Allie's War Season Four (201 page)

It was dark inside. Not quite pitch dark––the upper-story windows reflected some light onto the warehouse floor, presumably from the ambient light of the city as well as the stars and nearby houses and the path lights. I’d noticed only a small sliver of moon in the sky as we drove out here, and it had only just been rising.

That other feeling grew even stronger as we walked. Meaning the one about people being out here... living lights. We definitely weren’t alone in this building.

As I thought it, Revik squeezed my hand tighter.

He felt it, too.

Terian didn’t lead us in a straight line through the building, primarily because he couldn’t. The further we walked, the more I found it difficult to see much with my physical eyes. Storage crates broke our pathway in multiple lines, some of them stacked almost to the ceiling despite its height. The deeper we descended into those rows, the harder it was to see, since they often cut off even the small amount of light from the windows.

It created an odd, off-kilter progression through what felt more and more like a maze. I used my light to track every twist and turn, in the event we needed to backtrack the same way out without a guide, but I still found it disorienting.

Terian seemed to know where he was going, however.

Around the time when I could feel we’d made our way about halfway through the expanse of the warehouse, I could hear them.

Shuffling at first, like animals in cages.

I heard them through the echoes, thinking at first it must be rats. Then I recognized what felt and sounded more the movement of bare feet on a dusty floor.

Feeling my heart start to beat faster in my chest, I had to fight not to walk faster, even as I kept at least half of my attention on Terian again, and on what I could feel of him walking through the dark in front of us. He continued to wind his way through the high stacks of crates, occasionally disappearing through curtain-like cloths hanging down over more crates, only to reveal narrow, twisting passageways directly behind them.

Clearly, he hadn’t wanted people stumbling on his “guests” by accident.

We’d all dropped the civilian gaits by then, even me in the high heels.

I couldn’t hear Revik at all anymore as he fell back into his normal fight-walk. Even under normal conditions, when he wasn’t trying all that hard, his regular means of walking could be catlike in its soundlessness.

Now, he moved like a ghost.

His light had stilled into silence, too, making him an absence more than a presence even though he walked right beside me. Apart from his hand, which still held me tightly in his fingers, he might not have been there at all.

In front of us, Chinja, Anale, Poresh, Baleur and Dalejem had gone more or less silent, as well. Even Jax and Holo no longer made a sound as they walked between us and the others.

Stanley, who I’d nearly forgotten was with us, as well as Surli, took up the rear with Mansk and Delek. I couldn’t help noticing that they moved just as quietly as those in front of us, most of whom were Adhipan-trained.

Terian’s guards continued to walk normally, however, as did Terian himself, who scarcely seemed to notice the difference in the rest of us at all.

As we reached about two-thirds of the length of the warehouse, the space opened up.

I found myself reminded of the building’s height, as soon as it had.

Even as I thought it, a light ignited against the far wall, right at its base. Little more than a bluish-green glow at first, it rose as we got closer, then began to spread like liquid flame around the corners of the far end of the warehouse and down its length.

I wondered why Terian would wait until we were more than halfway across the floor of the structure before he turned on the lights... then the thought left my mind as I saw a row of cages to either side of the building in front of us, hidden at first behind another few rows of crates stacked almost to the height of the ceiling. Those crates stood ominously on either side of the wide aisle where we now walked.

Seeing the eyes reflecting back at me through that dim but rising light, I sucked in a breath. Next to me, Revik’s light flinched, too. Then we all seemed to be walking faster.

I couldn’t believe just how many of them there were.

What looked like several hundred people were crammed into two, long, weirdly old-fashioned-looking... well, cages.

There was really no other word for them.

The cages themselves stood maybe seven feet tall on the inside, with thick metal bars spaced only an inch or two apart and clearly of organic and dead metals in equal proportions. The ends of those bars disappeared into the floor of the warehouse on the lower end, and when I looked down, I saw bare feet below an odd variety of clothing styles that spanned from traditional, Chinese-looking and Indian peasant-type attire to full-fledged business suits and party gowns, as well as a number of outfits that looked more military in origin.

Looking up and across that span of bodies, I wondered how they slept.

Glancing back over the insignias on a few of military uniforms, I tried to decide if they belonged to private sec or the remnants of one of the human militaries.

After a few more seconds, I decided it was probably a mixture of both.

Looking at all of those pale, dirt-smudged faces, including those behind hands that clutched at the thick bars, I could only return their stares at first, nearly paralyzed.

We all stopped once we stood between the two rows of cages, and then all of us were standing in the middle of that open space, looking from one row of faces to another.

I noticed a lot of them were looking at Terian, watching him warily.

I also noticed how quiet they were. Silent, really.

Pretty unusual in a group of people this large, whatever their race.

Even as I thought it, Surli muttered from my right, “Why aren’t they speaking? Asking for help?” Seeing me look at him, he pursed his lips. “Wouldn’t you ask for help? If you were being held prisoner by this crazy fuck?”

Next to him, Stanley, who seemed to have bonded with Surli during their deployment here together, raised his hand to indicate for him to be quiet.

Glancing at Stanley, I motioned with a gesture that I agreed with him.

Whatever was going on here, I could feel that something was wrong.

As soon I thought it, I glanced at Revik.

I immediately saw that he felt it, too.

He’d gone rigid, halfway in a fighting stance, or at least one that indicated he was expecting something to happen. Looking at him, I felt that uneasiness worsen. I glanced behind us then, meaning back through the row of crates from which we’d come.

As I did, I grew aware that my heart was beating harder again, that the hair at the back of my neck was prickling, almost like I could feel someone standing behind me... or maybe like something was again happening in the construct around us.

I couldn’t see anything, though. No one apart from us.

The warehouse felt totally silent, too, now absent even of the sound of shuffled footsteps and hands touching the bars. With the prisoners standing so still and wordless, I didn’t even hear clothing rubbing against skin, or the sound of breathing, not even my own.

When Terian spoke, I probably jumped half a foot.

My eyes jerked back to where he stood in front of us.

Everyone else turned to stare at him, too. I felt my hands curl into fists where they now hung by my sides, even as another flicker of charged light flashed off Revik’s aleimi. I noticed only then that Revik had let go of me, and stood a few feet away. I could feel him still staring behind us, at the expanse of warehouse from which we’d just come.

When I looked at Terian, though, I forgot all of that.

He was looking directly at me. I saw grief in his eyes.

More than that, I saw fear.

“I warned you,” he told me sadly. “I warned you, Alyson, dear. I did.”

Next to me, Revik tensed.

I felt another coil of current slide through my light, nearly paralyzing me, but I didn’t look away from Terian’s face.

“In through the out door...”
he whispered.

I felt that cold ripple crackle through my spine, bringing another flush of deeper fear, so intense I couldn’t think past it that time. Even so, I could tell.

I could tell we were already too late.

Even as I thought it, another voice boomed through the hollow space of the warehouse from behind us. That time, it caused all of us to turn, to stare into the darkness we’d just walked through to reach the cages. I felt my whole body tense as I watched a group of seers filing out of the narrow opening in the wall of storage crates, flowing out into the wider clearing like ants pouring out of a hole during an infestation.

In the front walked a tall figure wearing all black, a traditional, Arabic robe.

Even in the unfamiliar clothes and headgear, I recognized him. Well enough that my breath stopped, a choking sensation hitting me in the middle of my chest.

It was Menlim.

He wasn’t looking at me, though.

He looked to my right, and I knew it was Revik he was staring at, long before I turned my head. Next to me, Revik’s light flared into seething, sparking life, a winding furnace of heat that turned into a tornado, raising the hair on my arms and head and neck, even as it occurred to me what he meant to do.

Revik thought he could kill him now. He thought he could kill Menlim.

Now that I’d detached him from Menlim’s construct, he really thought he could do it. Even as the realization struck, that Revik had known, that Revik had planned this... that deep voice boomed again.

It was Menlim’s voice.

The second time he spoke, I didn’t understand the words any more than I had the first time, but fear slammed my light, even before I felt the words hit Revik’s.

“Isre l’ange si nedri az’lenm. Isre ti’a ali di’ suletuum...”
His voice boomed, echoing strangely in the dark.
“Isre l’ange si nedri az’lenm. Isre ti’a ali di’ suletuum... sala. Sala ‘ti. Sala ‘ti, mongare sa’... Alyson...”

I felt Revik’s light shift, even as I turned my head.

I stared at him, feeling that fear bloom into panic as his light sparked upwards, even higher into the Barrier than before, igniting every piece of his aleimi so swiftly it was like watching a fire on a gas main pour upwards into the darkness of night.

His eyes ignited... and then he was looking at me.

I knew, in that split second.

I don’t know how I knew... but I did.

He was going to kill me.

He was going to kill me, and afterwards, he wouldn’t remember that he’d done it.

In through the out door...

I stared up at Revik’s face.

Time stopped, in that bare breath between seconds.

I saw the emptiness in his eyes, even beyond the pale green flames that flared brighter than I’d ever seen them, illuminating his features eerily in the dimmer light of the warehouse. I felt the part of me that ignited in response to the threat I felt, that sent my light high into those same structures in my own aleimi... but in that long-feeling stretch of no-time after Menlim first spoke those words, I could already feel it was too late.

I’d be dead before I accessed those structures well enough to pull the trigger.

As the thought filtered through my awareness, time slowed even more, long enough for a different thought to reverberate through my being, without slowing the reflex of my aleimi being ignited or that heightened edge in Revik’s light as we each responded to what we both perceived as a direct threat against our lives.

Terian was right.

Whatever else he’d done, bringing us here on this night, unraveling Revik’s and my bond so that we’d be even more determined to find him... lining us up to be slaughtered by Menlim... Terian was unquestionably right about one thing, at least.

He’d warned me.

He’d definitely warned me.