Broken (5 page)

Michael read the sign.

Yankee Park. The site of New Yankee Stadium, home of the American League baseball New York Yankees, 2009-2040. The Stadium was partially destroyed by bombs during the Last War 2046-7, and demolished 2056. Park dedicated by the Metropolitan Recreation Authority, 2066.

Broken emerged from behind the sign with a brown paper bag and a smile. "Ready," she said. "What?"

Michael was shaking his head slowly back and forth. "I thought it was still standing."

"What?"

"Yankee Stadium."

Broken shrugged. "All the old stuff is destroyed around here. Manhattan used to be all skyscrapers, y’know, and Queens looked like this."

"How do
you
know?"

"Used to be a superhero," she said, turning her back on him and walking west.

* * *

"So we go down to Hampton Station and get on the rail, and head south to Wilmington. From there we can take ground trans to Delmarva Spaceport," Michael said, trying to keep up with her. "Okay?"

"Then?" Her cheery mood had disappeared as fast as it had come. Now she glowered and hid her face in her thicket of silver hair.

"Then we can get on a liner bound for Valen. Uh. One way or another."

"No plan," she said disgustedly.

 “It's all we have,” he said.

 “Black Bands hang out at the station,” she said. “Government runs the trains. If they want him, they can take him then.”

 Michael couldn't think of anything to say to that. She was right, of course. Another flash of devastating lucidity. Maybe she was less crazy than she seemed? Broken took one more step, glanced up—

—and  pulled Michael into a doorway, flattening him as far into its recess as she could.

"What?"

"
Saw him
," she said, a mixture of elation and fear in her voice.

* * *

Broken had been getting bored with this game. Michael Whatshisname didn’t know what he was doing, and she didn’t like babies much. Ian stank, and he cried all the time. She wanted to get away.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a hauntingly familiar shadow pass overhead.

* * *

Silverwyng and Sky Ranger flew high above the city.

"Did you know Manhattan used to be all skyscrapers?" he said. "Now it’s just four-story apartments and condominiums. Queens was the low-rise part of town."

"Isn’t that where the Tower is?"

"Yes. Queens is filled with tall buildings, now. It was where we rebuilt after the Last War." He was so confident, he sounded like he’d been there himself.

He chuckled quietlyf. "Progress is grand, isn’t it? Nothing ever stays the same in this city."

Silverwyng actually found it a little depressing, but smiled at him anyway. Then, a horrifying jolt struck her.

For a split second, she lost power and plummeted towards earth. Sky Ranger stared, open-mouthed, as she dropped through the sky…

* * *

Sky Ranger
, Michael thought desperately. It had to be.

"He’s looking for us," she whispered. "He’s looking for me."

"For you?" Michael snorted. "Not likely. He wants the baby."
"He has babies. He doesn’t need mine." She snatched Ian out of Michael’s arms and squeezed him so tight he cried out in confusion.

Michael sucked in his breath. They said Sky Ranger could hear even the smallest sounds from far away. Broken froze, eyes wide.

But the whoosh of air and the swirl of the hero’s cape never came. When they dared to sneak out again, he had gone. Broken stared off to the east, where the distant spire of Union Tower peeked above the nearby buildings.

"That was stupid," Michael snarled. "He could have come. He could have taken him then."

"He’s not one of them," Broken said. "He’s no Black Band."

"Yes, he
is
!" Michael hissed. "How could you have missed that? He campaigned for Peltan last year, don’t you remember?"

She shook her head stubbornly.

* * *

She fell, but did not scream. Sky Ranger receded. She reached a hand out to him. He could fly so fast, surely she would be saved.

He didn’t move.

Suddenly, she felt whatever it was that kept her aloft return, and she powered back to where he was. Belatedly, he sped toward her. "Are you all right? You scared me."

"Oh," said Silverwyng. "I’m fine. Sorry."

He wouldn’t look her in the eye. They both knew.

* * *

"He’s good," Broken insisted. "I
knew
him."

* * *

Patrols combed the streets, endlessly searching—word of a double murder spread quickly. Police regulars and Black Bands guarded all the subway stations. A gauntlet lay between them and Hampton Station in Manhattan.

They’d spent most of the rest of the fleeting daylight hours running from one safe place to the next. At last, night fell and they could move more freely.

Broken was drunk. When they’d bought more baby food and diapers for Ian, she’d picked up ten tiny, plastic bottles of vodka, and had started downing them as soon as they’d managed to find a place to crash for the night.

This time it was one of the many abandoned buildings along the riverfront. They didn’t dare turn on Michael’s small flashlight, so the only light they had came from the silvery moon, far overhead, and the reflected glow of streetlights.

He heard her open another bottle. Was she crying? He checked on Ian; the baby slept peacefully. At least they had some money. It wasn't much, but it might get them to Delmarva Spaceport—if only they could get out of New York. How had she come by the money?

Better not to ask. He wasn’t entirely sure she’d paid for all of those bottles of booze.

He read some of the graffiti on the walls, and tried to think about what to do next. He had Broken and the baby. That fulfilled part of the vision, and it was a huge achievement. But the rest…it seemed impossible. Broken wasn’t fit for travel; he hadn’t counted on that. When he’d tried to talk her out of drinking, she’d pretended he wasn’t there. When he tried to take the bottles away, she almost bit his arm off. He rubbed the red marks absently.

So what now? How could he get to Delmarva with her?

He knew he couldn’t get there without her. He glanced over at her.

—She knocked the pistol out of the man’s hand.

—She watched over Ian and Michael while they slept.

—She let the Black Band beat her while Michael and Ian escaped.

Possibilities. She
would
make a difference. She had to; otherwise he would die before he ever saw Delmarva, and Ian would become a monster.

* * *

Too tired and worried to sleep, he distracted himself by looking around at the dilapidated old heap they were hiding in. The graffiti on the walls betrayed the building’s age.

"God save us from China," read one.

"Fuck the bombs," read another.

"Nuke Beijing again!" read a third.

"Victory," prayed yet another.  None of these things had come to pass; the people who had scrawled their desperate hopes on the walls had lost their war sixty years ago. He knew history. The million futures staring him in the face often drove him to the past, which was safely linear, and didn’t fragment with each new development. What had happened
stayed
happened. Done was done.

As the possibilities approached the present, they became fewer and fewer, until, at the moment of passing, only one was left. Then it moved safely into the past, where he could remember and read about it, but never again see it unbidden whenever he looked at a face or glanced in the mirror.

He sighed. He hated the future.

From the first moment he’d looked in his mirror and seen not his reflection but the horrifying confluence of a million futures, this thread had enthralled him the most. He’d clung to it for all of his short life. Joe had done what he could to get Michael ready...and then the letter from Val Altrera had arrived, not long after Joe had died, and Michael had left his home to chase after a thin thread of hope in the form of a little orphan baby.

Hope against impossible hope.

Ian gurgled softly.

Broken sobbed in the corner. He thought about going to try and comfort her, but decided against it. He rubbed his aching arm again, and was glad he didn’t have a mirror now. What he was likely to see would probably depress him terribly.

He glanced at Broken again. She’d fallen asleep. It figured.

—The thin man stood opposite her.

—The thin man laughed, Ian in his arms.

—The thin man shot Michael.

—The thin man took Ian.

—The thin man shot Michael again.

—The thin man wrested Ian out of her grasp.

—The thin man shot her.

—The thin man took Ian from Michael’s corpse.

Every vision—! The thin man…

No. No… Michael tried to tear the vision from his mind. The thin man was death inescapable. He was in every single one of Broken’s possibilities.

[CHAPTER 6]

M
ichael barely slept that night, waiting for the Black Bands or the police to come; they never did. Broken slept like the dead, and woke up in a far more lucid state.

"We should go," she said. She seemed remarkably refreshed, given the vast quantities of alcohol she’d consumed the previous night.

"Shouldn’t you have a hangover or something?" he asked, cold and miserable.

"I don’t get them," she said. "I heal."

Oh. Right
. He shook his head and hated her a little. "Okay. Let’s go."

"Where?" she asked.

He sighed, having been praying that she wouldn’t ask him that question. "I don’t know," he admitted. "I could hear patrols all night. I don’t see how we could even get into the station, much less catch the rail to Delmarva.We may have to walk out of the city to another station somewhere."

They sat for a moment, thinking glumly about the prospect of hiking out of the city in winter.

"How’s Ian?"

Ian hadn’t moved much. Now he let out a soft whimper, and started crying pitifully.

Michael touched his forehead. "He’s burning up! A fever."

A bad fever, too: Half his possibilities had gone dark. More were disappearing into yawning nothingness with each passing moment.

No! He has to live.

"Oh," said Broken.

“We could give him some medicine,” Michael said, thinking out loud. But he didn't have anything, and the government monitored all the drugstores. They asked for ID, even for non-prescription meds.

 "He ought to see a doctor," said Broken.

"You have any ideas? You need an ID to see doctors, too, and the cops can check that! I’ve used up the last of my fakes." Michael wanted to cry. All this… for nothing? Would Ian die before they ever got to Delmarva?

Would Michael be just a blip…?

Broken paced around the room for a minute. She looked terribly torn. Michael tried not to look at her.

"I know someone," said Broken at last. "I think she’s still there." She set off purposefully towards the door in a swirl of silver hair and rags. Michael scooped up Ian and ran after her.

* * *

They made it to Yonkers after five torturous hours of slipping from building to building, keeping to the shadows and avoiding patrols. The broadcast screens mounted on the sides of buildings every block or so kept saying that the search was centered on Hampton Station. Maybe they’d confused whoever was after them

The weather had turned even colder. Ian had stopped crying and hung limp in Michael’s arms. So many possibilities… gone dark… the moment was coming soon.

He had started to think Broken was leading them around in circles when she turned down a nondescript side street, and banged on the door of a massive one-story house.

"Hey!" she called. "Hey!"

An older woman with short-cropped red hair opened the door.

"Yes?" She seemed very tired. "What do you want?"

"Hey there, Doctor Lucky Jane," said Broken. "Can you help us?"

The woman’s eyes went wide. "S—Silverwyng?"