Allie's War Season Four (187 page)

Feeling what he did off Dalejem’s light as they stood together, on that train platform outside of Dubai, Revik realized he probably needed to have a talk with Dalejem.

But now wasn’t the time for that, either.

“I’m sorry, brother,” Dalejem said from next to him.

The seer spoke low, nearly a murmur.

Revik gave him a narrow look. Seeing the emotion on the other male’s face, he flinched, then fought back a wave of almost irrational anger.

What the fuck was this? A guilt trip? Seriously? After weeks of the weird crap he’d been feeling on Dalejem’s light?

Revik continued to study the seer’s face in the pause, even as it occurred to him that maybe there wasn’t much to say to Dalejem, after all. Dalejem already knew. For reasons Revik didn’t understand, Dalejem just couldn’t seem to control his light.

Maybe it wasn’t even specific to him, meaning Revik himself.

Maybe Dalejem just needed to get laid.

If so, Revik would foot the fucking bill personally, as soon as they got out of this mess. Anything, if it would get Dalejem to cut it out... and help Allie start trusting him again. Revik didn’t need this shit now, not with everything else. He didn’t need one more thing to freak Allie out, not after what he’d done with Ullysa and with not telling her about her own mother being alive. Not after the year before, when he’d thought his wife was dead.

He couldn’t have it anymore. Everyone just needed to back the fuck off. He’d take Allie to a tropical island if they didn’t, and try to fix his marriage away from all of them.

Revik felt his shoulders tense as he continued to think about it, and to stare at the other seer. But Dalejem wouldn’t look at him now.

“Why?” Revik said finally.

Dalejem gave him an incredulous look. “Why? Did you just say ‘why’? Are you really asking me that, brother?”

Revik frowned. “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I? It’s been thirty fucking years, Jem.”

“Don’t
call
me that, goddamn it!” Dalejem snapped.

Revik blinked at him in surprise.

He wondered briefly if he’d read the seer wrong before, if Dalejem meant that Revik should be using his op alias, rather than Dalejem’s real name, even a shortened version of it...even where there was no active surveillance nearby. Feeling another pulse off the older seer’s light, Revik realized he hadn’t, though.

He hadn’t misunderstood him. Dalejem was offended that Revik had used the shortened version of his name. As if they were still fucking
dating
or something.

“What do you want from me?” Revik said.

Dalejem stared at him. “You want to get into this now? Really?”

“No,” Revik said, his voice colder. “I really don’t. But you’re not making it easy, Dalejem. So either talk to me about it... or fuck off with your light, brother.” He gave the seer a harder look, feeling the threat snake out of his light before he could throttle it back. “...That includes my wife’s light, too, in case that part wasn’t
crystal fucking
clear.”

There was a longer silence.

In it, Revik watched the other’s jaw harden.

Dalejem’s green eyes grew colder in the pause, even before he deliberately drew his light closer to his body, so that Revik could barely feel it. Revik found himself remembering that Dalejem had started off as Adhipan, before he ran off with Kali in South America and joined her Children of the Bridge. When Revik first met him, he could barely taste the older seer’s light at all. Not unless Dalejem wanted him to.

Remembering that only made Revik’s frown deepen, however.

He wondered why he’d been feeling so much of Dalejem’s light lately, given that. Clearly, the other seer wanted him to feel it. Either that, or something else was going on. Something that made him less aware of his light than usual...or maybe something Dalejem wanted Revik himself to see. Remembering how Dalejem had touched him that first night, at the guard station in Macau, Revik felt his face tighten more.

Just when he’d decided the other seer wasn’t going to respond, Dalejem spoke. His voice was low, almost a murmur, barely audible over the sound of the approaching train.

“I’m still in love with you, brother,” Dalejem said.

Revik blinked. He turned, staring at the other seer.

Dalejem paused, too, as if to let his words sink in.

“You can yell at me all you want for that later, if you wish,” he added, still not looking at Revik. “...but you might as well save your breath. I’m well aware of your situation.” Dalejem’s eyes shifted towards the incoming train. “In any case, I’d prefer if we didn’t discuss the details of that
now,
brother. When it might get both of us...or your wife...killed.”

Revik couldn’t stop staring. The words continued to reverberate, sending a jolt of shock through his light. Then, a flush of anger.

“What the
fuck
are you talking about?” he said, not hiding his incredulity.

Dalejem gave him a colder look, not speaking.

“It’s been
thirty years,
brother,” Revik said, unable to be silent. “You left
me,
remember? I spent the vast majority of those years alone...when I wasn’t selling myself to humans for cash. So spare me your wounded animal bullshit, okay? I was here. You weren’t.”

A denser fury seethed off Dalejem’s light.

He still didn’t speak, however.

“I’m not even the same fucking
person
now...” Revik snapped.

“So you said,” Dalejem cut in, giving him a warning look.

Revik bit his lip, forcing back another hard pulse of fury.

He considered briefly that the other seer might actually be fucking with him.

Then he considered that he might be an agent of Shadow.

In the end, he wondered if Dalejem might just be another one of those people who rewrote reality to suit their own emotional needs, regardless of facts. It was less usual for seers to do that than it was for humans––mostly because seers had photographic memories so it was harder for them to b.s. themselves as completely––but it definitely happened. Revik had watched Terian do it for years. He’d also seen Raven do it, Maygar’s mother.

Feeling another, sharper pulse slide off of Dalejem’s light, Revik found himself thinking the ex-Adhipan seer probably wasn’t screwing with him, though. Not intentionally.

He meant it. He thought he did, anyway.

Revik fought with words, with some way to respond, torn between an inexplicable guilt and something that still felt a lot closer to anger.

Dalejem didn’t wait for Revik to speak, though.

The dark-haired seer began to walk towards the platform instead, no longer looking at Revik at all, his body moving strangely as he adopted a civilian’s gait.

The train screeched to a stop in front of them in the same set of seconds.

Revik followed Dalejem wordlessly, no longer looking directly at the older male, although he glanced at his back periodically, if only to make sure he still followed him. He walked straight through the same set of carriage doors as Dalejem did, and walked into the same segment of the carriage, glancing around only long enough to choose a seat.

Once inside, Revik found himself acutely aware of the surveillance.

Unlike the platform, the train had image recorders, audio and Barrier scanning equipment covering every inch of space. Revik could feel it.

Still utilizing his own version of the civilian gait, which he’d practiced for weeks on the deck of the aircraft carrier with Allie, Revik found a bench in the corner opposite Dalejem and fell into it clumsily. Once he had, he slouched into the cloth cushion, folding his legs one over the other in a way he never normally did. The posture felt strange, even though he’d practiced that, too. He hoped it didn’t look as unnatural as it felt.

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Revik slid lower in the seat, tucking his chin and closing his eyes as if he was tired.

He knew they still might pick him up in a scan.

His could not avoid being, by definition, a new face. They’d chosen this route into the city on the premise that any security agents looking at him would check him out, but that they would also accept the cover story and alias. According to that cover, Revik was a new day laborer who just got missed in the morning scan. Surli seemed to think it wasn’t uncommon that people got missed in such a way, given the volume of traffic and the high level of turnover.

Surli and Stanley both theorized that Dubai was set up more to protect against breach in numbers, not one or two seers slipping through. The city’s security forces relied heavily on the construct and the ubiquitous surveillance system to pick up any potentially-dangerous strays.

Mostly, Surli said, they didn’t see much as a threat, apart from the disease.

Revik had his blood checked for his race and for any trace of C2-77 on the docks, even as a worker. Being a seer meant he was immune, even as an infected host, but they checked him anyway, presumably to guard against possible mutations.

Revik knew that the fact that he’d come up new on a return trip still might get reported up in some fashion, depending on the standard operating procedures, or SOPs, for central security. The hope was, it wouldn’t raise any flags, even if it did.

Either way, that reporting loop should take longer than Revik intended to be on this train, which at the moment was all he cared about.

His fake credentials should cover him inside the system once they reached the city itself.

Stanley and Surli had custody of the originals, meaning the two work camp refugees whose papers Revik and Allie were using. They’d been holding them in their hotel room for the past few days––although Surli seemed to think they wouldn’t be particularly inclined to tattle, even if one of them got free. Conditions in those pens and their servitude in Dubai were less than ideal. Surli made the decision to keep them locked up anyway, just in case, but he told Allie during his call-in that they’d been exceedingly friendly, even before Stanley offered to take them out of the city with them when the op finished in Dubai.

Since both were unwilling refugees, stolen off the streets of Mumbai, they’d been nothing but grateful.

So Revik’s papers should be good, as long as Dubai security didn’t document the physical characteristics of their slaves too closely. Revik knew the main thing was to avoid looking too much like an infiltrator, or like anyone with much sight skill at all.

Like Dalejem promised, they weren’t on the train for long.

Even so, those minutes ticked by slowly.

Excruciatingly slowly, to Revik’s mind. He watched the city approach out of the periphery of his vision, but he didn’t stare at that, either, or do anything but exhale in boredom as he kept his eyes aimed mostly at his own shoes.

By then, he was deliberately not thinking about what Dalejem said to him on that platform. Whatever else the seer had said, he was right about one thing.

Now was definitely
not
the fucking time.

28

PRESALE

EFRAIL ALMOST DIDN’T take the call.

He was busy, he told himself. Overworked. It was auction day, the largest of these for the month, being the third Saturday. Moreover, it was December, and many large bidders came out in December, looking to expand their households and work forces for the coming year.