Allie's War Season One (153 page)

“Where is everyone?” I didn’t see the boy, or Terian.

“They left.” He looked at me. “Terian took the boy with him.” Looking down at my naked body, he seemed to realize what he was doing and forced his eyes back to mine.

“Allie,” he said. “He did this to you, didn’t he? Terian.”

“Can you get me out of here?” I said.

Maygar looked at the door, then back at me. He didn’t quite meet my gaze.

“It’s complicated.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Angry, I reached for him. I missed and ended up clutching the bedside table instead, squeezing it as hard as I could. Pain whited out my vision briefly, making my voice harsh.

“You owe me, Maygar...you fucking
owe
me! Now may be my only chance with you alone. If they’re distracted—”

“We don’t know that! And I don’t know how long they’ll be gone. The security is intense, and my mother—”

“Your what?”

He looked at the door again, then back at me. He lowered his voice.

“Elan Raven. She’s the woman in there earlier...with the blue eyes.”

“That’s your mother?” I fought to think past this, clutching my stomach harder when another wave of sickness ran through me, bringing bile to my throat. For another few seconds, I had to fight not to throw up.

I thought of the slim, athletic woman with those turquoise eyes. I forgot sometimes, that seers weren’t the ages they looked in human years. She could be Maygar’s mother.

Of course she could.

“Okay.” I nodded, acknowledging this. “So you don’t want to leave her—”

“It’s not that,” Maygar said. “Honestly, Allie...I’m a risk to you. She can feel me, wherever I am. I can’t get you out without leading her right to you...”

“Oh.” I fought back another ripple of pain, this one through my spine. “Gods, what the
fuck
did they give me?”

“Nothing,” he said. He pressed his lips together, looking worried. “Morphine for the pain...but that was hours ago. Are you sure it’s not just wearing off?”

“This isn’t pain...not like...that...” I fought back another wave, then struggled to sit up with my cuffed wrists. Hunched in an awkward pile at the edge of the mattress, I looked down at myself. I felt my jaw tighten.

“Can you at least get me some fucking clothes? And get rid of these...?” I held out the cuffs. “If you can get me out of the collar, too, I can do the rest...”

“Allie.” Maygar reached out to touch my face, then withdrew his hand when he saw the look I gave him. “Allie...they’ll kill you before they let you go. You know that, right? I heard Terian talking to my mother about it. They’re worried you’re a bad influence on the boy...that you’re making him worse...” He hesitated. “...I think the only reason he hasn’t killed you is that he’s worried about what the boy will do. That, and he wants your husband for something...”

I let out a gasping kind of laugh. “Yeah. So what else is new?”

“Allie,” Maygar said. He folded his thick arms, then sighed, looking at me. “I can’t believe I’m saying this...but have you thought about...” He took a breath, gesturing with one hand. “You know...with the boy. Just to buy yourself time. Time for Dehgoies to get here with the calvary. He can’t be any worse than Terian, right? I mean...he seems to care for you. The boy, I mean...”

I stared at him.

For the first time, I noticed. This wasn’t Maygar.

The whole tone of his speech was different. He was using different words. Hell, his accent was different. In fact, the way he was talking now, using my name, speaking about my marriage without utter contempt...he’d never spoken to me like this once, not the entire time I’d known him. I stared up at his face.

“Too far, huh?” he said, smiling faintly.

I swallowed another rush of bile. “Terian?”

He sighed. “I knew that last bit was over the line...”

The outline of Maygar phased.

A thin line of static tore it briefly in two. I blinked, holding my stomach with my arm. I looked at where my ankles were cuffed together, and realized I wasn’t going anywhere.

“Gods. I’m an idiot,” I said.

The image of the Scandinavian replaced Maygar’s briefly. He smiled at me.

“It was worth a try,” he said.

Then, all at once, the lights went out...completely out.

I was thrown into utter dark.

I groped around in that impenetrable blackness, long enough to feel myself still sitting on the edge of a bed, to realize my hands and ankles were still cuffed, that the rest of my body still hurt like hell.

I listened to myself breathe in the dark, feeling sicker than I could remember feeling, even that time I got food poisoning off bad sushi in Japantown...when an orange light flared in the dark. From a corner of the room, it rotated within a metal cage, like one of those emergency lights that come on when a generator kicks in.

I found myself in a cement-walled cell next to what looked like a heart monitor machine and two I.V. bags hanging from metal roll stands. A flat screen covered one wall, but it was completely dark.

The orange light colored everything in the room, but I could tell it was a different version of the same type of room as what Terian miraged with his VR overlay. The difference was the layout of the door and the cabinets lining the walls that I could now see. A rolling table covered with metal instruments also stood nearby, and a counter covered with glass jars filled with cotton balls, tongue depressors, long Q-tips, what looked like gauze...all of it orange in the rotating light from the corner over the organic-looking door.

I slid off the bed, shuffling in the ankle shackles to the table.

I fumbled over the rows of neatly laid out instruments. I looked for anything that might saw through the organic cuffs. I finally located cutters of some kind, thick enough and sharp enough to give me some hope.

I sat on the floor, drawing in my feet so I could reach the chain on my ankles. Thinking the cutters were probably for bone, I worked one of the blades into and around a metal link in the chain. When I finally got it in deep enough, I turned the handles sideways so I could brace one end on the floor. Using my full weight, I pushed as hard as I could on the handle pointing up. It slipped the first time I tried. The second time, I felt the metal give.

I bent down to peer at the chain link up close, bringing my ankles up to my body so I was sitting in cobbler’s pose. A tear had formed in the metal.

Wedging the pliers or whatever they were back in the same link, I threw my weight on the handles again. After two more tries, I managed to get all the way through.

The ankle chain was the easy one, though.

After trying and failing to find an angle where I could do the same with my wrists, I got to my feet. Crawling under the hospital bed, I propped up one corner of the frame with my shoulder. Wedging the cutter’s blade into a link from the organic chain, I set up the handles so that they were under the bed’s foot. Luckily the bed had a lot of organics in it, too...because it was heavy.

Sweat dripped off my forehead as I set it up, holding up the metal frame with my shoulder until it dug into the muscle of my back. I was gritting my teeth at the end, but somehow, my shoulder was almost a welcome distraction after what crippled me before.

I was starting to panic. Too much time had passed.

I was going to get caught.

At the thought, I got the handle under the bed frame’s foot, gasping as I lifted the bulk of its weight with my back, high enough to wedge the handle underneath at the right angle. Lowering myself as slowly as I could, I used the floor and the bed’s weight to squeeze the handles together.

The first time, the handles slipped and went skittering across the floor.

Letting the bed fall, I crawled around in the orange, semi-dark until I found them again. Wedging them into the same link in the chain, which now had a tiny crack, I took a breath, then used my back to lift the bed frame a second time.

This time, I forced myself to concentrate, holding my breath and ignoring the nausea as I held the handles in place tightly with my hands.

Slowly, I lowered the bed.

The weight of the bed closed the handles smoothly, cutting the metal clean through. I let out a startled laugh, staring down at my separated hands in something like disbelief. Immediately, I put my hands to the collar, feeling it with my fingers. I ran to the mirror, shoving the heart monitor out of the way while I looked at the cutters next to the thicker metal of the collar.

There was no way.

I tried to wedge them under the metal anyway. I only succeeded in cutting my neck so that it bled in a thin trickle.

Dropping the instrument on the counter, I went through the drawers next, pulling out anything I could find and holding it up to the orange light so I could see each one better. I went through the cabinets above, too, looking for anything that might cut or deactivate the collar. I found pills, instead...and, more importantly from my perspective, clothes. What looked like blue medical scrubs, now dark orange in the light.

I threw them on without thinking twice, pulling the longer shirt over my head and yanking on the pants. I cinched tight the string in the waist to hold them up and rolled the cuffs to my ankles before running for the door, feeling all over it for some kind of lock, or even a handle.

There was nothing; the whole surface was unbroken, and probably made of that same green, organic metal, although it was hard to tell in the light.

I wondered if I should bang on it.

When I pressed my ear to the door, I could hear nothing.

I looked for a panel next, but after a few minutes of searching every wall of the room, I was forced to concede that the controls must be outside. I was going through drawers again when the door suddenly jerked open behind me.

For the briefest second, my heart lifted...

Then I turned, holding a small saw in my hand, and the only scalpel I found in the whole room. It was as dark outside the room as it was inside, with more of the rotating orange lights.

Nenzi stood there, his eyes glowing bright green in the orange-colored dark.

“Allie?”

“What the
hell
is going on?” I said.

My voice came out in a snarl.

The sickness was worse.

Holding my stomach with the arm whose hand clutched the saw, I held out the scalpel with the other like a weapon. If the boy reacted, I could see no sign on his smooth face below those glowing eyes.

I fought the desperation that rose in me, the feeling of despair to see the kid there, when I was so close to being free...closer than I’d been since I’d gotten there. I was trying to decide what to say, when he held out a hand.

“Come here, Allie,” he said.

His voice was older again, the adult’s voice.

“Why?” I said. “Why should I?” I sounded like the child.

Tears came to my eyes, partly from the pain, and partly because I couldn’t believe it wasn’t over. Without realizing it, I’d been waiting for Revik to open that door. I’d been so sure it would be him...that the orange lights meant he was finally here, to rescue me.

“We’re leaving,” he said, as if he’d heard me. “Now, Allie.”

WE WERE RUNNING down corridors then, twisting past dark doorways and side passages that didn’t have emergency lighting.