Allie's War Season One (147 page)

Jon’s mouth fell open. He stared at Revik, his eyes showing disbelief...as if sure he was understanding him wrong. It irritated Revik more than he hoped showed that the human caught on so quickly.

Once again, Jon wasn’t dumb. Or unobservant.

Even Wreg hesitated, as if suddenly losing the desire to laugh.

“It may not work,” he said. “You’re making a leap, extrapolating what he might do faced with a particular set of variables...”

“Isn’t that what infiltrators do?” Revik retorted. “What about the variables? They make sense, right? Given what we’ve seen?”

“Who will you use? The team has to change if we’re doing this for real. We need to give them a few options...and they need to be convincing.”

“You don’t have any pros on your team? None at all?”

“No. Well...one maybe.” Wreg gave him a nearly apologetic look, one that told Revik he was making an effort to be polite. “We don’t generally
do
that, Commander Dehgoies...it goes against everything we stand for. Hardliners especially, and that’s just about everyone you hand-picked to come out here...”

“Do you have anyone locally?”

Wreg glanced towards the door. “You’ve got two pros out there...”

“No,” Revik said.

“What choice do you have?” He studied Revik’s face. “I understand that there’s a personal element...believe me, I do. But you’ve asked me to advise you on execution. No way can I recommend doing this solely with novices to back you up...or with unwillings who aren’t infiltrators. Either you use the two you’ve got, or we wait. Bring someone else in. You’re talking a few days’ delay at least, to weave them into the construct, brief them on the plan, establish their identity in DC...”

Revik frowned, staring at the door.

For a moment, his eyes lost focus. He tried to buy time, to think. Looking for a second opinion, he glanced at Jon. The human was watching him as carefully as Wreg, but the frown creasing his forehead held more understanding in it.

Allie must have said something to him.

Again, he couldn’t think about her without pain.

“It’s damned risky,” Wreg said seriously. “...Even if you do use them.”

“Anything would be risky,” Revik said, dismissive. “The boy is telekinetic. It took most of the Adhipan a year to best the last telekinetic seer, and I don’t have that kind of firepower...or time. I need to give him a reason to—”

“Not the boy,” Wreg said. “...Her.
She
might kill you, runt. Did that occur to you?”

“Damn straight,” Jon said. Outrage trembled his voice. “I can’t believe you’re even considering this! There has to be another way.”

Revik stared at the door, forcing his mind over options.

Jon’s voice sharpened. “You can’t use Kat, Revik. You can’t.”

Revik didn’t look at him. “It won’t matter who, Jon.”

“Like hell it won’t! Would it matter to you if it was Maygar?”

Revik hesitated, glancing up over the glass he’d refilled. Fighting a reaction out of his light, he took another long drink. Gesturing in acknowledgement with his fingers, he refilled the glass. He avoided Jon’s eyes.

“We do it tomorrow,” he said. “I’m not putting it off another day.”

Jon stared at him, open-mouthed.

Wreg hesitated only a half-beat, then gestured in acknowledgment. He walked back towards the main salon. Hesitating by the leather chair, he stopped to look at Revik one more time.

“You’ve got balls, runt,” he said. “I can’t decide if you’re a genius or a fucking idiot, but you’ve got balls. I’ll let the others know the plan.”

After the door closed, Jon turned on him.

“Revik...you can’t do this.” His face looked stricken. “Isn’t there some other way? Allie will freak out. She will totally fucking lose it...”

Revik didn’t answer. Even so, he found himself thinking about Wreg’s question long after the older seer had left him there with Jon and a bottle, in a beat up leather chair in a cramped, perfume-smelling room.

The thought had occurred to him. More than once.

Then he remembered Allie being dragged away screaming, climbing on Terian, clawing at him. He remembered the dead look in her eyes as she sat on a couch in the Oval Office, Terian caressing her collared neck with his fingers, like she were a particularly expensive whore.

He took another long pull of alcohol, closing his eyes.

He set the glass on the low table to refill it. Slumping back in the seat, he rubbed his temples as he slid into the Barrier, reworking several points of the plan over in his head, looking for flaws...running scenarios from different angles to catch anything he might have missed, anything he couldn’t account for.

He couldn’t afford to get too drunk yet.

That would come later, when he needed to force his body to sleep.

When he still hadn’t answered him a moment later, Jon left the room, letting the door close none too gently behind him.

IN THE MAIN salon, Jon sought out the only other seer he actually knew—the only one who still felt like a real ally.

Not that Revik didn’t, exactly...but truthfully, he was more like family. Even apart from his relationship to Allie, Jon’s relationship with Revik had entered those murkier, more complicated waters sometime during their shared captivity. Jon loved the guy...a lot. But like all family, that also meant he periodically wanted to wring his neck.

Besides, Revik wasn’t exactly running on all four cylinders at the moment.

He found Chandre in a corner, poring over a detailed electronic schematic of the White House and its grounds. Glancing around at the other seers sitting and standing around the room, Jon sidled up beside her, talking low.

“Someone needs to talk to him,” he said. “He’s totally fucking losing it, Chan. I mean
whacko
losing it...”

He glanced over his shoulder, focusing on Kat, the Russian seer, who was staring at him narrowly from across the room. Turning back to Chan, he watched the dark-skinned, red-eyed infiltrator glance up from the maps, a frown on her sculpted lips. She pushed her braids out of her face, her expression unmoving as she went back to studying the detailed lines.

Jon said softly, “Do you know what he’s planning to do? To get in there, I mean...to get that kid to come to him. Have you heard his idea?”

Chan didn’t answer at first, her eyes still focused on the maps.

“Chan!” Jon said. “Did you hear me?”

After a pause, she lifted her eyes, giving him a level stare.

“Did it occur to you, young cousin,” she said, her voice a hard whisper. “...That his wife is likely being raped by Terian and the boy in turns, as we speak?”

Jon hesitated at this, feeling his anger deflate.

“Yeah,” he said. “It did, actually.”

“Did it, now?” Chan said. “Well, do you think that maybe it occurred to Dehgoies as well...and that perhaps he isn’t willing to wait for a better, more squeaky-clean plan to get inside and help her?” Her reddish irises turned to glass, their gaze pointing inward. “The time for soft approach is over, Jon. They fucking stole the
Bridge.
They
own
her now. There is no negotiation. No legal means of taking her out. There is this, or there is outright war. The humans—”

“Humans didn’t do this, Chan! Terian did this...one of yours!”

“They are letting it happen!” she burst out. “They are
enjoying
this, Jon! You saw that bitch on the news! They are treating her like a zoo animal. Terian’s probably loaning her out to every worm with a hard on...or did you think she got those bruises playing chess with the boy?”

Jon pressed his lips together. For a moment, he had no response.

It occurred to him then, that the words she’d just spoken didn’t feel like they came from Chandre alone. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever hearing Chandre use the word ‘bitch’ before. Once he got that much, another understanding reached him. He glanced up and around them reflexively, as if it might help him see the construct with his physical eyes. Being human, he forgot what it was like for seers, with their minds often entwined like a single organism.

“You can hear him,” he said. “...Revik, I mean.”

She gave him another flat look. “Lay off him, Jon. He’s holding it together reasonably well under the circumstances…”

“Sure he is.”

“He’s fine, Jon.”

“He wakes up crying every night! He’s fucking
drunk,
Chan...or haven’t you been paying attention?”

She waved this off dismissively. “You don’t understand.”

“What?” Jon felt his anger rise. “Let me guess, because I’m
human?”

“He’ll get us inside! His plan is
good,
Jon...better than what any of us came up with when we ran scenarios on the plane. It may even work...”

“And if he goes back to how he was?” Jon said in a fierce whisper. “You know...when he was a
Rook.
Do you think Allie will thank him for that...or thank us for standing by and letting it happen?”

When Chandre turned back to the map, clicking her tongue, Jon caught her arm with his good hand, forcing her to turn.

“Come on, Chan! I’m not the only one who’s noticed...I’ve watched him threaten at least four people today alone with either torture or death and I don’t think in any way he was bluffing...” When she clicked at him, rolling her eyes dismissively again, he clutched her tighter. “He flat-out doesn’t
care
about how many he kills, human or seer. He’s
planning
on killing people, Chan. Not as unavoidable collateral damage...but as part of his strategy! Does that sound like the Revik you know? He doesn’t care if he starts a war—”

“Code won’t save us in this, Jon!” she said, her voice warning. “Were you watching the news with the rest of us when Seertown was bombed into rubble? How many deaths do you suppose they worked into the game plan for
that
little operation?” Her jaw hardened again, even as she gestured shortly with one hand, flipping her braids back with a jerk of her head.

“…He had her dressed up like a fucking whore.
His
whore. Terian is laughing at us, Jon! He deserves whatever he gets from Dehgoies and I’ll do whatever I can to see to it that he receives it...”

Jerking her arm out of his grasp, she closed up the map, giving him another hard look before walking back towards the staging room.

Jon just looked after her.

There was no point chasing her down. She couldn’t hear him.

Chan was like the rest of them now. The longer they stayed with that group of tattooed seers from the mountains, the more angry and anti-human they all got. Jon glanced around himself again, wondering if that came from Revik too. It hadn’t escaped his attention that his friend had a streak of racism a mile wide at times. Allie grumbled about it...even Yerin mentioned it once.

Lately, it had been worse.

There was something wrong. Jon knew it had something to do with the rebel seers and their creepy leader, Salinse. Revik seemed to know it too; he just didn’t care.

Knowing him, this was his idea of a compromise.

There was something unnerving about the fact that this whole army of strangers just handed over operations to Revik, no questions asked. No matter who his wife was, or what had happened to her, it just felt off to Jon. All of them, even that monster Wreg, who seemed to hate Revik less the more he turned into a complete bastard, did whatever Revik told them without question.