False Future (4 page)

T
he silence that follows seems to leave people dazed. A woman drops the new computer monitor she was carrying. Some people just stand around, looking up at the sky, waiting for more. Then a cab driver honks at someone standing in the street, breaking the spell. Soon many are running again, but they’re not as panicked now, as if the promise they aren’t
all
going to die is comforting.

Someone actually screams, “IS THIS A JOKE?”

A man in a blue pinstriped suit is yelling into a phone until someone plucks it from his ear and darts toward the subway escalator.

“Don’t!” I shout, but he’s already gone.

“We have our work cut out for us,” Rhys whispers.

Through the trees I see more people moving toward us, but at a steady march. Definitely not pedestrians.

I take Rhys’s hand. “We need to get inside.”

He leads me to the north side of the nearest tower, to a posh entrance. The doorman booth is unmanned. We get into one of the elevators, and Rhys uses a key, then jabs the button labeled
53
. While it rises, I count my falling pulse. I can still hear the director’s words in my head, clearer than memory. I don’t buy that they’re not here to harm us, especially since they’ve already fired missiles around the city, but I do believe they’re looking for something. Our first order of business should be to nab one of those flyers.

The elevator door opens onto a spacious foyer. Floor-to-ceiling windows are straight ahead, looking over the park. I run to them. Half of Central Park is on fire, but even as I watch, odd-looking aircraft hovering over the blaze spray foam that extinguishes the fire at once. It’s hard to make out details from this far away, but the jets are clearly not from this world. They’re rectangular, with one vertical engine in each of the four corners. In the streets more of those strange cars are racing around.

From the south, four American fighter jets fly in low over the tops of buildings, their heavy guns firing, bright yellow tracers against the gray sky. Seeing them makes my chest swell with hope. So much for the director’s promise that none would get through. One of True Earth’s jets explodes in a red and black fireball.
Yes!
The other True Earth planes break formation, taking off at high velocities in random directions, like UFOs. The American jets are gone, circling around the northern tip of Manhattan for another pass.

Closer, toward the middle of Central Park, I can see the edges of the Black. It’s a familiar void in the shape of a circle, a hole in the very fabric of our world. I never wanted to see it again, and I thought I would never have to.

On foot, the Rose army pours out of the park and advances south. Groups of them filter through the streets in that same steady march I saw outside.

“Miranda,” a familiar voice says behind me.

When I turn, Noble stands there just as I remember him: tall, blond, and bearded, with a smile that you can’t help but let warm you. I only saw him a day ago, but to him it’s been months.

“Peter’s not back yet?” I knew as soon as I entered the apartment. Somehow I could feel it.

“No, he isn’t.”

There’s a kindness in his eyes that I last saw from Dr. Tycast. Noble holds his arms out and I hug him, briefly.

“I’m sorry,” is all he says, and I accept.

“I understand.”

I finally take a look around the apartment. To my right is an open kitchen stacked with boxes of gear. The breakfast table is littered with guns and ammunition. I see a grapnel gun with a spool of wire, like the one Tobias used to keep me and Grace from falling to our deaths last summer.

“Noble got us some new toys,” Rhys says. “He’s been scrounging while you were gone, borrowing from the military when they let him.”

“These aren’t toys,” I say, running a finger over the barrel of an assault rifle.

“You know what I mean,” he replies. And I do. “You should see the guest bedroom. He turned it into a lab for making memory shots out of stuff you can buy in a bodega.”

I smile my thanks at Noble. Rhys and Peter are capable of taking care of themselves, no doubt. Still, knowing Noble was watching over them, I feel better about my absence.

Sophia walks in from another room and gives me a hug. Her black hair has grown out enough to tie into a short ponytail. She must’ve put on ten pounds of muscle. No doubt she’s been training with Rhys and Noble. Now that she’s not eating out of a gutter, she doesn’t look like a frail little girl anymore.

“It’s so good to see you,” she says, like we’re old friends who just haven’t had a chance to hang out in a while.

I nod. “You too.”

To no one in particular, I say, “I need to go to the roof.”

“This way,” Noble says.

We take the elevator up.

“Peter was meeting with troops the government has hidden in the city when the attack began,” Noble says on the ride. “I haven’t been able to reach him on the comm. It seems all communications are down.”

“I was worried about Rhys out there all alone,” Sophia says to me. “I’m glad he had you to protect him.”

Rhys snorts, then sobers quickly. Sophia gives him a playful shove. He catches her hand and holds it for a second, before letting it drop reluctantly.
Interesting.

“So if Peter was working with the government,” I say, continuing where Noble left off, “where’s the counterstrike? I saw some jets and tanks, but that’s it. Where’s the defense?”

“We’re not going to win with force alone,” Noble says. “Throwing everything we have into one assault will only result in us losing. We need an edge. We need to organize,
then
strike.”

“While people die,” I say.

No one responds.

The doors open at the roof, revealing the Hudson River and New Jersey beyond it. Everything is cold and gray from this height, though the snow has abated to flurries.

The wind catches my hood and flips it down. We walk to the edge of the roof and see exactly what True Earth meant when they said the perimeter has been secured. Several of those four-engine jets hover near the waterline, dropping box-shaped loads. As we watch, the boxes unfold and enormous guns that take up two lanes of the highway are left standing. There seems to be a gun every hundred feet. As soon as the first jets bank away into the city, more swoop in and continue to drop boxes.

Across the river, two military helicopters hover near the shore of New Jersey. The guns down on the highway swivel on their bases until they’re lined up with the helos, then contract suddenly, crackling with blue electricity. Across the river the two helicopters explode in enormous clouds of flame.

“My God,” Noble says.

Farther off, more military jets cut back and forth across the sky, but don’t dare come any closer.

“Look at this!” Rhys yells. He’s at the other end of the roof. We jog over, my heart already in my throat. The view of the park is even more breathtaking from up here. The column of smoke must be a mile across. It curls away toward the east, over Queens. Nearer the ground, twenty of the strange four-engine jets are supporting what appears to be a thick metal disk several hundred feet across. The disk hangs in between them, suspended by cables. We watch as they lower the disk into the middle of the park. It completely covers the Black, which seems impossible because that’s where the disk had to have come through.

As soon as the disk is in place the jets flash with small bursts of light, and I realize they’ve shot at something, but I can’t see what. Almost immediately there are several explosions in the trees, followed by the sound of cracking wood and the swish/scrape of branches as dozens of trees fall. I see glimpses of the wreckage as wind clears the smoke. They were tanks. The tanks we passed on Broadway.

Now I realize it doesn’t matter what else the military has planned. We’re on our own.

“What’s the disk?” Rhys asks.

Before anyone can answer, movement on the roof of our building’s south tower catches my eye. Two people are watching us from behind the railing, their postures rigid. They’re wearing armor like ours, but in dark red, not black. It’s too far away to make out details, but I recognize the auburn hair—my auburn hair—of a Miranda, and the blond locks of a Rhys clone. A moment passes where we just look at one another, completely confused, before they push off the railing together and sprint for the stairs.

On the north tower, Rhys and I do the same, a half second behind. We don’t even talk about it.

“Use the grapnel guns!” Noble shouts after us. “There are two!” He knows the stakes—the Roses are fleeing because they’re going to report our location, if they haven’t already.
How did they know it was us?
But then I have the answer. Had it just been me and Rhys, we might’ve been able to play it off, but not with Noble and Sophia there too.

We take the elevator to the apartment. Rhys grabs the grapnel guns from the breakfast table while I make myself busy throwing a chair through the middle window. Or trying to. The chair bounces off the glass, but I pick it up again and ram it through the window, shaking it around to break up the safety glass while cold air pumps into the room. So much for having a safe house. But it’s not like we have a choice.

The mix of warm and cold air makes my nose run. Rhys tosses me a grapnel gun. My eyes scan the room, looking for the best anchor point. We’ve been inside for fifteen seconds. If their elevator was already at the top, they could be halfway down by now.

“How does this work?” I say as I realize it just has a trigger and a switch marked
SHOOT/RETRACT
.

Rhys shoots his at the floor, and the pointed end buries itself in the concrete under the carpet. I do the same. The recoil is so powerful it almost flies out of my hand.

“Like this,” he says, pinching the cable with both feet. “Squeeze the trigger to slow. But hurry.”

He holds the gun with both hands and dives backward out the window.

“Oh,” I say.

Rhys flies toward the ground, the gun buzzing in his hands as it rapidly unspools. I jump after him headfirst, realizing how insane this is. Have I even been back for an hour yet?

I tuck my chin to my chest and keep my hands firm on the handle; the cord scrapes between my feet as it unspools, a high scream. Below me the pavement grows closer by the second, as the wind freezes the tears in my eyes and whips my hair against my face. I squeeze the trigger and my descent slows; the blood rushes into my head, making it feel like it’s about to burst.
Don’t let go.
Rhys is way ahead of me, almost all the way to the bottom. I keep steady pressure on the trigger as the sounds of the city get louder. People are still jogging on the sidewalks, and traffic is bumper-to-bumper, too many cars abandoned for there to be a proper flow again. Ten feet from the bottom, I let go of the gun and backflip onto my feet, instantly dizzy as the blood rushes out of my head. Rhys steadies me with his hand, and two seconds later we’re sprinting around the front of the building.

“Where will they come out?” I ask breathlessly.

“Probably the south side!”

We skid around the corner onto 58th Street, then pull up short next to another American tank. This one looks abandoned, the hatch on top wide open, its engine idling raucously. But that’s not what has my attention. Straight ahead is one of True Earth’s strange armored vehicles, parked against the curb as if the driver just needed to run into the drugstore or something. It must belong to the other Miranda and Rhys. We made it in time.

I pull Beacon off my back as we approach the exit, and sure enough, twenty seconds later the two Roses in red burst out, heading right for the tank-car. If they make it there first, it’s over, we can’t stop them. We close the distance as fast as we can while staying semi-silent, our footsteps muffled by the snow on the street. I make it to the Miranda first. She turns at my approach, and I grab her arm as it reaches forward to block me. I spin her around, palming the back of her neck, and then slam her forehead into the side door, knocking her unconscious.

Rhys wrestles with his clone behind me.

“A little help…” he puffs.

I grab the clone’s leg as he kicks at my knee, then kick him right back in a place that is not his knee. He howls and goes slack, and Rhys sweeps the clone’s other leg hard enough to spin him in midair, so he cracks his head on the street and lies still.

I kneel next to the Miranda, fingers going to her neck, eyes on the space around us. “Is he dead?”

Rhys checks for a pulse on his clone. “No, not yet.”

People on the street have stopped to watch us, including a fireman wearing full gear.

“Move along!” I scream at them.

The fireman starts to say something, but then one of True Earth’s jets slews around the corner high above, and the downdraft knocks him over. The jet slows to a hover and heat washes down from the engines, the noise a compression on my skin. I stagger under the blast, the snow around me turning to steam. People scatter like roaches, and I’m about to take cover when pieces of paper begin to float down to the street, shooting out from the bottom of the jet. They fill the air, blown around by the wind.