17

SCHOOL

 

REVIK STOOD BEFORE me, his height outlined in stars.

The night sky propelled me through its virtual folds, reconstructed in exacting miniature. I extended a hand to one of the fist-sized flames, feeling its warmth, wondering at the detail in the illusion.

“Where do you get these toys?” I said wonderingly.

Seer tech, he sent. “Are you ready?”

I nodded, gripping his shirt because it somehow helped with the illusion of flying.

Do not leave me, he warned. ...Not even a little, Allie.

Control freak. I smiled, tugging on his shirt to get him to smile back. “We’re just looking this time, right? A little psychic tom-peepery?” Feeling him hesitate, I shooed him with my free hand. “I won’t leave you.” I crossed my heart, saw his eyes follow my fingers. “Promise.”

“In Prexci, Allie.”

Thinking briefly, I switched languages. “I vow it!”

He continued to look doubtful.

I had asked for this.

We’d been eating breakfast the morning after that night on the balcony. We were halfway through plates of eggs and toast and ham when I reminded him of what he’d agreed to the night before. Instead of hesitating, or seeming disappointed, as I’d more than half-expected, he nodded at once, as if he’d been thinking about it.

First, though, he asked me what I wanted to learn.

“Everything,” I said, taking a bite of toast.

He smiled. “I’m not sure I can accommodate that—”

“Tracking,” I said. “Can you teach me that?”

A light sparked in his eyes. “Yes.” He leaned closer to me. “Where do you want to start?”

“Who ordered the hit on my mom?”

His pale eyes had immediately flattened, returning to the dull cold of an infiltrator’s eyes. He leaned back in his chair.

I got up when he didn’t speak, found a pen in the drawer of the inbuilt cabinet under the wall screen as I grabbed a sheet of the ship’s stationary. Plopping the paper down on the table in front of him, I bent over where he sat, sketching an outline of the Pyramid from memory. I took a few minutes, delineating the nodes that I’d seen change places, marking tiers I’d seen, too.

Revik watched me draw, shifting slightly in his seat, his arms crossed.

I circled the man sitting on top.

“Him. He’s the guy, right? Who is that?”

Revik met my gaze from less than a foot away. I could tell he was grudgingly impressed, but I wasn’t sure by what. He wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin, fingering the glass of juice by his plate. He gave a short laugh.

“D’ gaos, Alyson.” His pale eyes flickered up. “The best trackers in the Adhipan can’t answer that question. If you want to learn how to track, start with something small, something you have a connection to. These things go in stages...”

“So you won’t help me?”

His eyes narrowed. “Did you hear what I said?”

“I heard you. It’s just that I really think I—”

“Alyson!” He gave another short laugh. “No!”

“But how is it different from tracking anyone else?” I persisted, leaning my palms on the table. “Personal connection, right? Or a connection to something that’s connected to him? How hard can that be? I met that Terian guy...and you two were friends, right? And aren’t there, like...a million Rooks? You must still be connected to a few of them.”

He stared at me, his eyes horrified, bemused...even a little wary.

Pushing me gently aside with one arm, he stood and picked up his plate, placing it on the room service tray, stacking it on mine with the covers.

“I’ll teach you tracking,” he said after another pause. “But you’re going to have to do it my way.” He glanced over his shoulder, surprising me by smiling. “...As far as the ‘everything’ request, I have some ideas. How open are you?”

Open, as it happened.

Partly to distract both of us, and partly because he had too much time on his hands—he was type A with a capital “A,” I was learning—Revik made me his project. I knew he wasn’t telling me everything in terms of his reasons, but then, after our little talk that morning, neither was I.

He pushed me to learn not one, but several languages, mainly the seer tongue, Prexci, and basic Mandarin. He also wanted me to learn Russian, Hindi and Sanskrit, but apparently wasn’t enough of a masochist to start me on those until I’d made some headway with the other two.

He lectured me on seer history, politics, culture, mythology, biology, law...especially law; he was big on law.

He obtained recordings for when he might be absent or asleep, covering subjects like the entire Sark Codes, a sort of bible for his people. He described the evolution of controls following the death of Syrimne, the only documented telekinetic seer...and let’s just say, Revik’s version differed substantially from what I’d learned in school. He explained how laws for seers under the Human Protection Act evolved to include mandatory registration, travel, employment and residency restrictions, forced implantation, sight slavery and how Seer Containment, or SCARB, grew out of a branch of the World Court.

He tested me, trying to gauge what I could do with my light. He didn’t pull any punches, either, pronouncing me worthless at blocking and not much better at reading, what he called “the basics.” He said my concentration had to improve about a hundredfold before I could do anything in the Barrier alone.

To teach me blocking, he’d taken to hitting out at me with his light when I wasn’t expecting it. A few times, he caught me off guard enough...and hit me hard enough...that I got a nosebleed, like he had in the car.

He also obtained permission to have Eliah, one of the Seven’s Guard, teach me mulei, the seer martial art. When I asked why he couldn’t just teach me himself, he mumbled something about how he wasn’t allowed. I heard the word “penance” muttered somewhere in that speech, but he didn’t explain to me what it meant.

The Seven’s Guard kept regular passengers and crew out of our part of the ship, which also meant seers performed all housekeeping and food delivery. They stripped one of the larger rooms of furniture to make an exercise arena where Eliah could train me in sparring, too. The sparring itself was damned hard—seers had faster reflexes, better hearing and vision, more intolerance to pain because they could detach their light from their physical bodies, and they mixed sight skills in with their physical fighting.

So basically, no matter how much I absorbed, I earned new bruises daily.

Revik taught me “normal” things, too.

Before I was fully awake that morning, he sat on the end of the bed, explaining semi-organic machines to me, and the basics on how they worked. Laying Barrier images over virtual, he also showed me the primary theoretical models or “breeds” of living machine. He explained how they arose from Barrier experiments by seers during that brief period of integration with humans in the early twentieth century, and how seers were banned from scientific research in the forties partly because a handful of renegade seers took to “persuading” the more intelligent organics to turn on their human masters.

He said Syrimne basically invented the wires, too, while experimenting with ways to both enhance and control seer powers using organics and semi-organics.

I’d never heard that version of history before, either.

Some of what Revik taught me was blatantly illegal.

Like how to break keypads and access locked computer networks, pulling passwords and bypassing firewalls with my sight. How to avoid racial tagging systems and blood monitors as well as closed-circuit cameras and other security surveillance. How and when to push humans into giving me things I needed. How to feel facial recognition software and other external scans with my aleimi, and how to fool a DNA, fingerprint or iris scanner into a false positive for human, or a false negative on an ID by my DNA, if I was wanted by SCARB or Interpol.

Others were relatively benign.

Like how to greet strange seers and the rules on asking other seers for help. Legal loopholes such as when and how to claim clan status to avoid certain searches and seizures. Etiquette in seer temples and homes. How to act towards older seers, especially family members or any other category of seer to whom respect or deference was owed.

Revik informed me I would get a new identity and a clan tattoo once we made it to Asia. The Seven would reclassify a dead seer with my stats, and presto...Alyson May Taylor would cease to exist.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Revik further explained how I could claim proportional citizenship if they set me up with a human sponsor. Meaning, if I gave up some rights of movement and association, including sexual rights, depending on the contract, I would get limited citizenship rights proportionally related to the contractual agreements with whomever I worked.

“Your world is terrifying,” I told him.

“We didn’t make it so,” was his response. He paused then, thinking. “Well. Mostly.”

He went on to explain that contractual citizenship was just one way humans pressured seers to work for the military and in other quasi-legal occupations. Civilian contracts could only grant rudimentary rights...rights which generally didn’t include travel or association beyond specified categories...”entertainment,” including prostitution, being one of those most easily granted.

The military offered, among other things, nearly unlimited freedom of movement when not on the job, coupled with moderate rights of association without the need to sell sex.

Not surprisingly, a big market for seer contracts also existed in organized crime syndicates. But, Revik noted wryly, the life spans of those seers tended to be shorter, and Rooks dominated that market almost exclusively. Even the mafia didn’t make a habit of killing seers indiscriminately, however; trained seers with high sight-ranks were far too valuable.

Seer mafias existed as well, according to Revik, mainly dealing in seer children and organic material, including blood.

I got flickers as he spoke, glimpses of Asian seers on donkeys, leading dirty, barefoot children with dark eyes across the snow, metal collars around their necks like those I’d seen on the prostitutes and other owned seers in San Francisco.

He’d also mentioned casually,

...Even if you are able to legally change identity, you should know that Sark females like you are not legally sentient to the seers, either. If your race were made public by the Council, I would officially be your owner. And if I forbid it, you cannot consent.

We’d been eating on the balcony, and he paused at this, taking a bite of apple as he waved his hand vaguely.

It can be good for us, for they cannot lie and say you have consented where duress was involved. Providing you trust me with this, of course.

I’d stared at that particular mouthful, not sure where to begin.

“Not sentient?” I said. “As in lacks sentience?”

He’d shrugged. “It is a legal fiction, to require ownership.”

“But why females, exactly?” I’d said.

“Not females,” he said, looking at me. You misunderstand. These laws are to control seers with telekinetic powers.

That took me another few seconds to process. Even so, I had to admit it made sense, given the Syrimne thing.

Finally, I shrugged. “So I’m a different race now?”

Revik had startled me, gesturing in the affirmative.

“Well,” he amended, glancing at my expression. “Not really...your blood is somewhat different, but other seers have this genetic anomaly who are not telekinetic. You can reproduce with us...as far as I know.”

He hesitated, looking up at me where I stood by the balcony. He seemed to pick up on the fact that I knew he wasn’t telling me something.

He added, Telekinesis is believed to be at least partly genetic...so with females it could potentially be passed to offspring. It makes you very valuable, Alyson, and in a way that is more real to those who may not care about your significance as the Bridge. It is unclear to me how superstitious some of the higher ranking Rooks are. Although it is believed that Galaith himself is religious...

“Galaith? That’s their leader, right?”

“Yes.” At my continued stare, his colorless eyes had grown impatient. “You must have known they would have recorded what you did in the diner...with Jon. You have no one to blame but yourself, Allie.”

But I’d been remembering something else. The bridge over Lake Washington. The way the guardrail seemed to fold into itself just before we hit. It occurred to me that I must have done that, too...and that the Rooks chasing us must have seen me do it.

When I glanced at him next, Revik’s stare had grown irritated once more. More than that, I got a flavor of angry puzzlement underneath.

“Allie,” he said. “You should not have done that...not while they had access to your light. That was extremely foolish.”

“Excuse me,” I said, giving an outraged laugh. “I believe I saved your ass during that little screw up...Dehgoies.”

“Never do it again,” he said. The anger grew more prominent in his eyes. “Not for me or anyone else. I mean it, Allie.”

Feeling my anger turn real, he clicked at me sharply.

...Whatever story the human media gives, be sure that if the Rooks know you are telekinetic, then SCARB knows what you are, as well. Even if we change your identity to the humans, the seers will want assurances that you will remain docile. And some will want to breed you...consensually or not.

“Docile?” I said, barely containing my fury. “Breed me?”

Focusing back on his food, Revik shrugged, rearranging a cloth napkin on his lap as he looked out over the sunlit ocean.

“We’ll deal with it when we have to. You have protection for now. Vash will do his best...as will I.” He didn’t look up from where he was cutting a piece of meat.

“I won’t leave you in a bad position,” he added, gruff. “And I’m sorry if I seem ungrateful. I’m not. I just don’t understand how you can do these things, Allie...or why you don’t seem to understand how serious it is.”

I thought about pursuing that, as well. But at his warning look, I left off.

Sometimes our minds were way too entwined.

Now we stood in a cluster of virtual stars, and he’d promised to take me somewhere.

In Revik-world, this was probably the closest to a date I’d get.

“Where first?” I said in Prexci.

“Balixe,” he said. “It is a seer city.”

Balixe means water in the seer tongue... my mind recited.

“Yes.” Surprise wafted off him. You know of it?

“Only by name,” I joked. At his flat look, I sighed, thinking loudly that I’d watched a history program on ancient seer culture in one of the vids he’d given me. In that particular program, it said Balixe housed the ruins of the last Elaerian city.

Revik nodded. “That is correct.”

“I know,” I said. I tugged on his shirt. “Can we go?”

He caught hold of my wrist. I barely had time to take a breath when...

...I’M NOT BREATHING.

A horizon forms as I watch, framed by distant mountains, and I see currents, streams of swift-moving lights of all colors pertaining to dark. The currents flow like water or liquid starlight, level after level, hundreds of miles above and below where I am, and once again, I am forced to fight feelings of insignificance, of being swallowed in the vastness of how little everything about me truly matters.

Beauty overcomes those feelings of smallness, however. Dark clouds hang heavy in the distance, shot through with even more subtle frequencies of light, making me long for a sunrise, for stronger beams of illumination in the churning aliveness of the night.

Then I am looking at him, and I forget all the rest.

Geometrical patterns flow around Revik’s hyper-detailed form, sparking out in small, colorful arcs of current and light. I reach out, touching one of the shapes, and from his reaction, it isn’t dissimilar to poking him in the eye.

Cut it out, he says. Look for the track, Allie.

At my blank reaction, he sighs, sending up more plumes of light and feeling.

You know the theory, he says, patient now, if barely. If you don’t know the thing you want to resonate with, find another way in...

When my confusion doesn’t lessen, he prods me again.

There are three ways seers track, Allie. The first is imprinting...it is what I am doing now, using an imprint given to me by Vash.

He flashes a multi-dimensional image, too quick for me to take in.

...I could also use a personal object, audio or visual recording, blood, fingerprints, urine, hair, even a smell...all of these are imprints. Imprinting is the most common track, as imprints are everywhere. Imprinting is the reason for the image ban, Allie...and the ban on trade in biological artifacts...

...The second way is location track, he continues evenly. This is based on the principles of spatial intersection. In simple terms, if you know the location of something in the physical realm, you can track it in the Barrier. To do so, however, your knowledge must be very precise. It also does not work so well for time jumps, or Barrier echoes...

I have no idea what these are.

The third way, he says, ignoring my implicit question. Is a line track. It denotes having a personal connection with, or “direct line” to the thing you are tracking. Or in this case, something that is resonating with the thing you are tracking...which is me.

He waits for me to follow this train of thought.

Use the opportunity to feel me under a track, Allie.

I am following his logic now. If I resonate with him, and he resonates with the target, I will resonate with the target, too. Simple.

I focus on a current of light I don’t recognize in one of his hands. The vibration immediately changes my own.

...Resonance does not have a spatial or interconnectivity limit, he adds as I play with his light. If you resonate with something that resonates with something that resonates with something...you can track any part of the chain. Distance can muddle the imprint, but it doesn’t have to. The military, of necessity, depends mainly on secondary or tertiary links...sometimes those of much greater distances from the target. Most of the work of infiltration is this. Uncovering lines or “taps,” which can be complex...even tedious. Infiltrating the target’s life, hunting them to get close to their light...

I am fascinated, picking up images from him.

You still do this? Professionally?

Yes, he sends.

For who?

His light sparks in irritation. Try to match my light...or go back and wait for me in the room, Allie.

Touchy, touchy, I send softly.

But I am trying to do what he says, so his thoughts grow slightly less grumpy.

When you track, it is better if the target does not feel you, he advises. He waits for me to adjust, based on his words. When I don’t, he sighs again. This is not subtle, Allie. If I were a target, I would know I was being tapped.

I heard you. Just let me get the hang of it, okay?

He gives in, letting me openly examine his light.

He is cranky today, though. I have no idea if it has anything to do with me, but I decide to do as he says...until I am distracted again by the mechanics of our lights’ interaction. My aleimi really wants to resonate with his. It is less a matter of trying, more a matter of letting it. So I relax, unfurling a fist that I hadn’t known I clenched. My vibration changes.

I feel Revik’s approval.

Good, he sends.

He is closer to me now, and suddenly I am fighting the other thing. The pulling-nausea-pain feeling I get around him is stronger without my body, carries more of an imperative. It occurs to me that pain is likely how my body translates that imperative, like converting electrical signals...then it occurs to me that I’m embarrassed, trying to make it scientific.

Revik politely withdraws his light.

Are you ready? he sends.

I consider, for the hundredth or so time, asking him about that pull, then decide to leave it for when he’s in a better mood.

I let him feel that I am. Ready, that is.

He releases whatever he uses to keep us in place and we shoot across the night sky. There are no vortices this time, and the movement from one place to the next happens fast, almost instantaneously, without a breath between states.

A city bursts out of the dark.

Its many windows reflect the morning rays of a bloated sun peeking over the horizon. I recognize the skyline from my dreams. I see the jagged steel and glass squares sticking out of the ground, the older city beside them, the dense layer of smog over the honking cars and bicycles and auto-rickshaws on the street. People walk down the sidewalk in ragged patterns and stand by coffee shops and older-looking buildings with red and gold facades. I see flickers of the city from all sides...from the ground to a vantage point somewhere in the clouds.

I am afraid, focusing on the enormous metal and glass squares looming out of the dust of a predawn sky, the watery structure squatting closer to the ground.

I see more cars and bicycles and the light brightens, when...

...I am hovering over a different square, filled with people.

The sky in this new place is the opposite of the one over modern-day Beijing.

The curve of the atmosphere looms so high and clear I think it must belong to a different planet. The sun shines hotter here, too, but gentler somehow; it hangs in the sky, a near gold-white, so small and bright I can’t look at it for long, even from inside the Barrier.

The city’s buildings have rounded corners instead of square ones. They crouch around one another, yet have a kind of regal elegance, covered in greenery that makes them appear almost alive under the dense shadows of dark stone. Cut windows without glass overlook the center of town behind balconies covered in moss and dripping sprays of purple flowers. A fountain marks the center of the square itself, and watery creatures decorate the basin, foaming more of that crystal blue water from mouths and fingers.

Black volcanic tiles pave the center of the square, too. The streets radiating outward from that same square are of large cobblestones, but those stones look new, or as if someone polishes them daily. Statues mark the passage into arterial roads that spiral out from the center like spokes in a wheel. Flags ripple in a light breeze like silken snakes.

A portly man who looks to be in his mid-sixties stands at a balcony, giving a speech to a packed crowd standing below. The older man wears dark red pajamas and a long, embroidered tunic that looks Asian yet is not.

The crowd listens raptly as he speaks. I look over the crowd, fascinated by the beauty in so many of the faces I see, regardless of age. Men and women both wear their hair long, I notice. The men’s is wound in wooden clips studded with brightly colored stones, and the women’s hangs loose down their backs, woven through with thin metals and threads with small, embedded stones. More jewelry adorns men’s hands and ankles, compared to the women who wear stones at their throats and hanging from around their ears.

I listen to the crowd murmur, although the language is new to me, and to Revik too, it seems...so different that even my mind’s translations inside the Barrier aren’t quite right. Above the speaker’s head, a three-dimensional Barrier image shows two curved lines with parallel staves, like a crude drawing of one of those impossibly tall Japanese bridges.

Everyone in the square sees it, I realize. The image is painted inside the Barrier, but they all see it over him, and stare at it in some curiosity.

The man’s words grow more distinct, however briefly.

“I do not present this...concept from...ego, for self-aggrandizement,” I hear him say. Words go missing in his speech, words for which my mind cannot find context. “I merely wish for sight...the urgency behind...my plea. It can be peaceful,” he adds, holding up a finger. “There is no wanting to...war. Or...living miseries.”

The man continues to speak.

I hear only some of the words.

He speaks of working through differences, of wars that have come before. He exudes confidence, yet is unsure if they hear him, if they really understand what he is trying to tell them. I feel a lot about his mind, I realize.

My spine prickles as I wonder if it is too much.

This is Balixe, Revik says.

I startle, having forgotten him.

Even so, I look around me as his words sink in, in a kind of wonder. This is more than prehistory. This is history most humans don’t acknowledge having existed at all. This is history before humans.

If Revik is affected by this, I cannot tell. He continues to teach, even here.

This is our history, Allie...not prehistory from a seer perspective, but early history, certainly. The Merensithly Address, prior to the first Displacement...

The First Displacement? I say wonderingly. So these are Elaerian? They are the first race?

I feel Revik acknowledge this, right before his thoughts grow audible once more. Most cannot even see events of this kind. Vash is very generous to share it with us.

Revik gestures towards the podium.

This man...he is famous to seers. History describes him as the final war’s architect...its greatest proponent. It is unknown whether he was a Rook, as we think of Rooks today. But he was definitely some kind of precursor to those that exist now...

His words cut me somehow.

Focusing back on the podium, I shake my head.

No, I tell him. That’s not right.

I feel Revik’s puzzlement, riding the edges of his bad mood. He looks between me and the man.

It is right. He makes an effort to be conciliatory. Do not be naïve about his words, Allie. He was a politician, a rich man who only claimed to be a humble scientist. He used his studies to further his social and political agendas...

It is not his words, I say, pointing. It is his light. Look at it!

Revik barely glances at the man, before frowning back at me.

Light can be disguised in many ways, Revik warns me. Do not be naïve about that, either. It is the oldest game in the Barrier, to impersonate light frequencies of one kind or another...I have done it, as an infiltrator. To pretend to resonate with someone or something safe or familiar to your target is often the easiest way to get them to lower their guard. As a Rook, I did this all the time, Allie. I would adopt the light connections of relatives or loved ones, simply to get the person to open to me...

I try to take this all in, shielding myself slightly from Revik’s emotions. But I cannot just go along, letting his words stand, when they feel so wrong to me.

No, I say finally. You’re wrong about him. You’ve been misinformed.

I feel Revik’s stare, even before I focus on him.

Allie, he says, and I feel him fighting the bad mood once more, the anger I feel under it. These scenes have been studied extensively by the clan elders. I’m not defending my own sight, but that of the greatest seers in the clans. He adds, sharper, I do not say this to cause offense, but you are a beginner, Allie...

Before I can think how to answer, the scene around us shifts.

It is difficult at first to tell where we are.

A dark organic platform has been erected in the middle of a ripped up town square. Looking at the broken pieces of estuary and volcanic glass, the piles of burning bodies and the mountains looming up above the remnants of the ancient city, feeling fills me without warning...it shocks me with its intensity.

Revik grabs my light arm.

Calm, he murmurs. Yes, it is the same square.

It affects him too. I feel his grief, but mostly I feel anger in him, unconnected to this place.

Before us stands the same man on the platform, but he is older now, and thinner. His eyes look haunted, hollowed-out. Someone has tied him to a pole at the center of the platform. Bruised and cut, his face hangs over a dark-colored robe spotted with blood. His feet are bare and look like they’ve been beaten with sticks; blood drops down on them from one leg.

A man on the young side of middle age with a dark beard stands next to him.

Feeling explodes in me...unfocused, irrational.

Love, regret, grief...they tangle my light. I can’t tell if they are my feelings, my memories, or some imprint I carry with me, something handed to me from somewhere else. It is all too strong to sort out, too intense to do anything but try to absorb, or at least let pass through me.

The younger man raises his hands to silence the crowd. They look up at him, and I recognize that look, at least. They love him. They positively adore him.

Haldren, I murmur.

I feel Revik’s light focus on mine.

Just then, the bearded man’s voice rises, whipping in the wind.

“Kardek will die!” He speaks with passion, raising his hands as he shouts. “Yes! He will die...but his death will not save us. It is too late...the sickness will take many more. We will starve. We are almost out of water. Our enemies will kill us!”

Moans rise from the crowd, cries of pain.

I flinch away from them, feeling a part of me crushed into pieces like the volcanic rock, unable to feel without feeling too much. I know myself as connected in some way to what happened here. Not responsible, exactly, but more sad than I’ve ever felt in my life, even after my dad died. Even after my mother got murdered by the Rooks.

“...And for those of us left behind, there is no justice! Not for your families! Not for friends and neighbors! He cannot cure you! He can never bring back your joy!”

Haldren’s dark eyes fill with emotion.

“...But I can promise you this! He will harm you no more!”

Shouts rise from the crowd, screams. Fists raise into the air.

I make myself look at them, at their faces, and at the city that had once been so beautiful. Flowers no longer bloom from balconies, though. The stones are broken like jagged teeth, strewn instead with fingers of dried sticks from dead plants and mud and other filth. Instead of ornate tapestries and curtains, rags are crammed in cracks to keep out the icy wind. Blankets covered in ash and blood flap in smoke-filled wind, warning passersby away from the disease hidden inside the walls of those dwellings.

Blackened holes also scar buildings from some kind of fight. Volcanic glass cobblestones are broken and torn from their moorings; most of what remains lay in chunks and powder. The crowd wavers on its feet: sick, thin, dirty, clothed in rags. Many have volcanic shard knives and spears strapped to their backs, along with branch-like devices that also feel like weapons.

The stone skeleton of the city is all that remains.

“This man,” the bearded man shouts. He points at Kardek. “...He, who has called himself the Bridge! He stands before you, a traitor to our people! A heretic, and a liar!”

I feel Revik’s shock ripple through my light.

His whole attention is on me now. I cannot look at him, though. I cannot even care about his reaction. I am being slowly crushed under the weight of this city’s pain. Like the rest of them, I focus on Haldren to keep from collapsing, the bearded man with the intense eyes and the angry voice. Haldren. He will redeem the old man, cleanse him through fire.

It feels just. Right, even.

Haldren is a friend. The way he speaks is familiar, the way the crowd hangs on his every word, as if in a trance. Moans rise with his voice, emotion-laden screams. People throw things at the old man, hitting him with pieces of ripped up cobblestones. I wince as the lines cross, but feel nothing, in my body or my mind.

The man with the dark beard finally holds up a hand. He speaks quietly, for the old man alone. “You should have listened to me, Liego.” His voice breaks. “How could you do it? You will die the greatest mass murderer the world will ever know...”

With these words, it hits me.

More than that. It annihilates me.

I scream into that blue sky. NO NO NO! Get me out of here! NOW! NOW!

Allie! It’s okay! Revik is beside me, alarmed. No, afraid. It’s all right...

No. I shake my head, my terror crushed by grief once more. No, it’s not all right. Please, get me out of here. Now. Please, Revik...please...

He surrounds me, and then—

I am back in that quiet place.

It is the place he took me when my mom died. We float over a valley of sunset red. Towers of light billow like gold silk before an ocean of liquid diamonds and light. Normally, I think of it as his place...or maybe ours...but this time, it feels like mine. Friends surround me, try to comfort me. So much relief exists in being with them, in knowing it is finally finished, that it is finally over. That I don’t have to go back.

I don’t have to go back until...

Revik is there, too.

He is a different Revik, though, just as I observe a different me standing in waist-high water, in that golden ocean with my friends, relieved to be done. That other Revik talks to me in a low voice, and we are alone together now, and he holds me. He has perhaps been talking for some time, as if parts of us never stopped whispering in the dark.

I feel myself grow calm.

His light coils deeper into mine and the pain worsens.

There is familiarity there, beyond what I’ve felt from anyone...beyond what I’ve felt from him. We know each other here. We are more than friends. It is his comfort I seek, above all the rest. I know he understands. He understands in a way that none of the others can, in a way they never will, no matter how hard they try.

He succumbs to the pull, without reservation, and wishes—

STOP! STOP IT!

Panic fills my light. This time, it’s not mine.

STOP THIS, ALLIE! Please, stop...!

I have not come to this paradise alone. The other Revik’s light flashes out.

The arc blows us apart like dead leaves, until—

I TOOK A breath. I took another.

Air shocked my lungs. I choked on it, fighting to work the rhythms of my physical body, fighting to align myself, to exist inside myself.

Eventually, I found I was lying on the floor.

Virtual stars met my eyes, flooding the ship’s stateroom and the ceiling above where I lay. Flat-seeming now, those stars shone palely as they ran down pastel walls.

I felt him move next to me.

When I glanced over, he raised a hand, covering his face, but I saw his jaw harden before he did it. I realized only then that I clutched his shirt in my own hand, right before he pushed my fingers off roughly, forcing me to let go.

Some emotional kickback made it hard for me to look at him, but also hard to look away. I watched him sit up, trying to wrap my head around him again, around his familiarity, even through the shield he wore around himself like a wall.

I couldn’t reconcile the impression of complete impenetrability I got off him with the sense that I knew him behind it, somehow.

I tried to push both feelings away, if only so he wouldn’t notice me thinking about him. I tried to pull my mind back into one piece, but could only breathe, watching him as he fought to do the same. I don’t remember moving, but somehow, I was sitting up, too, watching him breathe. I couldn’t seem to unclench my hand.

He looked at me. His eyes held the same expression they had that morning in Seattle.

Even as I thought it, he shook his head.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said.

His voice was hollow, lost-sounding.

Whispers of that other place remained, pulling at his light and mine; I felt him wrestle with it, forcing it out of his light only to be compelled to look at it again. Pain wafted off him, for the first time in weeks, and he didn’t seem to be trying to hide it from me. Without thinking beyond a vague desire to reassure him, I reached for him, touching his face, pausing to finger his longer black hair back behind one ear.

He jerked from the caress, but afterwards he stared at me.

His eyes flickered to my mouth, lingered there.

For an instant, just an instant, he hesitated. Then I saw his eyes change. They grew openly angry...just before the light in them died.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said again. His voice roughened. “I want to sever us. Do you understand me, Alyson?”

I didn’t understand, not really. But he waited for an answer.

“I think so,” I said. “I mean, I—”

“Will you agree to it?”

“I don’t really know what...” I trailed, seeing his eyes harden to glass. I softened my voice. “Yeah, sure. Whatever you want, Revik.”

“Good.” He nodded, once. “Thank you.”

Without waiting, he regained his feet. For a moment he only stood there, over me, as if catching his breath. Then he moved, stepping around me to reach the stateroom door.

He opened it without hesitating, without a backwards glance.

I saw him murmur something to the guard, too low for me to hear, and probably in a language I didn’t know. The man standing there stared first at him, as though he didn’t quite believe what he’d heard, then at me, his expression openly bewildered. The guard continued to stare at me, his eyes a near question, when Revik’s voice sharpened, bringing his eyes back to him. As I’d suspected, Revik didn’t speak Prexci, but something else...one of the languages he hadn’t decided to teach me.

Eventually, the guard stammered a reply, bowing to him.

I watched Revik slip around the guard an instant later and disappear.

After a last, piercing look from the guard himself, the door closed.

I heard the lock glide into the wall with a soft click.

Through all of it, the stares and Revik’s anger, it slowly sank into my awareness that something had just happened...something decidedly more than one of our bantering back and forth bickering matches, or even the fight around Kat in Seattle. Even knowing this, I found I couldn’t move, or think really, not at first. I could only sit there, fighting to control whatever rose in me at his absence.

But I knew. Maybe I’d known for weeks now.

I was in love with him. Like, really in love with him.

Clearly, that wasn’t going to work for him, either.