The Duality Bridge (Singularity #2) (Singularity Series)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  The insect-under-skin feeling zooms to my head—

  And I’m in the fugue. I sit up in the chair, no longer bound by the mesh, and turn to Hypatia. Her hand scans my head, but her face betrays no emotion. The walls around us have gone transparent and beyond them I can see waves and a beach and green hills in the distance. Memories from Marcus’s life play like suspended holo screens in the air.

  These are Lilith’s memories. Marcus’s mother. Somehow my mind has conjured them as a shield against the probe. I didn’t do anything—it was an automatic reaction. Like a defense mechanism against invasion, maybe? I don’t know. But I don’t have time to think about it. I need to find a way to keep Hypatia from carrying out her threat.

  I move, leaving my motionless body behind in the chair. Hypatia’s face is slowly taking on a frown. The last time I plunged my hand into her head, I was blown into the void. But that’s probably the only answer I have left: if I’m dissipated into the gray, they can’t use me, and there will be no point in killing the others.

  I move again—my form, whatever it is in this state, obeys my intention without me consciously willing it. I raise my hand, palm toward Hypatia’s bald head. Her fugue form has no scintillating gray skin, but her face is emotionless all the same.

  I stop.

  I really don’t want to die. I’m not even sure I could—last time Hypatia brought me back from the void with her shock-inducing hands on my chest.

  There has to be another way.

  I have her key. I flip my hand over and focus on bringing the memory of her personal key to the front of my mind. It’s a shape in a constant state of flux. As I think it, so it is: the shape shimmers into existence, floating above my palm. It’s like a jewel of many possibilities, shifting between being and not being. I can see the equations that describe it as well as the field of probabilities that define its states of being. I don’t fully understand it, but maybe I don’t need to.

  Maybe I just need to control it.

  I get a firmer grip on it—which really means a better focus on its being—as I move it toward her head. It encounters resistance at the surface of her mind, a field that’s not synced with the one in my hand. I spin the key, ticking through all the states, rotating my hand as if her mind is a key of its own, and I have to get the shape of mine to line up precisely with hers… something opens up, but then the key is sucked from my hand.

  A force nearly pulls me in after it. A trap. Just like the one in Augustus’s mind that captured Lenora.

  Hypatia jerks upright. I fight against the pull of the trap, stumble back, and break free. She flicks her attention back to the mind-probe mesh, waving her hand over my prone body. The intensity of the blue light grows steadily. My arms and legs start to thrash in the chair.

  I can feel it coming for me. Lilith’s memories of the ocean and childhood and toy-strewn beaches start to flicker. I have no choice and no time left—I lunge back to Hypatia, determined to thrust my hand into her mind and blow myself out to the void before she can break through. My hand passes through her. A flurry of images and thoughts and ideas pound me at light speed—then a flash so bright it whites out everything—

  I gasp, sucking in air and fighting a spasm that feels like it’s ripping me apart—more than the usual fugue-induced cramping and general misery. I open my eyes, but everything remains dark. I blink several times… still dark.

  Is this death? It doesn’t feel like death, not that I know what death would feel like. It’s definitely not the deep, fuzzy grayness of the void.

  As my mind grapples with the disorientation of my senses, the flood of information from my contact with Hypatia swirls in and takes shape. My mind files and categorizes: memories, thoughts, connections. They’re a web, all circling around a central idea, but my understanding of that idea floats just beyond my grasp. I can tell it’s something Hypatia was desperate to hide. Something strong in her mind when my presence sunk into it.

  It coalesces enough that I can see the outlines of it: Augustus has a plan.

  My mind skitters around the edge, biting at it, but not really getting hold. The idea is big. It will change everything. It doesn’t involve me… only it does, tangentially, like I’m related to it… but Augustus is at the center.

  It’s the storm cloud. It’s an avalanche of death.

  My heart lurches. Like keys intertwining with keys, a certainty locks into place: my vision and Augustus’s plan are connected. If I overlay one with the other, they fit. I don’t have all the pieces, and the harder I focus on the splinters of it, the more the idea slips from my mental grasp, but… it’s coming. It’s marching closer, relentless—and it will swallow everyone and everything. And somehow I have to stop it.

  Some bridges burn. The old man said it—either I’ll stop the storm or be destroyed by it.

  My breath is audible in the dark. Which means I must be alive, and the blackness is simply the lights gone out. I hold my breath for a moment—the rest is silence. The chair is underneath me—I can feel it, but I’m no longer restrained by the mesh. I find my way to the edge of the seat and swing my legs off, nearly stumbling over something when I step down. It’s cool to the touch, humanoid shaped—it has to be Hypatia’s body.

  Something’s happened.

  I stand and mentally recreate the room: the placement of the Dalai Lama’s body; the pool of his blood I have to avoid; the sentry at the door. Slowly, I feel my way across the room. I don’t have a plan, but something is going down, and I need to be ready for it.

  I’m halfway across the floor when the door winks out of existence. I can tell because sounds float through the dark: gasps and mumbles and low, angry words. I climb over the prostrate sentry and stumble toward the murmurs, but what I see outside the door seems so unreal, I freeze in place, heart lurching.

  There’s a ghost in the hallway.

  I blink furiously, but the nebulous outline of the ghost continues to float past my door. It’s a man—I recognize him as one of the Resistance’s militia—and about half his body is lit-up by some unknown source while the other half fades into darkness. Strangely, he doesn’t seem to see me. Or anything at all. He’s feeling his way along the wall. A woman—or rather the ghostly form of one—bumps into him, going the opposite direction. There’s a tense moment when they gasp, recoil, then tentatively reach out to each other. They find each other’s hands and join them. After a few whispered words, they continue down the hall together.

  My brain finally puts it together—I’m still in the fugue state, at least partially. Something blew out everything—lights, bots, ascenders—and when the mind-probe chair died, it kicked me out of the fugue. Only, not entirely. I’ve got a fuzzy kind of double-vision happening, still partly in the fugue while everyone else stumbles around in the dark.

  I edge out into the hall, and dozens of ghosts—prisoners—wander the hall, finding each other in the dark. They must have all been liberated when the doors opened. I hurry past them, dodging their forms and peering at every one, searching for Kamali or Cyrus or my mom. As I turn the corner, getting closer to my original cell, my fugue-state vision falters. The ghost forms flicker off and on, plunging me into the same total darkness as everyone else for a second or two at a time. I slow my pace, making my way more cautiously, but the fugue state is slipping, and I still haven’t found anyone I know.

  A screeching sound kills all the whispering in the hall at once, leaving silence behind. It came from around the corner—as best I can tell, that’s the hallway where Augustus paraded me through originally. The prisoners hug the walls as the screech comes again, a metallic sound, like something being ripped apart. It continues for a long moment, followed by a more complete silence, like everyone is holding their breath. Then an orangish glow licks along the walls, undulating shadows across them.

  A wave of gasps floats through the hall as faces are lit by the strange glow. It’s not much, but I can see with my eyes now, not just the fugue, so I keep moving toward the intersecti
on with the main hallway. A sizzling sound runs roughshod over the attempts at speaking, but I’m picking up speed as my eyes adjust to the near-dark. I reach the intersection and finally find people I know—the two augments from the op, Caleb and Grayson, both watching the source of the orange flickering. It’s the door at the end of the hall, and it looks very much like someone’s cutting a hole through it from the outside. Caleb is standing over Grayson, who is sitting on the floor. His ascender-tech legs are shoved against the wall, out of the way of the slowly gathering crowd. His augments must have been knocked out by the same pulse that wiped out the ascenders and their sentries.

  “Caleb!” I say, breathless and grinning. “Have you seen—” I can’t finish because his hand is around my throat, shoving me back. I stumble and nearly fall out of his grip, but he slams me against the wall next to Grayson and holds me in place.

  Caleb’s face is alive with fury, and the orangish light turns his expression demonic. I claw at his hand, but the only reason I’m not already dead is because Caleb’s black-metal ascender-tech arm hangs useless at his side while he tries to kill me with his human hand. And he might yet succeed—everything’s going black. I’m passing out. Caleb’s hand is suddenly ripped away, nearly taking my throat with it. Grayson has taken him down, in spite of Grayson’s non-functional legs. He’s got Caleb in some kind of painful-looking hold, with his fist threatening Caleb’s face, but Caleb’s not fighting. He’s cowering.

  I clutch at my throat, struggling for air, and look warily at the orange-painted crowd. The scuffle has attracted everyone’s attention—now all the Resistance members who are likewise thinking I’m responsible for them being here are staring at me. I hold up my hands, half surrender, half to keep them at bay. Tristan emerges from the crowd, stalking up to me so fast, I’m afraid he wants to choke the life out of me, too.

  “You have something you want to say, Brighton?” he throws in my face.

  I stumble back against the wall again. “I didn’t do anything,” I say quickly, one hand out, the other rubbing and protecting my throat.

  “What are you doing?” Kamali comes out of the dark and slams both hands on Tristan’s chest, moving him away from me, but only by a foot or so. He’s still glaring death threats in my direction. “Leave him alone!” She shoves him again and stands between us, blocking our view of each other.

  Tristan relents and speaks to her instead. “We’re here because of him.” His voice is bitter.

  “He did not betray us,” she throws back. Then she turns to the crowd. “We can fight each other or we can work together and have a tiny chance of getting out of here.”

  “That was no ordinary white-out bomb,” Grayson says, his voice tense but even. He still has Caleb pinned. “Someone with ascender-level pulse technology just nuked this place. I’d suggest we get ready for whatever’s coming through that door.” He gestures down the hall.

  Murmurs of agreement and concern rise up.

  Suddenly, a white-hot flash burns across the walls, and my hand automatically flies up to protect my eyes. There’s a clatter of metal, like something has fallen, and by the time I blink away the retina burn, a dozen white lights are dancing along the walls, ceiling and floor, flooding the hallway with light. And a couple dozen black-clad militia: humans.

  They’re heavily armed and streaming in through the hole they just cut. Their helmets sweep the cells with wide, bright beams, but mostly they’re ushering the nearest prisoners toward the door, which is still glowing at the edges. In the new abundance of light, I can see there are maybe fifty of us—considerably down from more than a hundred in the camp. A hulking figure breaks from the crowd and stalks toward me with two shorter ones in tow. I tense up until I see it’s Cyrus.

  I don’t hold back from the rough hug he yanks me into.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he breathes out, then pulls back. “Man, I didn’t think I’d see you alive again.”

  I grip one hand hard on his shoulder. “Cyrus,” is all I manage to get out.

  “I was afraid those bastards were going to—” He chokes up.

  “I’m good.” I nod fervently. “I’ve been busy. Got a few new tricks to show you. You know, when we have a moment.” I fight back the tears pricking my eyes with a smile.

  He just hugs me quickly again. “Hey, your mom’s here, too.”

  My mother’s standing behind him with tears shining in her eyes. Her shoulders hang down, and I can’t tell if she’s hurt or simply miserable. I hurry to hug her. Over my mom’s shoulder, Basha beams at us.

  I pull back to scan my mom’s face. The red-lined eyelids and dark circles show she’s been crying. I can’t tell if she’s recovered from her gen tech treatments. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m so sorry, Elijah.” Then she sobs, and my arms are back around her. She shakes and waters my shoulder with her tears, then pushes back, lips trembling. “I tried to resist them. I couldn’t let them find you, but I couldn’t stop them—”

  “Mom.” This is killing me. “I know what Augustus did, and it’s not your fault. That’s not how he found me, anyway. That was all my own doing. I messed up.”

  She sucks in a breath. I think it gives her strength, knowing I got here with my own amazing ability to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

  The crowd is organizing into small groups like ours: people reuniting. I step aside as several militia gather to lift up Grayson. Caleb must be over his rage because he’s helping. They carry him toward the door. Behind us, Kamali and Tristan are hugging with his face buried in her hair. I tear my gaze away. I don’t have any business feeling the stab that image brings.

  I scan the rest of the faces as we all file toward the door.

  “Where’s Delphina?” I ask Cyrus. “And Commander Astoria?” I saw Delphina being tortured before, but I’m afraid her mom might not have made it out of the camp.

  “They were separated from us early on.” Cyrus’s voice is rough with emotion. “Leopold, too. Anyone who was in apparent leadership.” He peers at the faces around us. “They left the Dalai Lama with us. Guess he was too young or something. I haven’t seen him yet.”

  I grimace, my stomach bunching up. “He’s dead, Cy.”

  Cyrus’s attention whips back to me. “What?”

  “They killed him,” I say, choking up. “Because of me.”

  “No.” Cyrus throws a look around and takes me by the shoulder, dropping his voice. “If they kill anyone, it’s because they’re murdering bastards. It is not because of you. Everyone already thinks the ascenders are doing all this to get to you—”

  “They are, Cy.” My shoulders drag down with the weight of that truth.

  “Dude, don’t say that.” He gives me an exasperated look and glances around to see who’s listening. So far, it’s just my mom and Basha. Worry torments their faces.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know, Cy, but for now…” I lift my chin to the militia funneling the Resistance members, one by one, through the door. “We just need to get out of here.”

  Cyrus squints at them. “All right.” He jabs a finger in my face. “Just shut up with the it’s all my fault talk, or we won’t get you out in one piece.”

  I shake my head but say, “Okay, boss.”

  Cyrus gestures to our rescuers. “Man, I’m glad our transmissions got through.”

  “Transmissions?” The crowd moves faster as it thins out.

  “To the other Resistance cells,” Basha says, piping up. “We sent out a signal once the basecamp was under attack.”

  “Yeah,” says Cyrus, “but we only got off one message. Didn’t know if it reached anyone before we were taken prisoner.”

  I nod. Then a chill runs up my back—next to the carved-open door stands Marcus. He’s wearing a transparent shield over every inch of his body, some kind of shimmering force field bodysuit that floats over his normal ascender-tech toga.

  “Wait, is that… that cannot be.” Cyrus looks as stunned as I am. He slows our pac
e.

  My mother says quietly, “Why is Marcus here?”

  “He’s here because he wants me.” I give Cyrus a pointed look.

  He glances at the darkened hall behind us. “We could make a run for it.”

  I shake my head. That’s pointless, plus I’m close enough now to see Commander Astoria and Delphina standing at the door near Marcus. The commander’s dressed in her normal mountain fatigues, and Delphina’s toting a very large, ascender-tech-enhanced gun.

  “Looks like Marcus is working with the Resistance now,” I say. “Let’s just get everyone out. Then I’ll deal with our ascender friend.”

  “That’s a terrible plan,” Cyrus says. “I’ll let you know when I have a better one.”

  I smirk. “Cyrus, my man. I have missed you.”

  “That’s what you get for running off with Kamali. Which, you should know, was part of my plan all along. Didn’t count on the camp being attacked, though. That threw a bit of a loop into things.” He gives me a dead serious look. “I sincerely hope you did not waste that opportunity.”

  I sigh. Tristan and Kamali are ahead of us. He helps her through the hole then follows after. “Not wasted, Cy. Just not meant to be.”

  Cyrus exhales his exasperation. I grin, but it’s half-hearted—the other half is busy breaking for things that apparently aren’t going to happen. Not unlike my endless pining for Lenora—a thought that makes me cringe. Augustus has her now. I was there when he trapped her cognition—her essence—into his mind, but I still have no idea what that really means. I can imagine too many ways it could be horrible, if not outright deadly.

  I grit my teeth and keep moving. Marcus watches us bring up the tail end of the crowd. Augustus’s sentries must have all been disabled because our escape isn’t exactly panicked.