Shadow (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #4): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  She hoped Jon spoke to Balidor as soon as the call ended.

  Gazing out the window of her Maryland apartment, she stretched her arms, tilting her body sideways to get a kink out of her back.

  So far, she had met with nothing but dead ends since arriving here. Of her three assignments, she had made concrete progress with only one, and that progress had not been as significant as she would have liked, given the amount of time she’d been in the United States.

  One of those outstanding tasks, in particular, nagged at her.

  It was also the one in which she had made no headway at all.

  She’d come to the United States with two initial charges.

  Dehgoies wanted someone who could infiltrate the SCARB branch in D.C. for intelligence purposes, working their way as closely to direct White House access as possible.

  Her second task came from Balidor, and was even more straightforward. Watch the Rebels and SCARB. Report back on the doings of both.

  Once she’d established a stable identity with the Rebels and with SCARB, Balidor assigned her a third task. He wanted her to track down the whereabouts of an old female seer, a scientist who used to work for Galaith. All he could give her was a few aliases, the seer’s age, and the fact that she had strong backgrounds in both law and genetics.

  What he hadn’t come out and said, but what Chandre discerned from the intel he’d provided, was that this old seer had connections to other, very powerful seers. Seers he wanted to know more about. In particular, he seemed very interested to know if she had connections to any seer colonies based out of South America.

  The old seer’s name was Xarethe.

  Weeks after Dehgoies got custody of Feigran and Allie from the Lao Hu in China, the Sword contacted Chandre with a fourth task.

  He wanted her to find evidence of a biological weapon the Americans had developed. He’d read intelligence off the schizophrenic seer, Feigran, that suggested such a thing existed, or was in process of being designed. It wasn’t clear whether Feigran himself had commissioned that weapon to be built, or if Galaith had done so before him, but, while President of the United States, apparently Terian knew of one under development.

  That virus would supposedly kill humans, leaving exposed seers alive.

  The Sword assumed the Americans might want such a thing as leverage in their ongoing war with China. He wondered if perhaps the goal was to take out a significant portion of the human population of Beijing in order to secure the seers of the Lao Hu for the Americans.

  Naturally, the Sword wanted her to find out where they were with the project.

  He suspected it had been taken off the books, officially at least––either by the CIA or its research arm. From his time in British Intelligence, Revik knew how such lists tended to operate. He suspected the project had merely been shifted into a different budget category, its funding buried under a paper trail of several other projects of its kind.

  That, or it had been broken into a number of smaller projects, each seemingly innocuous on its own, but which, combined, would create the biological weapon.

  He also suspected the new president might not know anything about it.

  “Perhaps,” he’d joked with her over the VR link. “It is now labeled ‘Experiment for the balancing of non-European populations to meet international livestock projections’.”

  The Sword, like the Bridge, could have a dark sense of humor, at times.

  She’d asked him if the opposite kind of virus might also be in development. Meaning one that would kill seers, leaving humans untouched.

  He told her to let him know.

  She had found nothing on the books, official or unofficial, regarding either type of disease. She’d pored through funding lists of research tanks under military contract, looking for any individual or cluster of projects that might meet some portion of the description she’d been given. She used everything from keyword searches in project databases to actually visiting several of the labs in person and speaking with administrators under the guise of being a SCARB investigator.

  Even reading the humans, and pushing them with her light, she’d found nothing.

  The closest she’d come had been in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where they showed her a family of tests they’d been running to combat such a virus, were it ever to be developed. The paper trails and funding around those tests had been obscured under a number of different guises, mainly connecting them to vaccine projects to combat ebola and other dangerous diseases to which humans fell victim in the developing world.

  Still, Chandre knew not finding a thing did not mean it did not exist.

  Then the Sword had been kidnapped, and not long after, the incident in Hong Kong occurred. The news feeds screamed about nothing but seer terrorism for a few weeks more. Memorials were staged amid a backdrop of paranoid rants on talk shows, but no real evidence surfaced, officially or unofficially, about what actually killed the Hong Kong humans.

  All of the data points and fragments of intel kept trying to form a coherent picture in Chandre's head. Whatever that picture was, it never came into focus.

  She knew the Sword was right, though.

  Ways existed to bury such a thing. It could be split into components. Each component could be given a long, boring-sounding name that no one could possibly tie to its purpose.

  Still, at least one person would have to be on point for assembling those components, and ensuring that they, together, produced the desired results.

  If such a thing existed, Chandre would have to find that person.

  Clicking softly to herself, she shouldered a leather coat over a white blouse and dark jeans, and pulled on her boots, stomping each heel individually to settle it. Grabbing a piece of toast off a plate on the kitchen counter of her two-bedroom flat, she holstered her sidearm in her shoulder harness and grabbed her keys from the hook by the door.

  She opened the door, and instantly froze.

  A seer stood there, holding a gun to her face.

  She stared at him, unable to hide her disbelief.

  Her eyes flickered to the gun only long enough to note the safety was off. Then she was looking at the seer’s face again, studying his chocolate brown eyes.

  “Hello, sister Chandre,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d mind if I cut into your morning routine a bit?”

  Chandre pursed her lips, looking him up and down, from the dark leather motorcycle jacket he wore to the heavy boots on his feet. Then she gestured towards him hospitably.

  “Brother Maygar,” she said, tilting her head back towards the inside of her apartment. “If you wanted breakfast, you had only to ask.”

  “Not here,” he said, shaking his head. “I want you to come with me, Chan.”

  “Maygar,” she said, impatient. “What is this about?”

  “I can’t tell you here. But I’m not here to harm you. I vow it, sister.”

  She quirked an eyebrow down at the gun. “What’s that all about, then?”

  “Just a little insurance,” he said. “Nothing personal.”

  She gave him an impatient look. “Insurance? If I wanted you dead, I could have gone after you months ago, little brother. Sources tipped me off as to your whereabouts in New York before I even landed on U.S. soil.” Clicking at him in irritation, she added, “I am probably the only seer working for the Sword who would not inform him I had received news of you. You should be buying me breakfast, pup.”

  “I am not here to kill you, Chandre.”

  She folded her arms. “What a relief.”

  “Damn it,” he snapped. “Will you just get in the car? I want to talk to you!”

  “Why can we not talk here?” she said, gesturing fluidly with one hand, her eyes darting around the green lawns and white painted trim of the houses on her Maryland street. “I have food inside, if you really are hungry––”

  “I’m not hungry, Chan.” He sighed in frustration, right before he holstered the gun back in his own shoulder harness.
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  “Look. I have something I want to show you. It won’t take long,” he said.

  He looked back towards the car as he spoke, motioning with one hand.

  In that instant, she punched him hard, in the throat, with her fingers. When he choked, raising his hand to where she’d hit him, Chandre yanked her own gun out of its holster, flipped it in her hand, and slammed the butt into the side of his head.

  Maygar crumpled to the steps of her front stoop, dazed.

  Reaching into his coat, she swiftly disarmed him, then pulled a small, metal cylinder out of her own pocket and pressed the flat end against his neck. Pushing a button on the organic syringe with her thumb, she released the entire contents into his blood.

  Without waiting for the drug to take effect, she grabbed him under his thick arms. Using her hip to push the door open behind her, she dragged him back inside, dropping him unceremoniously in her foyer once she’d cleared the arc of the red-painted door.

  Walking around his body, she kicked her front door shut, locking the deadbolt after she’d done a quick scan of the windows and cars outside.

  19

  WORLDS COLLIDE

  MAYGAR’S EYELIDS FLUTTERED for a few seconds before he opened them. His head lolled on his thick neck before he managed to raise it to more or less vertical.

  Chandre sat across from him, perched backwards on one of her kitchen chairs as she sipped a mug of fresh coffee. After a second or two more where he seemed to be fighting to focus his eyes, he blinked at her.

  She smiled at him.

  Frowning, he tried to sit forward in the chair.

  The bindings on his ankles and wrists stopped him. So did the organic wire she had coiled around his chest and waist.

  “Would you like some coffee, brother?” she said, raising her cup.

  Maygar frowned up at her, his eyes still half-focused. He returned them to where he’d been examining his predicament with the chair.

  “What the…” He squinted at her, blinking to clear his vision, his mouth still a puzzled frown. “Chan? What are you doing?”

  “What am I doing?” She clicked at him softly, her expression hard. “You showed up on my doorstep, brother. Holding a gun. You tried to abduct me. That’s not very brotherly now, is it?”

  “Abduct you?” The male seer’s Prexci still came out slurred, but his disbelief sounded genuine. “Chan, d’gaos ‘le yilathre… I’m trying to help you! Now untie me, goddamn it! My arm’s starting to fall asleep.”

  “Help me? How, exactly? By pointing a gun at my face?”

  Clicking in irritation, Maygar averted his gaze, wincing as the hangover from the drug must have slid more to the forefront of his awareness.

  Shaking his head, he said, “I didn’t know how you’d react to seeing me. Last I knew, you worked for him.”

  Chandre snorted into her mug. She shook her long braids, clicking at his pained expression as she took another sip of coffee.

  “Well?” she said. “We have a predicament, then, yes? Because I do not like it when little baby Rooks show up at my door, brandishing pistols.”

  “Rook? Me?”

  He made a disbelieving noise, staring her in the face. She noticed his lip held more of that curling sneer she remembered. His expression reflected the belief that her remark had deeply insulted him.

  “This from you? A sister working for the head Rook himself?”

  She shook her head with a laugh, taking another drink of coffee.

  “Chan,” he said angrily. “Just what do you think Dehgoies is these days? An emissary of the beings from beyond the Barrier? Some kind of good fairy, here to dispense justice and hope for all his people? You can’t possibly be that dumb.”

  He bit his lip, his eyes showing a more complex flair of emotion.

  “Gaos,” he said. “How could you leave Allie?”

  Chandre stared at him, her dark red eyes clouding.

  For an instant, the question angered her.

  She might have reminded him that he’d hardly treated the Bridge well in their last few encounters… that he had, in essence, tried to rape her in an attempt to break up her marriage to the Sword. That he’d been involved somehow in her imprisonment under the White House, working with Terian. That he’d stood by and let Terian beat her and abuse her when she wouldn’t submit to the Rook’s wishes.

  Even in thinking all that, however, Chandre found herself turning over the question separately, thinking about it in terms of herself.

  “I did not leave her,” she said finally. “Not in the way that you mean. I needed some time apart from her. From her team. I thought I could better spend that time helping Dehgoies.” At the other’s angry tsking sound, she raised her voice. “…Who, despite the measure of truth in your words, is doing good works. You must know what he did for our people, dismantling the Registry system. He freed thousands––nay, millions––out from under the boot of Black Arrow and other slavers. That is no small thing, whatever you may think of him.”

  “Dehgoies the Rook,” he muttered.

  She made an impatient gesture. “I did not think that would last.”

  “That what would not last? Him being evil?”

  She clicked in irritation.

  Still, she could not tell him about her dual role with Balidor. She had no idea where Maygar’s own allegiances lay these days, and she hadn’t yet made up her mind to leave D.C., or to blow her cover with Wreg until it was absolutely necessary.

  For all she knew, Maygar would spill the beans to his Rook mother, intentionally or not.

  Maygar frowned at her, as if trying to read past her silence.

  “Chan, the guy’s certifiable. How is it I’m the only one who sees it?”

  “You speak like a child does, Maygar,” she said curtly. “And you know things are not so simple with him. He and the Bridge cannot remain apart forever. In the end, working for him is not so different from working for her. They will both go the same way eventually, either towards the light or towards the dark.”

  “All the more reason to kill him,” he muttered, shifting under the bindings on his arms.

  “I simply have more faith in the Bridge than you appear to,” she said, her voice sharp. “I have more faith in him, as well.”

  “You must have more faith in him,” Maygar grunted. “For I have none at all.”

  Still staring at him, she sighed. After a pause, her voice grew more patient.

  “She will not let him go so easily, brother.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Right.”

  “She will try to help him. To bring some of his excesses under control.”

  “Until he murders her in her sleep,” he grumbled under his breath. “Or forces her to join him as a puppet of the Dreng––”

  But she talked over his sarcasm.

  “––You must recognize she has influence over him, at least. I thought I could work more closely with him, help him with the operations they are in agreement on, in principle, at least. I expect to be back with her in not too long a time. And I had…” She hesitated, shrugging with one hand. “…My own reasons. For needing time apart.”

  There was another silence.

  Then Maygar snorted, inclining his head as he gestured with one bound hand.

  “Yes,” he said. “I heard about this, too.”

  “You heard about what?” Chandre said, sharp.

  “Cass. The Bridge’s human. And that Wvercian.” He smiled at her, his dark brown eyes flat. “That’s got to suck. I hear he’s a walking throwback. Nothing like being replaced by the brawny but moronic model.”

  “I do not know him,” she said stiffly.

  “Yeah,” Maygar said. “Right.” He inclined his head a second time, his broad face tilted towards the window. “Well, you should not take it personal, Chan.” Readjusting his posture, he raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps she just prefers cock. You know those Wvercians have to be hung like horses.”

  Chandre felt her fingers tighten on the back
of the chair. She stared at him, biting back her fury with an effort.

  “I have tied you to a chair,” she reminded him.

  Maygar smiled. “Yes. I caught that, sister. Very tightly, too.” He grimaced. “A little too tightly, if you want the gods’ honest truth––”

  “I overpowered you without even trying,” she cut in. “Like you were a Sark child. Like you had no training whatsoever.”

  “Yeah, I caught that, too.” Frowning, he sighed, looking down at the chains, then up at her, his brown eyes holding frustration. “Let me go, Chan. You know I don’t intend you any harm. I only wanted to show you something.”

  “Show me… what?”

  “It’s in New York.”

  “What is in New York?”

  He sighed in exasperation, clicking at her. “You are looking for a disease, right? Something that is supposed to kill off all the humans?”

  Chandre's hand halted from where she’d been about to put a piece of toast to her lips. Completing the motion, she took a bite of the buttered crust, chewing it slowly before she answered him.

  “How did you know that?” she said, lowering the hand with the toast to her lap.

  “I was with them at the White House.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know this, too.” Taking another bite of toast, she glanced up at him as she chewed, putting the remainder back on the plate and setting the plate on the coffee table. “The Bridge said you helped them. That you held her captive.”

  “Terian held her captive. And that creepy kid.”

  “But you were there?” she said. “How is that?”

  “My mother.”

  “Your… mother?”

  “Yeah,” he said, giving her an uncomfortable look. “I didn’t want to be there, believe me.” When Chandre only stared at him, Maygar exhaled. “After she helped Terian pick up Allie, she pulled me out of Seertown. During the bombing. No one was watching me because of all the panic, so she found me and got me out. She took me with her to America.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” He let out a disbelieving laugh. “Because she’s my mother, Chan. She knew Dehgoies would kill me the second he got the opportunity. And she knew the Seven would only stand by and let him.”