Allie's War Season Four (87 page)

“Yes,” Chandre said, who fell into the angry, bewildered camp with Allie, although she seemed to be more used to talking to her at least. “Yes...explain this, Esteemed Bridge. Aren’t all of our enemies followers of the Dreng...? Why is this different?”

“You’re not listening to me,” Allie said patiently, looking around at all of them.

Jon had been in the camp of just staring at her, unsure if his brain was even working.

He mainly stared at her eyes, at the person he could see there, instead of the wirehead he remembered from all of those weeks in San Francisco. He remembered the woman who wouldn’t talk, who still managed to push Revik around in that basement under the Victorian mansion. Looking at her in that Tower felt like crossing time streams, or maybe like being lost in a complex and confusing dream––a dream he hadn’t decided the outcome of yet, nightmare or wish-fulfillment or catharsis.

She still wore what Jon had seen her in after she died, which didn’t help.

The clothes looked like fucking pajamas.

Dark sweat pants and a long, button-down shirt that Jon recognized as Revik’s, and dark blue Converse sneakers. Someone had draped a military jacket over her shoulders, but somehow that only contributed to the overall effect of her looking like she’d just crawled out of bed and wandered outside looking for the newspaper.

The image could have only been more absurd, under the circumstances, if she’d been wearing fluffy slippers.

“You’re not hearing me...” she’d said again, looking around at all of them, as if aware they still couldn’t quite fathom her existence at all. “I didn’t say he was a
follower
of the Dreng, or even ‘The’ follower of the Dreng. I’m telling you, he’s one of the actual fucking
Dreng...
one of the beings from behind the Barrier who orchestrated all of this...”

She waved her hands around, indicating the Tower, maybe...or maybe the world.

Wreg’s eyes had sharpened on her. “What does that mean?” he’d said, speaking first into that silence. “The Dreng are non-corporeal, Esteemed Bridge. They don’t have bodies at all. They are Barrier creatures only...”

Allie threw up her hands, a gesture so familiar that Jon flinched, nearly wincing away from her that time. She glanced at him, as if she felt his reaction, but instead of frowning, she smiled at him, maybe to reassure him.

“I’m not as sure about that part, honestly,” she’d admitted then. “But I’m reasonably certain he’s the progenitor of the whole ‘body switching’ thing that Terian does. I’m pretty sure that’s how and why he can’t be killed in the same way one of us can be killed. He’s already dead. Or he was never alive...however you want to say it.”

She looked at Revik then, and for the first time, her light green eyes held a glimmer of worry when he wouldn’t return her gaze.

Revik didn’t stand far away from her precisely, but even Jon could feel the ‘stay away’ vibe in his light, almost as if he’d erected a shield to keep Allie and her light as far away from his as possible. They’d cut the collar off him by then, and the handcuffs, and Vikram had given him a shot of something to counteract the drugs in his system, but he still looked out of it.

He looked like he’d lost a fair bit of blood and possibly light, too, although Neela had bandaged up his arm, using a ripped off piece of shirt from one of the corpses lying on the floor of the lobby. It was difficult to tell just how much of the blood on his clothes and skin was actually his, though.

Remembering the dead bodies that surrounded Revik when those elevator doors opened, Jon shivered a little. Revik looked half out of his head before he even
saw
Allie. Jon felt that suicidal thing on him, too. Hell, he’d felt that on him even before they got to New York. Even before Allie physically died...or whatever she’d done.

Now Revik just felt lost, gone in a way Jon didn’t ever remember him feeling before.

The military guy was still there. That seemed to survive past whatever shock he might be feeling. But the man himself, Jon wasn’t so sure.

Even so, Revik had fought the hardest to go after Menlim. He continued to fight, even after what Allie said about Menlim being one of the Dreng.

“So we can kill this body, at least,” he said. “They take awhile to grow...especially if he’s attached to using that particular form. He’ll have to clone a new one...”

“Assuming he doesn’t have an underground bunker filled with back-up bodies already,” Allie said. She sighed, fingering her hair out of her face. “It’s not worth the risk. It’s not a good use of our resources right now, baby...and you know it.”

Revik flinched openly at her use of that word.

“...And anyway,” she’d said, talking over his reaction, although Jon was pretty sure she’d felt it. “We need to get you unattached from their construct
first,
Revik. We need to get Maygar and...” She’d hesitated, as if fighting over words. “...and our
child
unattached. We can’t do anything until then. We have to get all of you as far away from him as possible until then...don’t you get it? We’re too vulnerable right now!”

“I used the construct, Allie,” Revik said. “I got out of it. Hell, I managed to redesign it, even collared. How the hell do you think I got access to the telekinesis?” For the first time, it sounded almost like he was really talking to her, although he still wouldn’t look at her. Staring down at the stone tiles, he’d gestured behind him, towards the elevator doors. “You see what I did! You see it, right?”

“I do see it,” she countered at once, holding up her hands. “I see it, and I get it, Revik...I really do. But gods...you know how this works! You can only surprise them like that
once.
Menlim and his Dreng buddies are pissed as hell right now, and they still have links to all three of you...along with Cass! Even
I
can feel it now...and I’m only feeling it through you. We need a better plan than
no plan,
okay? He’s going to come after us as soon as he regroups, so we don’t even need to chase him. We’ve got a chance to get rid of them now...like
really
get rid of them...but only if we keep our heads.”

When Revik continued to stand there, breathing hard, jaw clenched where he stared at the floor, she’d raised her voice, her words carrying a strange combination of elation and hope and frustration and a pain even Jon could feel.

“Revik...baby...we can
win
this! We can actually fucking win this...eliminate them down here, don’t you see that? But it involves finding all of his anchors down here, and figuring out which ones are just Rooks, or servants of the Dreng, and which are actual
Dreng,
living down here in human bodies. We can’t get sloppy with this. Come on...you’re contingency
guy.
I know you see this, and I know why you’re pretending you’re not. I get that you’re pissed off...”

“Pissed off?”

For the first time, Revik had stared directly at her.

Jon didn’t think he’d ever forget the look that had come to Revik’s face in those few seconds. He couldn’t describe it to himself in words; he’d never seen anyone’s eyes hold so much, or convey so much. Allie had only stared at him, too, along with the rest of the seers, who had backed off with their light, and in some cases, their bodies, to give the two Elaerian room to argue. The fact that it had quickly become a domestic dispute, as much as a strategic one, didn’t seem to have escaped anyone’s notice, either.

Allie hadn’t looked away from Revik’s face for even a second of that stare.

She hadn’t frowned...or even blinked. She just stood there, her hands clasped in front of her, as if restraining herself from moving, probably from touching him, or at least moving closer to where he stood. She’d seemed glued to her spot, frozen, but also unable to look away, to even breathe maybe.

Revik had been the one to avert his gaze that time, too.

Then, without another word, he had walked.

He’d turned around, turned his back on all of them, maybe Allie especially, and walked towards the street outside the lobby doors.

Jon watched him walk around and over bodies still strewn over the stone tile. He watched Revik aim his feet for that wall he’d shattered with the telekinesis, what must have been hours ago, although it felt more like days to Jon. Jon couldn’t even believe that the sky remained dark outside, that weeks hadn’t passed since they’d gone down those elevator shafts. The storm had died down somewhat in their absence, bringing a harder rain but little wind, but otherwise, minutes could have passed instead of hours since they’d descended into that hell.

Jon thought at first that Revik was leaving them entirely.

He’d worried that Revik would simply ignore what Allie said, go after Menlim himself. But then he’d seen the Elaerian cross the street, heading for the park, and realized he was going to the Chinook, to the same rendezvous point that Allie just told them about.

He still worried until Allie and the others began to follow him.

Allie stopped only once, by what remained of the transparent organic wall, staring at Garensche’s cleaved body where it lay both inside and outside of the glass doors. She’d sucked in a breath, staring down at him, and then Neela and Jorag had steered her gently away.

Jon knew they didn’t have much time, but it bugged him, that they hadn’t let her mourn the big oaf even a little. He had to suppose all of that would come later, too, when they got to wherever they were going and started to collectively lick their wounds.

It bugged him, too, that they hadn’t found some way to bring Gar’s body with them.

But Jon supposed he understood that, too. Anyway, to seers, the body wasn’t the part of a person that mattered. Jon knew they’d do rituals for him and for any others who had fallen, once they got to wherever they were all going.

Jon’s light still continued to follow Revik’s nervously as the male seer disappeared into the park. He could feel Revik’s intent now, and knew that Revik had decided to come with them despite his words to Allie, but Jon still felt his muscles clenching with adrenaline as he fought not to run after the other man. The only thing that held him back was Wreg, who laid a heavy hand on his shoulder right as they were leaving the ruined lobby of the Tower for good.

Let him go, little brother,
Wreg advised.
He needs the time alone.

Is he all right?
Jon asked.

He knew it was a dumb question, but couldn’t seem to make himself not ask it.

Wreg gave a low grunt.
I highly doubt he is all right, Jon. But he will be. Just let him make his own way around this. Your sister gets that...it is why she let him go. The two of them are going to need to work a lot of this out alone...

At the time, Jon had only been able to nod, even though every atom and thread in his body and light protested Wreg’s words.

Still, he hadn’t tried to chase after Revik. He’d let him go, just like Wreg advised. Jon followed after Allie like the rest of the seers, entering the park where he’d last left it, just north of East 79th Street, and following one of the footpaths north.

Now that they’d made a full circuit of the lake and passed the tennis courts, which lay just south of the North Meadow’s western edges, Jon’s mind returned to Revik again. He could still smell smoke as he walked, from where Revik had ripped apart the airstrip less than twenty-four hours earlier, and something about that smoke, and the denser feeling of the construct overhead, caused Jon’s nerves to start worsening once more. He found himself wondering where Revik was, if he’d already reached the Chinook or if he’d left them altogether by now.

Jon didn’t stop walking as he thought it, glancing ahead periodically at the line of trees before 97th, which he could feel as much as see at this point.

The park felt dead, unnaturally quiet.

It reminded Jon of the mess they’d found in Golden Gate Park, when the disease first started, and how the city felt like a different world, one Jon no longer felt a part of in any way, despite his having grown up in San Francisco and spent most of his life there. It hit Jon again that he’d barely had time to mourn the loss of that world. They’d been too busy trying to survive over the last year since the disease first appeared.

At the thought, he found himself remembering the first time he’d heard about the outbreak of C2-77. He’d been with Dorje, at the New York Central Library. They’d walked there together to decipher the data key Allie and Revik stole from that bank.

Remembering that day, Jon felt a nearly physical pain from the loss.

The city had been normal then...as normal as New York ever got.

Crowds of people in business suits, drinking lattes. Students carrying portable study aids and monitors, wearing designer tennis shoes and sporting two hundred dollar haircuts. Artists hanging out in the park. Panhandlers. Avatars following him and Dorj down the street, trying to sell them time-shares in Cancun...time-shares that now had probably been taken over by armed squatters, or even stray animals breaking through the doors and windows in search of food. Jon had seen billboards for new Broadway shows. Posters for bands playing. Art galleries. Tourists. Music blared from radios, and from sidewalk cafés and coffee stands.