Bridge

by JC Andrijeski

  She also found herself thinking, not for the first time, that little Kami could be a miniature of her father at times, even down to that precious little wrinkle she got between her eyes when she frowned.

  Cass refused to acknowledge whether she saw any of her biological “mother” in those features, much less in the eyes themselves. Whatever had been imparted through Allie’s side of the genetic pairing had to be pretty insignificant at this point, anyway, compared to the role Cass played in the little girl’s life.

  Allie lost her chance to be a mother.

  For fuck’s sake, she’d never really wanted it, anyway.

  Even when they were kids, Allie only cared about herself. She’d never talked about having a family or even a husband or anyone of her own. When she talked about her future, Allie never even mentioned those things.

  It had always been all about Allie to Allie.

  For the same reason, Cass knew without a doubt the child was Revik’s idea.

  Knowing Allie, he’d been forced to talk her into it, assuming the pregnancy wasn’t a full-blown accident for both of them. It probably took the big guy months to get her to relent––and then he likely had to frame it as some kind of ego wank related to her being Holy Lord and Queen Allie the Bridge.

  Cass snorted. Having a kid would have bored Allie in a matter of weeks.

  She didn’t deserve Kami. She’d never appreciate Kami the way Cass did; she’d never even see her. She’d never know how special she was, how perfect in every way.

  So yeah––fuck Allie.

  Kami was hers. Kami loved her.

  She didn’t know Allie from shit.

  “Darling?” Terian called again. “Really, you must see this. I implore you!”

  Bouncing Kami on her hip, Cass walked with her across the deep burgundy carpet to the entryway between rooms. When she passed through the sliding wooden doors to the main living area, she saw Terian standing in front of a wall-length feed monitor. That monitor took up the vast majority of the bone-colored wall that stood directly across from the two-sided fireplace that burned brightly on either side of the two rooms.

  Frowning, Cass watched the black, billowing smoke on the monitor, seeing it float and expand upwards in liquid-like plumes from a large dirt hole surrounded by a ring of trees.

  Still bouncing Kami, she squinted at the burning vehicles.

  “Isn’t that––” she began, but Terian held up his fingers in a shushing gesture.

  “Watch!” he said, his voice delighted. “Wait for it…”

  There was a bare pause, then a sharp flash burst out from the screen.

  Something underground, on the far right of the dirt clearing, went up in a blinding explosion of light. As the brightness of the initial blast began to fade, Cass saw darker, denser black smoke belch from that second hole in the ground, along with high orange and yellow flames, tinged with blue and green from some kind of chemical.

  Terian clapped his hands together in delight.

  “Did you see that?” he grinned, waving a hand at the screen. “Gods. I think I have a hard-on. Is that wrong?”

  Cass laughed, even as she put her hand over one of Kami’s ears.

  “Language, Papa,” she said, her voice mock-stern.

  “Sorry, poppet.” Still grinning, he walked over to the two of them and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her and Kami roughly against his side before he leaned down to kiss her cheek. “I got overexcited.”

  “I see that,” Cass said, smiling at him fondly.

  Looking back at the monitor, she frowned.

  The images shifted as she watched, clicking through to another track, displaying views from a whole different set of cameras. Several of those views showed the docks on fire, and the northern land gate, which looked like it had been completely flattened.

  Cass flinched in reflex when one of the OBE transformers exploded in a dramatic, fireworks-like shower of sparks. She watched as the gateway to the shore closed.

  Beyond that gate, and in front of it, the fires continued to burn.

  He’d just cut off the eastern docks.

  That meant he’d locked a number of their people out, since they’d gone to New Jersey that morning to pick up more supplies.

  “Someone’s having a good time,” she murmured, bouncing Kami on her hip. Shaking her head and smiling at Terian, she continued to watch the monitor. After a few more seconds, she looked at the little girl’s serious face, making another mock frown.

  “Is that your daddy?” she asked the little girl, shaking her playfully as she pointed at the screen. “Is that your daddy, precious? Is he blowing stuff up? Is he?”

  Terian laughed, kissing the little girl on her dark head before he planted a significantly more adult kiss on Cass’s mouth.

  “Are we taking a field trip soon?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her from behind, his amber eyes sharp on the screen. “Going to see daddy in person?”

  Cass snorted another laugh.

  Just then, she saw a light blinking on the edge of the monitor.

  Menlim. He must be watching this, too.

  He wanted to talk to her. No surprise there.

  “Hold her for me, will you?” she murmured to Terian, handing over Kami. Once Terian had the little girl balanced in his arms against his chest, Cass straightened her suit jacket and shirt, right before she turned, heading back into the other room. She could tell by the signal that Menlim wanted her to come to him in private this time.

  “I’ll only be a few minutes,” she called back to Terian. “…An hour at most. You can feed her while I’m gone, if she gets hungry.”

  “You don’t want me to come along, dearest?” Terian called after her.

  “Not for this one, no,” Cass said, smiling at him.

  Changing her mind, she shucked off the suit jacket by the table, pulling her red leather jacket off the dining room chair instead. Sliding a hand into the nearest arm, she pulled it around her back, inserting her other arm before she tugged her long hair free of the back collar and shook it so that it hung straight down her back.

  “Play with baby girl,” she added. “I’ll fill you in when I get back.”

  Terian grinned at her, wolf-like. He raised up one of Kami’s pudgy little hands by the wrist, helping her to wave her tiny fingers at Cass as the latter walked towards the outside door.

  “Say bye-bye to mommy, precious,” Terian cooed. “Say bye-bye mommy.”

  Kami laughed, waving under Terian’s guiding fingers.

  Cass waved back, laughing. “Bye-bye, precious!”

  “She’s going to make a welcoming party for your other daddy,” Terian confided softly into the girl’s ear. “Aren’t you, mommy? Making a nice big party for Daddy Revik? With a cake? And lots and lots of friends and presents…?”

  Cass grinned in response, giving Terian a wink as she adjusted her shirt, tucking it into her pants before she slid her foot into one of the Italian-made red pumps standing by the door.

  “Don’t let her watch the feeds for too long,” she cautioned him, settling her heel before she stepped into the second shoe.

  “I won’t, mummy. Cross my heart.” Terian used Kami’s fingers to cross her own heart on her small chest. Terian smiled wider when the little girl giggled at the game, following the motion with those shockingly light eyes. “We won’t watch the nasty, nasty feeds, will we, Kami darling? We’ll find something more fun to do. Maybe you can ride Uncle Ulrich again?”

  The guard by the door, who happened to be that very same Ulrich, smiled, even as he bowed respectfully to Cass, keeping his head low as he opened the door for her.

  Still smiling, he stood out of the way so Cass could enter the outside corridor.

  Cass laughed, too.

  Flipping her hair over her shoulder, she gave the two of them a last wave and a blown kiss before she walked out, the grin still widening her lipsticked mouth.

  29

  FEELS LIKE HOME

  JO
N FORGOT TO breathe.

  Faces surrounded him, people clapping him on the back, touching him, clinging to his arms briefly then releasing him as he wove through the seemingly endless, snaking crowd.

  Everything felt surreal. He was caught in a dream filled with half-remembered faces, fingers touching him only to leave behind flickering pulses of presence and memory. Warmth flowed through the strands that held him, and Jon felt Revik there, stronger than the rest, wrapped into and around Allie’s light like a protective shield, but refusing to hide her, either.

  He wouldn’t hide her.

  They walked through the front doors, just like Revik said they would.

  It didn’t really sink in to Jon why Revik insisted on that, what it meant to him, to bring Allie in openly, not hide her from the seers and humans who rushed around them, fighting to touch her, to see her, to be near her, most of them not even seeming to notice that faraway stare in her eyes.

  That same stare might focus on them, or on the high windows of the House on the Hill behind them, shining brilliantly with their organic shields temporarily lifted––or she might be staring at a bird winging against the dark blue of the sky, or a piece of trash in the road, or one of the paintings in the lobby, or a birthmark on someone else’s face.

  None of it mattered to any of them.

  Jon felt shame when he realized that.

  If it had been him, he might have snuck her in through the back.

  He knew Revik was right and he was wrong, and that shame worsened.

  Gods. Why had he judged Revik for what he did with her?

  She was still Allie, regardless of how much or how little of her remained.

  He fought to focus on faces. Most flashed by too quickly for him to react with more than a jerk and a flicker of shock. By the time he’d reached the floor of the lobby, that fire in his chest had worsened, bringing stinging tears, clutching at his throat.

  Unlike most of the seers there, those tears weren’t of happiness.

  He knew most of them wouldn’t notice. They’d think he was crying for the same reasons the rest of them were. They’d think he was touched, filled with joy, overwhelmed by emotion––but he knew the truth.

  The truth was, he’d pushed all of these people out of his mind, just like he had Allie.

  He’d hardly let himself think about any of them since he’d looked down on that wave slamming into Manhattan’s containment fields and flooding the lower shores. From that moment until this one, he’d convinced himself he’d never see any of them alive again.

  The fact of his own cowardice hit him harder as he looked at the group of humans.

  Unlike the seers, they seemed uncertain how to react. Some looked happy, even hopeful, but most looked confused. They held back as they watched the seers greet one another, many watching the proceedings somberly from the walls of the four-story lobby.

  His people. Christ.

  He hadn’t spoken to any of them since he’d left.

  He’d heard from Balidor that Revik had been in touch with his and Allie’s family, but Jon himself hadn’t been. He hadn’t tried to contact a single one of them––not once, in almost six months. Revik even asked him to, once. He asked Jon to call his Aunt Carol, maybe so she could hear from someone she knew about Allie, or maybe just so she could be comforted by Jon’s voice, by knowing he was alive.

  Jon hadn’t done it, even then.

  The guilt of his own avoidance hit him harder, making his chest flare in pain.

  He wiped his eyes angrily with the back of his hand, even as he felt another flush of light from Revik, who seemed to have taken it upon himself to keep this reunion from becoming overly maudlin or depressing, even if he had to bolster some of them up artificially to get through it.

  Jon knew he wouldn’t see all the seers he remembered from here.

  Seers and humans had died since he’d left on that helicopter.

  Not surprisingly, they’d lost a lot more people here than Revik had in San Francisco. Seers died in the basement and sewer floods. They’d been shot on patrols, and even in that mess right before the tsunami, where a half-dozen Adhipan and ex-Rebels chased through the flooding sewer tunnels, trying to reach Revik, Jon and Maygar.

  Some couldn’t get out in time, when the first wave of the tsunami hit.

  Jon looked out over the faces he did know, flinching more at each one. He continued to be propelled deeper into the hotel, but he couldn’t see who held him anymore. He could barely take looking at even the seers who’d been with him the whole way.

  Even so, he glimpsed Neela arm in arm with Anale and Argo, two of the female seers who’d stayed behind in New York.

  He watched Neela throw her head back in a laugh at something one of them said, tears in her eyes as she paused to kiss Vikram on the mouth, more friendly than otherwise, but still making him blush and smile when it ended.

  He saw Garensche grinning stupidly at Holo, who he enveloped in a hug along with Jax. It hit Jon only then that he’d never seen Jax and Holo separated for very long before all of this… but Holo got left behind when Jax joined the search party to find Revik.

  Squinting through the layers of faces, limbs and bodies as he got pushed and led through the main part of the lobby, Jon realized those bodies still enveloped Revik and Allie more than the rest. He saw seers walk up just to touch the two of them, many with tears in their eyes, some making religious signs with their hands. He saw the owner of the hotel, Naldaran, among those who came to pay their respects, as well as the seer who helped Allie pick out the dress she’d worn for her wedding to Revik in Central Park.

  Tears choked Jon at the thought, more than he could handle suddenly.

  The seers crammed around him barely seemed to notice, but Jon couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see as he got shoved roughly along with the others towards the area near the fireplace and under the stone mosaic depicting Seertown before it was bombed.

  An arm wrapped around his shoulders then, and Jon looked up to see Jorag standing there, tears in his shocking blue eyes. He grinned down at Jon, squeezing him hard against his muscular body, even as he used his free hand to clasp Kalen around the neck and then Ike around the shoulders, squeezing them each affectionately in turn as Kalen laughed aloud, clapping Jorag on the back.

  Jon felt the sickness in his light worsen.

  He jerked his eyes off Jorag in time to see one of the female seers from the military group leap out of the crowd to pull Wreg into an embrace, kissing him on the mouth. That kiss was significantly less platonic than Neela’s had been with Vikram.

  Jon found himself turning away when Wreg returned it, pulling her against him with a laugh right after they parted.

  Jon’s eyes returned to the Chinese-looking seer against his will. He watched as Wreg exchanged hugs with Hondo and Mika. He couldn’t help noticing that the female seer who’d kissed him, who he was pretty sure was named Preela, didn’t leave his side.

  Jon fought not to care, to push it out of his light, but he couldn’t.

  Maybe it was everything else going on, but he just couldn’t.

  He couldn’t even hide it.

  Something must have left him, enough to reach Wreg’s light, because Wreg turned, staring at Jon with those black eyes, from what must have been twenty feet away. Jon met that stare and found he couldn’t look away. He didn’t hide the charge in his light, although if he did that deliberately or simply couldn’t control it, he couldn’t decide, either.

  Whatever the cause, Wreg seemed to get the message.

  Jon felt a flush of relief when the older seer stepped away from Preela, putting some distance between their light.

  He sent Wreg a short, brief message in that pause, the first he’d let leave his light in the seer’s direction since they’d left San Francisco.

  Thanks, he sent.

  When his vision cleared, Wreg was staring at him.

  Some of the anger had left the other man’s expression, leaving him looking borderline c
onfused. Even so, he nodded to Jon in return. They were still looking at one another when Wreg’s attention got pulled back to the crowd when Durel tackled him from the other side, howling out a yell that made the seers around him laugh.

  Jon watched, feeling his throat tighten as a dark-skinned seer named Gundry shook Wreg’s hand vigorously, tears in his eyes above a more serious-looking face. Jon had never seen so much emotion on the East Indian seer before; it took him aback, even as it brought surprise to Wreg’s returning smile. Wreg clasped the other in a warm hug in return, and again Jon felt a reaction in his light, one sharp enough that he forced his eyes away.

  He still didn’t know who Wreg’s ex- was, the one Revik told him about.

  Apparently Wreg had been with someone through most of World War I, so it was possible he was one of those who followed Wreg to Salinse, and then followed Wreg to the Sword when Revik left. Jon hadn’t wanted to ask before. Enough Rebels remained in their ranks from both rebellions, Jon knew there was a good chance the man was still here, with them.

  Assuming he was still alive, that is.

  Forcing the thought from his mind, he looked back at Revik and Allie.

  Once he had, he wished he hadn’t.

  Revik had brought her over to their human friends and relatives.

  Jon felt his throat tighten when he saw Aunt Carol envelope first Revik then Allie in bear hugs. Uncle James lingered more in the background, watching Allie’s face minutely with tears in his eyes. When Revik offered his hand though, Uncle James shook it, clasping Revik’s hand with both of his.

  Jon found he couldn’t tear his attention away from their small group, or the faces of his cousins, aunt and uncle as they all looked at Allie, a combination of fear and hope in their eyes as they watched her face.

  Jon didn’t know what Revik told them, exactly, about Allie’s condition, but he distinctly got the impression they were relieved by whatever they saw in Allie herself.

  Allie tugged on Aunt Carol’s hair then, almost playfully, despite the distance in her eyes, and Aunt Carol hugged her again, holding her more warmly that time, and tighter than before. She continued to grip Allie’s waist with one arm even after she’d more or less let go, and Jon saw her beaming, despite the tears Jon could plainly see on her face.