New York: A Bridge & Sword Prequel (Bridge & Sword Series Book 11)

by JC Andrijeski

  “Different,” he said, giving me another sideways look.

  When he didn’t say anything more, I sighed.

  “Revik… seriously. I’m trying really hard to stay awake for whatever you want to talk about up here, but I’m ready to drop. You’re going to end up with a woman snoring on your couch if you don’t talk pretty soon.”

  Nodding, he folded his arms, facing me.

  “All right.” His eyes and voice grew serious. I heard his accent get stronger, too. “This was a big mistake for me. This whole thing.” As if seeing the puzzlement in my eyes, he added, by way of clarification, “…An accident, Allie. One I’d prefer my handlers didn't know about. At least not in full.”

  “Your handlers.” I relaxed slightly. “I was beginning to think you didn’t have any. Who are they? Law enforcement?”

  “No.” He shook his head, frowning. “No… nothing like that. I work overseas for humans. I’m not here for them. I’m here for other seers.”

  “Other… seers?”

  He clicked under his breath, sounding faintly annoyed now. “This is why I do not know where to start. You are so full of misinformation about how things work, believing everything on the corporate feeds about seers and how we are contained, it will take all night just to get you to understand the basics of what our options are––”

  “Hey,” I said, sharp. “You don’t need to call me stupid. Just explain.”

  “I am explaining. And I didn’t call you stupid. Just ignorant.”

  I started to answer.

  Then, reconsidering, I shut my mouth with a snap.

  “Anyway, it is not your fault,” he added, his voice subdued. “You are less ignorant than most humans I encounter… and less deliberately prejudiced than many seers. I did not mean to insult you. I am only frustrated by our lack of time.”

  I wasn’t sure how to take that, either.

  There was a silence.

  I bit my lip, then relaxed with an effort, waving for him to continue.

  “So? I’m ignorant, and you made a mistake,” I said. “What was your mistake?”

  “All of it.”

  “All of it?”

  “Yes.”

  Again, I waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t.

  “So?” I said. “What does that mean? How was this your mistake, versus the mistake of the religious nuts who tried to burn me alive?”

  He smiled faintly. “I’m fairly certain they intended to tie you to that log.”

  When I frowned, opening my mouth to speak, he waved away his own words, his smile fading.

  “I didn't realize how dangerous they were,” he said. “I failed to recognize their intent sooner, and the extent of their resources. It was a mistake not to have SCARB pick them up, the instant I knew they were in New York. Before that, really. I should have had them picked up in San Francisco, as soon as I got their faces off you.”

  “Faces off me?”

  He nodded. “When I held you off that bomb. Your mind went to them at once. I don’t know if it was subconscious, but you suspected them from the beginning for that.”

  “Did they do it?”

  He shrugged. “SCARB is still working on it. I’ll give them information on what I found out here.”

  I frowned. “I thought you didn’t––”

  “––I don’t work for SCARB.” He gave me a level look, a faint warning in his eyes. “But they have better resources than I do, even through my current employer. I should have contacted them sooner, as I said, but I didn’t want the World Court opening a file on you related to race-crimes. Not even for this.” Exhaling, he sank deeper into the couch. “I thought I could keep you safe on my own. Then I lost you in the club… and again outside of it. Both my fault. I let the drama with you and Jaden distract me.”

  Clicking under his breath, he gave me a flat look.

  “…In all honesty, I should have never let you get on the damned plane. I should have had SCARB hold everyone outside the terminal for a few days. At least until I’d ID’d those men who seemed to be tracking you. But again, I didn’t want you interrogated by IPF.”

  I frowned. I knew IPF was the military branch of SCARB, short for “Interracial Peacekeeping Forces.” They handled international racial terrorism.

  I opened my mouth to ask, but he shrugged again, his eyes sliding out of focus as he seemed to be thinking aloud.

  “I try to err on the side of non-interference where I can,” he said, making another of those vague, graceful gestures with his hand. “And, well, I didn’t want you to have to miss a trip to New York with your friends, just because a few human religious fanatics decided to fixate on you. It’s not like stalkers are a new thing with you.”

  Drumming his fingers on the couch’s armrest, he shrugged again, as if still thinking.

  “Anyway. You seemed like you needed a vacation. You hadn’t had one in over a year, and I knew if you were detained, you wouldn’t get your money back for the flight, so…”

  Trailing, he glanced at me, as if remembering I was listening to all of this.

  Looking away an instant later, he blew out his cheeks a little, making that soft clicking noise as his eyes returned to the fire.

  “You think IPF was on this?” I said. “So you don’t think they were local?”

  “They weren’t local,” he said, frowning faintly. “I got that much off the fanatic chained to the log, but I suspected it even in San Francisco, based on what my initial tracks picked up. Now I know for sure that their ‘Patrón’ is based in South America. The human boy wasn’t sure where, but he knew the continent. A few of the others were from Eastern Europe. So definitely an international organization.”

  Pausing, he made a hand gesture I couldn’t interpret, but that looked almost like a shrug.

  “…I am still not sure where the human faction is based,” he added. “I’m pretty sure their ‘Patrón’ is a seer, though, since he’s been screwing with their dreams. It sounded like he’s been manipulating and pushing them for years.”

  “A seer?” I said, surprised. “Do you know him? This Patrón seer?”

  He gave me an incredulous look, snorting. “No. Do you?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that, so I sank back in the couch, waiting.

  “…I did call in to my own handlers,” he added, glancing at me. “The seers, I mean. Not my human employers. They weren’t exactly thrilled with all of this, either.”

  “Your seer handlers, you mean?” I said. “They weren’t thrilled with this?”

  He went on as if I hadn’t spoken.

  “I told them you’d seen me,” he said, gruff, combing his fingers through his black hair. “I told them we’d spoken. I told them your friends had seen me, too, and that I was forced to hide you in a fetish club while I assessed a possible threat against you. This was all before everything happened tonight, but I suspect they’re going to be even less pleased with me, when they hear I let you get grabbed right off the street.”

  He gave me a grim look.

  “I requested permission to make the ID permanent, to begin your training. But, Allie…” He shook his head, mouth pursed. “That request was denied.”

  “Denied,” I repeated.

  “Yes.”

  I stared at him.

  For a moment, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I fought to pull my brain out of the quicksand I couldn’t seem to dig it out of, reminding myself I’d been drunk earlier, then drugged, and I was probably still in shock. None of that helped me make sense of what he was telling me. I folded my arms, replaying all of his words again, this time inside my head.

  I did it again, slower.

  It didn't help.

  Finally, I shook my head.

  “What?” I said, looking at him. “What are you talking about, Revik?”

  He sighed, again running his fingers through his hair.

  “Allie,” he said tiredly. “You already heard part of this.”

  “Heard part o
f what?”

  “What they told you. It was true.” He paused, studying my face. After his eyes focused on mine for a few seconds longer, he frowned again. “…Not the part about being a Snake deity. The rest of it. About you being an intermediary. About you being a seer.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Only that part. Okay.” I smiled wanly. “Not the part where I have to die by fire to call down some kind of savior-seer-angel to help humanity evolve and prevent the end of the world by the hand of dark forces?”

  I’d meant it as an off-color joke, but suddenly, I felt my adrenaline spike.

  “You aren’t talking about the sacrifice thing?” I said. “Are you?”

  “No,” he said, impatient. “I meant about your race. About what you are.”

  I just stared at him.

  After another pause where he just looked at me, he sighed again.

  “I still don't understand how those Evolutionists found you,” he said, clicking softly. “I was told identifying your race by genetic markers alone would be nearly impossible. Intermediaries tend to mimic the primary racial characteristics of whatever population in which they are raised. You’ve pretty much always self-identified as human, so the risk of you being found that way seemed minimal.”

  He gave me another grim look.

  “The real risk was supposed to be when you started to display secondaries spontaneously… on your own, I mean. The risk was higher with you, because you wouldn’t even know to hide them, given that you were kept in the dark about what you are.”

  At my continued blank look, he made another of those graceful, shrug-like gestures with one hand.

  “So far, there have only been little things,” he said. “Your light is being monitored constantly by a select group in the Seven. They’ve been shielding you since the human authorities found you under that overpass.”

  I blinked.

  I didn’t try to speak; maybe some part of me was still trying to wrap my mind around his words. From my perspective, my mind felt utterly blank.

  When he appeared to be waiting for me to react in some way, I blinked again.

  “What?” I said.

  I really was tired.

  “So what are you saying?” I tried again. “You’re saying I’m a seer?”

  “We covered this. Yes.”

  “A secret seer? That no one knows about?”

  “Yes.”

  “Some unusual kind of seer?” I clarified. “Different from you? Different from that woman you uncollared?”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. His voice held some relief, as if this conversation were going better than he’d thought it would. “Officially, your race doesn’t exist at all to the human authorities. Which frankly makes a lot of things easier. They don’t know how to scan for your blood type, or any of your other biological markers. You also appear to age more like a human than the way seers like me normally do. Again, probably due to that mimicry I mentioned.”

  He indicated up and down my body pointedly.

  “…It’s the only reason we’ve been able to hide you in the human population for as long as we have. That would have been impossible if you were a normal seer. When you didn’t age with the rest of your human peers, you would have been quarantined at once, no matter what the blood tests said. They would have conducted multiple, increasingly invasive genetic and other tests until they figured out what was causing the developmental delays.”

  I just stared at him.

  I might have blinked again maybe.

  “Sarhaciennes are the breed of seer humans know about,” he clarified. “You know this, yes? You learn this in school? In history? In biology? Sarhaciennes are what humans think of as seer. Like me. And the woman you saw. We have four distinct blood types identified by the World Court, with four or five sub-strains. Yours fit none of these. It is close to one seer sub-strain, but it is the rarest of these, and one that humans already mistake for human in most cases.”

  He showed me the “H” on his forearm.

  “…I have that sub-strain. It is incredibly useful. It is also why I am classified as human by the World Court. But this is a complicated issue, for I am also classified as seer, only one with a genetic disease.”

  Again, I could only blink at him.

  “A genetic disease––” I began.

  “Not important, Alyson.” His voice held a faint warning.

  Studying his eyes briefly, I nodded.

  Again, my mind wrestled with his words, pulling them apart and reassembling them again.

  After what felt like a too-long pause, I frowned back at the fire.

  “You’re saying there’s another species of seer on Earth?” I said. “Not just the seers we know about? One that SCARB hasn’t discovered yet? Or any of the other human powers?”

  I turned to stare at him, now openly not believing him.

  He didn’t seem to notice.

  “Yes,” he said, exhaling in another sigh. Pausing, he amended his words. “…Well, no. Not exactly. Even to us Sarks, the first race is officially extinct. But some of them come back.”

  “Come back?” I refolded my arms tighter. “Come back from where?”

  “Allie,” he said tiredly. He rubbed his face with a hand, then ran those same fingers through his black hair. “I am tired, too.” He met my gaze. “And we really don’t have time to get into all of that now. Really, it’s better if you don’t know too much, anyway. I shouldn’t be telling you anything, really, but I didn't want to scare you.”

  I felt my jaw tighten. Replaying his words, I glanced towards the door.

  I barely looked, but I saw him notice.

  “You’re not doing a great job then,” I said. “Explaining. Or not scaring me.”

  “Allie.” He met my gaze, his eyes adamant. “I’m not going to hurt you. At all. In any way. I never will. I promise you that, all right?”

  “Then why am I here? You just said you shouldn’t be telling me any of this. Did you invite me up here for the sole purpose of telling me things you shouldn’t be telling me?”

  I saw a touch of nervousness reach his eyes.

  “No.” He shook his head, once. “Not exactly. I haven’t gotten to that part, yet.”

  “So why are you telling me these things, instead?”

  “I don't know,” he admitted. “Because I wanted to, I guess.”

  There was another silence.

  When it stretched, I gave another sigh.

  “So what am I supposed to do with this information, exactly?” I said. “Do I get to learn the seer secret handshake now?” I forced a smile, trying to keep my voice even. “Or is now when you start explaining how I need to join this organization you’re in, to help free ‘our’ people? Start by making pipe bombs in some San Francisco basement with you and your pals?”

  He shook his head. “Neither,” he said.

  “Then what? What am I doing here, Revik?”

  He sighed again, clicking a little. “I need to correct my mistake. In order to do that, I’m going to need to make you forget large portions of what happened since you got out of that taxi at San Francisco International. Everything that occurred between you and those cultists…” He hesitated, studying my face. “Everything that occurred with you and me.”

  “Forget?” I swallowed, staring at him numbly again. “Forget, how?”

  “It is something we seers can do.” Still studying my face, he leaned deeper into the couch, resting his arm on the back of it. His eyes never left mine, but I saw the faint thread of nerves there again. “It’s not easy. It’s also not generally permanent. But I think the incident was isolated enough that I can do it so that it sticks long enough for our purposes.”

  At my silence, he tilted his palm in another of those shrugs.

  “You don’t need to forget forever, after all. For the next few decades, at most. I’m assuming less. Far less, if I had any say in it.” He grunted, shaking his head. “Really, as far as I’m concerned, they’ve waited too long to start
training you already.”

  “The next few decades,” I repeated. “I need to forget something ‘for a few decades’?”

  “Yes. Well… potentially. As I said. It will probably be less time.”

  “You’re going to mess with my mind?”

  He shook his head, making that soft clicking noise. “It won’t harm you. I already told you I wouldn’t hurt you. I meant it.”

  “Why can’t I just keep it a secret?” I said, frowning. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “No,” he said frankly. “I don’t. You’d tell Jon… or Cass. Likely both of them.”

  “And they’d think I was having some kind of mental breakdown,” I said, frowning. “Look, you must know that even I don’t believe you. I’ve had my blood checked about a hundred times… if not more. The only people who believe in third races are religious nutballs. You may as well claim I’m a space alien.”

  “Look.” He sighed. “The blood part’s complicated. I told you that––”

  “––Then don't explain it, please,” I said, holding up a hand. “My brain can’t handle that kind of complicated right now. My point is, you don’t need to ‘erase’ me, Revik. No one would believe me, even if I did tell anyone. The worst that would happen is, I’d end up in the psych ward of some hospital, and I have absolutely no intention of ending up in a place like that. Even before your weird confessions up here, I’d already planned to soft-pedal the story of tonight when I talked to Jon and Cass. I have my own reasons for keeping quiet about this.”

  He just looked at me for a minute.

  Then he sighed, making that clicking noise with his tongue.

  “You’re missing the point, Alyson,” he said. “Anyone could read you for what happened tonight. Anyone could read you for what I just told you.”

  “You mean any seer.”

  “Yes.”

  “What are the chances I’d run into a seer who cared enough to look? Do you people just wander around reading waitresses and tattoo artists for the hell of it?”

  His eyes narrowed. For a moment he didn’t move.

  Then he shook his head, looking away with a faint frown on his lips.

  “I have to erase you, Allie,” he said, blunt. “I’m sorry if that seemed like a question to you. It wasn’t. You don’t get a say in security protocol.”