Allie's War Season One (42 page)

“Yeah,” she said. “Okay.” She balanced her martini glass on the edge of the bar, following the insistent tug of his fingers. He unhooked the clip from his collar, shoving it in his pocket as he led her out of the room.

I THREW MY jacket on the floor of the cabin, unwinding cotton wraps from my hands with shaking fingers. A few choice swear words left my lips, loud in the empty room.

Sparring hadn’t helped my mood at all. I’m not sure why I thought getting my ass kicked for the hundredth time by Eliah would help under the circumstances, but maybe I hoped it would distract me at least.

I could already feel Revik hadn’t been back.

Still, a tendril of my light flickered out, examining the room to be sure. Realizing that no amount of scanning was going to change reality, I slumped cross-legged to the floor. Fingering my hair out of my eyes, I fought a sudden tightness in my chest and closed my eyes.

Barrier clouds appeared.

A wolf runs across the tundra, tongue flicking over black lips in a blood-stained grin, body elongating...

But I don’t want to see that again, either.

Clouds hang bright and sharp, still against liquid black.

The Barrier enfolds me in dark and light waves. I can see it now, easily, whenever I close my eyes and resonate with its vastness. More importantly, I can feel when I am inside it, not just looking at it from without, or glimpsing the places where the physical world and the Barrier world overlap.

I’m not supposed to be here.

Even without Revik’s warnings, my gut tells me so.

The construct should keep me safe. I’m in a big fishbowl of protected space, cut off from the Barrier proper...but even I know that what I’m doing isn’t strictly covered by the construct’s shield. It’s not enough to stop me, though.

Not now, and not the countless times I’ve done it before, when Revik wandered out of the room at night or in the early morning, or whenever he thought I was asleep for more than an hour. He thought I didn’t know he roamed the halls while I slept, but I did.

I’d wait for him to leave, and then I’d sit like this. I even snuck in a few jumps after he’d passed out on the bed.

Those were riskier though...he was a light sleeper.

I no longer need to pause at the edge of the sharp clouds. I’ve eliminated a lot of the preliminaries, and even the intermediary steps. I’ve learned to make my jumps economical, due to the time constraints.

Even though I have time now, I do the same.

I don’t screw around, or look at the scenery. I don’t bother to play in any of the currents that flow in the waves above or below where I float in the clouds. I don’t visit nebulae, or stare up at the multicolored stars like I did the first few times I came here on my own. I don’t bother with vortices, either.

I aim directly at the gray wall around the spot at the top of the Pyramid.

Images hit me at once.

Most center on the keys I turned to get this far. The faceless man hides behind door after door, but it always starts in the same place, with a bearded man on a scaffold in a dying city that has a main square covered in broken shards of black volcanic glass. Before the Barrier jump with Revik, the image held no storyline, no meaning to me. Now I know, somehow, that the bearded man on the scaffold
is
the faceless man.

They are both Haldren, both Galaith.

Somehow.

I don’t understand, but I also don’t care.

Haldren whispers over an old man’s battered body.

Liego...Liego Kardek...why did you do it?

I know now that Kardek is the old man’s name.

Revik blames Kardek for the war that killed the Elaerian...the First Race...but I know better. I know Liego better by now, too. Liego and Haldren go way back, sharing a timeline I don’t understand, but that I am forced to accept on some level, at least enough to find him. I see Liego with Haldren when he is a child in that other world. A squalling, sickly child wearing rags, alone and abandoned. Liego rocks him to sleep, sings songs when the orphanage comes late to pick Haldren up from the school where Liego teaches.

Liego pities the boy. Eventually, that compassion becomes a deeper love.

The boy moves in with him and a man named Massani after no one claims him from the first set of wars. I watch Liego feed the four-year-old. I see him talk to an angry, confused adolescent, hold him as he cries at some disappointment or rejection.

I see Liego teach him in his private laboratory, ready him for exams, introduce him to a society that accepts him because of who Liego is.

Hatred wells up in me, mixed with a love that hurts more.

It is not my life, not my problem, but I take it personally. I take
him
personally. I crash through wall after wall, following the thread of that gaunt child.

He still exists...somewhere.

Haldren. His name is Haldren.

A recklessness lives in me. I decide I am tired of the slow way, the seer game of hide and seek, step by step, mapping and remapping of lines, all the cloak and dagger bullshit that I’ve tried my best to follow as Revik taught me. I don’t need to understand all the threads that tie me to this place and time. I am looking for the monster who killed my mother. I don’t care that he was once a child in some other version of Earth, except that it might help me find him now.

Dropping the pretense, I envision the child in the front of my mind.

I call to him.

I yell his name through the faceless shadows of a distant Pyramid, and most of the beings tied to that prison do not hear.

I think it is futile, that I am wasting my time, when...

I am with him.

Abruptly, I am there, at the top of all those chafing lines.

I float over the apex of the Pyramid.

Shocked by my success, I see him. He sits alone, in a structured room. Lines of silver and hard, metallic white stick to his head and heart.

The child is one of a thousand whispering masks.

He looks like a machine. The Pyramid has disappeared, I realize. It occurs to me that it disappeared because I am inside it. Haldren doesn’t move, doesn’t seem to see me at all. He rests inside a dream. A flat, pleasant emptiness.

Watching him exist in this state, I find I almost understand.

He is safe here. He is protected, in a way that the old man couldn’t protect him when he was alive. He is protected from feeling, from vulnerability, from caring about anything that might hurt him, or make him feel pain. He can sit in this empty space, untouchable, because the silver light ensures that he doesn’t have to feel any of it. He can give orders, and tell himself he is the cause of none of it. He can be the king of ghosts, of wasted machines.

He can kill my mom.

Or he can let it happen...and not care about that, either.

Anger flares my light.

A white arc leaves me, utterly different from the seething strands eclipsing Haldren on his metal throne. The flame sparks as it comes in contact with the Pyramid’s trembling strands. It finds one of the connecting points.

There is a strange silence.

Then a tangled, silver ball explodes.

I hear the crack below that single pearl of flame. Something totters, begins to fall. I hear voices scream, awakened from their collective dream. I watch that piece of the Pyramid tumble into a void-like abyss. Everything disappears below the connecting point I have broken. I watch lights disappear, erased from the network mind like branches cut from a dying plant...

Haldren disappears.

I fall. I fall for a long, long time...

Until I see only one face, one being.

A narrow, wasted mask looks at me, its eyes like poisoned urine. The face holds a dense knowing, a mirrored depth. The being smiles. I’m not looking at a person anymore. I am looking at one of the Rooks.

I see you, Bridge,
it whispers.

I see where you are...

...AND I SAT up, gasping, batting at my head with my hands.

Just like that afternoon, I found myself lying on my back on the carpet, but instead of VR stars I see the low, white-painted ceiling of the stateroom.

My head hurts. There is sharp pain, but also a feeling of despair.

I realize I am still partway in the Barrier and dig my nails into my arm, trying to force myself the rest of the way out.

My eyes clicked back into focus.

The silver light clung to my head in some undefinable way, so I sparked outwards with my aleimi, trying to get it off me.

All I felt was amusement, laughter as the being left.

I was still sitting there, gasping, when a sharp knock rattled the cabin door. I turned to stare at it, fighting to regain my breath, fighting the fear that wanted to throw me back into the Barrier.

Revik wouldn’t knock.

“Allie?”

I recognized the Irish accent. Eliah.

“What the hell’s on in there, love?”

Only minutes had passed. Seconds, maybe.

White hands on green mirrors. Blood with water.

He was thirsty. So fucking thirsty. Everything hurt, and...

Pain whispered through my fingers. I held my head, biting my tongue as hard as I could to try and keep my light inside my body.

“Yeah,” I managed. “Okay. What do you want?”

I don’t remember saying he could come in, but the door opened. Eliah crossed the threshold into the room and stopped, looking around as if startled by a strange smell. Closing the door behind him, he studied me with cocked head.

“What’ve you been doing in here, love?”

I pulled myself shakily to my feet, wincing at the bruises from our earlier fight.

“Feeling sorry for myself,” I said, forcing a smile. My hands shook, so I clenched them at my sides, not meeting his gaze directly. “Why? Do you want to kick my ass again?”

He smiled wanly, but his eyes didn’t leave my face. “You all right?”

“I’m fine, Eli. What’s up?”

“Orders.” He hesitated, then glanced at the bed, as if he couldn’t help himself. “...To hear tell it, your other half will be out for awhile. I’m supposed to keep you company until he gets back. You know, keep you from being too bored...” Trailing, he watched me rub my temples. “Allie-bird? Seriously. You don’t look so good.”