Bridge

by JC Andrijeski

  The memory pounded behind his eyes.

  Leaning back in the fabric seat, he scanned pieces of the construct to find out where his secondary team was now. He knew they’d decided to detour to hit a few buildings after they got the rest of the storage lockers in the park. He could feel now they’d added a side recon trip to the loop as well, for a larger garrison they didn’t expect to be able to take on their own.

  He felt Loki discussing with Garensche whether they should hit it today, or bring back reinforcements tomorrow.

  That, or bring Revik, once they’d mapped the target.

  Revik pinged his approval of the latter to Loki, telling him to take aleimic scans of every aspect they safely could, including anything they could feel underground, as well as any smaller constructs or Barrier signatures that might be protecting the structure.

  He told Loki once they had a better picture of the city’s remaining defensive capabilities, Revik would take them out in descending order of threat.

  He felt a pulse of appreciation and even humor from Loki. Sending him an amused blast of warmth in return, Revik withdrew, with a final message to ping him again if they needed him.

  Understood, laoban, the seer sent.

  Loki’s thoughts felt almost cheerful.

  Revik smiled, shaking his head.

  The impression struck him as funny, given how stone-faced Loki looked most of the time, but it made sense, too. Loki was a fighter at heart. He’d probably been climbing the walls from all of the relative inaction in San Francisco, especially after that taste of action in South America. For someone of Loki’s temperament, this trip probably felt long overdue.

  It occurred to him in the same breath that he should be using the Middle Eastern seer more in these on-the-ground ops. He, Wreg and Balidor had assigned Loki to the infiltration unit because of his high sight rank, but maybe that had been a mistake.

  Revik was still mulling this over when the Humvee pulled into the half-moon driveway leading up to the House on the Hill hotel.

  “We’re coming in the front?”

  Revik turned, realizing Jon had spoken.

  Jon was staring out the window, wide-eyed at the crowd of seers and humans waiting for them under the organic glass overhang just outside the lobby. Revik saw Jon’s eyes scanning faces with a stunned, numb expression, even as his fingers rose to clutch at his own chest, probably without him being fully aware he was doing it.

  Revik found he understood.

  He couldn’t really think about the last time they’d been here, either––which was why he’d been determined they would arrive differently.

  “Yes,” Revik said.

  He cleared his throat, glancing around at the other seers crushed together in the back of the Humvee, sweat on their faces from the close quarters and closed, armored windows.

  “We’re going through the goddamned front door,” he added, aiming a faint smile around that included all of them, before focusing on Jon. “Do you object, brother?”

  He knew it wasn’t much of a smile, but it seemed to do what he’d intended.

  Neela grinned back. So did Jorag, and Yumi.

  When Revik glanced sideways, he saw something in Jon’s face relax, too.

  It wasn’t quite a smile, but he hadn’t seen many smiles on Jon lately, not since the last time they’d been in New York. For the first time, Revik found himself really thinking about that. As he did, he glanced at Wreg, who seemed to be watching Jon, too, although he hid it better.

  Feeling a pulse of pain off both men, Revik frowned.

  He’d been staying out of things between the two of them, but he found himself thinking now that maybe he’d been doing that for long enough, too.

  “Brother Jon?” he prompted.

  Jon looked at him, tearing his eyes off the faces waiting for them on the other side of the glass with a visible effort.

  Revik saw Jon’s eyes shift to Allie. A pained look crossed his face, even as grief came off his light, along with something else, what might have been fear.

  Jon had lost weight, Revik realized. A lot of weight, maybe.

  “No objection,” Jon said.

  He gave Revik a faint smile as he said it, but Revik felt the constriction in the other man’s throat, as much as he heard it. Jon looked back out the window, and Revik realized suddenly that he could almost hear the beating of the other man’s heart, through the aleimic connection between them.

  It struck him again that Jon was afraid.

  He was afraid of what the others would do to him, once they saw Allie.

  Feeling a sickness in his own gut, Revik curled his arms tighter around her. She raised her head once he did, and he felt another, more urgent pulse of pain in her light. Strong enough to wipe his thoughts away briefly, and to get him to look her in the face.

  When he did, she touched his cheek, caressing him down to his jaw. Her eyes held his, and the distance remained, but gods––he could almost see her there. He fought with his own perceptions, even as he looked at her, wanting to believe it so badly he almost couldn’t hear the part of him that waved warning flags for even going there.

  He was still staring at her when she lowered her mouth to his, kissing him.

  He kissed her back.

  He did it unthinkingly, for once not letting himself care at all what the others might see in what he was doing with her. Her fingers tightened abruptly in his hair when he put light in his tongue, and his arm slid further around her in reflex, his fingers half-clenched on her side when she made a low noise against his mouth.

  He was instantly hard––painfully hard––which made him panic.

  Gods, Allie. Don’t. Not here. Please. Please, not here…

  She released him.

  She did it at once, so fast it disoriented him, raising her head and unclenching her hand in his hair before she rested the same hand on his shoulder.

  Revik looked up at her, feeling his chest struggle with breaths, conscious of the others’ focus on them again, even those who appeared to be looking away. When Revik looked at Jon that time, he saw guilt in the other man’s eyes.

  Jon jerked those eyes off the two of them, and guilt left his light.

  Without thinking, Revik sent to him, his light and thoughts holding zero compromise.

  No one’s going to hurt you, Jon. I won’t allow it.

  Jon flinched, staring at him.

  Revik smiled a little, clicking softly.

  Relax, all right? You did great today. Better than I could have asked of any of my senior infiltrators. “You’re a commander,” Revik added aloud. “Don’t forget it. You and I need to talk later.” He glanced at Wreg, muttering, “…I might need to talk to a few people around here.”

  Jon just stared at him, almost as if he couldn’t comprehend his words.

  “So don’t run off, all right?” Revik said. “I’m serious about the talk.”

  Jon frowned. He glanced at Wreg too, only to look sharply away. Wreg’s jaw tightened noticeably once he had, right before he gave both of them openly angry looks.

  Fuck you very much, Illustrious Sword, Wreg muttered in his mind.

  Revik ignored him.

  Jon? he prompted.

  After a pause, Jon nodded, his throat moving in a swallow. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” Revik said, sharper.

  Jon gave him a harder look. “Okay… sir.”

  Revik grinned. He realized the ridiculousness of the sudden flush of optimism that hit him, but couldn’t help himself.

  “Damn straight,” he muttered.

  Something about the way he said it made everyone else in the Humvee burst into laughter.

  Maybe they felt that optimism, too.

  Whatever it was, it dispelled the tension that had lingered ever since the Chinook landed. Neela grinned, giving another half-laugh as she leaned into Yumi’s side where she sat across from them. Up front, behind the driver’s wheel, Jorag snorted a laugh from where he sat next to Jax, Illeg and
Maygar.

  From the middle row of seats, Jon smiled along with the rest, almost as if he couldn’t help himself––even though that underlying irritation and bewilderment remained in his eyes. Balidor clapped him on the shoulder, but Jon barely seemed to feel it. Revik saw Jon aim a faint scowl in Wreg’s direction, too, but the ex-Rebel looked openly angry at that point.

  Wreg was the only one in the Humvee who didn’t laugh at Revik’s words.

  Revik suppressed a temptation to bump the older man with his light, if only to get that closed look off his face. He needed to wait until he could get him alone.

  The Humvee pulled to a stop, and something in that final jerk against the brakes seemed to snap Jon out of wherever his mind had gone.

  That time, when his hazel eyes returned to the window, Jon focused on the human faces waiting for them, including Dante, that hacker girl they’d picked up before the quarantine, and a few others Revik recognized from the human Lists.

  Revik’s eyes followed Jon’s past two Adhipan seers, Declan and Vikram, to a handful of Allie’s friends from San Francisco, as well as her and Jon’s cousins, and their uncle and aunt. Revik’s throat closed briefly when he saw her family standing there, even though he’d been in contact with them from San Francisco.

  He’d made sure they heard from him, personally, what happened to her, even if he left out some of the grimmer details, mainly about who had done it to her, the pregnancy, and the fact that she might never wake up.

  When she regained consciousness, he’d called them again, talking to her Uncle John and her Aunt Carol, as well as two of her cousins, Kara and Marco.

  He’d needed them to understand why she still wasn’t quite herself.

  Again, he left out details, mostly pertaining to her addiction to the wires, but he talked to them about it for hours. He’d needed them to understand the full scope of how she would be when they finally saw her in person, and why they couldn’t speak to her on the line.

  Still, he knew this would be a shock for them.

  Hearing about a loved one losing some aspect of their mind was one thing. Experiencing it was another.

  And Allie still wasn’t talking. Not even in his mind.

  He looked away from the cluster of humans, frowning. He knew he’d have to talk to them first, and probably give them significant time to be with Allie, supervised or not. Her cousins would be easier, he suspected––more confused than hurt, much less devastated by what had happened to his wife.

  Allie’s Aunt Carol worried Revik the most.

  She’d been kind of a second mother to Allie over the years, and with Allie’s real mother gone, Revik suspected Carol clung to Allie even tighter, as a remnant of her sister, perhaps. Carol was the one who’d cried inconsolably over the phone while Revik tried, badly, he suspected, to comfort her, and to reassure her that Allie wasn’t in pain, at least.

  He honestly didn’t know if she would feel better or worse when faced with Allie herself, but the latter reaction worried him.

  He didn’t know how Allie would react to her family, either, much less her aunt’s tears and grief if they overwhelmed Allie with emotion.

  He’d been careful to keep most of that from his wife since she’d returned to consciousness. He’d put the link in her ear so her aunt could speak to her over the line, but he hadn’t been able to tell if Allie even recognized her voice.

  He’d been shielding most of his own emotional reactions from Allie, too––the extreme ones, anyway––although he’d been a lot less than successful with that over the last few days.

  Still, she’d seemed okay with it. She’d comforted him even, in her own way.

  The thought left Revik’s mind a second later.

  His eyes got pulled by someone else.

  Standing in front of that smaller group of Allie’s human family and friends stood a man Revik didn’t even recognize at first. He felt compelled to stare at the man anyway, focusing on his dark blue eyes and black hair with a kind of blank concentration, without knowing what held him there.

  It hit him with a start he was looking at Jaden, his wife’s ex-lover and another refugee from San Francisco.

  The man had changed a lot in the months since Revik last saw him.

  Like Jon, Jaden looked like he’d lost weight. Also like Jon, most of what he’d lost hadn’t been muscle, which left him lean-looking, and taller somehow, almost seer height. He also looked more adult than Revik remembered him looking before, despite being in his mid-thirties, so well into physical maturity for a human.

  Jaden stared at the Humvee with an intensity Revik had never seen on the other man’s face before, either. It looked almost like he stared at Revik himself, although Revik knew that couldn’t be true, given that the shielded, blackened windows remained rolled up.

  Revik couldn’t remember ever seeing that particular look on Jaden’s face, in all the time he’d spent watching Allie in California. It struck him suddenly that Aunt Carol and the others would have told Jaden what happened. Staring at that face, Revik felt himself bristling, without any conscious thought attached to the reaction.

  Jaden was on the human Displacement List.

  He’d been ranked relatively high on it, Revik remembered––a “2” designation, unlike the threes and fours that designated most of Allie’s family and friends. Rank 2 - tech, so they probably had him working with Dante.

  In that same set of seconds, Revik knew something else.

  Jaden would blame him for what happened to Allie.

  He might have to restrain himself from killing that fucker when he did.

  As the thought swam through his mind, along with a denser pulse of hostility, Allie’s fingers tightened on his shoulders, massaging the muscle there.

  Revik looked at her, even as Declan opened the back door of the Humvee from outside. As Revik met her gaze, the passenger section of the armored car flooded with light from outside. It lit her green irises, giving them a ghostly glow he felt down to his feet.

  She was smiling at him.

  Gods. Pain snaked through his light, making his hands hurt where he held her.

  When her own light flared, responding to his, he pushed her gently back with his aleimi, a dense apology woven into the pulse.

  Sorry, he sent in a murmur. Not now, baby. Okay? Later. Later… please…

  He sent it softly, even lower than before. He felt another stomach-wrenching flicker of shame for the promise inherent in those words.

  He knew he meant them, though.

  Jerking his eyes off her face, he motioned for the others to leave the car before them, and not only because they were crammed into the far side of the bench on the back end of the Humvee’s passenger cabin. He needed to pull himself together before he faced these people, or he really would lose it. He needed to do it for her.

  By the time everyone else had climbed out of the car, he’d more or less managed to put his game face on again.

  “Okay,” he said, taking her hand as he smiled at her. “Are you ready, baby?”

  She smiled back at him, right before she lowered her face, touching her forehead briefly to his. Pain lived even in that small gesture.

  Revik could imagine he felt love in it, too.

  He sent his own love back, as much as she could hold, fighting tears as he did. He smiled through the sudden blur of his vision, holding her hand up to his lips to kiss her fingers before he started sliding across the bench after Balidor and the others.

  For good or for bad, they had come home.

  28

  LITTLE GIRL BLUE

  “DARLING,” A FAMILIAR voice called from the other room. The word came out sing-song, a lilting, seductive tone he used often with her now. “You’ll want to see this, my love. I promise, it’s quite exciting. Positively riveting, in fact…”

  Cass smiled, giving a low snort in spite of herself.

  Looking down at the little girl holding her outstretched arms up to where Cass stood, she relented, unable to
squelch her returning smile at the child’s somber gaze.

  “Such a serious little girl,” Cass cooed at her, swinging her up to hold her at her waist, wrapping her arms under her skirted bottom. “What are we so serious about?” she teased, giving her a mock frown in return. “Are you solving world hunger, my precious? Memorizing all of the elements on the periodic table?”

  The girl giggled, blowing light bubbles at Cass.

  Menlim already had little Kami’s light hooked into the construct, of course, but the child had her own construct, in addition to the one over the building, much less the one over New York. Menlim assured Cass it would speed up her light development in key areas if they kept her immersed in that more structured light, as well as help her learn the functionality she would need as she got older, and began her training in earnest.

  “She won’t require any of the persuasions her father received,” Menlim promised, waving away her concerns the one time Cass pressed the point. “She will not need even the smallest amount of such a thing, so do not worry your head in the slightest, my dear. Not only will she have you and Terian to guide her––we can channel her light appropriately from birth. Training your daughter will be like breathing for her. I vow it, my beautiful War Cassandra.”

  Cass had been relieved by his words, but still wary.

  Something about Kami brought up that momma bear thing in Cass so violently it shocked her. She’d never felt so protective of another being in her life.

  Small fingers tugged at her hair.

  When Cass turned, meeting those gorgeous, stunning, clear and green-rimmed eyes, she smiled, seeing the serious look that had returned to her daughter’s face.

  She must have picked up some element of Cass’s thoughts––enough that a small frown crinkled her tiny forehead. Her light exuded that worry too, along with a whisper of puzzlement, like she couldn’t figure out the precise source of what had bothered her mother.

  Kami was getting better at reading the two of them all the time.

  Seemingly every day, she got better at it.

  Something about the intensity of that gaze touched Cass deeper than even the request to be picked up. She couldn’t help but find that seriousness, along with the clear intelligence and intent behind Kami’s gaze, completely adorable and touching and awe-inspiring all at once.