by S. L. Dunn
Ryan rose from his seat and walked to the rows of seats by the rear of the ballroom. On the broad projection screen behind the stage, the title of the first presentation read: Bovine Lymphocyte Formations. He cringed at the subject and decided to visit the café downstairs and grab a coffee while he waited. Ryan swept down the main stairs, and found the lobby mostly unoccupied. Most guests were now up in the Lutvak Ballroom. After exchanging a pleasantry with the barista, Ryan stirred his steaming cup of French roast and raised his attention to a television screen propped beside the chalkboard menu.
The airplane crash in Albany had taken a secondary priority, and another evidently more important story was now holding precedent. Ryan noticed at once that the news anchors were failing to conceal anxiety behind their practiced on-camera guises. A flashing headline said the United States government was officially advising the country to be on guard. Ryan stared at the television as he stood alongside the few workers and patrons of the café. The broadcast suddenly cut to the president himself, standing behind a podium in the White House press room.
If the reporter’s had looked worrisome, the President of the United States looked outright sick with angst.
“My fellow Americans. I will first affirm that the recent security advisory is not, I will repeat, is not a cause for panic or evacuation of any specific locality. Instead, the Department for Homeland Security and myself have collaborated, and decided to come forward with this advisory merely as a precautionary measure. Our decision to take this action was done only with the intention of having our national infrastructures prepared should a disturbance on American soil occur. At this time I cannot state what the cause for our concern is, but I assure you it will be made clear to the public the moment we have been given clarity on the situation. I do not want this message to be perceived as cause for alarm. Schools and public offices will remain open. Public transportation and airports will remain in service. I have issued assurances to my advisors that the honor and courage of our people will hold them grounded against fear or social unrest. To our citizens, I advise you to stay calm and vigilant. To our police, fire, and emergency responders, I advise you to be ready. You will be updated the moment we believe the cause for this threat to be pacified. God bless America.”
An ominous quiet filled the lobby, where nearly everyone had seen the president’s face above the blinking word live and stopped what they were doing to listen.
“What the hell?” a man on a couch beside Ryan murmured to no one in particular. Nervous talk broke out among the café workers and patrons. What should they do? Should they leave the city? Were they safe? Ryan stared at the television silently. It did not feel right. Terrible possibilities began to play in his mind. Unlikely possibilities. He quickly shook his head and forced out his irrational fears. Surely a terrorist had gone missing or a threat had been made. Still, he did not like it, and assorted worst-case scenarios filled his imagination.
He thought of Kristen, upstairs by herself.
The reporters were beginning to speculate upon a connection between the Albany plane crash and the president’s announcement as Ryan reluctantly turned away and began to trudge back up to the convention. He was halfway up the main stairs when he heard a cry from the lobby. Turning, he saw people pushing against each other to get in front of the television, several of the women with hands raised over their mouths in horror. Ryan stared at their frightened faces, uncertain what could possibly have captivated them so completely. Slowly, nervously, he put one foot in front of the other and descended back down the wide stairs.
Ryan froze in place when he saw the television.
The words flashing on the screen could not be possible. An icy dread filled his being.
BREAKING NEWS: CHICAGO UNDER ATTACK
Above the blinking headline, a reporter was standing in the middle of a horrible scene. Men and women were running hysterically in every direction, and the scene was obscured by dust in the air. The camera was faltering, and moving about like a home video. Beneath the news reporter, the street shook as though an earthquake was ripping through the scene, indiscriminate roars and crashes nearly drowning out all other sound. The reporter was pressing one hand against her earpiece and with the other holding the microphone against her mouth, screaming into it as loudly as she could, though her voice could barely be heard.
“Chicago is under attack! The entire downtown area has turned into some sort of . . . of warzone!” the reporter screamed, the microphone pushed against her lips. She was stumbling, and the camera could barely stay on her. “We have no idea what is attacking the city, but it feels like . . . like . . . bombs are going off in the buildings! We don’t”— a terrible booming sound overwhelmed her voice. Whatever it was caused her to crash against a local news van as she screamed— “WAR.”
“What is happening?” Ryan asked with an unusually hollow and croaky voice.
A man in a polo shook his head slowly, his face turning pale. “The . . . the buildings are collapsing?” the man said, more as a question than a statement.
Ryan said nothing; he wanted to swallow heavily but his mouth and throat were dry. He took a step closer to the large television and squinted at the frantic broadcast. The shattering carnage on the screen was like nothing he had ever witnessed. He began to breath heavily, uncertain of how to act. Hundreds of thousands—maybe even millions—of people were being killed. Placing a clammy palm against his forehead, he had to steady himself as he embraced the terror.
“It doesn’t seem like missiles,” the man in the polo said.
“No,” Ryan muttered, his eyes unblinking and the color leaving his own face. “They don’t know?” Ryan repeated and stepped directly in front of the television, intensely scanning the chaotic camerawork of the Chicago streets. A number of people loudly objected from behind him, but Ryan was too distracted to hear.
The atrium of the broad skyscraper behind the shouting news reporter suddenly exploded outward, instantly engulfing her and the cameraman in a grayish cloud of debris and mangled steel. CNN’s broadcast went ominously blank, before cutting back to the studio. The two newscasters behind the desk each seemed momentarily unable to speak despite the teleprompter. They simply stared at the camera at a loss for words.
Ryan felt nausea rise in his own stomach.
“I—we . . . remain uncertain what is happening in Chicago,” one of the newscasters stammered in a detached tone. “We received some . . . startling . . . footage from a freelance cameraman in Chicago. What it depicts . . . what it depicts speaks for itself. We have no explanation . . . as to what it is. I must warn you, what you are about to see is very alarming.”
The broadcast cut to an entirely normal-looking Chicago on an ordinary-looking drizzly day. The digital time signature on the recording evinced that the video had been taken just minutes ago. A video camera was recording the narrow vista between two rows of gigantic skyscrapers drenched with whipping rain. Two men were discussing the best angle for their shot, their voices rising over gusts of wind.
“Jake, we need to get across the street. In this diffuse lighting, we should focus on the closest buildings. The far ones aren’t going to be clear anyway ’cause of the fog.”
“But what about if we took the shot from that build—” the other man stopped and hissed, “What the hell is that?”
There was a fumbling noise, and the camera jerked to the side. It came to rest overlooking several skyscrapers across the street. Above and between the dark forms of the buildings, a stormy cloud cover loomed.
“What in holy hell?” the first man exclaimed.
There was an odd dark spot in the sky just over the spire of one of the skyscrapers. The camera focus shifted, going from blurry and rushing past clear to blurry again. It then readjusted slowly, and with it so too did the dark object over the building. Against the silhouette of murky clouds, an unmistakable man was floating in the sky.
Ryan’s hands began to tremble uncontrollably.
The
man, the freakishly huge man, hovering high in the storm turned in the air and darted through the sky, piercing straight into the side of one of the skyscrapers. A moment passed, then the skyscraper let out a great shiver, the roof collapsed inward, and the whole building fell out of the camera’s shot.
The several people watching the broadcast around Ryan gasped, unable to understand.
Ryan blinked at the image several times, his whole body beginning to shake uncontrollably. “Oh no. Oh no,” he muttered as he placed his trembling fingers against his brow. “Oh no.”
Stumbling to the side, Ryan crashed onto a suede chair, his legs barely able to keep him upright. “Not here. Oh, please not here. Don’t do this to me.”
The man in the polo and one of the café workers stared at him, puzzled by his reaction. He looked up the stairway to the doors of the Lutvak ballroom, to where Kristen was. How could he leave her in this place? Beautiful, radiant Kristen left to fend for herself against the horrors of his past. He could not bear to think of it. She could not meet the truths he knew. The thought of it made him want to die with pain. On the television, another skyscraper crumbled to ruin. As it fell, he made up his mind at once. Ryan knew he would never forgive himself for abandoning her.
“How did they find us?” Ryan murmured. He thought of his father. He thought of his teacher. They were the only two who knew about this place. “How did they possibly find us?”
One of the baristas looked taken aback. “What on earth do you mean?”
“Get out of the city!” Ryan suddenly yelled as loudly as he could. “Get out, all of you. Don’t think—just run! Tell the people in the convention to get out! They’re going to kill everyone.”
Ryan sprinted out of the Marriot Marquis and crashed out onto the street. People were everywhere, going about business as usual. Ryan turned again and again on the sidewalk, looking up to the skyscrapers, utterly unsure how to act. His stomach lurched, the familiarity of the city he loved and the people he knew churning up piping emotion.
Around him the news of downtown Chicago’s destruction was visibly spreading through the crowds of Times Square like an outbreak of plague. He darted his attention around the congested intersections with growing panic. Here and there people were beginning to shout into cell phones. New York City was on a countdown to bedlam. The image of a giant man crashing into the Chicago skyscraper was seared into his mind as it undoubtedly was in everyone’s, though he alone knew the depths of the malice. Ryan turned in agony, his breath unsteady as he paced back and forth on the sidewalk. He looked upward, but saw only brilliant blue. The afternoon weather was a stark contrast to the grimness of Chicago. There were no dark forms above the buildings.
Ryan took off in a dead sprint up Seventh Avenue. He ran straight out into the street, tearing through the lanes of beeping traffic. His eyes were locked skyward as he raced up the avenue. Just as he ran past the biggest digital billboard screen of Times Square, he watched it transition from a bright red Coca Cola can pouring into an ice-filled glass to the gloomy Chicago news broadcast.
Evacuate. The historic and unparalleled martial order would be issued to New York within minutes, he was sure of it. With it would come an anarchy unrivaled in history. Ryan weaved between honking taxis and shouting drivers, his gaze locked skyward as he sprinted toward his dorm, toward his locked trunk. In his peripheral vision, a number people were running toward the nearest subway stations. Others were hurrying along the adjacent streets, perhaps toward the eastside bridges leading off Manhattan. The sound of beeping cars grew louder—in some way more frenzied—as radio stations were no doubt beginning to issue Emergency Alert System messages. The growing panic surrounding the people he had come to love was as palpable as the onset of a biblical storm.
If this day was to be their day of reckoning, of apocalypse, then it would also be the day the human race would embrace him in all of his immeasurable power. Deep down he had been waiting for this moment his entire life, and he was ready to meet his destiny and repay it for the things he had seen.
With an iron determination, he cast aside his masquerade and exploded from the sidewalk of Seventh Avenue.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Vengelis
“S-stay away from me,” Madison said as she painfully inched and crawled away from Vengelis on scraped elbows.
Shattered glass from the nearby pizza shop’s front window was scattered around her on the sidewalk, and in the middle of the intersection the ruins of the eighteen-wheeler smoldered and smoked. Vengelis regarded her pitiable retreat with a look of silent disapproval, as if her display of pain was shameful and inappropriate.
“You made a promise. Let’s get moving,” Vengelis said without a trace of warmth.
Madison seemed not to hear him. She pulled a thin glass shard out of her thumb and placed her hands on her forehead. Blinking dizzily, she tried to piece together what had just transpired. Vengelis’s eyes widened with disbelief as he saw tiny shards of glass had hewn narrow cuts on her palms, and her elbows were bleeding where they had grazed the cement of the sidewalk. He was taken aback at how delicate she was; the human form was impossibly fragile. How could they even survive in vessels so frail and anemic?
People collected cautiously around the wreckage, and lines of beeping traffic began to spread up and down the avenue. It looked as though the destroyed semi had driven full force into the side of a mountain. The rear of the truck’s mass had accordioned on top of itself from the frontal impact. It had been loaded with wooden pylons of soda, and hundreds of cans sputtered and rolled across the street in a growing puddle of fizzing drinks.
“W-what are you?” Madison said.
Vengelis took a step closer and held out his hand to help her up, changing his expression from a look of disdain to a mask of neutrality. On some level he recognized that he had just shattered everything she knew to be real. Surely some of his race’s strongest had similar reactions when they first witnessed the shock and awe of the Felix.
“I am a Primus,” he said simply. “Now get up.”
“I . . . don’t . . . understand.” Madison looked back and forth from the fizzling wreckage to Vengelis.
He continued to hold his hand out to her. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. But now you are breaking your promises. Get up.”
“P-please, leave me alone.” Madison winced from a pain in her hip as she tried to rise from the sidewalk, and fell back into the shattered glass.
“You asked me to stop that truck. I’m sorry you underestimated my capabilities, but a deal is a deal, and now you need to help me.”
“Help you? Help you? How could you need my help?”
“You will lead me the Marriott Marquis, right now. It was the second part of our agreement. Stand up.”
“Are you going to kill me?” Madison asked with growing sobriety.
Vengelis kneeled down to her, and she recoiled nervously away from him. He smiled sympathetically at her reaction. “Right now, at this very moment, you are the safest a human has ever been. Now come. Get up.”
Madison looked up at his outstretched hand. People around them cowered back, all of them too alarmed to speak to the familiar and yet terrifying man before them. Sirens screamed from close by, and an ambulance appeared through the parting traffic at the other end of the intersection. Two paramedics in blue uniforms hopped out of the doors and gaped at the extraordinary accident.
“Come on,” Vengelis said. “Authorities are on their way and I don’t want things to escalate here. That display was not . . . subtle.”
Madison looked up at him, her mouth frozen in an expression of turmoil. Then she suddenly snapped her mouth shut and her eyes came into focus as if she was awaking from a daydream; she took a deep breath, and reached up to take his hand. Vengelis lifted her into a standing position as if she were a child that weighed nothing at all.
Madison stared at him with trepidation. Her hair was awry, her arms were dotted with scrapes, and her white pant
s were marked from the ground. “Do you promise you won’t hurt me?”
“As long as you do as I say, I promise no harm will come to you. That is, assuming you hold true to your promise. Now, where is the Marriott Marquis?”
Madison looked up and down the avenue with feeble rotations of her head. Her face was as gray as the sidewalk, and she was clearly still in shock. Her hands shook as she brushed herself off with clumsy motions. “It’s . . . it’s that way. Midtown.” Madison pointed down the avenue toward the tallest buildings many blocks to the south.
“Come on, then,” he said.
“No.” Madison flinched as she leaned tenderly on her left leg. “No way. Just leave me alone . . . please. I don’t want anything to do with this, or you.”
A police cruiser barreled into the intersection followed by a monstrous fire truck, both with lights flashing and sirens blasting. The crowd of onlookers grew with each passing second as people exited the surrounding buildings to get a glimpse of the grisly spectacle.
“I can’t ensure your safety if you aren’t with me. If you want to guarantee your well-being, you will come along with me. Otherwise, you will be another face in this crowd to me and my men.”
Madison shifted woozily. Vengelis thought she might pass out, but she did not. He turned aside and peered over the heads of the crowd in the direction she had pointed, thinking he could lift off the sidewalk and fly in that direction. But there were countless buildings, and he did not know which one was the Marriott Marquis. It would be too much of a risk not to bring a local to show him the way and help him through any exigencies that might arise.
“What are you?” Madison turned back breathlessly to the smoking wreckage as they walked. “What . . . the hell. . . are you? That isn’t possible, that isn’t remotely possible.”
“That was nothing.” Vengelis shook his head with a note of contempt. “A small glimpse at most.”
As they hurried down the busy sidewalk, he noticed Madison’s strength and cognition began to return. Soon she was walking normally. After a few blocks, she abruptly pulled away from his grasp and stood her ground. “I need some answers. Right now.”