War_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

  “I guess you don’t have family in town,” Revik added, his tone biting.

  “It’s tough all over right now, iceblood.” The man’s eyes grew colder, holding Revik’s unflinchingly. “Maybe you hadn’t heard? That little disease you and your cunt wife decided to dump in the water supply made this pretty much a zero-sum game for the rest of us. No time to cry over the rich assholes of New York, sorry.”

  Revik didn’t answer.

  His eyes returned to the window.

  When he glanced at Jon and Maygar, he saw them staring out at the same view, similar expressions of numb blankness in their eyes.

  Maygar looked like he mostly felt sick to his stomach, though, whereas the look in Jon’s face bled abject terror, a kind of helpless disbelief Revik strongly suspected had more to do with Wreg being down there than the annihilation of the city itself––or even the vast numbers of humans who would likely die in the next fifteen or so minutes.

  Revik couldn’t judge his brother-in-law for that, though.

  Staring back at the view in front of them, and at the wave that rose higher even in the few seconds he’d looked away, Revik felt his chest go numb as it occurred to him again, that wherever they were taking him, it wouldn’t be to reunite him with Allie.

  He had to hope she’d made it out of the city okay.

  A thunder-like clap of sound ricocheted between buildings.

  Revik’s eyes clicked back into focus as the wave slammed into the southernmost edge of the skyline, blowing out windows and knocking the glass and steel structures back. Two massive skyscrapers shoved into one another and back, crashing into one another a second time with more force and exploding windows on both sides. The Black Arrow building, a blue-green design masterpiece and one of the tallest in the country, got hit next, its odd, pyramid-like structure on top shattering in a rain of glass and twisted metal.

  The massive building bent and broke backwards. Revik watched, unable to look away, as it came down for real, crushing three older brick buildings standing behind it.

  The sound was deafening, so loud it was hard to think through.

  Truthfully, Revik could barely take any of it in as real.

  Then the city’s containment field exploded in a brilliant flash of blinding, blue-white light. Hard pulses of electrical current ran around the southern tip and up the sides of Manhattan like bolts of lightning, exploding transformers and knocking out fields along both rivers.

  Watching more skyscrapers smash into one another like oversized dominoes, Revik held his breath, seeing people on the ground running up the street, as if they could get away from it.

  The helicopter was already rising, lifting them up past the tallest of the midtown buildings as the wave finally came down for real, crashing down like a living force into the middle of Lower Manhattan and filling every street with water.

  It was the last view Revik got before the wall of water swallowed the skyline totally.

  47

  DARKNESS

  IT SEEMED LIKE they flew for hours.

  Really, it couldn’t have been more than an hour or two, given the range of the helicopter, but Revik didn’t see much of the flight, so didn’t count off landmarks the way he would have normally.

  His eyes remained open.

  He stared out at the landscape as it flowed beneath his eyes, but he couldn’t make himself see any of it. He couldn’t make himself care enough to pay attention, although some hardwired part of him did track direction, as well as any changes in the same, pretty much without him knowing consciously that he did it.

  He didn’t think until later how stupid that was.

  The not paying attention part, that is.

  Then again, it was difficult to convince himself it really mattered. He couldn’t make himself think about much of anything right then, apart from how he might get free at the first possible opportunity. He didn’t see anyone from their team being able to help him, at least not right away. They’d be lucky to get out of Manhattan alive, much less rescue anyone else.

  None of the humans bothered to update them on what had happened in Manhattan.

  Revik didn’t ask. Neither did Jon or Maygar, so maybe they were thinking along the same lines as Revik, that they were better off not knowing until they were in a position to act on it.

  By then, Revik had already guessed where they were taking them.

  Still, he didn’t get a huge amount of satisfaction when he got confirmation he was right as the helicopter began to descend over some very familiar-looking landmarks in Langley, Virginia.

  He watched the ground grow closer as the helicopter dropped.

  He barely felt the change in his equilibrium that time, and only glanced at the man sitting across from him for a beat before looking back out the window. In that brief look, his eyes fell to the lettering on the man’s dark rain slicker.

  “NYPD?” he said with a grunt.

  Revik didn’t expect the man to hear him, much less answer, but he did both.

  “Yeah,” the man said. “And I suppose you’ve always been aboveboard about who you are. Right, iceblood? That’s how you managed to disappear for a half century or more, right? By telling everyone who you really were?”

  Revik didn’t bother to answer.

  “That’s what I thought,” the agent smirked.

  The Sikorsky was already touching down.

  Revik winced a little at the landing, realizing again he was more banged up than he’d let himself think about, much less feel. Looking down over his bloodied shirt and the swelling that was already stretching his pants on one leg, he winced again, that time at the realization that he was pretty damned far from his fighting best.

  He glanced at Jon and Maygar, appraising the two of them for the first time since they’d left the New York sewers.

  Both of them looked significantly healthier than he felt.

  The CIA agent climbed out first.

  Revik watched as a group of uniformed military-types clustered around the agent on the landing pad, all of them bent down under the helicopter’s decelerating blades. A few had hands held up to their ears for what must have been links to others in the building and elsewhere.

  One of the agents was red-faced and flustered-looking, but the rest had that calm veneer of career military, the human version of an infiltrator’s mask.

  Revik watched them talk for a few minutes more, able to lip-read a few words, but not getting enough to come to anything conclusive.

  Well, not other than the fact that an emergency situation existed over most of the Eastern Seaboard. He didn’t exactly need to read the local humans to discern that.

  The agent who’d brought them here was motioning towards the powering-down helicopter then, pointing specifically at Revik.

  Another group in uniform, these looking more like grunts, climbed into the passenger section of the helicopter and began unchaining them from the seats.

  They jerked Revik out through the doorway first, shoving him roughly enough that he would have fallen if not for the grip one of them had on the back of his collar. The chain Ditrini had left around his neck still hung loose down his back, but none of the soldiers seemed to notice it or care. The group might have its sadists, but for the most part, they were all business.

  Revik only found that mildly comforting under the circumstances.

  Even so, he scanned faces, trying to get some sense of them, if any stood out as being more reasonable or even less hostile than the rest.

  He was still doing that when he stopped short on one face, barely able to suppress the shock that ran through his aleimi before he jerked his eyes forward.

  The same man grabbed his bound arms, gripping him tightly as he shoved him towards the building just to the right of the helipad, careful to avoid any of the bloodied spots on Revik’s body despite the surface roughness of his muscular, tattooed hands.

  “Eyes forward, iceblood,” the male grunted, hands tightening on Revik’s shoulder.

/>   Revik glanced slightly to his left anyway, assuring himself that the soldiers were bringing Jon and Maygar, too. He didn’t dare look back at the agents on the helipad.

  Instead, he lowered his head against the buffeting wind and rain, forcing himself to walk at a normal pace towards the glass doors into the main facility.

  No one spoke until they’d gotten inside.

  Revik found those same hands shoving him sideways down a narrow corridor with doors lining the wall to his right. The only windows sat high in the wall, well above eye-level. The doors shimmered in a way that told him they were organic-metal composites.

  These had to be holding cells, or interrogation rooms.

  The rest of the facility seemed to be painted the same yellowing white, but Revik barely took that in, or the old-fashioned door handles, before he was being shoved through one of those same doors followed quickly by Jon, Maygar and at least six faces that Revik knew well enough that their mere familiarity almost brought him to tears.

  “Gods, brother…” he gasped, overcome in spite of himself. “Get this off me.”

  Wreg clapped him on the shoulder, then motioned for him to turn around.

  Within minutes Jorag had sawn through the collar Revik wore with a cutting tool. Without waiting, he immediately started work on the binders holding his arms together behind his back. Revik watched as Neela cut off Maygar’s bonds in the same set of minutes, and Illeg sawed through Jon’s, all the while Wreg caressed Jon’s face and chest, kissing him in a relief so open and genuine that Revik felt it close his throat.

  Tears ran freely down Jon’s face as he kissed the seer back. As soon as his hands and arms were free, he’d wrapped his arms around Wreg’s larger body, too.

  At any other time, Revik would have looked away, given them their privacy.

  He couldn’t afford to do that now.

  “Where’s Allie?” he said.

  Wreg looked at him at once, but didn’t release Jon’s face.

  “We need you for that,” he said. “What the fuck do you think I’m doing here, risking my damned neck?”

  A faint pulse of happiness touched his words as he gripped Jon tighter, but Revik ignored that, hearing only the grimmer note underneath.

  “How much time?” he said. “How much of a lead does she have?”

  Wreg’s eyes met his again, and that time, Revik saw the understanding there.

  “So you know about Cass?” Wreg said only. “You know who has her?”

  “I guessed,” Revik said. “How much time, Wreg?”

  Wreg looked at his watch, his face unmoving. “Two hours. That’s minimum, lao ban.”

  Revik felt that sick feeling return violently to his chest.

  He’d known. Of course he had.

  His internal clock would have even guessed somewhere along those lines, too, if he’d let it, but hearing the words spoken aloud still sent a dense feeling of pain directly into his gut. He receded into the Barrier at once, looking for her.

  They would have her collared, of course.

  She would be blind, too, to most things at least. Even so, Revik found himself thinking that they wouldn’t be able to keep him out, not entirely. Not without something akin to the Tank, that would cut her off from the Barrier totally.

  He needed to find her before the same thing occurred to them.

  Or before they could transport her to somewhere he’d never find her.

  Maygar and Jon were now completely uncuffed. Maygar was rubbing his wrists, giving Wreg a wary look before he moved closer to where Revik stood, maybe to watch his face while he looked for Allie.

  Neela stood waiting, as well, a fierce look on her face, and Illeg watched Revik’s eyes as closely as Maygar did.

  All of this slid through his awareness in the background, though.

  Realizing they were all waiting for him, even Jon, Revik honed in on the points of connection he shared with Allie, and put every bit of his concentration on what he could feel, stripping back every emotion that wouldn’t help him, anything that might get in his way.

  He forced himself to breathe as he did it, to not let anything else in.

  He stood there, in that interrogation room in Langley and no one made a sound as they watched him look for her. It felt like all of them, collectively, held their breath.

  For a long moment, Revik thought he wouldn’t find her.

  He thought they’d cut her off from him already, put her someplace where even his light couldn’t resonate with hers.

  Then, out of nowhere, he got a glimmer.

  That glimmer grew to a brighter spark, like a hot coal lodged somewhere in his chest. He could still barely feel her when her terror washed––then exploded over him. It was a feeling like nothing he’d ever gotten from her before, so intense, tears rose immediately to his eyes.

  He groaned involuntarily, clutching his chest.

  From one side, Jon grabbed hold of him, looking into his face. Someone else caught hold of him from the other side, but he couldn’t see them.

  “Gods… Revik. What is it?”

  He shook his head, fighting to breathe.

  He didn’t let go of her.

  His sight slanted out again.

  She screamed for him in the dark.

  She screamed and screamed…

  He felt nothing but darkness around her. He felt how lost she was. She couldn’t feel him, but he felt her crying for him. She cried and screamed for him, putting her whole being behind it, only to slam up against a cage of light that strangled and choked her. That light was darker than anything he remembered from the Rooks, or Galaith.

  It seethed like snakes, choking her.

  It hated her, despised her, wanted her dead…

  Adrenaline slammed through his system, making it impossible to stay still. Somewhere, barely at the edges of his awareness, he felt the other seers clustering around him, holding him in place, warming him with their light, trying to calm him.

  He pushed and shoved their aleimi out of the way, fighting to stay with her…

  She screamed for him again, and that time, he couldn’t hold it back.

  He let out a choked sob, gripping the arms of whoever stood in front of him. He felt her desolation, a grief too large for him to feel in its entirety. She cried and he cried with her, devastated beyond anything he’d felt in longer than he could remember.

  He clutched at her in the space, wanting her to feel him, to know she wasn’t alone. He couldn’t reach her. He couldn’t… it was like a thick pane of glass separated them, something that lived on her side, not allowing him to get through.

  Revik found himself thinking it was too late, that they were already dead, that all he could do was convince her she wasn’t alone––

  A hand hit him across the face on his good side, hard.

  Hard enough to bring more tears to his eyes, but he barely felt it.

  “Where is she?” a voice barked. “Nenz! Where is she?”

  Revik fought to answer the question, to even think.

  He started getting lost in that dark again, hearing her cries. He choked on another sob. The hand hit him again, harder, snapping him out just enough that the outline of a larger body swam into focus in front of him.

  “Nenz!” the voice snapped. “Where is she?”

  Revik fought his way through the darkness, looking for landmarks, anything that made sense to him. Then he felt her. Not his wife, the other one. She smiled at him from that black pit, and for those few seconds, he’d never wanted to kill anyone so badly in his life.

  When he finally spoke, his words came out in a forced gasp, barely understandable, even to him.

  “San Francisco,” he said. “They’re taking her to San Francisco…”

  “You’re certain, brother?” the voice said, its words hard.

  Revik looked up, found himself staring at Wreg, who held him as tightly as Jon. Behind him, Jorag rubbed his back, along with Oli on his other side, and Neela.

  �
�Nenz!” Wreg snapped.

  Revik’s head turned. He fought to breathe.

  “Yes. San Francisco.”

  “You’re absolutely sure?” Wreg repeated. “Are you positive she will be there? They could not possibly be there yet.” He checked his watch, his mouth a frown. His other hand never left Revik though, still holding him near, tightly by the arm. “It could be misdirection, brother. A ruse. Are you sure they are not sending you in the wrong direction?”

  Revik shook his head, closing his eyes against another flush of that unbearable pain.

  “No,” he said. “No, it’s not a ruse. I’m sure, brother.”

  “How?” Wreg said. “How do you know?”

  “She wants me to come,” Revik said, feeling that sickness worsen. “Cass. She felt me there. She wants me to come… she wants me to see what she’s done.”

  Still staring at his face, that time, Wreg only nodded.

  Then he turned, glancing worriedly at Jon.

  He motioned for Jorag to continue holding Revik up before he released his arms, taking a step back. Wreg was back in military mode, which Revik couldn’t help but find a relief. He watched his commander walk towards the door to the interrogation room, jerking it open with one smooth pull.

  He held it open, motioning for the rest of them to leave in front of him, even as he used more complex hand signals to convey orders for getting them out of there.

  Revik watched the motion of the seer’s hands without being able to make sense of any of it. Feeling Jorag’s hand on his arm, and Illeg’s on the other side, Revik followed as best as he could, fighting not to let the limp slow him down.

  He wouldn’t make them wait for him.

  As he walked, he found himself tugging on the telekinetic structures above his head, fighting an urge to scream at all of them, maybe even threaten them when he couldn’t get those structures to move, to do more than spark idly in the darkness behind his eyes.

  Instead, he tried again. And again.

  He put every last reserve of his light into trying, until he lost track of where they were, or even whether they might need him on the other side.

  No one bothered him.