The City We Became

Madison drops Manny and Paulo at City Hall Station, and they pass a gauntlet of NYPD officers with almost no incident. The station is swarming with police and Con Edison engineers investigating a bomb threat in the station, but Manny and Paulo walk right past them. An empty #6 train sits on the tracks, so they board, and Manny uses his city energy to fire up the engines and drive the train to the next stop: old City Hall Station. They disembark and make their way through the darkened station, searching for the primary avatar. They navigate the unlit stairwells until they find him, sleeping on a bundle of newspapers just like in Manny’s vision. He tries to touch him, but an unseen obstruction prevents contact. While Paulo tells Manny about his own city birth, they suddenly hear a loud, metallic screeching. The #6 train has powered to life and is coming after them.

On Staten Island, Aislyn is awakened by shouts and rumblings in her front yard. Peering through her front door, she sees Hong, Bronca, Brooklyn, Padmini, and, floating in the air, the Woman in White. Fueled by years of suppressed anger and resentment, Aislyn summons her power and flings Hong and the other boroughs into the street. They try to convince Aislyn that the Woman in White is malevolent, bent on destroying the city, but Aislyn defends her, claiming “Maybe it should all go to hell” (405). Brooklyn approaches Aislyn threateningly but stops when the Woman shows them a vision of Veneza, injured and imprisoned in an interdimensional cavern. The Woman tries to strike a bargain: She will return Veneza in exchange for the avatars allowing her to occupy and destroy this universe, albeit quickly and peacefully. Belatedly, they realize that Veneza is not trapped in a cavern but in a living creature who means to swallow her alive.

Back in the subway tunnel, the tendril-covered ghost train moves toward Manny and Paulo. Summoning the vast power of Manhattan, Manny morphs into King Kong and charges forward to battle the serpentine train beast. Meanwhile, Aislyn cannot abide the utterly bizarre chaos that is happening in her city in her front yard; she summons a final burst of city energy and banishes everyone—the other boroughs, Hong, the spindly creatures, even the beast who holds Veneza—leaving only the Woman in White. Laying a hand on Aislyn’s shoulder, the Woman gives Aislyn a false sense of safety as her city, the city of White towers, begins to supplant Staten Island.

Bronca, Brooklyn, Padmini, and Veneza reappear in downtown Manhattan, but Hong is missing. Veneza is deeply shaken by her experience which she describes as “a halfway point, where things from both places could exist” (413). Gathering their wits and their strength, they decide to forge ahead without Staten Island, and they head for City Hall. As Bronca searches for parking, Veneza explains the Enemy’s strategy: to replace New York City with its own. They notice that, despite the sunny day, the city is eclipsed in shadow, as if something unseen is blocking the light.

Brooklyn gains access to the closed subway station, and, upon entering, they see “the scattered, twisted corpse of a biomechanoid monster” (420)— the ghost train that tried to kill Manny and Paulo. Paulo emerges from the wreckage; Manny lies, bloody and naked, slumped against a wall. Brooklyn explains that Staten Island has sided with the Woman in White, so they decide they must do the best they can without her. Stepping into the alcove where the primary avatar sleeps, they reach out to wake him, but an invisible barrier stops them. All is lost, it seems, until Veneza begins to change and to become a city herself, Jersey City, New Jersey, “a city that’s spitting distance of Manhattan, closer even than Staten Island” (426). With R’lyeh approaching fast, the five now gather around the primary avatar who, they notice, is glowing. He stirs and opens his eyes, gazing at the five avatars. Grinning, he says, “We’re New York. Aw, yeah” (427). The combined power of the six avatars blasts upward, shattering the invading city and cleansing New York and its inhabitants of the multidimensional infestation. R’lyeh, caught between universes, cannot survive unless she can find a foothold in this one. She anchors herself in Staten Island. She is no longer a mighty city; she is merely an entity but still alive.

July 9, the day New York declared independence from England, is also New York City’s commemoration of its birth. The six avatars—along with various family members—picnic on the beach at Coney Island. The primary avatar, Paulo at his side, watches from the boardwalk, basking in the sun and in the special bond he shares with Manny. From here, they can see Staten Island, still eclipsed in shadow. As Paulo prepares to depart, he tells the primary that The Summit, a gathering of all awakened cities, is meeting in Paris, and New York must attend. The primary eventually joins the others on the beach. They commune in their mutual love of the city of which they are all a part.