Allie's War Season Four (9 page)

“You
know
you should do it,” I say instead. “If he gets deported, it’s his own damned fault, Cass. Your mom and sister would be better off, anyway.”

“On the street?” Cass says. “That would be
better,
Allie?”

“There’ll be another way,” I say, shaking my head. “There’s
always
another way, Cass, even if it seems like there isn’t. Ask my mom. She lost
everything
after dad died. The insurance didn’t cover any of it...then she lost her job. She found another way.”

Cass only looks at me, not hearing me, that pleading look still on her face.

“Please don’t, Allie. I’m begging you,” she said. “I’m
begging
you, Al. Please, I swear to God, I’ll make
sure
he never bothers you. Anyway, he’ll sleep this off and apologize tomorrow, he always does...” Her voice grows more urgent. “Allie, it was my fault for going over there on a weekend night, okay? I
knew
he’d be drinking. You know this isn’t an issue much anymore, since I’m hardly ever––”

“––IS EVERYONE HERE?” Revik said, his voice monotone. “Can we start?”

Jon sat in one of the high-backed chairs, on one side of the antique table, both of which were made of some heavy, dark wood. Balidor sat two seats to his left. Wreg sat opposite Revik, at the other end of the narrow dining room. Jorag sat directly across from Jon.

They always sat in the same chairs now.

It felt like they lived in this damned room.

The table itself was probably an original, given the millionaires who used to inhabit this dwelling. Now burn marks marred its otherwise-burnished surface, probably from drug pipes and cigarettes from when thieves and looters squatted here.

Wreg cleared his throat.

The sound pulled at Jon, but he found himself avoiding the large seer’s nearly-black eyes, focusing on Revik alone. He watched the Elaerian’s lean, hard-muscled body fall in a near-vertical line as he sat himself at the table’s head.

Still, he didn’t quite meet the Elaerian’s gaze, either.

In spite of what Jon had told Balidor, Revik had been drunk the night before.

Too drunk, as it turned out. Somewhere in that inebriation, he’d made his way to Jon’s room. Jon had no idea if anyone else in the construct overheard the conversation that had followed from Revik’s late-night visit, but he sure as hell hoped not. He especially hoped Balidor missed it, as the Adhipan seer seemed to hear everything...much less Wreg.

Hell, he didn’t want to have to explain that conversation or what followed to anyone, much less revisit it with Revik himself.

Honestly, he hoped Revik was too drunk to even remember it.

Jon looked away, catching the edge of Wreg’s eyebrow-raised stare.

He didn’t miss the coldness that shone there, however.

Exhaling, Jon found himself watching Revik again surreptitiously, maybe to avoid looking at Wreg, noting that Revik had been eating less again, but clearly hadn’t let up on his time spent at the building’s improvised gym. The Elaerian had been running every morning too, Jon knew, often well before dawn. Sometimes he ran around Alamo Square itself, but more often, he ran to the panhandle and into Golden Gate Park...even as far as the ocean, at times.

Jon hadn’t personally been working out with him in the sparring arena, but he knew Revik had an open challenge out there, too, in an attempt to get himself into shape and pick up new fighting techniques. So far, only Jorag, Wreg, Yumi and Balidor took him up on that challenge on a regular basis, although Jon overheard Torek saying he’d fought him a few times as well, along with Maygar, and some of the cockier youngsters among the new recruits.

A few of the last of these came out of there with broken bones, including one shattered cheekbone, a broken hand and a dislocated jaw. Revik himself had barely recovered from what that sadistic fucker, Ditrini, had done to him in the sewer tunnels under New York, or the injuries might have been worse.

The Elaerian only seemed to be marginally aware of the rest of them again, Jon noticed. His clear eyes focused outward, almost as if he were conversing with someone in the Barrier. Or maybe as if the larger part of him simply remained absent from the room.

After everyone found a seat, and the shuffling and scraping of chairs and mugs and whatever else had finished, silence fell over the dimly lit room.

Wreg cleared his throat a second time, laying a tattooed hand on the table.

“Laoban,”
he began, aiming his words at Revik. “Everything is set up for the link. We have Al...” Seeing Revik’s eyes dart towards his, Wreg stumbled, correcting his words. “...The Bridge is ready, too, sir. We tried the amplification methods you suggested. We are set up to test the first of these, using the Barrier records you requested.”

Revik nodded, but his face showed him to be elsewhere again.

When he faced them once more, he looked first at Wreg, then at Balidor and finally Yumi.

“Did you determine if I’d need a wire hookup?” he said. “Will it boost my ability to resonate with her at all?”

That time, Balidor spoke up. “We did test it, Illustrious Sword,” he said, his voice close to sharp. “It is not a good idea.”

“Explain,” Revik said, his voice still empty.

Balidor let out a sigh, glancing around at the rest of them before answering in a more subdued tone. “It is simply not worth the risk, Illustrious Sword.”

Balidor used Revik’s full title...twice, Jon noticed...despite the harder lack of compromise in the older man’s voice. Or perhaps because of it.

“...It is unlikely to help,” Balidor added. “It puts you at considerable risk, in more ways than one. It could also very well hurt her. If nothing else, by putting you too close to the specific parts of her that were damaged by what...” Like Wreg, Balidor struggled briefly over names. “...What the being, War, did to her, Illustrious Sword. We all agree it is an unacceptable risk.”

“Define unacceptable,” Revik said, his pale eyes leveling on the Adhipan seer’s.

“Unacceptable as in, we might lose you,” Wreg said, blunt, drawing Revik’s eyes back to the opposite side of the table. “As in, we can’t afford to lose you, too,
laoban.
And it’s unlikely to do what you want anyway.”

“How unlikely?” Revik said.

Even Jon gritted his teeth a little, though he knew this was just Revik’s way.

The Elaerian wasn’t being argumentative. He simply didn’t want subjective opinions. He didn’t want their fears, or their emotional reactions. He wanted facts. He wanted facts down to the last damned percentage point if he could get them.

Jon knew that Revik didn’t even want advice, not when he was like this, not unless he asked for it specifically. Balidor knew this. Wreg knew it even better than Balidor did. Wreg had worked with Revik longer than any of them, and he understood the way the Elaerian’s mind worked better than any of them, too.

“We ran extensive tests on eight different inducement wire configurations,” Wreg said, shifting his tone to that of a military report, almost as if he’d heard Jon’s thoughts. “One produced a minor increase in resonance over a period of several hours, but only when the simulated subject had been subjected to that resonance multiple times. By then, that subject was already hooked on the wires––”

“Did you calibrate for Elaerian aleimic differences?” Revik asked.

“Yes,” Wreg said at once. “We did, to the best of our ability. And we still had zero success with improving resonance without addicting the user to the devices.” His voice got harder. “I’ll break every machine we have before I let you do that,
laoban...”

Turning his head, Revik stared at him.

His eyes shone briefly but unmistakably with a cold anger.

Jon flinched at the look he saw there, but it vanished a bare second after Jon saw it. Revik nodded again, his face smooth. He laid his long fingers on the table, raising them only to gesture vaguely in the direction of Wreg and then Balidor. Jon in no way saw agreement with Wreg’s position in any one of those motions.

“Other options?” Revik said, his voice as dead-sounding as before.

That time, Yumi cleared her throat.

She glanced at Neela before she spoke, the latter having entered the room without Jon even seeing her, much less feeling her with his light. As one of the original rebels, Neela had some punch as an infiltrator, although Jon didn’t know her exact sight-ranking. She crouched behind shields multi-faceted enough to make her somewhat ninja-like, though, and Jon often found himself practically walking into her in the halls. At times, something about Neela evoked kind of a ‘young Tarsi’ vibe to Jon. Tarsi, who had been leader of the Adhipan prior to Balidor, and a high-ranked infiltrator for most of her life before that, wasn’t the soft, warm cloud of smiling heart that Jon remembered as Vash. Tarsi looked and felt like what she was...fucking dangerous. A military commander, first and foremost.

Unlike Vash, Jon never really figured out how to talk to Tarsi. For maybe similar reasons, he didn’t know how to talk to Neela, either.

Even more than Revik, Allie was always the one closest to Tarsi, apart from maybe Balidor...and Vash himself. Even Balidor had more of a teacher-student relationship with the ancient seer, as opposed to any kind of real friendship.

“...We did have another idea,” Yumi said, her fingers curling together on top of the heavy table. “Something we thought you might want to try first,
laoban.”

Revik looked at her, his eyes prompting her to continue.

“We thought perhaps Jon could go in with you.” Yumi’s eyes darted to Jon then, giving him a faintly apologetic look. “...With his closeness to Allie, as well as his proximity to her during different time periods in her life...” She trailed a little. “We figured, between the two of you, you could cover the vast majority of her timeline. This one, anyway.” Yumi swallowed at the unreadable look on Revik’s face. “Then there is Cass...War, herself...Illustrious Sword,” she added, anger blazing briefly in her eyes. “Jon has a longstanding relationship to Cass, too. We thought that would be of benefit, too, perhaps. In...well...both things, sir.”

Revik’s face remained unreadable as his eyes shifted to Jon.

Jon felt a part of him stiffening, almost fighting not to jump out of his skin, or maybe just shout ‘NO!’ in a really loud and inappropriate voice.

But he wasn’t going to weigh in on this, not now.

Maybe not ever.

Like Maygar, maybe Jon was willing to do whatever it took, no matter how he felt about his role in things personally. Maybe he was more than a little willing to take whatever Revik might feel the need to dish out right now. Remembering the night before in the same set of seconds, Jon felt his skin warm, forgetting that Revik still focused on his face.

“All right,” Revik said, his eyes flickering away. “Is there anything else?”

He looked back at Yumi, then at Wreg, narrowing his colorless eyes.

“No, Illustrious Sword,” Neela said, surprising Jon by being the one to answer.

Revik only nodded, his expression as unreadable as before.

There was another silence.

Then Revik rose smoothly to his feet, moving with that strange, feline grace of his, so different from Wreg’s, but strangely compatible, too.

Barely a second passed before the others stood up to follow him.