Read Online Allie's War Season One by JC Andrijeski - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: JC Andrijeski
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abruptly clasp my light wrist.
He enfolds my body with his, and in no time at all, he is all I feel. The diner reemerges, the blobs of human light, the plastic cat crouching by the old fashioned cash register on the counter.
Even after it all comes back, he doesn’t let go of me.
What happened? he asks.
You’re kidding, right? How would I know?
He is upset though, which startles me. He continues to hold me tightly in his light arms. You must be calm when you are in the Barrier, Esteemed Bridge! Calm! Emotions change your frequency!
I’m sorry, I say, more out of confusion than knowing why I’m apologizing.
Do not be sorry...do as I say!
His fear still sparks through my light. I send calm to him, warmth. I do it instinctively, without really thinking about how or why...and I can tell it startles him, but it affects him, too, enough that he opens, letting me in. After a few seconds more, I feel him beginning to calm.
His light grows more and more still, until it is nearly serene.
Dangerous how? I ask him then.
He sighs, but still doesn’t pull away from me.
The Rooks are looking for you, he says. They would send many seers after us. More than I could handle.
So they really want me dead? These Rooks?
He hesitates. Yes. He pauses. . ..Or with them.
With them? I think about this, remembering Terian’s words. And that would be bad?
We should not talk about this here, Allie.
I look around the diner, then ask anyway. So what is a Rook exactly? Just a renegade seer? One of the terrorists the news is always talking about?
He looks at me, his light once more a pale blue.
They are the enemy, he sends simply.
6
TERIAN
THE CORPSE OF a man who died in his early twenties lay with artistic precision on a stainless steel table.
Clear tubes protruded from his throat, from veins in his arms, legs, his stomach. He was additionally fitted with several color-coded sets of electrodes that dotted patches of his bare skin, a computerized headband and the more conventional saline I.V. The organic-looking headband with its soft, skin-like texture blinked rhythmically, the only light not coming from one of the four monitors that dominated the walls of the bone-white room.
A technician adjusted settings on a rolling console beside the steel table, utilizing a standard interface and keyboard that projected data and findings to one of those thin screens that covered a portion of the organic-coated wall. Fluid coursing through the clear tubes disappeared into the same wall, changing color subtly soon after each adjustment the technician made. Temple electrodes on the corpse’s head flashed a dark blue once the fluid stabilized, signaling that another piece of the organic end of the transfer had been completed.
Fogged pupils stared blindly at the ceiling, irises and whites the same milky gray. As the tubes carried the genetic virus to their host, the eyes changed to an opaque yellow, the color of daffodils...or strong urine, the technician thought.
Over time, that yellow began to brighten.
The skin looked different as well, not flushing with life exactly, not yet, but somehow less...dead. That much took twelve hours.
It would have taken longer, but the body had been prepped well in advance.
Day one came and went. The technician’s boss came to the room, several hours past the first signs of change. An older woman, she checked the readouts on the monitor, made more and infinitely more subtle adjustments before nodding a stiff approval to the junior tech, who watched her every move in undisguised tension.
“Now,” the woman doctor said. She had the barest hint of a German accent. “Now, we wait.”
TERIAN LAY ENTIRELY still.
His new body’s only hint at motion lived in an elusive attempt to focus his eyes.
New eyes...to him at least...they looked out from the foreign planes of an unfamiliar face. His face, although he hadn’t gotten a good look at it, yet. Terian gazed up at a flat, dead ceiling, wishing he’d
He enfolds my body with his, and in no time at all, he is all I feel. The diner reemerges, the blobs of human light, the plastic cat crouching by the old fashioned cash register on the counter.
Even after it all comes back, he doesn’t let go of me.
What happened? he asks.
You’re kidding, right? How would I know?
He is upset though, which startles me. He continues to hold me tightly in his light arms. You must be calm when you are in the Barrier, Esteemed Bridge! Calm! Emotions change your frequency!
I’m sorry, I say, more out of confusion than knowing why I’m apologizing.
Do not be sorry...do as I say!
His fear still sparks through my light. I send calm to him, warmth. I do it instinctively, without really thinking about how or why...and I can tell it startles him, but it affects him, too, enough that he opens, letting me in. After a few seconds more, I feel him beginning to calm.
His light grows more and more still, until it is nearly serene.
Dangerous how? I ask him then.
He sighs, but still doesn’t pull away from me.
The Rooks are looking for you, he says. They would send many seers after us. More than I could handle.
So they really want me dead? These Rooks?
He hesitates. Yes. He pauses. . ..Or with them.
With them? I think about this, remembering Terian’s words. And that would be bad?
We should not talk about this here, Allie.
I look around the diner, then ask anyway. So what is a Rook exactly? Just a renegade seer? One of the terrorists the news is always talking about?
He looks at me, his light once more a pale blue.
They are the enemy, he sends simply.
6
TERIAN
THE CORPSE OF a man who died in his early twenties lay with artistic precision on a stainless steel table.
Clear tubes protruded from his throat, from veins in his arms, legs, his stomach. He was additionally fitted with several color-coded sets of electrodes that dotted patches of his bare skin, a computerized headband and the more conventional saline I.V. The organic-looking headband with its soft, skin-like texture blinked rhythmically, the only light not coming from one of the four monitors that dominated the walls of the bone-white room.
A technician adjusted settings on a rolling console beside the steel table, utilizing a standard interface and keyboard that projected data and findings to one of those thin screens that covered a portion of the organic-coated wall. Fluid coursing through the clear tubes disappeared into the same wall, changing color subtly soon after each adjustment the technician made. Temple electrodes on the corpse’s head flashed a dark blue once the fluid stabilized, signaling that another piece of the organic end of the transfer had been completed.
Fogged pupils stared blindly at the ceiling, irises and whites the same milky gray. As the tubes carried the genetic virus to their host, the eyes changed to an opaque yellow, the color of daffodils...or strong urine, the technician thought.
Over time, that yellow began to brighten.
The skin looked different as well, not flushing with life exactly, not yet, but somehow less...dead. That much took twelve hours.
It would have taken longer, but the body had been prepped well in advance.
Day one came and went. The technician’s boss came to the room, several hours past the first signs of change. An older woman, she checked the readouts on the monitor, made more and infinitely more subtle adjustments before nodding a stiff approval to the junior tech, who watched her every move in undisguised tension.
“Now,” the woman doctor said. She had the barest hint of a German accent. “Now, we wait.”
TERIAN LAY ENTIRELY still.
His new body’s only hint at motion lived in an elusive attempt to focus his eyes.
New eyes...to him at least...they looked out from the foreign planes of an unfamiliar face. His face, although he hadn’t gotten a good look at it, yet. Terian gazed up at a flat, dead ceiling, wishing he’d
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