Veronica looked up, tears on her cheeks, and I followed her stare. The stars were different through the opening. A tunnel raced downwards from some distant point, and the room went black again.
“Veronica?” Our flashlights were off, the torches out, and the blue light had dissipated. I couldn’t see a thing.
We were still clutching hands. “I’m here.”
I felt for the lighter and flicked the gear, a butane flame bounding to life. Two men stood across the podium, gaping at us with wild eyes.
“You did it,” one of them said. “You brought us home!”
“Who the hell are you?” I asked, but Veronica was already moving from them. She grabbed a torch and tossed it to me, while aiming her gun in the newcomers’ direction. I lit the tip, a sulfur smell catching my nostrils, and held the bright wooden stick out, trying to garner a better view.
“You found a way to bring us back,” the other man said, his voice practically a whimper. They were dressed in ill-fitting robes, and the one man was mostly bald, with cracked glasses placed precariously on his nose. Their faces were shrouded in shadows, and the taller man reached for the Case.
“How did you find it? I made sure no one would,” he whispered.
“Back away!” I had the gun aimed between them, the effort making my stomach hurt fiercely.
His hair was matted, long and curled at the ends. Dark brown eyes glanced up at me, and even though there were more lines on his face, and he was a good twenty pounds lighter than any pictures I had, his identity was obvious.
“It’s impossible.” I walked around the stone stand, using it to keep my balance. The wound was aggravated, and I stuck a hand to it, pressing tightly. My vision was distorted, blood seeping through my fingers. I stumbled, and the man caught me.
“Who are you?” he asked, and I heard a voice from my past.
I was four years old, wearing a birthday hat and sitting at the table, waiting for Mom to bring the cake in. A scattering of friends sat around me, and Beverly saw Dad first. She started to get up, but Mom shut the door. She was yelling. Dad hadn’t been around for weeks, perhaps months, and Mom had told me earlier that he wasn’t coming for my fourth birthday party.
After a few minutes of shouting, he walked into the dining room with a small gift, wrapped with a section of the newspaper and an elastic band. This is for you, son, he’d said, and I’d dug into it, finding a multi-knife, the kind a kid that age should never have. I jumped from my seat, clinging to his waist, and I remembered seeing my mom’s expression. A mixture of sadness and relief.
“I’m your son.” And I passed out.
7
I only recalled sections of our return trek to Madison’s vineyard.
“Are you sure we can go back there?” It was Tripp, and I scarcely heard him over the whir of the rotors.
A gruff voice answered, and I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t have the strength to open them. “Fred had no access to the network. The moment you arrived, I cut the communication ties from his end.”
“Impressive.” This from Marcus.
“Is he going to be okay?” the voice that haunted me asked.
“He has to be,” Veronica said. There was a tinge of sadness to her voice, a heaviness I’d never heard before. But it was gone with everything else as the darkness overtook me again.
I woke in a bed, with sunlight peeking through the drawn drapes.
Images flashed in my mind: of the Tokens, the Case, the blue light cascading from the stars, and lastly, of the two figures that had emerged in the cavern. It was impossible. Clearly, I was delusional, likely feverishly dreaming in the hospital bed in Boston. I fumbled for a call cord but didn’t find one.
“Good, you’re awake,” someone said.
The drapes were pulled aside, sending motes of dust into the beam of sunlight. He wore the same robe and walked across the room from the chair he’d been sleeping in.
“Dad,” I muttered. My lips were dry, and he passed me a glass of water.
“I don’t know how this came to be, but I’m so grateful.” He sat on the bed, his weight tugging at the blankets. He must have noticed, because he loosened the covers off my stomach. “You were in rough shape, Rex. These people… they really care about you.”
I nodded, unable to find my voice.
“I know you have a lot of questions, and I’ll do my best to answer them, but bear with me. I’ve been somewhere else, not sure I’d ever get home. Things haven’t been easy on Clayton and me.”
The other man. Clayton Belvedere. It was so obvious.
“I… never gave up on you,” I whispered.
He clutched my hand, and for a second, I was that little boy at my birthday again. “Thank you, son.”
“How… you’re not much older than me,” I told him. It was true. He could have been my brother, or a young uncle at the very least. Fifty, tops.
“The Bridge… it defies a lot of what we assumed,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” I admitted. My head felt clearer, and I took another sip of water, letting it ease my throat.
“Neither do I, but we’ll figure it out together. I hear they’re on the way,” he said.
“Who? The Unknowns?”
“They are known, Rex. They are very known. But we’ll get to that later. You need to rest. Are you hungry?”
I sat up, cringing as I propped the pillow behind me. “You owe me this. I’ve spent my entire life searching for your ghost, and you show up and say we’ll talk about it later? No. Give me answers. Where the hell were you? Why did you leave? How come you hid the Tokens?” The questions flew out of me, and he nodded. His body looked calm, but his eyes were restless.
“Let’s find you some food. Clayton and his kid should be there when we talk. Beverly too.” He smiled. “I can’t believe your mother is gone.”
I’d missed something, and circled back. “Clayton and his kid? Who…”
And it hit me as I recalled a distant memory. The wisp of a blonde girl. Those same striking blue eyes. “Veronica… is Ronnie Belvedere!”
“She didn’t tell you?” Dirk asked.
“Help me up,” I said. It was entirely strange, giving my absent father orders, but it felt right at this moment.
A pair of gray sweatpants sat folded on the dresser, and he assisted me while I slid them on, sitting at the end of the bed. I snatched a bathrobe and wrapped it protectively around myself.
With the door open, I heard something I didn’t expect. Laughter. Music. The scent of bacon and eggs.
We walked toward the kitchen, and Marcus held up a champagne flute with orange juice in it. “Rex!” He jogged over, handing the glass off to me. “This one is just a splash of the good stuff. Your pills…”
“What… what are we celebrating?” I asked, trying to make sense of the picture. Beverly had her kids pulled tight, their expressions grim. Her husband had died. I’d almost forgotten. Veronica and Clayton sat on the couch, near the crackling fireplace. She stared at me as we approached, and everyone went silent.
Except Marcus. “It’s New Year’s Day. Since we missed out on the eve, we thought it might be a good way to ring in the new year. With some tunes, and food…”
I wasn’t keen on celebrating. I stared at Veronica, and her expression said it all. A silent I’m sorry. I had to do it.
Saul was in the kitchen, working at the huge gas range, and he nodded to me.
“Since we’re in this together, Dirk Walker is about to regale us with his story,” I said. “Dad, we’ve been to hell and back, and I can only assume that’s likewise for you. We’re here to stand against these Believers and stop whatever is coming. Tell us what you know, and don’t keep anything out.”
“Rex, can I have a minute?” Veronica asked, and everyone turned to stare at her. After my speech, no one had expected the interjection.
I glanced at her father, who appeared to have showered and trimmed his hair. We walked to the fireplace and turned from the o
thers.
“Who wants another drink?” Marcus asked, and they started talking amongst themselves.
“I’m so sorry for not telling you,” she said.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
She brushed at a strand of dyed hair covering her eyes and sighed. “I assumed Hunter would freak out if he knew who I really was. He was so paranoid. I’d heard from second-hand sources that he blamed my father for being cut out, and I couldn’t risk him learning the truth. I had to find the Bridge, Rex. You understand.”
“You could have told me.”
“I tried in Antarctica, and then everything turned into a nightmare.”
“We’ve had other instances alone,” I reminded her, trying not to let her omission of truth affect me so much.
“When? We haven’t exactly been sitting around the breakfast nook playing cribbage and sipping tea, have we?”
I stepped closer, and our noses almost touched. “You don’t get to talk to me like that. You were the one lying, not me. I’ve been nothing but truthful.”
“Maybe, and that’s fair. But look what we accomplished. We’ve brought our fathers home. Shouldn’t that be sufficient?” She took my hand, and I didn’t fight it. I had no energy for squabbles. Veronica was probably right about Hunter. He had been erratic, but I did feel like his passion had come from a good place.
“No more of that. We have to trust one another.”
She blinked rapidly and bent in, kissing my cheek. Her lips tilted toward my ear. “Something’s wrong with him. I don’t know if that’s my father.” The words were so subtle, I wondered if I’d misheard her; then she was gone, returned to Clayton’s side, grabbing another mimosa from Marcus.
I watched my friend interact with everyone. He was making jokes and cheering the kids up. They wouldn’t know what happened to their father, and I wasn’t sure how Beverly was going to explain it, but I would be there for them. Carson and Edith needed that. I’d grown up without a father, and I’d make sure they had someone in their corner for years to come.
“Food’s up, Rex.” Saul waved at me from the kitchen, and Marcus dashed to the counter, relaying the plate as I sat on the couch opposite Ronnie and her dad. Ronnie. Marcus had called her that once on our trip, and now I felt foolish for not having picked up on it then.
Beverly made the kids settle in the smaller living space and turned the TV on quietly before coming back. She sat next to our father, and to my surprise, Beverly leaned in, resting her head on his shoulder like no time had separated them for the last three-plus decades. I still couldn’t believe Fred had been with the Believers.
Saul washed up and grabbed a cup of coffee, finishing off the group, and stood behind a couch with Tripp.
And Dirk Walker began. “The Bridge was an idea. A theory Hardy had heard of years before Clay or I finished high school. He was an interesting man—brilliant, really. There was a hypothesis of ancient beings on Earth. The Believers, whom I’ve been told you had a run-in with, worshiped a race they call the Unknowns. They feel that these aliens weren’t technically aliens, but the original inhabitants of Earth. They speculate they weren’t evolved from microorganisms; rather, they flew here on interstellar vessels.
“The Unknowns lived on our planet for countless years, far before dinosaurs, or anything else we’ve managed to dig up. It’s thought they dismantled their cities before leaving, but before they went, they left the spark of life they knew would one day create us. Homo sapiens. The Believers, in all their rhetoric, think we’ve reached our precipice as a species. Some think we’ve passed it, and our decline is imminent.”
I swallowed a few bites of my eggs and peered around the room, seeing everyone was as enthralled with my father’s storytelling as I was. Saul nodded along, which was proof in itself, considering he’d secretly been among them for decades.
“By learning their language, the cult thinks they can attune and merge with the aliens’ minds upon arrival. Hardy dismissed this, along with many of their ideologies, but he did agree about our creators, and the fact that they’ll return.
“There is evidence of them coming to check on our progress throughout the ages, most recently in a community in what we now know as the remote Canadian tundra. The entire village was wiped from the face of the planet, leaving the military to construct an elaborate environmental hoax.” Dirk Walker paused and took a sip from his wine flute. “Hardy imagines this was to test their concepts. If they deemed them worthy, they would send a contingent.”
“What do they want?” Tripp asked.
“We can’t be certain, but Hardy thought they wanted workers. There’s no empirical evidence of this,” my father replied. “But it’s what the Believers built their religion on.”
“A god that created us… aliens. This is messed up,” Marcus mumbled.
“And where does the Bridge come into this?” I managed to ask.
“That was all Hardy. He studied every single culture he could, dating back as far as the Stone Age. Eventually, he made the connections: mentions of the hexagonal shapes, though they were never described so similarly. Unfamiliar black substance. Six sides. Flat stones. Then the markings.
“There were six in total, or so he thought. Six Tokens, as he called them. He determined there had to be a correlation, a link between the items, since they were from so many different ages and spread apart across our globe. And he found it.”
Veronica cleared her throat and said the words. “The Case.”
“Yes. The Case would hold the Tokens, and he imagined that linking them simultaneously would create a portal to another world. A design left for mankind to prevent their creators from destroying them.”
“But who would bother to do something like that? Why didn’t they just stop in and say, ‘look at us, we’re going to stop an invasion’?” Beverly said.
“How do you assume that would go? Plus, this was before we became a global community,” I said, and my dad nodded in agreement.
“Rex is right. When they visited, we were fledging societies, with no contact with one another. They knew the Unknowns, as you called them, wouldn’t return until humanity was far more advanced. Which meant they’d have the ability to find the Bridge pieces and use it.”
“And you did. You both did.” Veronica smiled at her father, and I noted how quiet he’d remained this whole time.
“So where’s our help? Tell us about the Bridge,” I urged him.
Suddenly, Dirk looked less of my childhood hero and more of an aging stranger. “We departed under great duress, Rex and Beverly. I didn’t want to leave you two or your mother, but we’d heard rumors of the Believers’ redeemers returning. Now I suspect they were just that: lies perpetuated to provoke us to find the Bridge and lead the Believers to it. Only they never did track us.”
“Is that why you cut Hunter Madison out?” Veronica asked.
“He had too many ties to the cult. He promised he’d severed them, but I couldn’t…”
“What about Hardy? He told me you were brothers. That you were supposed to bring him too,” I said, remembering the doddering old man.
“Brian Hardy wouldn’t come. We tried. He said he might be needed here,” Dirk said.
“Well, they’re both dead. At the hands of the ones you put Saul’s life into.” I was angry for a multitude of reasons but was quickly realizing that my father had been trying to save the world. It did little to ease the decades of unanswered questions.
Dirk and Clayton watched one another as I told them, and Clayton finally spoke. “We must return to the Bridge.”
My father squinted, his lips pressing together hastily. “Clay, remember yourself.”
I saw something pass between them, an invisible understanding.
“Why?” I pressed. “What’s there?”
“Time is different. We found a city, empty. We could breathe, and there were food sources, water wells, but we were alone. Hardy was certain we’d find our salvation. The Promised Land. Promiss
a Terra. But he was wrong. They were gone. We think the Unknowns are to blame,” he told us.
“We’re doomed. The Unknowns are coming, and we have no defense,” Tripp grunted.
“That’s not quite true. They left something else behind: a seventh Token. And we know where the Case is.”
“Where?” I asked, my blood thumping through my veins.
“In Rimia.”
“What’s Rimia? Is that where the Bridge leads?”
Clayton nodded. “That’s the planet, or the city. We aren’t sure. We didn’t venture far. Dirk made us return to the other end of the Bridge each night. Plus, leaving was… not safe.”
“You thought these beings who created the Tokens would be there to help you, right? That’s why you had Luis disperse the Tokens around the world?” I asked.
“Yes. You know about Luis?” Clayton asked.
“We uncovered his trail on your gravestone. The coordinates to the mine in Venezuela,” I said.
Dirk went rigid. “Clay, you did that?”
Clay coughed and slid his broken glasses up his nose. “I had to, Dirk, and for good reason. You two were so sure help would be across, but I was more pragmatic. On the chance we traveled the Bridge and couldn’t return, I wanted someone to find the trail. I didn’t think it would take so many years.”
“And, Dad, you sent Beverly the Token,” I said.
It was Clayton’s turn to get upset. “And after all the chiding you gave me about wanting to set up a contingency plan, you went and sent one to your daughter?”
My father held his daughter’s hand. “They needed to know it wasn’t them. It was something bigger.”
“Well, we do now. But the question is, what’s next?” I set my half-empty plate on the coffee table and waited for the answer.
“We locate the seventh Token and carry it across the Bridge. There, we’ll revive a second Bridge, one that will lead us to the only people who can save us from the incoming Objects.” Dirk spoke with passion and enthusiasm, and despite everything that had just happened, I was optimistic.
“Where is this mysterious Token?” Veronica asked.
Lost Contact (The Bridge Sequence Book One) Page 31