Allie's War Season One (46 page)

Jesus. Whatever was wrong with me, I had to get it under control. I was sweating too much, and I could see in the reflective glass that I was deathly pale. That, combined with the hollow cheeks, made me look like a drug addict.

I couldn’t risk that someone here might care. Security maybe, or one of the cameras. I had to get out of here, away from these people, away from—

Allie?

I stopped in mid-exhale. Scanning faces to my left, I paused on the bay windows overlooking the ocean.

Allie? Will you answer me?

I swallowed, keeping my eyes on the rolling waves. The sky was dark, but a rim of reddish-purple remained by the water. My eyes returned to the dim lounge with its few tables. I didn’t recognize anyone, didn’t feel him nearby.

He wasn’t there, I realized.

I’d been thinking about him, and he’d heard me.

Allie. Please...I need to see you.

I stood motionless by a men’s bathroom. I didn’t move, even when a man smiled at me as he left the swinging doors.

Allie, I’m sorry. I’m really—

I don’t want to talk about this,
my mind blurted.

At his silence, I forced my thoughts back to neutral. I breathed in and out, once, forcing myself to be logical about this.

Revik,
I thought at him. I took another breath, and my mind leveled more.
Revik...you really don’t need to explain anything.

Allie, I do...

No,
I sent.
You don’t. I’m sorry I pushed before. You can have a divorce or whatever you want—

Not like this,
he broke in.
I don’t want to talk to you like this. I want to actually sit down and talk to you. Please.

I felt him trying to think how to persuade me.

Please, Allie...

He reached for me with his light and I jerked back, pulling away from him without thought. When he came close to me again, I threw up a wall.

He ran into it...then withdrew all at once.

It happened so fast, I barely understood what I’d done.

The silence went longer. I could tell it shocked him, my forcing him away. I felt pain on him, cloying, hard to keep out of my light. He was still hiding something from me, but I was trying to hide how I felt, too. It never seemed to end with us.

Revik,
I sent.
Really, I’m not just saying it...you don’t need to do this. I’m cool with us being friends...

Allie...

Eliah told me. So I get it now. I get what happened in Seattle. And I mean what I said about pushing you. I shouldn’t have...

Eliah?
His thoughts grew still.
What did he tell you, Allie?

Revik. I’m trying to say I’m sorry. Can’t we just—

No,
he sent. Pain wafted off his light.
Please...gods. Don’t make me talk to you like this...please, Allie...

I felt the vulnerability on his light again, and couldn’t answer.

His thoughts grew quiet, almost a murmur.
Please, Allie. Please let me see you...please.

I stared out at the night sky, watching the horizon dip gently up and down.

Okay,
I sent, reluctant.
But God, Revik. We don’t have to do this—

You’re in the room? Is Eliah with you?

No.
I hesitated long enough to find it odd he’d mentioned Eliah again.
...to both, actually. I’m on the other side of the ship. Near that big piano, with all the shops. We could meet out here, or—

What?
His light changed.
How did you get there?

I walked.
The pain worsened again and I clutched my belly, trying my damnedest not to feel anything more from his light.
Revik...I’m being careful. Eliah was all pissed off. I didn’t see anyone in the corridor, so—

Allie! Gods, baby, what are you doing...wait right where you are. I’ll be there. I’ll find you...

“Sister?”

I jumped, turning at the new voice.

I was distracted, half-sick from being so close to his light, distracted by what he’d just called me, unsure at first if I’d even heard him correctly, much less if someone really just spoke to me outside of the Barrier.

In any case, I expected it to be one of the guards, Eliah or Chandre or someone they’d sent to find me.

Revik’s presence faded, but I didn’t feel him pull away. Instead it felt like I walked into a dense wall and the wall entangled me, pushing him out. Beacon-like eyes met mine, glowing in the VR projections by the nearest kiosk. The flickering images there distracted me; I saw a woman gyrating in a tall monitor, wearing a sequined evening gown. The real person whose image it projected watched the transformed version of herself as if mesmerized.

“Are you lost, Sister?”

I blinked. A different woman held my arm. I watched her long fingers tighten on my skin. They looked blue in the light of the VR images. I struggled to focus on her face, couldn’t.

I will help you,
she sent softly.
You look very fatigued, sister.

Relief washed over me. I
was
tired, more tired than I could express. The woman with the opaque eyes purred a lulling sound...

...and I fell into a complicated strand of light.

The world phased.

It reemerged altered before I could catch it, as if my lenses reflected light from a different angle than they had before. Objects and people grew complex, multidimensional...expanding around me and sharpening from blurry outlines into a series of mathematical equations.

Snatches of music and light harmonized the perfect structure underlying their interweaving strands. A blueprint emerged from the harsh outlines...walls, floors, fixtures, furniture, potted trees, even people. The overhead chandelier exploded in a glitter of lit strands. Physical light broke down into particles, matter and energy, an achievement of base mechanical beauty that literally stopped my mind dead in its tracks.

I and the other seer walked back through the crowded causeway, and all I could do was stare around me, lost in the complexity and beauty of every single thing I could see. Even those banal VR projections grew fascinating...I could see now, how they were made, the technology infused with nonphysical light, framing each message like the projection screen behind a movie’s shifting frames. The minds behind each concept, the way in which those concepts formed building blocks into more and more detailed messages...all of it grew visible to me.

A group of humans pass us, jerking my mind off the cleaner lines of the virtual program.

I hear their harsh laughter as if from far away. They feel like children, puppets caught in lit strands, surrounded by a complexity that dictates their every move, while remaining wholly invisible to them.

Yes,
the blue-skinned woman sends.
You feel it, don’t you? Even you. You feel how wrong they are. How...incomplete.

I watch atoms dance among the beams of the causeway ceiling, light shower down in golden rainbows as the lit strands cross and change overhead. I gaze into the eyes of the woman holding me...and she is beautiful.

More than that, her words feel right to me. True.

The humans really aren’t much above animals. As insentient as the fake jewels on the women’s necks, the dogs they drag around on leather leashes. I wonder how it is that I never saw it before, the gaping holes in the pictures that surrounded me, day after day, week after week...

It’s not only the humans, I realize as I look around.

It’s all of it. The world feels half-formed. Incomplete.

It is broken. Somehow, we let it be so. It struck me then...

Like any equation, it could be changed.

We will show you,
the blue-skinned woman purrs.
We will show you such wondrous things, Sister. You will understand so much of what has been hidden from you. The world will never be so small to you again as it is at this moment.

I close my eyes.

I can see what she offers me. It is clear. It is without pain, without ambiguity or aloneness. I would have a purpose. My life would mean something...something other than pain and death to those I loved.

It is such a relief to give in, to just let it all go. The sickness and pain I felt just minutes before is already gone.

The woman is right.

Nothing could ever be the same again. Nothing.

ALLIE!
REVIK SCREAMED her name into the Barrier.
ALLIE!

He shoved at the space where she’d been, trying to force his way through. He tried again, fighting a rising panic. He knew what had her, recognized the flavor of the metallic strands that forced him away from her light, taking her away from him. He didn’t understand how yet, or who, but that didn’t matter, either, not now.

He slammed against that wall, using all of his light.

The wall started to give.

Then something rose up. A sharp pain hit him over his right eye. He fought back, tightening his shields, when something bigger lashed at his light. The dark shape threw him sideways, knocking him out of the smaller construct, knocking him out of his body, too, enough that he lost himself...

When his vision cleared, he’d come to a stop in the corridor, fingers splayed on one of the wallpapered walls.

He wiped his nose, stared at the blood on his fingers.

He didn’t let himself think. He began to run.

Dread pooled in his stomach as he pushed his legs to move him faster down the hall, fighting to build momentum, to cross the distance between himself and her, even as he threw part of his mind ahead of himself, and back into the construct.

It would take him at least ten minutes to get to the atrium, even at top speed.

Too long.

He scanned options.

He tried their cabin. It was empty; he got the equivalent of Barrier static. No Chan. No Eliah. No guard. How the hell had she gotten out of the room, much less out the secured corridors on the seventh deck? Someone must have noticed she was gone by now. And who had her? A unit of the Rooks? Ship’s security? A lone infiltrator looking for the bounty on her...or worse, to sell her?

Had facial recognition software picked her up, or something else?

He tried a general channel, Guard security.

Nothing. He slid more of himself back into his body, where he ran towards the bow of the ship, fighting to think.

His head hurt. Something dark clung to it, and to his right arm. The hole over his eye was the most serious. He attended to that first, reweaving his light, but the something there fought to hold on, hiding in parts of him he didn’t access as often. He’d lost where she was. He continued to search, but his shields were up now, in hunting mode, which slowed him down. Still, if they broke too much of his structure, he’d be useless to her.

How in the gods’ names had she gotten to this side of the ship?

His adrenaline spiked as his mind put the pieces together.

They were under attack. This was coordinated. He was being hunted, and it had to be by the same people who had her. He felt them searching for weaknesses in his shields almost openly, trying to penetrate his mind even as they distracted him from making his way towards her.