Allie's War Season One (139 page)

Within seconds, he found himself flexing their weight, reacquainting himself with the added structure, with the multiplication of his light against that of whatever held the reigns at the other end.

For an instant, he stood perfectly still, gazing down from a vantage he hadn’t glimpsed in about forty years.

It was like he was meant to be there.

It was like coming home.

23

OWNED

I COULDN’T SEE. Flashes popped in my eyes.

I felt a vague gratitude that I had on clothes, even though I knew it helped only marginally here. The crush of bodies pushed up against where I tried to walk, sandwiched between guards, holding cuffed hands in front of my face.

People touched me wherever they could, and they weren’t particularly gentle about it. I heard clothing rip, felt their fingers caressing bare skin. I knew all this, in some part of my mind, but continued to stare straight ahead, my jaw clenched to keep my face still.

I’d become one of those people on the feeds...the ones who bolster sales of tabloids along with the viewership of the main networks. The ones with screaming headlines over their pictures, who always managed to look stoned at the instant the recorders captured the still image of their real, non-avatar faces.

In my case, they’d be right.

Before the helicopter touched down, Terian slammed another syringe-f of something into my neck. It worked on me at once, making me thick-tongued even before he’d finished unlocking the straps that held me into the restraint chair at the back of the military transport. When he helped me out of the sliding door, I half-fell, lurching sideways until he clamped an arm around my waist. I’m sure I looked drunk, or sufficiently wanton even for the mass feeds.

There’d be no avatars for my image, of course. I was a terrorist; they could print my real face with impunity. Even dead people had more rights to hide their faces than I did. I’d never maintain anonymity in the seer world again...not like I ever had, come to think of it.

These images would be current, though. The one the feeds had been broadcasting since my mom died had been from high school, and my hair had been bright blue. Not my finest moment, really.

The Scandinavian Terian remained by my side as we parted the crush of reporters waiting by the White House helipad. He kept an arm firmly around me as the guards led me across the White House lawn and into the famous building.

No one noticed the boy as he trailed along behind us.

“COULD YOU SPEAK up?” the sharp voice said.

I held up my cuffed hands, spreading my fingers and blinking against the ultra-bright lights. Terian caught hold of the chain and pulled my hands back to my lap. With an effort, I focused on the reporter.

“Excuse me?”

“How do you account for yourself?” The blond woman said. Her organic headset pulsed with a bright blue light, which told me that anything I said would be heard, even if I whispered. Maybe by millions of people.

Account for myself? I wondered. Does she expect me to answer that?

Even on drugs, the setting was ludicrous.

Paisley couches and a polished maple coffee table. A bone china tea set and a silver tray of cucumber and hummus sandwiches. Terian and I sat on a loveseat in the Oval Office, although without its more famous occupant in attendance. The Scandinavian fingered the collar at my neck absently as he posed—serious, pensive, handsome—for the cameras running steadily in the background.

“I’m not sure what you mean...” I began, glancing at him.

The woman raised her voice and spoke more slowly, as if supposing I was deaf, or maybe mentally retarded.

“Do you consider yourself a terrorist?” she said.

I imagined the swell of dramatic music in the background at her daring question of the bloodthirsty seer…a close-up on her determined face. I didn’t smile, though. Terian coached me well in advance. He warned me that seeming amused in any way would, at best, make me appear arrogant.

At worst, bat-shit crazy.

I knew who she was, of course. I’d grown up seeing people like her on the flatscreen at my apartment in San Francisco. I even watched the feeds from time to time in India. She was one of those journalists who had the reputation of asking the poignant questions, of
getting to the truth.
I didn’t know anyone on the ground who really believed that, though, not even when I lived in San Francisco. The news feeds were nothing but theater and propaganda.

This woman, in particular, always grated on my nerves. She had the voice of one of those yappy dogs, and a face that had been reconstructed so many times she looked like a wax doll. During a period where I drank heavily, after Jaden cheated on me with this horrible groupie, I occasionally used this woman’s channel on the feeds as an alarm clock. Her voice was one of the few sounds I’d get out of bed just to shut off…no matter how hung-over I was.

Even before I knew I was a seer, I knew the feeds were full of shit. So did all of my human friends. I just didn’t realize the extent of it.

My mom told me it hadn’t always been that way.

“Did you hear me?” the yappy dog said, her voice sharper. “Are you a terrorist, Alyson? Or does that question make you uncomfortable?”

I glanced at Terian. He sat casually in his dark suit, still caressing my neck absently with his fingers. I knew that was deliberate, too. The body he wore looked like an Aryan version of Action Ken doll…almost absurdly handsome, and so white, he had to be human.

Or so the feeds would think.

I fought the urge to yank up the front of the low-cut sundress they’d shoved me into, crossing my legs compulsively in spite of myself, although I knew that probably only sexualized my appearance more. Sandals covered my feet, ribbons winding up my bare legs. Terian probably would have put me into a VR-paneled, topless club dress if he could have gotten away with it. But according to the Press Secretary and others from the Department of Defense, they needed me to look harmless. They needed me to seem as frail and feminine as possible.

I wondered how well my bruises were showing up on the national feeds.

I cleared my throat.

“No,” I said. “It doesn’t make me uncomfortable. I’m just not exactly sure what you mean by that...”

“What I
mean?”
She snorted in open derision. “I mean...you blew up a ship, Alyson. How do you feel about killing all of those innocent people?”

“Errr...no,” I said. “I didn’t blow up a ship.”

I looked out the glass doors behind her, staring longingly at the green lawns and gardens. I wiped my face with cuffed hands, then instantly regretted it, realizing I’d just highlighted them for the camera a second time.

“Look,” I said. “That was all a big mistake. I thought you knew that. I thought you proved Caine was behind what happened there?”

The woman gave the camera a knowing look. “Sure. Of course. Because we all
know
humans have access to supernatural powers…”

“You have access to C-4,” I said, blunt.

The woman gave me a narrow look, as if the cocker spaniel suddenly began speaking English. I saw the Press Secretary behind the cameraman, waving his arms to Terian. When Terian glanced up, the human began making ‘cut it off’ gestures by running his finger across his neck.

“I think what Alyson means, is,” the Scandinavian Terian said smoothly, waving the man off absently with his fingers. “...There are other ways that accident could have occurred, Donna.”

“Are you saying the Pentagon
believes
her story?” the woman said.

Looking at the Aryan Ken Doll, Donna was nearly panting.

Terian shrugged, smiling faintly. It was a human shrug.

“We are looking into it,” he said. “Let’s just say, we have reviewed her testimony in detail, and we are not yet ready to dismiss the evidence it has uncovered. Clearly, another explanation might exist for what occurred…”

The woman gave him a seductive smile, then me a thoughtful look. As if reading my thoughts from earlier, she leaned towards me, laying her arms on her lap and clasping her fingers.

“…But aren’t you
dating
one of the terrorists, Alyson?” she said. She smiled. I’m sure it was meant to be a conspiratorial smile...just two girls chatting, maybe. With a few million people watching.

“You know which one I mean,” she said coyly. “He’s been a national obsession since the attacks last year…”

In the VR space behind her, a picture of Revik appeared. It morphed into more pictures as the woman talked, showing various angles, and even one of the two of us, together, in Vancouver, BC. Text overlay the images, addresses in the virtual network, images of the burning ship along the Alaskan coast, a blueprint of Revik’s apartment in London next to a realtime image of the outside of the building as Revik’s old manservant blew it up.

“Whole websites are devoted to the two of you,” the woman said, her voice still sickeningly coy. “…the Bonnie and Clyde of the seer world. Surely, you were aware that a certain, immature segment of the human world finds the two of you fascinating?”

I shook my head. “Not really, no.”

I had known though...once.

I forgot about all of that, mostly because when it started, Jon and Cass had been missing, my mother murdered and I’d thought Revik was dead. I hadn’t given a damn about much of anything back then.

The woman’s words seemed to mirror my own mind.

“…Of course it’s easy to romanticize someone who’s dead, isn’t it, Alyson? It’s a little harder when you’re
alive
and a mass killer...”

At my silence, she gave Terian a questioning look, then cleared her throat.

“So are you still dating him, Alyson? Or have you moved on since then?”

I felt my chest clench as I stared at the morphing images.

“Dating?” I heard myself say. “No.”

“You aren’t still sexually involved with this man?” she said, skeptical.

I hesitated. “Well…”

“So for seers, maybe this doesn’t constitute dating,” the woman said smugly, crossing her thin legs under the short skirt business suit she wore. “…But for humans, this implies some kind of
relationship,
Alyson. Living amongst us all those years, surely, you were aware of that…?”

“He’s my husband,” I blurted.

I felt Terian’s smile, but when I glanced over, his face remained still, his eyes showing a faint concern as he studied my face. Quite the specimen of deep-thinking male. If he wasn’t so completely out of his head insane, it might be funny.