Allie's War Season Three (55 page)

Any one of those items probably cost more than Dante's mother made at her shit job as a manicurist in a year. Working at
any
of those slave drone jobs was for total suckers though, Dante thought. Her mom was just too bought in to see it.

Seeing Pip's half-stoned grin widen, Dante could only laugh, shaking her head.

She hit a few more controls on the screen, avoiding using her headset in case any whisperers might be around, still grinning from behind her hooded sweatshirt as she walked the VR avatar towards the Avenue of the Americas.

Sticking to the shadows, she waited until the brightly lit man in the blue suit was a good two hundred paces ahead of her and Pip before she began to follow, motioning Pip to stay a little bit behind her. Once they reached the edge of the abandoned stretch between buildings, she would switch to the headset Mavis pulled together for her, which should have a built-in scrambler. For now, she wanted to make sure everything worked on the avatar end. She and Pip already busted all the surveillance cameras on this block...after Mavis disconnected their feeds remotely, to make sure they wouldn't be recorded doing it. That way, even if they discovered the tap, they wouldn't be able to re-engage the system without sending a tech in person.

Dante watched the avatar disappear into the crowd from the safety of a basement doorway looking out over the northeast end of Times Square. She still wanted to follow...to see the thing in action...but she wanted to make sure they were actually capturing the credit information first.

It was barely seconds before she and her new avatar pal hit pay dirt.

She knew the instant the avatar hit the busy part of the street, because credit numbers began popping up on the feed, to be instantly transferred to Mavis' and Dante's boxes back at 'the office,' aka, bum stank central.

Folding up the monitor as the numbers continued to appear, Dante switched it off, grinning at Pip as she shoved the device into her back pocket. She could have reconfigured it to wear around her wrist, of course, but she wanted to look unwired, in case anyone happened to be scoping the area...

"Come on," she said, nudging her friend as she pulled her skateboard from the top of her backpack. "Let's go watch our glow-worm fish for suckers..."

Pip broke out into a giggle, pulling out her own board and jumping on with her high-topped sneakers. Within seconds, the two of them were racing down the alley, weaving around cracks and bumps in the pavement as they followed the glowing man.

"SHE’S YOUNG," JON said, staring down at the name on the list. "...It says she's rank one, though, like me. 'Tech,' whatever that means..."

It had been seventeen days since the shooting. Jon still found himself counting days that way, which sickened him a little, when he let himself think about it. Pushing it out of his mind, he waited as Wreg read over his shoulder, his dark eyes seeming to memorize the stats. Grunting, he clapped Jon on the back, and briefly, Jon felt that warmth he felt sometimes from Allie, as if Wreg sent it through his very skin.

"Young is good," he pronounced, releasing Jon's shoulder. "...she'll likely be more open-minded. No real attachments, either." He gave Jon a wry smile. "...Or are you worried about your leadership team turning into a nursery?"

"She's the only other rank 1, Wreg," Jon said, giving him an impatient look. "I'm more worried one of the people I
supposedly
need to rely on in a big way is more likely to develop crushes on all the male seers, show up late for meetings and raid the mini-fridge for those tiny liquor bottles whenever we aren't looking..."

Wreg chuckled, making a noncommittal gesture with one hand. "You cannot have a team filled with geriatric humans, Jon...your race doesn't live long enough. You
need
the young ones, or there won't be time to train any of them to even a halfway-decent level."

"Yeah, but she's only, like, fifteen," Jon said, frowning. "That's not just young. That's...a kid. Should we go talk to the other one first? He's at least of drinking age..."

"You need the rank one, Jon. You said so yourself. We can't afford to let anyone else grab her...we have no idea who else has that list. And whoever put it in that vault knows we have it now, so it's likely they'll be going after the same people...if not now, then soon." Wreg shrugged again with one hand. "Anyway, you need her on board...and trained. And she's in New York...I call that highly fortuitous, don't you?"

"Or some kind of curse," Jon muttered.

Smiling faintly, Wreg again shrugged with one of his muscular hands, noncommittal.

Even so, the more buoyant, humorous tone left his voice.

"You knew you'd have your hands full with this lot," he said, his dark eyes growing a touch more serious. "They won't be like seers, cousin. Most will think you're completely out of your mind when they hear your little tale...especially the adults. From what I know of modern humans, the youngsters are more likely to buy into the idea of the world ending. It is probably why this person was chosen..." Smiling again, he sounded more like his usual self when he added, chuckling, "...I almost want to be there when you lay this tale on some of the older worms, brother. Telling
any
human that their name is on some list...that they are supposed to be important to the seer myth of Displacement that is said to kill off most of their race. That would be
most
entertaining. And you're going to have to do it..."

He glanced down at the list.

"...Six hundred and forty-eight times," he finished, grinning again.

"Thanks, man," Jon said, giving him an openly annoyed look. "You're a big fucking help, in case you were wondering..."

Undaunted, Wreg clapped him on the shoulder. "My point is, your job won't be easy, brother, whatever the age of recruitment...but the young ones are
likely
to be significantly easier. I only say
likely,
Jon...there is no way to know for sure, so I wouldn't count on that, either. It is probable that it doesn't matter the order you decide to approach them in, other than rank. Especially not when you have no idea which ones will react badly and which won't. Most will think you're crazy. Some will be interested enough to follow along with you, at least initially...but a lot of those will likely be doing so for the wrong reasons. They'll be wingnuts, or sociopaths..."

Jon let out an involuntary laugh, in spite of himself. "Jesus, Wreg!"

The infiltrator only shrugged. "It's not my race, brother."

Without bothering to look even remotely apologetic, he leaned closer to Jon once more, half-hanging over his shoulder to stare down at the list, his dark eyes once more scanning names.

Again, Jon felt a pulse of misgiving, and fought back the knowledge that it had more to do with the nearness of the muscular seer than what they'd actually been talking about. But jeez, he should be used to it by now. In some weird twist of opposite-land, Wreg's previous nervousness around Jon seemed to have evaporated in the last week, even as Jon found his own nerves around Wreg flaring, for reasons he couldn't pinpoint, even when he went out of his way to think about it...and to try and be honest about possible causes, everything from racism to a lingering distrust of the seer's ex-rebel status to fear of the seer's actual size.

In any case, Wreg didn't seem to notice, or care...not enough to stop lurking around him anyway. Half the time, in the last few days especially, Jon found the big seer hanging on him and touching him almost without seeming to notice he was doing it.

And Jon had spent a lot of time with Wreg the past few days.

Enough that he suspected Wreg had been assigned to him in some way...probably because Allie and Revik had been pretty tied up with interrogations and ops planning in regards to South America and San Francisco. The Adhipan and the rebels were being hyper-careful of both of their captives, Raven and Surli, given that both had connections to the Chinese and the Lao Hu. Raven seemed to have connections to that Shadow person, as well.

As far as Jon knew, Allie hadn't been allowed in to talk to either of them yet, due to her own connection to the Lao Hu...as well as their concerns about her security more generally. Jon got the impression from Wreg that Revik was worried the Lao Hu might have plans to extract Allie again, much like Revik had extracted her from the Forbidden City. One Chinese infiltrator's name in particular kept coming up, but Jon didn't know who this 'Ditrini' character was exactly, or why he was so significant to everyone all of sudden.

Whatever the reason, Allie wasn't allowed to leave the hotel at all anymore, even with prosthetics. Neither was Revik, for that matter.

Sighing a little, Jon forced his mind back to the task at hand.

All in all, having Wreg around had been a good thing. He kept Jon from getting too lost in his own head, anyway.

He found himself looking again at the odd pattern of tattoos running up the Chinese seer's otherwise brown, muscular arms. Half of them were depictions of gods from the seer pantheon. He knew more than a handful of those from the studies he'd started under Vash and tried to keep up since he'd first lived in Seertown. The rest were snippets of scripture...and images or symbols from the intermediaries.

Jon had already noticed the oddly simple, chicken-scratch-type symbol for the Bridge on each of Wreg's shoulders, in addition to the larger version of the sword and sun he had on his upper arm. Supposedly the placement of each of the designs had some meaning too, but Jon hadn't yet had the nerve to ask Wreg for the tour of his whole ensemble.

Even as he thought it, Wreg stood behind him, rubbing his shoulder with one hand.

"I'd be happy to tell you whatever you'd like to know, brother," he said warmly. "I did not realize you were familiar with our books..."

A little stunned, Jon nodded. "Yeah. Not as much as I'd like, but...you know. I learned some. Under Vash..."

Wreg grinned, his hand still warm on his shoulder. "...Now if you could get your sister to do the same. It is embarrassing, having a Bridge who knows so little. I keep telling Nenz he has to educate his wife, or we'll do it for him..."

Jon grunted, looking back at the list of names. "Good luck with that."

Wreg only laughed, patting him again before wandering back to the bar nearest to the part of the inner lobby where they stood. Jon couldn't help thinking it was kind of funny how few business people seemed to occupy this part of the hotel, too. Apparently, Wreg and Balidor made some arrangement with the owners...either that or they pushed the few humans who dared to notice them in a way that was relevant.

In any case, Wreg claimed his infiltrators were getting stir-crazy, being up in that maze of rooms, no matter how well-furnished, so he'd moved a lot of their meetings to the atrium and other more spacious areas...even the penthouse balconies on the higher floors.

Jon's favorite space in the hotel, however, with the exception of maybe the roof pool, which he frequented with Allie whenever the weather got warm enough, remained the indoor gardens and the atrium that stretched up to a skylight at the height of the sixty-five floor hotel.

He knew a lot of the seers felt the same about the giant, plant-filled glass room. The height of the atrium displayed long rows of balconies covered in plants and flowers, and a fake stream ran around the rim of the room, one that had been stocked with koi and landscaped with tropical plants, probably in some pale imitation of the canals of the Forbidden City. Jon felt like he could breathe down here, especially with the tall waterfalls in the center of the round room and the scattered tables and lounge chairs that faced the bar and the waterfall itself.

He still wanted to go for a run in the park, but so far, security protocols were on high alert from the shooting and he'd gotten a resounding no the one time he asked. No one said anything to him directly, but he'd already noticed they'd tightened security around him anyway, ever since his name showed up on the top of that list, next to "rank 1" and "command"...whatever the hell either of those things actually meant.