War_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

  My eyes shifted off her, looking back out the window.

  I stared numbly over the city’s skyline.

  We were already over the water.

  The helicopter, despite its large size, swayed and jerked, buffeted by the wind. Rain drove against the glass in hollow plinks, and I saw the pilot’s hand as he used the cyclic to correct for the wind, even as he aimed the helicopter higher.

  I looked down once more, away from him, away from the sky.

  As soon as my eyes focused on the view directly below the bird, my breath grew tight.

  Sickness rose in my chest and throat, worsening as I struggled to breathe. I wanted to look away, to tear my eyes off the scene unfolding over that water, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t think, couldn’t stop gasping breaths. I couldn’t look away. Some of my reaction might have been from the drugs, but honestly, all I could see in my mind was Revik.

  If I hadn’t been locked in, I might have flung myself out the open doorway, chains, collar and all. I fought against the restraints anyway, even knowing it was futile. Even knowing there was nothing I could do, that I was powerless to stop any of it.

  Whimpering, almost in spite of myself, I struggled harder, trying to get free.

  A giant wall of water was traveling towards the edges of the city from the direction of the Atlantic. It had already passed the Narrow Bridge.

  I watched it approach the Statue of Liberty and Governor’s Island, and it looked taller than bronze figure of Lady Liberty herself. Containment fields rimming the land on either side began to short out and fail as waves that must have been huge but looked small in comparison crashed against them and over the top of their sparking walls.

  As for Manhattan itself, the water was receding backwards from its shores at an alarming rate, the levels sinking low enough that I could see fish flopping where the rivers had been, sunken boats and ships exposed to the air while those tied to the docks strained against their ropes and chains from where the current wanted to drag them out to sea. Some of those chains and ropes broke, taking the boats with them. Some of the ships ended up on the muddy bottom of the New York Harbor or hanging from piers

  I watched that wall of water heading straight for Manhattan, knowing Revik had been in the basement. Knowing there was absolutely nothing I could do.

  Gasping out a half-cry, I looked at Cass, still fighting to get free while the Black Arrow guards watched me warily. Cass only smiled, leaning back in her cushioned seat as her eyes narrowed down at the same view.

  “Cool,” she said. “Just like a movie. Right, Allie?”

  I could only stare at her, unable to speak, unable to think anything in those seconds before my eyes returned to the window.

  Once they had, I couldn’t tear them off that mountain of water headed for lower Manhattan. I’d never seen anything like it in my life––maybe not even in the movies. It had an odd kind of grace, if only from how completely unstoppable it was. It ground towards the lower shores of Manhattan without slowing, without altering trajectory at all.

  And it was heading straight towards pretty much everyone left in the world I loved.

  I was still watching it when Cass chuckled, snorting as she rearranged her body in the jump seat across from me.

  “Things are about to get a lot less boring around here, Al,” she said.

  When I looked over, half-confused, still feeling sick, she chuckled again, taking in my facial expression with a delighted grin.

  “Best get used to it, Allie-bird,” she said, patting my knee with one hand. “We are the Apocalypse, right? Don’t you know your scripture yet? After all this time?” She grunted, looking down at the incoming wave and folding her arms. “Time for you and hubs to move aside and give someone else a turn. That ‘soft path’ bullshit of yours is over, big sis.”

  I could only stare at her, unable to think of a response to that, either.

  Still, it didn’t escape my notice that she was enjoying this.

  She wanted the shit to hit the fan.

  She wanted the world to fall apart. She wanted the earthquakes, the tsunamis, the hurricanes, the nuclear bombs. To her, this was exciting.

  The sickness in my gut worsened at the thought.

  My eyes returned to the window, right as the wave rose smoothly to meet Manhattan.

  All I could do was watch.

  45

  LAO BAN

  WREG JOGGED ALONG the empty street, followed closely by Jorag, Neela, Loki, Jax, Illeg and Oli. All of them held guns gripped tightly in their hands, safeties off.

  Windows were broken up and down Fifth Avenue, and Fourth. Ash from fires covered parts of the road; the fronts of several brick buildings they’d passed were charred. From the smoke darkening the edges of broken out store fronts on either side, someone had been using a chunk of those stores as squatter homes, probably to get out of the rain.

  Wreg noted that furniture stores, clubs and restaurants appeared to be favorites, followed by clothing stores and coffee shops.

  The air smelled like smoke, even now, in the rain and driving wind. The rain seemed to pull the smoke up off the glass and cement, bringing it into Wreg’s lungs every time he inhaled.

  They hadn’t seen many people. Most of those Wreg glimpsed disappeared into the shadows as soon as they got a good look at the hardware they were all carrying.

  Even so, the street had gotten eerily quiet in the last ten or so minutes.

  He could hear all the same ambient sounds––the human-created ones, at least.

  He heard horns honking, shouts from far away, the occasional thread of a feed station, playing off someone’s hoarded battery or solar-powered generator. The wind remained loud, screaming between buildings, occasionally driving or dumping rain on them and their surroundings in hard patters and pings.

  He heard gunshots every handful of minutes, too.

  They’d walked around the SCARB and NYPD forces they’d tracked outside the hotel. They’d stayed out of sight, and under a mobile construct the Adhipan worked up with the engineers at Arc, based on portable electrical fields of one kind or another and a special construct back at the hotel. Either way, Wreg was pretty sure they hadn’t been spotted, either from the Barrier or in the flesh. The one time a flyer got close to their location, Jorag managed to jam its signal before it got them on camera.

  Oli shot it down shortly after.

  No, the quietness came from something else––something less tangible.

  Wreg could feel whatever it was vibrating his aleimi. He felt the danger just as clearly as the birds seemed to; he watched them pass overhead and between the buildings in dense flocks aimed North, as if some giant hawk chased them across the sky.

  He tried to feel Jon, couldn’t.

  Sickness rose in his chest. He came to a dead stop, holding up a hand for the others to halt with him. The team froze, half in and half out of the shadows along the sidewalk.

  “Something’s wrong,” he said.

  Looking at Jorag, he saw the taller man agree.

  When he glanced at Neela, he saw her breathing harder than normal, harder than the running would have caused. An animal-like fear lit up her eyes. Her pupils were dilated as if she’d been doing poppers, or was coming off a three-day op with no sleep.

  “What do we do, boss?” she said. Her voice came out strained.

  Touching his earpiece, Wreg keyed in the private channel to Balidor. The other seer picked up at once. Wreg didn’t bother with a greeting.

  “Get above ground,” he said. “As high as you can. I think we’re about to get hit.”

  “Earthquake?” Balidor said, his light exuding confusion.

  “No,” Wreg said grimly. “Water. A big, damned shitload of water.”

  Balidor didn’t answer at first, but Wreg felt his light moving overhead as a part of him split off, giving commands to the other seers working with him underground.

  “What are you going to do, brother?” Balidor asked him.

  Wre
g frowned, looking at the seers with him.

  He couldn’t trust his own motives right now, not with Jon involved.

  Looking around at the seers in his team, he saw the answer in their faces, though, and in the hard looks in Loki and Illeg’s eyes as they returned his stare. After another handful of seconds, Wreg found himself relaxing, just before his massive shoulders gave a shrug.

  His answer to the Adhipan seer followed their expressions.

  “I’m going to find the boss,” he said, blunt. “…just like I said I would.”

  REVIK GASPED, LEANING against the wall as Ditrini pulled the chain tight, tight enough to nearly black him out, right before he hit him again, harder, and in the throat.

  Revik choked, fighting to tighten muscles when the hard-muscled man hit him again, that time in the jaw, hard enough to white out his vision. Before Revik could raise his head, the seer punched him in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him, even as he struggled to turn his body to deflect part of the blow.

  Revik had it half in his mind to speak, to try and reason with the older seer again, but Jon spoke up before he did, and even before Maygar, who stood beside Jon now, breathing hard as he watched Ditrini lose control.

  “What the hell is this accomplishing?” Jon snapped. Fear and fury vibrated his voice. “Have you totally lost your mind? We’re all going to die down here. We have to get out of here!”

  His words seemed to force some out of Maygar, too.

  “Fucking psycho…” Maygar swore in Russian. “Crazy dick-faced idiot…”

  He switched to Prexci, then to Mandarin, swearing more, and using more colorful words.

  “Whatever you think of him,” he snapped next. “Is it worth dying over? If you want to see Allie again, don’t kill him, for fuck’s sake! Or is this some kind of suicide pact for evil pricks?”

  Ditrini looked up, that manic glint shining in his silver eyes.

  “Defending Dad now, are we?” Ditrini said, smiling.

  Maygar blinked, then frowned, looking at Revik.

  “Just don’t kill him,” he muttered, still looking at Revik’s face, as if assessing the damage there already. “And don’t be stupid. Jon’s right. We’ll all die down here, if we don’t get above ground… and soon.”

  Ditrini laughed.

  When he didn’t stop, Maygar’s eyes turned openly wary. Silent, he just watched the older seer laugh, as if seeing him for the first time.

  Watching his son stare at the Lao Hu seer, it occurred to Revik that Maygar hadn’t interacted with Ditrini until now. While he’d obviously picked up that Ditrini had “issues” with Allie, he didn’t know what the infiltrator had done to her, either, not in terms of details.

  Ditrini looked back at Revik.

  Sweat made a light sheen across his face from his however-many minutes of hitting him. His expression itself was unreadable, but Revik saw the light in those silver eyes; he recognized the instability there, as well as the fury that shone beneath. He didn’t try to talk, but crouched there, doing his best to make his light submissive.

  He had to get the fuck out of this. It was all that mattered.

  If that meant catering to Ditrini’s power fantasies, so be it.

  Ditrini laughed, yanking on the chain, forcing Revik back to his feet.

  Revik fought to keep his balance as he pulled himself shakily upright and leaned on the curved wall of the cement pipe. He blinked through the blood running into his one good eye, still fighting to get his breath back as he focused with an effort down the pipe, listening.

  The sound of the water had vanished.

  Unfortunately, Revik didn’t see that as a good sign.

  He feared what he could feel behind that silence. Not with his light––he was still blind from the collar, but he felt it some other way, like an animal might feel it. Somehow, that silence scared him a hell of a lot more than the water he’d heard rushing into the pipes earlier. He’d seen tsunamis before. He knew what happened before the big water came.

  He couldn’t die down here. He couldn’t die down here, damn it.

  He thought of Allie, and his breath grew harder, more painful. He remembered the presence he’d felt around her for the past few weeks––the soft, white as snow, at times shockingly bright light that coiled around him sometimes as well, especially at night, as if checking him out, making sure he was okay.

  The pain in his chest worsened, grew debilitating.

  Every inhaled breath brought a stabbing knife to the gut, making him wince. He’d lost track of his injuries by then, and stopped trying to track them. He was afraid the more details he knew now, the more likely they were to slow him down.

  “You weren’t lying, Sword,” Ditrini said, his voice a sneer. “You’re good at being a slave. Perhaps I should keep you around. See just how good you are. I bet in a few months, I could have a very comfortable home, between you and your wife.”

  Revik didn’t answer.

  Ditrini had lost it on him, and none of them really knew why.

  It happened after his last communication with one of Shadow’s people. Revik didn’t know for certain if Ditrini had been talking to Cass, but he suspected he was. He definitely saw the look of fury rise to the Lao Hu seer’s face as he cut the person off on the other end of the line.

  “Are you certain?” he said. “What do you mean, ‘a wave?’ How big?”

  Silence as the other person explained.

  “The fields cannot stop it?” Ditrini said. “You are certain?”

  Another moment passed where he only listened.

  “What?” Ditrini said, his voice suddenly ice. “Where?”

  A few more seconds passed before Ditrini cut the other person off.

  “No. That is not what we agreed––”

  Another, briefer silence.

  “You had said you would take care of that problem,” Ditrini snapped. “How can I go up there, if it is likely that––”

  The person on the other end must have cut him off again. That time, Ditrini’s face twisted in a fury that made Revik nervous, in spite of himself.

  Allie’s face flashed through his mind, even before the other seer spoke.

  “How can I know that will be the case?” Ditrini said. “Where are my assurances, if I do as you say? Why should I not just put a bullet in his head, right now?”

  When silence fell that time, Revik could almost feel the rage emanating off his light, even wearing the collar. Ditrini stood there in silence, listening to the other speak, but Revik could see him thinking, could see him coming to some conclusion he didn’t like, but one he clearly felt powerless to do anything to change. It was that look of powerlessness and loss of control that made Revik nervous.

  Then Ditrini had looked at Revik, his silver eyes like liquid metal.

  Reaching up, the infiltrator turned off his link, without taking his eyes off Revik.

  That’s when he’d started hitting him.

  He’d attacked him without saying so much as a single word, barking a command in Prexci for the guard to hold him up while he hit him in the face, again and again, and then in the stomach and upper body, hard enough that Revik was pretty sure he’d cracked a few more ribs, and probably bruised a few organs in the process.

  Really, he was pretty sure a good chunk of his abdomen and chest were already bruised inside and out, if not bleeding him out where he stood. His swollen cheek was so bad now, he couldn’t even see light past it. His jaw throbbed between hits, painful enough that he wondered if something had cracked there, too.

  That bothered him less than the other, really.

  Ditrini worked him over as if it was the most logical thing to do under the circumstances, and not a complete waste of all their time as they faced probable drowning or worse when the water hit those tunnels.

  Now Revik leaned his back against the curved wall of the pipe, panting, trying to get his mind back together.

  The guard next to him looked nervous too, from where he
held Revik’s bicep lightly in one hand.

  The tunnel dripped under the yellow-green glow of the yisso torches, turning faces sickly, making it hard for Revik to think. He tried to decide how he might convince Ditrini to let them survive, to not kill them just to prevent someone else from getting Allie––or to prevent her from having his child.

  The thought brought a wave of pain so intense, he instinctively tried to block it, triggering the collar enough to force out a groan.

  When he looked up next, Ditrini was staring at him again, those silver eyes shimmering with hatred. The emotion there was so intense, Revik could only stare back, his mind blank.

  “We’re not going to get out of here,” Jon muttered.

  “Shut up,” Maygar told him.

  His eyes went back to Revik, then to Ditrini.

  “Well?” Maygar said. “Is Jon right? Is this how you plan to spend your last minutes roaming this creation, brother Lao Hu? Because, while I sympathize with the sentiment, I would think one of your years might have something more meaningful to impart, before you go?”

  He used formal Prexci, the old version.

  Revik found himself looking at Maygar after he said it, remembering for the first time that he’d been Vash’s student for most of the thirty or forty years of his life.

  He really didn’t know his son at all.

  Now it looked like he might never know him.

  Revik watched Ditrini as he gave Maygar another of those predatory smiles.

  Before Revik could make sense of the expression, Ditrini turned back towards him.

  Without warning, he wound up and kicked Revik in the balls, hard enough that Revik nearly blacked out. Letting out a half-formed cry, he felt every muscle in his body let go as the pain ran like a shock current through his light. When he could see again, he was on his knees, in the filthy water at the bottom of the pipe, gasping, unable to move through the pain, which was more than he could think through at first.

  He looked up, half in a daze, and Ditrini spat in his face.