Allie's War Season Four (66 page)

Reaching the door, he flipped up a small metal panel that had been designed to blend in with the wall, using a thumbnail switch and then a retinal scanner to gain access. Once the second panel opened to a DNA-encoded keyboard, Balidor punched through the code by memory and then stepped back, waiting for the lock to disengage.

He could only hope that whoever had come in via the roof didn’t know about the second set of stairs, which Wreg had arranged to sequester off from the others, with the help of Naldaran, the owner of the hotel, as well as Arc Enterprise engineers.

Even as he thought it, an audible click sounded even above the oscillating siren.

Balidor grabbed he door when it popped open a few inches, revealing an orange-lit corridor on the other side, about half the width of the main stairwell and with one-way organic panels on the two long windows that projected out from the building itself.

Balidor shut the door behind him sharply, then began to climb.

THEY’D ONLY BEEN walking for a few minutes––if that––but already, Jon could feel nerves and adrenaline twisting his insides so badly he walked strangely, even breathed strangely.

The corridor had grown darker in those few minutes, the shadows longer.

Jon knew they were close.

To what, he didn’t know, but he could feel the closeness, a near presence lurking somewhere just out of reach of his sight. He imagined he could feel Cass in that, but truthfully, he didn’t know that he did, really. He imagined he could feel Terian, too––not the Feigran version he’d spent so many afternoons keeping company in that cell in Nepal, or in the underground tank compound, or even in the upper floors of the House on the Hill hotel.

He found himself remembering the Terian from that prison in the Caucasus instead.

Jon realized, the longer he walked, just how much he’d let himself conveniently forget about that Terian, and what he’d been like. What he’d done to him and Revik...and yes, to Cass.

So yeah, okay, maybe some PTSD was thrown into the mix at this point.

Jon found himself clenching his mutilated hand in a kind of nervous tic, taking it off the gun where he’d been holding it out in front of him, two-handed, and fisting it at his side or even in the open air, only to return it to the gun again, seconds later.

Even apart from fear, Jon felt sick. More than sick.

The headache had worsened the further they walked down that torch-lit corridor. Jon felt a heavy tightness deep in his chest as he felt that same corridor continue to slope downward, although he knew that might be another illusion for Revik’s benefit, along with the dense, airless and lightless feeling that seemed to crawl all over this place. Either way, Jon felt like he was suffocating slowly...getting just enough air to stay alive.

He also swore he saw insects scurrying over cracks in those walls, cockroach shells and feet, worms, the eyes of rats staring out at him like black liquid, reflecting in the torchlight. None of those things tended to trigger Jon normally, but he knew they weren’t for his benefit, either.

After all, he’d never slept in a place where those things could get at him easily.

Jon recognized part of that airless feeling as not only coming from the construct, but from Revik himself, reflecting back to the rest of them as an intense form of claustrophobia. Something about that fear struck Jon as completely irrational, borderline insane in its inability to connect to anything logical in his head...yet so mundane in a way, too, that while the low-level panic it caused seemed to affect every cell in his body, it didn’t actually impede any of his muscle movements, or even the workings of his forward mind.

Or maybe not
low-level
precisely, Jon corrected in his mind.

More like tightly controlled...as in, the claustrophobia and its accompanying fear were so familiar to some part of Jon’s light that he managed them in rote, like one might manage a longstanding physical disability, or maybe chronic pain that had lingered for years and become the new normal.

Jon didn’t have to think too hard about where those feelings came from, either.

Glancing at Revik, he caught flickers of a less-diluted version of that panic in the other man’s light, even though the expression on Revik’s angular face hadn’t changed. Jon wanted to touch him, to reassure him in some way, but he couldn’t think of a way to do it that would actually work...especially given where they were going. He could also imagine ways in which doing so might only make things worse for the other man, by calling his attention to it in a more concrete way, or just by not letting him distract himself with the military, tactical stuff his mind likely chewed over in the foreground.

Jon also knew Revik well enough to know that, in addition to controlling his fear of enclosed, underground spaces, Revik was probably using some portion of his concentration not to feel the other emotions that probably vied for attention in his light. Namely, his feelings about Allie and Menlim...or even those about Cass and Terian.

Right now, Revik might not welcome anything that got in the way of that. He might not welcome anything personal at all, given his usual coping methods.

The headache worsened as Jon thought all of this.

Pushing Revik out of his mind briefly, as well as he could anyway, given the fear that trembled the other man’s light, Jon tried to focus on what he could feel and see ahead of them.

Clearly, whoever designed the visuals for this part of the construct did it with Revik in mind. Jon could hear things in the construct too, and not all of them pertained to insects and rats. He heard what sounded like metal scraping on rock, like the sounds of chains dragging over the bottom of a rock floor, for example.

If the whole thing didn’t feel so real, it might have made Jon laugh, just for the sick, dark humor of it all. Like a morbid attempt at a haunted house, only one that some part of Revik actually lived in still, after suffering in the dark for almost a century.

The thought made Jon shudder involuntarily.

The worst part was the smell.

It smelled worse than an outhouse Jon had once visited in Thailand, where there’d been dead rats seething with maggots floating on the top of the water. At the outhouse, which stood outside some crappy tourist huts in a small town outside of Phuket, Jon had exited as quickly as humanly possible and warned off all of his friends from even opening the door. Even after that, he’d run back to the hotel to scrub every inch of his exposed skin, sure he’d caught some new kind of horrible disease from breathing the air in that godawful pit.

He couldn’t be entirely certain, but this seemed to smell worse.

For the first time, the reality of that boy’s time in the cells really hit Jon. There
would
have been rats...and insects, and probably bed sores and sickness and bad food and water and whatever else. He would have gotten infections, and cuts and scrapes from the chains. From what Allie said, the kid had been malnourished, overly pale, half-broken with emotional problems from having been left alone for so long.

Remembering her words now, Jon shuddered, feeling that sick, panicked feeling worsen.

“I can feel something,” Wreg muttered then, from Jon’s other side. “Up ahead.”

Jon glanced at Revik, maybe to verify Wreg’s words. Revik nodded, looking between the two of them. His mouth remained hard, not quite a frown.

“Yes,” he said aloud. “I know.”

“What is it?” Jorag said. “Are Loki and the others there?”

Revik shook his head, but not quite in a no. His eyes narrowed somewhat, and he inclined his head, almost as if listening to something none of the rest of them could hear.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I’m mostly getting a lot of bullshit.”

“Bullshit?” Jorag said, frowning.

“You know...interference,” Revik said, still not looking at any of them.

The rest of the seers and Jon exchanged looks.

“Interference?” Jon said finally. “What kind of interference, man?”

“Cass,” Revik said, making a vague gesture with one hand, without elaborating either in sign language or aloud. “...Terian, too. But mostly Cass.”

“What is she saying?” Neela asked, glancing over at them from where she positioned herself beside Jorag. She walked just behind Jax, who still limped ahead of them.

Thinking about her words, or maybe how to answer, Revik exhaled, clicking under his breath. He didn’t hide his irritation when he spoke next.

“The usual crap,” he said. “Mostly about Allie...some about our daughter.”

He said both words with a kind of added charge, Jon noticed. He swallowed, again suppressing the impulse to touch Revik in some way.

“Tell her fuck you from me,” Jon said finally, after a pause.

There was a silence.

Then Wreg, Jorag, Maygar, Neela and Chinja broke out in coarse but almost uncontrolled-sounding laughs. The laughter struck Jon as odd in that stone-walled place, almost hollow in the deadened acoustics of the corridor. Their voices sounded strained and off-key and unlike their usual voices, but something about hearing them laugh made Jon smile anyway.

“Me, too, boss,” Chinja grinned.

“...And me,” Neela said.

“Me, as well,” Jorag chimed in.

“And me,” Maygar added. “Give a nice, big, fat, fuck you from me too, Dad...”

Jon saw Revik flinch a little, looking over at Maygar in a briefly unguarded surprise. The Elaerian didn’t speak though, or even smile. Rather than dissipating, Jon felt that surprise deepen in Revik’s light for a few seconds more as he walked.

“Tell her to kiss my Asian ass,” Wreg added, reaching over to massage Jon’s shoulder and give him a fleeting but warm smile.

Jon shivered a little from the contact, even as he leaned into the other man’s fingers. Something about being hit constantly in his light made him want the seer closer to him, but he resisted the impulse to follow Wreg’s hand when Wreg let go of him a few seconds later. Jon bit his lip instead, keeping his eyes down and letting the Chinese seer separate them when Wreg’s graceful steps pulled him further away.

Jon looked ahead then, at Jax, who still led their suddenly
very
small-seeming group. Jon happened to look forward right as the other seer glanced over his shoulder, giving the rest of them a strained smile.

“...And mine,” Jax added, joining in on the mirth a little late.

Studying the seer’s face and body, Jon felt a flicker of worry.

Jax didn’t look very good. His complexion had gone distinctly more gray since they’d first landed at the bottom of that chute. His light didn’t look right, either, even to Jon, who had the worst sight of any of them. Jax’s limp had gotten worse, too.

“Noted,” Revik said, a faint smile once more touching his narrow lips.

The surprise had finally faded from Revik’s light.

It left a thoughtful kind of silence in its wake, along with a warmer pulse of his light...although Jon could still feel the strain of that panicked feeling in the background of his aleimi, too, as well as whatever interaction might still be going on between him and Cass and Terian. Jon also saw Revik notice the same things about Jax’s light and body that Jon had been noticing a few seconds earlier.

He considered saying something again, maybe to dispel even more of that tension he felt, when suddenly, Revik came to a dead stop.

Jon had been looking at Revik’s face, not ahead of them, so at first all he could do was stare at the pallor that swiftly came to the Elaerian’s complexion, turning it chalk white, almost deathly white, and so quickly Jon felt the change like a punch to the middle of his chest. He grabbed for the other man that time, even as Wreg came swiftly around Revik’s other side, catching hold of his opposite arm. The large seer moved so quickly it caught Jon off guard, and Jon could only stand there, gripping Revik’s arm as Wreg began to speak into Revik’s ear, holding him in a half-hug around the shoulders.