by SM Reine
The Pyramid fights to reform, to pull him up and out, to align him with the top spot, but the murderers intervene, again and again, ripping apart threads each time they touch his light, killing or disconnecting more and more of his drones.
He feels her. She laughs at the carnage...laughs.
His hatred rises, a crushing need to kill, even as the last whispers of light connecting him to the Dreng’s clouds snap and fray.
The Pyramid teeters.
Pieces unlock, above and below. Terian hears it, as the cracks build momentum, as the fissures move from segment to segment, tearing through dark, quiet structures, one by one. More and more of them fall, breaking apart like compressed ash, until he can only stand there and watch, unable to believe what he is witnessing.
Thrown clear, Rooks scatter like so many rik-jum cards, ripped from their moorings like birds thrown from straw nests. Light from the feeding grounds disperses, dumping power from the Pyramid’s base. The seers of the Rooks begin to panic.
Those still hooked into the network begin feeding off one another, killing one another for light. Terian watches in horror as more pieces fall, crushing panicking seers, tearing abilities and knowledge from the communal pools. Lifetimes’ worth of accumulated structures crumble to dust, no longer able to hold to the shared mind of the Pyramid, useless without it. Terian’s own structures begin to flicker, too, then to crack, dimming more as the pools unravel.
He feels it as a drop in power so severe that at first he thinks he is dying.
Then, it gets worse. He feels the Pyramid detach.
It breaks away, Headless.
Terian feels her again. She laughs happily above that whispering dark, and he hates her for the sheer joy he feels in her light.
He screams into the reaches of the Barrier, calling the Dreng back.
But it is too late. The gap between the silvery clouds and the creation stretches too long.
The Dreng are nowhere to be found.
I spin through a weave of multicolored light, laughing without knowing why, tears flowing down my light face. I have never been so happy. Light dismantles the Pyramid while I watch, tearing it off from its broken moorings.
Souls disperse like leaves freed by a warm breeze.
I feel humans on different continents blink, come awake.
Even in their pain, their innocence brings up so much feeling I laugh again, unable to help myself, with no other way to express it. Light pours from the Barrier itself, a cleansing torrent that blasts away the dusty, broken remnants of the Dreng.
The lynchpin pulled, I have only to watch.
It is the break in the clouds...sunrise without annihilation.
Then, I feel something else.
Allie, he says. It’s time to go. We’re in danger...
I open my eyes, fighting to see through the light...
...and found myself lying on something hard that jutted into my back. I was in a dust-filled space, colored only by light from a small, square window with rose-tinted glass.
I looked around, trying to get my bearings.
Revik’s long body lay next to mine. A low boom trembled the floor beneath my back. It brought down dust, and the sound of coughing around me, some male and some female. I saw a broken lamp swinging from the ceiling above, and realized I lay in a stairwell.
Voices grew audible above me.
I heard Maygar first. “Well, we can’t stay here!”
“You heard what Eddard said,” Jon said. “The next floor is completely blocked! We’ll have to...” Jon held a gun when his eyes swiveled to my face and widened. He nearly dropped the gun. “Allie...jesus! You’re awake!”
I looked over at Revik, whose chest rose and fell as he lay on his side on the same wooden steps as me. His eyelids flickered, enough that I hoped he’d come back half-conscious. I fought to sit up, to force myself upright, when I got hit with a sudden rush of dizziness.
Before I could fall, arms slid around my waist, catching me.
I glanced up, surprised to see Maygar.
“You’re back,” he muttered. He held me against his shoulder. Plaster drifted down from the ceiling as the building shook, dusting his hair. Maygar looked up as another booming sound rattled the windows.
“Is Cass okay?” I asked. “Where’s Cass?”
Her voice rose, shaky. “I’m here.” I saw her gripping her own shoulder, leaning against the stair’s handrail as she peered down at me. “What are we going to do?”
Maygar’s voice shifted into the tone of a military report. His words were directed at me, I realized, as if I was in charge.
“They’re blowing up entrances and exits...presumably in case we try to take control of their people,” he said. “I’ve counted at least twenty inside. I can’t feel any below the ground level, but it’s only a matter of time. They’ve got seers with them, and the elevators are all down, as well as everything in the building fitted with organics. They’ve got trank guns too, and gas.”
Maygar grunted, motioning his head towards Revik.
“Rook-boy taught them well,” he added sourly. “Eddard still hopes to get us out through the underground tunnel. He thinks it’s not on any of the plans, but they may have collapsed it by now. They could gas us at any minute. These two...” He nodded at Jon and Cass. “...Made us carry you both. It slowed us down too much.”
I smiled at him, shaking my head. “You want me to feel sorry for you because my friends wouldn’t leave me behind to die?”
His eyes flickered, once. “I wouldn’t have left you,” he said.
“Allie!” Cass said. “We have to get out of here!”
I looked at Revik. Remembering Terian’s scream of rage, I clutched his arm, sliding into his light to see how he was. He was weak as hell, but most of his aleimi had returned to his body. The pressure built behind my eyes as I felt Terian searching for us both.
Cass was right. We didn’t have much time.
“Get him up.” I clicked my fingers in Maygar’s face. “Now, Maygar! And wake him up more...he’s still in the Barrier. Give him some of your light!”
Maygar let go of me and crouched over Revik.
After shaking him once, he slapped his face, harder than absolutely necessary, I thought, but it seemed to do the trick. Once Revik’s eyes were open, Maygar grabbed his other arm, grunting as he hoisted him upright. He slid a shoulder under the taller seer’s arm, motioning for Jon to help him by supporting his other side.
Then I saw Maygar’s expression turn puzzled. He looked back at me.
“Something’s different. It feels like chaos. Like—”
“I know.” I studied his eyes, startled by his seeming unawareness of what had occurred. He didn’t seem to remember what we’d done to the Pyramid at all. “We have a window,” I told him, keeping my explanation short. “From the Rooks, at least. I don’t know for how long. And I don’t know exactly how it’ll affect them.”
“What about the barricades?” Jon said.
“And those soldiers on the stairs?” Cass said.
I looked around at all of them, hesitating. “Yeah. Okay. Maygar and I are going to need your help. You’re going to get tired. If it gets too bad, tell us, okay? We’ll lay off.”
“Allie?” Cass said. “Lay off what?”
I met her eyes. “We’re going to be draining you. Taking your light...as soon as things start,” I said. “I’ll take as much as you can possibly spare. Don’t ask me to stop unless you’re desperate. The main thing is going to be speed. Once we get closer to their humans, I’ll switch to draining them.” I looked up the stairs at Eddard. “Those charges Revik mentioned wouldn’t hurt either. The more we can distract them, the easier it will be to knock them out before they start firing...”
I trailed when Eddard held up a black bag. He shook it, to show me it was empty, then lifted some kind of hand-held remote device.
Getting the gist, I nodded, glancing around at the others.
I considered saying
something else. Something encouraging, maybe, something inspiring or leader-like. But seeing the glazed looks I got in return, it struck me that we didn’t have time for that, either. I motioned for Maygar and Jon to follow with Revik, even as another booming sound brought dust sifting through the floor above.
Already, I can barely see for the light in my eyes.
“Stay behind us,” I hear myself say to the humans.
I feel Revik react, reaching for me, but only just.
The first explosion rocked the whole of the penthouse apartment, raining debris down on the crowd of onlookers standing in the street below. Windows shattered, car alarms went off as chunks of metal, plaster, paper, fabric, bits of wood furniture and wainscoting along with broken appliances, powdered glass and paint showered onto the street alongside the pieces of helicopter and smashed up cars that had been moved to the side to help reinforce roadblocks.
Detective of Home Office Security for England, Ronald Clement, spilled his coffee over the front of his shirt when the windows blew, ducking down behind a military van.
He touched his earpiece, but his eyes found his partner, Detective Henry George, first.
“What in God’s name was that?” he shouted. “I thought we had them trapped in the stairwell?”
Henry pointed to the penthouse, as if the smoke billowing out the top floor windows was explanation enough.
Clement tapped his headset pointedly. He felt the other detective click over, and immediately began to speak. “Henry? What happened?”
“Dunno. Where’s the head Yank? That’s their people, right?”
Another explosion blew out a set of windows on the penthouse floor.
Clement ducked, then watched in disbelief as furniture rained down, including what looked like a four foot head from a Buddha statue. It caved in the front of a police car as it landed, crushing windshield and bonnet neatly into the asphalt.
Clement barely had time to be grateful no one sat inside when the muffled sound of gunshots grew audible once more. Automatic rifles.
Henry motioned Clement to follow him behind a row of vehicles out of range of the falling debris. A woman in a dark, civilian suit stood there, drinking from a cup that came from a gourmet coffee chain and nodding to a man wearing the black uniform of the Sweeps. She didn’t stop speaking as they approached, although Clement saw her glance at them.
“Director Raven?” Henry said.
“...I don’t understand it, ma’am,” Clement heard the Sweep say to her. “Our people...half of them just collapsed. They won’t fight. The other half are completely out of control. They won’t listen to orders. Some even started shooting each another...”
The woman took a drink of her high-end coffee, her face unperturbed. “Gas the building with cyanide. If that doesn’t work, we’ll nuke the damned thing.”
Henry and Clement gaped at her, then at one another.
Even the Sweep looked confused. “Sir?”
“Kill them,” she snapped. “Do you hear me? This is no time to play footsie with her, not after what that bitch has done! Kill all of them!”
The man wearing the Sweep uniform saluted. Right before he turned to walk away, his face seemed to crumple strangely, turning almost childlike.
“How did this happen?” he said. “What will we do, now that we no longer have—”
“Pull yourself together, Agent,” she hissed. “Or you’ll join her.”
“Director Raven?” Henry said, louder.
Clement gave Henry an irritated look, mainly for interrupting his eavesdropping.
The woman, Raven, the hotshot seer they sent down from Central to run the iceblood units, turned. Her blue eyes glinted shockingly light, and she stood taller than Clement had realized, at least an inch taller than he did himself. She wore her hair long, unlike any other breed of agent Clement could recall. It hung like a dark curtain around her porcelain, Asian-looking face, nearly black in color. Her high cheekbones and almond eyes hinted at her seer blood, but apart from her height, she could have been human. A really beautiful human, for sure.
On her index finger, Clement saw a ring glint in the few wisps of sunlight.
It looked German to him. A six-pointed cross.
“I think you understand what needs to happen here, soldier,” she said to the Sweep, still staring at Clement. “It’s time to clean up. That means our side, too.”
The Sweep nodded, his eyes still holding that dense, childlike grief.
Clutching his helmet in one hand, he wandered back towards the building, as though lost.
Director Raven smiled at Clement, her shocking blue eyes still holding that odd focus. She held up the paper cup in a kind of salute.
“Coffee?” she said, raising a charcoaled eyebrow.
A chunk of cement hit the street, flattening a letter box. It broke in two, sending up a plume of white spray after the larger piece crushed a yellow fire hydrant.
Then Clement saw Henry freeze, his face drain of blood. Turning away from the woman and from Clement himself, he clutched his earpiece as he listened.
“Can you repeat?” he shouted. After a pause, he cursed. “So it’s a sure thing. He’s really dead...”
“Who?” Clement said, bending closer. “Who’s dead?”
“Ron!” Henry shouted, not hearing him. “They shot the U.S. President! Gunned him down in their own White House! Looks like the VP’s not going to make it either...”
“What?” Ronald Clement stared at his old friend.
Behind him, another explosion rocked the white building.
He and Henry both ducked. When Clement turned, looking for the person who had been standing there, drinking her designer coffee and smiling at him with that striking face, he couldn’t find her. He scanned the nearby crowd, looking past uniforms and the crush of onlookers gawking from the first set of barricades.
But Director Raven was gone.
32
BRIDGE
A few blocks from Eaton Place, a manhole cover lifted softly from its resting place flush with the asphalt, revealing pale but dirty hands. As the cover rose higher, an equally dirty face grew visible, fitted with chocolate brown eyes and dusty black hair. The hands pushed the manhole cover to one side, planted themselves on the cement and hoisted up a muscular torso.
Maygar sat on the lip of the hole just long enough to get his balance.
He pulled up his legs behind him, then immediately reached back inside, clicking his fingers impatiently for someone to hand something up to where he could reach it. He glanced around as he caught hold of the clothing, then the arms of another, taller man and dragged him through the same opening. He pulled him clear, then laid him down on the pavement, frowning.
Bending over his inert form, he slapped him sharply on the cheek.
“No sleeping now, Rolf...wakey-wakey.” He slapped him harder, and the other man’s eyes flickered open. Once the clear irises could focus, he frowned.
“That’s right.” Maygar smiled. “It’s me, dickhead.”
“Oh, give it a rest, will you?” The girl climbing out of the hole had a long scar splitting her face and hair dyed bright red with several inches of black roots. She was helped up the last rungs by a long-haired man in a very dirty jacket that might once have been expensive, and a middle aged man with thinning hair and wire-rim glasses.
Behind them, another woman followed. She looked exhausted.
“Do we know where we are?” Cass said.
Maygar said, “No. But we’d best assume—”
“Wait,” Jon said. “Look.”
They all watched the woman who’d climbed out last.
Allie walked out into the middle of the street, aiming her feet towards a stretch limousine that had just turned the corner onto the small cul-de-sac where they all stood. She held up a hand...and the car came to a screeching halt.
The others exchanged looks, but only hesitated an instant before they picked up Revik and ran for the car. Maygar handed him off to
Jon once they reached it, walking around to the driver’s side door. Sitting in the front seat, a man in a black suit and cap stared up and around at all of them, fear and confusion in his eyes.
“What the bloody hell—” he began.
Then his eyes went dead, like the power had been cut.
“Get out,” Maygar said.
The man obeyed.
Maygar, Eddard and Cass slid into the long front seat without waiting, locking the doors behind them. Jon climbed in the back with Allie and Revik. Putting the car in drive, Maygar wrenched the wheel, making the wide turn to get them flipped around and aimed towards the main road beyond the narrower stretch of buildings. Once he had, he saw a London police car pull up to block the entrance of the cobblestone road.
The eyes of the two cops looked crazed as they got out, like Night of the Living Dead crazed, and Maygar hesitated before craning his neck to look back at Allie.
“Two more, boss,” he said. “They’ve blocked the road.”
Allie glanced in the direction of the police car.
...and both officers fell to the ground in mid-walk.
Maygar stared, bewildered by the efficiency with which she’d done it, and to two seers, no less. Dehgoies couldn’t possibly have had time to train her so well.
He’d heard mates could sometimes take on one another’s skill sets...
Maygar pushed that thought from his mind as well, but not before it tightened his jaw, bringing a low surge of anger.
“Can you just knock it out of the way now?” Allie asked him.
He continued to stare at her.
“The police car, Maygar,” she said. “Can you knock it out of the way?”
Maygar nodded, turning back to face the wheel, and the road. “Aye, aye.”
He reached the parked cruiser a few seconds later, driving fast enough to feel a little reckless. The limo passed through the opening by slamming into the front end of the cop car hard enough to push it out of the way, crushing in the right fender and losing a long gouge of black paint in the process.
