Dragon_Bridge & Sword_The Final War

by JC Andrijeski

  He didn’t have time for much of anything anymore.

  He fought Allie out of his light as he thought it, but a voice in the back of his mind told him exactly where that fear came from. He knew enough about his own light to know exactly how focused he was––on her, on his wife falling in love with another seer, on running out of time to save his marriage––on running out of time, period.

  He had to get out of here.

  He had to get the fuck out of here before he lost his family for real.

  43

  BEING LED

  REVIK FOUND THE entrance more easily than he thought he would.

  They had it hidden primarily through physical means, so knowing roughly where it was helped immensely.

  He sent up another silent pulse of gratitude to that unwilling––Charlie, he was pretty sure her name was, her nickname, at least––and the fact that she’d trusted him enough to tell him about this, even after she realized her mistake in assuming he already knew.

  He might never have found this on his own, certainly not as quickly as he had with her help. The lack of constructs here, or any kind of Barrier security, made it strangely easy to miss.

  He used his physical eyes to scan the area, staying out of the Barrier as he watched two armed guards linger by the lit entrance to the cave, smoking hiri as they talked quietly amongst themselves.

  Even in the dark, he could see their armor-clad arms resting on automatic rifles they wore on straps around their shoulders.

  The protection appeared to be physical, too.

  Revik looked for cameras hidden anywhere in the row of trees where he stood. He saw none. He knew they might be hidden better than he could ferret them out, but suspected they might just not have any, for the same reason they kept the rest of the security minimal.

  Given the constraints they were under in terms of electricity, he would have noticed a shift in the power grid if some got routed to that part of the compound.

  His eyes returned to the cave’s entrance, which from a distance struck him as a strange cross between old and new––like a stone tomb mixed with the organics labs he’d worked with Terian.

  Past the edge of the yellow-gold light shimmering from the opening, a long, probably-organic door with an iron-looking ring lay on soft earth.

  That earth looked like it had been recently dug up.

  The patch of disturbed ground spanned about ten meters, shielded from the footpath and field by the horse barn and the high outer wall, as well as the trees and bushes lining this edge of the paddock, the same area where Revik now stood.

  He could feel the OBE field over the opening.

  Its energy imprint blended with the OBE on the wall behind it; even so, he felt the charge on his skin and light, even without using the Barrier or his aleimi to scan for it deliberately.

  Which meant the levels on that thing had to be cranked through the fucking roof.

  Thinking about that, he wondered about the power issue again. Maybe he’d been wrong about the cameras. Maybe they brought in their own power source for this.

  His options were limited, regardless.

  He wasn’t carrying so much as a pocket knife.

  They wouldn’t let him conceal-carry inside the City, or anywhere really. That had been part of Menlim’s stipulation while he operated outside a collar or other sight restraint. Physical take-downs weren’t a good option, even if he managed to obtain a gun in the process.

  Anyway, he knew just the ordinary security construct would pick up unauthorized gunfire in a heartbeat. That would likely set off an alarm that would pull military and guard personnel from this whole half of the compound.

  Unless he left this for a night, he really saw only one option.

  He wasn’t going to leave it for a night.

  He had a strange feeling he’d come too far in this already. Meaning, if he left now, the security measures he could see would have changed entirely by tomorrow.

  He tried not to think about the implications of that.

  Stepping out from behind the line of tall trees, he straightened to his full height, making his light visible in the immediate area. He did the latter not by dropping his shield, but by expanding it outward to encompass the guard station and the far wall, which should have made him visible to the guards, but no one else.

  Another trick Balidor taught him.

  Because he didn’t make a big deal of showing himself, the guards didn’t even see him at first. By the time they swung around, aiming rifles at him, he was already at the edge of the ring of light emitted by the cave’s opening.

  Once they faced him, the lights on their uniforms ignited, washing him out and half-blinding him with semi-organic sentry torches.

  “Hey.” Holding up a hand to shield his eyes, he let his voice come out in more of a slur. “Do you mind?”

  “Halt!” the first one said. His hiri now lay smoldering at his feet. “Identify yourself.”

  Revik kept his voice entirely calm, but still drunk-sounding. He also continued to walk, his steps and light casual but not particularly graceful.

  “Dehgoies Revik. Illustrious Sword. Syrimne d’Gaos.” Pulling his second hand out of his pocket, he held both up in mock-surrender. “First Lieutenant under Menlim of Purestred. Last I knew.”

  He chuckled at the nearest seer.

  Still walking more clumsily than usual, he let the alcohol be visible on his light as he stepped into the circle of physical illumination glowing out from the opening. Once the security torches flicked off, he lowered his hands, meeting the gaze of the guard closest to him.

  He waited until he saw recognition in the male’s gaze before he continued.

  He didn’t miss the flicker of disgust there.

  “Do one of you have a hiri I could smoke, brother? Or do you really need me to go get my formal ID just for that?”

  Revik saw the two guards glance at one another, then back at him.

  Neither lowered their guns.

  “This area is restricted, sir,” the guard closest to Revik said. His voice slid into a formal cadence, but remained wary. “Halt, brother!” he said, raising the gun higher, his voice sharper when Revik continued to walk.

  Revik slid smoothly to a stop, keeping his expression and light calm.

  “What?” he said. “Kind of jumpy tonight, aren’t you, brothers?”

  The second guard’s voice sounded only marginally less hostile than the first’s. “I’m afraid you cannot be here, sir. I am sorry, but you must turn around.”

  “Why?” Revik glanced around, frowning in puzzlement. “It’s a fucking field. We’re guarding grass now?”

  The two of them looked at one another. Revik felt exasperation off them both, like they thought maybe Revik was soft in the head.

  He walked closer to them once more, and the first one aimed the gun back at his face.

  “Brother,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’m not going to tell you again.”

  “You would shoot me?” Revik let amusement touch the alcohol in his voice. “For running out of hiri? That strikes me as extreme.”

  He was close enough now that he could feel their lights without reaching out.

  He looked from one to the other, took the specs in a mere snapshot.

  “Brother,” the second guard said, exhaling in a clicking sigh without lowering the gun. “We’re going to have to ask you to––”

  Igniting the telekinesis, Revik knocked them both out.

  He did it fast. It was crude, but took less than a second.

  His light flared into the construct in a single pulse. He yanked it back the instant it had, before he’d even completed the motion to get them on the ground.

  Then he stood there, heart pounding.

  He held his breath, fighting to control his light.

  Waiting.

  He could hear nothing. No doors opened, no alarms ignited in other parts of the compound. Most Barrier shields had controls built in to prevent the alarm f
rom being set off by a random anomaly from the Barrier itself, since those were fairly frequent.

  Flares from Barrier beings. Shifts that were more global in nature than individual.

  Revik had hoped to hide within the cracks of those controls.

  If he hadn’t been successful in that, he had minutes.

  Possibly seconds.

  Then again, if he hadn’t been fast enough, he wouldn’t know until they were upon him. Any additional security protocols that might pick him up in the Barrier lived somewhere outside his hearing. He doubted he would miss the physical cues of others approaching, given how sound traveled out here, but really, that was a kiss in the dark, too.

  Being fast was all he had, really.

  Walking to the first guard, he bent his knees, lowering his weight. Holding his fingers under the nose of the first one, he listened.

  Letting out a low curse, he laid those same fingers to the man’s throat.

  He cursed again, softer that time.

  He’d killed him. It hadn’t been his intention, but he’d known it was a risk. Being that fast also meant being a hell of a lot less precise.

  Nothing he could do about it now.

  Muttering a brief prayer for the seer’s light, he shoved a hand into the guard’s jacket, feeling for the gun harness he’d seen pushing out his vest on the left side. Seconds later, he took out a handgun. American made. A Desert Eagle, but with some organic enhancements.

  No DNA trigger at least.

  Clicking the release, he checked the magazine, then pressed the full cartridge back in, flipping the safety before he shoved the gun into the back of his belt.

  He felt over the guard’s head, finding his headset.

  Fitting it over his ear, he used his light––carefully that time––to try and determine the sequence to disengage the OBE.

  First, though, he disengaged the network controls over the gun. The last thing he needed was someone turning the dammed thing off long-distance.

  Or worse, making it self-destruct in his fucking hand.

  A few minutes later, he had the secondary sequence for the OBE field. It took longer than it should have, mostly because he couldn’t use his light very well and expect to remain unseen, but also because he was still feeling the effects of the alcohol.

  By the time he finished, he was starting to worry about time for real.

  Someone would definitely notice the downed guards.

  They would noticed the OBE being switched off as well, but the guards bothered him more. Even if their being conscious wasn’t tied to a specific alarm––and it might not be if they were trying to keep people from knowing this was here––Menlim would still have someone watching the entry passively on surveillance.

  Since he still hadn’t seen any stationary cameras, not even through the headset, he guessed it was likely flyers on a regular patrol circuit.

  Which gave him ten minutes. Maybe.

  Once he got the OBE down, he would have to move his ass.

  Checking the second guard’s pulse, he was vaguely relieved to find that one alive. He knew both would be needed to disengage the OBE, so he took the headset off that one, too, and fought to imitate the seer’s light to trick the mechanism into engaging with him.

  That time, he managed it a lot faster.

  When he got the command to go through, he heard a soft, static-like crackling noise behind him, right before the OBE went dark.

  Rising to his feet, he left the security link with the guard’s body, knowing it would have a GPS tracker on it. He walked straight towards the opening, hesitating in front of the line where the OBE recently stood.

  He could feel it gone.

  Moreover, he could see it; the gold-tinted light brightened marginally without the dense field in front of it. Even so, his mind flashed to Garensche, seeing the big seer cut in half on the sidewalk outside Gossett Tower in New York.

  Taking a breath, he crossed the line without incident and exhaled, moving faster, until he found himself at the entrance to that yellow-lit opening.

  Leaning over the edge, he looked down, frowning at the steep steps.

  He could feel the tunnel stretching down well past where he could see. He barely glimpsed what must have been the first landing, a good forty meters below where he stood.

  “Fuck,” he muttered.

  Normally, no amount of alcohol would have gotten him down there.

  He didn’t have the luxury to let his hang-ups slow him down, though.

  Clenching his jaw, he took the steps two at a time, moving fast.

  He kept his mind utterly blank, now as much for the feeling of the walls closing in on him as to move unseen in the Barrier.

  He wasn’t positive they wouldn’t shoot him for being down here, but he was betting they wouldn’t. He knew a range of other things existed that they might do to him instead––including use it as an excuse to hook him to wires and try to break down his mind for real.

  He didn’t want to think about that, though.

  He’d known that was a risk long before he washed up on that pier in Hong Kong.

  He managed to get down four of those steep, endless-feeling flights of stairs before the claustrophobia started to creep past where he was able to ignore it effectively.

  By the time he got down two more, he found himself struggling to breathe, to even think clearly. He’d also slowed down.

  He forced his legs forward anyway, clicking into a part of his light that nearly detached him from his body altogether. He knew it would slow his reaction times––possibly more than was safe––but he also knew he’d never make it down if he didn’t.

  His claustrophobia had gotten worse in the last few years, not better.

  He’d talked to Balidor about it––and Allie.

  Both seemed to think it likely stemmed from regaining the specifics of his memories that caused the claustrophobia in the first place. Allie thought engaging Menlim’s construct in New York hadn’t helped him much, either.

  Whatever the cause, what used to be a minor annoyance had turned into an actual operational limitation. Which didn’t thrill him, for a lot of reasons.

  Allie promised she would help him with that.

  The thought tightened his throat.

  He couldn’t think about her right now.

  He made it down two more of those long flights of stairs before his light being detached no longer kept the claustrophobia at bay.

  By then, he felt his chest compressing; he was sweating too much for the level of exertion. He was also breathing too much. He could tell he was losing the ability to keep his thoughts rational––although the fact he could tell that much told him the distancing technique with his light was helping him to keep his mind relatively clear, even now.

  He imagined he felt people following him now.

  That part, he felt less sure about. It could have been the claustrophobia speaking, or some higher part of his light.

  He did feel an increasing pressure to get inside this thing somehow.

  He was also beginning to think he wouldn’t be able to reach the bottom.

  At the seventh landing, he found his first door.

  It came up on him out of no where. It wasn’t until he stood right in front of that part of the wall that he found himself staring at a faint outline set in the stone wall. His Elaerian light confirmed it as a door when he did a brief snapshot-check from his higher structures.

  He stayed out of his light otherwise, so couldn’t feel anything on the other side.

  He felt no organics in the door itself. The metal felt dead. Given how strange this whole structure was, if only in terms of the depth and sheer size he sensed, he didn’t feel confident he wasn’t missing things, though.

  He felt no construct down here, either, but he knew he couldn’t trust the more passive areas of his sight for that. He couldn’t do a directed scan without risking being seen, so he laid a hand on the door cautiously, trying to decide if he should risk anot
her flare from the telekinesis to get it open. Feeling that pressure again in the higher areas of his light, he made up his mind.

  This would all be for nothing if he didn’t manage to get out of the damned stairwell.

  Sliding into the telekinetic structures, he activated them the instant his light coiled into the mechanism of the door.

  Like with the guards, he cracked it crudely, retracting his light in the same millisecond.

  He’d done it faster than with the guards, but still found his heart beating loudly in his chest by the time his vision cleared and his hand fell on the outer door.

  The panel had already separated from the frame.

  The crack emitted a sliver of brighter gold-tinged light.

  Revik noticed only then that the gold light appeared to come from the very walls and floor of the staircase. So something organic lived here after all––just so low-level in aleimic structure that Revik’s light couldn’t pick it up as a living being without reaching out.

  That, or it was so completely foreign to his light, he didn’t know how to sense it.

  The thought unnerved him, in part because it felt more true.

  Taking a deep breath, he shoved the panel inward.

  He followed with his body when no alarms went off, and when no secondary security measures shot at him or tried to sever his arm.

  Pushing the panel closed behind him, he remained by the door once inside.

  That wasn’t all caution.

  Most of it was shock at the room itself.

  He stared up, breathing harder as he looked around.

  A much higher ceiling than he’d expected met his eyes, arcing up so high it distorted his sense of perception. He found himself calculating that height, trying to quantify it in some way. The closest he came was guessing it took up roughly two of those steep flights of stairs he’d just descended––an almost unbelievable height, given where he was.

  The sheer feat of engineering alone brought awe to his light.

  He focused on the contents of the room itself, taking in the enormous, pale gold and green vats that stretched in over a dozen perspective-altering rows in front of him and to each side.