Allie's War Episodes 1-4(112)

...and find myself alone in a green, glass-tile room.
It is silent. My clothes are gone. A flat metal collar rings my neck. Against the back wall, three metal cages stand.
The image shimmers, breaks apart...
Red water runs on green glass, pools in dimples by the drains, dries in spots and smears on the ceiling. Hooks have instruments attached to them as wires spark close to the wet floor.
I scream, and I can’t stop screaming.
Barrier winds shriek and tear; I clamp my hands over my ears, but it’s not enough. It’s not outside of me at all, I realize, as the Pyramid fills the sky...
7, 10, 9, 33, 1099, 20, 41, 9883, 231, 87, 284, 2, 23, 66, 66, 994, 1, 1, 1...
I scream at the sky, feeling Revik and the man with no face, but he only smiles, and I...
...opened my eyes.
I found myself hunched in a ball on the wet top deck, freezing in a raw, cutting wind, gripping the handrail, wearing a spray-wet hoodie and jeans and combat boots. I knew the helicopter was not here yet, but it is coming. I could now feel them all around me now. I could feel them closing in on both of us.
Even as I think it, fear exploded in my chest. It wasn’t for myself.
The realization got me to my feet, got me stumbling, then running for the stairwell.



Revik ripped a light fixture off the wall with his fingers. He laid his palm on the bare bulb, biting back a scream as hot glass seared his flesh. Mashing the hand against his side, he cooled it reflexively in his own blood.
The trick worked, briefly. His mind cleared.
Sliding up the wall on his good side, he regained his feet.
They’d trapped him in a floor of staterooms. He could no longer remember which floor. He’d counted twelve more infiltrators in the Barrier, plus the four he’d seen...but they could be obscuring their numbers in either direction to confuse him, and to make him hesitate. He hadn’t seen any humans since that first volley of shots. He may have inadvertently cleared this section of ship for them by pulling the fire alarm.
Something had happened.
Whatever it was, it blew out the overhead lights.
It almost felt like he’d done it...but he couldn’t remember how or even why. The dart made it difficult to think in straight lines, to put the pieces together.#p#分页标题#e#
He’d felt Allie. For a moment, the briefest instant, she freed him.
She carried him high on wings of light...and he’d been alone with her, out of all this mess. She’d forgiven him. She’d even healed him.
Then she was gone, and all of his attempts to find her since only made him sick. He couldn’t feel Chandre, Eliah, or even Vash, who always seemed to have a thread to him, no matter where he was.
He walked faster, holding the wall.
Images flashed, turned the blackened tunnel to a stone cave with rough walls. Silver lights dripped from moss-covered boulders. His neck was swollen, heavy with chains. He could smell death...all around him...
It was like being buried alive.
Depression tried to steal over him, to blank out his mind. He couldn’t breathe. The space closed, thick and heavy. A man’s voice whispers in his mind...Uncle.
Wasted hands, holding a red-tipped dart.
This is your enemy, Nenzi. Not the guns, this.
Merenje stands over him, mashing the gun to his temple, an old revolver from the early colonials. The human clicks through chambers, telling him to disarm, yelling at him to disarm.
You little fuck...you think he’ll let you live if you don’t? What about your girlfriend? How many of us do you think it would take to break her?
A sob came to Revik’s throat, a sick, dying feeling. He is there again, trapped. Faces swim past, fear washing through his skin like a tangible force. He remembers getting so hungry he ate dirt, hands locked to his feet so he stank of his own urine, woke to insects and animals crawling on him, screaming at first, eventually so hungry he tried to trap them...
This is what humans do. What I teach you can save you.
The gun clicks by his ear, louder with each turn.
Disarm, you fuck! Disarm or I’ll blow your head off...!
A bright light flared behind him. He remembered Allie and a part of him fought back. The Rooks were fucking with him, trying to break his mind. He’d fix it. Allie would help him. Allie would find a way.
Irrational, the thought repeated.
He felt an opening in the corridor ahead, and a faint hope reached him. They weren’t desperate enough to gun him down in a crowd of human tourists. No matter how many they pushed, they couldn’t be that desperate to bring him down. Besides, if they wanted him dead, they could have done it by now.
They were trying to bring him in.
He would have put the gun in his mouth already if it wasn’t for his wife.
The thought echoes, paralyzing him.
He feels another sting, this one on his chest. He yanks at the source and stares at the dart, half-blind with pain as he understands.