Allie's War Season Three (130 page)

Dante hadn’t seen a lot of those seers around in the past few weeks, though. A whole bunch of them cleared out, including the one, quasi-normal guy in the group, that surfer dude from the West Coast, Jon whatever-his-name was, brother to the queen-bee terrorist herself.

Kind of pissed her off, really, that Jon hadn’t even warned her he’d be leaving. Guy wasn't a hack, but he’d been
trying
with her...and he was more or less warm-blooded.

But yeah, blondie went poof, just like that shit-weed Mavis. Just like Pip and her mom and everyone else she ever knew. Surfer Jon took off on some super-secret mission with his sister and the rest of the icebloods not long after Dante began cooperating with the guy.

After Jon left, Dante had no one.

She woke up to new faces every day.

More than half couldn't speak English. They understood
her
just fine, probably from the whole mind-reading thing, but Dante understanding
them
was a different story. Most days, she had to rely on the comps. Not only were computers a language she and the iceblood hacks shared already, but a built-in translator did a decent job converting their verbal speech into an audio translation, straight into her headset.

Now, Dante hardly noticed the delay.

"So what's on downstairs?" she asked Tenzi. “The big bosses back yet?”

Unlike most seers, Tenzi seemed to be
trying
to learn English. He mixed his weird, clicking and gestures thing with some actual words in Dante’s native tongue.

"Boss and Bridge not come back...yet. Later. Soon," he added, not looking up from his own monitor. "They coming. Bring more people..." (there was a slight pause after he added words in his own language, then his headset sent her),
"...refugees, along with the infiltrators from several work camps they freed in South America..."
Tenzi paused, and added, "San Francisco, Argentina...those places...understand? They are coming..."

Dante heard that word 'infiltrator' before, but she still had only a vague idea of what it meant. The Argentina thing made her frown. She'd seen something on the black feeds about an attack in Manaus, but that was Brazil.

Tenzi was watching her, though, so she shook her head.

"You got Argentina from my head, right?" she said.

"Yes," the Asian-looking seer said. "I am saying this wrong? Incorrect?"

"No." Dante shook her head. "You're saying it like my dad would...so yeah, Spanish. But stay out of my head, okay? I don't need you poking around in there just to get your English screwed up with my Spanglish..." At his confused look, she shrugged. "Anyway, you're in the U.S. of A., Holmes. You should say it like a gringo would...Ar-GEN-tina. Got it?"

Tenzi continued to look puzzled, but smiled faintly as he nodded.

"Got it," he said, enunciating each word.

Shaking her head, Dante picked at the cuticle of one thumb. “Right.”

The seer only spared her a glance that time, his expression faintly distracted as he did something in the hack-line they shared.

"I understand some," he told her.

Seeing the agitated look that rose to his eyes, Dante grunted. He understood all right. Ice-for-brains just read her mind. Right after she told him not to.

"It is easier," he said apologetically. "I am sorry."

Dante blew a longish string of dark bangs out of her face. "Whatever."

She glanced down at the monitor he was adjusting, watching the signals configure.

She knew he did a lot with his mind as well as the headset, so she was only seeing the surface stuff. She knew this in part because she'd memorized every sequence the first time he let her watch him open a hack terminal, and then tried to replicate it on her own, in one of her failed attempts to unlock the machines after they all left.

All she’d managed to do was set off an alarm.

Vikram hadn't even been mad.

He seemed to be their head of security, at least when Wreg, that monster with all the tats, wasn't around. Dante supposed the Vik-man knew the weaknesses of his system well enough not to bother being 'viced. Still, his complete and utter indifference to her hack got Dante where it hurt. Ice-dick actually
praised
her, for having 'so many excellencies of memories.' He asked her to repeat the whole sequence so he could watch it again, smiling in delight when she knocked through it without a single keystroke out of place.

"Marvelouses," he told her, once again making up a new English word. "Very many marvelousnesses of memory, my cousin. We can use this mind of yours. It is most excellent...I am much pleased..."

Dante hadn't known what to say to that, either.

It was hard to be pissed off when he was so busy praising her like his favorite pet chihuahua, but yeah, she was a little. Pissed off, that is.

That same day, Vikram informed her they were going to intensify her training by putting her on an actual job, which turned out to be the tracking people thing. Vikram told her they probably would've given her a taste of real work sooner, but most of the
'militarily-deployed infiltration units...'
(that one went through the translator, too), were away on assignment.

Dante had to assume he meant Jon and big sis and the Sword, along with that tattooed monster and whoever else.

She had to admit, she
wanted
them to come back.

The feelings around that were mixed, sure, but overall, she wanted them to return in one piece, too. In particular, she was looking forward to seeing Jon again, and his cut, tattooed bodyguard with the super-black eyes, Wreg.

Dante thought Wreg was pretty hot, actually.

She'd distinctly gotten the impression that he and Jon were an item of some kind, but she doubted that mattered...from what Mavis said, seers would put their dicks in pretty much anything, so being with another guy didn’t even make Wreg gay, really.

If anything, her estimation of Jon went up once she scoped that.

Jon himself was a pretty weird bunch of contradictions, anyway.

Sometimes he came off like white-bread normal California dude, and other times, he seemed as tough and foreign as the rest of them. Even when Jon was trying to pal around with her or whatever, his casual-seeming words were peppered with bouts of intensity and a sharper intelligence. A thinker type. Maybe a lot smarter than he pretended, which made Dante careful around him, since maybe he was there to get her to lower her guard. He'd gone badass on her once or twice, too, talking to her about how they would be training her, and the importance of protecting her mind from the seers.

That time, he'd seemed as military as Wreg.

In fact, the more she'd talked to him over those couple of weeks, the more her impressions of Jon blurred and seemed to conflict.

Thinking about it now, Dante realized that Jon was pretty hot, too.

She wasn't into white-bread usually, but Jon had something, and not only because he hung around all of these icebloods. Anyway, growing up with the Bridge had to be a trip.

Glancing at Tenzi, she said, "Has anyone heard from them?"

Tenzi nodded. "Yes."

"They’re okay?” she said, casual. “Jon? That guy, Wreg? They’re together, right?"

Tenzi gave her a half-smile, one that held a degree of knowing. He didn't look up.

"Where Jon is, there is Wreg, too,” he said. “Both are fine."

"How long?" Dante said, keeping her voice casual. "The two of them, I mean. How long have they been a thing?"

"Not long," Tenzi said, making that clicking noise with his tongue. "Weeks...maybe this many." He held up five fingers. Seeing something in Dante’s expression, or maybe her mind, Tenzi firmed his mouth. "Wreg is not okay for you, cousin." He pronounced the words carefully. "Not Jon, too, my lovely friend. I would not thinks about this...dangerous. He and Jon...is much light. No other peoples..." Tenzi frowned, as if trying to think of some other way to phrase it. Shaking his head and clicking again, he essentially repeated himself.

"No good," he said, glancing up. "...Dangerous."

He made what almost looked like the universal hand gesture for crazy by his head.

"Mind and light," he repeated. "Understand?"

Dante shook her head. "Not even a little. You’ve got to give me more than that, Holmes. You're saying one of them is crazy? Both of them? What?"

"Yes," Tenzi said, nodding emphatically.

Dante laughed, refolding her arms. "Really? He didn't seem crazy...Jon."

Looking at her blankly for another few seconds, Tenzi shook his head then, as soon as his eyes clicked back into focus.

"No. Okay." He took a deep breath. "I explain bad. Seer thing. Not broken. Not crazy like that. Seer is okay. Crazy for human. But only short time..."

Likely seeing Dante’s puzzled look deepen, Tenzi sighed, making that expressive clicking noise that all of them made, right before he seemed to concede defeat, switching from his stilted English to his normal, clicking and purring tongue. Dante listened to him speak, waiting out the pause. When the translation kicked in with her headset, Tenzi was still speaking, punctuating his words with hand gestures, pauses, and more of that clicking sound.

"...Jon and Wreg aren't just having sex,"
the program translated.
"...They are together. In the seer sense of together. Seers have a lot of casual sex, it is true...but mated pairs are exclusive. When this kind of coupling is at its beginning, the affected seers tend to go a little crazy. This can manifest as paranoia, hyper-possessiveness, violence. When I said 'crazy' I meant only this. There is nothing wrong with them. They are not sick...but we seers know to be cautious around new pairs of this kind. It's not really good for you to have crushes on either of them, cousin. It could be dangerous for you. Do you understand...?"

"But Jon..." Dante said, confused. "He's human, right? I mean, his parents were human. He told me they were."

"Maybe not so much now," Tenzi said in English. "Not so human."

"‘Not so much now’?" Dante said, bewildered. "What the fuck is that? You mean being a seer is
catching?"

"No," Tenzi made a negative gesture with one hand, laughing a little. "No...not catching. Not like disease. Not so easy to explain, this. Jon change, very rare. Very, very rare. Only happen ones other times...on lists. Like people you find. Understand?"

Dante pulled apart his words, still half-sure she'd heard him wrong.

Not just about what he'd said about Jon somehow 'changing' into a seer...but the whole crap about seer pairs and being monogamous and whatever else. She'd always heard seers were big, walking piles of hormones, that they'd do it with pretty much anyone.

Or anything.

"Myth," Tenzi said, without even sounding offended, or contrite about reading her mind for like the millionth time. "Jon and Wreg...marriage. Like marriage. Like Bridge and Sword..."

"Jon and Wreg are married?" she said, dumbfounded. "After five
weeks?
They're married?"

He made a different hand gesture, tilting his palm back and forth.

"This is close," he said. "Complicates. But yes...is okay."

"Complicated," Dante said, but at least she understood him that time.

He made the hand gesture she now knew meant 'thank you,' presumably for the correction to his English. She sighed, folding her arms.

"...So what's the crime for today?" she said.

Giving up on the Jon and Wreg thing, she slumped into the open seat with a sigh, kicking at the carpet with her sneakers to make the chair swivel. Reaching behind her, gripped the back of the chair, without taking her eyes off the screens generated by her headset, or his open monitor.

"...More government databases?” she added. “Or were we going to knock over a bank? Not that we'll need to in a few weeks..." she added in a darker mutter.

Tenzi gave her a curious look. "You saw this on feeds? Today?" It wasn't really a question, more like surprise.
"...Already they are saying this? That the currency is failing here? That is very bad news..."
came the delayed addition.

"Yeah," Dante said, once the translation program finished. She tried to keep the rest of her thoughts hazy and in the background, like Jon had started to teach her before he took off, but some of what she'd been thinking must have leaked through, enough for Tenzi to get the gist. That time, he didn't bother trying to speak to her in English, but rattled off words in that other language, his voice noticeably agitated, his dark eyes serious.