Bridge

by JC Andrijeski

  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.

  Revik knew what he had to do.

  The phantom Allie told him to wait. He didn’t know how long he could. She’d told him to stall, too, but given that they had him in cuffs, with a collar around his neck, he couldn’t be sure what that meant at this point, either.

  He dug quietly, slowly, patiently, at the scar in his arm.

  It wasn’t a real scar, unlike most of those on his body. His medical techs made it in San Francisco, right in the sliver of fat tissue they injected into his forearm, sewing the tool he’d asked them to create out of bone and organic into his very skin.

  Confusion hit him, more tiredness.

  Some of that might be shock, or blood loss. It could also be the drugs they’d fed him after they put the collar around his neck.

  Even past the drugs and shock, past the loss of blood… something felt different.

  In the construct, in his light, he felt a difference. He didn’t think he could be imagining it entirely. He hoped it meant his friends had gotten out.

  He hoped it meant his son was free.

  The two guards holding him had shoved him to the back of the elevator.

  Big mistake, letting him hide his hands, but they probably figured it was a moot point now, that it couldn’t possibly matter.

  The elevator was large, more of a cargo lift than one strictly for passengers. They were taking him somewhere outside of New York; he felt that high up in his light, as well. He thought about the word “distraction” in that higher part of his aleimi, mixing it in with other symbols, reciting scripture he’d learned as a child in the forefront of his light.

  He could use the telekinesis still.

  Of course, they might short it out, like before.

  Maybe they even wanted him to knock himself out, knowing they could build him up faster than before. He already knew from the construct that they’d deliberately not repaired his telekinesis after Argentina, so he wouldn’t be able to interfere when they took Allie.

  While they took his wife and child.

  He could feel it now, what they’d done up there, to his light.

  It was a feature built into the construct itself––a safety-defense mechanism added by the architects in case one of their network pillars went rogue.

  Because of it, he couldn’t turn his telekinesis on anyone high up in the construct, anyone above maybe the third or fourth tier. It instantly created a kind of feedback loop, overloading the structure and damaging it, and him, like shorting out a fuse by pumping too much electricity through it all at once.

  Only, instead of electricity, triggering the failsafe in this instance brought down a massive dump of hard, metallic-silver light, like pouring mercury over his head.

  Revik’s mind spun around the mechanism at those higher levels, looking at it, all the while his fingers and hands worked in the physical, pulling out the tool, sawing at the cuffs on his wrists. In the foreground, he found himself reciting the succession order of the Pyramid he’d built for Galaith.

  …1, 1, 9, 2023, 12, 2878, 23, 21, 3, 4, 17, 188, 192, 101, 1, 3, 3, 2, 5…

  “Stop that,” the seer holding him muttered, shaking his arm.

  When Revik looked up, the man was wiping his nose with a gloved hand. His gloved fingers came away covered in blood.

  The higher parts of Revik’s light looked down, assessing, thinking.

  From there, the construct looked like silver threads, strangling him from all sides. He hadn’t seen it before; those telekinetic structures were so much higher up than he normally operated, so much a part of who he was. Those structures always felt more personal to him anyway, more woven into the fabric of his being.

  As a result, he hadn’t seen it clearly.

  Balidor hadn’t seen it.

  Even Tarsi hadn’t seen it.

  Allie might have figured it out eventually. Maybe that was another reason they had to get rid of her, before she discovered what the Dreng had done to him.

  How they’d made him a slave.

  …987, 231, 11, 11, 11, 57, 63, 44, 1, 2, 2, 2, 6, 6, 8, 2, 1, 6, 6, 887, 900, 600…

  “Fucking stop it!” The guard next to him lost control, cuffing his head.

  Revik felt Menlim’s light in his––trying to control him, to calm him down.

  They never left him alone. They never fucking left him alone. Menlim always acted like Revik’s light belonged to him as much as to Revik himself.

  More, really. He thought it belonged to him more.

  Your light is a gift to the world, nephew. A gift to the world…

  A gift to him, he meant.

  Thinking about that now, Revik laughed.

  He leaned against the wall between two of the largest of Menlim’s guards, both of whom had nose-bleeds now, neither of whom noticed Revik’s own blood running down his arm behind his back, where he extracted the tool he now used to saw at the organic cuffs. Revik felt something in their minds start to unravel as he laughed.

  It made him laugh harder.

  What the fuck is he doing? Terian sent to Menlim. What’s wrong with him?

  The words appeared, floating somewhere in the construct. Revik saw them, clear as day, drifting below those higher structures in his light.

  What the hell did they give him? Terian scanned the lower areas of Revik’s light. Is he having some kind of psychotic break?

  Menlim’s presence floated alongside Terian’s. The lizard lady floated there, too.

  Cass wasn’t there anymore. Cass was just… gone.

  A harmless sedative, Menlim sent back. It was meant to calm him.

  Does he strike you as particularly “calm” right now? Terian sent, his thoughts sharp. What the fuck happened down there? You felt it too, didn’t you?

  Of course I felt it, Menlim sent back, cold as ice. It doesn’t matter. Whatever trick the Adhipan and that old woman are playing, it is too late. We have him. There is no way they can stop us from leaving with him now.

  Yeah, Terian retorted. He sounded genuinely angry, furious at the older seer. We only had to sacrifice Cass to do it… and the child. And he’ll probably just die anyway.

  He won’t die. Menlim’s thoughts grew warning and reassuring in the same beat. And we will get Cassandra and your daughter back, my son. Do not worry. I promise you, they will not be separated from you for long. The Adhipan has no one left to protect them, and I can easily track the girl.

  Terian’s thoughts remained skeptical. Are you sure you killed the Bridge at all? She didn’t feel all that dead to me.

  She is dead. We confirmed it brother, believe me.

  Terian didn’t answer him, but continued to feel unconvinced. His light darted around Revik’s in electric twitches and jerks.

  Did you evacuate the rest of your little council? Terian sent next. What are we doing next, if you’re serious about going after––

  He is listening to us, Menlim sent. We will discuss this later, Terian.

  Revik chuckled, glancing at the two guards he stood between.

  They glared at him in return, but Revik saw the nerves in their eyes.

  More seers, and even a few humans, stood in front of him, nearly filling the metal box as it descended through the floors. He could taste water now, feel a boat, yet somehow, he had to fight not to laugh again. Menlim was right. He could hear them. He could hear every fucking word.

  Not only that, he could feel where they were.

  He could feel them waiting for him below.

  What was it that Terian had said? That they’d lost the child? They’d lost Cass?

  Of course, the child was dead, Revik knew that. Allie told him.

  But why did Menlim claim he could get them back? Was
he lying to Terian, to keep him compliant? Was Cass dead, too? Something definitely went wrong with Cass’s light––something Menlim hadn’t planned.

  Then again, this was probably all just another trick, another way of screwing with his head. He couldn’t help thinking it might be more than that, though. He could feel it. Something happened. Something Shadow didn’t like. Something Menlim hadn’t planned for.

  Whatever it was, it was making the old seer damned nervous.

  Revik knew he hadn’t done it, whatever it was.

  But someone had.

  The thought made him smile, even as he turned that word over in his head a second time. Distraction. Allie said something about stalling, about creating a distraction. Maybe he could do something with that, after all. Maybe he hadn’t been chained as much as he’d originally thought. He might not even need to use his body––or the tool he’d now used to cut most of the way through the first cuff.

  After all, he was the head of the fucking construct.

  That meant he could rewrite the construct, right? In theory, anyway.

  So he did. He just went around that whole land mine entirely, rerouting his light at the source. He fixed the connections and broken pieces of his structure at the top of the silver-threaded Pyramid, looking down on the structure as he worked.

  The first thing he did was eliminate that jurekil’a feedback loop.

  He just got rid of that fucker entirely.

  Once he was pretty certain he’d managed that, he let his eyes click back into focus. He waited for someone to react. Menlim. Terian. One of the guards down here. He waited for them to freak out, to try and reverse the changes he’d made, to re-leash his telekinesis to the construct before he did something crazy.

  No one did.

  He wondered if he should test it.

  Concentrating briefly, he focused on something small. Something inconsequential.

  Stall them, she’d said. Give me some time.

  He decided to stop the elevator.

  The car complied with a hard jerk.

  The motion nearly threw him off his feet, making the seers and humans around him sway and slam into the walls. A few fell, grabbing onto the uniforms of the seers and humans closest to where they stood. The alarm went off, exploding into harsh clanging overhead.

  The guards gasped. Even the ones holding Revik shut their eyes, wincing and covering their ears, one-handed. The two guards closest to him looked bad now. The other six crammed into the elevator in front of him didn’t look so hot, either.

  Four humans, the rest Sark. He could read their stats now, in the construct.

  The two holding him, as well as the one standing directly in front of him, had actual ranks of six, four and eight.

  Revik could feel all of it now.

  The seer in front of him and to his right fell between a rank two and three––the fighter from before, so more of a physical guy. The woman on his other side was a seven. Another female and two males all fell into the five and six range.

  Another rank two. A four. Another five.

  He could see all of them, their structures, spinning in the construct below.

  The really big gun stood in the opposite corner. Female. Had to be a rank nine or ten, actual. Close to Wreg’s in potential, if not his equal in actual, not yet.

  He started with her.

  No one heard the cracking sound that came right before she crumpled to the carpeted floor. The alarms were too loud.

  Well, no one but Revik. He heard it only in that high up, distant place in his light.

  He felt the others react when they realized what he’d done, though. He heard a yell, with his physical ears, felt the panic as their lights flared out, one by one, starting with the seers and humans who stood closest to her.

  He didn’t give them a lot of time to react.

  Tapping into the higher light of the construct, he picked them off, one by one.

  She’d wanted a distraction. She’d wanted him to stall.

  The more he thought about it, the more he doubted it had been Cass, talking to him. He didn’t know where she’d spoken from, what it meant, but it felt like Allie.

  Allie, and she told him their child was dead, that he didn’t need to worry about her anymore. He could go back upstairs. He could go up, and tell Balidor to use the bombs. He could tell Balidor what he’d seen about that underground escape, what the ship looked like, how to find their main transport when they hit the ocean.

  He could tell them everything. They could blow the damned thing out of the water before it even surfaced.

  Or, he could do that part himself.

  He could go downstairs now, while they were still in the building, take the fucker out before it left the dock. Take Menlim’s magic council and just crack their spines, one by one. Sever the threads that held them to this world.

  Even as he thought it, the elevator groaned.

  Revik blinked, staring around the elevator car, realizing it hadn’t been the drugs, or some kind of dream. Bodies littered the floor. He was covered in blood. He stood there, panting, nearly losing his balance without the seers to hold him on either side.

  He still hadn’t managed to saw all the way through the organic cuff.

  It only occurred to him then that he still wore a collar.

  They must have done something to that collar so it wouldn’t interfere with Revik’s ability to hold the construct. He couldn’t help but find that funny, given that he’d used those same structures to kill everyone in the elevator car, after rewriting the construct.

  Even now, a part of him experimented, moving around construct filaments like living, thread-thin puppet strings.

  Staring up at the god’s eye camera in the corner over the elevator’s control panel, he laughed. He was still laughing when the elevator jerked back into motion, the alarm shutting off without warning.

  This time, it was traveling up.

  The motion threw him to the ground as the car began ascending rapidly.

  He struggled back to his feet, climbing over bodies awkwardly, slamming his own body against the car’s walls by the control panel and using that to leverage himself back up to his feet. He’d dropped the tool by accident when the car lurched, and now he fought to pick it up, banging his side into the metal hand-rail that rimmed the back three walls of the car. He barely felt it enough to curse before he fumbled over the bodies lying there, looking over his shoulder to try and locate the dropped tool. When he couldn’t find it, he stood up, fighting his way over the console instead, looking for the controls.

  He couldn’t stop the elevator car with his mind that time. Something was interfering. He assumed they must have gotten wise to him, fixed the construct, but whatever it was, it didn’t feel like Menlim, or the Dreng.

  It was something else.

  Turning his back on the console, Revik tried hitting the emergency stop button with his fingers. He pressed it in, but it did nothing.

  Pulling it out with his fingers and thumb, he pressed it in again, but still, no response.

  “Fuck,” he muttered.

  He looked around on the floor, once more trying to locate the cutting tool. He didn’t see it. One of the bodies or limbs must have rolled over on top of it.

  He tried to use the telekinesis to undo the collar, but that time, it shocked him, hard enough to make him gasp, and to disorient him. It shocked him again when he tried to use those same structures to open the cuffs.

  He needed too much of his lower aleimi to manage either thing, apparently.

  He tried hitting other buttons on the elevator key pad, but when he looked down at the console, none of them would stay lit.

  Someone had hijacked the elevator car.

  Menlim must have had his people override the signal to get him to the lobby. But why couldn’t he reach it with the telekinesis? And why were they having him go up now, when before they’d been bringing him down? Why the lobby and not the roof, if they still planned to take him out
of Manhattan?

  Using the construct, carefully that time, he tried to see who they were.

  Cass remained invisible.

  He saw Terian, briefly, standing in a cement tunnel, his clothes jerking under a heavy wind. Revik felt the cold air, the spray from a tunnel river. He saw the long, narrow boat docked behind him, it’s oval cabin door open and spilling light down a lowered staircase.

  Revik vaguely recognized the amphibious vehicle, but knew it had been heavily modified. He scanned briefly, looking for serial numbers––

  Something slammed him, hard, knocking him out of the construct.

  Leaning against the wall, he let out a low laugh.

  Fuck. They’d figured out how he was getting in.

  For some reason, the thought only made him laugh harder. He grinned up at the camera, tasting blood as his nose bled onto his lips from the hit. It still didn’t explain why the elevator was going up and not down.

  “Kiss my ass,” he said to the camera. “I guess you’re going to have to kill me… uncle dickhead.” He let out another course laugh, amused by his own childishness. “Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on… you sick, skull-faced fuck.”

  The elevator car lurched to a stop.

  Revik managed to remain on his feet––barely.

  Panting, he stared around at the stopped car, knees bent, fighting the drug that still coursed through his veins. He half-expected to be shot. Some part of him felt an irrational flush of hope, wondering if they were going to leave him behind, if he’d proven to be too much of a pain in the ass. Of course, they’d probably just kill him, if that was the case.

  Gas him. Or just lock him up in here, collared, and let him starve to death, surrounded by the corpses of the seers and humans he’d slain.

  Maybe the Dreng hoped he’d go all Donner Party and eat them.

  The thought made him laugh again, although it wasn’t really funny.

  It had to be the drugs.

  Even as he thought it, the doors in front of him pinged.

  Slowly, they began to open.

  54

  HEAVEN’S DOOR

  REVIK STARED INTO a familiar-looking space. Dimly lit, covered in gray, marbled stone tile. Expensive looking––or it had been, before bullet holes riddled the walls.