Allie's War Season Four (140 page)

“Lily,” I said. “I want to know when Lily can start to leave the tank. On a trial basis.” I cleared my throat, combing my fingers through my hair, realizing only then that it was still damp from the shower I’d taken. Clicking softly, I shook my head. “At the very least, she needs contact with other kids. Revik and I have talked about it, and we simply can’t be in there as much as we’d like. I know everyone pitches in, and we both appreciate that...but we want her to have play dates. With other kids. Human, if there are no other seer kids. Ideally, she’d be able to play in the actual ship, too, not be stuck in that damned tank all the time...but we’ll take whatever we can get for now. Whatever passes security muster.”

Another silence fell over the room.

That time, when I looked at Jon, I saw understanding in his eyes. I saw it in Wreg’s too, even as a smile toyed at the edges of his lips.

Somehow, just in feeling Wreg and Jon’s shift, that hotter current in my light began to relax. I felt my own relief intensify...maybe because they all seemed so relieved I wasn’t going to quit. I turned my eyes on Balidor then, and saw his eyes holding more understanding, as well.

I could see him thinking, too, but I couldn’t read which direction his thoughts were turning behind that more open expression of understanding.

“Well?” I said. “Balidor?”

He nodded, once, his jaw suddenly firm. “Yes,” he said.

“Yes, what?” I said, my voice slightly sharper.

“Yes...Esteemed Bridge,” he said, smiling.

Seeing his expression, I exhaled again, giving a short laugh in spite of myself. “That’s not what I meant, Adhipan Balidor...and I’m pretty sure you know that.”

Balidor returned my smile, but I saw something else in his eyes, too, something that lingered in the background, reminding me of what I glimpsed on him during my confrontation with Revik in the security station.

“We will arrange it,” he said simply. “Give me twelve hours, Esteemed Bridge...then we will arrange for regular time for your daughter to at least get exposure to other children. I will have them look into more ways we might let her out of the tank on a limited basis, too.”

Feeling something in my heart loosen, something that had been pounding and cracking there for weeks now, I leaned back, gripping the backs of two of the metal chairs. Briefly, I found myself fighting tears, but that pain in my chest was worse. It felt good, that pain, but it also seemed to let everything out all at once, catching me off-guard.

I couldn’t quite let Balidor off the hook though, even now.

Are you ever going to really trust me, ‘Dori?
I asked him, my thoughts quiet.

He turned, looking at me directly with those light gray eyes.

After a faint silence, where I felt and heard nothing in return from his light, his words rose, equally quiet, in my own mind.

I do trust you, Esteemed Bridge,
he sent softly.
I wish you knew how much.

I frowned a little, my eyes still focused on his.

Clicking, he only shook his head.
I will do as you command. I vow it, sister. Just as I swear my loyalty to you.

I nodded, but felt my chest start to hurt a second time.
Sorry for doing it like this,
I sent, quieter.
You didn’t leave me a lot of choice, ‘Dori.

He nodded, once, his eyes distant once more.

I know I didn’t, Esteemed Bridge,
he said only.

Looking at that expressionless face, I realized he meant that, too.

14

I KNOW BUT I DON’T KNOW

SUNLIGHT FLASHED OVERHEAD, peppered by shadow, then banded by it.

The flickers confused Loki at first.

Then, when he could feel his body again, that jerking motion of shadow and light added to the sickness pooling in his gut. He let out a groan, feeling hands on him, hearing the deafening whir of rotors. Then, someone grabbed hold of him, hoisting him up.

The abrupt change, happening so fast, it seems to wash through him deeper than the shadows can manage, and then––

––he gasps, feeling as if a long breath had gone by, little more.

Not much time at all. No time.

But now there is ceiling overhead, not simply sky and those dizzying, sickening, whirring blades. He gasps as pain shoots up his leg and his shoulder. Loki feels hands on him again, but they seem to be acting with purpose.

He recognizes Kalgi’s face briefly, then Illeg...that large seer, Rex...

The names come to him, absent of meaning...even absent of context.

He fights to breathe, still feeling that moment stretch, lost in a silence that makes his breaths deafening in his own ears, but he can still hear that dull heartbeat of blades, thudding through the sky overhead, pulsing and whining under the air, the same air they shove and push into a thick eddy to bring the whole vessel upward.

His nausea returns, even as the pain worsens around his head. He sees Illeg with something in her mouth, a tube of what might be glass or plastic. Her eyes meet his, a grim apology, and then she slams the needle into his leg. He lets out a gasp and then––

And then...

There are more
and thens...

More and more, faster than the spinning rotors.

More and faster than he can count.

Some are sharp, clear, like that beautiful, sickening but mesmerizing play of sunlight and shadow over the bright pink of a sunset-kissed sky, its purple clouds bleeding stars at the corners. Some are vague, faces and sounds, hands on him, groping, hurting him, but with the light of their owners warming him, too.

Some feel fanciful, at least half imagined, with sunlight shimmering through pink cherry blossoms, golden-white oceans sparkling with diamonds near a rock stuck like it had been dropped just off the shore from high, reddish-orange cliffs.

The ocean teemed, and he could feel the presence of its creatures in every part of his body, humming with life and light, singing to him in the further reaches of his mind.

He knew it must be fanciful, that it couldn’t be real.

He watched more of those
and thens
come and go, and eventually, somewhere in that primordial soup between consciousness and oblivion, he finally let oblivion take him.

THE NEXT TIME Loki woke, he had a better sense of who he was.

The thudding of the blades had stopped...but he still felt as though he were moving, as if the ground shifted somewhere distantly beneath his back. He found himself staring up at a white ceiling with rust stains moving out from metal brackets over the main panels.

After a few moments of fighting to focus his eyes, feeling his nausea return in increasing waves, he could smell brine, too, and hear the distant cry of what might have been gulls.

Of course, his mind might have invented the latter part.

He had been dreaming of that golden ocean, or so he thought. The image came close enough to the conscious areas of his mind that the transition felt weirdly smooth, despite the dullness of the light in comparison to what he’d witnessed from behind his eyes.

He remembered black birds, too. Green and black, with iridescent wings.

Cormorants, they were called.

“What, no pelicans?” a familiar-sounding voice said.

Loki turned his head, squinting into an instantly brighter light. It struck him that maybe he’d spoken aloud, that he’d been caught by the human soldiers tracking him...then the light’s brightness began to roll backwards into a more manageable glow.

“Your prince is awake,” the same voice said ruefully. “Damned lucky, too. We’d have to try adrenaline next...and he wouldn’t have thanked us for that.”

The voice hadn’t spoken to him that time, but to someone else.

Loki fought to clear his throat. He even moved, he imagined, somewhere in the less aware part of his mind, fighting to sit up, but a strong, cool hand and set of fingers found his forehead, pressing him back down to the bed.

“Don’t get any ideas, brother,” the voice said, leaking amusement.

That time, Loki realized he did know the voice. Further, he could feel the relief in her light, the affection she aimed at him when she spoke to him next.

“She’s been waiting for you,” she said, switching to Prexci. Mika’s voice turned teasing, even as she eased his head back to the pillow. “The crazy worm won’t leave, brother...”

That time, Loki’s eyes attempted to follow Mika’s dark blue ones.

He found himself staring at the white-gold rim of those nearly black irises for a few seconds first, noticing them clearly for the first time.

Somewhere in that lingering stare, he felt anger, though, not from Mika herself, but from somewhere else in the room.

Following the scent of that light––as well as Mika’s own stare, which continued to aim in the same direction––Loki focused his eyes past Mika’s strong, Asian features to the subject of her stare instead. A low bench stood there, what looked to be made of well-worn wood missing most of its paint. Resting his face sideways, Loki tried to raise his head a second time when he saw the face that stood almost directly in his new line of sight.

His eyes met another pair of eyes, those also dark.

Brown with flecks of green and gold, so perhaps hazel, technically, but he found himself too lost in the subtleties of light and dark in her irises and pupils to be able to decide on a precise color, or to name it, anyway.

The face that wore those eyes nearly took the breath out of his lungs, in part because he could feel her light now, too...or, more accurately, he could connect the familiarity of that light to her face, to who she was, to the body she wore. A more visceral reaction hit him in the same set of seconds, even as that nausea he’d been feeling abruptly worsened.

For the first time, he also connected that nausea to something outside of himself.

Above him, Mika laughed.

Loki barely heard it.

He remembered dreams that featured this woman’s face, those same green and gold flecked eyes that were human but not. He wondered now if those dreams had been real, as well. Why was she here? Why did she sit there, looking at him? Why did she frown at the hands that Mika held on his shoulder and forehead?

Trying to sit up again, Loki let out a low groan.

That time, the human woman regained her feet, pausing almost in a fighter’s crouch on the other side of Mika. Loki could feel her wanting to speak, but also her confusion. She wondered why she was there, too. She wondered, but a larger part of her refused to leave. It felt as if she’d been having this same argument with herself for awhile now.