Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (48 page)

“Where is she?” Brooks muttered.

Her eyes scanned the mostly-flat, grass-covered land leading up to the base of the Rockies. Trees broke that plain, here and there. Old trees mostly, ones that looked like they’d been there for a long time. The closer to the mountains her eyes got, the more foothills also pushed out of that flat land, causing gentle ripples covered in yellowing grasses.

She blew stray strands of her curly hair out of her face, fighting impatience.

It was cold out here. Despite the jacket she wore and the hood covering most of her head, she felt exposed. On the other hand, she hadn’t been aboveground in weeks, so she also felt strangely liberated, having escaped all but the bare bones of the Secret Service and every one of the now overly-familiar faces of those who made up her administration.

She knew she should probably be feeling a lot more than impatient.

She should probably be scared out of her damned mind.

She definitely should be wondering how she’d let herself get talked into this…a secret, low-security meeting with a known terrorist…a terrorist long-rumored to be married to one of the most historically infamous mass murderers of all time.

Even now, only one other human stood beside her out here.

By comparison, twelve seers stood around her in a protective circle. The fact that the majority of those seers supposedly worked for her didn’t really do much to assuage Brooks’ anxiety…although she didn’t feel actively in danger, either.

Then again, how would she even know?

Brooks had nothing against seers personally. She’d even befriended a few of them on her security team…and as a senator she’d fought for a relaxing of some of the harshest of the SCARB codes in D.C., an uphill battle even before Wellington was assassinated by seer terrorists. So yeah, she wasn’t anti-seer.

On the other hand, Brooks was a realist.

A lot of seers hated humans…with good reason.

Brooks knew all seers weren’t terrorists, though. Some weren’t even particularly hostile to human beings, despite the sordid history between the two races. The power imbalance there worried her, though…because again, she was a realist. Meaning, she couldn’t avoid the thought that they might have manipulated her mind to get her to come out here.

It might explain her lack of fear, too.

Brooks had known one of the seers who came to her underground quarters that day.

Talei used to be on Brooks’ Secret Service team in D.C.

Brooks remembered her well; moreover, she’d always liked her. She’d trusted her too, as much as she could trust anyone who was essentially owned by the United States Government.

Still, Brooks been shocked when Talei entered her room, saluted, then as soon as the door closed, proceeded to use an illegal headset to disable all of the room’s internal security measures. Once she had, she’d approached Brooks and began talking to her rapidly in English, after barely so much as a
how do you do?

She’d told Brooks that her presence wasn’t authorized to be inside the NORAD complex at all, that she’d snuck in with a small group of seers to offer peace terms and a potential alliance…an alliance with none other than Alyson Taylor, one of the most notorious seers alive.

Alyson Taylor, who also happened to be the seer many people blamed for the C2-77 epidemic.

As Brooks listened to Talei speak, she found herself wondering, however.

For one thing, Talei’s words in a roundabout way lent support to several suspicions Brooks herself had been harboring for some time now. Suspicions around the integrity of her own administration. Suspicions around the logistics of infrastructure failures at key points in the United States and elsewhere at the beginning of the crisis. Suspicions around the official stories about how the disease got rolled out in so many places across the globe…and of course, suspicions about the blackout cities and their seeming “preparedness.”

Essentially suspicions Brooks had, pretty much from the start, about how realistic it was that a handful of disgruntled, terrorist seers could have done all of this on their own, without major backing from key segments of the human world.

Talei told her she couldn’t trust what she’d heard about China.

She also told Brooks that Alyson Taylor’s people had been trying to feed her accurate intel for months, but that those channels were increasingly being intercepted and shut down.

Remembering the reports she’d been getting and how they seemed to come from all over the place, Brooks found herself listening a lot harder after that.

Talei told Brooks bluntly that spies lived underground at the NORAD complex with her, spies who belonged to the same group that orchestrated the plague of C2-77 and the global lockdowns. She told Brooks that those same blackout cities were now taking over entire continents, including large segments of North America, Asia and Europe, as well as the Middle East, Africa and South America, primarily using seers to control the political situation, but also using humans for labor and capital accumulation.

According to Talei, the conspiracy involved humans and seers working together from the beginning, although she admitted the conspiracy’s main architect was likely a seer. This dark seer, who Talei called “Shadow,” had been allying with humans in various ways all the way back to World War I. He’d also allied with Syrimne, at least until Syrimne decided to ally with the Bridge instead.

Some of this was a little beyond Brooks to grasp, in terms of the details.

Yet she found she didn’t disbelieve it, per se.

Some was a lot easier to comprehend.

Like Talei telling Brooks that the spies among Brooks’ own people were likely already working against her. And Talei telling her that they likely intended to kill Brooks once her immediate usefulness expired. Brooks had long suspected that there was a clear list of “allies” and “enemies” around those lock-down cities and the elite who managed to procure a coveted spot inside their protective walls. She’d also suspected that if you weren’t on the ally list, you would eventually end up on the other one.

Talei’s words supported that suspicion, too.

Those same spies, if Brooks understood Talei correctly, wanted her to threaten China with nuclear war in order to obtain some concession from the Chinese seers, the Lao Hu. Talei seemed to think a coup might be attempted there soon, either from outside or from within, but she had less information on that.

The thought was chilling…yet it resonated with a lot of what Brooks had been seeing.

As a result––and even though she knew there was some chance that highly-trained seers had implanted these beliefs in her brain––Brooks found herself agreeing to meet with Taylor informally.

Talei promised her that her mind would not be touched.

Of course, they would have said that anyway, Brooks knew.

“Where is she?” she muttered again, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the afternoon sun.

Turning, she looked at the red-eyed seer standing directly behind her, an East Indian-looking female who Talei had brought out here with her. Her skin was dark enough that Brooks might have been psychologically fooled into feeling some kinship with her in that more gut-level way, particularly given her hairstyle…but those eerie red eyes marked the differences between them with exclamation points and several underlines.

That same female seer looked somewhat familiar to Brooks too, although she couldn’t place from where exactly. Possibly one of the mixed-race SCARB teams out of D.C., since Talei introduced her as ex-SCARB, too.

Whoever she was, she seemed to be the one actually in charge. Tall and muscular with black hair done in tiny braids that hung down her back, she had those striking red-ember eyes, high cheekbones and a strangely perfect mouth.

She also wore at least six guns that Brooks could see.

“I’ll be missed,” Brooks reminded her, glancing at the other two female seers standing next to her, both of whom wore that same warrior-like demeanor. Brooks noted the guns on them too, as well as the armored clothing they wore, fighting the intimidated feeling that wanted to crawl over her chest.

“…If you are truly worried about spies within my administration, this isn’t the most inconspicuous thing we could be doing right now,” she added.

The red-eyed seer nodded, unfolding her muscular arms and planting her feet.

Turning her head towards Talei, who stood next to her but at least four inches shorter, she began gesturing fluidly with her hands, grunting something in that seer language as she did. After Talei responded in the same language, the one with the braids looked back at Brooks.

“She is on her way,” she said in accented English. Tapping her headset with one long finger, she made a strangely polite-looking inclination of her head. “She has contacted us, beloved cousin. She was held up…but she is now coming. She asks us to apologize on her behalf for being late.”

Brooks nodded, smiling stiffly.

She appreciated the seer’s efforts to put her at ease.

Still, she couldn’t remember ever seeing a seer who looked so, well…
seer
before.

Those red eyes coupled with the way she moved gave her an air of foreignness that seethed off her very skin. Standing over six feet tall with those muscular bare arms and shoulders, she was frankly terrifying. Brooks strongly suspected that went far beyond the six guns she wore and the bare bones of her physicality, both of which were intimidating enough.

It hadn’t occurred to Brooks in a long time that most seers she got exposed to had been chosen and trained specifically to mimic humans. Not just in terms of wearing contact lenses and being picked for their height or their facial features or their ability to blend into a human crowd…those deemed able to “pass” were also taught to mimic human mannerisms, gestures, walking style, clothing, language, even facial expressions.

No way could this female seer pass.

Brooks suspected no amount of contact lenses, prosthetics, Miss Manners classes or clothing choices would make her look human.

A laugh burst out, a male voice.

Brooks jumped, her eyes shifting to the right of the seer with the braids.

The giant male seer standing there snorted again in humor, nudging the red-eyed seer affectionately with his arm.

“Ain’t that the truth,” he said in much less accented English. He winked at Brooks, smiling in a friendly way as he slung his arm over the red-eyed seer’s shoulders. “And you haven’t even seen sister Chandre eat, cousin…it is a sight to behold. Truly.”

The blond seer next to him snorted.

The red-eyed one gave him a death stare, but Talei snickered, too.

Brooks fought a smile, not sure if she should risk pissing off the red-eyed seer, even if it all appeared to be all in good fun. She’d been told seer culture involved a lot of what her British friends called “taking the piss” out of one another, but she wasn’t sure if she was ready to test that with someone who looked like they could break her neck with their bare hands.

The seers chuckled at that too, which didn’t exactly put Brooks at ease.

Talei’s voice turned business-like.

“She is coming now,” the Thai-looking seer said.

Brooks followed the direction of her eyes, turning to see what looked like a high-end SUV driving fast––damned fast to the naked eye––down a dirt road on the opposite side of the asphalt service road where Brooks herself had been driven in.

“She’s requesting a private audience,” the East Indian one said next. Her dark red eyes met Brooks’ when she turned. “Is that acceptable to you, sir?”

Brooks flinched at the “sir” coming from the muscular seer, then hid a smile.

“Sure,” she said, muttering, “…It’s not like she couldn’t kill me just as easily from a hundred yards away.”

If the seers heard her sarcastic addendum, they didn’t respond.

Brooks wondered again if agreeing to this had been a huge mistake.

There was a decent chance that Alyson “The Bridge” Taylor might
actually
break her neck if Brooks didn’t say the right things in their little talk.

Or maybe push Brooks into doing something a lot worse.

Then again, Talei could have killed Brooks in her own bedroom in that underground bunker in NORAD, if that’s all they wanted. They could have pushed her from there, too––“infiltrated” her, as seers called it––without leaving the confines of the compound.