Time, something that I usually count on for being the same, becomes something incredibly slow.
The melody coming from the other end of the bridge only stops because the musicians can no longer read their sheet music. It cuts off awkwardly, instrument by instrument, until there's nothing left but a stunted quiet. In the new, foreign darkness of Calore Industries, the two-thousand people of high society have nothing to say, paralyzed in the midst of their conversations and laughs.
Downtown Manhattan is a dark place, and despite the staggering wall of glass—reaching from the ballroom floor to the dead chandeliers—that looks to the plaza and the street, no light exists. Far away lamps flare as warnings in the distant outside. The candles balanced on servers' platters become less romantic and more of a cruel joke, when they work no better at lighting up the ballroom than a couple dozen fireflies would be at illuminating a football field. I wait for my eyes to adjust, wait until I can discern the outlines of the Calores, but when I barely find Lucas, my breath hitches.
And then it hitches a couple of more times as I stand in place, scared of the dark like I've never been before. It presses in on me, impossibly tight and suffocating with the expanse of the ballroom surrounding me. I feel impossibly alone. I feel impossibly motionless, like I'm seeing a landscape of dark nothingness from outside of my body. Impossibly, I feel as though the ground's going to fall right out from under me.
If one was waiting for nothing, they might very well have mistaken the gunshot for something else.
More seconds tick by.
I realize that it wasn't one gunshot, because it was too loud, coming from too many places at once.
The dark swells. My skin prickles with gooseflesh.
"Rise, Red as the Dawn."
The words come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time, distorted and robotic and nothing like the voice of a real person.
From somewhere below on another balcony, a phone flashlight turns on.
Whoever holds it is one bold man or woman.
And in the next second, an earsplitting, petrifying, feminine scream from that same balcony peals through the whole damn ballroom.
I close my eyes so that it's truly dark, the little gleams of flames and streetlights gone.
If it wasn't gone already, I let my stage face go, descend into whatever my emotions are.
And whether it's that scream, the distorted words of the Scarlet Street Fighters, or simply a delay in what should happen instantaneously, whether my perception of time is wrong or whether it's a combination of all of those things . . . people begin making sounds.
I can't see them, but I hear whispers, hisses from guests who ask those near them what to do. They respond in turn, probably saying that they're not exactly sure what to do let alone what's going on. Those are the quiet, reasonable ones. I hear cries, borderline screams from others throughout the ballroom and its floors. Heels begin clicking, backing away even when they have no inkling of what directions are safe to go. I hear the smart ones beckon for somebody to call the police, in spite of the hundred security guards deployed throughout Calore Industries.
Fear washes through the building like a tidal wave until everybody realizes that something's horribly wrong.
Nothing more than headless chickens devoured by fear, they begin to move too fast.
When I open my eyes, the lights flare again, chandeliers and sconces burning bright. The elevator buttons turn orange, and the waterfalls buzz red.
For just a moment, just a breath, the gild returns to Calore Industries.
Then they begin flickering. Madly flickering. Seizure-inducing flickering.
There's no plunge, no ebb and flow. Only flickers between stark light and painful dark. The flashes of light make it as though the world keeps disappearing, here in one blink and vanished from under my feet the next. Apart from the fear, the sounds, the flashes make it impossible to move.
A matter of seconds pass.
In the midst of shoving, trays of wine have toppled over, alcohol pooling on the floor. Across the ballroom, guests have pushed themselves against walls, thrown themselves to the ground in the hopes that they'll be safe from whatever's going on. Even in the convulsing light, the gleaming jewels seem dull now, pale in comparison to the sudden, out-of-control chaos. The dresses, the tuxes, aren't so beautiful anymore either, crouched down and flush against falls. Screams replace music, a horrific melody unto itself.
Rise, Red as the Dawn.
There's no chance in hell that a single socialite in this place doesn't know what that means.
Least of all Tiberias Calore.
Nobody breathes normally, breaths all variations of gasping and the beginnings of crying. Mister Calore, Anabel, and Cal still stand at the fifth story bridge's center, surrounded by other guests who have paused in their trips across. Cal has a hand on his grandmother's shoulder, and he no longer smiles. In between the awful, disorienting flashes, his mouth is set into a fine line, and his eyes burn with a different, more dangerous sort of fire. Anabel's lips are twisted as her grandson forces her down towards the ground, inaudibly yelling for the others around to do the same.
I don't feel Lucas's hand on my shoulder as he pushes me back toward the wall, toward the elevators where socialites stand frozen.
I do watch, however, the way that Tiberias Calore's face contorts in rage.
It takes him longer than most to realize what's being done to him, but when he does, his skin reddens and his fists bunch up. Like Cal, he starts yelling. I have a feeling his words are different.
Men in black suits swarm the bridge, running towards the Calore family, but with one order, Tiberias Calore sends half of them sprinting the other way.
He wants to find them. He knows what's happening, and he's going to hunt them down.
But it was dark when the gunshots went off, and they came from different places.
The Scarlet Street Fighters only allowed for the lights to return, unsteady and oddly blinding, because they knew that it would make everything worse. Those brave enough to move end up colliding into one another when the lights flicker away, and those who are too fraught with fear end up being an impediment to the ones that make for the doors, the stairs, anywhere that resembles safety.
I don't know where they are, what they look like, and everybody's moving too fast to so much as make an attempt at finding out. Perhaps they're where the screams are the worst.
It takes me too long to notice the blood, too thick to simply be another platter of wine spilled upon the floor. From across the ballroom, from where that flashlight shone and from where that first scream arose, I take in what gleams brighter than any diamond ever could, pooling beneath the throat of a black-haired, tanned-skin man clad in a tuxedo.
Not a warning.
Certainly an attack.
And definitely an assassination.
Another second or two pass.
The ballroom goes dark and light and dark and light.
I flinch at it, my back against the cool metal of the stopped elevator. People are probably trapped inside of it with no idea of what's going on outside. On his way up for me, Maven might be in one.
I know that there are more pools of blood. I heard more than one gunshot.
Pages of a book flash before my eyes, there one moment and gone the next, never giving me the chance to see the full, unabridged story.
It's not over.
The lights wouldn't be flickering if it was over.
They're not done yet, and everybody seems to know that.
Somebody realizes that the front doors are locked, and then the screaming gets worse.
Nobody knows where to go. The elevators are down, cutting off access to the rest of the building. The stairs can only take so many, and considering that the shots rang out seconds ago, nobody's exactly forming a line. They follow one another like sheep in a herd, but none of them really know anything.
Numbly, I glance across the wide bridge to the stairs that my brother warned me of. People rush up them, disappearing around corners and giving up any qualms they have about shoving people aside.
The members of tonight's orchestra, barely apart from the entrance to those massive stairs, wear black dresses and black tuxes and sit in black chairs, as though they're a fragment of what the world becomes each time the lights flicker off, each time we drown all over again. They've taken cover between their rows of chairs, a couple underneath the grand piano and more holding up their instruments as though they plan on using them as weapons.
A familiar man with thinning grey and chestnut hair crouches at the edge of the ensemble. Jazz and contemporary teacher, opera star, NYU scholar, and apparent violinist, Julian Jacos watches this scene unfold as I do, his violin tucked at his side.
He doesn't wear the same face of terror that I do, but looks on with a passive, albeit sad expression.
A tall man in a server's uniform comes sprinting up the stairs, red bandana over his mouth and nose. It nearly matches his hair, unbelievably red. It covers his freckles, pasted across his face and something that I shouldn't know he has. Tristan.
Diana Farley, even taller, is right behind him, wearing black tactical gear and a ridiculous number of knives and guns at her waist. She, too, has a bloody red bandana over her mouth and nose.
One, two, three security guards are right on their tails.
Still moving forward, Farley whirls around and takes each of them out with three magnificently-placed bullets.
Farley and Tristan keep running.
Elsewhere, gunshots go off and glass breaks.
Shatters. It's no tray of wine glasses either, but entire panes.
For just a moment, I take my attention off the two Scarlet Street Fighters on my level of the ballroom and turn my eyes to what goes on below.
The glass panes of railings shatters as another server runs along the third-story balcony. Only the golden balustrades are left, and there's plenty of open space in between the rails to fall through. The few guests that remain on the ground of the bridge cling to it as the glass simply breaks, falling to the marble ballroom floor and fragmenting into thousands of tiny pieces.
On the ground, people lunge back as glass pours down and ricochets outward.
I can't help but loosen a breath when I see that everybody manages to stay out of the raining glass's crosshairs, that no more blood spills on the ballroom floor.
It happens again at the next story, fifteen feet below me, and I recognize the figure who runs along the bridge well. Kilorn, red bandana tied around his face and green eyes gleaming, runs just ahead of where glass breaks apart and falls. It leaves those left on the bridge with a few feet on each of their sides before marble ends and open air begins.
Something deep in my gut buckles when I see the figure that follows him, tux jacket off and a bloodstain at his left shoulder, inches from his heart. It streaks all the way down his arm.
In between the flashes, I realize that Ptolemus Samos sprints after Kilorn, who doesn't dare turn around and take a shot like Farley did. Ptolemus is bigger than him, faster too. A second's delay might end up—
The dancer lunges out and sends Kilorn and himself sprawling to the ground three-quarters of the way down the bridge. They land near the edge, and three women nearby have to scramble to get away while not falling twenty feet onto marble. Kilorn's gun flies to the ballroom floor. Ptolemus pins Kilorn's hands to the ground, even as Kilorn struggles against him. But one is heavier, one is muscled, and one is apparently highly trained in these things.
No. No. No.
Shit.
But I don't have the time to register the implications of what Ptolemus pinning Kilorn to the floor means.
When my gaze returns to my floor of the ballroom, so far above from the sea of glass crystals, I see Farley make a move.
Most still have their eyes on Ptolemus and Kilorn, struggling against one another.
It happens in between light flickers, in the nanosecond transition between light and dark as things go fuzzy.
Julian, at the orchestra's edge, reaches for something inside of the violin case beneath his chair.
Just as Farley passes him, practically at his side, he hands her something.
I don't know what.
Glass begins to shatter beneath the feet of Farley and Tristan, who have each taken to a side of the bridge and hopped up upon a metal railing. They must carry some sort of a device that sends out a glass-shattering pitch, because it's only with their movements that the glass breaks.
With the agility of ballet dancers en pointe, they run on top of the narrow gilded railings, unforgiving stone and glass shards almost twenty meters below.
I don't know where they're going.
The security guards that encircle Mister Calore, Anabel, and Cal don't leave their posts. But they raise their guns a little higher.
Farley raises her gun right back, mercilessly taking out two more guards. I don't know where the bullets hit, but I watch as they drop at Anabel Lerolan's feet, leaving the old woman vulnerable.
Silently, I hope that Cal isn't stupid enough to take the guards' place.
Glass continues to rain, effectively stopping anybody on the floor from making a move towards the stairs. With the bridge on this floor under attack, the stairs on the other side of it, and the elevators down, there's nowhere for anybody to go. My back presses into the elevator doors, wishing they'd open and I could fall into them.
Farley and Tristan should get shot at, but they don't, moving too fast along the railings and firing right back at the guards on the bridge, not so far from the Calores. They aren't afraid of giving a couple of the guests non-lethal bullet wounds, and by the time the two have nearly approached the middle of the bridge, most of the guards are down.
Dead, dying, bleeding, scared. I don't know.
But somebody else isn't so scared.
Lucas takes a step out from where he was, in the middle of ordering people to the wall or to the floor. He's been saying it over and over again these last thirty, forty seconds, but I haven't listened.
I've barely heard him.
I'm hearing him now.
He rushes to the edge of the balcony.
It's the perfect angle. And Farley and Tristan don't see him coming.
His gun is out of his holster, raised before I can say anything.
But it's not like I ever had the power to say anything anyways.
A single shot rings out, resolute.
Lucas dives to the ground, as if he's expecting some sort of retaliation.
The boy with the fiery red hair hears the sound of a bullet leaving its barrel.
But there's hardly anywhere to go.
Tristan's dead before his feet leave the bridge railing, a hole between his eyebrows to match the color of his hair and bandana. The gun he holds clatters to the marble, and along with broken shards of glass, his broken body travels the journey down. It falls and falls, dying skin cut by glass as the Scarlet Street Fighter makes his descent. I'm up too high to see the moment when his corpse hits the floor.
People scream as they always have. A sob leaves my throat.
But even Tristan doesn't earn more than a second's worth of my attention as the wall of glass that leads to the plaza flares up with fire.
Passing the Calores, every one of their guards down, Farley's hand is outstretched towards the front doors as though she just threw something. She doesn't lose her balance.
A grenade. That's what Julian handed Farley.
A freaking grenade.
It's no longer dark, at least.
An explosion rattles Calore Industries as glass flies down and up, this way and that. For but a moment, the flickering, incapacitating lights mean nothing as red-hot, scalding orange flame erupts, consuming half the glass wall with its fury. The handrails, the limestone, the marble, and the guests of the building are illuminated as they never have been before, fiery rather than gilded. Heat flares, and hot wind blows. Socialites fall to the ground, and a man at the third story bridge—the one closest to the wall—blows right off it.
The sound that it makes is deafening, makes all of the screams and gunshots worth nothing. It booms in my ears, sends them ringing. The fire flares, this mass of orange that becomes a sort of wall. A barrier.
The firelight reaches the very ends of the ballroom, lighting up the koi ponds the color of sunset. For but a moment, everybody's eyes gleam the color of Cal's.
The flames hit the portion of glass higher up, saving most of those on the ground from any damage. But a man flew off a bridge, and I can't think that he's the only injured amidst the flames.
There's glass everywhere, and smoke begins to waft.
With nothing to eat, the fire turns into sparks. Glass falls.
Lucas is back, pushing me to the floor. My body hits it hard, but I don't register the pain, not when he's half-on top of me, protecting me from whatever I need saving from.
I wish that I could tell him that I'm the one person in this whole damn ballroom that's safe.
Farley advances, past the Calores and the center of the bridge, still artfully balanced on the railing, glass crumbling beneath her feet.
Farley reaches for something at her belt. From dozens of feet away, it looks like a gun, but I sense that it's not. In the remnants of fire, I see an arrow at its end.
A fancy-ass grappling hook. Naturally.
Nobody has the mind, the sanity to pay attention to her as they take in the devastation of what she's done.
Except for one person.
Cal emerges from the cluster of gala guests, his tux jacket discarded. I can't read his face.
And then he starts running, as fast as Diana Farley sprints upon the railing.
"Cal," I whisper. My voice is broken, pleading. He doesn't hear me. I doubt Lucas hears me. Instead, he runs alongside the railing, a dozen feet behind her.
He sees what she's about to do. Farley's going to get that grappling hook around a chandelier and fly right out the glass wall that she just took down. Naturally.
My contemporary teacher's form is perfect. I've never seen someone sprint so fast or with such perfection. He gains on her, coming to the end of the railing.
My heart pounds harder than it has all night.
Farley won't touch Cal. Not when Maven's part of all of this, and he's his brother. She won't risk that kind of damage.
That's what I tell myself, at least.
She makes to turn, to advance on the adjacent balcony railing before making her final move.
Cal takes a final step, and then he's lunging like Ptolemus did.
His arms wrap around her arms and her waist, and Cal's tearing her away from the balcony, using his knee to kick the gun out of her hand as they go plummeting to the ground.
Farley's face hits marble not so far from me, and Cal lands right on top of her. He doesn't brace himself, allowing her body to receive his full weight, and as soon as they're on the floor, Cal's pulling his arms out from under her, taking hers and twisting them behind her. A knee goes to her back, and his other leg presses against both of hers.
The people around us quiet.
A dozen security guards couldn't take her down, and yet Cal did. He came at her from behind when she was on the railing, about to make her escape. Even she couldn't fight that.
Lucas moves off me, raises his gun and aims it at Farley.
"Move and I shoot," he says with a force that could shatter glass if there was any left.
Not stupid enough to get herself killed, Farley stills against Cal.
"I'm impressed," Farley murmurs through her bandana from under him, thoroughly ignoring Lucas. "Not many can take me down."
Some shots still fire from other balconies and bridges, from below in the ballroom. People still scream. But with one of the Street Fighters on the ground, there's a strange calm here.
She laughs a little. "Cal," she says his name. "That is what you go by, isn't it? Not Tiberias Calore the Seventh? I don't blame you. It's a silly, embarrassing name."
Cal says nothing. Like a good soldier, he stares at her back, focuses every part of himself on keeping her contained. Though Cal's a big guy, Farley's not much shorter than him, and she's certainly buffed out. Not to mention the other things that she can do. He won't risk losing her over a hit at his pride.
"But your mother didn't want to name you that, did she? Coriane Jacos," Farley continues, drawling Cal's mother's name. "I suppose old family traditions are harder to kill, though."
He doesn't falter, but I watch as something in his eyes break. The fire flickers in them. He hardly looks himself right now, throat bobbing and barely-held rage pulsating all throughout his body.
But then three other security guards are over, two lowering themselves to the ground while the third mirrors Lucas with his gun.
The Street Fighters have lost the element of surprise. The police will arrive in hoards at any moment, and God knows who else will follow. The people who were supposed to die are dead, minus Ptolemus Samos. The glass of most surfaces is destroyed. I'm destroyed. Guns still fire, but they're fading, meaning most Street Fighters have run off, disappearing through this exit and that, chased by security who will never catch them.
People still scream. They don't know if it's over or not.
The power flashes in and out, but oddly enough, the elevators begin working again, their buttons lighting up and not going out. The one that I'm propped against dings a moment later, and when the doors glide open, I have to fight to keep my back upright. My skin misses the cold.
"Mare," Maven says, and I close my eyes tight at his voice, soft but afraid.
He was on his way up for me, despite Shade's warnings of the stairs. When the power failed, he indeed ended up trapped inside the elevator, probably dark and flickering and deadening like the rest of this place.
Suspended by a few cables, surrounded by metal, and oddly safe, he would've heard everything that was going on.
From the screams to the gunshots to the explosion.
Maven's feet end up at the elevator's threshold, and I can only imagine what the younger Calore sees. The cowering bodies, the continual screaming, the smoke, the spilled wine and blood . . . the hundreds of panes of shattered glass. Surely, he notices how Cal has his knee pinned against Diana Farley's back.
Cal jerks his head towards the sound of his brother's voice. His eyes become something else as he looks between us, one of us on the floor and the other stuck in place.
"Go." His voice is gentle, nothing of the man that flung himself out of the crowd to rush at a terrorist.
I don't miss how Farley glances between us, amusement written in her eyes despite the guns cocked at her skull.
When Maven grabs me by my underarms, drags me into the elevator, I don't protest.
I force myself up as other people come bursting in, filling it until there isn't enough space for one more person.
The doors close, encapsulating me in a small box, gilded and bright and yet suffocating.
Somebody presses a button, and when the elevator starts its ascent, my stomach falters.
The worst part of it all:
None of it lasted more than two minutes.
"Some water, hon?"
I shake my head.
"Sure?"
I nod my head.
The woman with the tray of water in plastic cups goes away.
Through the unshattered, perfectly intact glass wall that I gaze out of, Manhattan sparkles. The streets and avenues stretch across the island like veins, colored golden with the constant traffic moving along them at a snail's pace. As always, buildings stand like swords plunged into the earth, all the while standing up to the sky. Their windows gleam with light, making the concept of nightfall utterly pointless.
Just like my old dance teacher always said.
I've never been as high as I am now. I'm seeing Midtown from the opposite end of the island that I'm used to, a skyscraper window off Wall Street replacing my apartment roof in East Harlem. We're high enough so that no other buildings block my view, and instead I can see from SoHo to Chelsea, from Little Italy to Midtown. Trimmed with stretching piers, the Hudson River flows off to my left, and the East River gleams to my right. FDR Drive lights up with traffic. I see how after the Financial District, the buildings of lower Manhattan sink low to the ground before soaring back up and becoming skyscrapers at Midtown a few miles north.
The buildings glitter like my diamonds do.
The elevator ride took too long, and we ended up on one of the last floors of Calore Industries. Maven took us to a carpeted boardroom with an elegant glass table, beige rolling chairs, and a sitting area off to the side, decked out with leather couches and chairs and a liquor cabinet that the socialites have since raided. The walls are painted beige to match the chairs, and the fourth wall is made of glass, facing north to Midtown and beyond. Too many people numbly stare at the skyline.
Somebody called somebody, and now a quarter of the gala guests are up here, sitting in the chairs and on the couches, along the walls and on the floor. Hundreds more are strewn throughout the corridor outside, more in similar boardrooms down and across the hall. Forty, fifty policemen and women stand guard on this floor. I heard somebody say so. A dozen guard the boardroom alone, wearing black gear and hands never far from hips. Their faces are all different. Some look stern, others sympathetic. Others look horrified and disgusted.
The high society of Manhattan has fallen. Dresses are in shambles, cut by trampling shoes. Bowties are long discarded, and hair gel has long been ruined.
I try to ignore the sobs, the streaks of mascara that destroy the faces of women. Lying on the carpet, pressed against walls, some are curled up on their sides, shaking and sniffling. Others can hardly breathe, gasping for air in between fits of crying. More are silent, mutely staring on at absolutely nothing. Some force themselves to be strong, to pretend for the sake of those that they came with. Others take walks down the hallways, talk to their families on their phones, try to make themselves useful and ask the police about what's happening and when we can leave.
The leather office couch that I sit upon with Maven and two other socialites that I've never met or at least don't remember meeting begins to feel sweaty underneath me. Even against Maven's shoulder, my head's pounding. My hand won't let go of his.
My partner stares into the glass as though it bears an answer.
The awful thing about glass is that it reflects. I see New York City as I never have before through the lens of a caged bird, through a lens that has a horrible side-effect.
Half-transparent men and women in tuxes and dresses stand, kneel, sit, lie in the reflection, reminding me of what I knew.
The moment Julian Jacos, brother of Coriane, handed Farley the grenade rings fresh in my mind.
But I had no idea. I had no idea that it would be so bad.
That people would die, that an entire wall of glass would come crashing down, courtesy of a grenade.
An hour or so has passed.
Nobody who knows dares to say how many casualties there were, how many wounded there are.
Nobody will say if they've heard anything of Diana Farley or Kilorn Warren.
Not that they'd know their names.
I close my eyes, pinch them shut until it hurts.
Only to be brought back to when the first shots went off and everything went to hell.
When I open my eyes, tears begin streaming down my cheeks.