Allie's War Season One (62 page)

Stepping back, he wiped his hands on his pants, grinning at him.

“I’d like to reward you, though. Your humans, too...once I’ve washed the shit smell off me from you. So expect another visit today, all right, brother?”

Without another word, he walked to the mirrored wall.

Touching a panel, he disappeared through the opening that formed in the organic metal.

Once the hole melted shut, Revik slumped to the floor. He pressed his mouth to the wet tile, trying to inhale blood-tasting water, but the floor sloped in the wrong direction, leaving it slick but almost dry. The attempt only frustrated him, made his thirst desperate.

Jon’s voice came at him jaggedly from the nearer cage.

“Revik.” His English was hoarse. “Revik! Listen to me, goddamn it.”

Revik turned, fighting his eyes clear, his voice. “What, Jon?”

“Keep pushing him like that and he’s going to kill you. Stop it, alright? Just stop! I mean it, man...stop.”

“Yeah.” Cass’s voice slurred. “Stop it.”

Revik said, “It’s okay. We’re fine, Jon...Cass.”

“Don’t give me that shit!” Jon said. “You can’t go suicidal on us, man! You can’t! We need you...”

“We’re okay,” Revik repeated. “We’re okay, Jon...”

He lay there, willing his mind blank, wishing more than anything he could go back to where Allie slept. She didn’t always find him. There were gaps that went for days. Eventually she’d stop looking. At the thought, pain blinded him briefly. He rolled over onto his stomach.

His eyes closed when Jon’s voice jerked them open again.

“God.” Jon stared at him, eyes hollow. He licked his lips, staring still, as if examining the damage. “Thanks...okay?” He clutched a bar with his mutilated hand, twisting on the metal. “Thanks. I mean it. Just take it easy. Don’t provoke him any more. Don’t let him kill you. We need you, man. We need you...”

“We’re okay...”

“Are you listening to me?”

Revik acknowledged the human’s words with a nod, then let his head slump to the tile. He promptly fell unconscious.

REVIK! WAKE UP! Come back...come back to me!

He reached for her with his light. Fire shot into his neck, gritting his teeth.

“Dehgoies.”

A different voice.

“Dehgoies Revik?”

He tried to lift his head. His tongue had dried into his mouth. He couldn’t swallow. His temples pounded. He tried to clear his eyes, watching as a man placed a chair more than a body length from where he lay on the tile. Middle-aged with dark skin. Likely a seer from his physical appearance and the expression in his eyes.

His human-based ethnicity was closer to Indian than Eastern European or Chinese. He wore his wood-brown hair wound into a clip, and clothing reminiscent of Terian in the 1940s.

Revik focused on his own hands, feeling his pulse rise.

“What shall I call you?” the new body said.

Revik glanced at the far wall, saw that the cages that normally housed Cass and Jon were empty. Feeling his breath shorten, Revik tried not to let his panic show on his face. The new body regained its feet, walking closer to where Revik lay. Revik recoiled, but the seer only set something on the floor, within reach of his hands.

It was a glass of water.

The body returned to its chair, sat.

Revik stared at the water...but only for an instant.

Throwing his upper body forward, he reached for the glass, pulling the container closer with his fingers. He sniffed it...and ducked his head before he could come to anything conclusive, tilting the glass to his mouth as he sucked the liquid down greedily. When it was empty, he licked condensation off the sides.

He was still pressing the cold glass to his face when the body regained its feet and strolled closer to Revik once more, plucking the empty glass out of his hands. Revik watched in disbelief as the body carried the glass to the spigot on the wall, using the thin, high-pressure hose to fill it again. When the seer walked back, he placed the new glass on the same section of floor.

He stood there, watching Revik drink.

“You never answered me about the name,” the seer said. “Is it Revik now? Rolf? What does your new wife call you?”

“Dehgoies.” Revik tilted the glass for the last swallow, then pushed it carefully toward the other’s feet. “Where are Jon and Cass?” His voice was thick, but he could speak again.

The seer smiled. “Would you like another?”

“Yes,” Revik said. “Where’s Jon? Cass?”

The body bent for the glass. Walking back to the spigot, he replied,

“Cassandra required medical treatment.” He refilled the glass and walked back, setting it on the floor. “And I wanted to talk to you alone, Dehgoies.”

“You’re Terian?” Revik brought the glass closer, lowering his mouth to the cool liquid. He’d never tasted anything so good.

He drank with eyes closed, slower this time.

The body smiled. “Terian. Well, that’s an interesting question, Dehgoies. Yes, I am Terian.” He paused, watching Revik drink. He said, quieter, “Jon is right. You are pushing the drone too far, old friend. I can only control him so much...”

Revik laughed. He didn’t lose a drop of water.

Watching him, Terian clicked mildly.

“Must I put you on suicide watch again?” He watched Revik gulp down more water. “Relax, my friend. Slow...I will not take it.”

Revik tilted his head, finishing off the last of the water. He used his lips to take the condensation, cooling his face.

“You don’t look very well yourself,” Terian observed. “And yet, you still haven’t met the worst of my personas, Dehgoies. Trust me when I tell you, the Terian I’ve been using to interrogate you is a petulant child compared to the ones I have for less...delicate exercises. I call him Terian-6. I am Terian-2.” He spread his hands. “It simplifies things.”

Revik made his face expressionless.

“Are you willing to talk to me?” Terian said.

“Sure.” Revik set down the glass. “Can I have more?”

The body made a line in the air with one finger, a seer’s “no.” He added, “You obviously don’t trust me to not kick it over or make you piss in it...so I will pace your consumption for you. You don’t seem to believe me that you’ll get sick if I don’t.”

He folded his hands, tilting his head as he continued to examine Revik. His handsome face appeared greenish in the overhead light.

“You present us with an interesting puzzle, Dehgoies,” he said finally. “You see, I do not wish for anyone to know you continue to exist on this plane. So I am unable to utilize the Barrier the way I would normally. Inducement wires would be tricky, at best...”

The seer ticked off the list with his fingers.

“...Drugs must be avoided for the same reason. I do not want to kill you...and I would prefer you with limbs and organs intact. If I scan you outright, you will fight me, whether you mean to or not. If I scan deeply enough, there is a very good chance the telepathic restraint will kill you. Or destroy your mind, and I do not wish for that either. I obviously cannot deactivate the restraint.” Terian-2 spread his hands wider apart, smiling. “Truly? I wish I had my friend Dehgoies to ask. He was always so very good at puzzles of this kind.”

Revik kept the irritation off his face.

Terian-2 added, “You always had a bit of a dark twist in your methods, Revi’. I wonder now, was that from the wars, also? Did your creativity blossom questioning French prisoners? Or was it the Nazis themselves who sparked this in you?”

Revik stared at his thin hands clasped on the floor.

He could feel something trying to get at him, a pale, silvery thread, hovering over his light. Paranoia bit at the edges of his mind, a vague memory of being lost, of being broken. Worse than that, he felt the buttons the seer was trying to push, a flicker of pleasure that tried to insinuate itself, to flex into parts of him that lay dormant but unlocked. Memories tried to coalesce, to remind him of other things he’d been good at, once.

It occurred to him that his sight reflex ought to have kicked in. The collar should have ignited when he flexed his light.

But his mind felt relaxed.

Too relaxed.

He stared at the empty glass.

“Yes. Well. I did say drugs should be
avoided,
Revi’,” Terian-2 said apologetically. “...Not eliminated altogether. They must be handled with care, of course. You always did have that odd tolerance.” Terian-2 studied him as though he were an insect climbing wet tile. “It may help you to remember, you know. That would be good for you, yes? Less confusing?”

Revik’s fingers tightened on the glass.

“You see, I have a theory,” Terian-2 said. “I think that you have been remembering for some time, Revi’. I am curious to see how much of you is awake ahead of your conscious mind.” He watched Revik’s eyes. “I also truly do believe you have the succession order, my friend. Or perhaps you did something with it, yes? Something you forgot?”

When Revik continued to stare at the glass, Terian sighed, clicking.

“I confess, I still find it very difficult to read you. Even now, when you are ostensibly under my power, I feel I know you less, not more.” His dark lips thinned as he studied Revik’s face. “Some of this is act, yes. But not all. You hide behind a veneer of obedience. Obedience to Galaith, to me, to the Seven...your Ancestors. It does make me wonder what lies beneath.”

Internally, Revik rolled his eyes.

Smiling, Terian lit an expensive-smelling hiri stick, exhaling a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke. Revik’s hunger worsened.

“I suppose I understand,” Terian said. “...In part, at least. The way you were raised, you would have had plenty of practice in both lying and submission.” He bit gently on the end of the hiri, sucking resin. “And yet, in all of these months, I find it astonishing that I have yet to see a response from you that did not feel amazingly well-scripted. I believe all of this actually bores you on some level, am I right?”

Revik stared at his hands.

When the silence stretched, he gave a sort of barking laugh.

Terian smiled, settling his weight back in his chair. “If you do not wish to speak of the succession order, perhaps we can speak of other things. Tell me about Elise, Rolf.” He ashed the hiri. “How did you come to marry a human? How did you come to be in Germany at all?”

Revik’s mind remained lax. Images seeped through cracks. Her dead eyes grew into her living ones, smiling at him, laughing as she waded through blue-green grass, trailing dark hair. He caught her fingers, then the rest of her, and it was familiar, so familiar...but deadened somehow, far away. She was taking off his clothes before he’d caught his breath, asking him, and he lay on her, could barely hold it once he was inside.

Time rushed forward. He was older, bigger. She looked small to him now.

She blindfolded him, taking him into her studio. A wall of their house, painted with the sword and sun...

Everything went dark.

When he opened his eyes, he lay on the cold tile, naked, shaking with pain.

Tears poured down his face. He didn’t know where he was. He felt Terian with him briefly, his friend, laying an arm on his shoulder, laughing as he told another story about that hooker he’d loved in Paris...