Allie's War Season Four (166 page)

“Because he’s always such a chatterbox,” I murmured.

“He has to sleep!” Lily insisted.

I laughed again, clicking softly as I looked up at Revik.

She wants to talk to you alone,
Revik said in my mind, too soft for her to hear.
I probably shouldn’t have come in here with you.

Remembering the scene outside the tank, at the security station, and the vibe I’d gotten off Neela more generally, I sent him a pulse of warmth.

It’s fine. Just lie down, like she said. I’ll talk to her.

Lily was still tugging on my hand as Revik walked over to the couch and sat, and then turned, stretching out his long body to lie on his back. Lily watched him carefully, her clear eyes slightly narrowed, as he lay his dark head on one armrest, closing his eyes before stretching out an arm. He lay the arm over his face too, and over his closed eyes.

I felt a satisfied flicker go through Lily’s light, even as she pulled harder on my arm. She brought me to the far corner of the room and indicated with her hand and light that she wanted me to sit first in the green, fuzzy chair. I smiled at the crouching piece of furniture, something I knew Chandre had dug up for Lily after one of our salvage runs in Eastern Canada.

Lily had half the seers on this ship wrapped around her little finger already, even stuck in here. I had to wonder how much worse that would get, once we finally got her out of here. Even as I thought it, I frowned again, staring at my daughter’s light through my own.

I could see everything so clearly all of a sudden.

I found myself looking closer, staring at some of the structures I could see higher up in her aleimi.

Careful, wife...
Revik blew at me softly.

I felt my irritation return at that, but not at him.

I sent a pulse of something along the lines of
fuck the rules
back at him, and felt a glimmer of amusement from Revik in return.

But Lily wasn’t having any of my distractions that time, either. Climbing directly into my lap, she wrapped her arms around my neck and began talking quietly into my ear. Of course, she was no where near as stealthy as she seemed to think she was, so I could tell Revik heard most of what we talked about.

“Are you mad at Daddy?” she said in my ear.

I smiled, shaking my head at her. “No.”

“Not even a little?” she said, frowning that time, and forgetting to be as quiet.

“Not even a little,” I told her, still smiling.

She pursed her lips, thinking about my answer.

“Was he mean to you?” she said then, trying to get at the truth by a different angle. “Is that why you were gone?”

I thought about that. Then, not wanting to lie to her, I tilted my hand, a seer’s form of ambivalence, what bordered on a shrug.

“Maybe he said some things at a bad time,” I admitted.

From the couch, Revik grunted.

Lily glanced over at him, then back at me. “Uncle Wreg and Uncle Jon are really mad at him,” she informed me.

I nodded to that information, glancing at Revik.

“They are, are they?” I said, quirking an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Lily said, looking at Revik, too. “They think that’s why you went away and didn’t come to visit me for so long.”

Revik didn’t look up that time, and his light remained quiet. I saw him shifting his weight on the couch, though. I also saw his mouth tighten under the shadow of his arm.

“Are
you
mad at Daddy?” I asked Lily then, turning back towards her. “Is that why he has to take a nap?”

From the couch, I felt a softer pulse of humor. I felt the sadness underneath that, too.

I only looked at Lily, though.

After a few seconds, she shook her head. I felt relief in her light, even as her arms tightened around my neck.

“No,” she said. “No, I’m not mad at him. I just didn’t want him to be mean.”

I laughed, hugging her back. “He’s almost never
mean,
honey.” I glanced at Revik then, still grinning. “...Although he has his moments.”

“So does Mommy,” Revik grunted from the couch.

I felt the relief in his light, though, and again found myself wondering what had been going on for the past few days. I definitely got the sense that Revik himself didn’t want to talk about it, whatever it was. Well, not then, anyway. Knowing him, probably not until at least some of the emotional fallout had blown over.

Lily was playing with my hair though, and I felt her light weaving back into mine, a near relief in her as she relaxed into my arms and aleimi.

Remembering again just how young she was, and how often Revik and I weren’t in here, I fought back another ripple of pain on my own light. Thinking about my friends back in San Francisco with their kids, and what their lives had been like––at least before the nightmare of the last few years––didn’t exactly help. They spent most of their time with their kids, especially when they were this young.

In fact, they were with them pretty much 24/7.

On the other hand, I knew that most seers were forced to give their children up even younger than this, and had done it routinely since World War II, when trade in live seers had exploded out of Asia. Most seer parents had their kids sent to schools with military-grade protection, usually at least half-run by the Adhipan and the rest run by monks.

That had been true right up until the whole C2-77 mess.

It was still true, in some parts of the world. In fact, some of our people––meaning ‘Dori’s people, operating out of Asia––still worked at seer schools located in the mountains.

Thinking about this, I found myself sliding deeper into Lily’s light, almost without knowing I did it. I felt Revik hovering over the two of us from the limited Barrier field inside the tank, and gently pushed him back, if only to get a better look at Lily herself. I only realized I was targeting the structures that Shadow had put there once Revik moved accommodatingly out of my way. Once he did, I found myself following threads across and through the higher structures in Lily’s aleimi, looking at things in her that I’d never seen before, and not only because I’d been following security protocols and staying away from that part of her light.

I could see more now, for some reason.

From the couch, Revik grunted again.

I looked over at him questioningly, but instead of speaking to me, Revik addressed Lily.

“Mommy’s light is different now, isn’t it?” he said.

I looked at Lily, startled.

Lily only nodded, though, that serious look on her round face, a face that looked so much like Revik’s suddenly––at least, the younger version of Revik I remembered from the Barrier––that I grinned, squeezing her impulsively.

“I do?” I said to her. “I look different?”

Lily looked up at me, squinting at the empty space above my head.

“It’s different,” she agreed, talking mostly to Revik. She continued to look up, her small mouth pursed, jutting out her lips. “It’s...more
colors
now.”

Revik grunted again. “Yes,” he said only. “What else?”

“It’s more...” Lily paused, and I could almost see her thinking about words. “...More high up. More pictures in it.”

Revik nodded. “I see more pictures, too,” he told her.

I glanced at him, but he didn’t meet my gaze.

“Her eyes look different, too,” Lily said, her voice more confident that time. She turned, staring up at my face. “Do you see that, Daddy? Mommy’s eyes are different...”

Revik nodded again, settling his head back on the armrest. “Yes. I saw.”

I frowned a little, but didn’t try to get his attention that time.

“What happened to her?” Lily said then.

Revik clicked softly, under his breath. He made a vague motion with one hand, one that came off like a shrug, but had a more nuanced meaning in seer, something along the lines of,
only the gods know for sure
, from what Wreg had taught me.

Lily continued to look at him where he was stretched out on the couch. As she stared, I felt a flush of pain off her light. That time, it felt aimed at Revik.

I realized that she’d missed Revik, too.

Not because he hadn’t been in here...I could feel from both of them that he had been, at every time increment they allowed him to be. I more got the sense that Lily herself had remained aloof from him during those sessions. I glimpsed pieces of the last few times he’d been in here, and I could feel her avoiding him with her light.

I didn’t probe either of them too deeply for specifics. It felt like it was between the two of them. That being said, I was pretty pissed off at Jon and Wreg.

From the couch, Revik clicked again softly.

When I looked over, I saw that relief in his light again, along with love in his eyes.

“Don’t be, wife,” he said, his voice soft.

I nodded, noncommittal. I didn’t answer him outright, though.

I was looking at Lily’s light again.

I could see everything now, including those fine, dark threads Balidor warned me and Revik about, the ones that had been woven there by Shadow. I could see where they spiderwebbed around the natural light structures over her head, like an infestation of micro-fine plant roots. Looking at them made me feel sick. I could see them structuring and rechanneling Lily’s light, even here, cut off from direct contact with the Dreng.

Those tiny threads were the reason Lily remained a prisoner inside her tank, unlike Revik and Maygar. We knew that if we gave Shadow and the Dreng access to her light, they’d continue to warp her development. Eventually she wouldn’t be able to do anything without them... just like how Revik was after Menlim broke and rebroke and regrew structures in his light.

From what Balidor said, it had been different with Revik. He’d been older when Menlim got his hands on him. Even though he’d still been ridiculously young, he’d previously lived with parents who loved him, who coccooned him in protection and light, who helped him develop those most basic, primitive structures that tied him to this world.

It had taken repeated traumas to break Revik’s light enough to give Menlim the same level of control over him.

But Lily, he’d had as a tiny embryo, long before she would have been born, if she’d been allowed to develop normally. I could feel now just how early he’d started planting and nurturing those metallic threads in her. He’d started it long before she’d been viable, even with how he’d manipulated her development to speed it up.

I could see her there, floating in a tank, surrounded by his fucked up scientists.

I could see Terian there, too.

I shook off the image, but not before it brought another flush of pain, and a denser feeling of helpless and grief-filled rage. I fought the memory of Cass’s words to me, right before they put me under in my mother’s bedroom in San Francisco. I fought out the image of her face, smiling down at me, the satisfaction in her expression. It was too much.

Even now, it was just too much.

And anyway, thinking about all of that wouldn’t help Lily.

Going closer to those dark threads, I frowned again, following with my eyes and light where Shadow had deliberately wound the new structures into her aleimi, breaking down parts of her natural framework in the process. I could see now, what he’d done... beyond just the cloud of shadowy spiderwebs that Balidor had shown me before. I could see the actual mechanics of what he’d removed and replaced and shifted around.

It quickly became clear that Shadow had deliberately targeted the threads that tied Lily’s light to her physical body. They were the most “semi-dimensional” aspects of her light, those that powered the body itself as well as providing the interface between Lily’s physical body and the parts of her that existed solely inside the Barrier. Rather than allowing those connecting threads to grow naturally––as they did in normal seer children––he’d disrupted that development process entirely.

In looking at her, I also remembered what Revik had told me about seer children, long ago, while we were still on that cruise ship along the Alaskan coastline. He’d told me young seers lived only halfway in their bodies, even compared to seer adults. He said seer children were scarcely here at all until they were about twenty or thirty, and didn’t fully develop until they were closer to forty. He also told me most of those connections between the Barrier and the physical were developed through practical application––meaning as the muscle flexed versus sprouting up fully-formed.