Prophet: Bridge & Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  He turned around in my embrace, wrapping his arms around me in the pause.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be around Lily right now,” I said, speaking aloud so we wouldn’t be overheard in the construct. I bit my lip as pain darted through the center of my chest from my words. “…Just until we get this sorted out. Just to be safe.”

  He squeezed me against him, his warmth flooding my light.

  I felt the same pain slide through him at the thought of being separated from our daughter. Despite all the weirdness in our light, we’d spent as much time with Lily as we possibly could since we got her out of that tank, whenever we could sneak away from planning meetings and intel debriefings and whatever else.

  I knew he hated the idea of losing that so soon.

  He didn’t answer, though.

  I knew that probably meant he agreed with what I’d said.

  44

  AWKWARD

  WE DIDN’T END up back in the bullpen, or the mess hall, but it didn’t feel any less public.

  I was a little blown away by just how many people Balidor wanted in on this, and how many eyes and aleimi he wanted staring at me and Revik’s light.

  They didn’t put Revik and me in jump seats or anything, which, I don’t know, might have made it better, might have made it worse. We all sat around a metal table instead, a smaller version of what lived in the bullpen, although it still took up most of the largest of the three interrogation rooms behind the lower hold security station.

  Revik and I sat next to one another, facing the rest of the almost-full table.

  I knew why Balidor picked this spot. The room had its own construct, in addition to being housed inside the denser security construct.

  Still, the whole set-up already felt like an interrogation.

  Or a trial.

  “Esteemed Bridge?” Balidor motioned at the area above my head. “If you would not mind? I’m afraid your blocking skills are better than the infiltration skills of the majority of your team.”

  He said the words in his most polite voice.

  I glanced at Revik before I complied, and Revik met my gaze, his expression grim. He knew exactly what I was reluctant to show them.

  Realizing that made me realize something else. Revik had been lurking behind my shields, too. He might even have been reinforcing them.

  I turned back towards Balidor, still stalling.

  “What do you want us to do?” I said. “Just open our light? Focus on that…” I bit my lip, fumbling for words as I made a vague, flowing gesture. “Err… compulsion thing? Or the structures I replaced in his light? What?”

  Balidor glanced at Tarsi, then at Kali.

  Kali looked at Uye, who looked uncomfortable, too. In fact, he looked more than anything like he didn’t want to be there at all.

  Tarsi kept her eyes on mine.

  I could tell she was scanning me, whatever my blocking might be doing to the rest of them. After a pause, and without Tarsi ever looking away from me, Balidor nodded in her and Kali’s direction, as if in agreement to something one or both of them had said.

  “Yes,” he said, looking back at me. “Yes, Esteemed Bridge. If you could open your light to the rest of us, then concentrate your attentions on the…” He fumbled for words as well, making a similar gesture to the one I’d made. “…The, ah… sensations the two of you are experiencing, that would be best.”

  “We need to see where it’s coming from,” Tarsi added, her clear eyes shifting to Revik’s. “We need to know if it’s only from the two of you, or––”

  “––Or elsewhere,” Revik muttered, glancing at me.

  Impulsively, I reached for him, wrapping my fingers around his.

  I gave a last glance around the table.

  I knew Revik wasn’t thrilled with Balidor’s decision to include a few of the people there. Jorag, for one. Balidor invited Jorag, along with a few of the other multi-war Rebels, to participate as resonance builders in the event this ended up being about Menlim. Wreg and Jorag were the obvious choices, given they had the longest-running connections to both rebellions. Jorag was recruited the same year Revik officially joined, and trained under Menlim and Salinse for over a hundred years.

  For the same reason, Raddi was there, along with Neela.

  Varlan was invited for his sight-rank, but also because he’d worked for the Rooks under Galaith.

  Dalejem was there, since (as Balidor explained), he’d known Revik’s light not long after Revik left the Rooks. He’d also known my light as a child.

  I wasn’t too thrilled about that one, but yeah, I got the logic.

  Then there were Kali and Uye, my “parents,” who also knew my light before it got mixed up with Revik’s. And of course Jon himself, who’d been exposed to my light longer than any of them, although he’d been a human for most of that time.

  Jon also knew Revik’s light. And Terian’s.

  The others in the room were a mixture of ex-Rebels, Adhipan and Seven, with a heavier weighting towards Adhipan, probably so those Shadow resonances wouldn’t overwhelm the construct. They included: Loki, Declan, Garend, Kalgi, Anale, Chandre, Yumi, Rig, Hondo, Chinja, Poresh and Vikram. Dante was there, too, to run the computer end of things, meaning the capture of aleimic imprints. Jaden came along to help her.

  Neither Revik nor I was thrilled about Jaden being there, but Vik told us Jaden had become Dante’s right hand guy for electronic conversions of Barrier scans. I knew they wanted humans on the comps anyway, so they could free up Anale, Vik and Poresh.

  I found myself thinking I would have a little chat with Dante about training up more humans on the comp-squad besides my ex-boyfriend. While I was at it, I might also have a talk with her on the relative merits of Jaden as a boyfriend, since I’d seen her looking at him a little too long and hard over the past twenty or so minutes.

  Of course, Dante was too busy glaring at Loki right then for me to be able to even make eye-contact with her.

  I might have found that amusing under different circumstances.

  I’d heard the whole Loki-Gina-Dante story by then, of course, so I knew exactly what that glare meant. The Loki-Gina inter-species light connection had been a source of gossip for weeks after Loki and his team first got back to the carrier from D.C.

  At the moment, however, I had other things on my mind.

  It didn’t help that Revik and Jaden had already engaged in a few brief staring contests across the rectangular-shaped room. Luckily, they’d seated Jaden as far from Revik as they could, at a small table covered in computer equipment in the corner.

  Jaden was the only one who didn’t sit at the conference table. Even Dante squeezed in, sandwiched between Vikram and Yumi. Her eyes were locked to her hand-held now, at least when she wasn’t giving the stink eye to her mother’s new boyfriend.

  I wished I knew what Jaden’s trip was.

  If he was going to glare at anyone, I wondered why he didn’t glare at me. After all, he knew me. Then again, I’d long gotten the impression there was more behind Revik’s hatred of Jaden than I’d ever gotten the full story on, either.

  Balidor cleared his throat, more delicately that time.

  “Esteemed Bridge?” he said. “Whenever you’re ready…?”

  I gave Revik a last glance. He smiled at me reassuringly, but I noticed that sharper, more wary look never left his eyes.

  Still, I’d stalled as long as I could.

  I could feel the part of me that knew something was off, but didn’t want to know. I could feel how I didn’t want anyone telling us what we were doing was wrong, or somehow part of Shadow’s plan. Truthfully, I kind of wanted to tell them all to piss off and leave us alone, that we deserved this––moreover, that we needed it.

  I knew I couldn’t do any of those things, though.

  Realizing only then that I’d been holding my breath, I let it out in a slow exhale.

  As I did, I released the stranglehold I’d maintained over me and Revik’s light.

/>   45

  RIPPED APART

  I FELT THE difference as soon as I lowered the wall around our aleimi.

  I hadn’t fully realized just how much I’d been blocking that intensity of light between us––or trying to manage it, I guess. My attempts to control it had increased as the pull worsened.

  Within seconds of my letting go, pain swam liquidly through my light.

  It hit with an intensity that made me gasp, made my stomach clench. I gripped Revik’s fingers where they wrapped around mine, and he gripped me back, but neither thing lessened the pain in my chest.

  I felt him fighting not to block it, too. As both of us struggled not to control it, I felt it bleed through our lights like liquid fire. Both of us clenched and unclenched those blocks as it did, never holding any one of them for long, or consistently––or at the same time.

  The inconsistency alone was enough to open the floodgates.

  All of that happened before I’d thought to actively focus on any of it.

  The pain keened higher. In seconds, it was bad enough that I found it difficult to think. I fought to breathe, to remain silent, but I couldn’t regain control over my light. Once I tried to open to that pain instead of control it, the emotions started to hit me, too.

  Those emotions went towards Revik, first.

  Protection. Fear. A kind of numbing possessiveness, wound into a desire that tried to take over my mind, even as it amplified the rest of it.

  My mind kept returning perversely to how he’d looked in London, right after he’d escaped from Terian. I remembered how thin he’d been, how quiet, the cuts, burns, bruises and scars he’d tried to hide under the long-sleeved shirt and collar.

  He’d been afraid of me that day. I hadn’t known that at the time. I’d been too swallowed by my own fears to see his clearly, but I could see it now. He’d been so quiet––quiet even for him, although he’d managed to hide the thousand-yard stare better than Jon or Cass.

  Jon and Cass, who’d escaped that hell with him.

  I felt Revik’s light react next to me. I felt glimmers of San Francisco in him, around finding me half-dead from the wires, just before he let out a strained breath. The breath bordered on a gasp, even as his grip tightened painfully in mine.

  He released my hand seconds later, only to wrap his fingers and palm around my thigh. He yanked me closer to him, and I felt panic in his light. It resonated with mine, but instead of reassuring me, it made that danger feel all the more real.

  He never felt safe to me, not since London.

  I would never feel safe to him after what Cass had done.

  Watching him struggle only made it harder to keep my hands off him, although if it was in protection or some twisted part of me that got off on his vulnerability and loss of control, I couldn’t tell.

  We weren’t the only ones being affected by then.

  I felt the room react in waves, hitting at us, amplifying our light. I glanced away from Revik long enough to look at them, but I could barely see through the light in my irises, and most of me didn’t care about them anyway, not enough to focus past that misted green glow.

  Next to me, Revik’s pain worsened. I felt him looking at me, his light wrapping into mine, his hands and arms wrapping around my body. I felt the others in our light, but having them there only made that pain worse. It reminded me of other times people had been in his light––people who shouldn’t have been there, who didn’t belong.

  Next to me, Revik let out a low sound, gripping my leg tighter. My pain worsened when I felt it mirrored in him, even as he pulled me closer on the bench, using both of his hands, tugging my leg up around him.

  The pain worsened after he slid his arms around me.

  Even in that, I felt him trying to reassure me with his light. Embarrassment lived there. Anger, too, as I felt him thinking about Beijing, about Jaden, Surli, Balidor, Ditrini.

  A kind of horror washed over me when I remembered the others could feel this.

  I could feel that Revik didn’t care––that they barely registered for him.

  I cared, though.

  I cared what they knew about him. About us.

  Worse, I could feel the rest of them really in it now. They weren’t just watching us anymore, but feeling what we felt, listening to our thoughts, seeing the same mental movies. I felt some react more strongly to the two of us, and that made my paranoia worse. I wrapped myself in Revik’s long arms, sitting in his lap, fighting to hide him from the rest of the room.

  I felt Balidor there, trying to calm my fears. I felt Tarsi, Chandre, Yumi––even Kali––but I almost couldn’t make myself care about anything they tried to tell me.

  I fought with shame, too, around Beijing and the things I’d done there––even around my possessiveness and anger at Revik’s past––but I couldn’t seem to stop my reactions to those things, or the compulsion to try and expel every other seer from our light.

  Within seconds, I was fighting an urge to use the telekinesis to do it.

  My pain worsened the harder I fought it, until fear exploded over my light, blinding me. I remembered hitting out at Jon in the mess hall, and that fear turned to panic.

  Revik! Don’t let me, please––

  You’re okay, his mind murmured. You’re okay, Allie. You won’t do anything bad. You don’t want to hurt them––

  I’m not okay. I’m not––

  Allie, he cut in, soft. You won’t hurt anyone. You won’t. You’re not like me, wife. You’re not a killer. You’ll never be a killer, like me––

  I let out a gasp, tears blinding me as I remembered our conversation on an airstrip in Brazil. Grief overwhelmed me, memories of lying to him, betraying him, betraying the Rebels. Pain hit as I remembered how badly I’d wanted to tell him everything, to ask him to leave with me, right then, to leave Salinse––

  His pain worsened. His light snaked through mine, turning harder, even as that vulnerability in him deepened, widening to a chasm.

  He leaned up, bringing my mouth roughly to his.

  He kissed me, his pain exploding somewhere in my chest as he lowered the shields he’d once more thrown over his light. I felt those shields waver, click open and shut, then fragment as he deepened the kiss, pulling me against him, so I was fully astride him.

  I want to fuck, he told me, once we’d come up for air. His pain worsened as he pulled me against him. “I want to fuck again…” he murmured. Alyson, gods. I want your light so far inside me. I want you to hurt me for real. I want you to keep me there, with you.

  My pain worsened as I remembered him saying something similar, even when the Dreng had him, back when he was Syrimne and still led the Rebels.

  His pain keened higher. His thoughts grew harsh.

  We have to end this. We have to fucking end it, Allie. It’s been too long. It’s been too fucking long like this. We need to end it, or nothing will ever end. We’ll ride this circle forever. We’ll destroy us, destroy Lily, destroy each other…

  I only half understood his words.

  I felt it, though. I felt every word, and in my light, I understood what he meant.

  More than understood––I knew he was right.

  Gripping his black hair, I fought with that understanding, with what it meant.

  We can’t, I sent finally. I shook my head, closing my eyes. Revik, baby, we can’t. Not here. We have to stop. We have to stop this now––

  “No,” he said. Fuck them. They wanted to see this. Let them see it.

  For a long-feeling number of seconds, I forgot everything as we kissed.

  He put so much light in his tongue that I let go into him completely. I couldn’t care about any of it, or about the other lights I felt watching from around the room. Their presence there only made the compulsion stronger, turning it aggressive, making it more irrational and less willing to compromise––

  It brought that urge to do the telekinesis back.

  I felt Revik pulling at me, pulling at that c
ompulsion, but the aggression in my own light scared me. It scared me enough that I was pulling back again, out of his arms.

  I fought his words in my mind, even as he kissed me again.

  I felt the pain in him as he felt my fear, as he imagined me unhappy if something went wrong. Through him, I saw a snapshot of the room if I lost control, if he let himself lose control with me. Bones broken. Bruised flesh and organs. At least one person hitting the wall hard enough, in the wrong part of their body––

  “Stop,” Revik said.

  His voice was low at first, a murmur against my neck.

  When my pain worsened, he gripped me tighter, holding me against him. I saw images flicker through his mind, of us together––of me with other people. That pain I felt in him worsened. Pain from China. What he’d seen, how badly it had hurt.

  What he’d imagined.

  That frustration in him grew, turning violent.

  “Stop,” he said, his voice denser that time, harder. “Stop this. Now!”

  I felt lights around the room react, sparking off his, off both of us. I felt fear in some of them, fear at that intensity building in the structures above his head.

  His pain grew unbearable––

  “Stop,” he growled. “Fucking STOP IT! NOW!”

  A sharp pop! exploded overhead.

  I opened my eyes.

  More of those pops made me flinch, blinking and wincing against him, holding up an arm to shield his face, hunching my back to shield his body.

  Overhead, the lights dangling over the table exploded, one by one.

  They just––exploded.

  Pieces of glass––powder, really––rained down on the metal conference table. I felt flinches and gasps from other lights, heard surprised cries and sharper pained sounds. I smelled smoke, what might have been burning hair and skin.

  Something nicked the side of my neck.

  The reality of physical pain brought my protectiveness into sharper relief. I threw a cloak reflexively over our light, protecting Revik’s, protecting mine. As I did, I slammed the rest of them out of our space. I felt a flare of Revik’s aleimi as I did––the heat, relief, and near-calm that rose in both of us once we were finally alone.