I felt the skin prickle on the back of my neck as we did.
Moving carefully now, walking in his soft, combat tread, Revik continued to lead the group down the next segment of tunnel, his eyes trained straight ahead, a Glock-17 in his hand instead of the torch. Behind us, Holo and Varlan illuminated the tunnel with the torches, their guns held at their sides in their free hands.
My attention remained mostly on Revik, though.
I could tell from his eyes he was scanning, like Balidor was, but that sharper fear had turned into full-blown aggression in his light.
His irises also glowed a sharper green.
Bringing more light into my own telekinetic structures, I paced him, walking less than a half-step behind him and imitating his combat crouch. I still held my gun up, two-handed, aimed down the dripping stone tunnel.
For the first time, I noticed what Revik commented on earlier.
I could smell water again, and not just from the thin sheen that ran down the stone walls, leaving a trail of orange and brown algae in its wake.
There was more water up ahead––significantly more. I guessed another underground river or waterfall, but I couldn’t hear anything, so it might just be another flooded segment of tunnel.
I couldn’t help grimacing at the thought of wading through another hundred or so yards of chest-deep, foul-smelling water.
We were passing the last pieces of the broken flyer, when I felt it.
A light, barely discernible breeze.
It was slight––so slight I may not have felt it at all, if I hadn’t been straining with every ounce of my being, looking for whatever was wrong, whatever I could feel trembling the higher areas of my light. It was a bare kiss, the faintest movement of air over the parts of my skin that were showing around the armored clothes and my long hair.
Once I felt it, that fear prickling the back of my neck spiked.
My whole body flooded with light.
“Revik!” I shouted.
“I got it!”
He’d already ignited the telekinesis.
I felt him looking for a way of stopping it, for some way to disrupt the energy source, some element of the mechanism powering what we both felt coming.
I looked around at all of us, in a panic.
We would all be dead in seconds if he didn’t find it.
I couldn’t even tell the rest of them to hit the deck.
Getting down on the floor wouldn’t do shit.
It was closer now.
I felt it, could see it in the darkness behind my eyes––soundless and inexorable, the field slid over and around the rock, conforming to every inch of the tunnel, sparking water running down the stones as it passed, killing everything it touched.
In a panic, I threw out a shield––not a Barrier shield, but a telekinetic one.
Feeling what I’d done, Revik threw his light behind it, thickening it into a foot of solid energy.
It wasn’t enough. I could feel it wasn’t enough.
We were out of time, though. It all happened so fast, I couldn’t think of any other options.
“Did you find the source?” I asked Revik, shouting above the humming noise that might have only been in my mind.
“No.”
Terror washed over me––when suddenly, out of nowhere, more light slammed into mine.
Flinching at the presence behind it, I looked back, in spite of myself.
Cass stood there, her eyes ignited in a sharp yellow glow.
Next to her, Feigran clutched her arm.
His eyes didn’t glow like hers, but I felt him feeding her light from somewhere high up in his structure––too high for me to see. He poured it down on her, and as he did, I felt the stream she was aiming in our direction start to thicken.
Focusing back on the wall I’d thrown up, I opened the floodgates over my own head, pulling even more of my own light down into the telekinetic barrier.
It sparked now, light and darker green, yellow and red.
I could feel it coming––
The OBE field slammed into the telekinetic shield, sending up a shower of white, red and green sparks. A near-explosion went off, making Illeg shout out in terror. She dropped to the stone floor of the tunnel along with Dalai. Varlan shouted something incomprehensible as the torch swung wildly behind us.
I felt most of those things through my light, or heard them, but I didn’t look back.
I didn’t take even a fraction of my focus off the curved wall of light and energy the four of us held up to stop the OBE. We all continued to feed light into the shield, holding the bent piece of energy so that it filled the mouth of the cave.
The OBE sparked hotter, sending up even more sparks.
Gritting my teeth, I tried to use the wall to push it back, but it remained where it was, shooting sparks behind, up and along either side of the seething shield.
We held it there, all of us gasping at the impact.
The shield really only held the OBE off about a yard at the closest points. The two fields sparked and hissed, throwing off heat and light, making me sweat. I struggled to breathe through that heat, the sweat dripping from my hair down my back, making my skin burn.
Then, just when I was starting to worry it would be an impasse, that we’d have no way to keep it off indefinitely, that we would tire before it shut off––
There was an explosion.
The sparks turned into a volcano of light, turning the night of the tunnel briefly into broad daylight, blinding all of us. It sparked higher, turning into a wall of flame in the tunnel in front of us, filling my eyes with green and blue flame like molten light.
I started to worry it would spark a second reaction, one even bigger than the first one, or that somehow it would throw us back, and the shield with it––
When it snuffed out, leaving the tunnel in darkness.
30
FOUR LIGHTS
ALL I HEARD was heaving breathing.
When Revik’s light did a quick flicker around the dark space, I felt everyone in our group still alive, which brought an intense flush of relief. Through Revik’s light, I felt them all around us––standing, crouching, lying on the stone––all of us panting together in the dark.
The yisso torches had gone out.
Then Revik’s voice barked into that dark.
“Alyson? Are there any more?”
Turning towards his voice, I threw out my light, trying to feel if anything more was coming. I focused my scan primarily in the direction of where I’d last seen the tunnel, the direction from which the original OBE field had come. Scanning for a few seconds, feeling other lights around me doing the same, I swallowed when I realized I felt Cass almost as strongly as I did Revik––and definitely stronger than Balidor or Varlan.
I felt Feigran more strongly than the others, too.
Somehow, that felt less strange to me than feeling Cass there, her light pulsing through mine in a gold-white-green stream.
“I don’t feel anything.” Turning towards where I felt her, and then back towards Revik, I bit my lip, then said it anyway. “Cass? You getting anything?”
“No.” Her voice sounded surprised, probably that I’d asked her first. “No. I don’t feel anything. Revik?”
“No,” Revik said. “Nothing. Feigran?”
I practically saw the last of us shaking his auburn head.
“No more bad fire,” the Elaerian said. “No more.”
I felt the threads tying the four of us together, the sparking currents of light.
I fought the kinship I felt there. I fought it, even as another part of me geared into it more strongly, feeling it lock into place as comfortably as a set of favorite clothes. I felt the relief in all of our lights, a kind of resting place that stabilized all of us.
Swallowing as I felt my vision expand, pulling me out of that blindness even more than Revik had on his own, I let my light touch the rest of our group.
“Everyone okay?” I said.
“Yes, Esteemed Bridge,” Illeg said at once, from closer to me than I’d expected. I heard what must have been her and Dalai getting up off the stone floor.
“Yes, Esteemed Bridge,” Dalai echoed.
Others in the group repeated the words after them, in a disjointed chorus that touched all four of our lights, as if they were just now realizing what happened. I felt gratitude on them, also a kind of awe as they felt the connections between us.
Then I heard Feigran muttering in the dark.
“Black water,” he said. “Need to go. Black water… find the door.”
Frowning, I turned towards his voice.
“Are we in danger, Fig?” I said. “Is something coming?”
He fell silent briefly.
Then, as if I hadn’t spoken, he went back to muttering under his breath, as if thinking out loud. I could almost see him counting off something with his fingers, despite the pitch-black of the tunnel.
“Fig?” I prompted. “Are we okay? Should we keep going?”
“Yes, yes,” he said, still muttering. “Yes, yes, sister… must go on. Must go on. Waiting for us. Waiting for us in the dark.”
There was a silence.
Then Revik took my hand, pulling me closer to him.
“Can we get some light?” he said. “My headset isn’t working. Neither is the handheld. Or the light on my gun.”
I heard a lot of fumbling in the dark as others tried theirs.
Using my free hand, I tried to activate my headset when it didn’t respond to a mind-command. When that didn’t work, I tapped at my handheld, trying to activate the sensor so it would turn on. Everything remained quiet, and dark.
“Nothing,” Balidor said from behind me, his voice a frown. “All of my electronics and organics are shorted out. I can’t even get a charge on them.”
“Mine, too,” Cass said.
“And mine,” Illeg said. “The organics in my gun aren’t working either.”
The silence grew more grim as the implications of Illeg’s words sank in.
Releasing Revik’s hand, I unholstered my own gun, and tried to turn on the targeting mechanism––something I almost never used, since my light tended to be more accurate. The gun remained as dark as my headset.
Aiming it down the corridor, I spoke up, louder. “I’m firing a test round on my sidearm. No one move.”
Everyone fell still.
They needn’t have bothered.
My gun wouldn’t fire. I squeezed the trigger and it didn’t even click.
“Fuck,” Revik muttered.
Everyone else checked their weapons and other equipment. As the rest of the team sounded off, relaying their lack of success, I went back to tapping my handheld, trying to get a response. It remained inert and dark, along with the organic light on my Desert Eagle.
My headset was completely dead, even for verbal commands.
For a moment, we all stood there, messing with our various devices.
“EMP?” Varlan ventured. “Could the OBE have emitted some kind of anti-electronics pulse? Such a thing would not be unprecedented.”
I frowned in the dark.
“Do we have any conventional weapons?” I said. “Non-organic?”
“Two,” Illeg confirmed. “One rifle and one handgun. We bring them in case our organics get hacked. SOP. I’ve had the rifle since we left Istanbul.”
I nodded. I knew “SOP” was military shorthand for “standard operating procedure.”
“That won’t be enough,” Holo muttered in the dark.
There was a silence.
Like all of them, I wondered what had disarmed us, and why. I also wondered if it was some kind of routine security measure, of if they sent it because they knew we were here.
“It doesn’t matter,” Revik said. “You all heard Feigran. We go forward. Right?”
Thinking about his words, I nodded.
He was right. Moreover, we needed to move. We’d been standing here too long already, given what we’d just done to their OBE defense. Feigran hadn’t come out and said it, but I could feel the urgency in his light, the desire for all of us to get moving.
Revik must have felt it, too.
Without another word, he reached for my hand, gripping my fingers in the dark.
“Allie and I will take the lead,” he said. “Stick together. Use your sight. Everyone stay in touch with what you feel, and report anything unusual back to the group. I don’t care what it is: a new construct, a foreign mind, electrical or organic fields, other living lights… even if you think it’s only a rat. Share it with the group. Have someone double-check any imprints or impressions you find, no matter how harmless-seeming. Illeg––you and Dalai handle the guns we have.”
As he spoke, it struck me that his light felt more stable.
All trace of his claustrophobia was gone.
I wondered if it was because he couldn’t see the tunnels or the low ceiling anymore––when the truth suddenly hit me.
It was the Four.
It was from the four of us being connected. Something about that matrix of light erased those darker spots in his aleimi, or made them unimportant, somehow.
As I looked at his light, I felt Feigran and Cass more strongly again, almost like the four of us were standing in a line together, or maybe in a circle, holding hands.
I could see us all there, in the dark, separate and different, yet somehow forming a kind of whole out of intricately woven light. I saw a pattern there, in the middle of that light, a colorful matrix like something from a beautiful painting, a perfect symmetry that made my heart open, just by looking at it.
Something about that pattern I saw, those geometrical, light-filled shapes, reminded me of paintings I’d seen on the stone walls of the Pamir––or replicated in one of Wreg’s books.
It was difficult not to react to the feeling in those criss-crossing strands.
A part of me wanted to fall deeper into that light, to stare into the patterns they formed and reformed while I watched. A part of me was convinced a deeper meaning lived there, something so beautiful, it would change everything if only I could see it.
It was difficult to not make it personal.
I felt Cass there, fighting not to react to those same sensations. I felt her fighting not to react to that same feeling of kinship, of belonging.
My mind resisted it, too.
From what I could tell, Revik and Feigran didn’t fight that feeling at all.
They swam into and through it, weaving themselves into that beautiful pattern of light and distant sound––and the main feeling I got off both of them was relief. It was like some part of them could finally exhale, a part that had been fighting and clawing, straining and searching for as long as they could remember.
Those interlocking puzzle pieces came together and they could finally relax.
They let go into that feeling, into that sense of being held, like it was the most profoundly satisfying thing they’d ever experienced.
Feeling that surrender in Revik, I felt a flash of fear, of self-doubt.
It crossed my mind that this might all be a trick. They might both still work for Menlim, for the Dreng––this whole thing with the Four might just be one more bullshit game they were playing with our heads before they tried to kill me and Revik all over again.
Revik blew heat and reassurance over my light.
No, he sent, his light achingly soft. No. I don’t think so, wife.
Staring into that intricate pattern of light, I didn’t know how to answer.
31
THE DARK WATER
I COULD HEAR the water now.
I kept checking in with Feigran and Revik, making sure that water wasn’t heading towards us in a way that would be dangerous.
Neither of them seemed to think it was.
At the same time, their impressions weren’t exactly consistent.
“Big water,” Feigran muttered to himself. “Big, dark water. Fallin
g on rocks.”
The water feels still to me, Revik said, his thoughts a frown as he turned in my direction in the dark, his fingers still strongly clutching my hand. It feels deep and still. Deeper than what we encountered in that last flooded tunnel. Deeper, but less stagnant. Less foul.
I was having trouble seeing it any way but how Revik saw it, just because my light remained the most entwined with his. The physicality of water was one of those things I needed my lower light structures to see and feel, so I was completely blind without him.
Trying to tune into Feigran to see what he saw just threw me up into his higher structures, which were essentially a disjointed, fast-moving slew of images, impressions, even smells––all of it coming at me so fast, I could barely comprehend them on their own, much less put them into any kind of discernible order.
I could feel Feigran himself darting around and through them, drawing connections and painting larger pictures out of those fragments. Some of those pictures struck me as terrifying, some as beautiful, but I couldn’t get close enough to any of them to really take in what they meant. I definitely couldn’t follow what he was doing, much less how he was doing it.
I couldn’t quite bring myself to connect directly with Cass.
She didn’t volunteer anything, either, as the other two described their impressions.
I could hear the water, though, so I was thinking Feigran had to be at least partly right. Water was definitely crashing down on something up ahead.
“There’s someone up there,” Balidor said.
Revik tensed, gripping me tighter. “Someone?” he said.
“Yes. It doesn’t feel like soldiers, though… and I only feel one.”
He walked directly behind Feigran and Varlan, holding Cass’s hand, just like Revik held mine.
We formed a tighter unit in the dark, but also a narrower one, made up of tightly-spaced pairs, following one behind the other in a close line in the dark. Most of us held weapons in our hands, even if we pointed those weapons down, towards the stone, or those weapons were crude.
All of us scanned backwards and forwards down the tunnel as we walked.
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