Allie's War Season One (141 page)

He spoke English, maybe because I had.

“He’s gone. You were sleeping…” He caressed my face again. “Are you in pain? Do you hurt still?”

In reflex, I tried to look at my body.

I saw pale-looking flesh, bruises, what looked like cuts. I looked thin to myself. My sense of smell was both dampened and sickeningly sharper…the aleimic portion of it missing, the physical smells nearly overpowered me. I must have peed through the grate below me, because I could smell that too. But I wasn’t really in pain apart from the collar. The rest was discomfort from being tied down, from not being able to move, and having my skin chafed by metal.

After thinking for a moment, I shook my head.

“Only my neck. And I’m thirsty.”

The boy immediately turned away, fumbling with something in the dark. I wasn’t surprised when, seconds later, he put a cold-feeling container to my lips. I drank the water eagerly once he’d opened the top, swallowing as he held it to my mouth. After minutes passed where I only drank, pausing here and there to breathe and swallow, I nodded, gesturing with my fingers that it had been enough.

He set it on the floor of the cage.

“Thanks.” I looked up at him, squinting in the dim light.

He caressed my arm, then my fingers. I saw his face tighten in some kind of concentration. A little nervous at what I saw there, I averted my gaze, resting my chin on the grate. I wondered if he was reading me…or trying to.

“Nenzi…where were you today?” I said, when he didn’t move away.

The boy began to answer me in a series of complicated hand gestures until I made a negative gesture of my own. I kept my voice calm.

“I don’t understand.” At his blank look, I said, “…You need to tell me. Speak out loud, like you did before.”

I was still confused by his inability to read me.

Revik had told me that restraint collars only prevented him from using his own sight…it shouldn’t have impacted the kid’s ability to read me at all. Revik also told me that he’d been in a lot of separation pain from me while he’d been locked up with Terian. He said the collar prevented him from controlling it, so it had actually been worse, almost unbearable at times.

Why couldn’t I feel anything? And why couldn’t Nenzi just pull answers from my mind? For that matter, why couldn’t Terian?

“…Tests,” Nenzi said, once his brow cleared. “They do tests on me. They want to do more tests, too…on both of us,” he said.

“What kind of tests?” I said, although I already knew.

He pointed to his head, gesturing up towards the space above where we sat. Wearing the collar, all I could see was air where he pointed, but I understood. He meant the structures over his head. The telekinesis.

Moving closer almost shyly, he sat next to me, crossing his legs by my ribcage where I lay on my stomach. After another moment’s pause, he placed his hand lightly on my back, stroking the skin there tentatively with his fingers.

I watched him stare at me. I closed my eyes at the intensity of his gaze.

“Nenzi, why do you look at me like that?” I said.

He smiled. There was something heartbreaking in that smile, something that made my chest hurt. Still, I had to find some way to discourage this. Hopefully without him deciding he needed to make my skull crack in half.

“Nenzi,” I said. “I think you’re mistaking me for someone else.”

He caressed my hair as I looked up. Touching me tentatively at first, he gradually grew more bold, sliding his fingers through long, half-curled strands, working out tangles carefully with his hands. It reminded me of Hannah a little…but moreso of Revik, who had done something similar a number of times when we were alone together. Both of us had our moments when we just wanted to touch each other.

There was a bit of possessiveness behind it, I guess. But it was also loving and affectionate and sensual, and…I think with us, stemmed at least partly from the fact that we finally could.

For Revik, it had been my hair, at least in part.

I closed my eyes, pushing the memory away.

Nenzi scooted closer with his feet. He continued to touch my hair, pushing it aside to rub the back of my neck. I was so tired I could barely think, and didn’t bother telling him to stop, figuring it might be better not to piss him off until I had a good reason.

I’d tried asking Terian about the boy, of course. More than once.

The only time we had what approximated a real conversation about it, we’d been in a federal holding facility. We’d been forced to wait for over eight hours while they went through the paperwork of letting us through Sight Containment and into the United States. Nenzi took almost as long as me…probably because Terian had to falsify all of his records for the first time.

I’d been naked of course, and cuffed to a metal bench.

Terian had been his usual, charming self. He’d plopped down next to me on the bench, smiling. His fingers touched my cheek until I flinched away.

“You’re going to help me with our little friend in there,” he’d murmured. “Keep him happy, yes? It is the healthy thing for both of us…”

“Uh huh.” I’d continued to look around. The room had been a ten by ten cell with white walls, a bolted down organic bench being the only furniture.

“Does he know why you really want him?” I’d said.

Terian made a ‘more or less’ gesture. “He knew well enough to bargain with me about you.” The blond seer tilted his head back to look at me. In that body, it gave him a kind of rakish air…almost cartoonishly handsome. “…And he’s right, of course. I can’t expect him to function at his best, not when his basic needs haven’t been met.” He winked at me. “The poor lad’s suffered so much already.”

I snorted. “You really think I’m going to be able to bring the teenage serial killer under control…because, what…I have girl parts?”

Terian chuckled. “Most definitely.”

I decided to just come out and ask.

“Why
me,
Terry? Why does he think he knows me?”

A flicker of curiosity had touched the amber eyes.

“You know, I’ve wondered that myself.” His gaze drifted down the length of me, then turned inward. “There’s your race, of course. But he seems quite taken with
you
, specifically…and convinced he knows you personally. And he knows a lot about you, Allie-bird…”

Smiling, he’d gestured in a shrug, putting his hands in his pockets.

“…I’m looking forward to what you find out,” he said. “Once the two of you have become better acquainted…”

“That’s not going to happen,” I said.

His lips stretched in another smile.

“Oh, I’m quite sure it will,” he said. “I highly doubt he’ll take no for an answer…for long, anyway. You should see all the nasty little thoughts he’s had about you already.”

His smile touched the amber-colored eyes when he saw me grimace.

“…He’s quite the little voyeur, our Nenzi,” he added. “He barely took time off to sleep while you and Revi’ were getting acquainted in that hovel. And let’s just say, Revi’ wasn’t the only one who got off on some of those experiences…”

I grimaced again. I tried not to remember the look of adoration in the kid’s eyes when he’d first seen me.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered.

“But I’m not, little bird…”

“Stop fucking calling me that!”

At his delighted grin, I bit my lip. My mother had called me bird, little bird, Allie-bird. The same mother Terian bled to death over what had to have been an extremely long couple of hours. I knew why he was doing it, but it made me want to kill him with my bare hands, each and every time he said it.

He trailed fingers over my neck. I jerked from his touch.

“…He was incredibly jealous, you know,” he added, softer. “I can’t say I blame him. I’ve wanted to kill Revi’ more than once myself.”

I swallowed, keeping silent with an effort.

“He’ll calm down, I think,” Terian mused. “Yes…a blow job a night from his best girl should put things right as rain in his little world.”

I made an involuntary face. “Jesus. You’re really sick.”

He’d chuckled again.

Lying on the floor of a different cage now, I remembered thinking at the time that there was something Terian wasn’t telling me.

Ignoring the boy’s fingers in my hair, I scanned his words again, trying to decide if he’d given me any kind of hint about Nenzi’s true identity. I still had no idea if he was the same Nenzi who eventually turned into Syrimne. And even if he was that being…in some, obscure way…it didn’t explain how he thought he knew
me,
much less how he’d avoided aging in eighty-odd years.

I tried not to think about the interview with that reporter, or the fact that it had gone out live on all the major feed channels.

Two days earlier, I’d had my sentience status legally revoked by the World Court. I was owned now, by the United States government. There would be more hearings of course, more red tape. The other human governments were pitching fits, especially China. But there was no one left in the seer world to fight it…not legally, anyway. The Council of Seven no longer existed. Terian let me watch feeds about Seertown being bombed to the ground by persons unknown, and the surprise attack on the American military who came to “help.” It was American media, so I couldn’t be sure how much of it was true…for all I knew, the Americans themselves did the bombing.

But the images of Seertown itself appeared to be irrefutable.

The official seer government was finished. Seertown was now part of the militarized zone, and basically deserted.

I knew that should be at the top of my list of concerns…and it was. Where Vash was, whether my friends were okay, what Balidor had done with the Adhipan, who might have been killed in the fight…all of these questions kept me up at night. Yet somehow, what kept rising to the forefront of my mind was Revik seeing me on the feeds sitting in the Oval Office, bruised, wearing a low-cut dress, make-up and a collar, Terian’s arm wrapped around my shoulders.

I knew Terian had his own reasons to want to provoke Revik. It didn’t help, knowing that, or that Revik would see through it.

I jerked my head, and the collar clunked against my neck.

It hurt. But it got my mind back to the present, reminded me where I was, that I was blind. He wasn’t gone…I just couldn’t feel him. And if Nenzi and Terian were any indication, he couldn’t feel me, either. Which was likely the point of this collar, to keep Revik from tracking me.

At the thought, a physical pain started in my chest.

His hands were on me then, like they had been the night before.

I tried to writhe from his fingers, but there was no where to go.

“Nenzi…no.
Stop it!”

His hands caressed my back down to my rear, then the top of my legs. I felt his fingers tense as I moved as far back as the cuffs allowed. He caressed my inner thigh, then his hand slid higher…

“No!” I said, craning my neck. “Stop it! I don’t want you to.
Please stop…!”

After a pause, he removed his hands, looking down at my face. His eyes glowed a faint, pale green.

“Please,” he said softly. He touched my cheek. “Please, Allie.”

“No!” I made a sharp negative gesture with my fingers. “No!”

His eyes closed, longer than a blink. He caught my hair, holding it tightly in his small fingers. He caressed my back with his other hand, and I saw him look at my body even as I avoided looking at his. I was aware now that he wasn’t wearing any clothes…a fact I’d purposefully avoided when I looked at him earlier. I felt the smallness of his hands, saw the whiteness of his skin in my peripheral vision, the thin chest and spider-like arms. He looked so young.

I recoiled under his stare.

“Please,” I said. “Please, leave me alone.”

“What can I do?” he said. Frustration grew audible in his voice. He sounded older to me once more, like he did sometimes. Less the frightened boy and more like...someone else. He caressed my face. He tried to touch my breast, but I pulled away from that, too.

“You want it,” he said softly. “I can feel it. You want me to touch you...” Desire thickened his voice. “What do you want?”