Bridge

by JC Andrijeski

  She still wore what Jon saw her in when she died, which didn’t help.

  The clothes looked like fucking pajamas.

  Dark sweat pants. A long, button-down shirt Jon recognized as Revik’s. Dark blue Converse sneakers. No makeup. Her hair a tangled mane down her back and shoulders. Someone had draped a military jacket over her, but somehow that only contributed to the overall effect. She looked like she’d just crawled out of bed and wandered outside looking for the newspaper.

  The image could only have been more absurd if she’d been wearing fluffy slippers.

  “You’re not hearing me,” she said again, looking around at all of them, as if aware they still couldn’t quite fathom her existence. “I didn’t say he was a follower of the Dreng, or even ‘The’ follower of the Dreng. I’m telling you, he’s one of the actual fucking Dreng. He’s one of those things from behind the Barrier… the ones who orchestrate all of this.”

  She waved her hands around, indicating the Tower––or maybe the world.

  There was a silence after she spoke.

  In it, Jon saw Wreg’s eyes sharpen on her face.

  He spoke into that silence first.

  “What does that mean?” he said. “The Dreng are non-corporeal, Esteemed Bridge. They don’t have bodies at all. They are Barrier creatures only.”

  Allie threw up her hands, a gesture so familiar Jon flinched, wincing away from her. She glanced at him, feeling his reaction, but instead of frowning, she smiled at him.

  He couldn’t quite make himself smile back.

  Turning back to Wreg, she sighed, combing her fingers through her dark hair.

  “I’m not sure about all the details yet,” she admitted. “But I’m reasonably certain he’s the progenitor of the whole ‘body switching’ thing Terian does. That’s how and why he can’t be killed. He’s already dead. Or was never alive… however you want to say it.”

  Sighing, she added, “I don’t know where he gets his physical forms exactly, but we need to figure that out first, before we worry about killing him. There’s absolutely no point spending a lot of resources killing something that can just come back. I’m not even positive the body Menlim’s using right now is alive. Maybe it was during World War I, but now he’s created some kind of artificial organism to house his light.”

  She looked at Revik, and for the first time, her light green eyes held a glimmer of worry when he wouldn’t return her gaze.

  Revik didn’t stand far away from her precisely, but even Jon could feel the “stay away” vibe in his light, as if he’d erected a shield to keep Allie and her light as far away from his as possible. They’d cut the collar off him by then, and the handcuffs, and Vikram had given him a shot of something to counteract the drugs in his system, but he still looked out of it.

  He looked like he’d lost a fair bit of blood and probably light.

  Neela bandaged up his arm, using a piece of shirt she’d ripped from one of the corpses lying on the floor of the lobby. No one checked him for more wounds, though. Just looking at him, it was difficult to tell how much of the blood on his clothes and skin was actually his.

  Remembering the ring of dead bodies around him when those elevator doors opened, Jon fought a surge of nausea. Revik looked half out of his head before he even saw Allie.

  Jon felt that suicidal thing on him, too.

  Hell, he’d felt that on him before they got to New York. He felt it in the hotel suite before Allie physically died––or whatever she’d done.

  Now Revik looked and felt lost, gone in a way Jon had never seen him before.

  The military guy was still there. That seemed to survive past whatever shock he might be feeling. But the man himself, Jon wasn’t so sure.

  He still fought the hardest to go after Menlim. He continued to fight, even after what Allie said about Menlim being one of the Dreng.

  “So we can kill this body, at least,” he said. “They take a while to grow, especially if he’s attached to using that particular form. He’ll have to clone a new one––”

  “Assuming he doesn’t have an underground bunker filled with back-up bodies already,” Allie said, exasperated. Fingering her hair out of her face, she sighed. “You know what he’s like better than anyone, Revik. It’s not worth the risk. It’s not a good use of our resources right now, baby… and you know it.”

  Revik flinched openly at her use of that word.

  “…Anyway,” she went on, talking over his reaction, although Jon was pretty sure she’d felt it. “We need to get you unattached from their construct first. We need to get Maygar and…” She hesitated, as if fighting for words. “…and our child unattached. We can’t do anything until then. We have to get all of you as far away from him as possible until then. Don’t you get it? We’re too vulnerable right now. All of us are. But you, more than anyone.”

  “I used the construct, Allie,” Revik said. “I got out of it. Hell, I managed to redesign it, even collared. How the hell do you think I got access to the telekinesis?”

  For the first time, it sounded like he was really talking to her, although he still wouldn’t look at her. Staring down at the stone tiles, he’d gestured behind him, towards the elevator doors.

  “You see what I did! You see it, right?”

  “I do see it,” she said, holding up her hands. “I see it, and I get it, Revik. I really do. But gods… you know how this works! You can only surprise them like that once. Menlim and his Dreng buddies are pissed as hell right now, and they still have links to all three of you… and that doesn’t even include Cass! Even I can feel it now, and I’m only feeling it through you.”

  She paused, staring at his profile.

  When he wouldn’t turn, or look up, she sighed, going on in a more subdued voice.

  “We need a better plan than no plan, okay? We won’t need to chase him. He’s going to come after us, believe me, as soon as he regroups. We have to be ready for that. We’ve got a chance to get rid of them now… like, really get rid of them. But only if we keep our heads.”

  When Revik continued to stand there, breathing hard, jaw clenched where he stared at the floor, she’d raised her voice, her words carrying a strange combination of elation and hope and frustration and a pain even Jon could feel.

  “Revik… baby… we can win this! We can actually fucking win this! We can eliminate them totally down here, don’t you see? But it involves finding all of his anchors, and taking them out faster than he can rebuild. It involves figuring out which ones are servants of the Dreng and which are actual fucking Dreng, living down here in human bodies. We can’t get sloppy with this. Come on! You’re contingency guy. I know you see this, and I know why you’re pretending you don’t. I get that you’re pissed off––”

  “Pissed off?”

  For the first time, Revik stared directly at her.

  Jon didn’t think he’d ever forget the look that came to Revik’s face in those few seconds. He’d never seen anyone’s eyes hold so much, or convey so much. Allie only stared back, along with the rest of the seers, who had backed off with their light, and in some cases, their bodies, to give the two Elaerian room to argue.

  The fact that it had quickly become a domestic dispute, as much as a strategic one, didn’t seem to have escaped anyone’s notice.

  Allie didn’t look away from Revik’s face for even a second of that stare.

  She didn’t frown, or blink. She just stood there, hands clasped in front of her, as if restraining herself from moving, probably from touching him, or at least moving closer to where he stood. Silent, she watched his eyes, as if unable to look away.

  Revik was the one to avert his gaze that time, too.

  Then, without another word, he left.

  He turned away, turned his back on all of them, and walked to the street outside the lobby doors without a backward glance.

  Jon watched him walk around and over bodies still strewn over the broken tile. He watched Revik aim his feet for the same wall he’d sh
attered with the telekinesis, what must have been hours earlier, although it felt more like days to Jon.

  Jon couldn’t believe the sky remained dark outside, that weeks hadn’t passed since they’d gone down those elevator shafts. The storm had worsened somewhat in their absence, bringing a harder rain and colder gusts of wind, but otherwise, minutes could have passed instead of hours since they’d descended into that hell.

  Jon thought at first Revik might be leaving them entirely.

  He worried Revik would simply ignore what Allie said, go after Menlim himself. But then he’d seen the Elaerian cross the street, heading for the park, and realized he was going to the Chinook, to the same rendezvous point Allie just told them about.

  He still worried until Allie and the others began to follow him.

  Allie stopped only once, by what remained of the transparent organic wall, staring at Garensche’s cleaved body where it lay both inside and outside of the glass doors. She sucked in a breath, staring at him, until Neela and Jorag steered her gently away.

  Jon knew they didn’t have much time, but it bugged him, that they hadn’t let her mourn the big oaf even a little. He had to suppose all of that would come later, when they got to wherever they were going and started to collectively lick their wounds.

  It bugged him, too, that they hadn’t found some way to bring Gar’s body with them.

  At the same time, he understood. Garensche was hardly a small man.

  Anyway, to seers, the body wasn’t the part of a person that mattered. Jon knew they’d do rituals for him and for any others who had fallen, once they got to wherever they were going.

  His light continued to follow Revik’s nervously as the male seer disappeared into Central Park. He could feel Revik’s intent now, and knew he’d decided to come with them, despite his words to Allie.

  Even so, Jon’s muscles clenched with adrenaline as he fought not to run after the other man. The only thing that held him back was Wreg, who laid a heavy hand on his shoulder right as they were leaving the ruined lobby of the Towers for good.

  Let him go, little brother, Wreg advised. He needs the time alone.

  Is he all right? Jon asked.

  He knew it was a dumb question, but couldn’t seem to make himself not ask it.

  Wreg gave a low grunt.

  I highly doubt he’s all right, Jon. Sighing tiredly, he added, But he will be. Just let him make his own way around this. Your sister gets that. It’s why she let him go. The two of them are going to need to work a lot of this out alone.

  At the time, Jon could only nod, even though every atom and thread in his body and light protested Wreg’s words.

  He hadn’t tried to chase after Revik, though. He let him go, just like Wreg advised.

  Following after Allie with the rest of the seers, he entered the park where he’d last left it, just north of East 79th Street. Once they were past the stone walls and among the trees, they took a hard right, following one of the footpaths north.

  Now that they’d traveled the length of the lake and passed the tennis courts, which lay just south of the North Meadow’s western edges, Jon’s mind returned to Revik. He could still smell smoke as he walked. He knew it likely came from the airfield up ahead, where Revik burned Shadow’s fleet to the ground less than twenty-four hours earlier.

  Something about that smoke, and the denser feeling of the construct overhead, caused Jon’s nerves to worsen. He desperately wanted to know where Revik was, if he’d already reached the Chinook or if he’d left the park altogether, like he feared.

  Jon didn’t voice his worries to Wreg but walked in silence, glancing ahead periodically at the line of trees before 97th, which he could feel as much as see at this point.

  The park felt dead, unnaturally quiet.

  It reminded Jon of the mess they’d found in Golden Gate Park, after the disease first devastated the city. San Francisco felt like a different world after that day, one Jon no longer felt a part of, despite having grown up there, and having spent most of his life there.

  He’d barely had time to mourn the loss of that world. They’d been too busy trying to survive since the disease first appeared.

  Glancing over his shoulder, towards midtown Manhattan, he found himself remembering the first time he’d heard about the outbreak of C2-77. He’d been with Dorje, at the New York Central Library. They’d walked there together to decipher the data key Allie and Revik stole from Heinrichter Global Bank.

  Remembering that day, Jon felt a nearly physical pain from the loss.

  The city had been normal then––as normal as New York ever got.

  Crowds of people in business suits had been walking down the sidewalks, drinking lattes, talking on their headsets, hailing robo-taxis. Students carrying hand-helds and monitors headed for the colleges and high schools, wearing designer sneakers and sporting two hundred dollar haircuts. Artists hung out in the park, smoking hiri and drinking espresso. Panhandlers and avatars tried to con him out of money.

  Some of those holo-men followed him and Dorj down the street, trying to sell them timeshares in Cancun––timeshares now likely filled with armed squatters, or stray animals and high surf after the fields failed.

  Jon had seen billboards for new Broadway shows. Posters for bands playing. Banners advertising guest exhibits at MOMA and the Met.

  Tourists wandered around with big smiles, wearing dorky clothes and drinking sodas. Music blared from car radios, from sidewalk cafés and coffee stands.

  Jon pushed the images away, but the feel of them lingered, making his chest tighten.

  He grew aware of Wreg by his side, not touching him, not speaking, but his warmth somehow seeping over Jon’s light anyway, bleeding away the worst of his anxiety, or at least blunting its sharpest edges.

  They walked silently over the grass and into the trees rimming the edge of the road, and Jon found himself reaching for the butt of his gun in reflex.

  He had no specific fear, nor even an abstract one, but the feeling of violence lingered from that morning. Imprints from death, fear, adrenaline and fires tensed muscles all over his body as they broke through the trees on the other side of the street.

  No one greeted them on the other side.

  No shots rang out.

  Jon didn’t feel anyone either, even through that hyper-awareness he now had of the construct, presumably because Revik now knew how to access that construct directly.

  He felt shimmers of Maygar, and glanced over at the Asian-looking seer, catching him staring at Allie. Unlike his father, Maygar barely seemed able to take his eyes off of her. He still hadn’t spoken to Allie directly, not that Jon had seen, nor had he approached her, or hugged her like Chinja and a few of the others. At the same time, he seemed hyper-aware of her, almost to the detriment of anything else.

  Remembering a few key things about Maygar’s reactions to Allie in the past, Jon frowned, almost without knowing he did it. He also forgot how closely connected he and Maygar’s light remained, and the fact that he hadn’t been shielding his thoughts.

  The stare he caught from the Asian seer held a disbelieving flicker of anger.

  I’m not like that anymore, Maygar grumped at him.

  Sorry, man. Can’t help it.

  Well, find a way to help it. Get off my back!

  Jon shrugged, not feeling particularly apologetic.

  Frowning, Maygar hit at his light, a thread of urgency in his thoughts. Jon, I mean it… don’t. Or you’ll have him crawling all up in my shit again, too.

  Jon nodded that time, but didn’t answer.

  Shoving that whole dynamic out of his head, he faced forward, and immediately made out the outline of the Chinook. The cockpit light was already on. Jon found himself squinting at the man he could see sitting there, until he realized it was Revik.

  Shit. He was going to fly them out of here.

  In the same set of seconds, Jon realized he wasn’t really surprised.

  Revik would want something to do
right then––preferably something that took all or most of his concentration. He definitely wouldn’t want to sit in the back with the rest of them.

  Anyway, Jon knew Revik had a tendency to go full-blown loner when he wasn’t ready to deal with something. Vash had been the one to tell him that.

  Smiling faintly at the memory of Vash, he approached the lowered ramp in the back, watching Allie and Chinja help Jax limp up the ribbed metal.

  Past them, the cabin was still dark, with only the running lights glowing from strips along the floor. A looming shadow moved between those glows, touching seers as he passed, clapping them on the arms and shoulders.

  Jon realized it was Jorag. He watched the tall seer make his way all the way forward to the cockpit, probably to co-pilot for Revik.

  Walking up the ramp with a few of the others, including Chandre, Wreg and Neela, Jon blinked when the main overhead lights for the cabin suddenly flickered to life.

  They illuminated the passenger hold with shocking yellow light.

  Jon held up a hand, gripping the back of one seat, feeling more presences dart around him in that silence, including Tarsi––and Vash, who Jon realized he could feel again, with Tarsi so near. He took in the row of headsets slung next to each chair, feeling dazed all over again when he saw all the faces looking in their direction, all the wide eyes on Allie.

  Several made reverent signs of the Bridge as she passed.

  They were really leaving.

  They were leaving New York––probably never to return.

  The thought hit him strangely, almost painfully, but Jon shoved that aside, too.

  Then another sound jerked him completely out of his head.

  It shocked him so much, he froze in the cabin aisle, mid-step. Nearly stumbling when he did, he caught himself by grasping a seat back in one hand, panting. He never stopped listening to the sound, or trying to wrap his head around it.

  It was a baby crying.

  57

  THERE IS AN OCEAN