The Blazing Bridge

by Carter Roy

  For the first time, I could see how high up we were.

  A hundred feet down, six lanes of cars sped in both directions, and a hundred and fifty feet below that, the waters of the East River glinted in the moonlight.

  “Ronan!” Dawkins shouted from behind me. “You must keep going.”

  “I can’t,” I said, feeling my knees lock and my stomach drop like in my dream of my dad.

  “We can go over the top and down the other side!” Greta shouted.

  “Listen, friend,” Dawkins said. “Just turn your face forward, and you’ll see a ladder not a dozen feet away. And once you’re there, you’re safe as houses.”

  I did as he told me and saw Greta clinging to the rungs, waving at me and shouting, “Come on!”

  I thought again about the life she had before her. Someone had to help save Greta from that. And who better than me?

  I got moving again, and before I knew it, I’d reached the caged ladder that snaked from the cable up to the roof of the tower.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” Dawkins said.

  There was nothing left to do but climb.

  I was shocked when, moments later, I reached the top. The tower roof wasn’t nearly as big as I’d always imagined—thirty feet across at the narrow points, and maybe a hundred feet wide. A metal railing crisscrossed the center of it. That and the flagpole at the center were the only things that were not wrapped in silk.

  I crawled the fifteen feet from the edge to the center railing, the fabric weirdly soft and springy under my hands and knees. Then I rolled onto my back. I’d expected to see stars overhead, but the sky was overcast, and all I saw were dark storm clouds.

  After a moment, Greta and Dawkins came and stood over me. They stared left, toward the center of the tower.

  “What’s all that for?” Greta asked.

  I pulled myself up and turned to see what she was talking about.

  Fifty feet away, in the center of the tower roof, was a flagpole, the Stars and Stripes snapping in the wind at its top. Piled near its foot were things I hadn’t noticed during my crawl to the railing: carts of electronic equipment—monitors and things that looked like they belonged in a hospital. And encircling the flagpole was a spiky forest of steel rods, sixty or eighty of the things, all sticking straight up eight feet or more. They were in concentric circles and connected by wires to a silver metal rectangle in the center that looked like a bed frame standing on end.

  “I don’t know,” Dawkins said. “But whatever it is, it can’t be good.”

  CHAPTER 19

  I HAVE THE ABSOLUTE WORST IDEA OF MY ENTIRE LIFE

  “This must have to do with that Reckoning business the Hand was going on about,” Dawkins said. And then, leaning into the wind, he walked toward the equipment.

  “Shouldn’t we be fleeing?” Greta shouted to him.

  “Keep watch!” he shouted back. “I just want to see if I can throw a monkey wrench into whatever nefarious business they’re planning up here.”

  “I’ll help Jack,” I told Greta.

  “You sure?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I’ve got this railing to hold on to.” I pulled myself along the center until I reached Dawkins. By that time, he’d finished examining the bed frame thing and the lines connecting it to the metal rods and had begun going through the contents of four metal chests.

  “Why all the emergency medical supplies? Not just defib paddles, but …” He lifted up one vial after another and read each label. “Epinephrine—medical adrenaline, but also atropine, adenosine, and so on all the way down the alphabet—what are these for?”

  He moved to the second chest. “Ugh,” he said, slamming the lid shut. “Filled with weapons.” He dragged it over to me. “We’ll heave it into the East River before we head back down.”

  “Do we really have time for all this?” I asked.

  “We must find out their purpose,” Dawkins said. “You’ve met the rank and file in the Bend Sinister; most of them are morons. Which means that somewhere up here there are likely diagrams, instructions, something to aid the dimwits who put this together.”

  I glanced back at Greta. She raised her thumb and forefinger in an O: Okay.

  “Of course, I could be wrong … Nope—here we are.” From within the third chest he took out a folded sheaf of papers. He quickly scanned the first, flipped a page and scanned the second, then looked at the steel rods and rectangular frame in the center.

  He stood abruptly, stuffed the papers into his coat, and frantically waved at Greta. “We have to get Greta away from here as quickly as possible.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What does this thing do?”

  “I told you the thirty-six Pure are linked, right?”

  “They each feel when one of them dies,” I said.

  “This”—he waved his hand at the entire setup—“this is intended to transmit the death of a Pure to the other thirty-five, to use that single Pure soul as a window to reach and kill every last one of them.”

  “How … ?” I asked, backing away.

  “These are lightning rods, Ronan, and those are transformers. The Bend Sinister will call forth thunderstorms, and guide the lightning—all the lightning—right here, straight to the Pure in that rack there. The Pure’s heart will stop, and she will die, and her death will be carried via that bridge of stars I told you about to the other thirty-five.”

  “And they’ll all die?” I asked.

  “Maybe not at first,” Dawkins said, kicking at one of the lightning rods. But it had been bolted to the stone, and he couldn’t knock it loose. “But after the Pure dies, the Bend Sinister intend to revive her, so that they can kill her again, and again, and again—until the accumulated trauma kills the other thirty-five Pure.”

  “So all they’ve ever needed is one soul,” I said. “That’s why Dad risked burning down our house—he hoped my mom would somehow expose the Pure she was guarding.” One hand on the railing, I reached down and grabbed the handle of the chest and started dragging it back toward Greta.

  Dawkins hefted up the other end. “We are going to do everything we can to keep Greta safe. Everything. But if they capture Greta and discover the truth about her, we have to spare her.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “We can’t let them torture her like that. We can’t let them kill her again and again.”

  “No,” I said. “That would be awful. She’s my best friend.”

  “More than that, we can’t let them use her to get at all of the other Pures.” Dawkins stopped walking and tugged the chest so that I had to turn toward him. He stared hard into my eyes. “Give me your word, Ronan: if they capture Greta, you will kill her before letting them attach her to this contraption.”

  “Kill Greta?” I glanced back at her over my shoulder. “There’s no way I could—”

  “Neither of us want her death, but we cannot let them do this. We must be true to who we are as Blood Guard.”

  The wind was fierce up there. My eyes were watering when I told him, “Okay. I promise. Now can we get out of here so that I don’t have to do it?”

  With his free hand, Dawkins waved to Greta and shouted, “Time for us to get off this landmark!” His voice sounded almost carefree, but I could see the strain in his face.

  “What is that thing?” Greta asked as we drew near.

  “Wasn’t able to figure it out,” Dawkins said. “Bend Sinister craft project, apparently.”

  “And in the box?”

  “More of those Tesla guns,” I said.

  Dawkins and I set the chest down, and then he pushed it with his foot until it tipped over the edge. We didn’t wait to hear the splash.

  “Let’s move!” Dawkins barked.

  I couldn’t look at Greta as she led us down the ladder on the other side of the tower, back to the suspension cable’s other side.

  She kept glancing at me, worried. “I’m really sorry, Ronan—but this part is going to be rough because of your f
ear of heights.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I said, shaking my head.

  “At least we’re going downhill,” she said, squeezing my shoulder like my mom might do. “Hold tight to the auxiliary cables and keep your eyes on my back and we’ll be at street level before you know it!”

  “Fine, I’m ready,” I mumbled.

  Greta smiled and ducked down the ladder. And glancing at Dawkins, I turned and went after her.

  Going down was a lot easier than going up, mostly because Krisco hadn’t wrapped up much of this part of the bridge yet, and we could stand up instead of crouching in the tunnel of orange silk. But that was bad, too, because it meant I could see all too well exactly where I was—fighting the wind to walk down a steep, skinny cable, hundreds of feet in the air.

  I kept my hands on the auxiliary cables and my eyes on my sneakers, and I didn’t care about the Bend Sinister agents who had probably figured out our escape and were even now climbing through that orange silk tunnel to the tower to search for us.

  No, all I could think about is what I’d promised Dawkins I would do, and how I’d lied to him when I’d made that promise.

  There was no way I could ever kill Greta. Not even to save her. I knew that, and at the same time I knew it made me weak, a failure as a Blood Guard, and a failure as her friend.

  And, fine—maybe I cried a bit. My wet cheeks got cold in the wind, and I couldn’t even wipe my face, because there was no way I was going to let go of those cables.

  We were halfway down the main cable, and the slope had gotten easier as we got closer to the road. Another five minutes and we’d be safe.

  Because I was watching the placement of my feet, I bumped into Greta when she stopped moving.

  “Careful!” she said, as my right foot slipped sideways and I fell to one knee.

  I felt Dawkins’ fist grasp my collar. “I’ve got you, Ronan.”

  Greta looked back at my tear-stained face and said, “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry, Ronan—you must be terrified!”

  “No!” I said. “I mean, yes, I …” I had no idea what to say.

  “Why have we halted?” Dawkins said, stopping just behind me.

  “The road,” Greta said, ducking out of our way.

  I didn’t like what I saw: two figures climbing the cable toward us. Two men, one of whom I didn’t need to see up close to recognize.

  My dad.

  “This is far too precarious a site for a sword fight,” Dawkins said. “So I propose a new plan: we hurry back up and go down one of the cables on the far side of the—”

  “That’s not going to work, either,” Greta said, nodding to our right.

  Making their way up the other three suspension cables were the rest of my dad’s team: one man on each of the center cables, and two others on the one farthest from us.

  “Okay,” Dawkins said, turning. “We go back down the way we came up, and at the cable’s lowest point, before it enters the anchorage proper, we cut our way through the silk and climb down to the road.”

  “What if Legion and Birk and the Bend Sinister are coming up that way?” I asked.

  “We will burn that bridge when we come to it,” Dawkins said. “Now let’s go.”

  Scaling the ladder to the roof of the tower was a cinch the second time around. I knew what to expect up there, knew I was in no danger of falling if I was careful.

  The three of us crossed over to the other side and climbed back down to the main cable.

  “I will reconnoiter,” Dawkins said, brandishing his sword. “If we are to meet anyone on our way down, I’d rather I met them first. I am going to go very fast to clear the way. You and Greta follow as quickly and safely as possible. Ronan, you first, then Greta.”

  And then he spun and galloped down the cable, vanishing into the tunnel of orange silk.

  “He wasn’t even holding on,” Greta said, tightening her grip on the auxiliary cables.

  “It’s easy to be fearless when you can’t be killed.” I bent over and led the way down.

  “I’m right behind you, Ronan,” Greta said, lightly tapping my back.

  We had barely gone a dozen feet in the tunnel when I saw someone running full tilt toward us: Dawkins.

  “Go back!” he shouted. “They’re on their way!”

  “But my dad!” I shouted at him.

  “We’ll take the cable on the far side of the tower,” Dawkins said as he reached us. “I like my odds against two of his agents over the half-dozen Bend Sinister coming our way.”

  So for the third time that night, we headed back to the tower ladder. We cleared the silk-covered part, the loose ends flapping in the storm winds blowing around us, and I had an idea.

  A terrifying idea. I thought I was going to be sick.

  “What if there was another way off the bridge?” I asked.

  “Out with it!” Dawkins snapped.

  I drew my sword, went to the silk wrapping, and sawed through the side that went down to the roadway. One end of the fabric fluttered down toward the water, but the long piece that had been braided around it went slack. I grabbed the loose bit and started to hoist it up hand over hand. “This is all one big piece that’s been wrapped around the bridge, right?” The fabric whirred over the auxiliary cable and puddled at our feet. “So what if we tie ourselves to it, and, um …” I couldn’t stop myself; I turned and dry heaved.

  “And jump!” Dawkins crowed. “That’s idiotic—I love it! We might have enough silk to stretch all the way to the water. And the way this strand of fabric is braided around the others should slow our fall.” Dawkins sheathed his sword and used both hands to help me. “We can just splash down and swim to shore.”

  “Like bungee jumping,” Greta said. “Great idea, Ronan.”

  After a minute, we had filled the main cable between us. Dawkins tied Greta into the middle section.

  “You’ll be anchored here,” he said, tapping her waist, “but to keep upright, you’ll want to loop the excess around your leg here, and hook it across your back like so.” He shuffled through another thirty feet or so and then tied me in, and then another thirty feet to the end, and tied himself. “I’ll be the dead weight at the end of the line,” he said with a wink.

  One by one, we climbed under the auxiliary cable and hung on facing out, our hands gripping the line behind us.

  “Why are we always doing this?” I asked. “Jumping off things?”

  “On three, I’ll throw myself off,” Dawkins said, ignoring me, “and you two do the same a split second after. Sound good?”

  Sound good? No, it sounded terrible. But I swallowed and answered, “Okay,” though I’d never been less ready for anything in my entire sorry life.

  “One,” Dawkins said.

  “Let’s do this!” Greta said. She actually sounded eager, like leaping to her death off the Brooklyn Bridge was something she’d been wanting to do forever.

  “Two.” Dawkins squatted and leaned far out, hanging on with a single hand.

  “Three!” he shouted, and launched himself.

  He leaped far, twenty feet out into the dark, trailing an orange silk streamer that I almost forgot was attached to me until the slack started to tighten.

  “Ronan!” Greta shouted. “Go!”

  So I squeezed my eyes shut and jumped.

  CHAPTER 20

  TAKING THE PLUNGE

  Back when I was maybe seven years old, I used to like to hang my head out the car window when my mom was driving. The rush of air on my face, the wind blasting in my ears—it’s what I thought it would be like to soar through the sky.

  “I’m like Superman!” I’d yell to my mom.

  “No, you’re like a dog!” she’d scold me. “Get your head back into the car, Ronan, before something hits it.”

  Falling from a really high place was a lot like that. Windy, noisy, and somehow I knew that my mom would not approve.

  Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d listened to Dawkins’ instructions and held on
to the silk. But I hadn’t, so I spun wildly as I fell, the world a jumble around me. I opened my eyes and caught glimpses of the half-wrapped bridge, the lights of the city, the dark, metallic crinkle of the waves on the river; heard the fabric snapping in the air, the faraway beeps and engine noises from the traffic, and someone screaming.

  It was me, of course. Once I realized that, I shut my mouth.

  Now and then I spotted Greta twirling above me, or flipped and saw Dawkins below, his arms and legs spread-eagled like a spider riding a strand of silk. At some point we fell past the roadway, the braided silk barely slowing us at all.

  Would we hit the water before we ran out of fabric?

  I’ve really done it this time, I thought. I’ve finally done something so stupid that it’s going to kill me, Greta, and everyone else in the world.

  And then the silk went taut and twanged.

  As horrible as falling had been, jerking to a halt in midair was worse.

  The silk Dawkins had tied around my waist yanked tight, but my arms and legs and head still wanted to keep going: I jackknifed around the knot and felt the silk cinch up around my middle. It felt like being cut in half.

  Somewhere above, Greta moaned in pain. “Ugh!”

  I looked up: she was maybe twenty feet under the bridge, the traffic speeding by above her. In the other direction, Dawkins spun in slow circles about eighty feet over the water. Me, I was stuck in the middle. We twisted in the wind.

  “Not quite enough fabric, Ronan,” Dawkins shouted.

  I was in too much pain to respond.

  “We’re going to have to climb back up to the roadway!” he added.

  Climbing a rope is easy … but silk isn’t like rope—it’s slippery. It was the middle of the night, we were all beyond exhausted, and when I looked down at the faraway water, I was scared out of my mind.

  “Sure thing!” I said, and I started winding my fists into the fabric.

  The silk jerked and rose a yard.

  “Um, Jack?” I shouted. “Something’s happening!”

  I felt myself being dragged up another six feet.

  “They’re reeling us in like fish!” Dawkins shouted.

  “Guys?” Greta called as the silk smoothly raised us all ten feet higher. “I can see the road—but I can’t reach it!” The girders along the road were several feet out of reach.