Shock (9 page)

It was like Great Adventure after a nuclear apocalypse.

THE TRAIN OUT TO BROOKLYN WAS
almost empty. It was a great place to sit and think. Like having her own private office, Gaia thought, except it wasn't really private and most places of business didn't have floors covered in pee. But the comforting rumble of the train as it took her downtown was soothing. She propped her feet up on the seat next to her and watched people get on and off.

Different stops had different personalities. Midtown was for tourists and businesspeople; downtown was where hair got brighter and noses and eyebrows bloomed with piercings. But by the time the train shot out of the underground tunnels for its trip outside on the Manhattan Bridge, the crowd was a complete mix of every kind of person, from suit-wearing guys with briefcases to exhausted-looking women in fast-food restaurant uniforms. Manhattan from this distance looked like Emerald City, magical and simple and clean. The tall, glam buildings cleverly hid the trouble and confusion that existed just beneath the surface.

Gaia looked the other way, toward Brooklyn, and saw fewer tall buildings and lots of smaller neighborhoods. The girls she went to school with acted like the outer boroughs were no-man's-land, but Gaia thought that probably spoke well of the non-Manhattan sections of New York City. She had a sketchy knowledge of what was where. Brooklyn seemed like just the place to disappear for a while.

The crowd on the train thinned out as Gaia hurtled farther and farther from Manhattan. By the time she pulled into the last stop, Coney Island, Gaia was one of six people stepping out onto the outdoor platform, where the night air closed in around her. The entire station had been built with Astroland in mind—a permanent seaside carnival that hadn't been fancy since about 1907. It was like Great Adventure after a nuclear apocalypse: ancient, seedy, and busted up but charming and nostalgic at the same time.

Gaia walked through the amusement park. The fog that had closed in around her during the hour-and-a-half ride out of Manhattan—the haze of confusion, anger, and heartsick betrayal—began to lift just a little as she walked aimlessly around the park. She had to clear her head and figure out what to do next. Slowly she felt her consciousness begin to click into place, pushing her emotional miasma back into the box she had to keep it in, allowing Gaia to think clearly and logically.

As she looked around, she was amazed that anyone was there, but sure enough, a few families still straggled around the desolate rides. This place was a perma-holiday for the damned. An ancient roller coaster with wooden slats whipped people up and down a course of turns that Gaia thought couldn't be scarier than the 4 train at rush hour. The “haunted house” was a couple of dismal carts that rolled through a small structure decorated with truly terrifying cardboard skeletons. Go-karts buzzed around a figure-eight track, looking like they'd been constructed of leftover parts from a demolition derby. The place was like an old couch, one part comfy and two parts gross. Gaia loved it.

She stopped at a huge Ferris wheel that was the most obvious feature looming up out of the dark beachside neighborhood. Lights on the side of it spelled out
Wonder Wheel.
Gaia figured it was called that because everyone wondered why it didn't pop off its casters and roll over the boardwalk into the nearby surf. It had two kinds of cars: big white ones that sailed placidly in a neat circle and smaller ones in red, blue, and green that seemed just as placid until they got about halfway up. That was where they lurched sickeningly and rolled to the center of the wheel, sliding violently back and forth before speeding back out to the outer edge of the wheel. Those cars really looked like they wanted to pop off and sail over into the carousel. Gaia could hear thin, high screams drifting down from the lurching cars. They did the same thing on the way down; when they came back around to the entrance, the doors to one of them opened, revealing a small family in a hurry to get out.

The mom and dad of the family getting out of the Wonder Wheel were laughing, and a big brother looked a little embarrassed as a girl, about ten years old, wailed at the top of her lungs. She was shaking as her mother put her arms around her, stroking her wavy brown hair and trying to shush her.

“She'll be okay,” the operator told them, and the mom said, “I know.”

The dad leaned down and spoke to the girl. “LuAnne, look, you don't have to be scared,” he said. “You're safe on the wheel; it just feels scary, but you're okay.”

“I don't like that ride,” the girl wailed.

“Come on, it's not scary,” her older brother insisted, waving a hand derisively.

“Don't let him fool you—he cried, too, the first time he went up,” the mom said. The little girl looked up at her, amazed. “Ask him,” the man said.

“You got scared?” the girl asked her brother. He rolled his eyes, stood back for a moment, and then laughed.

“Yeah, I was scared,” he admitted, and his sister laughed, too. He pulled her back a bit and pointed to the huge wheel stretching above them in the sky. “This thing has been up there for like a hundred years,” he told her. “Look at how they made it—those things never fall off. It's strong, see? It feels bad, but you're safe in there. Probably safer than when
Papi's
driving.”

“Hey,” the dad growled. The girl looked dubious.

“I don't like the way it feels,” she said.

“That's 'cause you're a wuss,” her brother told her, and she gave him a punch and started chasing him through the park, away from their parents, who yelled at them to slow down as they strolled to the next ride.

Something about the scene made Gaia feel like her stomach was made of lead. Was she pissed at the parents for taking the kid on the ride? No. Gaia realized she was sick with envy. Jealous of a child who'd thought her world had spun out of control but then found out everything was okay—because her family wouldn't let her get into anything really dangerous.

As opposed to me,
Gaia thought.
In my case, there's no safety inspector making sure I'm rolling on my track. No one to catch me when I fall. In fact, there are monkeys loosening the bolts on my car, and when I feel like I'm falling, I really am.

It was enough to make a girl need some cotton candy.

Gaia bought a bag of pink flax and broke off a piece, letting it melt in her mouth as she walked slowly out of the park and onto the boardwalk. A long pier stretched out into the darkness, lights twinkling at the end of it, just barely visible.

She walked all the way down. Here the wind was stronger, colder. She hunched her shoulders, feeling almost like she could be blown into the black waves at any moment. When she got to the end, she leaned against the wooden railing and pulled the rifle out of her bag, one handed. Never even put down her cotton candy. She saw the metal glint for just a second in the moonlight, then dropped it unceremoniously into the deep, cold, salty water.

She didn't look at it, didn't make a snappy comment about a watery grave, didn't even pause to reflect on the fact that it had almost been the agent of her death.

It was gone, and that was that.

There's only one thing to do,
she thought as she gazed down into the inky blackness below her.
I've got to watch my own back. Check my own bolts. Run my own Ferris wheel. I've been doing it since I was twelve. Just because I thought for a moment that I didn't have to anymore doesn't mean I can't learn to do it again.

She followed the pier back down to the boardwalk and turned right, walking along the strip of boardwalk between the beach and the amusement park, toward the tall towers of the residential buildings of Brighton Beach. After ten minutes she was totally out of range of the bright lights and well into dangerous territory. But she wasn't too worried. She could take care of herself. Unlike most people.

Unlike the woman wrestling with a couple of muggers about fifty yards away.

What kind of woman in her right mind would walk this boardwalk alone at night?
Gaia wondered. A homeless person, maybe. Someone from out of town or someone who was lost. But now was not the time for profiling.

Gaia dropped her cotton candy and thundered down the boardwalk toward the attack in progress. The most likely result would be that the bullies would want to avoid any kind of confrontation and would drop their task and run at the first sign of interference. But Gaia kind of hoped they wouldn't do that. She could use a good ass-kicking right now. Anger still whirled in her head, and this could be just the stress-reducing workout she needed.

Yahoo! The muggers didn't even acknowledge her approach. An ass-kicking was just what was required. And Gaia was ready for it. She kicked forward, hard, making contact with someone's chest. The two guys dropped the woman, who ran shrieking toward the lights of the tall projects at the end of the boardwalk. Now it was just Gaia and her new friends. Fists rained on her from either side, and the second guy grabbed her from behind, an arm across her windpipe, trying to cut off her air supply.

Gaia grabbed at the arm across her throat instinctively, then put her training into action, turning her head to the side and shoving briskly upward with her hands. Your average girl would have had no effect on the oversized arm encircling Gaia's throat. But your average girl was not Gaia Moore.

Her choke-hold attacker fell forward, then grabbed at the air in confusion as Gaia stepped back and took a fighting stance. She gave a whirling roundhouse kick that caught one of the guys in the nuts; he tried to grab at her foot, but it was obvious that his only training was as a street fighter, and he was too uncoordinated to disable her. She shoved the heel of her hand into his face and felt his nose break, blinding him with blood and tears. She didn't know how many other guys were on the shadowy dark boardwalk with her and didn't want to stick around to find out; Gaia took off running, sprinting down the boardwalk toward a streetlight, hoping there would be an exit back to the street there. She wasn't sure how many of these guys she could disable before they overpowered her.

Behind her she heard their footsteps thundering and realized she had really pissed someone off. She'd robbed these guys of an easy mark, and now they wanted revenge.

Gaia needed to turn the tables. Stepping into an alley, she leapt up onto a fire escape and waited a moment. She heard their footsteps approach and leapt quickly down with her full weight onto the last of the goons—there were three now, she could see that—and punched at his face from above. Gaia had both gravity and surprise on her side. The guy tumbled to the sidewalk and gave a shocked yell as she stomped her foot on his face. The other two stopped to look back. In that brief moment under the streetlight Gaia could see the damage she'd done to one of their noses. She gave a battle yell and ran at them like a crazy person, swinging a crowbar she'd found on the fire escape. She felt a thud as it made contact with some part of one of the two guys; that was all they needed. She almost laughed as she saw them start running again—in the opposite direction.

Now she had a taste for the fight. Though she knew logically she should quit while she was ahead, some ancient, instinctive voice from the deep recesses of her brain told her she was having too much fun. Her legs agreed and took off after them, racing to catch up and cause more damage. Attack a defenseless little female on the boardwalk, would they? She'd show them. Anger pumped through her veins along with adrenaline to keep her going at top speed.

But the goons knew this neighborhood, and she didn't. As they approached an avenue, they split off in two different directions. Gaia looked wildly up and down, through the sparsely populated street under the elevated train. One man hopped into a sedan that sped off; the other crossed in front of a bus and disappeared down a side street. She tried to run after that one, but a bus lurched in front of her, stopping her with a deafening honk as she felt the warm air of its exhaust hit her in the face. By the time it passed, the guy had melted into the night. Gaia's chase was over.

She stood for a long moment. She knew what would come next. After any ass-kicking there was a price to pay, and it came upon her from behind now with the force of an explosion: total exhaustion, turning her limbs to rubber and her guts to lead. She heard it in her ears, saw the world fade to black, and felt her back hit the sidewalk as she tumbled to the ground, unconscious.

HER EYES OPENED AND GAIA SAW…
uh…what?

Lights. Tons and tons of lights. Gold frescoes in arches. And a bear. A huge brown bear wearing a leather harness and standing in a ring of people. What the hell?

Her vision cleared a little. The bear was nothing but acrylic paint. Part of a mural on a vaulted ceiling. She blinked twice and faces came into view, ringed around the edge of her vision and looking down at her with varying expressions of worry, concern, and bemusement.

“She's awake!” someone said, and several voices gave a cheer.

Gaia tried to sit, and a soft pair of hands helped pull her up.

“You're passing out in front of my restaurant!” The hands and the voice belonged to a stout woman wearing heavy sky blue eye shadow under short, bleached blond hair.

“I'm so sorry,” Gaia said. “I'll go.”

“Seeet!” the woman said, shoving Gaia right back down. Her arms were the size of huge legs of lamb, and their slack skin quivered as she sat Gaia on a high stool with surprising strength. “You are drunk?” she asked suspiciously.

“No,” Gaia said. The woman smelled her breath, seemed satisfied, and clapped.

“Then you are hungry,” she announced. She rattled off a series of orders in Russian and slapped the bar next to Gaia.

Gaia looked around her. This place looked like a palace—well, kind of. A palace built of plastic and mirrors instead of stone and tapestry. Everything around Gaia was shiny, reflective, and marbled. The bar stools were tall chairs with white pleather seats and shiny gold backs; the bar was cool black Formica with a gold pattern of flecks and veins twisting through it. Behind it, bottles gleamed in front of a mirror that wrapped all the way around an already huge room, making this restaurant look like a vast cavern of festive tables. Wherever she was, Gaia had a feeling there was a party here nightly.

“My name is Luda,” the woman told her. “You?”

“Gaia,” she told her. The woman's forehead wrinkled in dismay. “Guy-a,” she repeated.

Luda shrugged and squeezed Gaia's knee. The man behind the bar, a huge bear of a man who looked as big as the creature in the mural over their heads, said, “You need strength. Good vodka wake you up, make you feel powerful.”

“No, no, that's all right,” Gaia told him.

“Don' be stupid,” Luda yelled, smacking the man on his huge forearm with a resounding slap. “She needs food.” As if on cue, three heaping plates of food rattled onto the counter, brought by a beefy man in a stained apron holding a cigar in the corner of his mouth.

“Stuffed cabbage,” Luda told her, pronouncing it
“cebbedge,”
the way Natasha and Tatiana did. For a moment Gaia felt a cold shudder run through her. Were these people friends of her newest enemies? Was she about to be ambushed? But as she looked around the room, she saw nothing to make her feel nervous or suspicious. Besides, Natasha was so tasteful and vain; she'd never be caught dead in a place this tacky. Gaia relaxed as much as she ever did and tried a piece of the cabbage.

It was rich and flavorful—one cabbage roll felt like it could satisfy her for a month. And it just kept coming: bow-tie pasta with barley in a thick gravy, blintzes buried in thick sour cream…the kind of food that was designed to get you through a cold Russian winter.

A distant memory flamed up in Gaia's consciousness. Her mother. A fragrant kitchen. Snow outside but bright, yellow warmth inside. And these flavors. This fantastic food, served by her mother. It made her want to sob with the familiar comfort of it.

She couldn't believe how confused she felt. On the one hand, being here with these Russians reminded her of the way Natasha and Tatiana had tried to kill her. The horrible betrayal of it all. On the other hand, it brought back everything about her long gone, long dead mother—even the feel of her sweater against her skin, the warmth of her arms around a much younger Gaia. She had to get out of here. This outer-borough experience was making her feel confused and disoriented.

Gaia lost her appetite. She pushed her plate away, forcing herself to smile at Luda.

“That is delicious,” she said. “Thank you.”

“You eat more,” Luda ordered. “You're skinny, like a stick. You pass out again if you don't finish food.”

“I'm really okay,” she said, standing up. “My parents will worry if I don't get home soon. How much do I owe you for the food?”

Luda waved off that ridiculous suggestion. “Where you going? I'll have Vahe drive you,” she insisted. “He's got a Town Car.”

“I'll get on the subway. It's really okay,” Gaia said, giving her a hug. “You've already done too much—I'm embarrassed.”

“You come back,” Luda told her. “Come back and I feed you until you strong like me.”

Gaia smiled and left the restaurant. God, what a homey place. Warm, safe, and caring. How come total strangers treated her like a queen and the people she'd been living with for weeks wanted her dead?

Just dumb luck, she supposed. She wished she could run back inside and eat brown bread slathered with thick butter until she went into a carb-loaded coma. But while she'd been sitting there, chowing down and making new friends, she'd realized how much she didn't belong there. While she was stuffing her face, her dad was suffering somewhere, and she was his only hope. And the only way she could find him was to spy on the spies she was living with.

The job seemed impossible. She dreaded the task ahead of her. But there was no other answer. She had to return to Seventy-second Street, act like she hadn't found anything out, and live in seeming ignorance, pretending to get along with Natasha and Tatiana while waiting for clues.

She had to climb back into the snake pit. Sit among the snakes. Let them slither over her. And listen for the secrets that their whispering hisses might reveal.

Putting the warmth of the restaurant behind her, Gaia faced the night chill and dragged herself reluctantly to the nearest subway.