Allie's War Season Three (185 page)

Revik gasped, fighting for breath, half of a mind to answer him.

He didn’t though, if only because he was having a hard enough time restraining his light, and he couldn’t afford to get knocked unconscious. When he glanced up next, he saw Maygar watching him, a look in his eyes that Revik almost didn’t recognize. Then he realized it was anger, just not aimed at him. Hell, it might have even been on his behalf.

The conflict returned to Maygar’s brown eyes, though, even as Revik thought it, right before Maygar looked away, shifting his weight between his feet.

Abruptly, the ground started to shake once more, harder that time.

Ditrini himself was thrown into the wall that time, and Revik, without use of his arms, only remained where he already lay, gasping, watching the others careen and fall around him. Jon fell to the floor of the tunnel and brought one of the guards holding him down with him. Maygar crashed into the opposite side of the pipe, falling into the water with a splash. One of Revik’s guards nearly fell on him, landing half on his side against Jon and the two other seers struggling to keep ahold of the cuffs around Maygar’s upper arms.

Revik paid more attention to the shaking of the earth that time.

Being down already, he could.

The moving rock and concrete threw his body simultaneously back and forth and up and down. It got stronger briefly, cresting before it once more began to recede.

Then the chain tightened around his neck from Ditrini's fingers as the seer climbed back to his feet. Briefly, that same chain choked Revik nearly to the point of unconsciousness, then the pressure abruptly lifted, and he was gasping in musty air filled with mold, cement powder and dirt from the pieces of pipe falling from the cracked ceiling, mixing with water rising into the air closer to his face. When he looked up, spots dancing in his eyes, Revik saw Jon fighting his way back to his feet, leaning on the pipe wall for balance. Jon was still struggling to regain his feet when the shaking resumed.

Jon fell again with a splash, closer to where Revik lay that time.

Revik barely had time to think about whether he could take advantage of that fact when Ditrini shouted a series of commands, gesturing to the guards in quick flicks of his wrist and fingers. The five infiltrators regained their feet, holding the cement walls even as another, heavier chunk of ceiling fell out of the cracked pipe in front of them, opening a hole that rained down another dump of silt and water. Revik could hear a different sound now, roaring in the background, and found he recognized that, too.

The pipes were flooding.

He couldn’t yet tell from the echoes if it was happening in front of them or behind them, or even on another floor, but the sound was definitely getting louder.

Revik glanced behind him. He found Maygar watching him, too.

Revik’s mind spun around details, even as he tried to decide if he could count on either or both of them. A part of him couldn’t help thinking it wouldn’t matter. Hell, it might not matter to any of them, not anymore, including Ditrini and his infiltrators.

They could drown down here.

Revik understood something else now, too.

The ‘wall’ that Ditrini referenced on the comm to Cass or whoever, must refer to the protection fields designed to keep the island of Manhattan above ocean-level. Meaning, the force fields that protected New York City in the event the Hudson and the East Rivers flooded due to some kind of severe jump in water levels.

Like what had been happening when they first arrived back in New York.

Revik glanced back down the tunnel, again noting the slope of the floor as he pulled himself up to a sitting position, then allowed the guards to pull him up to his feet.

Fuck. They were definitely going the wrong way.

Revik glanced at Jon, wondering if he'd put the pieces together, too. Maygar likely wouldn’t have, given that he’d been cut off from most of what had happened since they took him out of Argentina.

Ditrini might be the least of their worries. They could all be buried down here...Ditrini and Jon and Wreg and the Adhipan, too.

If he died, Allie would die.

Before Revik could fully process the thought, another rumble of the earth threw him into two of the guards, one of whom held onto the wall of the pipe that time.

The rumbling hadn't yet stopped before that same guard jerked Revik fully upright, forcing Revik’s weight off his own. The chain once more tightened violently around his neck.

It loosened faster that time, though, and Revik could breathe again, if still coughing dust and foul-smelling water from the spray that filled the air. Revik watched as Ditrini threw the chain to the same guard who held his arm, right before Ditrini repeated the hand-gestures for them to move forward. Revik wondered if he could make a break for it with Jon in the confusion, if there was a heavy enough quake.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, his air abruptly cut off once more, knocking him into a second guard, whose grip abruptly tightened on his neck, hitting at pressure points that numbed the muscles.

When Revik could see again, Ditrini looked from him to Jon to Maygar.

"If the Sword tries to run, shoot him first," Ditrini hissed, pointing at Jon. "Shoot him in the head. We don’t need him. Or his terrorist mate..."

Swallowing, Revik glanced at Jon and found him staring at him.

Revik found he could almost read that look, too. He also knew it wasn't on Revik’s own behalf, at least not entirely. Jon was telling Revik, with his eyes at least, not to do anything completely stupid. Revik found himself thinking Allie would probably agree.

The thought closed his throat a second time, even as he looked away from Jon.

Another jolt from the cave floor threw all nine of them off balance again, but not enough to knock anyone off their feet. The ground stopped moving long enough for Ditrini to motion at the guards again, even as he seemed to be staying out of the Barrier, likely because of Balidor and Wreg, since there was a good chance ‘Dori would have hacked their construct by now.

Revik recognized the basic gist of the hand movements, although he’d developed a slightly different variant with the rebels.

Ditrini had them in full-fledged flight. Which at that point, didn't surprise Revik at all.

What confused him more was the direction the seer was leading them.

He didn't have time to think about that either, though. The guard now holding the chain around his neck yanked him forward, accompanied by the shove of the second guard behind him. The roaring sound echoing down the pipes was louder now.

Revik was starting to get nervous. The instinct was almost animal. Allie’s face flashed behind his eyes, and without thinking, he looked at Ditrini.

"Warn the Adhipan," he said. "...And Wreg. They might not know. And they might let you through. If they think you’ll let me die, rather than be caught, they might––"

"Shut your mouth!" The guard behind him yanked on the collar, bringing another fire-like bolt of pain. Even so, Revik felt the tension in the man's hands. "...Now! Or we'll shut it for you."

Revik never took his eyes off Ditrini. "Warn them!" he urged. "You don't want her dead, do you? If I die down here, it'll kill her, too––"

"Shut up!" the guard snapped.

Ditrini stared at Revik, his silver eyes shining in the half-light of the yisso torches.

"Do you want her to die?" Revik said, fighting the anger out of his voice when the guard again yanked roughly at the collar. "Warn Balidor...or you'll never get what you want from either of us. Pregnant or not, if this whole place floods––"

"Jesus, man...shut up!" Jon stared at him. "Have you lost your mind?" His eyes were wide, holding an open fear. "Why the hell would you tell him that?"

Revik gave him a hard stare. “He already knows, Jon.”

“So what?” Jon said. “He’s not going to let us die! He would die, too...”

Revik felt his jaw harden, but he didn't take his eyes off Ditrini, watching those silver eyes as the seer seemed to be thinking about Revik’s words.

Revik saw the indecision there, a flicker of the drugs confusing his thoughts. A waver lived there before it disappeared, even as Ditrini motioned the guards forward yet again. The five of them began dragging Jon, Maygar and Revik down the right side of a Y-break in the pipe, a shorter and narrower length of pipe than the one they’d just left.

Revik didn't understand why the seer would risk putting them into an even more confined space, especially one that didn't look particularly sound, structurally speaking, and then he realized that the tributary pipe sloped uphill.

Ditrini was trying to outrun the water.

Even as Revik thought it, he heard the seer speak into his headset again, once more using heavily-accented English instead of Prexci.

"We're coming up," Ditrini told whoever it was. "Get your people to control the group up there. Or I promise you, I’ll make sure that neither of us gets what we want..." Ditrini glanced at Revik then, his silver eyes glinting in the light of the yisso torch. Pulling out his gun, he aimed it at Revik’s head. “Are you understanding me, my friend? Can you now see the meaning behind my words? And you’d better call your friends in the Adhipan, too. Unless you want the Bridge, the Sword and that baby you want so badly to die, too..."

Revik felt a flush of pain mixed with relief even as something else in the seer's words registered, bringing a cold feeling to his stomach.

He knew, now, who the Lao Hu infiltrator was talking to.

He also knew without doubt who was running this operation.

Menlim wasn’t the one making the calls, not overtly anyway. Revik doubted Menlim was even in this part of New York.

It was Cass. Cass had replaced Revik himself as Menlim’s weapon of choice.

Moreover, Cass was the one who had taken his wife.

19

WATER

BALIDOR STOOD IN the entrance of the sewer tunnel, staring into the dark. As he stared, Balidor’s mind combatted darting and conflicting thoughts that were, somewhat ironically, difficult to think past.

He could feel Dehgoies again.

Thanks to Wreg and Yumi and even Varlan, who had joined them on the lower levels a few minutes before, they had managed to hack through the perimeter of the mobile construct being used by whatever beings pulled the strings outside of the hotel. They couldn’t get much in the way of intel, of course, much less an insight into Ditrini’s thoughts, even drugged as they undoubtedly were, but they now knew Ditrini had Dehgoies, Jon and Maygar.

They could also feel them well enough to track them.

However, the ground shaking and the flickers of panic Balidor got off Dehgoies himself a few times weren't exactly helping his concentration.

Probably because he knew that the Bridge had been taken by now, Dehgoies’ thoughts and feelings came through more loudly than any of them, even those of Jon and Maygar, who had to be equally terrified, if perhaps for different reasons. Dehgoies had a strange sort of focus, even apart from the emotions that likely churned under that veneer, but all it did was convince Balidor that the op had been planned to give the captives as few options as possible.

He’d been able to get all the details of their situation off Dehgoies for the same reason, however...down to the exact chain configuration in which Ditrini’s goons had Dehgoies and the others currently trussed.

At times, Revik’s mind had also gone the quietest of the nine seers they could now feel, including that of Jon, Maygar, even Ditrini himself.