Allie's War Season Four (64 page)

Jon knew their signals could still be tapped, but also that it would be less likely when they shared it only between the eight of them.

Well, sixteen of them, assuming the other team would be meeting them on the other side.

Jon continued to fire up the dark tunnel overhead as Neela disappeared through the opening. Towards the end, Jon felt one of his bullets hit. A body started to fall down the shaft. He couldn’t yet see it, but Jon could feel it from above. Before he could react, Jax punched him playfully on the arm, even as Chinja joined him on his other side.

“Nice shooting, brother,” Jax said.

Jax’s face still looked drawn, but Jon found himself smiling back.

“We’re going,” Chinja told both of them, shoving them forward as she pulled her rifle down from where she’d slung it down on her back to free her hands for the climb. “Jax, go in front of brother Jon...I’ll cover from the rear.”

It occurred to Jon that normally a comment like that would have gotten a gleeful, sexually-ridden innuendo from Jax. This time, the Chinese seer remained quiet, merely holding up his gun as he inserted his body in the hole between the doors, gripping Jon’s vest with his free hand.

“Stay with me, brother,” he muttered.

Jon nodded, feeling his nerves ratchet up a few more notches. He glanced back at Chinja, watching her light orange eyes shift around the empty space behind them, even as she continued to push them both forward.

Then Jon fell through the opening. Once he had, he came to a dead stop.

Air got stuck in a hard lump in his throat, right before he let out an involuntary gasp.

Nothing stood beneath his feet.

Nothing.

“Gods!” Chinja let out in an involuntary cry. She grabbed at Jon’s arm, as if to pull him back, but movement to the side jerked Jon’s eyes that way. Standing in a huddled group with the others, Revik held up a warning hand, his irises once more glowing a pale, iridescent green, this time in direct contrast to a dark, star-filled night sky. He appeared to stand only a few yards away, but his feet rested on nothing but the vacuum-like black, decorated with stars so vibrant, to look at any one tumbled Jon into a near state of vertigo.

“Quiet!” Revik said, his voice unforgiving, but lower than a whisper. “We’re being scanned...”

Jon could only stare at him.

Then, he could feel it, too.

For a brief instant, he thought about Loki, wondering what happened to the other group of seers, if they had already been captured on the other side.

Then, without warning...

...the floor beneath his feet, or whatever it was that held Jon in place once he walked through those jacked open elevator doors...abruptly vanished.

20

THE WATCHTOWER

JON HEARD YELLS, all around him.

He fought to keep his body upright as he fell, but by then, he had no idea which direction that even was. Bodies slammed into his in midair, bringing grunts, cries, along with gasps of pain from what sounded like Jax, even in mid-fall.

Jon felt fingers grasp fleetingly at his arms, his clothes, but all he could see around himself was that deep-black of night...and stars, more stars than his eyes could take in.

Revik’s voice remained calm, erupting on the transmitter.

“They’re fucking with us,” he said. “You’re not free-falling. It’s some kind of slide...we’ll be at the bottom in fifty seconds...forty-five...”

“Where are we going,
laoban...?”
Wreg said, his voice out of breath.

“I don’t know,” Revik said without a pause. “Thirty seconds.” His voice remained calm, but he spoke faster, conveying information in a low stream. “...Pull in your limbs. Get to your feet as fast as you can. Guns out. I’ll try to buy us time. I can feel the rooms below, but not the seers. Loki’s team is there already. Five seconds...”

A bare breath after he finished.

Jon felt a whisper of Loki’s presence, along with Oli’s...

Then he crashed into something heavy and warm, hard enough to know it wasn’t another collision on the slide itself. He felt a pulse of warmth, hard muscles and a hand that wrapped around his arm. In the same set of seconds, Jon recognized Wreg’s presence and realized the other seer must have moved towards him before the hatch opened beneath their feet. Jon felt the lights of other seers around him, holding him protectively, even as he focused back on the shield. He hadn’t released the shield as he fell, although it hadn’t occurred to him to think about that fact through the minute or so of terror.

Jon looked up, and realized he could see again.

The lights were on down here.

Either that, or everything he could see was just another elaborate Barrier illusion.

A long corridor stretched out in front of him, so long, the lines of the walls appeared to meet in the middle at the far end. Wreg pulled Jon to his feet as he regained his own, and Jon realized the seer already had a gun in his hand, that same modified Nambu pistol Revik used to tease him about as an ‘antique.’ Revik claimed he’d been carrying the damned thing since the first World War. Wreg, for his part, told Jon he’d had the gun modified a number of times over the years, so that Revik’s claim wasn’t quite true, but Revik still seemed to find it funny.

Looking at the gun now, Jon found himself thinking it looked deadly enough, given the dark green organics that covered the handle and firing mechanism.

Wreg also told him no one could fire the gun but him. He’d had it DNA-coded under Salinse, and there was something with his fingerprints in the handle, too. Jon tore his eyes off the gun long enough to unholster his own, pulling himself to his feet clumsily as he saw Jorag helping Jax up.

Chinja was already on her feet, too, her rifle pointed down that oddly castle-like corridor. Her curly, reddish-brown hair had fallen half out of the bun she’d had it tied in at the beginning of the op. Somehow, the incongruous texture of her hair and eyes only brought out her Asian features more, emphasizing the height of her cheekbones and her perfectly sculpted mouth.

Maygar, Revik and Neela had their weapons out, too, along with Wreg.

Only then did Jon notice the torches lining the hallway, illuminating the dark stone walls with flickering but very real-looking flames.

Jon gripped the handle of his Glock, thankful he’d put the damned thing in its holster before he fell. He glanced back behind him, just in time to see the gaping, square hole of the chute that deposited them in the corridor get swallowed up by the construct. The hole appeared to melt away into thin air, leaving an identical view of an equally endless corridor lit with medieval-looking, iron-bracketed torches stretching in the opposite direction.

“What the fuck is this?” Wreg said, his eyes narrowing down the same view as Jon’s. He turned, looking at Revik. “What is this, Nenz? Do you know it? This feels deliberate...”

Revik shrugged, his face holding a faint trace of irritation. Still, something about this place bothered him. Jon could feel it, if only at the edges of the other man’s light.

“It’s the tower,” he said, muttering, “...Fucking cute.”

“Tower?” Jon said. “What tower, man? You mean Gossett Tower? This building?”

Revik didn’t seem to hear him at first. He raised a hand to his ear, without lowering his gun.

“Communications are out, too,” he said. “...I can’t raise the hotel.”

“What tower?” Jon repeated. “Revik?”

The Elaerian’s eyes swiveled to his.

Jon realized only then that they still glowed a faint green.

Revik’s voice turned into a growl. “The tower where they kept that boy locked up for ninety or so years, Jon,” he said. “The one where Shadow had Merenje posted as the guard. The one where I was chained to a wall in the dark for almost a century.”

Jon felt that pain in his gut worsen. He nodded, still watching the other seer, even as it occurred to him that at least part of that pain came from Revik himself.

“Are you going to be okay, man?” Jon said.

Revik gave him a harder look.

“It’s a valid question,” Wreg said from the other side, causing Revik to turn. When Jon looked at Wreg as well, he saw the Chinese seer measuring Revik with his eyes. “What can we do? Is there some way we can help to dispel this illusion for you,
laoban?”

Revik gave a humorless laugh. “I don’t see how.”

“Will it get in the way?” Wreg persisted.

Revik looked back at Wreg, then around at the rest of them. Finally, his eyes paused on Jon once more, even as he frowned.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I’ll let you know if it is. Until then, all we can do is try to help one another out. They won’t go after me alone...” He gave Jon a more meaningful look. “...They’ll likely go after several of us at the same time. If not all of us.”

Wreg nodded. He reached out, gripping Jon’s shoulder in one hand.

“Keep the shield on him, brother,” Wreg said to Jon, still watching Revik’s face. “He’s right. This’ll only be the beginning of this shit...we’ll split our resources between the two of you, like before. It’ll give them more targets, at least.”

Jon nodded, even as he felt his headache start to worsen again. When he glanced at Revik next, Jon saw that harder look in the seer’s eyes had lessened.

“Thanks,” Revik said to Wreg. His eyes grew unreadable once more, even as they flickered down both ends of the torch-lit corridor. “Which direction, do you think?”

Wreg and the others exchanged looks.

Wreg looked back at Revik then, still holding Jon’s shoulder firmly in his hand.

“You can’t feel the walls,
laoban?
” he said. “The structure?”

Revik shook his head, once, clicking in irritation. “Not anymore. Last glimpse I got was in that chute.”

“What about Loki?” Chinja said, from Wreg’s other side.

Revik glanced at her, his eyes unreadable. “Same.”

After another seemingly long silence, Jax exhaled. Jon turned with the rest of them, watching Jax as he limped up to Neela’s other side. He limped past her then, aiming in the direction Jon had first faced when he picked himself up off the floor.

“Well,” Jax said. “We know what’s in the other direction, right? A wall? Chute up to the first sub-basement floor?”

“Right,” Neela said, her voice holding that odd humor again. “Assuming they haven’t manipulated the visuals already...so that we’re facing the exact opposite direction as we think we are, brother Jax. Or perhaps a new one entirely...”

Jax shrugged, but didn’t stop walking, holding his rifle out in front of him. “Well, we know which direction they
want
us to go, right? Does it make much sense to argue?”

The others exchanged looks.

Then, each conceding Jax’s point in their own way, either with a hand gesture, a shrug, or a more subtle expression, they all began to follow the limping seer down the same stretch of corridor, each gripping a different type of weapon in their hand.