Dragon_The Final War

by JC Andrijeski

  “Shall we go, Esteemed Bridge?” he said.

  Still spinning through everything he’d said, I found myself at a loss for words.

  I considered arguing with him.

  I considered pointing out that I had my own bodyguards already, that I wasn’t going alone, whatever he or Revik discussed or imagined without me. I considered naming them off, telling Dalejem I’d vetted each one personally, including on Revik’s last night here, when most of them had been otherwise occupied with their lights.

  Looking at Dalejem, I realized all of that was besides the point.

  Revik had asked him to go with me. He’d asked because he trusted Dalejem. He’d asked the one person he really trusted, besides me. And maybe that was good enough.

  After all, I couldn’t do much for Revik now.

  But I could do this. I could give him this one thing.

  Anyway, I’d already told him I would.

  Looking away from those green and violet eyes, I clenched my jaw.

  “I want us out of here in five,” I said. “Are you packed?”

  “It’s already on the truck, Esteemed Bridge.”

  I nodded.

  There really didn’t seem to be anything more to say.

  17

  HONG KONG

  REVIK RAISED HIS hands… slowly. His eyes didn’t move from the end of the rifle the guard aimed at his head.

  “Don’t fucking move!” the seer hissed in Mandarin.

  Revik looked the other male over carefully.

  The seer had black matted hair tied back by a leather thong.

  Bare feet. Torn, filthy jeans. Shirt open to display a thin chest with visible ribs.

  Homemade, black-faded-to-blue human ink tattoos crawled up from his chest to his neck, covering his arms, hands and fingers. The marks and symbols mirrored those Revik had seen on many ex-slave campers, as well as those who ended up in work camps––the poor seers, that is. The ones without the sight rank or the connections to be bought out.

  The seer wore earrings, human-style.

  Although his dark skin looked sun-worn and rough, Revik pegged his probable age at just over one hundred years––two hundred, at most. From the looks of his light and body, he’d definitely come into this world post-First Contact.

  A recent refugee from one of the liberated work camps, most likely.

  That, or one who’d been enslaved for years and only recently obtained a half-assed form of freedom, courtesy of the Dreng.

  He could have worked fishing trawlers, from his skin. He wore the open uniform shirt of dock security, but Revik focused on his bare feet.

  They couldn’t have splurged on boots for this poor fuck?

  Revik took in the other seer’s light in a single pass.

  He didn’t lower his hands.

  “Relax,” Revik said in the same language, sending a pulse of warmth. “I’m not armed, brother. I’m not here to cause trouble. I’ve come to––”

  “Who are you?” the guard snapped, cutting him off. “How the fuck did you get out here? This area is restricted!”

  Standing at the end of the dock, Revik kept his expression still, unmoving apart from a slight widening of his feet and legs. He hadn’t done that aggressively either, more to connote that he fully expected to be searched for weapons.

  The posture was meant to imply he wouldn’t fight them.

  Nothing to hide, so to speak.

  “I took a boat,” Revik said, fighting not to add something sarcastic about the obviousness of that fact. “As far as who I am, I would happily tell you that, brother, if you would just allow me to––”

  “Shut up!” the guard snapped. “I don’t want to hear your lies!”

  Revik’s jaw tightened.

  He tried to decide if he should attempt to calm him with his light, then fell silent when another guard walked up and grabbed his arms from behind.

  The sudden, rough contact made Revik jump.

  He’d felt other lights in the background; he knew the first guard wasn’t alone, but the second infiltrator had been a fuck of a lot closer than Revik realized.

  Already he was struggling inside the denser construct. He was an outsider here. None of that functionality would be working for him, only against him.

  He wondered if he’d need to use the telekinesis after all.

  The idea didn’t thrill him.

  Then again, neither did the idea of being shot then drowned in the ocean by underfed guards bought off with scraps and cheap grain alcohol.

  “You think you’re funny?” the first seer grunted, still aiming the rifle at him. “You a fucking comedian brother, is that it?”

  “No,” Revik said only.

  “You like jokes?” the seer with the ponytail sneered, as if he hadn’t spoken. “You want to tell us some funny jokes, brother? Right before we splatter your brains and bone all over these crates? Or should we save the bullets? Just throw you back in the water, like you were thinking? Watch you sink like all the other fishes? Maybe then you don’t come on shore where you not supposed to?”

  That time, Revik opted to remain silent.

  He kept his mind silent too, realizing he’d underestimated the construct already.

  He didn’t fight the seer behind him as they cuffed his wrists behind his back. He felt the muscles of his arms and back tense, though.

  He also started to wonder if this had been a mistake.

  He’d known via his aleimic link to Menlim that his old guardian was in Hong Kong, not Dubai. Even so, he should have stuck with his original plan and crossed into Singapore from Malaysia. He could have made a formal petition for entry there, on the land side.

  Hell, he wouldn’t have needed to––his image would have lit up their facial-rec software like a damned Christmas parade the second he got in visual range. That, or the Barrier construct would have ID’d his light the instant he crossed the immigration checkpoint.

  He wouldn’t have had to explain anything.

  They likely would have shoved him on a boat for Hong Kong themselves.

  Ironically, he hadn’t done it that way because he’d been worried some trigger-happy guard might recognize him and shoot him out of panic––before they could run his stats up the flagpole and get the word from higher-up.

  Now he might get killed by some dock-rat security guard for no fucking reason whatsoever.

  He decided to take a chance.

  “Do you not recognize me, brothers?” he said.

  He let the second one shove him forward, stumbling a little as he took a few steps. It hit him that they really were shoving him towards the end of the pier. They might really just throw him into the water, cuffed––and likely shot––and let him drown.

  Thinking again about whether he wanted to risk using his telekinesis, Revik swallowed.

  He might have no choice.

  He knew that using manipulation here, inside even the bare edges of a Dreng construct, would be risky as hell. There was a better than decent chance he’d be knocked unconscious, at minimum, the second he tried it.

  Hell, it might kill him.

  “You might want to send my image to your commanders,” he said, speaking faster when the seer behind him shoved him again. He switched to formal Prexci. “I am the Sword, brothers. I believe your masters would wish to speak to me before you toss me off the pier… however good your reasons for doing so might be.”

  The male seer holding him halted.

  His hand still gripped Revik’s cuffed wrists.

  “You liar,” he said, gruff.

  Great. This one barely spoke Prexci.

  Revik switched back to Mandarin.

  “I’m not. Brothers, I implore you. Check my ID before you do anything rash.”

  The seer behind Revik shoved him again, still gripping the metal cuffs.

  Revik found himself half-hung over the water. He felt his body tense as he overlooked the murky water of the pier, his booted feet barely gripping the edge of the wo
oden planks. He stared into the oil-slick surface and swallowed, right before he turned his head, craning his neck to speak to the first seer, the one with the messy ponytail and the human tats.

  “Brother! I am the Sword! I am not lying to you!”

  “You are liar!” the first seer said. He spoke English that time, if thickly accented. “You not Sword! You nobody! You lie!”

  “Run the facial-rec,” Revik said, switching to the same language. He glanced at the water, conscious of the male behind him tensing, as if readying to shove him the rest of the way over the edge. “…Hook my appearance into the security construct at least! Please consider this, my brothers. If you kill me and you are wrong, you will answer for it. Is that worth not even checking with your masters, first?”

  “Why the fuck would the Sword come here?” the second seer sneered. He spoke English with a heavy accent, but a lot more competently than his partner. “And why the fuck would you think his name would protect you here, brother? The Sword is our enemy. He is a traitor… defected. He is worm-lover, with his cunt whore of a wife.”

  Revik felt his jaw harden.

  He forced himself to answer in an even voice.

  “I can only tell you what is true,” Revik repeated. “I am the Sword. I have come requesting parlay with your masters. I would ask that you permit me to make peace with your people. If I could just––”

  “If you Sword, why you not kill us?” the first seer cut in. He raised the gun, aiming it at Revik’s head. “Why not use light? Break guns and bones?”

  Revik hesitated.

  He didn’t know if he should tell them he might have to do just that.

  After a bare pause, he shrugged with one cuffed hand.

  “I would rather not kill my own kind,” he said diplomatically. “Why not simply send my image and light to the network? It is a small inconvenience, surely. Particularly for a mistake that might cost both of you your lives.”

  There was a silence.

  The first seer, the only one Revik could see, frowned at him.

  Revik couldn’t see the seer behind him, but felt a flicker of nerves vibrate the strands of his light. Revik felt a tenser pull of those fingers on his cuffed wrists, along with glimmers of some private exchange between the two seers.

  It felt like they were arguing.

  Seconds later, the seer behind him yanked Revik off the end of the pier.

  Revik kept the relief off his light, exhaling as his feet rested firmly on the water-soaked wood.

  “One moment,” the seer behind him said. He still gripped the cuffs, but lightly now. “One moment, brother. We will do as you say. You will not move.”

  He sounded openly nervous now.

  Nervous enough that Revik wondered if maybe he’d looked at Revik’s light.

  After a few more seconds, that quiver of nerves turned into something closer to shock. Revik glanced at the first seer as he lowered his rifle. His dark skin had gone an unnatural pale color, with a greenish tint. He continued to grip the gun, but fear trembled his aleimi.

  The seer behind Revik began to unlock the cuffs on his wrists.

  “Illustrious brother,” the seer behind him said. His voice shook, holding an overt submissive note. “Brother, I humbly apologize.”

  Revik grunted, noncommittal. He pulled his wrists back in front of his body, rubbing them briefly with his fingers.

  “Come with us. Please, brother,” the same seer said, stepping out from behind him and motioning towards the landward side of the pier. “Please, Illustrious brother. Please.”

  Revik glanced at him, taking in his appearance and light as the other bowed, making the respectful sign of the Sword with one hand as he kept his head lowered. He looked a lot like his friend, only slightly less underfed and at least three inches taller.

  He had the same ID scars on his arms though, and the same pantheon of tattoos covering his skin with the same cheap human ink and imperfect lines.

  When the seer indicated a second time for Revik to walk up the pier towards the guard station and the outside wall, Revik followed the direction of his ink-stained fingers.

  He didn’t give the other seer, the one who’d pointed a gun at him, so much as a glance.

  He felt the seer’s shock as he passed, however.

  More than that, he felt a kind of lost confusion on the seer’s light, like he’d just found out Revik was Santa Claus.

  Revik ignored all of it. He focused on the landward horizon instead, placing his feet in rote as he made his way up the warped planks.

  The real construct lived behind that gated wall, he knew. He also knew there was a good chance that once he passed through that wall, he’d never come out again.

  Or worse––he would come out, but no longer be himself.

  Because at this point, as Allie would have said, things could definitely get worse.

  18

  PRODIGAL

  REVIK WAITED, ALONE in a high-ceilinged Hong Kong apartment, sitting on a couch that looked like it might be made of real tiger skin. It smelled like real skin, which frankly made Revik faintly sick, and uncertain if he should sit on it.

  Of all of the decadent things he’d encountered in his life, either under Menlim or during his time working for various human governments, he’d never seen anything like that before.

  In the end, he opted to move, sitting on one of the leather chairs instead.

  Weaving his fingers together between his knees, he fought to calm himself.

  He could feel the construct messing with his light, which didn’t help.

  They still kept a distance, however––possibly to keep him from freaking out, at least until he’d been interviewed by a few more layers of security. They likely wanted more idea of what his light might be connected to outside the construct.

  No way in hell would anyone here trust that he came back due to some change of heart. He’d never intended to try and convince anyone of that.

  He’d never intended to tell them anything but the truth.

  He’d already spent several hours at the dock’s main security station while they ran him through about ten different forms of physical and aleimic IDs. They’d taken blood samples, recorded multiple and increasingly invasive imprints of his light, forced him to strip naked and documented every inch of his body, including close ups of his scars, tattoos and genitalia. He’d been x-rayed, scanned, fingerprinted. They’d recorded his gait at different speeds.

  By the end of it, Revik couldn’t help but be unnerved.

  He didn’t think he’d ever been so thoroughly tagged and catalogued in his life.

  When they finished, one of the guards brought him up here.

  The seers manning the main wall’s security station had been nothing like the dock rats Revik met when he landed. Wearing crisp white uniforms with the Hong Kong Homeland Security badge on every shoulder, they’d been polite, professional to the point of mechanical and unerringly precise with their commands.

  Even so, Revik felt the denser coils of silver light strangling their aleimi. At times it had been intense enough to set the hair on his arms and the back of his neck on end.

  He forced himself to submit to all of their ministrations. He reminded himself that none of this mattered anymore. There would be no more hiding.

  A tone sounded from the apartment door.

  Revik looked over, his heart beating louder in his chest.

  It occurred to him only then that he’d never tried the handle of the door. He had no idea if it was even locked. As a result, he didn’t know if the tone was a courtesy or a real request for entry.

  The tone sounded again.

  Revik hesitated only a second longer.

  He rose slowly to his feet.

  At the third door tone, he felt a corresponding ripple of impatience from the Barrier from at least one being on the other side of that door. He began walking jerkily towards it, his hands and shoulders clenched, his weight lowered. It hit him that he was moving lik
e he expected to get into a physical fight with whoever stood on the other side.

  It also hit him that he was afraid.

  Maybe more than just afraid.

  He shoved the thought from his light.

  When he reached the small foyer and the door, he placed his hand on a panel that stood about chest-height on the right wall. Examining the panel, he realized he likely could have triggered the mechanism from the leather chair, using a voice command.

  Too late now.

  The door was already opening.

  Revik just stood there, feeling his body tense more as the sliding panel opened. As it did, it revealed a group of seven seers.

  In the middle stood Menlim.

  Briefly, the sight of him sent Revik into a kind of paralysis, and not only because he in no way expected to see him in actual person so soon.

  He stared at his ex-guardian, seeing the yellow eyes focused on his, a strange confluence of impressions gliding off his highly-structured light. Fighting the young feeling creeping silently and insidiously over his light, Revik jerked his gaze sideways.

  He next found himself meeting the gaze of Ute, one of his lieutenants under the Rebels. Seeing her stare at him, a heightened and much more believable confusion of emotions visible in her eyes, he swallowed.

  He couldn’t hold her gaze for long, either.

  He glanced around at the rest of the seers standing there and found he knew all of them.

  Salinse. Rigor. Tan. Eren. Kidi.

  He’d been close to several of them at different times––as close as anyone could be inside any construct of the Dreng. Some, like Kidi and Eren, he’d known under Galaith while he’d been with the Rooks. The rest he’d known in one or both rebellions.

  Something about seeing all of them there, even with Menlim standing among them, brought up an irrational wave of emotion in him, shortening his breath. Revik stared at Tan and Eren the longest, realizing he hadn’t let himself think about their fates after they’d decided not to follow him out of Salinse’s army.

  They’d thought him brainwashed by the Adhipan.

  Ute called his wife a psychotic bitch. She accused Revik of being hypnotized by her, of being dick-whipped, light-whipped, of being a fool.