The Bridge

by Jane Higgins

  ‘I can find out.’

  ‘For both triggers?’

  ‘For both triggers.’ His stare told me not to ask how he was going to discover the Cityside one. ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘What if I don’t come back?’

  ‘I don’t think you want ISIS finding you any more than we do.’

  True enough. ‘All right. When?’

  ‘The exchange is planned for first light, two days from now.’

  ‘Tell me what to do.’

  CHAPTER 40

  Mol Bridge. 7am. Suicide switch day. The sun didn’t rise that morning so much as seep grayly through thick cloud so that the gloomy light became slowly less gloomy until you could see the other end of the bridge. The giant ribcage of the Mol arched over us gleaming faintly, radiating cold, and the whole thing creaked and groaned like a beast in pain. You could taste the sea on the river breeze.

  I took Sol to one side so he wouldn’t see the women wrapping his sister in explosives. ‘Okay, Sol, now listen. We’re going to walk halfway across the bridge. We can’t run. We just walk. Then we’re going to stop for a minute, right in the middle, then you and Fyffe are walking on, to the other side.’

  He thought this through behind wide blue eyes. ‘Not you?’

  ‘I’m staying here for a while.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Got some things to do. I’ll come back later.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Not long to go now. Who do you think is waiting for you over there?’

  ‘Mama.’

  ‘For sure.’ I stood up as Lanya came over.

  ‘They’re ready,’ she said.

  ‘Right. Let’s do it.’

  She put her hand lightly on my chest. ‘God go with you.’

  My voice stuck, so I picked up her hand and kissed it, then took Sol back to Fyffe.

  I’d thought hard about whether to tell Fyffe about the plan to jam the triggers. Vega had said that no one else should know, besides him and me. If word got out that Southside were doing this, there wouldn’t be any more exchanges. But Fy was the one wearing the explosives, not Vega. I told her.

  When I saw her on the bridge that morning, wearing the padded jacket, I could tell she didn’t think the jamming would make us any safer. She was standing very still as if she was afraid to breathe, and the smile she directed at Sol was brittle and too bright. She held out her hand to me. I took it and squeezed it.

  ‘Ready?’ I said. She nodded. ‘It’ll all be over in fifteen minutes. Can you handle fifteen minutes?’

  ‘I think so,’ she whispered.

  ‘Okay.’ I took Sol’s hand.

  So there we stood, Fyffe, me, Sol, hand in hand on the bridge in front of the gate. Behind us stood an armed squad and behind them a crowd of jostling onlookers. Ahead of us, in the middle of the bridge, an ISIS agent held the trigger for the explosives on the Breken hostage, and with him stood the triggerman from Moldam who had gone over to verify the hostage and to hold the trigger for the explosives on Fyffe. At the gate at the other end where the Breken hostage stood there’d be ranks of troops too, and maybe there was a crowd, I couldn’t see. I wondered if Dash was watching.

  A foghorn bellowed on Cityside and we all jumped. An answering bellow came from Southside. That was my signal. Not sooner, Vega had said. Save the battery. I put a hand inside my coat, felt in the inside pocket for the buttons I’d practiced with. Pressed them. A tiny vibration told me the jammer had winked into life. No outcry sounded behind us. No alarms went off. So far, so uneventful. I grasped Fyffe’s hand again and we started to walk. Five minutes, Vega had said. Five long minutes to walk slowly to the middle of the bridge and another five to make the exchange.

  I looked down at Sol. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Yep.’

  I found myself counting steps so I wouldn’t freak out. Even so, everything pushed itself at me: the hardness of the concrete through my boots; the salt of the sea wind on my tongue; Fyffe’s hand, slim and tense in mine, and Sol’s, small and sweaty; the gulls – there were gulls that morning, wheeling and crying high over the bridge. By the time I’d counted to a hundred, the hostage coming from Cityside was close, the noise of the crowd had faded and all I could hear were the gulls.

  Then, the crack of a shot.

  We hit the ground.

  Panic charged through me.

  A second shot split the air.

  The silence that followed was as loud as anything I’d ever heard. I lifted my head from my arms, got up on hands and knees. Fyffe was frozen in a crouch, her lips moving, her eyes closed.

  Sol was sprawled in a pool of blood.

  The world went blank for a heartbeat – then it all came roaring back. Sol’s blood spread under my fingers and knees. Fyffe’s wail filled the air. I turned Sol over. Blood spilled out of his mouth and down his white face. I gathered him up in my arms. His chest was a pulp of bloody clothes. His head fell back. His eyes stared up at the bridge, at the sky, at heaven, at nothing.

  City voices were shouting all around us and comms units crackled with bursts of Anglo. I held Sol close, brushed his hair back, tried to see a spark in his eyes, rocked him and said, ‘No, no – it’ll be all right. You’ll be all right. We’ll get you home. I promise. I promise.’

  Then, above me there was just one voice, barking orders, and another, quiet, in my ear, while Sol bled his life out on my coat.

  The voice in my ear was Breken. A woman had crouched beside me. I remember thinking that she looked like Lanya, but older. She put a hand on Sol’s face and whispered a Breken prayer, then men came and stood around us, bristling with guns and orders and marched her back towards the city.

  They wouldn’t let me carry Sol. They took him Cityside on a stretcher surrounded by paramedics as if that would do any good. But they let Fyffe and me walk off the bridge together.

  She went straight into her mother’s outstretched arms. And I went into the waiting arms of ISIS.

  City forces had taken back the hospital near Bethun Bridge. They took me there and put me in a white room that had a chair and a cabinet and a narrow bed and a window too high up to see out of and a small bathroom. They were kind. They checked that the blood all over me wasn’t my own and gave me a hot drink and clean clothes. They told me to take my time, get cleaned up, rest. Someone would come by presently to see how I was. They locked the door.

  Someone did come by presently, but I hadn’t drunk the drink, or got cleaned up or changed my clothes. They said Dash wanted to see me and wouldn’t it be better for me not to be covered in Sol’s blood when she arrived? They brought me another hot drink.

  So I drank it, and had a shower – it was strange to stand under hot water. I put on the clean clothes and stared at myself in the mirror. They’d given me an old cadet uniform: green fatigues and brown boots. Maybe it was all they had to spare.

  I should have looked like a standard issue ISIS cadet, but my hair was too long and I was too thin and what I really looked like was a hostile in a stolen uniform. I turned away, picked up my bloodstained clothes and stood holding them. I didn’t know what to do with them. In the end I folded them and laid them on the chair. Then I sat on the bed holding my coat, Levkova’s coat, and waited for Dash.

  CHAPTER 41

  My eyes wouldn’t open. I was floating and warm and I didn’t want to move.

  A voice said, ‘Hey, Nik. Wake up. You’re home.’

  I made an effort and opened my eyes. I was on the bed in the white room and Dash was sitting beside me. She looked like a real cadet – fatigues, boots, hair short and severe – but her eyes and smile, they were just like always. ‘Hey.’ I reached out my hand and she took it. Her smile trembled and she started to cry.

  There was nothing to say that would make it all right, so we didn’t say anything, just sat together. Eventually I said, ‘They told me you were coming but I fell asleep. Sorry.’

  ‘That was yesterday.’

  ‘I slept a whole day?’

 
She nodded. ‘You must be hungry. And you’ve got some recovering to do: this knife wound,’ she picked up my left hand, ‘it’s not healing well.’

  ‘How’s Fyffe?’

  ‘Shattered. Badly in need of TLC. Like you.’

  ‘How are you?’

  She shook her head. ‘We came so close. Half a bridge length. He was nearly home.’ She took a deep, shaky breath, then picked up her crutches and stood up. ‘I have to go and see Sarah Hendry.’ Mrs Hendry. Mother of Sol and Lou and Fyffe. I couldn’t have faced her right then. Dash said, ‘I’ll come and see you again soon. They won’t keep you here long.’

  I nodded. ‘How’s the leg?’

  ‘Not bad. Mending.’

  ‘Seeing you is – it’s… it’s… I mean, you look good.’

  She smiled. ‘And you look half-starved and exhausted. But you’re in the right place, now.’

  ‘I guess they’ll want to debrief me.’

  ‘Oh, they’ve done that.’

  ‘No, they haven’t. I’ve been asleep.’

  ‘Yes, but that was part of it. Didn’t they tell you? They just drug you slightly and ask questions and you talk. It’s quicker than other ways, and more effective – they can get at things you might not remember. They said you spoke Breken the whole time. It really got into your system, didn’t it?’

  I rubbed my hands over my face and tried to focus. ‘Say all that again. Slowly.’

  She went through it, piece by piece. She ended with, ‘Rest now. You look so tired.’ She kissed me, whispered, ‘Thank you for trying,’ waved at the cc-eye above the door and left. The door locked. I closed my eyes.

  They left me alone for the rest of the day.

  Everything. That’s what I must have told them. That’s what they took. Including the subset of ‘everything’ that is ‘everything that matters.’ Elements in this subset: my father is alive; this fact is being protected by, among others, Sim Vega and Tasia Levkova; the jamming of the triggers for the prisoner exchange was deliberate; it was Vega who set it up and me who jammed them; Remnant control all the Bridge Councils east of Ohlerton; CFM supporters – who would negotiate a peace – are under siege and in retreat…

  A woman came to see me. She had a notebook and wore a white coat and wouldn’t answer any of my questions. She took my pulse, shone lights in my eyes, and looked at the gash on my hand.

  I said, ‘Why am I locked up?’

  She said, ‘We’re here to help. Don’t worry. You’re safe now.’ She wrote notes and left.

  Dash came to visit. ‘How’s Fy?’ I asked. ‘Where is she? Can I see her?’

  ‘She’s with her parents,’ said Dash. ‘I’ll see what I can do. They’re taking Sol home the day after tomorrow, and I’ve asked to go in the escort. I put in a request for you to go too but the chief here said no. She wouldn’t tell me why. Do you know why?’

  I knew exactly why. I couldn’t imagine them letting me out of there until they’d done a whole lot more prying into what I’d told them under the debrief drug.

  ‘Nik? Do you?’ The blue gaze, the frown, the lips pressed together – the Dash wordless interrogation, just like I remembered it.

  ‘Do they use that debrief drug on everyone?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I guess so. It’s harmless.’

  ‘Did they use it on Fy?’

  ‘Why? Does it matter?’

  Did it matter? I’d been trying to work this out. Had Fy seen or done anything in Southside that might put her in danger over here? She didn’t know about my father. She hadn’t been involved in any CFM or Remnant politics. She knew the triggers on the bridge would be jammed, but that was Vega’s plan, and mine. There was nothing she could have done about it. I closed my eyes and wished my head was clearer.

  ‘Are you feeling bad?’ said Dash. ‘I could get a doctor. They told me that drug was safe. That you’d just feel tired and groggy.’

  Tired and groggy. I’m sure that’s how people usually feel when they’ve been busy betraying other people.

  ‘Hey.’ She snapped her fingers in front of my face. ‘Come back.’

  I opened my eyes. ‘What do you think happened on the bridge?’

  ‘You were there. You’d know better than me.’

  ‘But what are people saying?’

  ‘That the hostiles jammed the explosives trigger so that when they shot Sol their person couldn’t be terminated and had a chance to escape.’

  No. No. No. That wasn’t why.

  Dash said, ‘What did you see?’

  I looked at her, and then I couldn’t look at her. ‘I jammed the triggers.’

  She went completely still. ‘You can’t be saying that. Why did you? Did they make you? Did they trick you? How could that happen?’

  ‘I thought it was a chance to protect them both – the hostages – theirs and ours.’

  ‘What do you mean protect them both? Why would you protect a hostile? God, Nik, they used you. They used you to kill Sol.’

  CHAPTER 42

  I sat on the floor in the dark and thought about Fyffe. She knew I’d jammed the triggers. Now she’d be told it was a plot by the Breken to free their hostage and kill Sol. Would she believe that? Did I?

  I walked round and round my room thinking about the possibility that Vega set up Sol’s murder. I didn’t believe it. The whole thing made much more sense if it was Remnant that had sabotaged the exchange. By shooting Sol they’d be aiming for success twice over: deepened divisions between the city and Southside, and the Breken hostage – the CFM leader-in-waiting – blown into the sky.

  Next morning an agent appeared at the door. I said, ‘Can I see Fyffe?’ but she said that such decisions weren’t up to her. She took me down white corridors that were gleaming and eerily quiet – even the people hurrying past seemed to glide on silent runners.

  The woman she took me to was white and quiet as well. She had black hair streaked with gray swept back from a high forehead, and her uniform was gray not black or green like everyone else’s. She sat behind a large desk with her hands clasped in front of her. Her eyes were small and very blue under thin dark brows. She gestured to a chair and I sat down.

  She smiled, but to herself rather than to me. Eventually she said, ‘You don’t remember me.’ She seemed pleased rather than offended. ‘I’m Frieda Kelleran.’

  A rush of images filled my mind: my mother’s long dark hair and gold earrings, a room cluttered with books and boxes and too much furniture, a gloved hand and a gray coat and a walk up the school driveway.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Now you remember. Welcome home, Nikolai.’

  Frieda. Friend of my mother. Who’d enrolled me at Tornmoor, and then disappeared from my life entirely. Here she was. Back.

  ‘Home,’ I said. ‘Is that what this is?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Have I done it then?’

  ‘Done what?’

  ‘What you wanted. Led you to my father.’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘It was a good plan. I see that now. Stick me in Tornmoor and you have all that leverage to use against him in the Marsh. But he escapes – probably not in your plan. And then you get reports that he’s dead. That’s probably more like your plan. So you forget about me, but you leave me there in case, one day, I might be useful. And now I have been. I’ve led you right to him, and here I am: leverage all over again. Have I got that right? I think you might be disappointed, though, in just how much use I can be. But still – at least you know that he’s alive and over there. I’ve told you that much.’

  ‘You’re angry. I understand that.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘But we’re not the ones you should be angry with. Your father abandoned you to Tornmoor, and then when you went over the river in, I must say, an admirable feat of bravery, he used you. You must have worked this out by now. By jamming those triggers they could kill the Hendry boy and in the resulting chaos the Breken hostage could escape.’

  ‘Why would
they do that? They were getting her back anyway.’

  ‘I’d have thought that was obvious. A message to us that they mean to pursue this fight to the bitter end. And it will be bitter. The hostage is still here and we are more determined than ever to punish the insurgency and push it to a satisfactory conclusion. They have made a grave tactical error and they will pay for it.’ She peered at me. ‘You’re one of us, Nikolai. I think you know that. You can do good work here. You have grounding in the field. Facility with Breken. Understanding of their ways. And you know just how warlike and unforgiving they are. We want you with us, working for peace. Surely you want peace?’

  ‘They’d negotiate, you know,’ I said. ‘Some of them. If you came to the table, with terms, they’d talk.’

  ‘There will be no negotiation with the hostiles as long as they take up arms. It’s out of the question.’

  She pressed a button on her desk and said, ‘Proceed,’ to someone; I couldn’t see who. The wall lit up with faces: Levkova, Vega, and a host of others. The images were fuzzy, like they’d been taken from a long way off and magnified multiple times.

  She said, ‘You’ve given us a commentary on life over the river. I know you didn’t agree to do that, and I’m sorry you didn’t have a chance to consent, but time was of the essence. We couldn’t wait for you to recover.’ The parade of faces and figures streamed across the wall. ‘We know some of these people. We don’t know them all. We’re asking you to identify as many as you can, so that we can match them with your commentary. We want to know who’s with CFM, who’s Remnant, rank, popular status, you know the kind of thing. We want peace, Nikolai. You can help us achieve that.’

  I watched them go by, my mouth dry and my heart beating hard and when the wall went blank I stood up. She said, ‘You need time to think. I understand that. You have twenty-four hours.’ She punched a button and spoke to the air again. ‘An escort please.’

  She smiled up at me. ‘You haven’t asked me about your mother. Surely you have some questions. I was a good friend of hers, you know.’