Jane Higgins - The Bridge

My eyes wouldn’t open. I was floating and warm and I didn’t want to move.

A voice said, ‘Hey, Nik. Wake up. You’re home.’

I made an effort and opened my eyes. I was on the bed in the white room and Dash was sitting beside me. She looked like a real cadet – fatigues, boots, hair short and severe – but her eyes and smile, they were just like always. ‘Hey.’ I reached out my hand and she took it. Her smile trembled and she started to cry.

There was nothing to say that would make it all right, so we didn’t say anything, just sat together. Eventually I said, ‘They told me you were coming but I fell asleep. Sorry.’

‘That was yesterday.’

‘I slept a whole day?’

She nodded. ‘You must be hungry. And you’ve got some recovering to do: this knife wound,’ she picked up my left hand, ‘it’s not healing well.’

‘How’s Fyffe?’

‘Shattered. Badly in need of TLC. Like you.’

‘How are you?’

She shook her head. ‘We came so close. Half a bridge length. He was nearly home.’ She took a deep, shaky breath, then picked up her crutches and stood up. ‘I have to go and see Sarah Hendry.’ Mrs Hendry. Mother of Sol and Lou and Fyffe. I couldn’t have faced her right then. Dash said, ‘I’ll come and see you again soon. They won’t keep you here long.’

I nodded. ‘How’s the leg?’

‘Not bad. Mending.’

‘Seeing you is – it’s… it’s… I mean, you look good.’

She smiled. ‘And you look half-starved and exhausted. But you’re in the right place, now.’

‘I guess they’ll want to debrief me.’

‘Oh, they’ve done that.’

‘No, they haven’t. I’ve been asleep.’

‘Yes, but that was part of it. Didn’t they tell you? They just drug you slightly and ask questions and you talk. It’s quicker than other ways, and more effective – they can get at things you might not remember. They said you spoke Breken the whole time. It really got into your system, didn’t it?’

I rubbed my hands over my face and tried to focus. ‘Say all that again. Slowly.’

She went through it, piece by piece. She ended with, ‘Rest now. You look so tired.’ She kissed me, whispered, ‘Thank you for trying,’ waved at the cc-eye above the door and left. The door locked. I closed my eyes.

They left me alone for the rest of the day.

Everything. That’s what I must have told them. That’s what they took. Including the subset of ‘everything’ that is ‘everything that matters.’ Elements in this subset: my father is alive; this fact is being protected by, among others, Sim Vega and Tasia Levkova; the jamming of the triggers for the prisoner exchange was deliberate; it was Vega who set it up and me who jammed them; Remnant control all the Bridge Councils east of Ohlerton; CFM supporters – who would negotiate a peace – are under siege and in retreat…

A woman came to see me. She had a notebook and wore a white coat and wouldn’t answer any of my questions. She took my pulse, shone lights in my eyes, and looked at the gash on my hand.

I said, ‘Why am I locked up?’

She said, ‘We’re here to help. Don’t worry. You’re safe now.’ She wrote notes and left.

Dash came to visit. ‘How’s Fy?’ I asked. ‘Where is she? Can I see her?’

‘She’s with her parents,’ said Dash. ‘I’ll see what I can do. They’re taking Sol home the day after tomorrow, and I’ve asked to go in the escort. I put in a request for you to go too but the chief here said no. She wouldn’t tell me why. Do you know why?’

I knew exactly why. I couldn’t imagine them letting me out of there until they’d done a whole lot more prying into what I’d told them under the debrief drug.

‘Nik? Do you?’ The blue gaze, the frown, the lips pressed together – the Dash wordless interrogation, just like I remembered it.

‘Do they use that debrief drug on everyone?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. I guess so. It’s harmless.’

‘Did they use it on Fy?’

‘Why? Does it matter?’

Did it matter? I’d been trying to work this out. Had Fy seen or done anything in Southside that might put her in danger over here? She didn’t know about my father. She hadn’t been involved in any CFM or Remnant politics. She knew the triggers on the bridge would be jammed, but that was Vega’s plan, and mine. There was nothing she could have done about it. I closed my eyes and wished my head was clearer.

‘Are you feeling bad?’ said Dash. ‘I could get a doctor. They told me that drug was safe. That you’d just feel tired and groggy.’

Tired and groggy. I’m sure that’s how people usually feel when they’ve been busy betraying other people.

‘Hey.’ She snapped her fingers in front of my face. ‘Come back.’

I opened my eyes. ‘What do you think happened on the bridge?’

‘You were there. You’d know better than me.’

‘But what are people saying?’

‘That the hostiles jammed the explosives trigger so that when they shot Sol their person couldn’t be terminated and had a chance to escape.’

No. No. No. That wasn’t why.

Dash said, ‘What did you see?’

I looked at her, and then I couldn’t look at her. ‘I jammed the triggers.’

She went completely still. ‘You can’t be saying that. Why did you? Did they make you? Did they trick you? How could that happen?’

‘I thought it was a chance to protect them both – the hostages – theirs and ours.’

‘What do you mean protect them both ? Why would you protect a hostile? God, Nik, they used you. They used you to kill Sol.’

I sat on the floor in the darkand thought about Fyffe. She knew I’d jammed the triggers. Now she’d be told it was a plot by the Breken to free their hostage and kill Sol. Would she believe that? Did I?

I walked round and round my room thinking about the possibility that Vega set up Sol’s murder. I didn’t believe it. The whole thing made much more sense if it was Remnant that had sabotaged the exchange. By shooting Sol they’d be aiming for success twice over: deepened divisions between the city and Southside, and the Breken hostage – the CFM leader-in-waiting – blown into the sky.

Next morning an agent appeared at the door. I said, ‘Can I see Fyffe?’ but she said that such decisions weren’t up to her. She took me down white corridors that were gleaming and eerily quiet – even the people hurrying past seemed to glide on silent runners.

The woman she took me to was white and quiet as well. She had black hair streaked with gray swept back from a high forehead, and her uniform was gray not black or green like everyone else’s. She sat behind a large desk with her hands clasped in front of her. Her eyes were small and very blue under thin dark brows. She gestured to a chair and I sat down.

She smiled, but to herself rather than to me. Eventually she said, ‘You don’t remember me.’ She seemed pleased rather than offended. ‘I’m Frieda Kelleran.’

A rush of images filled my mind: my mother’s long dark hair and gold earrings, a room cluttered with books and boxes and too much furniture, a gloved hand and a gray coat and a walk up the school driveway.

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Now you remember. Welcome home, Nikolai.’

Frieda. Friend of my mother. Who’d enrolled me at Tornmoor, and then disappeared from my life entirely. Here she was. Back.

‘Home,’ I said. ‘Is that what this is?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Have I done it then?’

‘Done what?’

‘What you wanted. Led you to my father.’

‘Well—’

‘It was a good plan. I see that now. Stick me in Tornmoor and you have all that leverage to use against him in the Marsh. But he escapes – probably not in your plan. And then you get reports that he’s dead. That’s probably more like your plan. So you forget about me, but you leave me there in case, one day, I might be useful. And now I have been. I’ve led you right to him, and here I am: leverage all over again. Have I got that right? I think you might be disappointed, though, in just how much use I can be. But still – at least you know that he’s alive and over there. I’ve told you that much.’