Prophet: Bridge & Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  “Are you going to tell me or not?” she said.

  There was another silence.

  In it, Dante saw his avatar just standing there, in black, empty space.

  After another pause, she saw that avatar sigh, right before it ran a stick-figure hand through its white, sticking up, stick-figure hair.

  “I forget, you know, how young you are,” he said, his voice openly grouchy. “You were a real brat today. A stereotype of a human teenager. I am not used to that from you.”

  “What?” she snorted. “You my dad now, Vik-man?”

  “I am close enough!” he snapped, surprising her with his emotion as much as his words. “You embarrassed me today, beloved cousin! You embarrassed me, just as if you were my own! More than that, I am very disappointed in you––and very sad for your mother, who cried when we told her you would not come up! I did not think you would treat one of your loved ones in such a callous way! With so much selfish disregard!”

  Some part of her wanted to snap back at him.

  She could feel it building in her throat, rants about how he sure as hell wasn’t her father and he could just piss off with his unearned “embarrassment” and disappointment in her and just piss off in general.

  She didn’t say those things, though.

  The truth was, his words stung. They hit in a way that surprised her, if only because they hurt. They hurt more than maybe anything anyone had said to her since she’d gotten here.

  She also realized she did see him almost like her dad.

  Close enough, as he’d said.

  She could feel all that and even imagine the Vik-man could feel all that, too. She couldn’t make herself say she was sorry, though.

  Even so, she sniffed a little, wiping her nose. “Are you going to tell me?” she said, hating how young she sounded. “Or should I ask one of the others?”

  He let out a sigh, clicking at her. She felt some part of his anger lifting, even before he spoke in a gruffer voice.

  “I will come find you.”

  “No, Vik. You don’t have to––”

  “I will come find you,” he said, firm. “I can see you right now––”

  “Peeping tom,” she muttered.

  “––on the surveillance, cousin,” he said, exasperated again. “I left your mind alone. But I am coming with you for this. I will not have you shocking your mother a second time. She is still adjusting to the realities of her new situation.”

  Dante rolled her eyes, but didn’t argue.

  Anyway, he was probably right. Her mom was probably freaking out at being surrounded by a bunch of hyper-tall, weird-eyed, high-cheekboned people who stared a lot and made off-color jokes and looked Asian but not-Asian and looked human but not human, and who walked in that weird, fluid way that made them look more like animals than people.

  Dante didn’t voice any of that. She just waited for Vik to show up in the green and gray metal corridor, arms folded across her chest.

  Vik emerged from around the corner only a few seconds later.

  He gave her a seer’s eye roll when he drew level with her, then motioned with his hand and head towards the hallway Dante had just left. Turning on her heel after he passed her, Dante followed him, moving fast but still in that arm-folded slouch.

  Neither said a word until they’d gone another hundred or so paces.

  Then, just after they went through the fourth of those oval portals, Vikram bumped her with his shoulder. She stumbled, putting out a hand to regain her balance.

  Looking at him in annoyance, she faltered at the gleam of humor in his eyes.

  When she burst out in a surprised laugh, he smiled, too.

  IT TOOK THEM another six of those oval portals––or maybe seven, Dante sort of lost count––before they got to the center of the ship.

  Four of those super-steep metal staircases got them to the right deck, then another six or seven hundred steps down residential corridors brought her to the right section of the ship.

  Dante was nervous now.

  She was actually wringing her hands in front of her chest as she walked, one of those things she thought only happened in comic books and in movies. She was also weirdly glad Vik insisted on coming with her.

  It was stupid to be like this.

  Really stupid.

  It was her mom. Even if Dante really did hurt her feelings a little, refusing to come up to the flight deck, it was still her mom. The thought of her mom crying only made her feel worse though, so she shoved that idea right out of her head.

  When they finally got to the correct door, she was wringing her hands again, wincing when she knocked the thumb with the messed-up cuticle.

  Her chest felt tight, like something got stuck there.

  To distract herself, she stared around at the residency area, looking at the rows of hatch-like doors, the low ceiling showing exposed pipes and electrical cables painted white and gray, blue for water pipes, red for live wires.

  It didn’t really help. Truthfully, she felt kind of sick to her stomach.

  When Vik looked at her, his hand on the door handle, she only nodded to him, though.

  Before he could turn that handle, she changed her mind and grabbed his arm.

  “Hey,” she said. “Did anyone tell her? About being on the List?”

  Vikram frowned, then shook his head. “No, cousin. I have not told any of the others yet. I thought it better to wait… until your mother is perhaps more acclimated.”

  Dante nodded. Reluctantly, she released his arm, realizing at least part of her asking had been a stall tactic.

  But Vikram was already opening the door.

  Turning the handle, he swung it wide, exposing the inside of a very plain-looking cabin.

  Truthfully, it looked identical to how Dante’s own cabin looked when she first came on board the ship. The difference was, Dante personalized hers a lot in the time since. Like right now, her cabin walls were covered in printouts from the Lists, generally the portions she was working on at any given moment.

  She’d mark out the ones they found, using a color code she worked out with Vik and Jaden. “Red for dead,” Jaden joked when they sat down with the markers over lunch that morning. Green for alive and on the ship. Blue for alive and not on the ship. Black for alive and unreachable because they were in a Shadow city.

  Purple for unknown.

  Something about having that physical version mapped out on her wall reassured her. It also made the people behind those Lists seem more real, especially after she tracked them down and could tape pictures next to the names.

  Vik had the Lists on his walls, too.

  She didn’t know about Jaden, since she’d never been to his room. A lot of the seers had that sword and sun symbol on their wall, or pictures of other seer deities. Vikram had Hindu images by his bed, and on his dresser. He seemed particularly fond of that god with the elephant head.

  So yeah––it had been a while since she’d seen one of these cabins stripped down to its bare-bones basics.

  Metal table, pretty much blank of anything. A mirrored panel that had been programmed into the wall. A gray blanket on the room’s couch. A bolted down gunmetal-gray chair in front of the desk. The door to the head. A monitor over the single bed––

  Doing a double take, Dante stared openly at the bed.

  Two people were on it.

  Not one, two.

  And Dante recognized both of them.

  “What is the name of shit-bleed storms of the gods is this?” she shouted.

  She didn’t really notice that when she swore, she’d done that part in Prexci.

  When she yelled it, though, her mom started violently, her cheeks blooming bright red even as her eyes widened comically in her face. Well, it might have been comical, if it hadn’t been for the rest of it, including Vikram’s shocked face as he stared at Dante.

  “Cousin!” he murmured incredulously.

  Dante barely heard him.

  Instead, she sta
red at her mom, fuming.

  Her mother looked back at her, still surprised, but her dark eyes held additional things now, too: annoyance, a barely suppressed joy at seeing her, what might have been guilt.

  Loki, the guy her mom had been tongue-wrestling with––like five seconds earlier––looked one hundred percent mortified, even as he hastily acquiesced to Dante’s mother’s attempts to extricate her body from his. Given that he’d been lying on her, half-wrapped around her with various limbs and other parts of their two bodies, that took a few seconds.

  Somehow, it was him, Loki, who got the burnt of Dante’s next words.

  “You goddamned iceblood!” she exploded.

  Next to her, Vikram jumped a foot.

  Dante didn’t so much as glance at him, but continued to glare furiously at Loki. Losing the power of speech briefly, she gestured at him, not noticing that time, either, that she did it in seer sign-language.

  “What, in the lowest realms of the coldest hells are you doing to my mother?” She balled her hands into fists, her whole body shaking. “Are you going to explain yourself? Or am I going to have to get Declan up here to kick the living shit out of you?”

  Once again, she barely noticed when she switched from English to Prexci to swear at the now guilty-faced seer with the Middle Eastern features.

  Loki blinked at her, then glanced at Dante’s mother with a frown.

  “Well?” Dante demanded. She stamped her foot at him.

  Clearing his throat, Loki held up a hand in a peace gesture, his face reddening more.

  “Cousin. Please. Control yourself. I apologize. I––”

  “Control myself?” Dante burst out. “You’re seriously telling me to control myself? When I just saw you with your hands all over my mom?”

  There was a silence.

  Next to her, Vikram didn’t make a sound.

  Neither did Loki, who still seemed more bewildered than anything.

  Dante’s mother burst out in a laugh.

  As soon as she had, she clamped a hand over her mouth, as if horrified, but she couldn’t seem to stop laughing, either. All Dante could see was Loki’s shirt hanging open and his long, dark brown hair out of its usual clip for the first time in the eight or so months she’d known him. That, along with the unfastened top buttons of her mom’s black jeans was enough to have Dante livid, to the point where she really did consider calling Declan.

  When her mom laughed harder––still looking at Dante’s face, her hazel eyes holding guilt now, despite her seeming inability to stop laughing––Vikram, who’d apparently been suppressing his own humor, chuckled, too.

  He stopped when Dante gave him a death stare, his eyes holding a faint apology, but Dante saw the smile there anyway and only scowled at him.

  Apart from Dante, only Loki did not laugh.

  He sat on the bed, watching Dante’s mother as she clamped both hands over her mouth, trying to kill the last of her giggles, his expression still mostly bewildered.

  34

  DON’T FOLLOW ME

  THE CONVERSATION SEEMED to go on for hours.

  I fought not to react to a lot of it. Mostly, I tried to calibrate my answers and demeanor to match everyone else in our group.

  I could tell I wasn’t really processing things. I needed to get away from everyone else for that. I needed to just be alone, maybe stare at the water again.

  The words I heard all sounded perfectly logical.

  Kali––and Uye, too, I assumed––wanted to help us move our people off the ship, and set up a land-base somewhere. A number of different locations were tossed around, but we all agreed that if we went forward with the plan, Revik and I, and the rest of the team who intended to penetrate Dubai couldn’t know the details until after the op.

  Apparently Kali had been dreaming of mushroom clouds, just like me.

  She seemed anxious to see this happen soon––and to see Dubai happen soon.

  I remembered Terian’s anxiousness in all that, and while I still didn’t know if I could believe anything he’d said, or trust how I’d felt while he’d said it, a part of me couldn’t help noticing the parallels with the vibe I got off Kali as she talked.

  There was definitely something different about her light.

  Wreg commented on it, too, and even Jon, the one time he tried to pull me aside to figure out what was going on with me.

  By then, even Revik was giving me some amount of space, although he never wandered far, at least not until he had to return to the tank when his clock ran down again.

  Until that time, though, I often found his eyes on me, measuring me, weighing my light. And yeah, I couldn’t really blame him. I knew I was acting strangely, and not only in relation to my mother and Uye. They were talking about taking Lily. They were talking about leaving with my child while Revik and I went to Dubai.

  I could tell myself it was temporary. I could hear others, including Balidor, call these people her grandparents. I could hear them reassure me they would take me to her as soon as the op was finished. None of it mattered. None of it got me past my visceral reaction to the bare fact of handing my kid over to these people, who were strangers to me still. Just the thought brought up a panic in my light so intense I couldn’t think past it.

  At the end of the day, though, I could feel the truth in Kali’s words.

  I knew she was right.

  I couldn’t see ahead, into the future––not like she and Terian could––but I could feel this thing, whatever it was. I could almost see it when I closed my eyes, like clouds massing on the horizon.

  Even so, the idea of losing Lily again, so soon after we’d finally gotten her back, felt like being asked to hack off one of my limbs.

  I even started to hate anyone who wanted to reassure me it would be okay.

  So I didn’t say a lot, by the end of that first day.

  When I finally returned to the ship, with plans to meet with Kali and Uye and the rest of them again the next day, I just wanted to sleep.

  Revik had been back for over three hours by then––well past the end of his two-hour shut-in period. I suspected being forced to leave early frustrated him, but he’d been quiet towards the end of those talks, too, so maybe he was having his own issues about Lily.

  He definitely seemed to have some issues with Kali still, although I tried to pretend I didn’t notice that––just like I tried to pretend Dalejem wasn’t staring at the two of us most of the time we were on that beach.

  Anyway, by the time I returned to our room in the four-quadrant tank, Revik wasn’t there anymore. Instead, I found a note in his handwriting on the night table, saying he’d gone to talk to Yumi.

  I didn’t bother to wonder about why he’d chosen that day to go see her––I was pretty sure I knew why. Anyway, he’d been going to see her off and on since we’d talked about it that day.

  So no, I didn’t wonder about him.

  I more wondered if I should go see Yumi myself.

  I was still thinking about that when I fell asleep on top of the bed with my clothes on. The only thing I managed to pull off before I passed out were my boots.

  I WOKE UP to hands on me, light pulling at mine, fingers sliding under my shirt to caress my skin. When I turned over from where I’d been lying on my side, his eyes were glowing, enough that I could see the bare edges of his face.

  He kissed me before I could ask him anything, and his light was softer than I’d felt it in weeks… months maybe.

  By comparison, I felt hard and closed and covered in edges.

  I fought to open to him in return, to be there with him, and he kissed me again, blowing warmth over my light, caressing my back and sides with his fingers, nuzzling my face.

  The sheer softness of him started to melt something in me.

  I started to fall into him, into his light.

  I wrapped my arm around his back––

  And he winced.

  I felt the shock of pain in his light––physical pain, n
ot separation pain. I was close enough to him in both ways by then it felt like my pain at first. I flinched, pulling back, tasting a faint nausea in the back of my throat.

  Confused, I looked up at him.

  My heart started beating harder in my chest, long before my mind could turn over the new information. My light sparked as I met his gaze.

  “What’s wrong with your back?” I said.

  “Nothing.”

  Kissing my cheek, he pressed his face briefly against mine. Pain slid through his light, pulling at me. I was still fighting my thoughts clear when he lowered his mouth, kissing my neck, putting light in his tongue.

  “Allie,” he murmured. “Relax. Just let me be here for you. Please.” He kissed me slower, his voice soft, full of light. “Did you take a shower? I can taste salt on you still.”

  My confusion worsened.

  I started to reach for his back, but he caught hold of my wrist, stopping me.

  “Allie,” he said. “It’s fine.”

  “But what happened to you? What’s wrong with your back?”

  He just looked at me for a second, as if thinking. Then he exhaled, letting his weight fall to his side, so that he was lying next to me.

  “You went to Yumi, right?” Turning my head, I looked at the timepiece shining faintly from the edge of his organic desk. “Were you with Yumi all this time?”

  Clicking softly, he resettled his body deeper into the bed. Combing his fingers through his hair, he sighed again, as if resigning himself to dealing with me.

  Somewhere in that pause, the light in his eyes dimmed, so I could only just see him.

  His form was outlined via the pale, white-green light that shone from the edges of the floor, mostly so we wouldn’t bang into things if one us had to get up and use the bathroom in the middle of the night. In that fainter glow, he was only a dark shape, his black hair only slightly blacker than his skin.

  “Do you really want to talk about this now?” he said.

  I stared at him, at where his face was, feeling that pain in my chest worsen.

  “Talk about what?” I said. “What are we talking about?”