Allie's War Season Four (167 page)

In other words, it happened as seer children learned to operate their light.

As they were taught to split their consciousness, shield, read minds, use pushes, time jump, share light, and all of the other Barrier skills seer children learned as they got older, those same skills––in some ways, ironically––strengthened their connection to their physical bodies, too.

Revik only explained the
how
part to me briefly, but I remembered him saying something about it clarifying the whole “me” / “not-me” bipolarity, which was intrinsically physical, since those kinds of distinctions didn’t exist in the same way inside the Barrier.

I’d sort of understood that, too, even back when Revik first explained it.

Now, looking at Lily’s light, I could almost see it.

I could see the places where Menlim had broken threads, burning them out of existence before they’d been allowed to grow and thicken under the natural resonances of Lily’s light. After altering, breaking and removing those fluid, light-filled,
living
threads... he’d replaced them with the cloying, metallic, rigid and somehow dead light of the Dreng.

I stared at those connecting points, looking at where they began and ended.

I looked at how he’d fractured pieces of her light, fusing them with the strands of the Dreng, and how those strands had grown right into the structures through forced resonance.

It was like grafting the branches of a tree together.

Or maybe more like forcing that tree to grow into the side of a steel skyscraper.

In any case, I could see why Tarsi and Balidor warned me not to get my hopes up.

Unlike with Revik, that forced resonance with the Dreng wasn’t even the main issue.

The
real
issue was that nothing apart from the Dreng held Lily’s light to her body.

In literal truth, the Dreng now kept Lily alive.

Without those natural light connections, Lily
needed
them. Not just how Revik needed them, to keep his sanity by unifying the fractured parts of his personality––Lily needed them to exist in the physical world at all. Removing those Dreng structures without replacing them would kill her. From what I could tell by scanning Lily’s light, those structures wouldn’t simply regrow on their own. Not in time, anyway. Not before she died.

The problem was absolutely structural.

It was tied to the very fabric of who Lily was.

So yeah, Balidor was right. About Lily... and probably about Revik too, since apparently Balidor and Tarsi had seen something similar in Revik’s light. I hadn’t heard yet, whether Maygar or Cass suffered from the same problem.

I had to assume they did, to a lesser or greater degree. Cass especially.

Thinking about that, I frowned more.

I was still looking at those structures when a low tone came from the higher portion of one wall. The organic speaker there sparked to life a half-second later.

“Esteemed Bridge.”
I recognized the voice as Balidor’s. It rose slightly, as if he’d twisted the volume knob on the speaker from the security station.
“What is it that you are doing, exactly, my dearest of sisters?”

He must be monitoring the security console from the CIC.

Meaning the Barrier signature component.

Rolling my eyes, I continued to keep most of my attention on Lily’s light. “Examining my daughter’s light. Is that all right with you, my lovely brother?”

From the couch, Revik let out a low snort.

“Not really,”
Balidor said.
“Esteemed Sister, we discussed this––”

“No,” I said, cutting him off.
“You
did, ‘Dori. You discussed it... and I listened. Now, I’m overruling you.”

There was a silence.

When I glanced over at Revik, he raised an eyebrow at me in question. He didn’t speak though. More than anything, I felt curiosity on his light. Lily remained quiet, too, tugging on the necklace I wore with Revik’s ring on it. I could tell she was listening, too. I may have imagined it, but I swear I felt a vague glimmer on her light, something that felt like hope.

Maybe it was that. Maybe it was that bare whisper of faint, questioning hope I felt on both of their lights, but I sharpened my voice, making up my mind.

“What’s the current state of the construct?” I asked Balidor.

There was another pause.

“Meaning what, Esteemed Bridge?”

“Meaning...what is its current state? Any leaks? Is Shadow able to see past it, from what you can tell? From what any of the others can tell?”

Again, I got a curious ping from Revik.

It was a slightly more insistent one, that time.

I didn’t look at him right away. I continued to focus on the speaker in the organic wall.

“Why are you asking me this, Esteemed Bridge?”
Balidor said.

Clicking a little under my breath, I shook my head. Smiling wryly, I glanced at Revik that time, meeting his gaze as I told Balidor the truth.

“I want to know if Shadow would be able to see my husband and daughter outside of the tank,” I said. “...If I were to remove their specific light connections to his construct that allow him to penetrate our construct now.”

Revik flinched, staring at me.

Allie...
he sent, soft.

Seeing the sadness in his eyes only brought a flush of anger to my light.

“I’m tired of this bullshit!” I said, maybe to all of them. “I think I can get rid of the structures in Lily... and probably in Revik, too. But it’s going to mean taking both of them out of the tank. I can’t have either of them cut off from my light. Ideally, I’d like to use the other half of the Four to really strengthen this. What I can do on my own might not be enough to get them to regrow the structures they need to connect on their own...”

I felt my jaw harden more.

“They’ll need to be connected to my light until then. As in all the time,” I warned. “So no tanks, okay? Until I can figure out the rest. Is that clear enough?”

When I glanced at Revik that time, his eyebrows had gone up.

I could see him listening though, probably to hear what Balidor would say.

“Alyson,”
the Adhipan leader said, clicking through the loudspeaker.
“You could kill them. Both of them.”

“I’m aware of that,” I said. Even so, his words hit at me, hard enough to make me pause. I shook that off, too. “But I don’t see a good option. My...” I bit my tongue on the word, then refused to say it. “...Kali. She said that Lily wasn’t safe here anymore. That we were going to be targeted on the ship. If that’s true, then we need to be able to get Lily out of the tank. I want Revik with me in Dubai and we absolutely can’t risk that if he’s still tied into their construct.”

I looked at Lily, coiling my arm more snugly around her.

“I know it’s risky. I know that. But I really think I can do it. I wouldn’t be suggesting it, otherwise.”

There was another silence. I didn’t look at Revik in that one either, but felt him listening again, almost holding his breath.

I heard Balidor sigh, clicking, but there was a grudging admission in it now.

“You will also lose whatever intelligence your husband has managed to feed us off that connection,”
Balidor reminded me.

“Yeah.” I grunted, giving Revik a look. I smiled for real that time, when I saw Revik roll his eyes, seer-fashion, showing his dismissal of Balidor’s words. “Intelligence that’s probably being tampered with,” I said, looking back at the organic speaker. “...If not fed to us outright. As you yourself have reminded all of us again and again, ‘Dor.”

There was another silence.

I couldn’t feel anything on the other side of those walls, of course.

Even so, I definitely got the impression that Balidor had others there with him now, that they were consulting amongst themselves.

Then another voice rose, one that made me wince.

“What does the Illustrious Sword think?”
Kali said.

I looked at Revik. He returned my stare, his mouth set in a hard line.

Then he smiled, shaking his head and clicking softly.

“I will do whatever the Esteemed Bridge thinks is best,” he said, raising his voice as he faced the speaker. His words turned more brusque, more military. “If you want my opinion apart from that, I’m afraid I don’t have one... not in relation to the specific procedure she’s proposing. Truthfully, I can’t see what she’s seeing. Therefore, I don’t know exactly what that procedure entails, although I understand the theory. In any case, when it comes to that, I will defer wholly to her judgment.”

Pausing with a shrug, he added, his voice and expression darkening somewhat, “I agree with her that Dubai is significantly more risky with me connected to Shadow’s construct.” He gave me a harder look. “I think if that were the case, I would have to bow out of the ground op, and provide support from outside the construct. Which means my wife would be doing the same.” He paused again, letting his voice grow harder, too. “For, if any of you, including the Esteemed Bridge herself, thinks I’m letting her go in there without me, you’re going to be very disappointed. I’m quite sure my wife knows this, but it bears repeating. I’m quite willing to go to extreme lengths to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

Hearing the open threat in his words, I smiled faintly, clicking at him.

“Such a bully,” I murmured, tugging on Lily’s hair. “Isn’t he, baby? Big, bad wolf.”

Lily giggled, leaning her head and back into my chest as she looked at Revik. He lifted an eyebrow, but his eyes didn’t move, not even when he looked at her.

Exhaling, I spoke to Revik directly next, looking only at him.

“You’re okay with her light being interdependent with ours?” I said to him, quieter, even though I knew the speakers would pick it up. “Even with Dubai coming up?”

Revik’s expression grew more thoughtful.

I saw him look at Lily again, his clear eyes conflicted. Then he shook his head, but not in a no, at least not to my question.

“Versus her being dependent on Shadow?” Smiling humorlessly, he sat up on the couch, weaving his fingers together where he held them between his knees, his arms balanced on his thighs. “Yes. I’m okay with it, wife. Especially if Kali says Lily’s not safe on the ship. If you really think you can pull it off, then I say do it.”

The silence on the line deepened once more.

Then Kali spoke again.

“Are you going to try it in there, first?”
she said.

I realized she was speaking to me. Thinking, I looked around the four walls of the tank, and then nodded, more decisively than I felt.

“Yes. I think in here is better.” I hesitated, then looked at Revik again, feeling a sharper flicker of nerves when I saw him watching me. “If anything seems to be going wrong, I’m going to have to stop, of course,” I added, louder, that worry leaking into my voice. “We’ll have to reassess options from there. There’s some chance we’ll have to rush Lily out of the tank, if I can’t rebuild the structures that Shadow removed using my own light.”

“Do you want us to join you in there? Tarsi and me?”
Balidor said through the speakers.
“Or Kali? Any of us?”

I shook my head. “No. I think fewer lights in here is better.”

Revik made a low, humorous sound.

When I glanced at him, he smiled, too.

I want you watching,
I sent to him, still holding his gaze.
More than any of them. I’m going to try with Lily first, so you can see what I’m doing.

He smiled faintly, giving me a sharp
of course
gesture with one hand.

Unfortunately, I caught the nuance there, too, which was something along the lines of:
assuming I can see jack shit, since I have no idea what you’re talking about, wife.

As usual, Revik was a lot more expressive with his body than his actual words.

“You said something about the Four,” Revik said then, still watching me with those clear, intent eyes. “What did that mean?”