The Bridge (27 page)

Suzannah put a hand on my shoulder and looked straight into my eyes, and that’s when I knew she was afraid. But she spoke calmly enough, a Breken parting, ‘Peace on your road, Nik Stais.’

Dash came to see me a few hours later
. I was back in my room, sitting on the floor, trying to make sense of it all. She was wearing her efficient persona. It suited her; always had. If she ever doubted where she fitted in the world, she never let on. She leaned on her crutches and studied me. ‘Well?’

‘What?’

‘What did you decide?’

‘I decided, no, I’m not going to ID those people.’

Her shoulders slumped. ‘Well, in that case, they’re right to be taking you to the Marsh. No, don’t look like that. They say it will help. It will, Nik. I mean, look at you – you look wretched. And that is a wretched decision.’

‘I thought the Breken had taken the Marsh.’

‘They did. They freed their people and looted it for
medicine. And tried to burn it down. But we’ve taken it back, and part of it’s still operational. Just as well for you. You need help. They dug too deep – you’re not you anymore. You speak Breken in your sleep.’

‘How do you know that?’

She nodded towards the eye.

‘What do I say?’

‘They don’t tell me that.’ She limped to the bed and sat down. ‘Look. You’re home. You’ve had a terrible time but now you’re safe and you can rest and get well.’

‘Being locked up, spied on, and sent to the Marsh – this will make me well?’

‘And being used by the hostiles? How does that feel? Face facts, Nik. People here are going to wonder about your loyalties, aren’t they? Until you can prove which side you’re on.’ She took my hand. ‘You’ll sort it out in the Marsh.’

‘Which side do you think I’m on?’

‘Ours, of course.’

‘
Ours
meaning you and me, or you and ISIS?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It’s supposed to mean maybe those aren’t the same thing.’

‘Now you’re scaring me. Don’t you want an end to all this? The uprising quashed, no more bombings, safety for our families? Peace! Don’t you want peace?’

‘Sure, I do. What about the Breken?’

‘Disarmed, and back over the river.’

‘With the gates locked? And no access to medicine or decent food?’

She frowned. ‘They’ll be better off than they are now. They’re starving, aren’t they? They can go back to the way things were if they agree to demilitarization. That’s fair, isn’t it?’

‘Is it? I don’t know. You’ll have to ask them.’

‘Well, I can tell you now, it’s the best offer they’ll get.’

‘Then I think they’ll keep fighting.’

‘You say that like you think it’s okay.’

‘No, it’s not okay. But what you’re offering isn’t peace.’

‘Listen to yourself!’

‘Do you know who I met this morning?’ I told her about Suzannah.

She sat and listened and said at last, ‘So she wants to be noble. So what? What about Sol? What about Lou and Bella? Shouldn’t they be avenged? I would avenge Sol. Show me a hostile, any hostile, and I’ll avenge Sol.’ When I said nothing, she said, ‘Aren’t you even angry about him?’

‘Jesus, Dash.’

‘I’m sorry, but we have to send them a message. They can’t just gun us down and get away with it. We have to respond!’

‘Sure, you have to respond. But do you have to
respond in kind? And anyway, who’s
they
? What if – think about this – what if it was a Remnant gunman that shot Sol? What if he shot Sol, and got shot himself before he could shoot Fyffe. There were two shots. What if there are people over there worth negotiating with? People who aren’t Remnant?’

‘You talk like those are distinctions worth making.’ She grasped her crutches and stood up.

‘I think they are,’ I said.

‘They’re hostiles, Nik. That’s what they are.’

‘It’s not all they are. I found my father over there.’

She stopped and looked hard at me. ‘What?’

‘Over the river. I found my father. I’m Breken, Dash.’

She missed a beat, but recovered fast. ‘You can’t be. You’re one of us – you’ve always been one of us.’

I nodded. ‘That too. Go figure.’

‘This is crazy. Your father’s dead.’

‘He’s not dead. He’s a Breken strategist. They took me to meet him.’

‘You didn’t believe them, though, did you?’

‘Yes. I did.’

‘Did you believe everything they told you over there?’

‘They had nothing to gain by lying to me.’

‘Of course they did. You’re a brilliant mathematician. Anyone would fight to have your brain working for them. Think about it. If your father was alive and Breken, he would never have let you grow up in a city school. He’d
have tried to get to you, wouldn’t he? To get you out. It doesn’t make sense. They lied to you. It’s what they do.’

‘You don’t know what they’re like.’

‘Yes, I do. And I know what you’re like, and this is not you. Go to the Marsh. Let them help you.’ The door buzzed and she looked relieved. ‘Oh, yes. You have a visitor.’

She nodded at the eye.

Fyffe. I scrambled up. ‘Hey.’ I gave her a hug. ‘How are you?’

‘All right. I’m sorry about last night in the chapel. The parents. Are you okay?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Course I am.’

‘He’s not,’ said Dash. ‘We’re taking him to the Marsh to recuperate.’

‘Oh, no!’ said Fyffe.

‘He needs help,’ said Dash. ‘He thinks he’s found his father. Over the river. Do you know anything about that?’

Fyffe shook her head, and looked at me anxiously.

‘No,’ said Dash. ‘I didn’t think so.’

‘Your father?’ said Fyffe to me. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I couldn’t tell you,’ I said. ‘He’s wanted by ISIS and he’s been in hiding. But now it doesn’t matter. They’ve got me talking in my sleep and I’ve told them all about him.’

‘Oh, Nik. That’s what all that business with your name was about?’

‘You don’t believe him,’ said Dash.

‘Why not?’ said Fyffe.

‘You people! What did they do to you over there?’

Fyffe turned back to me. ‘What will you do?’

‘You mean if I ever get out of the Marsh?’

‘Don’t be like that,’ said Dash. ‘We just want you back to your old self. We need you. We need that brain of yours. When you’re recovered they’ll take you on here, they told me.’

‘And you believed them?’ I said.

‘Of course.’

‘Do you believe everything they tell you here?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? Don’t let’s fight.’

The door buzzed and swished open to Jono. He smirked in my direction. ‘I just heard. The Marsh. That’ll straighten you out. What is this? A school reunion?’ He turned to Dash. ‘It’s nearly 1800. We’ll be late.’

‘Late for what?’ I asked.

‘Prayer ‘n’ swear, of course. You’re not invited.’ He held out a hand towards Fyffe. ‘Fy?’

But she sat down on the bed and folded her hands in her lap. ‘I’ll stay with Nik.’

‘Let’s move, then,’ said Dash. ‘We’re late and I’m slow.’

Jono gave me one last filthy look as he punched the button that closed the door.

I sat on the floor by the bed. ‘Thanks. You could’ve gone. I don’t need looking after.’

‘I know,’ said Fyffe. ‘But I can pray any time.’

‘Can you? Will that help?’

She gave me half a smile. ‘It’ll help me.’

‘Didn’t help Sol.’ Tears snuck up on me again. I stuck the heels of my hands in my eyes and breathed deep. ‘Sorry,’ I said.

Fyffe sat down beside me and put her head on my shoulder. ‘Don’t be. He’s worth crying for. I think I’m all cried out for now. Do you think it was Remnant?’

‘It must have been. They wanted the other hostage dead. They want the war to escalate.’

We sat there for maybe an hour, talking about Sol and Lou – who they’d been, who they might have been, how we could remember them.

At last I said, ‘People are coming for me soon. Are you going home tonight?’

‘Yes. My poor parents. I have to help them get through this. I wish we could take you with us. They blame you. It’s stupid. You tried so hard to bring him back, and he wasn’t even your brother.’

I hated the thought of her going home to that big silent house with only her grief-stricken parents for company. And Jono arriving for weekends thinking she was still his meek little girlfriend, not knowing what she’d done, who she’d been, in Southside.

She looked up at the eye. ‘Does it listen as well as look?’

‘Yeah.’

She was silent for while, then she said, ‘Everything’s different now.’

‘Everything is.’

‘It was only three weeks and it felt like a year. I’m afraid for you. Going to the Marsh.’

‘I don’t exactly envy you.’

‘I won’t stay home forever. I want to come back to the city. I want to save a life, two lives, for Lou and Sol.’

With the eye staring at us, I didn’t ask what she meant. But knowing Fy, she meant something brave and heartfelt and, now and then, madly reckless.

Dash came back and said it was time to go: a car was waiting to take me to the Marsh.

Fyffe and I stood up and Fyffe said, ‘I might not see you for a while.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Dash. ‘He won’t be long in the Marsh.’

But that wasn’t what Fyffe meant. She kissed my cheek and whispered in Breken, ‘Dear Nik. Go home.’

Dash and I sat locked in the back
of an armored car, waiting to go to the Marsh. It was dark. The car we were in was practically hermetically sealed. There was no getting out, except through Dash.

‘Dash, we’re still friends?’

‘Course. More than friends.’

‘If I go into the Marsh, I won’t come out in one piece.’

‘Sure you will.’

‘No, listen. You have to believe either them or me about this, because only one of us is telling the truth.’

‘You only think like that because you’ve been so … indoctrinated.’

‘And you haven’t?’

‘They killed Sol! They used you to do it.’

‘Someone did. I want to find out who. I can’t do it from inside the Marsh.’

‘We know who!’

‘I don’t.’

‘I want you here, Nik, working with me. We can do good work together. Didn’t we always say that’s what we wanted?’

‘Yeah, we did.’

‘Well, then.’ She sat back, argument won. She took my hand. ‘Kiss me.’

When I didn’t move, she smiled and said, ‘What’s the matter? Forgotten how?’

So I did, I kissed her, and she said, ‘Okay, why did that feel like good-bye? You’ll be out of there in no time. And when you come out I expect something much happier. That’s an order.’

The driver arrived and as he opened the door there came a high-pitched, howling yell – a war cry – in Breken, from somewhere close. Fyffe came running towards the car, crying out. She grabbed the driver’s arm and gasped, ‘I saw them! I saw them!’

‘How many? Which way?’

‘Three or four – I couldn’t tell.’ She pointed away from the gates towards a complex of low buildings.

‘That’s where you were,’ said Dash to me. ‘They must be looking for you.’ She climbed out and I followed. Dash put an arm around Fyffe and the driver ran towards the complex. I looked at Fy. She looked back at me with a perfectly innocent expression then buried her head in
Dash’s shoulder, and while Dash was telling her, don’t worry, you’re safe, I ran for the perimeter fence.

I hid in the shadows of the fence, watched the guards on the main gate, and hoped.

I hoped Dash wouldn’t be punished for taking her eye off me.

I hoped Suzannah would be okay, that they’d see that what she was offering was a chance to change the course of the war.

I hoped I could get out before they found me.

But most of all, I hoped Fyffe would be safe: that ISIS would never work out what she had just done. Her angelic face would help. Who could doubt that face? And having a powerful father, that would surely help too. I desperately didn’t want to leave her with ISIS and Jono and her grieving parents. But I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t waste this brave thing she’d done for me.

I skirted the perimeter, listening for trouble. The place wasn’t exactly high security: just a hospital that they’d planted a few extra guards around. Most of the security was inside, not out. Maybe they were more stretched than they were letting on. I came to the south gate where a lone guard was shouting into his comms unit.

‘Yes! I heard it! It’s hostiles. No, I haven’t seen any. Send someone down here. We need to reinforce this gate. No, I told you, there’s only me. I don’t care! The perimeter’s weak here. Get –’

I put a boot into his back as hard as I could. He went down with a grunt, and I kicked him again and pulled his gun away. He lay there gasping. The comms unit screeched. I settled for one more kick and a word in his comms unit, in Breken: ‘We’re everywhere.’

Then I ran.

I ran about twenty blocks, heading downriver towards the Mol. In the blackout it wasn’t difficult to be invisible. What was difficult was the thought that Dash was right: I’d said good-bye, to her and to Fyffe. Maybe forever.

The Mol at sunrise
. A haze lay over the river. The bridge creaked in the cold air. Light grew in the sky. Two city guards paced at the bridge gate. I wanted to get past them, and now that I had a gun I could see a way to do that. I stood in a doorway close to the riverwall, took aim at a darkened shopfront across the road and fired. The guards came running. I hid in the shadows and when they’d gone by, shouting into their comms units, I ran onto the Mol.

I was heading for the place where Sol died. I hoped it would help me know what to do next.

But there was something there already. I was close before I saw what it was.

Suzannah. Her body had been dumped in the stain left by Sol’s blood. Now her blood ran with his. They’d slit her throat.

There was so much blood over her body and on the
ground that they must have marched her there and done it as she stood in sight of home. No justice. No mercy.

The gun was heavy on my shoulder and thoughts raced through my head about what I could do with a free hand and a loaded gun. I stood there, looking at Suzannah. The slap of the river and the waking sounds of the city and Southside receded into white noise.