Chapter 41: Chapter 38: Nonstop

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> “The Convention was a rousing success and the Federalist secessionists are now a laughingstock. But to be certain of their demise, and of their patron’s, I must pursue one final course of action before my days are over.”

We fled along the water.

Not with the quickness of the speed buffs, which were stupidly in a box in our island headquarters, but with the urgency of a gazelle trying to outrun a hungry lion. The hooded figure pursued us with equal zeal, and I braved a half-second glance back to see him slowly gaining.

Beatrice ran a few paces ahead while I lagged behind, thanks to the wooden box.

“I can’t keep this up!” I shouted to Beatrice, my forearms burning from the strain. “It’s too heavy!”

Beatrice suddenly stopped short and I nearly collided with her from behind. I could see the edge of the park and the city streets just up ahead. She turned and there was something small and smoking in her hand.

“Keep going,” she said and I saw the fire in her eyes. “I’ll catch up to you.”

“O-OK,” was all I could muster as I left her there, alone. I reached the street and started retracing our route from earlier. Beatrice would be fine, I tried to convince myself. She had no shortage of weapons in her arsenal, and apparently had a few that I still didn’t know about. And if she really got into trouble, she could always use whatever strength was left in the ring. I, on the other hand, had nothing of the sort, unless my mom’s locket had somehow been gifted with alchemic powers when I had fed it to that rat all those months ago.

The streets were eerily quiet, devoid of people and cars, and I realized with a sinking feeling that we were trapped here until the next train arrived. I ran along 215th Street until I saw two flickering lights appear in the distance.

The stairs. Which meant that the subway platform was only a few blocks further. I crossed the street and was about to descend to the lower depths of Inwood when I heard a shout from behind me.

I turned and saw Beatrice sprinting toward me, her face red with exertion.

“Go, go!” she cried, grabbing the box from me. “We don’t have much time.” She rushed passed me and disappeared down the stairs. I followed, my arms relieved to be free of the burden but my legs now protesting as I tried taking the steps two at a time.

“What did you do?” I yelled ahead.

“Threw a special firecracker at him,” she said. “Hopefully it set him on fire. Keep moving.”

I reached the landing halfway to the bottom and heard the whistle of an approaching train. It was an unbelievable stroke of luck, but one that was immediately eclipsed by my very next step. I felt my foot barely scrape the edge of the stair before my body tumbled downward.

The next landing quickly rose up to meet me and I held out my hands to brace myself for the impact. I heard a crunch erupt from my right wrist as I hit the pavement and cried out in pain. Beatrice was almost at the bottom, but had stopped and was now gripping the banister, looking past me with a look of horror on her face. I slowly swiveled my head around to see the figure, smoke billowing from his still burning cloak, standing at the top of the stairs.

I summoned what little strength I had left and tried pushing myself up with my left hand, but the night’s exertion had completely drained my reserves and I slumped back down. The train whistled again in the distance and I watched as Beatrice turned toward the platform and then back at me and our pursuer above.

“Help. Me,” I croaked, before trying and failing again to get to my feet. The seven seconds it took for Beatrice to make her decision ticked off like they were days, but when I saw her set the box down and leap up the steps toward me, all remaining doubts I had about her were erased. As she slung my limp arm around her shoulder and hoisted me up, a crack erupted above us.

“What … what was that?” I said with a whimper.

“Don’t know,” said Beatrice. “But we need to get the hell out of here. Now!”

Somehow she braced me against her body and dragged me down the rest of the stairs, grabbing the box on the way. We reached the bottom and I finally steadied myself. The subway tracks loomed in front of us and I finally saw the train chugging slowly down the elevated platform to the north.

“Can you make it the rest of the way?” asked Beatrice, who had broken into a jog. “If we’re not on that train…”

I put one foot in front of the other, ignoring the throbbing pain in my hand and the protests of my body and the terror flooding my mind, and nodded.

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The ceiling was ugly, that much I had concluded from my 30 minutes of ceaseless staring. The carpet was also ugly, a dull gray that had maybe once been brown before the years of uncleaned dirt and grime had ossified on top, but it was oddly comforting. I don’t know if I had slept in the hours since we had stumbled into the office, as the pain in my wrist made it hard to keep track of anything else but its constant presence.

It had eventually died down to a dull hum that ignited whenever I tried to lift my arm, and so I had waited patiently on the carpet until Beatrice returned from the other side of the door. A vitality buff would be welcome, but I doubted it would do anything more than get me to my feet and what I needed now, more than anything, was nothing. I just wanted to be able to close my eyes and let everything fade away. But the events of the evening kept playing over and over again in my mind, like a tape stuck on loop in an old VCR.

Somehow, we had made it up the platform steps before the already waiting train had closed its doors. Our pursuer, by some stroke of luck, had not, and so we had sat silently in the almost-empty subway car with the almost-empty Compendium until the conductor sleepily called out “Times Square, 42nd Street.” From there, it was a short but paranoid walk east to the Chrysler Building, where we were greeted with a raised eyebrow by the security guard until Beatrice had flashed him our badges and he nodded.

We had stood vigilant by the door, waiting for the hooded figure to burst through, but after an hour of perfect silence, we nodded to each other and I had collapsed into my current position.

It would be another hour before Beatrice would finally emerged from the black expanse beyond the door. She looked alert but exhausted, and I wondered how many buffs she had eaten.

“Here,” she said, crouching down beside me and placing a small vial next to me.

“Wh-what’s this?” I asked. “Haven’t seen this before.”

“It’s a vitality serum. It wouldn’t congeal into a gummy for some reason, so it’s less portable but far more potent. Don’t know if it will actually fix your wrist but maybe it will dull the pain for a while.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Don’t thank me yet, you haven’t drank it.”

“No, I mean, for earlier.”

“Oh,” said Beatrice. “I hope you didn’t think I was just going to lea-”

“I didn’t. But, still, thank you.”

I waited for Beatrice to launch into a speech about how now we were even or that we were something closer than partners, more like sisters, but she just stood over me with a dispassionate expression on her face.

“What? What can I say, except, you’re welcome?”

“No, that’s enough,” I said, pushing myself up to a sitting position with my good hand and picking up the vial. The liquid was brownish-gray, which was fitting, and I swirled it around for a few seconds before Beatrice took it back to unstopper it for me. Downing it in one big swig, I waited for the familiar rejuvenation to wash over me.

What happened next was something else entirely. It started in my stomach, a warm soothing feeling like the one you felt when drinking a mug of hot cocoa after a cold day out in the snow. But then that warmth exploded into a deluge of heat that washed over my entire body like an unexpected wave during low tide. The heat and the pressure kept increasing, as if the liquid wanted to force its way out of every pore of my body. I gritted my teeth and fell back onto the floor, trying to hold back a scream. But it was too much to take and I let out a loud, guttural cry as I reached my breaking point.

And then, it was gone.

The heat, the pain in my wrist, the constant tiredness and anxiety after too many late nights and too many days filled with endless worry, gone. I tested my wrist by trying to push myself back up and found that while I didn’t feel any pain, neither did I have the strength to support my weight.

“Huh,” I said, trying and failing again.

“What?” asked Beatrice.

“My wrist, I don’t think the serum fixed it.”

I rotated it back and forth, still feeling no pain but doubted I could lift even a pencil with it.

“Well why would it? It’s not a healing potion.”

“But I thought maybe th-”

The door suddenly swung open and we both looked over with panicked faces, but it was only Eva standing at the threshold.

“Wh-what are you doing here?” asked Beatrice, running over to the girl and pushing her inside.

“I need something,” said Eva in a voice barely above a whisper. She walked over to the lone chair at the workbench and sat down, a forlorn look on her face.

“And you have a perfectly good method of contacting me without risking someone following you up here,” Beatrice said. “Which in this instance would have been fucking prudent to use, seeing as how we were just attacked by the Guild.”

Eva looked out the window, before the glamour vanished and was replaced by a scared little girl.

“Oh,” said Polly. “Didn’t realize.”

“No, you didn’t,” said Beatrice sternly. “Hence why following the communication protocol before barging in here unannounced would have saved you a trip down here. Go home and get some sleep and I’ll touch base with you soon.”

“But-”

“Go.”

Polly rose from the chair, rubbing the green stone as she did. The tall blonde who took her place glared down at Beatrice, before walking out the door without another word.

“What that really necessary?” I said. “She looked lik-”

“You too, Jen,” said Beatrice.

“What?”

“Go home. I’m going to do the same. Can’t remember the last time I slept there alone.”

“Where’s your son? And your husband?”

The question left my lips before I realized that maybe she didn’t want to answer.

“They’re somewhere safe. Well, at least Jack-Jack is. Don’t really care where Garrett went.”

“You don’t know?” I asked.

“No. I sent them both away a few hours after the Council meeting. The benefits of being over-prepared, I guess.”

She quickly wiped away a tear and looked out the window.

“So what time should we meet back here? Noon?”

Beatrice shook her head.

“9 a.m. On Monday.”

“What? That only gives us two more days and we sti-”

“I can’t keep doing this,” said Beatrice. “I know you probably think I’m some sort of inhuman robot that can just plow ahead, no matter the circumstances, but even I have a breaking point and I don’t want to reach it.”

“But we’re no further along than we were a few days ago. We might even have moved backwards, seeing as how our only lead is to find a fucking extinct dodo bird!”

“I found one already,” said Beatrice. “It’s in the Natural History Museum.”

“Oh,” I said, before I burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” said Beatrice, looking at me like I had just lost my mind, but I couldn’t stop.

“It’s just … of course it is. We needed to find a way to open the door in Long Island City and there was a pile of old door knobs just sitting there at the Met. Now, we need to heal a mythical curse and there’s a long-dead bird on display at the museum across town.”

“You think it’s a trap? But that doesn’t make any sense, how would they know that-”

“I don’t know what to think. What I do know is that I’m going to take you up on your suggestion that I get some sleep.”

I lied.

Next: Jen searches for a leg up.