NEW YORK:
ALLIE’S WAR, EARLY YEARS
by
JC Andrijeski
Copyright © 2011 by JC Andrijeski
Published by White Sun Press
Cover Art Design 2013 by Greg Jensen
Ebook Edition, License Notes
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***
Other Books by JC Andrijeski:
Rook: Allie's War, Book One
Shield: Allie's War, Book Two
Sword: Allie's War, Book Three
Shadow: Allie's War, Book Four
Knight: Allie's War, Book Five
War: Allie’s War, Book Six
Bridge: Allie’s War, Book Seven
Revik: Allie’s War, Early Years
The Alien Club
The Culling (The Slave Girl Chronicles: Book 1)
The Royals (The Slave Girl Chronicles: Book 2)
The New Order (The Slave Girl Chronicles: Book 3)
The Morph
Never More (A Minders Novella)
Synopsis
Allie calls it her New York jinx. Already on this trip, obnoxious band groupies hang all over her boyfriend, a stalker leaves her cryptic and creepy notes, and she nearly gets arrested watching a Seer get tasered by cops who act like not-cops. One of them, a tall, black-haired guy with strangely colorless eyes, keeps showing up everywhere Allie goes.
But when a religious cult targets Allie for an end of the world ritual, her visit goes from annoying to quite probably fatal.
A prequel novel in the Allie's War series, an alternate history romance featuring a gritty, unique and modern day Earth with star-crossed telekinetic lovers, Allie Taylor and Dehgoies Revik.
Dedicated to Alaina
Table of Contents
Synopsis
New York: Allie’s War, Early Years
Bonus Pages from Rook: Allie’s War, Book One
Prologue: Mistake
Chapter One: Mr. Monochrome
Chapter Two: Awake
Chapter Three: Exit
About the Author
Additional Books in the Allie’s War Series
Credits
NEW YORK:
ALLIE’S WAR, EARLY YEARS
I never liked New York all that much.
I know it’s not cool to say that. I mean, everyone likes New York, right? I don’t even tell most people that I don’t like it anymore. Some of that's pride. I hate getting the cocked head and pointedly disbelieving look, like they think there’s something wrong with me...or even an eye-roll, like I’m some corn-fed rube who can’t handle a ‘real’ city.
But San Francisco, the city where I grew up, has been real enough for me.
New York just seems so...I don’t know.
Mercenary.
Or a little too hard-wired into the material thing, maybe.
Maybe I just don’t buy how cool everyone thinks it is. It seems like everyone’s pretty hung up on money and status and looks in New York, which is the same thing (ironically, in my opinion) most New Yorkers complain is wrong with LA.
Or maybe it’s just that every, single, solitary time I’ve gone to New York, something really bad has happened.
I think part of it is the seer thing.
The seer thing is genuinely depressing here. Not fascinating and yet appalling, the way it is in San Francisco and LA, but really out-and-out soul crushing. There's no way you can pretend it's not slavery after spending a few hours wandering around New York.
It’s kind of like how zoos depress me, I guess. Looking at all those animals in cages, especially the smarter ones like the big apes and the elephants, always makes me uncomfortable. It did even when I was a kid. How the hell are you supposed to lighten up and enjoy yourself when you’ve got this intelligent creature staring you in the face, like, ‘what did I ever do to you?’
The seer thing is a lot worse, of course. I mean, they look like us. Not a little bit, like apes. I mean, they look pretty much exactly like us...with a few minor details changed, maybe. Like a lot of them are really tall. Most of them have weird-colored eyes, and sometimes weird-colored hair. A lot of them look Asian, or have dark skin. But I've seen humans with most of those traits, if not in the exact same combinations.
They feel different, sure. In a way that's less easy to categorize, when you look at them, they don't quite feel like one of us. But you'd have to be able to do some pretty serious mental gymnastics to be able to dismiss them as animals, the way the news feeds try to, or try to convince yourself they're stupid. One look into their eyes, and you could pretty much tell they're thinking about stuff...more than a good chunk of people I know seem to think about things, honestly. And a lot more than some of those moron broadcasters they have on the feeds.
Like I said, the seer thing is really in your face in New York.
On this trip, I'm noticing them a lot more, too. In fact, since we got here, I've seen more seers on the streets than I knew even lived in the States.
The last time I was here, three years ago, I don't remember seeing even half as many.
Their numbers seem to have quadrupled, at least in terms of their visibility...and three years really isn't very long, so I admit, it's kind of a shock. They all wear those computerized collars, which supposedly means they’re “safe." But I see the looks they get on their faces, following behind their human sponsors, or even just when they’re standing there like equals almost, offering their opinion or insight like anyone else. I see the way they look at us.
I see the way they look at me, and I wonder why any of them would spare even one of us, if they had the option. And sooner or later, everything that gets enslaved gets free.
I don't remember where I read that, exactly, but it feels true.
There aren’t many seer clubs in San Francisco yet, although I’m sure it’s coming. I’ve already noticed more walking around with business people in downtown SF, wearing suits and collars, sometimes so well-concealed I think they’re human until I get a good look at their eyes, or maybe give them a second glance because of their height and notice the collar.
That’s the other thing I don’t like New York.
Often, coming here, I see the future of San Francisco.
It’s not always a future that looks all that great to me, frankly.
***
My best friend, Cass, rolled her eyes, snorting pointedly.
I could tell it was aimed at me.
Leaning back on the leather-padded bar, she sighed loudly and even more pointedly, stretching her arms over her head. Everything about her posture and body language was designed specifically to let me know in no uncertain terms that she was bored...and that she held me personally responsible.
Sighing back, I threw my swizzle stick at her.
She brushed it off her arm, raising an eyebrow.
The message in her eyes remained the same.
The club was closed, but we’d been allowed inside as 'band crew' when we told the bartender we’d be helping Jaden set up. Well, that and he found our name on the list. The bartender himself was still cleaning up from the night before, which wasn't all that surprising really, considering New York club hours. And it was early still, only about eight am.
That should have been early enough to chill out even Cass, but our plane landed at five, so she'd been up long enough to be antsy.
The club was a lot bigger inside than I’d been expecting, even looking at it from the outside. Four stories of blacked-out windows, with the main stage on the ground floor more than a hundred yards from where we were standing. It felt more like being inside a black-painted warehouse than a bar. The upper levels all had DJ dance floors with different themes. Those sometimes housed smaller live acts as well, although the show that night would pretty much spill over to all the other rooms, since the headliner was a biggie, even for New York.
Jaden told me that they were expecting full capacity, around 1800 people.
It wasn’t quite the Coliseum back home, not yet, but still, pretty crazy compared to some of the venues I'd seen him play in before. It was more than twice the number of people as that show in Santa Cruz, and that had seemed enormous to me at the time.
I was impressed, I couldn’t help it.
"Come on," I said. "Some slack, okay? This is a big deal for Jaden..."
"I get that," Cass said. "I really do, Al...I just don't care..."
I rolled my eyes at her, snorting a little in spite of myself. "And you wonder why he doesn't want to hang out with my friends...?"
She blew her bangs out of her eyes, rolling them back at me, only with more dramatic flair.
"Jeez louise. It was a joke, Allie..."
"Sure it was," I said, snorting again. "Look, we just got here, didn't we? So chill for a few minutes. Drink some coffee. Give Jon crap for awhile, if you have to bug someone..."
"Hey!" Jon said reproachfully, looking up from where he'd been doodling on paper at the bar.
"...It won't kill you to be supportive," I added to Cass. "To me, if you can't be civil to Jaden..."
"I'm civil," Cass said. "I'm plenty civil. In fact...I'm practically an honorary member of your relationship committee..."
"Not lately you haven't been."
"He's been a big-headed, obnoxious ding-dong lately, that's why..." Cass retorted. "The groupies are turning his hair gel into meat tenderizer..."
I fought the smile off my face, gesturing as if she'd just made my point.
"Even so," I said.
"But why are we here?” she said dramatically, drawing out the last word with a kind of exaggerated affront. “Seriously, Al. I thought we were going to have fun in New York this time? Isn’t that how you talked me and Jon into coming here in the first place?”
Jon looked up from the drawing long enough to take a sip from his customary soda water with lime and laugh at Cass' words.
“No,” he said, grinning at me. “We’re here to make sure my sister doesn’t go ballistic on some Jaden groupie and start beating on her with a wine bottle...right Al?”
I glanced between the two of them, now fighting irritation.
“It’s eight a.m.,” I said, repeating emphatically, "Eight a.m., Cass, Jon. And this is what you want to do? You want to talk smack about me and my boyfriend?"
Cass folded her arms. "We wouldn't have to if we were out touring, like you promised..."
I bit my lip, fighting back the retort that wanted to come out. Instead, I walked to the bar and picked up the crappy coffee the bartender scrounged up for us when we told him we'd just come from the airport after taking the last redeye flight of the night from San Francisco.
I’d thought inviting my best friend and my adoptive brother along on this little excursion would make the whole thing more bearable. I was bound and determined to have fun this time in New York, unlike my usual track record in this city, which had involved one near-rape, a stalking, a mugging, and being accosted by this freaky group of bible-belters who decided they needed to save me from the devil...or maybe save Jesus from me, I'm still not sure.
Cass would have said that was my usual track record anywhere, but I strongly believed the freak-quotient to be higher in New York, and to a statistically significant degree.
So far on this trip, I’d managed to avoid any catastrophes, but we'd just gotten off the plane.
Of course, none of this was helped by the fact that Cass was right, in a way. My boyfriend and lead singer of the band, Jaden, had been pretty stressed out and distant for about a month now. It was getting increasingly difficult to predict his moods.
“We can go as soon as they get here,” I said, fighting the defensive creep in my voice. I shoved my hands in my pockets. “I just told Jaden we’d help unload the stuff. He said he might not need us, but I want to check in before we split...make sure they’re all good.”
“Why don’t you just call him?” Cass said.
“I did call him,” I said, unable to suppress my annoyance that time. “They’re probably on their way and he couldn’t pick up. We wait a few more minutes. Then we help them carry a few things maybe, and split.”
“So we’re roadies now?” Cass said, exasperated. “Doesn’t he pay people to do that kind of thing now that Eye of Morris is all big-time?”
“They got asked to open for one mega-band. That doesn’t mean they’re rolling in the cash.”
“Why are you defending him?” Cass said. “You know it’s crap detail. And he’s blown you off since we got on the plane. He could at least have offered to meet us for breakfast...or sit with you for part of the flight, for that matter...”
I couldn’t really argue with that, so I shrugged, keeping my mouth shut.
I really didn’t want to get into it with Cass about Jaden again. She really was convinced he was getting a big head from the band stuff, and slowly turning into a dick as a result.
Hell, maybe she was even right.
But Cass hadn’t sat in dank, one-room apartments with him for years, either, listening to Jaden play the same riffs over and over again as he tried to write songs. Nor had she been one of four fans sitting in for laundry mat and coffee shop shows, usually where the other three people listening were either washing their dirty socks or one of a handful of Jaden’s pals from music school. Cass also hadn’t seen him dragging his junkie drummer out of the practice space by his shirt after he stole half of their sound equipment and sold it for stash. Nor had she heard the drag-down fights the rest of them got into, about everything from set lists to costumes to who’d last paid for parking and who broke whose guitar case and on and on.
So the last thing I wanted to do was get on Jaden’s case now, when the band was finally enjoying some real wins. Eye of Morris’ tracks were climbing on all the college and even the mainstream charts. They got their big break when Jaden gave a few songs away to an indy filmmaker, who ended up making a sleeper hit that catapulted the title song into the top 100 in a week’s time, and then into the top 50.
Last I checked, it was still rising, and Jaden was riding the high of that, too. Given everything he’d gone through, I was fine with letting him bask for awhile. As long as he didn’t go completely off the deep-end, he had a right to be a little excessive.
“So?” Cass said, making a show of checking her Felix the Cat watch, which I happened to know was broken anyway. “Do we wait until he’s an hour late? Or is a half-hour long enough?”
“Chill out, Cass,” Jon said, sighing a little. “You’re like a harpy right now.”
“A harpy?” Cass said, turning to glare at him. “You should want to be out on the streets, too...isn’t this like gay mecca? The place where you can let your freak flag fly?”
“No, that would be San Francisco,” Jon said, smiling a little and rolling his eyes. "Anyway, you’re just pissed because Jack blew you off. Stop taking it out on Allie...”
“That’s not true! I told you...we both decided it would be better for him to stay there.”
“Yeah. Sure you did."
Cass threw a plastic swizzle stick at Jon’s head, coincidentally the same one I'd thrown at her. When it bounced off Jon's temple, she burst out with a laugh, covering her mouth with her hands in mock horror.
“Oops, sorry.”
Jon rubbed his forehead. “Jesus, Cass.”
“Guys!” I said. “Cut it out, all right? Seriously. You’re like twelve-year-olds!”
I was about to say more, when the bartender appeared from the back room. He’d been carrying crates of beer in from the alley out back for the last few minutes. Of course, he might also just have been hiding, since he was probably sick to death of listening to the three of us joke around and bicker like infants. Either way, I tried to tone it down when he was there.
But this time, he yelled out for me.
“Hey!” he called, setting a box of import beer bottles on the bar. “You Allie?”
"Allie?" I said, surprised. "Yeah. That's me."
"Allie Taylor?"
“Yeah.” I craned my neck, looking behind his not-inconsiderable form, half-expecting to see Jaden. “Is the band out back? Do they need our help?”