Shield (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #2): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  Hearing Terian chuckle, I glanced up, seeing his chiseled face shadowed by the light cascading from above. His eyes still held caution, but he was listening to our conversation with a keen interest. Feeling my jaw harden, I blinked and shook my head, removing the boy’s fingers from my arm.

  “No one gets what they want all the time.” I glared at Terian. “We could be friends, if you let me go. I’ll help you find your own mate.”

  Terian’s eyes turned to glass, focusing on mine.

  Swallowing a little at the look there, I returned my gaze to Nenzi.

  “No!” The boy’s eyes filled with tears, bewildering me. “No! I love you. I don’t want another female. You are my wife…”

  “Nenzi…” I said, at a loss. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I watched you,” he said. “I saw you in that purple house. I saw your human mother. I saw your father, and all the numbers. I watched you. You were like me.” At what must have been a blank look on my face, he burst out, “You threw the bad man. He killed those pigs, like Wilbur. You made him stop!”

  I felt the blood drain from my face.

  That time, I knew exactly what he was talking about.

  My uncle Stefan owned a farm in Nebraska. He kept pigs, and when I went to visit, I was seven years old, and I had just finished reading Charlotte’s Web. Naturally, I’d asked him what he was going to do with the runts in his sow’s litter.

  I couldn’t believe his answer. I’d thought it was just a story. I couldn’t believe anyone actually did that, killed something just because it was small.

  They all pretended afterwards that Uncle Stefan had some kind of seizure. They said he’d lost his balance maybe, or that he’d been knocked over by a gust of wind.

  But I made him swear.

  I made him swear he would never kill another runt pig.

  “How could you know that?” My voice sharpened. “Nenzi… even Jon didn’t know about that. I never told anyone.”

  Then, remembering my time in the cabin with Revik, I realized that wasn’t true anymore. I had told someone. One person, in fact.

  My sense of unreality worsened.

  I looked at Terian, fighting to calm myself. There was another explanation, there had to be. Something else occurred to me.

  “My mother?” I said to Terian. “Did you get that from her? Did my uncle tell her?”

  But Terian had a faint wrinkle to his brow as well. It could have been an act, but somehow, I didn’t think it was. Had he figured it out? Would he put together the pieces as he listened to Nenzi talk?

  The boy took my hand again, stroking my skin with his small fingers, moving closer to me, touching my face.

  “Please, Allie,” he said. “I love you. You know I do.”

  “You don’t love me.” My voice came out angry, maybe because I was afraid, or at the very least, completely and totally unnerved. “I’m not your wife. I’m someone else’s wife. You don’t even know me, Nenzi!”

  When tears rose to his eyes once more, my voice grew even more harsh.

  “Whatever your deal is with me… it’s not real. You can’t read things off someone, read about their past and the facts of their life and think you know them––”

  “You were my wife first!” he burst out.

  I felt Terian staring at the boy along with me.

  Nenzi’s voice had reflected that older person again, losing all trace of its child-like cadence. His pale face was flushed under the cascading light. His fists were clenched; he was breathing harder. His eyes held a dark flame, distorted by reflected light. I saw frustration there, but also fury.

  “You’re mistaken,” I said.

  “I’m not!” His eyes ignited to a pale green.

  “Yes… you are! You’re confused!”

  Terian touched my shoulder.

  When I looked up, the amusement on his sculpted face was gone; the quirk had disappeared from his full-lipped mouth. He was staring at the boy’s eyes. His own slid out of focus, aimed roughly at the space directly above the boy’s head.

  That’s when I noticed the urele.

  The light had turned the color of dark blood, red with black veins.

  The rain-like beads washed down around us, reflecting against the boy’s pale skin before bleeding to the floor. The pale green eyes stared at mine, lamp-like, sharp against that dark red curtain.

  Looking at him, all I could feel was a sharp wave of compassion.

  “Do you want me to pretend to care for you?” I said. “Are your expectations really that low? Someone would love you, Nenzi. But it can’t be me.”

  Terian’s fingers dug violently into my shoulder, hard enough that I twisted away from his hand. When I looked back, I saw Nenzi staring between us.

  He focused on my face.

  The urele flashed white. Light exploded out of it.

  It bled up the walls in a thick wave.

  When it reached the top, a heavy wave of sound exploded on all four sides, like a nearby crack of thunder. Glass exploded outwards. The fragments shattered to a fine powder. I realized in shock that those weren’t VR windows, but whatever lay behind them.

  Even as I thought it, the illusion melted.

  The domed room with the marble floors, red rock cliffs and birds, the blue sky and New Mexico landscape faded around where we stood. The waterfalls melted into a flatter background, like a projector image when the light goes out.

  Around us stood gray metal and cement, an open, empty space.

  We were in a warehouse. Or, I thought, as I looked around and up at the high ceiling, maybe some kind of airplane hangar.

  A group of humans sat on metal bleachers behind what looked like a plexiglas shield. The faces I saw flashed white, round-eyed. Guards hustled a few of the uniformed men and women off the platform, into armored vehicles parked behind the viewing area. The vehicles roared to life, taking off down the middle of the hangar towards what must be the doors on the other end. It might have been comical if I’d had time to understand what just occurred.

  Nenzi didn’t care about them, though.

  Light from the urele flashed out once more, reaching the metal walls. More glass shards rained down around us, this time from above, too.

  I threw up my arms, but fragments still nicked my face and shoulders. Fear rippled through me, a sudden realization that what I’d suspected––what I’d known, somehow, all along––was really true.

  Nenzi wasn’t a young Syrimne. He wasn’t his offspring, a clone, an experiment, or even a confused reincarnation.

  Somehow, in some way, Nenzi actually was Syrimne.

  And he was broken, just like Tarsi said he was.

  39

  INFILTRATOR

  HE LAY BESIDE her, propped on his side, resting his head on one arm so he could look at her. Caressing the hair back from her face, he kissed her, fighting a swell of feeling that still hurt. She smiled as she took in his expression, looking tired but heartbreakingly happy, and he wondered if she knew…

  She was telling him about her brother, something Jon said when they were kids, and all he could think about was that glimpse he’d gotten when he pushed her to confess everything, the lingering jealousy he still felt, and he felt like a bastard for wondering if––

  She kissed him again, smiling. Her eyes turned liquid and the feeling there clutched at his heart. He still didn’t quite believe it.

  “I love you,” she whispered, caressing his face. “I love you…”

  HE JERKED AWAKE.

  Fighting to breathe, he stared up at a lightless ceiling in a dim motel room. His whole body hurt. Tears coursed down his cheeks and he had a hard on. The pain in his light vibrated every layer of his skin.

  He couldn’t move.

  He fought out a thick sob, an attempt to express some part of it, but couldn’t. Turning to his side, he clutched his stomach with an arm instead, willing it back, willing it to pass through or away from him, somehow.

  Gradually,
he could breathe.

  He lay there awhile longer, fighting his way back to some semblance of normal––an approximation of level at least. His mind only worked when he kept it going in straight lines.

  He scanned for her, reflexive, but there was nothing there.

  Nothing. Not even her in pain.

  When he looked up, he saw Jon watching him, his eyes shining faintly from the orange lights showing through the motel window’s curtains. Revik saw the sympathy there, but he couldn’t deal with that either.

  Rolling to his back, he closed his eyes, holding a hand over his face as he deliberately slowed his breathing. Eventually, he got his heart moving slower, contracting slower, pumping blood slower.

  He didn’t have time for this, he told himself.

  He didn’t have time.

  HE STARED AT the virtual map, studying the main and secondary structures.

  Primarily, he was memorizing foundational details. Mapping entrances and exits. Locating security tech. Rooms with external walls. Reinforced barriers. Underground spaces uncategorized on the plans, or simply empty spaces that might not actually be empty. He looked for air ducts, server storage, sewage lines.

  Anything that might provide ventilation or access below ground.

  He knew Terian. He knew Galaith, for that matter.

  He could expect back doors.

  Likely half as many again existed in reality as what appeared on the plans, despite the fact that these were supposedly the “real” plans, meaning the version protected by the Secret Service. He had no idea if he’d be able to access any of those other doors, even if they existed, but he knew how to begin looking for them, at least. The plans were just a place to start. Using them, he could look for the holes, make a few educated guesses.

  The truth was, Revik didn’t have a lot of options, in terms of breaking into the White House. That would have been true even if Terian wasn’t president.

  As it was, the usual problems had multiplied.

  Still, politicians were politicians.

  They didn’t change much over the years. Revik had observed at close hand hierarchies spanning countries in half the continents in the globe. The human ones always shared certain traits in common.

  When he’d proposed his plan to Wreg, the older seer laughed.

  “Dignity still isn’t high on your list of attributes, is it, runt?” he’d said.

  Revik hadn’t bothered to react.

  He’d watched the other infiltrator instead, knowing he was thinking through the logistics. He waited for Wreg to find some detail he had missed, some reason it wouldn’t work. When the Asian seer with the thick arms adjusted his weight, eyes blurring as he retraced the steps of the plan a second time… then a third… Revik found himself relaxing.

  After another pause, Wreg nodded.

  “It might work, at that,” he said. “I assume you have some different idea for yourself?” He motioned towards Revik’s face.

  Revik shook his head, then gestured in negative when the other didn’t react.

  “I want to go in the front door,” he said.

  Wreg frowned. “I don’t know––”

  “That’s non-negotiable.”

  Hesitating, Wreg conceded with a tilted palm. “Fine, fine. It’s your show. We’ll need a cover. Better than the usual blood-patch and prosthetics.”

  Revik gestured affirmative. “Yes. I have some ideas. But what do you think, assuming that end is covered?”

  “That is not a small detail,” Wreg said.

  “It is a detail,” Revik said. “What do you think?”

  Wreg jerked his chin, smiling faintly. “It is good. It will work, runt. But we need to find a reputable house to affiliate with, with contacts to the houses being used now. We’ll need to research the types involved, and…”

  They began discussing details in earnest.

  That had been a few days ago.

  Wreg’s formality with him may have slipped, but his ability to take and carry out orders had not. Revik even wondered if it was a sign of the other’s growing trust in him, that Wreg no longer used the formal version of every response when Revik made a request.

  Revik didn’t want to waste so much as a second of time––yet, he wasn’t about to blow what would likely be his only chance by being sloppy, either.

  He’d run several dozen scenarios with the best infiltrators he could find among the seers he’d been given. After two days on a cargo plane, he’d come to the conclusion that Salinse was right; Wreg was the best of all of them. In his way, he reminded Revik of Balidor a little, although without the degree of subtlety in his sight.

  Bringing Balidor himself had been out of the question.

  The last thing he needed was someone preaching Code to him from over his shoulder, no matter how valuable they might be in other respects.

  The hardest thing upon entry would be disguising his light. Everything else had been worked down to the finest details since that initial conversation.

  Money didn’t appear to be a limiting factor, either, even before Revik contemplated plundering his own primary stores. Salinse insisted on covering all of it.

  He had to admit, it was nice having access to real equipment for a change, not the dilapidated hunks of crap that usually fell to the Seven’s Guard for operations of this kind. Even the Adhipan could use a serious upgrade in their gear, if the work he’d done with them in Sikkim was any indication.

  Revik knew he was skirting a dangerous edge, but he found it harder and harder to care. Strictly speaking, the parts of himself he was drawing upon to perform this op weren’t the ones he should be using, from the perspective of the monks who’d taken him through his rehabilitation.

  Or from the perspective of Vash, for that matter.

  To some extent, that was even deliberate.

  Beyond what he was getting off Salinse and his people in terms of support and intelligence, he was going out of his way to remember every detail he could of being a Rook. That included diving into memories stirred by Terian in his months of captivity, even deliberately putting himself back in that space with the help of Wreg and his team. The security construct Salinse’s people used, tied to organics in their headgear and to the aleimi of their infiltrators, helped that along more than perhaps it should have.

  Revik didn’t question that too closely either.

  He knew it was wrong, strictly speaking. At the very least, it was damned risky. He would deal with that later, too.

  Allie would help him.

  In any case, he’d pretty well thrown the idea of following Code out the window as soon as Terian dragged his naked wife away in chains.

  The plan as a whole was relatively simple, but played on the blind spots of the Rooks’ standard security protocols––and even a few of the nonstandard ones Revik remembered. The majority of the group would wait nearby in the safe house construct they’d essentially built in shifts… and from scratch… while none of the infiltrators slept. The first eight and Revik would breach the perimeter while half of the rest worked solely from the Barrier.

  The other half would be wave two of the direct assault on the physical structure.

  He, himself, would go after Allie.

  That part, he wasn’t willing to discuss.

  She’d be with the boy, anyway. He could even argue that going after her personally was contractual on his part, since he needed to find the boy to fulfill his end of the deal he’d made with Salinse.

  The rest of them would take down the White House security system and the construct itself, which was what they wanted to do anyway. It hadn’t escaped Revik’s notice that Salinse’s people were enjoying this op on more than one level. They wanted Allie back, of course––she was the Bridge. They also loved the idea of taking down one of the humans’ more enduring modern symbols.

  Revik didn’t mind. He could leverage that enthusiasm, and get what he needed from them at the same time.

  He knew that if the grid truly went d
own it could start an actual shooting war in the middle of Washington D.C., so they had contingency plans for that eventuality as well.

  It could spiral out of control anyway, but again, he was willing to take that chance.

  The truth was, there was no way in hell Terian wouldn’t be expecting him.

  He could try to delay that knowledge as much as possible, but at the first sign of any disturbance, Terian would deploy assuming it was him. Revik would build in redundancies, of course, but he still only had two real backups for his first idea, and both were risky as hell, and none changed that naked fact.

  Terian would know it was him.

  Besides, a certain amount of guesswork was unavoidable without a contact working on the inside. Any one of the contingencies he’d mapped would depend a hell of a lot on whatever he eventually found once they breached the perimeter. Whatever that ended up being, it would contain at least a few surprises.

  Knowing that didn’t help him a damned bit, really.

  Wreg still seemed to find the approach strategy for the primary team amusing, but Revik had noticed he wasn’t as naïve about human culture, or even American culture, as he would have expected given the Rebels’ isolation in those mountains. He found himself wondering just how many ops Salinse’s people had pulled on this continent over the years from the Barrier, if not actually on the ground.

  He decided he didn’t really care about that, either.

  In any case, Wreg was fully on board with the plan now.

  Leaving the main equipment store, Revik pushed aside a beaded doorway, and found himself in the parlor of their secondary “safe house.”

  That part, Salinse’s people hadn’t provided; Revik handled that end himself with contacts he had in the States. Upon entering the room, he found himself face to face with Kat before he knew who he was looking at.

  It had been a long time since he’d seen her in her full regalia. His eyes drifted down out of habit, settling on the high heels under the silk dress that barely covered her crotch. She smiled at him coyly and he frowned, looking away.

  His eyes passed by Jon and settled on Ullysa.