Dragon_The Final War

by JC Andrijeski

  She looked older to me again.

  She’d lost some of the baby fat she’d worn what seemed like only weeks before, that same cute, dimply layer that made her so utterly squeezable. She was losing that layer too fast, faster than even a human. Its loss made her look older, childlike in a way that appeared different to me already, more like a little girl and less like a baby.

  She was beautiful. So beautiful it still took my breath.

  “We have to do it,” he repeated, softer. “We have to do it for her, wife. This will never be over if we don’t. And I can’t stay here… not like this. I’m a danger to both of you.”

  I nodded, fighting tears.

  “He has no reason to hide the link now,” he reminded me, caressing my cheek, then my neck. “He has no reason to hide it, because he knows we know it’s there. He knows we’ll have the whole team working on this, doing everything we can to try and sever that line he has to me. He has no reason to hold back.”

  He swallowed, studying my eyes, brushing a few strands of hair out of my face, clutching the weight of it in his fingers.

  “…He won’t stop, wife. He won’t. I know him, and the only thing that confused me before was why he hadn’t tried to kill you already. We know why, now. He thought he could get me to do it. The fact that he failed will only make him more determined.”

  I didn’t speak. I didn’t even nod that time.

  I couldn’t nod, but I also couldn’t argue.

  Revik did know him.

  Menlim raised him. Menlim trained him. Menlim rarely left his side for years.

  It wasn’t a question of whether Revik was right. I knew he was right.

  I just couldn’t stomach what that meant for both of us.

  “He sees you as the obstacle to me,” he said, softer, still caressing my neck. “He sees you as the only real obstacle to everything he wants down here. He won’t stop until you’re dead. And if he can’t have her, he’ll want Lily dead, too.”

  I clung to his arms, nodding, unable to look him in the face.

  “We might as well use that,” he said softly, kissing my cheek. “If I have to go anyway, we might as well use it, wife, use it against him… use it in a way that eventually sets us free.”

  I fought to answer, but couldn’t.

  “Every connection goes both ways,” he reminded me.

  He put his hand on my heart, placing my hand on his, and I felt that connection throb between us, beyond the beat of the organs.

  I nodded, wiping my eyes, but I still couldn’t answer.

  I knew. I knew he was right.

  But I really really wished I didn’t.

  3

  EIGHT MONTHS, FIVE DAYS

  AN EXPLOSION RIPPED through the silence of the late afternoon light, jerking my eyes up.

  It got all of us to our feet, staring down from the roof of the thirty-story apartment building where we worked. I looked west with the rest of them, holding my breath. Raising a hand to shield the sun, I gazed towards the line of the horizon.

  My eyes found the snaking curve of river reflecting sunlight first.

  Then I saw the smoke.

  Pretty much due west, from the lines of the sun.

  I was still staring when a second detonation went off.

  I ducked in reflex. Before I’d straightened, a third, larger charge detonated along a different part of the wall, causing all of us to flinch, and many of the seers next to me jerk back from the edge of the roof. Glancing to my right, I saw Jorag lower his arm from where he’d used it to instinctively shield his face, even though we were more than a mile from the blast.

  He frowned at the horizon as I watched.

  Black smoke plumed up. Again, I raised a hand to shield my eyes.

  For a moment I forgot what we’d been doing as I watched the scene unfold.

  Sirens went off. I heard distant staccato bursts of what had to be automatic rifle fire. I cursed under my breath as the breach siren wound higher.

  It wasn’t our siren. It belonged to the Thai humans.

  The Mythers were trying to breach the Bangkok city wall. Again.

  I’d heard about this on the feeds, even before we got here. It wasn’t only happening in Thailand. These more systematic and better-armed attempts to break into enclave communities from the outside had been springing up all over. We didn’t know if Shadow’s people were behind it, not for certain, but I strongly suspected they were.

  These groups never attacked Shadow cities, only the independent ones.

  I figured Shadow had to be funding the group behind it, at least, even if they weren’t involved directly. From what our infiltration team could tell, these coordinated attacks all came from the same fanatical religious group, whose adherents believed in a “One True God,” under a radical interpretation of the Third Myth of the seers.

  Normal people called them “Mythers”––I’d known them by that name even before the outbreak of the disease––but in interviews on black market feeds, their adherents called themselves either “Guardians of the One True Myth,” or “The Brotherhood of the Dragon,” after their dragon-god creature that was supposed to wipe out the world’s imperfections and remake it anew once the “unbelievers” were purged.

  Religious fanaticism aside, this had the stink of Menlim all over it.

  I’d wondered how long he’d tolerate humans operating and rebuilding their lives outside of his immediate sphere of control.

  The Mythers themselves were the perfect, mindless foot soldiers.

  You couldn’t reason with these fuckers, no matter how hard you tried to appeal to their better natures, or even logic. Like all true believer types, they couldn’t comprehend the worldview of anyone existing outside their tightly-policed ideological bubble.

  All of it seemed calculated to divide the human populations further and get them to turn on one another even more.

  I was still watching the smoke rise on that end of the wall when a voice rose in my headset.

  “Hey,” he said, impatient. “What’s going on? Are we all right to continue?”

  I looked down, aiming binoculars on the streets and alleyways directly below and around the circumference of the apartment building, looking for any increased activity from the blast. There was plenty, but it was all heading away from us.

  Reinforcement militia were heading in uneven lines for the wall on the other side of the Chao Praya river. Most of them didn’t wear uniforms, but I noted the yellow and green scarves tied around their heads, necks and arms so they could distinguish one another from the enemy. More than half wore automatic rifles, but I saw a few with shotguns and older guns, and a handful with swords, axes and clubs.

  I clicked over into the Barrier construct I was helping to hold since we didn’t have anything permanent in place yet. I pinged Wreg in the same set of seconds.

  Hey, I said to him. We okay? Revik wants to know.

  I practically heard Wreg’s snort, even with the wind and from all the way across the roof.

  Of course he does, Wreg muttered. Tell him we’ve split off part of the team to monitor the area of the bomb, but we should have more than enough to cover his end. I was considering sending Chan down there, since they haven’t left yet. What do you think?

  I nodded, once.

  Before I answered Revik, I sent a packed message to Balidor conveying everything Wreg just told me, including the part about Chandre.

  Tell him yes on Chan, Balidor sent back at once. Unless you disagree?

  No, I agree, I assured him. Thanks. And let me know if anything changes down by that wall. Can you coordinate with Chan directly?

  When I felt Balidor acquiesce, I switched my focus back to Revik, un-shielding my light.

  We’re all good. Balidor’s monitoring the situation on the wall. You don’t need to worry about that. And I’m staying away from those lights.

  I felt Revik relax––slightly––but he still felt wound up.

  I didn’t bother to ask why.


  Good, he sent. Then we’re ready to go down here.

  I passed that on to Wreg, too.

  It was weird acting as translator for Revik of all people, but they didn’t want him tied in too closely to our main security constructs right now, for obvious reasons. I was only in part of those constructs for the same obvious reasons. Wreg acted as a go-between too, keeping my light in an area of the construct that had been sequestered off from the most high-level security segments.

  They’d restructured all of those constructs in the last few weeks, too.

  Are they any closer to locking that box of crazy down? Wreg asked me.

  Rather than interrupting Revik to ask, I read Revik’s light in order to answer Wreg’s question at once.

  Revik thinks they’re most of the way there. It can only be temporary, of course, I added, more or less translating Revik’s thoughts. He wants to take both of them out of the city as soon as possible, now that we’ve got them secured in the truck and the tank construct’s holding. He’s thinking maybe we use Chan as a diversion if she gets stuck here much longer.

  I felt Wreg acknowledge my words.

  A twinge of impatience left his light, though.

  It occurred to me I was thinking things at Wreg that he already knew, maybe out of nerves, or maybe just to fill space. Unlike humans, seers didn’t tend to repeat known information to one another as a general rule, so Wreg took my doing so now as nagging.

  He took his security duties damned seriously. Especially now.

  What about the illusion on the street? Wreg grunted. How does it look? Can we lock it down as is, or does he want us to modify it first?

  I sighed a little, but passed that question on to Revik directly.

  “I’m thinking we should go more towards the dead body smell for the humans,” Revik said matter-of-factly, using the headset that time. “We’re good on the seer side. As good as we can make it, anyway. We’re pretty far from most of the seer enclaves in Bangkok anyway. The humans are no where near cleaning up this side of the city, so a large number of their dead should create a pretty wide area of avoidance.”

  I nodded, then sent that on to Wreg.

  Most of my attention remained on the wall and the column of smoke and to a lesser degree on Balidor’s team, even through the back and forth with Revik and Wreg.

  I could hear the increase in automatic gunfire.

  Balidor hadn’t wasted any time; Chandre was already on her way to the wall with a small team to see if they could help the Thai humans.

  From the Barrier, things were still pretty confused––a lot of shouting and tension, especially on the defending side of the wall. The Myther side felt strangely blank to me until I realized they must have seers with them, shielding them.

  That was kind of unnerving.

  Don’t get too close, princess, Wreg cautioned me. Adhipan is monitoring those fucks.

  What do you think, Wreg? I sent. Do they know we’re here?

  I felt Wreg focus on my question, even as his consciousness remained split.

  I felt him continue to work on the construct around the truck as he answered me.

  I think your husband is right, Wreg said finally. I think our being on the defensive and simply trying to avoid them won’t work for much longer, Esteemed Bridge. I think we’ll end up being dragged down by the wolves if we continue like this. They’ve got us on the run, and they know it. It will only make them more aggressive.

  I frowned, but didn’t comment.

  I agreed with him, just like I’d agreed with Revik when he’d said more or less the same thing to me, only using stronger words. I knew with Revik it was more than that, but it didn’t take away from the essential rightness of either seer’s statements.

  It had to happen soon.

  The thought brought a sudden, hard knot to my chest.

  The pain came fast enough and intensely enough, it briefly blanked me out. My vision blurred; I pressed a fist to the middle of my chest, panting. I forced my mind blank, absent of details, of specifics, even as I fought for air.

  It hit me suddenly that I might black out.

  I might black out for real.

  Sister? Wreg sounded alarmed. Sister! Are you all right?

  His voice receded as I fought to hold it back.

  Sister? Allie!

  That time, Wreg’s thoughts sounded clearer. Still panting, I shook my head, still fighting to hold onto consciousness, to force it back.

  I’m all right, I managed.

  Sister, I did not mean to upset you. Wreg exuded worry, even a flicker of panic. I felt guilt with that, too, but his worry overpowered the rest. Esteemed sister, I apologize. Truly. I spoke too bluntly. I thought I was merely confirming what you and Nenz––

  You were, I told him. You were confirming it. Really, Wreg, it’s fine. It’s nothing you said. And I agree. Just get Feigran out of here in one piece. We need him. Especially now.

  Wreg hesitated, long enough that I knew he didn’t believe me.

  He didn’t try to get me to tell him anything, though.

  And yeah, I wasn’t lying. My reaction wasn’t about him.

  It wasn’t even really about what he’d said.

  I agreed with Wreg’s overall assessment about the current attack on the Bangkok wall, too. I didn’t think we were at immediate risk. I thought it was smart to have Chan go down there to make sure, but I didn’t think they would be coming for us today.

  Even so, the timing of the attack unnerved me.

  It also felt a lot like a message.

  Like whatever their plans for us, they knew where we were. I was beginning to think they knew exactly where we were, that maybe they’d even known from day one. Like Revik said, they’d held off on going after us before because they could.

  Menlim knew he had his ace in the hole. He had Revik.

  In some more distant area of my light and mind, I felt Revik agree.

  Pushing that awareness out of my light, I forced myself to sigh.

  Right now, there was only the immediate.

  Revik had been teaching me a lot about that lately, too.

  In the immediate, we had to deal with Feigran and Cass.

  Once we had the two of them secured, we would take them out of the city, using the same armored truck currently parked below the apartment complex. First we needed to design a construct that had a prayer of getting us past Shadow’s seers, though. The problem with that, of course, was that the main person we had to help us with that was Revik––also the one person in our group most likely to be overheard by those same Shadow seers.

  Which meant we had to get Cass and Feigran the fuck out of Thailand, preferably with a few high-ranked infiltrators guarding them to reinforce and adjust the construct once they were further away from Revik’s light.

  We had to do the same with our daughter. And with Revik’s son, Maygar.

  For the same reason, neither Revik nor I could know anything about where they were going, or even the route they took out of Bangkok.

  I could make some guesses, given what I knew about neighboring countries and bodies of water––or narrow the list down some, at least––but I went out of my way to minimize my exposure to information or intelligence that could aid me in those guesses. The news feeds didn’t penetrate much of the countryside outside the Shadow cities anyway, and I’d deliberately kept far away from all of those planning meetings, especially those involving Lily.

  Revik and I had been letting Balidor, Tarsi and Wreg handle logistics for those.

  But yeah, most of our people would be driving into the dark soon.

  As the thought repeated in my light, I made a decision.

  I’m going down there, I told Wreg. To the tank. You don’t need me up here anymore, do you? You got what you needed from Revik?

  I felt a flicker of surprise on Wreg. I could feel him trying to decide if my decision to go downstairs meant anything, if it was related somehow to the reaction he’d felt on m
e when he mentioned the likelihood of a Shadow attack.

  I felt something else in his light, too––something more subtle, something to do with Revik. Wreg had noticed things were a bit off between the two of us. Maybe even a lot off.

  I felt curiosity on him related to that, but mainly I felt his worry.

  I felt his husband and my brother, Jon, in some of that.

  Of course, princess, he assured me, blowing warmth in my direction, as if he’d felt my increased attention on his light. We are perfectly fine up here. You are free to go, if you wish. He hesitated, then his thoughts turned more carefully teasing. Are you going down there to give shit to that dugra-te di aros husband of yours? If so, I heartily approve. Moreover, I would be happy to assist, if you require back up in any way––

  Liar, I sent, snorting. You’d probably help him. You jerks love ganging up on me. Smiling, I shook my head, even though I knew he couldn’t see me where he was. And no, brother troublemaker. I’m not going down there to hassle Revik. Not this time.

  Then what? You have some purpose, yes, ilya? You feel… purposeful.

  I rolled my eyes. Subtlety is not your strong suit, Wreg.

  I felt him smile, but that sharper interest remained in his light.

  I felt him waiting, too.

  Yes, I sent, clicking in exasperation but smiling anyway. Yes, I have a purpose. I’m going to talk to Feigran. I won’t have the opportunity again for a while.

  I felt a flicker of real reaction in Wreg’s light.

  He didn’t say anything, but I felt him understanding more than just the words I’d spoken. That worry in his light intensified, enough that I felt a twinge of guilt.

  Things were definitely going to get harder soon.

  Even apart from what was going on with me and Revik––everything was just getting harder. Terian warned me about that, in the desert outside Dubai.

  I hadn’t really gotten it at the time, but now I knew he’d been right.

  I could feel it.

  4

  RIGHT HOOK