Caine turned towards the sound, but too late. The slowed-down vision of the Barrier allowed him to witness the last shot, almost as an abstraction.
It didn’t allow him to get out of the way.
Smoke came from the gun’s end, the hand jerked, and then…
Panicked yells fill the bunker.
Caine is somehow on the floor.
He fights to breathe, but he’s got a frog in his throat. He tries to clear it, chokes. He hears them, hears the shots echo in his ears well after the fact, but really all he sees is the towel, the blank look on the man’s face, the strange clarity in his eyes.
Caine stares at the Oval Office ceiling, wonders that he felt no warning from the Barrier. He breathes in labored inhales and stuck exhales, breathing as if through water. He hears a struggle, the breaking of glass, but that’s far away, too. He wonders how anyone could have gotten past his security, that of the Pyramid more than that of the human compound, although the latter is not inconsiderable, either.
Then he remembers.
Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong with the Pyramid.
Liego disappeared, and then––
Ethan is there. Ethan kneels heavily, still clutching his own side.
Ethan Wellington, Harvard graduate and decorated soldier, is an entity almost separate of Terian in Caine’s mind. Their wives are best friends. Their kids go to the same school. They vacation together, stood up at one another’s weddings. As Ethan crouches next to him, Galaith and Caine bleed over as well; for an instant, he believes his friend is there to help him.
Then he sees the gleam in Ethan’s eyes, the yellow glow behind brown irises, threads of those other fragments woven into the stable facade of his friend from Massachusetts.
The Pyramid shudders in those eyes.
The threads cross.
Caine feels grief. Fewer bodies exist in which Terian can hide. Fragments of his aleimi crystallized into darker stains weave in with the rest, looking through the same amber irises. Caine knows insanity lives there. He feels responsible.
Ethan leans closer. Anyone watching would see a concerned colleague reassuring his mortally-wounded friend.
“We may indeed prove to be the inferior race,” he breathes to Caine. “…But at least we can shoot straight.”
Gazing up at the dome of the Oval Office ceiling, Galaith chuckles, in spite of himself.
Emotion overcomes him, brings tears to his eyes.
“Feigran,” he chokes through fluid. “Forgive me.”
He can no longer see the Oval Office.
Lying on the grass, he gazes up at dense clouds. He is surprised when an opening presents itself there, where for the barest instant, he sees the flames of a blue-white sun. But the sun does not brighten his eyes for very long.
Through that same gap, a glint of asteroids beckon, cold but beautiful. Below, in a room filled with humans, the body Galaith used in this very long life finally gives out.
As it does, the Thousand roll over, claiming him for their own.
I FEEL HALDREN expel his last breath.
A flurry of lines and pulleys unravel as he does, leaving with what remains of him. I watch the Dreng gather up those fragments. They pull him into the cold, flaming center of their silver clouds, claiming him as one of their own. I watch his aleimi––or soul, or whatever is left of him now––disappear into those dense, metallic strands as they take it away.
I am shocked by a sharp flicker of grief.
But I cannot dwell on that for long.
His absence leaves a hole at the top of the Pyramid.
The structure loses its silver sheen as the cold of the Dreng’s light evaporates. The giant beings from the silver clouds disappear like inhaled smoke from the physical world, leaving an oddly full silence.
I send up a flare.
I don’t have long to wait. Vash and his seers: Yerin, Jalar, Mutkar, Fley, Maya, Itru, Tarsi, Inde, Argo, Jet, Anale, Keeley, Maygar, Naomi, Hondo, Dorje, Tan, Samantha, Inge, Derek, Ullysa, Mika, Chinja, Alex, Garensche, Tenzi, Cohen… they all come. They come separately and together. They come with countless lights I don’t know, faces I’ve never seen in outside.
Late to the party, Revik joins us, too.
He is battered, beaten up, but he is here.
They greet me and one another, lights interwoven, combining and recombining in different patterns, creating something new.
I flash the plan, the plan they created, and we unite in concert.
A single goal. A single vision.
Human lights shine with us, too: Jon, Cass, Jaden, Sasquatch, Frankie, Angeline, Sarah, Nick, the man at the toll booth on the way into Canada, the couple who stopped in Vancouver because they were worried Revik would hurt me, the little boy whose bread I stole in Seattle. The people on the Royal Faire cruise ship. My Aunt Carol. My uncles and cousins.
My mom and dad.
Feeling them all there together brings a flash of hope.
Then, in another flash, we disperse.
51
LOST SOULS
“NO!” TERIAN SCREAMS.
He watches the receding cloud of the Dreng. He realizes the danger too late. He feels the shift below his feet, and struggles to counteract, to weave himself into the void above.
“NO! NO! NO!”
Out of nowhere, seers surround him.
These aren’t the seers of the Rooks. These wield a sharp, white, painful light, one that burns everything in its path, everything it touches, ripping through strands and connections that hang dead and lifeless, temporarily inert without the Dreng.
And not just seers… he feels humans among his attackers.
The Pyramid fights to reform, to pull him up and out, to align him with the top spot, but the murderers intervene, again and again, ripping apart threads each time they touch his light, killing or disconnecting more and more infiltrators from the structure below.
He feels her. She laughs at the carnage.
Laughs.
Hatred rises in him, a crushing need to kill, even as the last whispers of light connecting him to the Dreng’s clouds snap and fray.
The Pyramid teeters.
Pieces unlock, above and below. Terian hears it. He feels it as cracks build momentum, as fissures move from segment to segment, tearing through now-dark structures, one by one. More and more of them fall, breaking apart like compressed ash, until he can only stand there and watch, unable to believe what he is witnessing.
Thrown clear, Rooks scatter like so many rik-jum cards, ripped from their moorings like birds thrown from straw nests. Light from the feeding grounds disperses, dumping power from the Pyramid’s base.
The seers of the Rooks begin to panic.
Those still hooked into the network begin feeding off one another, killing one another for light. Terian watches in horror as more pieces fall, crushing panicking seers, tearing abilities and knowledge from the communal pools. Lifetimes’ worth of accumulated structures crumble to dust, no longer able to hold to the shared mind of the Pyramid––utterly useless without it.
Terian’s own structures begin to flicker, too, then to crack, dimming more as the pools unravel. He feels it as a drop in power so severe that at first he thinks he is dying.
Then, it gets worse. He feels the Pyramid detach.
It breaks away, Headless.
Terian feels her again. She laughs happily above that whispering dark, and he hates her for it. He hates her for the sheer joy he feels in her light.
He screams into the reaches of the Barrier, calling the Dreng back.
It is too late.
The gap between the silvery clouds and the creation stretches too long.
The Dreng are nowhere to be found.
I SPIN THROUGH a weave of multicolored light, laughing without knowing why, tears flowing down my light face. I have never been so happy. Light dismantles the Pyramid while I watch, tearing it from its broken moorings.
Souls disperse like leav
es freed by a warm breeze.
I feel humans on different continents blink, come awake.
Even in their pain, their innocence brings up so much feeling in me, I laugh again, unable to help it. I can find no other way to express the sheer joy I feel. Light pours from the Barrier itself, a cleansing torrent that blasts away the dusty, broken remnants of the Dreng’s network.
The lynchpin pulled, I have only to watch.
It is the break in the clouds. It is sunrise. Light without annihilation.
Then, I feel something else.
Allie, he says, sharp. It’s time to go. We’re in danger.
I open my eyes, fighting to see through the light––
…AND FOUND MYSELF lying on something hard that jutted into my back. I was in a dust-filled space, colored only by light from a small, square window with rose-tinted glass.
I looked around, fighting to get my bearings.
Revik’s long body lay next to mine. A low boom trembled the floor beneath my back. It brought down dust, and I heard coughing around me, some male and some female. I saw a broken lamp swinging from the ceiling above, and realized I lay in a stairwell.
Voices grew audible above.
I heard Maygar first. “Well, we can’t stay here!”
“You heard what Eddard said,” Jon snapped. “The next floor is completely blocked. We’ll have to…” Jon held a gun when his eyes swiveled to my face, then widened. He nearly dropped the gun. “Allie. Jesus! You’re awake!”
I looked over at Revik, whose chest rose and fell as he lay on his side on the same wooden steps as me. His eyelids flickered, enough that I hoped he was half-conscious, at least. I fought to sit up, to force myself upright, when I got hit with a sudden rush of dizziness.
Before I could fall, arms slid around my waist, catching me.
I glanced up, surprised to see Maygar.
“You’re back,” he muttered. He held me against his shoulder. Plaster drifted down from the ceiling as the building shook, dusting his hair. Maygar looked up as another booming sound rattled the windows.
“Is Cass okay?” I said. “Where’s Cass?”
Her voice rose, shaky. “I’m here.” I saw her gripping her own shoulder, leaning against the stair’s handrail as she peered down at me. “What are we going to do?”
Maygar’s voice shifted to the tone of a military report.
His words were directed at me, I realized.
“They’re blowing up entrances and exits,” he said. “I’ve counted at least twenty inside, most of them on the floor directly below. I can’t feel any on the floor above us yet, but it’s only a matter of time. They’ve got seers with them, and the elevators are all down, as well as everything in the building fitted with organics. They’ve got trank guns too, and gas.”
Maygar grunted, motioning his head towards Revik.
“Rook-boy taught them well,” he added sourly. “Eddard was trying to get us out through some kind of underground tunnel, something Dehgoies told him about before you two went under, but now the stairwell’s blocked. Eddard says the tunnel’s not on any of the plans, but we don’t have enough weapons to get through. They could gas us at any minute. These two…” He nodded at Jon and Cass. “…Made us carry you both. It slowed us down too much.”
I smiled at him, shaking my head. “You want me to feel sorry for you because my friends wouldn’t leave me behind?”
His eyes flickered, once. “I wouldn’t have left you,” he retorted.
“Allie!” Cass said. “We have to get out of here!”
I looked at Revik. Remembering Terian’s scream of rage, I clutched his arm, sliding into his light to see how he was. He was weak as hell, but most of his aleimi had returned to his body. The pressure built behind my eyes as I felt Terian searching for us both.
Cass was right. We didn’t have much time.
“Get him up.” I clicked my fingers in Maygar’s face. “Now, Maygar! And wake him up more. He’s still in the Barrier. Give him some of your light.”
Maygar let go of me and crouched over Revik.
After shaking him once, he slapped his face, harder than absolutely necessary, I thought, but it seemed to do the trick. Once Revik’s eyes were open, Maygar grabbed his other arm, grunting as he hoisted him upright. He slid a shoulder under the taller seer’s arm, motioning for Jon to help him by supporting his other side.
Then I saw Maygar’s expression turn puzzled. He looked back at me.
“Something’s different. It feels like chaos. Like—”
“I know.” I studied his eyes, startled by his seeming unawareness of what had occurred. He didn’t seem to remember what we’d done to the Pyramid at all. “We have a window,” I told him, keeping my explanation short. “From the Rooks, at least. I don’t know for how long. And I don’t know exactly how it’ll affect them.”
“What about the barricades?” Jon said.
“And those soldiers on the stairs?” Cass said.
I looked around at all of them, hesitating. “Yeah. Okay. Maygar and I are going to need your help. You’re going to get tired. If it gets too bad, tell us, okay? We’ll lay off.”
“Allie?” Cass said. “Lay off what?”
I met her eyes. “We’re going to be draining you. Taking your light. As soon as things start. I’ll take as much as you can possibly spare. Don’t ask me to stop unless you’re desperate. The main thing is going to be speed. Once we get closer to their humans, I’ll switch to draining them.” I looked up the stairs at Eddard. “Those charges Revik mentioned wouldn’t hurt either. The more we can distract them, the easier it will be to knock them out before they start firing…”
I trailed when Eddard held up a black bag. He shook it, to show me it was empty, then lifted some kind of hand-held remote device.
Getting the gist, I nodded, glancing around at the others.
I considered saying something else. Something encouraging, maybe, something inspiring or leader-like. Seeing the glazed looks I got in return, it struck me that we didn’t have time for that, either. I motioned for Maygar and Jon to follow with Revik, even as another booming sound brought dust sifting through the floor above.
Already, I can barely see for the light in my eyes.
“Stay behind us,” I hear myself say to the humans.
I feel Revik react, reaching for me, but only just.
THE FIRST EXPLOSION rocked the whole of the penthouse apartment, raining debris down on the crowd of onlookers standing in the street below.
Windows shattered. Car alarms went off as chunks of metal, plaster, paper, fabric, bits of wood furniture and wainscoting along with broken appliances, powdered glass and paint showered onto the street alongside the pieces of helicopter and smashed up cars that had been moved to the side to help reinforce roadblocks.
Military Intelligence, Section 5 senior agent, Ronald Clement, spilled his coffee over the front of his shirt when the windows blew, ducking down behind a military van.
He touched his earpiece.
He also turned his head. His eyes found his partner, Agent Henry George, first.
“What in God’s name was that?” he shouted. “I thought we had them trapped in the stairwell?”
Henry pointed to the penthouse, as if the smoke billowing out the top floor windows was explanation enough.
Annoyed, Clement tapped his headset pointedly. He felt the other agent click over, and immediately began to speak. “Henry? What happened?”
“Dunno. Where’s the head Yank? That’s their people, right?”
Another explosion blew out a set of windows on the penthouse floor.
Clement ducked, then watched in disbelief as furniture rained down, including what looked like a four-foot head from a Buddha statue. It caved in the front of a police car as it landed, crushing windshield and bonnet neatly into the asphalt.
Clement barely had time to be grateful no one sat inside when the muffled sound of gunshots grew audible once more. Automatic rifles.
“Director Raven?” Henry said.
“…I don’t understand it, ma’am,” Clement heard the SCARB agent saying to her. “Our people… half of them just collapsed. They won’t fight. The other half are completely out of control. They won’t listen to orders. Some even started shooting one another…”
The woman took a drink of her high-end coffee, her face unperturbed. “Gas the building with cyanide. If that doesn’t work, we’ll nuke the damned thing.”
Henry and Clement gaped at her, then at one another.
Even the SCARB agent looked confused. “Sir?”
“Kill them,” she snapped. “Do you hear me? This is no time to play footsie with her, not after what that bitch has done! Kill all of them!”
The man wearing the SCARB uniform saluted. Right before he turned to walk away, his face seemed to crumple strangely, turning almost childlike.
“How did this happen?” he said. “What will we do, now that we no longer have—”
“Pull yourself together, Agent,” she hissed. “Or you’ll join her.”
“Director Raven?” Henry said, louder.
Clement gave Henry an irritated look, mainly for interrupting his eavesdropping.
The woman, Raven-something––or perhaps something-Raven, Clement wasn’t sure––turned. Her blue eyes glinted, shockingly light in an Asian-featured face. She stood taller than Clement remembered, at least an inch taller than he did. She wore her hair long, unlike any other breed of agent Clement could recall. It hung in a dark curtain around her porcelain-colored face, jet black in color, sleek and straight.
Her high cheekbones and almond eyes hinted at her seer blood, but apart from her height, she could have been human. A really stunning, beautifully put-together human.
Rook (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #1): Bridge & Sword World Page 48