I glance behind me to make sure Elissa is okay. She’s peering around wildly, as if searching for someone. When our eyes meet, she looks guilty for a second; then she relaxes and gives me a tight grin.
“Is that how we get underground?” I point to the subway entrance, which is sealed with blocks of concrete laced with steel girders. It looks all but impenetrable. I search out the green posts, like the ones near the South Street Seaport, but I don’t see any. I wonder how we’ll get in.
Turk shakes his head. “No. The entrance is up there.” He points a few blocks ahead: I don’t see anything except a dirty, oversized sign about half the length of a city block. It was probably white at one point, but that was many years ago. Now it’s a filthy beige, with large red block letters: TKTS.
“There?”
Turk nods. “Come on. But careful.” He steps in front, motioning for us to follow; behind him, we stand pressed up against the wall of one of the buildings. There’s a drooping awning overhead that’s providing us with some well-needed shadow: the center of Times Square is bright, brighter than I anticipated. We’ll have to stay around the edges so as not to be seen.
Turk listens carefully, then signals for us to proceed. I make sure I don’t step on anything that might break and give us away. The closer we get to the TKTS sign, the more voices I hear. I look out toward the middle of the square.
And that’s when I see him. A block away.
“Come on, boy,” someone says. Hunter’s head is down, his arms cuffed behind his back. His shoulders slump forward; he shuffles his feet as if it’s painful to walk. There’s a guard on either side of him, Stiggson and Klartino following directly behind. My father and George Foster walk a few feet ahead, bodyguards flanking them, along with Thomas, Garland, Kyle, and Benedict. None of the women are there.
I cover my mouth so they can’t hear me gasp.
I poke Turk in the back and we stop in our tracks. Elissa, too. “What’s happening?”
“Shhh,” Turk hisses.
We press so close to the building that I can feel the bricks making imprints on my back and the palms of my hands. From this angle, we can see Hunter and my father’s crew, but unless they come around the corner and run smack into us, we should remain out of sight.
We watch as the guards pull Hunter toward one of the buildings with a faded gold door. The windows are blackened with grime. “Is it this one?”
Hunter studies the door for a second. He’s barely recognizable, his face is so bruised. His forehead is sliced open, his cheeks red and swollen. His hair is streaked with blood and matted to his head with sweat. My stomach feels like it’s being wrung out. I might be sick.
“Don’t recall,” Hunter mutters.
My father strolls over to him, lifts his chin in the air with one finger. The sleeves of Dad’s dress shirt are rolled up, exposing his thick forearms and the corded muscle there. Hunter tries to look away, but Dad grabs his jaw. “Look at me,” he instructs.
For a second, they stare at each other—then Hunter spits at my father.
As soon as the spit hits his forehead, Dad attacks. He pulls back his arm and punches Hunter in the gut, then on the right side of the face. His fist connects with Hunter’s chin with a loud smack.
Hunter doubles over, vomiting blood and bile and whatever else is in his stomach onto the pavement.
“Ready to stop the bullshit and show us where the entrance is?” my father asks.
Hunter doesn’t answer. His lip is split—I can see that from here—and his eyes seem snuffed out, lifeless.
“I can’t see,” Elissa whispers from behind me. She shifts her weight forward and kicks something out from behind her—an empty glass bottle? I don’t know, but it makes a sound that alerts everyone to our presence.
My entire body tenses, and I hold my breath. Turk’s eyes are wide, alert. Nervous.
The guards raise their noses in the air like trained dogs, and I see my father whip his head around. Kyle, who’s standing a few feet away with a pistol trained on Hunter, turns. “Who’s there?” he shouts.
Elissa squeezes my hand, and I squeeze Turk’s. I’m so scared. Maybe if we’re quiet … really quiet … they’ll ignore us.
Just then, someone stumbles over a bridge on the far side of the square. A man, from the looks of it, a bottle of booze in one hand. He turns onto the street where my father and the others are and freezes.
Kyle shoots.
The bullet lodges right in the man’s forehead. The bottle falls, smashing on the ground, and the man drops to the pavement like an abandoned marionette.
“Just some drunk,” Kyle calls out.
Relieved to have found the source of the noise, Dad and his goons shove Hunter to another derelict storefront. But for a split second I see Hunter glancing in our direction—there’s a flash of life in his eyes.
He knows we’re here.
I hope with all my heart that he’ll lead my father away.
And then, as if he can hear my prayers, he opens his bloodied mouth and says, “Okay. I’ll show you. It’s down this alleyway.”
He points in the opposite direction of the sign, and I know he’s lying, trying to buy us more time. The goons hold their guns to his back, piloting him forward, their figures diminishing as they move into the distance.
Turk pulls us away from the street corner and into a huddle. Then, finally, he lets go of my hand. “While Hunter is distracting them, we need to go underground and get with reinforcements. We can outnumber them.” Turk points to the ratty TKTS sign. “See the gray building just under the sign?” We nod. “That’s where the entrance is. We’ll rescue Hunter and disappear back into the subways, where we can figure out our next move.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I say, relieved to have one.
“I’ve never used that entrance,” Elissa says, nodding toward the banded cement blocks. She doesn’t apologize for making noise—for almost getting us killed. Shadows and light from Times Square play on her face, making her seem older than she is. “How will I get in?”
Turk rolls his eyes; I can tell he wishes she weren’t here. He swipes a hand over his hair. The rain has flattened down his Mohawk, which sweeps over to one side. “Aria has a passkey.” I raise my hand, wiggle my finger with the ring on it. It’s the only part of my body that feels warm. Elissa’s eyes shine with recognition.
“You’ll have to grab her hand when she uses it,” Turk instructs. “You both should be able to gain entrance that way. I’m going to stay here, make sure they don’t hurt him too bad.”
“But I don’t know where anything is down there,” I say. “I’m not sure I could even find Hunter’s place by myself. What if I get lost? And besides, who will listen to me? You two go. I’ll stay here and watch out for Hunter.”
Turk shakes his head. “Absolutely not, Aria. I’m not leaving you up here alone.” He sighs. “We’ll all go together, then, and hope nothing happens to Hunter in the meantime.”
“Then let’s go,” Elissa says confidently, standing up straight.
We wait for the perfect second to break. As soon as my father’s group is out of sight, Turk waves his hand and whispers, “Now!”
We bolt out of the shadows, high-stepping over a pile of broken cobblestones and dashing along a wide, high bridge that crosses the canal. There before us is the entrance, just beneath the faded sign. Like the old subway entrances, this, too, is sealed with steel-reinforced concrete.
Then I notice a spindly post, practically hidden behind the wall of concrete. It’s made of metal, and at the top is a small green globe. It must have been decorative at one point, but now it’s fused to the steel, bent, so that if you weren’t looking for it, you certainly wouldn’t find it.
“The globe,” I say. “It’s a smaller version of the ones at the Seaport.”
I’m reaching for it when I hear a gunshot.
I look over my shoulder and Turk is on the ground, grabbing his chest. A plume of blood has blossomed on his T
-shirt and is seeping through his fingers. His face is frozen in shock.
“Elissa, watch out!” I say, but then I see the expression on her face: she’s grinning, her smile wicked and dark.
And then I notice the gun in her hand.
She shot Turk.
Before I can react, Elissa grabs my hand and twists off the ring Turk gave me: the passkey.
“Elissa, what are you doing? I thought …”
“You thought wrong,” she sneers, laughing triumphantly. “I work for your parents, and the Fosters, hunting out rebels. That’s my real job. No one, not even Patrick, knows the truth.” She takes a deep breath.
“How long have you been doing this?” I ask, trying to keep her talking, hoping to think of something, anything, that will allow me to escape.
“The Conflagration?” Elissa says. “The bomb was my pet project, made from my energy.”
It all makes sense now: Elissa was the one who turned against her people for personal gain, who was given a spot in the Aeries and hired by my parents to get the mystics out of the picture. She must have been in her early twenties then, and she’s been working for my family ever since.
Elissa runs back out into the street. “I have the passkey!” She holds the ring above her head like a trophy. “And I’ve found the entrance!”
There’s a sinking feeling in my stomach. I’ve been betrayed. Turk’s been shot. And now I am about to die.
• XXXI •
Suddenly, Times Square is alive with movement.
Armored men creep out of buildings and onto the streets like ants, crawling over bridges, lining up to penetrate and attack. Some of the men I recognize as my father’s supporters, or George Foster’s; others must be part of the city’s police force, which my father and George have in their back pockets.
There’s no time to think. I just do.
I grab Turk by the armpits and drag him underneath the sign, which hangs diagonally and blocks us from view. My palms are sweaty, and he’s heavier than I expected. His eyes are shut in pain.
I hear the sound of commands being hollered into the air, of dozens of feet approaching. It’s stopped raining now, and the air is damp and hot. Any second, my father will be back with Hunter. There’s only one thing I can do.
I let Turk down to the pavement, then grab the green globe. With my free hand, I reach across Turk’s chest, pulling his arm so that his fingers touch the globe, too.
The ground beneath me liquefies.
My body begins to thrum as though drumbeats are reverberating through the ground, throbbing in my bones. There’s a weird sensation like being squeezed through an ultrathin tube. I close my eyes.
We fall.…
And land on a dirty tiled floor. It used to be white, I think. Huge chunks are missing. Along the ceiling are colored circles like the ones outside the subway entrance. At one time, they must have pointed to specific trains.
Ahead of me is a network of tunnels that branch out in different directions. I seem to be on a platform of some sort: to my left are old stairways that lead down to tunnels full of water, lined with high catwalks like down at the Seaport. To my right is a wall covered in graffiti and old, unrecognizable ads. Ahead is darkness.
I look up and see that a few lights seem to be embedded in the walls. If they’re anything like the ones down at the Seaport, they’re likely motion sensitive. I need the light, but I don’t want to leave Turk, and he’s in no position to walk.
I kneel beside him and check his pulse—it’s faint but there. Still, I know the wound will be fatal if he bleeds out before I can get him any help.
I bite the end of my sleeve and rip off a piece of my shirt, which I crumple into a ball and hold to Turk’s wound, letting it sop up the blood. Overhead, the stomping of feet is heavy, as if there are a thousand men above us.
“Turk? Can you hear me?”
Nothing.
Then, for a second, his eyes flicker open. “Aria?” His voice is weak, but it’s enough for me to believe there’s a chance he’ll make it.
“Turk? Are you okay?”
He tries to speak, but it only sounds like gargling. “There,” he manages to get out eventually. He can’t lift his arm but raises one of his fingers: up ahead, there’s a bright red disc the size of an eyeball on the wall. I would have walked right past it.
What does it do? There’s really no time to waste wondering. I rush over to it: a button of some sort. It sticks at first, but I apply some pressure. I hear a click.
And then the wind is knocked out of me by a huge subaural pulse that I can feel in my muscles, in the pit of my stomach. It makes me dizzy and nauseous at the same time, and shakes loose dust from the ceiling and rafters.
After a few seconds, I can breathe again. I have no idea what just happened.
“Come on,” I say, doubling back to Turk and lifting him up, careful to avoid his wound. With his back against my chest, I drag him step by step. Tiny amber-colored lights in the walls turn on as we move, and I can see there are six fat pillars in front of me: three on either side, lining the platform. They’re each more than twice my size and crumbling with age, but they could provide cover.
“What was that?” I ask Turk once I get him behind the first pillar.
From here, I can see that there’s a tiny alcove off the platform, and I drag him inside. It smells mustier here, and the ground is caked with dirt. I lean him against a wall, then sit down next to him, checking his wound again and pressing the now-bloodied cloth more firmly against his chest.
His eyes are open, and his breathing seems normal. More normal, at least. “An emergency beacon,” he says. It takes him longer than usual to get the words out, but they come. “You can’t be a … mystic and not f-feel it. Doesn’t matter wh-where you are … you f-feel it in your v-very soul.”
So it was an alarm? Good boy, Turk. Now maybe we have a chance of surviving.
“Shhh.” I wipe sweat from his forehead. “Just rest.”
I’m blotting his cheeks and neck with another strip of fabric from my shirt when we hear what can only be my father’s troops falling through the ceiling and onto the platform. Elissa must have opened the entrance with the ring Turk made for me.
There’s a symphony of thuds and metallic sounds: the unlocking of bullet chambers, the funneling in of new ammunition, banging, beating, snapping, ticking, as weapons are drawn and held and battle is prepared.
And then—voices. “Come on, boys!” someone yells. The troops from above begin marching forward, hulking bodies with guns ready in their hands. “Keep your eyes out for these tricky freaks. Shoot anything that moves.”
I glance out of the alcove, farther into the tunnels. Where are the mystics? Didn’t they hear the alarm? Why isn’t anyone coming to fight?
“Stay here, Turk,” I say, leaving him shrouded in the darkness of the alcove. He tries to hold me back, but he isn’t strong enough. I creep forward slowly, just a few inches, still shielded by the column, and peer out.
Dozens upon dozens of uniformed men are marching into the tunnels, the tiny wall lights brightening as they advance. Some of them are in uniform, some in civilian clothes, but in one way they’re the same: they all carry weapons.
“No mystic leaves alive!” screams a husky voice. It sounds like George Foster’s.
I look for my father, for the Fosters, Hunter—anyone I recognize. But all I see is face after nameless face, brainwashed denizens of New York who are devoted to my family.
For a moment, I pity them. Then I think of Hunter. Of Davida. Of what my parents did to me, stole from me.
The pity washes away, leaving something else in its wake: fury.
I breathe evenly, trying to ready myself for what’s about to happen. It’s only a few seconds before I see the first jolt of green light.
Mystics rush out of the opposite end of the tunnel. They’re skinnier than the men from the Aeries, less solid, with the wiry arms and spindly legs that come from being malnourished and l
iving in the Depths. My heart sinks: the rebels are outgunned and outnumbered.
But then they start to glow.
I’ve only ever seen Turk, Hunter, Davida, and Lyrica use their powers, but that’s nothing compared to what I see now. What’s taking place in here is like nothing I’ve ever experienced or even dreamed of.
Mystics flood the platform, every inch of exposed skin turned green.
Rays extend from their hands in all different sizes—thick, thin, short, long—so many that from where I’m standing, the beams look like a patchwork of color, knitted together over the platform in some kind of electric blanket.
The light from the rays is bright, too bright. This must be what it’s like to stand on the surface of the sun, the world around you burned away in a smothering glare that you see even with your eyes closed, that you feel scorching your flesh and the bones beneath it and the walls of every cell that makes up your being. And you know that there’s no resisting, that you’re just going to wither and turn into a pile of ash blown on the wind.
I feel a wave of relief. They heard the alarm. The rebels have come.
“Attack!”
Everything happens quickly, like a movie on fast-forward. I can hear the steady sounds of machine guns being fired, bullets ricocheting off the tunnel walls.
I shield my eyes and squint out: the mystics look like they’re on fire. A man rushes past me, his entire body aglow, followed by two women who are swinging lassos of coruscating light from their fingertips.
Almost immediately, the ground is decorated with fallen, decimated human bodies.
Ahead, underneath a faded red circle with the letter L in the center, a young female mystic with wild curly hair holds both hands out in front of her like she’s surrendering.
Only she’s not.
The air around her hands begins to swirl, gathering dust and turning into a miniature tornado that she raises from the ground.