Prophet: Bridge & Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  It was weeks before they let us in to see her in person, and even then I pretty much had to throw a fit––and then Revik had to throw a fit––before Balidor and the other Adhipan seers cleared us. They still didn’t know everything Menlim had done to her light, although she had high-ranked seers looking at it pretty much every day.

  Revik and I spent long hours looking at it, too, even if they only let us do it via transcripts and recordings at first.

  Either way, by the time they finally let us in there, we were both acting a bit nuts.

  Revik and I stood outside that room together, stuck between anticipation, excitement, nerves, relief and terror as we waited for them to let us in.

  Neither of us moved while Chinja and Tenzi opened the outside door, and I clutched Revik’s hand tightly enough that it probably hurt.

  They’d given us the rundown on the rules, while we stood out there. Two hour stretches inside Lily’s tank for either of us, maximum. Nothing invasive with our lights, at least in terms of her higher aleimic structures. Four hour gaps between the two hour stints in the tank. No sleeping in there. No letting her resonate too much with Revik’s higher column, or even mine, although they were mostly worried about Revik, for obvious reasons.

  We stood there, listening to all that crap, but only half-listening, too.

  Revik held my fingers firmly, despite my death grip, but I’d felt every ounce of his attention focused on the other side of the door. When they finally got it open, a violent lurch of nerves hit my stomach. I remember I got dizzy, and nauseous, and my skin felt hot.

  More than any of that, I remember being terrified.

  I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the fact I was a mother.

  I hadn’t earned that title. I mean, sure, half of Lily’s genetic material was mine. I carried her for the first few weeks of her existence. Oh, and I’d knocked the person my daughter thought was her mother on her ass when I went to save her.

  I wasn’t positive that last one counted.

  Revik must’ve been nervous, too. If he was, it didn’t show; he’d been the rock in all that, Mr. Calm and Collected. I’d tried to convince myself it was because he’d been alive longer, and had more confidence in his ability to parent a child without completely screwing them up. He’d been reassuring me on the motherhood thing for weeks, even though we rarely talked about the logistics of what it would be like, us being parents.

  Of course, a quieter, more nagging voice in the back of my head told me Revik was only less nervous because he’d never spent any time with small kids.

  Letting out a faintly-amused snort, he’d looked at me when I thought that, gripping my hand harder.

  Stop being such a baby, he chided.

  I knocked into him with my arm, without letting go of his hand. Tell me that in ten years, when our daughter’s in therapy because her biological mom beat up her fake, kidnapping mom right in front of her.

  Revik only clicked at me.

  Should one of us go in first? I asked nervously, watching as Chinja and Tenzi pulled the thick, organic-metal door open. Try not to overwhelm her too soon?

  No, Revik said. He hadn’t look away from the opening door. Instead, he’d only gripped my hand tighter. No, we go in together.

  He’d sounded so sure, I relaxed a little.

  Feeling his eyes on me then, I glanced up, and saw his mouth pursed in a faint frown, amusement in his eyes.

  I think you really are more nervous than me, he said.

  Or you’re hiding it better, I retorted.

  Maybe.

  My stomach knotted and clenched as we walked towards that open door. I found myself thinking about little Lily crying after I’d knocked Cass out, how she’d watched me suspiciously the whole time back on the helicopter.

  Probably not, I admitted to Revik, quieter. Hiding it better, I mean.

  Pulling me closer, he smiled, sending a warm pulse to the middle of my chest. He’d been really affectionate with me that day––I remember that, too. He also sent a thread of heat at me, one I felt all the way down to my feet. Closing my eyes in mid-step towards the door, I thunked my shoulder into him, smacking the forearm connected to the hand I held in both of mine.

  Stop it, I sent sternly. Not in front of the baby.

  That made him laugh, causing Tenzi, Chinja and Declan to aim puzzled looks in our direction. When I glanced back, only Balidor looked amused. Catching my glance, he made a motion with his fingers towards the open door, that half smile still on his lips.

  “Stop stalling, Esteemed Bridge,” he said, his voice joking.

  But I’d already looked away from him.

  I remember Tarsi being there, too. She’d shooed me towards the door, like Balidor.

  “Go on,” she said in her heavily-accented English. “Won’t get any easier with you hiding out here.”

  Nodding, I wasn’t quite able to smile in return.

  “We need to visit Maygar, too,” I muttered at Revik.

  He’d nodded to my words.

  Of course, I only found out later he’d been visiting Maygar every day since we got back to the ship. It threw me a little at first, the realization that Revik and his son had a relationship now, one I knew absolutely zero about.

  Truthfully, I still felt out of step with a lot of things.

  “He wants to talk to you.” Revik spoke up from the floor, looking up from where he was still making his rabbit bright blue, despite Lily’s scolding. “About Dubai. About how you want to use him there. He thinks I’m sidelining him after what happened in Macau.” Rolling his eyes a little, he smiled at me. “He’s still blaming himself. For Jon getting stabbed.”

  I smiled, clicking softly. “You’d never know it, with how he grumbles at Jon.”

  Revik lifted an eyebrow at me. “He’s a complex person.”

  I laughed. “Wait. Could you say that again? A little louder? I want to make sure it got recorded by surveillance.”

  Revik grunted, but gave me another smile.

  Lily looked between us, her clear, green-rimmed eyes sharp. “Who?” she demanded of Revik, her mouth set in a frown. “Who is complex?”

  “Your brother,” he told her casually, going back to coloring.

  She looked up at me, as if to verify his words, and I laughed.

  “Don’t look at me,” I said. “Do you really think your father is lying to you?”

  “He said bunnies can be blue!” Lily said at once. “I looked it up, just now. I showed him, but he says he doesn’t care. Bunnies are brown… or black… or white. Not blue!” she emphasized, looking disapprovingly at Revik’s very blue rabbit.

  He glanced up, smiling at me, and rolling his eyes.

  “She is definitely your daughter,” he said.

  I clicked back, laughing.

  “You think so, huh?” I looked at Lily, smiling at her. “Your father doesn’t like rules, darling,” I told her. “You may not win this one.”

  She gave me a surprised look, then stared at Revik’s downturned dark head, as if contemplating this new information, or maybe incorporating it into the information she already had about him. Her hair had gotten longer, I noticed, looking at it from behind. As it grew longer, the curl got pulled out of it by the weight, leaving it looking even more like Revik’s.

  She looked older to me again, too.

  I frowned at the thought, looking at the length of her legs. Balidor said there wasn’t anything they could do about whatever Menlim had done to speed her maturation process.

  It bothered me, though. It bothered me a lot.

  When I looked up next, she was staring at me again, a sharper look in her clear eyes. Her round face reminded me strangely of Revik’s too, more from what I remembered of him as a kid when looking at Barrier images, but enough to take my breath at times. Her light was all her own, though. It had flavors that felt familiar to me, bare glimpses I couldn’t react to with anything but emotion, but those things weren’t either mine or Revik’s.

&n
bsp; They were hers.

  She watched me look at her, that serious expression still on her face, even as she continued to lean against Revik’s shoulder and side.

  That only reminded me of that first day, too, though.

  She just stared at us as Revik and I walked in here that first time. We’d stopped within a few feet of the door, and just stood there as the security team rolled it shut behind us.

  I guess we’d been letting her get a look at us, although we hadn’t planned that ahead of time, or even talked about it.

  Lily didn’t blink at all those first few seconds.

  She’d been standing in her crib, staring at us with eyes that looked a lot older to me than the body to which they were attached. I remember wondering, even then, just how old she was at that point, in seer years. She’d looked around three or four in human years to me then, but I had no idea how that would translate, or even what it meant, really, since we knew Shadow’s medical techs had been aging her artificially.

  Also, I still didn’t really get seer aging, truthfully. I still tended to relate it to human ages, more often than the reverse.

  I also wondered if she was still her chronological age mentally.

  Given what Menlim had done to her, would her emotional growth lag behind her physical? At that first meeting with me and Revik in the tank, Lily wouldn’t have even been born yet until the following month, if she’d been allowed to gestate and age normally.

  “Nine,” Revik told me softly at the time, squeezing my hand. “Balidor tells me she’s been aged to roughly the equivalent of a nine-year-old Sarhacienne. Which he believes should be more or less accurate, at least physically, which includes brain development. They’ve done something to speed up her experiential development, too, probably via enhanced VR, but also by speeding up the activation of her light structures. Either way, the age should be about right, since she’s been exposed to very few humans. Even if she’s Elaerian, and able to change her development cycle, she still wouldn’t be mimicking human development, but Sark.”

  I’d only nodded, unable to tear my eyes off those clear, glass-like irises. The thin band of light green around the edge was so perfectly symmetrical it almost looked fake.

  Mostly, though, I’d been staring at eyes that looked a hell of a lot like Revik’s.

  I remember seeing a small frown on her small mouth. That, coupled with the intent, very Revik-like stare in those clear eyes, rendered me more or less speechless.

  It both touched me and made me nervous. No amount of “cootchie-coo” was going to win Lily over, unlike some human kids her age. Revik warned me that with seer kids, you needed to approach them more like an individual, even at this age.

  Already, I’d seen her weighing me with her eyes.

  I’d also felt her remembering my light.

  I was still distant from her, which hurt; a wall still stood tangibly between us.

  She remembered me both ways, as the person who knocked out Cass, the one they’d probably been brainwashing her about for as long as she’d been alive. She also remembered me as a light from a far more distant memory, a memory she might not even be conscious of.

  That was the memory I’d desperately wanted her to remember.

  It was the memory I needed her to remember.

  Somewhere in all that, I’d realized I was holding my breath… and my light.

  Once I noticed, I forced myself to let both of those things go.

  Within seconds, her own shockingly bright light hit mine in a white and blue-green wave. It made me gasp aloud, my hand rising to my chest, even as I fought to make sense of everything I felt, the distance and nearness and the complications in those high, structured strands.

  “Gods,” Revik had said from next to me.

  I’d almost forgotten he was there, but after he spoke, I’d felt his light wrapped in hers, too. I saw her looking at him, then, viewing him almost with fear, but knowing him somehow, too. I noticed that with Revik, her fears were both more nebulous and more concrete, related to pictures and feelings I couldn’t make sense of, impressions she must have received from Menlim, or maybe from Menlim, Cass, and Terian collectively.

  Revik had squeezed my hand again, then tugged at me, walking deeper into the room.

  I’d followed, no longer reluctant, but still worried at some of the more intense currents I could feel in her light. I could see her watching us warily, that caution and fear still in her eyes. I’d tried to open to her more, to give her more of me to feel.

  Somewhere in that, I’d felt recognition spark in her.

  Beyond that horrible apartment in New York, beyond anything she’d been brainwashed by Menlim or Cass to feel about me––I’d felt her remember me. I felt a thread of her light slide into a thread of mine, like it belonged there, like it had always been there.

  Then she’d burst into tears.

  It felt like someone punched me right in the middle of my chest.

  I ran to her then. I’d had her in my arms before I’d consciously made the decision. Hoisting her up out of that low-walled crib with the fuzzy white and blue sheets covered in smiling whales, I brought her straight to my chest, enveloping her in my light as much as my arms.

  I’d barely noticed I was crying until Revik was with us, and I’d looked up to see tears in his eyes, too. Lilai had wrapped her arms around my neck and continued to cry and then Revik had his arms around both of us, and his light poured into hers, and into mine, until all three of us had more or less cried ourselves out.

  Even after I’d finished, my chest still hurt.

  I think it hurt for a few days.

  Weeks, maybe.

  After that, we just sat with her on the couch––the same fuzzy green thing I sat on now, that still reminded me more of a cartoon couch than a real one, like something from a Dr. Seuss book. That first day, I just sat there with my arms wrapped around her, stroking her hair, which was long, soft and slightly curled like mine, but more Revik’s color, meaning closer to pitch black than dark brown. Revik sat next to us on the couch, and for a long time, I could barely think a coherent word as our lights wrapped deeper into one another.

  I’d also understood, somewhere in that, why Balidor had been cautious about letting me and Revik see her. Within five of those first ten or so minutes, I already knew there was no way in hell I was going to let her stay alone in this green cell, without us, no matter how many plush toys they gave her or fuzzy whale-covered blankets or green, mossy couches that looked like they came out of Alice’s Wonderland.

  Next to me, Revik had chuckled at my grumpy protectiveness, even then.

  I remembered seeing him wipe more tears with the back of his hand, but really, the main thing I saw on his face was joy, a kind of wordless, awe-filled joy I’d never felt on him before. Impulsively––and yeah, a little reluctantly, too––I’d eventually handed Lily to him directly, plopping her unceremoniously on his lap.

  Instead of curling his arms around her the way I had, he just sat there that first time with her, looking at her face. He’d been smiling, but after a few seconds, I realized he was letting her come to him.

  She had, too.

  It hadn’t even taken her all that long, really.

  Hoisting herself up into a sitting position and staring at his face with those serious, clear-as-glass eyes, she looked at him for what seemed like a long time without blinking.

  Then my vision blurred again when she crawled up to his chest, pulling herself up by gripping his shirt so she could stand on his legs, and look him directly in the face.

  He hadn’t moved. He just sat there, looking back at her, unsmiling that time. His light had been more open than I think I’d ever felt it.

  I’d continued to watch as Lily reached out to touch his face with her hands. She’d gripped his hair, then his jaw, where he still had some five o’clock shadow scruff from not shaving that morning, then his arm.

  I hadn’t really realized none of us had spoken until she broke the
silence, still looking somberly into his eyes.

  “Are you my other daddy?” she’d said.

  Her voice had been as serious as her eyes.

  I remember feeling pain in my chest from her words, hot enough to cut off my breath, and woven into a flood of protectiveness that felt a lot more like anger. Realizing she must have heard that term from Terian and Cass didn’t help. Even then, they’d been grooming her to accept Revik as a parent, maybe alongside Terian.

  Clearly, I was never meant to be in the picture, though.

  Revik glanced at me at the time, as if realizing the same thing.

  To Lily herself, he never flinched.

  Still holding her gaze, he’d made a “more or less” gesture with his hand. When she frowned, he’d answered her question aloud, his voice just as serious.

  “I’m your only father,” he said simply.

  Pausing, as if unsure if he should go on, he gauged her face. For a few long-feeling seconds, both of us watched her think about his words.

  Lily had looked at me then, still clinging to the front of Revik’s shirt.

  Her eyes turned briefly wary again as she looked over my face, but I saw the conflict there that time, and felt a denser grief in her light. I felt that grief and conflict strengthening, even just from our sitting so close to one another.

  That connection we all shared shone brighter than her fear. It was like a multicolored thread woven between and into the highest portion of all three of our lights.

  I felt love in that thread, even then.

  I felt it from her, and it poured out of me with such intensity I saw her blink a little, right before that wariness in her eyes faded again.

  Tears rose to those giant eyes a second time. She reached out to me with her free hand, clutching air, asking to be held.

  And yeah, I think some part of me died in those few seconds.

  Even now, remembering that moment––the moment I realized it might really be all right, that Lily wouldn’t hate me forever because of Cass, Menlim and Terian––a bare glimpse of that feeling could still fill me with so much, I honestly didn’t know how to express it.

  Watching her scold Revik again about his coloring choices, pausing to clutch at his shirt as she leaned on his shoulder to point accusingly at his drawing, I wiped my face again, grinning at the two of them like an idiot.