Allie's War Episodes 1-4(113)

He’d been wrong. They did want him dead. They were going to kill him quietly, where the tourists would see him collapse. They could explain it any way they liked...the blood-drenched seer, terrorism threat averted, SCARB coming to the rescue...
The helicopter that takes off in the night, holding Allie. Taking her.
They didn’t want him.
The world tilts into darkness as he fights to focus his eyes, and once more he finds himself in the cave, alone. Silver clouds mass overhead, metallic wardens to his prison in the dark. They watch, biding their time.
They left him there. They left him to die.
Sound jerks him out...back into his body, into another darkened corridor that moves lightly beneath his feet. He feels them, behind him, stalking him.
But it is the rumbling sound that gets his feet moving.
When a flash lights up the pastel walls, Revik breaks into a run.






 
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20
SURPRISE

 
I aimed for the seer segment of the ship.
I knew the basics of where that was, even before I’d left the cabin. All of the cabins of the Seven stood at roughly mid-port, decks seven through nine, although none of us used any but deck eight, sandwiched between two empty rows of cabins and cut off by bulkheads on both sides, but for the entrances and exits guarded by Chandre’s people.
I couldn’t reach Chandre, Revik or Eliah through the private channels they drilled me on.
I considered a public kiosk, but a fire alarm had gone off on deck five and I heard disjointed thoughts about gunshots in the crew. Given that no announcements had gone out, damage control on one or both sides must already be in play. Anyway, since no one in the Seven would likely be hanging out in their cabin, watching pay-per-view, a public kiosk would be useless. No one in the Guard even wore headsets.
I considered heading for the fire alarm itself.
But even if Revik was there, I wasn’t sure what I could do. I was alone, unarmed and pretty much useless in terms of the seer stuff.
My other option was to find someone in the Seven on foot...or go to the humans for help. Since the latter would probably get me tranked and stowed in the brig, I chose the former. The Rooks were likely controlling the human crew by now anyway.
I rounded a corner on a family of humans as I thought it, and found myself watching them as if they were wildlife from the Serengeti in their tennis shoes and baseball hats, holding shopping bags and soft drinks. Glitter speckled the hair of one of the little boys. His father brushed it off absently, still talking to the woman, who laughed at something he said.
Then I saw them.
Five men whose faces fit together like differently shaped puzzle pieces were coming up fast from behind the family of humans. The men all looked young, late twenties to early thirties, yet their expressions were older, their eyes sharper.
One saw me. Within a heartbeat, all five were staring.
Turning so fast I wrenched my back, I bolted down the hall, back the way I’d come.
I hit a fork and turned. I turned again...and again.
I began trying doors. They all needed card keys. I pounded on one. When I turned, I found myself face to face with two humans.
The man blinked at me with watery blue eyes, clutching a woman’s hand tight enough that it whitened her skin dimpled around his tan fingers. In his other hand, he held a card key.
“What are you doing?” he sputtered. “That’s our room!”
His wife gaped at me, as if expecting me to launch into a speech a la confessional television. Then I felt the seers. I couldn’t tell where they were exactly, but I knew they were on their way, not far behind me. Looking for me. Hunting me.
I raised my hand to a gun-like position.
The woman’s eyes bugged out further. The man grew very still and pale, his eyes on what he saw as a black muzzle.
I showed him an image of Ivy’s Baby Eagle.
“Open the door,” I said, motioning towards the door.
Both pairs of eyes went blank.
“I’m not here,” I said. “Open the door.”
The man’s face calmed. He smiled at his wife, waggling his eyebrows at her suggestively. She laughed, squeezing his hand. They kissed, then he slid the key card into the lock to the right of the door handle.
It opened with a click. I followed them in and stood inside while they shut the stateroom door, pushing the man to flip the dead bolt lock. Stepping around the woman as the man trundled over to turn on the television, I walked to the balcony, drawing back the curtains with a sharp yank as the woman disappeared into the bathroom. I glanced back as the man straightened his crotch, adjusting his seat in the round-backed chair facing the main monitor.