Allie's War Season Four (176 page)

I also felt Revik thinking about how very
like
Menlim it would be, to use Revik’s light to get at mine.

Then I felt a little sick, realizing Menlim had probably watched me and Revik together, pretty much since the beginning of our marriage.

Revik glanced at me, and I saw pain in his eyes, along with a heavier look, one that bordered on disgust. That disgust had a familiarity to it, though, like he’d felt himself being watched in such a way for a long time... for most of his life, really.

Menlim had controlled him that way, too, I realized––by playing on the shame Revik already carried for some of his less than squeaky-clean impulses, especially when it came to sex. Menlim managed to convince Revik that he wanted to hurt women for years.

But the more I knew Revik and his light, the less I believed that.

Gripping him tighter with my arm, I flooded light into his chest, reminding him.

He glanced down at me. That time, I saw anger there.

I was glad. I’d rather see him angry at Menlim and what he did to manipulate his emotions than sad and ashamed. I’d rather see him murderous about it, truthfully, than afraid and defeatist. I couldn’t tell if that was right or wrong of me, honestly.

As if reading all of this along with me, Balidor gestured up at Revik with a flowing hand.

“He knows!” Balidor’s voice still held some exasperation, but he also sounded faintly relieved. “He understands this... all too well, Alyson. How is it that you can pretend there is no risk of infiltration, given what Shadow and his people have perpetrated against us already? How can you pretend this is a small thing... ‘given what we have on our respective plates’?”

I glanced up at Revik. His narrow mouth firmed as he looked at Balidor. I felt him agree with the other seer, right before he glanced at me.

Realizing I agreed with Balidor, too, I let out a frustrated exhale.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, ‘Dori. Then we’d better look at this now.”

“Now?” Balidor said, quirking an eyebrow.

He glanced around the room, as if to remind me we were only on a break, and already in the middle of a planning meeting.

“Yes,” I said, sharper. “Now. Close this meeting. Open another. Pull whoever you need. Yumi, Wreg, Jon, Tarsi, Loki, Varlan... or hell, Dalejem. Whoever you want there. Then tell us where you want us. Anywhere but the tank. I don’t want to bring Lily into this, not unless we absolutely have to, and even if you put her to sleep, her light would be too involved inside the tank. It’s better if we stay out here. In fact, I’ll probably want her pulled out of class and put into her own room’s construct until we’re done...”

Balidor was already nodding, acknowledging my words with a gesture.

He took himself away before I could think of anything else.

I watched as he motioned sharply to Yumi, who stood on the other side of the room. Before she’d reached him, he’d conveyed part of my instructions via hand signals, the version used only by the ex-Adhipan infiltrators.

Watching the two of them for a moment, I sighed, looking up at Revik.

He returned my look, his clear eyes sharp, a faint smile touching his narrow lips. I could feel he meant the smile to be reassuring, but it wasn’t really. His light grew increasingly distracting again, the longer we stood there, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to let him go. The fact that Balidor managed to worry me about what was going on between the two of us only made me want to hold onto him tighter.

He wrapped his arm around me in the pause, holding me tighter, too.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be around Lily right now,” I said, speaking aloud so we wouldn’t be overheard in the construct. Wrapping my arm around him tighter still, I bit my lip as a pain darted through the center of my chest at my own words. “...Just until we get this sorted out. Just to be safe.”

His arm squeezed me against his side, even as his warmth flooded my light.

I felt the same pain slide through him, though, at the thought of being separated from our daughter again, even if we shared the same Barrier space. Despite all the weirdness in our light, we’d spent as much time as we could with her since we got her out of that tank, whenever we could sneak away from planning meetings and intel debriefings and whatever else.

I knew he hated the idea of losing that so soon.

He didn’t answer me, though.

I knew that probably meant he agreed with what I’d said.

24

BONDAGE

IT WAS AWKWARD, yeah.

We didn’t do it in the bullpen... or the mess hall... but it didn’t feel any less public.

I was a little blown away by just how
many
people Balidor wanted in on this, and how many eyes and aleimi he wanted staring at me and Revik’s light. I don’t think I realized how much I was shielding from all of them until Balidor pinged me via the construct, clearing his throat as he opened the session.

They didn’t put Revik and me in jump seats or anything, which, I don’t know, might have made it better, or might have made it worse. We all sat around a metal table instead, a smaller one than what lived in the bullpen, although it still took up most of the largest of the three interrogation rooms behind the main security station below deck.

Revik and I sat next to one another, facing the rest of the almost-full table.

I knew why Balidor picked this spot. This room had its own construct, in addition to being housed inside the denser security construct. Still, the whole set-up already felt like an interrogation. Or maybe a job interview.

“Esteemed Bridge?” Balidor motioned towards the general area above my head. “If you would not mind? I’m afraid your blocking skills are better than the infiltration skills of the majority of your team...”

He said the words in his most polite voice.

Because of that, and because of the neutral yet somehow reassuring feel of his light, I could tell that Balidor knew this was awkward for Revik and I. Even so, I glanced at Revik before I complied, my light bordering on apologetic.

Revik met my gaze, his expression grim.

I knew he could feel me. He knew what I was reluctant to show them.

Realizing that made me realize something else. Revik had been lurking behind my shields, too. He might even have been reinforcing them.

I turned back towards Balidor, still stalling.

“What do you want us to do?” I said. “Just open our light? Focus on that...” I bit my lip, fumbling for words as I made a vague, flowing gesture with one hand. “Err... compulsion thing? Or the structures I added to his light? What?”

Balidor glanced at Tarsi, then at Kali.

Kali looked at Uye, who looked uncomfortable, too. In fact, he looked more than anything like he didn’t want to be there at all.

Tarsi kept her eyes on mine.

I could tell she was scanning me, whatever my blocking might be doing to the rest of the team. After a pause, and without Tarsi ever looking away from me, Balidor nodded in her and Kali’s direction, as if in agreement to something one or both of them had said.

“Yes,” he said, looking back at me. “Yes, Esteemed Bridge. If you could open your light to the rest of us, then concentrate your attentions on the...” He fumbled for words as well, making a similar gesture to the one I’d just made. “...The, ah... sensations the two of you are experiencing, that would be best.”

“We need to see where it’s coming from,” Tarsi added, her clear eyes shifting to Revik’s. “We need to know if it’s only from the two of you, or––”

“––Or elsewhere,” Revik muttered, glancing at me.

Impulsively, I reached for him, wrapping my fingers around his. It wasn’t something I often did around the rest of them, if only because all of the seers on our team had a tendency to be overly interested in what was going on with the two of us, even at normal times. I knew that was a light thing, and had to do with us being prominent as leaders in the construct, but it still made me overly conscious of touching Revik in front of them.

In a few seconds, our privacy was going to be a moot point, though.

I gave a last glance around the table.

I knew Revik wasn’t thrilled with Balidor’s decision to include a few of the people there. Jorag, for one. Balidor wasn’t oblivious to the dynamic there, either––he knew enough to explain the choice to Revik, anyway. He told Revik he’d invited Jorag, along with a few of the other rebels from World War I, to participate as resonance builders in the event this ended up being about Menlim. Wreg and Jorag were the obvious choices, given they had the longest-running connections to both rebellions. Jorag was recruited the same year Revik officially joined, and trained under Menlim and Salinse for over a hundred years, all told.

Raddi was there, too, along with Neela, who’d been in that first rebellion, too.

Varlan was invited for his actual sight-rank, but also due to the fact that he worked for the Rooks under Galaith.

Dalejem was there, since (as Balidor explained), he’d known Revik’s light not long after Revik left the Rooks. He’d also known my light as a child.

I wasn’t too thrilled about that one, but yeah, I got the logic.

Then there were Kali and Uye, my “parents,” who also knew my light before it got mixed up with Revik’s. And of course Jon himself, who knew my light from way back, too, although he’d been a human for most of that time.

Jon also knew Revik’s light. And Terian’s.

The others in the room were a mixture of ex-rebels, Adhipan and Seven, with a heavier weighting towards Adhipan, probably so those Shadow resonances wouldn’t overwhelm the construct. They included: Loki, Delek, Garend, Kalgi, Anale, Chandre, Yumi, Rig, Hondo, Chinja, Poresh and Vikram. Dante was there, too, to run the computer end of things, meaning the capture of aleimic imprints. Jaden came along to help her.

I knew Revik wasn’t too thrilled about Jaden being there, either.

Truthfully, I wasn’t exactly overjoyed with his inclusion myself, but neither of us really wanted to be the ones to say no. I knew they had a shortage of humans in tech, and Vik told me Jaden had become Dante’s right hand guy for electronic conversions of Barrier scans.

I also knew they wanted humans on the comps so they could free up Anale, Vik and Poresh to check us out with their aleimi.

But yeah, it was awkward.

I also found myself thinking I would have a little chat with Dante about training up more humans on the comp-squad besides my ex-boyfriend. While I was at it, I might also have a talk with her on the relative merits of Jaden as a boyfriend, since I’d seen her looking at him a little too long and hard over the past twenty or so minutes.

Of course, Dante was too busy glaring at Loki right then for me to be able to even make eye-contact with her.

I might have found that amusing under different circumstances, but at the moment, yeah, not so much. It didn’t help that Revik and Jaden had already engaged in a few brief staring contests across the rectangular-shaped room, even though they’d seated my ex- about as far away from Revik as they possibly could, at a small table covered in computer equipment in the far corner of the room. Jaden was the only one, in fact, who didn’t sit at the conference table with the rest of us. Even Dante squeezed in, sandwiched between Vikram and Yumi.

Dante’s eyes remained locked mostly to her hand-held now... when she wasn’t giving the stink eye to her mother’s new boyfriend.

I wished I knew what Jaden’s trip was.