Skyline (28 page)

Sun
splashed onto the long green lawn, shadows falling onto the edges. It was still
a few hours to noon. Only a little time to wait before the bomb appeared in the
center. The round red disk was gone, of course, but Monroe situated himself
where it had been. From his own bag, he pulled out a small book, ready to read
until the sun was overhead. The Blast would occur at noon.

Then
a smell wafted over, breaking his concentration.
“Apples,”
Monroe said,
breathing the scent in deep. That hadn’t changed. No matter what sort of bomb
Ana used, no matter that the first four had been prevented, the scent of burnt
juicy apples still lingered.

Monroe
lay back in the grass as the sunshine crept over the lawn. Soon the news would
be filled with funny stories. Baristas would bring it up their whole shift.
Tourists and New Yorkers alike would walk around with their noses aloft. It
was—would be—such a
good
morning.

Monroe
sat up with a frown.

The
smell didn’t make sense. It
had
to be part of Ana’s Blast; that was the
big event of the day. But this bomb wouldn’t arrive until a minute or so till
noon. So why would the smell be here so much earlier?

Unless
…

Unless
the smell had something to do with the Council. Not the Blast at all, but a
sign of their coming. That made a little more sense. Except why hadn’t he
smelled this every time Paris arrived? Or in the future when they’d seen all
three members of the Council?

Maybe
it wasn’t from an astrolabe.

 The
Council had planned to come into this time, had likely chosen Bryant Park for
the information shelved far below the grass. Was that all? Three people and
some books wouldn’t get them much in this age. But if they could bring more in
…

Monroe
thought of Ana’s bombs. Big enough that hundreds of New York’s buildings had
been taken through time. Why? To get at three people? It seemed ineffective and
stupid, when Leanor was never anything but methodical. Even as Ana, she must’ve
planned for something more.

If
Leanor wasn’t sloppy, neither was Ana. She’d made this final bomb so big
because it
had
to be. Because it wasn’t just three people who would
enter New York City. The Council must have brought something else. Something to
help them gain power swiftly. Not just schematics, or a little technology, but
something enormous. “God,” Monroe said to himself, thinking it through. “It
wasn’t the information at all. It was the
land
.”

What
was Bryant Park but a perfect unused lot in the center of the city? Where else
could you put a building in a city with no space? You’d have to use a park, and
here was one ripe for the taking. They were bringing their empire in a building
that would fit seamlessly into New York’s skyline.

That
was what Ana had tried to prevent. The Blast reached out into the other
buildings so the sphere of light could take the entirety of a tall
building—exactly as the lines of light had done in Monroe’s timeline.

Just
as Monroe made the connection, the sun shone down above. His shadow cowered
underneath him.

And
then the sun was blotted out.

Monroe
found himself staring at a black tile ceiling. He hadn’t traveled through time;
time hadn’t unspooled. Instead, his theory was proven immediately. An entire
building had materialized around him.

He
scrambled to his feet, black tile underneath. All around was black tile,
intermixed in the walls with bright white panels. It was a lobby. A normal New
York lobby. But empty, devoid of anyone. No receptionists, no guards. Empty,
just like the era it had come from.

Despite
the emptiness, the lobby sent chills through Monroe. It was unremarkable; it
fit too well with New York. The Council had known what New York was like and
created a perfect way to infiltrate it. They’d succeeded; they’d brought their
empire to New York.

The
more Monroe thought about it, the less sense it should’ve made. But something
was changing his mind. Something telling him that the building had
always
been here. Just like the Empire State, the building was a part of New York’s
skyline.

But
that wasn’t true. Monroe
knew
it wasn’t true.

The
apples
. It must’ve been the scent. A
gas, somehow convincing him of a lie, even as he battled with it in his mind.

Fear
swept through Monroe. Was stopping Ana a mistake? This Council
was
dangerous; Paris had proven that. Maybe it would’ve been better if the city had
remained ruined. If Monroe didn’t stop Ana.

As
if summoned, she appeared. Ana stood with her foot on a thick metal box with a
glass top and not a single screw visible—the fifth bomb. Just as he’d hoped,
she wasn’t going to let this bomb out of her sight until the last moment.

Ana
rolled her shoulders back, a snarl on her face. “I knew you’d be here. You’re
what, a history teacher? And you’re going to defuse my bomb? You’re going to
get sucked back just like your friends.”

The
relief Monroe expected upon learning he was right failed to wash over him. He
was too worried that he was making the wrong decision. The Council had brought
their empire through time, and for some reason Monroe remembered visiting it,
talking about it in class. Could the gas work that fast?

But
the Blast had still been too big. Even the smaller bomb had taken more than
just this building. New York’s skyline was in danger. “You’re right,” he said.
“I can’t stop your bomb. But I can stop you.”

Ana
put up her fists, ready for another fight. But Monroe had other plans. He swung
a hand out and, when she moved to block it, gripped her arm instead.

“Agh!”
Ana stepped back, pulling. “Let go!”

Monroe
grabbed her other arm. “What do we have, twenty, thirty seconds?”

“Let
go! Help!” she yelled out to the lobby. “Help!”

But
he didn’t look away. The Council wouldn’t come down yet. If they did, they
wouldn’t help her. A slow smile built on his lips. “Ten seconds now, maybe?”

“No!”
she shouted, struggling to get away, kicking at his legs.
“No!”

“Time
to see exactly when your wonderful invention takes us.”

“But
if we go back …” Ana said, eyes darting to the bomb between them. She didn’t
have enough time to convince him.

Right
on schedule, a blinding white light blossomed out around them.

Outside
the lobby windows, Monroe watched as Ana’s final bomb—it would be her last; he
was certain—took them through time. While the building around him stayed
intact, New York’s skyline unbuilt itself. Skyscrapers vanished, replaced by
small wooden houses, by dirt, by trees, by ghosts of the wandering Lenape
tribe.

The
small circle of New York City surrounding the transplanted building traveled
back farther and farther. Trees reverted to saplings, were replaced by a
swampland, then by more trees, which faded into saplings. Time regressed
through several thousand life cycles. The rivers on either side of
Mannahatta—the landmass that would one day be called Manhattan—coalesced into
huge chunks of ice, leaving behind thick trees in their wake. Soon the ragged
circle of the city rested within a shifting glacier, which sped backward up
toward the polar ice cap. As it went, it took little rivers-turned-ice with it,
the glacier growing larger.

They
were traveling back to
before
the ice age. Was Ana expecting the Council
to freeze here? Or simply sending them to a time before technology?

The
shelf of the glacier passed through Monroe and Ana—somehow traveling backward
so fast that physical objects couldn’t affect them—but what was left behind
wasn’t more trees or swampland or colossal mountains. Instead, towering
skyscrapers popped up all around them, toppling upward. Ana hadn’t sent the
Council to some random time. Not a time without technology.

No,
this was
their
age. The empty streets and buildings around, the random
snowbanks, the rumbling thunder made all that clear as time slowed to normal.
This was their ruined age. Long before New York was New Amsterdam, before a
single person used Mannahatta as a hunting ground, an entire civilization had
lived.

“You,
you’re, this …” Monroe could barely wrap his head around it. He’d seen time
unwind, but to be here in a forgotten city changed everything. Civilization,
modern technology, humanity itself were older than anyone had documented.
Everything he’d ever taught, ever learned, was a lie. Everything.

Ana
tried yanking her arms away, but the pull brought Monroe’s focus back. History
was stranger than he knew, but Charlotte and Bill were here. They needed him.
Ana tugged again. “Let
go
,” she said. “We have to get out of here.”

“Why?”

Ana
tapped her foot on the bomb between them. If it was like her other bombs, one
orb had brought the device—and Ana—forward to the Blast day. Another had just
brought this circle of New York back. All that remained was what had ruined
both the Octagon’s dome and Pier Fifty-four—the self-destruct.

“Oh.”

“Not
that,” she said, rolling her eyes. She kicked the bomb away. All the details he
saw—the glass top, the four orbs inside—Monroe didn’t have time to process it.
“We need to get away from
them
.”

The
bomb slid to a stop against a wall and exploded. Flames blossomed out toward
them, but Monroe couldn’t flinch properly clinging to Ana. The explosion
stopped, feet away. The heat burned the shine from the tiles, created a smoking
hole in the wall, but they were safe.

“You
mean the Council.” Monroe rubbed his thumb along her arm as if he could trace
the spiral lines he’d seen in the future. “Your scars.”

“I
destroyed my astrolabe like you told me,” she said, “but they kept coming.”

Of
course they had. They’d pursued her until, somehow, they found a better option.
Instead of terrorizing Ana, they’d found three New Yorkers willing to stop her
for the sake of their city. Because she wouldn’t be so worried, so dogged in
her persistence if it were three foolish New Yorkers chasing her.

“Okay,”
Monroe said. “I’ll go.” He shifted his hand from her arm to the bag she
clutched. “
If
you give me the device in here. It’s Charlotte’s, I
believe?”

Ana
tugged at the bag, but Monroe tugged back. “I can stay here all day,” he said,
faking a yawn. “I’m not scared of the Council.” But he was. They’d brought an
entire building to his time. They’d killed Leanor, tortured Ana, and stolen
Charlie. They had plans for his city.

Gritting
her teeth, Ana stared Monroe down. With a shake of her head, she dropped her
hand. “You
fucker
,” she said as he slipped the bag inside of Bill’s
bowling ball bag, beside Ana’s astrolabe. “Now, c’mon. You’d better run fast.”

She
sprinted out the revolving door, and Monroe followed. An elevator
dinged
behind him, but then he was through the door, into the bitter chilly air of
this empty age.

Monroe
slowed as he stepped onto the sidewalk that had once been in New York City. To
his left, a sliced-off building creaked, then crashed to the street. The sky
above was dark and booming with thunder. It felt like he’d entered one of the
apocalyptic movies Bill made him watch. “Holy shit,” Monroe said, picking up
his pace to follow Ana around the Council’s sleek black building, then
alongside the New York Public Library. Even though he knew what had happened,
he hadn’t expected
this
.

This
was where millions of New Yorkers had had to live before the Blast had been
minimized. Now the number was down to a thousand or so. Whoever was in the New
York Public Library and the slices of the surrounding buildings.

“Why
would you send the Council here? Why not to the dawn of time?” Not that he
wanted New Yorkers to suffocate in empty space.

“
They
did this to our age,” Ana said with venom.

“They
did?” In the distant future, she’d said something different. That the Council
had just stranded her people and that had made history change. Maybe she was
just trying to convince him that the Council was evil.

Ana
clenched a fist. “They deserve to suffer through the coming ice they fled.”

“The
Council, sure. And them?” Stunned New Yorkers staggered out of the few
remaining doorways. Behind the glass of the library, librarians and patrons
stared with open mouths. Another wobbling slice of a New York building fell to
the ground beside the Council’s towering spire.

Ana
kept walking. “A necessary cost.”

“It’s
not
.” Monroe shuddered. How could she ever become Leanor? That woman was
kind and caring. Leanor gave her life to save millions. “It’s not
necessary
.
Even
one
extra person”—two extra people—“is too many. Can’t you see
that?”

“Oh,
that’s
what this is about. Getting me to regret it?”

They
passed from Manhattan’s asphalt onto streets that were shinier, slicker.
Monroe’s shoes still gripped the roads of this era, but they were composed of
dark, rough glass. Cracks ran along the glass, but still encased within was a
ribbon of metal running up the street, splitting into thirds at the next
intersection. It could’ve been a display, if there were power. As Monroe looked
at the buildings lining the street, he saw more panels. Everywhere dark glass
waited to be illuminated. Only a few lenses nearby, twisting to watch, seemed
alive with power.

No
doubt leading back to the Council’s powered home.

“So
why did you make the Blast smaller, once we stopped you?” Monroe asked as Ana
ducked into another street. “That wasn’t regret?”

“The
Blast’s initial size was an error,” Ana said, her voice clipped. “There were
four devices—Cornerstones—that brought the Council forward. So my bombs
targeted each of the Cornerstones. Except somehow my bombs got implemented
along the four trajectories. I fixed it. It wasn’t regret. It was a
recalculation.”

Lightning
flickered in the clouds above, a roiling thunder following seconds later.

“Now
hurry,” Ana said, not looking at the clouds at all. “We’ve gotta get out of
sight.”

Monroe
followed without arguing, but didn’t understand why she wasn’t fighting. In the
future—in his past—she’d fought Charlotte without a problem. What changed? Why
not fight here? Unless she feared that a fight would call the Council’s
attention.

Well,
Monroe would use that safety. If Ana wanted her astrolabe, she’d have to answer
for what she’d done. Convince him that she was finished bombing New York City.

The
shimmering streets wound around, not following a grid like Manhattan’s did.
They bent, curved, but Ana never slowed down, never led them back. She knew
this city. The cracks in the glass grew deeper and wider, leading them through
crumbling buildings. The air was a little foggy, almost greenish. The more they
ran, the more Monroe coughed.

Above,
more pathways connected each skyscraper at several levels. In Monroe’s distant
future, he’d seen New York become a spiderweb of walkways. But this was more of
a dense mass of bundled wires. If Ana’s bombs had looked like this, Bill and
Charlotte would never have saved New York City.

The
architecture shifted as they ran. The glass siding would be stone in one
district, wood in another. And between the districts that Monroe guessed were
from various times in this city’s history, the styles blended together.
Intricate carvings of wood surrounded by sheer stone, almost brutalist in
nature. Though he found himself using the terms he’d learned in college,
nothing quite fit. Carvings pressed out of walls; impossibly tall doors spanned
the height of a skyscraper; windows cut into the ground. It felt more like
stepping onto an alien planet than visiting the past.

As
he stared up at a thick chunk of metal extruding from a building, Ana gripped
Monroe’s shirt and pulled him off the street. Through a set of arched doors.
Inside, the walls reached up and up, sleek and smooth, until reaching a point
in the dark distance.

“Okay,”
Ana said. “Now we’re safe. Give me back the device.”

Monroe
backed away. If this was out of the Council’s sight, she’d fight here. Now. “No
way.” He cinched the bowling-ball bag tight around his shoulder. “You’re going
to take me to whatever Liberty Island is in your time. Once we get Bill and
Charlotte,
then
you get the astrolabe back.”

“The
Council will be there, y’know.” Ana spread her legs. Ready to run.

Monroe
almost
wanted
to fight. He could feel Bill’s words bubbling out of him.
“So all of this is okay with you? Not just the Council trapped, but thousands
of New Yorkers? My
friends
?” He balled his hands into fists. “You’re so
scared of the Council, but you don’t fucking care what happens to anyone else,
do you? You stranded millions of New Yorkers here, once. Now you’ll strand the
two people who forced you to reconsider? To ‘recalculate’?”

Ana
flew at him, her fists slamming against his chest before he even had time to
react. “You have no fucking
clue
what the Council did to me!” she
screamed. “You saw my scars, but did you know that they imprisoned me?” She
dodged and weaved around him as he turned. All his focus was on keeping the bag
safe. “They forced me to make those fucking Cornerstones. Told me that they’d
left our people to rot in history. That it was my fault. And the thing is?” She
slung another punch straight into his jaw, but Monroe remained standing.

Ana
stepped away, breathing hard. “It
is
my fault. Is that what you wanted
to hear? It’s my fucking fault. But I’m saving your time by keeping the Council
out.”

“No.”
Monroe turned as if he wasn’t in pain and walked to the door. “
We’re
saving our time by stopping you.”

Ana
gripped his shoulder before he could leave. “Don’t. Please.”

Monroe
jerked his shoulder away and stepped into the growing fog. “You want to escape?
To protect yourself like always? Well, then here’s your only chance: help me
find Charlotte and Bill.”

She
matched his glare, chewing on her lip, considering his deal and, more than
likely, trying to come up with an escape route. “Fine.” Whatever had changed her
mind, he’d better be cautious. “This way.”

They
began their jog down the city.

Ana
started up a few conversations, but Monroe shut her down. He hadn’t risen to
the fight like she wanted, and he wouldn’t let her distract him now. As she
mocked his love life, claimed Charlotte and Bill wouldn’t be there, told him
the Council would imprison them all, he kept his jaw set.

Rain
fell, clearing the fog, but it was too warm. Almost a hot, sticky rain. But
they didn’t slow until Ana led him to a long, narrow bridge leading to a high
hill in the distance. If she hadn’t been leading him astray, this would be
Battery Park and, in the distance, Liberty Island. The glacier that would come
through would make the East and Hudson Rivers, but right now there wasn’t any
water around.

“You
don’t fool me, you know,” Monroe said.

“Fool
you?”

“You
pretend they don’t matter. New Yorkers. But you visited Nellie Bly. You saw the
Lusitania
. I bet that before you met us, you went ice skating where the
Plaza would be. You even saw Lady Liberty’s pedestal being built. Right?
There’s only one person I know who would do all of that. And I know why.”