have caused one of those explosions...which Nenz wouldn't do unless he was fucking desperate, ilyo ..."
Jon paled as the seer's words sank in.
He found himself following them a second later, when Jax made his way towards the door with Wreg, buckling a second holster around his waist. Jax looked grim-faced now too, and paused only to shoulder on his jacket as Wreg did the same by the door.
"What are you going to do when you get there?" Jon said. "Do you even know? They have the whole place surrounded..."
When Wreg ignored him, Jon raised his voice.
"It's great you're so loyal and all," he added sarcastically. "But your pal, Nenz...he wouldn't thank you for getting shot for no reason. In fact, it would just piss him off..."
Wreg barely glanced at Jon, but his voice held a thread of humor that didn't touch his dark eyes. "Are you worried about me, brother?" he said. "Maybe I should tell Dorje about this concern of yours...he might not like it...?"
Jon bit his lip. "What?"
Wreg sighed a little, clicking. Then he turned, taking a few steps back into the room. When he got within a few feet of Jon he stopped, laying a muscular hand heavily on Jon's shoulder. The look in his eyes was closer to sympathetic that time.
"I am going, young brother," Wreg said seriously. "I would rather be near, on the chance that there is something we can do. Help them...if we can. If we cannot..." He made one of those vague gestures with his other hand. "...He would do the same. It is what we do for one another, yes? Isn't that why you came to tell me this? To help?"
Jon glanced at Jax, but the other seer already seemed to be in the Barrier. His eyes held a distant, faraway look, even before he fit the VR headset around his ear and clicked it on with a soft voice command.
Releasing Jon, Wreg rejoined Jax by the door. After exchanging some kind of silent communication with the younger seer, Wreg opened the door, motioning for Jax to leave in front of him. Once he'd passed through the doorway, still talking to someone on the other side of the headset, Wreg met Jon's gaze, his expression pointed.
"Well?" he said, when Jon didn't move.
"Well what?" Jon said.
"Are you coming with us? Or not?"
After a bare pause, Jon jerked forward. He found himself nodding, heading for the open doorway with a purpose.
"Yeah. I'm coming."
AS JON STOOD on West 24th Street, blocks from Fifth Avenue, he had time to wonder at Wreg's invitation...as well as the fact that recently the seer had taken to calling him 'brother,' instead of 'cousin,' as was the customary form of polite address from seer to human.
When the rebels first threw in their lot with the Adhipan and the Seven, Wreg treated Jon as little more than an annoyance. Jon got the impression Wreg saw him as an indulgence on Revik and Allie's part...but then, given his background with Salinse and the Dreng, Jon always assumed Wreg had very little patience for humans in general.
Still, he'd noticed the rebel leader's behavior changing towards him in the intervening months. He'd thought at first that the change was for Revik and Allie's benefit. Yet, unlike some of the ex-rebels, Wreg didn't change his behavior towards him depending on whether Revik or Allie were around. If anything, he was more polite to him when they weren't.
But Jon didn't have time to think about that for long, either.
Wreg insisted on Jon wearing armored pants, a vest and a jacket not dissimilar to the one Jon had seen on Revik in that image they'd captured of him in the stairwell. The clothes were fairly inconspicuous, at least at night in New York, and hid the two guns he also wore in shoulder holsters under the coat...but Jon couldn't help feeling as though he were wearing some sort of gangster costume anyway.
Wreg wasn't particularly inconspicuous, anyway...not even in New York.
Jon found himself watching the seer field stares as they walked down Fifth Avenue, and then across 24th Street and up Seventh Avenue after he decided