As soon as the train began to move, the sliding door connecting the car to the rest of the train slammed open. A figure dressed entirely in black, face masked by a balaclava, ran toward Robert so quickly that he barely had time to stand before it was on him.
Instinctively Robert lowered a shoulder and leaned into his assailant, trying to hold his ground. With a crunch of bone against bone, he felt himself lifted into the air and slammed against the metal door at the end of the train.
As soon as he hit the floor, Robert felt a knife at his throat, a hand gripping the top of his head. He gasped with pain and fear as the cold metal pressed into his flesh, his ribs and spine screaming. An acrid smell filled his nostrils. Desperation. His assailant might be more afraid than he was. But of what?
“Give it to me.”
He tried to get a reading on the voice. It was hoarse, dangerous. He knew it. Did he? Brisk, confident, but distorted somehow.
“You want my wallet?”
“The cache.”
“That’s fine. Take the cash.”
“What you found in the cache. Give it to me. Where is it?”
“I’ll have to reach into my jacket pocket.”
“Which?”
“Inside left.”
It was a lie, but Robert figured his assailant would find it hard to reach into the pocket without moving his knife hand.
Fingers reached into the pocket, found nothing. Robert’s head exploded with pain as it was slammed against the metal door.
“Where is it?”
The assailant wanted Robert’s link to Adam. No way. Robert chose his moment. A detached calm came over him, and he pushed up violently with his legs, hitting bone. He wouldn’t give it up.
Powerful hands twisted him round. He took punches on the mouth and nose. He went down on one knee, scrambling for footing.
He began to feel dizzy, and the quality of the light around him began to change. A tenuous yellow light, richer and darker with each second, seeped into the air around his attacker. Robert’s face started to go numb, a fist gripped his mind with cold, and he was back in the dream ... geometric shapes … lightning bolts … searing pain stabbed behind his eyes. It was evil. He wanted to vomit.
Words came into his head. Terri’s voice.
“Hide with the child and the Man of Light. Hide with them.”
The picture of the caged-off monument to the child that Terri had sent him sprang into his mind’s eye. Part of him took refuge there. With Moss. With the swirling angel figure. Outside it, the pain doubled.
Hands went through his other pockets, found the bullet casing and took it.
Robert felt himself hauled to his feet. Then he was suddenly watching the scene from above, from far away. He thought of Katherine, tried to gauge whether he was going to die or not. He thought he was. He saw the world shatter like pond ice.
Then just as suddenly it stopped. His mind was released. His knees gave way. The man was walking back toward the rest of the train, stashing the bullet cartridge in a pocket on the sleeve of his jacket.
“No!”
Robert, with a sheer act of will, launched himself at the man as he slid open the metal door that led to the next carriage. He forced them both out into the narrow metal and chain-link cage between the cars. The metal platforms shimmied and bucked beneath their feet. Rushing air tore at his skin.
He looked into his assailant’s eyes, and it was like looking into a malignant sun. He was staring again into the face of death from the night of the fire. The face spat hatred, arcing and warping into a single black hole, drawing him in and down … They grabbed each other by the throat, slamming off the doors and metal harnesses hanging between the cars. They roared through the closed subway station at Cortland Street, directly under the Ground Zero site, thrown from side to side, their feet slipping on the metal plates. The tracks rushed beneath their feet.
Closing his eyes to block the bilious yellow light, Robert twisted out of the stranglehold and took one of his assailant’s wrists with him, turning it until it was between the attacker’s shoulder blades. He jammed a hand into the zippered arm pocket and grabbed back the bullet. Then he slammed his assailant’s head against metal and forced it over the chains toward the speeding tunnel wall.
“Who are you?” he shouted. “Who are you?”
No reply.
He forced his assailant’s head and torso further out into the tunnel.
“Who are you?”
To his amazement, tears of anger filled his eyes. He wanted to kill this creature. He loosened his grip for a moment, disconcerted.
An elbow slammed into his belly, knocking all the breath out of his body. His assailant twisted away from him and tried to open the door back into the rear car as they pulled into Chambers Street.
Doubled over with pain, Robert felt his entire body fill with weight, as though he were made of lead. It pooled into his legs, rooting him to the earth. Time distended, like poured molasses. Yet to his astonishment he was able to stand, feeling the heaviness pour through his body, displacing the pain, filling his lungs and chest with a strength he had never felt.
He slung his weight forward in one mighty step and felt his torso twist round like a slingshot, propelling his fist into the back of his assailant as he stepped through the open doorway into the last car.
The man flew forward as though hit by a shotgun blast, lifted clean off his feet. He flew past the metal poles along the midline of the car, hitting one halfway along and rolling and tumbling to the far end, where he slammed into the metal door at the back of the train.
Robert stared at his fist in disbelief. And he recognized something else, too: excitement, and pride. He felt molten metal pouring through his veins and muscles, though already now it was beginning to seep back down into the ground, toward the centre of the earth.
His attacker picked himself up and fled into the Chambers Street station as the train doors opened.
Strength now flowing from him, his head spinning, Robert stepped from between the cars onto the platform and made straight for a trash can. He threw up into it. Then he staggered to a wall, squatted against it on his haunches and held his head in his hands. For a moment or two, he blacked out.