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“What thefuckare you talking about?” he said, not hiding his incredulity.

Dalejem gave him a cold look, not speaking.

“It’s beenthirty years,brother,” Revik said, unable to be silent. “You leftme,remember? I spent the vast majority of those years alone… when I wasn’t selling myself to humans. So spare me your wounded animal bullshit, okay? I was there. I wasalwaysthere. You weren’t.”

A denser fury seethed off Dalejem’s light.

He still didn’t speak.

“I’m not even the same fuckingpersonnow?” Revik growled.

“So you said,” Dalejem cut in, giving him a warning look.

Revik bit his lip, forcing back another hard pulse of fury.

He considered briefly that the other seer might actually be fucking with him.

Then he considered that he might be an agent of Shadow.

In the end, he wondered if Dalejem might just be another one of those people who rewrote reality to suit their own emotional needs, regardless of facts. It was less usual for seers to do that than it was for humans?mostly because seers had photographic memories so it was harder for them to lie to themselves so completely?but it definitely happened.

Revik watched Terian do it for years.

He’d seen Raven do it, Maygar’s mother.

Feeling another, sharper pulse slide off Dalejem’s light, Revik found himself thinking the ex-Adhipan seer probably wasn’t screwing with him, though. Not intentionally.

He meant it. He thought he did.

Revik fought with some way to respond, torn between an inexplicable guilt and anger that bordered on a furious disbelief, when Dalejem began to walk towards the platform. His light was entirely closed now, his body moving strangely as he adopted a human’s gait.

The train screeched to a stop in front of them.

Revik followed Dalejem wordlessly, no longer looking directly at the older male, either. He walked through the same carriage doors, following him into the same segment of train. He glanced around only long enough to choose a seat.

Through all of it, he was acutely aware of surveillance. Unlike the platform, the inside of the train had image recorders. Audio and Barrier scanning equipment covered every inch of passenger space; Revik could feel it.

Still utilizing his own version of the civilian gait, which he’d practiced for weeks on the deck of the aircraft carrier with Allie, he found a bench in the corner opposite Dalejem and fell into it clumsily. Once he had, he slouched into the cloth cushion, folding his legs one over the other in a way he never normally did. The posture felt strange, even though he’d practiced it.

He hoped it didn’t look as unnatural as it felt.

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Revik slid lower in the seat, tucking his chin and closing his eyes as if he was tired.

He knew they still might pick him up in a scan, if only as a new face.

They’d chosen this route into the city on the premise that any security agents looking at him would check him out, but that they would also accept the cover story and alias. According to that cover, Revik was a new day laborer who just got missed in the morning scan. Surli seemed to think it wasn’t uncommon that people got missed in such a way, given the volume of traffic and the high rate of turnover in workers.

The main focus of the quarantine walls remained keeping out the disease.

Revik had his blood checked twice for any trace of C2-77 on their way off the docks, even as a worker who’d supposedly been checked on the city side before he started his shift. It didn’t matter. Since he worked with cargo, seers and humans from outside the city, he was checked every time he crossed one of the security thresholds.

Revik knew his face coming up new on a return trip scan might still get reported up in some fashion, depending on quarantine procedure. The hope was, his alias would hold, along with the prosthetics he wore, and the miss wouldn’t raise any flags.

Like Dalejem promised, they weren’t on the train long.

Even so, those minutes ticked by slowly.

Excruciatingly slowly, to Revik’s mind.