Moments later we saw the same play of lights, view expanded now. Whatever Jones and Steale Programové had done, it coordinated the entire building. Color swirled, intensifying with the percussion that hit the final ten seconds.
“What’s wrong?” Nikos’s breath was warm on my ear.
“The colors intensify on the beat. But they don’t change. Don’t flash. On television the Ball flashes the last seconds of the countdown in bright, white light. But this one swirls a cacophony of colors.”
“Isn’t it just artistic design? Maybe there is no purpose.”
“All art has purpose. Sometimes only to shock or please the viewer, but the artist made it for a reason. And in this case, we even know the purpose-stimulate vampire vision. But how, without the red or yellow? Damn it, Nikos, I’m missing something.” I gasped. “It’s missing-”
The music stopped. Loudspeakers blared. “Two minutes.” A roar erupted from the city’s miles-long carpet of people.
“Damn it, I had it! Before that stupid announcer broke my concentration-”
“Calm down, Twyla.” Nikos stroked my hair. “You had it, you’ll get it again. Something missing.”
“Missing, yes. Missing.” I snapped my fingers. “Color. The way it combines. Red and blue, red and green-no wonder I didn’t see it before.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What if the Ball isn’t the focus? What if Jones programmed the colors, not to trigger the vampires, but to trigger the other buildings?”
“What? Why would he do that?”
“Colors combine. Imagine the Ball-and the whole damned glowstick of the One Times Square building-throwing its light on these skyscraper-sized neon billboards around us. Beaming colors in just the right order so that everything that’s not red or yellow is changed to red or yellow. Now the whole ocean that’s Times Square is pulsing pus and blood. Combined with the noise, the blood scent of the crowd, the excitement-”
Nikos nodded impatiently. “Vampires would go wild, especially the youngsters. But how? Yellow and blue combine to make green. Yellow and red make orange. Nothing combines to make red or yellow. They are primary colors.”
I sometimes forget that not everyone went beyond kindergarten art. “In paints, yes. Paints are subtractive. But light mixes differently. Light is additive. RGB.”
“Twyla, make sense.”
“Red Green Blue. Red is a primary, but it’s a color we want. Blue can be flashed with red light to make magenta, a violently bright pink.”
“And green? Green plus blue is aqua, and green plus red is just ugly brown.”
“Not in light. Green plus red equals yellow.”
His breath sucked in. “What? That’s impossible.”
“No, it’s physics. Every single light in the Square can be morphed into a variation of red or yellow.”
Nikos blinked once as his brain processed what I was telling him. “The whole Square is a vampire time bomb. And we’re standing on the detonator?”
“Exactly. In the last minute, as the Ball descends, the Square will be awash in yellow and red. Vampires will go berserk. Did you hear that, Nixie?”
“Yep. Mr. Goo’s on it. But it’s going to take him a minute to reprogram.”
That was when the Ball started to drop.
Chapter Six
The bright bustle of color oozed around us, morphed in the streets below. Red began to predominate, and a spoiled-egg-yolk yellow. The beat of the final seconds hit my ears like a battery of drums. I stared out, horrified. “We don’t have a minute!”
“Julian, Twyla’s got a panic on, and that can’t be good…uh-oh. Take a look at the idiotbox.”
They were seeing what I was seeing. The cement and glass ocean of Times Square was bathed in light that was red as fresh blood. The color would be real soon enough.
“Damn, Julian, look at the crowd. That guy, there. Look at his face. His eyes.”
“Nixie, I’m on the roof. What are you seeing?”
“This,” Nikos said from behind me.
Nape crawling, I turned.
Fangs split his lips like gleaming daggers. His skin was hard as a shell and his eyes were deadly rubies.
“Are…are you okay?” I squeaked.
“No. But I will control it.” His fingers clenched like he was concentrating really, really hard. His claws poked holes in his skin but his fangs receded somewhat.
I wasn’t afraid, not of Nikos. He would never hurt me. He would manage whatever was happening to him.
But I was shaken. “Nixie. We could really use your guru to come through about now.”
“He’s hamster-wheeling it, but it’s not that easy. He has to figure out which colors are combining with which buildings and signs, all over satellite bandwidth-”
“No he doesn’t. Just scramble it!” Below me, the roar of a million excited people sharpened with the edge of panic. “All he has to do is bump the colors coming from the Ball. Make them random.”
“Oh. Yeah. Julian-you heard?”
The lights intensified. Red and yellow became screaming vermillion and lemon. They brightened so much I had to squint, my eyes aching. Vermillion and lemon became salmon and canary…and then pink and buff…and then white.
And suddenly the pounding blood colors fell apart, muting into spring green and sky blue. The horrible feeling of drowning ebbed.
More importantly, Nikos’s features eased into their normal severity. His eyes opened, a warm seal brown, and landed on me. “Twyla. You did it. You saved us.”
He swept me into a kiss. All the rest of what he had to say was nonverbal, but quite eloquent.
When questioned about the strange images on some of the film from that night, nobody could answer. Nobody remembered that anything was off with the light show, almost as if their memories had been erased. And the films themselves disappeared, one by one. You can still see their holes on the Internet.
We found Aylmer and the rest of the crews on an untenanted floor. The crews went on to finish New Year’s in grand style. Aylmer had taken a clean shot to the leg, which had bled a lot but caused no damage to bone or nerves. After the EMTs cleaned and stitched and gave him fluids, he was taken into custody by some suspiciously handsome police officers. He was eventually released to go home and play with his tinfoil hats, any memory of v-guys forgotten. The officers also searched Jones’s brownstone loft, where plans for future terrorist acts were found.
“It was a human after all,” I said on the flight back. I was sitting next to Nikos in a private jet piloted by Bruce, ultra first class. For the first time I felt like I belonged. “Not the New York Cadre, or whatever they call themselves.”
“This time.”
We were back to the Spartan. And he was hogging the window seat. Well, one thing at a time. “I know, their philosophy isn’t the same as yours. But this proved you have some of the same goals. Doesn’t that mean there’s hope you can find some common ground?”
“Maybe.” His eyes shaded red.
“But…?”
There was a soft ding. “We’re about to hit some turbulence, sir.” Bruce even sounded a little like Bruce Lee. “I’ll try to get above it.”
Nikos popped the intercom. “Fine.” He turned to me. “I didn’t say but.”
“No, but your eyes did.” I wasn’t a musician, able to hear lies in the nuance of a voice. But I had other methods, other expertise, and I’d forgotten that. Nikos had helped me remember.
He sighed, the barest breath. “The code.”
“Code-you mean the program used to control the Ball?”
“And screens, yes. It was written by Steale Programové. Steale Software.”