Allie's War Season Four (189 page)

Down here, the floor was a cement slab.

It wasn’t dirt, but it was a half-step up from it.

Overall, the feeling the space evoked was the same as what Revik remembered from the other slave markets he’d visited, most of which had been during the previous century. He’d come across similarly-styled markets in Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia during the war, when he’d worked for the Rooks in the 1960s and 1970s.

They all sold essentially the same merchandise, too.

Mid-ranked, adult male seers being the most common of those commodities.

Revik felt another ripple of nerves from the dark-skinned seer, Stanley, even as he glanced at where Revik stood just behind them.

“I don’t think she’s here,” he said, his voice openly reluctant.

“Where else could she be?” Chinja glanced at Revik, too, but managed to be more subtle about it. “Are there other markets? Some other place they would have taken her for such a sale? Do they stagger the sales, or sequester some of the merchandise in clean up or skill assessment before offering them in open market?”

They were good questions.

Revik continued to struggle with his light as he listened for the answers.

Apparently Surli and Stanley thought they were good questions, too, given the way they looked at one another.

Stanley said, “There is only one market that we’re aware of. This is the biggest sale of the month, which is why we chose it, being the third Saturday. As to clean up and skill assessment... it is possible, of course, sister. Especially if they wanted her for...” Stanley hesitated, glancing at Revik, as if realizing what he’d been about to say. “...Commercial use,” he finished lamely.

Surli frowned, giving Revik an openly contemptuous look, right before he looked back at the Stanley and the others.

“Could they have opened a second market?” he said. “For preferred buyers?”

His words were directed at Stanley alone.

Revik found himself watching the intermediary’s face as he thought about the Chinese seer’s question. Stanley looked at Revik directly then, his mouth set in a harder line.

“Should we risk him trying to find her?” he said, speaking more to the others than to Revik, although clearly meaning him. “It would be the fastest.”

“And the riskiest,” Surli retorted. “If they tag him, it wouldn’t take much for them to figure out who she is... and that she’s here.”

Even so, he obviously was thinking about the idea.

So was Revik.

After a few more seconds, Surli clicked under his breath, glancing around as if making sure they weren’t being overheard, although they’d posted Deklan as a guard for that very purpose. They stood far enough away from the nearest row of seats that it was unlikely in any case, especially since most of them were speaking Russian, which didn’t seem to be a very well-known language here.

Surli’s frown deepened when he looked back at Revik.

“I say no,” he said, blunt. “He’s hanging on by a thread. Do any of you seriously trust him to get anywhere near that construct right now?”

“No,” Hondo said at once. She glanced apologetically at Revik. “Sorry, boss.”

Clicking under her breath, Chinja shook her head, also looking at Revik.

“It is a bad idea,” she agreed. Unlike Surli, her voice was reluctant. “I am sorry, too, boss. Even if we shielded you, I do not think––”

“We have to do
something,”
Surli snapped. He glared at Revik openly. “We were supposed to find the contact here... with her to help us.” His voice turned sarcastic. “I wish I’d known her husband was going to hand her off to a fucking
trader
before they even left the docks. It might have given us time to come up with an alternate plan, before––”

“He did not do it,” Dalejem cut in. His voice was final, and cold. “I did.”

There was a silence while the others all looked at Dalejem.

Then Surli scowled, glancing back at the stage.

“Whatever,” he muttered. “I still would have broken both your arms... brother. If it had been my wife. Hell, I would have killed you before I let them take her.”

Dalejem didn’t answer.

Revik didn’t look at any of them, either.

“We need to move,” Stanley said, at least in part to cut Surli off. “You heard the auctioneer. This is the last of it. We need to look for her. Now. Loki and his team will be here soon... we will lose time in rendezvous. The gods only know how far they could get with her by then.”

“So where do we even look for her?” Hondo said. She looked at Stanley first, then Surli, speaking in a low whisper. “We should discuss that
here,
first... where there is no surveillance. Once we are outside, the eyes of this place will be looking at us once more... and those eyes are everywhere, brothers and sister. Do we really think there could be a second auction?”

“Or a presale,” Stanley said, glancing at Revik again. “That seems more likely. The buyer we have been tracking is not here, either. It is possible they met with him and those like him earlier. A private showing of high-end product from recent acquisitions. I did not see any seers here with sight ranks in actual over a seven or eight. Such preferred buyer presales used to be common for the underground markets in South America and Europe. Unusual coloring. Sight rank.” Stanley made a vague motion with his hand, again looking apologetically at Revik.

“...Special skill sets of whatever kinds,” he mumbled, tilting his head.

Revik felt his jaw harden more.

He looked back out over the auction floor, fighting to think. He knew what they were talking about with his light. The last thing he wanted to do was paint a massive target on his wife’s chest, when the Dreng picked up Revik’s scent in the construct right after he’d gone looking for her. All he would be doing is locating his wife for Menlim’s people to find.

It wasn’t just risky. It was suicide.

Truthfully, Revik seemed to understand that better than the others did, even with all the crap he was dealing with in his light.

Allie would find some way to get word to them.

She would figure it out, eventually.

Revik struggled to make the thought real in his head, pushing away the far more paranoid scenarios that involved her being gang-raped by a bunch of sick fucks in a high-rise hotel. More than that, he tried to decide if he had any real alternatives. Alternatives that wouldn’t get either or both of them killed.

Then, something else hit him.

Revik looked back towards the stage. Within a matter of minutes, seconds maybe, he located the man he’d been looking for, standing off to the right but still within the glow of the harsh spotlights. At that distance, he couldn’t be absolutely certain it was him, not without using his sight, but it definitely looked like him.

Enough that it was worth getting closer.

“Come with me,” he said, looking at Dalejem. “Now.”

Without waiting, Revik began to walk, aiming his feet for the front of the room.

Revik felt Surli stiffen, about to protest, but Revik gave him a hard look as he passed, and the Chinese seer shut his mouth, somewhat to Revik’s surprise.

Dalejem followed him, his light still sliding around Revik’s in occasionally distracting waves, but operating as an infiltrator’s again, which was all Revik really cared about. Their window was closing, and he knew it. If he had to do something drastic in the physical right now, he would do it... as long as it didn’t put Allie at risk.

He grew conscious of the gun he wore against his skin inside his shirt, tucked into a side holster that melded against his flesh. Luckily, that hadn’t been picked up in the scans, either, since no one but the military and private security teams were allowed to carry firearms inside Dubai City. Vikram and his team designed both the guns and the holsters not to be picked up in a scan––it was a full organic, and threw off a cloak to blend in with Revik’s bio-matter––but, as always, there was a risk that the tech wouldn’t work.

Even with the wide aisles between seats, it took him a few minutes to get to the front of the room.

By then, most of the bidding centered on a dark-haired male seer, maybe halfway through his second century, who looked like he might have come from Europe, at least from his expensive haircut, his weight and the tattoo on the side of his neck. He could be from anywhere though, really. He was stark naked, which didn’t help with identification.

This one didn’t look like he’d ever been a slave before, though.

He looked lost, his eyes haunted, like his whole reality had been crushed recently... as it likely had. He’d probably been blending. He had the kind of coloring and facial features where he could have pulled it off pretty easily in the West, if he could keep himself in expensive and highly illegal colored contact lenses and high-grade blood patches.

And yeah, if he could afford to pay infiltrators who would keep his secret for him.

From his weight and the lack of clan tats on his body, he probably had that kind of cash. A fair number of young seers managed to pull that off before C2-77. Most were ambitious. Most used their sight conservatively, mainly in professions at the fringes of the stock market.

The stock market itself had been heavily regulated against tampering by seers, of course, and had its own army of seers whose job it was to prevent (or minimize, realistically) insider trading and high-stakes corporate espionage. But plenty of the big players had their own cadre of seers, too, so there was a lot of bullshit that went on, as well as a sort of an ongoing psychic battle between the seers working for various sides.

This guy didn’t have the rank to be a player at that level, however.

He probably advised suburban housewives on how they should invest their mutual funds, or maybe worked as a tax accountant for a mid-sized corporation.

Revik noted all of that, even as he felt a flush of sympathy for his brother, as the seers and humans in the audience bid for him.

His mind didn’t dwell on that for long, however.

He aimed his feet towards the male seer standing at the corner of the stage, still wearing a pristine white robe, the headpiece clamped to his head with a black headband.

Revik walked right up to him, saw security about to intervene, and held up a hand in a peace gesture, right as the trader looked over at him.

The dark blue eyes with their moon-white flecks shifted from Revik to Dalejem, right before his eyebrows lifted in surprise.

“Brothers!” he said, holding out his hands. “What is it you are doing here?”

Revik made a respectful gesture with one hand, bowing slightly.

The trader’s security goon glared at him in return, his hand on a holster as he looked to his boss in a silent question. The trader only waved him off, though. Revik saw a harder assessment forming in those dark blue eyes as they looked Revik over, maybe for the first time.

“What are you doing here, my friend?” he said again, smiling in a friendly way, even if it was somewhat overdone.

Revik watched the growing understanding in those eyes, too.

“...You are not really dock workers, are you?” the trader said, his voice coy as he winked.

“No,” Revik said, shaking his head, once. “We are not.”

“What were you doing on that dock then, brother?”

“We were there to look at the shipment,” Revik said without hesitation. “And to find a rumored Lao Hu consort for my employer... among other things.”

There was a silence as the sheik trader thought about his words.

“Your employer?” The man in the white robe lifted an eyebrow. “Do you mind elaborating on who that might be, my brother...?”

He looked at Dalejem in the same pause, almost in a question. Within the next set of seconds, however, he seemed to realize that he had miscalculated on the dock, that Revik was the one in charge here, at least between the two of them.

Revik briefly let him see more of his aleimic structure, just to reinforce the point.

“I apologize that we were not more honest with you on the docks,” Revik continued smoothly, once he knew the other had seen enough of him to take him seriously. “My employer has considerable resources at his disposal, and it is common for his new business partners to attempt to take advantage of him as a result. He trusts me... and of course, brother Marsei here... to make sure that doesn’t happen. He most of all desires to have an accurate understanding of his purchases before he takes possession of them.”