Bridge_Bridge & Sword_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

  The facts stacked somewhere in the background, shorting out his heart, hurting him so badly he couldn’t think through it.

  He remembered Cass in that prison under the Caucasus Mountains. He remembered how happy she’d been, to be with Allie again, in London. He remembered conspiring with her to put together his wedding proposal for Allie in that cabin, her laughing and embarrassing the hell out of him as she and Chandre picked out raunchy underwear and stockings for when he and Allie started having sex. He remembered her in high school, defending Allie from that prick, Mickey, who wouldn’t leave her alone.

  He remembered her in New York, how she’d tried to warn Allie off Jaden.

  Even in all that, his fear for Allie remained.

  Something lived in the look he’d seen in those jade-colored eyes––something more than awareness. He stared at his wife, refusing to look at the other woman at all.

  “Allie… don’t. Please, baby.” He didn’t even know what he was asking her, but tears came to his eyes. “Don’t, Allie. Baby, don’t, please.”

  He held out his hand, begging her with his light.

  “Allie… please. It’s not time yet. Please––”

  “Awww, come on, big guy,” Cass cajoled from the screen behind him. “Don’t be such a spoil sport. If Allie wants to play, let her play!”

  Revik looked between them, feeling that sickness in his chest worsen. When his gaze next fell on Allie, he flinched when he saw the expression there, as she stared up at the image on the feed monitor wall.

  Not just understanding lived there, he realized. He could see anger.

  Maybe not even anger.

  It was too self-possessed for anger, or hatred, or even a desire to do harm.

  Whatever Revik saw in his wife’s eyes, it came with a pure, fathomless, depth of knowing. Looking at her, he could believe she understood exactly what had occurred in the past few months. She understood just who Cass had become. She understood exactly how it happened, what Cass wanted, why she was doing this, what it meant.

  She understood.

  The knowing that stared out from those green eyes contained all of it: memory, reason, grief, wisdom, understanding, affection, pity, compassion, contempt… love.

  Looking at her eyes, he could almost visually see the history between the two women. He saw their history as children, as teens, as adults, as seers. He saw how much Allie loved her in all those incarnations. He saw how much she loved her now.

  His wife looked at Cass, and knew her, down to her core.

  Revik’s throat tightened.

  “Allie… no.” He shook his head, holding up his hand. “No, baby. No…” His words were a whisper, too soft for anyone but her.

  It was too late.

  The light in his wife’s irises ignited.

  33

  BRIDGE

  REVIK LUNGED FOR her, not even sure what he intended to do.

  He reached her, caught hold of her arms, even as he felt her light snake out, sparking along every piece of aleimi connected to and shared by his.

  The sensation completely disoriented him, inverted something in his mind. He could still feel his hands on her; he felt his feet on the floor, the wetness of his face. He felt her pulling from his light, from the light of Jon and Maygar––the pools of light Balidor collected.

  She did it all without yanking him into the Barrier with her at all. She seemed to not want him with her. She pushed him out, even as she drew on his light.

  Revik tried to follow her, to understand.

  He got lost there.

  He thought, in a split second of clarity, Cass was dead.

  Gods, she was dead.

  Allie was going to kill her.

  In the irrationality of that second, all he could think was, Gods, she’ll drop the child. Cass will hurt our baby girl when she falls. Or Terry will.

  Then that instant of clarity vanished, too.

  The snaking tendrils of Allie’s mind left him in the dark. They exploded out of her, out of control, stronger than his own light, stronger than anything he’d felt from a living seer before. The sheer power behind that blast blanked out his conscious thoughts, threw him into a darkness and silence that somehow still left him in awe of who she was.

  He’d never known this part of her before.

  The power behind it caught his breath, blinding him to the room, nearly causing an animal, panic reaction in his body. His nerves caught on fire, his skin, even his bones hurt from the influx of light, the awareness he felt behind it. He knew her in it, but not. It felt more like a knowing he’d forgotten, that he’d lost somehow, maybe just through the vagaries of death.

  Maybe that memory belonged to some other part of him, a part beyond a single life.

  Maybe it was something he didn’t––couldn’t––access in the day-to-day. The memory rotated somewhere far above his head, a spatial, mathematical equation that reached him in bare glimpses, too complex for his lower mind to translate.

  He stood there, holding his wife’s shoulders, gasping for breath.

  The lower parts of his light fought for control, fought to even keep up. He tried to ground himself, to ground her, but she only slapped that part of him out of the way.

  He let out a cry when she broke free of him entirely, and then––

  Gods, he felt her with them.

  Allie wound some part of herself into the lights of Terian and Cass.

  He got slammed with that presence next and let out a broken cry; it wound deeper into his light, forcing him into a construct that felt so much like the one he’d been raised in as a child that terror exploded out of him.

  For a second, a bare second, he felt his parents––

  NO! He screamed it in all that light, terrified out of his mind. NO, ALLIE, NO!

  That brighter light was being strangled now. Silver light erupted out of Cass and Terian like metal snakes. It reached for both of them, buzzing in his ears, in his light, reminding him of being a child with Menlim, of what happened after his parents died.

  He let out another yell, that time, fighting with her.

  Allie’s light willingly immersed itself in that silver-gray prison. She didn’t go there to pull Terian or Cass out, or even their child.

  She went there to put her own light and Revik’s into it.

  “ALLIE NO!” Fear broke his voice. “NO! ALLIE! NO!”

  He felt those silver threads wrap into her from all sides.

  They slammed into that supernova of light––that light that was brighter than anything Revik had ever felt. Greedily, they wound into her, pulling at her, tearing into her like sharks in a cold frenzy over the scent of blood. They coiled into her from all sides and she just stood there, letting it happen, even as she wrapped her aleimi into Terian and Cass’s mindlessly, pushing Revik’s back when he tried to stop her, to pull her away from them.

  NO! He screamed into the Barrier, frantic now, but she held him in his body now, wouldn’t let him join her in that space. She held him outside of whatever she was doing, too, so he couldn’t feel it, couldn’t comprehend what it meant.

  He could only watch, helpless, while her light lost itself in those gray and silver strands, opening to a fathomless dark he remembered swallowing him as a child. She seemed utterly oblivious as they stripped her, as they pulled her deeper inside, breaking her, smashing her in front of him, tearing her apart.

  NO GODS, ALLIE NO! NO! NO!

  Abruptly, the light hit a sort of crescendo.

  The pressure whited out the room, the surrounding Barrier space, like lightning behind his eyes. It wiped out his ability to see any of it, or even feel where she’d gone, much less why she’d left him behind.

  Then, abruptly, out of nowhere––

  The light died.

  It just––snuffed out.

  Revik stood there, shaking, barely able to remain on his feet. He was blinded by tears, disoriented by the absence all around him.

  The silence, the sudden end
to whatever that had been––

  He couldn’t breathe. He felt gutted, empty.

  The sudden lack of light, of presence, disoriented him. For a long moment, he thought maybe he had died. He thought he’d died, that he’d gone somewhere else, in some space across the Barrier, someplace outside the physical planes altogether.

  But he hadn’t.

  Slowly, the room came back into focus.

  The Barrier space dimmed back into shapes, fading from that brilliant shock that whited out its contours. It was like regaining one’s sight after being flashed in the face by a strobe. In the same way, everything seemed so much darker afterwards.

  The room looked gray, two-dimensional.

  Revik held her now, although he didn’t remember when that changed. He held her, crushed her in his arms, but something was wrong, something he didn’t want to look at, even when he could see again. She felt limp where he held her, more dead than his mind could comprehend. Her skin was already losing its blush of warmth, that pulsing heat he’d always felt pounding through her skin, even when she’d been in that coma for weeks and months on end.

  Even when she’d been gone, riding on the wire’s waves.

  “NO!” He screamed it, unable to stop himself.

  His mind broke. It actually broke, as if someone had knocked him completely off his mooring. He lost himself in that silence.

  He’d felt this way once before.

  Only once.

  “NO! NO, goddamn it! NO!”

  She was dead. He knew she was dead, even as the larger part of his mind refused to acknowledge it. He knew.

  “NO! NO, gods no… Allie!”

  He shook her, fought not to scream at her closed eyes, the empty, peaceful look there.

  “NO! Fuck! Allie! Allie! ALLIE!”

  He didn’t know how long he stood there, doing it.

  He heard laughter from the monitor behind him. He even heard the surprise in that laughter, although none of it made any sense. He didn’t look up, but he heard Cass’s voice, heard her smile, her bewildered chuckle, even as she spoke.

  “Well, shit.” Her musing disbelief echoed in the suite. “That was really fucking stupid. Did she really just do that? Really?”

  Revik didn’t look up. He didn’t tear his eyes off Allie’s face.

  He heard Cass speak again, but he didn’t turn.

  “I mean, how can you blame me for that?” She paused, as if waiting for his answer. When he didn’t give her one, she snorted, incredulous. “I mean, you saw that, right? That was, like… suicide. She wanted to go, big guy. You saw it. She wanted to go. You can’t blame me for that.”

  Revik didn’t look up.

  He didn’t even really hear her words until later.

  He was kneeling, but he didn’t know how or when that had changed.

  He continued to kneel there, looking down at Allie’s face, until hands touched him from all sides, pulling at him gently, tugging on him. Fingers and hands, then arms held him from behind, pulling him off of her, separating her from his arms.

  Revik didn’t have the energy to fight them.

  He couldn’t do much more than tense. His arms felt weak, his legs. He already felt only partly connected to Earth, to his body, to gravity, maybe.

  He let them drag him back, then Balidor was on the floor with her––Balidor, who Revik hadn’t seen enter the room. The Adhipan leader held Allie’s body gently, lowering her the rest of the way to the floor. Revik saw Yumi there, and Jorag. He watched as Balidor’s eyes blurred, as he brushed Allie’s hair gently back from her face.

  Revik writhed violently in the hands holding him as he saw it, suddenly unable to stand having any of the others touch her, even now.

  “Don’t… gods… leave her alone.” He fought to breathe. “Leave her alone… please.”

  He knew words were still coming out of his mouth, but he couldn’t tell how loud, or if anyone heard them but him.

  He didn’t know if anything he said made sense.

  Most of his words might have simply been her name, but he heard other things, too, from him and from the people standing around him. He heard Jon crying. He heard Neela, and Yumi. Wreg was there. Jax, Holo, Vikram, Chinja, Illeg… all of them were there.

  He heard Tenzi there, talking, but couldn’t comprehend his words, or even the language. Everything around him, even his own words, the things coming out of his mouth, felt completely disconnected from his mind, from the part of him that watched Balidor lay fingers on her throat, taking her pulse.

  Yumi did the same with Allie’s wrist on her other side, tears blurring the dark tattoo that covered half of her oval face.

  He couldn’t comprehend Balidor’s words when he spoke. He didn’t need to comprehend them. He’d felt the change. He’d felt her go.

  He’d felt her leave.

  Cass was right. Whatever Allie had just done, it was deliberate.

  Maybe not suicide, but damned close.

  He could still feel those silver strands sparking in the further reaches of his light.

  He could still remember that flash of white light, when his wife finally showed herself to him, without holding anything back.

  She’d kept him from being connected to the Dreng.

  She hadn’t wanted him along; she’d made him a bystander.

  She kept him out of that cold light, out of the construct, away from Shadow and Cass and Terian, even as she went into all those things herself… and for what?

  To leave him, maybe. To put an end to the suffering and pain.

  Or, more likely, to try and kill Cass and Feigran and fail, like Revik tried to kill Menlim in South America and failed. Maybe she was just tired of being here, saw a faster and more efficient way out than the wires afforded.

  None of those things sounded like his wife, but maybe he hadn’t known her as well as he’d thought. Maybe she wasn’t that different from him, after all.

  He didn’t know what Allie had wanted, though, what she’d intended.

  He didn’t know why she’d kept him alive, if she knew he’d only die anyway.

  Revik couldn’t understand any of it. He didn’t even want to.

  The screen had gone dark in the spaces between those moments. Revik didn’t know if Balidor, Garensche, Vikram and the rest of the tech team had done it, cutting off Cass and Terian’s signal from the outside, or if Cass and Terian simply ended things once they got what they wanted. He didn’t even know for certain if Cass and Terian knew Allie was dead.

  None of that meant anything to him anymore, either.

  Nothing but his wife being dead on the floor mattered.

  Nothing but the child he’d seen in that monitor mattered.

  As he thought about his daughter, that tiny body and face, and those light, slanted eyes that looked so much like his wife’s, a small spark in his mind flared to life.

  Once it had, he found he understood how this story would end.

  It would be a race.

  He would make a final dash for the finish line. He had to find them, get to them, kill them and take his child back before Allie’s death killed him. He knew how long his own death would take. He knew exactly how long, from the last time he’d been cut off from her light, the last time her light had been severed from his behind the Barrier.

  He knew exactly how long he had before the pain would grow unbearable.

  He knew exactly how long before he wouldn’t be able to think clearly anymore.

  He knew exactly how long before he started to lose control of his light. He even knew how long it would be before he couldn’t aim the telekinesis.

  He wouldn’t wait that long, though. He wouldn’t wait for any of it.

  He would leave tonight.

  34

  SAY YOUR GOODBYES

  REVIK HELD THE gun, willing his hand to still.

  He didn’t quite manage to make it stop trembling, so he clenched his jaw again, maybe to compensate.

  It wouldn’t matter, he
told himself.

  He glanced around at the shelf filled with armaments, flashing briefly to when he’d last stood in front of a shelf like this with Allie, while they’d been getting ready to rob that bank. She’d kept touching him. He remembered that, more than anything else; she wouldn’t stop fucking touching him, leaning against him, pulling on him with her light.

  Standing there, he’d fantasized about fucking her on the table that had stood in the middle of the room. He’d thought about it, fantasized about it, even as he avoided her eyes and hands. He’d imagined bending her over, ripping down her armored pants and fucking her until she came––before they’d even left for the goddamned job.

  He’d known, even then, he probably shouldn’t have agreed to go with her.

  At the same time, saying no was out of the question; by that point, he’d take any excuse whatsoever to be immersed in her light. She’d been driving him out of his mind for weeks, constantly hinting she wanted sex, half-seducing him without ever committing enough to give him a real excuse.

  He shook his head angrily, fighting past the memory, fighting to see past the blur in his eyes, the light that wanted to blind him whenever he wavered in focus for even a few seconds. He snapped the magazine into the bottom of the gun, chambered a bullet, and clicked the trigger to enact the safety before he shoved it into a second holster under his arm.

  Focus. He could do this.

  He could fucking do this.

  He glanced behind him, hearing a noise.

  Wreg stood in the doorway. So did Jorag, Jon, Neela, Balidor.

  He didn’t look at any one of them for more than a few seconds.

  “You got the track?” he said.

  His voice came out gruff, almost unrecognizable in his own ears.

  “Yes.” Balidor stepped forward, his voice disturbed, low, borderline unstable. Revik blocked those things from his light, too, focusing only on the words. “They’re north of here, Nenz. Eastside. The building they call The Tower, near to––”