Allie's War Season Three (56 page)

Jon shied away from thinking about
that
too closely, as well.

He did see a few humans at tables, eating breakfast or brunch or drinking coffee and talking. But, given the size of the hotel and the vastness of the space, it wasn't really very many. They would even occasionally stare at the real standouts among the seers...Wreg being chief among them. Jon wondered if Wreg had his people erase them on their way out or something.

"You want something to drink, brother?" Wreg said.

"No, I'm good."

"You should have something. You still look like you crawled out from under a rock..."

"Gee." Jon snorted a little. "...Thanks, Wreg."

"Coffee," Wreg said cheerfully, grinning at him. "You are like your sister, right? A coffee drinker?" Clicking softly, he shook his head, giving a low snort of his own. "...She even has Nenzi drinking it. I tried for years to get that asshole to drink coffee in Germany, and he wouldn't do it. He fucking hated it, actually."

Jon smiled faintly. He remembered Revik complaining about that, too.

"Well," Jon shrugged. "I'm sure he got her back. I saw her eating one of those moss sandwiches you seers are so fond of...and she wasn't even grimacing..."

Wreg chuckled, shaking his head as he wandered towards the bar.

"I don't need anything, Wreg," Jon called after him.

Wreg waved him off, dismissive. "Sure, brother, sure..."

Despite his banter, Jon couldn't help staring at the broad-shouldered seer as soon as he was sure Wreg wasn't watching him look. He continued to stare as Wreg ordered something from the bartender, clicking at the man with his fingers and gesturing as soon as he wandered over to their end of the bamboo-fronted stand. Jon couldn't help feeling another wave of disbelief as he felt the seer's attention remain on him, too. His disbelief worsened when he saw that Wreg had ordered something for him anyway, despite his protests. Something Jon would probably end up drinking, in spite of himself.

Hell, he hoped it
was
coffee.

He'd noticed all of the seers being gentle with him, of course. They treated him as they would any seer who'd lost his mate, which Jon couldn't help being touched by, even if it threw him a little. Some of those seers had barely known him to say hi to a few weeks ago, even though they'd all been living in the hotel together for months.

It was a lot more noticeable on someone like
Wreg,
though, who was normally brusque with him at best, out and out dismissive at normal times...positively frightening when he was pissed off or lost his patience with him or was in one of those moods of his where he wouldn't even meet Jon's eyes. Even just a few weeks ago, when Wreg had been attempting to sight-train him, he'd yelled at Jon, calling him a 'lazy, undisciplined toddler.' He'd smacked him with his light, too, hard enough that Jon ended up hanging over a toilet, watching his lunch come back up in the least pleasant way imaginable.

Allie had warned him, of course, that sight training could be brutal, especially with some of the old-school seers, who were trained in caves and basically hammered until they learned to protect themselves...but Jon still found something in Wreg's intensity harder to take than, say, Balidor's, although Balidor had a good two hundred years on the ex-rebel.

For the last ten or so days, however, the seer had been hovering over him protectively, ever since Jon wandered out of his hotel room, looking for Allie, only to find that she and Revik had retreated back into their own little world together again.

In fact, Wreg had barely left his side, which Jon found alternately baffling, touching, unnerving and annoying. Wreg was a little big to be underfoot, and now he'd insisted on accompanying Jon in Dorje and Tenzi's place, while Jon attempted to approach the first of the humans on the list.

The first one he'd been able to locate as still living in New York, anyway.

Jon was a little nervous about talking to some fifteen-year-old kid who was already likely to think he was crazy, with the massive, barbarian-looking seer standing behind him and glowering. If the kid didn't end up running to the police, they'd be lucky.

Still, it felt better to have a job, no matter how nuts.

"Dante," Wreg said thoughtfully, as he returned with the drinks.

The one he handed Jon looked like some kind of espresso drink, which Jon found himself accepting in relief.

"Yeah," Jon said, immediately sipping the coffee. As soon as he had, it struck him that it was a double cappuccino with cinnamon and no foam. Basically his favorite coffee-type drink. Having seers around was certainly handy at times...he didn't have to voice a lot of things, much less repeat himself over and over. Although, as Jon didn't remember ever having ordered coffee around Wreg, or even having
thought
about his favorite coffee drink around the seer before, he had to wonder how Wreg pulled it off him.

If Wreg heard any of that, he kept it off his face.

"Dante, like the poet?" he grunted. "Isn't that a boy's name?"

Jon shrugged. "I don't think that kind of thing matters much anymore, Wreg."

The seer shrugged, but his eyes held some skepticism.

Jon refrained from giving him crap about being an old man, like he might have with Revik...but still, it was strange to think that Wreg probably had a few hundred years on his sister's husband. Even Dorje was older than Revik.

At the thought, and in the present tense, Jon froze briefly, the coffee at his lips.

Blinking, he pushed the thought back, and its reaction, forcing himself to focus back on the names. As he did, he felt Wreg tense slightly beside him. Once more, he felt the seer's light around his, almost like a physical sensation.

"All right," Jon said, sighing a little, maybe in a feeble attempt to break the tension woven into the silence. He folded up the papers constituting the six hundred and forty-eight person list of human names, and shoved it in the inside pocket of his leather jacket. "I guess we'd better go. Did you still want Holo to come?"

"Your sister and Nenz...they haven't contacted you?"

Glancing at him, Jon shrugged. "She was downstairs for a few hours yesterday, but she went back up pretty quick. I haven't seen Revik at all...but unless they're back in hibernation, I figure he's probably in the basement with the infiltrators, right?"

Wreg shrugged, holding his own cup of coffee, Jon realized. He'd gotten them in to-go cups, too, so he must have had leaving on his mind also.

Either that, or he'd heard Jon thinking about it.

"It's your show, brother," Wreg said, not hiding that he'd heard him that time. "We go whenever you want."

Jon looked at his watch, frowning. "What are the chances this kid will be home at nine a.m., on a Saturday?" Shrugging, he answered his own question. "Better than average, I guess. She
is
only fifteen..."

Wreg dismissed this with a wave, tapping at his headset. "She's not at home...but I've got her current location. I had Jax look her up. He was able to get enough on her stats to conduct a Barrier track. She had a criminal arrest record with SCARB, so we even have an image..."

"You found her?" Jon said, blown away in spite of himself. "On the streets?"

"With an image?" Wreg snorted. "That's child's play, brother. Even
you
should be able to do a simple track using realtime images. That's the easiest way to find anyone...and not tricky at all when your target's human, unless they're under protection." Seeing Jon's skeptical look, Wreg smiled. "You don't think so, eh? I may need to make you throw up a few more times, brother..."

Jon ignored that last part, although he felt his mouth harden into a grimace.

"Okay," he said. "So where are we going, then?"

Wreg touched his earpiece again, his eyes blurring as he listened, and probably looked at whatever Jax showed him via the VR link.

"Times Square," Wreg said after a pause. "And according to Jax, we'd better hurry..."

"Why?" Jon said, alarmed.

"She's doing something illegal. We can't risk SCARB catching on before we've pulled her..." Wreg gave Jon a level look, quirking his lips in a smile. "I think I know how we're going to fish for your trout though, Jon...this might be a lot easier than we were thinking it would be."

Seeing the gleam in Wreg's eyes, Jon didn't really feel all that reassured.

LESS THAN AN hour later, Jon found himself crouched in an alleyway next to Wreg.

Well,
behind
Wreg, more accurately. The seer instructed Jon to remain out of sight until they could find the girl and set up a Barrier net to make sure she couldn't escape in the crowd.

Wreg and Jax both seemed to think this Dante girl was a major flight risk...which Jon supposed made sense, given that they also thought she was currently in the middle of doing serious crime. Like, SCARB jurisdiction-type crime, which was pretty heavy for your average high-schooler. In fact, it probably meant hacking organic machines.

Jon found himself rereading the entry on her stats again as he thought it.

...
Daniella Anita Vasquez (Dante). Female. Born: June 5, 2000. Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York, USA. Rank 1 (tech). Position: First wave - Second. Race: Human...

"Tech," he muttered again. "Well, I suppose that will come in handy...I would have thought one of the military ones would be Rank 1, too..."

"Are you talking to me, brother?" Wreg asked.

"I don't know," Jon said, exhaling in a faint hiss. "Myself, I guess."

"Well do it quieter..." Wreg said, glancing back. "We have her."

"Where?" Jon said, craning his neck to see over the taller seer's shoulder.

"Quiet!" Wreg said, waving him off with one hand.

The seer's broad back was covered in a thinly armored shirt that clung to his upper body, somehow making him look twice his usual size, like he was wearing some kind of superhero costume. His dark pants were more standard issue for the Adhipan and the rebels since they got to New York...designed to blend in as street wear, but also lightly armored enough that they could withstand a bullet from most conventional firearms...meaning anything with a non-organic projectile. Either way, trying to look around Wreg right then without stepping out from behind him was pretty much a lost cause.

"There," Wreg said, a few seconds later. He flattened his back slightly to the wall, pointing out into the stream of pedestrians walking along the Avenue of the Americas in the middle of Times Square. "...Do you see her? With the dark blue hood..."

Jon's eyes scanned clothes, because it was faster than scanning faces. He found several dark blue hoods, then felt the nudge from Wreg's mind, showing him the right one. She was smaller than he'd expected, and so curvy she bordered on pudgy, although given her age it probably could be called baby fat as much as anything. Her long brown hair hung out of part of her hood, naturally curly and streaked with red and green and blue. He couldn't see her ident tats, but he saw her touching her earpiece, and the tell-tale lip movements told him she was using subvocal commands on the network.

"What is she doing?"

Wreg chuckled. He nudged Jon's mind again, bringing his eyes to a bright blue form busy talking to passers-by, scanning their ID chips and barcodes and offering them insurance packages and deals involving vacation giveaways.

"She's ripping off her fellow humans," Wreg said, filling in the gaps with another of those face-splitting grins. "She's got a link to the scanner...she's using the company's software to gather the info, then rerouting it to another server and storage facility..."