Allie's War Season Three (9 page)

Wreg and Jax exchanged looks.

Jon heard the frustration leak into his own voice. "Am I the only one who's noticed how weird the two of them have been acting lately?"

At this, Wreg's expression relaxed. Looking back down at the cards in his hand, he chuckled a little, only pausing to exchange meaningful looks with Jax, whose face showed the same understanding.

Jax shook his head, clicking softly.

"You sure they didn't go somewhere to be alone, cousin?" he said a beat later, laying down a card of his own on top of Wreg's. "...Brother Syrimne hasn't exactly been hiding his discomfort in that area...not from anyone with sight, anyway." Glancing at Wreg, Jax exchanged another smile with the older seer. "Hell, I'm surprised he's lasted this long. I had money on him breaking down before the plane landed in New York..."

"I was expecting that too, brother," Wreg affirmed, still not looking up. "I guess the open construct made him shy..."

Jax grinned.
"Gaos
above. He
has
changed then."

Wreg grunted in acknowledgement.

Jon felt his jaw harden. "I'm telling you, you might want to look at the news."

"What is this thing on the news?" Wreg said, gesturing with his fingers with a frown, his voice dismissive once more. He still wouldn't look Jon in the face, which Jon was beginning to find extremely annoying for some reason.

It didn't occur to him until then that the two of them had been drinking.

Clenching his jaw in irritation, Jon walked up to the couch, snatching the remote off the cushion behind Jax's shoulder. Raising the small device, Jon aimed it at the corner of the screen, tapping in the feed address he'd been watching in his own room.

Instantly, sound exploded out of the monitor's speakers.

It was loud enough to make both Wreg and Jax jump. Both of their heads swiveled towards the wall where a female avatar spoke loudly to be heard over the sound of wailing sirens, clutching her headset to one ear as she fought her way through what looked like a growing crowd. In the background, the avatars of law enforcement personnel ran towards a skyscraper with smoke pouring out of the broken, mirrored windows facing the street.

Most of the police Jon could see wore SWAT-type outfits and carried automatic rifles as they entered through the smoking hole in the floor-to-ceiling, organic panes. Organic glass covered the sidewalk and metal girders had melted out of the lower level of the building in odd, curling shapes, making it pretty clear that the explosion had come from within.

"What the fuck is this?" Wreg said, staring up.

The seer winced against the sound when the sirens grew louder, clicking his fingers at Jon to turn the volume down with the remote. Jon did so even as the woman's words grew audible over the sound of glass crashing to the pavement, along with the more high-pitched alarms from inside the building meshing with the wailing of the emergency vehicles.

Jon found himself listening to the female reporter's words.

"...Here we are with the chief of internal security for Heinrichter Global Bank, Greg Anders, who is telling us that the attack is still underway, despite the effectiveness of their state of the art, counter-terrorism defense system in place..." The avatar smiled at the man identified as Greg Anders in the floating caption, her avatar teeth showing up shockingly white against the darkness of the background. "...Can you tell us more about what is happening inside, Greg?"

Another avatar-protected face appeared above dark clothing that morphed around an obviously modified virtual body. The avatar even had lines of soot on its face, approximating where they probably appeared on the man's actual skin.

"Sure, Tracy," he said, and his scrambled voice sounded tired. "...The number of assailants is unknown at this time. It is believed that we killed at least two just now, by activating a brand new, anti-terrorism device we recently installed on the lower floors. The system was meant to act as a last line of defense against attacks of this kind..." The man placed thick, virtual hands on his waist, clearing his throat. "...Unfortunately, in this case, it may not have been necessary. The security teams are telling us that there continues to be at least one other group of suspects on the higher floors where the bank's corporate offices are housed. We have reason to believe that this area is where the real assault is being conducted...that the corporation itself is the target. The supposed 'bank robbery' happening on the first floor was likely a diversion meant to draw our teams away from the terrorists' real aims..."

"What makes you so sure, Greg?" Tracy asked, leaning closer to him as the sirens wailed louder in the background again.

The man smiled grimly.

"Well," he said with a sigh. "We happen to know that at least two highly-trained seers were hired for this job. Seers like that don't usually bother robbing banks..."

"And why is that?" Tracy pressed. At his flat look, she smiled encouragingly. "...For our audience, Greg. Could you explain
why
a seer wouldn't rob a bank? After all, the vast majority of them are impoverished, isn't that right?"

Greg nodded, his expression clearing. "Look...the only reason seers don't rob us blind on a daily basis is because, for the most part, we have containment around their abilities, and through the controls instituted under the Human Rights Act and SCARB. Seers
can
be impoverished on a certain level, it's true...but a seer who is well-sponsored isn't going to starve to death, believe me, Tracy. They're
way
too valuable to whomever owns the rights to their sight capabilities. Most of them live pretty damned well, truth be told...a lot better than their human counterparts in many parts of the world..."

At Tracy's smile and encouraging nod, he jerked a thumb towards the bank, folding his arms over his chest.

"But in reality, Tracy, a highly trained seer who's not under the protection and control of a legal human sponsor doesn't need to rob a bank to get the money in it. An uncollared seer could simply walk up to a bank teller and convince her that he has six million in his account and that it's totally reasonable that he is moving that money to another, offshore account at a different bank...or even get the whole wad in cash and walk out the front door with it. Seers don't
need
to steal from us...not like that." The avatar's smile turned harder. "That's why we collar, 'em, Tracy. One of the many reasons, really..."

Tracy smiled again, her eyes wide and encouraging still.

Jon didn't glance at Wreg or Jax to note their reactions to the man's words. He pretty much knew what that reaction would be, without needing to confirm it with a visual.

"So do you suspect human sponsors behind this attack, as well?" Tracy asked brightly, once more holding a microphone to to the man's face.

The security chief's avatar shrugged its broad shoulders, but its somewhat cartoonish face held a grimmer expression.

"No, Tracy, we have reason to believe seers alone are behind this."

"And why is that?" she pressed, leaning closer as another group of military-clad personnel jogged past.

"Look," he said, rubbing his face with an avatar hand. "I don't want to say too much yet...but we've got reason to believe one or more of the known telekinetics is involved. Which means seer terrorism...not humans looking for a payday..."

Jon glanced at Wreg that time, raising an eyebrow pointedly.

Wreg didn't hold his gaze for more than a few seconds.

By the time Jon looked back at the monitor, the man on the feeds was already pointing them to another image, one that enlarged on the screen as he spoke.

"...See here, we have a positive ID on that one. We got it off one of our older-model cameras, in the stairwell next to one of the executive suites..."

"Non-organic, he means," Wreg grunted in irritation.

Jon knew what Wreg meant.

Organics seemed to be everywhere these days, despite the ban on commercial production and ownership of the living machines. The news feeds acted like the law still meant something, but anyone working at a corporate level above the mailroom, or anyone who had any connection whatsoever to the military or military contracts, knew what a joke that was.

The machines were proliferating, and at an alarming rate.

Jon forgot all of this, however, as the image from the non-organic camera sharpened into focus. He felt his shoulders stiffen the instant he could make out the two forms.

One had their back to the camera.

That one was smaller, shorter, and definitely female.

The other stood a foot taller, was broad-shouldered and definitely male. He faced the camera just about directly. Jon saw a complex array of emotions on Revik's face as he leaned up to kiss the woman standing on the stairs above him, his eyes closing briefly as he lingered. She clutched at him in the kiss, her long, dark hair up in a braided ponytail, wearing the same kind of organic-armored pants and boots as he did, along with an ankle-length black jacket in a style Jon recognized from armored clothing storage under the hotel's lobby.

There was no sound, but Jon saw Revik's lips move briefly as he spoke to her, right before he was holding his hand over the locking mechanism by the door.

Jon heard Wreg curse, and glanced at him.

He'd spoken that language he used sometimes when he was upset. Jon still wasn't sure what language that was exactly, but Allie told him once that she was pretty sure it was Mongolian. In any case, the muscular and tattooed seer was standing now, and had his thick arms crossed over his chest from where he frowned at the wall-mounted monitor.

Jax was standing too, Jon noticed, but his expression was closer to bewildered.

Wreg's held a knowing that bordered on irritation.

Jon glanced back at the monitor right as the door from the stairwell into the suite opened. The shooting began pretty much at once. Revik had already crouched in the entryway before Jon saw him move, and Allie's knees bent as his did. She had her gun out too, although she wasn't firing...instead, she seemed to be hiding behind the wall.

Seconds later, Revik stepped out into the room beyond the stairwell, motioning to her...

...when suddenly a much louder sound shook the monitor's speakers, causing all three men to flinch away from the wall.

At first, Jon thought it was something that had been recorded by the camera in that stairwell...then he realized the sound had come back on through the live feeds. The past recording from the stairwell had been silent.

"What
di'lanlente a guete
was that?" Jax said, staring open-mouthed at the wall.

Before either Jon or Wreg could answer, a woman's face filled the screen.

It struck Jon at first that something was wrong with her avatar. Then he realized in shock that she wasn't
wearing
her avatar. For most newscasters, that was the equivalent of delivering the news stark naked. She'd either forgotten to activate it prior to going live, or else had accidentally
de
-activated it...Jon didn't know which. Either way, her face, looking significantly older, less smooth and wrinkle-free, nearly filled the monitor as she spoke in a low, panicked voice. It struck Jon that the falsetto purr the woman used previously had been completely fictitious as well.

"...Interrupting our interview to bring you a real-time event, occurring at the lower levels of the bank as we speak..."

Her voice fuzzed out briefly, then returned, stronger than before.

"...At least two seers, from what security can tell us at this time," she said, still breathless, her voice a bit deeper. "They've broken into the private security boxes of some of the bank's top clients. When security began to close in..."

Another burst of static obliterated her face.

Jon could see the building shaking behind her, and glass raining down on the sidewalk from windows shattering on the upper floors.

The woman's voice grew into a near-shout.

"...Appear to be attempting escape by blowing a hole in the wall of the vault itself. We've been told by security that the walls down there are over five feet thick and poured of concrete reinforced with steel and military-grade shielding..."

Jon had time to think he actually liked her real voice a good deal more than the fake one, when another explosion behind her turned both her image and voice into static.

That time, instead of her face, they got an emergency broadcast signal. The two-dimensional symbol jerked a few times, then went to a clean-looking newsroom with a long desk where four avatar-clad humans sat facing one another and arguing. They seemed unaware of the interruption in signal, and continued talking loudly and over one another about the probable motive of the terrorists in attacking the bank.