by Carter Roy
“Wild!” he said. “How much water you think is over our heads?”
I tipped my head back and stared at the ceiling, imagining it. “A lot?”
“Thanks for the illuminating answer.” Sammy got up and wandered toward the front of the car again.
Dawkins had been thinking while we chattered. “He brought it to Agatha’s place because the Damascene ’Scope was there. Because of what it can do.”
I thought about the weird, Victorian-era device. The Damascene ’Scope looked like a mix between a telescope and a big brass cannon, but all I’d ever seen it do was good. First, when we accidentally used it to purify Agatha, and the second time, when we saved Flavia. “We used the ’Scope and the Glass Gauntlet to restore Flavia’s soul. But why would my dad want to project a Pure soul into someone else?”
“That’s only one of its uses. Agatha mentioned another use that I hadn’t really thought about until now.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“She said it could destroy souls, could eradicate them. Permanently.”
The singers had reached the middle of the car, and the sad truth is that they’d sounded a whole lot better when they’d been far away. Not that it mattered to Mrs. Sustermann; she dug around in her purse and took out a folded dollar bill. She pinched it between two fingers and waved it at the guys, and they did their strange little shuffle between the seats toward our section.
I glanced from Greta’s mom to the lead singer, but as I did, I glimpsed the soft jawline of the last of the performers, one who’d kept his head down the whole time.
And I recognized it.
I clutched Dawkins’ arm. “It’s him.”
“Guard Greta,” Dawkins whispered, then bent forward, grabbed the cutlass from under the seat, and rolled off the bench to the center of the car.
My dad pushed back the brim of his hat, looked straight into my eyes, and smiled at the same moment as the five men around him drew long, thin swords out of the wooden canes.
“Son,” he said.
And then the lights went out.
CHAPTER 6
GUARDING GRETA
The train slammed to a halt, and I was thrown to the floor. From the shouts around me, I guessed I wasn’t the only one—someone had yanked the emergency brake.
I crawled forward in the dark, blindly sweeping my hands back and forth, trying to find Greta.
From behind me came the clang of swords striking each other—Dawkins, holding off my dad’s Bend Sinister team. And I could hear people shouting all up and down the car. One man hollered, “Everyone calm down!” Another voice answered him, saying, “You calm down—I don’t want to die on the Four train!” And then total chaos.
All the noise made it hard to think.
Guard Greta, Dawkins had commanded, like that was easy. I couldn’t even see Greta.
And then I remembered Diz tapping her sunglasses and saying her Verity Glass worked like night-vision goggles. Thanks, Diz. I reached into my shirt, yanked my glass up on its chain, and wedged it over my right eye.
Immediately I could see Greta sprawled across the floor of the car.
She was pretty much all I could see.
That’s the thing about Pures: when seen through a Verity Glass, their souls blaze with a searingly bright light—almost painful to behold. Greta’s soul was so dazzling that I had to turn away or be blinded.
When I did, I discovered something else: her light illuminated the other souls in the car. It was like everyone else’s soul burned a little brighter because of the nearness of a Pure. Through the lens, the subway was a dark violet, but I could see people cowering in their seats at the back of the car, trying to avoid getting hurt by the swordplay taking place ten feet away from me.
Unlike everyone else, the Bend Sinister agents were only the faintest of shimmery outlines, barely there at all. They’d given up their life force when they’d joined the Bend Sinister. Except for my dad. His soul was all there. The only thing he’d given up when he joined the Bend Sinister was his family.
Dawkins had the agents trapped in the cramped space where two rows of seats extended out into the center of the car; there was only a narrow passage between the benches, and he and his sword were blocking the way.
Somehow he was able to fight them in the dark, blocking their attacks without seeing them. Twice one of them tried to clamber over the seats, but somehow Dawkins sensed it. Each time, he swept his blade or his leg out and knocked the guy back, then brought his sword up to block the attacks of the other men.
But he wouldn’t be able to keep them there forever.
Greta’s mom was lying low on the row of seats where she’d been sitting, saying, “Greta?” over and over, and reaching toward Greta’s empty seat with one arm while clutching the cat to her chest with the other. (I could also see Grendel—I guess cats have souls, too.)
Guard Greta, Dawkins had instructed me, so I crawled across the filthy floor toward the light. When I was close enough to hear Greta’s breathing, I reached out and touched her shoulder.
Her fist clocked me right in the jaw.
“Hey!” I said, falling backward.
“Ronan?” Greta whispered. “Sorry!”
“I’m trying to help,” I said, taking her hand. “This way.” I led her forward on our hands and knees.
“Ronan!” she whispered. “We have to get my mom!”
“Dawkins will protect her,” I said. “You need to get under these seats.” There was a row of three on the wall and nothing under them.
“No way,” she said.
So I pushed her. Hard.
“Stop that!”
The one nice thing about the dirty linoleum was that Greta slid pretty easily. She struggled, but I wedged my foot against one of the poles and shoved, then blocked her with my body. With my left shoulder against the bottom edge of the seats and my right shoulder flat on the floor, she was completely hidden.
“Ronan!” Her fists pounded my back. “Get off!”
“Shh,” I said. “We don’t want them to find us.”
Hiding under the seats meant I couldn’t really see what was going on anymore. But I could still hear things.
Sometime during our crawl, the riders had stopped shouting, which made the clashing of the swords sound that much louder.
“Evelyn?” my dad called. “Where’d you go, son?”
I kept quiet and hoped he didn’t look down.
Suddenly Dawkins yelled out in pain. “They got past!” Somebody shouted and a cat yowled.
“Grendel!” Greta pushed against me. “He’s with my mom.”
Feet pounded past in a run.
A mechanical noise from the front of the car—the connecting door opening and closing?—made me turn that way. I looked just in time to be blinded by a flare of red light. Metal sizzled, and sparks rained down to the floor in the dark. Then I could hear the train starting up again and rolling away down the tracks.
Except we weren’t moving at all.
The car was silent. After a moment, I heard a lighter strike, and a flame appeared.
“They’ve run off,” Dawkins said. He held his Zippo high. “Ronan? Greta? Sammy? Mrs. Sustermann? Is everyone present and accounted for?”
I slid out, relieved. I’d kept Greta safe.
“Come on,” I said, reaching back to help her out from the bench.
She smacked my hand away and stood up on her own. “Don’t talk to me.”
“Me and Greta are down here,” I said.
“I’m over here,” Sammy said.
A flashlight beam appeared at the rear of the train, and a conductor came into the car. “Okay, who’s the wise guy who pulled the emergency brake?” she asked. She raked the light across the riders cowering on the floor, then pointed it at Dawkins. “What happened here?”
“We were attacked,” Dawkins said. “A group of men … Are the lights going to come back on?”
“Any moment now,” the conductor said. She sl
owly swept the beam up and down. “Sir,” she said, “you have—sticking out of you—are those swords?”
Dawkins looked down. “Hardly! These are only foils—skinny little blades, more stabby than anything.” He withdrew first one, then a second, and finally the third, dropping each to the ground. “See? They didn’t hit anything vital.”
The lights overhead strobed twice. The third time, they stayed on.
In the center of the car, Dawkins stood panting, his clothes bloody. Three of the cane-handled foils lay on the floor. I knew that even as I watched, his wounds would be sealing themselves up.
The conductor gasped and covered her mouth. “I’ll call the hospital.”
“It looks much worse than it is!” he told the woman. He opened his shirt. “See? There’s not even a wound.”
Fifteen feet away in the other direction, toward the front of the car, Sammy was crouched in the L of two rows of seats. In his hand was the red wooden emergency brake pull.
Dawkins looked around wildly. “Where’s your mum, Greta?”
Greta shoved me aside. “Mom?” she shouted. “Mom?”
On the floor behind Dawkins was an overturned bowler and a sprinkling of coins. Next to them, still folded, was a one-dollar bill.
“Mom!” Greta screamed.
Dawkins blurred as he pounded past Greta to the front of the car. He strained to turn the handle of the connecting door, but nothing happened. “They’ve welded it shut somehow,” he said. “No matter.” He took a step back, grabbed the bar above a row of seats, and swung his feet into the subway window.
The glass popped out of its rubber molding and fell to the tracks outside.
“Hey!” said the conductor. “You can’t do that!”
But Dawkins was already gone. He’d leaped through the window and disappeared into the dark.
• • •
Greta wouldn’t look at me, just sat on the bench where her mom had been sitting and shivered.
“Is she going to be okay?” the conductor asked. “None of you are hurt, are you?”
“No, ma’am,” I said.
“It was me who pulled the brake,” Sammy said. “When I saw their swords, I just thought … It seemed like a good idea.”
“That’s okay, son,” the woman said. “I’d have done the same.” She looked back at the cane swords on the ground. “And none of you know why these gentlemen attacked your friend? Nor how they made off with the rest of the train?”
We shook our heads.
The conductor leaned out the window and then brought her head back in. “The front car’s been decoupled!” she said into a walkie-talkie on her shoulder. “They were using swords—and they stabbed a kid. He’s the one that ran away.”
While a half dozen transit workers examined the tracks outside the train, two men remounted the window Dawkins had kicked out.
And then the subway started moving again.
“Didn’t they take the engine car?” Sammy asked.
“Nah, any one of these cars can function as the engine. They’re all tied to the third rail.” The conductor smiled. “Listen, I’ve got to go talk to the police. My name is Letitia. I’ll find you at the City Hall station and take your statements there, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, and watched her walk through the connecting door at the rear of the car.
I turned to Greta. “I’m really— We couldn’t— How was I supposed to …” Nothing I could think to say was the right thing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I messed up.”
But she wouldn’t say a word, just pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her head and turned her face away.
When the subway limped into the Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall station, we disembarked along with everyone else who had been on the train. The platform went from empty to full in about three seconds. Most of the passengers were angry. A thick crowd surrounded Letitia the conductor.
“Now what do we do?” Sammy asked.
Across from us, an empty downtown 6 train sat on the local track. The words LAST STOP glowed from the sign in the window. From its speakers, a recording repeated, “This is the last stop on the train. Please exit the train. This is the last stop on the train …”
Dawkins’ head popped up behind one of the windows.
“Um, guys,” I said, jostling Sammy.
Dawkins waved his hand once and then disappeared again.
“What?” Sammy asked.
“Jack. He’s on that train across the platform.”
Sammy turned and said, “I don’t see anyone.”
Dawkins popped up again and waved us over.
“Come on,” I said, steering Greta by the elbow. She shook me off.
We got on board just as the doors started to close.
“I thought you three would never get here,” Dawkins said.
“But this is the last stop,” I protested.
“Only for the unwitting,” Dawkins said. “All of you get down so that conductor and her police officer friends don’t catch sight of you.”
The three of us sat next to Dawkins on the floor.
“Sorry to have abandoned you back there. I had to try and rescue Mrs. Sustermann,” Dawkins said, “but they had too great a lead, and by the time I caught up, they’d already abandoned that disconnected car.”
“You didn’t protect my mom,” Greta said, staring straight ahead at nothing.
“No,” Dawkins said. “And I’m deeply sorry for that, Greta. But I give you my word we will get her back.”
“Sure,” Greta said.
“They grabbed the cat, too,” I said.
“Truelove and his team must have ended up on that subway platform the same way we did: hiding from the Bend Sinister. But then they got lucky: we showed up with just the person they’d been looking for.”
He meant Greta, I knew, but I also knew Greta would think he meant her mom.
The train started moving. It slowly left the station and entered a dark tunnel.
“Is this going to take us to Agatha’s?” I asked.
“No,” Dawkins said. “This really is the end of the line. But the train follows an old turnaround loop and comes out on the opposite track to go uptown. We, however, will be gone before it arrives there.”
We entered a sharp curve, the wheels shrieking against the tracks. And then the train ground to a halt.
The doors opened onto darkness.
“This is our stop,” Dawkins said. “Everybody off.”
CHAPTER 7
CAT-O-GRAPHY
The moment we exited, the doors sighed shut and the train started up again, the shrilling of the wheels on the tracks so loud I had to cover my ears.
We were in some kind of subway station, that much was obvious: there was the same foot-wide band of neon yellow marking the edge of the platform, and that feeling you get in large spaces—an inkling that the darkness around you is big.
Dawkins raised a palm. “Wait here a moment.” He waved at a man in one of the driver’s booths, who waved back.
“A buddy of yours?” I asked.
“Blood Guard,” Dawkins said. “Retired, like Diz. Stops the Six train for us when we need to drop in.” He walked away into the dark. “Wait here while I get the lights.”
We were alone, listening to the racket of the train as it slowly went into a tunnel and vanished. I looked up. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I could see the sky through a window overhead. “Is that a skylight?” I asked.
At that moment, dozens of old-fashioned incandescent bulbs came to life.
“Now this is more like it!” Sammy said, looking around and clapping. “Why aren’t all the stations like this?”
We were in the coolest subway station I’ve ever seen.
Which isn’t saying a whole lot, because thanks to the rats, trash, graffiti, and four or five million people who use them every day, New York City’s subways can get pretty nasty. But this place was nothing like a regular station.
Even Greta came out of her fu
nk long enough to mutter, “Wow.”
The platform curved around like a crescent moon, and over it were a dozen multicolored archways, like beautiful ribs over the tracks. Parts of the walls were covered in tile—the usual white tile you see everywhere on the New York subway, but also bottle green, burnt orange, silvery gray, brick red, and cobalt blues. High above, the light glinted off of glass—the skylights I’d seen in the dark.
It was … grand—that’s the word for it. In some weird way, it reminded me of being in a church.
In the dead center of the platform was a broad staircase. Above it was a fancy tiled archway with the words CITY HALL set in stone.
“Are we going to see the mayor?” Sammy asked. “Is he in the Blood Guard?”
“Absolutely not,” Dawkins said, glancing back. “That staircase just goes to the old closed-up City Hall entrance. Our destination is this way.” We followed the curve of the platform, Dawkins talking and gesturing as he walked. “This was the original City Hall subway station, designed in nineteen-oh-something-or-other by a bunch of guys who usually made cathedrals, and ended up building things like Mount Rushmore. But the city got too big, needed bigger stations, so this little gem was closed down on the final day of 1945. Now it’s used only as a turnaround for the Six train.”
“That’s a bummer,” Sammy said. “A station this awesome should be seen by people.”
Along the wall at the edge of the platform were steps down to a gray metal door. Dawkins tapped a code into a keypad, the door unlocked, and he ushered us inside.
“Everything was shut down except for this control center, where they monitored the entire subway line until the nineteen seventies. And then it, too, became obsolete and was closed.” He slapped some switches, and rows of naked fluorescent bulbs buzzed and lit up.
The room was wide and deep, but somehow still claustrophobic. Maybe because of the super-low ceiling, or maybe because of the thick fur of dust covering everything. The walls were full of yellowed memos and calendars and pictures of people who had probably been dead since the end of the last century, and the floor was filled by rows of gray metal desks. At the front of the room were painted maps of the subway system, with the different lines indicated by big colored bulbs.