14
GRADUATION
HE STANDS OVERLOOKING a long field dotted with hills, surrounded by mountains.
A river winds down there, but that is not what draws his eyes. It is the humans he feels, more humans than his eyes can track, although their movements are clumsy by seer standards, obvious in terms of their tactics...and their attempts to conceal their numbers. Still, he sees them moving with military skill, here and there...and a few brighter lights live within that gray. He can feel what is coming, what vibrates their light. He has not yet seen his first battle, but the promise of it runs adrenaline under his skin until he is trembling slightly, unable to stand still.
He is to remain concealed for this fight.
The others who trained under Menlim will fight on that field, but not he. He can no longer see or feel any of the other seers with whom he has been running exercises for months, albeit in a different set of hills, in a wetter countryside far to the north.
The old man alone fills the empty space beside him, a silent specter hovering as he gazes down on the same unfolding scene under the stars. Both watch, silent, as the humans' numbers gradually increase, filling the fields below. The younger seer feels the old man watching him, expectant, perhaps even wary of what he might do, but for the first time he can remember, he doesn’t feel intimidated, or afraid.
A difference lives there, somewhere.
Some change in identity and purpose that allows for a real effort to understand. More than simply understand...to be better. To push himself in ways he never contemplated pushing himself before. To be a different kind of being entirely.
He wants to learn now. He spends every spare minute practicing. He dreams about practicing, about exercises he might try...things he might do with his light if he pushed it into more and more subtle gradations. Pushing humans, even fighting hand-to-hand...all of that has lost interest for him now. It is shadow-play, distraction...nothing more. It bores him because it no longer taxes any part of him he values.
He is no longer able to pretend it is enough.
As he thinks of that, the woman drifts into his mind.
He frowns, remembering her face the night before, the eagerness in her light as she looked at him. But she doesn’t see him...no more than any of the worms see him. That's not enough for him anymore, either...even now, when his conquests no longer require him to use his light.
He wants more. He wants something real.
His mind and eyes return to the reason he is here; his concentration sharpens. He is not content now, to simply do as he is told. He fights to understand every structure that lives within his light, to find new ways to combine those structures, to get them to work together. He reads the old texts, trying to find hints and knowledge between their words.
And sometimes, to try and discern how much longer he might have to wait for her.
He throws himself into his work, looking for anything that might force him to improve, to push his limits. He practices even when the old man is not around...he practices whenever he is not forced to other duties, such as the increasingly strenuous military training he’s also now receiving from the seers and humans in his uncle’s employ.
He’s exhausted now; he barely sleeps. He runs on adrenaline and purpose, and a kind of fevered hope that if he accomplishes what he is here to do, if he succeeds in this thing, then she will find him all the faster...
But now...a test.
The first test. The first real one.
He is nervous. He stands on the grass, wearing a dark shirt and dark pants, just enough in the shadow of nearby trees that he won’t be visible from the valley below.
His uncle is still speaking inside his mind, but he only half-hears the words.
...This is a demonstration only, nephew, the old seer sends softly. We have no stake in who wins the wars the worms wage against one another...we have only to help them go where they already desire to go. To do that, we must seem to align with those who most need us...who are desperate enough to think us their allies...
Nenzi’s eyes held still on the field below. He gestures in assent to the other's words.
He has heard all of this before of course, but it still provides a kind of background comfort, a story with which he can frame what he is about to do.
It is an exercise. Like any experimental weapon, he must be tested.
...As a result, it would be expedient that we gain the attention of the Austro-Hungarian forces, his uncle adds softly. ...and win their favor through something suitably dramatic, for which they have no reasonable explanation. We wish for the patronage of this group of humans at the outset...if only so they can aid us in weakening some of their rival human powers. In particular, we mustn't underestimate the threat of Russia to the east. They cannot fight this bear, not if they are divided, and forced to fight in the south, as well...
The younger seer nods again, gesturing his understanding, but he is not really listening.
His own concerns are more immediate, and more personal.
How will I know when it is right? he asks. I cannot see all of them...
When the two armies are about to meet, the time is right, his uncle responds easily. Just as we discussed. Just begin as close to that point as you are able to reasonably estimate...
What if I cannot control it?
His uncle only looks at him, his dark amber eyes glittering faintly.
“Does it matter all that much, nephew?” the seer says aloud, in old-tongue Prexci.
Looking up at him, the other swallows. After another pause, he shakes his head, clicking a little to himself with nerves.
“No,” he answers in the same language. “It does not.”
“Then begin, nephew. When you are ready.”
Nenzi’s eyes return to the field beside a river. Under the moonlight, he sees the humans massing from either side, moving swiftly but surely across the uneven ground. Some look ready to dig into defensive positions, readying themselves for the onslaught from the north, but his eyes remain with those in the rear, who carry the ammunition and the fuel. He focuses on guns, on other areas they discussed him using to target, even as he begins to feel for the different places he needs in his light, the structures he will use above his head.
Then, he feels it.
A shift in the air, as a command is given, somewhere below.
He watches the lines begin to converge...
And then he is inside his light.
A symphony erupts over his head, that now-familiar feeling of an almost sensual loss of control. The folding starts then, and he feels it like the unclenching of a fist he’s held so tightly he’s forgotten the reason for its grip. He fights to hold onto the map that seethes through his light, telling him where he must aim those flames, what to do with them once they are free...but then there is that merging into everything, into light and air and other living flames...and the vibration of living things, swimming around him, lifts him out of his body altogether until he is lost in the world of meaning in those shifting particles...
A kind of collapse occurs, between himself and the rest of the world. His heart opens in the same breath...and then he feels them, all around him...
The light of the worms, rolling into and between the guns they carry, the clothes they wear, the trees they hide behind, the earth on which they stand. He feels them there, a sea of heart and striving and need, and he wants so badly to give them what they want, to reunite them with the light from which they were born...
Pain slides through him, but it’s almost that of love, a kind of repressed grief he can barely feel in its entirety. He slides through them, and the practicing he’s done, the training he evokes, it only helps him pull back a little...and then, not for very long, not for more than a breath or two before it explodes out of him again, a wave of heat that he uses to try to connect with them, to connect with all of them, to liberate them, give them the peace they so desperately want...
Tears are running down his face as he directs the course of that folding arc.
He feels bones crack, ammunition light up, and he’s already moving out of the rear lines, and into the mass of them...the sounds are those of a stage play, not real, only incidental. He feels their confusion, their fear as their comrades fall around them, as he twists spines, breaks necks, stops hearts. He tries to ease their suffering, even in this, annihilating their fear by extinguishing their lights before it can fully blossom...
He sets them free.
He moves into the other side of the line without thought. There are no borders that make sense here, no uniforms, no sense of justice that either side can claim...
He continues through the sides until he is lost, and time disappears...
When he comes to, the sky is lightening, but it is cold.
He feels pain in his head, a throbbing in his light and heart he doesn’t recognize, even as his limbs tremble from lack of light. No...not lack of light, from new light, supplied from somewhere else. He doesn’t know its source, feels half-sick from the amount of it. His aleimic structure bears the influx, reluctantly, but it leaves him off-balance, dizzy and unable to focus.
The light doesn't feel like his own, not yet anyway.
He hears laughter, foreign and loud-sounding in his ears.
Voices echo from nearby, and they are loud with sound, boisterous in emotion. He can hear drink in the cadence of their words, the clink of bottles or glasses and what sounds like utensils scraping the bottom of metal dishes.
He tries to remember how he got here, finds his mind shifting backwards, moving into the darkness behind his eyes, until he feels...
“Hey! The runt is finally awake!”
A strong laugh brings his eyes upward. A face hangs over his, dark eyes and a heavy mouth crossed lightly by an age-white scar. The Chinese-looking seer looks down at him, holding the curtain to a bunk that he realizes only then had cut him off from the rest of the room. The older seer grips the fabric in one hand and stares down at Nenzi with a bleary and at least partially drunken grin.
He understands now, at least, where he is.
He is back in the tents, with his unit.
Fighting to keep his eyes open, he holds up a hand to shield them from the light. Remembering who he is to them, he forces his voice lower, into a surly cadence that is matched only by the obscene hand gesture he gives the older seer in the pause.
“Fuck off,” he says, to emphasize the point. “Leave the curtain closed, will you?”
“Do you intend to sleep for the next two days, little Nenz?”
“I will if I want,” he says back, his voice close to petulant. “What the hell did you give me, anyway? Or did you just bash me on the head when I wasn’t looking, to keep me out of the fight?”
“Give you?” Wreg laughs, but that time, a harder edge touches his voice. “You knocked yourself out in the first hour of battle, runt. Jonas barely dragged you out before the Hungarians mistook you for a Serb and shot you just for the hell of it. They had to house you in here, like an old woman, while the rest of us fought in your stead...”
His smile widens then, turns more genuine. The next words that come from him seem to come from another man almost, bursting out of his lips in his excitement.
“You missed it, my young brother!” he says, clasping Nenzi’s shoulder. “You missed seeing Syrimne wipe the dirt with their human asses!”
“I missed...what?”
“Syrimne, my brother! You missed seeing our Syrimne take on the humans and teach them what it means to fight our people!”
“Were they fighting our people?” Nenzi asks dryly. “I thought they were trying to kill one another, brother Wreg. This hardly seems like a victory for us...”
“It may have started that way, but they know exactly who they are dealing with now, runt! You can be assured of that!”
Nenzi battles to sit up, forcing his arms under his shoulders.
At once, his head starts pounding again, until it feels as though the pulses might splinter his skull. Reaching up, he feels the bandage someone has wrapped around his forehead, and the stickiness of blood in a lump at the back of his skull.
“What are you drinking, Wreg?” he says. “Whatever it is, spare me a glass, won’t you?”
“Did your uncle not tell you? Syrimne was to do his first test on this day...”
“He mentioned it, yes.”
“Mentioned it?” Wreg says in disbelief. “And did he ‘mention,’ you little prick, that our intermediary single-handedly ended the battle of Cer in under an hour’s time? That he did it before the humans themselves had managed to exchange more than a dozen shots between them?” He grins wider, as if unable to help himself sharing the news, even with a young seer he dislikes. “...Did he tell you that, runt? Did he?”
Nenzi forces his eyes up. He blinks into the light once more, wincing against the pain. That part, at least, he doesn’t have to fake.
“Did you see him?” he asks only. “Syrimne. Did you see what he looked like, Wreg?”
“Only from a distance, my young brother.”
“And what did he look like?” Nenzi says. “From that distance?”
“He was older than you...and younger than me,” Wreg replies. “He had dark skin, and looked Asian to me...only with light brown hair. I could see little else, at the distance...”
“He sounds like a fairytale,” Nenzi says, his voice a grumble.
“A fairytale? That fairytale killed almost 60,000 humans today, and in under an hour...”
“60,000...?” Nenzi stares up at him at this, not able to hide his bewilderment. “Sixty thousand...? That number cannot be correct. How is that even possible?”
“He is Syrimne d’Gaos...that is how it is possible!”
“But the Serbs,” Nenzi says. “They barely had that many in troops...”
“He did not only kill Serbs, my young friend.” Wreg smiles, obviously enjoying the reaction he has finally managed to wrestle from him. “He started with the Serbs...but then he moved into the lines of the Austro-Hungarian army, once he had decimated most of their enemy. Both sides were running before they knew what was going on. We intercepted calls for surrender from the military leaders of both armies...almost within minutes of one another!”
Wreg’s eyes shine now with a kind of fevered light.
“...I have never seen anything like it, brother Nenzi,” he says, raising his hand in the signal of an oath. “No seer on that field has ever seen anything like it. The day of the human is over! Our slavery is over! They will not dare to imprison and rape and torture our people anymore, not with Syrimne there to stop them!”
But Nenzi cannot answer. He stares at the floor under his feet, his mind lost in a haze of moving particles and half-remembered light. He fights it out of his aleimi, keeping the cloak around him that his uncle has instructed him to wear around the other seers. He knows there is a good chance that they will discover his identity eventually...but his uncle is adamant that he remain anonymous for as long as it is remotely possible to do so.
So he only nods at Wreg’s words, frowning.
“Can I have that drink, brother Wreg?” he asks then.
The other seer smiles, grabbing his arm. The mood of celebration is infectious in the small tent, but Nenzi cannot help but be bewildered by it all, lost in the triumph he feels in the lights of the other seers. They hand him a bottle, which turns out to be from the Austrians, and open it for him before he has managed to focus his eyes on the fire they have burning under the hole at the center of the tent’s roof.
Later that morning, there is singing. Nenzi can only watch, smiling a little as they begin to howl like wolves and sing off-key the old traditional songs that he only just remembers from his childhood. It pleases him, to see them like this...flying on adrenaline and regained hope...even if he cannot fully share it with them. He listens instead with a kind of wonder, unable to feel the freedom they feel, or the triumph...or even any real sense of accomplishment.
Instead he watches them, more pleased that he has pleased them than the reasons for their laughing and their affection with one another.
As he does, he thinks to himself about the flaws in what he has done, the loss of control...
But he can’t yet force himself to dwell on that, either.
So he simply sits there, by the fire, his head bandaged as he listens to them laugh and exchange stories of what they saw, and he can’t quite believe they are speaking about him.
STILL BLEARY-EYED, fighting exhaustion, I listened to Balidor with a barely-suppressed frustration. Biting my lip, I met his gaze, keeping my voice as even as I could.
“I understand all of that,” I said, when he paused long enough to take a breath. “But I want you to untie him...to take the chains off at least.” I motioned at the tank. “He’d be collared still...he’d still be locked inside. I just want you to let him move around like a person...not some kind of animal we have tied to a tree.”
The older seer looked at me, his gray eyes faintly incredulous.
“Do you even know your mate, Allie?”
I felt my jaw harden. Looking at him, then at the man on the other side of the transparent organic pane, I folded my arms.
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning...absolutely not,” the Adhipan leader said. “I don’t even like having him in there with the same chain configuration for as long as we have. To have his hands and legs unsecured, even in a locked room...it is completely out of the question, Allie. Completely.” He looked at me with flat eyes. “You should know this by now. You should take your sentimentality out of this, and look at who he is...”
“But he’s better now,” I said, fighting to keep my anger down. “You said so yourself!”
“He has not attempted to rape you lately, it is true,” he said, emphasizing the word a little harder than necessary. “...But I would hardly consider that fact alone a measure of his overall stability. And in any case, he is a prisoner, and prisoners, by nature, attempt to get free.”
“He’s through the worst of it. He shouldn’t even be a prisoner for much longer...”
“Through the worst of it?” Balidor gave me another of those incredulous looks. “Allie. What makes you think he will get through this at all?” When I felt my fingers curl into fists under my arms, he caught hold of one of my hands, looking me in the face. “You have gotten him to feel some of these things, it is true...it is making him different, we have all seen it. But Alyson, you still have absolutely no idea what he is going to do with this information...”
“Do with this information?” I said.
“Yes,” he said, emphatic. “Do you think any of what he is seeing is significantly more palatable now than it was back then? He will need to determine some way to exist past this point...or not. You have no idea what he will do...”
Tugging on my hand, he softened his expression. Somehow his empathy threw me more than his anger, maybe because I was tired enough to let it in. Or maybe because I was so used to him angry these days that when the anger vanished, I didn't know how to fight him.
“Allie, he could eat a bullet when this is over,” he said, his voice soft. “He could go fanatical religious again, like he did in the past...he could decide he needs a few more decades in snow caves.” His eyes hardened to a faint steel. “...Or he could decide everything that happened to him and everything he did was fate...that his uncle was right, all along. He could go back to being bent on avenging the seer race...only this time, do it with a greater sense of logic and purpose...”
“Or he could decide to just deal with it, ‘Dori.”
“Meaning what? Go away, live in the mountains somewhere? Resume his daily penance ritual for the next four hundred years? You do not know what you are saying, Alyson...you have never had to face a life debt of this kind! The truth is, you have no idea what he will do to incorporate this information...assuming he can incorporate it...”
I shook my head at him, biting my lip.
“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t. Because he could also decide to let us help him. He could decide to let Vash help him, and Tarsi. He could decide to try and leave all of that other crap behind, and just be who he is now...”
“Which is what, exactly?” Balidor said.
“My husband,” I felt my face tighten at the pitying look that rose to his face. “...And more to the point, The Sword, Balidor...Syrimne d’Gaos! You talk like a human, as though that name were synonymous for evil, but it’s not. We could use him, ‘Dori. In fact...” I swallowed, looking back at the tank before I faced 'Dori again. “...We need him.”
“We need him?”
“I need him,” I said, giving him a warning look. “...And so do you, whether you’ll admit it or not. We can’t do this without him.”
Seeing the anger returning to his expression, I lowered my voice, stepping closer.
“I know you think this is all personal for me, ‘Dori...and I get that, I really do. It is personal for me, but that’s not all of it. When I say we need him, I don’t just mean the old Revik, the guy I married. I mean the real guy, Syrimne d’Gaos...we need all of him.”
When the Adhipan leader only clicked at me, giving me a level stare that told me exactly what he thought of that idea, I flung out a hand in frustration.
“‘Dori...think about it! We have thousands of seers out there, newly released from camps with nowhere to go. We have the Lao Hu holding rebels and members of the Seven hostage, and Voi Pai on some kick to take control over all remaining seers...maybe even to use them to take out China’s competition in the human world. We have a disease that kills humans, that no one seems to be able to find. Seertown is rubble. We still haven’t found half the seer children who were supposed to be hidden in the mountains. The Pamir is a disorganized mess with most of the Adhipan gone. We’ve got Black Arrow and the traders getting ready to strike back at us, and America is still a quasi-military zone with more than half of its seers in concentration camps. Hell...there are probably a dozen other things I’m not even aware of! Are you seriously going to look at me right now, and tell me we don’t need him?”
“He is a walking time bomb, Allie,” Balidor said. “He always will be.”
“He won’t always be! Damn it, ‘Dori...have a little faith in him. And a little respect. He’s been through more than most seers would even survive. And that’s the guy we need, ‘Dori...”
Balidor just looked at me. For once, though, I saw past the shield I normally couldn’t see much past, the near-armor he habitually wore around his light. I saw the seer who was over 500 years old, who had watched history unfold in different ways throughout that time. I saw the military man in him, the one who tracked Revik all over Germany and Eastern Europe, the one who still saw him as quarry, as something to be eliminated. I saw the defender of the Council, who saw his charge as fighting the Dreng from the light of his fellow seers, even if that meant killing them...or dying himself. And I saw the man I'd known briefly in those tunnels under Seertown, the one who'd given me back to Revik for a chance at taking down the Rebellion and hated himself for it. The one who blamed himself for everything that had happened between us since...the one who was still trying to protect me, even now.
I saw all of this in his light, and when he spoke, I almost heard it in his voice.
“Do you seriously want to risk thinking along these lines?”
“I can’t afford not to!”
“Alyson...” he began, clicking tiredly.
“Balidor.” I clasped his arm, and he looked at me, meeting my gaze directly. Swallowing at the expression in his eyes, I relaxed my hold on him, stepping back.
“Look,” I said. “I know why you feel this way, I do. But I’m telling you...we need him. And he can beat this. I know he can. We just have to give him more time...”
He continued to hold my gaze, his gray eyes holding more now, a kind of frustrated empathy along with a more personal reaction I could almost feel.
“I know you want to believe it, Allie,” he said. “I know how badly you want to believe it. Unfortunately, that is the part that worries me...”
“Dori’,” I began, frustrated.
Another voice broke in before I could finish.
“Hey, guys?” Jon looked between us, his hazel eyes faintly worried above the hard line of his mouth. He stood by Dorje over the security console, one arm folded over his chest while his other hand pointed down at something on one of the smaller organic screens.
“I hate to break up the weekly ‘fight about Revik’ ritual,” he added. “...But maybe you could come over here, take a look at this...”
After a faint pause where I bit my lip, I gave Balidor another glance, then walked over to where Jon stood.
“What?” I said.
“That,” he said simply, pointing. A transcript was scrolling down the screen in black script over a pale gray background.
Leaning over him, Balidor and I read the words, Balidor voicing them aloud.
“...in addition to inviting them to stay as guests, as a sign of my continued goodwill towards the Esteemed Bridge, as well as my fealty to her and her husband, Syrimne d’Gaos...I have asked them to remain in the Imperial Suites until such time that I can hear the substance of the Esteemed Bridge’s request for transfer of the rebel traitors and following my obligation to apologize to my lords and intermediaries in person...”
Balidor looked up at Jon, his eyes holding a faint puzzlement. “Is this from the Chinese?”
Jon nodded, his mouth still grim. “Voi Pai’s emissary. Keep reading.”
I picked up roughly where Balidor had left off.
“...I also greatly desire to know more of the work that is occurring in the West, related to a weapon that I had been heretofore told was only under development by the American warlords and their servants. I have since learned that operatives working under your name have taken it upon themselves to destroy the main stores of this organism...after procuring samples with which to threaten our human hosts. As all of our people were privy to a demonstration of the power of this weapon in Hong Kong, I wish to know what your intention is with this sample of the disease, and what your intended response to the American warlords will be, when speaking to them of our mutual interests in noninterference with the larger population of the world's humans...”
I looked up at the two of them in bewilderment, before returning my eyes to the screen.
“...I am told that you lost a brother in this operation, as well...for that you have my genuine condolences. It is possible I can help you to exact revenge for this brutal transgression, particularly if I were to receive adequate assurance that my host families are not intended targets for this weapon you now are in sole possession of, and further, that you only procured a sample as a means of insurance against threat from personal harm and to further the goal of peace among all of our peoples. Although I recognize that the Bridge does not concern herself naturally with regional or factional differences among our brethren, much less our cousins, I would expect some concessions in this matter, as it clearly transcends a simple dispute over borders or economic rights to individual states and could bring about an untimely start to the war that all of us are intent on guiding to its highest evolutionary potential since Her arrival among us...”
I looked up again, trailing on that last line.
“Do either of you know what the hell she’s talking about?”
Balidor shook his head, gesturing ‘no’ in seer in the same beat.
Still, I saw something in his eyes that made me pause.
"'Dori?" I said. "Do you know anything about the op she's talking about?"
"No." Meeting my gaze, and then Jon's he frowned, pursing his lips. "...Not exactly. I did have an operative looking for the disease in the States. It's possible she found it. I didn't authorize destruction of the disease...but I would have, most certainly."
"Would this operative have taken a sample of the disease?" I asked, hearing my voice sharpen a little.
He hesitated again, then shrugged with one hand. "Possibly. Again, I didn't authorize it, but I can see the sense in it." He met my gaze. "An antidote could be developed, for one."
I felt something in my shoulders relax. "So Voi Pai might be right. We might have the only sample of this disease..."
"Possibly."
I felt my fingers tighten again. "Do you trust them?" I said. "This operative?"
He met my gaze directly, his eyes holding a faint guilt. "It's Chandre."
It took another few seconds for this information to penetrate. "What?"
Again, Balidor shrugged with one hand. "She's been working for me. I couldn't tell you before..."
Jon burst out into a laugh, even as I shook my head, unsure if I should laugh like Jon, or hit Balidor in the face.
"So she's been with you, this whole time?"
"Well..." Balidor glanced at Jon, then at Dorje, before looking back at me. His expression remained uncomfortable. "...Yes."
"And she might have a sample of this disease?"
"I will try to contact her..." Balidor's eyes were scanning the text again though, running over it with his eyes. "...I don't have another operative on this now, though," he added. "And she is specific that it is a 'brother' of ours who was killed..."
"Who do you think it is?"
He shrugged, one handed. "Possibly someone Chandre aligned with. Someone she was working with, to look for the disease...?"
"Uh, guys?" Jon broke in, pointing at the top of the message. "Did you miss this part? On top? Not only has refused your request for negotiation on the rebels without an in-person audience...but she's holding Cass and Baguen captive...”
I frowned, re-reading the transcript. “She’s holding Cass prisoner? Are you sure?”
Balidor also pointed to the relevant lines of text. “It says right here they are being held as ‘guests.’ You don’t suppose Cass decided to simply remain in the Forbidden City, perhaps to relax for a few weeks, while you complete your work with your husband?”
My frown deepened. "Jeez," I muttered. "I must be tired. How long have they been there?"
“You have to get her out of there, Al,” Jon said, looking at me.
My eyes rose to his. Before I could answer, Balidor spoke up, gesturing more strongly in the negative.
“Out of the question,” he said. “For multiple reasons. There are about a hundred bounty hunters out there looking for you, for one..."
Jon gave him a disbelieving look. "It's Cass, Balidor."
"I don't care who it is." Turning from Jon, Balidor looked at me, a complete lack of compromise in his gray eyes. "You're not going anywhere. Not until we’ve stabilized your mate.”
I looked at him. “I’ll have to go there, sooner or later.”
“Perhaps,” he conceded. “But we’ve discussed this, Allie. The bounties on you are astronomical right now. There's also the question of Wreg...and the rest of the rebels. Once we’ve stabilized Dehgoies, fine, we’ll go. In fact, we can all go. But, Allie...” His eyes flickered up, meeting mine grimly.
“...You can’t leave here and expect to come back. You can’t. The second you pop up on the grid anywhere, you will definitely be tracked. That means no more tank...which means no longer will we be able to shield Dehgoies from the Dreng, either. That will bring the Rebels here, in days, I would imagine, if not hours...as well as anyone out there looking to collect on those bounties. This message went out through our main channels. That means there’s a good chance that anyone watching the Adhipan...anyone looking for you...might also have picked it up...”
“She can’t just leave Cass there, Balidor!” Jon said, exasperated. “We have no idea how long it will take for this thing to play out with Revik...”
“No,” I said, giving both of them warning looks. “I can’t leave her there, not for that long.” I turned my eyes to Jon then. “...But Balidor is right, too, Jon. I can’t just show up there, wearing my ‘I am the Bridge’ T-shirt. We need to negotiate a safe way to settle this. If Voi Pai won’t do that for some reason...”
Balidor finished the thought for me.
“...Then we can assume Voi Pai is colluding with one or more of the bounty hunters,” he said. “Or worse, that she has no intention of giving up the Rebels, and intends to declare war on us once they are trained as members of the Lao Hu...”
“So what about Cass?” Jon repeated, looking between us.
I sighed, folding my arms.
Exhaling, I glanced into the tank, looking at Revik. He was asleep, lying on his back on the pallet I’d had set up for him in the past week. His bare feet faced towards the window, one of his arms lay on his stomach while he cushioned his head with the other. I watched his chest rise and fall, his face taut as he slept.
“She wouldn’t mess with him,” I mused, barely aware I’d spoken aloud. “She’d never admit it, but she’s afraid of him...I saw it when he came to get me that time.”
“No, Allie,” Balidor said.
When I turned to look at him, his eyes were flat.
“Allie,” he said. “Even you must admit...it is too soon for that. He’s not ready. Not for something like that. You’re talking about a military exercise...”
Jon spoke up next to him. “He’s right, Al. That’s not a good plan...not now.”
Sighing, I looked back at the tank, refolding my arms.
“Yeah.” I sighed again, suddenly feeling more tired than I’d felt in weeks. “Yeah...I know. Just wishful thinking.”
Pulling out of where my head wanted to go, I forced myself to snap back, to level out my light. Once I had, I looked at Balidor.
“Get the Adhipan on it,” I said. “I want scenarios...at least two...in the next 24 hours. And get ahold of Chan. Find out if she's really got a sample of that disease...and where she is, if so. If what Voi Pai claims is true, I want her in a safe location as soon as possible. Send some people over there, and to get her out of the country. We might be able to use the disease as a bargaining chip with the rebels, assuming Voi Pai intends to let them go at all..." I hesitated, then added, "...And see if you can find out who got killed. Voi Pai seems to think I knew him, whoever it was. We’ll regroup after my next session, come up with a response...”
“Allie,” Jon said. “Aren’t you going to get some sleep first?” He glanced at Revik, then back at me. “You just got out of there...”
“I’ll sleep in a few hours,” I told him. “It’s easier to go in when he’s sleeping. He fights me when he’s awake...he doesn’t mean to a lot of the time, not anymore, but he can’t help himself. I don’t want to miss an opportunity...”
“You’re exhausted,” Balidor said.
I turned to look at him, hearing the seriousness in his tone. I found him appraising me with narrow eyes, scanning my light. A pulse of worry left him in the same instant, even as I felt him kicking himself for not having noticed before.
“Allie,” he said. “You cannot continue at this pace. You will break yourself, before you break him...”
“I’m all right,” I told him, waving it off dismissively.
At Balidor and Jon’s exchanged glances, I clicked at them a little.
“...I’m all right,” I said, sharper. “I mean it. I’ll sleep tonight.”
“It is three a.m. now,” Balidor said.
“Then I’ll sleep in the morning.”
They were still looking at one another when I turned back towards the door, walking up to it and keying in the combination that lived in the security side of the construct, where it changed at random intervals from five seconds to every thirty minutes.
Neither of them spoke again as I unlocked the hatch, stepping through the door and closing it behind me. But I heard the seal catch as one of them must have swung the wheel shut on the other side, re-locking the mechanism that kept the Barrier seal in place.
I did my best not to make a sound as I crossed the long, green, organic-paneled room, and when I laid down on the pallet next to his, I didn’t touch him. He didn’t seem to move where he lay, either, but I felt his light envelop mine in a pale cloud, exuding that same, faint pulse of relief it always did when I rejoined him inside the tank.
Even so, I felt a twinge of...something...as I settled on my back. I didn’t dwell on it though; I closed my eyes, willing the Barrier to pull me back into that other place.
In any case, it didn’t slow my fall.