Sun

by J. C. Andrijeski

  At the silence following my words, I swallowed.

  Scanning faces, I felt them retreat from what I’d said. I felt them denying what they’d heard, and possibly the fact that they knew, deep-down, I might be right.

  Weirdly, I felt my own certainty that this needed to happen strengthen.

  “If I manage to open the doors,” I said, still scanning faces. “If I can figure out how to get even one of those portals open past the telekinetics, past the Dreng… and if I manage to stabilize it… we’ll pass through.”

  Thinking, I amended. “Well, I should say, those of us who choose to go through will pass through. No one is required to follow the path the Ancestors left us. No one will be forced, or pressured. But I should caution all of you to think about it now. Things may look a lot different when the Myther Army gets here.”

  Looking down, I saw Lily standing next to me again. Reaching for her, I gripped her hand tightly in mine, then glanced up, taking in the faces of the crowd.

  “Those of us who do choose to do so, we’ll leave this world together,” I said. “Plant the seeds for a new life wherever the portals take us. Just like our Ancestors did before us. Just like their Ancestors did before them.”

  Looking around at all of their faces, seeing the fear and confusion in their eyes, I bit my lip, feeling strangely guilty to be the one telling them this.

  I caught the gaze of one of the tribal elders then.

  Strangely, seeing the calm that lived there, in his dark eyes, I felt myself relax.

  He didn’t look afraid, or confused. He looked more like Tarsi did, like he’d known this would happen––or at least wasn’t totally shocked by the possibility.

  “No one will be forced to come with us,” I repeated, looking away from his face and shaking my head at the others. I held up my free hand in the sign of a vow. “No one pretends this will be easy, or safe. All of you will have to choose, on your own, with your families and loved ones. You must follow your own hearts, your own minds––in this, as with everything.”

  Pausing, I subdued my voice.

  “In case it helps in making your decision, I will say this. I genuinely believe these doors are the endpoint the Ancestors crafted for us. I believe this is what it’s always been about. Opening these doors is what the Bridge does. It’s why the Dreng wanted me either converted or dead. It’s why the Dreng want the Listers dead. It’s what’s supposed to happen next, for our people to evolve. It’s why those of you on the Lists were all chosen.”

  I looked at Jon, meeting his gaze from where he sat on the ground next to Wreg.

  Jon looked pale too, where he gripped his husband’s muscular hand in both of his. He also looked resolved. I could tell from his face he hadn’t really acknowledged this possibility until now, but also that it didn’t surprise him.

  I could also tell what his likely decision would be.

  For a long moment, no one spoke.

  Then Sasquatch, of all people, broke that silence.

  “But, like, hey, Allie-kins,” he said. “Like, there are questions, you know?”

  Looking up at me, he pushed old-fashioned, black-rimmed glasses up his nose.

  I’d never seen him in glasses before, but they suited him, making him look older and weirdly more earnest, although I’d never seen him as either.

  “Like, if you open the doors,” he said. “Or they open the doors. If someone opens the doors. What’s the diff? They open, you open… the doors open, right? All the doors open. Why not find a door, wait until they open the doors, then we go through? Either way, the doors are open, right? Either way, maybe the world goes boom… if I’m reading between the lines.”

  I found myself thinking again that Sasquatch’s mode of speaking had always disarmed me, and thrown me off. He was a hell of a lot smarter than I usually remembered.

  “Also,” he added, glancing around. “Maybe they, like, can’t open the doors. Maybe they screw it up, break all the doors. Then we don’t have to leave, right? We can stay here. Live to fight another day… and all that.”

  I met his gaze, frowning slightly as I absorbed his words

  I saw others around him nodding, seer and human. I saw them liking what he’d said, liking that he’d given them a scenario where we might not all have to walk into that abyss together.

  “Like Revik said, it’s probable that if one door opens, they all open,” I admitted, exhaling. “We don’t really know for sure, but theoretically, that makes the most sense. It’s likely why the Dreng made sure they controlled all the doors, rather than just one or two. They couldn’t risk someone opening a door in, say, Africa, while they worked on doors in Asia or the Middle East. They also needed to be able to cut off any efforts by others to open the doors ahead of them. That’s likely the real purpose of the network they created with the organics.”

  “But, hey, Allie-kins. That’s not all I meant––”

  “I know,” I interrupted. “And you’re right.”

  Pausing, I looked around at faces, stopping when I returned my gaze to Sasquatch.

  “According to seer myth, the Bridge destroys the world,” I said. “I’ve never known what that meant, truthfully. Ever since I’ve known I was seer, I’ve heard different interpretations, with half of those contradicting the other half, and some cancelling others out totally. I’ve never known which of these, if any, were right.”

  Frowning faintly, I held Sasquatch’s gaze when I added,

  “But this could be what the Myth meant… about the world ending, about evolution. It’s possible they were talking about Dante’s doors.” Frowning, I pointed at Kali, without looking at her or Uye. “It’s also possible that when I open the doors, the same thing will happen as what we saw in Kali’s vision. It’s possible the very act of opening those doors will cause a chain reaction that destroys the world.”

  The silence returned.

  Sasquatch cleared his throat.

  “So, like, why do it?” he said, pushing the glasses up his nose. He motioned vaguely with his big hands. “Why not, like I said, just wait? Those Dreng fucks, maybe they can’t pull it off. Maybe it won’t matter. We try that first, you know? Then, if they can open the doors, or it looks like we have to open them, you do it then. But more as a back-up type dealio.”

  I nodded, turning over his words.

  “That would be risky,” I said after a beat. Still thinking, I shrugged, admitting, “But really, that’s not the reason why I feel like we can’t do that, Sas. I don’t really have a rational answer for you on that. I just know I need to open the doors before they do, or it’ll be too late.”

  “But, like, why, Allie-kins?”

  Firming my jaw, I glanced at Revik, then at Lily.

  My voice hardened without my willing it.

  “Because the Dreng don’t want me to,” I said. “I can feel that strongly, tangibly, especially now. The Dreng will do anything in their power to keep me from doing that.” Pausing, I added, “There has to be a pretty big difference between what happens when I open them, versus when they do. If there wasn’t, they wouldn’t have gone to all of this trouble with the doors and the organic machines and the clones. They’d just do what you’re suggesting.”

  I waved vaguely, glancing at Revik.

  From his expression, he didn’t seem to disagree, so I plowed on.

  “…They would’ve just kidnapped me, kidnapped Revik, kidnapped Lily. Or Jon. Or a number of other people.” Swallowing, I added, “They’d use them to make me open the doors, and keep them open until they were able to pass through. The fact that they haven’t done that, that Menlim’s people have been trying to kill me instead, tells me it isn’t that simple.”

  Thinking about this, I added,

  “The Dreng always do things the simple way. Unless they can’t.”

  Revik glanced at me.

  Meeting my gaze, he nodded grimly, once.

  It’s funny, I wasn’t sure how confident I was of my own words until he did that.


  Seeing that utter certainty on his face about everything I’d just said, however, I was suddenly, completely, one hundred percent sure.

  45

  THE SECRET DOOR

  THE MEETING ENDED with more of a bang than it began.

  Revik took over after I basically scared the hell out of everyone.

  He flipped them back into operations mode in a matter of seconds, breaking different parts of our team off into squadrons, giving work assignments and orders, tasking each with elements of strategy regarding our best line of defense around whatever the closest hotspot on Dante’s map might be.

  A lot of people left in a matter of minutes, diving straight into work.

  In terms of which hotspot we would focus on and defend, that ended up being a slightly more involved discussion than we’d expected.

  The tribal elders approached us even as the meeting was breaking up.

  Walking up to us, one of their leaders, an older human named Ulysses, asked to speak to me and Revik. Tarsi stood with them as well, and their non-spiritual leader, a male named Tawa who was maybe in his mid-forties.

  “You don’t need to go to Denver,” the one called Ulysses said straight away, speaking in clipped, accented English. “We have one here. Ship Rock. Just north of here. Very close. Use that one.”

  Revik and I stared at him.

  We continued to stand there, staring, while he proceeded to tell us about the secret inter-dimensional portal that lived at the base of Ship Rock, about a hundred miles northeast of where we were now.

  It shocked the hell out of me, truthfully.

  From what I felt off Revik, it shocked him even more, probably because he picked up on the wider implications faster than I did.

  Not only did they have a door, Ulysses and the rest of the tribal elders were pretty sure the Dreng didn’t know about it. If they were right, that meant it wasn’t hooked into the Dreng’s network. That meant there may not be an organic machine there.

  Of course, not all the news was good, or hopeful.

  Ship Rock itself was probably the least defensible part of this segment of New Mexico, for a number of reasons. Apart from the famous rock formation itself, much of the immediate area was flat as a table, with almost no vegetation or trees of any kind.

  We’d be able to see anyone coming, but we’d also be visible from miles around.

  We’d also be an easy target from the air.

  The elders told us about caves, but they likely weren’t big enough for all of us. They also likely weren’t the fortified caves and bunkers Menlim had his people build in order to protect the other Barrier doors. Given where we were, the Ship Rock caves were likely sandstone and rock, maybe with some granite thrown in, if we were lucky.

  If we brought our whole team underground, they could potentially just bomb us out, or poison us, or cut off our air.

  They could even nuke us.

  Revik sent scouts out at once to confirm their story––tasking them with looking for any sign of an underground bunker or tunnel, as well as any sign of security or defensive measures already in place. He wanted them to look for any indication the area might be under surveillance by the Dreng or anyone else.

  Of course we all knew the big thing he wanted to know, though.

  He wanted to know if the door was protected by a telekinetic machine.

  If the elders were right about that one point, it would change everything, even with all the potential risks. If the elders were right about that one thing, we might actually have a prayer of opening the doors before the Dreng.

  It meant we actually had a fighting chance.

  Anale, Declan and Hondo volunteered to go check it out.

  I could tell Revik was on the fence about whether he should go with them. He didn’t want to leave me and Lily alone, so in the end he sent Maygar in his place, so they’d have at least one telekinetic as back-up. I saw one of the tribal elders signal two scouts among the local humans to go with them, too, likely because they knew the area.

  By the time Declan had his team armed up and ready to go, they’d already brought over a jeep and a motorcycle for everyone to ride.

  I admit, that relieved me, too.

  Revik pulled the seers aside to talk to them quietly for a few minutes before he sent them off. He asked the scouts a number of questions, too, but didn’t delay them for long.

  Once they were gone, he turned to inventory and supplies, going over our current stores, including whatever weapons, transport, fuel, food, water and ammunition we had at our disposal.

  The tribal leaders primarily led that discussion, along with Torek and Wreg.

  Revik also brought in President Brooks. He wanted to discuss with her the possibility of bringing over weapons from Denver and NORAD, in the event the door here ended up being a viable option for us to use. He also wanted to know the exact status of the nuclear arsenal the United States used to own and maintain, and whether she had access to it.

  I knew he was right to factor all of that in, but it was unnerving to hear where his mind was going already.

  The important thing remained the door, though. I knew Revik, like me, was praying the elders were right about Ship Rock.

  Our other options really weren’t great.

  Our best option among them, Denver, wasn’t that far, relatively-speaking, but transport would still be an issue. We could re-route all of Atwar’s people to the Denver Airport, but getting our whole camp up to Denver would be more complicated. There were so many of us now we couldn’t fit everyone in the one plane we had. That was true even without taking into account weapons, ammunition, food and water, and whatever else.

  A good portion of our team would need to travel across land, where they’d be vulnerable to being bombed, shot at, intercepted by drones.

  Not only did we have all the human and seer refugees from our small fleet with us now, we had all of the local humans. We had Luriaal’s seers. We had Tarsi’s and Balidor’s people from the Pamir, including some of the meditating monks who’d been pulled out of caves to join us. We even had the Adhipan seers who’d been protecting seer children in the mountains of Asia, along with all of their young charges.

  For the first time in my life, I’d seen a large group of seer children in person.

  We had Jasek’s whole infiltration team from England with us now as well, brought over after the Beijing operation, and all of the seers we’d recruited from the United States.

  That didn’t even count all the human and seer Listers we’d collected.

  Leaving anyone behind, from any one of those groups, was completely out of the question. Now that we knew the stakes, it wasn’t even up for discussion.

  Luckily, everyone seemed to get that without having to be told.

  The humans who lived here, Luriaal’s humans, pressed for us to use the door at Ship Rock even after the scouts left. They seemed less concerned about organic doors and telekinetics, or networks built by the Dreng.

  They claimed the site at Ship Rock was sacred.

  They claimed it was meant for us to use.

  The tribe’s elders said they’d been protecting this ground for thousands of years, passing down the responsibility from generation to generation since the last ice age.

  They seemed to think now they’d been protecting it for this.

  Revik said we’d wait for the scouts to return before we made a final decision, but I knew he desperately wanted to believe they were right. He seemed to think the door in Denver was likely hooked into the network with the others, and I couldn’t help but agree with him, given what Jem and I found in that bunker when we located Dragon.

  It would be Rome all over again, and we’d likely lose more people in the process.

  We needed Ship Rock.

  I could feel it. Revik could feel it, too.

  Ship Rock working out wouldn’t solve all our problems of course, but it would at least give us a place to start.

  Hell, I was worried about just feed
ing everyone.

  I was worried about us not having enough water, even if we did manage to fit everyone inside the Ship Rock caves. Food and water could end up being a serious problem no matter where we ended up, especially given how many of us there were. We were in a desert, after all. Water shortages had been an issue out here for decades.

  Don’t worry about that, Revik murmured in my mind.

  I looked over. He glanced up from where he hung over a virtual map with the tribal elders, along with Balidor, Wreg, President Brooks, Jon, Loki, and most of the rest of our senior infiltration team.

  Wrapping an arm around my waist, he tugged me closer, kissing me on the cheek.

  The elders know, his mind murmured. We’ll prioritize finding ways to transport whatever we can underground, depending on what Declan, Hondo and Anale find.

  Giving me a sharper look, he added,

  I want you working on how to keep that door open. Focus on that, baby. Maygar, Cass and I have to come up with a defense plan against those telekinetics, so if you have any ideas there, that would also be welcome. He kissed me again. But don’t worry about the basic ops crap. We’ve got enough minds looking at that. No one wants to die of thirst in a hole.

  I nodded, relaxing slightly.

  He was right.

  They didn’t need me for that. Revik himself certainly didn’t.

  I should have gone with them, I sent then. To scout out that door. I’m not much use to anyone here. Maygar would have been… useful, I mean.

  Revik tensed, looking at me.

  “No,” he said aloud. “Wait for them to come back. In fact,” he added, his voice turning to a sharper growl. “…Go take a nap, wife. You didn’t sleep at all on the flight. There’s a good chance you’ll be up all night, possibly for days, working on that door.” His eyes flickered down my body. “And you’re pregnant.”

  Frowning, I glanced at Lily.

  We hadn’t had a chance to talk to her or Maygar about that yet.

  Lily only smiled though, patting me on the belly.

  “It’s okay, mom,” she said cheerfully. “I’ve been talking to my baby brother for the past few hours. He came to me in dreams before that. I know all about him.”