Allie's War Season Three (191 page)

He pushed and shoved their aleimi out of the way, fighting to stay with her...

She screamed at him again, and that time, he couldn’t hold it back, he let out a choked sob, gripping the arms of whoever stood in front of him. He felt her desolation, a grief too large for him to feel in its entirety. She cried and he cried with her, devastated beyond anything he’d felt in longer than he could remember. He clutched at her in the space, wanting her to feel him, to know she wasn’t alone. He couldn’t reach her, though. He couldn’t...it was like a thick pane of glass separated them, something that lived on her side, not allowing him to get through.

Revik found himself thinking it was too late, that they were already dead, that all he could do was convince her she wasn’t alone...

A hand hit him across the face on his good side, hard.

Hard enough to bring more tears to his eyes, but he barely felt it.

“Where is she?” a voice barked. “Nenz! Where is she?”

Revik fought to answer the question, to even think.

He started getting lost in that dark again, hearing her cries. He choked on another sob. The hand hit him again, harder, snapping him out, just enough that the outline of a larger body swam into focus in front of him.

“Nenz!” the voice snapped. “Where is she?”

Revik fought past that feeling again, looking for landmarks, anything that made sense to him. Then he felt her. Not his wife, the other one. She smiled at him in the dark, and for those few seconds, he’d never wanted to kill anyone so badly in his life.

When he finally spoke, his words came out in a forced gasp, barely understandable, even to him.

“San Francisco,” he said. “They’re taking her to San Francisco...”

“Are you certain, brother?” the voice said, his words hard.

Revik looked up, found himself looking at Wreg, who held him as tightly as Jon. Behind him, Jorag rubbed his back, along with Oli on his other side, and Neela.

“Nenz!” Wreg snapped.

Revik’s head turned. He fought to breathe.

“Yes. San Francisco.”

“Are you sure?” Wreg repeated. “Are you positive she will be there? They could not possibly be there yet...” He checked his watch, his mouth a frown. His other hand never left Revik though, still holding him near, tightly by the arm. “...It could be misdirection. Are you sure they are not sending you in the wrong direction?”

Revik shook his head, closing his eyes against another flush of that unbearable pain.

“No,” he said. “No, it’s not. I’m sure, brother.”

“How?” Wreg said. “How do you know?”

“She wants me to come,” Revik said, feeling that sickness worsen. “Cass. She felt me there. She wants me to come...”

Staring at his face, that time, Wreg only nodded.

Giving Jon a worried look, Wreg glanced at Revik again before he motioned for Jorag to continue holding Revik up. Wreg was back in military mode, though, and he walked towards the door to the interrogation room, holding it open for all of them to leave in front of him, even as he used hand signals to convey his intentions.

Revik watched the motion of the other seer’s hands without being able to make sense of any of it. Feeling Jorag’s hand on his arm, and Illeg’s on the other side, Revik followed as best as he could, fighting not to let the limp slow him down.

He wouldn’t make them wait for him.

As he walked, he found himself tugging on the telekinetic structures above his head, fighting an urge to scream at all of them, maybe even threaten them when he couldn’t get those structures to move, to do more than spark idly in the darkness behind his eyes.

Instead, he tried again. And again.

He put every last reserve of his light into trying, until he lost track of where they were, or even whether they might need him on the other side.

No one bothered him. When he finally stopped, he found Maygar staring at him, his brown eyes holding a worry and grief almost on the surface. Revik looked away from him, but found himself seeing more of the same, seemingly in every face around him. He fielded sympathetic looks on dirty, haggard faces. He counted them, tried to decide if it would be enough, or if that even mattered anymore.

Eight infiltrators. Eleven with him, Maygar and Jon.

Cass would have more. She would have whoever Shadow gave her. She would have Terian, possibly Ditrini...likely members of Salinse’s network.

Whatever they had, it wouldn’t be enough.

Nothing they had, nothing they could bring, would be enough.

But Revik no longer cared.

Pushing it from his mind, he reminded himself it didn’t matter. He couldn’t be rational about this...he didn’t want to be. He was going to tear Cass apart with his bare hands. He would kill anyone who had touched her...any one of them who had helped make Allie feel those things he’d felt on his wife.

Hearing his wife scream at him again from that dark spot where she lived, he had to fight to keep from screaming himself. He couldn’t pick out enough specifics to know what he was afraid of, apart from her fear. He couldn’t see where she was.

She was lost in the dark, terrified, and not only for herself.

He must have made a noise at one point, because Jorag was rubbing his back again with strong strokes of his hand, half-supporting him now, and Oli gave him a frightened look from where she walked ahead, an automatic rifle slung over her shoulder.

Jon looked at him, too, but Revik couldn’t read anything in the other man’s face, couldn’t meet any of their gazes as they gave him nervous looks, as if he were already a ghost. Revik wouldn’t let himself think about anything he felt on them, but threw everything he had at Allie, trying to give her light, love, reassurance, anything he had, everything he had, already knowing she wouldn’t feel it, that it wouldn’t be enough.

She screamed again, and her anguish broke over him.

Lost in the dark.

She was lost in the dark. Alone.

Revik could barely see by the time they led him to the lone plane standing on the tarmac. He had no idea where he was, or anything apart from that scream he could hear in the dark.

SOMEONE SHOOK HIM back to consciousness.

Revik opened his eyes, feeling like his whole face had been encased in cement. A face hung over him, eyes shining faintly in low light and blocking out the rest of Revik’s vision. He moved fast, and without thought...like an animal, breaking out of his stupor as if he’d been hit with an electrical prod instead of touched gently with a bare hand.

As a result, he jerked his hurt leg, too hard, slamming it into the armrest of the plane seat and nearly losing consciousness again when the pain ran jagged lines through his light. He groaned, panting, and looked up again to see Jon’s face.

The man’s skin looked paler and more haggard than Revik had ever seen it.

“Gods, Revik...sorry.”

Revik shook his head, gripping the armrests and gritting his teeth as he waited for the pain to subside. As soon as he could take a breath, he spoke. “No,” he said, shaking his head again. “It’s all right. Talk to me. Where are we?”

“Twenty minutes to landing,” Jon said at once.

Revik nodded, feeling the sickness in his chest worsen.

He’d asked Wreg to knock him out.

He knew he wouldn’t sleep if they didn’t force it on him, and he knew his light wouldn’t replenish much at all if he didn’t sleep. He’d forced himself to catalogue his injuries before they did it, and to allow them to do what they could to patch him up so he might heal. He’d found most of what he expected to find, and a few surprises, too.

He’d broken one of his hands, probably when Ditrini slammed his bound arms into the pipe wall. He hadn’t felt it with his circulation cut off from the binders, but as soon as they’d given him a sedative from the plane’s medical stores, he’d realized that he could barely move his fingers, even to put on his seatbelt.

They’d put a field dressing and a splint on that, taping it up to where the pain was at least bearable. They’d cleaned up his face and stitched the cut over his eye and one at his hair line. They’d taped up the broken ribs, and his leg.

Apart from trying to pull himself together physically, Revik couldn’t do anything during the flight anyway, and he didn’t want to dream. He didn’t want to feel anything more from Cass, or even from Allie, not until he could see her with his own eyes.

So he told Wreg to knock him out, which the muscular seer did, and seemingly with relief in his eyes at the request.

“Any news?” Revik managed, fighting to clear his throat. “Balidor?”

Jon handed him a glass of something.

Revik didn’t hesitate. He drank it, closing his eyes as he tilted his head back. It was bourbon, a fact for which he was beyond grateful. He handed the empty glass to Jon, nodding a thanks, even as Jon handed him a water bottle next.

“Drink that one, too,” Jon advised.

Revik nodded, twisting off the cap. He drank that down almost as fast as he had the bourbon, gasping a little for breath as he finished. He did all of it with the emotionlessness of tending to a needed machine. Rubbing his unbroken hand through his hair, he tossed the empty bottle on the seat next to him, then clicked his fingers at Jon.

“News,” he said again.

He watched with narrow eyes as Jon poured him another glass of bourbon, handing it to him wordlessly. Jon watched Revik drink it before he began to speak.

“Balidor’s pretty sure Ditrini got away,” Jon said, his voice sounding like a military report, almost like how Wreg would have said it. “No news on Feigran or Shadow. They determined that telecast they’d done during the breach took place in D.C., just like it appeared. According to some of Balidor’s contacts, Shadow’s team left from there before the wave hit...he’s thinking they might have gone to ground again.” Jon hesitated. “...He also thinks it’s unlikely they would be going to San Francisco, at least right now.”

Revik nodded, finishing off the last swallow of bourbon before he handed Jon the glass.

“What about the hotel?” he said.

Jon gave a single nod, seer-fashion. “They managed to reinforce the fields enough to keep the building structurally sound,” he said. “The basement and all of the sub-levels flooded, of course. They lost most of the armory, and worse, from their perspective, the majority of the stored seeds and food they had in the main basement. They’re hoping they can salvage some of that when the water recedes, but they have to assume the worst...”

Revik nodded, only half hearing this.

“Casualties?” he said.

Jon hesitated, until Revik looked up, then he shrugged with one hand. “Which place, Revik? They figure they lost at least a hundred thousand in Manhattan itself. At the hotel, there’re estimating at least a dozen seers...maybe double that number of humans from the lists.”

Revik nodded, feeling nothing as he stared at the floor.

“What does Balidor think?” he said. “About the imprints I sent him?”

Jon exhaled, shaking his head. “He doesn’t know, man. No one does. It doesn’t look good, but you already knew that...” Hesitating, he seemed on the verge of asking something, then changed his mind.

“What?” Revik said. He looked up, then found he knew what the other man wanted to ask. “How soon before I start to die after Allie does?” he said, his voice bitter. “If it’s anything like last time, I’ll have a few days before I start to really feel it. Weeks before it starts to kill me. Anything else?”