Allie's War Season Three (180 page)

REVIK GLANCED UP at the second explosion.

His light already felt taut as a bowstring, focused somewhere high above his head. He’d been watching the progress of his telekinetic structures healing for weeks now, pretty much from the moment he came back to consciousness on that floor in Argentina. He’d seen signs of improvement, flickers of awareness, even parts of his structure he could move and flex, now that a few weeks had passed.

But the changes had been painfully slow....beyond incremental.

Staring up at the ceiling, Revik felt his heart pound in his chest, even as he tried again to reach Allie and couldn't. He felt something interfering with the construct, too, something that reminded him of that difference Allie had noticed when they first returned to New York...that feeling of a wider construct over the city itself.

How could he have stayed here with his wife, knowing the whole damned city might be under the control of Shadow? Why hadn’t he moved her, even before he knew?

He should have insisted she stay next to him, even for this.

It was ridiculous for them to stay joined at the hip all of the time, of course...except, well, a part of him didn’t really think it was all that ridiculous. He’d been struggling to give her any space at all for the past few days...really, truthfully, since they got onto that plane in Argentina. He’d woken her deliberately when he got up, coaxed her into the shower with him, coaxed her down to meals, pulled her into his work and his day-to-day routine in ways he never had before. He knew he’d been driving her crazy, although she’d been a good sport about that, too.

She’d been a good sport even without knowing what was up with him.

He hadn’t even really connected the dots around his protectiveness in terms of logic. His mind could do it in retrospect, of course, reminding himself of the intelligence leaks they’d caught already, the likelihood that Shadow had more people here. More than Dorje. More than one more than Dorje...at least one at a fairly high level...maybe more than one.

If this was a hit on her, they'd definitely want him out of the way.

He had almost no doubt that it was a hit on her.

He threw himself against the door, fighting to keep his light under control, fighting to keep from losing his shit altogether. Remembering Ditrini’s words, he felt a kind of cold shock hit his aleimi as he paced the small cell, trying again to get past the organic shields with his light.

He barely paid attention to Maygar, who watched him warily from one side of the small cell.

He didn’t look at Jon, either, who stood on the other side of the same cell. Jon had gotten stuck inside the locked door, too, after having come down here to bring him up to the conference rooms after he’d already escorted Allie.

In fact, whoever had eyes into the construct must have been waiting for Jon to arrive. Once Jon entered, and closed the door behind him, there had barely been a second’s delay when that door abruptly locked from the outside controls.

Revik had been surprised to see Jon down here, actually.

He’d since ceased to care about that, too. All he could think about now was Allie, finding Allie, getting her out.

He found himself reminded of that time on the cruise ship, when Terian's people managed to separate him from her by locking him in that residential corridor on deck five.

Remembering that didn't exactly help, though.

He'd been Terian's prisoner for months after that, after they shot him down like a dog with stunners and darts. He’d been gone long enough that Allie had been convinced he was dead and had gone after Galaith alone.

She'd also very nearly started dating his own son.

Almost as if he’d heard him, Maygar spoke to him again.

“What the fuck is going on?” he said. Frustration leaked into his voice. “Rook, talk to me!”

Revik’s eyes scanned the walls as he fought to think.

“Rook!” Maygar snapped. “Take off this fucking collar, okay? Unchain me...let me help...”

Revik ignored him.

Forcing Maygar and emotion and whatever else out of his mind, Revik fought to ignite the structures in his aleimi again. Somewhere in the back of his mind, and despite his outward calm, he knew he was beyond panic already. He was beyond fear even. He might have been to the point where he couldn't think much at all, but instead he’d flatlined, gone into a place of pure logic, where the world around him felt faintly unreal, yet the view grew sharper than glass. Tremors had lingered and lived in his light for weeks now...pretty much since the time it first occurred to him to question what the changes in Allie's aleimi might mean.

Now, those tremors gave him an almost crystalline focus, even as they made it difficult to stop himself from physically trying to tear down the door.

Even before the alarms went off, he'd felt it. Something.

He should have acted, opened the doors, but he wasn’t masochistic enough to not realize it had already likely been too late, even then. His eyes glowed as he stared at the one-way mirror, conscious that Allie no longer sat on the other side of it.

It had happened fast.

It had happened pretty much as soon as Jon opened the door and came inside the cell with him and Maygar. The door closed, and then...

But no, even before then. Jon told him that his headset hadn't been working. He told him that he'd been unable to raise Revik on the loudspeaker from the security booth, either. He’d come to the door to speak to him in person...

So someone wanted Jon in here with him.

Jon and him, together. Maybe Maygar, too.

His mind tried to fit the three of them together like puzzle pieces, looking for the view behind it. Why leave Maygar with him, only to yank him now, before he could do much of anything with him? Before he could even begin to teach him anything?

Why Jon? Why now?

Glancing at his brother-in-law, it hit Revik suddenly that Cass was behind this. Allie had probably figured that out by now, as well. Maybe she and Wreg would even be on their way down here, guns blazing.

He wanted the thought to reassure him, but instead all he could think about was the fact that his wife was pregnant, that even if she wasn’t being loaded, blindfolded, into the back of a truck right now, she’d be walking into a trap trying to save him. A trap that Shadow had likely set, that Shadow would want the baby, probably more than he wanted either Allie or himself. It also hit Revik that some part of him had already agreed with Allie's assessment of who Shadow really was. If Menlim was backing Cass in this move then he would have set up the extraction with multiple goals in mind.

Lock down Revik. Take Allie and the baby.

Hell, maybe take Maygar, too, if he could get Revik along with him...maybe even Wreg, if Menlim thought he had a chance of converting him back to his side.

He could want Jon for that purpose. Maybe that’s why they hadn’t killed Jon already. Maybe they meant to kill Jon in Argentina, then saw the preliminary bond with Wreg and didn’t. Jon could be leverage. Or they might want him as a crossover. If they broke him mind, they could set him up as a puppet in his Displacement role, or use Wreg against him. Convert him.

Revik’s mind fought to make sense of it, of what move resonated with what he felt now. He could scarcely think past the emotions that wanted to war around the different possibilities.

Anyway, at a certain level, Shadow’s motives almost felt irrelevant now. This felt like distraction. Avoiding the facts that stared him in the face...or at least what they meant.

Allie would be blind. She’d be totally helpless, even with the telekinesis.

The idea of Menlim having Allie stopped his mind a second time.

Whoever this Shadow was, he clearly blamed Allie for Revik’s own refusal to play ball, too. Either that, or Shadow wanted them to believe that...but neither scenario comforted Revik, in terms of how it would likely play out with Allie herself.

Forcing that out of his thoughts as well, he returned to the facts, ignoring the other two men entirely. Fact, the hotel had been breached in force, likely before the explosions. With the block on the room, Revik hadn't managed to get very close to where they'd entered, but he got a whisper of it being underground, which was maybe a shaky fact number two...and which probably meant they were closer to him and Jon than Allie at this point.

They were cut off from the hotel's security construct, fact three, and all of their headsets were inoperable, fact four.

Fact five, he couldn't reach the Barrier proper at all, and hadn't tried after his first few cautious feels around the wall that separated them from the outside. He hadn't felt the Barrier dump from the alarms, either. He could only hope that Wreg, Yumi and Balidor had, from the higher floors.

In any case, getting further intel from outside of the interrogation room was probably out, which might have been fact six, or simply a compendium of facts one through five.

Revik had already felt a warning pulse that told him not to attempt to break through whatever shield surrounded them by force. After Argentina he might have been cautious anyway, but now he was acutely aware of not doing anything that might take him out of the fight. He didn't know what was going on yet, but he could feel the Barrier wall. He knew they were locked in somehow, too, and not only physically.

That was fact number seven. He'd already tried the door. He’d tried cracking the lock with his mind, but Balidor built these locks.

Even Revik couldn’t get through without the telekinesis.

For the first time, he felt calm enough to glance at Jon, who looked equally grim.

Jon also looked at Revik himself somewhat cautiously, which reminded Revik again that his eyes were glowing. He motioned Jon behind him with a few hand gestures, putting himself between the human and the door.

Then, remembering, he glanced at Maygar, even as Jon complied.

The younger, more Chinese-looking seer remained silent after his last outburst. Whatever gripes he might have had with either of the other two men in the room, apparently he felt the current situation warranted putting the majority of his shit on hold. Moreover, Revik could feel that Maygar knew the score, too, in terms of what was likely happening. He could sense the tension around the younger seer's light without even reaching out.

More than tension. Terror vibrated Maygar's light, strong enough that he tried to hide it, even wearing the collar.

A faint pain came to Revik's chest as he looked at him.

He should take off the collar. Cut it off him, if he could. But he didn’t have any tools, and he hadn’t been the one to put it on the young seer. Security protocols insured they didn’t bring anything like that into a cell, not for an interrogation.

No weapons, either.

Still, this was a low-security set-up. He could get past the first part, and he knew it. Pushing that aside briefly, Revik tried again to feel around the edges of the Barrier wall that encased the three of them. As he did, however, he found his mind couldn’t let go of Maygar entirely. Maybe that was distraction, too, but a more useful one, perhaps.

He found himself remembering the more detailed statements he'd gotten off the medical techs relating to Maygar's physical condition. Based on marks they'd found on his body and his light, they had a pretty good idea of what he’d been forced to endure during his few months' stay in Argentina. They'd beaten him with blunt objects, scanned him, pulled his light apart, electrocuted him, burned him, broken his ribs and fingers, deprived him of sleep, starved him, subjected him to several forms of water torture...

After another second of hesitation, Revik walked over to him.

Triggering his headset, he was relieved to find it still worked inside the cell, at least. He sent a series of commands once he verified it was operational. After a few minutes of working with the creatures in the organic security system, he persuaded them to unlock the chains around Maygar's wrists and ankles. As soon as the locks had fallen open, he used the headset again to release the collar from around his neck.

He didn't have time to worry about Maygar turning on them. Truthfully, he also couldn't bring himself to leave him defenseless, even if he was a security risk.

The young seer may have been surprised, but that surprise appeared as scarcely a flicker on his face. Then he averted his gaze, giving Revik a short, almost reluctant nod of thanks. Revik watched him briefly as Maygar rubbed his wrists with his newly-freed hands, pulling the collar carefully off his own neck. He tossed it down on the cot once he got the strands unwrapped from around his spinal column.