Bridge_Bridge & Sword_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

  The more he thought about it, the more he thought getting drunk might not be a bad move for him tonight.

  He unlocked and opened the door, taking another drag of the hiri and nodding to the two men as they walked in, without really looking at either of them. He didn’t wait for them, either, but retreated back to the couch, already wincing and shielding from the pain coming off both of them in a coiling, out of control mess.

  Jesus Christ. As if he didn’t have enough of his own shit to deal with right now.

  Neither of them spoke either; they just followed him wordlessly to the couch. Then they just stood there, looking down at him.

  Revik flicked his fingers in the direction of the packet of hiri, as well as the bottles of wine on the counter behind them.

  “If you want something, take it,” he said, having to muster an effort to be even that polite. “Otherwise, talk.”

  Jon hesitated, glancing at Wreg.

  Wreg continued to frown at Revik, his dark eyes wary.

  “You all right, laoban?” he said.

  “Fine.”

  “Fine?” Wreg said. “What does that mean?”

  “Where’s Allie?” Jon said, looking around, as if noticing her absence for the first time.

  Revik felt his jaw clench more at each question. “She’s in the other room,” he said, wishing now he’d gotten the wine while he’d been on his feet.

  “Asleep?”

  “Wired,” Revik said, speaking bluntly before he’d thought about how it sounded.

  Jesus, he sounded drunk and he wasn’t. He could feel from Wreg’s light that the ex-Rebel assumed he’d been drinking, too.

  “Did you two come up here to chat?” Revik said. “Because you picked a pretty shitty night, if so. I was about to get drunk. So unless you want to join me… or at least open the fucking bottle… say what you have to say and get out.”

  Wreg and Jon exchanged a look.

  Then Wreg walked over to the bar where Revik had indicated earlier.

  Looking at the labels of a few of the unopened bottles standing there, he picked one and began opening drawers, rummaging around for an opener. Revik just sat there, watching, his jaw hard as Wreg screwed the corkscrew into the top after cutting off the metal wrap.

  A few seconds later, there was an audible “pop” as he removed the cork. He reached for the cabinets above the counter and pulled down a few long-stemmed glasses.

  “Don’t bother,” Revik said, clicking his fingers at him. “Just bring the bottle.”

  Wreg glanced over his shoulder, then shook his head, giving him a faint smile. His dark eyes held a harder scrutiny though, one the smile didn’t touch.

  “What are we?” His voice held a wry humor. “Barbarians? I think a few glasses being dirtied is worth the effort, brother Sword. Especially in these trying days… where we are clinging to civilization with our fingertips as it is.”

  Revik gave a low snort, in spite of himself.

  His jaw unclenched slightly as he watched the seer pour. Running a hand through his hair, he exhaled, fighting to calm down. Stubbing out the last of the hiri, he reached for the packet, shaking out another one.

  “Smoke?” he asked Wreg, holding one up as Wreg handed him the fullest of the three wine glasses he’d poured.

  Wreg gestured a polite assent, trading him for the glass. Jon took the third glass when Wreg handed it to him, but Revik could still feel the younger man’s stare.

  “Are you sleeping with her?” Jon blurted.

  Revik froze. He turned his head, giving the other man a hard stare. “Is your brain attached to your mouth, brother Jon?”

  Jon noticeably reddened. “Probably not,” he muttered. “But no one else was asking. I figured I might as well.”

  “What the fuck do you think?” Revik said, just as cold.

  “I think you are.” Swallowing some of the wine nervously, Jon made a vague gesture with his mutilated hand as he lowered the glass from his lips. “…I’m wondering why.” He wiped his mouth, clearing his throat. “I mean, obviously, you’re not okay with it.”

  “Jon.” Wreg looked at the other man, giving a small shake of his head.

  Revik’s jaw clenched harder. Painfully hard.

  He didn’t look up as he took a long drink from his own glass.

  When neither of the other two men said anything, Revik shook his head, clicking softly to himself. He spoke almost before he knew he meant to, feeling Jon flinch at the bitterness behind his words.

  “You want me to refuse my wife sex, when she asks it of me?” He leaned back in the leather couch, folding one arm across his chest. Lifting his glass in a mock toast, he met his brother-in-law’s gaze with a level stare, his eyes stinging.

  “…Fuck you, brother Jon. And if this is your way of leading up to asking me for a favor, I gotta tell you, your delivery sucks.”

  “Nenz,” Wreg broke in, holding up an appeasing hand. “He doesn’t mean anything by it. We’ve all been worried. That’s all it is… for both of us.”

  Revik gave the Chinese-looking seer an equally hard stare.

  He knew he wasn’t being rational. He could feel the confusion in Jon’s light, well enough to know Jon wasn’t in the best place to filter his words.

  It’s amazing how Revik could know all that and still not care.

  Even so, he forced his eyes back to the fireplace. The fire burning there had dwindled down to a bare flame. Taking another swallow of the wine, he motioned for the other two men to speak.

  “You want to ask me something,” Revik said. “So ask it.”

  Another silence fell.

  When Revik glanced up, Wreg was looking at him again. Revik couldn’t help noticing that the larger seer had inserted himself between him and Jon, or miss the protectiveness behind the stance. Feeling the wariness of the other man sharpen, Revik fought to control his light, at least long enough to get both of them out of there.

  Why the hell was he prolonging this? Did he really just want to vent at someone, and saw the two men coming up here as a way of volunteering for that role?

  Realizing there was probably some truth to that, he forced another exhale.

  “The two of you want to go into hibernation.” He took another mouthful of wine, gesturing vaguely as he swallowed. “You want to finish the bond.”

  The two men exchanged a glance.

  Then Wreg spoke.

  “Yes, laoban. We talked about this before. You said you could work around it.” Wreg continued to study Revik’s face, cautious. “Is that still true?”

  Revik nodded, once. “It is.”

  He gave them both a hard look, that time more from the military side of his brain.

  “I will pull Jon if I need him, brother Wreg. I’ll pull him even if I have to trank you to do it. That’s non-negotiable.”

  Wreg nodded, his eyes showing him to be turning over the words. “Agreed.”

  Revik turned his head so he could make eye contact with Jon. The smaller man was still shadowed by Wreg’s bulk. “If I do that, Jon––it’ll hurt. It’ll hurt like a motherfuck. Remember how I was, when Terian took Allie before we’d completed the bond?”

  Jon stepped to one side, facing Revik directly.

  He nodded, unfolding his arms.

  “I remember,” he said.

  “You’re okay with risking that? Because if you leave here, and you and Wreg do this thing, know that you’re giving me permission to do that to you.”

  Jon nodded, his eyes showing a flicker of nerves. Pain still dominated the majority of his light, though, sharp enough that Revik winced away from it a second time.

  “I understand,” Jon said. “You have my permission.”

  Revik grunted, humorless. “Sure. You say that now.”

  “I get it, Revik.” Jon exhaled. “I just don’t see any good options.”

  Nodding, Revik conceded his words with a flip of his hand.

  He finished off the last of the wine in his glass and set
it on the table, motioning to Wreg that he wanted more. He knew he should just get it himself. He didn’t know why he was being such a prick. Feeling another pulse of pain off Jon’s light, Revik winced again, tightening his arm around his chest.

  Maybe he did know why.

  Wreg swept Revik’s glass off the wooden coffee table without protest, bringing it back to the counter and filling it almost to the brim with the last of the wine in the bottle. When he brought it back to Revik that time, Revik raised the glass to them in a mock toast, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice that time and not succeeding.

  “Congratulations, then… to the happy couple.”

  Before either of them could raise their glasses in return or speak, Revik had already taken another three or four healthy swallows of wine. When he stood up that time, he nearly staggered. Jesus, now he was drunk. He’d forgotten to get that food.

  Maybe the fact that the two men had shown up on his door bleeding pain and practically knocking him over with their bond-compulsion hadn’t exactly helped.

  “Laoban.” Wreg caught his arm, and Revik flinched.

  He nearly jerked his arm away in reflex, but caught himself in time, knowing that might have been followed by a punch, if he didn’t control himself.

  “Laoban,” Wreg repeated, his voice lower. “You shouldn’t be alone. I’m going to call Adhipan. Him and Yumi. They should be here.”

  Revik frowned, shaking his head, making a negative gesture with his hand. “No.”

  “Yes,” Wreg said, insistent. “I’ve already done it. You can’t be alone right now.”

  Revik let out a humorless laugh. “Who’s in fucking charge here?”

  “You are,” Wreg said promptly. “But you know how this works. You wouldn’t let one of us be alone in this state, either.”

  Revik bit his tongue.

  He could feel the part of himself that wanted to lash at the two men some more, but he restrained that, too. At least Balidor’s girlfriend was out of town. She’d been part of the group they’d sent to track Ditrini. Last he’d heard, the Lao Hu seer was somewhere in Africa––or maybe the Middle East.

  Nodding, if only to get rid of them sooner, Revik started to speak, when a sound from the back of the suite made all of them jump.

  All three of their heads turned instantly––

  Revik saw a light flare from behind the half-partition separating the living area from his and Allie’s shared office. At first, the noise was so loud, the light so bright, he thought a bomb had gone off. His mind went sharply and without hesitation to Allie.

  Allie, who he’d left in their bedroom, just on the other side of that wall.

  The pain in his heart almost debilitated him.

  “Wife…” he managed.

  He was moving even as he whispered it.

  He fought and leapt his way over the back of the couch. He’d moved halfway across the room and through the opening in the partition before he recognized the flicker on the wall. By then, the sound already drowned out his thoughts. He could feel Wreg and Jon following him, but he couldn’t think about them, either.

  It wasn’t a bomb.

  The feed monitor had come on by itself.

  Staring up at the face that smiled down at him from that monitor, all the sickness, worry, grief and pain that had been twisting in his gut for the past hour turned into something more primal, something a lot easier for the more animalistic part of his brain to understand.

  Cass stood there, grinning at him, wearing a leather business suit.

  In her arms she held a child of maybe two years old.

  Well, she would have been that age if she were human––as a seer, she should be at least five or six. Revik saw that face, saw eyes the shape of his wife’s staring at him, a mouth that looked like Allie’s, too, dark hair in soft curls. His whole body stiffened as he stared at the little girl clinging to Cass’s neck.

  The girl watched him back warily, as if he were some kind of animal.

  Gods. She looked so much like Allie.

  She looked so fucking much like Allie.

  The resemblance paralyzed him, cut his breath.

  He fought for rationality, for something that made sense to any part of his mind. But all he saw was his wife’s body and face in miniature, wrapped in a light he knew somehow, he fucking knew it, in a way he’d never felt so strongly about any light, not since he’d first laid eyes on Allie herself.

  He knew her. He knew her so well.

  He remembered that light coiling around him when Allie first got pregnant, as if checking him out while he slept next to his wife.

  His vision blurred, but he couldn’t look away. He just stood there, paralyzed, watching Cass smile at him through the monitor.

  He didn’t move, didn’t so much as blink as Terian walked up behind her.

  It was Terian again, not Feigran––Revik could see the difference in his eyes, in his walk, in everything about him. Terian slid up against the child as well, holding the two of them like they were family, like parents would cradle their beloved daughter in their arms.

  Revik looked at the three of them, standing there together, and it hit him, for real that time.

  They’d stolen his life.

  They’d stolen all of it, every part of his life that meant anything to him.

  Everything he’d ever dreamed he might have––even when he couldn’t admit to himself that he wanted it, much less that he believed he’d ever have a chance in hell of having it, in this lifetime, at least––they’d just taken it. They’d taken it from him. Things he’d wanted, prayed for, even down in that hole under his uncle’s farmhouse when he was a kid.

  Family. Love. Allie herself, although he didn’t know her then, didn’t remember anything.

  Grief lived there, but it was more than grief.

  It felt like a part of his actual body had been cut off.

  The pain was so deep he could barely feel it as something separate from him. The sensation and emotion were so much a part of himself, he’d lost the ability to distinguish them from who he was. Maybe that had been true forever. Maybe it had been true since he’d seen his own parents butchered in that wooded clearing in the mountains east of the Pamir.

  “Gods,” he heard Wreg say behind him. The other male’s voice came out choked, filled with tears, almost a prayer. “Gods… Nenz… guete a Hulen-ta.”

  He felt the other male reach for him, but Revik barely felt his hands. He only felt himself telescoping inward. He didn’t know where he was going exactly, what it meant, but before he went there entirely, his wife pulled him back to the room.

  Her light hit his, turning his head so fast, no thought accompanied the shift.

  Allie stood there, in the doorway.

  She stared up at the same image of the three of them, her best friend from childhood, Cass.

  Terian, who nearly killed her, who raped and beat her in D.C.

  She gazed up at the two of them, at her and Revik’s child cradled in their arms. Like a family portrait, only framed by organic machines instead of those gray and blue smudged backdrops in the old human versions.

  Once he saw his wife’s eyes, Revik couldn’t look away.

  For the first time, he didn’t suspect, he knew.

  He knew she was fucking there.

  He saw something in her stare, something beside the wires, or that faraway look that scared him, even as it angered and frustrated him and left him with a perverse kind of guilt and pain and wanting when he couldn’t reach her through it. This time, he fucking knew. He could see the awareness in her eyes. She knew what she was looking at, what it meant.

  Revik was still staring at her face, at the strange, off-kilter clarity he could see in her jade-green eyes, when he realized the wire was gone from her neck. She clutched it in one hand, gripping it in a fist by her thigh. She’d taken it off on her own.

  She’d never done that before, either.

  Instead of relief, fear erupted in Revi
k’s chest, although fear of what, he had no idea at first. Pulling away from Wreg, he moved towards her before a single thought penetrated that terror.

  “Alyson.” He gasped, shaking his head. “Allie… no. No.”

  He choked out the words, her name, holding up a hand, maybe to calm her, maybe to calm himself. Tears came to his eyes, shocking him, blinding him and confusing him all in the same set of seconds.

  “Allie… darling. Go back in the other room. Please. Please, don’t…” He fought for breath. “Don’t look at this. Please, wife. Don’t look.”

  A voice came out of the monitor then, a voice that made every hair on the back of Revik’s neck abruptly stand on end.

  “Al?” Cass called out in delight.

  Revik froze, turning his head, staring up at the screen.

  Only then did he hear Wreg on his headset.

  “Right now!” the seer snarled. “…Trace the fucking thing! Now! She’s bypassed the server entirely. It’s in his room. Two-way signal…”

  Revik heard his words, but couldn’t make sense of them.

  He stared up at Cass, still holding a hand out towards his wife, maybe to shield her mind, or maybe her body, which wore only one of his long, button-down shirts.

  Cass squinted from the other side of the wall monitor, holding up her free hand to block a bright light on her side, so she could see.

  “Al, is that really you?”

  A kind of murderous hatred ignited in Revik, along with his eyes.

  “What the fuck do you want?” he snarled, glaring up at her. “What do you want from us?”

  Cass laughed, a melodious but somehow broken sound.

  “Well, pardon me if I’m calling at a bad time, big guy,” she said, her lips lingering in that sickly-sweet smile. “We just wanted to ask if you felt like coming out to play again.” Her smile turned into a grin, right before she gave Terian a conspiratorial wink. “…I had no idea the missus would be up and about so soon. You’re welcome to bring her along, of course.”

  Cass bounced the child affectionately against her hip, smiling wider.

  “…It’s been such a spell since the two of us had any real girl time together.”

  Revik lost himself in her words, lost in the awareness that Cass had done this to Allie, that she’d killed her mind and broken her light with less concern than flipping a switch. That she could laugh about it now, holding Allie’s child like it was nothing, like she hadn’t watched them cut his daughter out of his wife’s womb––