Prophet: Bridge & Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  It took me another blink to realize he wore a traditional Arabic head covering and robe.

  Even in the unfamiliar clothes and headgear, however, I recognized him. Well enough that my breath stopped, a choking sensation hitting the middle of my chest.

  It was Menlim.

  He wasn’t looking at me.

  He looked only at Revik.

  I followed his gaze to my husband, and saw him staring back at Menlim, his mouth curled in a hard but determined frown. His light flared into seething, sparking life, a winding furnace of heat that turned into a tornado, raising the hair on my arms and head and neck, even as it occurred to me what he meant to do.

  Revik thought he could kill him now.

  He thought he could kill Menlim, now that he was no longer attached to Menlim’s construct, or his network.

  He’d been expecting this. He’d planned for it.

  Even as the realization struck, that deep voice boomed again.

  Menlim’s voice.

  I didn’t understand the words any more the second time than I had the first, but fear slammed my light, even before I felt the words hit Revik’s.

  “Isre l’ange si nedri az’lenm. Isre ti’a ali di’ suletuum…” His voice boomed, echoing strangely in the dark, filled with silver light. “Isre l’ange si nedri az’lenm. Isre ti’a ali di’ suletuum. Sala. Sala ‘ti. Sala ‘ti, mongare sa’… Alyson. Alyson…”

  Revik’s light shifted, coiling hotter above his head.

  I stared at him, feeling my fear bloom into panic.

  His light sparked upwards, even higher into the Barrier than before. Every piece of his aleimi ignited so swiftly it was like watching a gas main catch fire, pouring its flames upwards into the darkness of night.

  His eyes ignited––

  And then he was looking at me.

  I knew, in that split second.

  I don’t know how I knew, but I did.

  He was going to kill me.

  He was going to kill me, and afterwards, he wouldn’t remember he’d done it.

  In through the out door…

  I stared up at Revik’s face.

  Time stopped, in that bare breath between seconds.

  I saw the emptiness in his eyes, even beyond the pale green flames that flared brighter than I’d ever seen them. They turned his face cold, contrasting his features in shadow and light. I felt my own light spark into life in response to the threat I felt, sending my aleimi high into those same structures in my own aleimi––

  But it was already too late.

  In that stretch of no-time after Menlim spoke, I knew it was too late.

  All Revik needed were those few seconds.

  I’d be dead before I’d ignited my light enough to pull the trigger.

  As the realization reached my awareness, time slowed even more, long enough for a different thought to reverberate through me, without slowing the reflex of my aleimi igniting, or that rising fire in Revik’s eyes as we each responded to what we both perceived as a direct threat against our own lives.

  Terian was right.

  Whatever else he’d done, kidnapping the Listers, unraveling Revik’s and my bond so we’d be forced to find him, brining us here on this night, lining us up to be slaughtered by Menlim… Terian was unquestionably right about one thing.

  He’d warned me.

  He’d definitely warned me.

  58

  CONTINGENCY

  JON GASPED, SWAYING under the slam to his light.

  He got hit by an immediate echo as the wave knocked into Wreg at the same time it knocked into him. The double shocks disoriented him, knocking his equilibrium off center. Gripping the strap of the weapon he wore on his back, he dropped to one knee in the sand, putting out his free hand for balance as his vision flashed to white.

  Most of the remaining members of their team stood and sat on the same stretch of dune, hunkered down about three clicks east of the outer edges of Dubai’s construct. Several went down on one knee on the sand like Jon. A few gasped and held their heads where they already crouched under organic structures meant to hide their presence from any surveillance that might fly overhead, including satellites.

  They all wore camouflage, but only a few remained outside the tents.

  Jon was one of those. So was Wreg.

  They knew there was a good chance their presence would be picked up out here eventually, so the main goal was to hide their numbers, and to do their best to resemble a caravan of refugees in the event they were seen.

  Since Bedouin still lived in pockets out here, in addition to the several refugee encampments left outside the Dubai wall, their presence shouldn’t raise any red flags, providing they didn’t do anything to gain the security team’s attention. Those locked out of protected cities were part of the landscape at this point, and not only in the UAE.

  Even so, Jon wore a traditional, sand-colored robe and a white turban, both of which were surprisingly comfortable in the heat of day. The clothing still served multiple functions after dark, as the wind kicked up sand and the robes kept in his body’s warmth.

  Now he found himself struggling with the unfamiliar clothing, however, fumbling to bring his rifle around through the folds of cloth as he rose back to his feet. He saw Wreg touch his headset as he did. He followed his mate with his eyes as Wreg moved further up the ridged dune, presumably to get a better signal.

  “Adhipan.” Wreg growled the word.

  Jon followed him along the crest of the dune, turning his headset to the same channel.

  He heard Balidor’s voice right as he found the signal.

  “I felt it,” Balidor confirmed.

  “No shit,” Wreg snapped. “What the fuck was that?”

  “The Sword,” Balidor said. “His light just spiked off the grid.”

  “Where are they?” Jon said, cutting in.

  “The Waterfront,” Balidor responded.

  Wreg glanced at Jon, scowling.

  Jon understood the meaning of the look.

  He’d studied the maps along with the rest of them. Revik was all the way across the city, almost in a diagonal line from where he’d told them to wait, at the northeast edge of Dubai’s main wall. Even if they managed to get through the checkpoint at record speed, they were at least an hour out from where Revik was.

  “Is Allie with him?” Jon said, turning his mind back to Balidor.

  “Unknown,” Balidor said. “Her light hasn’t hit the construct. If she’s with him, she’s still operating under the radar. In theory, at least.”

  “Or she’s incapacitated,” Wreg muttered.

  “Or she’s incapacitated,” Balidor agreed.

  “…And Menlim hacked his light,” Wreg added sourly.

  “We all knew it was a possibility, my brother,” Balidor said.

  His words were careful, but Jon felt the heaviness in the older seer’s light.

  “What does Yumi think?” Jon said.

  There was a silence. Then Balidor made a soft clicking sound through the transmitter, his words even more grim.

  “You don’t want to know what Yumi thinks,” was all he said.

  “We can’t get to him?” Jon blurted.

  He glanced behind him, noticing only then that they had an audience.

  The others had begun to gather around Wreg and Jon, listening to them speak to the Adhipan leader. Loki stood nearest, followed by Argo, Ille, Declan, Raddi, and Oli. Fear rippled their light as they picked up impressions from the conversation, and likely read between the lines of actual words.

  Jon saw Kat standing there, too, a few yards down the dune, arms folded. He couldn’t help scowling at her, even though he felt the worry on her light.

  “No,” Balidor said, after a lengthy-feeling pause. “No, my brothers, I’m afraid we can’t. Get to him, that is. No one is near enough.”

  “What the fuck are we supposed to do, then?” Wreg snapped. “Just stand here, holding our dicks, while Menlim takes them both ou
t?”

  The line fell silent.

  In that silence, Jon felt seers consulting on the other end of the line. He felt another sharper pulse of fear off Wreg’s light, and clasped his arm, instinctively sending him warmth.

  When Balidor came back on, he didn’t try to reassure them that time, either.

  “I honestly do not know, my brothers. All you can do now is what Nenzi asked, and wait.”

  “Wait for what?” Wreg growled. “For Shadow’s troops to come collect us?”

  Balidor clicked under his breath.

  Jon could almost see him shaking his head through the line.

  “Wait to see if we need to enact the contingency,” Balidor said. “The same one Nenzi told us to enact, if it looked like they wouldn’t be able to get out.”

  Jon didn’t move. Neither did Wreg.

  They both knew what Balidor meant.

  The carrier was equipped with long-range nuclear warheads.

  The contingency Balidor referred to was the last-ditch one Revik gave them. The one where Revik told them to take out the entire city of Dubai, if it looked like Shadow was going to get him and Allie alive.

  Jon fought to think past the possibility, realizing how little he’d let himself contemplate it at the time they’d been planning all this. He stared numbly around at faces as the other seers continued to gather around him and Wreg, as if waiting to be told what to do.

  Jon was still looking at nothing, when out of nowhere, something else clicked.

  Then he was scanning faces for real.

  When he couldn’t find the one he wanted, the frown returned to his face.

  “Where the hell’s Chandre?” he said, still looking for her dark red eyes and black braids from among the seers standing on the back end of that high dune.

  Confused expressions crossed the nearest of those faces, presumably those who’d heard Jon say it. He watched others turn and look around at the seers standing next to them, as if they, too, were looking for those same distinctive features. But Jon never glimpsed Chandre’s high cheekbones, muscular form, or sharply-angled face among them.

  Nor did anyone else.

  “Chandre!” Jon called out, louder.

  When no one answered, Jon looked at Wreg.

  “Where the fuck is she?” he said.

  Seeing the blank look on Wreg’s face, Jon was about to direct his question to the rest of them a second time, when Loki pointedly cleared his throat.

  Jon swiveled his gaze, staring at the Middle Eastern seer.

  Loki’s complexion darkened. He made a noncommittal gesture with one hand, glancing around at the ring of seers who now stared at him, too.

  He flushed more, gesturing again.

  “He told me not to say anything,” he said, as if that explained it.

  Looking at him, feeling his shoulders tighten, feeling Wreg’s light spark in understanding next to his––Jon found himself thinking it probably did.

  Explain it, that is.

  CHANDRE CROUCHED AT the top of a pile of slatted composite crates.

  She had not been here long in objective time.

  In subjective time, those twenty or so minutes felt much longer. If she’d gotten here any later, however, it would have been too late to effect any difference at all.

  She might still be too late.

  She held her breath, watching dark-clothed seers filter through the maze of tunnels and narrow aisles between stacked shipping containers. They moved silently, quiet as ghosts, and she held her breath as she watched them, hiding her thoughts as well as her body––perhaps more so for the former, given where she was.

  The rifle never left her shoulder.

  She used the infrared scope, shielded by an organic casing that generated a Barrier field in addition to the physical one. The shield allowed her to use the gun’s electronic components, which was good since, without that, she wouldn’t be able to see the warehouse floor, much less the Dreng infiltrators, not in sufficient detail for her purposes.

  Even so, she pulled her eye off the scope a few times, trying to obtain an accurate count––partly due to the magnification of the infrared lens, and partly just to make sure she didn’t miss anything her senses might catch better.

  She couldn’t help but be impressed by the complete lack of footprint the black-clad soldiers left in the Barrier. Granted, she couldn’t use her own aleimi much, not down here, but she still would have thought she’d get a flicker of something from such a large group of armed seers.

  That could be an effect of the construct, too, of course.

  The boss gave her explicit instructions, but Chandre still couldn’t help feeling some relief––along with a ripple of nerves––at how close things had gotten, in terms of her making it up to her perch before the Dreng reinforcements arrived.

  Once she’d seen her people heading for the boathouse with that Rook, she had to work hard to get ahead of them.

  She managed it by running ahead through the swampy field in the dark while they walked the lit path. After locating a side door near the far end of the warehouse, she cracked it, using a de-encryption tool Dante made for that purpose.

  The fact that it worked, that it got her inside minutes before the double doors rolled open on the other end, was the only reason she was still in play.

  As it was, she’d barely had time to reach a real vantage point before Terian began leading the Bridge and Sword through that maze of crates.

  The boss gave her access to a mobile construct, providing an elaborate set of Barrier key codes to access the same––but only in the event of an emergency. If she desperately needed the intelligence, she could have risked using that, but really, it was meant to be a last resort, and only if the boss and the Bridge needed immediate extraction.

  Chandre was deeply wary of using it before that state of emergency was certain.

  She knew the boss wouldn’t thank her for it, if she did.

  The Sword hammered that point harder than usual while they’d discussed this ploy on the carrier, and then repeated it again on the ground outside the Dubai nightclub. Namely, that he didn’t want her sending up any alarms to Balidor or Commander Wreg until she knew for certain they didn’t have a shot at taking out Menlim.

  Having Chandre there as backup to his own attempt would be worthless if she got taken out by the construct prior to the moment when he really needed her.

  It was a warning Chandre took seriously.

  Now, watching the black-uniformed seers melt through the rows of boxes like liquid smoke, she tightened her hands on the gun, glancing at the cluster of her own people standing in the lit area between two rows of iron-barred cages.

  Chandre saw the Bridge looking incongruous in high-heeled shoes and a form-fitting, black, backless dress that scarcely covered her rear end. She stood a few feet from the Sword, who, for the first time since they’d left that club in Deira, wasn’t actually touching her.

  That Children of the Bridge seer, Dalejem, stood on his other side, not far from Anale, Tenzi and two others Chandre knew only in passing.

  Jax and Chinja stood closest to the Rook. Surli and Stanley stood on the other side of the Bridge and the Sword, presumably to cover them from behind. Others positioned themselves further back, where Chandre couldn’t see them very well, but she knew how many had come out here, so she could more or less extrapolate.

  Chandre didn’t know how many of her people were still armed.

  To err on the side of caution, she had to assume none.

  Therefore, when she swung the rifle back towards the black-clad seers walking through the crates, she held her breath as she aimed the rifle at the one she presumed to be their leader. Instead of an infiltrator’s military uniform, he wore civilian clothes, a black robe of the local style with an equally black sash and headband.

  Chandre couldn’t see his face, but she suspected she knew who he was.

  She recognized the long-legged gait and the shape of his frame, which was tall
even for a seer. It also bordered on skeletal, even in the flowing robe.

  She remembered him from South America, well enough for her jaw to clench.

  Following his body with the infrared scope, she lost him here and there among the crates, but always managed to pick him up again. Placing her feet carefully as she tested her balance, she shifted her position slightly, trying to improve her vantage without making any noise.

  Once she’d improved it as much as she thought she could––safely, at least––she waited for Menlim to emerge. She hoped to catch him not long after he exited that final opening, meaning the one leading into the open area where the cages lived.

  She counted through seconds, waiting.

  She waited past where it felt like she should have had to wait.

  Then she heard his voice.

  Chandre knew it was his instantly.

  She recognized it, even as it filled the empty stretch of warehouse following the maze of crates. She could nearly see his words with her eyes. Not just words. Weaponized light, like keys turning in locks she couldn’t see. They hung in the air like metal, his light twisting out towards the seers standing between those human-sized cages.

  Twisting out towards the Sword.

  “Isre l’ange si nedri az’lenm. Isre ti’a ali di’ suletuum…” His voice boomed, echoing in the dark. “Isre l’ange si nedri az’lenm… isre ti’a ali di’ suletuum. Sala. Sala ‘ti. Sala ‘ti, mongare sa’… Alyson. Alyson…”

  Chandre pulled her eye off the scope, looking for him with her naked vision.

  Seeing nothing, she put her eye back to the round opening and swung the infrared along that same line, looking for him again that way.

  Menlim still did not appear.

  He must have stopped before he cleared the crates enough to be in her line of sight.

  Even as she thought it, she saw soldiers appear at the fringes of that same line. She noted their positions but didn’t move her rifle.

  She didn’t want to blow her cover for one of them.

  She wanted him. The head of the snake. Menlim.

  Once she got him, she would shoot at the rest.

  Jerking her eye off the scope briefly a second time, she scanned the nearby crates, trying to decide if she could safely move positions to get a better angle without being seen. The jump down wasn’t close, though. Now that black-clad soldiers filled the wider opening in the warehouse, it was too risky. If a firefight broke out on the ground, she could move without being noticed––but of course by then it may be too late.