Manny, who has noticed the faint aura limning the windows and visible exterior of the cab, glances at Paulo, who nods. “Well, you said your cab liked me,” Manny says. “Thanks for giving us a ride, by the way.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Madison says. She sounds amused rather than annoyed. “Only reason I’m headed this way is because the mayor wants to do some kind of old New York–new New York photo shoot tomorrow. You’re lucky as hell, dude.”
Paulo nods again. Cities make their own luck, apparently.
Getting into the old City Hall Station is almost too easy once Madison has dropped them off at the vaulted, colonnaded entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall subway stop. There are cops clustered all around it, and Manny sets his jaw, ready for unpleasantness as he and Paulo approach; three of the cops have visible white tendrils jutting from necks or shoulders.
Two of the ones who don’t, however, move to intercept the tendriled ones when they make noises at Manny about not letting anyone into the station due to an apparent bomb threat. “Let ’em through,” says a woman who seems to outrank all the rest. She’s in plain clothes, and seems to be barely paying attention to anything, instead flipping through a sheaf of papers on a clipboard. “They’re here to fix things.”
“Uh, these guys don’t look like Con Ed engineers,” says one of the intercepting cops. The tendril that juts from his left cheekbone is thick as an electrical cable.
The plainclothes woman fixes him with a glare. “There some reason why I have to tell you things twice, Martenberg?”
“No, I just—”
“Did I ask for your opinion, Martenberg?” He protests again, and she tells him off again, eventually lowering the clipboard and squaring off to establish her dominance. While the two cops’ companions watch the combatants, Manny and Paulo walk into the station unmolested.
“Want to tell me what just happened there?” Manny asks as they walk. “Because we really don’t look like Con Ed.”
“Those who would help protect the city see what they need to see.”
Well, alrighty then.
The 6 trains aren’t running, shut down due to police investigation. They pass a few more cops, MTA engineers, some uniformed people who might be Homeland Security, and some actual Con Ed engineers, but no one else stops them, or even seems to see them. These people thin out as Manny and Paulo descend to the train platform, but the tunnels amplify their laughter and jokes. It’s clear they’re not worried about any bomb. Manny can’t see any signs of construction. Someone in authority has simply shut the station down for no clear reason.
On the platform, an empty train sits with doors open and no conductor inside. “Do we just wait?” Manny says, stepping into the lead car. Paulo sits down opposite the conductor’s booth, but Manny can hear that there’s no one in it. He stands at the train’s forward window, peering into the dark that awaits down a curving, downward-angled tunnel corridor.
“If you wait, will it go?” Paulo asks. It seems a sincere and not sardonic question, so Manny doesn’t 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 shoulder, Manny’s hand halts in the air. Something resists the gesture, as if his hand pushes against a sponge that he can’t see or feel. He tries again, harder, and makes a frustrated sound when, after a little give, the unseen resistance goes as hard as concrete. He cannot touch the primary.