Allie's War Season One (133 page)

“...And find those human traitor friends of hers. Put a trace on her boy-toy, too. He might know something.”

Adjusting his belt again, he gave Balidor a withering look.

“Those materials didn’t get up and walk out of here...”

He gestured up towards the House on the Hill.

“And put out the fucking fire...she might have stuff hidden in there.”

Balidor exhaled in relief, even as it occurred to him that Terian had done that, too. Apparently he was more of a sentimentalist than anyone credited him.

The uniformed Sarks bowed. One, a bald male with a tattoo covering half of his face, Balidor recognized as well. His light had a particular bluish tint to it, and structures with an unusually delicate flavor.

His seer name had been Starlen, once.

Balidor glanced at Vash. Within a heartbeat, he made up his mind.

Reaching for the top of his boot, he jerked out a narrow throwing knife.

He flung it at the bald one’s chest.

Starlen slid liquidly out of the way, but Balidor darted forward as the seer next to him reached for his sidearm. Using his arm and momentum, he slid his body so that the bald seer stood between him and the other’s gun.

He grabbed hold of his hips and trip-threw him into his companion, pivoting his body. The two uniformed seers tangled into one another. It bought Balidor seconds, which was all he needed.

Pulling a handgun from a holster inside his own jacket, he aimed it at the legs of the two watching seers, squeezing off three quick shots to bring them down.

A fourth shot came from his left.

He felt the bullet before he heard the sound...then he was staring at the grass of the garden lawn, which was abruptly eye-level. Green shoots stuck up sideways as his breaths moved them in short bursts.

Holding his side where the bullet impacted his armored vest, he rolled as someone grabbed his wrist, sliding a syringe into the hinge of his elbow. He managed to punch whoever it was in the face.

He broke the syringe with his fingers, jerking out the needle.

When he looked up, at least five rifles pointed at his head...none held by humans.

Assessing their collective aleimi, Balidor went after the youngest.

He took control of his light within seconds.

The youngster swiveled his gun up, aiming it at the other uniformed seers. Balidor was about to speak, to try and reason with them...when Starlen shot the youngster in the temple.

The bullet exploded out the other end of his skull.

Balidor watched, disbelieving, as the seer’s body crumpled.

For a long moment, no one moved. Balidor continued to stare at the downed seer, doubting his eyes, having an emotional reaction even as his eyes flickered up to the murderer, Starlen. As much as Rooks and the Seven fought back and forth, they rarely killed other seers.

Humans, yes...humans who had been taken over by seers being the most common casualties in their longstanding wars. But they didn’t kill one another. Their long lifespan made the consequences too dire, and their dwindling numbers at the hands of the humans made it a matter of species survival, no matter how bitter their factional struggles.

It was one of those unspoken rules.

After what had happened already that day and night…as well as losing Pradaj in the woods, Balidor found he couldn’t look away from yet another broken seer body. Especially one so young.

At Balidor’s shocked look, Starlen smiled, crinkling the tattoo on his face.

He gave Balidor an apologetic shrug, just before he swiveled his organic rifle, aiming it at Cardesian.

“Victory without quarter,” Balidor heard him mutter.

He squeezed the trigger, dropping Cardesian with a single shot to the face. The human fell unceremoniously to his back, where he lay, nerves jerking.

Starlen’s eyes returned to Balidor. He smiled again, and this time, it held more genuine friendliness. Pivoting the assault rifle skyward on an organic harness, he held out a hand.

Balidor stared at it, unmoving.

“Join us, Balidor,” Starlen said. “...We’re not with Terian, nor his human puppets. We serve the Bridge.”

Balidor watched as two seers put guns on Eldrake, the seer who’d been guarding Vash.

Once they’d separated the ex-Rook from his weapons, one of the youngsters cut the bonds holding Vash’s wrists behind his back. He unsnapped the collar next, flinging it to the grass, where another broke it with his heel.

Starlen watched, then smiled at Balidor, his voice and eyes serious.

“Are you hurt?” he said, politely.

Balidor looked down at himself. Opening his shirt where the bullet hit, he saw it mashed to an unrecognizable shape on the organic vest. He’d have a hell of a bruise, but it wouldn’t be the first time.

“No,” he managed.

Starlen said, “There’s no need for us to fight on opposite sides, brother. We want you with us. The days of collaring seers is over.”

Balidor looked around the suddenly silent garden.

Seers held guns on human troops.

More seers appeared to be coming out of the woods. Balidor scanned their light, looking at their physical bodies in case he’d run into them while they were masquerading their light to appear to be human. Most, he didn’t recognize personally, although there were a few aleimic signatures he remembered. He noticed a large number appeared to be from the mountains. If so, they might even be unregistered under SCARB and the World Court.

Balidor fought to process this, but his voice held nothing but bewilderment.

“Who
are
you?” he said.

“We are the Rebellion,” Starlen answered.

The sound of planes grew audible again overhead.

Balidor stared up at the wings of passing aircraft. The planes seemed to have their origins from places all over the globe, from different time periods all the way back to World War II. But it wasn’t the planes themselves that riveted Balidor.

He paused on the colors they flew instead...a symbol he hadn’t seen since the end of World War I. A blue and gold sun broke the dull flash of metal and organic skin on each wing, pierced by a narrow, white sword.

Balidor knew without scanning that seers, not humans, flew them.

When the bombs began to fall that time, it wasn’t on Seertown, or its occupants. Balidor heard the noise and saw the fire when the first American transport went up in an explosion of metal and glass. The bombs came faster over the landing strip below the township, where the American fleet had parked several dozen of their planes following the attack.

Within a few seconds, the explosions ran into one another, shaking the ground under Balidor’s feet.

He watched, feeling a strange numbness fall over him.

He knew somehow, that it was already too late.

Today, the war had started for real.

21

MEMORY

REVIK WOKE ABRUPTLY, in a state of panic.

He looked around at where he was, not recognizing it, or remembering where he’d been last. He wasn’t reassured when he saw himself inside what appeared to be a cement and clay holding cell. He lay on a pallet in one corner. Someone had collared him, and cuffed his hands behind his back, locking them both at his wrists and his upper arms.

His panic worsened.

Before he got his mind working again, pain rippled through his body, keening upwards, sharpening until he was gasping, nearly moaning as he leaned his face into the wall. He fought to shield himself from it...then to force his way past it when the collar made that impossible...but the pain didn’t gradually lesson or die away like it had all those months before.

Nor did it get worse.

It remained, confusing him as he stabilized somewhere within it.

He focused on his leg, seeking to distinguish the more physical pain of the gunshot wound, if only for a reference point. Somewhere in that confusion, he assessed what he’d been collared with. Standard issue, one-way...it wouldn’t do much for the separation pain. He’d have some physical pain if he tried to fight it, but nothing like the ones Terian used.

He didn’t have time for this.

It was the only thought that truly helped.

He forced his eyes around the cramped space, feeling like a trapped animal as he assessed his options. The other corner had a spigot for water, along with foot platforms over a covered hole, like most of the common toilets in rural Asia. He doubted he could even get his pants off though, if relieving himself became an issue, not with the way his arms had been bound.

Water dripped down an algae-covered wall...but the wall itself looked solid, like plaster over cement or rock. The red and orange plants glowed under worm sac lights, making them appear faintly radioactive. The room reminded him of interrogation cells he’d witnessed in at least three different human wars.

A rusted metal table stood in the center, decorated with dented folding chairs on either side. He could smell blood. The floor was stained dark near the table and by the opposite wall, where someone bolted a pair of rusted iron shackles with a chain to whitewashed cement. Decorated with long cracks, the cement bled mud and water in a slow pulse from spiderweb lines that branched out and down from the water-damaged ceiling.

His jaw hardened. He wondered how long he’d been in there.

He didn’t remember arriving, so he must have passed out.

Writhing out from under the thin blanket someone had thrown over him, he examined his leg. A thick organic cast now covered most of his thigh, attached to a splint on a moveable joint. It was stiff, and he could tell the painkillers they’d given him were starting to wear off, but he should be able to stand, walk...maybe even jog if he really had to. Not for long, though, or very quickly.

Time passed.

Inevitably, he thought of Allie.

He fought back the pain that worsened in a sharp rise, leaning over the edge of the bed. He dragged himself to a seated position, still nauseous as he stared around the cell. Desire slid to the forefront of his mind, in spite of everything...he wanted her, even scared out of his mind. He didn’t know how to reconcile the two feelings, so fought to blank out conscious thought.

When that didn’t work, he tried simply to endure it.

He’d known the bonding process would fuck with both of their heads. He hadn’t expected to have to deal with it without her.

He had to get out of there. Now.

Anger fought to replace fear. Mostly, he was angry at himself.

He should have gone after Terian in the beginning, before returning to Seertown...before doing anything else. Galaith had already done most of the work for him. Killing whatever remained of that psychotic prick would have been relatively easy compared to what they’d faced in him before the Pyramid collapsed.

He’d known he would target Allie.

And Allie, from what he could tell, had been up to something too...at least in the months he’d been gone, maybe before, when Terian had him. No one would tell him what, precisely, but he read between the lines of enough with Jon and Cass to know
that
had involved Terian, too.