Rook (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #1): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  My vision slanted out.

  Light took its place. That light blocked my view of the surrounding room.

  Gasping in panic at my sudden blindness, I found myself acutely aware of everything else happening around us.

  I heard people scrambling to their feet, knocking over chairs, moving tables. Screams followed. I felt fear––of the guns, yes, but not only the guns. Some of that fear felt aimed at me. Loud speech and frightened gasps confused me. I felt their panic like a physical force. It made me wince, then grimace from the pain of it––but I couldn’t see them, or anything else.

  My eyes wouldn’t work. Everything was light––just light.

  Green light, like what my mind conjured around that force in my chest, just before Jon and that other man flew across the room. I blinked, panicking at my seeming blindness.

  I blinked, over and over, but the light wouldn’t dim.

  Then the fingers holding me tightened so much I let out a gasp.

  “Jurekil’a u’hatre davos!” The man was breathing hard, almost as hard as the people panicking around us. He gasped, speaking right near my ear. I couldn’t see him through the light, but his own panic slammed into me, making me nauseous. Was he afraid of me? “Gaos… di’lanlente a’guete… you’re a fucking manipulator! Gaos! Gaos!”

  I couldn’t make sense of anything he said.

  All I knew was, he sounded afraid. Shocked to the point of paralysis.

  I kept blinking, fighting to see.

  I felt dizzy, light-headed. Truthfully, I felt like I might be sick.

  I leaned against the man where he held me against him, not thinking about the gun anymore, only wanting to see, to know what happened, where I was, why everyone was screaming. Did I really see this man shoot another man in the head?

  Then, another thought brought panic back to my throat.

  Had I hurt Jon? What happened to Jon?

  Terror hit me, along with a surge of dread that nearly overwhelmed me.

  “Where’s Jon?” I managed, my words blurred, groggy. “Where is he? Is he all right?

  Something in my words seemed to snap the man holding me out of his stupor.

  The fingers released me, but for barely a second.

  An arm wrapped roughly around my waist, wrenching me against a hard, muscular body. I gripped that arm in my hands, still fighting to see, to think, to move my mind beyond that nausea and dread. I couldn’t budge the arm off me.

  Truthfully, I could barely make myself try.

  I couldn’t remember ever being so drained, scared or exhausted.

  Before I could wrap my head around what he was doing, the feelings coming off him, he was carrying me. Half-carrying me, at least, dragging me with him.

  I couldn’t see, but I knew we were heading towards the door.

  That’s when I first heard the sirens.

  4

  RUNNING

  HE HOLDS ME in a fireman’s carry now.

  I barely remember him picking me up, but I nearly throw up all over his back once he hoists me up and over his shoulder, so that my head hangs down his back. I still feel so weak I can barely hold onto him. My eyes remain primarily blank, lost in that green and white light, but my vision is now slanting back in fits and starts, snapshots that only sharpen that sick, off-balance, light-headed feeling.

  That feeling gets a lot worse once he starts running.

  I frantically try to grip his back, but the leather jacket he wears slips and eludes the hold of my fingers. I have no idea where we were going. I feel his urgency, his fear for himself, for me, so I don’t try to fight him. I try to talk to him a few times, but I can’t form words, or get them out, even when they make sense in my head. I can’t get my mind to run in straight lines. A kind of word salad takes over instead, a feeling of urgency without any ability to express any of it.

  As he runs, my vision changes.

  Everything grows dark once it does.

  Not black-dark. Not devoid of everything.

  Whatever is wrong to me doesn’t really go away, even after I can see again.

  The world is returned to me in a blurred, underwater, living painting. As he runs down the street with me, my mind knows it’s broad daylight––or, at least, it was, back when I was talking to Cass at that lunch counter––but everything around me looks like a photo negative, light to dark, dark to light. The world dims, tinged with purple and rose. Lights shine out of that twilight, infused with life, moving through and sharing our space.

  Blurred, cloud like lights are everywhere now. The man holding me runs us past them, dodging around them as though he can see them, too. When I stare at them harder, I glimpse fragments of meaning and detail from those lights, seeing past the edges of the gray and dirty clouds. I see glasses on one man. Shaggy blond hair on another. I see a head thrown back, laughter. I see eyes staring at us out of those lights, watching as we passed.

  The man holding me bumps into one, grunting.

  A yell follows us, a voice curses him out, shockingly loud in my ears.

  I realize in shock that they are human.

  Those blurred, cloud-like lights I see––they are people.

  Am I dead? I wonder.

  The voice rises in my mind. Clear. Precise.

  No, is all he says.

  He continues to run. I have no idea for how long. Here, there is no time––I live in spaces between time increments, outside time which spins like a glass ball, a matrix clockwork toy whirling dutifully overhead.

  The walls of buildings glow like oddly invasive lines. We run past them, but I honestly can’t tell if they’re real. I wonder again if I am dead.

  You’re not dead, Alyson. Impatient that time.

  His fear leaks through, too.

  Sirens. I hear sirens again.

  I realize I am hearing them through him in part. He fears them.

  He runs with me along the street, moving fast. I feel his fear through his fingers, where he grips my calf. I feel it through his arm where it circles my thighs.

  Craning my neck, still gripping his back under me, I looked for more of those glowing shapes. Whispers of features flicker at me in that dark space, there and gone.

  I see one blurred form, smaller than the bigger ones, wagging its tail. Staring at that feathered, light-trailing tail, I realize it’s a dog. Once I focus on it, I feel the presence embodied in it envelope me––a genial, sweet doggyness that touches my heart. I watch it jump, writhing and running in circles in excitement, making loops around a larger taller cloudy shape.

  I watch them in wonder until the dog and its two owners are too far away, receding in the opposite direction on the pale stretch of pavement.

  I look down at the man holding me, looking for the cloudy light-shape around him.

  He is different, though.

  He isn’t cloudy at all.

  Now that I am looking at him, I gasp in that timeless space.

  Under my hands, light bones and skin stand out, crystal-clear where the other people-like shapes are blurry and gray. I can only see the vague outline of the jacket I grip awkwardly in my hands. What lays beneath the clothes stands out much more. Gold and pale-blue light runs like liquid through tiny veins inside his light-bones, light-blood and light-flesh. I clutch tighter at his back, staring at those vibrating strands in bewilderment.

  Something about them pulls at me; I get lost staring at him.

  What the hell is he?

  Seer. His mind remains close to mine. I almost hear the German accent inside my head. We look different.

  “S-seer?” I stammer the word, tensing even as I bounce rhythmically against his back, clutching him to hold on. That’s when I notice my own hands.

  Letting go of him with one of them, I raise it to my eyes.

  Crystal-clear light bones glow before my face. Those same, pulsing, liquid veins of light flow beneath a gauzy light skin.

  I look like him. I look like him.

  My mind grapples with that f
act, fights it.

  Lowering my hand, my fingers clench into fists on his jacket. I watch them do it, follow the trails of light up my arms. His are white and pale blue, tinged with gold. The colors that make up my skin and bones and light-blood are different––gold and sunset-red, tinged with orange and paler flickers of blue. We are the same, but different.

  Again, my mind returns to what he said.

  Seer. He said he was seer.

  I feel like I must be losing my mind. Maybe he drugged me.

  My mind latches onto that, liking that explanation. I’d been drugged. I was dreaming right now, either at home in bed, or in some chemical-induced nightmare.

  None of this was real. None of it.

  The man running with me feels the need to shatter that illusion, too.

  It’s real, Alyson, he sends, blunt. You’re in the Barrier. This is how things look in the Barrier… the place where seers operate. He hits the word “seers” a bit harder that time. You’re not dreaming, dead or on drugs. You’re seeing things as they really are.

  My mind can’t do anything useful with that information, though.

  Still, I can’t avoid his words entirely.

  “Did you say you’re a fucking seer?” I spoke out loud that time, my voice deafening in my own ears. I can’t tell how loud I said it.

  Honestly, I’m not sure I said it aloud at all, not until he answers me.

  Quiet! he snaps inside my mind. You’re shouting, Alyson. Do you want to get us both gunned down? Or just me?

  I press my lips together, but I feel his fear again, so I don’t answer.

  “We have to go back,” I manage to gasp out instead. “Jon. I have to see if Jon––”

  His mind cuts off my words.

  Are you out of your fucking mind? Even his mental voice growls at me. Do you really not realize what you did in there? If you go back, they’ll put a collar around your neck and put you in a goddamned cage. Probably for the rest of your natural-born life. You just performed telekinesis in a restaurant full of human witnesses…

  I don’t answer, bewildered that he thinks I could have done that. I’m even more confused when I realize he’s mad at me, after I saw him shoot a man in broad daylight.

  His thoughts turn to an angry mutter, barely aimed at me. A fucking manipulator. Gaos d’jurekil’a. A fucking manipulator… and no one tells me.

  My mind blanks at this.

  I can’t comprehend his words, or even think about them really.

  I’m about to try and talk to him again, when he slows his pace out of nowhere, jerking my heart into my throat as my stomach rams sharply into his shoulder. He skids as he slows, then makes a sharp turn left. Within seconds, he is building momentum again, working up into another sprint, taking us down a narrower street. I see flickers of the walls of the buildings we run beside, a small, blurred, light creature scurrying nearer to the ground.

  Cat, my mind says.

  Birds flicker past, swooping blurred lines in the purple and rose dark, like fireflies, only the size of my fist and so much more beautiful.

  I am watching another of those fly by, when suddenly, like it had in the restaurant, some part of my mind clicks back into focus.

  This isn’t a dream. I am sure of it, suddenly.

  My nausea and nerves and disbelief abruptly worsen, mixing with alarm.

  “Where are you taking me?” I ask him.

  I try to ask it quietly that time.

  I have no idea if he hears me. He doesn’t answer.

  We pass another few blurred shapes, these ones sitting or lying down on the ground. Then the space opens up abruptly, and he slows.

  When he shifts my weight on his shoulder, I grip him tighter, in a panic. Then he’s bending down, depositing my feet back on the ground. I cling to him in confusion but he disentangles my arms and hands. I am still mesmerized by his light arms and legs, but I let him release me. His eyes shine at me in that dark space, diamond-like, a pale green-gold.

  “Stay there,” he says aloud. “Don’t move, Alyson.”

  His voice is a command.

  It never occurs to me to disobey it.

  I stand there, in the middle of that open space, watching him walk around the faint outline of shapes that stand in rows all around us. He looks over a number of them, and I stand there, panting, trying to decide what to do, fighting to think. I hear sirens again, somewhere in the distance. It occurs to me again that I’ve been hearing them for awhile.

  I’ve been so lost in that inverted, positive-to-negative world, I still can’t tell if those sirens have anything to do with us.

  Panting, staring around, clasping myself with my own arms as I fight back that deep-seated nausea, I try to decide if I should run.

  I can barely see, though. I can’t make sense of the landscape around me, the blurred shapes, the man’s crystal-clear outline…

  I look up at the sky, and gasp.

  Giant, winged creatures swim through the darkness overhead. Some look like whales, others dragons. I see one flap enormous wings, a mouth full of glass-like, glowing teeth. It trails a long, flicking, coiled tail, screaming silently into the night.

  The man grabs my arm again and I jump, letting out a little shriek.

  I jerk my eyes back down, towards him.

  I can practically see him frowning at me. Allie. Calm down.

  Again, it’s not a request. My vision flickers––dark to light, then back again.

  For an instant, I see him.

  Meaning, I see him as he really is. Mr. Monochrome. I am still with him. Somehow, the sheer reality of that manages to penetrate.

  “Come on,” he says, pulling insistently on my arm.

  Again, I don’t fight him. Following the tug of his fingers, I stumble over the asphalt, fighting to blink my eyes again, to see past that dark.

  The next thing I know, I am being pushed to sit.

  He has his hand on the back of my head, forcing me to bend my neck forward. I find myself guided into a seat; I realize I’m sitting in a car. Then something cold circles one of my wrists. He closes a door between us, then he is leaning down through the open window, tugging on my cinched wrist. I hear the rattle of metal, then he’s caught hold of my other hand.

  That same cold feeling cinches over the other wrist next.

  I try to move. My hands stop abruptly, only a few inches from the door. They are stopped by those metal rings around my wrists.

  It takes another second for that information to penetrate.

  While I stare down at my light bones and veins, and the faint outline of handcuffs around my wrists, he walks around the front of the car.

  It hits me again.

  He shot that man. In the diner. He killed someone.

  The man he killed struck me as dangerous––as bad, maybe. But he also seemed to have some connection to the cops. He had some connection to Seer Containment, too.

  Mr. Monochrome said he was a seer. He also wasn’t wearing a collar.

  That meant he was a terrorist.

  And now he has me.

  I hear the door open to my left. There is a creak of leather and the rustle of clothes and his weight hits the driver’s side seat, moving the car under me. I turn my head, panting, trying to see him, squinting and then blinking, but the dark persists. I see his crystal-like outline, the liquid glow of light in his veins, his mouth, cheekbones, even his hair.

  It hits me again that he really is a seer. He has to be one.

  He’s a seer, and he has me handcuffed to his car. I am full-blown panicking now. I can barely breathe. I am breathing too much.

  If the man notices, he doesn’t speak.

  I watch him bend down, feeling around for something. He feels above him then, moving things around. There is the sudden, sharp jangle of keys. He bends over the thing in front of him and I remember again that this is a car.

  He’s starting the car.

  He turns the engine over that very second.

  The engin
e rumbles to life. It’s a deep, heavy sound. Whatever kind of car this is, it has a big engine. Likely a V-8. It might even be one of the enhanced race cars they had nowadays, the ones that weren’t really street legal but were sometimes seen on the highways anyway.

  But if it has actual keys, it must be old.

  Nothing new had keys anymore.

  Fear runs through me again. “Where are you taking me?” I practically bark the words. I sound crazy to my own ears, terrified out of reason.

  There is another silence.

  I am still panting, fighting for calm, staring at him in the dark.

  I’m about to speak again, when he breaks the silence.

  “You’re going into shock,” he says, blunt. That deep, Germanic-sounding voice vibrates my chest along with the V-8 engine. “I’m going to have to knock you out.”

  His voice is so calm, I can’t comprehend his meaning at first.

  Then, abruptly, his words penetrate. My jaw hardens, my hands tightening into fists around the chain holding me to the door.

  “What?”

  He turns, looking at me. His eyes are sharp as cut glass.

  “I’m sorry, Alyson.”

  It’s the last thing I remember.

  5

  DRIVE

  I DIDN’T QUESTION the motion of the car at first.

  It was kind of soothing, even if I struggled finding a comfortable resting place for my arms. A bump in the road brought my eyes abruptly open. The sky through a dirty windshield showed the faint pink and gold of pre-dawn, reflected from a rising sun I couldn’t see.

  I’d missed the night somehow. All of it.

  Maybe that’s why it took me so long to remember anything about where I was now.

  The silhouette of a saint statue broke my view. It was glued to the dashboard above an old-fashioned FM radio with silver knobs.

  My eyes traveled left, meeting an angular profile framed by black hair matted to a pale neck. Almond-shaped eyes sat above high cheekbones, taking in the road. He had the beginnings of five o’clock shadow. Flecks of a familiar-looking brown substance stained his shirt. A lot more of it decorated his arm and shoulder, which bulged from a crude, homemade bandage.

  Feeling my stare, he turned. His eyes appeared cold, even in the morning sun.