False Future (3 page)

“Right. We went to Cleveland and took one of the blank—ah, I mean you, from Key Tower, and drove you to the other apartment. We wanted you to be in a separate location in case they found us and attacked there first. Noble set us up with these internal heart monitors and connected them to your tank. So if one of us died, you would’ve been activated automatically.”

I think about the row of blank Mirandas, all waiting to become someone. I could’ve been any one of them. I wonder how they picked this body.

I imagine being in their position, trying to figure out if they should bring someone back from the dead. What would I do? What’s a fair reason to bring someone back? What if I just
missed
the person?

Maybe I’m glad Noah doesn’t have to deal with any of this ever again.

“What did you think? About bringing me back.”

Rhys doesn’t answer. I decide to let it go.

The train swishes past us, not slowing down. It keeps going, right through the station. The weirdest thing is, I can’t see anybody through the windows as it goes past us.

The crowd starts shouting. A cop blows his whistle again and again.

Once it’s halfway into the tunnel, I hear the train’s power shut off and the wheels scrape along the track. The whole thing comes to a stop about two hundred feet past the platform. The taillights glow like demon eyes in the darkness before they wink out. People on the platform start yelling again.

Rhys and I share a look. Then we jump down onto the tracks and start jogging, careful to avoid the electrified third rail. We both stop once we’re in the darkness of the tunnel. A dozen brave/stupid people are following us.

“If another train comes, they’ll be crushed,” I say, “if they aren’t electrocuted.”

Rhys nods. “We need to keep them away. You got this one? I’m due for a shot….”

“Yeah, I got it.” I release a small wave of fear, just enough to discourage anyone from following us into the tunnel. The always-there pressure in my brain swells at first, then lessens, bringing a sweet-and-sour feeling that makes my scalp tingle. The center of my brain feels hot, almost pleasantly so, like a heated stone wrapped in a blanket.

The people following us turn around; two trip on the tracks but scramble to their feet. “What is it? What is it?” one of them says as they nearly launch themselves back onto the platform. None of them will have an answer.

“Nicely done,” Rhys says.

We turn our attention back to the train.

The emergency lights are on inside the rear car, but I don’t see anybody. I hop up onto the back and pull the door open, stepping into the dim yellow light.

The car is empty, but the seats and floor are covered in blood.

W
e pull our swords in unison. Rhys grabs a Glock from under his sweatshirt. We hold still, listening. The door snicks shut behind us, and now it’s completely silent, except for the soft thumps of explosions up above.

“What do you think?” Rhys whispers.

This isn’t the style of a Rose. This is the style of a monster. “I thought I destroyed all the eyeless.”

We move through the car, stepping over and around smears of blood. The smears all go in the same direction, telling us the eyeless boarded from the rear, slashing with their claws and biting with their teeth. Wounding people, driving them forward to the front of the car. I see the first few bodies just inside the next car—an old woman on her back, a man in a blue suit on his side, and a guy who got stuck between the cars.

The door keeps trying to shut on his ankle. It opens and closes, opens and closes.

I turn my head and close my eyes, swallowing hard. Then I trip on a grocery bag, spilling eggs onto the floor. Three of them break, and the yolks mix with blood.

“You okay?” Rhys asks, eyes forward like mine should be.

“Yes.” I have to be. We keep moving. Someone’s tablet is still playing a TV show, the screen fractured.

We step over the guy in the door. I nudge his ankle aside, and the door closes behind us.

I follow Rhys as fast as my gelatin legs will allow. We get through two more cars, where more people have bunched together and died in clumps. My neck stiffens with each passing second, as if someone is driving a screw into the top of my spine. It’s so quiet I can hear us breathing.

The fifth car is in complete darkness, save one flickering emergency light right above a slumped-over form. In the darkness to my left, something drips on the floor.

Rhys presses a button on his Glock, and a little flashlight snaps on. Handy. The light is sterile and white. He swings it left and right, and we creep forward. At the end of the car is a rhythmic banging, like a drum. Another door sliding open and closed, open and closed.

“You scared?” Rhys says.

My pulse tells me yes. I’d rather be back in the tank. But I’m glad to have Rhys by my side. “I’m fine.”

We make it to the front of the train, where we find even more bodies. Most of these are young people who were able to outrun the others. The door at the front of the train yawns wide open, nothing but darkness and silence beyond. I creep toward it and slowly pull the door shut.

Rhys uses his Glock to smash open the operator’s booth in the front right corner of the car. The little booth is empty; I have no idea where the operator went, or why the train lost power. Maybe trains are down across the city. Through the windshield the darkness is unchanged.

“Where are the lights?” Rhys says.

The controls are half digital, half analog. I find a little box on the screen that says
FRONT LIGHTS.
I jab it with my finger, and the tunnel lights up bright yellow. As my eyes adjust, shapes come into view. They are monsters.

But they are not the eyeless.

T
he creatures are twitching, shifting back and forth. They don’t have bodies. They just have arms—
human
arms—eight black limbs connected together in a ball of muscle. Each arm ends with a hand, five fingers tipped in claws. They’re like massive spiders without the bodies. My throat closes, and Rhys makes a strangled sound, muttering “Oh my God” under his breath. On the tracks I see a body clad in a blue uniform—the train operator.

I swallow. It feels like swallowing a rock. The black hands lift up and open toward us, like they’re seeing with their palms.

My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it against the inside of my ribs. Rhys actually grabs my wrist and squeezes, like a reflex. I try to beat down my fear with anger—
These FREAKS killed all those people. What are you going to do about it?

The spiders are crammed together, their black arms slick with blood. Their claws click on the tracks, and a few hunker down low before jumping onto the front of the train.
Thump thump thump.
They’re coming back for us.

“Go!” Rhys screams.

I find a lever on the dashboard. The only lever. I jam it forward with glee, ready to crush the spiders under tons and tons of metal.

But nothing happens.

“Where’s the ON button?” Rhys says.

A spider now plastered to the front of the car starts slamming one clawed hand into the windshield. Its hand is the size of a large frying pan. The glass splinters on the second swing. Rhys lines his Glock up and fires a bullet through the window into the twisted mass of muscle and tendons where the spider’s arms meet. It drops out of sight.

In the meantime, the rest have jumped onto the car and are shaking it back and forth like monkeys.

One of them grabs the door handle at the front.

“No!” I snatch the handle as it dips down, heaving up with all my strength, but then it tears the handle out of my hands. The spider flings open the door, which rebounds viciously, and the creature recoils, then slams it open again. This time the door pops out of its hinges at the top.

“Rhys!”

Rhys fires a blind shot, then stabs at the spider with his sword. He slams the door again and pushes a little locking pin through it. Still, it’s halfway out of the frame, and two fingers curl around the top, jerking on the door.

“Get us moving, Miranda.” Glass shatters at the other end of the car.

I search the dash while another spider hops up on the windshield. There’s a key, which I turn so hard I’m surprised I don’t break it. The train comes to life with a loud hum and rattle. I jab the lever forward and we accelerate.

“Faster!” Rhys calls out.

“I’m trying!”

Some spiders are trying to pry apart the double doors on the side of the car; there’s just enough space for them to fit between the train and the wall of the tunnel. As I watch, two spiders still hanging on to the front of the train get knocked off by a stoplight, limbs flailing, hands opening and closing. I almost shout
YES
at the top of my lungs.

With the lever pushed all the way forward, the train picks up so much speed I have to brace myself against the door. Another spider jumps onto the front of the train and wiggles its claw through the hole in the window left by Rhys’s bullet. It thrashes, widening the hole, bits of glass jabbing into flesh. It doesn’t seem to feel pain. I shove my sword through the hole as we barrel into the next station. The lighted platform is crowded with people and we fly by them, back into the tunnel.
Sorry, you’re going to want the next train.

I lock the accelerator in place, then join Rhys in the middle of the car. We stand back-to-back. A spider crawls along the ceiling; another crouches on a nearby bench. Suddenly they turn away and move toward the other end of the car. The ones working on the side door are gone.
Why?

I turn around as we burst into the next station—there’s a train stopped ahead. I slip back into the booth and yank the lever all the way toward me. The wheels kick up two trails of sparks, and I smack my head against the half-broken windshield. We’re a hundred feet from the train, then fifty, not slowing fast enough.

“We need to jump!” Rhys says, and I’m already prying open the side doors, finishing the work the spiders started. I push one halfway open, people rushing past the opening just feet away.

“You first!” I scream, shoving Rhys at the door. He jumps through, tucking himself into a roll. I do the same as the two trains collide hard enough to feel through the air. Like the first two, the platform is crowded with dozens of startled people.

“Up up up!” Rhys shouts at them.
“Up the stairs!”

Maybe it’s our swords, or the spider blood on us, but the people do as they’re told. We follow them up a few flights, watching for spiders behind us, and emerge in Columbus Circle, right at the southwest corner of Central Park.

Aboveground it’s chaos, like before. More of those strange armored cars are zooming around, crashing into the regular cars and shoving them aside like toys. People are fleeing out of the park, kicking up snow with their boots. Through the leafless trees I can see a dozen fires glowing and bodies and vehicles moving with purpose, the steady onward march of an invasion. It’s not the temperature that makes me cold.

A taxi is idling on the sidewalk next to me, all four doors open. Someone tries to get behind the wheel, but I dart past them, slip into the driver’s seat, ram it into gear, then floor it up and over the curb, wheels breaking loose on the snow.

“Miranda!” Rhys calls after me. But I’m not going far. I swing the car around and drive it straight down the subway stairs. The walls slam all four doors shut. The wheels bounce down the steps as a spider is rounding the bend, ready to come up and claw whatever it can. The front of the taxi hits it, and the whole car jams on the first landing of the stairwell at a sideways angle, pinning the spider and leaving no room for any others to squeeze through. Two of the pinned spider’s arms poke up from behind the bumper and slam down, gouging wide gashes in the hood of the taxi. They scrape and dig and twitch and then stop.

Rhys is already on the trunk of the cab, breaking the back window with his boot. It comes out in one fractured piece, and he grabs my hand and pulls me out. The spiders scream (
how?
) down in the station before moving away, looking for another exit. They’ll find one soon, but maybe I’ve bought some time.

We climb the stairs and head toward the twin skyscrapers of the Time Warner Center. Idiots are running out the front door with expensive-looking clothes and—I swear to God—copper pots and pans.

Suddenly a voice booms out, only it’s inside my head somehow, like telepathy. I know everyone around me can hear it too, because they all
stop dead
. Frozen in time.

“Greetings, people of New York. I am the leader of the army currently invading your city. Do not fear. We mean you only as much harm as necessary.”

I know the voice—it belongs to the director of True Earth. The Original Miranda North I’m cloned from.

“There is something on the island of Manhattan that we desire. When we find it, we will depart, and you will never see us again. Meanwhile, do not try to leave. As I speak, powerful turrets are being placed around the perimeter of the island. Nothing will get in or out, I assure you. Your country will try to fly planes and satellites over our airspace, and they will be shot down. But I repeat—we mean you only as much harm as necessary. Follow instructions and you will be safe. Those found acting out of order will be destroyed.”

Two gunshots echo off the buildings, the source impossible to discover.

“Flyers will be distributed. They will show you what we seek. The sooner we find what we want, the sooner your city will be returned to you. Take heart, citizens of New York. This is not your end.”