The Duality Bridge (Singularity #2) (Singularity Series)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  Crazy.

  I have no idea where Tristan fits into all this, but I’m not spoiling the moment by asking.

  We’re far enough away from the camp—about a hundred yards with no one shouting at us to come back—that I’m pretty sure we’ve escaped undetected. Up ahead is a small boulder tall enough to block the view from the camp. The rock is the same rough granite as the others strewn around the prairie in the shadow of the nearby mountains. The grass is drier and longer outside the camp, lacking the water and maintenance of the artificial hideaway, and it crunches under my boots. It’s strange not to see my own body—I’m constantly looking at the ground where my feet should be and feeling dizzy when there’s nothing there.

  “So you’ve done this before?” I guess.

  Her hand tugs mine, urging us a little faster. “Just a couple times.”

  “To dance?”

  There’s a hesitation. “And other things.”

  An image of her sneaking out with Tristan pops into my head, and I don’t like it, so I change subjects. “You are going to dance for me, though, right? I mean, I don’t need the fugue to draw anymore, but I still need a Muse.”

  “There’s a good spot on the far side of the rock.” She drops my hand. “Meet you there!”

  The grass ahead of me rustles, but the cloaking technology is so good, I don’t even see it move. By all rights, I should see her boot prints as they’re made, but the only evidence of her passage shows up after she’s moved on and the prairie grass moves back to cover it. Still, she leaves a quick trail through the weeds. I follow in her wake, wanting to speed up, but afraid of accidentally running into her.

  When I get to the far side of the boulder, she’s already taken off her helmet and her cloaking jacket, leaving just a thin, white tanktop behind. Her legs are still invisible as she works at taking off the pants. I make sure I’m out of sight of the camp before I deactivate and remove my helmet as well. I try to tame the grin, but she smiles when she sees me, and I give up the fight.

  She nods to my helmet, which is silver-blue and visible now, unlike the rest of me, which is still cloaked. “I can’t dance in the cloaking gear, but you can keep yours on, if you like.”

  She’s basically telling me I can keep my clothes on while she’s taking hers off. “Um… okay.” I tap the controls inside the helmet to deactivate the rest of my gear, then loosen the adhesive holding my jacket closed. I’ll need a little more freedom of movement to draw, so I completely get why she’s shedding the suit to dance, but when she changed before, I had my back turned. My face heats as she steps out of her pants. I retreat back to lean against a flat section of the boulder, drop my helmet, and fuss with my pad and pencil to avoid staring at her.

  Eventually, I look up—she’s stretching next to the pile of her deactivated invisibility suit. I flip open the pad, and my hand with the charcoal glides over the page. The crisp feel of paper, the drag of the pencil when it catches, the smooth lines of her legs as she bends with incredible grace: all of it works the tension from my shoulders. I relax into it, and it doesn’t take long for the embarrassment of her being scantily dressed to disappear. I like her hair unbound, so I focus on that first: how it falls forward when she dips, then slides across her shoulders as she bends to the side, arms outstretched in an arc that’s beauty all by itself. When she reaches up to the blue sky overhead, her hair forms a cloud of black curls in the shape of a perfect oval down her back. She stops stretching and stands, hands on hips, feet planted, looking at me.

  I stop drawing. “Something wrong?”

  “What are you drawing?”

  “You. Of course.” I smile.

  “Draw me like you did at the Olympics. And I want to see it this time.”

  I nod, slowly, wondering if that’s what this is really about. “It will only be in pencil.”

  “I know.”

  “Why do you want me to draw that?” I ask, even as my mind fills in the brush strokes that will be necessary.

  She drops her hands from her hips and sweeps her leg in more warm-up exercises. She’s not looking at me anymore and doesn’t say anything. Just when I’m convinced she’s not going to answer my question, she says, “It’s so I can remember you.” She runs a finger along the inside of her wrist. The remembrance tattoo is black and glistening in the sun.

  It sends a chill through me. “Is there some secret plot to toss me out of the Resistance?” I ask, trying to keep my voice light. “I mean, that I’m not already aware of?”

  She doesn’t even crack a smile, just keeps swinging her leg, sweeping her sock-covered foot in an arc on the packed-dirt ground.

  The chill pools in my stomach.

  “I don’t know how long any of us have,” she says, staring at the ground.

  That propels me away from the rock. I cross the ground between us, but she doesn’t look up until I rest a hand on her shoulder. Her skin is already warmed by the sun and impossibly soft next to the coarse fabric of her tank top. Her deep brown eyes slowly meet mine.

  “Don’t do that,” I say.

  “Do what?”

  “Give up.” I can feel my heart pounding in my ears again. She’s close and soft and beautiful, but that’s not why. At least, not entirely. “I don’t know if I believe in…” I swallow. “In any of it, Kamali. The Resistance. The cause. The idea that we all have souls—I don’t know what I believe anymore. But I need you to believe in it. Because if you give up, then there’s no reason at all for any of it.”

  The words are a surprise to me as they come out of my mouth. They seem to surprise her, too.

  “I mean, I risked my neck for you,” I say, making a desperate bid to lighten this up. “I’m pretty sure that means you’re forever bound to do good things with your life. Or something.”

  That finally twists a small smile out of her.

  “So, are you going to dance or what?” I ask, heart banging out my nerves on my ribcage. “Because I’ve got a whole pad of paper itching to be used.”

  She smirks, and it’s so gorgeous, I’m pretty sure my heart lurches to a stop. But then it jump starts again as she pushes away from me and leaps into the air. I stare as she twirls and glides and carves the space around her with long, long arms. It takes me a dozen more heartbeats before I remember I’m supposed to be drawing her.

  I lift the pad, flip to a fresh page, and start whipping charcoal lines across it. I almost don’t have to look to know where to lay them, which is good, because I can barely take my eyes off her. I’m drawing and backing toward the boulder while she continues to writhe her body into lines of feminine strength and beauty, brushing the grass with her feet in between spectacular leaps. There’s no music, but there’s no need. She’s making art with her body anyway.

  I bump into the granite behind me and let the coolness of the rock seep into my back as my hand whips furiously across the page. An image of her rises from the whiteness of the sheet, the charcoal-rough edges of each line somehow emphasizing the clean curves of her body even more. It’s only half done, and I already can tell it’s better than anything I’ve created while not half in the fugue. But that’s because the fugue knowledge is already there, inside my head. It’s as if the veil is permanently parted, at least in this arena. When I’m done, the sketch won’t need paint; it will be transcendent all on its own.

  A scream splits the air.

  I jerk my head up, but it’s not Kamali. I know this even before I see her stumble to a stop, surprise on her face. Our gazes lock, but a chorus of screams rises like a wail before we can say anything. Then a blast of something—sound and air and heat—booms all around us. The ground bucks, and I’m nearly thrown from my feet, but the boulder has sheltered me from the blast—Kamali is tossed a couple yards back into the grass.

  “Kamali!” I dash toward her, but another explosion throws me to the ground. She’s still down, but she struggles to sit up, so I think she’s okay. The screaming is a wave now. I look back at the camp. I can’t see it—
the boulder is blocking my view—but I can see the flames. An inferno is pumping massive gray clouds into the sky.

  My whole body freezes, my muscles seizing as the horror of it hits my brain.

  “Eli!” Kamali’s voice snaps me from my trance. She scrambles on all fours toward me. I’ve fallen next to her clothes. My brain slows down, taking it all in, flushing out the panic, and I realize three things: the camp is under attack; we have invisibility suits; and we need to get them on.

  I scoop up her suit and helmet and meet her with them in hand.

  “Oh my God, what’s happening?” Her entire body is shaking.

  I press the clothes into her arms. “Get your suit on. Now.”

  Her eyes are wild, but she doesn’t hesitate. As she shoves her body back into the cloaking suit, I race back to the boulder to grab my helmet. I put it on but don’t activate it yet, and for some reason I pick up my dropped drawing pad and pencil. Leave no trace, is the cool thought that ticks through the not-panicked part of my brain. I shove the pencil in my pants pocket and the pad in the back of my pants, under the jacket. Then I run back to Kamali. She’s shaking so badly, she’s having a hard time getting dressed, so I help, half holding her, half dressing her. We need to get cloaked now. The seconds breathe down my neck until she’s fully suited up. I grab her hand right before she activates, then slide down my visor and jab my chin against the buttons to turn mine on as well. With both of us finally cloaked, I pull her towards the boulder, edging around the side to see the camp.

  People are dying. Their screams roll across the prairie grass on billows of smoke. My impulse to run toward the camp is short-circuited by the massive ascender transport hovering above it, dwarfing it in size. The plumes of smoke curl around the sides of the ship, masking the portal that’s dropping legion after legion of sentries to the ground.

  “Eli.” She’s gasping. “Eli. Oh my God.” Kamali’s voice on the comm is as shaky as her hand in mine.

  I hold her tight, but I’m afraid I’m going to be sick in my helmet. My mom. Cyrus. Basha. Everyone.

  “We have to…” My mind is numb. “We have to run.”

  “Run where?” Her voice is a screech that pierces my ears.

  I can’t see her because she’s cloaked. I can’t see the horror that fills her eyes, but I feel it in the rock-hard grip she has on my hand.

  “Just… run.” I grab even harder onto her hand so she doesn’t slip from my grasp, then I wrench her away from the camp.

  We run toward the mountains without looking back.

  They’re not dead. They can’t be all dead.

  We run so hard, Kamali’s hand threatens to slip out of mine. I can’t hear her crying anymore, not over the labored sound of my breathing. My own face is a mess of tears inside my helmet as we charge across the prairie grass. Ahead is the mouth of a canyon—it’s really just a dark slash in the mountain, but I hope it leads somewhere. Either way, we can’t stop for anything, least of all lifting our visors to wipe away tears for the people in the burning camp behind us.

  I pull Kamali closer, making sure we clear a prickly shrub as we sprint past it. I’m not sure how rugged the suits are, but I think she managed to avoid it. We can’t afford to lose our invisibility—it’s the only chance we have. My heart is pounding out of my chest, in panic and grief and a desperate bid to pump more oxygen, but the haze in my mind clears enough to realize we need to cover our tracks. I’m terrified our boot prints will give us away. The sentries, when they’re done with the camp… my brain stops there, refusing to picture what the bots are doing to the people I love.

  I focus on escaping. When Kamali and I reach the ravine, it’s even more narrow than I thought. High granite walls hang over the tiny trickle of stream that carved the canyon. It’s almost a cave with its glistening, moss-covered walls blocking the sun.

  “The stream,” I pant into the comm, tugging Kamali into the wide but not-deep water. Our boots splash and make a terrific noise, but there are no sentry bots close enough to hear us. Yet. More importantly, the water will mask our escape, covering our boot tracks. Maybe. I don’t know anything about tracking humans. I’m desperately trying to remember our training on the capabilities of the suits—I know they block visible light and a range of other wavelengths. Thermal? Probably. But definitely not sound. I can still hear us splashing in the water. We can speak over the comm and keep our voices low. That will help. The best thing is to put distance between us and the camp, and then find somewhere to hide.

  I don’t have any idea what we’ll do after that.

  We keep running, but the rocks are getting more slippery and the stream more deep. Kamali urges me out of the water to the muddy banks, but I don’t like the tracks we’re leaving, so we’re back in the water, just along the edge. I nearly fall twice. Kamali has surer footing—all that dancer grace keeping her upright—and she’s got more stamina, too. I keep going, running along the twists and turns of the narrow canyon until my lungs feel like they’re going to burst. A stitch is stabbing blades of pain in my side. I pull Kamali to a stop and have to bend over double, bracing myself with one hand on my knee to keep from falling over.

  I can’t let go of her hand for fear of losing her.

  She lets me rest, but as my breathing calms, I start to hear hers—it’s a breathy sort of sob. I’m not sure if she’s crying again, but she doesn’t speak, just tugs on my hand for us to move. I lumber along the edge of the widening stream, trying to keep up with the pace she’s setting. After a while, she pulls me off to the side. The banks are graveled here, a million river stones washed downstream and deposited at a curve in the stream. Our boots don’t leave prints.

  “Up there,” she says, breathless, voice shaky.

  I don’t know if she’s pointing or not, but I see what she means: the cliff-like rock walls in this part of the canyon are less steep. A rough ledge in the wall slopes up into the forest that lines the top. Leafy trees mean more cover, not out in the open, exposed like we are now.

  “Okay,” I say, panting. I take the lead. I’m afraid I might have to let go of her hand for the climb—the rocky passage between the creek bed and the elevated forest is an obstacle course of boulders and clumps of river vegetation. Without a word, she pulls closer to me, and we climb nearly arm in arm, bracing each other. The path gets steep at the top, but we manage to negotiate it without letting go.

  Once we’ve summited the rocky edge of the ravine, we’re under the cover of the forest. Which is great for not being detected from above in an aerial search, but it also means wading into a thick undergrowth of knee-high ferns. My side still aches. I wonder how far we should go before trying to hide. Some of the branches reach down to the ground. Maybe we could tuck under those. We should stop for a while, figure out what we’re doing—

  Kamali lets out a yelp, and her hand yanks out of mine. I watch in horror as her invisible body leaves a wake of flailing ferns as it rolls down a hidden slope. Her scream is deafening over the comm.

  I shuffle down the hill after her, trying not to lose my footing. “Kamali!” I can’t see anything through the mass of leafy fronds. I hear her sobbing, but the ferns have stopped moving, and I have no idea where she landed. I move faster and slip on the wetted moss and unseen rocks. I keep going, half falling, half sliding. “Kamali!”

  She doesn’t answer. I’m still working my way down this giant bowl in the middle of the forest, but I’m nearly at the low point. And I have no idea where she is. I could have passed her.

  “Where are you?” I hear the panic in my own voice, and I force myself to speak softly. “Are you hurt?”

  All I hear is her crying over the comm, and my panic ramps up to choke me. I jab at the comm controls inside my helmet to turn them off. Then I flip up my visor, just halfway so I won’t kill the invisibility shield entirely, but I’ll be able to hear her—only through the air and not the comm, so I can find her. Whatever’s happened, she’s not responding, and that’s very bad. More bad than I
can deal with.

  With the visor partly up, I hear the sounds of the forest: the trees sighing in the wind; the distant sound of the stream; and a distinct human sobbing to my right. I move carefully through the ferns, stopping and listening every couple of steps. My shield flicks on and off, giving white-out flashes that blind me intermittently. My face is probably half visible, suspended in the air—if Kamali can see me, she’s still not speaking. Finally, a sign of her—a fern that defies reality. The top half floats in the air, disconnected from the stalk below. Her suit’s visual compensation only extends so far from the source.

  I shuffle toward her, hands forward, trying not to accidentally step on her. When my boots bump into her, I finally get down on my hands and knees. The drawing pad in the back of my pants slides around, but it doesn’t fall out. I tap on my comm, and her sobbing jumps ten-fold in volume.

  “Kamali, I’m here.” From what I can tell by feel, she’s curled up in a ball and lying on her side. “You’re okay, I’m here.” My touch, rather than my words, seems to interrupt the crying. I find her helmet and keep hold as I ease to the forest floor next to her.

  “Are you hurt?” I ask.

  Just a sniffle over the comm, but her helmet shakes no in my hands. It’s so strange, holding her but being unable to see her. I lean my helmet forward, touching it to hers. Our two invisibility fields merge such that I can see her helmet now. The visor is one-way, silver-blue on the outside. I turn off my comm and lift up my visor the rest of the way so she can see my face. When she doesn’t flip up her visor, I do it for her. The relief at seeing her face—even tear-stained and tormented—is so strong it sucks the breath out of me.

  Her eyes are closed.

  “Kamali, open your eyes.”

  When she does, they go wide. Her hands grab my helmet, but I can’t see them. Most of her body is still invisible to me—I can only see her face and her helmet.

  “Eli,” she breathes. “Oh God, Eli.” Her lips twist up. If she starts crying again, that’s going to undo me.