‘East,’ Damien said.
‘Yeah, that.’
He stared along the platform with a quickening pace.
‘Let’s go!’ he called over his shoulder.
Her legs seemed to have stopped working. She forced them into motion and tried to keep up with Damien.
The platform was exceedingly long — the ramp at the end almost a dot. It felt like a long time before she reached it but that was probably because she was quite unfit. She hit the ramp and followed Damien into the dining concourse. He was moving to the right, toward where she’d told him there was another train. She just hoped that was the train in Jay’s security camera feed.
He paused to wait for her, casting a glance behind them.
‘What is it?’ she gasped, sucking in air as she caught up.
‘Thought I heard—’
Something flashed past her. Knocked her to the ground. Knocked Damien to the ground. It congealed into view. Or her eyes were totally losing it and he’d been there all along.
It was a masked Blue Beret, only without the Blue Beret part. A masked operative?
Damien was on his feet, fighting the operative. The operative wielded a knife in one hand. Both hands. No, that didn’t seem good at all.
The operative and Damien danced across the floor. When they moved in close their limbs were a blur of short stabs and cuts. Almost too fast to make out the individual strikes.
‘Go!’ Damien yelled.
Aviary ran. She felt bad she’d just left Damien behind to get beaten up by some creepy operative but it’d be worse if the operative took even the half-second he’d need to gut her.
Chapter 54
The Jamaican woman stood before Nasira.
Nasira remained still. She could avoid any attack, but she knew as soon as that blade touched the barrier that separated them, explosives on another platform would take Damien’s life.
‘Not even be protecting yourself,’ the woman said. ‘So be it then.’
‘This is my last warning,’ Nasira said, measuring her words out so there was no confusion. ‘Come any fucking closer and we all die.’
The woman lifted her engraved sword.
Nasira pointed to the motion sensors. ‘Do you see those sensors? Passive infrared. Why else would I be sitting here?’
The woman glanced at the sensors — one on each end, fixed to the mesh ceiling. Finally, she understood. She smiled and focused on Nasira.
‘You be playing tricks on us. Clever girl.’ Her smile faded. ‘Dead girl.’
The sword came down on Nasira.
Another sword intercepted hers, keeping everything safely short of the sensors’ path.
DC was standing beside the woman, his sword extended past hers.
A snarl curled across her lips.
‘Bad man, bad mistake,’ she said.
She squared with DC, pressure on her sword. He matched the pressure, then they both withdrew. The swords clashed together again. Nasira shuffled back into her invisible square, watching.
The other soldiers crept forward, ready to close on DC.
‘Look out!’ Nasira yelled.
DC sidestepped the woman’s sword. She seemed, to Nasira’s surprise, a skilled fighter with her longsword. Only Sophia or DC could compare. But even DC was having trouble. She cut across him, once, twice. He avoided one, deflected another.
She came in hard. The sword sliced downward. Nasira watched as it slithered through the invisible barrier. The sensor on her right flashed red.
‘No,’ she breathed.
A chain reaction of explosions rumbled nearby, building in intensity until it drowned everything else out. Glass ruptured from the windows beside her. She shielded her eyes, hit the ground. Through narrow gaps in her fingers, she saw chunks of carriage from the explosion turn into fireballs and strike the train beside her. One fiery chunk collided with the carriage right beside her. Jay was behind her, hands bound behind him, just getting to his feet.
He was too slow.
The carriage beside her reeled from a colliding carriage and turned over. It bore down on them. Nasira ran. Collected Jay, knocked the air from him. She threw herself — and him — onto the far side of the platform. The overturning carriage crunched onto the platform. It landed right beside them, crushing her pistol. The impact rattled her bones.
Chapter 55
Get back up, Sophia told herself. Get back up.
She crawled to one knee. The corners of her vision seemed to pulse and curl. Denton was searching for his pistol. It was halfway between them.
He ran for it.
She ran for it.
A ripple of explosions tore the ground up from under them. The blood-smeared marble of the Grand Central main concourse cracked into violent shards and the center dropped inward. Sophia never got to the pistol. Denton scooped his hand to collect it, but it bounced off the marble and skittered into the collapsing floor.
Denton went with it. The transmitter tumbled from his grasp. He slid down the center. Sophia tried to keep her footing. The information booth in the center disappeared through a cloud of debris.
Czarina and the Commander were still lying on the outer edge. Sophia wanted to get to Czarina but she was too far in to climb out. The marble floor gave way underneath Sophia. She dropped through the abyss, bounced off displaced slabs of marble, shuttling feet-first toward Denton.
Sophia fell with the center of the concourse, down a waterfall of debris. She landed, rolled down a mountain of debris and landed on the level below. She wiped her face. Her hand came away smeared with dust and blood. She was on the lower concourse now. Quickly, she moved away from the rubble in case more chunks dropped from above. She searched for Denton’s USP pistol and for the transmitter, but she couldn’t see anything through the cloud of debris.
Chapter 56
Jay rolled clear of the sword. It sliced through the tourniquet on his leg. He looked down. The entry wound in his thigh was finally healing and the tourniquet was due for removal.
‘Oh, thanks,’ he said.
The soldier with the sword advanced.
The train platform was covered in fiery debris and chunks of carriage. Behind the soldier, other soldiers pressed forward, swords and spears gleaming orange. Jay leaped onto the fallen carriage to avoid another swipe. Not one but two soldiers had clearly made it their mission to cleave Jay’s head from his shoulders. Both leaped onto the carriage, sword and spear cutting the air toward him.
Jay dropped into an empty window, past a row of seats. His stomach burned but it had come a long way toward healing while he’d been confined to this platform. He landed in the other row, quickly climbed the seats into the aisle. One soldier dropped in behind him, sword slashing. Jay rolled from its path, his shoulder crunching along an armrest. Everything in the carriage was sideways. He moved quickly, feet alternating between the luggage compartment and the edge of the headrests. He leaped up toward the row of seats above, stepped up on the outside armrest and sprang off the seats until he reached the window. He was out and rolling along the scorched surface. A spear hunted him. He diverted, leaped off the train and back onto the platform.
‘Get out of here!’ DC yelled.
Jay saw him exchange blows with two soldiers while their leader, the crazy woman, circled him in search of an opening.
Nasira was below Jay, fending off another soldier with just her knife. Nasira cut an artery along the inside of a soldier’s elbow, and then the inside of his thigh. She stole his sword and called to Jay.
He landed on the platform — unarmed — and followed her into the train carriage on the other side, the train that was still upright and mostly intact. He didn’t like the narrow aisle but it was this or the open ground crawling with Batmen.