Bridge

by JC Andrijeski

Balidor smiled in the space. Apart from the shielding skills I mentioned, we do not know. We know only that your sister worked on them before your “crossover” status was triggered. From markers we have seen, she worked on these parts of your light since you were both very young.

  Feeling some reaction in Jon’s light, he added,

  Unconsciously, Jon. I didn’t mean to imply this was something she did behind your back. It is highly unlikely she knew she was doing it––down here, at least.

  Feeling Balidor’s focus pulled elsewhere, Jon didn’t answer.

  He did continue to watch the seers work, however. He watched Balidor, Wreg, Yumi, Neela, Chandre. As they put the preliminary threads in place, he found he understood more and more, exactly what this entailed.

  They wouldn’t just be connected to Allie.

  The three of them would be connected to one another, as well. Meaning, Jon would be connected, structure-to-structure, light to light, to Maygar and Revik. Each would be connected to the other specifically, not simply via Allie.

  The realization made him nervous.

  He found himself understanding why Revik didn’t like it, even more than he had before. A few months ago, Revik hadn’t even wanted Maygar alone in a room with his wife. Maygar had been fixated on Allie for years. He’d tried to take her from Revik.

  He’d tried to rape her once.

  Given everything they faced, Revik clearly felt backed into a corner, though.

  Part of that included letting Maygar form a half-light-bond with his wife––something that probably drove him out of his mind on more than one level. Knowing Revik, it also probably made him feel guilty, since he couldn’t exactly ask Allie’s permission to do it.

  So yeah, Jon understood Revik’s hostility to the process.

  He understood Wreg’s hostility now, too, even better than Revik’s––although he didn’t really want to. He couldn’t help seeing Wreg’s reaction to him staring at Maygar in a whole new light, as well.

  There wasn’t anything Jon could do about either thing now, though.

  Adjusting his rear in the Victorian chair, he grimaced from the hard padding.

  This must have been a fancy sitting room, once upon a time. Jon couldn’t help but find that ironic; it had the least comfortable furniture in the whole house. They’d decided not to use the jump chairs for this, partly because Revik didn’t want most of the seers living and working in the house to know about it. For the same reason, he used a room with its own construct and restricted access to a handful of inner circle infiltrators.

  They didn’t need the jump room for this anyway, according to Balidor.

  They’d strapped Allie down because of how unpredictable she’d grown of late, and to keep her in the room once they started. Jon strongly suspected they’d mainly done it to free up Revik, and give him the space to concentrate.

  Even so, Revik remained beside her, pulling his chair up to the padded bench where she lay. He held her hand, resting it at an awkward angle so he could continue to see the monitor that would translate the Barrier signals.

  Balidor took the lead on the connection end, with Jorag, Wreg, Yumi, Garensche and Neela in primary support positions. Balidor had already adjusted the room’s construct to aid the process, a sort of “construct within a construct,” which Jon was beginning to realize they did a lot––and often without him noticing a damned thing.

  Jon didn’t have much to do but wait for it to happen.

  Therefore, when he closed his eyes at Balidor’s signal, resting his head against the hard cushion of the Victorian-style chair, he barely had time to wonder what to expect––

  WHEN HE PLUNGES into an unfamiliar space.

  Time, as it always does in the Barrier, stops.

  It just…

  Stops.

  That odd feeling of no-time replaces it. The utter lack of a strict linear march through existence disorients him. He should be used to it by now, but he never is.

  It still surprises him, each and every time.

  He feels Wreg briefly.

  He hears the grandfather clock ticking by the wall, the rustle of clothing as Maygar shifts on the other end of the couch, a half-dozen feet from Jon’s slouched body.

  Then, he just…

  Falls.

  THE SPACE IS utterly black.

  Not black like in that horror place where he found Allie.

  Just empty. Vacant.

  It scares him at first anyway, maybe from the memory of that other place with the dead birds and the scorched altar.

  No markers exist, nothing familiar. Nothing touches Jon’s mind, good or bad. Nothing gives his thoughts something to wrap around. He has no way to create pictures to replace that darkness, like he did before. This space is just black.

  Empty.

  He doesn’t notice the shift at first.

  Slowly, like deep, unhurried breaths, presence creeps into his awareness. Sensation weaves into its slow approach, so fleeting Jon can scarcely identify it.

  Eventually, he realizes the others are already there.

  Balidor. Wreg. Glimmers of Yumi.

  He feels Revik, then.

  Once Jon feels the Elaerian, he realizes pieces of Revik’s mind form the backdrop for all the rest. The longer Jon notices this, the more he feels Revik’s light. That awareness grows stronger and stronger––more intense than any of the others.

  He is surprised at first, at how familiar the other seer feels.

  He feels Allie in that somehow.

  He feels shimmers of who he was, meaning Jon himself, what feels like a million years ago now, back in San Francisco before any of this happened. Back when Jon still taught Kung Fu in the Outer Richmond district of San Francisco. Back when he still dated Trey. Back when their mother was still alive. Back when Allie and Cass––

  That fades, too.

  Jon doesn’t know if he pushes it back, if it leaves on its own, or if Revik recoils from the immediacy of Jon’s memory… but it is gone.

  Echoes recede into the dark, but the presence of Revik remains.

  The Elaerian’s light interweaves with his, attached with pale strands Jon still recognizes. He realizes in shock he feels Revik in Allie’s light, that he felt it, even back then, in San Francisco––even when she was still with Jaden.

  Even when they were kids.

  He sees that stain of Revik in her, mutating over her in light-colored sparks, subtle touches he’s never seen before––or, more accurately, never noticed as being anything apart from Allie herself. Throughout most of his life, Jon incorporated Revik’s being so seamlessly into his feelings for his sister, he never even saw the other man.

  Only now does he see how he’s had a relationship with Revik for years––and without even knowing it.

  Family, his mind murmurs.

  He feels Maygar then.

  Pain cripples him briefly, as soon as the other man’s presence grows visible. Jon feels the pain worsen, a struggle in light.

  That is Revik, too.

  Revik is fighting Maygar’s light.

  He begins fighting Jon’s, too. He struggles, seemingly outside his control, resisting both connections, resisting both men. He fights harder as those loops close and wrap around the four of them––around Allie.

  Gods. He doesn’t want them so near Allie.

  Jon feels his own sickness worsen, watching the Elaerian fight. Revik fights without rationality, without seeming to be able to stop himself.

  Jon feels Maygar fighting to separate himself from Revik, too.

  Jon feels the pull there, too, on both sides, which perhaps should be surprising but somehow isn’t. He feels the conflict of feelings on both sides, and realizes he’s seeing into Maygar and Revik’s relationship, too, in a way that feels overtly invasive. He feels Maygar’s reluctance to have Revik see so much in him, a reluctance he aims at Jon as unfiltered resentment.

  It’s private, his mind whispers. All of this is private.

  He feels
Maygar’s anger grow hotter––

  Suddenly, sharply, Jon feels Wreg.

  Fear hits him. He feels this through Wreg’s eyes, Wreg’s light––the constriction of those morphing lines, the different pieces of them weaving together, the intimacy.

  Gods. The connection is strong, almost terrifying in its intensity.

  Briefly, Jon feels Balidor, trying to reassure them.

  He feels Jorag… Wreg.

  He feels so much grief on Wreg. It suffocates him, crushes something in his heart.

  The struggle intensifies briefly, but grows even more silent.

  He can feel Wreg begging him, asking him not to do this––

  Points of light, tiny starbursts flare as the connections hit one another like live wires. Structures light up in Revik’s light, things Jon’s never seen before, things he didn’t pick up on, even instinctively, in the light of the other male. He watches new structures form out of the dark as pieces of them weave together, forming new things out of the joining with each of them, new structures with colors that wrap around and into one another––

  He feels Allie there––something in that cuts his breath.

  It is pain he feels, with Revik, first, and strongest.

  That pain worsens, grows unbearable.

  Allie’s presence remains the weakest, but now Jon can feel her, too, and relief wars with his own pain at having missed her, at still not being able to touch her. He feels something similar on Maygar, only it is more charged, more directed. He feels Revik reacting to Maygar’s connection with his wife’s light, a sharp keening of rage, or powerlessness, of love and protectiveness that borders on out and out terror––

  Jon tries to focus on Allie.

  He watches Balidor weave threads of Jon’s light into hers.

  He can almost see her now, but she is still indistinct––more like a ghost or shadow than a person. He wonders if she is only there because his feelings make a shape for her out of that darkness. He wonders what Revik sees.

  Jon understands now, why they did so much of this in the dark.

  It has to be this dark. It’s too intimate––too cripplingly intimate for them to look at one another while it happens. No matter what they tell themselves about why they are doing it, Jon realizes there will be ripple effects, maybe big ones, maybe ones that none of them can control from being so wrapped into one another.

  Even as he thinks it, he feels another deep stab of pain from Revik’s light.

  He is so fucking sad. Gods.

  Jon didn’t think it was possible for one person to be so sad.

  The grief overwhelms him, even as it feels familiar, too crushing and immediate for words. Jon has been swimming through that grief inside the construct for weeks, but it only hits him now how intense and twisted and irrational it is.

  His chest fights to close, constricting under his fingers and through his light as the connections strengthen, as those structures are pulled taut. Those threads hold the four of them together, even as they change and alter from the contact, growing more and more complex, more intricate, more infused with color and meaning and memory.

  Something in those lit threads reflects the very fabric of who they are––

  Who they were.

  Already, they start to create something new.

  As the threads start to lock in place around Jon’s light, like tiny diamonds filled with live current, he feels another wash of that deeper fear. He tells himself he knows why he is doing this. He tells himself what they’re doing is necessary, that he agreed to this, that he agreed to do whatever it took to help Revik.

  But none of it, none of his self-talk crap really helps.

  Jon understands now; he will be forever changed by this.

  In his last few seconds in that dark space, surrounded by seers working patiently over the four of them, he feels Wreg, like a dark-gold star in the distance. The other seer radiates heat, feeling, presence––and for a long, terrifying moment, Jon really sees him.

  Looking at Wreg fills him with a longing that wants to rip apart his mind. The feeling worsens, turns to desperation, anguish that breaks something harder in Jon’s chest. That brief glimpse of Wreg’s light in all of that dark… it feels almost like a goodbye.

  Some part of him screams, fighting it.

  He screams and screams, but it is too late to change anything. It is too late to stop, to pull out of this thing, or even to say he’s sorry. It is already too late.

  Jon watches as the connections solidify, like drying paint.

  Seconds later, or maybe hours, something locks in.

  A swirl of thoughts hits him––emotion, heat, connections and currents flow through and between and within Maygar, Revik, Allie and himself. Some are not his, but he is carried along with them regardless, or sometimes, merely privy in voyeuristic glances past the edges of who he is. Some come from Magyar, from Revik, even from Allie––but they no longer belong to any of them exclusively. They belong to all of them, to the entity they create together.

  He feels Allie there.

  She is distant still, but closer than he’s felt her since she died.

  Died. He just thought that, that she’d died. Revik felt him thinking that.

  The realization hits him, along with another blast of fear.

  But it is too late. It is too late for his fear.

  Whatever this thing is, it is over.

  Or really, it has just begun.

  18

  ARE YOU FUCKING HIM?

  JON FINISHED BUTTONING the front of his pants, trying not to care that he could feel the other seer’s pain as Wreg watched him dress himself.

  Then again, Wreg wouldn’t leave long enough for Jon to dress alone.

  Jon couldn’t help swallowing back his light’s own reaction. Truthfully, to say he “swallowed” it wasn’t really accurate; it was more like he beat it back with a stick, forcing it as far outside of his awareness as he possibly could.

  Even so, he felt Revik react somewhere, in the edges of his light. He felt Maygar, too, stronger than Revik, and significantly more annoyed-feeling.

  Jon shoved both men out of his light as best he could.

  None of it really helped all that much. Pain coiled around him from the other two males, making his own feelings worse, even as he struggled to extricate himself from the suffocating feeling of their presence. At times he swore he could feel their very skin pressed against his, somewhere on the edges of his light.

  Struggling to find himself, center himself, create a space for himself in the odd entity he had become with the other three seers, Jon found he didn’t want to look at Wreg at all… much less think about the last time he’d gotten dressed in front of him.

  That time, they’d barely been able to keep their hands off each other.

  Shoving that memory out of his mind, too, Jon didn’t manage it before he got an even stronger pulse of disgust and irritation off Maygar, strong enough to invade his light and flush his cheeks. Revik withdrew entirely, shielding himself in a way that neither Jon nor Maygar seemed to be capable of doing, at least not from the other two.

  Maybe Revik simply had more practice, from being bonded to Allie.

  Clicking shortly under his breath, Jon fought to tighten his light around his body without looking up.

  Wreg shoved at him with his own light, forcing Jon to glance at him anyway.

  “No,” the seer said, jaw hard as he stared at Jon. “Goddamn it, Jon… no.”

  Jon shook his head, clicking at Wreg more directly that time, even as he slid his arm into the long-sleeved, armored shirt he held in his hands. Jon still couldn’t look at the other seer, not directly. His light skirted around Wreg’s larger form, but he didn’t let himself get very close.

  Even so, it hurt––or hurt more, anyway––with Wreg this close to him.

  He shouldn’t have let him in the room.

  He’d managed to keep the ex-Rebel out until now.

  Apart from when he
’d been recovering from the light sickness, he’d more or less kept Wreg out of his personal space since they got to San Francisco. Why he’d let him in this time, Jon couldn’t articulate to himself clearly.

  That, or maybe he just didn’t trust himself to tell the truth.

  The truth was, he’d been struggling more lately. Something about the bond with the other three, it ripped something open in him. It made him feel more, maybe––or maybe it just made him more aware of what he’d been feeling all along.

  Truthfully, he wasn’t even sure there was a difference.

  Whatever it was, whatever it did to him precisely, the feeling mostly translated into a kind of sick vulnerability, a feeling of exposure that was unbearable at times.

  Maybe that’s why he couldn’t stand to have Wreg so close to him right now.

  “Jon!” Wreg snapped. “Are you not going to talk to me about this at all?”

  “No.” Jon’s voice sounded surprisingly calm, even to himself. “I’m not. We’ve been over all of this, Wreg. Over it and over it.”

  “Over what? We haven’t been ‘over’ anything!”

  When Jon started to move past him, Wreg stood directly in his way, pushing him back gently but firmly with his hand. Something must have shown on Jon’s face, because Wreg lowered his voice, making it sound almost submissive.

  “You’re following Nenzi around like some kind of suicidal lap dog, Jon. You’ve been doing it for months. You’ve been doing it since we got here. You do anything that fucker says, no matter how ridiculous his demands!”

  Jon forced himself to shrug, even as the pain worsened briefly in his chest.

  He could have told Wreg that wasn’t entirely true, but he didn’t suppose that admission would be welcome, either. When the pain worsened, and Jon felt it coming off the ex-Rebel, too, he fought to close down more of his light, ignoring another angry flare from Maygar even as he finished tugging the dark shirt over his head and torso.

  “You’re so willing to just die, then?” Wreg said.

  “Who said anything about dying?” Jon snapped, turning.

  His words came out stronger than he intended. He saw the ex-Rebel flinch, almost as if Jon had struck him. Catching the harder look forming on Wreg’s face once his surprise began to fade, Jon exhaled shortly.