The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy (25 page)

“The Spear of Destiny?” Wong asked.

“Holy Lance, Spear of Destiny, who knows? Not important. They find this lance head and show it off to the army. The head Crusaders, they’re real skeptical. I mean, it looks just like one of their spears, so they figure this guy’s yanking their holy chain, right? But as soon as the grunts see this lance, they go ape shit. I mean, any army that carries the Holy Lance of God cannot possibly be defeated. They’ll just rampage over the heathens. And these happy assholes believed it.”

“Maybe it was the starvation, the heat stroke, the fasting, or maybe the lance really was some kind of magic holy mojo, but whatever it was, the army starts winning. Guys are running into battle getting shot to shit by arrows and shit, but they don’t care. They’re totally oblivious to their own wounds, slaughtering Muslims left and right, just batshit crazy suicide bombs in armor tearing ass from one side of the Holy Land to the other. They drive off the Muslims, but instead of thanking old Peter there, the leaders of the Crusade accuse him of making the whole thing up.”

“You know what an actual trial by fire is, right? Light up this stretch of ground between two points and force the accused to walk through the fire. You live, you’re innocent, you burn and you’re a liar, liar pants really on fire. Well, they put Peter through one of those and he comes out totally unscathed. Scared shitless, but unharmed. They make him do it again. Once ain’t enough proof, get it? It makes them look bad. But he makes it through again. Now, he’s probably thinking he’s either the luckiest motherfucker alive, or maybe God really has blessed him. What’s that got to be like, going from scared of being a crispy padre to thinking you might really be some kind of messenger from God? The crowd fucking loves him after that. Here’s the guy that’s brought them the bomb, the divine intervention that will save their asses from a slow, scorching death in some fly-ridden foreign shithole. They start to cheer. They start to paw at him, ‘cos everybody wants a piece of this lucky divine son of a bitch. Everybody wants a bit of hair, or some of his robe, because if this fucker is blessed, maybe I can lucky rabbit foot’s my way to surviving this crazy ass war by pinning a pound of his flesh to my armor.”

“And they pick at him for days. By the time they’re done, he’s been trampled and ripped apart by this insane crowd of fanatics. He inspires them to victory and he gets ripped to pieces for it. I heard that story when I was twelve. Not sure how much of it is true, but it always stuck with me.”

The scientists stared at Bridge in confusion. Balfour asked, “I’m confused. In this allegory, are we supposed to be the crowd or the priest?”

Bridge grinned. “You’re the Lance, Mr. Wizard.”

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*****

Bridge laid out the logistics of his plan to the skeptical group. It was bold, ambitious and larger than life, but he was sure it would work. Once they’d all bought into it, he set them to their individual tasks. As they went about their work, he went about his. He had one thing more to do before leaving Boulder, and he needed to do it alone.

The address was easy enough to find. He drove to a modern, somewhat swanky condo complex near the Pearl Street Mall. Bridge wandered through the halls until he found the right door, Condo 17 A, just like the book had said. The place was deserted, barren like every other place under the dome. Though it took only a few minutes to drive there, the sun was already peaking up over the mountains in the distance. He wasn’t sure if the temporal distortion was accelerating or not, but his body sure wanted that sun to be the signal for sleep. He would usually be in bed right about this time and his arms and legs felt as if they moved through molten lead. But he struggled to the door and made his way through it with a few well-placed kicks. He chuckled at the dichotomy of such an expensive place buying such cheap locks. The alarm system blared a deafening claxon to an audience of one. He ignored them as he entered her apartment and sagged into a chair with an audible thud.

He had asked Lydia about the ghosts before leaving. “When do they show up?”

“Random times. I tried to track it the first few days, but there was no discernible pattern other than that they show up once a day… er, once a solar cycle, that is. Close enough to a day for us.”

“So if I hang around here at least a day, they’ll come back?”

She nodded. “For a few minutes. Why do you ask?”

He just waved her off. “One more thing I have to take care of.”

There he sat in Lalasa Freeman’s apartment, waiting to meet her ghost while hoping he didn’t, hoping against every cynical bone in his body that she wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have been affected, a strange guilt weighing him down. Of course, he didn’t cause her death anymore than he should have felt guilty for not saving her. Guilt was one of the emotions he rarely felt, as if it was a disease and he was immune to its contagion. But he felt the guilt now, felt it like a two-ton stone in his gut. He knew better, but he still found himself hoping she had taken a trip, had gone to visit a friend outside the dome’s range, that they would yet find her somewhere safe and sound. He hoped and he blamed himself and he sat waiting. He tried to stay awake, marveling at the powerful paintings that hung all over the place, but his chin fell to his chest as his body gave in to the urge to sleep.

He woke to the rushing of blood in his ears, the itch of his jack burning on his neck. The hairs on his arm stood on enm stood d. He could feel something about to happen, just like it had the first time he’d seen the ghosts, and he steeled himself. The world blinked.

He opened his eyes and there she was. A short, slightly stocky black woman with neat cornrows in her hair and glasses perched on her nose, the ghost of Lalasa Freeman stood before Bridge. She seemed to be staring around the apartment, at her artwork, her counters, her chair where this young intruder sat staring back at her agape. “Who are you?” she asked, the hint of fear cutting through the distortion in her voice.

“Mrs. Freeman?”

“Mrs. Freeman was my mother. My name’s Lalasa, son. Now what are you doing in my apartment? Did you bust open my door? Why can’t I see right?” She adjusted the glasses on her nose and scowled. “My prescription ain’t due up for another six months. What’d you do to me?”

“Nothing, ma’am,” Bridge said, an unconscious respect appearing in his voice. “Well, I busted in the door, but didn’t figure you’d be in a position to mind.”

“Mind? Hell yes, I mind, you little fucker. You here to steal an old lady’s purse? I’m on a fixed income and my credit is tied up in this place. You won’t get nothing worth a damn out of me.”

“I’m not here to steal from you, Mrs. F… Lalasa,” he replied. “I’m here because Marcus sent me.”

“Marcus? That boy needs to learn to call his grandmother. I ain’t gonna be around forever.”

An unfamiliar sensation of regret stabbed at Bridge’s heart. “Yeah, about that,” he choked, “he’s fine. But you aren’t. You’re a ghost.”

“Nonsense, boy. You’re the ghost. How you do that, by the way? Gas? Nanovirus? Cloaking suit?”

“It’s not me, it’s you,” he said firmly. “There was an accident, and everyone here is… well, they aren’t dead, exactly, I guess. There’s just ghosts, like you. You blink in and out for a few minutes every day. We don’t have much time.”

She seemed to take the news of her condition in stride. “Well, you’re obviously crazier than a bedbug, but I’ll bite. How is my grandson? Is he keeping his nose clean? No more drugs, gangs?”

“He’s clean,” Bridge lied. “He’s working for me.”

“Doing what?”

“He’s a bodyguard. But he’s going to college, he’s getting a philosophy degree.”

“Good, good. Boy always was smarter than he let on. I tried to teach him right, teach him that money wasn’t as important as a peaceful spirit. Why’s he bodyguarding you? You ain’t doing nothing criminal, are you?”

Chapter 19

November 8, 2028

6:36 a.m.

The escape plan was a simple application of misdirection played out on a grand scale. Bridge needed to get six people out of the most watched city in the world without revealing their escape route. Between the press, the National Guard soldiers and Legios Corporation goons, and the unknowable number of government and private satellites likely trained on the city, the city was under constant observation. When the dome was dropped, the electrical dead zone around the city would go with it, and all those eyeballs would focus on Boulder unless he gave those eyes something else to see.

Getting out on foot was out of the question. Even if they could manage to stay unseen, the weather and distance would take too much out of them. Wong had not yet gotten enough control over the flight equations to carry other people, so flying was out of the question. A single car driving out of the city would be spotted within minutes. Bridge wasn’t confident enough in the mana engine’s ability to hide an entire car from satellites. While Bridge spent the day waiting for Aristotle’s grandmother, the technomancers gathered every car they could find, driving them to the edge of the dome facing outwards along six different exit points. Wong meanwhile modified his soccer AI, creating a sophisticated driving intelligence that could maneuver one car to a predetermined destination. If the car encountered an obstruction, it would transform into a giant golem robot like the car that had attacked the Legios Ranger on the journey to Boulder. Somewhere in the design phase, Bridge began referring to their abilities as spells.

Balfour scoffed. “Spells? I really think you are taking this wizard thing to a ridiculous conclusion.”

“You’re goddamn right,” Bridge countered. “And you had better learn to get used to it if we’re going to sell this technomancer thing. You don’t write programs, you create spells.”

“Why magic?”

“Because the church cornered the market on miracles. You have to make people believe in magic, because belief makes people stupid. Stupid is predictable.” Balfour appeared to want to argue, but as his mind chewed over the concept, his expression changed, first to one of confusion then acceptance. From that moment forward, he relished his role as the Alpha, first of the technomancers.

As sunlight broke on Bridge’s second day under the dome, they stood ready. Bridge, Janicki, Lydia and Balfour chose an unremarkable station wagon as their escape vehicle. They stood beside it as it lay idling at the intersection of Canyon Boulevard and Broadway surrounded by four lanes of cars pointed towards the western mountains. Six other major roads out of the domed area sat clogged with cars stacked three and four wide, each controlled by Wong’s spell.

The thorny problem of gathering up Carl was left to Wong. The youngest technomancer had been sullen but agreeable during the entire preparation. Bridge could tell that Rolfsberg’s death still weighed heavily on him, despite his enthusiasm for the programming challenge. Wong’s task was perhaps the most dangerous. The second the dome dropped, he was to send an encrypted message to Carl, giving him the details of the plan before joining the illusionist in executing their part. Balfour assured Bridge that the message would not be intercepted or decoded, another of the fringe benefits of the mana engine. Of course, they couldn’t be sure that Carl would still be alive to receive the message. They weren’t even sure when they would be emerging from the dome. Days, hours, weeks or minutes might have passed since Bridge had entered, and the message Carl had sent regarding his death might be genuine. If Carl was alive, Wong was to find him, but if there was no answer, he was to haul ass out of there, meeting the other technomancers at the Naturalist compound.

Bridge was unsure if Bud would allow him back into the compound with five new fugitives. Once the aging Naturalist found out that these fugitives were responsible for the deaths of his people, he’d probably be even less inclined to let them stay. But it was the only place Bridge had. All he would need would be a day, just a day to gather his resources and get them all to somewhere else, somewhere out of Legios territory. He wasn’t quite sure where they would end up but he was making it up as he went along.

“Are we ready?” Bridgady?” e asked. He took another hard look at his new associates, the tiniest bit of apprehension twisting his guts for the briefest of moments. But his course was set. These were the cards he’d dealt himself. Time to play them.

The group nodded. Bridge climbed behind the wheel, as he was the only one who knew where they were going. “Then let’s set it off,” he said through gritted teeth. Balfour gestured and a ball of lightning shot into the air, then split into hundreds of tiny fingers of electricity that shot off in all directions. The cars surrounding Bridge each got a jolt, and they started in tandem, a roaring grumble of automotive thunder. The first line of cars six lengths ahead jittered into gear and began to ease off the line.

Bridge turned his head to the southeast, gazing towards the Engineering Center. At first, he couldn’t see the tower over the trees and intervening buildings. But then he heard it, the crackling of energy gathering, building to some explosive crescendo. The Engineering Center had too much evidence of the technomancers’ presence. The cloud generator alone would be enough to sink them, even though no one outside of this group would have been able to decipher its uses for years. But the nanotech constructors, glowbugs and other experiments would be too valuable, too important to the upcoming investigations to let it stand. The technomancers knew they had to keep those things to themselves, at least for now. So rather than just shutting down the cloud generator and removing the dome, they needed to remove all evidence of their passing.

The technomancers turned the cloud generator’s energies back in on itself. They would implode the device, and the resultant implosion would wipe out the entire Engineering Center complex. Just as Wong’s fireball had disintegrated Rolfsberg’s body, every iota of physical evidence of their experiments in the Center would end up as ash.

Bridge finally located the Center by the pillar of light. It began to blink, to fade, falling away towards its source in a cascade of blinding light. The dome, deprived of its support, evaporated like the morning fog. All Bridge could see was light, a stunning white light that engulfed his vision. He squeezed his eyes shut and the world blinked.

*****

The car jumped, snapping Bridge’s eyes open, his breath caught in his throat. Another bump caused him to check the rear view mirror, which was filled with the hood of the car directly behind. He shook the cobwebs from his head and put the vehicle in gear, pulling out slowly to maintain pace with the cars to either side and in front. The rest of the car shook to awareness as well, staring around at the world as if seeing it for the first time.

Early morning daylight bathed the road. The buildings to either side were lit, the power having returned once the cloud generator was switched off. Bridge took a chance and tried to establish his wireless GlobalNet connection,t connec which worked flawlessly. He checked the date and time. It was early morning, a day and a few hours after he’d entered the dome. “It’s only been a day,” he told the technomancers.

“Time to jam the lines,” Janicki said and closed his eyes, concentrating on a spell. “Done.” To disguise their movements, they would need to disrupt the restored communications between Legios and the National Guard. Janicki’s spell would activate every switch it could find, sending reams of complete gibberish over phone lines, cell towers, and the GlobalNet. With that much static, Bridge’s call to Stonewall would go completely unnoticed. He had to make sure Stonewall and Aristotle arrived at the Naturalist compound ahead of him to prepare Bud for company.

The four lanes of Canyon Boulevard were packed with cars moving westward. A few vehicles were left abandoned in the road. As soon as an obstacle presented itself, one of the front line cars in the parade would transform with a screech of metal and the tinkle of exploding glass. The auto golem would smash, toss and kick the road clear for the rest of the convoy. Once the last vehicle passed, the golem’s work done, it would fold in on itself, ending life as a ball of fuel-soaked steel, glass and rubber. Bridge imagined the same thing happening at all the other spots around the city, the automatons blindly following their programming to the end.

The procession continued at around 20 miles an hour, receding as golems sprouted to deal with the obstructions. The buildings began to thin as they reached the outskirts of town and nervousness flourished in Bridge’s belly with each side street passed. Houses were replaced by trees and their army of cars seemed to get dangerously thin on the ground as they neared the cordon. Only two rows of vehicles were ahead of him as he spotted the first checkpoint. They had gone slightly less than a mile.

The checkpoint was a makeshift barrier manned by the National Guard with four cars pushed together to block the road. The soldiers seemed to be scrambling around in disarray, surprised that their communications gear was not only working, but was being overwhelmed by thousands of random messages. “Get your heads down,” Bridge commanded the technomancers. “Whatever happens, do not poke your heads above the windowsill until I tell you its safe.”

One of the soldiers had spotted the procession of cars coming towards his position and was frantically pointing it out to the rest of his team. Bridge counted at least ten soldiers, and they snapped into action with mechanical precision, ducking into cover behind the barrier while one stood holding up an arm to command the vehicles to stop. The cars continued to come and he repeated the command, his lips moving furiously with vain shouts. The cars continued. He raised his rifle and his team followed suit. Onward the procession rolled.

In the split second before he was prepared to fire, the point soldier realized that the cars were unmanned, that there was no driver to shoot. As time compressed into a slideshow of impressions, Bridge could see the confusion burst across the soldier’s face before quickly melting into horrified surprise. The front row of cars began to twist and shriek in tandem, transforming on the roll into a ten-foot tall wall of robot. Bridge could hear the thundering footsteps of the metal men, interspersed with the staccato pops of automatic weapons fire. Bullets bounced off the golems, the golor lodged in shattered windshields and burst tires. Shouts and screams erupted from the line as the golems made contact, tossing aside cars as easily as men.

They had discussed trying to keep the golems from using lethal force, but given the time frame, Wong couldn’t guarantee they would do the job at all with such parameters. In the end, Bridge had ended the discussion. “You may not want to kill those soldiers, and I don’t blame you. But think about it like this. You’re already on the hook for about 30,000 deaths. 10, 20, 30 more ain’t gonna make any difference.” The mood darkened, but the point was well made. Whatever guilt they might feel over the deaths of these soldiers couldn’t be worse than their original mistake.

Bridge clenched his teeth. Though the golems were doing their job, the road wasn’t completely clear. Soldiers ran towards the shelter of the trees to either side of the highway, but the golems had only managed to toss three of the four cars away. The now front line of the procession was transforming to help clear the way. Bridge’s line of cars was going to have to swerve to get around the last obstruction, and soldiers still sheltered behind the final car. An explosion rocked the scene as one of the soldiers fired a shoulder rocket into the face of a golem menacing him, showering the road with sparkling bits of steel shrapnel, some of which struck Bridge’s windshield. Spider-web cracks appeared all along the surface. Bridge was going to pass the last car in the roadblock to the right. As the car passed the barrier, the rocket-firing soldier’s nerve broke, and he half-turned to run for the shelter of the trees.

Bridge had no chance to miss him. The soldier struck Bridge’s side of the car, the mirror catching him on the hip and spinning him around hard like a broken marionette. He slammed across the hood of the last car, his head slamming into the windshield with a sickening crack. Past the barrier at last, Bridge snapped his neck around to catch a glimpse of the damage he’d done. The soldier lay limp across the car’s hood until the golems managed to lever the car off the road. The rag doll soldier’s broken body slumped sickly to the pavement and lay still. Bridge gritted his teeth and drove on, trying hard to shut out the sounds of the golems shrinking into inert spheres.

*****

The final component of Bridge’s escape plan was the most important and most perilous, as Bridge had to rely on Wong to pull it off. Since he was the only one besides Carl who could fly, he would be able to reach the dragon-man faster than anyone else. The two of them could escape as the bird flies, avoiding any checkpoints. But they would also need to create the biggest diversion, pulling off a pantomime act that would distract the corporations, governments and media from the real escape while also setting up the mythology Bridge had hastily crafted.

Carl had been seen multiple times as the dragon. If the last message the technomancers had received from him was accurate, he would eventualould evely be caught and killed if he hadn’t already been. Bridge knew the mentality of the Legios management. They would want to capture the dragon and dissect it, and the federal government wouldn’t be far behind them. If they managed that feat, they would have their hands on a mana engine. They’d figure out how to recreate the technology somehow. Bridge had to give them Carl, or at least the illusion that they had taken care of Carl, but without letting them actually have him or his technology. That particular sleight of hand was going to be tricky, but like all magic, it had to be done in plain sight.