Allie's War Season Four (114 page)

“Sorry,” I said.

“Come down here!” he said.

“Revik...”

“Please,” he said, subduing his voice. “Please, come down here. If you want to yell at me, then yell at me...I’d prefer that to this.”

“I don’t want to
yell
at you.”

“Then what? You’re obviously pissed off.”

I thought about that for a minute, too. Was I pissed off? Somehow, that didn’t feel like a good description for the emotion running through my light. Or it didn’t feel like very much of it, anyway, especially not anymore, since I’d come out here to sit. It took me a few more seconds to identify what it was, and then my frown deepened.

“I’m not pissed off,” I said.

“Then what, Allie?” When I didn’t answer him right away, he exhaled, sounding overtly frustrated. For a long moment, I could almost feel him dialing back his own reactions. The next time he spoke, his voice was carefully neutral.

“I’m still wearing the suit,” he said.

It took a few seconds for his words to penetrate.

Then I laughed.

“You are?”

“Yes.”

“And why is that, husband?”

I felt a smile in his words. “Why do you think? I was hoping you would take it off me.”

I laughed again. “You are impossible.”

“You’re really not mad at me?”

I shook my head, clicking a little. “Not really, no.”

“Then what? Why are you avoiding me?” His voice came out cajoling that time. I knew from his tone that if I could feel it, he’d be pulling on my light with his, too.

Behind that, I could almost feel him thinking, though. Or maybe I just knew him well enough by then that I could hear it in his voice, the endless multi-tasking he seemed to do out of habit, especially when something was bothering him.

“Are you jealous?” he said then.

He sounded openly surprised.

So surprised, I couldn’t help laughing again.

“This surprises you?” I said, my voice more teasing that time.

“Yes,” he said. The surprise lingered in his voice, even as I could hear that thoughtfulness there again, too. “I don’t think I’ve seen you jealous before,” he said.

I burst out in a real laugh that time.

“What? Are you joking?” I said. “I was jealous two hours ago.” At his silence, I reminded him, “Those girls in the pool...?”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Um...Kat?” I said, feeling my jaw harden. “Shall I go on?”

“No,” he said. “Please don’t.” He clicked at me, louder that time. “Those times were different,” he said then, his voice gruff. “I’d actually done something. Or said something stupid. You’ve never gotten jealous of someone from my past before.” He paused, then amended his words. “Well. Not like this.”

I fought to see the distinction he was seeing, then gave up, shrugging it off.

“So you admit it,” I said, my voice faintly accusing.

“Admit what?” he said. “What wasn’t I admitting?”

“That you were involved with that guy. Dalejem.”

“Yes!” Revik said, his voice holding surprise again. “Yes, I was involved with him. It was over thirty years ago, Allie...and that didn’t strike me as a particularly big secret at this point. By the gods, if you hadn’t figured it out before you walked up on us, I knew you had once I saw you standing there. Why? Did he deny it or something?”

“He said I should ask you,” I said.

I was frowning again, though, fighting to think through the open admission from Revik.

Granted, he was more open in general these days when I asked him about his life, providing I knew enough to ask, of course, but it still threw me off balance a little, maybe because I’d expected more of that weird caginess from the dock.

“So...what?” I said. “You were going to talk to me about it, then? When I went downstairs?”

“Of course!” he said, still sounding surprised. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know!” I said, throwing up my hands. “You and ‘Dori were both acting really fucking weird out there, you know? And, well, you’ve never even mentioned him before, Revik.” Thinking about that, I said, “...You’ve never mentioned
any
guy before.”

“Is that what’s bothering you?” he said. “That he’s male?”

“Not exactly...it’s just. I don’t know. It surprised me.”

Silence fell over the line again.

I looked out over the water, wishing suddenly that I could feel his light. The wind was getting colder, too. I found myself thinking that maybe I should just go down there. Before, it had seemed like the mature thing to do, to walk it off, spend some time thinking and pulling apart what was really bugging me, whether it was even real...preferably before I started yelling at Revik for no reason. Now I found myself looking at it from Revik’s point of view, and it looked a lot less mature and a lot more like avoiding, like he said.

But the truth was, I
was
calmer now, from sitting out here.

The ocean did calm me, and it somehow made me remember myself a little, too.

Hell, even Balidor suggested I “get some air” before going downstairs to talk to Revik. If it hadn’t been for him prodding me to take some alone-time, I probably would have stalled in one of the common rooms, or maybe in the CIC, going over intel.

I probably wouldn’t have thought to come out here, alone, in the freezing cold, even if the view was a lot better and the silence golden after all of the planning sessions of the past few weeks. But being alone, looking at the ocean, felt right to me, pretty much as soon as Balidor suggested it. It seemed less like keeping busy to avoid thinking versus purposefully taking time out to figure out what was going on with me.

Even apart from the op tonight, and the weirdness with Balidor and Revik and Dalejem and his “Children of the Bridge” crap...I’d had a lot on my mind.

The dreams were getting worse again, too.

“Come down here!” Revik burst out, his German accent thicker again. “Jesus, Alyson. This is driving me fucking crazy. Why are we talking about this like this? On a comm...where I can’t even feel your light?” He paused. “Do you really want to look at the ocean right now?”

Clicking a little, I shook my head, smiling in spite of myself.

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do!” he said. “What are you afraid of? Do you think I’m going to say something awful to you on purpose...try to hurt your feelings? Come down here!” he said. “Be jealous around me...where I can reassure you!”

I laughed again. “Reassure me, huh?” I snorted, still smiling as I shook my head. “Why does that suddenly sound not very...reassuring?”

“Don’t be a chicken,” he said. I heard his accent strengthen again, even as his words grew more cajoling. “Come down here. I want to see my wife jealous. Wearing that fucking dress I’ve been wanting to rip off her body all night...”

“Revik,” I sighed. “You really are impossible. You know that?”

“I’m hanging up,” he said, his voice a warning. “Come down here. I mean it.”

I felt myself giving in, even before I nodded, shivering a little against the cold.

“Okay,” I began. “Just...”

But the line had already gone dead.

8

A PROBLEM OF LIGHT

“WE’VE BEEN RE-ROUTED,” Loki said.

Hefting his automatic rifle, an Israeli TAR-21, or
Tavor,
briefly on his shoulder as he adjusted his headset, he glanced over at Illeg, then at Jax, who stood on Illeg’s other side. Both of them crouched next to a brick wall, part of an alleyway lined with trash pretty much from one end to the other. Most of that trash had been picked over already, so consisted of a mishmash of broken glass, soggy paper, twisted metal, plastic, piss-soaked cardboard...and the remains of what had probably been food, now too rotten for even the truly desperate to eat, piled up against the base of the taller of the two brick buildings.

Loki could smell denser, rotting smells, too, and knew not all of that had been food. Whenever the wind changed, blowing north between the buildings, that rotting smell got exponentially worse.

Even most of the human remains got eaten by something, however.

Loki preferred to think most of those scavengers were dogs.

They were in what used to be the borough of Brooklyn in New York, not far from where it transformed into Queens. Now, those lines and names were next to meaningless.

New lines snaked around these buildings, half of which were already falling down, some from human hands tearing them apart, brick by brick...even more of them from waterline issues from the encroaching river and sea that spilled over the dykes and bulwarks that partly shielded Long Island. Those same dykes and energy fields had mostly been built to protect the wealthier island of Manhattan, but these parts used to have their high-income enclaves, too, and some of those had exerted the influence necessary to have shielding put around more than just the nearby international airport.

Loki knew that most of those fields had failed in the previous however-many months, too.

This whole area would be a saltwater swamp in not too long a time, if the weather continued going the way it was. The storms had worsened over the past few weeks as winter got its stride, exacerbating the problems with the land, as well as the divisions between those who ran these streets and those who simply survived them.

All in all, Loki would be very happy to leave this part of the world behind.

“Boss wants us to go to D.C. before we head back,” Loki said, finishing his thought as he glanced up and down the shadowed alley at the other seven seers on his team. His eyes avoided the single human who now accompanied them, too. “...Make our way to a new rendezvous,” he said. “South of here. There are things he wishes us to check before we leave land.”

“Boss?” Jax muttered. “Which one?”

His words came out half-humorous, a borderline joke, but Loki answered him unsmilingly.

“The Sword,” he said simply.

“What is in D.C.?” Illeg said, from Loki’s other side.

She jerked up her own rifle, copying Loki’s pose, only with an Belgian-made F2000. The gun had been modified, of course, like most of the guns they wore, mainly via organic components, but Loki had noted a few other toys on Illeg’s particular gun of choice, as well, including a higher-grade scope than what came standard.

“I haven’t looked at the encrypted files yet, sister,” Loki said, giving her a direct look, as he had with Jax. “...But Oli said the boss wants us to look for information on C2-77, as well as any other government disaster contingency planning we might find. There’s a bunker under the White House. He wants us to check there, since we’re so close. I was told that the Bridge was dreaming about it...among other things related to that storage area. From what Oli told me, she has concerns that something might be coming out of the remnants of the government here. Meaning the former United States...” he clarified.

There was a silence as his words sank in.

Then Illeg swore under her breath in Prexci.

“Oli’s broadcasting that shit over our military channel?” she said. “Maybe you need to give Oli a bit of a lesson on comm etiquette where the Bridge and Sword are concerned, brother...” Illeg added, her voice angrier still. “She must know those fuckers listen for
any
intel with her name attached. Especially out here....and not only the humans wishing to blame her for C2-77. Prescient dreams? That fucker Shadow will eat that shit up, if he is listening!”