Prophet: Bridge & Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  “Shadow wants you dead, Bridge. Shadow wants you dead so badly he can taste it. Your husband’s right to be worried. Maybe he’s right about a lot of things you don’t really want to think about.”

  I didn’t answer.

  My mind turned over Tarsi’s words. I could feel the rebuke, of course. Even so, as understanding filtered over my light, I didn’t feel chastened, or even worried I’d been going about this wrong.

  I felt pissed off.

  That rage that filled my light. It wasn’t just rage at Menlim. It was rage at all of them––at the lengths all of these fuckers were willing to go, no matter how much ground they’d already won, no matter how many people they’d killed, how much beauty they’d destroyed. They wouldn’t be satisfied until they’d annihilated the light completely.

  They wouldn’t be satisfied until every single person on Earth bowed to them.

  Maybe that was part of Tarsi’s message.

  Maybe I needed to be willing to cross lines I hadn’t wanted to cross, to take risks I hadn’t been willing to take, break rules I’d left unbroken.

  They had no lines, no rules, nothing they wouldn’t destroy to get what they wanted. Maybe it wouldn’t be enough to take the safe road, even if it meant sacrificing myself. Even if it meant sacrificing people I loved.

  The idea terrified me, though––especially when I thought about the people seated around this table, much less Lily and Revik.

  I also felt Tarsi thinking I should be giving Revik his head more, especially in those areas where he excelled. Maybe she was right. Maybe I was holding him back. At the very least, maybe I was refusing to take advantage of who and what he was.

  Behind me, I felt Revik agree.

  Exhaling, I leaned deeper into his chest. Fair enough. But if Revik wanted a free head with this, he had to give me one, too.

  I exhaled, frowning. “Menlim is doing this, trying to break our bond? Him specifically?”

  Balidor and Tarsi exchanged a look.

  Then Balidor looked at Jon, who grimaced.

  “Not Menlim, no––” Balidor began.

  “Terian,” Jon said. Leaning back in his chair, he folded his arms, glancing at Wreg. “I felt Terian there. So did the rest of us who know his light.” He looked at me. “But I suspect you already knew that, Al, given how you asked the question.”

  I didn’t bother to confirm. “How is he getting through?”

  Jon shrugged, clicking softly. I couldn’t help noticing how seer he looked in his leather jacket and dark red shirt, which somehow made him appear more Wreg-like than usual.

  “Presumably through Revik,” he said. “Maybe Menlim’s helping him. Or maybe Menlim’s using Terian alone for this.” He frowned, folding his arms tighter. “Either way, it definitely felt like him. And it definitely felt like it’s coming from Dubai. So whatever other bullshit he fed you when he showed up in the tank, he probably told you the truth about where he is right now. This is probably another attempt to get you there. Maybe he thinks if he screws with you enough, you’ll have come to him.”

  I stared at Jon. As I did, the missing piece fell into place.

  Whether Terian was working alone or at the bidding of Menlim almost didn’t matter. If we went to Dubai, we’d be expected.

  Then again, if Terian could unravel our marital bond long distance, we had no real choice but to go anyway. Lily was tied to our lights now. That meant she was as dependent on our marital bond as we were.

  I looked over my shoulder at Revik.

  His eyes had turned murderous in the pause. I could tell from his expression that Terian, our brother in the Four, had just become operational priority number one.

  Of course, that was exactly what Terian wanted.

  Even so, studying Revik’s face, I wondered if Terry would be all that happy to see us when we finally found him.

  46

  TIME TO GO

  SAYING GOODBYE TO Lily was hard.

  It was more than hard. It was horrible, like losing a piece of my body.

  Revik held me the whole time, even as I fought to keep my mouth shut around Kali and Uye, if only to prevent myself from saying something I would regret.

  I knew my biological parents and their Children of the Bridge were the logical people to take her. I knew that, and told Lily the same, but I couldn’t stop myself from crying as I said it. Once Lily saw me crying she started crying too, which only made it worse.

  Watching her cling to Revik’s leg didn’t help. Nor did it help when she started trying to bargain with us, promising she’d be good if we’d just take her with us.

  Yeah, it really, really sucked.

  I argued with Revik about it at first, until he pointed out that my negative emotions were purely personal, and that I’d agreed with Kali that Lily was no longer safe on the ship. Moreover, however I personally felt about my newly-found “parents,” I didn’t believe they were agents of Shadow, especially with Tarsi and Balidor telling me how unlikely that was. I finally caved after Revik pulled Balidor and Tarsi into the discussion yet again, but I still had to fight to get enough distance to look at my emotional reactions objectively.

  Once I did, I had to admit Revik was right. I still hated it.

  On the plus side, Lily was a lot happier in general since we got her out of the tank.

  She liked having her own room next to ours. She especially liked the adjoining door, which she would knock on incessantly if we hadn’t gotten around to unlocking it yet by the time she woke up. She also knocked on it in the middle of the night a few times, asking to sleep in our bed. Even with all of me and Revik’s distractions with our own light, Lily still managed to be in our room as much––if not more––than her own.

  She also came with us to eat in the mess hall for all her meals now, and to get cooed over by the adult seers on the ship––including her Uncle Wreg, who was the worst of the lot in spoiling her rotten and letting her have her way.

  Not like the rest of them were much better.

  Even Balidor seemed physically incapable of saying no to her.

  Jon was a little better about setting boundaries. So was Chandre, although I’d seen her sneaking Lily ice cream, too. I had zero qualms about chewing her out right in front of my daughter, who I couldn’t help noticing looked entirely lacking in remorse.

  Lily also came with me whenever I walked on the deck.

  Revik took her flying one day, too, taking her up in one of the prop planes. I’d been stuck in a meeting and couldn’t go with them, but I got to hear all about it that night, and about how the flight crew gave her tours of the jets and helicopters lashed to the deck, and let her wear the giant sound mufflers used by the deck hands.

  So yeah, Revik wasn’t much better than the rest of them, really.

  Neither was I, when it came down to it.

  Jon and Wreg came with us to introduce Lily at the human school the day after she got out of the tank. Since then, she’d been jabbering nonstop to me and Revik about her new friends. More than any of them, she talked about the one other seer child who attended classes with her, a male Asian seer named Buuri who Lily claimed had eyes “just like Uncle Wreg,” which I took to mean they must be close to that black, obsidian color of my brother’s husband.

  She also claimed Buuri knew more languages than she did, an announcement that sounded more like an accusation than not. It soon came out that Lily had somehow decided that her lesser knowledge of languages was entirely Revik’s fault.

  I suppose that made sense in Lily’s world, since Revik tended to switch up languages a lot more than I did, often without noticing he did it.

  Even so, I had to laugh a little.

  Regardless of the relative merits of Lily’s blaming Revik for her perceived skill gaps, she’d demanded that he teach her Mandarin, Russian and Spanish at once. I’m not entirely sure why she picked those three languages, but they were pretty solid choices and Revik was fluent in all three, so we didn’t argue.

  R
evik split his teaching time with tutors, however, instead of doing it all himself, since we were often in planning sessions these days, even when she wasn’t in school.

  Lily went along with that, if grudgingly.

  She also wanted to learn Vietnamese, she announced a few days later.

  I assumed that had to do with her grandmother, which annoyed me. Kali offered to teach her after we left for Dubai, and I thanked her for that––but not very nicely, I’m afraid.

  Even apart from Lily leaving, the aircraft carrier was slowly disbanding.

  We’d already decided we would continue to use it operationally for Dubai, but we would limit the crew to military. Even then, I’d ordered them to keep it at a skeleton crew once they got the tanks and other large items moved. They’d already started transferring nonessentials to smaller ships; all of that accelerated once we got to the staging area.

  Now that we were ready to go live, that clock was running down for real.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  But, like giving Lily to her grandparents, there wasn’t much I could do to stop it.

  I BOBBED IN the water, gripping the side of a thick, inflatable boat that held Wreg, Jon, Chandre and Neela.

  I couldn’t help thinking, It’s a good thing I’m a decent swimmer.

  We’d gone over about a million different ways to enter Dubai.

  As with most of our operations lately, the tricky part was me and Revik.

  We’d been practicing different types of Barrier cloaks and shields for weeks. We’d also worked at hiding specific trauma markers, as well as other imprints and structures particular to ourselves and our aleimi––especially Revik, whose light had been mapped more extensively by the Dreng than likely anyone on our team.

  That didn’t even get into things like changing the way we walked, talked, sat and otherwise moved our bodies to keep from being picked up by electronic surveillance.

  Our lack of information was still more worrying than those things we knew to expect.

  We had absolutely no idea how many bodies Terian might be operating, what they might look like, what race they might be, or how they might be connected. Even if we found one of those bodies in Dubai, taking it captive might be a total waste of time. We had no way to “hide” him in any conventional sense, given what he was. Putting a secondary body in the tank and cutting it off from his primary body––meaning Feigran––would likely only kill it.

  Given how Terian’s bodies worked together in the past, Revik warned that no amount of shielding would cut Terian off from the rest of his bodies if we left him in some kind of military construct outside the tank. That meant he’d be a walking GPS signal for Shadow unless we locked him up––which again, would probably just kill him.

  Really, we needed the primary body, Feigran.

  In the past, the Dreng had gone to pretty drastic lengths to make Terian’s original body inaccessible. Given our current timetable, we were doubtful we’d have much hope of finding it, but Revik was determined to at least find out where it was being held, and to find and question the Terian who’d been messing with our light.

  The whole topic of Terian and Feigran spawned an interminable number of discussions and arguments, however, including how long we could afford to stay there, inside a Shadow city, to look for someone who would probably be under armed guard and in close proximity to Menlim. Many of the infiltrators questioned whether we should even be trying to bring in Feigran, given the risks and uncertain benefits.

  More than one person thought we should find him primarily to kill him.

  A smaller set of us, including me and eventually Revik, thought we should at least try to bring Feigran in alive, in the hopes that having the Four together might help Lily.

  Of course, those discussions also brought on a set of extrapolations around what might happen if we managed to get ahold of the original Feigran body, and, more to the point, if we could find some way to throw a kill-switch on the rest, in effect, killing “Terian” once more, and integrating all of his requisite pieces back into a unified Feigran.

  Again, most of those theories involved utilizing the tank to cut Feigran off from his satellite versions, which in theory couldn’t survive without the original body. We had no idea what that might do to the “fragments” of Terian left floating out there, though, if they would be reunited with the Feigran body when he emerged from the tank, or––

  Well, or not.

  Revik thought if the gap wasn’t too long, they might reunite.

  If they didn’t, Feigran might only die anyway, if he lost too much of himself.

  Truthfully, it was all one giant gamble of maybes and what ifs.

  Now I bobbed in the weirdly warm but very salty water of the Persian Gulf––or maybe, technically, the Arabian Gulf or the Gulf of Oman, I wasn’t sure––and watched Revik where he bobbed next to me in his form-fitting wet suit. We both wore oxygen tanks on our backs and I followed his hands as he fitted organic goggles over his eyes before he picked up the regulator on his tank and blew on it.

  “You ready?” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  He laughed, then leaned closer, kissing me with wet, salty lips.

  Liar, he sent fondly, blowing heat in my general direction. You’re worse than me.

  Feeling the adrenaline coursing through my limbs, I realized that most of that wasn’t fear. It was anticipation. Hell, it was almost impatience.

  Damn him.

  Revik chuckled, right before he fit the regulator into his mouth, arranging the goggles a last time once he had it in place. Inclining his head for me to follow him, I felt another pulse of heat off him, that one holding more than just affection.

  Hurry up, he sent. You’re turning me on.

  Rolling my eyes, I did as he said, pulling on my own goggles and flicking on the organics. I winced at the spark of current, although I’d been assured repeatedly they wouldn’t electrocute my head.

  “Boys and their toys,” I muttered softly.

  “What?” Revik said, still treading water in front of me.

  Not answering, I glanced up, and saw Jon looking down at me, his face set in a worried-looking grimace.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” he blurted. “Please. Or is that a futile request?”

  Realizing how little time I’d had with Jon since he and Wreg came out of hibernation, I felt a sudden stab of missing him, and a burst of guilt about hurting him with the telekinesis in the mess hall. I resolved to fix the first one, at least, once we got back.

  Maybe we could all go on a mini-vacation or something.

  Him, Wreg, me, Revik, Lily.

  At Jon’s snort, I blew warmth at him.

  “Avoid stupid,” I said. “Check.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Don’t humor me.”

  “Just don’t let your husband shoot at us and we’ll be fine,” I told him, grinning.

  I saw him flinch from the second pulse of emotion I sent, right before his eyes softened. That worried look didn’t leave his expression, however.

  “No promises,” he said, gruff. “And hey, I mean it, Al. No reckless bullshit, okay? You’re a mother now. You can’t get away with that crap anymore. So listen to Revik. For once.”

  “I will,” I told him, right before I fit my own regulator into my mouth.

  Next to me, Revik gave an openly disbelieving snort.

  Wreg apparently agreed with him. “No you won’t,” the muscular seer muttered.

  Looking at Wreg, I was surprised to see worry in his eyes, too, along with more emotion than I was used to from the ex-Rebel. When I glanced back at Jon, his frown deepened. I could tell just by looking at him that he didn’t believe me any more than Revik or Wreg.

  Giving them both a last smile through the awkwardness of the breathing equipment in my mouth, I waved, then let go of the boat.

  Revik followed.

  Together, we let the weight on our belts and tanks pull us under.


  47

  SLAVE SHIP

  WE’D MAPPED THE shipping routes weeks before, mainly by hacking satellite feeds.

  After the leadership team agreed not to let the aircraft carrier get any closer to Dubai than the coast of India, we mapped out alternative routes into Dubai City from the staging area. We still didn’t know for certain whether we were being actively tracked, but we had to assume we were, either in the physical or via the Barrier.

  Wreg and his team, along with Vikram’s, assessed every active satellite they could find in our area of the sky, as well as every mechanical and organic component in the ship, looking for any sign it was being used to pinpoint our location. They looked for foreign signals, anything being sent to or from the ship without authorization. They looked for signs of micro-flyers, or high atmosphere cameras.

  They found nothing––which didn’t really reassure anyone.

  At the very least, we were likely looking at a Barrier leak of some kind, which might be enough for them to plan an extraction attempt for Lily and Cass, if not a full frontal assault.

  For the same reason, we decided to send Maygar with Lily, rather than leave him on the aircraft carrier where he might be vulnerable, or put him with the military team supporting Dubai. That had been Revik’s call, but I didn’t argue.

  Truthfully, I felt better having Maygar with Lily anyway.

  I couldn’t help obsessing on where she was, how she was doing. I didn’t let myself scan for her, of course, but yeah, I was obsessing.

  I was thinking about her even as Revik and I floated in the darkness of the Persian Gulf, not far from the southern shore of what used to be Iran.

  We were reasonably confident that our multiple plane changes, treks over land and several boats hadn’t been tracked––at least not in a way that was relevant to us. Meaning, even if someone logged individual legs of our journey via satellite or surveillance, it wouldn’t be traced back to the aircraft carrier, or to us.

  We’d done everything we could to disguise our identities.

  Revik and I even had prosthetics on underwater.