Sierra Santiago and the Invisible City

Chapter 6 - Brooklyn Night

Sierra skated harder and faster than she ever had before. Despite the terror coursing though her body, her mind felt incredibly sharp. She nailed leaps and turns that on any other day she would struggle for hours to master. She wound her way down the narrow, quiet streets of Cobble Hill, past quaint gas-lit doorways and old Colonial mansions. The scattering of feet hustled steadily after her but she didn't dare look back. As she reached the dimly lit intersection of two tree-lined avenues, a well-armored humvee lumbered out from someone's driveway and screeched to a halt in her path. Without stopping to think she flipped her board up onto the sidewalk, narrowly missing an overgrown tree root and skated hard past the vehicle. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the monstrous truck lurch forward and back again, trying to execute a three point turn as several guards clamored out a side door towards her. Sierra rounded the next corner and headed quickly up the block. The crackle of radios cut across the night air. Above her, the thumping noise from the helicopters kept churning endlessly back and forth, suddenly deafeningly close and then a distant thunder roll.

She reached another corner and glanced back. The humvee was wedged between two cars and she heard the screeching of metal on metal as it grinded against a fancy Mercedes. The guards frantically waved their hands at the driver to help him maneuver back to a larger street. Sierra turned down a back alley and skated towards a patch of open sky at the end.

With her pulse thump-thumping in her ears and a painful stitch cutting into her abdomen, Sierra finally stopped on a narrow walking path over the endlessly passing headlights of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. She watched them rush along underneath her and disappear towards Staten Island. The helicopters were only a faraway rumble and she hadn't seen a humvee or guard for five or six blocks. She wiped the sweat from her brow and let out a long sigh. The moon was a crescent hanging low over Manhattan's lights in a tide pool of gray clouds. Cars rushed by. Brooklyn churned and twinkled around her, and her Tío's words echoed, everything you know and love is about to come to a terrible end. These security guys must've busted a whole lot of heads at that party. Who knew where Bennie was, let alone Ysenia, Emani or the two Maliks. And then there was Robbie...

He had jumped over that wall just seconds before her but when she landed he was nowhere to be seen. He couldn't have run away that quickly. She hadn't had time to really get a look around so there was a possibility that he was huddled under a car or behind a tree somewhere. But Sierra was pretty sure that he had vanished, just like that morning in school. Robbie had been there and then all the sudden he wasn't. Simple as that. And yet not simple at all.

He seemed to know something. The look of terror dancing in his wide eyes had told her that much. If she ever saw that boy again she would sit him down and find out exactly what inside scoop he'd got about all this madness.

She kick pushed across the walk-way, down a few blocks and onto Court St, its quaint bakeries and bookstores all darkened and shut down for the night. Still, it was the main drag in a commercial neighborhood. A little thrill of joy careened through Sierra as she skated headlong up the deserted one-way street towards Borough Hall. She'd gotten away from the guards and humvees. She tussled them, held her own, and escaped with only a few cuts and bruises. It was quarter to one in the morning by the LED display at the Mexican taxi stand and Sierra feels the remaining fear and worry carried off her by the warm wind blowing back her long hair. Sure, everything she knew and loved was in some mysterious mortal danger, but it was a warm June night, she was on the edge of sixteen and felt suddenly full of life and free. She passed pizzerias and Thai places and let out a hearty laugh from somewhere deep inside. For the life of her she couldn't explain why anything at all should be funny to her but it didn't seem to matter.

Crossing Atlantic Avenue, Sierra weaved in and out of cars waiting at a stop light, a stupid grin creased across her face. She headed against traffic up Court Street, past the cinema and then the great wide-open yard of Borough Hall, majestic against the night sky. A few policemen strolled aimlessly up and down by the courthouse steps but none seemed to notice Sierra. She was as free as a ghost, and loving every strange second of it. A few minutes later she sped down the deserted shopping center on Fulton Street, dodging scurrying rats and litter. The great clock tower loomed large above her head, a haunting red glow that almost seemed to beckon her to it.

At Flatbush Extension Sierra paused to catch her breath. On the left, the Manhattan Bridge arced illuminated above the darkness of the East River. To her right, Flatbush Ave sloped up towards Prospect Park.

The park had always carried a certain mystery to Sierra. The few times her parents brought her there to play as a child she could sense something a little different in the atmosphere as they worked their way deeper into the grounds. It was as if a whole other natural order ruled inside those walls, something bigger even than the city around it. Now, at just past one AM on a Saturday morning, Sierra felt strangely drawn to it. After everything she'd been through tonight, and she couldn't imagine any of the muggers or nosy cops being any more threatening than those gas masked security guards. She skated up the hill towards the park.

She smiled when she made it, sweaty and winded, to the arch at Grand Army Plaza, with its brightly lit warrior statues and sea god fountains. She was still smiling as she circled the roundabout towards the entrance to the park, an elegant gateway with the thick blackness of wilderness lurking behind it. She kept smiling right up until all the lights around her flickered once and then sputtered out.