Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (103 page)

As I approached the edge of that centuries old territory marker, it hit me that I knew where I was going.

Well, assuming I could find it.

Of course, even if I could find it, getting there might not even help me.

I might end up trapped in a different way…or hell, drowned, if this drug ended up being stronger than I feared. I knew the flooding had been intense lately, that there was a good chance that the water would be entirely unswimmable. I could get smashed up in the debris washing down from the mountains, or I simply might not be able to reach the waterline at all.

For some reason, it was the only thing that made sense to me, though.

So I ran, all out, for the river.

33

TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

Revik had never run down stairs in the dark so quickly in his life.

Not even as a kid. Not even running from Gerwix.

The thought brought a morbid twist of humor to his light, a twist that never really turned into full-blown amusement. It didn’t even really touch the lower areas of his light, much less do much to lift the mood he couldn’t seem to crawl out of, which seemed to be gradually worsening since he’d woken up in his wife’s lap outside the City’s walls.

He welcomed the thought anyway, if only because it was one more thing to think about that wasn’t his wife.

Having an objective and a relatively short time window helped more.

It kept his mind running in straight lines, kept it off the walls closing around him the deeper he descended into that cave…kept his light focused more or less on task and on the time window he’d negotiated with Allie to do this thing.

More to the point, it helped him avoid thinking about what he’d tasted in her light…what some part of his aleimi still tugged and obsessed on and fucking
tasted,
seemingly without him having any ability to control it.

It had been really hard not to yell at her.

Really, really fucking hard.

Kneeling in front of the organic control panel of the warehouse-sized fusion generator, he glanced at his watch, knowing without looking how much time had passed.

Thirty-eight minutes, fourteen seconds…

The watch reflected the same. Looking at the watch was ritual.

Fundamentally irrational, like all rituals.

It was also a means of motivating himself to move his ass.

He was already behind. His time got fucked as early as the stairs.

He’d more or less run, full-tilt down those eight steep staircases, using his light partly to see and partly to keep his feet from missteps, scanning from higher parts of himself for more tactical purposes aboveground and deeper below.

No one had been guarding the opening.

He’d managed to move more or less invisibly across the City’s grounds too, by using various shields and light disguises and even some careful pushes…but mostly because the vast majority of the seers and human’s he’d come across had been too distracted to pay much attention to him, particularly when they couldn’t see his light. So getting to that corner of the wall by the horse paddocks hadn’t been overly rough, either.

But the staircase had been bad.

Well, worse than he’d remembered.

He’d been sweating bullets by the time he reached that seventh landing; his heart had been hammering in his chest, and not only from physical exertion. He’d been fighting the edges of a full-blown panic attack, even after detaching a good portion of his light from his body and edging further into that distance in smaller and smaller increments as his panic worsened.

Nineteen minutes, twelve seconds…

That was the full amount of time that passed before he made it to that landing, starting with where he’d left the wall and Allie.

He’d definitely miscalculated on the fucking stairs.

He’d also forgotten he’d been drunk that night. His mental timepiece had been off. Moreover, he’d had his ass kicked in the aftermath, which probably hadn’t helped in terms of his memory of those events, either.

It would take longer to climb out.

He should have asked Allie for more time for the goddamned stairs.

He couldn’t think about that now, though.

Finding the fusion generator hadn’t been hard.

Six and a half minutes…

Twenty-five minutes, forty-one seconds running count…

More time got sucked up while he tried to figure out why he couldn’t turn the damned thing on, or get any of the organic machines to talk to him despite the fact that he could feel them powered up and conscious around him. Another handful of seconds before he admitted to himself he likely wouldn’t be able to figure out what the problem was, not in time.

Twelve minutes, forty-eight seconds…

Edging damned close to that forty minute mark…

The organic wasn’t listening to a single fucking thing he’d asked it to do. It wasn’t even like the AI he’d encountered that wouldn’t let him into that sentient room. This was some kind of total fucking lockdown; like he didn’t even have access to argue with the thing, or be heard by any level of its security access protocols.

He had maybe five more minutes to screw around with it.

Six, tops. Then he had to make a decision.

He bled more of his light into the living light of the machine, using the higher levels of his aleimi that time. He wondered if he could crack the actual aleimic structure of the organic, like he’d done with that wall. There might not be manual controls for this thing though, not that he could figure out in time. Turning on a fusion reactor wasn’t exactly the same as opening a door…and Revik had no idea if killing its organic “mind” and the living components of the reactor would basically destroy the machine itself.

He couldn’t even get enough of a grip on it to hack the damned thing…

Jem could have done it.

Jem would have this thing opening like a fucking flower right now…

The thought popped into his head, bringing a flush of anger so intense he could only sit there for a few seconds, fighting to control his light.

Anyway, he had no idea if it were even true.

Even Garensche hit walls now and then, especially with some of Menlim’s toys.

Forcing Dalejem out of his mind and light, he focused back on the machine, trying to coax his way inside the morphing strands. The thing kept sliding away from him though, going from an amoeba to a more sophisticated life form, then all the way down to a near-deadline pattern that barely contained a flicker of consciousness at all.

What access would I need to discuss options?
he asked it, bleeding his Elaerian light into the living but physical parts of the panel.

Silence.

Who would you let in?
he sent, trying again.
Who are you looking for, friend?

Silence.

Request information on option to override controls with telekinesis,
he sent, just to see what it would say.
Possible damage to autonomy of living component…

When it still didn’t answer him, he exhaled in irritation.

“What if I just cracked you in half, you bitch?” he muttered, feeling his jaw harden as the animosity in his light grew hotter. “Would you talk to me then?”

That time it shocked him.

Meaning, the mechanism gave him an actual electrical shock, something physical.

The pulse came out of the floor, hitting him in the knees and his hand where he leaned on the tile. It startled him enough that he regained his feet in reflex, then stepped away.

He stood there. Panting.

Taking another step back when nothing further happened, he stopped around six feet from the generator’s open panel. The physical shock hadn’t been hard enough to cause more than a lingering dull pain in his joints. Even so, the emotional shock hadn’t worn off. He looked around at the walls and floor of the machine room, then at the green mirrored ceiling overhead before letting his eyes rest back on the darker green of the control panel.

“What the fuck?” he muttered.

Looking up, he scanned for surveillance cameras with his eyes, wondering if the shock had come from somewhere else.

He couldn’t feel any people though. Human or seer.

All he felt were organics.

He could feel organic lights seething all around him, actually. More than what his eyes could account for as he glanced around the tiled room.

Reaching out tentatively with his light, he felt over the floor before exploring a portion of the nearest wall.

It shocked him again.

Revik felt his jaw harden. He checked his watch.

Forty-four minutes, forty-one seconds…

Standing there, feeling those strands weave around his light, he knew.

Somehow he knew.

Fear slid through his light as the realization sank in, vibrating his skin.

“Fuck,” he muttered, staring at the floor.

The floor rippled a bit, as if in agreement with him.

“I am sorry,” he said, aloud to the machine. “I made a mistake.”

The machine didn’t answer him.

He knew though. He knew he was right.

This whole damned complex was connected to that thing in the room. In fact, that thing in the room
was
this complex…its brain at least. Which meant the fusion generator wasn’t going to turn on for him. That AI wasn’t going to help him melt down the core of its own goddamned fusion reactor so that he could try to kill it.

He gave himself another span of time to consider options.

Forty-six minutes, four seconds…

It would take him another twenty-five to thirty to get back to the surface from here. It could take as much as twenty more to get past the main gate. That was assuming no real problems, which might be unlikely given that the heaviest fighting between Shadow’s people and the Lao Hu had been near the Tiananmen Gate.

He had a secondary exit if he didn’t make it to the square in time. He could find his own way to the airport, meet them there within another two hours.

His light twisted in a harder knot as he thought.

He didn’t want to miss that first window. He didn’t know why; he couldn’t really justify the flush of fear that came over him at the thought. He knew it might be purely emotional, a fear reaction to his realization about the AI being connected to the reactor and the walls and floor of this room.

He didn’t much care. Nor could he untangle his own feelings well enough to know for sure the truth of his motivations.

He had about a minute to decide. One minute.

After that, the decision to go for the second exit would be made for him.

Assuming the room would let him leave.

He frowned, fighting to think, to stay rational.

The thing hadn’t tried to kill him yet. He had no concrete reason to believe it would. All he knew at this point was that the room itself…meaning the brain itself in that distant room…had once thought seriously about killing him. It hadn’t killed him though, even then.