Bridge

by JC Andrijeski

  Balidor strongly doubted that last, though, given what he’d observed.

  At the thought, Wreg gave him a stone-eyed glance.

  The chair in which Wreg sat had obviously been carved and stitched to match Balidor’s couch. From the way Wreg sat in it, his expression a near grimace as he shifted his weight, it was about as comfortable, too, although equally beautiful, despite a tear in the back from what looked like a flip knife.

  Balidor returned his eyes to the Sword.

  Despite the careful blankness of Wreg’s face, Balidor had seen the Chinese-looking seer watching the two intermediaries being affectionate with one another, just like him. Wreg might have more of a thread of underlying anger in his gaze.

  Balidor only hoped he’d been somewhat less obvious about his staring.

  He understood the anger, too, but he couldn’t think about that now, either.

  Not with the Sword sitting so close.

  Revik glanced at him, and Balidor cleared his throat, averting his gaze.

  “Therefore, in terms of time,” Balidor said, going on as if that long silence hadn’t occurred. “…It is impossible to know for certain how much we can give you, Illustrious Sword.” He gestured again vaguely. “I cannot estimate times around a construct hack without having a reliable map of that construct. Which we do not currently have.”

  Balidor kept his voice neutral, stripped of emotion.

  Even so, he saw the male Elaerian staring between him and Wreg, a harder look in his clear, colorless eyes.

  “…There are too many guesses involved,” Balidor added, pretending he hadn’t noticed the stare. “Truthfully, we still do not know how we cracked that construct in Argentina. We weren’t able to get in until your telekinesis got knocked out, laoban. Yumi, Tarsi and I still do not know if that is because Shadow let us in once he had you down, or if we cracked the construct on our own, once the structure began to display at that higher level. For all we know, the construct energy was drained temporarily when they dropped you, creating a hole.”

  Balidor gestured again, clicking softly.

  “We are guessing with the theory of multiple seer anchors in the first place, Nenz,” he added. “The truth of it is, we still don’t know the precise mechanism for this non-pyramid network you and Wreg have been attempting to map.”

  He hesitated, giving Allie a scarce glance.

  “Even if you and Alyson are correct in your theory as to the Head of that network,” he went on. “We only have a few other followers of Shadow targeted as possible IDs for the secondary anchors. Those are possible secondary anchors, Nenz, and possible IDs. So that is another level of guesswork even beyond our ability to assess the theory of the properties and anchorage of this more sophisticated construct in the first place. It is too many theories stacked upon theories, my friend. Too many guesses combined with guesses dependent on other guesses. I cannot have a reliable opinion in this thing, based on so little.”

  “So you are saying… what?” Revik said, his voice colder.

  “I am saying, we simply do not know enough.”

  Balidor raised a hand from his thigh in a gesture of peace at the other’s frown, even as he glanced at Wreg, feeling the other infiltrator’s agreement, even if he could not see it on his mask-like face.

  “We will not know enough, either, Nenz,” Balidor added more carefully. “Not in the timeframe you have allotted for us. Not if we are to meet the parameters of the planned operation as it is currently scheduled. I do not currently see any way we could meet those requirements, truthfully. Not unless that schedule were to change. Not unless you mark out time for a real infiltration of their operation… which we both know would be risky as hell, even without the nightmare we’re facing if we wait too long. If Shadow manages to recreate Terian out of Feigran, meaning with multiple bodies, as well as train Cassandra to the extent that she becomes a serious threat to you––”

  “––Assuming she’s not there already,” Wreg muttered.

  Balidor glanced at him, then made a conceding gesture with one hand.

  “Assuming she’s not there already,” he agreed, not quite meeting the Sword’s gaze. “Then that will complicate our approach even further.”

  “What would you suggest, brother?” Dehgoies said.

  His voice lowered, growing dangerously quiet.

  “…Or is this merely one of those ‘it can’t be done’ conversations?” he said coldly. “With no goal but to shoot down the current options being presented?”

  Balidor glanced again at Wreg, who wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  Revik raised his voice, hammering his words.

  “You must know why she’s gone there.” Revik glanced at Wreg, his voice holding more anger. “Both of you must know this. You know the humans and seers from the Displacement Lists we’ve gathered in New York are in danger.” He gave Wreg a longer stare, then shifted his gaze back to Balidor. “We could already be too late to save them. You know that, too.”

  Balidor sighed, clicking to himself.

  He did not disagree with the Sword.

  Not in the slightest.

  “I agree,” he said, holding up his hands in a kind of surrender. “But you want me to advise you on particulars, Illustrious Sword. I cannot, in good conscience, do that. I can tell you that I will support any move you deem to be the wisest, under the circumstances––”

  “But you will not tell me which of those you would recommend?”

  Balidor blinked at him, startled.

  Again, he glanced at Wreg.

  Again, Wreg didn’t return his gaze, or take his dark eyes off Revik.

  “You hadn’t actually asked me that, Illustrious Sword,” Balidor said, looking back at Revik. “I will, of course, offer any type of recommendation you wish.”

  When the Elaerian only continued to sit there, stroking Allie’s hair with one hand, Balidor exhaled in another series of clicks. He leaned back on the couch cushions before he remembered they wouldn’t help him at all.

  He leaned forward, resting his arms on his thighs.

  Fighting back another reaction to Allie and the dynamic he could feel between the two of them in the edges of his light, Balidor turned over the Sword’s question. As he did, he put himself in the mindset he’d use in planning an Adhipan operation.

  Realizing with some irritation it wasn’t a question he’d asked himself, that he’d gotten too used to the Sword calling the shots, he frowned, staring down at the thin, sky-blue throw rug on the hardwood floor. He thought about how he might have organized this operation under similar constraints, with the resources they had, in New York and elsewhere.

  Once he had, he found himself looking at the problem very differently.

  He also found himself understanding the Sword’s frustration.

  “I see,” he exhaled. When he glanced up at Revik next, his tone grew apologetic. “Well, given the time constraints,” Balidor said carefully. “I actually think you should bring Maygar into this, and right away. I am wondering, also…” He glanced at Allie, hesitating before going on. “…I recognize the limitations of this approach, but I am wondering if you might be able to include Alyson in some part of this, too.”

  Balidor hesitated, glancing at Wreg, who raised an eyebrow at him.

  When Balidor looked back at Dehgoies, however, the Elaerian had not changed expression.

  “Go on,” Revik said.

  “Well. Her structure remains intact,” Balidor said, once more looking at her, almost without meaning to do it. That time, he found her green eyes focused on him. He hesitated, caught in her stare, lost there briefly, in that emptiness he glimpsed, the lack of her.

  That lack pained him, somewhere in his chest, making it hard to breathe.

  It wasn’t his only reaction, though.

  The rest held even less rationality.

  Despite that emptiness, something he saw in those eyes relaxed him strangely, too. He didn’t know if he saw her there, but he saw something. What
ever that something was, it made him wonder if maybe she approved of him mentioning this option to the Sword.

  “…Well, I am wondering if you can use that,” Balidor ended belatedly, glancing again at Wreg, feeling his skin flush as he realized either of the two men could have been reading him just then. “I am thinking, also, that it might be a way to protect yourself. Like routing a signal through multiple sources. It could confuse their construct as to where to focus their defenses. It could also––”

  “She isn’t coming with me,” Revik said, his voice warning.

  “I understand that, Nenz.”

  “That’s not on the table,” Revik repeated.

  “She wouldn’t need to,” Balidor broke in, holding up a hand. “We could coordinate that piece from here, laoban, purely from the Barrier. We’ll use the same construct you wanted me to set up to aid you and Maygar on the ground. You wouldn’t have full access to all of her structure, but it would give you a boost. A significant one, potentially, especially if we reinforced the connection between her, you and Maygar before you left.”

  Giving Wreg an apologetic glance, Balidor added,

  “We could use Jon for that, too, Nenz. To strengthen that connection, and to hide it in more than just the two of you. He could provide an additional anchor.”

  There was another silence.

  Again, for reasons he couldn’t articulate to himself exactly, Balidor looked at Allie first, not the Sword. That time, she frowned at him, her green eyes just as blank as before, but her mouth set in a distinctly harder line.

  Something about the look there held Balidor again.

  He felt the same disinterest and confusion on the surface as he had since she first opened her eyes. He also felt a denser, more complicated pull.

  She didn’t like it, Balidor found himself thinking.

  She didn’t like what Nenzi said about leaving her behind.

  She didn’t like that Balidor agreed with him.

  The thought was absurd, of course.

  The chances that she could even follow this discussion were slim to nil, given what Balidor could see in her light, the almost utter absence of connection between her aleimi down here and what lived above her head. Her mind operated at the level of a very young child, one who hadn’t fully landed in their physical body following birth.

  She could not possibly have understood him.

  And yet, looking at those green eyes, Balidor wondered.

  Something lived there. He couldn’t make sense of it, not even in the abstract, but that feeling of something lingered, keeping his eyes riveted on hers for a few seconds more.

  Balidor knew the truth of her condition.

  He’d seen the scans. Hell, he conducted a large number of those scans himself. Tarsi. Yumi. Wreg. Even Varlan. All of them took a turn looking at her light. All of them agreed. Even the Sword did not disagree, although he refused to voice his conclusions aloud.

  Balidor could not indulge in fantasy, not in this.

  Fighting that uncertainty out of his mind, as well as the uneasiness he felt with Allie frowning at him with that dense, disconnected stare, Balidor adjusted his weight on the unpadded couch, averting his gaze from hers with an effort.

  When he looked at the Sword next, Balidor saw that some of the harder tension had left Revik’s clear eyes. Dehgoies appeared to be thinking again, even as he coiled an arm tighter around the woman in his lap, seemingly oblivious to her blank frown aimed in Balidor’s direction. Balidor felt another hard flush of separation pain on him as she slid deeper into his lap, along with a paler pulse of grief, something the Sword hadn’t let Balidor or the others feel very often, not since they’d first found her in San Francisco.

  As far as the pain itself, Balidor couldn’t remember feeling that much pain on Dehgoies even back in New York, when he’d been pining over her for months after they left China.

  Remembering how Allie tried to use that pain to seduce her husband, and more than once, despite his fragile emotional state at the time, Balidor felt his jaw clench.

  He’d been so furious with her back then. Hell, it still angered him.

  He fought that out of his light, too.

  Being angry at her now was pointless. Less than pointless.

  Still, when he looked up at her next, Balidor could have sworn that frown on her face had grown even more prominent.

  Again, Dehgoies seemed to notice the two of them staring at one another only in the barest edges of his awareness. He was still clearly thinking as he tugged Allie closer, reassuring her instinctively with his light and his hands, even as he nodded slowly.

  “Yes,” he said. “I can work with that.”

  Balidor felt a pale ping from the male seer to his left and nearly jumped.

  Keeping it off his face, he gave Wreg the barest of looks.

  The seer was good at hiding his communications, even from the Sword.

  It struck Balidor again that Wreg’s sight ranking might be a lot higher than any of them had ever guessed, and not only because the seer seemed to be in the habit of actively hiding just how high it was, and just what skills he possessed. Balidor had caught him lying about it outright on more than one occasion, even in front of the Sword.

  Do you think that’s the best idea, brother? Wreg whispered in the back of Balidor’s mind. Giving them reason to become even more entwined in each other’s light, given her condition?

  Balidor thought about this, keeping any hint of their communication off his face.

  I don’t know, he sent finally, without turning his gaze off the Sword. Do you think it is a mistake? Will it worsen her condition? Or his?

  Wreg sent him a faint pulse of misgiving.

  I do not know what it could do to him, brother, he sent. I truly don’t. All I know is, I have heard of not a single case of one who has come back, after what they did to her. Those who recover from the wires are few and far between as it is. But to bring one back, after their mind has essentially been severed from the body… it is unheard of.

  Balidor kept his face expressionless.

  Even so, Wreg’s thought hit him, and hard. The meaning penetrated in a way he hadn’t fully let it before now, not since Alyson first reopened her eyes.

  For another, longer pause, he found himself turning over Wreg’s words.

  He also found himself agreeing with them.

  You think she is gone, then? he sent. That she is well and truly gone?

  Wreg sent him another pulse of misgiving, woven into an affirmation.

  I think it is far more likely than not, the ex-Rebel sent. Esteemed Bridge or not, I think the boss is setting himself up for a world of pain, by continuing to light-bond with her as he is. I also think that, wherever she is now, she isn’t exactly with the boss, if you catch my drift.

  Balidor sighed internally.

  He remembered those blank, green eyes, the way they looked at him.

  Again, he found himself agreeing with Wreg, even as the other seer continued.

  I also think, even if he manages to ease her off the wires over time, she won’t ever be the woman he married, Wreg sent, not mincing words. You saw the scans of her aleimi. All of the primary connections were severed, brother. All of them. She is more dead than alive now, whatever structure and strengths still live above her head. She cannot access any of them. She has little or no ability to connect to the rational areas of her mind. Or to what we would think of as her personality. Her very interface with the material world is irrevocably altered. She is barely held to her body at all, brother. She no longer has the ability to––

  Yes, Balidor broke in wearily. Yes, brother. I know. And I understand.

  Another silence fell between them.

  Then Wreg’s words grew even softer in the back of Balidor’s mind.

  He’s not… you know? With her? Wreg’s eyes shifted, too quickly and too subtly to even be called a glance in Balidor’s direction. He’s not… is he? Have you felt it?

  Balidor shifte
d his rear uncomfortably on the hard, padding-less bench.

  I do not know, he replied. I confess, I do not like to dwell on it.

  Wreg’s mind held a darker twist of discomfort.

  He can’t be. His thoughts carried the faintest thread of disgust. He added with his usual lack of finesse, Gods above. It’d be like necrophilia.

  Balidor didn’t answer that, either.

  Even so, when he looked up, he found Allie staring at him again, those blank, weirdly light-filled jade eyes focused on his. The intensity he glimpsed there, under that lack of coherent presence, struck him as unnerving in the extreme.

  In the back of his mind, however, he found himself thinking Wreg was right.

  Wherever Allie was, precisely, he didn’t see much of her down here.

  He didn’t want to think about what the Sword might be telling himself about that fact.

  Truthfully, Balidor didn’t want to think about the two of them at all, or what went on between them when they were alone in that master bedroom upstairs.

  16

  HARD RAIN

  JON ONCE MORE had to wonder what the hell he was doing here.

  He knew the bare bones basics, of course.

  According to Jorag, they wanted to try and reconnect what remained of Allie’s light down here and parts of Allie’s higher aleimic structure. They intended to use him––meaning Jon––along with Revik and Maygar to accomplish it.

  Jon didn’t entirely get that part, truthfully.

  Jorag explained it in terms of multi-level “anchors.”

  From what Jon could gather, they’d be using mid-level structures in him, Maygar and Revik to anchor Allie’s aleimi closer to Earth, filling in some of the gaps in her light caused by the wires. Revik himself would provide the link to those higher structures, which were undamaged and still active in her, if inaccessible to her “down here.”

  Revik didn’t explain anything to him personally, but Jon definitely got the sense his brother-in-law was driving this. He also got the sense Revik had more than one goal in mind. As with most everything Revik did these days, Jon suspected Revik hoped it might bring Allie closer to him again, and closer to the person she truly was.