And Mark and Courtney were caught in the middle.
I ran for a table that sat against the far wall.
“Guards,” Saint Dane called out, barely concerned by my move.
The red shirts ran for me. Too late. Alder launched himself at the dados, laying them out flat with his body parallel to the ground. I picked up the table and hurled it at the glass. Saint Dane dove out of the way. That was okay. He wasn’t the target. I wanted to break glass. The table hit the window, creating a spider web of cracks without breaking through.
Alder took on both the red shirts, keeping them away from me. His hands were tied, which made it more of a fair fight. I didn’t know how long he could keep them occupied. I didn’t need long. Saint Dane stepped directly in front of the cracked glass and faced me. The growing light from the flume filled the huge room below, casting him in shadow.
“Must you always prolong the inevitable?” he asked, sounding bored.
“Uh, yeah,” I answered.
He was in the perfect spot. Right in front of the damaged glass. This was going to feel good. I sprinted right at him. His eyes opened in surprise. He didn’t have time to react. I nailed the demon dead on, driving my head into his chest, knocking him back into the glass. The already damaged glass shattered, and the two of us launched into space. We fell through a blizzard of glass, plummeting toward the poor people who were directly below. I grabbed on to Saint Dane’s jacket, determined to keep him between me and the ground. If anybody was going to get hurt, I wanted it to be him. Not that I had thought it through, but I suppose I had a flash of hope that we’d land on some unsuspecting, soft Ravinians who wouldn’t be able to get out of the way in time.
I don’t know what or who we landed on, but we did land. Hard. I was aware of a jumble of arms and legs and screams as people dove out of the way. I was shaken, but okay. I landed squarely on Saint Dane and was thrown against the backs of some chairs. When I looked to him, he was gone. No, that’s not right. He was still there, but he had changed. Transformed. He had become a clean-cut-looking guy with short hair and a red golf shirt. He sat up, not hurt in the slightest.
“Stop him!” he shouted while pointing at me.
Nobody listened. They didn’t want any part of me. They backed away as if I were radioactive. Saint Dane may have considered them perfect. I considered them cowards.
Crash! I looked up to see one of the red shirts had been thrown through the window. Alder was back in charge. The guard plummeted down, along with the shattered glass. He landed against the back of a chair and bounced. Seriously. Dados bounce.
Bedlam was breaking loose. Between the flume activating and bodies crashing down from above, the Ravinians wanted out. They starting pushing their way toward the stairs.
Bright light filled the room. I didn’t have much time.
“Courtney!” I shouted. “Mark!”
I climbed up on a chair to see the red shirts pushing the group of frightened people toward the flume. Courtney heard me and turned.
“Bobby!” she screamed.
Her eyes were wild. She was terrified. She tried to fight her way back, but a red shirt grabbed her by the waist and pushed her forward. Closer to the flume. By this time the other people in her group knew something was wrong. They tried to resist, but the ring of dados closed on them, forcing them toward the light. I jumped down from the chair, pushing my way through the fleeing Ravinians, desperate to help these people. To help Mark and Courtney. It was impossible to move. There were too many people pushing against me, moving the other way. I was stuck. The music from the flume grew louder. I climbed back up on a chair just as the group of people were shoved into the tunnel, along with several red-shirt dados.
Mark fought his way out of the crowd. For a second I thought he was going to get away, but he turned back and tried to grab Courtney’s hand to help her. He was more worried about her safety than his own. That was Mark. The move cost him. A red shirt ran up from behind and pushed them both back into the pile of victims. The light enveloped them all. The music was deafening. A moment later it ended. The light disappeared. The music died. The last sound I heard was the faint echo of Courtney’s voice calling, “Bobby!”
The Bronx Massacre.
They were gone. But to where? Were they dead? Or exiled to some unknown location? Whatever the truth was, Naymeer had sent a message. Don’t mess with the Ravinians. Or else. I couldn’t let myself believe that Mark and Courtney were dead. I had to tell myself that they were just…gone. Thinking any other way would have crushed me. Knowing that they were out there somewhere, needing my help, gave me new strength. That was good, because I was still in the thick of it.
Naymeer was gone. So was Saint Dane. The red shirts weren’t. From my perch on the chair I saw several of them pushing their way through the crowd to get to me. I was about to jump down when I felt my legs go out from under me. The dado that Alder had bounced down from above was still in play. He flipped me to the ground, but I went down kicking. I nailed his knee. Hard. It may have been a dado, but feeling his knee give way was gruesome. It didn’t stop the dado from coming after me. After all, it was a robot. He reached down, and was about to grab my shirt when he was suddenly picked up and thrown aside like a puppet.
Alder stood over me. His hands were untied.
“We must go,” he said.
I bounced to my feet and looked around to find the best way out. I thought of going for the flume, but there were too many Ravinians and red shirts between us and the tunnel. The only logical way to go was with the flow of people who were desperately pushing to get to the stairs that led up out of there.
“Go with the crowd,” I instructed Alder.
We pushed our way through the mass. The dados were after us. Our best hope was to keep as many Ravinians as possible between us and them. I didn’t think the dados would hurt the Ravinians to get to us. After all, they were the chosen people. They were the future. All I cared about was that they would be our shields. Politeness didn’t count. I barged past them, not caring if they were offended or bruised or angry. We fought our way to the stairs and climbed to the top. I kept glancing up and around, to see how close our pursuers were. They were all still at the bottom of the stairs and having just as much trouble getting through the crowd of Ravinians as we were. I actually thought we were going to make it, until we reached the top of the stairs and ran outside.
The line of red-shirt dados that was holding the crowd back was still there.
The Ravinians were quickly funneled off to the side of the building, where two columns of red shirts formed a clear alley for them to hurry past the angry protesters. A line of buses was fired up, and waiting to take them away from the madness. We couldn’t go that way. The corridor of dados was too narrow. They’d spot us for sure. Even if we made it to a bus, we’d be stopped before we got on. No, we had to break free from the crowd and take our chances on our own.
The protesters on the stairs crowded against the line of red shirts. There were thousands of them, all wanting to break through and storm the conclave.
“Pendragon, look,” Alder shouted.
A group of red shirts had climbed up and out of the flume room, headed for us. We were trapped between them and the line of red shirts below us on the stairs. We were moments away from being swarmed. I could only think of one thing to do.
I started a riot.
“They’re not coming out!” I shouted to the angry mob of protesters. “Naymeer killed them all!”
Under normal circumstances, shouting something like that would have been a totally irresponsible thing to do, like shouting “fire” in a crowded movie theater. These weren’t normal circumstances. The effect was instant. The crowd turned violent. While some ran off in fear, most of them pushed past the line of red-shirt dados to storm the conclave. The guards Tasered a few, in a futile attempt to keep them back. No go. There were too many. The red-shirt dados were stampeded. Now the crowd was headed toward us. We stood frozen on the
stairs as the mob came our way. I glanced back up to see the dados who were chasing us had decided it was more important to protect Naymeer than to recapture Alder and me. They fled back inside the building and were quickly shuttering the large doors. The conclave would survive intact. I wasn’t so sure I could say the same for Alder and me.
Alder grabbed my arm and took off to our right. I felt like a tailback running behind a pulling guard. Alder picked a spot that wasn’t so dense with people and bulled through. I tripped down the stairs, banging into people as I went. Frankly, there were so many of them, it kept me upright. I kept bouncing off of people like a pinball. Alder didn’t do much bouncing. It was more like mowing. I don’t know how many people he ran over. Too many. These people were victims. They had only begun to live a life of misery, thanks to the Ravinians. A life they didn’t deserve. I hated to have to start it with violence, but we had to get away. It only took a minute for us to land at the bottom of the stairs and the backside of the surge of people. I grabbed Alder’s arm as a signal for him to stop. We both looked back up the stairs to see the crowd banging on the doors of the austere building, desperate to get inside and learn the fate of their friends.
“We gotta get away from here,” I said to Alder, and took off running.
The farther we got away from the conclave building, the sparser the crowd became. We made it. We got away. But our night was only beginning. I saw a subway entrance and led Alder down. I didn’t know where to go other than to get as far away from the Ravinians as possible. We didn’t have any money, so we both jumped the turnstile and walked out onto the platform to wait for a train. I had to give Alder credit. He followed me through this strange world without question. I couldn’t begin to imagine what must have been going through his head as he experienced the alien world that was Second Earth. Or maybe he wasn’t shaken by any of it. After all, there were bigger issues to deal with than learning what a subway train was.
Thankfully, a train pulled into the station quickly. The doors opened and Alder followed me on. We took seats at the rear of the near-empty car. It was the first chance we had to catch our breath since I saw Mark and Courtney being led to—I won’t even finish that sentence.
“What do you believe happened to them?” Alder asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t believe they were all just…executed. What would the purpose be?”
“To eliminate their enemies and intimidate those who remain,” Alder answered.
“Yeah, but Patrick wrote that Naymeer exiled his enemies. I said before, exile isn’t execution.”
“Then why was it called the Bronx Massacre?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. What I wanted was to have Mark and Courtney back. I think I was in shock. That’s the only way to explain how I could keep going without being crushed by the events we had witnessed. We were traveling downtown into Manhattan. With each stop, the subway car took on more passengers. I didn’t know what to do. After having bounced around between territories for so long, it was a strange feeling to be home and not know where to go. I had to think, but the memory of Courtney and Mark being tossed into the flume kept invading my head. If nothing else, I swore to myself that I would find out what happened to them.
The train made a stop at a busy station. I didn’t know which one. The platform was crowded and people jockeyed to get off and on before the doors closed. At the far end of the subway car, I saw a cop get on. A regular old New York City cop. Nothing strange about that, except that he seemed to be looking for something. Or someone. Or two someones…us. That wasn’t the worst part. The cop wasn’t alone. With him was a Ravinian red shirt. They were both searching the faces of the people on the subway car. That meant the Ravinians and the New York City police force were working together. The implication was huge. The Ravinians were already working their way into positions of power with the government.
“We gotta go,” I whispered, and pulled Alder toward the door. The bell rang. The doors began to close. I threw my arm out and pushed the sliding doors back open. There was no way I’d let us get trapped on a moving train. We weren’t going to make it that easy for them. It was my turn to get Alder through the crowd. We couldn’t be as bold as we’d been in the Bronx. We didn’t want to attract attention. We were being hunted by the Ravinians and now the police. We were fugitives here, just as we were in Stony Brook. It was going to be easier melting into Manhattan than the suburbs, but still, eyes were everywhere. We were going to have to find somewhere safe to hide.
I led Alder up and out of the crowded subway station, to discover we were in the middle of busy Times Square. Alder finally balked. I guess being bombarded by the lights and sounds of one of the busiest intersections in Halla was a little much for a knight from a primitive village. He stood frozen, staring up at the noisy spectacle. I didn’t push him. The chances of us being seen by the police were slim. The sidewalks were packed with tourists. No way we’d stand out.
At least that’s what I thought, until my eyes settled on the giant video screen that loomed over the crossroads.
“Pendragon, it is you,” Alder said with surprise. He saw it too.
It was a still picture of me that must have been taken from the surveillance cameras at the Sherwood house. It was a grainy blowup of a video freeze-frame, but it was definitely me. As stunning as that was to see, the words superimposed under the picture were even worse. Beneath my admittedly guilty-looking face were the words “ROBERT PENDRAGON—SUSPECTED DOMESTIC TERRORIST.”
It was a news report. A warning. There was no sound, but the words that ran along the bottom of the screen said it all. “WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH ATTACK ON RAVINIAN CONCLAVE. EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. IF SIGHTED, DO NOT APPROACH. CONTACT POLICE.”
My picture was replaced by another. Alder’s. Alder gasped. It was also taken from the surveillance footage. Similar words crawled beneath his picture, warning people to contact the police if these two dangerous terrorists were sighted. The feeling was hard to describe. We were standing in the middle of a thousand people, yet I suddenly felt alone. Naked even. It was like one of those dreams where you find yourself out in public in your underwear. Only we were being accused of a lot more than walking around in boxers. I was a fugitive in my own home.
“They are hunting for us,” Alder said in a small voice that was not like him.
“It’s worse than that. It means they’ve gotten to the media. There’s no report about a dozen people disappearing in the Bronx, only about us. The Ravinians’ influence is everywhere.”
“Then we are truly too late,” Alder said, defeated.
The image of Alder on the giant screen was replaced by another. It was the man we had seen on TV that morning in Naymeer’s office. Again there was no sound to the report, only words that crawled across the lower part of the screen. He was identified as: “HAIG GASTIGIAN—NEW YORK UNIVERSITY.” The scrolling words read: “PROFESSOR CONDEMNS IMMINENT UNITED NATIONS DECISION. CALLS FOR WORLDWIDE PROTEST AGAINST ALEXANDER NAYMEER AND THE RAVINIANS.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “That guy’s the leader of the opposition. What’s it called? The ‘Founding’? No, the ‘Foundation.’”
“What about him?”
“He may be the only person with any power who’s left on our side.”
An hour later Alder and I arrived in Washington Square Park at the bottom of Fifth Avenue. We walked the whole way, for fear of being spotted on the subway. The park was the center of New York University, the college where Gastigian was a professor. It was pretty simple to find him. I looked in the white pages of a phone book. Duh. There weren’t a whole lot of Haig Gastigians listed. In fact there was only one, and it was in Greenwich Village, near the university. The address was on Sullivan Street, a quiet, tree-lined street of brownstones. Finding the address was easy. Getting to see Gastigian wasn’t. I knew we had come to the right place when we turned onto Sullivan Street and saw a group of scary-looking guys camped out in front of Gastigian’s address under a streetlig
ht.
“Guards,” Alder said, reading my mind.
“Smart move. It’s not healthy to mess with the Ravinians.”
We saw more men stationed at every street corner, watching for trouble. They were ordinary-looking guys, but not the kind you’d want to mess with. They were big and they were serious. They must have heard what had happened at the Ravinian compound. These guys looked like the type to want revenge.
“Act unintimidating,” I said as we walked toward the building.
“How do I do that?”
“Smile and don’t take a defensive stance.”
“What if they attack us?”
“Let them.”
We had only gone a few steps when I sensed that we were being followed. I didn’t have to turn around to know there were a couple of big goons shadowing us. I was pretty sure that Gastigian didn’t have high-tech surveillance cameras like Naymeer, but his security was just as effective. Before we could step up to Gastigian’s door, a ring of thugs closed around us.
“Remember,” I whispered. “Unintimidating.”
Alder put on a totally false smile that looked more creepy than friendly.
“Lose the smile,” I said quickly. “Just don’t hit anybody.”
“Can I help you fellas?” said one of the larger characters, who stood between us and the door.
“We’d like to see Professor Gastigian,” I said in my most polite voice.
Two other thugs joined the first. They exchanged looks. It was pretty clear that they had no intention of letting us see him.
“Really?” the first guy said sarcastically. “What for?”
“We have information about the Ravinians he’ll want to hear” was my honest answer.