Bridge_Bridge & Sword_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

  After all, I’d missed a lot, right?

  I mean, I’d been on, like, a serious sabbatical.

  Should I really be so sure of anything, given I’d more or less been out of the picture for over half a year? That struck me as pretty strange, if so.

  Across the room from me, Tarsi chuckled.

  I smiled back at her, then looked at Cass, and that smile turned into a thoughtful frown.

  I still wasn’t sure how it all went down, to be honest.

  I mean, I was. I knew what happened.

  I was clear through all of it, so I could more-or-less document the facts, but I didn’t know that I could say with much assurance that I was there for it, in the strictest sense. I was there, but there was a split awareness thing going on that was hard to put into words, that went beyond any split-awareness type drills I did while working with Revik.

  I mean, I wasn’t there, and then I was only half-there––and then I was really gone.

  Then, suddenly, I was back.

  Or maybe half-back.

  Either way, I was moving again, and Revik was here.

  I held our child in my arms.

  It just all felt so weird, being back in my body––both strangely restrictive, yet a huge relief and familiar and kind of fun, too.

  It was kind of like finding a favorite set of clothes in a box in the back of a closet. You think they’re going to be trashed or no longer fit, but no, they fit just like you remembered, and they still feel good, maybe better, since you appreciate them more now. They also look more or less how you remembered, no major holes or rips or anything broken or missing.

  I know, crappy analogy.

  I feel like I should understand this better, or explain it better, maybe.

  Tarsi told me a few things, but she didn’t need to tell me much.

  I knew the facts already, like I said.

  I couldn’t explain how I knew them, but I knew them.

  I even understood that my light and mind were in kind of a high place, so I was acting pretty strange to all of them. I didn’t try to change that––not right now. For now, we just needed to get my baby out of here, and get Cass out of here. I needed to deal with the immediate problems we were facing, like the fact that Shadow had my husband.

  So yeah, the basics.

  I figured Tarsi and Chan would fill me in on the rest.

  Logistics-wise, we were still upstairs, in one of the high-end apartments sandwiched between a few floors of brokerages and tech company suites.

  Okay, so I got that part pretty well. It made sense to hide them in the middle of the building during Revik’s assault, not in the penthouse, or the basement.

  Shadow had some kind of funhouse bunker in the basement itself, filled with trap doors, underground waterways, mazes, holograms, half-sentient robots, and whatever else. He’d used that to lure Revik below ground… got that part, too.

  Apparently, Shadow built the heaviest constructs below ground, so Revik, Balidor, and the others would think everything important lived down there. They’d done that by covering the lower six or seven sub-basement floors in a few hundred different constructs, then littering the architecture with all kinds of b.s. to confuse things even more.

  Meanwhile, Tarsi knew our child would be upstairs.

  Well, she claimed I knew it, and that I told her where to go. But really, that’s part of the less-clear part, and I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway.

  Either way, when we reached the correct apartment on forty-two, I felt it. I felt it really strongly. I could feel Cass by then, too.

  Cass had our baby.

  She was up here, waiting for Menlim’s people to collect Revik alive downstairs. Then she would travel down to meet them, and leave through the basement.

  All of that made sense, too.

  They’d only put about five humans with Cass to guard the place, using the complete invisibility of their presence as their primary defense. No constructs to speak of guarded the door, nothing but a basic link to the main construct downstairs, as well as the larger one over Manhattan. No one would believe anything important could be housed here, given the utter lack of defense. No one would even think to look for her on such an obscure floor, that wasn’t particularly near either the roof or the lobby or the basement exits.

  The baby (oh my gods, she is so adorable, every time I look at her I just see Revik and I just want to squeeze her and it is the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful thing) was inside, in an OBE-protected crib.

  Our daughter’s light was tied into the construct––not only the one over Gossett Towers, but the one over Manhattan. I could feel Revik wrapped into that construct now, too… and Cass, and even Maygar, probably from when he’d been a captive in South America.

  Strangely, I didn’t feel Cass or Terian as pillars––only Maygar and the baby.

  I felt Revik significantly more than any of them, probably due to the exponentially more developed structures he carried, and his far higher “actual” scores for telekinesis.

  They’d used those structures somehow, as a link between the Barrier and the physical world, which made sense, since Revik told me once that Elaerian constituted a link between the Barrier and the physical world already.

  He said it was our main purpose, really.

  So yeah, Revik was the hidden link, the one he, Wreg and Balidor tried so hard to find.

  It all made sense. I knew it would infuriate the hell out of Revik, but it all made sense.

  It could also wait, at least for now.

  Menlim had Revik in the basement, and we were upstairs with the baby. We had Cass neutralized (thank goodness) and only Shadow and the others to deal with. So the priority now was to get Revik, Maygar, Jon, Wreg and the rest of them out of here in one piece before Balidor decided to blow up the building with us inside it.

  So yeah. Sigh.

  I was kind of looping on this, wasn’t I?

  Did I mention I felt pretty weird?

  It felt strange to keep calling her “the baby.”

  I wasn’t sure what else to call her yet, or even if I should be coming up with nicknames––without Revik, I mean. Of course, I’d definitely have to wait for Revik before coming up with any kind of “official” name, but even a nickname felt weird, with him downstairs, dealing with his childhood nemesis.

  Maybe I could call her “Mishka” for now, like Varlan did when he first looked at her. Or maybe I could ask Chandre for the word for “baby” in Arabic or Hindi… or in Prexci?

  Ah, wait. I knew that one.

  Lilai’i is baby in Prexci.

  I remembered Revik using that word when talking about Sikkim. He’d been upset, talking about all the lilai’i he’d seen, their poor skulls and bones broken and burned on the ground and how awful it had been.

  That had been our wedding night.

  For a while that night, he’d been devastated by what he’d done as that telekinetic boy who’d been chained up for a hundred years. We’d both been high as kites from Tarsi’s crazy wedding cakes, and Revik got really sad and upset while he told me about Sikkim. He’d thought he was helping those children at the time––saving them from a lifetime of pain.

  Setting them free.

  It had been an act of love, albeit a misguided one.

  So… Lilai’i? Or maybe just Lilai.

  That shouldn’t bother him, not as a purely temporary, expediency thing. I mean, it was weird to call your own child “baby” after a certain point, wasn’t it? Although I guess I was doing that anyway, just in a different language. Still, it felt different.

  It sounded different, anyway, in my head.

  So, Cass.

  Yeah, I hit her pretty hard.

  Honestly, I might have been overcompensating. I remembered how good she was with the telekinesis on the rooftop of the House on the Hill hotel, and yeah, I didn’t want to take any chances. So I knocked her out, and then, just to be safe, I broke most of the structures I could see over her head that she use
d for telekinesis.

  Tarsi seemed to think it was a good idea.

  And yeah, I was feeling pretty weird by then with all that light, and then getting to pick up little Lilai for the first time. Of course, I’d had to spend the first few minutes calming her down, since the only mother she’d ever known was Cass, and she just saw Cass crumple to the carpet and not get up.

  Lilai was pretty much screaming at the top of her lungs after that.

  I was really worried I’d traumatized her.

  She seemed calmer now, though.

  She sat in my arms, watching me warily, but I could tell she was no longer afraid, not like she had been. She looked at Cass periodically, where she lay on the floor, but Lilai seemed to understand that Cass was still alive, just sleeping.

  There was all kinds of ungodly crap in Lilai’s light.

  Even Tarsi said we were going to have to keep her shielded from the Dreng while we try to fix it––and yeah, while we escape.

  Because we would have to escape, at least temporarily.

  I knew who I was dealing with now in Shadow.

  I knew who he was––or, more accurately, what it was. I knew we wouldn’t be able to kill him, at least not the way Revik and I talked about killing him before.

  The construct that lived over Manhattan shook violently, tilting behind my eyes when we knocked Cass out, especially after Dante and Surli dismantled the OBE over baby Lilai’s crib.

  I had to assume Shadow was sending people up here to stop us from taking Lilai.

  That, or he was already on the run.

  With our child out of the game, we had to assume they’d try to take Revik.

  So yeah, I really needed to get downstairs.

  “Bridge!”

  I snapped out, realizing I’d been in the Barrier only then.

  I turned to look at Tarsi, since it was her who spoke. Adjusting Lilai on my hip, I gave my little girl a brief smile, and she smiled back at me, shyly. She still looked mostly confused and wary. I could tell she hadn’t figured out if I was the bad guy yet, but that was okay.

  I mean, why wouldn’t she think I was pretty strange, given what I’d just done?

  “Bridge?” Tarsi said, her voice more subdued. “You with us, sister? We not done here yet. Still have work to do. Yes? Or you wanting to leave your husband behind?” she added, her voice more caustic. “Tired of him, maybe?”

  I laughed, bouncing Lilai on my hip. “Not particularly, no.”

  I spoke the words with light, blowing that light in soft kisses at Lilai. She blinked a little from the blown light, then sneezed, still looking at me with confusion in her pale eyes, gripping Revik’s shirt where it buttoned over my breasts, her aleimi still retracted and tense.

  “We await your command, Esteemed One,” Varlan said, his voice considerably more polite than Tarsi’s had been.

  “Okay, well.” I exhaled, looking down at Cass.

  It hit me that I knew exactly what came next.

  I spoke fast, without taking a lot of breaths.

  “Varlan, I want you, Stanley, Chan, Surli and Dante with me.” I looked at the others. “Tarsi, Rig, Vikram, Yarli, Anale… take little Lilai to the rendezvous point. Take Cass with you, too. Keep the collar on her. Contact Balidor as soon as you’re out of the construct, tell him what happened. Tell them we’re heading out as soon as we get Revik.”

  Tarsi rolled her eyes. “You gonna tell us to remember to breathe, too, Esteemed Know-It-All?”

  I grinned at her, then motioned my head towards the door.

  “Get going,” I said. “Your escort’s waiting for you in the lobby.”

  “Escort?” Chandre muttered.

  I looked at her, blinked. It hit me I’d forgotten to say that part out loud.

  “Yeah,” I said, bouncing Lilai. “Maygar. Jon. Wreg. Neela. Loki, Pagoj…” I trailed, sending her the rest of the faces in a packed image to save time. “They’re heading for the lobby now. I told them you’d be coming. Loki’s team will go with you to the transport with Lilai. I might keep a few of the others with me.”

  I started to walk towards the door.

  “Wait… Bridge!” Chandre shook her braids when I turned, holding up one reddish-brown hand in a signal of confusion. “If they are already coming up, where are we going?”

  I blinked at her, then looked at Varlan and Anale, who stood next to him. Pursing my lips, I looked back at Chandre.

  “We’re going to get Revik,” I said, frowning. “Weren’t you listening?”

  Chandre stared at me.

  Varlan, Stanley and Anale inexplicably laughed.

  I was still looking around at all of them, trying to decide if I got the joke, when Vikram came up behind me, clapping me on the back.

  I still stood there, holding Lilai in my arms, when they all seemed to converge on me at once, throwing their arms around me. I grinned, unable to help it, as I was enveloped with warm limbs, feeling fingers pat my hair and my shoulder, squeeze my arms and back.

  When we came out of the impromptu group hug, everyone was grinning, and most of them had tears in their eyes, even Chandre, who continued to look at my face as if some part of her couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  “Okay. Are we ready then?” I said. “We need to move fast now, okay?”

  I handed the child reluctantly to Anale, who looked delighted to be able to hold her.

  “Yes, Esteemed Bridge!” at least five voices said at once.

  Even Dante said it, who stood right by my ear.

  That time, when I laughed, all of them laughed with me––even Chandre.

  Even so, when I glanced at the muscular infiltrator next––while we were already heading for the door and the corridor beyond––I could still see that pained, almost hurt look shining from the depths of her dark red eyes. She looked confused, wary, scared maybe.

  She looked at me like she wasn’t sure if she trusted me.

  Seeing that doubt in Chan’s eyes brought the first shiver of nervousness to my light as I thought about the others. I had no idea how any of them would react to seeing me, the way I was now. Jon, Wreg, Balidor, Yumi––what if they all decided they couldn’t trust me, either?

  Most of all, though, I thought about Revik.

  53

  YOU DON’T OWN ME

  REVIK FELT SICK. Pain wracked his body, more than he could deal with.

  More than he could think past.

  Nothing felt real anymore. Nothing.

  He couldn’t decide anything about what he’d felt in those few minutes before they’d finally brought him down. He’d watched them locking cuffs on his wrists, numb, unable to think past the reality as it happened.

  He fought that feeling that he’d been tricked, that they’d been fucking with his head to get him to lower his guard, to get him to stop fighting. He’d stupidly fallen for it––like he always fell for it. Just like when he was a kid, Menlim honed in on his weak points with laser-like precision, as soon as he’d grown tired of screwing around with his charge.

  Revik was their pillar down here.

  The thought repeated in his mind.

  They’d been using him, just like they’d always used him.

  They hadn’t even bothered to drug him, or take him down physically. They got him to go down on his own, using his heart against him, his light, the part of him that still had a soul. They’d been doing the same thing to him for as long as he could remember.

  He felt broken––but he was angry, too.

  He was really fucking angry.

  He didn’t think, though, not really. He’d defaulted back to where his mind went as a child, those secret compartments he built in those years, the places even Menlim couldn’t reach him. They barely constituted places of thought, which helped to keep them hidden.

  He floated there, instead.

  His mind did sums, worked through more complex problems. If he couldn’t do that, he counted: ceiling tiles, flecks of dust, colors in the patterned carp
et, anything to drown out those whispers in the background, the ones that lived and vibrated somewhere high up in the structures of his light, twisting around the threads of his telekinesis.

  He hadn’t known that then, of course.

  He hadn’t known those places were the very thing Menlim wanted, the same thing everyone wanted from him, stole and cheated and robbed him of, pretty much since he’d been exposed to anyone outside his immediate family.

  It had always been that way, until Vash.

  It had been that way again, until Allie.

  His life consisted of a series of pits he dug himself out of, using his bare hands, his broken hands at times, his torn fingernails and skin ripped down to the bone.

  She’d promised she wouldn’t take his child from him.

  Had that been Cass talking again? Cass fucking with his head?

  He knew, by now, that Menlim believed he could keep him alive without Allie. Revik hadn’t yet bothered to delve into specifics, but it had something to do with Cass and Terian, and being one of the Four. Menlim thought it would be enough to keep Revik alive, at least physically, as long as they kept him tied into the construct, and into Cass and Feigran.

  As soon as Menlim tested that––which he’d done, apparently, both in Argentina and the last time they’d been in Manhattan––he knew he could get rid of Allie, without losing access to Revik’s light, or his function within the network.

  Revik knew a lot, really, now that he knew where he connected to them.

  Like the Head of some fucked up version of Galaith’s Pyramid, he could see all the way down and through, from the highest, most intimate part of his light, and he didn’t even know if they could see him doing it, given that the whole reason they’d chosen him for this role was that he had structures none of them shared, that none of them could even touch.

  Only Allie could touch him here.

  Only Allie… and Allie was gone.

  They’d done all of this––all of it––just so they could take her from him.

  They’d lured him to New York so they could take her from him.

  He could even feel, from that high up place, that they hoped he would bond with Cass and Terian well enough to forget about Allie entirely, and build a new life without her. They thought the love of his children, his love for his daughter and Maygar, would be enough to cement him to the network, to the Dreng, to Menlim himself.