Allie's War Season Four (173 page)

Then something else occurred to me.

“How would Cass know anything about what I’d done in Beijing?”
I asked him then.

That time, my only answer was silence.

23

ANOTHER PROBLEM OF LIGHT

IN THE END, Revik was right. I didn’t get anything more off Cass.

I tried for awhile longer, but essentially, all I came away with was more questions. About Terian being fixated on Revik and whether that might be something we could use. About Cass knowing about my time in Beijing. About whatever “in through the out door” really meant.

We discussed putting Cass on wires, but I couldn’t stomach that.

We discussed doing something like what I’d done with Revik, where someone went in there and tried to get at the person underneath. We talked about who that might be. Me. Jon. Revik. Chandre. Yumi. Balidor. I definitely got the sense neither Wreg nor Balidor’s girlfriend, Yarli, were too enthusiastic about using their romantic partners for that, and not only because the process with Revik pretty much wore me down to a shell by the end.

Yarli, in particular, seemed pretty pissed off by the whole conversation, and kept glaring at Balidor while we discussed it.

I could understand.

I didn’t want Revik going anywhere friggin’ near her.

We all, unanimously, decided that anything like that would definitely have to wait until after Dubai. So why was I having trouble letting it go? It wasn’t even about Cass, per se. It was that nagging feeling that I was missing something.

Like I was missing something big, that might get us all killed.

I don’t think I realized how far I’d lost track of the meeting until everyone around the metal table turned, staring at me.

We were in the bull pen.

Realizing all of those eyes were looking at me, waiting for me to speak, I leaned back in the metal chair where I sat cross-legged, shifting my ass on the hard seat. I missed the hotel in New York, with its leather upholstery and giant wall monitors and carpeted floors. Everything in here was either gray or green, depending on the amount of organic living in whatever particular chunk of whatever I happened to be staring at.

In here, meaning the bullpen itself, the walls were dead metal with the exception of the large wall monitor, currently stuck on the feed station,
Drahk.
I’d been tempted to tell them to switch the damned thing off, but I’d forgotten about it while my mind wandered.

Giving another glance around at faces, I cleared my throat.

“What?” I said. “Did you need something?”

Balidor looked at me, then glanced at Revik.

Revik’s face remained neutral as he returned the Adhipan leader’s glance.

I felt the distraction on Revik too, and tried not to meet his gaze, at least not for any amount of time. I knew he’d sat on the other side of the table for a reason, and for the most part, I appreciated it, but it still felt weird, me sitting at the head of the table with him sitting further down like that, both of us avoiding looking at each other.

“Are we boring you, Esteemed Bridge?” Balidor asked mildly.

I felt my face warm. I knew it was ‘Dori’s idea of a joke, so I didn’t take offense, but plunked my elbows down on the table.

“What was the question?” I said.

“We wished to know if you’d had any luck removing the structures from Maygar’s light. Without tying him to you... the way you were forced to do with your husband and daughter.”

I felt my jaw harden. “No.” Remembering our last session in Maygar’s part of the tank, I felt my frustration rise. “I would have to do the same thing I did with the two of them. Revik and I talked about it, and we think that’s too many lives interdependent on one another, at least right now.” I shrugged vaguely with a hand. “Maygar acts as back-up. Outside the Dreng construct. For now, anyway.”

Balidor leaned back in his seat, and the metal squeaked around the screws. “Understood. And do you want him with Wreg’s team? At the northern end of the city? Or with me and Yumi, as part of the infiltration unit?”

But my mind had drifted somewhat again.

“Where are we with the construct over Dubai?” I said.

Balidor glanced at Revik again, lifting an eyebrow before he looked back at me.

“We have been discussing that very thing. Most of the morning, in fact, Esteemed Bridge.”

Frowning, I thought for a minute, tapping the metal tabletop absently with my fingers. “Did you discuss Feigran’s drawings? Whether anything there might give us a glimpse into the workings of the network as a whole?”

Balidor shook his head, once, his expression openly puzzled now.

He glanced at Revik again, and then at Tarsi, both of whom remained stone-faced.

“No, Esteemed Bridge,” Balidor said, his voice more subdued. “But I believe the Sword could answer these questions much more thoroughly than I, sister. He spent a great deal of time going over these materials and others related to Shadow’s Barrier network and constructs, while we were still encamped in San Francisco.”

I nodded, glancing at Revik.

I met his gaze directly that time.

Feeling a pulse of heat off him once I had, I fought to keep my reaction off my face. I saw his eyes change slightly in that pause, right before he shrugged with one hand, his face still carefully set in the infiltrator’s mask, despite the reactions I felt on his light.

“I would very much like to go over those materials with you, Esteemed Bridge,” he said, using his most polite voice. “Perhaps we could do that in a separate meeting?”

I nodded, feeling my shoulders relax.

“Okay,” I said. “Great. Thanks.”

Everyone continued to look at me, as if waiting to see if I was finished. When they didn’t speak after a few more seconds, I waved a hand in their general direction.

“Go ahead,” I said, feeling my jaw tighten. “Keep talking.”

I could still feel the puzzlement wafting off some of them, Balidor in particular, who I saw exchange looks with Tarsi and Yumi.

I knew I was acting strange, but I couldn’t seem to help it.

Truthfully, I’d been having a hell of a time keeping my mind focused on anything being said during this particular strategy meeting, pretty much since I got here. I knew this shit was important. I usually would have been leading a meeting like this, and I could feel how they’d let me off the hook for that, but I couldn’t seem to care about that, either.

Was it Lily? Was it worry about her doing this to me? Was it Revik?

Or was it all of the shit still swimming through my light around what Terian told me, about what Cass more or less confirmed, about Dubai itself, about this guy who was collecting List seers? Was this about my mother being here, watching me, her face as puzzled as everyone else’s? Dalejem was here too, but I’d studiously avoided looking at him, as well... in addition to my father, Uye, who was still the hardest for me to avoid for some reason.

More than any of that, though, I couldn’t shake this feeling that I was missing something. Or the feeling of something bearing down on us out of the dark... or maybe waiting for us in Dubai.

I couldn’t feel any actual worry on the others around the table.

Not even Kali, and she was supposedly prescient, right?

So maybe it was just me. Maybe I was just off my game after everything changed in my light the other day. I didn’t need to scan the others to know they thought I was acting weird. Balidor made a few cryptic comments about Jon and Wreg “not being the only ones bonding right now,” so maybe that was part of it. They thought Revik and I were bonding, too, probably because of whatever had changed in our light again recently, as well as from Lily being a much bigger part of our lives now.

Even now, I felt Balidor’s light on mine, less subtly than usual. I knew it was his job to keep an eye on me, so I didn’t take offense, but I found it distracting. After a few minutes more while they talked over weapons, I shoved his light off me for real, standing up.

Again, I barely realized what I was doing until they all turned, staring at me again.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I said.

Well, I muttered it, really.

Without bothering to gauge their reactions further, I walked to the oval door and pulled it open with a jerk. I stepped over the raised lip of the doorway and entered the corridor. I had walked nearly to the end of the first segment when Revik caught up with me.

He didn’t say anything. He just grabbed my upper arm, then continued to walk beside me, only now it felt like he was steering our direction, not me.

“Are we having that meeting now?” I asked, a little amused, in spite of myself.

“Something like that,” he muttered.

A few doors later, and he turned us down a different corridor. I didn’t realize where he was taking me until we stood in front of the locked door to our room. I recognized the security panel installed to the right of that door.

Even as I thought it, Revik leaned over for the retinal scanner, his thumb already pressed to the organic panel. When the red light switched off, I heard a click and Revik had his hand on the door’s handle, pushing it down and shoving the door open to drag me inside.

I found myself staring at the windows first.

Portals, I guess...view ports.

They lined the entire wall over our bed, right next to the desk that had been moved up from the tank and now stood nearer to the door, bookended by several rows of cabinets. The bed wore a dark blue coverlet, thick despite the heated walls. Right before we moved in for real, a group of seers headed by Maygar created a “welcome home” present to congratulate us for moving out of the tank––a blue, white and gold mosaic of the sword and sun in the cabin’s ceiling.

The painting I’d made for him hung on the wall, too.

The mountains of the Himalayas shone from between the thin and thick lines, along with the same words in Old Prexci that Revik had tattooed on his arm. I’d imparted as much of him as I could into those lines, and in the profile of his face which slid into the contours of the mountains.

In the background of that one lived the sword and sun too––a glowing starburst around it with just enough color to pop in the sky.

Lily had declared it “beautiful” when she saw it and Revik seemed to like it, too. He’d been the one to hang it on the wall, anyway, and I’d seen him staring at it a few times, a small smile on his face when he thought I wasn’t looking. He told me no one ever painted a picture of him before. I found that hard to believe, since I knew his first wife had been an artist, but when he said it, I believed him. I’d sketched his face numerous times before, so maybe his wife Elise had done the same and never actually painted him.

I stared at the image of his profile there now, and it caused a pain-filled shiver to course through me.

Revik caught hold of me around the waist.

He had me against the nearest bulkhead then, his mouth on mine, his fingers clenching in my hair. He startled me enough that I tensed, gripping his shoulders, but not enough that I didn’t kiss him back once I realized what he was doing.

He threw his pain at me the instant I parted my lips, and after a few more minutes of that, he let out a groan, his hands on my belt, unhooking it roughly while I wound my fingers into his hair with him looking down. He yanked my pants down over my hips even as I tried to reach for his, but he wasn’t willing to wait for me there, either.