on our hands, brother!” he said, smiling widely. “Who do you think your gods are pulling for, Illustrious Sword? Your people or mine? Or do they follow the Dragon, too?”

  Revik didn’t answer.

  He saw nothing in those mercury-colored eyes he could relate to, or even connect to, seer-to-seer. Those eyes belonged to an animal––or possibly a ridvak, if one believed the myths about Barrier worms said to suck souls and turn seers and humans into puppets from the aleimic fields above Earth. It was said that a traumatized seer could abdicate their life, hand their will over to a ridvak to live for them––or through them.

  Also according to myth, such a life brought fame and riches, but a loss of soul.

  Either way, Balidor was right. The guy was a full-blown psychopath.

  The silver eyes shifted, aiming back down the tunnel in the direction from which they’d come, then forward, in the direction they were going. He seemed to be calculating distances, trying to decide something. The longer Revik watched his face, the more he found himself thinking the infiltrator didn’t like what his calculations told him.

  Of course, that might be good news for him, Jon and Maygar.

  Turning, Ditrini frowned at him openly.

  His silver irises shone in the light of the greenish, flickering yisso torches. After another pause, he hit the button to open the line for the transmitter in his ear. He didn’t bother with a greeting that time.

  “You felt that?” he said, to whoever picked up.

  He spoke in accented English that time.

  Revik could almost hear the rapid-fire words from the other end.

  “How the hell could that have happened?” Ditrini snapped, cutting them off. “We were supposed to have reinforcements, na? Where are the fucking military helicopters? Where are the gaos d’jurekil’a SCARB teams? You must know we're cut off. If this segment floods––”

  Whoever was on the other end was still talking fast. Fast enough that Ditrini fell silent.

  After another pause, he cursed, loudly and in Mandarin.

  “What other exits do you have mapped?” he began, stopping when the other cut him off. ”That is not fucking acceptable! The Adhipan is right behind us! I told you, we––”

  Again, the person on the other end cut him off.

  “Well, we can’t go back,” Ditrini snapped after another pause. “Get rid of them! Or find some way to turn them around, before––”

  The other cut him off again. He frowned, listening.

  Revik had to fight to keep from trying to scan the Lao Hu infiltrator.

  Had SCARB and the human authorities turned on Ditrini’s extraction team? Was it possible Revik, Maygar and Jon could be rescued by World Court agents, thanks to Balidor and Wreg’s connections and Chan’s new friend from D.C.?

  The irony didn’t escape Revik; SCARB historically worked for Galaith and the Rooks. They had for decades, pretty much since the bureau’s inception.

  Even so, the thought brought his first glimmer of hope.

  When he glanced at Jon, the other man mouthed a single word.

  Flood?

  Seeing Ditrini’s eyes dart to them both, Revik looked away.

  His mind never stopped churning through possibilities. This time, he kept his thoughts in the lower part of his light, where Ditrini would hear them.

  Multiple parties with guns. Earthquakes. Floods. Perhaps a tsunami hit the city, or was about to. That would explain why Ditrini was panicking, if they’d picked something like that up on satellite or from one of the government feeds.

  Would Ditrini let them all die, himself included, rather than risk losing to Balidor and the Adhipan? Was the idea of defeat so abhorrent, he’d risk his one chance at Allie?

  Ditrini turned, staring at him with those silver eyes.

  After a pause, he scowled.

  “You think you’re pretty fucking smart, don’t you, cub?”

  Revik didn’t answer, or avert his gaze.

  Eventually, Ditrini did. Ignoring Revik, Jon and Maygar, he began talking to his guards in a language Revik didn’t know, probably something specific to the Lao Hu. From the heightened tension in the guards’ voices, they had some idea of the score, too.

  Receding into the higher structures of his light, Revik tried to think. He didn’t really want to know what Ditrini might do if his b
ack were sufficiently against the wall. Revik was beginning to think he’d been wrong, though; Ditrini might kill him, if faced with capture. Perhaps he knew Balidor was likely to put a bullet in his head, rather than another collar around his neck.

  Perhaps he knew Revik would do the same.

  He glanced at Jon, and his brother-in-law mouthed the word at him again.

  Flood?

  Revik frowned in reply.

  Then, sighing, he gave a bare nod.

  He didn’t need his sight to know Jon understood.

  42

  WATER

  DITRINI AND HIS guards stood in the mud bilge of the pipe, coughing cement dust and mold as they argued and gestured in that other language, for what seemed to Revik an interminable amount of time.

  In truth, it probably only lasted a few minutes.

  In the end, some kind of agreement must have been reached, but clearly it satisfied Ditrini more than the rest of them.

  Still looking uneasy and now bordering on angry, the guards resumed pushing the three of them down the tunnel’s corridor, moving in the same direction as before. They were moving faster now, and none of them spoke, but the splashing was loud, echoing against the cement.

  Giving Maygar a bare glance, then Jon, Revik mouthed words without speaking them.

  Opening. Distraction. He looked between them. Earthquake? Run?

  Jon stared at him, blank-eyed.

  Then understanding seemed to reach him.

  Glancing around without slowing his steps, he frowned.

  Maygar flicked his eyes to indicate behind them. Back?

  Frowning, Revik thought, then nodded.

  Balidor, he mouthed. He looked at Jon. Wreg.

  Jon’s frown deepened, even as pain sparked in his eyes.

  “Flood,” he repeated, barely audible. “We need to get out of here––”

  “Shut your mouth!”

  The burly, Chinese-looking guard cuffed the back of Jon’s head with a hand the size of Jon’s face, nearly plowing him face-forward into the water. The same guard caught hold of Jon’s cuffed arms before he could fall, shoving him forward in the same motion.

  His heavily-accented voice was deep. “One more fucking word from any of you, and we’ll lock you to a pipe and leave you down here to drown like rats.”