Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (42 page)

I couldn’t help thinking it wouldn’t be waiting much longer, though.

“Agreed,” Dalejem said next to me, soft. “I think not long at all, Esteemed Bridge.”

I glanced at him, but didn’t comment.

Biting back the misgiving that swam through my light, what bordered on full-blown fear now, I clenched my jaw. I knew the chances of Shadow’s people showing up here now, when we happened to be here, had to be in the millions-to-one category.

I hadn’t ruled out alarms, though. Or other automatic security features.

Someone must be guarding this place…somehow.

Unless Shadow wanted us here. Unless Feigran really was a plant.

Shoving the thought out of my mind more forcefully, I drew my weapon from the thigh holster I wore and began to walk. Immediately, I felt Dalejem pacing me, his own, much larger gun propped on his shoulder. I couldn’t feel anything at all on him now, which didn’t surprise me. He was ex-Adhipan after all, and whatever he might be thinking about this, it probably wouldn’t help either of us to discuss it now.

Thinking about that, I made another decision.

“Ten minutes to locate them,” I said, looking at Dalejem. “Then we’re on our way out.” Seeing his green eyes staring at mine, I made a gesture with the hand holding a gun. “We have to assume they have alarms down here,” I added. “Someone will be coming.”

Dalejem nodded, once.

Still, I felt a whisper of something else on his light.

I suspected I knew what it meant. He doubted that anyone was coming for the same reason I did. They simply didn’t see us as a threat.

Perhaps we were even being offered an unguided tour.

A glimpse into things to come.

“Agreed,” Dalejem breathed, still holding up the gun as he walked soundlessly to my right. “I think that is most accurate, sister…well, except perhaps the last part. I think we are definitely not a threat to them…not in their mind, at least.”

I gave a noncommittal grunt, not taking my eyes off the store front windows, or my fingers off the flat part of my gun barrel just above the trigger.

“Are we a threat to them in yours?” I said, my voice sarcastic.

Dalejem’s voice remained serious.

“I think we are…expected,” he said.

“By Shadow?” I said.

Dalejem shook his head, but not entirely in a no. I saw him frown, as if trying to catch some scent in the Barrier that eluded him.

“By someone,” he said after a pause. “I do not know if it is Shadow himself.”

I looked at Feigran.

The auburn-haired rocked on his heels, gazing up at the ceiling, his mouth hardened in concentration. He’d started humming again, muttering every few seconds between the longer breaths. I doubted he knew he was doing either.

Apparently Dalejem had given up on silencing him.

Aware that my fear was starting to affect my concentration, I slipped even deeper into military mode, maybe as a means of controlling it. Taking my eyes back over the row of storefronts, I frowned at a window filled with small manikins wearing children’s and baby’s clothes. I knew once this place was lit up, it would likely be filled with virtual ads as well as the more old-fashioned display cases like I could see now. Still, something about those child-sized manikins with fake blue eyes and wide-spread arms was deeply disturbing.

Turning over Dalejem’s words, I nodded, once.

“You think we should leave now?” I murmured.

Dalejem shook his head. “No,” he said. “No…it is too late for that. But we should be very careful about not doing whatever it is we are being guided to do down here.”

I nodded to that, too, biting my lip.

“Agreed,” I said.

…
Assuming it’s not too late for that already,
my mind muttered.

Dalejem glanced at me.

I don’t know if it was because he’d heard my mind’s snarky addendum, or some other reason. I didn’t ask, but continued to case the buildings as we passed.

Feigran huddled just behind us, keeping pace despite the smaller length of his steps. Clutching his fingers and hands together at around chest-height, he looked into the windows of stores whenever I glanced back, his eyes round, his sculpted mouth pressed into a small line.

“Laboratory,” he muttered. “Rats in tunnels…rats…food for ghosts…”

It frightened me that I understood that.

Fighting back the panic that wanted to pool adrenaline in my gut, I sent my light out ahead, right as we passed another restaurant, an old-fashioned style Italian place. The tables had checkered tablecloths complete with wicker-wrapped wine bottles coated in different-colored candle wax. It reminded me of places I’d been to with Jon in the Village of New York, what felt like a million years ago now.

“You’ve dealt with this before,” Dalejem said, his voice low.

I glanced at him, then returned my eyes to the buildings. Still walking, I shrugged, aiming the gun at windows on my side of the street.

“Sort of,” I conceded. Hesitating, I amended, “Well…no. Not like this. But the feeling, yeah. It’s familiar. Mostly from Revik.”

“Revik?” Dalejem’s voice sharpened.

Only a little, but I heard it.

I exhaled.

“Yeah,” I said, glancing at Dalejem with a frown. “He was forced to spend a lot of time in that fucker’s mind.” I motioned at the storefronts vaguely with the hand holding the gun. My fingers tightened on the grip as I continued in a low murmur.
 

“He used Menlim as a strategic partner through pretty much all of World War I,” I said. “Revik knows all about how Menlim thinks. He talked about how insidious his manipulation tactics could be. All of the back ups and contingencies and hiding plans within plans…things even his own people didn’t know about. I picked up a lot from him…Revik, I mean. Even stuff he didn’t know he knew. Including what Menlim’s mind feels like…how it’s structured…”

Dalejem frowned, but only nodded.

He kept his reaction hidden in his light that time.

Even so, I found myself biting back a different pain that wanted to build in my light.

We didn’t speak again until we’d passed a few more blocks in that odd replica of rural town America. I still didn’t see any end to the street. The further we walked, the longer it seemed to stretch out in front of us. I saw a lot of alleys on either side, though.

I felt other streets, parallel and perpendicular to this one.

We paused briefly at a park on our right, complete with real grass under more of those sunlight-imitating bulbs. Only there I also felt artificial wind and full-grown trees had been planted in the park itself, along with a large play set over a bouncy material like rubber.

I saw a pond past the play set too, filled with toy motor boats. The whole scene stuck me as surreal in terms of details. I found myself thinking there would be ducks at some point, although maybe virtual ones so they didn’t make a mess.

Even as I thought it, Dalejem pointed at the screens behind the pond.

Following his fingers, I nodded as soon as my light identified what he’d seen.

Virtual capability…of course. Glancing up, I realized the entire ceiling was made of the same material. This whole area would probably be indistinguishable from the planet’s surface once all the bells and whistles got turned on.

Well, indistinguishable to a human.

Pain slid through me at the thought. That time it wasn’t separation pain. The idea of generations of kids growing up down here, cut off from real sun and wind, living inside Menlim’s rat cage, as Feigran called it, depressed the hell out of me. I fought with the anger that rose in my light…the utter calculation and yet total indifference of it.

It was entirely logical, even on paper.

But every single thing about it felt wrong, for reasons I couldn’t even fully articulate to myself. And they wouldn’t know any different. They’d grow up grateful to be alive at all. They’d probably grow up with some bullshit, quasi-religious mythology about how much they owed their benefactors for surviving an extinction-level event.

The thought put a bad taste in my mouth, even as I stared at the metal play set with its rubber bumpers on the bottom and artificial ground below.

Dalejem touched my arm.

When I looked over, he motioned with his head, his rifle raised.

I followed the direction of his gesture and saw the front of a pet store, painted with bright, colorful colors. Feeling the older seer push me lightly to see behind the walls there, I let out a low grunt.

Gaos.
Talk about a little too on the nose.

Dalejem suggested with hand gestures that he go ahead of me this time. He tied his dark hair back once he’d said it, letting go of the rifle just long enough to pull his hair back into a thick ponytail. He tied it deftly with a leather thong to get it the rest of the way out of his face.

I found myself thinking that was for combat reasons, too.

I nodded to his question about who should go first.

Even so, when he began to walk towards the pet store, I ignited the bare edges of the telekinesis. I also stayed close, walking right behind where Feigran stayed attached to Dalejem by the organic lead.

Dalejem pushed through the glass front doors. A little bell jangled, like something out of a movie and I looked up, caught off guard.

Dalejem barely paused.

He walked soundlessly down the middle aisle towards the back end of the empty store, his booted tread nearly silent. He didn’t look much to either side, although I felt his light extend outward, still inside my shield but definitely in scouting mode. Like Balidor, he had that knack of doing it without leaving much of a footprint at all.

I knew it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference, though. Light touch or not, if this place was being watched, I strongly suspected we’d already been ID’d.

I didn’t let myself think about that for long.

I didn’t stop walking either…although I did look around more than Dalejem seemed to.

I noted the cages for bigger animals and aquariums for what might be smaller rodents or reptiles, in addition to the ones obviously meant for fish. It was unnerving that most of the store was already stocked…at least with everything that wouldn’t die or go bad. Boxes of animal toys and canned food lined the shelves and even hung from hooks, already on display. A lot of it was half-stocked, with boxes opened in aisles and half-unpacked. The fact that so much of it was ready to go––or would be in a night’s work by some industrious minimum wage worker––only worsened my unease.

I glanced at the time in my headset.

We’d already blown past the ten minutes.

I tried to feel how far ahead of us those aleimic signatures might be, but I could tell I wasn’t getting a fully accurate reading on distances, even now.

I kept my mouth shut as I watched Dalejem approach a metal door at the back of the store. It looked like a meat locker…or a walk-in cooler at restaurants where I’d worked back in San Francisco. Once more, I got the impression this whole place and everything in it was hiding in plain sight, which made my stomach clench all over again.

I could also feel what Dalejem had been talking about.

Someone was tugging us this way.

I was a lot less sure it was Menlim suddenly.

I could feel the pull on the bare edges of my aleimi. It struck me that the same pull might be why I hadn’t thought to check my timepiece until now.

“Is it locked?” I asked Dalejem.

He stopped in front of the door.

“No,” he said. His voice was openly puzzled. “Which is strange…yes?”

He glanced over his shoulder at me, his green eyes reflecting the overhead lights. It didn’t really occur to me until then that this whole place was lit. Was it always so? Or had everything turned on for us when we opened that door from the stairwell?

“You can feel them, can’t you?” he said. “I’m right…that they’re through here?”

I nodded. “I feel them.”