Sun

by J. C. Andrijeski

  “What is it?” he said. “Nenzi called me already. He said––”

  “BREACH!” she cut in. She used sub-vocals for the hybrid out in the corridor, her voice shaking from the view in front of her. “Seer hounds! Balidor! They’re inside the compound! At least one got loose that I saw…”

  She leaned her head out the cave opening, looking into the main corridor. She peered out just long enough to locate the hybrid, taking in the giant hound as its massive jaws crunched over the leg of the girl it had leapt on.

  Standing on the girl’s motionless back, which had to have been broken from its weight, the animal worried the limb briefly with sharp jerks of its jaws and neck before ripping it off at the joint. Stepping on the calf to balance it, it began to chew.

  Fighting a thick surge of nausea, Chandre slowly withdrew her head, pressing against the rock wall so she was out of sight of the animal. She focused her mind back on the comm, on the seer on the other side.

  “Confirm,” she said through the sub-vocals, her voice shaky. “One is definitely loose. I think I managed to contain the rest with the OBE generator––temporarily, at least. You need to seal off command. Right now.”

  Balidor’s voice came through grim, but all business.

  “We have your location,” he said. “I’m coordinating with Nenzi and his son now. You have the rest contained?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  Still panting from adrenaline and shock, she sent him her view through the headset, of the cave opening, the OBE, the humans inside. Peering around the edge of the wall, she gave him a quick view down the hall, letting him see the hybrid that had gotten free.

  The genetically modified animal was still there, eating.

  “Got it. Thanks. Nenzi is working on it now. Stay where you are.”

  She nodded, looking back through the shimmering surface of the OBE.

  Inside the cave, the view was worse than what she’d seen in the corridor.

  She winced violently as she saw three of the hybrids eating humans who lay on the floor. Some of those humans were still alive, and screaming. Looking away from the terror in those faces, Chandre bit her lip to remain silent herself, remembering the hybrid chewing down the corridor. If it heard her, or smelled her, she was dead, too.

  Then her eyes lit on one of the faces inside that room.

  A young human, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties, she was clearly dead.

  Chandre recognized the human. She knew her face as one of the Bridge’s friends.

  Her long dark hair had been done in strange ponytails coming off either side of her head. Purple glitter eye makeup darkened her almond-shaped eyes, which stared at nothing now.

  “Gods,” Balidor breathed through the link. “Get out of there, Chandre! Nenzi said the Dreng’s telekinetics are protecting that thing. They’re working on trying to crack the shield, but Nenz says they still have too many clones… they can’t get through. You need to go. Now. Before it’s done eating.”

  His voice grew distracted. He must have been looking at the cave’s maps.

  “Go back up the tunnel, back the way you came. There’s a ladder for the lower levels about three clicks northeast of you. Go––now! That’s an order! We’re closing off the higher floors in the next thirty minutes.”

  She shook her head, adamant.

  “No,” she said. “No. That thing is in the halls. If you try to move now––”

  “We have no choice,” Balidor snapped. “I told you, the Dreng’s clones are shielding that fucking thing. The whole damned Myther army is over our heads right now… the engineers were just forced to abandon two other digger sites and blockade the tunnels. We go now, or we risk giving them access to Allie and the hotspot door. Which is why you need to move your ass and get out of there right now!”

  Still kneeling on the floor, fighting to think, she nodded, once, but not to Balidor’s words.

  Peering around the corridor, she watched and listened to the digger chewing.

  It was close to finishing eating the girl. Chandre saw it flexing its feet, extending its long, metallic claws in contentment as it took a bite out of her back.

  She’d heard the Dreng and Rook militaries starved these beasts.

  They grew them in tubes, raised them in cages, tortured them by infusing metal into their spines and teeth and skulls as they grew… then they starved them, beat them, programmed them, trained them.

  As a result, the hybrids tended to eat the first few targets they encountered.

  After it got its fill of meat, the beast would just kill indiscriminately and leave the bodies, but right now, it would sate the sharpest edges of its hunger.

  As she watched it, her thoughts began to solidify, to grow almost calm.

  A strange feeling of contentment fell over her.

  Not just contentment––peace.

  She did not know if she’d ever felt so utterly at peace.

  With that came a clarity of mind she hadn’t experienced in as long as she could remember. Maybe she had not felt such a thing since she was a child, all those years ago, before Menlim, before Langley, before everything went wrong in the world.

  “I’ll try to buy you some time.” Her voice came out as clear and calm as her mind. “Gods be with you, brother. Give my love to the Bridge and the Sword. Don’t wait on moving. Bring only what you need. I can only promise you a few minutes. Twenty at most, if I can stay ahead of it for a time.”

  “Gods-damn it, no!” Balidor snapped.

  “Do it now,” she urged, ignoring his words. “I’ll hold it off as long as I can.”

  “Chandre! Listen to me. You can’t do enough to––”

  She snapped off her comm link, even as she rose smoothly back to her feet.

  57

  STRANGE LIGHTS

  LIGHT SURGED THROUGH me, through my arms, through my hands, my legs, my chest, my belly, my fingertips, my lips.

  More light than I’d ever felt.

  More light than I’d ever known I could channel or hold.

  More light than I’d ever thought about existing in the world.

  It washed through me like liquid life, sucking the air from my lungs, blanking my mind, throwing me up so high into my structure I could barely make sense of anything happening down below. Everything I’d been thinking about or worrying about when my consciousness existed down below disappeared, grew unfathomable.

  Up there, I felt Revik. I felt that blue-white sun above him.

  I saw a little boy, laughing, holding that sun in his arms, filled with nothing but joy.

  I also felt the man, my husband, and couldn’t help but watch in awe at the things he was doing with his light. He, Tarsi, Kali, Uye––and now Maygar, Feigran and Cass––were all trying to channel the light from massive Myther feeding pools through my upper structure and into the door I knew was in front of my actual physical body.

  I watched Revik in particular as he manipulated the currents, using his bond structure to me to wind them down through my light.

  I can’t believe the things you can do, I told him, even knowing I shouldn’t be distracting him. You really are a superhero, you know that?

  He laughed, despite the utter seriousness I felt on him just an instant before.

  You should see yourself up here, baby, he sent, smiling at me from that space. I’ve never seen so much goddamned living, breathing, morphing structure in my life. It’s unbelievable… like something out of one of the mythological texts. I had no idea you had all of this. No idea at all. It’s like something in these doors opened up a whole new set of layers in your light.

  I laughed, I couldn’t help it.

  You’re teasing me. I was serious, and you’re teasing––

  I’m not! Trust me, I’m not, wife. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. If you could see us all up here, we’re all just standing, gaping at you while we feed you light––

  He’s right, Kali sent. Awe infused her thoughts, bleeding thro
ugh me in a whisper of her presence and living light. It’s so beautiful, Alyson! It doesn’t even look real. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life.

  Me neither, sent Uye. You are a wonder, daughter. A true wonder.

  Bewildered by that, I looked up through my structure, trying to see what they saw.

  All that met my seer’s sight was that torrent of light, flowing down and through me and past me and into the door. I saw rainbow colors, felt flickers of presence, and not only from the seers helping me channel the light. I glimpsed distant cities, faces, humans and seers.

  I even saw faces and felt presences from the army overhead, from people who felt faintly familiar from Rome and Dubai.

  Before I could get a different view on what all of them were seeing, Tarsi’s mind and presence rose.

  Her thoughts and words broke through the elation I felt in the others.

  It is beautiful, she sent, her sharp mind touching mine. No doubt about it Bridge, you are a wonder. Unfortunately for us––and for you and all of your wondrousness––it’s also not working. There’s still not enough light.

  I felt the others around me react to her words.

  Are you certain it’s not enough? Uye sent. I’m looking at the door, right now. It sure as hell looks like it’s working. The door’s structure is changing. Not only in terms of light, but physically. It really seems to be responding to the influx––

  It responds, Tarsi broke in agreeably, her mind as sharp as before. It responds every time, brother Uye. Big or small, we feed it light, it reacts. But the reaction’s not stable. It’s not self-sustaining, and we need it to be for the door to open. I’m beginning to think the machines helped Alyson open it even just for that brief flicker in Rome. Right now, the second we let up on the voltage at all, the structure dims. If we stopped feeding it, in seconds it would go back to being static altogether.

  To prove her point, she removed herself and her light from the construct over the door.

  I felt the drop in power as soon as the part she’d been channeling got cut off.

  It wasn’t huge, but only because the rest of them maintained theirs.

  You see? the old seer sent. It’s not enough.

  So we’re just draining their feeding pool right now? I sent, frowning in the space. We’re draining all those people for nothing?

  As soon as I sent it, I felt the others realize the same thing.

  We all seemed to make the decision at once.

  We released the channels of light, letting them go.

  The light above me evaporated so quickly, it spun my sense of balance, blinding me briefly as my aleimi compensated for the sudden lack of weight and intensity above my head. If I hadn’t been so infused with light myself, I might have ended up on the cave floor.

  As it was, my whole body felt like it was made of molten granite, holding me to the Earth with steel cables.

  My physical vision righted itself, then slowly cleared.

  When it did, I found myself staring at the jagged, crystal-encrusted fissure in the cave wall, a near replica of the one we’d found under the Vatican, only absent the organic machine.

  The opening pulsed with pale white-green-blue light, making the crystals glow as if they were alive. As I watched, however, I frowned, realizing again that Tarsi was right.

  The crystals were gradually dimming, even now.

  “Damn it,” I muttered.

  Turning, I looked at Revik. His eyes had gone back to normal, but I could still see so much light in him, just through his clear irises, it sent a shiver of reaction through my light.

  “What now?” I said.

  Maygar exhaled, leaning his hands on his thighs and breathing hard, like he’d been running. Next to him, Tarsi’s face looked more pinched than usual, too. She patted Maygar’s back affectionately, and he looked up, smiling at her before he brushed his sweaty hair out of his face.

  Frowning slightly, I glanced at my parents next, and realized they didn’t look much better.

  This wasn’t tiring me, or Revik, but it was tiring everyone else in our group.

  “Not me!” a voice said proudly. “Not me, sister! Not me!”

  Turning, and laughing a little in spite of myself, I found myself looking at Feigran, who stood on the opposite side of the Barrier door.

  Once I’d met his gaze though, I realized he was right.

  Like Revik, he looked both energized and utterly relaxed.

  Light flowed around and through him like liquid amber, lightening his eyes.

  Moreover, despite his words and the tone of his speech, I saw that more adult sheen ripple through his aleimi––that presence or being I glimpsed occasionally on Feigran, the one that wasn’t crazy, or unclear, or terminally fragmented. I’d often thought the person I glimpsed there in sparks and flashes in his light was who Feigran might have been, if the Rooks never got to him and broke his mind.

  Frowning at the clarity in his expression, I looked to Cass next, and saw she looked utterly at ease, too.

  Reddish orange light pulsed around her, infused with a soft gold glow I’d seen on her more lately, really ever since she’d come out of the tank with Balidor. That gold color was brighter now than I’d ever seen it, and her face looked calmer than I’d ever seen it.

  That was true even including all the time I’d known her before, meaning before she was War, before she turned on us, before she became one of us.

  She also looked older somehow.

  Unwillingly almost, I liked what I felt in that gold light.

  It reminded me of when we were kids, even though it felt nothing at all like what I remembered of her from that time, or during high school, or college… or any time since. Still, there was something familiar there, something I’d felt maybe, without knowing I’d felt it.

  Something I recognized.

  Shaking that off with a faint grimace, I looked at Revik.

  He was watching me look at Cass. I felt a whisper of sympathy leave his light. I had no idea if it was for her or for me. I decided either way, it was none of my business.

  “What do we try now?” I said, taking his hand.

  Gripping my hand back, he looked down at me, hesitating.

  From his expression and everything I felt on his light, he had thoughts, or at least a thought on what came next. Whatever it was, he was pretty sure I wouldn’t like it.

  “Yeah,” he said, sighing. “About that.” He squeezed my fingers, his voice reflecting his hesitation. “Allie, I think we really need to talk about––”

  A commotion by the cave door broke off his speech.

  We both looked over.

  The instant I looked at the door, I realized someone had dropped the OBE field protecting the entrance to the cave. People were streaming inside, and for the first second or two, I couldn’t identify any of them for all the red dust they wore and their smoke-smudged faces.

  A lot of them carried rifles.

  Some carried other people.

  I felt Revik’s light spark up into his higher structures, even as the light in his irises ignited. I held up a hand though, having already recognized the person leading the group. As soon as I did, the tension left my shoulders and body in an exhale.

  “Balidor.”

  He looked over, meeting my gaze.

  I realized only then how he looked, too.

  Blood covered one side of his face, still trickling down from under his hairline. Smoke and red dust smudged his face, stuck there by sweat and blood. Next to him, Dante held an armful of what had to be computer equipment. Following close on her heels were Sasquatch, Hondo, Jaden, and lastly Crieg, one of Jasek’s seers from London.

  Loki and Gina followed behind them, followed by Yumi, Wreg and Jon.

  My eyes fixed on my brother, even as Balidor walked up to us. Cass now stood beside him, staring worriedly up at his face and the condition he was in.

  “Jon and Wreg are back,” I said to Balidor, as soon as he was close enough. I
nodded towards Loki and Gina. “So is Loki. Is everyone underground now? Do we have any more teams engaging with the Mythers up top? Or is it all remotes and satellites now?”

  Balidor’s mouth hardened. His voice came out blunt, more or less in the form of a military report.

  “We’ve lost access to all of our weaponized satellites,” he said, nodding towards Dante. “The Mythers moved a group of telekinetics right on top of us, so it was kind of a Hail Mary to knock as many of them out as we could. It was effective… but, like we suspected, we lost the satellites shortly after.”

  Still frowning he turned back, meeting my gaze.

  “Tawa’s people are up top, fighting. Mostly guerrilla type moves, designed to distract them, to knock them off balance. I don’t know how much longer they can keep it up, but it’s buying us some time. The entire Myther army is directly above us now. Given their numbers, distraction is about all we can hope for.”

  Clenching my jaw, I nodded, watching Jon and Wreg see us and walk closer.

  “You don’t think we should sent up another unit?” I said. “Help them out?”

  Balidor exhaled. “Honestly? I don’t see that it will do much good. At this point, we need to concentrate on keeping the Mythers above us out of here. The more firepower we have down here, the better. There’ve already been skirmishes in the upper levels of the caves… and not only with Diggers. We managed to collapse a bunch more of the tunnels, but we should assume they’re digging their way down to us as we speak.”

  Jon and Wreg had reached us by then.

  Jon wrapped his arms around me in a hug, and I hugged him back. When he let go of me, I impulsively hugged Wreg too, holding each of them longer than I needed to.

  “He’s right,” Wreg seconded, releasing me and smacking Revik affectionately on the shoulder, his voice equally grim. “Tawa and Black Wing seem to think they can keep them away from the southern entrances for now, so they’re doing us a service. But they can’t stay out there for much longer. We can’t afford to let them get cut off.”

  Nodding, I looked around at the seers and humans still filing into the high-ceilinged cave.

  “So this is the new command center?” I said.