Bridge_Bridge & Sword_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

  “Look. Wreg.” He paused, gathering his thoughts as he stared out the window.

  Outside, a seagull winged by, a dirty white streak gliding on the breeze.

  The cloud cover had grown dense again, but without satellite reports, Jon had no idea if that signaled a storm, or the more historical San Francisco clouds that could linger for days without a drop of actual rain. The air didn’t smell as much like smoke today, at least.

  He felt Maygar trying to push him out of his light again, and frowned.

  “What?” Wreg said, jerking Jon’s eyes away from that gray view. “Look, what? Are you going to pretend you haven’t noticed how fucking weird that whole thing is, with Nenz and your sister and––”

  “I’m not talking about this any more,” Jon cut in, giving him a warning look. “I’m going with Revik. It’s a done deal. I don’t even know why it would surprise you, given what’s been going on. If you’d think about it for even one minute––”

  “Are you fucking him, Jon?” Wreg said, cutting him off. “Nenz.”

  Jon froze, staring at Wreg, in spite of himself.

  He saw Wreg’s eyes brighten in that pause. Barely brighten, the faintest extra sheen over those near-black irises, but Jon couldn’t help but notice, couldn’t tear his eyes off Wreg’s face once he had.

  “…Because I’m not the only one who’s wondered,” Wreg added.

  His voice sounded thicker that time, less coherent, and Jon winced, pulling away from the emotion he felt emanating off the other man.

  “No,” Jon said. “Jesus. I’m not fucking Revik.”

  Wreg frowned at him, his eyes openly skeptical, and Jon clicked at him angrily. He saw Wreg attempt to shake it off, even as his voice hardened.

  “This is a suicide run,” Wreg accused him coldly. “For both of you. He’ll let anyone die to get that bitch who destroyed his wife… who stole his child. He won’t so much as blink if one of those people happens to be you. He won’t give a damn about you, about me, even about how the Bridge would feel, if she were truly here.”

  When Jon turned away, frowning, Wreg’s voice sharpened.

  “…Even if you are fucking him, Jon, or sucking his cock when he asks, or whatever the hell is going on with the two of you… he won’t care. You know this. I know you know this. I just don’t understand why you’re letting him drag you into it anyway. You must know he only wants you there to use you for your connection to Cass.”

  Jon shrugged off the other man’s words, feeling his jaw harden.

  “So what? What makes you think I’m not okay with that, Wreg?”

  “You want to die,” Wreg accused, his voice colder. “You’ve wanted to die ever since we got here, Jon. Before that. In those damned sewers. On the plane ride from Langley. You’d rather blame yourself for how they used you. You’d rather do that than feel anything about what happened to your sister. You’d rather die than feel that. Or risk that it could happen again.”

  Jon shook his head, clicking. “You’re over-thinking this, Wreg.”

  “Bullshit! Everything we do now matters! Everything!”

  “Jesus. Drama much?” Jon said.

  “You are a fucking commander, Jon,” Wreg growled, smacking the wall with one hand. “You are the first name on the human Displacement List… or had you forgotten that, too?”

  When Jon only clicked at him again, Wreg raised his voice, putting light into his words.

  “You do not have the luxury for this emotional self-flagellation, Jon! You are too important to be killed off as part of the Sword’s personal vendetta. Even if it feels like some kind of catharsis for both of you, you cannot do it. The humans need you. Or are you too selfish to give a damn about them, either?”

  Jon turned, glaring at him directly for the first time. “I’m going to New York. The humans are there, Wreg! Not here!”

  “Bullshit.” Wreg’s jaw hardened. “You are going with Nenz. You don’t care about them. Do not pretend that you do. They have not crossed your mind once in this.”

  Jon started to answer him, then fell silent, feeling his fingers curl into fists before he could stop them.

  But he couldn’t feel anything about Wreg’s words, not really.

  All he could feel was a desire for the other seer to shut the fuck up, to get out of there. Anger seethed through his light, but his heart felt strangely closed off, distant from the other man in a way he wouldn’t have been able to imagine, even a few months ago.

  It made it difficult to even look at Wreg’s face.

  “I’m sorry, Wreg,” he said finally, exhaling a forced breath. “I really am. I know you don’t like this, but I’m not going to change my mind.”

  “And if it kills me?” Wreg said. “If I die, in your mission to purge yourself? Is that an acceptable outcome to you now, too, you goddamned little pup? Or has it not occurred to you yet that such a thing is possible, given who we are to one another…?” Wreg’s voice grew colder, even as he took a step closer to Jon. “Or should I say who we were to one another? Given that Nenz now has you by the dick?”

  Jon felt his jaw harden more.

  Shoving the black duffle bag backwards on the Victorian armchair so he could sit on the edge, Jon lowered his weight to finish buckling his boots, pushing down the organic snaps to lock them into place around his calves and ankles once he had his heels settled.

  He felt Wreg’s eyes on him, and his light, but all he could do was shield from both.

  He couldn’t lie to himself about one thing, anyway.

  As far as he was concerned, he couldn’t get out of San Francisco fast enough.

  Wreg gave a humorless laugh, but all Jon heard in it was anger.

  “Yeah,” the muscular seer said. “Fuck you, too… brother.”

  Jon finished the second boot, and rose to his feet.

  “Take care of Allie, Wreg,” Jon said, hating the tonelessness of his voice, but unable to do anything about that, either. He didn’t look up, or open his light. “I’ll come back if I can. I promise I will.”

  “Yeah.”

  Wreg seemed about to say more, then didn’t.

  The silence grew thick as Jon glanced around the room, trying to distract himself even as he tried to think through anything he might have forgotten.

  When that silence continued, however, he couldn’t help himself.

  He looked at Wreg.

  Wreg’s obsidian eyes met his, unflinching. Disbelief stood there. Disbelief and what might have been shock, a kind of lost expression––none of which managed to mask the crippling hurt Jon could both feel and see under that more intense veneer of anger.

  Jon had never seen the seer look like that before. The expression there hit at him, nearly cracking the shield he’d thrown over his light.

  Until Jon shoved that away, too.

  “Good luck, my brother,” he murmured, not looking up again.

  Hooking his hands through the straps of the carry-on bag, Jon slung it over his shoulder. He turned his back on the other man, reaching for the antique, porcelain door handle and twisting it sideways to open the door.

  He left the room, fighting the sudden tightness in his chest, fighting to breathe.

  Wreg didn’t follow him.

  19

  FINAL TALK

  JON SAT IN a metal folding chair in the basement of the Victorian house.

  This was supposed to be the final “talk” before they left San Francisco. Not quite a planning session, at least from what Jon could pick out of the minds around him––most of the on-the-ground planning had already been completed––it wouldn’t just be a pep talk, either.

  Jon had never really been along for a military operation with Revik before, at least not one the Elaerian led personally.

  He’d been with him when they broke out of that prison in the Caucasus Mountains, and when they’d been dragged by Ditrini through the sewers. This didn’t feel like either of those things. It felt a few hundred miles from that extraction op in Sa
n Francisco, too, and not only because Allie wasn’t planning it with him.

  Less than an hour had passed since he’d left Wreg.

  The metal folding chair where Jon sat took up an exceedingly small part of a low-ceilinged space dotted with at least two dozen more chairs exactly like it. The room itself had padded floors and walls from being used as a mulei practice space.

  Jon sat in a cluster of other seers in a half-ring around Revik, who faced them in another of those folding chairs. The chair looked oddly small under Revik’s long legs, despite the fact that he sat perfectly straight against the back, poised with that strange precision of his.

  The seers all wore clothing that looked more or less like what Jon wore, Revik included.

  Black armored shirts hung down over armored pants. Thicker armored vests wrapped around their torsos over the shirts, with side and shoulder holsters for guns along with pockets and pouches for magazines, flares, hand-helds and whatever else.

  Revik had his ankle propped sideways on his opposite thigh, his hand resting on his foot where it sat just above and past his knee. His fingers looked longer and whiter than Jon remembered, in contrast to all that black armored clothing, as well as the dark green walls of the organically-padded room and his black hair.

  Most of the furniture had been stripped, leaving only a mirror behind Revik, duplicating their numbers, and duplicating the emptiness around where they sat.

  A pile of black duffle bags stood against a wall by the door, the only other things left in the room apart from the folding chairs, the floor pads and the seers themselves.

  Jon found himself watching Revik, just as the rest of them did.

  For a long-feeling few minutes, Revik didn’t speak.

  He watched the few stragglers come into the room and take seats, leaving their duffels on the pile in the corner as they slunk in, looking vaguely guilty at the silence.

  Jon watched Revik’s clear eyes as he scanned all of their faces.

  He wondered if Revik was thinking about what he intended to say, or if he was counting heads and bodies to remind himself of their number, or to determine if everyone had finally arrived. He could have been contemplating that fine balance between what he needed in New York and what he wanted to leave here, in San Francisco, with Allie.

  Whatever Revik was thinking, his expression didn’t move as he took in the wash of different-colored faces and eyes. Once all of the metal folding chairs were full, he paused to assess the pile of bags that stood in an uneven mound by the propped-open door, then the stacked equipment crates in the hallway beyond it.

  Jon knew the latter held everything from ammunition magazines to grenades to a frighteningly diverse number of hand-held guns, rifles and other weapons.

  That didn’t even include whatever they’d already loaded onto the truck downstairs.

  Revik never believed in scrimping when it came to weapons.

  Jon’s eyes returned to the faces of the other seers, counting them.

  Twenty-five in total––twenty-seven with him and Revik––but only half of those faces were truly known to Jon, other than in passing.

  Neela was there, along with Maygar, Jorag, Garensche, Jax, Loki, Oli, Poresh, Illeg, that British seer friend of Revik’s, Torek (not to be confused with Tardek, Jon reminded himself, that older Rebel who died in the tsunami). Chinja and Yumi were there.

  Jon didn’t know much of the concrete plan yet, but he knew that in New York, they would be joined in an operational sense by Holo, Declan, Anale, Mika, Ullysa, Raddi, Hondo, Vikram, Argo and a bunch of others.

  Balidor would stay here, overseeing their shields long distance.

  Wreg would be staying, too. He’d been put in charge of the protective detail over Allie.

  Jon knew, just from knowing Revik, that he’d likely already spent the previous ten or so hours talking to the infiltrators he would leave behind. Revik would have hammered out a few dozen protection protocols with Wreg and Balidor personally, along with whatever contingency plans he would undoubtedly have in place in the event of an attack on San Francisco itself.

  Supposedly Chandre was tracking Ditrini and monitoring his location in the physical, aided by Varlan, Rig, Stanley, Balidor’s new girlfriend, Yarli, who was a better than decent infiltrator in her own right, and a male seer named Damon.

  Even so, Revik wouldn’t want to take any chances.

  Jon knew nothing would truly calm Revik down about Ditrini except a bullet in the Lao Hu seer’s head. Jon felt pretty much the same way himself, truthfully.

  It only occurred to him sometimes, and usually in the dark when he laid down to sleep, that wishing someone else dead, even a psychopath like Ditrini, was a relatively new experience for him. He didn’t really want to think about what Vash would have said about that.

  Right now, given everything, he didn’t really want to think about Vash at all.

  When Revik shifted in his seat, Jon’s eyes jerked back to his.

  That time, he found himself focusing reluctantly on the bruise under the other man’s eye and the top part of his cheek. The mark was fresh, mostly red still, although it had already started to darken. Jon already knew from Maygar and Revik’s minds exactly where that bruise had come from.

  Wreg punched Revik in the face, during one of their “talks” that morning.

  Wreg hadn’t mentioned that to Jon, of course.

  Then again, neither had Revik.

  Jon supposed that might explain, though, why Wreg had been excused from this meeting. Grimacing, he jerked his eyes off the fresh bruise, watching as Revik leaned back and at an angle in the metal folding chair, one black-clad arm slung over the curved metal back.

  “All right,” Revik said, clearing his throat. “The plane is being fueled and checked over at SFO. We leaving this house in thirty minutes. We’re lifting off in…”

  He glanced at the organic wrist-band he wore.

  “…Two hours, following loading and Balidor’s team putting some final touches on the construct for the plane. That’s two hours, tops.”

  Revik’s long jaw tightened, right before he rearranged his body in the metal seat.

  “I just want to make sure everyone is clear on things, before we go.” He scanned faces, his expression unmoving. “This is your last chance to speak freely before we’re out the door. Once we leave here, we’re live. That means chain of command. That means military rules. In here, that’s void. But only in here, and only until we walk out that door.”

  Revik lifted his hand off his ankle long enough to aim his finger at the outside corridor. His clear eyes sharpened in the green-tinted light as he looked around at all of them.

  “I want everyone to be crystal clear on that point, because I won’t say it again. If you have something to say to me––to any of your commanding officers––say it now. Right now, I genuinely want to hear it. Later, I probably won’t. Not unless it’s op-dependent.”

  Jon glanced around at the faces of the other seers.

  He knew from Allie, as well as from Wreg and even Revik himself, that the Elaerian meant what he said. Revik lived by the chain of command out in the field. He might shoot someone who defied him out there, if he felt strongly enough about it.

  Jon felt the other seers thinking, too, as he glanced around.

  If anything, the room had grown more still and silent than before. Even some of the darker-skinned seers looked pale now, but Jon couldn’t tell for sure what that meant, either. Had Revik intimidated them? That wasn’t exactly uncommon, given who he was, and if that was all it meant, that didn’t matter.

  Jon couldn’t help wondering if that was all it was, though.

  He knew some of them were more than a little superstitious about the Bridge.

  He also knew, mostly from Maygar’s mind and light, that some of them weren’t happy that Allie would be staying behind.

  As the silence continued, Revik only sat there, arms folded in front of his chest as he waited.

  Then
Chinja cleared her throat, glancing at Jax before she turned towards Revik.

  “Just so I understand, sir,” she said politely, holding her hand up in the sign of the Sword. “There is no contingency for capturing the being, War, alive? Even if it were possible to do so?”

  There was a silence.

  In it, the room seemed to drop a few degrees in temperature. The change didn’t feel aimed at Chinja herself, however.

  “No, sister, there is not,” Revik said, using formal Prexci that time.

  “What about Feigran?” Jax blurted, glancing around at the others before adding, “…Sir? Is there any contingency in place for extracting him?”

  “Yes,” Revik said simply.

  “What will prevent the same thing from happening as last time, Illustrious Sword?” Jorag said, his voice also lower and more polite than usual. “Meaning with the constructs, sir, in that stronghold in Argentina. Is there a possibility we won’t have access to you or your son’s…” He blanched as Revik’s eyes narrowed. “…I just mean…” Jorag stammered. “Is there a back-up plan, if the telekinesis can’t be made functional?”

  Revik sighed, his eyes clearing. The sigh came out more like a clicking purr.

  Leaning back in the chair, he rearranged his feet on the padded floor before aiming a level stare around the room. He paused on a few faces, including Jorag’s.

  “You are all concerned about this?” he said.

  The way he said it made it sound only marginally like a question.

  “Yes, Illustrious Sword,” Neela said, answering for more than herself.

  Revik nodded, but no emotion touched his clear eyes. “I understand. Unfortunately, there are elements of the plan I cannot share with all of you, for security purposes. However, I want to assure you, this issue has strongly been taken into consideration. We have a number of contingencies in place, as well as…”

  He trailed, his eyes shifting to the open doorway to his right.

  Jon’s gaze followed his, unthinking, as did every seer’s in the room.

  Once it had, Jon could only stare, bewildered.

  The room grew so silent, it felt like every seer in it was holding their breath.