Allie's War Season One (154 page)

I stumbled after Nenzi, still clutching the scalpel and the saw, barefoot and jogging to keep up with his fast pace.

I hated how blind I was...forced to use my eyes on any area illuminated with a swath of rust-colored light. I sought out every line and surface I could see until the light disappeared and the contrast threw me into relative blindness again.

Nenzi got us to the elevator.

I saw a pair of guards standing there. I was about to grab his arm, when the two of them crumpled in front of me. I looked at Nenzi, then stepped over the guards, looking for the panel to open the elevator doors. I found it, but it was DNA coded and required a retinal scan.

“Leave the knives here, Allie.”

Glancing at my hands, I hesitated, then tossed them on the floor, my eyes still on the panel’s security system.

“Nenzi,” I said. “We might have a problem.”

He walked up to stand next to me.

I watched as he laid his hand on the external control panel. His eyes glowed again, faintly, and I glanced down at the two human guards. I realized in some bewilderment that he hadn’t just knocked them out. He’d killed them.

“Nenzi, jesus,” I said. “You didn’t have to—”

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said.

Looking at him, I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it.

I forgot the guards a second later, when the panel lit up under the kid’s fingers. I watched the retinal scanner click on; it sent a narrow beam of red light down over his forehead, eyes and face, seemingly untouched by the orange generator lights. Reaching the base of his neck, it clicked off just as abruptly, leaving us in relative darkness.

The doors to the elevator slid open smoothly, letting out a low tone.

My chest clenched. Relieved, sick, scared, totally confused...I didn’t know if I was happy to be leaving with him or not.

He started to enter the elevator when I grabbed his arm.

“Terian,” I managed. “We’re not going somewhere with him, are we, Nenz? We’re not just meeting him upstairs? Him
or
Wellington?”

Nenzi gestured negative. “No.”

“What about Maygar?” I said. At his puzzled look I used my hand to indicate the male seer’s rough height. “The seer that brought me to the doctor...that was here earlier. With the tattoos...”

Nenzi frowned, shaking his head. “No.”

I hesitated for another half-second. Nenzi grabbed my arm, tugging on it without forcing me inside.

“Come on, Allie!” he said. “We have to hurry!”

I nodded. Then, taking a breath, I stepped into the elevator.

I watched him hit a button, but my mind was somewhere else. It was so strange riding in the elevator with him—the quiet whisper of the rails, the elaborate wallpaper that belonged more in the upstairs part of the building than the downstairs, the whisper and click of passing floors.

Suddenly, I realized we’d passed too many floors.

“Nenzi.” I grasped his arm again. “Where are we going?” I heard the edge of panic in my own voice. “Nenzi? You said we weren’t going to Terian! You said we weren’t going to him or Wellington! You told me!”

“Wellington
is
Terian,” he said, giving me a puzzled look, like he couldn’t believe I didn’t know. “And we’re not going to him. Calm down, Allie—”

“Then why didn’t we get off on the main floor? Why are we—”

“We have to make a stop first,” he said.

His eyes looked determined, just the slightest bit triumphant. Seeing the expression there, I fell silent, unable to make sense of it, or how it could possibly fit with what was going on here.

Then it hit me. The power was out in the friggin’
White House.

The only thing that could cause that was some kind of war.

Receding deeper into the wall by the brass handrail, I felt the car slow, then come to a gliding stop. For a number of seconds it remained where it was, going through the security protocols of scanning us, checking us against where we were supposed to be in the building according to the security files.

Whatever Nenzi told the machine to get it to open its doors to us the first time must have been fairly all-encompassing. The organic mechanism now thought it was perfectly okay for us to be on the second floor of the aboveground structure, too.

I felt my breath come short as the doors opened.

I crept out after Nenzi, half-wishing I still had the scalpel and the saw, even knowing they wouldn’t do me a lot of good if we were confronted by security, who had guns at minimum and more realistically a bevy of organic toys that were a lot scarier than guns. Still, it was oddly comforting even just wearing clothes after what felt like weeks and weeks of mind-numbing helplessness.

I followed him down the hallway, still treading lightly. The entire floor seemed to be deserted, but as we rounded a corner, I saw two guards sitting on chairs outside of a set of closed doors.

I realized then, that the lights were on upstairs.

I let my gaze sweep the hallway, back and forth. The rich furnishings suddenly swam into focus, and I realized again where I was, and the craziness of being here, wearing doctor’s scrubs that were three sizes too big, clutching the hand of a seer kid who looked about twelve years old.

“What are we doing here, Nenzi?” I whispered.

He motioned for me to be quiet, then focused on the guards.

I saw both of them collapse in nearly the same instant. One didn’t even fall out of his chair. I didn’t know if he’d killed them at first, but when we got closer, I saw that their chests were still moving.

“Thanks,” I whispered.

He smiled at me. That odd look remained in his eyes. He walked to the double doors, laying his hands on the ornate handles.

“Nenzi!” I whispered urgently. “There are people in there!” I said. “Thus the guards...get it?”

“I know,” he said. His smile crept slightly wider. “That’s why we’re here, Allie.” Seeing my panicked look, he gestured negative. “It’s not Terian. Or that woman with the sky-colored eyes.”

I stared at him. “Then what? Who is it?”

“Come here.” He motioned me over.

Cautiously, I stepped barefoot over the rug. Funnily enough, I had a twinge of guilt when I saw that my foot was bleeding and realized I was tracking blood on the White House carpet. Somehow, that wasn’t something I ever thought I’d do.

When I was near enough, Nenzi took my hand.

“Don’t be mad at me, Allie,” he said, soft. “You needed to know. You needed to see what he really is.”

Then, without another word, he opened the two doors.

I STOOD BY the edge of the far right door, peering in without exposing any more of my face or body than I had to. I was sharply aware of the daylight-bright light behind our backs, the fact that it made our silhouettes stand out like cardboard cutouts on a white background when viewed from the dimly lit room.

A fire burned in the grate. A few lamps stood on side tables, but turned down to their lowest settings, so they acted more like candles, or oil lamps maybe.

Then my eyes focused on the people.

A woman lay sprawled on the bed, naked. A man was having sex with her, his face contorted as he neared orgasm. I stared at the man’s body. I didn’t know his face, which was a young, boyish kind of pretty that had never really appealed to me. He had long blond hair in a braid that hung past his shoulders; it slapped his back at each thrust into the woman below him.

I stared at the muscles in his arms, the length of his back. I watched him fuck the woman, and realized there were others in the room, in my peripheral vision. I knew they were all either watching or doing similar things, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off the man who’d first pulled my attention.

Then, I knew. Somehow, I knew.

In that instant, his hand rose from where he’d been clutching the sheets beside the woman’s body. I saw him turn, moving so quickly I didn’t have time to flinch. I saw the gun in his hand...

And then two shots fired, so near my head I thought for sure I was dead, that he’d been aiming for me. They were quiet, though, like a toy’s pop. The gun was organic, not metal...so small it seemed almost to be a part of his hand.

I stood there, paralyzed, as Nenzi dropped.

No, not dropped.

Despite the size of the gun and how quiet it was, the shots threw his small, spider-thin body backwards, tearing his cold fingers from mine. I stared down at his crumpled form, at his chest rising and falling too fast, the blood swiftly darkening the beige carpet I’d been so worried about staining.

The blood spread out from under him in a rapidly widening pool.

I watched as his breaths gradually slowed. I could only look down at him, paralyzed as his eyes glazed, losing light...

The other man stood beside me before I realized he’d moved.

He stood over Nenzi, the gun pointed down at him. He was breathing hard, his eyes still glazed with sex, his cock fully hard, and I couldn’t stop looking at it, or at the body it was attached to. A thin organic cast circled one thigh, and I stared at a blue and black inked pattern on his skin, just below his navel, in the shape of...

I felt my knees buckle. He grabbed me around the shoulders and I stared up at his face, but I didn’t know it and I couldn’t feel anything with my light, but the sickness was back, so bad I actually thought I would throw up. I closed my eyes, leaning against the door jamb, unable to breath...breathing too much...

“Allie.”

I knew his voice, and then I felt the room swim.

I hadn’t thought once about what I’d seen. It didn’t want to be in my head, so I let my eyes drift past him, into the room, and they settled on a face I knew, a body I even knew, though I’d never seen it entirely naked before, just enough that I’d felt completely threatened. I stared at Kat’s face, sure I was hallucinating. Then I realized she’d been the woman sprawled on the bed.

I crumpled beside the door. I knelt there for a moment, barely aware of him even though he was kneeling beside me, his arms around me, his hands shaking.

“Allie...darling...Allie...” He was having trouble talking. I stared at his face, and I didn’t know it. “Allie...we don’t have much time...”

The others were getting dressed, I realized.

They were back in infiltrator mode.

Even Kat seemed to be business-only. She pulled on a white blouse, fitting a black organic vest over it before shouldering on what looked like a business suit jacket. The humans were all passed out. Somewhere in that moment where I couldn’t breathe, the seers had sent all of them into a deep sleep.

A handsome male seer I didn’t know drew his own organic vest over a dress shirt, throwing another to a female with red hair. I stared at her face...lost again in a kind of sinkhole of disbelief.

“Ullysa,” I breathed.

I couldn’t look at him, although I was aware of him next to me, watching my face. He smelled like sex. He stank of it. I couldn’t feel him, couldn’t feel his light, and I’d never been so glad of anything in my whole life. I just wanted him to get away from me, to put on clothes and get the fuck away from me, and not take off the makeup or prosthetic or whatever else was on his face.

He was doing something to me though. I felt his fingers at the collar around my neck, realized he was holding some kind of tool...