bristle. In fact, it belatedly occurs to him that Paulo is trying to teach him something. And after a moment, as he feels the powerful nearby tug of the primary, he gets it.
So he takes a deep breath and puts his hands on the smooth metal that surrounds the window. He’s only ridden a subway once before, but he makes himself remember that sensation now, as he did at the Bronx Art Center. The power of unseen, relentless engines driven by the mysterious and deadly third rail. The rocking, hectic speed. The driving needs of hundreds of people riding within—to get to important places for important reasons, to have a warm place to sleep, to keep them safe along the way.
Safe, he thinks at the primary, and at the train that surrounds them. Yes. I’m coming to keep you safe. Now.
“Stand clear of the closing doors, please,” he whispers. In the reflection of the glass, behind him, he sees Paulo smile.
The PA system utters a little “ding-dong” tone, and then the train’s doors slide shut. There’s a faint hum from the undercarriage as the train turns on and its engines warm. In the tunnel up ahead, a signal switches from red to green. Then, slowly, the train jolts into motion.
Manny’s half expecting someone to come running onto the platform to try to stop them, but it’s New York; if any of the personnel in the station hear the train start moving, they dismiss it as normal background noise, more familiar than the strange silence of before. So Manny’s 6 glides unmolested into the tunnel—and then, surprisingly quickly, they are at the old City Hall Station platform. Manny turns to the door as the train slows and then stops of its own volition. It knows where it needs to go better than he does.
When the doors slide open, the platform beyond is pitch-dark; the defunct station has no power. Manny can make out glass skylights on the ceiling here and there—the same pattern of Beaux Arts ironwork that he saw in Bronca’s books—and a bit of moonlight coming through them. The light from the train car helps, but even this fades as they walk away from the train and into the bowels of the station. Manny fumbles in his pocket for his phone and turns on its flashlight. It’s barely enough to illuminate more than a foot-wide circle on the stone floor ahead of them; he hasn’t charged it since Inwood and the battery’s getting low. Better than nothing.
When they’re a couple of feet past the subway train’s circles of illumination, the train’s lights suddenly go out with a loud electrical snap. In spite of himself, Manny jumps. But he doesn’t need his eyes to know where to go, not anymore. He can feel it. “This way,” he says.
He feels Paulo latch on to the back of his jacket, letting Manny take the lead. “We must be careful,” Paulo says. “It was necessary that we come here, but the Enemy has seen us.” Manny grimaces, thinking of the tendriled cops. “It will know now that its target is here.”
Manny sets his jaw. “Roger that.”
There’s a set of steps after about twenty paces. Shining the flashlight around, Manny finds that it leads into an arched stairwell. A sign on the arch, etched in green tile, proclaims that they stand within the station of CITY HALL. The ceiling of the arch is covered in marching, elegant white Guastavino tile patterns.
Manny follows the stairs up, barely noticing as Paulo barks his toes on a step and mutters some imprecation in Portuguese. The sound of their footsteps and breathing whispers back at him from the arches of the ceiling. In his mind, the whisper forms words: here here here and at last at last at last. And then he turns the corner.
It is both like, and unlike, his vision. There is the bed of old bundled newspapers. Its occupant lies amid a pool of pale moonlight, still and curled, his breathing so slow that it’s barely visible. Just a too-thin young Black man in worn cheap clothing, sleeping on trash like a homeless person. And yet… he radiates power. Manny shivers as waves of it ripple along his skin, feeding something within him that had begun to starve. Here, at last: the most special person in the whole city.
Without thinking, Manny moves closer and puts out a hand to shake him awake. He needs to touch him. But a few feet from the primary avatar’s