Jane Higgins - The Bridge

Curiosity, and an aversion to getting beaten up again, got the better of me. I followed him. He took me to a white room with no windows and no furniture. Just the eye above the door. A woman sat on the floor. The Breken woman from the bridge. She wore civilian clothes – a gray tunic and black leggings. Her feet were bare.

She stood up, waited for Jono to leave, then held out a hand. ‘Suzannah Montier.’ So this was her. CFM’s leader-in-waiting. She had a warm, quiet voice and a cool grip.

‘Nik Stais,’ I said.

She raised an eyebrow, then nodded up at the eye. ‘They’re watching. They want to find out if we know each other.’ She bowed to the eye. ‘We do not.’

‘You’re the hostage.’ I said.

‘I was the hostage, yes.’ She studied me. ‘You have a famous name.’

‘So do you.’ I sat on the floor, opposite the eye, so I could watch it the way it watched me.

Suzannah said, ‘My father and Commander Stais were friends. Did you know? The last time I saw them together was at a Crossing, the last Crossing of the ‘87 rebellion. My father asked Nikolai to speak.’ She smiled, remembering, then walked across to the eye and spoke to the watchers. ‘Do you know what he said? He said, “Freedom.” And “Justice.” He said, “We’ll feed our families with the work of our hands. We’ll build a common life. An honorable life. Not of plenty, but of sufficiency.” He said that, and I believed him.’

She swung back to me. ‘I still do. Despite all this. So, Nik Stais, who are you and where do you fit?’

‘I’m no one. And I don’t fit anywhere.’ And because it was too hard to think about that, I said, ‘Why are you here? Why did you stop?’

‘Stop?’ She set off around the room on her bare, silent feet.

‘On the bridge,’ I said. ‘You could have run. The triggers weren’t working. Why didn’t you just run?’

She glanced at me and kept on walking. ‘And then what?’

‘You’d be free. You’d be home.’

‘And that child? Shedding his life’s blood in your arms? No. Our people killed an innocent. By the logic of this war, the city must strike back.’

‘Well, yes. Exactly that. And now here you are – right in their firing line.’

‘It looks that way.’ She leaned on the wall. ‘Who jammed the triggers?’

‘I did. Vega’s idea.’

‘You saved my life.’

‘CFM want you back. It’ll be harder now, to try for talks. The city’s digging in. Remnant has CFM in its sights, and it’s winning. It must have been a Remnant gunman that shot Sol.’

She nodded and resumed her walking. ‘Remnant has won this round. So, how does it stop – this suicide march? This death for a death?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t stop. Not till one side’s crushed the other.’

‘And then what will we have? Will we have peace?’

‘No. I don’t know. Of a kind.’

‘Of a kind.’ She stopped in front of the eye. It stared at her, crowding the room with watchers: Frieda, the doctor with her notebook and little torch, Dash, Jono, others, lots of others.

Suzannah watched back for a while then turned away. ‘Yes. Peace without justice, if it’s the city that wins. Peace without mercy if it’s Remnant. Which would you choose, Nik?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t get to choose.’

‘But you do. You choose where you stand and who you stand with.’ She was watching me and reading my mind. ‘You can’t not choose. To walk away in disgust – that is also a choice. You are entangled, Nik. Like all of us.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘What about you? Which would you choose?’

‘I choose justice.’ She looked at me. ‘And mercy. That, we can call peace.’

‘Hey – unfair. You didn’t offer me the box set.’

She smiled. ‘No. Why not, do you think?’

‘I don’t know. It’s not possible?’

She nodded. ‘It’s not possible, if one side crushes the other. But if both sides meet, if both will negotiate, then, perhaps.’

‘That’s not happening, though, is it? And it’s not going to now.’

‘No. It won’t while we’re trapped in this… this dance. The suicide switch is well named, isn’t it? We seem hell-bent on killing ourselves.’

‘How do you change that?’

She folded onto the floor beside me. ‘You asked me why I stopped on the bridge. That is why. To make a chance for the city to break that circle. To say, yes, a child was murdered, but something new can come from that: a refusal to answer a death with a death.’

She looked up at the eye, staring the watchers down. Her hands gripped her knees; her breathing was short and sharp. I wondered if they could see that through the eye. But then she looked at me and smiled. She didn’t seem to have an insane spark of martyrdom in her eye.

I said, ‘That’s one hell of a gamble.’

‘It’s a way forward. It’s the only one I can see right now. There are days, many days, when I cannot see any way forward. It’s all too hard; it asks more of everyone than they can give.’

‘What do you do on those days?’

‘On those days, I tell myself: don’t look up, the mountain is too high; but choose for this day, for this moment, that’s enough. But, Nik, today is not one of those days. Today, I think, here is a chance to look ahead. Shouldn’t we make the choices that will lead us to peace?’

‘What if it leads straight in front of a firing squad?’

‘It’s a risk. I think it’s worth taking.’

The door buzzed and an agent came in, a senior agent by the look of him, dressed in black, with an assistant trailing behind him. He nodded to Suzannah, called her Ms Montier, and asked her to go with him, please.

‘Where?’ I said. ‘Where are you taking her?’

His glance passed over me as though I wasn’t there, but he spoke to her. ‘We wish to discuss the current situation. This way, please.’

Not a firing squad then. Not yet.

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.’