It was late. We"d decided to sleep in Central Park again. It was huge, dark, and full of trees.
"It"s only about eighteen blocks to walk," I said. But Angel was starting to fade too-she wasn"t back to a hundred percent by a long shot. "Let"s see how much it would cost."
Five steps down the subway entrance, I was already tense. Nudge, Angel, and the Gasman were too tired to hate being in an enclosed s.p.a.ce, but Fang, Iggy, and I were twitching.
The fare was two dollars a person, except kids under forty-four inches, who were free. I looked at Angel. Even though she was only six, she was already over four feet tall. So that was twelve dollars.
Except the fare booth was empty. So we"d have to use the automatic fare machine. That is, if we were going to be troubled about a small thing like hopping over the turnstile when no one was looking.
Once we were inside, ten minutes went by with no train. Ten loooong minutes with me feeling like I was about to start screaming and climbing the walls. If we"d been followed, if Erasers came . . .
I saw Iggy turn his head, listening to something from inside the dark tunnel.
"What?" I asked.
"People," he answered. "In there."
"Workers?"
"I don"t think so."
I peered into the blackness. Now that I concentrated, I could hear voices too. And way down the line, I saw what looked like the flickering of a fire-its reflected glow from around a bend in the tunnel.
I made a snap decision, which always makes the flock feel so safe and comfortable.
"Let"s go," I said, and I jumped off the platform and onto the tracks leading into the darkness.
83.
"What does that mean?" the Gasman asked, pointing at a small metal plaque that said Stay off the third rail!
"It means the third rail has seven hundred volts of direct current running through it," Fang said. "Touch it and you"re human popcorn."
"Okay," I said. "Good tip. Everyone stay off the third rail."
Then I shot Fang a look that said, Thank you for that lovely image. He almost grinned at me.
Iggy felt the train first. "Everyone off the rails," he said, standing still until I took his arm. We all stepped over to a yucky, disgusting wall and pressed ourselves as flat against it as possible.
Thirty seconds later, a train rushed past so fast that its slipstream made us sway toward it. I kept my knee shoved against Angel so she wouldn"t be pulled off her feet.
"Well, that was fairly nerve-racking," I said as we gingerly peeled ourselves off the wall.
"Who"s there?" The voice was querulous, aggressive, and rough, as if its owner had spent the last fifty years smoking cigarettes. Maybe he had.
We walked forward, on the alert, wings starting to unfold a tiny bit in case we suddenly needed to go airborne.
"n.o.body," I called convincingly as we turned the bend of the tunnel.
"Whoa," the Gasman breathed.
Before us was a city. A small, ragged city in Manhattan"s bas.e.m.e.nt. Groups of people clotted a large concrete cavern. The ceiling was three stories above us and dripped with paint stalact.i.tes and humid condensation.
Several unwashed faces looked toward us, and someone said, "Not cops. Kids. Kids."
They turned away, uninterested, except for one woman who seemed to be wearing about five layers of clothing. "You got food?" she barked.
Silently, Nudge pulled a napkin-wrapped knish out of her pocket and handed it over. The woman sniffed it, looked at it, then turned her back to us and started eating.
Here and there the cavern was dotted with fifty-gallon oil drums in which people had made fires. It was a warm spring night, but the fires provided the only light and helped get rid of the dank chill that was creeping up my legs.
It was a whole new world, made up of homeless people, people who didn"t fit in anywhere, runaways . . . We saw a handful of kids who looked around our age.
I realized that my head was aching. It had been growing worse all evening, and now I just wanted to go to sleep.
"Over there," said the knish woman, pointing. We looked and saw a narrow concrete ledge built into a wall. It was hundreds of feet long, and people were sleeping on it, sitting on it, marking off their territory with old blankets or cardboard boxes. The woman had pointed out a thirty-foot-long section that seemed unoccupied.
I looked at Fang, and he shrugged. It wasn"t as nice as the park, but it was warm, dry, and seemed somewhat safe. We scrambled up the ledge, with me boosting Angel. Keeping our backs to everyone, we stacked our fists and tapped twice. Almost instantly, Nudge lay down, pillowing her head on her hands.
Fang and I sat with our backs against the wall. I dropped my head into my hands and started rubbing my temples.
"You okay?" Fang asked.
"Yeah," I muttered. "I"ll be better tomorrow."
"Go to sleep," said Fang. "I"ll take the first watch."
I gave him a grateful smile, and soon I was out, out, out-with no idea how we would ever know it was morning.
84.
The brain explosion came again while I was sleeping.
One moment I was lost in a dream in which I was strolling lazily through a field of yellow flowers, like a dopey shampoo commercial, and the next I had jackknifed into a sitting position, holding my head and feeling like this was it: Death had finally come for me, and it wasn"t taking no for an answer.
My breaths were tight hisses. Jagged shards of pain ripped through my skull, and I heard myself whimper. Please let it be fast, Please let it be fast, I begged G.o.d. Please just end it, end it, end it now. Please, please, please. I begged G.o.d. Please just end it, end it, end it now. Please, please, please.
"Max?" Fang"s low voice, right by my ear, seeped through the waves of agony. I couldn"t respond. My face was awash with tears. If I had been standing on a cliff, nothing could have kept me from throwing myself off. With my wings tucked in. in.
Inside my brain, images flashed incomprehensibly, making me sick, a.s.saulting my senses with pictures, words, sounds. A voice speaking gibberish. Maybe it was mine. Maybe it was mine.
As if from a great distance, I felt Fang"s hand on my shoulder, but it was like watching a movie-it seemed totally unrelated to what I was going through. My teeth were clenched so hard my jaw ached, and then I tasted blood-I had bitten into my lip.
When was I going to see the proverbial tunnel of white light I"d heard about? With people waiting for me at the other end, smiling and holding out their hands? Don"t kids with wings go to heaven?
Then an angry voice filtered through the pain: "Who"s s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with my Mac?" "Who"s s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with my Mac?"
85.
Just as before, the pain slowly ebbed, and I almost cried with frustration: If it was ending, I wasn"t dead. If I wasn"t dead, I could go through this again.
Images flashed across the backs of my eyes, but they were unfocused and undecipherable. If I had been alone, I would have started bawling. Instead I had to desperately try to keep it together, try not to wake the younger ones (if I hadn"t already), try not to give our position away.
"Who are you?" The angry voice came again. "What are you doing? You"ve crashed my whole system, worthless dipstick!"
Ordinarily, I would have been on my feet by now, pushing Angel and the others in back of me, an angry snarl on my face.
However, tonight I was crumpled in a humiliated, whimpering ball, holding my head, eyes squeezed shut, trying not to sob like a complete weenie.
"What are you talking about?" Fang asked, an edge of steel in his voice.
"My system crashed. I"ve tracked the interference, and it"s comin" from you. you. So I"m tellin" you to knock it off-or else!" So I"m tellin" you to knock it off-or else!"
I drew in a deep, shuddering breath, totally mortified that a stranger was seeing me like this.
"And what"s wrong with her? her? She trippin"?" She trippin"?"
"She"s fine," Fang snapped. "We don"t know anything about your computer. If you"re not brain-dead, you"ll get out of here." No one sounds colder or meaner than Fang when he wants to.
The other guy said flatly, "I"m not going nowhere till you quit messing with my Mac. Why don"t you get your girlfriend to a hospital?"
Girlfriend? Oh, G.o.d, was I going to catch it later about that. It was enough to make me lever up on one arm, then pull myself to a sitting position. Oh, G.o.d, was I going to catch it later about that. It was enough to make me lever up on one arm, then pull myself to a sitting position.
"Who the h.e.l.l are you? you?" I snarled, the effect totally ruined by the weak, weepy sound of my voice. Blinking rapidly, finding even the dim tunnel light painful, I struggled to focus on the intruder.
I got a hazy impression of someone about my age; a ragged-looking kid wearing old army fatigues. He had a dingy PowerBook attached to straps around his shoulders like a xylophone or something.
"None of your beeswax!" he shot back. "Just quit s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up my motherboard."
I was still clammy and nauseated, still had a shocking headache and felt trembly, but I thought I could string a complete sentence together. "What are you talking about?"
"This!" The kid turned his Mac toward us, and when I saw the screen I actually gasped.
It was a mishmash of flashing images, drawings, maps, streams of code, silent film clips of people talking. It was exactly the stuff that had flooded my brain during my attack.
PART 5.
THE VOICE-MAKE THAT MY MY VOICE VOICE
86.
My eyes flicked to the kid"s grimy face. "Who are are you?" I demanded again, still sounding shaky. you?" I demanded again, still sounding shaky.
"I"m the guy who"s gonna kick your b.u.t.t if you don"t quit messing with my system," the kid said angrily.
In the next moment, his computer screen cleared totally, turning the same dull green as his fatigues. Then large red words scrolled down: h.e.l.lo, Max. h.e.l.lo, Max.
Fang"s head whipped around to stare at me, and I focused helplessly on his wide, dark eyes. Then, as if connected, our heads turned to stare again at the computer. Onscreen, it said, Welcome to New York. Welcome to New York.
Inside my head, a voice said, I knew you"d come. I"ve got big plans for you. I knew you"d come. I"ve got big plans for you.
"Can you hear that?" I whispered. "Did you hear it?" you hear it?"
"Hear what?" Fang asked.
"That voice?" I said. My head ached, but the pain was better, and it looked as if I might avoid barfing. I rubbed my temples again, my gaze fixed on the kid"s Mac.
"What"s the deal?" the kid asked, sounding a lot less belligerent and much more weirded out. "Who"s Max? How are you doing this?"
"We"re not doing anything," Fang said.
A new pain crashed into my brain, and once again the computer screen started flashing disconnected images, gibberish, plans, drawings, all chaotic and garbled.
Peering at the screen, wincing and still rubbing my temples, I spotted four words: Inst.i.tute for Higher Living. Inst.i.tute for Higher Living.
I looked at Fang, and he gave the slightest nod: He"d seen them too.
Then the screen went blank once more.