Balidor shrugged, giving me a wry smile. “Seemed as good as any.”
I looked back at my brother and Wreg. I considered asking them about the fighting up top, how things had gone in that valley, then decided it could wait. They both looked dirtier than most, but appeared to be unhurt at least.
Looking around the cave, I noted that others hadn’t gotten off quite so easy.
A bruise darkened one side of Dante’s face, and Loki was limping like he’d been hurt pretty badly in one leg, or maybe his hip. Gina half-held him up, although she looked like she’d run through a dust storm right after getting into a fist-fight herself. Her nose looked like it might be broken and she had at least one black eye.
They all looked pale, exhausted, disheartened and afraid.
They all stared at me and Revik like they didn’t know us at all.
Then a form limped through the door I knew.
Maygar let out a cry.
He ran to her, before I’d even made sense of how bad she looked.
Angeline stumble-limped into the cave, holding one arm in the other, a deep, open slash down one side of her neck and shoulder. The arm she held was wrapped in what might have been someone’s shirt. Whatever it was, it was soaked in blood. In fact, she was covered from head to foot in blood. It had soaked through her clothes and down her pants.
Her shoes were covered in it, and face was streaked in blood and red dust.
Maygar grabbed her around the waist, talking to her rapidly in Prexci, most of it swear words but in a soft, terrified voice that sent a spark of pain through my light.
It hit me, maybe for the first time––he was in love with my friend.
My husband’s son was in love with Angeline.
I was walking towards them before I knew what I intended exactly.
I heard words exchanged by humans and seers as I passed, but only took them in with the more distant, compartmentalized parts of my light.
“…sealed off the upper floors with that sonic charge…”
“…barely managed to get down here in time…”
“…lost at least a dozen people in the first breach, then…”
“…diggers broke through in three separate sites…”
“…Myther soldiers shielded by the telekinetics…”
I filed most of what I heard away for later.
For now, I focused on Maygar and Angeline.
Maygar helped her down to sit on one of the rock outcroppings at the edge of the room. They were talking to one another now, tears running down both of their faces as he kissed her repeatedly. Normally I would have been hesitant to approach something like that, but this time, I barely paid attention to whatever I might be interrupting.
I walked straight up to them instead, and crouched down next to Angeline.
I was worried about all the blood.
“Can I see?” I said, indicating towards her arm.
She looked down at me. The instant we met gazes, I could tell she was in shock. Maygar must have noticed too; he was pouring his light into her, warming her with his aleimi and his hands, feeling over her carefully, looking for broken bones.
After a long-feeling pause, Angeline nodded to my question.
From her expression, she might not have understood me.
She might not have recognized me at all.
Moving slowly and carefully, I drew her arm gently out of her lap, I began unwrapping the soaked rag she had around it once I had it away from her belly and side. I felt Maygar watching me, not seeming to comprehend what I was doing at first. Then that fear and tension in his light bloomed into full-blown terror, trembling his voice.
“Allie,” he said. “Should you be doing that?”
“It’s okay,” I assured him.
I don’t know why I said that.
I have even less idea why I believed it.
After a few more seconds, I had all of the soaked and sticking bandage off her arm and hand. I didn’t touch the tourniquet someone had bound around her upper arm, nearly at the shoulder.
It looked like whoever had done it used their belt. After a quick scan I realized I needed to leave it there, or she’d die in minutes, if not seconds.
Whoever put it there had saved her life.
“Balidor,” Maygar said. “Angie said Balidor did it. With his own belt.”
Nodding, I kept my focus on her arm.
It had been completely ripped apart, from her forearm all the way up to her bicep. Muscle and bone were both missing and visible, stripped of skin and flesh. She was missing every finger but her thumb on that hand. Around me, I heard sucked in breaths, alarm and horror coming off the seers and humans watching us.
“What did this?” I said.
My voice was weirdly calm.
“Seer hounds. Hybrid animal-machines.” Balidor spoke from behind me, his voice grim. “Allie. We should get the med-techs to look at that. Kensi and Morek are coming. They had a few more serious cases they had to attend to first, but they were right behind us.”
“More serious cases?” Maygar’s voice reflected his fear. “Gaos d’lanlente… she’s lost half the fucking blood in her body!”
I barely heard him, though.
I was already working.
I went into a part of my aleimic structure I hadn’t used very often in this life, but one that Revik had been telling me for years was more highly developed than I realized. According to him, it was far more developed than anything similar in him, despite his training.
I slid into that part of myself now.
I did it without thought, without any conscious plan.
Manipulating the structures subtly above my head, I aimed them at what remained of Angeline’s arm. I pulled light gently from above as I did––a pale violet frequency I knew somehow, and knew was the right one for those structures, even though I didn’t know either thing, not consciously.
It flowed down from that high, quiet space, infusing my body, sliding down through my head, neck and limbs, coming out through my fingers.
When it began to infuse her arm, she let out a startled gasp, jerking her arm away.
“It’s okay,” I told her. I looked up, meeting her gaze. “It’s okay, Ang. I promise.”
Infusing my light into hers, I continued to look at her face, steadying her.
“It’s okay, Angie,” I said, softer. “I can help. Let me help.”
I only realized my eyes were glowing when I saw them reflected in hers.
Smiling at her reassuringly, I pulsed more of the violet light at her, so much of it I could barely see her through it.
“Try to relax, all right? You’re in shock.”
After a faint pause, Angeline nodded.
The tension around her eyes relaxed slightly an instant later, as if she’d belatedly made sense of my words––or maybe just from something in that violet light.
I focused back on her arm.
Again, I don’t know how I did it.
I definitely couldn’t have described the process to anyone else.
My light darted out like a living thing, probing her arm. Through that light, I saw a map of how she was put together, what was missing, how it was all supposed to work. I couldn’t do anything for the missing fingers, but I found cut veins and repaired them, blowing more of that light on them to grow them back so the blood would stay inside her.
I watched the cells respond to the violet light, knitting together slowly but surely, weaving into one another and filling with living light. Moving to a higher part of her arm, I began doing the same to the muscles of her bicep, starting first with the layer of muscle… then the layer of fat over that… then the skin that lay over that.
In that space it felt slow.
It felt painstakingly slow.
I felt Angeline’s heart rate go up and blew on it to calm her down.
I realized the regrowing threads of her bones, flesh, skin, fat and skin were hurting her. I waited until a good portion of her fles
h was replacing itself around her forearm and the bones and joint of her elbow were mostly back together before I tackled the nerves, trying to keep the numbing affect over those raw endings so the pain would be less.
At a certain point, though, I knew it was time.
“Hold her,” I told Maygar, my gaze flickering briefly to his. “This is going to hurt.”
He didn’t argue. He didn’t even nod.
Catching hold of her good shoulder and waist, he held her against his muscular body, careful not to touch her wounded arm.
Finding the nerve endings, I wove those together too, feeling her wince when they sparked into life, making her gasp.
After that, she let out a groan.
“Allie! Allie, it hurts!”
“I know it does.” I sent more violet light at her. “It has to, Ang, I’m sorry. Try to hold out, okay? The medics can give you something for the pain when I’m done.”
Behind me, the seers watching had grown quiet.
I felt Revik trying to help Maygar keep Angeline calm, both by calming her light and using subtle pushes with the telekinesis to hold her still.
She whimpered and moaned as I continued to work on her arm. Slowly, more of it was coming back into shape. Slowly, it was looking more like how an arm should look.
I still didn’t see anything I could do about the fingers.
That bothered me.
Angeline was an artist. She was one of the best artists I knew.
“It’s okay, Allie,” Maygar said. “It’s okay. She can still paint. It’ll be fine.”
He was hugging Angeline against his side, tears in his eyes as he looked down at me. He smiled, wiping his face with one hand.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, Bridge.”
I smiled back, touched by the way he looked at my friend.
“You can take the tourniquet off now,” I told him. “We should make sure the blood is flowing okay now, that I didn’t miss anything.”
He hesitated, looking at the blood-soaked belt, then back at me. After the barest hesitation, he nodded, reaching for the hooked ends. Holding the nylon strap carefully in place, he carefully unlocked the silver tongue from the metal-rimmed eyehole. I watched the flesh there turn from white to pink to red as he finished taking it off her, dropping it to the cave floor once he had it off.
Angeline writhed as the blood returned to her arm, letting out another pain-filled moan.
Maygar wrapped his arm around her tighter, nearly pulling her into his lap. She cried into his shoulder and he stroked her hair, careful to avoid the cuts and bruises on her face. He was so gentle with her, I felt that pain in my heart again.
I wasn’t going to let him lose her, not now.
From behind me, Revik laid a hand on my shoulder.
Love flowed through that gentle touch, gratitude.
Thank you, he sent. Thank you so much, wife.
I glanced up, smiling at him.
Then I focused back on Angeline.
According to that violet light, I’d done just about everything I could do. I checked over her again, just to make sure, and found a few things I’d overlooked while concentrating on her arm and hand. The violet light closed the cut on her neck, making Balidor gasp behind me when he saw the skin knit back together.
That violet light found another deep cut on her scalp and closed that too.
I checked over her again, but the rest felt superficial.
She’d hit her head pretty hard, but I didn’t see or feel a concussion. I softened the bruise and swelling I felt there, did one more pass over her, then decided it was probably enough.
Slowly, the violet light began to dissipate around me.
My eyes slowly cleared.
I looked up at where Maygar still held Angeline most of the way in his lap. He kissed her while I watched, pressing his cheek to her forehead.
“I think that’s all I can do for now,” I told him. “But it feels like she’s okay. She’s still in shock,” I added, when he glanced down at me, a kind of confused disbelief in his eyes. “She should drink water if we have any handy. And eat. She’s really low on blood and I can speed that up a little, but it’s still going to take some time.”
I hesitated, trying to think if I’d forgotten anything.
I couldn’t think of anything.
When that sank in, I rose slowly back to my feet.
“Where’s Loki?” I said.
Only then did I realize a crowd of seers and humans stood around where Angie and Maygar sat, and around me and Revik. They just stood there, silent, in a thick half-crescent. Then they slowly cleared a path, and I saw Loki sitting on the dirt floor with Gina.
Walking over to him, I found he’d been shot in the thigh.
Calling down the violet light, I got to work on him while Gina held him, stroking his long hair back from his face, which had fallen out of his usual seer clip entirely.
It took a lot less time to fix the damage that had been done to him.
He’d lost a lot of blood too, and aleimic structure, which looked like it had been done to him by the telekinetic clones. I tried to infuse more light into that, too, and to give him more light in general, since I was still buzzing from all the light that had been flooded into me while I’d been trying to operate the door.
By the time I finished, his color looked a lot better, and Gina looked openly relieved.
She held the bullet I’d dug out of his thigh in one hand, staring at it.
She’d watched me take it out of him with the telekinesis, her eyes stunned as it fell down on the dirt floor. She still looked like she couldn’t believe it. I saw her finger the mashed up metal, weighing it in her palm like she couldn’t decide if it was real.
When I finished with Loki, Balidor touched my arm.
“Esteemed Bridge,” he said gently, looking down at me, his gray eyes soft. “We all thank you for what you’ve done. But we need you to get back to the Barrier door.”
Firming his mouth, he glanced up at the high rock ceiling of the cave.
Exhaling, he looked back at the opening in the wall they’d all come through, before returning his gaze to mine. Glancing to his left, I saw Cass pressed against his side, holding one of his hands in both of hers. I could feel the relief on her light, and realized Balidor had barely made it down here alive too.
All of them had barely made it.
“There are things I need to tell you about that,” Balidor conceded. “But now isn’t the time, Esteemed Bridge.”
His mouth and voice turned grim.
“They’re coming,” he said simply. “We won’t be able to keep them out forever. A number of us were lost up there, buying the rest of us time. But, even after all they did, the Mythers will break through. It’s only a matter of time. There are too many of them for that not to be the case. And there are too many of us to hide everyone in here.”
Looking up at him, seeing the exhaustion and worry on his face, I realized he was right.
Nodding, I sent him a pulse of reassurance.
“Okay,” I said.
Climbing back to my feet, I looked at Revik, who was watching me as well.
Light still flickered in his irises. I felt gratitude on him still, as well as love for what I’d done for his son. He looked almost on the verge of tears.
“Okay,” I repeated, now looking at Revik alone. “You were going to tell me something before they came in, husband. You were going to tell me that you know what we need to do to open the door… and to keep it open.”
Balidor looked over.
So did Cass, Tarsi, Yumi and my parents, who were standing closer than I’d realized. I felt them all turn, and saw it in my periphery, but I never took my eyes off Revik.
Gauging his face and his eyes, which had sharpened perceptibly as I spoke, I saw a tauter expression come over both. Between that expression, and the currents and sparks I felt flickering through his light, I knew I’d been right.
When his jaw h
ardened, I took his hand, drawing him closer.
“It’s time for you to tell us what that is,” I said, soft. “We need to know.”
After the barest pause, he nodded.
From the look on his face, I could tell he was still reluctant.
He opened his mouth, about to speak, when a different voice broke the quiet.
“It is the sun,” the voice said, calm, filled with certainty. “We need the sun to open the doors to the next place. It has always been the sun.”
I turned at the accented English, startled.
Max, or “Bear” as many of the locals called him, stood with Tawa, the younger, more political and military tribal leader. A number of other New Mexico humans stood behind him. I recognized many of their faces from the camp. Realizing they must have just arrived in the cave along with the others, I stared around at their faces, noting their somber expressions.
A shiver of misgiving hit me, too, when I saw the face of Black Wing among them.
Tawa and Black Wing had been fighting Mythers up top.
If they were both down here now, that didn’t bode well for any of us.
Next to them, Torek stood, grim-faced, his face smudged with dirt and sweat, a rifle slung over his shoulder. He spoke next, his British accent more prominent than usual.
“He’s right,” the tall, gold-eyed seer said grimly. “I’ve seen it too.”
Looking between me and Revik, he nodded sharply towards Revik.
“It’s the Sword,” he said, blunt. “He’s supposed to do it.” He gave me an apologetic look before adding,“He probably doesn’t want to tell you ‘cause there’s a damned good chance our Illustrious Sword will die in the process.”
At that, the whole cave fell utterly silent.
Dante looked up from where she’d been staring at her virtual monitors.
Sasquatch, Crieg and Gina did the same from where they’d unrolled their consoles on the rock and sand floor. Dalejem, who I hadn’t even noticed inside the cave until now, knelt beside them, staring up at Revik, his jaw hard.
I saw my parents looking at Revik, too, their expressions worried.
Balidor stared at Torek, his gray eyes narrow and slightly out of focus, as if he were scanning him. Cass stared at Torek, too, along with Jon and Wreg. Loki looked up from where he leaned against the stone wall, next to Jax, Holo, Chinja and the big seer, Rex.
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