‘Fuck you motherfuckers,’ he said.
There was a short pause.
‘Yeah, that didn’t work,’ he said.
Her eyes blurred. She blinked, felt frustration well inside her.
‘Keep your phone—’ Nasira said, but the call ended.
Jay was gone.
Chapter 38
Damien released the lever in the driver’s cabin. The train halted sharply, drawing along a side platform at Union Square. On his right he could see two more island platforms and a side platform on the far wall.
Another train stopped suddenly, screeching across the rail at the far end.
Sophia.
He hit the button for the doors on his right and jumped out onto a bare track. He ran across the first island platform, between its green columns. Ahead of him, the other island platforms were divided by partitions, but they had gaps up high that he could climb over to get through.
Damien leaped off the platform and hit the partition wall with his feet first. His fingers just managed to find the top of the partition. He absorbed the impact with his legs and hung there.
Headlights blinded him.
He looked across to see a train blast through the tunnel, heading right for him.
‘Shit.’
He hurled himself over the partition and clung to the other side. The train punched through, screeching to a halt on the other side of the partition.
More than one train. That wasn’t good.
Which one was Sophia in?
He sprang off the partition, landed in the center of the track. Ahead of him, he saw two figures running through the train on the far wall. It was Sophia, and someone he didn’t recognize. Sophia carried her pistol and a sword — DC’s sword by the looks of it. Her companion wasn’t DC though — it was another woman.
That meant the train behind him had some bad news.
Damien climbed onto the next island platform. Sophia’s companion followed her through the carriages, carbine in hand. Damien noticed how she stood, elbows tucked in, carbine aimed. Unlike most soldiers, she wasn’t in a weaver or isosceles stance. He recognized the modified isosceles stance as one he’d learned in the later stages of Project GATE. Aggressive, knees slightly bent, well balanced and solid. The stance was specific to operatives and lent itself to both speed and movement. Sophia had recruited a new operative.
Sophia forced a door open and called out to him. Another train surged past, right behind Damien. What the hell was going on? Who was in these trains?
‘Aviary?’ he yelled over the train’s screeching. ‘Can you hear me?’
Nothing.
He ran to the end of the island platform, shedding his ruck. Sophia was about to drop into the empty track between them, but the sound of another train deterred her. Damien looked over to see headlights flood his vision. The train was barreling between them.
He had to do this quick.
He grabbed his ruck and tossed it across the track to Sophia. She caught it. An instant later, the train whipped between them. Damien caught glimpses of masked Blue Berets.
He ran for the nearest stairs. Climbed to the mezzanine. His hearing picked up boots on the platform below. But the mezzanine was clear. Everyone was on the platforms searching the trains. He couldn’t get back to his now. His best chance was the hurricane.
Unarmed, he sprinted through the mezzanine. He found full-height turnstiles at the end so he dived through the emergency exit door, triggering an ear-piercing alarm. He didn’t care: it was his only option right now.
Something struck him in his side. He dropped.
It wasn’t a round. It wasn’t a fist or a baton.
He hit the ground with his limbs taut, trembling with the voltage that rolled through him. He looked up to see two operatives. One drew a needle, the other held a can of CS gas to his face.
His vision was gone.
Chapter 39
‘What the hell just happened?’ Aviary said.
‘They got ambushed, that’s what,’ Nasira said.
Nasira had watched the whole thing in Union Square go down. She’d seen Sophia and her new buddy pull away in their train before anyone could stop them. She’d also seen Damien make for the exit, through the mezzanine. He moved out of camera range but when she checked her phone she noticed three operatives surrounding Damien.
‘They got Damien,’ she said.
‘Shit,’ Aviary said, reaching for the iPhone she’d given Nasira.
‘What?’ Nasira watched her type a message to Sophia on her behalf.
Turn off your loc.
Aviary didn’t send it. She stared at the screen for a moment.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘No.’
‘What?’ Nasira’s question was more of a growl.
Aviary just stared the screen. ‘They have Jay’s phone now so they could follow Damien by his location.’ She looked up at Nasira. ‘I’m so sorry, I should’ve put a passcode or fingerprint on them.’
Nasira shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter, they’d just make him unlock it.’
Aviary sent the message to Sophia, and then again to Damien — but Nasira gripped her wrist.
‘Too late,’ Nasira said. ‘You should never have turned them on.’
‘But it’s a beacon!’ she said. ‘We know where Jay is! And Damien!’
‘Give me that,’ Nasira said, taking the phone back.
Jay’s dot was now much closer, on Lexington Avenue, right next to Grand Central terminal. And Damien’s dot was moving in this direction, accompanied by operatives.
‘What are they doing here?’ Aviary said.
‘Denton has them now,’ Nasira said.
She heard boots in the distance. They sounded close.
‘Did you turn our location off?’ Nasira said.
The color left Aviary’s face. ‘Oh.’
‘Oh?’ Nasira said. She shoved the phone in Aviary’s face. ‘Turn the damned thing off!’
The door to the Operations Control Center was sealed shut, but a modest amount of explosives or detcord could change that.
‘OK, it’s off! It’s off!’ Aviary said.
‘Like I said, too late.’
Nasira scanned the room. There had to be another way out.
She didn’t know whether it was her newly upgraded sense of magnetic fields, but the shape of the room seemed wrong. She walked along one of the walls, lifting a copy machine out of the way. There was some sort of aberration in the fields along the wall. She peered closer and noticed a carefully concealed door. The handle was hidden behind the copy machine. Possibly left over from before the renovations and the new control center.
‘What’s behind this door?’ Nasira said.
Aviary leaned over her computer, fingers punching keys. ‘Clock tower.’
‘Works for me,’ Nasira said. She turned the stiff, metal handle on the door and pulled it open. It took a short, explosive pull to pry it from the frame. It was dark inside and Nasira splashed it with red light from her torch. There was an X-shaped concrete foundation before her. At the rear of the space she could see a thin ladder leading upward.
‘On me,’ Nasira said. ‘Move!’
Aviary had packed all her computer gear back into her ruck and locked the desktop computers, and now scurried to Nasira. The military boots were outside the control center door. She could hear them preparing something and knew they were planning to pry or ram it, or blow it.
Nasira closed the door behind her, making sure it was shut firmly. She didn’t have anything to booby trap it with, and she didn’t want to waste the time. She went for the ladder. It was thin and squeaked as she climbed. She moved through the ceiling. It was decorated with a fat white pipe and a bunch of cabling. Aviary was in tow.