by Joe Ducie
‘Thank you,’ Whitmore said to Irene. ‘For keeping her safe.’
Drake glared at Tristan, and his old cellmate shifted nervously on the spot, gripping the strap on the backpack a little tighter.
‘We may leave now, yes?’ Takeo said. ‘Your word, President Whitmore.’
Whitmore regarded Noemi and Takeo for a long moment. ‘Your precious Haven will offer no protection in the war to come.’ He dismissed them with a wave and looked at Drake behind his sleek, reflective sunglasses. ‘I will honour our arrangement to a degree and allow your friends safe passage. The two from Haven and Miss Finlay. But I simply cannot allow you to leave New York, Mr. Drake.’
Drake laughed. ‘Oh look, you’re betraying us. I am shocked. Shocked and surprised. Curse you, Whitmore!’ He shook his fist at the president of the Alliance.
Whitmore checked his wrist watch and sighed. ‘And that is time, ladies and gentlemen. Drake, take the deal – if your friends do not leave now they may not get another chance.’
‘Where’s Brand?’ Drake asked. Another shiver, stronger this time, almost like an electric shock, ran down his back. ‘What’s …?’ He looked at Irene, at Noemi and Takeo, and his heart skipped a few beats.
The air felt tense, as if the entire city was holding its breath. The hustle and bustle of New York, the sights and sounds, grew dull to Drake. The sights and sounds were still there, the slow gyration of ten million people living their lives, of streets packed with food carts and yellow taxis, but all that faded into the background.
Drake crouched down on his haunches and pressed his crystal hand against the concrete. He tilted his head, grimaced, and felt a low, but powerful vibration shudder up his arm and through his body. That’s not the subway, he thought, a split second before a tremendous, glass-shattering boom echoed down the canyons of New York City.
His friends and allies – and his enemies, dressed in their sleek, faceless Alliance armour – all pressed their hands to their ears as the ground shook and white steam burst from the drains and sewers. A heavy pause followed the boom, time for Drake and Tristan to share a quick look, and then the manhole covers exploded from the road and thick tendrils of dark crystal swimming with bruised-purple light burst from underground.
Several dozen tentacles, on all corners of Times Square, broke the surface, shattering the roads and tipping over parked Alliance and NYPD cars. The crystal pillars, each about as thick as an ancient oak tree, clawed along the ground and slithered up the sides of the hotels and other buildings, trapping the people inside.
All of this happened in the space of about three seconds, but in those brief moments a tangled nest of dark crystal enclosed Times Square in an ugly purple wall. Arcs of wicked lightning crackled along the surface of the crystal, striking at the ground and the ring of Alliance goons Whitmore had brought with him. They stumbled back, some burnt and screaming, all of them trapped with Drake and his friends in the heart of the square.
‘Well,’ Irene said. ‘That’s ugly.’
The crystal continued to grow, to spew forth from under the ground, and claw its way up the buildings. Something moved within the crystal briar patch, something more than purple light. Drake glimpsed a pair of yellow eyes, then another, and behind those eyes shadowed forms swimming within the dark bands.
Visions of horrendous crystal spiders danced in his head. He didn’t need an ability to see the future to know what was about to happen.
‘I’m afraid,’ Drake whispered, then cleared his throat. ‘I’m afraid we’re in a spot of bother.’
‘More than you know, Drake!’ a loud, twisted voice echoed across Times Square.
With a weary sort of sigh, Drake turned and followed the red and white stairs of the TKTS building to its top. Marcus Brand, the Skeleton Man, his pasty skin painted with purple light from the walls of crystal, and a sleek rifle slung over his shoulder, waved at him.
‘Oh, look, it’s this bastard …’ Drake muttered.
Brand pointed at Drake. ‘Now watch what happens next!’
The crystal choking the buildings all around Times Square began to pulse with a dull, deadly light. Vicious cracks splintered up and down the twisted tendrils, like a thin sheet of ice breaking underfoot.
From those cracks burst dozens – hundreds – of crystal monstrosities.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Crystal Force
The creatures born inside the bands of thick, glowing crystal took to the sky and slammed into the ground. Of all shapes and sizes, resembling spiders and cockroaches with thin wings, bugs and insects, they all burst into the world with the familiar chime of glass striking glass.
‘To arms!’ Whitmore roared. ‘Protect the limousine.’
Drake snapped his head back to Brand in time to see the man disappear over the edge of the steps and out of sight, rifle slung over his shoulder and more weaponry holstered at his waist. He took a step forward to follow him, to put an end to the mess, but Takeo grasped his arm.
‘We must stay together,’ the giant boy said, and his grip on Drake’s arm was unbreakable. Blue light swam deep within his eyes. ‘We must protect each other.’
Drake hesitated only a moment and then nodded. He turned to Whitmore and Tristan, with Irene and Noemi at his back next to Takeo. ‘Well?’ he said.
Whitmore pressed a phone against his ear and barked a few commands. The soldiers and police opened fire, blasting the dozens of monsters sweeping along Times Square with bullets that did next to nothing. Gunshots echoed throughout the square, reverberating off the crystal pillars, and tore chunks of dark material from the creatures – but sparkling light swirled to the wounds and healed the damage, fusing the crystal skin back in place.
The hundreds of flying beasts, large cockroaches, spiralled up into the air in one flock. As they reached the height of One Times Square, the tower, the crystal cockroaches dispersed across the city, flying out to every point of the compass – and began to descend on New York.
The chiming of crystal limbs on concrete brought Drake’s attention back to the ground. A six-legged monstrosity, with a maw of sparkling silver fangs, leapt at them. He raised his palms and fired a burst of raw power – something he wasn’t supposed to do, according to Noemi – and shattered the creature beyond repair.
Distant explosions, tyres squealing on unseen roads and high-pitched screams echoed down the avenues and streets of New York City. Drake began firing wildly into groups of the crystal creatures, slaying as many as he could with nothing but pure, hot power – with force enough to crack their impossible hides.
Damned or dead either way, he thought.
Takeo was at his back, and his hands were encased in mittens of silver light. As one of the spiders moved in, Takeo lunged forward and grasped its sharp-angled head in his hands. With a grunt of effort, he twisted and wrenched the head from the spider’s body. The crystal monster twitched, legs splaying, and fell to the ground.
‘Will!’ Irene cried. ‘Behind the limo!’
Drake turned in time to see a spider dig its limbs into the trunk of the limousine, shifting the whole car. He raised his arm to destroy it, to protect young Amy, but Lucien Whitmore stepped in the way. The President of the Alliance removed his sunglasses and clapped his hands together. A dull chime, almost below hearing over the noise of the attack – of the invasion – reverberated in Drake’s head.
A pale mist flowed from Whitmore’s hand, snakes of glowing smoke, and enveloped the spider on the limousine. The mist ate the crystal, dissolved the monster, reducing its bulk to vicious spasms, which rolled from the car. Whitmore opened the rear door and retrieved Amy, holding her to his chest and shielding her face.
He turned and ran past Drake, giving him a desperate look with eyes glowing blue and red, to the front of the vehicle. Once there he raised his hand and a surge of fresh mist fell in a wide sphere, as if he were encased in a bubble, around him and his daughter. Whitmore disappeared under his shield.
Something pushe
d Drake in the back, hard, and he fell against the limousine. He turned, furious, to see it was Irene, who leapt back as a leg from one of the spiders swept the space he had been standing just a moment before. That close, Drake saw just how razor-sharp the legs on the monsters were. It dug a clean laceration in the concrete, sweeping for his head.
Takeo grabbed the monster and tore it apart, pushing Drake and Irene closer together.
‘Thanks,’ he breathed to her with a grin.
Irene smiled. ‘No problem –’
Drake’s eyes widened and Irene fell silent at the look on his face. Marcus Brand appeared behind her with his wasted arm held towards the sky, a blade of fetid yellow light – hard light – three feet long in his grasp. He snarled at Drake and brought the blade swinging down towards Irene’s neck.
Noemi met his attack halfway, her sleek, silver katana catching and deflecting the blade before it could cleave Irene’s head from her shoulders. Irene ducked, and Tristan pulled her aside.
Brand dispelled his blade and took a large step back. Fresh power flooded his palms and he fired a sphere of hot, rippling energy at Noemi. At that distance, he couldn’t miss.
The burst of fiery energy should have fried Noemi on the spot, but she moved fast – faster than Drake had ever seen any one move, and closed in on Brand. The fireball struck the remains of a spider and it exploded into a rain of sharp, crystal shards. Noemi curved around the blast, the trail of her cloak absorbed by the flame, and spun with her sword.
Noemi moved with such balance and grace that Drake felt like he was watching silk fall over curved glass. She danced below Brand’s guard and moved in on his left, nicking and slicing at his exposed skin with her blade. She sketched lines in his flesh that bled light, fusing the wounds closed as quickly as she could draw them. The sword wasn’t so much a tool as an extension of her arm.
All of this happened in seconds, as Drake tried to circle closer, through the remains of crystal spiders and dodging the strikes of a few more. He glanced at Takeo and saw a ring of decapitated spider corpses encircling him. His eyes were wild and he threw his head back and laughed.
Crazier than me, Drake thought.
Brand grew frustrated with Noemi’s deadly elegance – moves that would have killed any other opponent by now – and drew a familiar revolver from the holster at his waist.
Warden Storm’s revolver, stolen from the Rig, which Drake had last seen pointed at his skull before Brand had shot him above New York. Should not have kept that. Brand pointed the gun at Noemi as she flowed away.
‘Dodge this, bitch,’ he growled – as Drake closed the gap – and pulled the trigger.
Drake threw his arm forward to shield her, but she simply disappeared. The bullet shot across the square, a wicked snap echoing through the rest of the noise, and struck the front window of the limousine. The bulletproof glass splintered but held.
Noemi reappeared from behind her veil on Brand’s left and, with a cry, sliced her katana down from above and severed his hand.
‘Yes!’ Drake said as Brand’s hand fell away, still grasping the revolver.
Brand cursed and stumbled back, clutching his wrist, which sizzled with bubbling white light – what passed for his blood.
Drake moved in to end the fight.
He ducked as he approached, picked up the revolver by its barrel, and slapped Brand across the face with his own severed hand, wrapped around the butt of the gun.
Brand struck back at him with a closed fist and the blow glanced off his jaw. Noemi used the distraction to glide in again, her blade gleaming, and drove the sword through Brand’s shoulder, piercing the fused armour and his flesh. Three inches of folded steel emerged out of his back.
He screamed – not in pain, but anger. A wave of invisible force knocked Drake away and Noemi lost her grip on the katana’s hilt. They were thrown back together, Noemi atop Drake, across the ground towards the base of the red and white steps.
Drake would have kept sliding but Noemi hooked her foot between a concrete bollard and a tangle of metal piping and pulled them to an abrupt stop. She cried out. The revolver flew from Drake’s hand and struck one of the spider monsters.
‘You OK?’ he asked, pulling himself out from under her. ‘Come on, can’t stay here.’
Drake pulled her to her feet and Noemi tested her weight on her foot. She winced but it held.
Another noise rose above the chimes of the spider creatures and Drake looked up to the sky, and marvelled as a dozen Alliance attack helicopters swooped into Times Square, over the pillars of twisted crystal sealing them all inside. On the deck of each helicopter sat two gunmen with long, black-barrelled guns as thick as tree branches – or a crystal limb.
The helicopters hovered over Times Square for a long, pregnant moment, and then opened fire into the crowds of spiders. The rounds from the massive guns churned through the crystal creatures and split them into a mess of tangled limbs spewing glowing ichor.
‘Never thought I’d be happy to see an Alliance chopper,’ Drake said and nudged Noemi.
The helicopters began swooping in and out of the kill zone, taking turns to strafe the creatures and the crystal pillars with high-calibre fire.
Drake took a deep breath. ‘Where did Brand go?’
The Skeleton Man knelt on one knee near the limousine, the sphere of glowing mist from Whitmore’s shield behind him growing dull. Whitmore, still clutching Amy, emerged from his shield in time to see Brand grit his teeth and wrench Noemi’s blade from his chest with a cry of triumph.
Brand met Drake’s gaze only a handful of metres away – and swung the rifle hooked over his shoulder into his hand. Whitmore ran to join Irene and Tristan near the trunk of the limousine as the helicopters lit up Times Square. Takeo had cleared enough of the crystal spiders around the limousine and steps that Irene, Tristan, and Whitmore, with Amy in his arms, could dash around, away from Brand, to stand near Noemi and Drake.
A swarm of flying cockroach creatures hurled themselves at the line of choppers hovering above the battlefield – the pilots never stood a chance. The weight and ferocity of the beasts sent half a dozen of the choppers spinning into the crystal pillars that had birthed the cockroaches. Loud explosions rocked Times Square as fiery husks of crystal and chopper slammed into the ground, taking with them at least a few more of the crystal spiders.
Burning metal and jet fuel joined the mess of hot, acrid scents drifting over New York City.
Brand laughed at the chaos and took a step forward. He raised his gun, pointing the barrel at Noemi, who stood between the two separate groups, and winked at Drake. Drake stepped in front of her and clenched his crystal fist. This needs to end – I need to speak to Bluebird.
‘Wonder how many bullets it’ll take to put you down, Drake?’ Brand asked. ‘Let’s find out.’
‘No!’ Whitmore roared. ‘Stand down, Mr. Brand.’
Brand’s finger slipped onto the trigger.
Drake braced himself and cursed. He’s not playing for your team any longer, Whitmore. This is going to hurt.
Brand’s finger twitched again and a hail of hot, deadly metal filled the air.
Irene’s heart leapt into her throat; the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, as the clatter of machine-gunfire broke across Times Square, mixing with the cacophony of sound from the crashing or fleeing attack helicopters and the buzz of crystal wings.
Brand opened fire at the same instant Drake raised his arm – not in front of him, but towards Irene, a determined look on his bloody face. She screamed as Brand’s fire spattered across her group of allies – and Whitmore – and swung over Drake, peppering him with dozens of bullets. Takeo pulled Noemi out of the way, behind Irene, who found an impossible shield in front of her, protecting her from the deadly projectiles. Some of the bullets struck the shield and sparked ripples of blue light across its surface.
The rest struck Drake.
Drake’s jeans and shirt were torn open, the denim blossomin
g with bright red spots under the hail of gunfire, and he fell to his knees, thrashing like a puppet on strings.
Irene drew a harsh, ragged breath as the clip ran dry and Brand threw aside his gun. Drake slumped, swaying as if he were about to fall face first into the sidewalk.
And then he stood.
A thousand bright spots of crystal light burst from the dozens of wounds across his body and Drake looked up, a horrific, bloodstained smile on his face, and hurled himself at Marcus Brand.
Irene almost didn’t see him move, but he left a trail of neon-blue light in his wake and covered the distance between himself and Brand in half a heartbeat.
Drake slammed into Brand and a wave of concussive force echoed outwards, forcing Whitmore, Tristan and Brand to stumble back. Any windows and glass across the square and up the hotel skyscrapers still in one piece shattered in a rain of shards. Irene felt the ground shake behind the shield. She steadied herself as Will Drake shrugged off a clip’s worth of bullet wounds as if they were no worse than mosquito bites – and tore into the Skeleton Man.
In the heartbeat after the first of Brand’s bullets struck Drake, he found himself once again in his mother’s kitchen.
Dead or dying, he had time to think. Just like when I fell from the chopper with a bullet in my head.
The creature from under the Rig, the alien wearing his mother’s face, didn’t even pretend to convince him this was real. Wherever he was, it was happening in some place between seconds – what had she said last time? Something about how consciousness, and coming close to death, opened lines of communication.
‘Hello, Bluebird. Brand shot me again,’ Drake said. ‘A whole bunch of times. Didn’t know how else to get in touch with you.’
The creature frowned, splitting the fake human skin of her forehead and revealing the dark crystal underneath. A million blue lights swirled in her skull, a nexus of alien thought.
‘You made it to New York,’ Drake said. ‘Or, your Crystal-X did, anyway. It’s choking the city. Weird bugs and insects are attacking people. Make it stop.’ The creature said nothing, only looked at him with a curious expression on her face. ‘What are you, really?’