Allie's War Season Four (37 page)

Before he’d thought about the other’s words fully, at least in the conscious part of his mind, Jon let out his own forced-sounding snort. Thinking, he nodded to Wreg’s assessment.

“Yeah,” he said.

His voice still sounded shaky.

He exhaled, then tried to pull more air into his lungs.

“Yeah,” he said again, rubbing the back of his neck.

He didn’t bump Wreg’s arm, though, or try to move out from under his fingers.

For his own part, Wreg didn’t try to put more distance between them, either. Jon could feel his light reacting to the nearness of the other male, mostly by opening more than he’d felt comfortable letting his light open for weeks. As Jon opened, the pain that had murmured in the background since he first got to San Francisco surged briefly back into his awareness.

“Maygar...” Jon blurted. He shifted under Wreg’s touch, in spite of himself. He didn’t move away from him, though. If anything, he moved closer, even as he turned his head, scanning the other seats in the cabin. “Maygar,” he repeated. “Is he––”

“Chinja’s with him,” Wreg reassured him, his eyes following Jon’s towards the other seats. “We saw both of you start to affect one another. We should have foreseen this... before we got this close, I mean...”

“It’s all right,” Jon managed. “I didn’t think...” He stammered again, trying to convey the emotion that stuck in his chest. “Thank you,” he repeated. “...Thanks, Wreg.”

“It wasn’t only me.”

“Thank... all of you, then,” Jon finished lamely.

Again, he found his mind overly focused on Wreg’s nearness, on his hands and light in his, on how close the other seer sat to him. Jon hadn’t let himself get this close to Wreg physically since he’d left New York, apart from when he’d had light sickness and had no choice. He hadn’t let himself be this open around him since then, either. Some part of Jon wanted to apologize for what he’d said to Wreg when they last talked in San Francisco...or maybe to push him away again. He couldn’t decide which of those felt more right, or even which would be more fair to the other seer. As he struggled to think it through, Wreg turned, looking at him.

Briefly, his dark eyes slid down Jon’s body.

“Just breathe,” the seer advised. “Don’t think about me, Jon. I came because your light was closed. The others thought I’d have the best chance of reaching you.”

Jon nodded, but felt his skin flush hotter.

Of course. Infiltrators to the core. They would send Wreg because Wreg was best-situated to succeed. Practical. Efficient.

They were on operation time now, like Revik said.

As soon as the thought hit him, Jon realized he knew the real reason Wreg sat there, in the seat next to him. Revik ordered him here. Revik assessed the situation, decided to intervene, and assigned the seers he thought would have the best chances of success within the timeframe of the op. Jon even understood. They couldn’t be carrying him or Maygar or anyone else once they hit the ground.

Looking away from Wreg’s face, Jon felt that sickness worsen.

Unable to keep his eyes off Wreg entirely now, not with the continued proximity, Jon found himself looking at the other man’s tattooed forearms instead, particularly the one attached to the hand that didn’t happen to be touching him. Wreg’s upper arms and chest, as well as his legs down to the heavy, combat-style boots, were covered in the same black, armored but stretchy material that Jon himself wore. Looking at Wreg in the skin-tight but dense fabric brought back memories that Jon hadn’t let near the conscious areas of his mind in awhile...months, really, since they’d gotten to San Francisco in the first few days of December.

Shifting again in his seat, Jon cleared his throat, forcing his head to turn, away from Wreg, away from the last time he’d let himself look at the seer’s body.

He looked out the window, instead.

He remembered the sound of water rushing through the sewage tunnels, watching Revik getting punched by Ditrini before he––

“Jon,” Wreg said, his voice gentle.

Jon’s vision snapped back into focus.

The sound of the water turned into the drone of the Chinook’s propellers, the denser thrum of its engines at the front of the fuselage.

Jon shook his head, but not at the other seer.

“What if I freak out down there?” he muttered, looking out the window again.

He aimed the words more at himself than Wreg.

“You won’t,” Wreg said, answering him anyway.

“How can you know that?” Jon said.

He turned his head as he asked, once more facing the other seer. As soon as he had, he found himself wishing that he hadn’t...pretty much the instant he met the stillness and depth of Wreg’s returning gaze. The feeling Jon saw in the other man’s eyes paralyzed him briefly. When his pain worsened again in that pause, Jon saw Wreg’s obsidian eyes flinch.

The Chinese seer’s skin flushed a little darker, but Wreg didn’t break their stare, either, or even change expression.

“You’ll be fine, brother,” Wreg assured him. “I promise you, you will. I know you better than you think...” Hesitating, he smiled faintly, but it didn’t touch his eyes, which remained cautious, even distant as he continued to massage Jon’s shoulder. “Trauma doesn’t equate to fear...not exactly,” Wreg added. “We should have Yumi work with you more, when the opportunity presents itself, but it is too late for that on this run. It won’t matter, brother...it really won’t. Not once we land. Trust me on this.”

Jon nodded, feeling his throat tighten as he continued to look at Wreg’s face.

The seer had shaved that morning. He had a bruise on his neck, too, probably from some fight or another, but close enough to something Jon might have given him during sex that Jon’s chest clenched briefly in an irrational wave of jealousy.

Wreg had lost weight since New York. He’d cut his hair shorter, too, and wore it in a clip like the ones Jorag often wore. Jon noticed that Wreg’s cheeks looked thinner, that he had a smudge of dirt or grease on his jaw, just forward of his left ear. He noticed that Wreg smelled just like Jon remembered him smelling, a faint sheen of sweat overpowered by a sweeter musk that somehow reminded Jon of cut grass and trees, maybe because he could picture Wreg being from a place like that. Jon could almost see Wreg there, at the base of those mountains...

That time, it was Wreg who averted his gaze.

The older seer shrugged while Jon watched, mirroring the sentiment with one wave of his muscular hand. As he did it, he seemed to hesitate as to whether to remove the hand that still rested on Jon. After a brief tug of war, he left it there, if only briefly.

Jon didn’t really hear his words for a few seconds.

When he started listening again, Wreg was already midstream.

“...Being connected to Nenzi will help,” Wreg said, that distance back in his voice. “That son of a bitch is focused, I’ll give him that. He’s also a lot more connected to the two of you than maybe you realize. You may not always feel it, but it’s there...the rest of us can see it, and feel it...” He hesitated, as if pushing aside some other reaction, then shrugged. “Use that, Jon, if you need to. Don’t hesitate. Nenzi will pull you and Maygar along when it comes to the emotional stuff, if it really comes to that...”

Hesitating again, Wreg gave Jon another direct look.

“...But it won’t come to that, brother,” he said, his voice firm. “You’ll be fine. Better than fine. You’ll do your job, like the rest of us.”

“How do you know that?” Jon asked again.

His voice came out stronger that time, more insistent. For some reason, it felt important to get a real answer out Wreg, something he could hold on to, maybe.

Wreg only shrugged, however.

A few seconds later, he removed his hand, too.

For the first time Jon had let himself in months, he felt real, physical pain when the Chinese
 
seer separated his light from his. Jon had to fight not to gasp as Wreg rose wordlessly to his feet, giving Jon a last, reassuring pat before he turned to go. Jon only sat there, watching as Wreg moved with his usual grace towards his previous seat at the front of the cabin.

Wreg didn’t look back, not even once.

Feeling a stab of what might have been regret, guilt or even fear, Jon glanced up at the last moment, fighting with what to say, how to thank him before he’d well and truly gone. The moment passed though, and Jon was left there on his own once more, struggling with his mind, with his light, with how he even felt. He ended up only watching as Wreg made his way soundlessly down the aisle of the Chinook to return to the area by the cockpit.

When Wreg lowered his weight fluidly to the seat next to Jax, Jon’s pain abruptly worsened.

THE CHINOOK DESCENDED in a sharp, cleanly-vertical line.

It dropping so suddenly that Jon felt his heart jerk into his throat. He’d been looking out the window without seeing anything since Wreg left him, and now, panic filled his light again as he watched their unhesitating descent. Pulling his attention off the river, Jon forced his eyes straight down, watching the expanse of green growing larger below him.

Central Park.

Fitting somehow, but it also made everything suddenly feel a lot more real.

The hole in the OBE sat right over the North Meadow of the park, which Jon remembered as the place where baseball fields used to live.

He doubted anyone played baseball here anymore, though.

Tall metal poles formed a jagged line all the way around the rim of the meadow. The rec center, or what had been the rec center, had another fence around it, too. Land and air vehicles parked in odd rows along the center’s southern edges, as well as on the western and eastern edges of the meadow itself. Jon realized the poles formed a military enclosure fence, likely covered by another of those killer-grade OBEs. Instead of baseball diamonds rimmed with grass lawns, he saw nothing but dirt, as if all the grass and sod had been ripped out of the ground.

Jon realized suddenly that a lot of those vehicles appeared to be moving.

His eyes followed as more and more of those jeeps and armored cars rushed across the packed dirt towards the landing strip below. They looked like ants riding dune buggies from their still-significant height, but Jon could see the longer protrusions on some of those vehicles, and knew they were weapons. He saw more doors opening in the dirt, too, and realized underground bunkers lived there, probably filled with even more weapons.

Jesus, it was a damned military base.

SCARB maybe. Maybe even Federal.

The Chinook continued to drop, engines whirring. Jon could only watch their steady approach, staring down between his feet as more and more of those black, armored vehicles rushed to greet them on the packed dirt where the bottom of the fuselage aimed.

“We’ve got a welcoming party,” a familiar voice said.

Jon jumped. His eyes jerked up to find Revik standing there, right beside him.

Revik’s words had come through strangely loud and clear, despite the whine of the engines and the deeper thud of the rotors. Jon touched his headpiece in rote, then noticed that Revik was only now fitting his over one ear.

Revik continued to stand there, his posture deceptively casual as he leaned his forearms on two of the seats for balance once he had the headset in place, his legs slightly splayed where he stood in the middle of the aisle. Guns protruded from holsters on both sides of his ribs, as well as on his hips, and he wore full armor, on everything but his actual face.