Bottom line: it is very much not any space within the Center that Bronca has seen. And Bronca’s got the sudden sense that once again, she’s catching a glimpse of what was really happening in Stall Woman’s stall that day.
She shouldn’t look. The lexicon warns… but she cannot tear her eyes away from that tiny, flat, featureless spot of otherness.
And as Bronca keeps staring, something small slips through this opening. It’s whip-fast—so fast that her eyes cannot follow it. It’s on the floor in front of Bronca in an instant, and it’s already bigger, elephantine. There is another waver, and for an instant Bronca yelps as suddenly there is a wall of pebbled, grainy whiteness in front of her, immense… then it’s human-sized. Just a lump of white clay, uncurling and taking shape. A person, straightening and turning to Bronca—and Bronca catches her breath and stumbles back as she realizes the person has no face.
There is another pixel-flicker, and the person resolves suddenly, becoming a smiling woman in white.
She is not the same woman Bronca met that morning. Bronca has looked up the sponsors of the Better New York Foundation by this point, and spotted “Dr. White” in a photograph; her family name is actually Akhelios, not White. From a big wealthy Greek shipping clan known for its right-wing political contributions. This is not Dr. Akhelios, who was brown-haired and ordinary in the photo. The person who has materialized before Bronca is definitely not ordinary. She is tall as she draws herself up and adopts an oddly elegant pose: something like ballet third position, with her hands held before her upturned, gracefully and unnaturally poised. Her hair is the same tawny white as that of the woman Bronca met before, but there the resemblance ends. The Woman in White has the kind of angular, high-boned face that Bronca has only ever seen before on high-fashion models, and other women deemed beautiful for their ability to act as living props. This one is even more modelly than most, however—in a way that pushes her past beautiful and into uncanny valley territory. Her cheekbones are just a little too defined, her lips too perfectly Cupid’s bow, her eyes just a touch too far apart. The smile that she wears seems fixed, painted on… but that, at least, is familiar. Somehow, even though this is a completely different woman, Bronca knows she’s finally met the real Dr. White.
There is a call from the Murrow Hall entrance, and Bronca turns to see that her old friends the Alt Artistes have clustered there, blocking her exit. It’s not all of them—just Manbun, Holliday, and Fifteen, the lattermost wearing some kind of hilariously silly ninja getup that looks more like oversized black satin pajamas—but that’s still three more people than Bronca can easily fight, if it comes to that. In the dim night-lighting they are grinning; she sees the gleam of their teeth. They think she’s in trouble.
The fact that they’re right makes her maybe more belligerent than she strictly needs to be as she turns back to White. “Trouble at home?” she asks, remembering the groveling, resentful tone that she heard in the stairwell.
White does something shruglike. It’s too sinuous a movement to just be a shrug—too much head, not enough shoulder. “We all have a board, of sorts, to answer to.”
Bronca laughs a little, surprised to feel sympathy. “I think I’ll take my board instead. Do you even have a PhD? What’s it in, Weird Shit?”
White laughs. Her mouth opens very wide as she does so, showing nearly all her teeth. “By the standards of my people, I’m barely more than an infant, hopelessly unteachable. By yours, I am ancient and unfathomable. I have knowledge of mysteries you haven’t even begun to wonder about. It’s very nice to meet you in person, though, The Bronx.”
“Bronca.” She knows why White is calling her that, but goddamn it, her name is her name.
White considers, then shrugs. “Such meaningless things, names. You cling to them in this world, where all is chaos and separation and differentiation—and I understand.” Her hands move, extend, implore; her expression turns tragic. “I have lived in this world for countless human lifetimes! I’ve seen how your kind—especially your kind of your kind, must fight simply to be seen as the same kind, and not be consumed into the mass. Which is why I regret more than ever what must be done.”
As Bronca puzzles over this, White splays the fingers on her upraised hands. All at once, the white walls of Murrow Hall, stripped of Unknown’s vibrant paintings and pathetic in their barrenness, blossom with colors and slashes of paint. New murals suddenly unspool over the walls as if with a colossal paint roller, though the hand of their painter remains unseen. But Bronca’s stomach clenches as she recognizes the style of this work—and sees faceless, paint-strewn figures resolve out of the spreading swirl of colors. They stand around the walls, a watching crowd, a few seated or kneeling while others climb, elbows and knees a-jut, over the walls themselves. One of these last, a creature that is more radial than symmetrical with five leglike limbs, tilts its head sharply toward her—
Bronca jerks her gaze away. The mural is on every wall, though, and spreading over the ceiling in her peripheral vision. Her heart’s pounding. The mural scares her far more than Manbun and his buddies ever will.
“I don’t understand,” says the Woman in White. Her head tilts suddenly, sharply, in a parody of puzzlement. There’s no kindness in her voice anymore. “Wasn’t it you who tried to barge into my toilet stall? Didn’t you want to come in and see me? And I left the door open for you, too, oh yes I did, but then you kicked me, and the door shut. Rude.” Her smile vanishes abruptly, replaced by annoyance. Then she sighs. “But I haven’t given up on you, The Bronx. My offer—from the toilet?—still stands. If you work with me, I’ll help you. There’s no need for you and your favorite individuals to die in the conflagration to come, or at least not for some time as you reckon it. I can see to it that you, The Bronx, are the last to be enfolded. All I need you to do is find him for me.”
And she gestures down at the pile of Unknown’s photographed art. On top is Bronca’s favorite, still beautiful despite its desecration.
Looking at this, at the clean lines that are still visible despite the marker and the distancing secondhandness of photography, steadies Bronca through her fear. She remembers the day she found the real image. It was a mural that someone had painted onto the wall of a crumbling low-rise in the South Bronx, near one of the 4 train stations. Another brickyard. Bronca can’t seem to stay out of them. But then, amid decay and despair, she’d seen this. The self-portrait of a young man who’d drawn it without hands, without paint, from miles away. The city painted it for him; that was why the eye for that painting felt different. And now the avatar of New York is somewhere underneath the city, she knows instinctively; somewhere in the subway tunnels. He’s sleeping in the image, and at last Bronca understands what this means. Something has gone wrong. The avatar’s sleep is unnatural, enchanted, a desperate last-ditch measure to conserve strength while the city labors through an unexpected crisis. The reason the city is so dangerous, so infested with the Woman in White and her ilk, is because all of its defenses are at their lowest ebb, and faltering.
Why? Why is the city’s avatar sleeping?
It comes to her almost painfully fast, as if the city has just been waiting for Bronca to ask this question. Because New York is too much for one person to embody. Because its avatar embodied it anyway when the city needed him—and he fought, and won, because otherwise the city wouldn’t be here—but doing this, using that much power, nearly destroyed him. Now he waits for Bronca and the others, the ones who are meant to help him. They must heal him. He can’t wake up without their help.