Allie's War Season Four (82 page)

Revik let out another humorless laugh. “Rash?” he said.

It came out like a curse.

Menlim’s face did not change expression. “We will only replace you in this role, as we said. If you want to see your daughter again––”

Revik laughed again, cutting him off.

There wasn’t a lot of humor in his laugh that time, either, although he did, at least, get the joke that time. His laughter sounded like it came through a mouth full of broken glass. It more or less felt like that, too. He understood what the seer was telling him, though. He couldn’t possibly have
not
understood it. They were already grooming his daughter for that role.

He was also already too late to get her out.

Hell, she might never have been here at all.

Menlim would groom their daughter, just like he had groomed him. She would take his place...his real place...as the pillar for the Dreng here on Earth. It wouldn’t be Cass. It wouldn’t be Feigran or Terian, either. It would be his daughter. Allie’s daughter.

She would be the one to usher in the new world.

At the thought, something finally broke through the haze that had settled over Revik’s mind.

Or maybe it just broke.

Revik couldn’t be sure when he made the decision to find her. He couldn’t be sure when he decided it didn’t matter to him what happened to his aleimi anymore, or if he broke it by turning it on Shadow’s construct a second time...and therefore breaking himself, maybe even killing himself, if they were done with him, or if they no longer needed him to hold up the construct while Shadow’s people escaped.

He just had to find her. He had to know where she was.

He crashed through every waving red flag in his light, through that choked feeling in his chest and throat, through the adrenaline running through his limbs and the sweat dripping down his face and into his eyes. He tried to find her, to find a thread to his daughter’s light through the construct he now knew for certain they shared.

For the first time since he’d landed in the basement, shieldless, he opened his light.

He looked for his daughter in the darkness surrounding them both.

Before he could find her, though, something else slammed him.

It came out of nowhere, the instant he opened his light at all.

Almost as if it had been waiting for him.

It hit him hard, too...hard enough to suck the air out of his lungs, to buckle his knees. He fell physically before he knew why, before he could wrap anything rational around his mind...around what he felt or saw. He landed on carpet in what felt like slow-motion, but he didn’t feel that, either. He didn’t think about the guards, about the fact that they were likely closing on him, even now. He couldn’t make himself care about any of it.

Allie.

He felt her so strongly it blinded him.

Then it did blind him, igniting the light in his eyes so swiftly and intensely that he lost touch with the room. A pale green glow obscured his vision, then flared...wiping out what remained of his physical sight, forcing him to remain where he was, kneeling, panting, feeling a pressure in his chest like a cement slab crushing him from above.

Allie.

She’d been waiting for him. He must be feeling her there, waiting.

The blackout must be over. That blackout after death.

His mind thought these things, but couldn’t make sense of them, either. He felt the last traces of that rational thread, and something in him broke. Grief expanded over him, over his light. He realized how closed down he’d been. In survival mode. Fighting to stay on his feet, like always. Fighting like he had as a kid, just like his uncle said. All of that felt gone now, though.

Gods. He had to find his daughter.

Maybe this was illusion, too. Another distraction, a means of pulling him away from the child. He shouldn’t feel Allie this strongly...not
this
strongly. It had to be another trick.

But gods, it was working...it was working.

He couldn’t let it go, couldn’t move past it.

He fought to remember what it had been like the first time, when she’d been in that tank in the mountains. But no...he hadn’t felt her.

He hadn’t felt anything then.

He hadn’t felt her like this...nothing like this.

Then she spoke to him, and his mind turned off entirely.

Revik,
she sent.
Revik, baby...try to stall them. Just a few more minutes...I’m coming for you, I swear to god. Just hold on for a few more minutes...

He groped for her in the dark, confused, blinded by pain. She was dead. It had to be her, dead. She wasn’t broken by the wires. She didn’t sound broken by the wires, so she had to be free of all of it. She had to be free of what they’d done to her.

He looked for their child again...

Don’t worry about her,
Allie whispered.
Don’t worry about her, Revik...I’ve got her. I’m holding her right now, okay? I’ve got her in my arms. She’s fine...

“Allie.” He said it aloud, fighting to breathe, the word a near-groan. “Allie...no. Don’t take her. Please. Please don’t take her from me...”

He knew the irrationality of his words. Moments before...days before...weeks before...he’d thought only of the same thing. Of killing his own child. Of releasing her from this place, of rescuing her, even if it meant snuffing her out of this world...and maybe Maygar, too, now that Revik knew Shadow would want him, as well.

But kneeling there, surrounded by Allie’s light, feeling hints of the girl with her, that irrationality bloomed, turned to a suffocating heat in his chest.

“Gods,” he managed. Tears ran down his cheeks, even as he felt another coil of her light through his.
Leave her with me. Please. Don’t take her, too...please, wife...

Revik, it’s okay...

It’s not. It’s not okay. Please, Allie...don’t do this. I’ll find a way to free her. I swear to the gods, I will. Whatever it takes...

I’m not taking her from you, baby,
Allie sent.

Love hit him, so much it cut his breath, fierce, beyond what he could think past. A warmer pulse of reassurance followed, but still wrapped in that hotter, protective light, flooding his body even as he realized the protectiveness was aimed at him.

Not at the child, him. The thought confused him, but it lingered, still making it difficult to breathe, to see anything past that pain in his chest.

I vow this to you, husband,
she said, her voice still holding that heat.
With all of my heart, I vow it, Revik. I’m not taking our child away. Well...
she amended, her voice shifting, flickering out with a denser, angrier spark.

I’m not taking her from
you
. Never from you, Revik...I promise...

Allie paused, her light completely tangled in his, washing over his, invading and tumbling through him and yanking him out of the dark even as it ripped him raw. He felt completely unmoored, completely out of control, upside down and lost and torn apart. He fought to think, to feel their daughter, and got lost in that spark of heat and light all over again.

He felt hands on him, from far away, hands gripping his arms. Cold metal on his neck. He felt them around him, but he couldn’t make himself fight. He couldn’t see anything well enough to fight it off, to even make himself care. All he could do was look for the two of them in the darkness, to try to find them, keep them with him...

Then Allie was there again, so dense, so fucking real, he couldn’t feel anything else.

Honey,
she sent, and he felt so much compassion in her light he squeezed his eyes shut, his hands balled into fists where he held them out in front of his body.
I’m coming for you, okay? Hold them off...just a little longer. Just a little longer, please...

Her voice turned to steel.

...I’m coming for you.

I CLICKED OUT, frowning, staring up at the ceiling briefly, fighting to control my light, which seemed to be slamming and crashing around the room the second it came into contact with Revik’s, in spite of the shield that locked down my aleimi in most other respects. I felt that shield tighten around me even as I thought it, right before Tarsi smacked some structure above my head that both hurt and forced my eyes over to hers.

She had a smile on her face when I turned, however.

I felt her strongly, stronger than anyone now that Revik had been pushed out of my light. Stronger than the child I held in my arms, who still held her light apart from mine and watched me with fear in her eyes, sweet, small-girl tears glistening on her cheeks as she watched me with those clear eyes, measuring me, trying to decide what to do with me, maybe.

I couldn’t be sure if they’d felt me––Shadow and his minions, I mean.

Then again, they probably knew I was here already, regardless of the shield. I felt the other seers with me woven into that shield: Anale, Yarli, Chandre, Varlan, Vikram, some seer I didn’t know, Rig, Surli. Also, the one they called Stanley, the African-looking seer who’d been called ‘Rabbit’ on the Displacement lists and who always seemed to be smiling.

My mind felt weirdly sharp, almost unreal sharp.

They had to know I was here by now.

They had to, my mind repeated.

At the thought, my eyes returned to the other person in the room, the one who wore a tan leather skirt suit with knee-high boots, whose long black hair lay in a tangle around her shoulders. Somehow, the fact of her unconsciousness took the sheen off of her expensive-looking clothes, even making the flame-like red streaks in her hair look duller in the atmospheric light of the fancy apartment where we all stood.

That same woman half sat and half lay on the carpet between Stanley and Varlan’s feet. A collar circled her throat. Organic cuffs bound her wrists and ankles, but I doubted those would be much more than redundant for at least a few hours, too. Her brown eyes were closed, and I suspected they would be for awhile.

She was the real reason the child in my arms looked afraid. She was the reason for the little girl tears, and the reason my child’s light remained closed to mine.

I’d hit Cass pretty damned hard when I came through that door.

Truthfully, I kind of thought I’d killed her.

Well, in the beginning, anyway.

Even now, so much light coiled and ran through my aleimic body, I felt strangely disconnected, almost floaty. Yet somehow, that weird clarity persisted, allowing me to think through all of that light, and to know exactly where I was, and what was happening, and how I got here, and what I’d done. I even knew exactly what needed to happen next...even if my own confidence on that score made me somewhat nervous, too.

After all, I’d missed a lot, right? I mean, I’d been on, like, a serious sabbatical. Should I really be so sure of anything, given that I’d more or less been out of the picture for going on a half-year now? That struck me as pretty strange, if so.

Across the room from me, Tarsi chuckled.

I smiled back at her, then looked at Cass, and that smile turned back into a frown.

I’m still not sure how it all went down, to be honest.

I mean, I am. I know what happened.

I was clear through all of it, so I could more-or-less document the facts, but I don’t know that I can say with much assurance that I was
there
for it, in the strictest sense. Well, I was there, but there was kind of a split awareness thing going on that’s harder to put into words, and that goes beyond any of the split-awareness type drills I did while working with Revik. I mean, I
wasn’t
there, and then I was only half there...and then I was really gone. Then, suddenly, I was back, only right now, in the beginning, I’m more like half there and moving again, only in a different way than before.