Sierra Santiago and the Invisible City

Chapter 19 - Grid

The big gentle hands lay Sierra carefully down on the rooftop gravel. She lifted her head just in time to see Twork rush out of the Vault and swing a long, bladed hand at Movimiento. Movimiento pivoted to the side, just barely avoiding the slash of steel, and placed his body in front of Sierra. From deep inside the Vault, the crackling of hundreds of clackens returning to life rang out like machine gun fire. Sierra lifted herself off the ground, each muscle groaning with resentment, and was about to rush over to help Movimiento when a long fingered hand rested firmly on her shoulder.

"Why such a hurry?" a voice very close to her ear said.

"Biaque!" Sierra turned and wrapped her arms around her friend. She wanted to breakdown and cry, immersed again in that familiar musk of Malagueñas, but there was too much going on around her. "My brother," Sierra whispered into Biaque's ear. "He's with Treme at the—"

"I know," Biaque said. "Tinibu is trying to burrow through to them now."

Sierra hugged him even tighter. She turned back around to see Twork dodging a heavy blow from Movimiento's clobberstick. Biaque pulled Sierra a few steps away from the battling gridlions just as Lucera's brightly burning shape rose up from the side of the building behind Twork. He didn't notice her at first, he was so immersed in taking his next swipe at Movimiento. She closed in on him slowly, an ecstatic smile stretched across her glowing face. The heat from her bright red body began searing into Twork's pale blue back and he turned and threw his hands up in the air. His blade clattered to the ground.

"Lucera," Twork hissed. "Easy now, you wouldn't want to destroy me when so much is at ssstake." Lucera looked right into his goggles and slowly raised one long arm back behind her head. "Lucera! You'll be banished, girl, don't be stupid!" The word STUPID ran its LED laps across Twork's body. "Don't be rash! You may have infiltrated my fortress with your maggot human and sent all my precious clackens into the wind, but I still control Brooklyn. And don't think I don't have a few more cards up my sssleeves, sssweety."

Lucera smiled even more broadly. She said, "I'm sure you do," and then swung her fiery arm hard across Twork's face. He stumbled backward, his arms splayed out to either side, but before he could collapse Lucera reached forward and grabbed his collar. The clackens kept bursting out of the Vault around them, their flashes brighter now that the glaring searchlight was losing power. A few scattered clouds appeared in the darkening sky. "Lu-Lucera!" Twork stammered. "You don't know what you're doing! You're making a huge mistake!"

"Perhaps," Lucera said. "But it is a mistake I should've made a long time ago." She reached towards his face with her free hand and made a sharp twisting motion. Twork's goggles flew into the air with a snap and shattered on the gravel in front of Sierra. The sky grew steadily darker.

"There's things you don't know," Twork sputtered, the desperation finally seeping into his voice. "My plan has already been set into motion, Lucera, you don't know..." Lucera reached across her body and backhanded Twork, sending him careening to the ground. He landed on his hands and knees facing Sierra, Biaque and Movimiento. He raised his head and for the first time, Sierra looked into the eyes of the gridlion who'd brought so much suffering to her family. She was startled to find them a deep shade of brown, not unlike her own and Biaque's. Twork read her expression and smiled. He opened his mouth to say something, surely something slick that would make Sierra shudder, but before he could Lucera was on him. She reached around to the front of his face and dug her fiery fingers directly into Twork's eye sockets. His mouth opened wide in a silent scream. Lucera lifted him high above the rooftop and then slammed his body into a heap on the ground. He lay there, eyeless and panting, as they sky above them clouded over.

"What's going on?" Sierra said, taking a step back toward Biaque.

"I don't know," Biaque said. He looked at Movimiento, who shrugged and shot a nervous glance at the graying sky.

Lucera floated down to them. She was breathing heavily. "I didn't kill him," she said proudly.

"This was the correct move, I believe," Biaque said. A light rain drifted down on the four of them.

"Something's wrong," Movimiento said. Biaque nodded, chewing on his cigar.

A lighting bolt cut across the sky and in the flash Sierra saw a series of connecting lines stretching out above Brooklyn. "What was that?"

"That's Twork's grid," Biaque said. "It's only visible because he's too weak to shield it."

"We gridlions don't like our grids to be seen," Movimiento explained. "We only show them when we have to, either because we are too weak to hide it, or we are stressing it with lots of use."

Tall shadows grew in the sky around them. Sierra couldn't quite make out what they were, but they terrified her. "Are you sure Twork's grid isn't visible because he's stressing it?" She asked, pointing at the figures. The one hanging in the air closest to them was a thick triangular shape with long waving tentacles reaching out towards them.

Biaque squinted up at the shadows. "They're gridlions!" he yelled.

"It's not possible," Lucera said. "Twork is defeated. He can't have the power to bring in something as huge as a gridlion on his grid, let alone an army of them."

Twork's crushed body began heaving up and down and Sierra heard that eerie cackle of his. The towering gridlions were becoming clearer by the second. There were twelve in all, each one thrashing at the air in anticipation of their full arrival to the sky over Brooklyn. "I told you, fools!" Twork said. "I told you I had a plan! You thought I would leave it all too chance? I may be defeated, but my call for reinforcements was placed long before you even knew what was going on. I've been charging my grid with clackens for months in preparation to bring in these gridlions. They're from Invisible Cities all over the world! You think you can stop us? There's no stopping us!"

Sierra saw blue police lights flashing in the street below. She wished that for once she could count on them to keep her safe, but knew they were just as clueless as everyone else. The closest gridlion was almost fully formed now, his long armored tentacles stretching towards them. Biaque raised his palms towards it, his face grimaced with determination. Movimiento was attaching a chain to the end of his clobberstick to give it more reach. Lucera wore a mask of bored irritation, but her body was tense and her fists clenched.

Could we have come this far only to be obliterated by a gang of invading gridlions? Sierra wondered. It didn't seem possible. A few fully formed tentacles slammed against the gravel and stretched towards Movimiento. He set the chained clobberstick into a wide orbit over his head, blasts of steam bursting from his creaking armor.

Something far off in the distance caught Sierra's eye. She looked out over the city, past the glowing clock tower, beyond her Bed-Stuy home- something was stirring in East New York. Or was it Bushwick? Or both...Matter of fact, a strange movement was rustling up from neighborhoods all across Brooklyn.