Allie's War Season Three (177 page)

Frowning, Menlim turned to stare at the camera directly, his sallow skin sweating lightly in the glaring lights and video feeds from the network station reporters that stood around him in a ring. Balidor watched him stand there, adopting the mannerisms of an old human, down to a kind-seeming smile to the reporters...or one that would seem kind, if one didn’t have the sight and couldn’t see the metallic strands that strangled his aleimi.

Briefly, Menlim paused, looking out over the crowd, as if in grief.

Anger stood in his eyes, along with a frustrated grief that almost felt real, but for the complete wall around the being’s aleimi, and the hardness of the light that reflected back, pulling on the crowd without them being aware of their being pulled. Balidor felt that pull, too. He recognized it, knew its power. It had frightened him, that power, when he first felt it in the trenches during World War I. It frightened him now, even though he only tasted the edges of it. He remembered how it had affected his own men, confusing them as they fought, sometimes even making them turn on one another. The amplification of that network terrified Balidor briefly, if only because he could feel a part of himself that could get lost inside it, that could get lost and never climb out.

"...Whatever the reasons given for this horror, do any of us really care anymore?"

The crowd shouted a no, even some of the reporters. The voices rose, even as Menlim’s rose right along with them, lifting to be heard above the cries of the grieving and afraid.

"Whatever those reasons might have been, they don't matter anymore. All that matters is this: It. Must. Stop..."

More yells rose, briefly drowning out the rest. Still, Balidor’s eyes and attention scanned the faces, looking for Cass, looking for any hint of her in the bodies pressed up against the ropes around the podium. He felt his mind skirt around Menlim again, getting close without letting that metallic light pull on him, without letting it tug him in. He glanced at Jorag with a frown, even as he thought it, and saw fear in the taller seer’s eyes as well.

“We’re recording all of this?” Balidor muttered, glancing at the others.

A few heads nodded.

Only then did Balidor notice the silence.

All of them stared now, their arguments forgotten. None looked away from the screen.

"The Bridge will get her war,”
Menlim said, his light eyes shimmering with a harder pulse of that metal light.
“She wanted this...or so the iceblood scripture tells us. She wanted this war. She wanted us to rise up. To evolve. To change. She wanted us to be afraid. She wanted the human race’s back against the wall...”

Menlim paused for a weighted beat, eyes lingering on faces as the light above him brightened, descending down over the crowd like a snaking, sparking cage.

“Well, Esteemed Bridge...”
he said, softer, his voice lulling, cajoling.
“Our back is to the wall. But you may find you don't like us in this state as much as you think..."

More yells erupted through the crush of the crowd, now holding more pride, more of an angry war cry as Menlim tightly gripped the edges of the podium.

"Yes,”
he said, letting his voice rise once more above the swell.
“...The infamous Bridge and her brainwashed band of cowards will get their war...at last. She has forced us to take a stand, so now, we are all in. She has taken all we have, so now, we have nothing left to lose. With our president and leaders recently fallen from this cursed disease, we do not even have law and order to restrain our demand for justice. We are our own people still. Alone, but brave. Frightened, but immovable. The last remnants of a free world...”

Jax’s eyes shifted to Balidor. "Is that true? Is Brooks dead?"

Balidor shook his head, but not in a no. "We have been unable to confirm or to refute that assertion,” he said. “We're trying to get eyes into the security bunker below the White House, but the construct is complex, to say the least. We had a hard enough time breaching the main construct before, when talk of war with China began...now they have reinforced it at the lower levels, which is where the medical center is located..."

"Reinforced," Jax muttered, staring back at the wall monitor.

"We have to assume Shadow is behind that also, yes."

"We've lost our link to the White House," Yumi said, more blunt. She glanced around at the other infiltrators, her brow furrowing and wrinkling the tattoo on her face. "Which means we’ve lost the ability to influence the humans in regards to China, too."

Her words brought a deeper silence, and a few paler faces, Balidor noticed.

He didn’t insult any of them by trying to deny what they already understood.

Menlim’s voice rose again into that silence, charged and alluring with silver light.

"We do not believe that it is unreasonable, to ask that the person responsible for this...carnage...”
he spat, curling his lip.
“...To answer for her crimes."

Mutterings of agreement swam through the crowd, a few angry yells in the background, although Balidor found he didn’t bother to make out the precise words. More of that righteous fury rose to Menlim’s face after he’d allowed for a pause, even as he retained that calm, masterful demeanor, enhanced by the silver light.

"...We do not think it is unreasonable to ask that she explain herself,”
Menlim added, his voice rich and deep with emotion.
“We do not think it is unreasonable to want to know
why
she has perpetrated these horrific crimes on our people and hers. In fact, we demand that she do so. If this ‘Bridge’ wishes to prevent a further catastrophe for her race, she must come out of hiding and accept the judgment of the world she has condemned...”

Angry cheers rose in the weighted pause as he looked around at all of them again.

“...If this self-proclaimed 'Bridge' and her army of terrorists do not agree to surrender themselves for this judgment, we will be forced to act to protect ourselves and the remainder of our race to the fullest extent of our powers..."

More triumphant and vengeful yells rose up in the crowd that ringed him in a densely-packed mass on the steps of the Capitol Building. Balidor saw lights flash as more recording devices switched on, trying to get different angles on the seer where he stood. Watching the aged Menlim stand there hunched in an expensive suit, waiting for the emotional impact of his words to abate, Balidor swallowed, again feeling an unreal kind of déjà vu.

That time, it wasn’t only of World War I.

More than anything, Balidor found himself reminded of the Barrier records he’d seen from the time of Kardek, the first so-called 'Bridge,' who lived during the first recorded Displacement on Earth. Back then, the enemy of the world had been the Bridge, as well. His accuser, an Elaerian named Haldren, had orchestrated Kardek’s public execution in the wake of the wars and disease that constituted the Displacement of the time.

Something about the thought sickened Balidor now. It also made him wonder if perhaps those records had not been interpreted entirely accurately in the time since.

More than just vengeance, that desire for a savior, for that one person who would bring them out of death and chaos, scared him. That fevered desperation and hope hit a note that Balidor recognized from too many time periods to count, albeit usually not with so much at stake.

It also made him feel powerless to stop what he could already sense coming from this.

He knew, from too many years of personal experience, exactly what kinds of things mobs could be capable of, whether seer or human. He also knew intimately the types of decisions and actions desperate people, fearing for their families, could make.

This really was the Displacement. Most of these people would likely be dead in a matter of months. Now, thanks to Shadow, more of them would die enmeshed in the light of the Dreng.

Or, at the very least, they would die filled with hate and misplaced desires for revenge. They would die in terror, feeling powerless and without hope. They would be lost in the Barrier spaces of the Dreng after death. Perhaps they would be lost in those spaces even longer than that, if Balidor could believe the prophecies of the old seers, and even the words of Vash himself.

Either way, Menlim managed to hit those same notes that Haldren had back then.

His words resonated along the same twisted, yet oddly archetypal lines, causing the same tremors in his psyche and in that of the crowd who so badly wanted to believe him. Menlim managed to not only tap into their desire for rescue and their fear of death, but also their anger, desperation, fear of change, fear of being overpowered, fear of the unknown and fear of anyone unlike themselves. Also, perhaps even more importantly, he tapped their need for an
explanation.
Their need to find someone or something to blame.

It was the same thing Haldren had done. Hell, it was the same thing
Hitler
had done, from Balidor’s own experiences during war and in the world.

Menlim also fed their fervent wish to see the world the way they always had, as something they could control. As something that made sense to them.

The thought of what could come from that terrified Balidor.

He found himself thinking about the Bridge, and the condition that grew more obvious to the rest of them every day, the one Dehgoies still avoided telling her, for reasons Balidor only partially understood. He tied that in his mind to Jon and Wreg’s desire to be mated, and his own morning with Yarli, and Allie’s human friends who had just arrived from San Francisco, the hacker kid Dante, the Bridge and Sword’s wedding and the Bridge’s surprise party planned for Dehgoies’ birthday...and just the fact that all of them had built a family here at the hotel, in spite of everything. Balidor tied that in his mind to everything they’d been through in the past year, and what Allie had gone through to rescue her husband, and something in him dipped enough that he felt it as a near-danger, and shook his head, trying to snap out of it.

As soon as he had, the voices of the others reentered his consciousness.

"...We have to respond in some way to this," Jorag was saying. "They're all but threatening to nuke New York, if we don't..."

"Or China," Yumi muttered, folding her tattooed arms.

"They aren't going to nuke New York," Chandre said, her voice hard. "Why would they? This one of
their
cities, is it not? Did they not set this up with their own people, for the purpose of keeping them safe? Why go to all of that trouble, only to destroy it? They are rattling swords, trying to get a response from us..."

"You're assuming that Shadow is running the White House entirely now...” Jax said.

“Why wouldn’t we assume that?” Anale asked, frowning at Jax.

"Anyway, we have to respond, don't we?" Jorag said a second time, glancing at Illeg and then Holo. "We can't just sit here, can we? We have thousands of brothers and sisters in China. We cannot just let them die..."

Chandre looked at Yumi, then back at Balidor, her eyes holding an open disbelief.

"We cannot truly believe he would wipe out all of Asia!" Chandre gestured towards the monitor with a strong sweep of her fingers. "Why would he do this? What would be the possible motive? If he wants the Lao Hu gone, there are easier ways. Especially at a time like this. And why would he not want to recruit as many of them as possible? Why kill the children? Why kill those who would willingly join his crusade...?"

Balidor’s eyes shifted back to the monitor.

As his gaze moved, Menlim spoke up in another burst of angry speech.

"...Let her show her face to the world! Let her tell us exactly what it will take to end this war she has started!"
His words rose to a shout, even as he held up an aged fist.
"Let her explain to us why she's so determined to end humanity and in such a disgusting, brutal way...without giving us recourse to a sane solution to these problems between our peoples!"

Menlim’s expression twisted, turning into a sneer.

"...Clearly she feels somehow justified to visit this horror upon the world,”
he said, letting his voice grow louder once more.
“Clearly this seems
reasonable
to her...the deaths of families and children from all corners of the world, millions upon millions of us, bleeding and rotting too quickly for those left behind to even bury what's left..."

Wails rose from the crowd, a shock-filled grief that Balidor also recognized from war and death or previous years. Menlim’s voice seethed with a darker hatred, one that felt almost real as angrier yells once more broke out among those in the watching crowd.