Dragon_Bridge & Sword_The Final War

by JC Andrijeski

  I shoved that out of my mind, too.

  Realizing I was doing this the hard way, I took an aleimic snapshot of the drawing, then one with the image capture in my headset. The light one was so I’d have all of the imprints Feigran left on the paper, since I noticed he tended to leave fragments here and there on those segments that particularly interested him for whatever reason.

  Using the headset to overlay the image and manipulate it along with the maps, I folded up the original drawing Feigran gave me and stuffed it in my vest.

  “Do I want to know?” Dalejem asked from next to me.

  I didn’t answer directly but shared both the map and Feigran’s drawing with him via our headsets. I included the aleimic snapshot, too.

  Hell, he was here.

  I might as well use his light.

  Dalejem hadn’t been kidding when he said he’d shoulder the job of guarding Feigran personally. He now had the significantly less-muscular seer tethered to him via a retractable organic cord. I’d watched as Dalejem hooked the tether to a loop on his belt before he gave Feigran a hard look and tugged on it.

  “You’re with me,” he’d told the auburn-haired seer, a mild threat in his voice.

  Feigran only nodded, his light submissive.

  Weirdly, Feigran seemed to like Dalejem.

  I couldn’t help remembering Terian’s reaction to Dalejem’s pain in Dubai, and found myself hoping Feigran didn’t like Dalejem too much. I wasn’t super-keen on Dalejem taking over Varlan’s role out here, even if I didn’t have to see it.

  Dalejem gave me a hard look, his green eyes glass.

  I shrugged off his glare, then immediately changed the subject.

  “Where is NORAD exactly?” I said, flipping my headset back to binocular mode and adjusting it to study the side of the complex where Feigran marked the entrance. “From here, I mean. This isn’t close to any part of the expanded complex, is it? We’re still pretty far north of Colorado Springs from here. Like close to a hundred miles, correct?”

  Dalejem nodded. “Yes. Perhaps eighty miles, Esteemed Bridge.”

  I exhaled, frowning. I couldn’t feel a damned thing.

  According to my light the airport was completely deserted.

  I felt Dalejem agree.

  He let out a slow exhale when I continued to compare the image Feigran drew to the complex I could see through the binocs. I knew if Revik was here, he’d want to plan this out better. Knowing him, he’d have planned it out in minute detail back in Bangkok, before he ever left Asia.

  But I wasn’t Revik. And frankly, I didn’t have time.

  Whatever Revik told Shadow, whatever he did to try to prove his loyalty to get Menlim to back off me, Lily and Maygar, I already knew it wouldn’t work.

  Shadow wouldn’t back off. He never would.

  He’d tell Revik whatever he had to tell him until he’d corrupted his light enough that Revik believed anything he said. Then Menlim would send Revik after me himself.

  Once I was dead, he’d likely try to bring Lily and Maygar back to the fold. He’d want Cass back, and Feigran. He’d probably want Wreg. He might even want Jon, if he thought having Jon would help him control Wreg.

  But me? He’d never let me live.

  Revik was deluding himself if he thought otherwise.

  Fighting that out of my head, I exhaled.

  It didn’t stop the harder flush of pain from hitting my light. It crushed some less obvious part of me that time, something I’d been protecting maybe, ever since I woke up on that Bangkok roof. Whatever it was, I felt it in my heart. For those few seconds I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t feel anything else. I hadn’t even let myself think about Lily yet.

  Just Revik.

  Swallowing when my vision gradually returned, I found my eyes had blurred.

  When I glanced at Dalejem, he looked uncomfortable.

  I saw something else there, too. It was fleeting, there and gone, but I winced away from it––before I’d identified it even. For a few seconds, he just watched as I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. He didn’t avert his gaze, but his voice held less of an edge when he next spoke.

  “What are we doing here, sister?” he said, hands on his hips.

  I glanced at him, then back at the row of tent-like spikes making up the main terminal.

  “We’re going inside,” I told him.

  Without waiting for him to respond, I turned, walking to the SUV.

  Clicking off the binocs as I grabbed the edge of the door and pulled myself onto the ripped vinyl seat, I used the headset to start the car and waited, watching as Dalejem pushed Feigran into the car in front of him, using the back door on my right side. Dalejem then climbed in after him, walking up between the front seats to sit shotgun.

  In his case, that was pretty much literal, since he had a semi-organic and semi-automatic Benelli M4 stuck just inside the door.

  Squinting through the light slanting down from the sun roof, I raised a hand to shield my eyes and realized I vaguely recognized the weapon.

  “Is that Wreg’s?” I asked, putting the car into gear.

  Dalejem glanced down at the gun he balanced against the car door with his booted foot.

  “So?” he said, looking at me. “It didn’t have his name on it.”

  I let out a disbelieving snort, shaking my head.

  “You pick strange people to piss off, brother,” I said. “Wreg’s guns are like his children. I think you’d better wear the bullet proof jacket the next time we’re with them, brother… and maybe bring a lot of liquor as a peace offering. Not many of my people will be sympathetic if he takes a machete to your hands.”

  “You’re assuming we make it back at all,” he muttered, staring out the window.

  I lifted an eyebrow. “I never assume that.” Still thinking, I snorted. “I still wouldn’t be stupid enough to take one of brother Wreg’s favorite guns.”

  He looked at me directly that time.

  I didn’t return his gaze. I was taking the SUV down the low slope towards the plain between us and the airport.

  From Dalejem’s light, it felt like he might be about to say something more.

  He didn’t, though.

  Staring out over the wind-swept flats as I cranked up the engine, he didn’t change expression even as I drove hard over the rutted and rock-strewn flats, bouncing both of us in the air periodically as I floored it. In the bench seat behind us, I heard Feigran let out delighted shrieks every time I hit a particularly big bump or rock.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror, clicking softly even as a smile ghosted my lips.

  Fucking Feigran, man.

  “Why do you trust that piece of shit?” Dalejem said, his voice louder over the engine and the bump of the shocks and tires on rocks and ruts.

  I glanced over and saw Dalejem staring at me, his green eyes hard as stone. I could see the scrutiny there. It made me nervous for some reason, although I had no issue with the particular question he’d just asked.

  More and more, I got the feeling Dalejem was a lot better at hiding what he was thinking and feeling than he pretended. I suspected he also picked up on a lot more than he pretended. Maybe that should have made me nervous, but somehow, it didn’t.

  Even so, it was all the more reason to keep him closer than not.

  “What makes you think I do?” I said.

  I gripped the steering wheel with my hands, jerking it periodically to avoid larger debris. I glanced away from Dalejem’s face back to the windshield in time to swerve us around a larger rock than I wanted to risk going over, even with the higher undercarriage.

  Getting stuck out here would not be my idea of an acceptable op deviation.

  I’d only taken us out this way to avoid the ambush barricades on the highway.

  I still couldn’t feel a protection grid of any kind.

  Nothing in the Barrier. Nothing in the physical, either. No OBEs. No electrical activity at all that I could feel––and, being Elaerian, I
should have been able to pick up on anything like that if it existed out here.

  The lack of security might be evidence against Feigran’s visions––or it might not.

  From the satellite feeds, the planes were mostly gone about a month after the outbreak of C2-77. The fuel had to be long gone by now, given the absence of military protection. Whatever was left initially would have been stripped bare months ago.

  Food would be gone, even from the vending machines by now.

  From what I knew, Denver was hit hard.

  The few enclaves that made it past those first six months gunned down without mercy anyone stupid enough to attempt to breach their walls. Given that, who besides us would even be out here, investigating something that technically didn’t exist? And why call attention to something by covering it with high-grade security? Particularly if your main strategy for protection had been invisibility from the start?

  In other words, I still believed it might be here.

  The SUV met up with the main road and I gunned it, getting us down and then up the slight ditch and onto the asphalt going about sixty miles per hour. I’d calculated it so we rejoined the road just after the disjointed line of broken storage crates and abandoned truck cabs. Most of those, especially the crates, looked like they’d burned at one point. Through the binocs, I’d seen bullet holes, as well, and impact craters in the road.

  Whatever happened out here, it was long over now.

  Even so, I didn’t want to risk that someone might still be using those crates and smoked out cabs as barricades to jump unwary travelers. I kind of doubted it, all the way out here––for the same reason I doubted there was anything left to steal inside the terminal.

  I just didn’t see any reason to risk it.

  I cranked the wheel, turning us onto Peña Boulevard, now going closer to seventy.

  The back wheels skidded, but the thing cornered pretty well. I barely slowed as we fish-tailed briefly, then aimed for the arrival gate, since that brought us to the lower level of the terminal. I already knew what we wanted lived underground.

  I also knew from Feigran’s drawings that he’d ID’d the entrance on the west side, below a small security station.

  I heard Dalejem muttering again as we slid under the overpass and I accelerated in the shadow of the overhang.

  That time, I didn’t bother to look over at him.

  Instead I drove us right up to the entrance of the airport, as far west as I could go along the loop where cars used to come to pick up loved ones from business trips, trips to see grandma or visits home from school, return flights from vacation or Vegas.

  I shoved the ghosts of happy families out of my mind as I bumped the SUV up over the curb, driving directly through the blasted out glass doors and into the terminal. I parked us in the baggage claim area, by a conveyor surrounded by luggage someone opened with a knife, strewing the contents all over the stained carpet.

  I didn’t see any reason to get out of the car without cover.

  And yeah, if the SUV wasn’t here when we came back out, so be it.

  That was more or less the least of our worries. If we found what I came here to find, I’d be perfectly okay with calling the others in for backup and transport.

  I had a feeling it wouldn’t be that easy, though.

  22

  BENEATH, WHERE HE WOULD NOT GO

  THEY LIVE UNDERGROUND.

  In the dirt, sister, where he won’t go.

  In the dark, where he won’t wander.

  In the depths that he can’t know.

  I am waiting for you there, my sister.

  For I cannot do the rest alone.

  Mirror. Lover. Devil. Saint.

  Eater of Souls. Creator of portals.

  Breather of dreams. Birther of worlds.

  I will wait until the end of time, my beautiful, beautiful sister.

  For I cannot do the rest until you come home…

  THE WORDS ECHOED in my mind.

  I felt them in a deeper part of my light than when Feigran first spoke them to me. They wove in and out of the other thing I now felt, what grew increasingly loud in my light, the deeper we descended in the dark.

  I hadn’t heard the other voice, though.

  Not down here. Not since I woke up that morning.

  Sub-basement twenty-four now.

  Twenty-four. Christ.

  As an Elaerian, I had the ability to feel physical objects with my light. That meant I could feel the actual cement, metal, stone and earth of the tunnels around us, not just the aleimic imprints left on those things or any organics or semi-organic composites living inside the dead materials––which is all a regular seer would feel.

  I could see the actual staircase turning at precise right angles above and below us.

  I could also feel at least thirty more floors below the one where we stood now––which just blew my mind.

  Even with my Elaerian abilities, I couldn’t wrap my head around how big this space was. I also couldn’t stop wondering why I hadn’t felt any of it before we got past those blast doors under the security station in the basement of the terminal.

  I wondered how no one had ever discovered it. I also wondered how the hell it had been built in the first place, without anyone noticing.

  It was pitch black in here.

  No electronics hummed behind the walls. I hadn’t felt a single living thing in the staircase itself, not even any semi-organic metal or stone. I definitely hadn’t felt any full organics or full-sentients––not once since we started descending the stairs.

  And yeah, you’d never get Revik down here.

  Hell, I was having a claustrophobic reaction, and I’m not even particularly claustrophobic. Of course, I was never claustrophobic at all before I married Revik.

  They live underground. In the dirt, sister, where he won’t go.

  “You feel them too, sister?” Dalejem murmured from next to me.

  His voice was slightly out of breath as we continued to descend the cement stairs.

  I sent a pulse of acknowledgment, feeling that pain in my chest worsen.

  I could feel them. I wasn’t entirely convinced I would have felt them on my own, without Feigran there. I felt the other Elaerian’s light more entwined with mine than usual, especially at those higher levels of my aleimic structure. I wondered if he’d found some way to communicate that information to Dalejem too, or if I was doing that.

  Either way, I didn’t see a need to share with Dalejem my suspicions about Feigran’s light acting as a kind of underground antenna for the two of us. Dalejem already didn’t trust Feigran. If he thought the Rook led us down here and was manipulating us to feel the lights of other seers, he’d likely mutiny on me for real.

  And frankly, by that point, I was glad to have him––Dalejem, that is.

  I could feel the beings he’d referred to, however the information came to me.

  I could also feel that there was something really fucking wrong with them.

  They felt like seers. They had to be seers; yet, they didn’t feel like normal seers, or anything like Elaerian. The only thing I knew for certain was, there was a hell of a lot of them. More than we could handle, if they turned out to be hostile.

  Coming down here without a larger military group may have been a mistake.

  In the dark, I heard Dalejem snort.

  I didn’t slow my steps on the cement stairs.

  Dalejem moved fast, and seemingly without effort. His silent steps reminded me he’d been Adhipan once. He must have kept up his training under the Children of the Bridge.

  I’d thrown a shield over all three of our lights before we got that vault-like door open inside the supply closet of the security station. I’d gotten better at shielding in the past few months, as well, working on it almost as much as Revik had been, in part to help him.

  Even so, I knew I couldn’t count on us being invisible down here.

  “What is it you expect to do, exactly?” Dalejem
asked under his breath. “…when we get to the end of this maze, and find the piece of cheese?”

  I didn’t answer.

  And yet, he was right.

  We were also getting closer. I could feel it.

  Even as the thought passed through me, Feigran started to hum. I felt a flush of panic off Dalejem as the noise echoed in the stairway corridor. Since we walked so close to one another, I also felt Dalejem thinking he should have gagged him.

  “Shush!” he murmured at the Rook.

  Feigran made his humming softer, but didn’t stop it altogether.

  “Quiet, or I’ll silence you myself,” Dalejem warned, his voice still soft as a breath. “Quiet! Stop making that sound!”

  Feigran’s humming grew even softer, but he still didn’t stop.

  “Feigran,” I said. “Be silent. Now.”

  He stopped humming.

  The instant he did, he started sending pictures to me via the Barrier.

  They came fast––so fast they disoriented me. I barely glimpsed one before he flung another at me. As he went, the pace of the deluge continued to accelerate. They grew increasingly visceral, too, until I started to flinch at the more intense ones. Pain. The smell of urine. Unwashed bodies, scalpels cutting into flesh. Whimpering voices, chaos in light, screams in the dark. Drugs filtering down through intravenous tubes. Organic metal cages. Dirty water, maggots in the meat, bloody drains––

  Pain.

  A lot of fucking pain.

  More pain than I could handle.

  I fought to shield myself from it, to at least dial back the volume. I saw people screaming from inside shining green-metal cages, hanging on the bars like animals, screaming––

  “Figures he would listen to you,” I heard Dalejem grumble.

  It hit me that Feigran wasn’t sending the images to Dalejem, only to me.

  Without thinking, I opened my light, letting Dalejem see what I was seeing. He sucked in a light breath as I did, faltering in his steps for the first time since we’d left the basement landing.

  It only occurred to me after I’d done it that I maybe shouldn’t be sharing this, especially since I had no idea what it meant. I felt a swell of frustration at Revik at the thought, even as it occurred to me why I was being so open with Dalejem.