Allie's War Season Three (11 page)

WE’D HAD TO ditch the organic lights.

Not so much because of the physical light, but because they left an aleimic signature. It was faint, but enough that a good tracker might notice the difference from the rats and other smaller life forms that lived in these cement tunnels.

I had one light, a non-organic I'd brought in case of an emergency. Since this was pretty much our textbook, worst-case, emergency scenario, all the way down to one of us being wounded, I didn't hesitate to whip it out...but I still used it sparingly, turning it off whenever we got close enough to another light source to be able to see without it. I didn't want to risk anyone noticing us through one of the grates, much less from inside the tunnels themselves.

I also didn't want to risk the battery, in case we needed it for longer than I was hoping.

We'd been walking...for miles, it seemed.

Longer than I could really think about clearly. So long that I'd fallen into that numb state of the exhausted, where time seemed to both slow down and speed up in all the wrong ways. I had no idea where we were, or how far we'd gone. I knew some of that was the come-down from adrenaline and being low on light. Some of it was probably shock, too.

I was pretty sure we weren't being followed anymore. Still, we'd been staying out of the Barrier, following the tunnels but also branching off whenever we could, trying to confuse the trail. Since we didn't have a particular destination in mind, at least not right away, we didn't have to continue to go in a particular direction underground. We aimed north where we could, just because we were less likely to hit a dead end...or to find ourselves up to our waists in filthy river water. Also, there were a lot more blocks north of us than there were to the south.

I tried to use my seer memory to trace backwards to where we'd been, to get an idea of how far we'd gone and what streets might now be above us. I knew Revik might have done the same already, but I also knew he was so low on light that he was likely delirious...even with what I'd given him, and what I'd siphoned off our human attackers when they got close enough.

It had taken everything he had left to blow out that wall, and it had taken most of my reserves to throw the seer trackers off our scent by giving them shadows to chase. Most of those shadows I projected heading south and east down a different set of tunnels.

Still, it wouldn't fool them for long. It probably hadn't fooled the seers at all, and they'd joined the hunting party not long after that first underground assault. By now, they definitely knew they'd been tricked. I could only hope that the seers would follow standard protocol and look for us from the Barrier...which likely meant going back to the bank to pull imprints off what remained of our aleimic signature following the explosion, and anywhere else where the security cameras had more or less nailed our position.

I really, really hoped they wouldn't be crazy enough to try and find us in the tunnels, not when we had close to an hour's start on most of them.

They might be combing the streets for imprints from humans and seers, however. They'd definitely be looking at street-view cameras for anyone emerging from a manhole cover in the sidewalk, or exiting from anywhere, really, that had underground access.

I slid an arm around Revik carefully. Letting him rest his weight on me, I avoided the shrapnel wound with my arm and hand.

I'd done my best to patch it, while we were still in the vault. Both of us agreed it would be better to stop the blood trail before we attempted to flee.

It hadn't been pretty. I'd had to brace my feet against the wall to pull the piece of shrapnel out, and the wound bled a lot. We had an organic sealant gun and patches, so I knew he shouldn't be bleeding anymore, but I couldn't help but worry, especially since I'd barely had time to do more than a cursory look to see if there might be internal damage, or whether the wound might be more serious than we'd thought.

As it was, he was pretty sure he'd nicked a kidney. Kidneys were a lot bigger on seers, so he didn't seem too worried, but
I
was worried. Also, I knew next to nothing about normal seer physiology, much less ours, as intermediaries and telekinetics. Being the only two known Elaerian knocking around...well, three, if you counted Feigran...wasn't always an advantage. Plus, my organ placement and composition had pretty much tried to mimic that of humans until I was close to thirty...it had only started to spread out and reconfigure in the intervening years, and I didn't really know how close I was to 'normal' as a result. I knew the bits and pieces that the seer medical techs told me, often exclaiming their new findings in excitement when I went in for one of my mandatory regular check ups. They found me a curiosity in general, I knew.

I also knew they'd probably love a few years of me doped up on their lab tables so they could poke and prod at my insides even more extensively than they did already...so yeah, overall, they mostly just made me nervous.

Given that the techs I knew here were seers themselves, I had to assume that went double for the human scientific community. But, to use one of Revik's funny, outdated phrases, I didn't intend to ever let them 'get their mitts on me'...not if I could help it.

Revik's body had primarily imitated that of a Sark, or Sarhacienne, so I doubted ours even looked the same under an x-ray, which was pretty weird in and of itself.

"Baby," I said softly.

I felt him jerk slightly, as if shaking himself out of wherever he'd been.

When he looked over, I tried to hold his gaze, but it was difficult when I saw the pain in his eyes. Maybe giving him something to think about would help. His eyes were glowing a little, too, so I knew some part of him was struggling to stay out of the Barrier...probably because he would heal faster if he went away for awhile to replenish his light.

But I couldn't let him do that, either.

"We've probably gone far enough," I said, stroking his side carefully. "I don't think anyone's following us anymore. But I'm worried about surfacing in too populated of an area. You know the city better than me. Can you think of some place we could go...some place with underground access that wouldn't have a lot of cameras...?"

He didn't speak at first, or change expression. He just stood there, leaning against me, breathing harder than usual, gripping the wall with his free hand. I saw his eyes slide out of focus and worried at first he was going into the Barrier to look, that he really was delirious, so much so he'd forgotten how dangerous the Barrier was for us right then. But when I touched his light, it felt like he was still there, just thinking.

"The park," he said finally. "Can we get to the park, Allie?"

I thought about that. It was a good idea.

Once more, I attempted to trace our footsteps, to take them backwards with my mind to determine our exact location. That time, I did it in earnest, using my seer memory to reconstruct our path as exactly as I could. Balidor had told me long ago, even before I'd been taught such things by the Lao Hu, that memories living in seer light pretty much remained indefinitely, even if we weren't conscious of them.

So the knowledge of where we were...the exact knowledge, down to the exact number of steps we'd walked since we left that blown out vault...still lived somewhere in my light. Ironically, according to my training, it was my conscious mind that got in the way. Miscounting, fuzzing out over passages we'd taken, too tired to lay the pieces together into an accurate trail, letting my worry for Revik distract me, letting my fear convince me I was getting it wrong...all those things were the problem.

Still, the map felt pretty clear in my head.

I followed it from where the underground vault broke into the smaller sewage corridor, and then the unused subway tunnel...where we left the old, rusted tracks to veer into the older and larger system of sewage pipes, the ones that had been built around the turn of the century. I let my light retrace our steps, walking through blocks and blocks of these tunnels, through the turns we made, heading north and east, then back north, then west, then north again, but slightly west.

I took my time, comparing the distances against what I knew constituted a rough mile, then a city street block, then a city avenue block...then the approximate length of Manhattan and where we'd been along that length when we left the bank.

It couldn't be exact of course, as the pipes weren't straight.

Even so...

"We're close," I said finally. "I think we're really close...but we're too far west. By a few blocks, I think..." I held him tighter, but not too tight, even though my arm was a good six or seven inches from the patched wound. "Can you walk a little further?"

"The others..." Revik said, still fighting to breathe. "They probably know by now..."

I nodded, gripping his hand. "Yes," I said. "They probably do."

"We could call them...Wreg and the others. The ones hunting us...they already know who we are. It doesn't matter anymore, does it?"

I fought the worry from my expression as I studied his face in the dim light.

"We could," I said carefully. "...But we have no way to reach them outside the Barrier. No way to let them know where we are...not without raising the alarm..."

"They could help us..." Revik said. "Even the odds..."

I caressed the hand of his I held, fighting fear out of my voice.

"Yes," I said, nodding. "...They could. But we'd have to fight our way out of New York. They'd shut down the airports...the ports, too, since they'd know it's us. Do you think that's a good idea?" I swallowed a little, looking up at his faintly glowing eyes. "Are we at that point? Now, I mean. Because if we are, tell me. I'll call Wreg right now..."

I stood there, silent, while he thought about that, too.

As I did, I continued caressing his fingers, but almost without knowing I was doing it. My attention was fixed with obsessive detail on him...on how he was breathing, the way he stood, the relative coldness of his skin. I found myself feeling out every tendril of his light, assessing his body without going fully into the Barrier, instead using the link we had to one another to bypass that space altogether.

If he was seriously thinking about calling for help, he was in pain. A lot of pain.

"Revik," I said, sensing him drifting again. "Are you in danger?"

Once again, I seemed to snap him back from somewhere else.

"In danger...?" His eyes clouded. He looked at me, and I saw a detached confusion there, along with the pain. "What do you mean, Allie?"

"You're not going to pass out on me?" I swallowed painfully, but my voice still came out short. "You're not going to die?"

He thought about this, just as carefully as I'd seen him think about calling for help. I felt him assessing his light, just as I had done a few seconds before.

Finally, he shook his head.

"No," he said. "No, I won't die, Allie." He glanced at me, smiling. "...Not unless you leave me down here."

I didn't know if I wanted to smack him or kiss him for that. If he was joking, maybe he wasn't as far gone as I'd been worrying.

"Don't tempt me," I said.

He kissed my cheek, caressing my face with the back of his hand. I felt my skin flush, even then, even with everything else going on.

I dealt with it by moving my face away from his fingers.

"Come on," I urged him.

I was thinking about Wreg now as we walked, moving slowly as Revik limped beside me, still leaning against my side. We paused a few times to let him rest, his upper body supported almost entirely on my shoulders, but I barely noticed, too far gone in my own mind to do anything but slow down to accommodate his pace. For the first few blocks, I tried to think through each one of our options, running over the more dramatic scenarios and their probable outcomes in the event we had to call Wreg and Balidor to come get us. I knew Revik could get killed just as easily if it became a shooting war in the middle of Manhattan. Easier really, with him incapacitated like this. Without him, we'd both be vulnerable...me, of course, because I was bonded to him, but Wreg and Balidor and the rest of them, too.

My light was too depleted for me to be of much use without him, either...even if there wasn't the danger that I'd take out a few city blocks by accident, given my track record with the telekinesis.

Even knowing all that, I knew that if Revik got any worse, I would call them. If he gave me any indication that his life really was in danger, I'd call them without hesitation.

"You were right, baby," I murmured as he leaned on me again, shuffling through the few inches of water in the bottom of the pipe.