And stepped off.

She plunged down and away. The trick was to release the hook at just the right moment, when her speed and upward momentum existed in perfect balance. This would occur roughly two-thirds up the back side of the hook’s arc. She swung through the bottom, still accelerating. Her body, her senses, her thoughts—all were attuned, at one with speed and space.

She released the hook. Her body inverted; she tucked her knees to her chest. Three aerial rolls and she uncoiled. The flat-topped roof across the street: that was the target. It rose in greeting. Welcome, Alicia.

Touchdown.

Her powers had expanded. It was as if, in the presence of her creator, some powerful mechanism within her had been fully unleashed. The aerial spaces of the city were trivial; she could vault vast distances, alight on the narrowest ledges, cling to the tiniest cracks. Gravity was a toy to her; she ranged above Manhattan like a bird. In the glass faces of skyscrapers her reflected image dove and darted, plunged and swooped.

She found herself, sometime later, above Third Avenue, near the demarcation between land and sea; a few blocks south of Astor Place, the encroaching waters began, bubbling up from the island’s flooded underworld. She descended, ping-ponging between buildings, to the street. Broken shells lay everywhere among the dried husks of ocean weeds swept inward by storm surges. She knelt and pressed her ear to the pavement.

They were definitely moving.

The grate pulled away easily; she dropped into the tunnel, lit her torch, and began to walk south. A ribbon of dark water sloshed at her feet. Fanning’s Many had been eating. Their droppings were everywhere, rank, ureic, as were the skeletal remains of their feeding—mice, rats, the small creatures of the city’s clammy substratum. Some of the droppings were fresh, a few days old at the most.

She passed through the Astor Place station. Now she could feel it: the sea. The great bulge of it, always pressing, seeking to enlarge its domain, to drown the world with its cold blue weight. Her heart had quickened; the hairs stood up along her arms. It’s only water, she told herself. Only water…

The bulkhead appeared. A thin spray of water, almost a mist, shot from its edges. She stepped toward it. A moment’s hesitation; then she extended a hand to touch its frigid face. On the other side, untold tons of pressure lay in stasis, stalemated for a century by the weight of the door. Fanning had explained the history. The entire Manhattan subway system lay below sea level; it had been a disaster waiting to happen. After Hurricane Wilma had flooded the tunnels, the city fathers had constructed a series of heavy doors to hold the water in check. In the throes of the epidemic, when the electricity had failed, a fail-safe mechanism had sealed them. There they had rested for over a century, holding the encroaching ocean at bay.

Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid…

She heard a skittering behind her. She spun, raising her torch. At the edge of the darkness, a pair of orange eyes flared. A large male but skinny, the bumps of his ribs showing; he squatted, froglike, between the tracks, a rat gripped in his mouth with the very tips of his teeth. The rat squirmed and squeaked, its bald tail whipping.

“What are you looking at?” Alicia said. “Get out of here.”

The jaws clamped shut. An arcing pop of blood and a sucking sound and the viral spat the empty bag of bones and fur to the ground. Alicia’s stomach tumbled, not with nausea but hunger; she hadn’t eaten for a week. The viral extended its claws, petting the air like a cat. It cocked his head: What sort of being is this?

“Go on.” She waved the torch like a pike. “Shoo. Scat.”

A last look, almost fond. It darted away.

—

Fanning had already prepared for daybreak by drawing the shades. He was sitting at his usual table on the balcony above the main hall, reading a book by candlelight. His eyes lifted as she approached.

“Good hunting?”

Alicia took a chair. “I wasn’t hungry.”

“You should eat.”

“So should you.”

His attention returned to his book. Alicia glanced at the title: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

“I went to the library.”

“So I see.”

“It’s a very sad play. No, not sad. Angry.” Fanning shrugged. “I haven’t read it for years. It seems different to me now.” He found a certain page, looked at her, and raised a professorial finger. “Have a listen.”

The spirit I have seen

May be the devil, and the devil hath power

T’ assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps

Out of my weakness and my melancholy,

As he is very potent with such spirits,

Abuses me to damn me. I’ll have grounds

More relative than this. The play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

When Alicia said nothing, he raised an eyebrow at her. “You’re not a fan?”

Fanning’s moods were like this. He could go silent for days, brooding incessantly, then, without warning, would emerge. Lately he had adopted a tone of dry cheerfulness, almost smug.

“I can see why you like it.”

“ ‘Like’ may not be the word.”

“The end doesn’t make sense, though. Who’s the king?”

“Precisely.”

Wedges of sunlight peeked through the drapes, making pale stripes on the floor. Fanning seemed unperturbed by them, though his sensitivity was far greater than her own. For Fanning, the sun’s touch was deeply painful.