He gripped the handprint podium, fighting a low panic that wanted to worsen.
He looked back at the sentient elevator, trying to decide if he should try to force his way back inside, see if he could convince it to take him back to the surface.
He already knew it wouldn’t, though. That thing didn’t answer to him.
Nothing down here did, nor was it likely to.
Too much time had passed anyway. Too much fucking time.
That is true, brother, yes, a voice whispered. Very, very true. But time is always so precious, is it not? Always slipping so easily from our fingers?
Revik tensed, his knuckles going white where he gripped the podium.
For a few seconds, he couldn’t breathe.
And I may not answer to you, the voice added softly. But a part of me is a part of you, is it not, brother? I am partly your design… am I not?
The words confused him.
The voice itself confused him.
Melodic. Polite.
Not the machine as Revik remembered it, but based on the words, he had to assume that’s what addressed him. He couldn’t remember hearing the thing speak to him before. Perhaps it was simpler here, outside the smaller room.
Perhaps here, it knew ways to interact with him. Protocols.
That is one way to see it, yes. The machine sighed, a softness to its voice. Yes. That is one way. Not the best way. But one.
Revik frowned, glancing around at the bodies on the floor.
Did you do this? he said. How? Who killed all of these things? Was it you?
He stared at the very seer-looking or possibly human-looking shit on the bare stomach of one of the bodies, feeling a sudden flicker of doubt.
Was someone else here? he said.
It is not important, brother. It is not the important question. The voice made a faint humming sound, like a gentle rebuke. But you have not answered me, and I wish to know. This system of transport. This comes from you, does it not? It is you I have to thank for this? This multi-dimensional elevator you thought up in your mind?
Revik cleared his throat. His heart beat remained loud, strained.
I don’t know, he sent truthfully. Hesitating, he added, Can I leave, brother?
No.
Revik’s heart jackknifed.
But I wish to leave, he said. I apologize for coming here. I had concerns––
You did not come here to see me, the voice said.
Revik fell silent.
The thing phrased the last as a statement, but to Revik, it sounded more like a question. He turned over its words, trying to decide what to say. Was there a right answer here? Did the thing bring him here because it was bored? Curious? Lonely?
Maybe it really didn’t know why he was here.
Maybe it didn’t know what he’d intended with the reactor.
The voice murmured, softer,
Or perhaps, it said. Perhaps you did come to see me.
Revik fought to blank his mind.
I apologize, he said again. I had concerns––
Do you not still have these concerns?
They are no longer relevant. I wish to return to my––
Your wife, yes. But you are here on your own now. Why, brother? Why would you not bring her with you? Do you not fear leaving her alone?
Revik frowned, fighting confusion.
Allie. Why was it talking about Allie?
That fear shivering through his light intensified.
All around him, Revik felt tastes of what he remembered. It wasn’t as strong of course, not like that dark green room with its alien life, the one that wanted to pull him apart like a lab animal as soon as he ventured into its lair––but it was unmistakeable.
The consciousness seethed around him with a resonance that set his teeth on edge, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. It gave him that same feeling he remembered––like a gazelle trapped under the extended claws of a lion, pinned to the earth.
He grew more conscious of that animal fear, of the alienness there, the touch of light and mind. He grew conscious of the difference between this being and himself.
Yet there was something. Something…
What did it want with Allie?
Dragon? he sent.
The thought startled him, even as it grew more sure.
Dragon? he repeated. Brother. Is this you I am speaking to?
The thought came with an emotion that edged strangely towards relief.
Are you here? Revik prodded. Are you in this place with me?
Inside that dense, seething light, what flickered around the nearly bloodless bodies and the podium with its hand scanner and the blank, pulsing walls… Revik felt more than heard a clicking, purring sigh.
He felt what might have been sadness in it, too.
I am this place, brother, the voice told him. …It is me.
Revik felt a denser understanding, even as the consciousness around him sharpened, bringing back that wash of nerves, making him feel again like an insect under glass.
You cannot let me go? he said, swallowing. Why?
The silence deepened.
Revik felt the being sigh again.
I think you had better come to see me, brother, Dragon said.
Revik fought his light neutral, fought the part of him that really hated that idea, more than he could formulate into words. But he couldn’t think of a good way to refuse––not with the exits locked, not with the clock ticking all around him, not with his first option at transport out of the city already likely behind him.
Not with this machine that wasn’t really a machine seething through his head.
“Where are you?” Revik said, speaking aloud.
An image formed.
Immediate. Stark.
It showed Revik exactly what he knew he would see.
An image of that dark-green room.
His fear returned in a cold pulse, coiling into his intestines. Swallowing harder, he stood there a few seconds more, stalling, fighting to think, or maybe reminding himself of the limits of his options. He stood a few seconds longer, trying to force his limbs to move, to carry him to the other side of that grisly floor covered in body parts so he could get this over with.
Allie had been right. He shouldn’t have come down here.
He shouldn’t have come alone.
That fear grew more visceral, darting around his skin, tensing his muscles as he remembered what he’d felt in that room the first time.
Sixty-one minutes, twelve seconds.
He was already inside the thirty he’d allotted to get back to the surface.
He wouldn’t make it to Tiananmen Square. Not on his own.
Clearing his throat, he nodded.
“Yes,” he said, choking on the word. “All right, brother. Of course.”
He walked to the edge of the podium and jumped down, ignoring the steps.
He moved fast, maybe because it was the only thing left he could control, the only hope he could hold on to, that it might let him out of here if he did what it wanted of him. Even so, his body fought with itself, pushing him across the floor in jerking, ungraceful steps, like some part of his light forced each limb.
He tried not to look at the bodies as he passed. He didn’t focus on anything until he reached the far wall, the same one he remembered from the first time he was here.
The door was open. Instead of darkness inside the room, light coiled and sparked and seethed in wild, wind-whipped circles around a single form, seated cross-legged on the floor.
That form faced Revik from the middle of the concave surface.
“Hello, brother,” the being said, smiling at him.
The fucking thing really did wear his face.
It couldn’t be a biological brother, or even a cousin, not unless he’d been born a twin. The similarities were too exact, even with the different scars and other body marks, the longer hair and the different amount of bulk on his long frame.
It h
ad to be a clone.
The body, at least.
The familiarity hit Revik differently this time, now that his mind was more or less working. It didn’t just disturb him––it unnerved him entirely. It felt like some part of him had been stolen.
It felt like this being actually stole his body from him as he slept.
“Gaos,” he muttered, staring up at the lightning sparks that coiled around his twin’s form. He watched the lit bolts and strands crash into the wall and dissipate like liquid, only to reform and coil back around the cross-legged figure on the floor.
Somewhere in that light seething around his skin, he felt Dragon smile.
“One of them, I suppose,” the voice said, aloud.
Humor lived in his words.
Revik looked over sharply, feeling the fear return to his heart when he saw Dragon looking at him. It took a moment longer for Revik to understand what he’d said.
“The Old God.” Revik frowned, remembering a farmhouse in the woods of Bavaria, a kitchen table where he recited words with his uncle. “I prayed to you… as a child. I thought it was just words.”
Dragon smiled.
His clear eyes filled with light, a darker, more earthy green than what Revik saw in his own eyes when they glowed from those higher structures––or in the eyes of his wife, which looked to him like ethereal pale emeralds.
But the thought of her only brought his pain back again.
He was still trying to force it back, to force away the images that wanted to creep into the darkness behind his eyes, when Dragon smiled a second time.
“Yes. It could be argued one of them, most certainly,” the intermediary said.
“What do you want from me?” Revik said, staring at him. “What is it you want from either one of us? From Allie? From me?”
“Nothing, brother. Nothing. Not anymore.”
“Then please let me go––” Revik began, his voice harder.
Dragon spoke over him as if he hadn’t said anything.
“––You’ve already done what I wanted,” Dragon continued, that smile curving his narrow lips. “She did before. You have now. I appreciate it, brother. I truly do. Unfortunately, I do not have time to show you how much I appreciate what you have done, as I tried to do with her… but know that I love you too, my brother. As much as I love our beautiful Bridge. Know that I left a gift for her. A gift for both of you.”
Revik frowned. He fought to think through his words, to make sense of them.
He couldn’t.
He could feel something with his light, something that pulled at him, lingering at the edges of his awareness. Dragon tugged on him, he realized. The other intermediary pulled on some part of him, tasting him with those lightning-like sparks of his aleimi, making it his own.
“And what is it we did?” Revik said, gruff. “What did we do for you? My wife and I?”
“You set me free.”
Revik could only stare.
Dragon smiled, eyes patient. “Patience, brother. You’re not as far off as you think.”
Revik continued to stare, frowning. “From what?”
“From being free yourself.”
Revik didn’t have words for that, either.
The image was changing now.
The figure in the middle of the green room was gradually growing brighter. Those flaring, lightning-like shards twisted around him in more violent and colorful sparks, until soon they were blindingly bright, raising the hairs on his arms, sucking in his breath.
The lights whipped faster, turning green and red, orange, light blue and gold.
They crashed into and around him, stuttering his heart, turning the form in the middle into a glowing triangle of multicolored flame.
Revik held up a hand, shielding his eyes. That pain in his chest worsened.
Then, abruptly and yet without fanfare, given how it began––
It ended.
The light flashed once, blinding him for real.
By the time Revik could see again, lowering his hand––
Dragon’s body had gone.
He was just… gone.
Frowning, Revik stepped forward.
Without thinking, he entered the room, crossing the threshold without noticing at first that he’d done it. He didn’t pick up on the significance of that either, not at first––not until he was wholly inside those mirrored walls.
It wasn’t just Dragon.
The room itself––the sentient machine.
It was gone, too.
That pulsating, breathing, animal-like life, the alien mind that previously made up the room’s walls, had been stripped from every millimeter of the room’s physical form. The dark green complexion from the organic itself had even gone.
Without it, the walls, ceiling and floor shone with a steel-like brushed metal glow.
Revik didn’t have to scan it to know it was devoid of life, devoid of even the most rudimentary of consciousnesses. All that remained was dead mineral and stone.
Holding his breath, he walked in a small circle, fighting to make sense of what he’d just seen, what it might mean. He looked around at those blank, lifeless walls, fighting a different kind of fear that wanted to crawl over his light.
The thing was gone. He had no one to ask.
The sentient machine, that alien intelligence…
It was just gone.
He honestly couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or worried.
Even as he thought it, the lights around him flickered, then died.
REVIK FOUND HIMSELF in a darkness so complete, it felt like he’d been buried alive.
Panic exploded in his chest, so much he couldn’t breathe at first. He reached out with his hands as his light darted out of him, looking for contours, looking for any way––
Then a voice broke that quiet.
It was strangely close, and softly tentative.
“Revi’?”
Not Dragon.
Revik exhaled, feeling a relief so palpable his heart started back up in his chest. He honestly didn’t even know why at first, if it was from the realization he wasn’t alone, or because of the identity of the person he found himself with.
“Feigran,” Revik said, the name a gasp. “Feigran?”
“Yes, brother.”
There was a pause.
Then Feigran’s voice grew closer.
Revik felt his relief intensify when he realized he could hear him approach, meaning his physical body. Feigran’s light steps echoed slightly against the dead walls.
“You’re really here, Feigran?” Revik said.
“Yes, brother,” the other seer said.
“Come here. Come here, my brother…”
“All right,” the other said agreeably. “But we really should get out of here now, Revi’. The knowledge is gone… the tree is dead. It’s time to move on. It’s time to go to the water.”
He spoke with that schoolboy solemnity he sometimes adopted.
Revik wondered if he did it now to convince him of the seriousness of his words.
“They’re going to try and kill us soon,” Feigran added. “Well…” the seer amended, exhaling in a soft, purring sigh. “They are trying to kill us, brother. Already, that is. Not future. Present. It is on its way here. Some part of it, at least. We should go before it arrives. I would prefer that, I think. Very much… to staying down here.”
Revik’s mind spun over the other’s words.
“What’s on its way, Feigran?” he said, alarm in his voice. “What’s coming?”
He flinched, jumping in spite of himself when the smaller seer sidled his body closer, grasping Revik’s arm in his hands. Revik didn’t move away when Feigran pressed into his side.
Instead a strange surge of relief came over him at the contact.
“The bombs,” Feigran said, as if that were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Bombs?” Revik said.
His alarm sharpened. He reached out with
his hands and light, clasping the other seer’s cold fingers.
“What bombs?” he said. “Who’s trying to kill us, Feigran? The Americans?”
“Everyone,” Feigran said, matter-of-fact, purring as he stroked Revik’s hand. “Everyone, brother. They will all come after us now. The Tree of Knowledge is dead.”
60
THE BEACH, REVISITED
IT WAS REVIK’S idea.
Most of the truly crazy plans we came up with were. The ones that required us to turn ourselves inside-out, to maybe tear some part of our souls apart in the process.
But desperate times call for desperate measures, as the saying goes.
These were desperate times.
Moreover, my husband might be a romantic at heart, but when it came to military ops, his brain was in charge. His brain was a cold-hearted bastard pragmatist, through and through. He’d warned me about that part of him back when I first met him.
Of course, he’d often accused me of the same.
And really, we both agreed to this. We both added our own enhancements, our own thoughts, our own details to the overall plan. We both agreed we needed to do something drastic, something that the other side wouldn’t be expecting.
Both of us agreed to risk sacrificing what we had now, to reach that end.
I told myself all those things again now, like I had been for the last ten months.
I told myself those things as I fought to control my heart rate, sprawled on grainy sand in a ripped up silk gown covered in smoke and powder burns, panting, sand stuck to my face, sand in my mouth and fingernails and hair. I could see trash littered across the edge of the river, including around where I lay.
I felt the screaming flare of injuries on different parts of my body––burns, cuts, scrapes. At least one bullet that found its mark with my lack of armor. I hadn’t scanned yet to check, but I was pretty sure the metal passed through.
I knew that wouldn’t matter, either.
I was already dead.
I had only to wait out the finale.
I lay there, fighting the exhaustion that penetrated my bones, my mind, my very soul. I told myself this had been Revik’s idea, that the plan had been his––that it wasn’t my fault.
None of it felt very convincing.
And anyway, in the end, the fault had been mine. At the decisive moment, it had been me to pull the trigger––or not pull the trigger, as the case may be.
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