Bridge

by JC Andrijeski

  She didn’t even bother to respond when Chandre pointed out that all their scans told them far fewer people lived on the upper floors, compared to the lower ones––and that few occupied the lower floors, compared to the sub-basements.

  Tarsi wouldn’t tell them why the Bridge’s body needed to be carted along with them, or what that body needed to be “closer” to before they made their next move.

  She certainly didn’t tell them what that move would be.

  Chandre couldn’t help wondering if the old woman had developed some form of human-like dementia. She verged on making a crack around that very subject, when, at the landing for the forty-second floor, Tarsi instructed them to stop.

  Motioning for them to be quiet, she used her cane to maneuver her over to the metal door, which presumably opened onto a row of office suites, or possibly high-end apartments. Without touching the door, Tarsi cocked her head, as if listening.

  After what felt like an interminable pause, she looked directly at Chandre.

  Four of them, she sent. Only four. Can you feel them?

  Puzzled, Chandre glanced at Stanley, then at Varlan. Seeing Anale’s eyes on the old woman, her sculpted mouth pursed, Chandre shrugged.

  Looking around at the rest of them, Tarsi suddenly changed demeanor entirely. A military-like glint sharpened in her eyes and light. Her thoughts grew openly impatient, carrying a stronger accent even inside their minds.

  You want my nephew to die? she sent, cold.

  No, sir, Varlan sent at once.

  Chandre only stared at her, taken aback. Tarsi clicked softly, but some of the anger in her eyes faded when she motioned towards the door.

  “Blind as bats,” she muttered. You do not need break shield, she sent, her thoughts still carrying that harder edge. Just feel them. Feel them from here. They human. Blind like you. But don’t get too close––

  Human? Chandre stared at her, confused. You brought us up here for four humans?

  “Not only them, no,” Tarsi said, sighing.

  Her voice sounded more amused that time, though.

  Before Chandre could think of a suitable retort, Tarsi motioned for Rig to put the Bridge’s body down on the landing.

  “Okay,” she said. She sounded matter-of-fact, as if contemplating what to have for breakfast, or maybe which feed broadcast to watch before her nap. “I think now is good. We can’at wait longer, anyway. Must be now. Good or not.”

  “Now is good for what?” Chandre spoke aloud without thinking, following the old seer’s lead. She still held her gun in her hand, although she had it pointed at the floor. Or, more specifically, straight down at the metal, corrugated stair on which she stood.

  “Old woman?” she prompted, when Tarsi didn’t answer.

  “Shhh,” Tarsi chided. “I need to concentrate for this.”

  “For what?” Chandre persisted.

  Tarsi gave her a hard look with those colorless eyes. “Control yourself, sister. You’ll have your answers. I can’t risk there being leaks before then. It’s why we had to be close.”

  “Leaks?” Chandre muttered.

  Still, she fell silent when Tarsi gave her another glare.

  Fighting a swell of irritation mixed with genuine bewilderment, Chandre holstered her gun more forcefully than necessary, crossing her arms as she stared up at the old woman, who now bent over the body of the Bridge.

  Rig had lain the Bridge carefully, almost reverently, on the textured metal of the staircase landing. Before he straightened, he pulled Allie’s hands and arms over her, so they would cross her chest. In doing so, he left room for Tarsi to kneel beside her, which Tarsi did, her joints creaking audibly.

  Chandre bit her lip, but forced herself to stay silent.

  Her mind couldn’t help grinding over the other thing Tarsi said, about the Sword. Were they really wasting time up here, if his life was in danger? What could be so important, that they wouldn’t go help him first?

  Even so, she found herself watching the old woman along with the rest of them. When nothing happened for what felt like a long set of seconds, she glanced at Stanley, her chest tight with held breath as she tried to decide what to do.

  Had Tarsi really lost her mind? Were they to trust the old woman unconditionally, simply because she was an elder, and had spent so many years with the Ancestors in those caves?

  Chandre knew what tradition told her on that point.

  Then again, tradition had gotten them into a lot of this mess in the first place.

  Below her, Tarsi chuckled faintly, but her eyes never left the Bridge’s face.

  “I know you worried about him,” Tarsi murmured, softer. “She is, too.”

  Chandre didn’t know what to say to that, either.

  She didn’t even know for certain to which of them Tarsi was speaking… or referring to. Biting her lip, she shifted her weight as she stared down at the old woman’s bent head.

  Stanley didn’t share Chandre’s glance the second time she looked at him.

  Or the third time. Or the fourth.

  The male seer’s eyes never left Tarsi.

  Rather than worry, or even puzzlement, his expression held an open interest. Concentration lived in his dark eyes, a denser form of concentration than Chandre had ever seen on him. She found herself remembering that the African-born seer also spent many years in caves, meditating, just like Tarsi. Maybe he understood whatever this was better than the rest of them.

  His dark, full mouth pursed in a slight frown as she watched.

  Chandre’s eyes followed his back to Tarsi.

  The ancient seer had leaned over the inert body of the dead Bridge and now gripped her by the shoulders. As Chandre watched, Tarsi leaned closer still, hovering her lips over the Bridge’s pale ear. She began to murmur in old and soft words, words Chandre could feel but not understand.

  Even Dante shut off her hand-held long enough to stare and listen to the old woman, her dark eyes holding as much puzzlement as Rig and Anale’s. Dante didn’t look away, but fell silent with the rest of them, peering down through the curtain of her blunt-cut, dark hair.

  The silence stretched.

  It must have gotten a lot more still on that landing than Chandre realized.

  When a sharp, shocked-sounding gasp broke the silence, she must have jumped a foot in the air. More gasps and hissing of breath filled the space around her. The shock of those sounds in the echoing stairwell paled in comparison, however, to when she looked down.

  The Bridge’s eyes were open. They glowed faintly, staring up at the ceiling, the sharp jade green of her irises swimming with liquid current.

  Chandre felt her jaw go slack.

  Every muscle in her body went limp.

  She couldn’t speak, couldn’t formulate words. She couldn’t move.

  She still struggled to wrap her mind around what she was seeing, when Vikram shouted from next to her, nearly making Chandre jump out of her skin.

  “Holy fucking gods in the heavens! What in the di’lanlente a guete is that?”

  For some reason, Varlan burst out in a laugh.

  Chandre couldn’t laugh, though. She couldn’t make her jaw move, couldn’t get the air to make sound. She fought to form words, to ask the question. Swallowing thickly, she stared down at the Bridge’s face, watching her look up, not at Tarsi, but at Stanley.

  Even so, it crossed the infiltrator portion of Chandre’s mind that someone might have heard Vikram in the hallway outside that metal door.

  If so, that possibility no longer seemed to alarm Tarsi.

  Maybe it no longer mattered if they were heard.

  Chandre was still staring down, fighting to move her thoughts in anything close to resembling straight lines––

  When the Bridge spoke.

  The sound of that voice, so familiar, so unmistakably hers, caused Chandre to flinch back violently. She clutched at Damon, who she barely knew but who happened to be standing next to her in the stairwell.

  The Br
idge’s actual words penetrated a second later.

  “Hey,” she said, blinking those glowing eyes up at Stanley. She squinted, as if trying to see past that light. “…Is that rabbit?”

  Staring down at her, Chandre realized she saw nothing of the blank-eyed stare she remembered of the Bridge the last time she’d seen her awake. That had been through the virtual connect with Dehgoies, when she’d seen the Bridge curled up in the lap of her husband in that Victorian house in San Francisco.

  That had been unnerving too, yes.

  Somehow, this was worse.

  Staring at Allie’s face, seeing her in that expression, brought tears to Chandre’s eyes so violently, they blinded her. She blinked to clear them, but didn’t bother to wipe them off her cheeks. She couldn’t make herself tear her eyes off the Bridge’s glowing irises.

  She still clutched Damon, but neither of them really noticed.

  Allie seemed to be struggling to work her jaw. She still stared up at Stanley, as if his face grounded her, or held some kind of deep significance.

  “Is anyone going to answer me?” she said. “I mean… that’s him, right? That’s the rabbit. Stanley… am I right?” She continued to blink at him “Do I know you?”

  For some inexplicable reason, Stanley burst out in a laugh.

  Tarsi looked up at him, her colorless eyes shining, a smile on her lips.

  In those few seconds, she looked about thirty years old, Chandre thought. She could almost picture her as a girl in the Pamir, flowers in her hair, a lithe body soaking up the sun.

  The image faded, but somehow, Chandre couldn’t unsee it.

  She was still staring between the four of them, bewildered, when Stanley leaned down to Allie, tears in his dark brown eyes, a wide smile stretching his full lips as he took her hand.

  Clasping it strongly in his, he kissed it, still beaming at her.

  “Yes, most Holy One,” he said, his voice reverent. “I am the rabbit… and you know me. I am so very, very happy to be here when you came out the other side.”

  Tarsi grunted, looking down at Allie.

  Still, the smile lingered on her narrow mouth.

  “Now get up, lazy,” she scolded, smacking the Bridge on the arm. “Your pal the rabbit forgot to tell you… you’re late.”

  For some reason, that made Stanley laugh harder.

  Tarsi, Vikram and Varlan chuckled, too. So did Yarli.

  Chandre stared between them, frowning, her muscular arms folded.

  She didn’t get the joke.

  51

  WHITE ROOM

  REVIK FELL BACK into fighting stance.

  They’d backed him up against the wall.

  Well, as far as he could tell, anyway, given how the room looked to his physical eyes. He couldn’t use his sight.

  There might be another trap door behind him––or an electrical field, or drug darts, or a line of soldiers holding nets and carrying rifles, for all he knew. They could have any number of means of getting him down.

  If they did have those things, they hadn’t used any of it so far.

  His eyes told him he stood in the corner of a low-ceilinged room made of white-washed cement blocks, broken only by a single, white-painted door.

  He’d spent the last twenty minutes, his internal clock calculated, in the same room. He’d landed on the floor roughly in the middle of the cement floor, the wind knocked out of him and his ankle and one of his knees hurting from the fall. He’d spent the rest of his time here fighting them off, or at least avoiding being cornered.

  His ankle still hurt. His knee hurt worse, thanks to a few well-aimed kicks. He had a few more injuries, none of them serious enough to bother thinking about yet.

  Regardless, his time in here was winding down. He’d been in enough fights to know he wouldn’t be on his feet much longer.

  What he didn’t understand was why he was on his feet still.

  He didn’t understand why they hadn’t just knocked him out.

  His mouth tasted of copper. So yeah, he was bleeding. A few of Menlim’s guards were decent fighters, which didn’t surprise him, given where he’d learned as a kid. Three or four of them had gotten in some good hits. He grimaced as he wiped his mouth in the pause, giving a bare glance to the blood that landed on the cement.

  Still, it wasn’t serious, as he’d already noted.

  They weren’t even really trying to hurt him.

  The row of faces still watching from the semi-circle on the other side of the room didn’t flinch, nor would he have expected them to. He’d kept their soldiers away from him up until now mainly with his fists and feet. He’d managed to stay out of the Barrier since he’d emptied around eight magazines on the men trying to corner him––men he now suspected were real, although he felt a lot less sure about that in regard to Menlim and his pals.

  When he’d tried to shoot those people down here, the bullets ricocheted off them, implying some kind of shield.

  So yeah, different from upstairs, but still likely a projection of some kind.

  Real or not, he could feel them working at the edges of his light, trying to get in. He had no real shield. He had nothing down here. He could feel them trying to resonate with him, trying to adjust the frequency of his aleimi to where he would have to fight harder to feel and see the problems in their light.

  Eventually, he wouldn’t even notice the lack of connection in his.

  Vash was gone already.

  He couldn’t feel Jon. He couldn’t feel Wreg––or Maygar, his son. He couldn’t feel any of them. He could only hope they were still alive, somewhere.

  He could only hope he might be buying them time, even now.

  Time to get back upstairs. Time to give the order to Balidor to bomb the building, which he’d authorized Wreg to do, in the event he was killed or captured.

  Revik wondered if it would even do any good.

  Was Cass still here? His daughter?

  Why hadn’t they knocked him out?

  The guards felt more or less real. Hitting them felt different than hitting that illusion of Allie upstairs. He felt bones under his hands and feet. He felt flesh and bone, cartilage and tendons. He felt teeth and skin, and the contours felt right for a human or seer face when his knuckles made contact with a cheek, mouth or jaw.

  The remaining five guards out of two dozen Menlim initially instructed to collect him had backed off for now. The closest stood a few yards away, watching Revik warily, his cheek swelling from a cross Revik got to his face. All five of them were out of breath. Another scowled openly at him, his mouth and ear bleeding. Red-faced and breathing in thick gasps, a third guard looked like he might go into cardiac arrest any moment.

  Thank the gods he’d spent the last few months in the ring.

  Even as he thought it, Menlim let out a purring sigh, clicking at him softly.

  “Nephew,” he said. “This is pointless. You will come with us. Whether you want to do so or not is beside the point now.”

  Revik let out a low laugh, wiping his jaw again with the back of his hand.

  Even so, he couldn’t argue with his uncle’s basic logic.

  Why hadn’t they just drugged him?

  When one of the soldiers moved closer, Revik repositioned his body, his peripheral vision focused on the other men who hung back. He wondered if they’d called for reinforcements yet. He wondered if he was buying them time, while the rest of Shadow’s people evacuated through the lower floors of the building.

  He wondered if his daughter was gone already.

  When the guard got closer, Revik darted out. He moved his head and neck, avoiding a blow to the face even as he countered it, kicking low, twice and hard, knocking out the man’s knee before spinning on his back heel, whipping around to back-fist him in the throat.

  He didn’t wait for the guard to fall but slid sideways, trying to get out of the corner. One of the others saw what he intended and tried to block his way, but Revik had expected that. He’d already tagge
d the shorter, red-haired man as the worst fighter of the bunch.

  Grabbing that same man by the shoulders after he slipped behind him, Revik used him as a shield as he backed out of the corner and into the wider room.

  Once he got far enough back, he shoved the redhead forward, tripping his ankles to send him sprawling into the others. They stepped aside, and the red-haired one fell face-forward onto the cement floor.

  Even Revik heard the crunch as the man’s nose broke.

  Anyway, he’d gotten what he wanted: more space.

  Stepping deeper into the room, he kept his peripheral gaze on the door. He looked over sharply when three more guards appeared in the same opening. Two blocked the door, while the third entered, joining the others.

  Reinforcements. Big guy, too.

  He moved like a fighter, like maybe they called him here to beat Revik down.

  From the way the two at the door kept looking backwards, more were already on the way.

  Revik glanced at the empty guns on the floor. He’d taken most of that first round of soldiers out with those––until he ran out of bullets. Pity he hadn’t been carrying more magazines. He glanced at the guards at the door, then at the big guy who’d joined the other five. None of them carried sidearms, either––probably so Revik couldn’t take them away.

  Maybe so one of them wouldn’t get pissed off and just shoot him.

  He tried to decide if he should start using his knife, just to even the odds a little.

  He felt more threads pulling at his light.

  He blinked back sweat, fighting to think.

  “Look at yourself, nephew.” Menlim clicked softly, shaking his skull-like head. Folding his hands at the small of his back, he exhaled in a sigh. “Are we really back to this? To that more physical phase of your youth? Have you really not outgrown this?”

  The ancient seer studied Revik’s face, his yellow eyes suddenly harder.

  “Will you force me to take you in this way? Like an animal? Beaten and bloody… in chains? The greatest of our intermediaries? Will you require me to visit this indignity upon you, even now, my beloved nephew?”

  Feeling his jaw harden, Revik looked around at the row of faces. He felt his own puzzlement leak into his expression as he focused on Terian and Cass.