Sierra Santiago and the Invisible City

Chapter 20 - Rise

Sierra squinted up her eyes to see better, but she still couldn't make out what was going on. Then, all of the sudden, a burst of bright colors shot up into the sky from somewhere near Sierra's house. It was shaped like a giant person, but the long arms and legs looked a little too lanky and exaggerated. Yet it seemed somehow familiar...

"Vincent?" Sierra said out loud as the towering figure took a long stride towards downtown. Without a doubt, the image before her was identical to the painting of Bennie's dead brother on Lafayette Avenue. Another flash of color rose from Canarsie. This one was farther away, but to Sierra it looked like an older black man, goateed and smiling, wearing a doo-rag and overalls.

More paintings were rising now. Some were people and some abstract swirls, random letters, even entire landscapes. Soon the whole borough was awash with swirling images. They gathered like a rainbow of storm clouds just over the tops of the brownstones. As they rose, they took long strides over the rooftops towards where Sierra watched from the top of the Vault. She saw old man Mauricio, the one time Domino King, along with a few Malcolm Xs and Marcus Garveys. There was Alissa, who was killed in a hit and run when Sierra was seven, and Big Malik's aunt Julina who died from a seizure a few years back.

Sierra turned back to the rooftop. The tentacled gridlion, although bleeding profusely, had tangled itself around Movimiento, who was puncturing its coils again and again with a five-foot long rusty drill bit. Biaque was engaged in some kind of invisible mental battle with a squat, greenish thing sitting in the cockpit of a mechanized spider. Above them, Lucera rushed from one emerging gridlion to the next causing them as much trouble as possible while they were still in transit.

The battle was not going well, but no one seemed to be paying her any mind for the moment, so Sierra returned to her perch at the edge of the rooftop and looked out over Brooklyn. She almost fell down with shock: the great painted army had broken into a furious rush and charged towards the Vault from all directions. She could barely distinguish one shape from the next as the mass of colors, faces and swirled came pouring at her. Before she could even yell out to her friends, the flood culminated at the foot of the Vault. It was getting in somehow, maybe through the tunnel that Tinibu dug to reach her brother. Either way, the swarm of murals continued towards them unabated.

Sierrra felt a slight tremble course through the foundations of the building. Then a groan. With a tremendous roar, the murals burst like a geyser from the top of the Vault and shot straight up into the sky. The invading gridlions opened their mouths and raised their weapons in front of their faces, but the flood was unstoppable. The murals crashed into them, exploding them into millions of flesh and metal shards that scattered across the skies. The colors spread out over the grid, churning in slow, vicious circles like lava. The grid trembled, flickered, and then blipped into oblivion.

Sierra watched the painted images swirl above her head. Biaque was hovering a few feet from her, his mouth hanging wide open, eyes staring up at the sky. "I've...never..." he gaped. Sierra walks over to him and puts an arm around his shoulder. "Never seen..." She realized she was laughing. Her whole body hurt and she had no idea what was going on but she was alive, and her friends were alive, and that was all that really mattered. Biaque finally shut his mouth and allowed himself a little chuckle. Even Lucera looked shocked—that smug grin finally replaced by a genuine expression of wonder. Movimiento had sat himself down with his short legs spread out in front of him like a little kid. His great horse head swaying from side to side as he took in the show. "It's beautiful," he muttered.

"Not bad, huh?" said a voice behind Sierra. She turned around to find Robbie flashing her an extremely charming grin. Without thinking about it at all she walked towards him—it felt more like falling really, and kissed him full on the lips. It was a funny kiss, a little awkward at first because Sierra moved in too fast and their teeth clinked against each other. But then Robbie reached his hand up to her cheek and they both adjusted slightly and fell into a proper, completely delicious, sustained make out session. The triumphant murals flitted this way and that in the sky around them.