Allie's War Season Three (136 page)

Ships were visible and available for long-range scanning long before they got within range of the coast. They could also be easily neutralized before they got close enough to pose a contamination or security threat. Really, the overwhelming sense I got from the human soldiers on the docks was bewilderment at the number of seers, and confusion as to what to do with them.

We weren't really the threat they'd been trained to combat.

Most of the actual dock workers, from what Chandre told us later, were human, which helped. As soon as she and Talei showed them ownership papers for the seers attempting to pass quarantine, Chandre said they immediately calmed down. They calmed down so much, in fact, that we had to guess that more than one multinational was still getting deliveries of live cargo as well as the other kind, just not usually in such large quantity.

We didn't know any of this until later, of course.

At the time, Revik, Wreg, Balidor and I were stuck in the cargo hold, strapped to the inside walls of one of two organically-shielded crates.

It was a pretty awkward way to come face-to-face with the humans we'd brought back with us from San Francisco. Jon was there, too, but totally down for the count. He hadn’t so much as stirred since we’d entered the cramped, seer and human-filled crate.

Most of the other humans I knew from San Francisco sat directly across from us.

Yeah, it was awkward.

I hadn't gone to see them even once on the aircraft carrier before we left for Argentina; there simply hadn't been time. I hadn't seen them on the sub, either, since Balidor took the precaution of locking all of the humans in the disease-free crates prior to our leaving, so that their human signatures wouldn't show up in any potential scans by seers who might be checking for contaminants. Wreg was pissed off that Jon had been housed with the other ‘worms’ during our trip, but looking at him now, I really couldn’t see how it made much of a difference.

In fact, it was probably a good thing really, since Jon likely wouldn’t have let himself sleep if he’d seen Wreg with a bullet in his arm, much less if he’d been pulled into discussions around OBE fields and Menlim and whatever else.

Jon had an ‘ambiguous' Barrier signature anyway, according to Varlan and Balidor, so we needed to be careful with him until we know how he’d show up in most scans.

Varlan seemed to have a great deal of curiosity about Jon, actually.

After quite a bit of staring after they were first introduced in Argentina, he cleared his throat and openly asked him, "What
are
you?" As Jon fumbled for a noncommittal reply, Varlan turned to Balidor, asking the same question of him. "What
is
that?" he said, curiosity audible in his deep, melodious voice.

He stared at Jon as if he were some exotic pet owned by the rest of us.

He might have kept asking that, or something similar, but about then, Wreg lost patience. An edge in his voice, he explained that 'it' was off-limits, and that Varlan had best keep his damned aleimi to himself if he didn't want to lose something he'd miss.

I couldn’t help giggling a bit at that, even though it earned me a dark look from Wreg, too. The answer didn't seem to satisfy Varlan much, either, but he made a respectful gesture to both of them and took himself politely away.

Revik found all of this extremely funny, of course.

I wondered sometimes if it was a ‘misery loves company’ thing, at least to a degree. Wreg and Jon, if Balidor could be believed, were smack dab in the middle of that awkward, volatile and hyper-sensitive stage of an intense seer coupling that hadn't yet figured out where it was going. Those kinds of couplings usually either resulted in a messy breakup involving death threats and a lot of hard feelings...or else an actual mated pair.

Honestly, I wasn't sure which possibility scared me more.

Brushing that out of my mind, too, I tried to mentally prepare myself for what came next after this.

According to 'Dori, we would be taken straight to the back end of the hotel. He only hoped they’d managed to erect the decontamination station they’d planned to build, in the event the disease spread to New York. Wreg’s team designed a specific set of disaster protocols before we left. I knew this in part because Revik and I had been asked to weigh in on those plans a few times and I signed off on the final right before we left for San Francisco.

Since no one had managed to talk to anyone at the hotel yet, we really had no idea what we were walking into, though.

Whatever they’d managed in our absence, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it wouldn’t be enough. I couldn’t tell if the feeling came primarily from intuition or paranoia, but everything shifted over my head as soon as we broke the perimeter of New York City itself.

A heaviness lived here, in the aleimic field over the city, something that reminded me of the Pyramid of the Rooks, back when it still existed.

In that same heaviness, I felt eyes surrounding us, too, as if everything and everyone here was under surveillance, pretty much all the time.

Thinking this, I glanced at Revik and saw him frown.

“Yeah,” he said only.

I reached out more with my light, but he caught my hand, indicating for me to stop.

“Not now,” he cautioned. “We’ll be at the hotel soon.”

I nodded, but let go of my light only reluctantly. Even in that brief taste, I’d felt a glimmer of that ‘something wrong’ blanketing the city.

It felt almost like a construct.

“It might be,” Revik admitted, squeezing my fingers tighter. “I feel it, too.”

Nodding again, I made myself drop it.

At least until we got through the docking protocols, and into the city proper.

Still, the thought that someone might have placed a functional construct over the whole of New York, given the sight restraint mechanism we’d just encountered, as well as everything that happened in Argentina at Shadow’s beach-side chateau, was enough to ratchet my pulse up a few more beats per minute.

The crate itself wasn't comfortable, either.

It had been fit with running lights at the base, maybe so no one would freak out in the dark, but the seats were hard, and the straps cut into my skin, even wearing an armored vest. It smelled sharply of disinfectant, too, strong enough to make my eyes sting a little. But then, I’d noticed I’d grown a lot more sensitive to chemicals in general, especially poisonous ones.

Someone had sedated all of the humans.

I'm sure they’d done it to keep them from hurting themselves or trying to get free, but also likely to keep them from making noise. Whatever they’d been given, it didn’t knock them out entirely, probably so they could be shepherded through decontamination on the other end. The single exception was Tina, Jaden’s girlfriend, who
had
been knocked out, and who lay even more motionless than Jon. According to Balidor and Jorag, they pretty much
had
to do it.

It was that or strong-arm her, just to get her strapped inside.

In her defense, Tina
had
been shot in the leg during our escape in San Francisco. So she might still be in shock, or suffering from PTSD.

Knowing how thrilled she must be to be going
anywhere
with me and my terrorist seer pals, she’d probably been screaming bloody murder since she woke up on that aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Angeline, who I'd known since art school, along with Frankie, one of my tattoo shop pals, just looked really stoned. They stared at me, glassy-eyed, as if Revik and I were ghosts, or maybe some program on the virtual feeds. It was difficult not to stare back as I fumbled to strap myself into one of the jump seats across from them. They'd provided us with crash-seats, essentially, like you might see in a stock car, I assumed in case they had to invert the crate.

I glanced over at the rest of them as I finished buckling the last safety belt, fighting to get comfortable in the hard organic foam. Sasquatch looked pretty out of it, too. So did the handful of other humans we'd pulled because their names were on the list.

Jon was supposed to be the commander of these people.

As I thought it, I glanced at Wreg, watching him strap himself in on my other side next to Jon. Despite his seeming imperviousness, Wreg looked pretty exhausted now, too, despite the relief in his light now that he’d seen that Jon was all right. That last week of stress and no-sleep, periodic jailbreaks and battles thrown in, boat rides, flights, treks through the Andes and jeep rides across a bullet-ridden and half-crazed New York state...it was taking its toll on all of us. From Wreg’s face, I could tell his arm hurt him, too.

Feeling a different set of eyes on me, I turned, looking for the source.

I met a pair of dark blue irises before my mind caught up enough to identify their owner.

Once I recognized him, I stiffened.

Jaden's stare remained glassy, like Frankie and Angeline’s, yet he seemed to be trying to think through the drug, to concentrate. He focused the bulk of that effort on me for some reason, as if I were a puzzle he couldn't quite solve. When I tried giving him a reassuring smile, he flinched, even as recognition flickered across his features.

"It really is you," he said. “Allie.”

I glanced around at the other faces nervously, even though Balidor had assured me the crate was soundproof. When I glanced at Balidor himself, who sat on the opposite side of Revik, he only raised an eyebrow at me, glancing at Jaden.

When I looked back at Jaden, his expression hadn't changed from that puzzled stare.

"Do I really look that different?" I said quietly with a smile.

"Yes," he said without hesitation. “At first I thought those pictures must have been doctored on the feeds...or else they were talking about someone else...that there’d been a mistake..." He squinted, again seeming to be trying to concentrate. "You're...taller," he said finally. "Your body's totally changed..." He stared at my chest, and I felt a pulse of irritation from Revik, who sat beside me on the opposite side as Wreg. Jaden didn't even glance at him. "...You look completely different, Al. Your face, everything. Even your eyes are different..." He hesitated again, staring at my mouth, and again I felt a ripple from Revik, one holding more overt aggression that time.

"...Your smile," Jaden said. "Your smile is the same. Your voice is...close. But something about that is different, too..."

I shrugged, honestly more indifferent to his appraisal than anything.

"Yeah," I said. "Well...seers age different than humans. You knew that. Some of mine happened a little later, is all. I changed when I found out what I was."

Jaden shook his head, his eyes still puzzled.

"Not like that," he said. "They don't age like
you
did, Allie. You should have been a kid when I met you, right? I looked it up on the reference feeds. The pictures they showed of seers had them looking like kids until they hit their twenties. I saw pictures of an eighteen-year-old and she looked about ten, in human years..." He hesitated, still staring at me. "Did you know? Did you know what you were...even when we were together?"

Again, I felt anger on Revik, that time dense enough that I flinched.

He looked away when I glanced up, folding his arms, even as his light coiled a little deeper into mine.

"No," I told Jaden, fighting to hide my puzzlement at the intensity of Revik’s reaction. "No, I didn't know then. I didn’t know until I left San Francisco."

“How did you find out?” Jaden said. He turned his head, looking at Revik as if he were some kind of cartoon villain. “Did
he
tell you?”

“Yes,” Revik said, his voice openly hostile.

Jaden barely seemed to hear him.

He stared back at me. I clasped Revik's hand when he lowered his arm, pressing my leg against his where we were strapped into the crate.

“How I found out doesn’t really change anything, does it?” I said, sighing a little. “...As far as the aging thing, you're right...what you’re describing is the usual aging pattern for seers. Mine happened differently. It's complicated, Jaden, but it's a lot of the reason why I didn't realize what I was."

The confusion returned to Jaden's dark blue eyes, even as he glanced at Revik, as if remembering again that he was there. Feeling another pulse off Revik as he noticed the other's stare, I gripped his fingers tighter, adding,

"...I'm a seer, but I guess you could say I'm a different breed than most seers. So is my husband." I emphasized the word ever-so-slightly, without thinking much about why. "...The kind of seers we are, we're able to adjust our maturation cycles to fit that of the species primarily responsible for raising us..."