Allie's War Season One (48 page)

His relief is palpable, his warmth overwhelming as he floods my light. Affection comes with his presence, longing...for a moment it is all I can see. He wants to know where I am, how I am, but I am focused on keeping him alive, so I extract myself, looking for how I can help him. I zero in on the part of the structure that holds all the rest in place...

...and crack it easily with my light.

The walls around him begin to dissolve.

Very good, Alyson.

I barely hear her. Smiling, I watch Revik’s light shift. Inexplicably, tears come, blurring everything I can see outside the Barrier.

Gods, he is so beautiful.

He rises as I watch, his light flooding structures I’ve never seen in him, twisting around his head, around his whole body, expanding in high, white flames. His whole being flares, shaking the Barrier, trembling the nonphysical space with a burst of light.

Without knowing I am doing it, I rise with him.

For a breath at the top, we are together, really together.

I break free of the finely-woven silver light the woman has shared with me, and instantly I feel lighter; a pressure evaporates from around my heart. From this height, the metallic strands that seemed so fascinating and dense now look fake. More than fake...they look clouded, dirty, rigid and small. I see the rotating Pyramid below my feet, with thousands of beings chained to its immovable lines. Leeched of light, they dance like frail puppets made of wire.

I am still staring at it all in bewilderment when Revik falters.

Something jerks at him, hard, pulling him down, bringing me with him. I fight back...fight to stay above the smoke and silver clouds. My own light recovers and I try to catch his, grappling with him in the Barrier’s waves. I can’t hold him. His light curls sideways. As it does, a dark mass lights up around his head, turning that portion of his aleimi solid black.

He falls inside the Pyramid and disappears.

NO!
I scream.
REVIK!

Around me, humans mill in the casino. No one looks up at my screams. No one hears me as they hang over tables, drinking foul-looking cocktails with colored umbrellas and fruit dipped in formaldehyde. They all look dead to me, like corpses going through the motions of life. I scream again, and the image ripples like a pool after someone throws in a stone.

NO! REVIK! COME BACK! REVIK...!

I can’t feel him anymore. I look for him, like a diver feeling blind through pitch dark water, looking for something they can no longer see, but my hands and light come up with nothing.

No one. He is gone.

He will adjust.

I turn, sweating, gripping something in my hands.

He will live now, Alyson. You have saved his life.

I feel the silvery light creep back around mine, pulling me into its complicated strands. I am still above it, but only just. From where I am, those metallic clouds look like filth. Mirrors and death, stolen power...a lie that coats the Barrier like an oil slick. I focus on the woman’s opaque eyes, and they no longer look wise. They look dead to me. Cold.

My vision clicks into focus.

...and I found myself staring at Ivy.

Ivy. The same girl who bandaged Revik’s shoulder in Seattle, who I laughed with while she dyed my hair, who arranged for all of my IDs and passports along with Yarli. But instead of the young, happy person I remembered, Ivy looked gaunt to me now, her head too large, her skin too thin, making her appear skull-like. Her platinum-blond hair stuck up on her head, making her look more like a goblin than an elf.

She smiled at me, her eyes studying my face as she touched my arm.

Sister. Do not be afraid. Do not doubt that we are your friends.

I looked around at the physical world.

The casino, the crowds, none of that had been real, either. I stood on a deserted piece of the ship’s top deck, buffeted by a cutting wind. My hair whipped my cheeks as I looked up, where a rock face cut the sky, dark and still as it passed the port side of the ship.

Ivy and I were alone. The entrance to the metal stairs to my right hung with signs showing it off-limits to any but crew.

You work for him,
I manage.
Terian.

She smiles. The smile is cryptic, but cold.
No,
she says, surprising me.
I work for someone far older than he. Far more knowledgeable than he.

Galaith?
I ask.

No,
she says, her eyes still on mine.
Not him, either.

Who then?
I say.

She only smiles, but I feel somehow, that she would like to tell me.

By then, I decide I don’t care.

Clutching the handrail, I look down. The sheer, white hull stretches below to where a row of lifeboats hang over the water. Jumping is not an option.

A whisper-thin thread still holds me out of the Pyramid, but I feel Ivy chipping at it, trying to distract me from it, to convince me it lives somewhere else, inside the silver waves. A part of me has already started looking at the patterns, finding them fascinating again.

It is too late. Revik is gone. Just like mom. Just like dad.

Allie,
a voice whispers, and it’s not Ivy’s.
No.

It sounds so much like him it stops my heart. But it also snaps me out of that place of no hope. I haven’t used up all my options. I still have one left.

I force my way out of the Barrier...

...and pivoted my body in a fast, hard arc.

My hips snapped with my shoulder. Before I’d let out a breath, my fist hit Ivy in the sternum with a satisfying jar, exactly as Jon and then Eliah had taught me.

Ivy stumbled into the guardrail, nearly fell...and then recovered faster than I would have imagined possible.

Grabbing the top rail with both hands, she aimed a kick at my head.

I avoided it, barely, but it was misdirection; she caught me with a lower, sharper heel to the knee, knocking me into the guardrail by a circular vent. Pain bloomed sharply up from my knee up to my groin, making me gasp, but I didn’t let it drop me. I grabbed slats in the round opening of the vent, managed to regain my balance right before the Rook’s fist came down on the small of my back, half-crumpling me to the deck.

The second shock of pain brought a sharp, white moment of clarity.

I’d reconnected Revik to the Rooks.

I’d just fed him to them.

Pain rose in me, a darker grief that turned into rage.

A scream ripped out of my throat.

Ivy hissed at me like an animal as I turned, back-fisting her face. I broke something. Without stopping, I kicked down, aiming hard for her femur. A satisfying sound brought my other fist around, hitting the Sark in the temple, driving her to the deck.

A sharp stab of pain lit up around my face and neck.

Ivy was going after my light. I threw myself at her as she tried to crawl away, putting all my momentum and weight into a kick to the face.

The seer’s nose exploded in a spray of blood. I grabbed her hair as her light faltered, slamming the back of her skull into the guardrail. Her eyes rolled up and I grabbed hold of her long jacket. Regaining my balance against the railing, I hoisted her up to the top rail.

For an instant I felt the Sark’s light, beyond that of the Rooks.

Looking into the eyes of the girl who’d sent me a pulse of warmth that night in Seattle, I saw a flicker of fear, a deeper understanding.

A half-beat of hesitation made me pause.

Then Revik’s face swam before mine.

My heart clenched into a hard fist in my chest.

I threw Ivy over the railing, nearly going over with her.

She snatched at and grabbed my arm, screaming a terrible sound, like a giant bird. Silver light exploded around my head, and I felt those other beings, beyond the Pyramid itself, something larger, more frightening, like massive clouds of metallic light. I felt them screaming at me, fighting with me, trying to save Ivy from me by threatening me and slamming pain through my light, telling me I would be dead. Agony ripped through my mind as they beat against my aleimi, fighting for her...or maybe through her...

Panting, bleeding on her hands, I wedged my legs against the guardrail. I fought my way free of her attempts to save herself, disentangling her slippery fingers.

A half-second later, the hands were gone.

I watched her fall.

Ivy receded into darkness as the ship slid forward into night, but I saw her body hit the edge of a lifeboat on its way to the water. No screams echoed up as she broke the surface foam. Darkness swallowed the splash and I fell to a crouch by the guardrail, gasping.

The whisper and pound of the ship’s wake was deafening.

They’re coming for me.

I feel it now. I feel all of them.

They fight alone, held together by silver threads. They fight one another, even, but it doesn’t matter...it all serves their greater purpose.

A helicopter approaches, flying low over the water...

...I grasp for him, blind. I can’t see. Darkness spreads over the ship, breathes into my skin. I look up as the Pyramid descends, blotting out the sky. Wire-like strands snake out from all sides. I call for him...

...and find myself alone in a green, glass-tile room.

It is silent. My clothes are gone. A flat metal collar rings my neck. Against the back wall, three metal cages stand.

The image shimmers, breaks apart...

Red water runs on green glass, pools in dimples by the drains, dries in spots and smears on the ceiling. Hooks have instruments attached to them as wires spark close to the wet floor.

I scream, and I can’t stop screaming.

Barrier winds shriek and tear; I clamp my hands over my ears, but it’s not enough. It’s not outside of me at all, I realize, as the Pyramid fills the sky...

7, 10, 9, 33, 1099, 20, 41, 9883, 231, 87, 284, 2, 23, 66, 66, 994, 1, 1, 1...

I scream at the sky, feeling Revik and the man with no face, but he only smiles, and I...

...opened my eyes.

I found myself hunched in a ball on the wet top deck, freezing in a raw, cutting wind, gripping the handrail, wearing a spray-wet hoodie and jeans and combat boots. I knew the helicopter was not here yet, but it is coming. I could now feel them all around me now. I could feel them closing in on both of us.

Even as I think it, fear exploded in my chest. It wasn’t for myself.

The realization got me to my feet, got me stumbling, then running for the stairwell.

REVIK RIPPED A light fixture off the wall with his fingers. He laid his palm on the bare bulb, biting back a scream as hot glass seared his flesh. Mashing the hand against his side, he cooled it reflexively in his own blood.

The trick worked, briefly. His mind cleared.

Sliding up the wall on his good side, he regained his feet.

They’d trapped him in a floor of staterooms. He could no longer remember which floor. He’d counted twelve more infiltrators in the Barrier, plus the four he’d seen...but they could be obscuring their numbers in either direction to confuse him, and to make him hesitate. He hadn’t seen any humans since that first volley of shots. He may have inadvertently cleared this section of ship for them by pulling the fire alarm.