Sun

by J. C. Andrijeski

I was already struggling with separation pain, and an increasingly worsening headache. It hit me on the way down here that the headache might be hunger-related; Revik and I hadn’t eaten since we had breakfast together the morning I got back.

  Truthfully, I was mostly struggling with being separated from Revik.

  Since we’d left his quarters, I could barely concentrate when we were outside of visual range of one another. I could feel the irrationality behind that, the part of me that wanted to overreact to everything that confused, annoyed, or frustrated me––like the weird seer cageyness I saw in the faces of the security detail in front of me.

  I aimed that frustration at Revik’s son.

  “Maygar?” I said. “Could you cut the shit, please? Where’s ‘Dori?”

  The Asian-featured seer sighed.

  Looking at him there, leaning back in his chair, his feet propped on the edge of the console, I couldn’t help noticing he looked more like Revik all the time. His body had leaned out somewhat as he’d grown taller, leaving his broad shoulders in a more similar proportion to Revik’s. His face was still more Asian than Revik’s, his mouth full instead of narrow, but something in the shape of their eyes and their cheekbones definitely struck me as similar.

  That similarity had grown as Maygar’s face gradually aged.

  I saw Revik even more in Maygar’s chest and arms, and his legs, especially now that he was taller than he had been when we first met.

  Frankly, looking at a semi-clone of my husband wasn’t helping my separation pain much right then.

  Hey, a voice murmured in my head. Don’t check out my son.

  I rolled my eyes internally, snorting.

  I didn’t bother to respond to his actual words.

  Where’s ‘Dori? I sent instead. Do you know? They’re all being fucking weird about it. First Yumi upstairs. Now the team down here. Including your son.

  ‘Dori? I could see Revik frown inside my mind. There was a few seconds’ pause while I felt him looking for him. You’re in the security station? In the main hold?

  I sent a flicker of acknowledgement.

  Yumi said he was down here, I added.

  He’s got to be in one of the tank partitions, then. He’s not visible in the construct. Unless he’s hiding from the construct for some reason. He paused. But why would he do that?

  I frowned.

  Nodding to myself, I clicked out of the Barrier.

  Focusing on Maygar a second time, I said, “Is he in with Feigran?” I bit the inside of my cheek. “…Or is he in with Cass, Maygar?”

  Maygar glanced at Garend, who colored visibly.

  “Maygar,” I warned.

  “Cass,” Maygar said, looking back at me. He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “He’s in with Cass, okay? He asked us not to bother him. Surveillance is off.”

  “Fine.” I folded my arms. “Can you let him know I’m coming in?”

  Again, Garend and Maygar exchanged looks.

  “For the gods’ sake… open the fucking door, Maygar,” I snapped, losing patience. “I need to talk to ‘Dori now, before he starts implementing Wreg’s deployment plan. It can’t wait. We’ll be in Istanbul in three days, and I don’t have time to go looking for him every time he happens to have his headset switched off.”

  “Esteemed Bridge!” Maygar held up a calming hand. “I understand. I do. But brother Balidor specifically asked not to be disturbed. He’s been working with Cass on memory work in the Barrier. It’s delicate work. You, of all people, should know that, given everything you went through with my dad. We should talk to him first––”

  “No,” I snapped. “Don’t talk to him. Don’t ask him. Don’t give him any goddamned warning whatsoever. You and your pal here have negated that courtesy. Open the fucking door. Now. That’s an order.”

  What’s going on? Revik murmured. You’ve got Maygar nervous as fuck.

  Balidor’s in there with Cass. They’re giving me some bullshit spiel about memory work, but it’s clear they don’t want me going in there. I told them to open the fucking door. Now.

  I’m on my way down, he sent.

  He clicked out before I could decide if that was a good idea. After all, Revik’s previous track record in dealing with Cass wasn’t exactly stellar.

  I couldn’t make myself care, though.

  Honestly, all I could feel was relief.

  Anyway, I’d already decided I would go find Revik after I talked to Balidor. I was going to make both of us go eat something––no matter what he was doing, and even if it meant dragging him bodily to the mess hall, using the telekinesis.

  Garend and Maygar were already working their way through the security sequence to open the door, so apparently my words penetrated. I saw Maygar reach for the comm panel on the console then, and scowled, realizing he was about to key a warning pulse to reach inside the tank partition, despite what I’d told him about not alerting Balidor I was coming.

  I pinged him with my light. Hard.

  Glancing up sheepishly when he realized I’d seen and felt his intention, he drew his hand away from the console and shrugged, giving me a scowl I associated more with the old Maygar, meaning the one from a few years ago, the one who always seemed mad at the world.

  The one who wasn’t dating one of my best friends from my old human life.

  The one who definitely didn’t have what now seemed like a pretty solid relationship with his father, my husband.

  “Really, Maygar?” I said. “Really?”

  “Just let me give him a head’s up,” Maygar said, clearly annoyed, and flustered. “For fuck’s sake, there’s no reason not to tell him you’re coming inside––”

  “You mean apart from the fact that you desperately don’t want me to go inside?” I retorted. “You want me to warn him, Maygar? Tell me why. Tell me why I should give him a head’s up, and I will. Only this time, tell me the real reason.”

  At his stare and silent scowl, I exhaled in exasperation, then walked to the wheel on the door of the nearest tank compartment, waiting for them to finish with their end of the protocol.

  I was still standing there when Maygar approached me warily.

  He made a few apologetic gestures in seer that he needed to get to the panel beside the door until I scowled, waving him by.

  “Just do it, for fuck’s sake,” I snapped. “Jesus, Maygar. What is your problem? Why won’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

  Maygar’s mouth hardened into a line. Opening the outer casing to the security panel, he gave me a sideways look, his expression even more annoyed.

  “You’re being a fucking brat… Esteemed Bridge.”

  “I’m hungry,” I snapped. “I have a headache. I haven’t slept in three days. And I’m not in the mood for bullshit, and you’re all fucking lying to me. You. Yumi. Garend. Moreover, I’m in charge, and I don’t have to explain myself to you. I’m only doing it because of who you are. Otherwise I might just throw you in your own cell for insubordination.”

  His jaw clenched briefly.

  After a pause where he didn’t stop working over the panel, he gave me another glance. That time he looked me over warily, as if noticing something in my face and light he hadn’t seen before.

  “Why haven’t you slept?” he said, wary.

  I clenched my jaw, folding my arms. “Why are you lying to me?”

  He exhaled. His thick shoulders rose in a human shrug. He didn’t pause as he keyed in the sequence of codes to open the hatch.

  “I made a promise,” he said, gruff.

  “What kind of promise?”

  Maygar didn’t answer, but the line of his mouth grew thinner.

  The light over the panel went off then.

  I watched him, biting back my impulse to yell at him as he went through the final sequence. He displayed a Barrier key inside a node in the security construct as he leaned over the retinal scanner, letting it identify him physically.

  Hitting through a final code once thos
e both took, he pressed his hand to the panel, letting it identify him a second time, via a blood-prick scanner and his handprint.

  The light over the door turned from blue to red.

  I grasped the wheel and began to spin it open.

  Maygar lingered for another few seconds, watching me, before he spoke.

  “Hey, Bridge, listen. Go easy on him, okay?” He said it low, too low for Garend to hear it over by the security console. “He didn’t plan this.”

  I paused in my spinning of the wheel, long enough to give Maygar a disbelieving look.

  “Go easy on who?” I said in my normal voice. “Who didn’t plan this?”

  He gave me an exasperated look. “Who the fuck do you think? Balidor.”

  “Balidor?” My voice was even more disbelieving. “Why in the name of the gods would I need to go easy on brother Balidor?”

  Shoving muscular hands in his pockets, Maygar only pursed his lips, shaking his head.

  Exhaling in frustration, I gave the outer wheel a hard jerk, going back to unlocking the door’s seal. A few turns later, the solid red light over the oval hatch began to flash, signaling the seal was broken.

  I didn’t wait, but yanked open the heavy door.

  I didn’t call inside. I didn’t even wait for the lights inside the tank to rise after I crossed the hatch threshold. I slipped through the opening as soon as it was large enough to fit me and stalked inside, knowing Maygar would close the door behind me.

  It didn’t cross my mind at first to wonder why it was so dark.

  By the time the lights rose, I was about a third of the way into the cell.

  Once they did rise, I came to a dead stop.

  I COULD ONLY stare at the view in front of me.

  Some part of me couldn’t make sense of it at first.

  Nothing about the scene was unclear, but I had trouble making sense of it anyway. When I finally did force myself to comprehend it, I couldn’t quite believe it.

  Balidor’s face was set in a hard mask, but that wasn’t what made me stare.

  He was putting on his pants. A dark blue shirt hung open on his shoulders, exposing his bare chest while he shoved a foot into the second leg and pulled dark combat pants up to his hips, fastening the top catches before he reached down to the floor for his belt.

  He didn’t say anything.

  Neither did I.

  My eyes shifted down and to his left, staring at the woman sitting on a sleeping pad that lay on the floor. She had a blanket half-assedly wrapped around part of her legs. She was also writhing into pants––in her case, stretchy, legging-type pants she tugged on under a long dress shirt that looked like it was made for a man.

  Her long black hair was mussed, the dyed scarlet tips creating a calico pattern around her shoulders and down her back over the white, collared shirt. She didn’t look up until her pants were up to her waist. I saw a flash of her bare belly before she yanked down the shirt to cover her torso down to her upper thighs.

  Then she looked up and froze.

  My eyes flickered up to see hers widen in her face, staring at me in open disbelief.

  Somehow, that expression on her face only paralyzed me more.

  It wasn’t the face of War, the being I remembered smirking down at me in my mother’s house in San Francisco. It wasn’t even the face of the person who screamed at me from this same tank cell, threatening to kill me if I didn’t let her see my daughter.

  The shocked, mortified look there belonged to the person I’d known before all that.

  It belonged to the person who’d been my best friend for most of our lives before she decided to destroy mine.

  Unable to hold the gaze of the woman sitting on that sleeping pad, I clenched my jaw, fighting tears suddenly, fighting to breathe, to think.

  I swiveled my gaze back to Balidor.

  He didn’t look at me with embarrassment, shame, worry, fear, or any of the myriad emotions I’d seen cross Cass’s face once she realized who’d entered the tank.

  He certainly didn’t look apologetic about how I’d caught them.

  He didn’t even seem shocked I was there.

  He looked furious.

  “What the fuck are you doing in here, Esteemed Bridge?” he said, barely masking his hostility. “I left explicit instructions with the security team that I wasn’t to be disturbed. Was some part of that unclear? Or did you just decide to invade my privacy anyway?”

  I blinked, staring at him.

  Balidor rarely swore. I wasn’t sure he’d ever sworn at me.

  I looked at Cass, then back at him, feeling a heat growing in my chest, an intensity of emotion I couldn’t make sense of. I didn’t even try. I was breathing harder now, fighting fury, a denser, less rational burst of intensity in my light. It bled adrenaline through me, a flush of hotter light. It made me want to hurt one or both of them, to fight them physically.

  Balidor had turned on me.

  He’d turned on me for Cass. He was defending Cass from me.

  The room came over in a green glow, making it feel like I’d blacked out, even as my aleimi kicked in, trying to compensate.

  I couldn’t even do that.

  The pregnancy made me blind.

  I blinked, struggling to see through that green glow, through the rush of adrenaline and fight in my blood. I fought to control my light, a choking heat that filled my throat and chest. I looked at Balidor, seeing only his outline at first. When I managed to blink past the worst of that green glow, I saw him staring at me warily, his clothes forgotten.

  His shirt still hung open, his chest bare, as he held up a hand towards me.

  “Calm down,” he snapped. “Calm the fuck down, Allie! I can explain this!”

  I shook my head. I didn’t turn away from him.

  I couldn’t form words.

  Memories slid through my mind.

  I remembered the last time I’d been in this cell. I remembered Cass telling me she’d had sex with Revik. I remembered her describing everything they’d done in that cave where Terian kept her, Jon and Revik in the Carpathians, about the things Terian made them do to one another. I remembered her gloating because she’d slept with my husband before I had.

  I remembered her telling me how often she’d given him head, how much he’d liked it.

  The film flickered, burning through the center.

  I remembered lying on my mother’s bed, the same bed Terian tore my mother out of before he bashed her over the head, then slowly bled her to death, using her blood to paint the walls of my childhood home. I remembered looking up from that same bed at Cass, a woman I’d loved for most of my life, who I’d considered family. I remembered her smile as she told me she was going to cut my child out of me, that I didn’t deserve to be a mother.

  I remembered her when we’d first locked her in the Tank.

  I remembered her screaming that Lily belonged to her.

  The film flickered again, burnt.

  I remembered her at my house as a kid.

  I remembered her there every holiday, helping my mother decorate the tree at Christmas. I remembered the two of us crammed together on my beaten up futon in the Castro after she showed up in the middle of the night, running from her father and brothers––

  “Alyson!”

  Balidor stood between me and Cass, in a near fighting stance.

  “Allie!” For the first time, his voice grew less cold. “Allie! Listen to me! She’s not like that now! She’s different. She’s different now! You need to calm down! Calm down and let me explain! Let me explain, goddamn it!”

  I didn’t realize until then that I’d stopped staring at him.

  I’d been staring at Cass, unable to see her through the light in my eyes, through the tears that ran down my face, but unable to look away. I didn’t stop staring at her until Balidor inserted himself between the two of us, forcing me to look at him.

  He stood there now, panting, his shirt open, fear emanating off his light.

&n
bsp; He held up a hand, his voice a harsh command.

  “Get out of here!” he snapped. “Allie! Get out! Now! We’ll talk about this outside!”

  I could only stare at him.

  That pain in my chest worsened as the memories refused to stop running behind my eyes. Each memory hurt more than the one before. Each one seemed to chip away at something in my heart, making it impossible to breathe.

  I saw her and me and Jon, laughing on Baker Beach.

  I saw us crying together when she and Jack broke up, when I found out Jaden cheated on me, that he’d been cheating on me for months.

  I saw us working that diner together. The scar on her face after Terian––

  Arms circled me from behind.

  Warm, muscular arms, they pulled me back against a warm chest, a long, muscular body. He wrapped his hands around my shoulders crosswise, warming my heart, pulling me tighter against him. For the first time, I took a real breath, realizing only then I’d stopped breathing altogether.

  I breathed again. And again.

  That’s right, baby, he murmured in my mind. Breathe, baby. Just breathe.

  He was pulling me backwards. Gently, carefully.

  I did as his hands coaxed me to do, as his mind told me to do, fighting to get my equilibrium back, fighting to remember how I lost it in the first place. I knew I wasn’t okay. I hadn’t been okay even before I got here. I was half-delirious with lack of sleep and whatever Revik and I had been doing in his room.

  I needed to eat. I had a headache. I wasn’t rational––

  It’s okay, he assured me. It’s okay, wife. Don’t think about any of that now. We’ll talk about it later, okay? We’ll go somewhere and talk about it. Just you and me.

  I nodded, closing my eyes.

  He continued tugging me gently backwards, holding me against him.

  Pain hit into me again as I remembered, as images tried to rise from the darker corners of my mind. I had a vague awareness of Balidor there, of Cass––

  Allie, Revik murmured. He kissed my neck, holding me tighter. Honey, let’s go get something to eat. Can we do that? Can we eat? I’m hungry.

  Pain flickered and coiled through his light in reaction to his own words, in reaction to the kiss, in reaction to my body pressed against his.