Allie's War Season Three (113 page)

"Their innermost desire?" Allie said, her voice openly disbelieving. "Why not release them before we arrived?"

The seer gave her a dismissive look. Even so, Jon saw the brief flicker of hatred that lived there, a colder light than any he'd shown the rest of them.

His eyes returned to Wreg.

"You used to be loyal, brother," the seer said, his voice holding more than a faint rebuke. "You used to be a faithful servant of your race...one who would lay his body down for the greater good. When did that change so dramatically? When did the cause of your people suddenly become a question of means over ends...?"

Wreg stared at him. "Who the hell are you to me, to ask me that?"

Those blue eyes darkened more as they stared from Wreg to Jorag to Deklan to Raddi. It occurred to Jon in the same instant that all four of those seers had fought not only in the latest rebellion, under Salinse and Revik, but in the first one, as well, under Menlim.

The next time the seer spoke, his voice grew colder, less compromising. He looked around the room, once more focusing longest on those seers who fought in the first rebellion.

"Why have you come here, threatening us?" he said. "Why not send a messenger first, to ask us of our intentions? We invited you here, peacefully enough. We sent an emissary..."

"Who?" Wreg said, his voice equally cold.

"Elan Raven," the seer replied without hesitation. He looked at Maygar. "We sent a message to the boy's father. We asked him to come, to speak with us so that these conflicts between us would not continue to escalate..." He looked at Chandre and Varlan then, his voice once more holding contempt. "...Instead you send us these scavengers. One who breaks contracts with us and another meant to spy on us for those race traitors, the Adhipan. And you wonder that we felt the need to build a few more safeguards against you...?"

"Raven came
after
we'd sent Chandre," Allie said, her voice openly angry now. "Before then, all we knew about you was that you seemed to be behind both the creation and the destruction of a virus to kill most of the humans on the planet..." She looked at Cass, swallowing. "We didn't even know you had Cass then...much less Maygar. We only wanted the antidote we assumed you must have stolen..."

Once again, the seer honored her only with a contemptuous glance.

His eyes shifted back to Wreg.

"We will not continue this conversation until the Bridge is collared," the male seer said coldly. "You must at least grant us that. You would demand the same, under the circumstances..."

Wreg gave a disbelieving laugh. "You must be joking...brother."

"I most certainly am not. If you wish more information from me..." He gestured around at the castle. "...From any of us, that is our condition."

There was a silence. Jon saw Wreg look at Allie.

After a longish pause, she nodded, frowning.

"We will supply our own collar, brother," Wreg said.

He said it readily enough that Jon realized they must have expected this.

The blue-eyed seer made a gracious gesture. "As long as we are permitted to reassure ourselves of its authenticity, I have no quarrel with that approach."

Wreg nodded, reaching into his jacket to pull out one of the modern, light-weight, sight restraint collars. Regaining his feet, he brought it to the blue-eyed seer, handing it to him without words or preamble.

The seer turned it over in his hands for a long handful of seconds. After glancing at the seer who stood guard behind Cass, he nodded, as if to himself.

"It is acceptable," he said, motioning for Wreg to put it on Allie.

Wreg knelt behind Allie, who still hovered over Revik, her eyes on his face. She didn't look up until he had the collar around her neck and activated the retinal scanner. Jon saw her flinch noticeably as the collar's tendrils dug into the skin at the back of her neck. Once the collar had been activated, she winced again, her face taut as she looked up at the blue-eyed seer.

"Happy?" she said, her voice a retort.

The seer didn't bother to answer her.

"So?" Wreg said, gesturing with a hand. "Talk."

"What would you like to know, brother?" the blue-eyed seer smiled.

"Who are you?"

The seer made a vague gesture with one hand. "You may call me Yosef."

"Is that your name?"

The seer made another vague gesture, not answering.

"You work for this Shadow person? Or are you Shadow yourself?"

"I work for him."

"Who is he? Who is Shadow?"

"He is my father."

"Literally?" Wreg said.

The seer made an affirmative gesture, but in such a way that Jon couldn't be sure of what he meant by the answer.

"Who is he apart from that?" Wreg growled.

The seer sighed, clicking a little. "We have very little time, brother Wreg," he cautioned him softly. "Perhaps you should make your questions more relevant, yes? And less about finding ways to hunt us down after this...?" He smiled thinly. "Trust me, finding us will likely be the least of your worries after today..."

"Meaning what?"

Again, the seer gave only a noncommittal gesture in reply.

"Did you create this virus?" Wreg said, fast enough that Jon wondered again if they really had planned this, down to the list of questions they wanted answered.

"Yes," the blue-eyed seer said promptly, gesturing indifferently with one hand. "...In the sense you mean, at least. We commissioned to have it built, starting as a request through the offices of Ethan Wellington, the previous President of the United States."

"Do you have the antidote?"

The seer smiled, but it didn't touch his eyes. "What makes you think there
is
an antidote, brother Wreg?" At Wreg's frown, he sighed. "No, we do not."

"But you have a sample of this disease?"

"Of course."

"You planted it in San Francisco?"

The seer made another affirmative gesture, so indifferently that Jon felt his jaw harden to granite. Remembering the bodies littering either side of the paths in Golden Gate Park, he felt his stomach turn, half in sickness and half in fury.

"Why?" Wreg said.

The seer sighed in exasperation, holding out his hands. "Really. You need to ask us this, brother? Sincerely?" He sighed again when Wreg didn't avert his gaze. "We needed to test it, brother Wreg. We needed to know how quickly it would spread in a real-world test...so we could plan accordingly. In Hong Kong, we delivered the virus in a contained environment...as much as we could, anyway. That provided the demonstration. San Francisco constituted ground zero...a test, but also an initiation point."

"Do you plan to distribute it anywhere else?"

The seer gave him another thin-lipped smile. "Yes."

"When?"

"It is already done, brother Wreg."

Jon felt a shock of cold go through his spine. He looked at Wreg, who met his gaze, but only briefly before he looked back at the blue-eyed seer.

"Meaning what?" he demanded. "When did you do this?"

"It is happening as we speak," the seer replied calmly. "Distribution is occurring over twenty more test-case cities..."

"Twenty?" Jon choked on the word. "Mother
fucker..."

Next to him, Neela gripped his hand tighter, willing him through her fingers to be silent.

"Why?" Wreg said. Even his voice sounded strangely faint, almost at a loss.

"Why do we do anything we do?" the blue-eyed seer, Yosef, said, holding up his hands in near supplication. "What other purpose do we exist, other than to work for the benefit of our people? To create a world in which we will no longer be slaves?"

"So you intend to kill all of the humans then?" Wreg said, sounding faintly sick. "That is the solution your brilliant minds have come up with? To end this life wave? Spit in the faces of our Ancestors and intermediaries, and ensure that their creation has no chance to become something greater? Is that this noble task of which you speak...?"

The blue-eyed seer only looked amused. "Tell me, brother Wreg," he said. "Are your own people not interfering in the course of history yourselves? Isn't that the purpose of your infamous 'list'? To pick and choose who is to survive the coming cataclysm?"

"No," Wreg said, looking genuinely surprised. "It is nothing of the kind..."

"Then why are you
here,
brother Wreg?"

"You know damned well why we're here!" Wreg said.

"Do I?" Those dark blue eyes locked onto Wreg's. "Enlighten me, brother."

Jon bit his lip. He didn't like where this conversation was going. In fact, he found himself wanting to tell Wreg to look away, to look anywhere but directly into that monster's eyes, but he couldn't seem to force his tongue and voice to work well enough to form sound. Something about the distant look in Wreg's eyes scared him.

Then, the reason for that fear struck him hard, like a blow.

Wreg didn't seem to be talking to the seer Yosef anymore. He seemed to be talking to someone else. As Jon stared at the face of the tattoo-covered ex-rebel, that cold, sick feeling returned to his groin and the lower part of his belly. He found himself thinking that the look in Wreg's eyes as he stared at the other seer was strangely familiar...even though Jon was reasonably sure he'd never seen that exact expression in Wreg's eyes before.

Wreg looked at the seer as though he knew him.

Even as Jon thought it, the voice of the robed seer changed.

It deepened. More than that, it grew older.

"...Last I knew, you were
loyal,
brother Wreg," the seer said. He emphasized the word enough that Wreg flinched...then continued speaking in that deeper, more precise voice. "...When did your views change so dramatically, my son? Did we do something to wound you personally, beloved friend? Or has the Bridge and her cadre of
kneelers
so poisoned your mind that you no longer remember the vows you made to me, all of those years ago...?"

"No." Wreg shook his head, closing his eyes. "No...I didn't make them to you. I made them to the cause..." His eyes brightened when he opened them. "...To the Sword."

"I see," the seer said, and that sick feeling struck Jon again, as if it came through the very melodiousness of that deeper voice. "...Must we all go back to that tired doctrine of the Seven then, brother Wreg, simply due to your loyalty to your brother, the Sword? Can it not be that the Sword, too, is not infallible?" Sighing, with a regret that actually hit at Jon somehow, making it hard for him to think, the voice added, "...Shall we all simply pray to gods who ignore us because we haven't the fortitude to take matters into our own hands? Shall we sit passively back as the lesser breed of humans attempts to destroy us...for principles that are no longer relevant in this world?"

He held up his hands, open-palmed, a gesture of near-supplication.

"Has the world really changed so dramatically for you then, brother Wreg?" the voice said. "In your view, have humans grown to see the error of their ways? Shown more promise for evolution? Become kinder and more compassionate...even to one another?"

Those dark blue eyes remained bound to Wreg's, the color of a stormy sea.

Even so, Jon found himself positive that Wreg saw a very different face. Briefly he felt that confusion flicker back over his lover's light, as if he struggled through clouds just to think, to form words in his mind. Jon felt it, too...that pull inside the construct, the pain that rose when he resisted it. He felt Wreg fighting it, felt his light trying to hold back the invasion that came at him again, just like it had during that attack in the hills.

It hit Jon then, where they really were, what they'd let happen.

They were inside a fortress of the Dreng. They'd been coaxed inside the mind of this Shadow person. More than that, they let themselves be immersed in the presence of those beings, the Dreng, who had already come close to destroying Revik at least three times.

Those same beings had owned Wreg once, too.

Fear exploded over Jon's light. They'd all been worried about Revik, but every ex-Rebel in the room shared his same vulnerability. Jon could feel the conflict there now, in Wreg's eyes and light, even as he fought his own resonance with those silver threads.