“Sexual is not better!” says Padmini. She sounds horrified as she glares around at them.
“I don’t know how the ‘devour’ part works,” Hong admits. “But I told you: with London there were many, and then there was one. She was traumatized. For many years she would not speak at all. Now, she is… different, even for one of us. When she’ll talk about the issue at all, she claims that she doesn’t remember what happened.” He sighs and folds his arms. “It clearly isn’t anything good.”
Manny wants to attack someone. Anyone. The urge to do violence runs under his skin like a current—but violence toward whom? He will not hurt the primary avatar. Lashing out at anyone else is pointless, because everyone in the room is either the messenger or another passenger on this ride to surreality. When he takes a deep breath to try to calm himself, it actually works, and has the feel of old habit. Yes. He is not some monster, lashing out wildly. Violence is a tool to be controlled and directed, and used only for worthy purpose. That is the man he has chosen to be.
He focuses on Paulo, not to attack, but to understand. “There is no way,” he says, “that you could have soft-pedaled this to us.”
Paulo still doesn’t look good, Manny thinks, assessing him clinically. Here in Bronca’s office, he’s standing on his own near the microfridge, but his posture is decidedly off from true vertical. There are dark circles under his eyes. Still, he draws himself up with careful dignity. “I would have begun by explaining the stakes,” he says. “You’re all selfish. Anyone would be—but one cannot be, and be what we are. Thousands or millions of lives depend on a city’s avatar. The Enemy is within the gates; there’s no more time. If you have located the primary, then you must go to him.” He takes a deep breath. “And then do whatever is necessary.”
Padmini is the one who explodes. Manny wasn’t expecting that. She seems like a nice girl. But she pushes away from the wall and lunges at Paulo, shoving him into the microfridge. “You want to let that—thing—kill us? Eat us? You haven’t even been here when we needed you, and you just show up and tell us to die? How dare you! How dare you!”
Manny reacts without thinking, catching her by the shoulders before she can do more. He does this for two reasons: first because Paulo grimaced when she shoved him, as though he has injuries greater than what they’ve realized—or as if her shove hurt much more than it should have. Only New York can injure São Paulo so badly, here within the city. Unreliable ally or not, Manny suspects they still need Paulo.
The other reason that Manny reacts is more visceral. It’s because Padmini called the primary that thing. “Stop it,” he snaps at her. He knows he shouldn’t. She’s upset for good reason. But he cannot bear her rejection of the primary—of New York. They are all New York. He feels it, too, in the parts of himself that did not exist before three days ago: the same thing that any of them can do to a foreign city, they can do to each other. But New York cannot war with itself without dire consequences, any more than a man can stab himself in the guts and still be fine.
Padmini wrenches away from him, her hands immediately turning to fists. Manny braces himself for a fight, both as a man and as an island of fragile, built-by-the-lowest-bidder skyscrapers. Fortunately, she only shouts. “Be quiet! I don’t want to hear anything more from you! You’re crazy. You probably want to be eaten by him. Why would I want to be part of you? Oh—” And she turns away, hands in the air, making a sound like a growl.
“I don’t want to die, either,” he replies, then pushes on before he has time to think about Padmini’s accusation, that he wants to be devoured. “And we don’t know that we will! Paulo said it himself: something different has been happening here, beyond the usual process.” He lifts his gaze to glare at the foreign cities. Paulo is trying not to be conspicuous about leaning on the microfridge to keep from falling over. Hong merely regards Manny impassively. “I know tap dancing when I hear it. Everything from the way we’ve awakened to the way the Enemy is acting—time after time, you’ve both been surprised by what’s happened in this city. You’re nearly as in the dark here as we are!”
“Maybe so,” Hong agrees readily. He looks bored. No wonder Paulo hates him. “It’s true that every city birth is different. Would you rather I not have mentioned that in every precedent we know of, the sub-avatars have vanished?”
“No. We needed to know that,” Brooklyn says. Alone of all of them, she hasn’t gotten to her feet. She still sits in the largest of Bronca’s mismatched chairs, her legs primly crossed and hands folded in her lap. Maybe only Manny sees how pale her knuckles have gone.
Hong regards her for a moment, then inclines his head to her in a “just so” nod.
Padmini turns away to begin pacing in the narrow space on that side of Bronca’s office, muttering to herself. She’s meandering between Tamil and a few creative English imprecations. Manny tries to ignore her muttering, to leave her that much privacy—but then she says, “Kan ketta piragu surya namashkaaram,” which translates to something like Why look at the sun after you’ve already been blinded or Why bother doing morning yoga if you got up late, and he cannot stop himself from reacting.
“None of us are enemies to each other,” Manny says. Padmini stops and stares at him. “We’ve got one enemy—the one who’s already attacked each and every one of us, sometimes more than once. The primary hasn’t done anything to harm us. He’s on our side. He has no reason to want to kill us—”
“You don’t know that,” Bronca says, with a sigh.
“It doesn’t matter if he wants to kill us or not, new guy,” Brooklyn says. Her voice has hardened. She folds her hands, regarding Manny over them. She’s still showing the toll of both her battle against the creatures that attacked her family, and the shock of learning that she’s lost her home. “Lots of bad things that happen ain’t personal. This primary could love us all like brothers and sisters, but in the end he’s going to do what he’s got to do. So would we in his position. Millions of lives in exchange for four?” She shrugs. It looks nonchalant but isn’t. “That ain’t even a debate.”
Manny nods at her, grateful for the support. She regards him back, her gaze frank and cool. By this he knows that she did not say it for him.
Hong then nods, too. “Well. Now you know. Let’s go, then.”
They all turn to stare at him. Even Manny shakes his head in pure incredulity at the man’s complete lack of tact. “Too soon, man,” says Veneza. God knows what she thinks of all of this, but it’s clear that she gets the dynamics. “Way too fucking soon.”
“I don’t care if it is or not,” Hong says, without heat. “All of you deserve to know what will happen, but Paulo is correct in that there’s no more room for sentimentality or individualism or cowardice. Just on the ride from JFK, I saw blankets of white tentacles covering entire blocks. They are forming structures; did you notice that?”
“Structures?” Bronca frowns. “Like what?”
“Like nothing I have seen that can be compared. On Staten Island, I saw…” For the first time, he hesitates and seems disconcerted. Then he shakes his head, and it’s gone. “A tower, of sorts. I have no idea what it’s for. But if our enemy has built it, there can be no good reason for that.”