19

BREAKDOWN

 

...I STAND ON a rock bluff, above a valley riddled with spider-web cracks. Wind tunnels between chasms. Everything is gone. All trees, animals, plants are dust, blown away.

I’m alone. But not really. Not really alone.

...He raises himself up on his arms, sweating, reading her, watching her eyes as he brings her to the edge. I see the tattooed writing on his arm, sweat sticking his black hair to his neck and forehead as he moves over her, his arms tensed as he adjusts the angle of his body. He holds her still, fingers clenched in blond hair as he arches deeper...deep enough to pause when she cries out, holding some part of himself back, going in with his mind so he can feel it when...

She climaxes, gripping his arms. Pain ripples off him as he watches.

Then it worsens.

Red sunlight shines behind my lids, but that pale, bird-less sky fades.

I feel him fighting. With himself, with me. He loses control and then he’s asking me, winding some part of himself deeper into my light.

He pulls me inside of him, even with her lying between us.

...and he’s inside both of us now, and I feel his relief mixed with frustration, a kind of horror at what he’s doing even as he asks me again. He wants me now, more than he can tell me, more than I can let myself feel. It hurts, that want, but I’m lost inside the conflict on him too. Fear hovers behind desire, masked in anger at me for forcing him to revisit that place, to remember.

I would turn him back...make him into that thing he hates.

He is sure of it. He feels it with every part of his being.

I would turn him back, if he let me.

Above, the Pyramid rotates. There is more to see.

For now, alone...further back, below.

He would remember.

“HEY.” THE WOMAN fought to slow her breathing. She realized she’d never gotten his name. “Hey...are you okay?”

His pale skin wore the same sheen that matted her blond hair to her neck and shoulders, stuck the cotton sheet to her legs. She clutched at him, unable to help it. Her whole body still vibrated from what he’d done to her...seemingly again and again and again. He’d been unnervingly focused as he brought her to orgasm, but by the end, he’d surprised her by being verbal, too.

A lot more verbal than she would have guessed from their brief conversation in the bar.

He’d warned her it would be fast, and yet, there’d been something vulnerable about him once he let himself go. That vulnerability edged into a near-violence at times, but he hadn’t hurt her. He’d removed her clothes before they were all the way in the room, and she could tell he’d been holding back even then, using his mouth to buy them time, pushing her to talk to him.

Once he’d really started, she doubted he’d been aware of her at all.

When he finally came, he’d been nearly begging her.

Or begging someone, perhaps, to do...something.

Now he just lay there, like a dead person.

She wondered how she’d let him talk her into coming here. Her husband got them separate cabins—his idea, of course, to give them “more space” and because he claimed he couldn’t sleep with her snoring—but he had no compunction about stopping by when the mood struck him, or if he and the dance instructor had one of their spats. She cringed at the thought that she might have to explain a naked, male seer in her bed.

Although, really, it would serve him right.

“Hey.” She laid a hand on his chest. His skin felt cold. She kept her voice light, trying to smile. “Who’s Allie?”

She saw his expression change, just before he closed his eyes. She couldn’t help wondering though. A girlfriend? Did they even date?

Looking away, he shifted his weight on the mattress.

She caressed his hair. “Are you sick?”

He raised a hand, pushing hers off. She watched in disbelief as he wiped his face, doubting what she’d seen. Then his breathing changed, and she couldn’t deny what she heard. He was crying. He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“Hey,” she said, a little alarmed. “What’s going on?”

When he spoke, his voice made her jump. She’d forgotten the accent.

“I’m married,” he said.

A surprised laugh caught in her throat. She tried to keep it out of her voice.

“So am I,” she said. “I thought that was the point.”

He looked at her. His pale eyes reflected light shining from under the door, almost like a cat’s eyes. Again, she remembered he wasn’t human. He stared back as if she were just as alien to him. Then he sat up. She watched him feel around on the floor for his pants, pulling them up over his legs and looping then hooking his belt. Standing, he found his shirt and drew it over his head, and now she felt emotion waver off him, clear as a scent. It was self-loathing.

She pulled the damp sheet tighter around herself. “I’m sorry,” she said.

He shook his head. “It’s not your fault.”

“Do you want money?” She recoiled in spite of herself, afraid of him once she saw the look in his eyes.

“No,” he said flatly. He didn’t look at her again.

Before she could think what to say next, he had bent down, picking up the shoulder harness that had shocked her when she had first seen it.

He donned it like a vest, velcroing it tight, checking the gun in obvious rote before shouldering on his jacket over it. She was still staring when he turned his back to her, aiming his feet for the door.

The light blinded her as he opened it onto the corridor...but it wasn’t open long.

Following the click of the latch, she lay back on the bed with a sigh. All she could feel was relief that he was gone, that she’d likely never see him again.

WHEN ELIAH FINISHED speaking, Chandre remained silent.

Eliah shared the construct with her, so he knew she was thinking to herself how ridiculous this was. Further, that it went beyond her job description as infiltrator to babysit two full-grown seers who, in her mind, should be alone in a cabin somewhere, getting acquainted in the carnal sense for at least a month before they were allowed to talk about their relationship in anything but monosyllables. That was the traditional way it was done, and the old forms existed for a reason.

Eliah kept the smile out of his light with an effort.

These two-hundred-year-old seers always groused about the past.

Is she all right? Chandre sent finally.

Well enough, yeah. He let her feel his frown. Threw up when she came to, and she won’t talk about it. Physically she’s fine. She’s out on the balcony—

Get her back inside. Now.

Pardon my saying, sir, but no. She wants to look at the water, let her bloody well look at the water. It’s dark...no one’ll see her. He paused.

Has he checked in?

No. She exhaled a Barrier sigh. Vash said it’s up to us to determine what’s needed to keep the situation under control. You said she won’t press charges. Do we discipline him for breaking vow? She could be waiting for him to come back. To stab him, try to hurt him, whatever...

Eliah gave a humorless laugh.

I don’t think so, he sent. She still thinks too much like a human to let herself go on that kind of thing.

Feeling Chandre’s skepticism, he added,

...And if by disciplining him, you mean shooting him in the head, I’m all for it. His thoughts leaked anger. He didn’t shield it from her at all. If I had to guess, I’d say he pulled her into it deliberately.

Recommendation, Eliah? Chandre sent dryly. Beyond the firing squad for Dehgoies for the crime of wanting his wife?

Separate them, he returned promptly. Keep him away from her. When she’s up to it, I’ll ask her what she thinks.

Fine. I leave them to you. She clicked to herself in irritation, folding her light arms. Watch her, Eliah...and no taking advantage of the situation to talk her into your bed! We still don’t know why he did it. You get Dehgoies coming up here in a jealous rage and we’re going to have ourselves a real problem. That is one piece of bullshit I don’t intend to deal with tonight.

Understood, he sent.

You’d better. Or so help me I’ll let him shoot you.

Eliah was still laughing a little as he clicked out of the Barrier, feeling his legs against the hard padding of a stateroom chair.

He waited for his eyes to clear, then faced the window out to the balcony where he’d last seen her and startled, jumping to his feet.

The balcony, the entire cabin in fact...was empty.

THE ELEVATOR CAR came to rest on the higher of two main floors, dumping me and seven other passengers into a wide foyer filled with people on red and gold patterned carpet. From human minds milling around mine, I surmised I’d arrived during the later of the two dinner meals served for general passengers...a stroke of luck in that it provided visual cover at least.

I hadn’t had much time while Eliah had been in the Barrier, talking to Chan or whoever else about me. As soon as I saw him shift out of his body, I ran for the wardrobe.

In seconds, I’d yanked on jeans and a tight-fitting tee from a band I’d seen years ago in Oakland. I donned my boots and a sweatshirt to deal with the cold, throwing the hood up to cover my head and putting in the brown contacts I’d fished out of the trash and washed. I projected some of my consciousness out on the balcony while I dressed behind the wardrobe door, just in case Eliah looked for me at any point in his conversation with Chandre.

That was another trick Revik taught me.

Grabbing a pair of mirrored sunglasses I’d found in one of the drawers, I stuffed them in my pocket and headed out the door.

I’d come up with a whole story for the guards at the end of the row of staterooms, but hadn’t needed to use it, because, well...the guards weren’t there.

Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, I walked to the elevators as fast as I could, donning the sunglasses clumsily as I hit the button.

That had been at least fifteen minutes ago.

I got off on a few random floors, ran into several different groups of humans before I decided to head for the lobby and look for a place where I might hide out in public. I figured my best chance of getting even an hour out from under the Guard would be to find a place where no one would be looking at me. Meaning, somewhere where I could disappear into the crowd.

Of course, the Guard might be looking for me by now.

It crossed my mind that I also might run into Revik. Particularly if he went out trolling again, maybe going for round two.

When my light reacted at my own bleak attempt at humor, I shoved it aside, but not before the image of me collapsing on the atrium floor flickered through my thoughts, along with a taste of what it had felt like the first time. I really doubted I would be able to control it any better if it happened again.

Keeping my mind carefully blank, I focused on my surroundings.

The decor hovered somewhere between Vegas, which I’d visited once with Jaden, and a suburban shopping mall. Except here, only about half of the signs and VR projections were speaking English. Most switched languages as they scanned room keys, following customers with higher credit limits and adjusting products until the person waved them off or stopped to listen to their pitch. Corridors twisted off in all directions, making it hard to track which side of the ship I was on until I stood still long enough to feel the whole thing moving.

Even then, it was easy to get turned around.

After the near-silence of the past few weeks, both here and in Seattle, the voices echoing up and down the five stories of glass and metal were both comforting and a kind of psychic attack. A feeling of almost paralyzing aloneness tried to creep back around me, as well. The groups of laughing, shopping and even bickering humans somehow reminded me just how completely isolated from everyone around me I really was.

That aloneness shed some light on something else, too.

It was no wonder, really, that the thing with Revik screwed me up so badly. In the past month or so, I’d let him become my whole world.

I needed to be around other people, even if I couldn’t talk to any of them. Even if it was reckless. Even if all I could do was watch them from a distance. I needed to know I wasn’t the only person on the planet, and that every human being in the world hadn’t been replaced by angry, one-hundred-year-old, mind-reading seers with sexual and emotional issues.

Anyone could potentially recognize me, I knew, at least in theory.

But it struck me as pretty damned unlikely that anyone actually would.

I had my doubts that most of the humans on board would be on the lookout for a renegade seer terrorist in their midst, even if they weren’t on vacation. I suspected they’d be a lot less likely to be looking for me while taking a scenic cruise up the Canadian coastline on a city-sized boat that boasted a midnight buffet table. Half the people around me were drunk, or focused solely on free food and gambling in the ship’s casino, anyway.

And anyway, I looked different from the photos plastered all over the feeds. My hair had changed color and length. My face had thinned. My eyes were a different color. Then there was the other thing: weird as it was, I could swear I had grown taller. Not much, maybe only a quarter or half-inch, but to call it strange was hardly an understatement. I didn’t know many humans who had a massive growth spurt as they approached their thirties.

The truth was, I didn’t completely look like the same person I had when I left San Francisco, except for maybe my eyes, thus the contacts and the shades. The rest of me, I figured wouldn’t stand out as specifically mine to anyone but my mother, and maybe Jon.

From wall maps I got the basic layout of the boat.

I located the main casino, two dining areas and five bars on the lobby floor alone, along with access to a theater and a swimming pool. Thinking about the last of these, I seriously contemplated going for a swim, although it meant going in wearing underwear, which might call a little too much attention to me, even here.

I didn’t have any credits to buy a suit, or even a room key. I wondered if I could push a clerk well enough to get one anyway. Thinking about this, though, I figured I should probably save the pushes for if I really needed them.

Photography stands flashed virtual backdrops of Alaskan coastlines next to people dressed in VR-paneled costumes that used computer-generated images to make the wearers look like everything from bald eagles to caribou to penguins to moose. I even saw a few polar bears standing on that virtual landscape, which as far as I knew had been extinct for years outside of zoos.

Next to the long lines of people waiting to be seated in the dining area for a five course, sit-down dinner, stood a piano bar flanked by two gilded waterfall balconies. Lining the guard rail above the sunken bar stood kiosks that sold everything from jewelry to shore excursions, pedicures and massages, dance classes and raffle tickets, tax-free wires, hiri and tobacco cigarettes, perfume, alcohol and handbags.

I saw a woman holding a brochure on seer services that could be purchased in Anchorage, too, including a trip to what Revik referred to as an “unwilling” bar, and what every human I knew called a whorehouse.

Another surge of sickness hit, that time bad enough to make me stop.

I took a breath, leaning a palm against the corridor wall in a shadowed observation area outside the piano bar. Only a few tables stood there, populated by couples sipping drinks and looking through large windows to the ocean.

Jesus. Whatever was wrong with me, I had to get it under control. I was sweating too much, and I could see in the reflective glass that I was deathly pale. That, combined with the hollow cheeks, made me look like a drug addict.

I couldn’t risk that someone here might care. Security maybe, or one of the cameras. I had to get out of here, away from these people, away from—

Allie?

I stopped in mid-exhale. Scanning faces to my left, I paused on the bay windows overlooking the ocean.

Allie? Will you answer me?

I swallowed, keeping my eyes on the rolling waves. The sky was dark, but a rim of reddish-purple remained by the water. My eyes returned to the dim lounge with its few tables. I didn’t recognize anyone, didn’t feel him nearby.

He wasn’t there, I realized.

I’d been thinking about him, and he’d heard me.

Allie. Please...I need to see you.

I stood motionless by a men’s bathroom. I didn’t move, even when a man smiled at me as he left the swinging doors.

Allie, I’m sorry. I’m really—

I don’t want to talk about this, my mind blurted.

At his silence, I forced my thoughts back to neutral. I breathed in and out, once, forcing myself to be logical about this.

Revik, I thought at him. I took another breath, and my mind leveled more. Revik...you really don’t need to explain anything.

Allie, I do...

No, I sent. You don’t. I’m sorry I pushed before. You can have a divorce or whatever you want—

Not like this, he broke in. I don’t want to talk to you like this. I want to actually sit down and talk to you. Please.

I felt him trying to think how to persuade me.

Please, Allie...

He reached for me with his light and I jerked back, pulling away from him without thought. When he came close to me again, I threw up a wall.

He ran into it...then withdrew all at once.

It happened so fast, I barely understood what I’d done.

The silence went longer. I could tell it shocked him, my forcing him away. I felt pain on him, cloying, hard to keep out of my light. He was still hiding something from me, but I was trying to hide how I felt, too. It never seemed to end with us.

Revik, I sent. Really, I’m not just saying it...you don’t need to do this. I’m cool with us being friends...

Allie...

Eliah told me. So I get it now. I get what happened in Seattle. And I mean what I said about pushing you. I shouldn’t have...

Eliah? His thoughts grew still. What did he tell you, Allie?

Revik. I’m trying to say I’m sorry. Can’t we just—

No, he sent. Pain wafted off his light. Please...gods. Don’t make me talk to you like this...please, Allie...

I felt the vulnerability on his light again, and couldn’t answer.

His thoughts grew quiet, almost a murmur. Please, Allie. Please let me see you...please.

I stared out at the night sky, watching the horizon dip gently up and down.

Okay, I sent, reluctant. But God, Revik. We don’t have to do this—

You’re in the room? Is Eliah with you?

No. I hesitated long enough to find it odd he’d mentioned Eliah again. ...to both, actually. I’m on the other side of the ship. Near that big piano, with all the shops. We could meet out here, or—

What? His light changed. How did you get there?

I walked. The pain worsened again and I clutched my belly, trying my damnedest not to feel anything more from his light. Revik...I’m being careful. Eliah was all pissed off. I didn’t see anyone in the corridor, so—

Allie! Gods, baby, what are you doing...wait right where you are. I’ll be there. I’ll find you...

“Sister?”

I jumped, turning at the new voice.

I was distracted, half-sick from being so close to his light, distracted by what he’d just called me, unsure at first if I’d even heard him correctly, much less if someone really just spoke to me outside of the Barrier.

In any case, I expected it to be one of the guards, Eliah or Chandre or someone they’d sent to find me.

Revik’s presence faded, but I didn’t feel him pull away. Instead it felt like I walked into a dense wall and the wall entangled me, pushing him out. Beacon-like eyes met mine, glowing in the VR projections by the nearest kiosk. The flickering images there distracted me; I saw a woman gyrating in a tall monitor, wearing a sequined evening gown. The real person whose image it projected watched the transformed version of herself as if mesmerized.

“Are you lost, Sister?”

I blinked. A different woman held my arm. I watched her long fingers tighten on my skin. They looked blue in the light of the VR images. I struggled to focus on her face, couldn’t.

I will help you, she sent softly. You look very fatigued, sister.

Relief washed over me. I was tired, more tired than I could express. The woman with the opaque eyes purred a lulling sound...

...and I fell into a complicated strand of light.

The world phased.

It reemerged altered before I could catch it, as if my lenses reflected light from a different angle than they had before. Objects and people grew complex, multidimensional...expanding around me and sharpening from blurry outlines into a series of mathematical equations.

Snatches of music and light harmonized the perfect structure underlying their interweaving strands. A blueprint emerged from the harsh outlines...walls, floors, fixtures, furniture, potted trees, even people. The overhead chandelier exploded in a glitter of lit strands. Physical light broke down into particles, matter and energy, an achievement of base mechanical beauty that literally stopped my mind dead in its tracks.

I and the other seer walked back through the crowded causeway, and all I could do was stare around me, lost in the complexity and beauty of every single thing I could see. Even those banal VR projections grew fascinating...I could see now, how they were made, the technology infused with nonphysical light, framing each message like the projection screen behind a movie’s shifting frames. The minds behind each concept, the way in which those concepts formed building blocks into more and more detailed messages...all of it grew visible to me.

A group of humans pass us, jerking my mind off the cleaner lines of the virtual program.

I hear their harsh laughter as if from far away. They feel like children, puppets caught in lit strands, surrounded by a complexity that dictates their every move, while remaining wholly invisible to them.

Yes, the blue-skinned woman sends. You feel it, don’t you? Even you. You feel how wrong they are. How...incomplete.

I watch atoms dance among the beams of the causeway ceiling, light shower down in golden rainbows as the lit strands cross and change overhead. I gaze into the eyes of the woman holding me...and she is beautiful.

More than that, her words feel right to me. True.

The humans really aren’t much above animals. As insentient as the fake jewels on the women’s necks, the dogs they drag around on leather leashes. I wonder how it is that I never saw it before, the gaping holes in the pictures that surrounded me, day after day, week after week...

It’s not only the humans, I realize as I look around.

It’s all of it. The world feels half-formed. Incomplete.

It is broken. Somehow, we let it be so. It struck me then...

Like any equation, it could be changed.

We will show you, the blue-skinned woman purrs. We will show you such wondrous things, Sister. You will understand so much of what has been hidden from you. The world will never be so small to you again as it is at this moment.

I close my eyes.

I can see what she offers me. It is clear. It is without pain, without ambiguity or aloneness. I would have a purpose. My life would mean something...something other than pain and death to those I loved.

It is such a relief to give in, to just let it all go. The sickness and pain I felt just minutes before is already gone.

The woman is right.

Nothing could ever be the same again. Nothing.

ALLIE! REVIK SCREAMED her name into the Barrier. ALLIE!

He shoved at the space where she’d been, trying to force his way through. He tried again, fighting a rising panic. He knew what had her, recognized the flavor of the metallic strands that forced him away from her light, taking her away from him. He didn’t understand how yet, or who, but that didn’t matter, either, not now.

He slammed against that wall, using all of his light.

The wall started to give.

Then something rose up. A sharp pain hit him over his right eye. He fought back, tightening his shields, when something bigger lashed at his light. The dark shape threw him sideways, knocking him out of the smaller construct, knocking him out of his body, too, enough that he lost himself...

When his vision cleared, he’d come to a stop in the corridor, fingers splayed on one of the wallpapered walls.

He wiped his nose, stared at the blood on his fingers.

He didn’t let himself think. He began to run.

Dread pooled in his stomach as he pushed his legs to move him faster down the hall, fighting to build momentum, to cross the distance between himself and her, even as he threw part of his mind ahead of himself, and back into the construct.

It would take him at least ten minutes to get to the atrium, even at top speed.

Too long.

He scanned options.

He tried their cabin. It was empty; he got the equivalent of Barrier static. No Chan. No Eliah. No guard. How the hell had she gotten out of the room, much less out the secured corridors on the seventh deck? Someone must have noticed she was gone by now. And who had her? A unit of the Rooks? Ship’s security? A lone infiltrator looking for the bounty on her...or worse, to sell her?

Had facial recognition software picked her up, or something else?

He tried a general channel, Guard security.

Nothing. He slid more of himself back into his body, where he ran towards the bow of the ship, fighting to think.

His head hurt. Something dark clung to it, and to his right arm. The hole over his eye was the most serious. He attended to that first, reweaving his light, but the something there fought to hold on, hiding in parts of him he didn’t access as often. He’d lost where she was. He continued to search, but his shields were up now, in hunting mode, which slowed him down. Still, if they broke too much of his structure, he’d be useless to her.

How in the gods’ names had she gotten to this side of the ship?

His adrenaline spiked as his mind put the pieces together.

They were under attack. This was coordinated. He was being hunted, and it had to be by the same people who had her. He felt them searching for weaknesses in his shields almost openly, trying to penetrate his mind even as they distracted him from making his way towards her.

They must have been in place.

They saw their chance, with him and Allie separated...maybe they even coordinated her escape from the seventh deck, knowing she’d be more willing to leave, if...

He cut off the thought. Blaming himself wasn’t going to help her, either.

Whoever they were, there were a lot of them. They’d likely been in place for some time, which meant they’d been on the ship, waiting for an opening.

He’d given them one.

He recalled one of his reference memories, a detailed map of the ship, found an aberration in the Barrier that matched what he’d last felt from her. Hitting another shield around where he expected her to be, he searched for openings, making his light resonate with hers.

He remembered how she’d felt when she finally agreed to meet him...how his light had responded. His throat clutched and he shoved it off angrily. He had to concentrate. He was fucking losing it...

“Dehgoies Revik.”

He landed the rest of the way into his body, coming to a dead stop.

Four men stood a dozen yards before him, dressed in long coats.

Revik scanned in reflex. Seers. Well-shielded. He didn’t recognize any of them, so they probably operated mainly out of Asia. Hand guns, infrared, tissue extractors, some kind of propulsion device, grenades, flares, a shotgun...

Something stung his throat. He reached up, jerked a sharp point from the side of his neck. He stared at the thumbnail vial for a beat of his heart, scanning the clear liquid. His chest clenched. The dart trembled from his fingers even as he felt one of the seers lock on him with an extractor. He leapt for the opposite wall.

It all happened within seconds of his first scan...but he was still too slow.

The glass tube slammed him midair.

Knocked sideways, he missed his mark and crashed into the wall short of the alcove he’d been aiming for. He landed in a heap and pulled in his limbs, fought to drag himself back to his feet when the cord pulled, making him lose his balance.

They still had him. The cord left a hole in his jacket on the right side. He grabbed the braided metal with his bare hands, scanning the glass vial embedded at least a thumb-length into his flesh, right through his jacket. The cord went taut. The teeth closed. Before he could let go, the vial slid out of him in one quick pull, the braided metal ripping skin off his hands as it went.

Revik screamed, clutching his abdomen. Blood poured out between his fingers, soaking his pants and jacket. He mashed his hand over the hole. Fighting shock, he picked himself up, stumbled backwards.

That time, he practically dove into the Barrier.

Everything grew crystal clear. Ripping the Glock out of its holster, he fired, blindly, running in the opposite direction. The first shot cut a dark hole in the wall, but did what he intended, forcing them behind cover. He switched to his mind, knowing it would be overheard, no longer caring. He sent up a high, sharp blast of alarm.

His warning cry slammed against something before it reached the main construct walls. He watched it dissipate, useless. Looking around in the physical, his eyes lit on a pull mechanism for a fire alarm. He caught it in the hand holding the gun and yanked it down. Immediately, a shrieking bell went off.

Doors opened on several sides.

Dehgoies? Eliah’s thoughts rose, as if coming through smoky glass. Where are you? Can you hear me?

Eli...have you got her? Revik blinked back pain, clutching his side. His mind shifted sideways. It threw off his balance, forced him into the forward part of his consciousness.

Gods, the drug. He’d forgotten about the dart.

Eliah...someone’s trying to leave with her. The truth hit him again, bringing a near panic. Look for boats, anything big enough to land a helicopter. They’ll want her off the ship as soon as possible...

Brother, calm yourself...where are you?

Find her, goddamn it! Start with the atrium. Last I saw, they had her there.

Where are you? I’ll send someone...

No. I’ll come to you. He stared at the blood soaking his jacket, realizing the truth. ...Eli. Please...I can’t get to her. You have to do this. Please. Please...

Deghoies—

He kicked the other seer out of his mind. The hunters were regrouping.

Limping backwards in a half-jog, he held up the Glock, mashing his other hand into his side. He scanned behind him, looking for doors. He had to stop the bleeding, or he’d be even more useless. If it meant draining humans from the Barrier like a fucking ridvak, he would get the light he needed to do it. He thought about Allie again and it got him moving, propelling his legs faster.

He’d asked her for a divorce.

He’d asked her for a divorce and let her see him with someone else.

If he had to kill everything between here and the outside decks, he wouldn’t let that be the last thing he’d said to her.

I AM OVERCOME by wonder, lost in it.

The complexity of light astounds me, and makes me realize how little of the Barrier I truly saw before, even when I used Revik’s eyes. I never would have seen this on my own. Not for years...if ever. I realize, too, how abstract it all seemed to me before now, how dreamlike the Barrier and everything in it appeared to me.

Now, for the first time, I see its power.

I had never known the visions inside this space could be so sharp, so utterly dense, so filled with information and functionality. I saw only glimpses inside the woman’s vision...and yet, those creations she showed me made the construct-shields I’d seen at Ullysa’s and on the ship seem like child’s play, like crude forts constructed of children’s blocks.

The art alone I could create with this...gods.

It blows my mind, to think how much more even my meager sketches would contain. Yet art itself seems so trivial here. It strikes me that I have a responsibility in seeing this, to use what I know, to change things somehow. To make them better...somehow.

I rise above the crowded causeway.

I ignore bodies and faces entirely now, tracing maps of every connection, every interaction and intention and pattern...

They are so lost. The people I see, they blunder around and into one another, blaming each other for the endless collisions. There is no direction, no purpose, no awareness, no understanding of what drives them. Anything can fill that vacuum.

Anything.

A voice purrs from beside me, You begin to see the problem. Can you guess the solution, Esteemed Bridge?

I find myself back with the female seer, frowning, but not at her.

Meeting her wise, sharp eyes, I lean my flesh and blood hands on a painted guardrail while I try to answer her question.

I was always a bad student, though. I don’t know why everyone wants to school me...using teacher’s tricks that never seem to work on me, or do anything but close me down. I don’t want leading, trick questions. I want solutions. If they don’t exist, then I want to know why, and where to go next. I want to know what has already been tried, what works and what doesn’t. I don’t see this as a mental exercise. I have zero interest in feeling clever.

There are fucking lives at stake here.

So I ignore her question, rising higher into the complicated light, examining the patterns I’ve already found from different angles. When I focus on a particular aspect of the world-Barrier interface, it amplifies, then rotates into different angles.

It’s like I have access to a hundred different minds at the same time.

Not a hundred minds, the female next to me purrs. Thousands. When you are with us, you have access to every aleimic body in our network, Alyson. Every ability, every piece of knowledge, every skill-set held by every seer who has chosen to align with us...

I try to understand.

Irrationally, I want to free all people, everywhere, even though I can see along with the woman that they would simply use that freedom to destroy themselves. I am still thinking about this, watching them...when I am distracted by something going on in another part of the Barrier.

With it, I feel fear...a taste of violence.

I focus there.

Yes, the woman purrs. You know this being. You know him well by now, yes?

I do know him. I know who he is...even under all of those shields. I touch his light through the wall, and the recognition strengthens.

The woman’s perfect lips curve to a smile.

The Seven went to a lot of trouble to hide him. Even from himself. But they cannot hide him from you. Not from you, Esteemed Bridge...

“Revik.” I smile in recognition, remembering only fleetingly that I had been angry with him once, that something wrong had happened between us, what felt like a million years ago now. Whatever it was, it doesn’t seem important now.

A beat later I frown, though, scanning his aleimi.

What’s wrong with him?

He is under attack. Those seers will kill him, if you do not help him.

What? I look up at her, alarmed. Kill him? Why? Where is he?

The images around me waver, lose focus. I pull back, returning to the complicated light strands that weave overhead, and everything grows easier. I see him again, this time as if he were right in front of me. I stare at him, fighting to understand.

Then my stomach drops. Pain expands over my heart.

He’s been shot! I have to go to him...now! Please!

You are the Bridge, Alyson. You can help him from here. Do you not see?

I struggle with fear, a fevered helplessness as I watch him run down a distant corridor, leaving footprints of blood. I believe her now. He is outnumbered, injured, bleeding from multiple wounds, losing light and structure.

He could die. He really could die.

I see what the woman shows me, too. His light is broken somehow, ensnared by a thousand crisscrossing strands, holding him in place with a hundred tiny walls. His attackers are not doing this to him. The walls I see are old...they strangle his light, cutting him off from whole parts of himself, leaving pieces of his aleimi dark from lack of use.

I see the imprint of the Seven on those walls.

A soft memory flickers, dies.

Who did this to him? My heart hurts more, and my head. Vash? Did Vash do this?

The female’s bright eyes remain motionless.

Why? Tears sting my own. Why would they do this?

They fear him, she says simply. That fear will kill him now, if you do not intervene, Esteemed Bridge. Help him, Alyson. Set him free. He is not one of the lost ones. He needs only to remember who he truly is...

But I am already looking at the structure encasing him, using the myriad eyes of the Barrier seers who surround me. Focusing on where those dense walls meet, I touch him with my light, trying to soften the intersection.

I feel Revik react. I feel his fear.

I send reassurance, and when he realizes who it is, he lets me in.

His relief is palpable, his warmth overwhelming as he floods my light. Affection comes with his presence, longing...for a moment it is all I can see. He wants to know where I am, how I am, but I am focused on keeping him alive, so I extract myself, looking for how I can help him. I zero in on the part of the structure that holds all the rest in place...

...and crack it easily with my light.

The walls around him begin to dissolve.

Very good, Alyson.

I barely hear her. Smiling, I watch Revik’s light shift. Inexplicably, tears come, blurring everything I can see outside the Barrier.

Gods, he is so beautiful.

He rises as I watch, his light flooding structures I’ve never seen in him, twisting around his head, around his whole body, expanding in high, white flames. His whole being flares, shaking the Barrier, trembling the nonphysical space with a burst of light.

Without knowing I am doing it, I rise with him.

For a breath at the top, we are together, really together.

I break free of the finely-woven silver light the woman has shared with me, and instantly I feel lighter; a pressure evaporates from around my heart. From this height, the metallic strands that seemed so fascinating and dense now look fake. More than fake...they look clouded, dirty, rigid and small. I see the rotating Pyramid below my feet, with thousands of beings chained to its immovable lines. Leeched of light, they dance like frail puppets made of wire.

I am still staring at it all in bewilderment when Revik falters.

Something jerks at him, hard, pulling him down, bringing me with him. I fight back...fight to stay above the smoke and silver clouds. My own light recovers and I try to catch his, grappling with him in the Barrier’s waves. I can’t hold him. His light curls sideways. As it does, a dark mass lights up around his head, turning that portion of his aleimi solid black.

He falls inside the Pyramid and disappears.

NO! I scream. REVIK!

Around me, humans mill in the casino. No one looks up at my screams. No one hears me as they hang over tables, drinking foul-looking cocktails with colored umbrellas and fruit dipped in formaldehyde. They all look dead to me, like corpses going through the motions of life. I scream again, and the image ripples like a pool after someone throws in a stone.

NO! REVIK! COME BACK! REVIK...!

I can’t feel him anymore. I look for him, like a diver feeling blind through pitch dark water, looking for something they can no longer see, but my hands and light come up with nothing.

No one. He is gone.

He will adjust.

I turn, sweating, gripping something in my hands.

He will live now, Alyson. You have saved his life.

I feel the silvery light creep back around mine, pulling me into its complicated strands. I am still above it, but only just. From where I am, those metallic clouds look like filth. Mirrors and death, stolen power...a lie that coats the Barrier like an oil slick. I focus on the woman’s opaque eyes, and they no longer look wise. They look dead to me. Cold.

My vision clicks into focus.

...and I found myself staring at Ivy.

Ivy. The same girl who bandaged Revik’s shoulder in Seattle, who I laughed with while she dyed my hair, who arranged for all of my IDs and passports along with Yarli. But instead of the young, happy person I remembered, Ivy looked gaunt to me now, her head too large, her skin too thin, making her appear skull-like. Her platinum-blond hair stuck up on her head, making her look more like a goblin than an elf.

She smiled at me, her eyes studying my face as she touched my arm.

Sister. Do not be afraid. Do not doubt that we are your friends.

I looked around at the physical world.

The casino, the crowds, none of that had been real, either. I stood on a deserted piece of the ship’s top deck, buffeted by a cutting wind. My hair whipped my cheeks as I looked up, where a rock face cut the sky, dark and still as it passed the port side of the ship.

Ivy and I were alone. The entrance to the metal stairs to my right hung with signs showing it off-limits to any but crew.

You work for him, I manage. Terian.

She smiles. The smile is cryptic, but cold. No, she says, surprising me. I work for someone far older than he. Far more knowledgeable than he.

Galaith? I ask.

No, she says, her eyes still on mine. Not him, either.

Who then? I say.

She only smiles, but I feel somehow, that she would like to tell me.

By then, I decide I don’t care.

Clutching the handrail, I look down. The sheer, white hull stretches below to where a row of lifeboats hang over the water. Jumping is not an option.

A whisper-thin thread still holds me out of the Pyramid, but I feel Ivy chipping at it, trying to distract me from it, to convince me it lives somewhere else, inside the silver waves. A part of me has already started looking at the patterns, finding them fascinating again.

It is too late. Revik is gone. Just like mom. Just like dad.

Allie, a voice whispers, and it’s not Ivy’s. No.

It sounds so much like him it stops my heart. But it also snaps me out of that place of no hope. I haven’t used up all my options. I still have one left.

I force my way out of the Barrier...

...and pivoted my body in a fast, hard arc.

My hips snapped with my shoulder. Before I’d let out a breath, my fist hit Ivy in the sternum with a satisfying jar, exactly as Jon and then Eliah had taught me.

Ivy stumbled into the guardrail, nearly fell...and then recovered faster than I would have imagined possible.

Grabbing the top rail with both hands, she aimed a kick at my head.

I avoided it, barely, but it was misdirection; she caught me with a lower, sharper heel to the knee, knocking me into the guardrail by a circular vent. Pain bloomed sharply up from my knee up to my groin, making me gasp, but I didn’t let it drop me. I grabbed slats in the round opening of the vent, managed to regain my balance right before the Rook’s fist came down on the small of my back, half-crumpling me to the deck.

The second shock of pain brought a sharp, white moment of clarity.

I’d reconnected Revik to the Rooks.

I’d just fed him to them.

Pain rose in me, a darker grief that turned into rage.

A scream ripped out of my throat.

Ivy hissed at me like an animal as I turned, back-fisting her face. I broke something. Without stopping, I kicked down, aiming hard for her femur. A satisfying sound brought my other fist around, hitting the Sark in the temple, driving her to the deck.

A sharp stab of pain lit up around my face and neck.

Ivy was going after my light. I threw myself at her as she tried to crawl away, putting all my momentum and weight into a kick to the face.

The seer’s nose exploded in a spray of blood. I grabbed her hair as her light faltered, slamming the back of her skull into the guardrail. Her eyes rolled up and I grabbed hold of her long jacket. Regaining my balance against the railing, I hoisted her up to the top rail.

For an instant I felt the Sark’s light, beyond that of the Rooks.

Looking into the eyes of the girl who’d sent me a pulse of warmth that night in Seattle, I saw a flicker of fear, a deeper understanding.

A half-beat of hesitation made me pause.

Then Revik’s face swam before mine.

My heart clenched into a hard fist in my chest.

I threw Ivy over the railing, nearly going over with her.

She snatched at and grabbed my arm, screaming a terrible sound, like a giant bird. Silver light exploded around my head, and I felt those other beings, beyond the Pyramid itself, something larger, more frightening, like massive clouds of metallic light. I felt them screaming at me, fighting with me, trying to save Ivy from me by threatening me and slamming pain through my light, telling me I would be dead. Agony ripped through my mind as they beat against my aleimi, fighting for her...or maybe through her...

Panting, bleeding on her hands, I wedged my legs against the guardrail. I fought my way free of her attempts to save herself, disentangling her slippery fingers.

A half-second later, the hands were gone.

I watched her fall.

Ivy receded into darkness as the ship slid forward into night, but I saw her body hit the edge of a lifeboat on its way to the water. No screams echoed up as she broke the surface foam. Darkness swallowed the splash and I fell to a crouch by the guardrail, gasping.

The whisper and pound of the ship’s wake was deafening.

They’re coming for me.

I feel it now. I feel all of them.

They fight alone, held together by silver threads. They fight one another, even, but it doesn’t matter...it all serves their greater purpose.

A helicopter approaches, flying low over the water...

...I grasp for him, blind. I can’t see. Darkness spreads over the ship, breathes into my skin. I look up as the Pyramid descends, blotting out the sky. Wire-like strands snake out from all sides. I call for him...

...and find myself alone in a green, glass-tile room.

It is silent. My clothes are gone. A flat metal collar rings my neck. Against the back wall, three metal cages stand.

The image shimmers, breaks apart...

Red water runs on green glass, pools in dimples by the drains, dries in spots and smears on the ceiling. Hooks have instruments attached to them as wires spark close to the wet floor.

I scream, and I can’t stop screaming.

Barrier winds shriek and tear; I clamp my hands over my ears, but it’s not enough. It’s not outside of me at all, I realize, as the Pyramid fills the sky...

7, 10, 9, 33, 1099, 20, 41, 9883, 231, 87, 284, 2, 23, 66, 66, 994, 1, 1, 1...

I scream at the sky, feeling Revik and the man with no face, but he only smiles, and I...

...opened my eyes.

I found myself hunched in a ball on the wet top deck, freezing in a raw, cutting wind, gripping the handrail, wearing a spray-wet hoodie and jeans and combat boots. I knew the helicopter was not here yet, but it is coming. I could now feel them all around me now. I could feel them closing in on both of us.

Even as I think it, fear exploded in my chest. It wasn’t for myself.

The realization got me to my feet, got me stumbling, then running for the stairwell.

REVIK RIPPED A light fixture off the wall with his fingers. He laid his palm on the bare bulb, biting back a scream as hot glass seared his flesh. Mashing the hand against his side, he cooled it reflexively in his own blood.

The trick worked, briefly. His mind cleared.

Sliding up the wall on his good side, he regained his feet.

They’d trapped him in a floor of staterooms. He could no longer remember which floor. He’d counted twelve more infiltrators in the Barrier, plus the four he’d seen...but they could be obscuring their numbers in either direction to confuse him, and to make him hesitate. He hadn’t seen any humans since that first volley of shots. He may have inadvertently cleared this section of ship for them by pulling the fire alarm.

Something had happened.

Whatever it was, it blew out the overhead lights.

It almost felt like he’d done it...but he couldn’t remember how or even why. The dart made it difficult to think in straight lines, to put the pieces together.

He’d felt Allie. For a moment, the briefest instant, she freed him.

She carried him high on wings of light...and he’d been alone with her, out of all this mess. She’d forgiven him. She’d even healed him.

Then she was gone, and all of his attempts to find her since only made him sick. He couldn’t feel Chandre, Eliah, or even Vash, who always seemed to have a thread to him, no matter where he was.

He walked faster, holding the wall.

Images flashed, turned the blackened tunnel to a stone cave with rough walls. Silver lights dripped from moss-covered boulders. His neck was swollen, heavy with chains. He could smell death...all around him...

It was like being buried alive.

Depression tried to steal over him, to blank out his mind. He couldn’t breathe. The space closed, thick and heavy. A man’s voice whispers in his mind...Uncle.

Wasted hands, holding a red-tipped dart.

This is your enemy, Nenzi. Not the guns, this.

Merenje stands over him, mashing the gun to his temple, an old revolver from the early colonials. The human clicks through chambers, telling him to disarm, yelling at him to disarm.

You little fuck...you think he’ll let you live if you don’t? What about your girlfriend? How many of us do you think it would take to break her?

A sob came to Revik’s throat, a sick, dying feeling. He is there again, trapped. Faces swim past, fear washing through his skin like a tangible force. He remembers getting so hungry he ate dirt, hands locked to his feet so he stank of his own urine, woke to insects and animals crawling on him, screaming at first, eventually so hungry he tried to trap them...

This is what humans do. What I teach you can save you.

The gun clicks by his ear, louder with each turn.

Disarm, you fuck! Disarm or I’ll blow your head off...!

A bright light flared behind him. He remembered Allie and a part of him fought back. The Rooks were fucking with him, trying to break his mind. He’d fix it. Allie would help him. Allie would find a way.

Irrational, the thought repeated.

He felt an opening in the corridor ahead, and a faint hope reached him. They weren’t desperate enough to gun him down in a crowd of human tourists. No matter how many they pushed, they couldn’t be that desperate to bring him down. Besides, if they wanted him dead, they could have done it by now.

They were trying to bring him in.

He would have put the gun in his mouth already if it wasn’t for his wife.

The thought echoes, paralyzing him.

He feels another sting, this one on his chest. He yanks at the source and stares at the dart, half-blind with pain as he understands.

He’d been wrong. They did want him dead. They were going to kill him quietly, where the tourists would see him collapse. They could explain it any way they liked...the blood-drenched seer, terrorism threat averted, SCARB coming to the rescue...

The helicopter that takes off in the night, holding Allie. Taking her.

They didn’t want him.

The world tilts into darkness as he fights to focus his eyes, and once more he finds himself in the cave, alone. Silver clouds mass overhead, metallic wardens to his prison in the dark. They watch, biding their time.

They left him there. They left him to die.

Sound jerks him out...back into his body, into another darkened corridor that moves lightly beneath his feet. He feels them, behind him, stalking him.

But it is the rumbling sound that gets his feet moving.

When a flash lights up the pastel walls, Revik breaks into a run.