“Nik’s supports seem to be holding, at least for now. That should buy us a little time.” Steven caught Emilio’s gaze. “You and Rocinante try grabbing two or three people at a time and bring them back here. If the bridge starts to go, get out of there.”
“Roger that.” Emilio shot Steven a quick salute and grinned, the ivory and chrome motorcycle beneath him revving to life of its own accord. “Just leave me some room.”
In a flash, they were gone. A proud smile found its way to Steven’s lips. Despite Emilio’s litany of complaints, when push came to shove, you could count on him like no one else.
Next.
“Archie.” Steven worked to keep the hesitation from his voice. “Stay here with Nik and prepare to take casualties.”
Archie winked at Steven, a wicked grin flashing across his face. “You got it, boss.”
The bizarre grimace set the hair on Steven’s neck on end, the seemingly innocuous statement cutting him like a subtle blade slid between his ribs.
It wasn’t the first time.
And, as usual, none of the others seemed to notice.
A new sound pulled Steven’s attention to the water below. A small tugboat had made its way to beneath the bridge, its crew working feverishly to rescue the dozens of men and women flailing in the East River’s churning expanse. Though his heart surged with hope, Steven couldn’t banish the image of all the floating bodies below of those who hadn’t survived the initial jump.
“Audrey.” Steven pulled close to the woman whose eyes had captivated him for weeks. “Head down to the river and help the tug crew get those people out of the water.”
Audrey nodded and motioned to Lena. “Care to join me?”
Lena stepped to Audrey’s side, a thick white mist playing about both their feet. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
“Be careful, you two,” Steven murmured. “That bad feeling I had hasn’t gone away.”
“We’ve got this.” Audrey lifted both hands before her, palms up, and the bank of fog beneath her and Lena’s feet answered, lifting them both into the air. “The rest of you focus on clearing the bridge.” The silver crown of the White Queen shining, Audrey inclined her head to one side, and the cloud carried her and Lena over the side of the bridge and out of sight.
A moment later, Emilio reappeared in a flash of brilliance atop Rocinante. Two small girls, neither long out of diapers, sat huddled together behind him on the gleaming motorcycle, the older holding onto Emilio’s shirt for dear life and the younger clutching her sister’s dress with white-knuckled fists.
“Two down.” Emilio gently coaxed the girls off Rocinante and onto the deck of the bridge. “Two hundred to go.” And with that, he disappeared in another flash of silver.
No sooner had he vanished than the older girl fell to her knees and began screaming for her mother. The younger of the siblings, however, merely stood on wobbly legs and stared silently in awe at Niklaus’ colossal form.
“Don’t be afraid,” Niklaus grunted to the girl. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“Are you an angel?” The girl’s eyes grew wide in wonder.
Niklaus forced his grimace into something approximating a smile. “Something like that.”
“Come to me, children.” Archie beckoned to the pair of girls. “You’re safe now.”
The younger sister shot Niklaus a questioning glance and at his gentle nod, took her sister’s hand and pulled her to Archie’s side. The Bishop, in turn, welcomed the pair with open arms.
Steven shook his head as self-doubt regarding his suspicions about Archie weighed heavy on his soul.
One simple fact remained: Moments like these were where Archie shined.
Doom and disaster? Injured humanity? Children in danger?
No one did it better.
Still, none of that quieted the questions at Steven’s heart.
“Niklaus,” Steven shouted. “How are you holding up?”
“I’ll manage.” Niklaus’ stony eyes slid shut as another ivory bulwark rose from the river to fortify the collapsing bridge. “How is everything looking?”
“Another tremor and the bridge is going to go.” Steven brought his open hand to his brow to block the sun from his eyes. At the far end of the crumbling span, the White Knight loaded an elderly woman onto the back of his motorcycle. “And Emilio bringing folks back one or two at a time isn’t cutting it.” Steven stepped to the edge of the fractured steel and concrete deck and peered down at the frightened mob below. “Any way you can bring the bridge deck back up level with us so we can evacuate everyone at once?”
“Sorry, Steven.” Niklaus’ already gravelly voice cracked under the strain. “It’s taking all I’ve got to keep the bridge out of the water. If I push it any more, we might lose everything.”
“Dammit.” Steven ran his fingernails across his scalp. “We’re running out of time and… Wait.” An image from Steven’s lone college architecture class flashed across his memory. “You may not be able to bring the bridge back up to plum, but do you think you could reconfigure our end into something that might help?”
“I can try.” Niklaus cocked his head to one side and gritted his teeth in a half-smile. “What did you have in mind?”
One harried plan later, the Rook’s marble eyes closed tight in concentration. At his feet, the steel and concrete warped and folded into a trio of stony tendrils that shot from the fractured bridge deck, braiding together like a colossal coil of rope as they rocketed toward the huddled mass below.
“Stand back,” Steven shouted over the edge. “We’re trying to save you.”
Ignoring Steven’s command, the entire mob screamed as the stone battering ram swept down at them, their wailing quickly shifting into a collective gasp of wonder as the tongue of concrete and steel configured itself into a crude but functional spiral staircase.
“Will that do?” Niklaus asked, the ever-present sarcasm in his voice cutting through the strain.
“Perfect.” Steven sighed. On face, the comment stood equal to Archie’s barb from before, and yet, even as the priest sat playing patty cake with the two girls Emilio rescued moments before, Steven couldn’t ignore that something with the priest was terribly wrong.
That’s it. He answered Archie’s sidelong smile with one of his own. Once this is over, Archie and I need to have a little chat.
“Out of the way!” Escalating shouts from below brought Steven back to the situation at hand. The panicked mob surged toward the miraculous set of stairs, climbing over each other in desperation as millennia of ingrained fight or flight instincts overpowered anything resembling civility. Steven’s mind flashed back to the chaos that ensued weeks before during his first encounter with the Black Queen.
Time to save these people from themselves.
“I’ve got crowd control, Nik.” Steven fished the Pawn icon from his pocket, shaking his head at the recognition of how little it took to turn even the best among humankind into so many rats on a sinking ship. “You just keep this bridge out of the river.”
At Niklaus’ nod, Steven held aloft the small hunk of carved marble that had all but become a part of him over the preceding weeks. The Pawn icon shone at his silent command, and then, with a quiet chuckle and a flash of silver, his one became eight. The charging mob, despite the cacophony of stomping feet and anguished cries, didn’t hold a candle to a band of Blackfoot Indians armed with tomahawks forged of mystic steel.
“Here goes everything.”
The eight Pawns raced down the spiral staircase against the rushing tide of humanity. Steven did his best to direct the charging mob while his seven doppelgangers helped the young, the old, and the infirm to safety. Despite Grey’s many admonitions, Steven chose not to bring up his cloak of anonymity. The shock value of the Pawns’ collective attire lent credence to their commands, not to mention twisting the perceptions of a panicked mob as they tried to negotiate a narrow stairwell didn’t seem the best plan. He had little doubt the tabloids would be fil
led with tales of rocky giants, magic carpet clouds, and rescuers straight out of a Renaissance festival, but at the moment, he didn’t care.
Steven continued to help the rushing crowd navigate Niklaus’ crude staircase, Emilio skirted the rear of the mob continuing his two-by-two rescue service, Archie cared for the many injured and frightened that came his way, and all the while, Lena and Audrey worked the river below. In the end, they achieved barely controlled chaos, but within minutes, the Brooklyn end of the bridge sat clear as the octet of Pawns commenced searching the deck for other survivors. A car-by-car sweep of the fractured bridge revealed a few frightened stragglers Steven directed toward the Brooklyn end of the bridge. In minutes, the Pawns gathered beneath the Manhattan tower with the two remaining survivors: a white-haired gentleman still behind the wheel of a wrecked hatchback, his leg malformed and turned at a strange ankle, and a young bike courier who refused to leave his side. As Steven knelt by the older man, the entire bridge shuddered.
Hold on a little longer, Nik. Just two more to go.
Other than the brief mental contact Steven shared with Audrey after her abduction weeks before at the hands of the Black Knight, he’d experienced no more evidence of any sort of link with the other members of his team. Still, at his silent request, the vibrations along the bridge decreased in amplitude and then stopped altogether.
Good. No time to waste.
Steven and three of the Pawns worked to extricate the man from his wrecked vehicle while keeping stable what appeared to be a broken femur. The man screamed with their every attempt to move him, leaving their ears ringing, but they eventually freed him from the car and carried him slowly to the ever-widening fracture at the Manhattan end of the deck. As they lowered him to the bridge’s surface, the man grasped weakly at Steven’s tunic. “Don’t let me die,” he whimpered. “Please.”
“No one else is dying today.” The two Pawns closest to the edge leaped across the tear in the bridge and summoned their pikes. The two pole arms, one held high and the other low, spanned the gap and allowed the bike courier to scramble across.
That left the old man. Steven didn’t have the first idea how to get him across the gap without making his leg worse. Still, they couldn’t just leave him there.
“We’ll get you across,” Steven said, “but this is going to hurt.”
“Maybe I can help.” Astride Rocinante’s gleaming chrome, Emilio appeared in a flash. “Load him up.”
The motorcycle roared as Steven and his complement of doppelgangers helped the elderly man onto the seat behind Emilio. As Rocinante and his two riders disappeared in another shimmer of silver, he allowed himself a rare moment of pride.
Holy shit. We did it.
Steven recognized that Niklaus couldn’t hold out much longer and that the Brooklyn Bridge had seen its last day, but that didn’t change the fact they’d saved hundreds of lives, their mission accomplished with none of the White the worse for wear. Despite his every reservation, they had come. And not just that. They had won.
How could he have gotten it so wrong?
His answer wasn’t long in coming.
As the phalanx of Pawns marched the five hundred yards to rejoin Niklaus and the others, one of the few remaining vertical cables caught Steven’s attention. Near its connection with the deck of the bridge, the metal smoldered, the flames surrounding the steel wire as dark as a starless night. A moment later, the braided steel snapped, and its entire length shot upward like some impossibly long rubber band, the tip sizzling with black flame like a child’s sparkler. The entire deck shook at the cable’s sudden release, but Steven’s sudden apprehension had little to do with any concern about the bridge’s stability.
No. With eight pairs of eyes, he cast his gaze in every direction. Not now.
As his mind struggled to deny what his heart knew was coming, a wave of all-too-familiar nausea hit Steven, sending him and his seven doppelgangers into a full sprint.
And he was far from the only one who sensed the presence of the enemy.
Audrey and Lena floated above the East River less than a hundred feet away atop a cloud bank the size of a small bus. Lena’s mace, drawn from wherever it resided when its services weren’t required, shone like a small sun above its mistress’ head as she cast about for any sign of the Black. Audrey, on the other hand, stood stock-still atop the cloud, her imploring eyes asking a question that Steven desperately didn’t want to answer.
They’re here. Another wave of nausea passed through Steven. And close.
The eight Pawns summoned pikes and shields and formed a tight perimeter at the center of the bridge as the one nearest Audrey raised an arm high in a prearranged signal. Wiping a solitary tear from her cheek, Audrey answered with a resigned nod. Her hazel eyes slid shut, and eight spheres of silver-white energy began to revolve around her body like an octet of miniature stars. Lena dropped into a crouch as Audrey moved the cloud-barge to join the circle of Pawns.
Shifting his attention to the far end of the bridge, Steven could just make out the remaining three of their party. The sight left him filled with dread.
Though a giant of stone, Niklaus stood defenseless, his rocky form still fused to the Brooklyn tower. Regardless of the danger, Steven knew one thing about his friend: he wouldn’t budge an inch until he knew every last person had been evacuated.
He hoped his friend’s unyielding resolve didn’t end up getting him killed.
Archie stood beneath the tower and continued to minister to the small crowd that had formed around him, the silver flashes from his healing touch just visible from three football fields away. As with previous rescue missions, the old man had likely given more of himself than was healthy. Yet again, Archie’s undeniable selflessness, made plain time and again in a dozen different scenarios, flew full in the face of Steven’s fears.
Still, Steven’s instincts about the day had proven true.
Emilio sat astride his chrome and ivory steed, his skyward lance shining like a magnesium flare as he stood guard over Archie and the priest’s newest set of parishioners. Of them all, Emilio had changed the most since his induction into the Game. The death of a brother and having the fate of the world laid upon his shoulders had forced the boy to grow up fast. Though still the first to complain when things went south, Emilio’s spunk and zeal were hard to deny, especially when coupled with the new confidence evident in the young man’s dark eyes.
Regardless, he, Archie, and Niklaus remained the very definition of sitting ducks.
“Steven.” Audrey brought the cloud carrying her and Lena to rest just above the gathered eight Pawns. “Get yourself together. We’ve got to go.”
Steven focused for a moment, his seven doppelgangers fading into thin air as he merged back into the singular entity of the White Pawn. His eightfold perspective coalescing back into one set of eyes and ears, Steven pondered which of the two states now felt more normal.
No time for philosophy. We’ve got to move.
A tendril of palpable mist shot down like a frog’s tongue and scooped Steven from the deck of the bridge. Before he could take a breath, Audrey’s tractor-trailer-sized cloud took off at breakneck speed with Steven trailing like some fog-bound water-skier. With every inch closer they came to the Brooklyn tower, the stabbing pain in his side intensified, and though he’d already shifted into the garb of the Pawn, Steven had to stop himself from retching.
Dear God, the Black must be here in force.
“They’ve got to be somewhere close.” Audrey’s words echoed Steven’s thoughts. “I haven’t felt this bad since— Oh my God! Steven! Look!”
Steven’s tether of mist brought him up to the main body of the cloud just in time to see a shimmering rectangle of black energy appear behind Emilio and Archie. A dozen fingers of pure darkness erupted from the doorway in space and grabbed the priest, pulling him in. With Archie out of the picture, the void in space turned its attention on Emilio. Two enormous tentacles of the ebon energy encircled Emilio
and Rocinante, pulling them apart and holding them aloft, helpless.
Lena’s screams drove home the spike of ice in Steven’s chest.
“No!” The girl’s entire form trembled in fear and rage. “Díos mío! Emilio!”
The crowd that previously had surrounded the Knight and Bishop scattered, leaving Emilio and his chrome horse dangling like forgotten puppets at the whim of an insane puppeteer.
“Dammit.” Steven stepped to Audrey’s side. “Can’t this thing go any faster?”
“I’m trying!” Audrey’s tear-filled eyes narrowed in concentration. “I’m trying!”
Her efforts were all for nothing. A breath later, the dark tentacle holding Rocinante hurled the ivory-and-chrome motorcycle into the East River while the other sucked Emilio into the void’s shimmering surface.
And then, in a blink, the dark doorway vanished as if it had never been.
“They’re gone, Steven.” Audrey’s shoulders slumped. “Dear God, they’re gone.”
“Díos mío.” Lena’s gaze went blank. “Emilio.”
“Lena,” Steven shouted, waving his hand in her face. “Snap out of it. We need you.”
“It’s all my fault.” Her eyes shot to Steven. “I made us come here today.”
“We’ll find them, Lena.” Steven rested a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I swear it.”
Far from comforted, the girl trembled like the last leaf of a tree in a December storm.
“Steven,” Audrey interrupted. “Eyes forward. Nik’s in trouble.”
Steven peered up from Lena’s tear-filled gaze. At the base of the Brooklyn tower, one of Niklaus’ hands remained bound to the masonry and steel while the other waved frantically for assistance. His shouts incomprehensible over the groan of the collapsing bridge, the terror on his face told Steven all he needed to know.
“Come on, Audrey.” Steven seethed with anger. “Nik needs us.”
Audrey’s eyes slid closed and her hands balled into fists. In answer, the barge of mist carrying them flew even faster. As they drew close, though, one thing became quite clear.
Niklaus wasn’t waving for help.
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