War: Bridge & Sword: Apocalypse (Bridge & Sword Series Book 6)

by JC Andrijeski

  He looked up, half in a daze, and Ditrini spat in his face.

  The other seer walked away then, back the way they had come.

  Back towards the larger pipe, and probably back towards the hotel.

  Revik stared after him, still gasping. He saw Ditrini make a series of hand-gestures towards the five seers of his crew, without slowing his steps.

  The seers holding Maygar and Jon released them, and released the chains wrapped around their necks. They didn’t unlock either set of arm or wrist cuffs, or remove their collars. They simply walked away from where they stood, glaring at all three of them as they left.

  Ditrini gave another command, gesturing towards the torches, and the largest of the five guards tossed a yisso torch back towards them with a grunt, his eyes murderous as he paused long enough to glare at the three of them.

  Then he was gone, too.

  They’d left them there.

  They’d left them with a torch.

  Ditrini… or someone else, more likely… wanted them to get out of this alive. They wanted Revik to get out alive, probably to keep Allie alive, too.

  They at least wanted them to have a fighting chance.

  Revik watched them go from his knees, fighting to think through his confusion and pain, but unwilling to voice the question. He didn’t want to risk that it might bring Ditrini and his goons back. Given Ditrini’s instability, Revik didn’t want to do anything that might flip that switch.

  When Revik looked at Jon and Maygar, the puzzlement on their faces mirrored his own.

  Revik was struggling then, leaning his weight against the pipe wall and trying to force himself up to his feet. Jon moved forward, using his body as a counterbalance to help him up, and after a few seconds, Revik managed to get himself more or less upright.

  He gasped when his light sparked around him, igniting the edges of the collar enough to bring a cold shock of pain all the way down to his abdomen.

  “We have to go,” he gasped, looking at the other two.

  They looked at one another, then down the pipe after Ditrini.

  “We have to go!” Revik snapped. “Now! Grab that fucking torch! We’ll likely need it, or they wouldn’t have left it.”

  He watched Maygar walk to the torch.

  Turning his back to the sparking and sizzling thing lying in the dirty water, Maygar lowered himself in a swift crouch, grabbing hold of the end of the black handle with his hands bound behind his back.

  Once Revik knew he had it, and was more or less vertical again, he began limping up the sloped pipe as fast as he could. He couldn’t walk in a straight line, even now. He found himself weaving in the dim light instead, navigating around piles of silt, deeper pools of water, and chunks of concrete in the bottom of the curved cement pipe.

  He stumbled a few times, even so, making his way through water and debris, much of which had likely fallen in the last series of quakes. He fell once, tripping over a submerged chunk of concrete, but caught his balance before he face-planted in the bilge.

  He never stopped. He barely even slowed down.

  Instead, he did his best to increase his speed as his eyes adjusted to the dark.

  He didn’t look back, either, but could see the light bouncing behind him, and heard the other two following him. He also heard them occasionally cursing him out––particularly Maygar––presumably for not waiting or discussing his route with either of them.

  Revik ignored that, too.

  He managed to get his speed up to a reasonable facsimile of a combat jog right around the time he heard the other two catching up to him, splashing their way through the foot or so of water and closing the gap to where he half-ran down the narrowing pipe.

  His eyes scanned the walls for a ladder, any hint of a way to a higher level, but it seemed like they ran forever without seeing anything on the featureless pipe walls. Maybe twenty minutes passed before he realized he could hear it again.

  Water.

  The sound was getting louder in the background again.

  Allie’s face flashed in front of his eyes again, even as he let out a low groan.

  “Ideas?” he gasped. He didn’t turn to look at either of them, or slow his pace as he slogged through the deepening mud and silt. “We’re running out of time.”

  Silence from the other two.

  Then Maygar’s voice burst out suddenly from behind him.

  “There!” he shouted. “Another pipe! It looks like it’s going up!”

  Revik stared at it, but only for an instant.

  Cursing the collar, he fought to decide, then abruptly changed course when they reached the Y-junction, running up the slightly larger tributary.

  Jon and Maygar splashed behind him.

  He heard a grunt as one of them fell then struggled back to their feet, but Revik didn’t slow, and within a few more minutes, he could hear both of them splashing not far behind him in the tunnel again.

  The sound of rushing water was getting louder.

  “Fuck,” Jon muttered, half a gasp with each step. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

  “Save your goddamned breath!” Revik growled. “Think it, if you need to!”

  Jon fell silent.

  Revik saw it then, and let out a cry.

  He would have pointed if he’d had use of his arms, but as it was, he only ran towards it. He didn’t really think about the logistical issues until he was standing right in front of the damned thing, and then he could only gasp, giving the other two a kind of helpless look.

  It was a ladder, but they didn’t have use of their arms.

  Hearing the water rushing louder behind them, Revik turned around, grasping hold of one rung with his bound hands. Leaning as much of his weight back as he could to keep from toppling over, he stabbed his foot onto the lowest rung, and fought to pull himself up. Quickly, he realized it was futile. His hands were bound too closely together, and every time he let go of a rung, he would fall, face-forward, back into the pipe.

  “What the fuck do we do?” Jon shouted, now to be heard over the rushing of the water filling the pipes below. “There’s not going to be any way out! Not without a ladder!”

  Revik looked between their faces, feeling his chest go numb.

  “We can try to hold onto the ladder,” he said. “Let it bring us up.”

  Looking from Maygar’s to Jon’s faces, though, he knew they’d already come to the same conclusion he had, about how futile that was.

  They could let the water bring them to the surface––in theory––but the reality was, it wouldn’t. The flood of water would knock them over, then send them spinning down the pipe, slamming into the walls and ceiling until they got knocked out or drowned.

  That was assuming they weren’t stabbed or beheaded by shrapnel first.

  Even if they managed to hold onto the ladder, they had no way to climb up it underwater, either. They would drown waiting for the current to die down, and it likely would never die down enough to be completely stagnant. The instant they let go to pull themselves up to a higher rung, they’d be sent down the pipe with no way to get back to the ladder.

  Either way, they’d drown.

  Revik fought to think, to breathe through his panic to come up with something, anything.

  If there was some way to get the chains off even one of them, but there was no time for that, either. There was no time for any of the several dozen solutions that flickered through his mind. He fought to think past the obvious barriers to something he hadn’t tried before.

  Maybe he could risk blacking out, try to get a signal to Wreg and the others through the collar. If he could hold out long enough to send up some kind of flare, it might be enough for Wreg to track them. All they’d have to do is feel him, once.

  He could ask Maygar to try, too. After all, Maygar had the Elaerian structures just like he did, even if Maygar’d never used them.

  Maybe, between the two of them––

  “Well, hello down there!”

 
The voice jerked all three sets of their eyes up.

  Revik stared up at the faces peering down at them, feeling a kind of disbelief as he saw a few of them smiling. Those faces looked the three of them over leisurely, their eyes taking in the torch clutched behind Maygar’s back, their dirty faces and clothes, the collars and chains they wore, Revik’s swollen and darkening jaw and cheek from Ditrini’s fists.

  Revik hadn’t heard the manhole cover being rolled away, with the sound of the water coming at them. He hadn’t noticed the change in light either, and when he looked up, the faces appeared to be in dark shadow, even now.

  Either they were indoors, under some kind of heavy overhang, or the sky was really damned dark for what had to be mid-afternoon, at most.

  Immediately, looking up at them, Revik knew they weren’t friends.

  On the other hand, he wasn’t all that sure they could be picky at the moment.

  “Need some help?” the man in the NYPD uniform asked, grinning at Revik above a dark rain slicker with florescent bands across the front. “Or were you planning on learning to surf in the next five minutes, iceblood?”

  Looking up at them, Revik didn’t need his sight to know they wouldn’t help him get to Allie.

  Right now, that couldn’t be the priority, either.

  “Help!” Revik said, staring up at them. “Help us!”

  “Now why would we want to do that, iceblood?”

  “I’m him!” Revik said at once. “The Sword… Syrimne. I can take you to her! I can give you what you want…” Panting, he felt his heart jackknife in his chest as he added, “It’s her you want, right? That’s why you’re here? For her? My wife?”

  The man grinned at him again.

  Then, glancing to his side, he motioned for someone to bring something over.

  Turns out, it was a crane.

  46

  WAVE

  UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES, Revik would have held up his hands.

  Surrounded by automatic rifles held by some very pissed-off looking humans, it seemed the logical thing to do.

  As he couldn’t hold up his hands because of his bound arms, he just stood there, balancing most of his weight on the leg Ditrini hadn’t hit with the coiled chain. The muscle of his thigh hurt so badly in the other leg, he wasn’t sure it would hold his weight now that his adrenaline was starting to run its course.

  He knew how the three of them must look, him in particular.

  Blood still ran down his face. His one eye was now swollen all the way shut. He wore a white dress shirt and jeans, without so much as an armored vest since he’d gone down to interrogate Maygar in his street clothes. The shirt stuck to his wet skin, spotted with blood where his injuries marked it as he ran, along with mud and clotted cement dust. Since that dust filled the pipes for most of the time they’d been down there, he, Maygar and Jon looked like they’d been coated in a layer of white clay.

  Revik coughed, hopping a little on his good foot, before he glanced at Maygar and Jon, who huddled not far from where he stood, dressed about as appropriately as he was.

  Needless to say, the human cops hadn’t removed their collars.

  Before Revik could think of something to say, hands grabbed him from both sides. He looked over to see Maygar and Jon grabbed by four or five more men wearing SWAT outfits that said NYPD on the back in white letters.

  Seconds later, he found himself being loaded roughly into the back of a military grade helicopter, dark black with dead metal, so likely SCARB or one of the several other federal or international branches. Sikorsky X4, so one of the high speed varieties, and able to do quick extractions even under conditions such as this.

  Jon and Maygar were loaded into the same helicopter next to him, and all three of them were locked to the jump seats by the chains they already wore, including their collars, forcing them to sit upright and not really turn their heads. The same SWAT agents knelt down to lock Revik’s ankles to the floor of the helicopter, as well.

  Truthfully, the overkill might have been laughable, under different circumstances.

  Then again, they had no idea his telekinesis was shorted out, so maybe it wasn’t that surprising.

  Revik watched as the first human he’d spoken to, the one who’d crouched in that circle of light from the open manhole cover, sat down across from him. The human smiled at him, but it wasn’t a friendly smile.

  He arranged his muscled weight in a seat and strapped on a waist belt while his eyes took in Revik alone, measuring him without apology.

  “The mighty Syrimne,” he said, grinning a little. “Who would have known you would turn out to be such a bad swimmer?”

  Revik didn’t answer.

  He shifted his gaze, looking out the window at the driving rain, and the wind buffeting the side of the helicopter even where it sat parked in the middle of the Avenue of the Americas.

  “Don’t worry,” the man said, pulling the fingers of the gloves off his hand one by one, right before he banged on the glass separating them from the cockpit with his bare knuckles. “We’re leaving, your royal ice-bloodedness. As much as some of my people would love to leave you here to test that swimming ability of yours… I’m afraid your presence is wanted elsewhere.”

  Smirking, he stretched out, propping an ankle on one knee.

  “It didn’t take long for you to throw your wife to the dogs, did it?”

  Revik didn’t look away from the window.

  Sighing audibly, the man leaned deeper in the seat across from him.

  “We’re going to take you somewhere a little more private before we start asking the tough questions, Mr. Syrimne,” he said with mock politeness. “Since you seemed so amenable to our ‘help’ just now, I’m going to assume you’re willing to return the favor. In fact, I’m going to be most displeased with you, if you aren’t as friendly and helpful with us as we’ve been with you, cousin Syrimne. So will my friends.”

  Revik followed the man’s eyes to the row of black-clad soldiers with him, all of whom were staring at Revik now. Two of them grinned, and one made kissy faces.

  Smiling a little wider, almost as if he couldn’t help himself, the first human motioned at Revik’s face.

  “Who did that to you? One of yours, or one of ours?” Exchanging grins with his friends at Revik’s silence, he grunted. “Whoever it was, they must like you even less than we do. I guess karma’s a real bitch, though, isn’t it, King Iceblood?”

  Revik didn’t answer that, either.

  He was tempted to, though.

  He was tempted to tell this human just how brutal karma could be.

  Feeling a pit trying to burrow back into his stomach as he thought about Allie, he tried to reassure himself that at least he was alive.

  At least he wouldn’t kill her that way.

  Being alive, he could find her.

  Being alive he could get her out of wherever she was.

  The human across from him chuckled. When Revik turned, he saw the soldier smiling at him, studying his face almost as if he’d guessed Revik’s thoughts.

  “I wouldn’t count on any grand rescues, O Mighty Syrimne,” the human said, still smiling. “We’re going to have to travel a spell, I’m afraid. And there aren’t a lot of windows where you and your friends are going.”

  The man’s smile widened to a grin as he motioned towards the open door. With his other hand, he grabbed the straps holding him to his jump seat, even as the Sikorsky lifted agilely off the ground, creating a dip in Revik’s stomach when it caught the updraft and rose swiftly between the high buildings.

  The bird continued to rise, compensating for the wind as it slid up and sideways before clearing enough ground to begin moving forward as well, in a line heading due south. Turbulence continued to buffet the helicopter as it altered direction, forcing the pilot to compensate as the wind drove more rain into the cockpit window.

  Revik couldn’t stop himself from following the motion of the man’s fingers with his eyes, seeing the scatt
ering of other helicopters rising with the US Army logo stamped on the side of their dead metal walls.

  His eyes flickered lower then, sensing the change on some level, even as water began flowing out of the manhole covers from the sewer pipes underground, spilling out onto the street. He watched the remaining troops and police on the ground scatter, moving away from the water towards the nearby buildings, presumably to get to higher ground.

  Swallowing as he thought of where he, Jon and Maygar had just been, as well as the probable locations of Balidor and Wreg, Revik found he couldn’t look away as the water flow increased, until the manhole covers disappeared, buried under a few feet of water.

  “Ah, but that’s only the beginning, Mr. Syrimne,” the human smirked, folding his arms across his chest before he motioned towards the horizon. “There’s a lot more to come, believe me. All your friends will get a chance to test their swimming ability pretty soon.”

  As the helicopter lifted higher, Revik saw what the human meant.

  A literal wall of water had reached Lower Manhattan.

  Revik had seen tsunamis before. He’d seen one in Japan from the air while he worked for the Rooks. He’d seen images on the feeds once or twice, as well as in VR simulations during disaster training. He’d never actually been in one before, though.

  He’d also never seen one that he knew was about to hit a hell of a lot of people he cared about.

  The sheer magnitude of the wave brought a base, animal terror that echoed in his body. Nausea rose in his chest. His heart beat harder; his breath grew short.

  He could see the rising swell approaching faster and faster as the Sikorsky rose above the main skyline and began accelerating in the wave’s direction. Seeing the sheer height of the water as it crashed into the first buildings facing the harbor, Revik felt his throat go completely dry.

  That sick feeling in his chest worsened.