Allie's War Season Three (5 page)

Vash told me to trust those impulses, at least when I could.

He seemed to think they came from the Bridge nature in me, taking over from the regular, more ordinary person of Allie Taylor. He also seemed to think it was good that part of me was becoming more prominent...even, at times, dominant, compared to the rest of me.

Anyway, it was Balidor's own fault we were going in this way. If I'd thought I had a prayer of talking him or Wreg into coming with us based purely on my dreams and things Feigran had told me, I would have included the Adhipan and the ex-rebels in my plans, too.

But, watching Revik, I had to wonder if that was true, either.

I hadn't really wanted to include the others, if I was really being honest with myself.

Another click came from the mechanism in the door.

I felt that one more than heard it. Revik glanced at me, giving me a slight grin before he turned the handle. Seeing the look on my face, he paused, and I realized he felt more in my light. For the barest instant, I saw him let it in, saw his expression soften.

I nudged his shoulder with my hand, harder than necessary.

"Cut it out," I whispered. "Not you, too."

He averted his eyes, but I saw color rise to his cheeks. Taking my wrist, he pulled me carefully through the doorway behind him. Then he stopped, and I felt his light roving up and down the stairs, taking in details systematically. I was close enough to him now that I felt him do it; he let me in when he noticed, wanting me to see everything, too, to make sure he didn't miss anything.

He found the camera on the next landing before I did, though.

"You do that one," he said, soft.

I felt my nerves jump a little. Thinking then, I nodded.

He hid behind the teaching thing sometimes. I knew it was partly to avoid dealing with me directly. That was fine with me; it allowed me to chill a little on my end, too. Focusing on the camera located where his light pointed, I gradually loosened my hold on the telekinesis. The more I learned about how to use it, the more I found that using it was less about
trying
to use it and more about letting it do what it wanted to do anyway. There was an art to relaxing my normal holding back...as well as aiming that force at something specific.

The main problem was not letting it go too far.

Even as I thought it, there was a loud cracking sound from the landing above, a miniature explosion. I winced, pulling back my light, even as I glanced up at Revik.

Clicking softly, he smiled, shaking his head.

"Too loud," he said, unnecessarily.

I didn't answer, but followed him when he began climbing the stairs. When we reached the landing with the camera, Revik pointed. The glass wasn't just cracked, like it had been when Revik broke that camera in the garage...it was gone completely. A pile of glass shards stood on the floor. The remaining glass had melted into rounded shapes around the camera, which itself had been melted into an unrecognizable lump of dark green metal with a cracked, black-scorched lens. It crouched flush against the back wall, looking like a giant had squeezed it inside thick fingers, popping it like a grape.

Revik snickered. Then he raised his wrist, snapping an image of the still-smoking remains with the image-capturing device built into his organic watch. When I smacked his arm, he laughed louder, although still lower than a whisper.

"Funny," I told him.

It was hard to be annoyed though. He was smiling too much.

"Laugh it up," I said, smiling back, even as I smacked him again. "Don't think I won't remember this, though...or that I won't start carrying around a camera of my own..."

"Shhh," he said. He covered my mouth with one hand, still fighting back laughter. "...Quiet, wife. We're working."

"Then work," I retorted, fighting not to react to the affectionate way he'd used the moniker. I pushed his hand off my mouth, motioning him up the stairs with an exaggerated flourish. "Make fun of me on your own time...you work for me tonight, remember?"

Giving an exaggerated version of the respectful salute to my formal title as the Bridge, he continued to smile at me, his clear eyes holding that glint of mischievous humor.

We walked up the next few flights of stairs before I found a second camera. It was also hidden behind a one-way segment of wall, disguised to be invisible to anyone relying only on their physical eyes. Revik motioned for me to take that one as well. When I sighed in exasperation, he nudged me playfully on the shoulder.

"You need the practice."

"Not in a field op, I don't!"

"It's low risk," he said. He nudged me again, his voice faintly coaxing. "I'll handle whatever we run into upstairs. Promise."

Sighing in defeat, I focused on the camera above. That time, the explosion was quieter.

Even so, Revik grinned at me when my eyes clicked back into focus.

"What?" I whispered. "It was better!"

Chuckling, he took my wrist in his fingers again, leading me upstairs. Even I had to admit, the second camera didn't look much better than the first one had. It was also on fire. But the glass had mostly melted that time, so less of it covered the floor.

Revik took a picture of that one, too.

"Really?" I said. "This is how you get your jollies, now?"

He started to answer, then looked up, his face suddenly stripped of humor. His eyes sharpened, growing concentrated as he scanned something he'd felt overhead. Before I could ask, his irises clicked back into focus.

"Come on," he said. His voice held a faint urgency now.

"Did they notice the feeds being out?"

He shook his head, once, still walking with me up the stairs, now taking two at a time. Both of us were moving faster now, and quieter, but I had to hurry to keep up with his longer strides.

"Motion detectors," he said, low.

"I thought you neutralized those before?"

"Not mechanical. Seer. Aleimic scans."

"The shield's not holding?"

"It is. They haven't felt us. But they felt the cameras go..." He glanced at me. "They'll probably think it's an electrical problem at first. Still, they'll send someone down to look..."

He glanced up the stairwell. I felt his light flicker over the next camera, right before it snuffed the mechanism out. He did it soundlessly, and when we reached that landing, I didn't even see a crack in the outside glass.

"Show off," I muttered.

He spared me a grin, but his eyes remained serious. Not quite worried, but definitely focused, and I could feel him in several different places now above our heads. I felt that charge in his aleimi, too...even through his fingers where he held me lightly with one hand.

We were close now. I felt it. I'd been counting floors, too, but the feeling created a kind of tremor through my light.

He stopped outside the correct door, and now he wanted me well behind him, and behind the wall, out of sight when he opened the door. He positioned me firmly on the stairs just above where he stood before his hand went to the locking mechanism to the right of the steel-plated panel. He glanced at me, his eyes sharp once more.

"They'll feel this," he reminded me. "Stay behind me, Allie."

"I will."

"Don't follow until I say it's all right."

"I won't."

"Promise me."

I'd been staring at the lock, ready to watch him open it, but his tone made me look up. That time, I saw a faint worry in his eyes. Before I could say anything, he leaned towards me, kissing me on the mouth. It was a brief kiss, but the first he'd given me in months...and a lot lay behind it. Enough that it stunned me temporarily, stopping my breath even as I clutched at him. He pulled away a heartbeat later, his hand still over the door lock, his body tense, his light sparking in strange arcs over his head.

"Promise me, Allie," he said, his voice firm, still holding a faint worry. "Promise you'll let me handle this...please."

I nodded, swallowing tautly at the look in his eyes. Woven into the worry was a love even I could feel.

"I promise."

"You'll do what I say?"

"I will," I said, trying to reassure him. "We agreed. You're in charge."

His face relaxed, but only a little. "We've agreed this before," he muttered.

I knew he worried about that part of me that could be a bit of a loose cannon, the part that Vash included in his definition of my 'Bridge nature.' Even as far back as the ship, Revik had seen that part of me do things that were more than a little risky...at times, seemingly without my actually
deciding
to do them, at least in the usual sense.

Whatever misgivings he had about me, however, he seemed to shove aside, even as I felt him make up his mind.

He focused back on the door.

It seemed like he only looked at it an instant before I felt his light shift.

He didn't wait that time...nor conduct scans to make sure the alarms disengaged, like we'd done below. We both knew they'd be engaged up here. No way existed to turn the alarms off without alerting the whole building. Even so, time seemed to slow when I felt his light unfurl. I watched it filter through the mechanics of the lock, draw the combination out of the mechanism itself. Right before he finished, he looked at me a last time, his eyes the color of green glass.

Stay here,
he sent, his thoughts openly warning.

His mind changed, emptied down to the bare minimum, business-only. It held nothing of what I'd felt in him seconds before. A sudden rush of fear hit my light. I pulled it back before he might feel it, but I could tell by looking at him that it wouldn't matter, not anymore. The cloak falling over him grew abruptly dense. Feeling the Revik I knew slip from my grasp, I felt a different thread of nerves as he disappeared behind it.

He was Syrimne again.

It occurred to me to wonder if maybe I was playing with fire, letting him come with me on this jaunt. It also occurred to me he'd nearly lost his soul using these same abilities, more than once. But it was too late to second-guess any of that, too.

I heard the click.

...Then the alarm exploded overhead.

2

MACHINE

A GUNSHOT EXPLODED through the doorway.

It echoed past him into the stairwell, louder than the alarm.

Revik dropped, firing before his knees finished bending. Both happened faster than my eyes could follow, but my light wrapped so tightly in his that I felt every movement, seemingly in a stretched space of time. I recognized the grid that fell down over his light, watched him use his aleimi to aim even as he squeezed off four or five rounds in quick succession.

It occurred to me I had crouched down, too, and that the gun from my thigh holster now lived in my hand. Revik's body swiveled. He squeezed off three more rounds in the opposite direction down the hallway outside the door.

A second guard had joined the first...both human, my mind told me belatedly.

The gunfire paused. If two seconds counts as a pause.

I breathed hard through it, still hunkered down a few feet from where Revik crouched. I remained so entwined in his energy I didn't dare move, either in or out of the Barrier. He glanced at me, and I felt the prod in my light. Before I could catch my breath, we left the doorway, entering the bank's upper-level office suite on the tenth floor.