Legacies Reborn (3 page)

I RUN UP THE LAST OF THE STAIRS AND OUT OF
the park. The others follow.

“You're like a mutant or something,” Flashlight Boy says from behind me. “You been exposed to some radiation or toxic waste or something?”

“Do you have a spaceship?” a girl asks, totally ignoring the fact that I already said I'm not some alien.

“Why is this happening?” another girl asks. She just keeps repeating the question over and over again.

I don't say anything—wouldn't know
how
to even try to answer these questions that don't make any sense to me either. But that doesn't seem to matter to any of them. They just keep on chasing after me, the younger ones sometimes slowing down a little bit to get the old-timers moving faster. I know that if this group stays on my heels I'll never make it down to Wall Street and Mom, because there's no way I can avoid these alien
bastards with fifteen people hobbling after me. I've got to lose them.

So I figure if I can find a good, safe hiding place or something, I can slip away and not feel bad about abandoning them. The only problem is that the safest place right now is probably in, like, Montana or Wisconsin or, I don't know,
Antarctica
or something—just anywhere far enough from New York or other big cities. I know this neighborhood like the back of my hand, and my mind races trying to think of some kind of place they can hole up and wait for actual help from the army or whoever. I make for Columbia since the university is only a block away and has big metal gates at its entrances that at least
look
like they might be strong. But I don't even have to get close to the campus before I can see a small spaceship in the air over it and hear the shouts and sounds of those electric weapons firing. Some of the buildings are on fire. It sounds like the entire school's under siege. I guess some of the nerds didn't like the idea of being invaded and decided to put up enough of a fight that the aliens are taking notice. Or maybe they were having one of those protests they're always doing, and the pale freaks thought it was a threat. Whatever happened, shit's definitely going down on campus.

Normally I'd cut across the university at 116th Street to get to the train, but that's obviously not happening. Taking out a few pale-faced dudes in the park is one
thing, but I'm not gonna test my luck by trying to face off against a
spaceship
. I doubt I'm that strong. Besides, I don't even know how I got these powers, much less how long they'll last, and I don't want to use them all up when I've still got to get across the whole damn city. So I take a quick left and head down Amsterdam. There are people everywhere, mostly running, some who look injured. No one seems to know where to go or what to do. My legs keep moving, and it's a few more blocks before I realize where I'm leading us.

The Big Crab.

Or, more specifically, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

I stop at the bottom of the steps leading up to the church and turn to the group behind me, the kids, old people and a couple of wide-eyed teenagers around my age. There's a little pang in my side from running, but I'm in great shape compared to the others, who are wheezing.

“Inside,” I say, nodding to the church. “You'll be a lot safer in there than on the street. Just wait until the army or marines or coast guard or
whoever
shows up and takes out all these pricks. They're probably marching across the bridges right now.”

“What are we supposed to do inside?” Flashlight Boy asks.

“I don't know. This place is gigantic and, like, a
hundred years old. There should be plenty of places to hide. Plus, it's a church, so . . . you know. It's probably extra protected or something.”

A couple of the elderly people who are hunched over and trying to catch their breath look so relieved that we've stopped that I think they might cry. Or maybe they're on the verge of tears because of everything that's going on around us. I don't know. Whatever the case, they start up the steps, glancing around and looking for any more aliens on the block. Three of the teenagers stand their ground, though. Flashlight Boy puffs out his chest.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“Downtown. That's where my mom's at.”

“You're gonna need help,” Flashlight Boy says. “I'm fast. And I can fight.”

I catch him flexing his wiry arms a little, and in other circumstances I'd probably laugh at the fool. The others nod in agreement. One girl starts saying how much safer they'd be with me to protect them, while Flashlight Boy goes on about not wanting to sit around with nothing to do just waiting for the demons from another planet to show up, and all I can think about is how with every second I waste here, Mom might be in more and more danger.

“You wanna see a demon?” I ask, shaking my head at them. “Spend five more seconds standing here talking
instead of getting inside.”

Flashlight Boy looks taken aback. He cocks his head to one side.

“You can't stop us from coming.”

My nostrils flare as I push my hand out to one side. At the top of the stairs, a big set of doors fly open with a bang, almost tearing off their hinges.

I've got to be more careful with this whole mind-power thing
.

My point gets made, though. They look back and forth between me and the doors for a few seconds, faces all twisted up in a mixture of confusion, fear and something like awe.

“Go,” I say. It sounds more like I'm begging them than commanding them. I've got to go. I've wasted too much time as it is.

Thankfully, they trudge up the stairs. At the top, Flashlight Boy takes one look back.

“Well, you better fuck all those aliens up,” he says. “Any of 'em come busting in here and they'll be sorry.”

I nod and turn away, cutting across the road. A few cars and a taxi whizz by me, but in the distance, farther down Amsterdam, I can see another alien ship landing. The cars are headed right for it, right into the arms of the aliens. My blood pumps faster. How many obstacles stand between my mom and me? I shake the thought from my head and focus on continuing to
move. It's only then that I realize how truly messed up this must be for Flashlight Boy and the others. If their families made some kind of stand or distraction back at the apartments, there's a good chance they met the same fate as Benny. Or they were captured, which, hell, might even be worse for all I know. I'm just glad I have Mom to run to. Otherwise, what the hell would I even be doing right now?

I turn off Amsterdam before I get to a bigger intersection. There are only a dozen people on the street, but I see lots of faces in windows looking out with wide eyes. I try to think about what this means. If the Moga-dicks are at the university and hit my block in Harlem, maybe they're working their way down from the Bronx. They were in Midtown on the news, and I know they were at the UN. Maybe they haven't gotten down to the Financial District.

Halfway down the block, I hear a huge explosion from somewhere behind me. I look over my shoulder to see smoke rising from the area the church is in. I stop. My stomach cramps up. For a second I think about running back, but I bury that idea in my head and start towards the train again, telling myself that it must have been a car getting bombed or one of those alien ships going down. The church is probably fine. I have to keep focused. I can't stop and help every person I see.

Still, my heart's in my throat.

But it doesn't stay there. Instead, it drops to my guts when I come to a corner and see dozens of Mogadorians four or five blocks up the street. There are tons of police cars too, their flashing lights reflected in the hulls of two spaceships hovering over the street. I can't tell if there was some kind of police resistance that retreated into campus or if some kind of student revolt spilled out onto Broadway. Whatever's happening, the Mogs are fighting back with everything they've got. The ships fire into the crowds. There are exploding bottles being thrown by the students and a steady pop of gunshots. It's chaos. It's hard to even take my eyes off the crumbling buildings and the faces of the people fighting back. But I do. A hundred feet in the other direction is a subway entrance at 110th. My goal. The trains still have to be operating, helping get people out of the city.

Right?

I practically slide down the stairs when I finally get to the entrance. For a second I actually wonder if I have my MetroCard on me, as if with everything that's going on someone would try to stop me from hopping the turnstile.

Only, that's not a problem, because the subway station is packed full of people. It's madness. If I were claustrophobic at all, it would be my worst nightmare. There have to be a hundred men, women and children between me and the turnstiles. A steady stream of
panicked people leap over them, one by one, and jump down onto the tracks. They hold their cell phones out, using them as flashlights. Someone's opened up the emergency gate, and a high-pitched alarm squeals as people shove through it.

“What the hell?” I wonder out loud. “They're going to get run over down there.”

“Oh, honey,” a woman beside me says. She's got a handful of photos and a small, rat-looking dog pulled close to her chest. “This train hasn't been running for hours.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask. The trains have to be running.
Shit
.

“The aboveground tracks are out at 125th,” she says. The dog yaps. “Bastards destroyed them. Not that I'm guessing any of the other trains are running now either. Lord, I hope not if there are other people in the tunnels.”

My pulse is pounding so hard that nothing's computing in my brain. Before I can even formulate another question, someone runs into me, knocking me into the woman and causing her photos to fall to the ground.

“They're coming!” It's a college-aged dude with blood running down his face. “They're all moving this way. Go! Faster! Run!”

THE ALREADY MESSY SITUATION QUICKLY TURNS
into pandemonium as everyone tries to jump the turnstiles at once. Screams bounce off the tile subway walls, blending in with the screeching alarm. People fall and don't get back up, trampled. Others are wedged against walls or turnstiles. I realize that I'm probably not going to make it onto the tracks unless I unleash my power on these folks and carve a path by pushing everyone out of my way, and I'd probably end up crushing half of them if I did that. I don't know how I can help. But if some aliens with heavy firepower start down the stairs, I'm screwed. We're
all
screwed, because while I might be able to take out a couple of bastards in a park or on the street, fighting down here in close quarters with a ton of people around is a whole different thing. So I climb back up to the street level, figuring I'll just keep running down to the next stop. The bleeding guy wasn't
lying—a few blocks up, about ten aliens have broken off from the rest of the fighting and are marching down Broadway, blasters out in front of them. I turn and start for a side street, when out of the corner of my eye I see a bunch of people all rushing through the open doors of an MTA bus. One of the giant ones that looks like two buses shoved together.

“Come on,” I hear someone yell as she pulls a kid half my height onto the bus. “We're getting out of here.”

I'm over a hundred blocks away from where I need to be. The trains are down. I can't run all the way downtown. Not with evil aliens lurking around every corner waiting to take me prisoner or shoot me full of lasers or whatever. Despite the voice screaming in my head that this might be a bad idea, I sprint towards the bus. I get on just as the doors close behind me. There are maybe two dozen people huddled together in the seats in various states of shock. A woman a few seats from me cranks the handle on a little emergency radio while trying to find a broadcast, to no avail. At the front of the bus, two guys are crouched in front of the steering wheel.

I hear the firing of weapons on the street. Somewhere way too close to us.

“Go!” I shout. “Go, go, go. Downtown! Just drive!”

One of the guys at the front glances back at me and sneers but doesn't say anything.

“We don't have keys,” one of the people in the seats says. “They're trying to hot-wire it. . . .”

“You've gotta be shitting me,” I mutter, wishing I'd kept on running. Now I'm trapped on a bus, bad guys about to show up at any second.

My fists clench at my sides. These people have no idea how lucky they are that I got on board.

I shove my face up against the back doors, trying to get a look at the approaching aliens, but the way the bus is angled makes it hard for me to see up the street. I glance at the front of the bus over my shoulder. The men are talking excitedly, but I can't hear what they're saying. Suddenly, there's a rumble that shakes the floor. At first I think it's from an explosion, but then I feel cold air being pumped in through the AC: they've got the engine started.

That's when I turn back to the doors and see the gnarly gray teeth of one of the aliens. He's got his blaster pointed right at me.

I shout in surprise, and my hands go up. Before I realize what I'm doing, I can feel the power pouring out of my body. The door to the bus rips off, slamming into the Mogadorian and sending him sailing through a coffee shop window across the street. I fall on my ass. Some of the other people inside the bus start screaming too, and rushing away towards the front. And then we're moving, slowly at first but quickly accelerating.
A few electric shots bounce off the side of the bus, but we get away.

“They've got ships!” I shout as I try to get to my feet. “We gotta get off Broadway.”

“I'm working on it,” the man behind the wheel shouts back at me.

Right on cue we take a sharp turn. It feels like the bus is going to tip over for a few terrifying seconds. I slide across the floor, knocking my head against one of the handrails. I'm pretty sure the wheels on the left side actually come off the ground, but we level out, taking half a dozen side mirrors off cars parked on the street as we race by. I grip onto one of the poles, trying to pull myself upright.

“Where are we going?” someone asks.

“Riverside to Hudson,” the driver yells. “It's the fastest way down.”

Down.
It's the only word I need to hear.

Air rushes by the hole where the doors used to be, filling the bus with a low roar. When we get to the road that runs along the Hudson River, there are burning cars all along the sides of the park. It looks as though something blew them up. I wonder if the aliens took one of their spaceships and just flew down the highway, blasting everyone who tried to escape when they first appeared. For a moment I'm thankful for whatever cleared the road for us, and then I shudder at the thought.

Taking prisoners. Destroying buildings and cars. Killing who knows how many people. What the hell do these douche bags want?

My body is sore all over, and I let myself sink into one of the seats lining the side of the bus to catch my breath. A few of the other passengers are staring at me. Maybe they're wondering if I was the reason the doors flew off. The last thing I want to do is try to explain what's going on with me, since I have no damn clue myself. And I definitely don't need another group wanting me to keep them safe. So I pull out my phone and try to ignore them.

Still no signal. Still no messages.

And my battery's starting to get low.

There's a pulsing pain in my head, and I rub my temples to try to make it stop. If anything, I think I actually make it worse, so instead I lean my head back against the window and try to take a few deep breaths and figure out what the hell is going on.

That's when I see it for the first time with my own eyes. The giant spaceship that's hovering over the middle of Manhattan, the one that was all over the news. I knew it was big, but seeing it in person is totally different from watching it on our crappy TV. It blots out part of the sky. It's hard to even imagine how something that size was built. I can make out things that look like weapons sticking out from its hull.

“Holy shit,” I murmur, and there's such a sinking feeling in my stomach that I have to clamp a hand over my mouth, scared that I'm going to hurl.

Mom. She's so small compared to that thing. We all are. What if . . .

But I don't have much time to worry about what kind of damage the ship has already done to the city: our driver starts yelling.

“Shit! It looks like something went down at the Lincoln Tunnel. Oh Jesus, it looks like it got blown up! We'll have to try the Holland.”

The driver keeps cursing, and people start to shake their heads and mutter about how we're all going to die. It takes me a little while to realize what this means. The Lincoln Tunnel—they're headed down but not
downtown
, just to a way off the island.

I get to my feet and walk to the front of the bus so I can try to talk them into going towards the Financial District, or at least letting me off before I end up stranded in Jersey. Through the front windshield I can see a pileup of cars all sprawled out in front of the Lincoln Tunnel ahead of us. Several of them are burning. A couple look like they've been completely mangled. It looks like two of the tunnels have collapsed, brick and dust spilling out of them. My stomach twists as I wonder how many cars might have been inside it when they were destroyed. There are plenty of people around.
They climb over the piled-up cars, disappearing into the darkness of the remaining tunnel. Desperate to get out of the city I'm working so hard to get deeper into.

The driver doesn't slow down even though cars jam the street. Instead, he just slams on the horn, causing people to scatter as we race towards them. We take the bumper off a taxi and then clip the front of a little red sports car. The bus shakes and I have to hold on to the rails above me to keep from tumbling back.

“Dude, we can't get through there,” the other guy who helped with the hot-wiring says. “Take a side street or something.”

“Everybody hold on,” the driver shouts as he shakes his head.

“This isn't your
taxi
. Are you sure you know how to handle this thing?”

“I see a path but it's gonna be tight. Besides, you really wanna risk going through
Midtown
? You saw the news right? Midtown's a war zone.”

“Yeah, but . . .” The other guy notices me coming to the front. “What do you want?”

“Just seeing if I can help,” I murmur.

“Are you crazy, girl? Sit back down and hold on. We're gonna . . .”

I stop listening and try to focus on the cars we're rushing up on. Maybe I'm powerful enough that I can push them out of the way. Maybe I can help get us
through this—
then
I'll worry about where we're going.

I don't know if it's because we're moving so fast, or that the cars are too heavy, or that I'm too far from them—whatever it is, they don't budge. I concentrate harder, ignoring the pounding in my head.

Focus, Dani. If you can help clear the path, you're that much closer to Mom.

The right side of the windshield suddenly breaks, fracturing like a spiderweb. The left windshield is separated by a piece of metal and is fine, but the driver still swerves a little, startled. He hits the side of a stalled-out car, sending me falling back into the laps of some of the passengers.

So much for helping.

“Here we go!” he shouts.

He leans on the horn again as we blow through more parked cars. The passengers cry out. The woman whose lap I've fallen into holds me close, but I don't know if it's because she's trying to keep me from being thrown to the ground or because she's just scared out of her mind. I don't see what we hit but I feel every impact. Everything around us lurches and shakes, but hardly slows down. Sparks fly into the back of the bus through the opening where the door was.

Somehow, we make it through.

The driver lets out a whoop as we hit clear-ish road again.

“All right,” he says. “Everyone pray that the Holland Tunnel is clear. We're getting the fuck out of the city.”

“Hold up,” I say, getting to my feet again. “I'm
not
going to Jersey.”

“Don't be stupid. We can't stay here.”

“I have to get downtown! My mom—”

“Kid . . .” He cuts me off, but he doesn't finish his sentence. Instead, he just points to the massive spaceship over Midtown.

The bus has done a fine job of getting me farther downtown, so I really hesitate to cause a scene or yell at the driver. On the other hand, the only person I have left in the world is somewhere down by Wall Street, and I've got a badass superpower. I don't have to take no for an answer.

“Stop the bus before you get to the tunnel,” I say firmly, calmly. “I'm getting off.”

The driver laughs a little.

“Like hell you are.” He glances at me. “There are aliens attacking the goddamn city. I'm not slowing down until that ship is a speck in the rearview mirror.”

The other guy standing beside him looks at me with shifty eyes. I can see him wondering if he's going to have to push me back to the rear of the bus. If I'm going to be a problem. Over his shoulder, through the cracked windshield, I see a sign for the Holland Tunnel whiz by.

“I don't wanna have to make this a thing,” I say.

“Then
don't
,” the driver responds.

“Damn it,” I mutter.

I could try to brake the bus myself, but I'm afraid I'd slam on the pedal too hard and send us careening off into the Hudson. So instead, I lock eyes with his friend so that he knows exactly what I'm doing. Then I push one hand out. If I concentrate hard enough, I bet I can break the cracked window and control the glass or plastic or
whatever
it is that the windshield is made of. Show off my power. The people might think I'm a crazy alien, but at least they'll listen to me. They'll have to go—

“Hold on!” a voice shouts from the back of the bus. At first I think she's talking to me—that she's somehow figured out what I'm about to do—but then I realize it's the woman with the emergency radio. She rushes towards the front, warnings pouring out of her mouth.

“The Holland Tunnel is out too.” I can hear a man's voice crackling through the radio in her hands the closer she gets. “It sounds like all the tunnels in the city are either blocked or collapsed. The bridges are the only way out. There's a big evacuation site at the Brooklyn Bridge they're telling people to go to if their homes have been destroyed.”

“Are you sure that's right?” someone asks, voice shaking. “Maybe the tunnel's been cleared up since then or—”

The bus suddenly jerks, brakes squealing as we slow down rapidly. I turn my attention back to the front and see that a few blocks ahead of us the highway is littered with abandoned cars. Some of them are smoking. Others have been overturned. Flames reflect off the water of the Hudson River.

Something bad happened here.

“Damn it,” the driver says. “Damn it, damn it,
damn it
.”

It gets quiet in the bus except for the sound of the man on the radio. Static keeps interrupting him as he talks about how none of the other boroughs have been hit yet, only Manhattan. Then suddenly everyone's talking, trying to figure out what to do.

The woman with the radio stares at the driver. “What do we do now?”

He shakes his head a little as he goes over his options in his head. Finally, he puts his foot on the gas again, and we all jerk back as the engine revs.

“We're heading for the Williamsburg Bridge,” he says.

“But the Brooklyn Bridge is where—,” the woman starts.

“Yeah, which means the streets down there are probably a shit show. We've got to get out of the city and that's our best bet. Once we're across we can cut down through Staten Island to Jersey and get as far away as
we can. I doubt Staten Island's on their hit list.”