Dragon: Bridge & Sword: The Final War (Bridge & Sword Series Book 9)

by JC Andrijeski

  Feeling my emotions slide into rockier territory, I cleared my throat, tightening the more military aspects of my light around my person.

  “It’s not on the recordings,” I said, glancing around at all of them. “But Dragon was also in the chamber with Novak… the seer known as Xarethe. According to time signatures, he got there about thirty-eight minutes before we did. He left me a recording, one that got auto-wiped shortly after I saw it, of him walking in there and confronting her. There was no sound, so I don’t know what they talked about, but it’s probable that he killed her, or compelled her to kill herself.”

  Hesitating, I glanced at Balidor.

  His gray eyes held mine as he gave me a slight nod.

  We’d discussed this part too, in detail, including with Wreg and Tarsi.

  I was pretty sure we’d come to the right decision when we agreed to share this information with the group. Even so, I exhaled in a clicking sigh before I added,

  “…He also left me this.”

  Pulling it out of my pocket, I placed the organic data key on the table in front of me.

  “Well,” I amended. “Either Dragon left it, or Xarethe herself did. But given how she died, I find it unlikely she could have done anything after being shot. So either she was holding it and Dragon left it there––or Dragon placed it there himself.”

  Giving Balidor another glance, and Jon, who hadn’t known about this prior to the meeting, I shrugged, gesturing with an open hand.

  “We have to assume he wanted us to have this information, in any case,” I said.

  I watched Wreg and Jon frown, exchanging looks.

  Wreg hadn’t known about this either. Only Balidor and Tarsi knew, until now.

  And Jem of course. And me.

  “The fact that he left the other recording for me,” I continued. “Meaning the surveillance footage of himself entering that room and confronting Xarethe… definitely suggests he knew we were in the building. Or that we would be shortly.”

  Glancing at Balidor again, I flicked my fingers sideways, activating the data chip.

  “Anyway, intro over. Here’s what’s on it.”

  I gave a thought-command via my headset and immediately a diagram blew up, expanding into a three-dimensional image over the table. Using my headset to highlight different aspects of the image, I found myself remembering a conversation I’d had with Vash where he’d done something similar for me via the Barrier, explaining to me how the Pyramid worked.

  That first talk with Vash in Seertown felt about a million years ago now.

  Back then, I thought the scariest thing in the world was Galaith and his army of network seers, the Rooks.

  Now that struck me as sort of quaint.

  “Adhipan Balidor and I spent some days looking at this,” I said. “Along with sister Tarsi and two of her acolytes in the Pamir. It appears to be a living diagram of the current state of the Barrier network of the Dreng.”

  I glanced at Jon, who stared up at the highlighted strands, hazel eyes narrow. I motioned with one hand, highlighting the parts currently moving, changing shape.

  “The way it’s set up, it reconfigures constantly,” I explained. “Much more frequently and elaborately than the Pyramid we encountered under Galaith. Those changes also involve the entire structure versus that movement being directed primarily from upper level tiers. There are no upper level tiers on this network that we can find. Its structure appears entirely mutable, random even, well beyond something as rudimentary as a succession order.”

  Pausing, I glanced around the table, watching individual faces stare up at the rotating lights.

  “This network has a number of other features neither Balidor nor Tarsi has ever encountered before. Things they caught from their vast number of years studying construct arts in the Pamir.”

  I glanced at Balidor, motioning with one hand.

  “Could you expand on this for me, brother?” I said politely.

  He nodded, once, his face expressionless.

  Even so, I felt the gentle pulse of warmth he sent in my direction.

  It caught me off-guard. When it strengthened, holding a more overt affection, it nearly brought tears to my eyes. Glancing from him to Jon, Wreg and Yumi, it occurred to me yet again that my friends really were worried about me.

  I wondered if it was because of everything they knew was happening and had happened, or if they could see something in my light––something I wasn’t letting myself look at yet.

  The fact that Balidor cared so much touched me, though.

  It touched me a little too much right then truthfully, but I couldn’t help feeling a rush of warmth for the Adhipan leader. More than warmth. I felt love for him, for his damned unshakable loyalty if nothing else.

  Forcing the pain that tried to rise out of my light, I struggled briefly to get back into my military cloak.

  When I sat back in the chair, I felt Dalejem staring at me again.

  That time, I didn’t stop myself in time––maybe because my defenses really were lowered from what ‘Dori had done. I glanced over at where Dalejem sat, expecting to meet his angry gaze from the other side of the table.

  When I turned, he wasn’t looking at me, though.

  His green eyes focused on Balidor instead, a faint frown etching the corners of his dark lips.

  That pissed me off, too.

  Jesus, had he appointed himself the guardian of Revik’s marriage, or what? If so, he might want to have a little chat with his guy pal about his end of things. Revik had been fucking someone else that morning. I basically woke up to it.

  He’d opened his light with that one, too.

  Forcing the image out of my mind even as the memory gritted my teeth, I closed my light, doing it in reflex, and hopefully fast enough that no one else in the room noticed.

  I didn’t move my eyes in time though, and caught the edge of Dalejem’s stare when he aimed that frown even harder at me.

  Rage twisted through my light. I fought the urge to flip him off.

  Still clenching my jaw, I returned my attention to Balidor’s words, realizing only then that he’d already begun to speak.

  “…and as the Bridge has already implied, this is more of a matrix-type design,” Balidor was saying. “Less the straight hierarchy of Galaith’s version. As a result, it operates more like an organism, rebuilding connections wherever they are diminished or broken, changing those connections and orderings as the organism’s priorities change. The structure appears to contain every individual pillar we ID’d on the Earth side, in addition to the Barrier anchors I mentioned working from the other side…”

  Jon spoke up, his voice strangely loud in the otherwise quiet room.

  “So they’re all Terians,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I mean… each of these pillars has multiple bodies. Like Feigran did?”

  Balidor gave him a grim look. “Yes. If this diagram is correct, that is likely.”

  “How many bodies?” Neela asked from the other side of the table.

  Exhaling in a purring sigh, Balidor flipped his hand sideways.

  “There is no real way to know that, sister. But it appears they have quite a few on store, for want of a better way to put it. If we are correct on this point, there is some chance the reconnection process is automatic. Meaning, if one body is killed, it activates another. And so on. This is something the being, Feigran––Terian––did not have, at least not that we are aware.”

  “Where are they?” Wreg said. “Where is this storage place you mention?”

  “Unknown, brother,” Balidor said, his eyes shifting to Wreg’s. “The diagram doesn’t tell us that. Although there is some chance we can use it to infer possibilities.”

  “So Xarethe is likely still alive,” Yumi said, from across from me.

  Balidor glanced at me, his mouth a grim line. “It is possible, yes.”

  “Likely?” Maygar said. “Or just possible?”

  Balidor shrugged. “We cannot say tha
t yet either, brother. We are still using our knowledge of Feigran’s structures to map that aspect of things, and there are some fairly large differences, as I said. Presumably, Feigran was an experiment of sorts. I assume he was used as a guinea pig to determine the limits a single living aleimi could be stretched, in order to keep it viable across multiple personas.”

  Balidor gave me a heavier look before adding,

  “There is something else,” he said, reluctant. “There is another mapping contained within this data key. One overlaying the original… likely added after the fact.”

  “A mapping?” Jorag frowned, glancing at me also, maybe from following Balidor’s eyes. “What does this mean?”

  Balidor’s eyes remained on mine a beat, then shifted to Jorag. “In this case, brother, it means we were given a map of the network’s weaknesses. A map that appears to be showing us how to dismantle it. Including a direct indication of the order in which the pillars would need to be eradicated to successfully take down that network as a whole.”

  Silence settled over the table.

  “What?” Jon looked from Balidor to me, incredulous. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means someone wants us to go after network seers,” I said, giving him a direct look. “Someone appears to be helping us do that very thing, in fact.”

  Jon looked at me, his expression holding more scrutiny that time.

  His frown deepened after a few seconds, and I got a fleeting impression from his light it was partly because he couldn’t read much off me. He glanced at Wreg before aiming his question back at me.

  “You mean this… Dragon, right? He’s helping us? You think he left this there for you to find, to tell us how to take down the network? Why would he do that?”

  Balidor answered for me. “It is possible he did this, yes. It is certainly possible evidence that the data key was left by someone less sympathetic to the network as a whole, versus one of the pillars we believe to be loyal to Menlim.”

  “It’s also quite possibly a ruse to yank us around by the crotch…” a voice muttered, drawing my eyes.

  Seeing the source, I gave Dalejem a disbelieving look.

  He stared back unapologetically, shrugging with the flat of one hand. “Someone needs to fucking say it. No one else was.”

  Balidor quirked an eyebrow in his direction, then looked back at me.

  “We are examining that, too, brother,” he conceded, making a much more polite wave of his hand than what Dalejem had done. “And we will continue to do so. But for now, this intelligence is too valuable for us to ignore entirely. Moreover, the evidence in the Barrier so far indicates that whoever left this information behind, they do not appear to be operating under Menlim’s orders––”

  “Like we’d fucking know if they were,” Dalejem muttered.

  Again, I gave him an annoyed look. “Would you like to actually contribute to the discussion, brother Dalejem?” I said coldly.

  He smiled at me, eyes flat. “I apologize, beloved sister. I thought I was.”

  Muttering under my breath, I only stopped when I caught Balidor looking between us again, more of that puzzlement in his light.

  “But why?” Jax said, repeating Jon’s question as he looked around the table. “Why would he do that? Isn’t Dragon one of the pillars himself?”

  Balidor flipped his hand again, his voice calm.

  “The network key does not tell us that for certain, brother,” he said. “Yes, it could certainly be surmised, given where he was being held. However, perhaps he was made an unwilling pillar.” Balidor cleared his throat, glancing at me. “Such as the Sword.”

  “…Or maybe he just didn’t like being locked underground for however-many years and experimented on like a fucking rhesus monkey,” Dalejem muttered under his breath. “As I recall, the ‘Sword’ wasn’t too happy about that, either.”

  Another silence settled over the room.

  I saw a few people giving Dalejem puzzled looks that time.

  “Is the Sword himself on this diagram?” Neela said, staring up at the image.

  “No,” Balidor said, exhaling as he again looked at me. “But again, this information is organic. And the data chip appears to be tied in some way into the living network organism itself, for want of a better term.” He shrugged, still holding my gaze. “From what we can tell, as the network changes, the diagram in the data chip changes, too. We have no idea what the Sword’s current status is within Menlim’s network.”

  I watched understanding reach their eyes as they all went back to staring up at the seething lines of red and silver light that morphed and twisted over the table.

  “So… who’s next?” Chandre asked, blunt.

  I looked at her.

  She leaned deeper into her chair, her muscular arms on the table in front of her, her red eyes shining in the overhead light of the morphing network. When no one spoke, she made a sharper gesture with one hand.

  “You say this Dragon… or someone… is leading you through who to eliminate on this network,” she said, her accented voice clear. “So who is next? According to this map of his? Can you share that with us?”

  I glanced at Balidor. Meeting my gaze, he made a sweeping gesture with one hand, basically telling me it was up to me whether to tell them or not.

  Clearing my throat, I met Chandre’s gaze.

  “Eddard,” I said. “He wants us to go after Eddard next.”

  I felt a reaction in Jon’s light.

  Glancing at him, I remembered that Jon knew Eddard better than I did. Staying with Revik all those weeks in London, he would have interacted with him daily. I saw a grim look form on Jon’s face in the seconds after I spoke, right before he glanced at Wreg, communicating something to his mate via hand gestures.

  I didn’t follow his fingers to see what he’d said; I figured if he wanted me to know, he would have said it out loud.

  Silence again fell over the table.

  That time it was Wreg who broke it.

  “So according to this,” the ex-Rebel said, his black eyes still on the diagram. “That fucker, Menlim… he is not a pillar, either.”

  Balidor exhaled, affirming his words with a slash and cut upwards of his hand.

  “Yes, brother,” he said. “That is correct. Again, we are only in the preliminary stages of examining this network. We require many more eyes on it than simply mine and sister Tarsi’s.”

  He gave Wreg a meaningful look, as well as Jon, Yumi and Dalejem, I noticed, before giving me the most pointed look of all.

  “…Many more, my brothers and sisters,” he added. “But right now, from our preliminary examination of this model, it appears that only beings who are actually alive can take that role. Menlim is not technically in that category… although there is some chance the being whose body he hijacked is still alive in some form and might have a role. We strongly suspect pillars are rotated in and out of the network entirely via links that are made inactive or invisible when not in use, thus effectively disguising their numbers.”

  “So the diagram’s not complete?” Wreg said.

  Balidor met his gaze. “Technically, no. We believe it is not.”

  Dalejem let out an angry noise.

  Again, I looked over at him. Biting my lip, I fought to remain silent and failed.

  Are you drunk? I sent. What is the matter with you?

  Cold fucking sober, love.

  Then shut the fuck up, I told him, incredulous.

  This is horse shit, he sent back, almost as if he’d been waiting for me to speak. Allie, this is a trap. It’s a fucking trap. Please tell me you can see the neon signs all over this thing, saying ‘it’s a fucking trap’––

  How about you shut up or I boot your ass out of here? I sent angrily. Can you at least pretend you’re capable of contributing to the discussion like a goddamned adult?

  Dalejem looked up; briefly, his green eyes locked on mine.

  If Balidor noticed any of that, he appeared to ign
ore it.

  Sighing a bit, the Adhipan leader inclined his head as I returned my attention to him, directing his words at Wreg.

  “It appears to us now that Menlim is anchored here via these other beings, brother,” he said. “Which is essentially the principle operating behind the network as a whole. Meaning he, and it, are dependent on those he has selected to play pillar roles here on Earth.” Shrugging with his hand, he glanced at me before adding, “Of course, it is a bit of a semantics issue. Even if the body being used by this ‘Menlim’ remains alive in some sense, it is not the Dreng themselves acting as pillars. They would still need humans or seers for this.”

  “Humans?” Maygar said, his voice terse. “You said humans?”

  Again, Balidor gave him a single nod. “Yes.”

  “How many?” Yumi asked.

  I glanced at her. She stared up at the diagram as well, her lean, tattooed arms folded over her chest. She wore only a black tank top, I noticed, and what looked like fatigues. The dark blue tattoo on her face moved slightly as her mouth and eyes made micro-expressions up at the diagram. I could almost feel her light hooking into the flow of the different strands, trying to make sense of it, to understand the motion there, or at least imprint the flavor of it.

  Yumi was an infiltrator, through and through.

  Balidor gave another flip of his hand.

  “According to this diagram, that varies, too.” He met Yumi’s gaze when she looked down from the diagram, right before he glanced at Wreg. “It is why you could not pin down a structure for this thing, my brothers and sisters. It is more like a living thing than any construct we have ever seen, moving and changing as it interacts with the world. There are too many factors involved to model a pattern. So far, at least.”

  “And the ‘brain’ for this thing?” Dalejem said.

  His louder, clearer voice made me flinch, looking over.

  He glanced at me, then back at Balidor, his voice and expression polite. “The nerve center,” he clarified. “How commands are sent. It is in the Barrier, brother? Or down here?”

  Balidor gave him a grim look.