Allie's War Season Three (182 page)

"WE’RE CUT OFF from that whole end of the basement," Wreg told Balidor in a hard voice, one now stripped entirely of emotion. He handed Balidor five more magazines of two different sizes, which the Adhipan leader promptly stuffed into the pockets of his armored vest, but not before he checked to make sure the calibre was correct for the three guns he had strapped in holsters around his body.

Balidor put the smaller calibre bullets in a back pocket, keeping the 9mm more easily accessible. They were moving fast, but Wreg already had a near-arsenal strapped around his chest, his waist and even his thighs.

“You’re sure Jon is down here, too?” Balidor said.

Wreg gave him a hard look. “We traced the mole. It was Jon.”

“Jon?” Balidor blinked, staring.

When Wreg didn’t speak, Balidor’s voice turned hard.

“Wreg...that’s not possible. You must know that.”

Wreg shook his head. “He’s not an agent of Shadow. Someone got him on the docks...before we got on that fucking sub...” He finished with another gun and handed that one to Balidor, too. “...I’d been wondering how he got down to that crate,” he said, his voice harder. “I couldn’t get a straight answer out of him. I couldn’t get anyone else to admit to having done it, either...”

Wreg’s scowl deepened, turning his face into a mask.

“...I thought they were afraid I’d be pissed off that they’d touched him. But something about Jon not remembering how he got there bugged me. I should have put them all through security scans, found out for sure...”

Balidor felt another cold layer of shock settle over his light, but he only shook his head. “Do not waste thoughts on regret now, brother,” he advised. “We need your mind elsewhere.”

Wreg gave him a harder look, but only nodded.

He barely paused before saying, "Chan’s got Jorag and Neela trying to get through the walls down below.” His voice grew toneless once more. "They say the whole wall's caved in on that side. They’re cut off from the security area entirely..."

"That was the explosion," Balidor muttered. "They've got sewer access, I assume?"

"Yes."

"Tell them not to wait. Have them try to get around that way.”

"Already did,” Wreg said with a nod. He didn’t look up from shelves covered in hand-held explosives, his black eyes sharp. “...They’re stuck down there now,” he added emotionlessly. “Chan claims there’s too much structural damage. They'll only cave the whole basement in if they try to break down the walls from that end. I have them moving stone manually...called everyone down to help without leaving the upper floors unprotected..."

Balidor nodded, but the knots in his chest and stomach only hardened.

“What about the Bridge?” he said. “Any word?”

“Helicopter left the top of the building twenty minutes ago,” Wreg said.

Balidor felt that sick feeling worsen, but shunted it aside. “Ditrini?”

“Cell’s empty. I’ve got orders out to kill that fucker on sight.”

Balidor only nodded to that, too, but felt his jaw harden to granite, realizing how close he’d come to solving that problem himself, less than a week earlier.

“Are they trying to extract the Sword too, do you think?” Wreg asked.

Balidor shook his head, his mind still elsewhere. “I don’t know. We have to proceed as if that were the case. We’ll need him to track Allie...” Feeling that sick feeling worsen, Balidor tried to shake it off, even as Wreg clasped his arm, tight enough to hurt.

“Hold it together, Adhipan,” the ex-rebel said, his voice a near-threat. “We need you, too. You fall apart right now, and I’ll shoot you myself, I swear it...”

Balidor nodded, smiling wanly in spite of himself. “Noted.” Forcing clarity back to his mind, he said, “She might want them. Cass, I mean. She might want Nenz. Jon, too.”

Wreg didn't look surprised, but Balidor felt the coil of pain that came off his light, along with a pulse so dangerous that Balidor flinched, stepping back from him in reflex...no mean feat, given Balidor’s own mental state. Without waiting, Wreg had turned and was already heading for the door. He didn’t bother to look back to see if Balidor followed.

Somewhere in that, Balidor imagined he felt Cass, too.

Watching them. Perhaps even orchestrating this, even more than Shadow at this point.

"Yeah," Wreg said, from next to him, handing Balidor another of those small, cylindrical grenades as he reached over to fill his other vest pocket with flares. "I feel it, too. They're screwing with us, for sure. I feel that fucker Ditrini now, too..."

"A diversion, to keep us from following her?" Balidor muttered.

"Too much bait?" Wreg said grimly. "Agreed. I’m not sure we have much choice, though. We’ll need Nenz to find her now..."

Balidor glanced at him, and in the ex-rebel’s obsidian eyes, he saw the same understanding that had reached Balidor himself. Of course, Wreg also clearly knew that it wouldn't make any difference. Knowing they were being funneled into a trap didn't change anything. Knowing they were being lured, that their construct had been breached, that everything felt orchestrated to make them so desperate that they did something stupid, none of it changed the basic facts. It might make them marginally more cautious, but truthfully, Balidor doubted that, too.

“We play his little game then,” he muttered, glancing at Wreg.

“Or hers,” the ex-rebel agreed.

He didn’t slow his muscular strides down the hall as he said it.

Without slowing his own strides in the hallway, either, Balidor found himself thinking about how Jon must feel right now, knowing he’d likely just led his own sister to her death. He wondered if he even knew yet. If he was with Dehgoies, he’d be lucky if the Elaerian didn’t kill him. He glanced at Wreg as he thought it, but the seer only shook his head, once.

"He won’t,” Wreg said. “The rest of it doesn’t matter. Let’s get them out, first...pick up the pieces later.”

Balidor nodded, but he felt the swell of grief on the seer as he said it, and knew the same thought had occurred to Wreg already, meaning about how Jon would likely react to this once everything fell out. Neither of them wanted to think about where the Bridge was by now, nor what Shadow might do to her, pregnant or not.

“What about Cass?” Balidor said cautiously. “If she’s telekinetic, do we take her out?”

“Nenz’s call,” Wreg said, gesturing dismissively.

“It may have to be ours,” Balidor warned him.

Wreg glanced at him, without slowing his strides as he continued to round the corner. “I vote yes. Especially if she’s telekinetic. If Chan’s right, she’s traumatized. Shadow activated her prematurely, just like he did with Nenz. Probably broke her mind in the process, if she’s turned on Jon and Allie this fast. We can’t risk it...we take her out...”

Thinking about this, Balidor nodded slowly.

He didn’t disagree with the ex-rebel’s reasoning, but the idea still gave him pause. Not only was Cass clearly an intermediary, she was one of the Four. Further, Allie herself might never forgive either of them if they killed her, even if they did it to save Allie’s own husband.

More than any of those, however, Balidor himself didn’t want to do it.

The idea of killing Cassandra Jainkul, the person Balidor knew and cared about and worked alongside and even briefly had a crush on, made him feel sick. Whether she was telekinetic or not, to kill Cass now, before any of them had a chance to talk to her, much less to assess whether she could be brought back, felt wrong in a way that Balidor couldn’t even adequately communicate to himself, much less to Wreg.

“Yeah,” Wreg sighed. “Jon will never forgive me, either.”

Balidor only nodded to that, not answering.

"But we need to get right with it,” Wreg added sharper, looking at him. "So will Jon. Either we kill her now, when she's only a baby demon, brainwashed and brow-beaten by Shadow and Terian and whoever else...or we face the full-grown hydra later on...” Pausing, he made his mouth a grim line. “You can't possibly tell me that you don't think we'd be doing her a favor at this point? Or do you really want to see her go through what Menlim did to Nenz?"

Balidor nodded, feeling his jaw clench more.

Even so, he made himself say it aloud.

"Yes,” he acknowledged. “...I agree. If we cannot capture her, and the opportunity presents itself, we should kill her...”

Wreg only nodded in reply.

They made the final turn towards the section of tunnel that had been blocked by the first set of explosions. As Wreg pinged that part of the construct to give the excavation team warning of their arrival, Balidor glimpsed the aleimic signatures of Illeg, Deklan, Loki, Torek, Gunte and Oli, along with at least a dozen other seers, some of whom Balidor knew only by their aleimic signature, charted for security purposes.

Seconds later, he saw them, too.

It only took a few more seconds before he found he recognized the explosives they were stacking in key pieces around the debris.

“Are you ready for this?” Wreg asked him grimly.

Balidor nodded, his eyes still on the explosives as he unholstered his gun. “Do it,” he said. “Now, brother.”

18

CALCULATIONS

REVIK GLANCED AT Jon first, when the next set of explosions started.

Despite the collars around both of their necks, it seemed almost as if Jon felt the tremor in the rock the same way Revik himself did. Perhaps Jon even felt it
through
him somehow, some kind of sympathetic ricochet through both of their light.

Unfortunately, Ditrini seemed to feel it, too, well enough to ID the source.

"Adhipan..." he murmured. He glanced at Revik, giving him a thin smile without slowing his pace. "He is not happy at all, about our acquisition of our precious girl...”

Revik didn't let himself respond.

Even so, something in his face must have struck the older infiltrator as expressive anyway. Ditrini chuckled, yanking sharply on the chain he had attached to the collar around Revik's neck. Revik let it jerk him forward, not fighting him. Despite everything, that crystalline sharpness hadn’t left his light...or his mind. If anything, it had grown more intense.

“Don’t worry, brother Sword,” Ditrini smiled. “I fully intend to let you play this time. Our sponsors have promised that I could invite you both over for parties, when you’re feeling well enough...perhaps even your lap dog here, too,” he added, tugging on Jon’s neck.

Revik ignored that, too.

He knew the purpose of the chains, symbolically and otherwise.

He got a few other smatterings of Ditrini’s thoughts before they cut off his sight, all of them aimed at screwing with his head, and likely meant to enrage him beyond where he could think clearly. Revik didn't care. He barely registered Ditrini at all at this point, other than as an obstacle. He remained silent because logic told him it made the most sense.

He would think about the actual captivity once he was faced with it. Still, if Ditrini thought things would go that smoothly with Revik himself in that area, or that he would be that easy to break with torture, he really was an idiot.

That, or Shadow had been lying to him, too.

Ditrini chuckled again, glancing at him.

"Perhaps I'm simply more skilled at training wives than you are, Dehgoies," he said, smiling. "...As well as husbands. You didn't get to see how compliant she was while we were together before. I look forward to showing you everything you missed out on, my brother..."