Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (80 page)

…telekinesis will activate construct protocol six-seven-nine-ought-four…

Disable,
Revik sent.
You are ordered to disable at once.
He’d entered the coding sequence, although the fucking thing kept morphing as soon as he’d broken down the structure. Wrapping his light around the different entry points, he pushed harder.

Disable protocol, or security breach is imminent…

Cannot disable only father disable security clearance six-seven-nine-ought-four…

Hearing the “father” reference, Revik grimaced.

What is inside?
he sent then, trying to push a different lever as he continued to manipulate the wall’s aleimic structure.
Describe contents of room…

…cannot authorize information dissemination dehgoies revik aka sword not authorized for description of contents activate gas in seven seconds if subject does not retreat to security mandated distance…

Taking his hands off the wall, Revik backed off.

He continued to back off until he felt the security protocol switch off.

Standing a few yards from the sentient wall, he slid into the Barrier again, trying to see or feel what lived on the other side of the wall.

A Barrier field protected it, which wasn’t surprising but the density of that field was.

The elevator brought him here. The AI seemed to think the compound’s biggest secrets lived here, somewhere on this level. Somehow Revik doubted the bodies in fish tanks really qualified. Then again, he was banking on a lot, trusting that elevator at all.

He could feel the pull to go in there, though.

Something beyond that door tugged at his light like a fucking magnet.

Urgency tightened his chest as he felt the construct activity increase. That urgency hurt him somehow, flaring his nearly nonstop separation pain even as it sharpened the more tactical areas of his mind and light.

Whatever he’d come here to find, some part of it lived beyond that fucking door. Without having any logical way to be sure of that, Revik was sure of it anyway.

He could feel that higher part of his light agreeing. More than that, he imagined he felt memory there, some resonance he couldn’t explain. Maybe like missing limb syndrome, he felt some part of himself that Allie had separated from the Dreng’s construct, reminding him.

Secrets. He’d known secrets.

He might not have even consciously known a lot of them.

They would knock him out if he went in there.

More to the point, he knew Menlim might use it as an excuse to negate their agreement, hook him to wires, throw him in a Barrier prison, start hacking his light for real. Then he’d be on a real countdown. Not only for being here, but for his life. For Allie’s and his daughter’s lives. Once they hacked him for real, he had few doubts who his first target would be…assuming they really had figured out a way to keep him alive without his wife.

They’d have him go after Cass once Allie was dead.

They’d have him hunt his daughter…and Maygar, too.

He knew all that…he knew…

But he and Allie talked about that. They had no good choices.

They also didn’t have the luxury to be careful right now.

He and Allie talked about that, too.

Clenching his jaw, he checked his wristwatch. Even being conservative, they would be down here in minutes. That was assuming they could get here in less than half the time it took him.

Revik stepped closer to the wall.

Immediately the alarms re-ignited. Feeling a charge of electricity shiver through his aleimi, he closed the gap between himself and the sentient organic in two more strides, once more laying his palms on the wall.

That time, he didn’t wait.

He jacked into the Barrier at once…far enough that time to see the sentient machine’s entire aleimic structure. Once he had, he snapshotted it…rotated it once, twice…his mind catalogued every detail of shape and form.

He unfurled his light.

…and hooked into every point of contact or structure he could find.

To see and access all of it, he had to trigger a number of those higher structures in his light. Even so, he took care to avoid any combination he normally used for the telekinesis, knowing that would likely be enough to activate the security protocol and knock him on his ass right here. He also worked fast.

Maybe faster than he ever had for something like this.

He connected his aleimi to those structures before he’d taken a complete breath.

Then he ignited that harder light.

…crushing a few dozen of those structures at once.

He didn’t wait.

Exploding the next handful even faster than the first, his light spread, moving like liquid fire, not hurrying but not hesitating. His mind remained tightly focused, methodical as he explored every fragment of that semi-dimensional field. He broke every piece of structured aleimi he could find, snapping and exploding individual nodules like bits of glass. Most of the big ones he broke in simultaneous bursts…then gradually he began hunting stragglers one by one as they fought to morph and recombine in front of him.

A few of those morphed fast enough to elude him, so he had to find them again.

He broke them faster the second time.

It seemed to take a long time…too long…

But eventually, he ran out of the things to break.

The space grew quiet. Dark.

Well, not dark
precisely,
although it felt that way to Revik’s aleimi in comparison to the living mass of before. Now the light field around the wall seethed in slow motion patterns like a pond faintly stirred by wind.

No intent lived there…no mind…no thoughts.

None of those mathematically precise geometric patterns remained either.

When his vision cleared, the wall had gone dark in the physical, too.

He scanned it, a surface scan that time. From the outside, it appeared dead. Or maybe blank, like an amoeba instead of a well-trained guard dog. Entering those surface layers cautiously with his light, Revik activated the manual switch for the door.

At once, the mechanism ignited, moving the panel smoothly into the wall.

Dehgoies…
a voice said in his head.

It was so loud Revik looked up, sure it was a loudspeaker.

Dehgoies…you are breaking our agreement…

Realizing it was a Barrier communication, via the construct, Revik felt his jaw harden.

He glanced back at the door. It was most of the way open now. He checked the timepiece on his wrist, realized less than a minute had gone by. Then he peered through the still-widening gap in the wall, wondering if it would be enough to stand here, to look into that other space.

The room on the other side remained totally dark however, shielded somehow from the light of the room in which Revik stood.

He would have to go inside to see.

Dehgoies,
the voice repeated.
Our agreement. You are breaking it…

Am I?
he muttered in his own mind.

Yes,
the voice answered at once.
You are.

Revik could almost hear the clicking purr of the aged seer. He could almost see the frown of disapproval, him folding his hands at the base of his back, yellow eyes staring down at him from that skull-like face. He was likely wearing one of those fucking suits, his gray goatee precisely trimmed, feet tucked into expensive leather boots.

The shtick of a Dreng living in a seer’s corpse.

It hit Revik only then that he hadn’t seen any of Menlim’s bodies down here.

He must keep them elsewhere. Somewhere even deeper than this fucking cave.

The voice grew colder, even less compromising.

We agreed that your access to sensitive information would of necessity be limited as per the terms of our agreement,
Menlim reminded him.
We agreed, both of us, that this would be necessary for this tenuous partnership of ours to work, given your role here…and the stipulations about your own light…and the fact that you made it clear you would never let yourself feel any loyalty to me, nephew, no matter what transpired…

I also remember you agreeing not to call me nephew…
Revik’s mind muttered.

He didn’t expect any response to that.

He didn’t get one.

He felt some part of his light gearing up, a near defense reflex.

The construct’s motion over his head brought aspects of his higher structures online almost without him willing it, making his light flare brighter in the immediate Barrier space. He looked at the open doorway and into that darkness, fighting back and forth in his mind.

They’d knock him out.

He knew they would.

Menlim’s voice grew even colder, stripped of any pretense of politeness.

If you cross that threshold, nephew, our agreement with one another is void. Be aware of that. And be aware that I warned you before you did what you are about to do.
Menlim’s voice grew sharper, louder in Revik’s mind.
I did not trick you or try to hide my intentions…I told you outright, which is significantly more courtesy than you have afforded me…

Revik felt a prickle of warning grip somewhere in his spine.

But he’d already made up his mind.

He had to, he told himself.

He had to do this, or it was all for nothing.

He’d risked his family for nothing.

Even as he thought it, his legs propelled him towards the opening in that organic wall.

25

METAL

Light ignited around him the second Revik stepped through that opening. His foot landed on another green-tinted floor, darker than the one he’d just left.

Looking up, he realized only then how high the opening in the wall stretched, forming a strangely organic-looking rectangle at least twenty feet in height.

He looked up at it as he passed through, feeling his muscles tense as his light reacted to the new construct he entered.

Not construct.

This wasn’t a construct.

He came to a dead stop.

Feeling alarm bells going off all over his light, Revik tensed just inside that door, holding his breath as his heart thudded in his chest. It crossed his mind that his life was in danger.

Like, really in danger.

Unmoving apart from his eyes, he held his breath, staring around at the perfect square of the room. His mind catalogued dimensions, scanning every centimeter of space he could see without turning his head. He looked for security systems and found none. He looked harder, using more areas of his light, trying to discern the specific nature of the threat.

The room was entirely empty.

For a long moment, he couldn’t make sense of what he felt, what he was even reacting to. He could feel that sense of danger increasing rather than lessening, sending more and more urgent warnings to some baser, more animal-like part of his mind and light.