“Yo, Old B,” Veneza says, with sudden urgency. She has peered through one of the murky plastic windows set into the plywood fence; now she steps back and points at it, wordless and wide-eyed. When Manny and Bronca share the view, it’s hard to see at first—but then Manny catches his breath.
All over the brickyard, like the newest of sprouted seedlings, short white tendrils have wriggled up from between or within the bricks. It’s a whole field of them. As they watch, an older woman totters past the far edge of the brickyard, pushing a granny cart laden with laundry and groceries. She stumbles suddenly, frowning as she catches herself on the cart, and bending for a moment to rub at her ankle. When she straightens and resumes walking, there is a white tendril sprouting from the back of her hand. Probably one on the ankle, too, though Manny can’t see it.
Bronca’s breath quickens. She rounds on the coming-soon poster and narrows her eyes. “This didn’t just start when the city came to life,” she growls, scanning the text in a rapid left-right scroll. “I don’t care how many people they’re paying off or mind-controlling, even eldritch abominations can’t get a construction permit overnight in this city. Which means Dr. White has been planning her move for a lot longer than just the past two or three days.”
“How can that be, though?” Manny’s still peering through the window, though now that he knows the white tendrils are on the other side, he’s keeping his feet well back from the bottom edge of the fence. “Did she know the city was about to be born?”
“No idea. Been so caught up in Raul’s political bullshit…” Bronca’s engrossed in the fine print, muttering as she does so. “Didn’t notice what I should’ve noticed. The land here hasn’t been healthy for a hundred years, but this is a new sickness, and I should have noticed. They’re destroying everything that makes New York what it is, replacing it with generic bullshit.” She swats the poster—
—and then she blinks, drawing back a little in surprise. “Better New York Foundation?”
The name sounds familiar. Manny leans in to see. Yes; tucked into the corner of the sign text is a little logo. It’s a stylized letter B and the miniature skyline of New York—well, of Manhattan.
Then his skin prickles as he belatedly realizes that’s not the Manhattan skyline. The longer he looks, the more anomalies he notices. There’s a distinctive-looking structure in the middle of it that at first he thinks is something like Seattle’s Space Needle: a long tapering column topped with something flatter and wider. Then he notices the odd lumps spaced irregularly along the column’s length. Also, the structure at the top doesn’t look like a restaurant or observation booth. It’s more organic. Polyp-like, like some kind of deep-sea organism.
“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.