He’d asked her for a divorce.
He’d asked her for a divorce and let her see him with someone else.
If he had to kill everything between here and the outside decks, he wouldn’t let that be the last thing he’d said to her.
I am overcome by wonder, lost in it.
The complexity of light astounds me, and makes me realize how little of the Barrier I truly saw before, even when I used Revik’s eyes. I never would have seen this on my own. Not for years...if ever. I realize, too, how abstract it all seemed to me before now, how dreamlike the Barrier and everything in it appeared to me.
Now, for the first time, I see its power.
I had never known the visions inside this space could be so sharp, so utterly dense, so filled with information and functionality. I saw only glimpses inside the woman’s vision...and yet, those creations she showed me made the construct-shields I’d seen at Ullysa’s and on the ship seem like child’s play, like crude forts constructed of children’s blocks.
The art alone I could create with this...gods.
It blows my mind, to think how much more even my meager sketches would contain. Yet art itself seems so trivial here. It strikes me that I have a responsibility in seeing this, to use what I know, to change things somehow. To make them better...somehow.
I rise above the crowded causeway.
I ignore bodies and faces entirely now, tracing maps of every connection, every interaction and intention and pattern...
They are so lost. The people I see, they blunder around and into one another, blaming each other for the endless collisions. There is no direction, no purpose, no awareness, no understanding of what drives them. Anything can fill that vacuum.
Anything.
A voice purrs from beside me, You begin to see the problem. Can you guess the solution, Esteemed Bridge?
I find myself back with the female seer, frowning, but not at her.
Meeting her wise, sharp eyes, I lean my flesh and blood hands on a painted guardrail while I try to answer her question.
I was always a bad student, though. I don’t know why everyone wants to school me...using teacher’s tricks that never seem to work on me, or do anything but close me down. I don’t want leading, trick questions. I want solutions. If they don’t exist, then I want to know why, and where to go next. I want to know what has already been tried, what works and what doesn’t. I don’t see this as a mental exercise. I have zero interest in feeling clever.
There are fucking lives at stake here.
So I ignore her question, rising higher into the complicated light, examining the patterns I’ve already found from different angles. When I focus on a particular aspect of the world-Barrier interface, it amplifies, then rotates into different angles.
It’s like I have access to a hundred different minds at the same time.
Not a hundred minds, the female next to me purrs. Thousands. When you are with us, you have access to every aleimic body in our network, Alyson. Every ability, every piece of knowledge, every skill-set held by every seer who has chosen to align with us...
I try to understand.
Irrationally, I want to free all people, everywhere, even though I can see along with the woman that they would simply use that freedom to destroy themselves. I am still thinking about this, watching them...when I am distracted by something going on in another part of the Barrier.
With it, I feel fear...a taste of violence.
I focus there.
Yes, the woman purrs. You know this being. You know him well by now, yes?
I do know him. I know who he is...even under all of those shields. I touch his light through the wall, and the recognition strengthens.
The woman’s perfect lips curve to a smile.
The Seven went to a lot of trouble to hide him. Even from himself. But they cannot hide him from you. Not from you, Esteemed Bridge...
“Revik.” I smile in recognition, remembering only fleetingly that I had been angry with him once, that something wrong had happened between us, what felt like a million years ago now. Whatever it was, it doesn’t seem important now.
A beat later I frown, though, scanning his aleimi.
What’s wrong with him?
He is under attack. Those seers will kill him, if you do not help him.
What? I look up at her, alarmed. Kill him? Why? Where is he?
The images around me waver, lose focus. I pull back, returning to the complicated light strands that weave overhead, and everything grows easier. I see him again, this time as if he were right in front of me. I stare at him, fighting to understand.
Then my stomach drops. Pain expands over my heart.
He’s been shot! I have to go to him...now! Please!
You are the Bridge, Alyson. You can help him from here. Do you not see?
I struggle with fear, a fevered helplessness as I watch him run down a distant corridor, leaving footprints of blood. I believe her now. He is outnumbered, injured, bleeding from multiple wounds, losing light and structure.