Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (97 page)

I sat with my mostly-bare legs under me on the wet grass. He still lay more or less in my lap, his face pressed against my leg. We were further in the trees than when he first fell, but not much further. I hadn’t been able to drag him far. I couldn’t take the time to do it, or risk using the telekinesis.
 

And Revik was really damned heavy.

I could feel dawn approaching, for real now.

Even so, the light hadn’t quite yet started to rise.

I could see him, though, enough that I was having trouble controlling my light.

He was a little more filled out than I remembered, like he hadn’t been running as much, or fighting as much in those past eight months. His face was bruised. It had new cuts on it, including one across his cheek that might have had stitches. I’d felt more on his neck and hairline. They were all healing but I could tell some of them had been deep. Probably not deep enough to scar, since he was a seer, but deep enough to make me wince with pain whenever my fingers grazed one of them on accident.

I could feel other injuries on him…bruised bones, more cuts. Things I couldn’t see.

“Revik…” I murmured, kissing his face. “Come on, baby…come back to me…”

I’d spent over an hour on his light already.

There was only so much I could do.

I couldn’t detach him from the network. Not yet.

A part of me wanted to so badly I almost couldn’t think rationally about it, but it would have defeated everything we were doing here, so I didn’t even let myself get very close to the different strands tying him to Menlim and the Dreng. I kept the silver light as far away from me as I could, focusing only on those higher areas of his light, the places where the Dreng and Menlim could not go. I knew they would feel me in his light anyway, but I also knew they would feel me there anyway, no matter where I was.

I tried to make it look like he was dreaming about me.

That we were dreaming about each other.

After I’d gotten the specs and checked and rechecked them, I’d mostly been looking at what they’d done to him. I did that even more carefully than I’d done the other, hidden behind one of the most intense shields I’d ever used to disguise my light. I knew it might still not be enough, but I couldn’t seem to leave him alone.

And yeah, while I couldn’t fix it yet, my light was already mapping out a plan for that, too.

I was waiting for Jem now, for Balidor and Wreg. I was waiting for Jem to get the others up to speed, to tell them what we needed now that I had the connection.

It was taking too long.

Whatever he was doing, this was taking too fucking long.

My fingers began combing through Revik’s hair again, noting another cut behind his ear, one on his hand where he held my arm…

When a voice rose abruptly in my headset.

“Alyson?”

It was loud, shocking me with its immediacy.

Not Jem. Balidor.

I heard the wonder in just that single utterance of my name, what must have been shock from what Jem had just told them. I brushed it aside, more relieved than I could feel at first that they were finally here, that we could finally do this.

I didn’t have time to field their reactions to the rest of it right now.

Not even Balidor’s…or Wreg’s.

So I just clicked into sub-vocals.

Then I launched into it.

“I’m going to assume you have everyone we need hooked into here in the next five seconds and then I’m only going to explain this once…” I said, without taking a breath.

I heard Balidor clicking his fingers sharply from the other end. A minor commotion of light and sound erupted; I felt a rush of other lights join the comm link in those same seconds.

I didn’t wait long.

“…I have the map,” I said, after a bare pause. “The real one, meaning the one Revik is actually hooked into. It’s fucking rough and it keeps shifting and Revik’s only half-conscious right now…but I think it’ll be more than enough for him to guide us through the main structure. The highest parts of his light are wide fucking awake, and that’s the part of him we need. I can translate from there…”

I took a short breath, forcing myself to get out the rest of it.

I could feel a lot of lights listening now, not only Balidor’s.

“The network seers are all here right now,” I added. “…In the City, I mean. Revik can feel them on his light…that same part of him told me that the main storage facility is here, and the only one that’s currently in operation. They have two more in process…one in Tibet, the other outside of Anchorage. A third was housed in New York under Gossett but got damaged during the last big flood. It looks like they’ve decided to abandon that one and focus on the land-locked cities…with another possible in Zurich next year.”

Taking another short breath, I added,

“You’ll need to crack the secondaries and backups when we’ve finished here, especially in the bigger cities…and of course get rid of those other storage facilities. Use the Americans on the latter part of that, if you can…”

I paused, feeling a denser pain in my heart.

“And you need to neutralize the mole,” I said. “It can’t wait any longer, ‘Dori. Have Deklan do it. But don’t fucking
hurt
her, damn it! I really don’t think she has any idea what she’s doing. She thought she’d given that book to Tarsi, not Novak––”

“Allie. About that––”

Without letting him finish, I plowed on.

“…As soon as we’re finished with the meta-network, I mean that very fucking
instant,
I want your team broken up and assigned accordingly to deal with the rest of that shit…but in terms of the main, it looks like we caught a break with Dragon’s crazy. The network pillars he killed are actually
here,
in Beijing, like I said, so between Revik and I we should be able to knock out their current bodies, too, not just the network links themselves.”

“Understood. Allie, there is––” Balidor began, but I cut him off.

“…Dragon’s not on the network grid at all according to what Revik can see,” I said, ignoring him. “Neither is Menlim. I have to assume that Menlim at least has got some tertiary link, but even if Revik can’t dig that out for us, hopefully they’ll be in free-fall once the overall structure crashes. Either way, let me and Revik handle the actual pillars. I want you to focus on the secondaries, as soon as we hit the mains. In theory at least, Menlim should be cut off from his source of light not long after we start taking them out…”

I exhaled, blowing hair out of my face.

“…I’m hoping that alone might kill him temporarily, but it may not,” I admitted. “Revik knows where the body storage facility here is located. We’ll see if we can do something about that once we’ve finished with the light work…assuming we’re successful.”

Taking another breath, I added,

“To do that we need to break the back of this fucker faster than he can rebuild it with any of his backup clones…and we need a goddamned
exit
waiting for us once we’ve done it, whether it works or not, but especially if it doesn’t. Leave at least one of your team out to arrange that for everyone in China…and to coordinate with Brooks. Tell them if the network goes, to contact Laiki of the Lao Hu…or Voi Pai herself, if they can get through. I’m hoping we can free enough of them to have real help there, but tell them to terminate contact if they sense the Lao Hu are being cagey. Revik also tells me there’s some scary-ass hyper-sentient machine here that we can’t afford to leave alive, but that’s close to the bodies, so we can probably handle that…”

“Understood,” Balidor began again. “Allie, there is something––”

“Whatever it is, I don’t care,” I cut in, my voice harder. “We’ve been out here too long. I need to get Revik out of the network as soon as I fucking can, before Menlim catches wind of this and kills him…and I can’t do that until we’ve finished here. We’re going live on this now, ‘Dori. Right now. Is your team ready?”

Balidor tensed.

I felt it through the line, right before he let it go.

“We are ready,” he said.

“Good,” I said, taking a full breath for the first time. “Wait for the first one to go down, then you’re up. Work
fast,
goddamn it. As fast as you can. This isn’t going to be like the Pyramid Galaith put together…this fucking thing needs to be yanked down all at once, so we’re going to hit the mains almost simultaneously. There can’t be any fucking mistakes on this, ‘Dor. None at all. I’m starting now…”

I didn’t wait for him to acknowledge that time.

I didn’t want for him to say anything.

I didn’t even try to feel which of them was with me, although Jem’s light shone brighter in the background, warming me with his.

I didn’t let myself think about that, either.

Instead, for the first time in what felt like months…really, since I’d last seen Revik in the tank before we got off the ship…I opened my light.

Like…
really
opened it.

As I did, I heard Revik gasp, right before he gripped me in his arms.

President Brooks frowned at the virtual transmitter.

Behind her, she could hear a group of the highest-ranked military commanders left in the United States muttering in a tense circle with Osake, the ranking officer of the human SCARB unit still operating out of the East Coast.

Most of those military leaders were from her Joint Chiefs of Staff, which explained in part why they were alive and not dead from the disease; they’d been pulled into protective custody at the same time she had.

The nearest of them stood about ten feet behind her. Even so, she knew without looking that despite the steady murmurs, they were listening to every word of her current conversation. She didn’t have to eavesdrop to have a pretty good idea of what they thought of it, either.

Hell, she wasn’t even sure she disagreed.

Fighting not to let their stares or murmurings distract her, she focused back on the comm.

“What do you mean she’s ‘not available’?” Brooks said, letting her voice turn cold. “Tell the Esteemed Bridge that she is now approximately
four hours
past the deadline we agreed upon in relation to Dragon. If she is in Beijing as you say, then she’d damned well better
make
herself available, or she’s likely to find herself in a very serious situation…”

The seer on the other end of the line grew increasingly uncomfortable.

It didn’t help that the male’s English wasn’t very good.

In fact, Brooks had to struggle to even understand him.

What had he said his name was? Jack? Jackie?

“Jax,” the seer said. “With all respect, Madam President, all respect…it is impossible this thing…now, it is not good. But she knows you and she knows she still adheres to objectives as you said. This is important now. Much so, and if you wait, we can speak of this, if––”

“Is she aware that Dragon has been spotted in Beijing?” Brooks said.

She gritted her teeth at the silence at her question, fighting to hold onto her civility at the other’s stilted and overly-soothing words.

“…This very morning,” she added. “Dragon was caught on surveillance flyers, just outside the City’s walls,” she said. “Tell your Esteemed Bridge that…”

“Much respect, Madam, but the most holy Bridge cannot right now do this with you. If you can just wait, some more minutes, all will be––”