Chapter 32 Crack
Crack
Sascia is sixteen, Danny is seventeen, and the utility closet in their basement is now a veritable map of Dark.
It’s an accidental discovery. One day, they find the moth they’d picked up from the lowermost point of Astoria Park flapping its wings frenetically.
Not five minutes later, their phones buzz with a citywide alert: a float of Darkcrocodiles has been spotted roving the waters of the East River, right by that park.
A couple of weeks later, the same thing happens with a moth from the heart of Jackson Heights, minutes before a swarm of Darkvultures infests the neighborhood’s rooftops.
The moths, they realize, can detect oncoming attacks.
Little by little, week by week, they secure moths and flora samples from a fifty-mile radius.
Danny sets up a camera system to alert them every time one of the moths starts reacting.
When the alarm goes off, Danny and Sascia send an anonymous tip to the local authorities.
Five times now, their map has saved people’s lives.
“I don’t like the looks of this one,” Danny says one Sunday morning in mid-March. They’re standing over an open manhole.
The cover they’ve just removed has deep claw marks on the inside.
Sascia already has her arguments ready. Whatever made those marks must be gone by now. Their sonar reading shows no Darkcreatures, but it does show a lush paradise of Darkflora—have they ever seen anything like it?
They have not and Danny knows it. His jaw juts out in thought, but he’s just as bad as Sascia at refusing his curiosity. Besides, they’ve got a nova-gun now, bought after three months of saving their busboy wages. It doesn’t take Danny long to relent.
They descend the ladder and fall into position: Sascia in the lead, nova-gun across her flashlight, cop-in-movies style, and Danny at the rear, watching their backs.
Already, the Dark breathes and coils around them.
Vines reach for them and blooms cast their effervescent neon against the walls.
They stroll for a long while, in awe of all the strange plants and bugs.
Then they turn a corner and pull to a stop, mouths agape.
Before them rises a tree, a proper Darktree, with roots that carve deep into the concrete and branches that hug the entire tunnel.
Fruits hang from its thicket of leaves, perfect orbs that look like black glass marbled with sapphire.
Neither of them has seen a blooming Darktree before; this Dark has been growing, unperturbed, for a long, long time.
As the tunnel settles into the familiar grinding of Danny’s trowel, Sascia lays out the rest of their equipment to host the root sample he’s extracting: a collection box, fresh dirt, a spray bottle with clean water.
When it’s all set up, she reaches into her backpack, scoops a few caramelized almonds into her palm, and waits.
The moths trail out of the other end of the tunnel in lazy swirls of bright color.
They land straight on the almonds and begin scarfing them down. Cute little scoundrels, Sascia thinks—
A snarl cuts through her thoughts.
She and Danny are standing in a second, flashlights aimed at the end of the tunnel. The moths flutter around Sascia’s head, almonds and cuteness forgotten.
Two spots of bright red are peering down at them.
The lithe body of a Darktiger lies flat against a thick pipe. Beneath its stripes, its spine juts out in sharp ridges as thick as a kitchen knife. Its mouth is closed, its features tranquil, its eyes deeply intelligent—this is an apex predator.
“Danny, run,” Sascia hisses, and she’s already shooting, blast after blast of nova-light. With every flash, she glimpses images: The tiger lunging. The tiger dashing across the tunnel. The tiger sweeping a clawed paw at her feet.
Glass breaks, moss tears, metal pounds as Sascia follows Danny to the ladder.
He’s climbing ahead, above her, but the tiger is right there, its lips parted around tusks as thick as her wrist. Logic has fled right out of Sascia’s head.
She acts on instinct alone, the millennia-old fight or flight.
She tears her backpack from her shoulders and launches it at the tiger’s snout before dashing up the ladder.
“Go, go, go!” Danny is shouting at her from above.
She tries. She does try. (No one can ever take that away, at least.) Her feet fly over the rungs. Her arms ache with the strain. The ladder reverberates with the stomp of their frantic retreat.
Then claws dig into her calf—she screams.
“Sascia!” Danny cries. He reaches down for her. His foot slips.
He falls.
They ask her afterward how she killed the Darktiger, but she can’t remember.
What she remembers is the impression of Danny’s body parting the air.
The horrible crack as his back struck the concrete.
The nova-gun firing shot after shot, a barrage of furious light.
Her arms around his torso, trying to help him stand.
His trembling voice saying, “I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my legs.”
She remembers carrying him up the ladder, her muscles bursting with adrenaline.
She remembers his arms digging into her shoulders, her lungs threatening to burst, blood flowing freely down her calf.
She remembers riding with him in the ambulance, holding his hand so tight his fingers go white.
She remembers Aunt Rania’s terrible scream as she bursts in through the hospital doors.