Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  I felt my jaw harden more.

  I honestly wasn’t sure if I believed that, either, but Wreg was too good of an infiltrator for me to be certain. He felt sincere, but I wasn’t sure if that meant much, under the circumstances. I was willing to grant my safety might have been a consideration––for both of them. Holding the elevator car rail, I closed my eyes when another blast from below shook the car.

  “I apologize, Esteemed Bridge,” Wreg repeated. “I will do so to the Sword, as well. His specific instructions were to do whatever possible to avoid casualties on this operation. I should have moved the guards, as he told me to. I admit, the problems with the machine made me overly conservative in terms of time and securing your safety.”

  I closed my eyes, rubbing them in a kind of frustrated fatigue.

  Why were things blurring for me so much? I understood why Wreg hadn’t prioritized the lives of a bunch of hired killers for a publicly-traded murder company––especially given the pressure to dismantle the machine before we put all of our own lives at risk. Hell, even I had to admit that four people––or even forty people––in an op that affected almost a hundred million seers, might not be too high of a price to pay. What did that say about me?

  When I glanced at him again, I saw relief in Wreg’s dark eyes.

  Just then, the elevator car shook again, harder.

  I wondered if Revik was detonating the C-4 chunks one by one.

  “Not exactly, Esteemed Bridge,” Wreg said, his voice still respectful to the point of being worried, even through the subvocalization. “He’ll do a few of the smaller pieces first, to get the heat up and burning, then go for the larger stacks, the ones we packed more heavily.”

  I nodded. Wreg checked his watch again.

  We were only a half-dozen floors below the top now.

  Right then, a concussive rumble that made the others feel like baby blasts shook the car so hard my hand was jerked off its grip on the rail.

  Wreg caught me, sliding an arm around my waist as the others rocked on their feet, grabbing one another and the railing.

  The lights in the elevator flickered.

  Then they went dead.

  The car came to a complete stop.

  I stood in the pitch black, fighting not to panic.

  But I knew. Somehow I knew in my gut that things were going to go badly from that point.

  Really, really badly.

  38

  COLLATERAL DAMAGE

  I HEARD THE others breathing.

  Wreg released me, moving at once to the elevator doors.

  I saw him and a few of the others fight to wedge their fingers into the crack in the doors, then pull, muscles straining. Garensche was down on one knee before the inside panel. I reconstituted the shield around all of them, a little blown away by the speed at which they went to work.

  No one said a word.

  Garensche cracked open the panel, then yanked off his gloves to handle the wet organic circuits bare-handed. They glowed faintly in the Barrier, making them visible through his lit fingers as he separated out the vein-like strands.

  He tried a few different combinations. Finally, he made a noise for them to try the door again, and I saw Wreg, Nikka, Qualen, Loki, Jax and Ike all straining to open the door.

  Slowly, they managed to pull the two panels apart.

  Light illuminated their outlines through the widening crack.

  Alarms exploded overhead. I thought at first the alarms had just started up, then realized the doors had simply ceased to muffle the sound.

  “Check it,” Wreg said. He spoke to Nikka in a near yell, not bothering with subvocalization in the high-pitched whine.

  He boosted her up with his hands, and the female infiltrator disappeared through the crack to the floor above.

  Seconds later, I heard her voice.

  “Clear!”

  “Bridge!” Wreg yelled, turning.

  I reached his side and he grabbed me around the waist. Hoisting me up, he fed me through the opening to the story above. I climbed up, bracing my feet against the half-open doors until Nikka grabbed my arm and yanked me the rest of the way through the narrow opening.

  Looking down, I saw the men working again, yanking harder on the doors to widen the crack between them. It hit me only then that they’d gotten me out before taking the time to make the opening large enough for the rest of them to climb through.

  I glanced at Nikka, then looked down the hall in either direction.

  The alarms rose a few notches higher. I spread the shield over the immediate area, and realized I felt people coming, up the stairs.

  A lot of people. Armed.

  “Hurry!” I said, looking at Wreg’s dirty face past the opening as Qualen climbed through after Jax. “Move it. Now!”

  In response, Wreg shoved Ike through, then Niwa. Two more came after them, then Garensche climbed through, faster than I would have credited him, given his bulk. But I could feel them now.

  It wasn’t going to be fast enough.

  “Wait here,” I told Nikka.

  She grabbed my arm when I turned to go. “What? No!”

  “Do as I say!” I told her, pointing at the floor. “Don’t fucking leave this spot! Tell Wreg the shield may have to drop briefly. Look out for the construct––they’re going to come down on you, hard, if I do.”

  “Do? Do what?” Nikka said, confused.

  “I’m dropping the fucking shield!” I said, half-shouting to get the blank look off her face. “Two minutes, if it happens. Maybe less. Tell the others!”

  Wrenching my arm from her fingers, I ran down the hall. I rounded the corner at close to a sprint, running the length of the next arm of corridor before I came to the heavy organic metal door leading to the stairwell.

  As I did, I took in my surroundings in a quick scan.

  We were in the upper levels of an office building, a nice one. Organic windows made up the outside walls, giving me a high-level view of the surrounding city. A long, ornate planter of potted trees followed the wall opposite the windows. On a trellis behind it, tropical vines and dense ferns made the inside walls resemble a segment of jungle. The art I glimpsed in the alcoves looked like real art, not the framed wallpaper found in most office buildings.

  Something else hit me.

  The space definitely appeared to be in use. That meant we might have company up here already. I threw out a quick scan of the office suites on the other side of the wall by the elevators, even as my feet skidded to a stop.

  Military-like markers pinged in my light. Cameras. Organics of all kinds. Dense electrical fields I couldn’t identify.

  Security. Tight. These were top executive suites.

  I stood by the door to the stairs. Tucked invisibly into a corridor alcove, a combination lock stood out from the wall, along with what looked like retinal scans and a handprint access panel. Garensche could probably open it, but that wasn’t our immediate problem.

  Extending my light out past the door, I felt the small army running up the steps.

  I got private, building-owned security, but they moved like ex-military. Armored vests, organic. I might be able to short those out, but not fast enough. They had a few seers on their payroll, too. The seers carried organic weapons, but I recognized more regular guns like M-4 carbines and SG 550s from specs both Revik and Balidor had wanted me to memorize.

  I fought through options, trying to clear my head.

  I couldn’t melt the door. It wouldn’t hold them, and anyway, it wouldn’t solve our bigger problem––namely, getting the hell out of the building.

  I scanned both ends of the hall, confirming what I’d already suspected. One set of stairs. This was our only way to the roof, with or without the elevator.

  We couldn’t even go back down, not with the elevators out.

  I scanned the security detail themselves, still maintaining the shield. I heard Wreg down the hall through the construct, asking where the hell I was.

  The alar
ms kept going off, winding higher, seemingly louder as the seconds ticked by. I heard Wreg shout when he saw me.

  But I’d already made up my mind.

  I held up a hand to the other infiltrators, sending them a hard pulse to keep them back. I didn’t look once I felt it stop them in their tracks. My focus remained on the group I felt jogging up the stairs from the security floor below.

  I couldn’t pinpoint any of the physical details well enough to be able to get to the guns until they were right there, in my face. They were moving too fast.

  I would have to wait until they reached the damned door.

  “Get back,” I yelled at the others. I looked at Wreg, saw him flinch back when he saw my face. “Get them back!” I told him.

  I backed away from the door, too, but it was too late. I already felt the seers with them, and they’d sensed the presence of a construct, with me standing so close. I took more steps back, and felt Wreg again.

  “Bridge! Come back here… now! Now!”

  I felt his light, realized he was panicking, terrified I would get shot on his watch. Making up his mind, he shoved through the wall I’d thrown up and ran for me.

  I already had my awareness high in my aleimi, where that white light seemed to coil down and through, like an electrical current. I remembered all of that time spent with Tarsi, in her cave-like house in the Himalayas, studying the past, watching how it had been done––

  On the battlefield. By Revik.

  Turning, I sent a pulse at the Chinese-looking seer, throwing him backwards.

  Behind me, the door burst open, and I shifted my attention without thought, light coiled in both directions.

  “Halt!” the human in front said, aiming his gun at me.

  I fanned out my light, trails sliding around the gun, around his body, his armor, the band of grenades coiled around his form…

  He stared at me. His brown eyes held disbelief, a near shock.

  He knew me now, recognized me.

  But that didn’t matter, either.

  I felt inside each piece of him, knowing him.

  “Bridge!” he said, exultant. “It’s the fucking Bridge! We have her!”

  I triggered the impulse, atoms winding through tendrils of light. Even now, it was more of a letting go, an unfurling of my fingers out of a fist I’d spent most of my life clenching––clenching so tightly it hurt. I fought against it, a brief flicker of fear.

  Then the folding began, and I forgot that, too.

  The light rolled through me in a sensual wave.

  I felt every particle of it, every fleeting touch. It was the most satisfying exhale I’d ever allowed myself. It wasn’t like those practice sessions in Revik’s room, where I’d been too worried about hurting him or breaking something to really let go. I opened this time until the walls between me and the physical and Barrier worlds vanished entirely. I felt connected in a way I’d never imagined or allowed myself––I felt connected to every atom singing and humming through space. Life pulsed through the walls, through the organic panes, through the sky, the clouds drifting past the building’s frame, the sun, every living creature around me.

  I felt birds flying, water in the ground below, water in the potted trees, water in people, the infiltrators standing behind me.

  Everything merged. Everything became one inside that single pulse of white light.

  It was beautiful. So fucking beautiful.

  I had a vague awareness of shouting, of voices behind me. I stood there, feeling poised on the verge of a sprint when I lifted one hand.

  Light flowed through me. It was part of me. Part of the rest.

  …and the grenades wrapped around the shoulder of the man across from me exploded in a burst of hot metal and fire.

  WREG NEARLY LOST his mind when he climbed out of the stopped elevator and didn’t see the Bridge.

  It was his fault. He’d let the team run behind. The elevators went down sooner than expected, and now they were out of synch with the boss’s plans.

  The building was shutting down.

  When Nikka told him the Bridge had left, ordering her to stay by the elevators––warning her that the shield might come down in a few moments––he felt his blood stop in his veins. Fighting the urge to slap the other infiltrator across the face, he’d run after Alyson instead, aiming his feet in the direction Nikka pointed. Garensche and Jax came with him.

  He felt the others not far behind.

  When they rounded the corner, though, they’d hit a brick wall.

  Her glowing eyes and a hard pulse inside the shield that still hadn’t come down stopped him in his tracks. He found himself looking at her, helpless, from a over a dozen yards away. The boss’s wife… gods, and she stood only a half-dozen yards from a door that he suddenly realized would open in less than a minute.

  “Alyson!” he shouted. “Stop!”

  She didn’t move, didn’t take her eyes off the door.

  “Bridge!” he shouted. “Come back here… now! Now!”

  When she didn’t turn, he pushed through the shield, ran for her.

  He’d nearly reached her when she whirled on him.

  Her hand came up…

  …and Wreg found himself off his feet, flying backwards through empty space. He tried to touch his feet to the ground, to grab the walls, but everything slid past his reach.

  He slammed into the considerable bulk of Garensche.

  The giant infiltrator caught him, letting out a grunt as he adjusted his weight, grabbing the wall to keep from being thrown to the floor. Garensche set him on his feet at once, but Wreg felt a pulse of shock come off the other male, too.

  It took a hell of a lot to knock Gar down.

  Fighting to regain his breath, Wreg rubbed his chest where the pressure hit him, then turned, and saw Allie standing less than a dozen feet from six armed security guards in full combat gear.

  He cried out, unable to help himself.

  A rope of grenades hung around the leader’s shoulder like a bandolier; he clutched an organically modified carbine in both his hands. He stared at Allie like he couldn’t believe it, recognition in his eyes.

  “Bridge!” he said then. “It’s the fucking Bridge! We have her!”

  Wreg screamed out, nearly losing his mind––

  ––When there was a sudden, sharp, flash of fire. A booming sound echoed through the corridor. He ducked instinctively, seeing shrapnel tossed straight down the corridor.

  Smoke billowed forward down the hall, obliterating his view.

  Fire sprinklers went off in the same second, even as he heard another explosion echo through the walls in front of him.

  More shrapnel flew out, past the curve in the wall, so that they were shielded from its path. Even so, Wreg felt a rain of metal and material that felt more organic––pieces of bone, chunks of flesh. Wreg pulled himself and the others further back around the corner, coughing in the billowing smoke.

  Peering around the wall, he tried to scan, to see through the smoke.

  Then his light got hit, hard.

  Clicking into the Barrier, he realized the shield was down.

  “Barrier!” he shouted in Prexci. “Qualen! Nikka! On point!”

  He still fought to see past the smoke, feeling the others take offensive positions around him within the Barrier.

  The boss would feel this soon.

  Then Wreg was as good as dead.

  Even as he thought it, there was a deafening crash from the corridor in front of him. He ducked again without thought, then looked around the corner.

  Fire and smoke billowed backwards from where Wreg stood. It curled rapidly away from him in a thick, black wave, like watching a film run backwards and sped up.

  He saw bodies, then. Two, no three infiltrators flying out the windows directly in front of him, at the very end of the long corridor. He saw another uniformed soldier lose his grip on the staircase door. He flew out the window with the rest of them. Wreg could only watch, his breathin
g stopped as her form came back into view.

  He saw a white shield around her light briefly as a seer grabbed her––

  Then that seer’s body was jerked sideways, as if by a giant hand. He smashed into the wall like a rag doll, then flew out the broken window, too.

  One of the walls still burned, as did a pile of something that must have been that lead infiltrator, in the middle of the carpet.

  Wreg watched her hand come up, another body thrown backwards, this time through the doorway and back down the stairs. He heard a metallic clang as the security guard hit the metal bannister, then another, louder impact sound as he went over it and fell down the staircase below.

  “Back! Retreat!”

  Wreg grabbed Ike, realizing the signal for retreat came from the security team.

  She had them on the run.

  His light got hit again, nearly blacking him out. Wreg split his consciousness enough to look at what stalked them from the Barrier. He saw at least two dozen infiltrators working from there. They had threads to everyone on his team except Allie herself, and were draining their light as rapidly as they could.

  Nikka had been hit hardest. Pieces of her structure were broken, and she was starting to lose consciousness.

  Even as he thought it, a white blast came from the Bridge.

  He felt it more than saw it––the curl of white flame left her in an arc. It expanded, sliding over them like a sonic charge, somehow missing all of their own people. It blew back the ring of Black Arrow infiltrators like so many dead leaves.

  Wreg saw the draining threads torn off his team’s light. He felt his own light buoy back as the Barrier space cleared over the building.

  When Wreg’s eyes could see again, he found Allie staring back in their direction, her eyes glowing green rings in her face.

  He thought at first she was looking at him.

  Then he felt something behind them.

  He turned, found himself facing another line of seers.

  A security team stood at the open double doors to the executive suites on that floor. Designed to blend in with the wall, the doors themselves had remained invisible until they opened. Now Wreg could see and feel more seers behind them, along with a larger number of humans. Bewildered as to why and how he hadn’t felt an entire damned security team at his back, Wreg got hit by another jolt of understanding.