The City We Became

by N. K. Jemisin

  “Better New York is the foundation that offered us the fucked-up donation I told you about,” Bronca says. Her anger seems gone now, replaced by confusion and not a little unease. “The one ‘Dr. White’ said she worked for.”

  The familiarity pings then. “It’s also the same foundation that’s claimed ownership of Brooklyn’s brownstone,” Manny says.

  “What?”

  “Brooklyn got an eviction notice yesterday on two buildings that her family has owned for years,” Manny explains. “Her lawyer says there’s some kind of city program that’s meant to reclaim distressed or abandoned properties. They give them to nonprofits that rehabilitate them and sell them off. But the program has gone wrong. They’ve been eminent-domaining properties that aren’t distressed, in some cases over paperwork errors or minor tax bills that aren’t in arrears. Or nothing at all—like in Brooklyn’s case.”

  Bronca raises her eyebrows and whistles a little. “Oh, so that’s what’s wrong with her. Apart from being Brooklyn.”

  Manny nods. Brooklyn is more connected than most, and she’s already gotten some kind of injunction against the eviction notice, putting everything on pause while an investigation takes place. But the situation still has her on edge, understandably. And—“The nonprofit that’s been given ownership of her brownstones is this Better New York thing.”

  Bronca turns to him; she looks as horrified as she is angry, her eyes wide. “My God. She’s been waiting for this.”

  Veneza pulls back from where she’s been peering through the window. “What?”

  “This is a trap. White’s been setting up little traps like this, all over the city. It was inevitable that the city would come to life someday, and she had all this in place here, just in case.”

  “Or, maybe, setting little traps all over the world,” Veneza says grimly. When they turn to her, she sighs. “Squigglebitch is a planner, right? So… why would she only plan here? If most big cities eventually come alive, then she’s probably everywhere, yeah? Maybe all the cool tentacles from Planet X are on that real estate tip.”

  Bronca and Manny look at each other.

  Manny grabs his phone and quickly plugs in the website for the Better New York Foundation, reading it off the poster. Just before he’s about to hit “go,” however, Veneza grabs his hand. “Oh my God, what is wrong with you, do not go right to their site! What if it gives you phone tentacles instead of malware? Look, just see if there’s a news article or something.”

  So Manny instead does this. “Wikipedia says that the foundation has been around since the 1990s,” he says. “Holdings in New York, Chicago, Miami, Havana, Rio, Sydney, Nairobi, Beijing, Istanbul—”

  “They are everywhere,” Veneza says, clearly horrified to find her theory correct.

  Manny backs out of the Wikipedia entry and scans some other news items for a few moments. “It looks like they didn’t do most of this, the property acquisitions and policy proposals I mean, until recently. Like, just the last five years or so. Before that, the foundation existed, but was pretty much dormant.”

  “Well, something woke that shit up.” Veneza crowds in to look at his phone. At once she gasps and pokes a finger at something Manny was about to scroll past. It’s a business news site link reading BETTER NY PARENT COMPANY TMW HONORED AT VC GALA. “Parent company TMW?”

  “I guess there would be an overarching corporation running things, if they’re this widespread,” Manny says, clicking on the link. “Can’t roll into Boston as Better New York.”

  Bronca finally leans in, too, though she makes a little disgruntled sound as she squints at the phone’s text. Manny, trying to be helpful, enlarges it for her. She glares at him, though it’s obviously easier for her to see. “I guess they really did have millions of dollars, huh. Probably chump change, all things cons—”

  She stops. Manny flinches. Veneza’s mouth falls open. They’ve all seen it at once. The parent company’s name.

  TOTAL MULTIVERSAL WAR, LLC.

  There’s no need to go around the block anymore. They’ve figured out what’s really wrong.

  Night has fallen. Behind the Center’s shutters, they’ve gathered in Murrow Hall, beneath the self-portrait of the primary. Being here makes Manny feel better, despite the implicit threat of the primary’s image. He’s fairly certain it’s not comforting to anyone else, but he doesn’t really care what they think as long as they keep it to themselves.

  No one seems inclined to talk about the primary anymore, however. After they’ve explained everything about Better New York to Hong, Paulo, Padmini, and Brooklyn, Hong actually looks alarmed for the first time since Manny’s met him. Brooklyn, meanwhile, is incandescent.

  “They stole my property,” she snarls, getting up and starting to pace; her politician voice is gone entirely, and once again Manny hears MC Free in her anger. “My father bled for them buildings, and these multiversal motherfuckers stole my goddamn house. What do you know about this?” Now she rounds on Hong.

  “It isn’t something we—the other cities, and I—have noticed elsewhere,” he says slowly.

  Padmini stares at him, incredulous. “Have you even been looking?”

  Paulo sighs heavily. There’s a whiff of I told you so in it, but less than there probably should be; Paulo is too clearly exhausted for proper schadenfreude. Hong scowls at him, then shakes his head and says to all of them, “Before a city is born, it’s nothing. Just buildings, people, and possibility. We’ve focused on actualities.”

  “So while you and the other cities have been doing business as usual, reacting, this thing has been planning preemptive strikes everywhere,” Bronca says. She’s pacing on one side of the main gallery. On the other side of it, Brooklyn is nearly her mirror, pacing as well, though faster and with her arms crossed. Bronca pokes at points on an imaginary map. “Little corporate traps in every city, in case it comes to life. Infusions of cash here and there to weaken cities before they’re born—maybe keeping them from being born?” She shakes her head as both Hong and Paulo stiffen. Clearly that possibility hadn’t occurred to them. “Either way, as soon as a city is born, the Enemy has a foothold already.”

  Manny’s leaning on the wall next to the primary’s portrait. Veneza and Padmini have huddled together on one of the viewing benches, using Padmini’s laptop to learn more of their enemy’s corporate structure. It’s branched and extensive—almost tentacular—but they’re tracking it down. Everyone’s let Paulo have the lone chair, rolled in from the reception desk, because he’s looking only a little better, even though he’s appropriated the rest of Veneza’s brigadeiros and is chewing on them now and again, meditatively, as he listens. (Veneza sighs, resigned to the sacrifice.)

  “And the Enemy has probably been waiting particularly for something like this city,” Brooklyn says. She’s still furious as she eyes Hong, but her anger has cooled a little, and Politician Voice is back. Manny suspects she is a terror in city council meetings. “You said most cities are either nothing—completely vulnerable, but of no value. Or else they’re alive, and the Enemy wants them, but they’re too tough to crack. We’re stuck in between. The perfect target, valuable and vulnerable.”

  Paulo nods slowly. “I told the Summit that the Enemy’s behavior had changed. I had no idea it had taken on a human shape, or that it could talk; that’s new. But even without that, it’s been smarter, more subtle, more malevolent. The last two cities to awaken before you, New Orleans and Port-au-Prince, were stillbirths—and neither should have happened. But the elder cities, and more than a few of the younger ones, didn’t believe me. They implied that we young cities of the Americas might simply be awakening prematurely, before we have the strength to survive the process.” His lip curls as he says this.

  Hong shakes his head, restlessly and angrily. The exchange has the feel of an old argument, to Manny. “The process has not changed for centuries. Millennia! Longer than recorded human history! Why would it change now?”

  “I don’t know. May
be something’s happening that we don’t know about. Something beyond this world, some catalyst which has spurred the Enemy to evolve. But we should have started investigating this before now.” Paulo’s hand has become a fist on his knee; his jaw is tight. “I should have done it myself, if you weren’t going to. But I let you talk me into joining your complacency.”

  Hong glares at him for a moment, a muscle flexing in his jaw. “I just wanted you to be safe,” he says finally. Softly. Manny blinks in surprise at the shift in his tone. For a moment, Hong sounded almost human. But is that…?

  Paulo smiles bitterly and spreads his arms. His meaning is clear, although his arms have healed and he’s looking much better than when they first met him. He will not leave New York unscathed.

  “What we are,” he says to Hong, with the same softness, “is not a safe thing. No city is—even we whole ones. We can be sacked and set ablaze, drowned when a new dam is built, bombed into craters. We live for as long as our cities, and we have great power… but you were the one who told me to study history. And I did. I saw that very few cities have died peacefully.” Hong winces. Paulo presses on, relentless. “And I, for one, will not live with my back to the wall, ruled by fear of death. Or of that creature.”

  Hong just glares at him, but. There’s an undercurrent. Manny finds himself exchanging a sidelong glance with Bronca. Is this what I think it is? Bronca raises her eyebrows and purses her lips. It sure as fuck ain’t what we thought it was.

  When Hong does not reply, Paulo lets out a long, steadying sigh. Then he gets to his feet. He seems stronger, but he’s still holding a hand to his lower ribs—where Padmini shoved him earlier. She notices this, Manny sees, but sets her jaw and lifts her chin; not sorry.

  “Blame Hong and me for your misfortune,” Paulo says to them. “Blame the other cities, too, if that comforts you. But unlike all of you, I’ve seen a living city die. I don’t want to see it again.”

  “New Orleans?” Manny guesses. He’s been wondering about Hurricane Katrina.

  Hong is the one to shake his head. “I handled that one. There are often complications with smaller cities, so the Summit was concerned enough to send someone more experienced in that case.” He looks pointedly at Paulo. Then he sobers. “So much went wrong there, however. Its avatar was shot in an attempted robbery. Before the birth; indeed, before I even arrived. Pure bad luck, I thought—but then the hospital mishandled her chart and nearly killed her in surgery, and then they turned her out before she was fully recuperated because she was indigent…” He shakes his head, muttering in Cantonese about barbaric American health care for a moment before resuming English. “I gave her a place to stay, but she had no strength when the city tried to rise, and the Enemy came. The levees broke after she died, and rather than help, your media and incompetent leadership compounded the catastrophe at every turn.” Then his frown deepens. “But if the Enemy was at work there, interfering somehow even before the city chose its champion…” He trails off, visibly troubled.

  Paulo looks bleak. “Port-au-Prince was mine to oversee.”

  Manny winces despite himself. “The earthquake.” The one that killed a quarter of a million people, then thousands more from cholera and mismanagement and foreign interference.

  Paulo nods, but does not elaborate. Then he lifts his chin. “New York is much bigger than Port-au-Prince. It’s surrounded on nearly every side by satellite cities and massive exurbs. This Woman is looking for him, the primary—and, having infested so many citizens with her essence, acting as her eyes and ears, she will eventually find him. If you haven’t awakened him by then…”

  He shakes his head, and none of them speak for a moment. It’s hard to argue with the tight-jawed tragedy in his face.

  “Look,” Brooklyn says. She sighs and leans against a wall. “Without Staten Island… You can’t ask us to sacrifice ourselves if we don’t even know that it’s going to work. If it takes dying to make her safe, I can pay that price. In a heartbeat. But I’m not going to leave my daughter motherless for nothing.”

  “What if you go find Staten Island?” Veneza’s voice is hesitant; when they turn to her, she is sitting against the far wall of the room, knees drawn up and arms wrapped around them, looking tired and unhappy. Manny can guess why. He hasn’t quite sussed out the relationship between Bronca and Veneza—surrogate-mother-and-daughter, superhero-sidekick, or maybe just odd-couple best friends. Love is love, however, and it probably bothers Veneza a lot to know that she’s going to lose Bronca if they see this through. “What if all of you go to her, and convince her to help? It’s the one thing you haven’t tried, but it seems… I don’t know. The obvious next step.”

  It’s true. Yet Manny finds himself disliking the idea, and for a moment he is flustered as to why. He’s never been to Staten Island. What is this reluctance to go there? Is he afraid of an avatar who is clearly violent and might be crazy? That basically applies to all of them—himself more than most. Or is he somehow being affected by Manhattanites’ collective distaste for the littlest, least-loved borough?

  “It’s worth a try,” Brooklyn says, at last. She sounds reluctant, too. All of them look reluctant, which backs up Manny’s theory. But no one objects.

  Hong rubs his eyes. “None of you seem to realize how urgent a matter this is. While we waste time with endless chatter, what’s happening in this city is escalating, rapidly. Each person infected infects others. Each new structure that grows unchecked infects many. It’s clear that the Enemy is building toward some goal, and I don’t know what it is, but you need to stop it. Now, before it gets worse.”

  “We are being urgent,” Padmini snaps. “A few days ago I was doing coursework, today I’m actually standing here and not leaving while strangers try to convince me to kill myself. This is as fast as I get.”

  “If we go to City Hall,” Manny begins. Padmini groans, and he glares at her, annoyed. “If we go now, and can’t wake the primary, we’ll have wasted a lot of time. I think we should split up. Some of us go get Staten Island. The rest see if we can do anything at City Hall—or just keep the primary avatar safe, if not.”

  Padmini blinks. Bronca looks duly impressed. “Agreed. Surprised to hear it from you, but agreed.”

  Manny lets out a slow breath, attempting patience. “I want the primary to live. I haven’t made any secret of that, but I can’t see why you wouldn’t, too, given what’s at stake.”

  Bronca snorts. “You’re the one who’s in love with him, Mannahatta.”

  “Not suicidally,” Manny snaps, although he’s also blushing. “What good does it do me to save his life and then die at his feet? I want… more than that.” Jesus. He’s going to blow some blood vessels. But it’s the truth. “I’m going to fight for more than that.”

  “That’s almost sweet,” Brooklyn says. She’s smiling, albeit with a hint of sadness. “I hope you get what you want. I hope we all do.”

  Bronca lets out a little tired sigh and shakes her head. To Manny, she says, “I take it you’re Team City Hall?”

  “Of course.”

  She eyes Padmini. “You?”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere near City Hall,” Padmini declares.

  “Team Staten Island, then,” Hong drawls. “Since São Paulo should not return to that borough, he’ll obviously have to—”

  He tenses, midsentence. Paulo, too, frowns and turns, his eyes unfocusing. Manny’s trying to figure out what’s the matter—and then it hits all of them, too. A sinking sensation. A strange gravitic dip, which is all the stranger because it does not exist in the real world, where there is light and time and space and they all stand upon a floor. Something in the other place. Close, whatever it is.

  “What is—” Padmini begins. Paulo shakes his head, frowning.

  “Nothing I’ve ever felt,” Hong says.

  Bronca groans softly, bending and grinding a fist into her midriff as if she’s got heartburn. “Urgh. I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

  Mann
y doesn’t feel sickness, but he definitely feels something. An offness, a wrongness. An… imminence. He looks down, his perception caught half in and half out of the real world, and frowns at a whispery rustle at the edges of his hearing. “Why does it sound like there’s something moving underneath us?” And why is there something familiar about the sound?

  Bronca looks at the floor, too—and all of a sudden, her eyes widen. “Because there is. Rising toward us.” She grabs Veneza and hauls the girl to her feet. “Everybody out! Now!”

  “What? Why?” asks Brooklyn. But she’s moving.

  Then they can all feel it. Something is growing underneath the Center—a layer of wrongness between them and the city’s bedrock, interfering with the bond they should feel by simply standing on their home ground.

  Manny curses and grabs Paulo, since he’s nearest. Paulo does not protest, though he stumbles a little, shaky on his feet. Veneza comes up on Paulo’s other side, however, and between the two of them they’re able to keep up as the rest pelt for the door. Bronca swings a little right as they’re hurrying down a corridor so that she can yank on a fire alarm panel. An old-fashioned clanging bell starts to go off. Manny remembers her mentioning that there are artists who sometimes spend the night in the Center, upstairs. But even as the alarm goes off, the building’s lights flicker.

  They begin to hear a sound. A whispering susurrus. A many-layered slither, rising into a growl beneath them. And they’re not running nearly fast enough.

  Manny tries to think, tries not to be afraid—and then for some reason, he finds himself thinking about his one experience of being on a subway. That rush between express stops, hurtling through the dark in the belly of a gleaming metal sheath. That sense of endless, perilous, chaotic speed—