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Chapter Text

He ran.

Racetrack was to his left; Kid Blink to his right. Like him, they ran in grim silence, broken only by the rasp of harsh breathing and the scrape and thud of boots against uneven pavement.

The same sounds came from behind them—multiple pairs of pounding feet, drawing closer. There was no shouting, either from the pursuers or the pursued. He counted lampposts in his head, watched Petersen's ruined storefront flash by to his right out of the corner of his eye. Overhead, the sky was deep blue and amber, and blessedly clear.

Race hissed under his breath, "Jack—I'se beat—"

"Almost there."

"There's...four of 'em—"

"One block." He closed his fingers a little more tightly around the packet in his hand, his grip sweat-slick against the waxed paper. Three against four; not bad odds really, but the sun was setting fast and there were no benefits to a well-matched fight. Lungs beginning to burn, he pushed himself onward.

A chunk of stone smacked into the pavement at his left heel. Instinctively, he and Race sprang apart; just as instinctively, he reached out with his free hand and snagged the shorter boy's shoulder before they drifted too far away from each other.

As one, the three of them swerved to their right around the next corner. It put the sunset behind them, throwing long shadows out in front, like runner's lanes marked on the cobblestones, though running down the center of the street was strictly out of the question. Blink ducked another thrown rock, his shoulder jostling against Jack's chest. Jack levered him back upright with a forearm.

One stumble and it'd be over. Blink slapped his palm against the remains of the brick wall to his other side, quickly regained his footing.

The old tenement block loomed into sight. Jack glanced up at the empty sky, then the three of them abruptly stopped hugging the right side of the street and darted across it instead, heading for the far corner.

"Sampson!" Jack panted as loudly as he dared. "Sampson!" Behind them, he could hear the footsteps break stride at the sudden sound of his voice.

From the interior of a burnt-out streetcar that lay directly in their path, another three boys sprang out. One wielded a heavy, jagged plank of wood; the other two had slingshots aimed and ready. Jack and his companions swept past them, halted and wheeled to face their pursuers.

Now it was six against four.

The boys who'd been chasing them staggered back, re-assessing their chances. One still clutched a rock, but he paused with it only half-raised.

Race took a step forward, catching their gazes, then meaningfully flicked his eyes to the sky.

They hesitated, traded glances. Jack could practically hear their thoughts. How long'll this take? And can we still get back in time? They shuffled one step back, then two—then turned and sprinted back the way they'd come. The one with the rock threw it anyway, not to strike, but to deter; the two boys in front with slingshots neatly sidestepped it, and by the time they recovered their aim, the erstwhile pursuers were already halfway down the block.

"Thanks, guys," Jack said, keeping his voice low. He shook damp hair out of his eyes, only realizing then that he hadn't yet let go of Race. He did so, leaving Race to smooth out his crumpled sleeve with an air of mock offense, then held out his hand to the boy with the wooden plank.

Skittery lowered his makeshift club and returned Jack's handshake. "'S been quiet, Jack. You'se prob'ly the last ones."

"We'll give you twenty." He pushed Skittery in the direction of Blink and Race, tossed Blink the packet he'd been clutching. "Go."

Jack watched the three of them take off, staying as deep within the rapidly-growing shadows as they could. He nodded to the two remaining boys: Chopper and Toms, both of them good shots. They returned his nod. He'd seen them eyeing the packet with curiosity, but they didn't ask, busying themselves with scanning the sky and streets around them instead.

...Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. He took a deep breath, gestured to them, and then it was back to more running. Two blocks and following the el tracks from beneath and threading through an alley, different directions each time. Until, pressed up against the side of the remains of the Postal Telegraph, they peered out across the street at the scorched, wide area that had once been City Hall Park. In the distance beyond City Hall itself rose the World Building, its golden dome crushed like an eggshell.

This was the most dangerous part to run: Broadway and the park were vast and open, although the broken vehicles, smashed masonry from the surrounding edifices, and sorry attempts at provisional shelters—long since abandoned—provided some cover here and there. Jack tipped his head back to the sky and held his breath, listening hard.

Nothing.

He jerked his head at the park and the other two took off towards it, himself following close behind. Crossing the expanse of Broadway, weaving from one pile of rubble to another, they made for the carcass of a large carriage lying almost completely upended just within the scorched lawn beyond the sidewalk. They vaulted the low cast-iron fence and Jack dropped flat, easing himself partway through the small opening between the carriage's frame and the ground, blinking in the sudden darkness. "Sampson," he hissed.

"That you, Jack?"

"Yeah."

Sound of a double-barrelled shotgun uncocking. A dim light flared from below as the lantern was uncovered, casting stripes of brightness on the inside of the carriage.

"Anyone else?" Jack asked.

"You'se the last ones."

He backed out as the grating was pushed up silently on well-oiled hinges. He ushered the other two into the carriage and the ventilation shaft, then climbed in himself.

"Lock," someone whispered, and there was a rustle of movement down the line of boys in the shaft. Jack held out his hand, and the metal padlock was pressed into it. He looped it around the edge of the grating, paused as he did every night.

"Key?" he said.

"Me. Snoddy."

"Right." He snapped the lock shut, yanked on it several times to test. It held. "Go."

Inside, the passageway quickly narrowed until it was only wide enough for one body at a time, so they moved crouching down the sloping shaft single-file. A very tiny bit of daylight filtered in through the metal bars behind him, but it was fading fast, and soon the only light that made it through came from the lantern at the head of the line, blocked and blocked again by the forms of the boys ahead of him. He kept one hand on Chopper's back as they went along.

It took them, ironically enough, partway back across Broadway, opposite the direction in which they'd just run over the surface. There was a slight pause as they reached and collected the next small cluster of guards at the end of the shaft, then they all continued through, more light drifting back to Jack as boys exited the shaft and he got closer to the main tunnel.

He hopped down onto the stacked crates that served as steps leading from the ceiling entrance of the shaft. Descending, he touched bottom in the tunnel proper. This was theirs, their modest kingdom: a circular tube, straight and faced with whitewashed bricks for about a block's length, until it began to curve sideways in a gentle "L" shape for the last eighty-odd paces at the north end; there the walls were iron-plated. The floor was ridged with a set of rusting tracks, bricks laid between. A single dilapidated wooden car sat just beyond the shaft's opening, tucked up against the tunnel's south end. Once an experimental subway before most of the boys had even been born, now it was home sweet home.

As living quarters went, it was by no means either fancy or spacious, as the tunnel was no more than eight feet wide. Still, it was solid and dry, roughly two dozen feet underground, and virtually inaccessible save for the ventilation shaft—and that was so narrow that anyone trying to break in would have a devil of a time trying to mount an attack lined up in single file.

Most important—it was fire-proof.

Chapter Text

Behind him, boys were "closing the door"—putting one more crate atop the stack and sliding a wide brass panel salvaged from some fancy building between it and the ceiling to block the mouth of the shaft. Snoddy was conscientiously setting the padlock key beside the stack, in the little niche created by a missing half-brick.

Jack closed his eyes just for a moment, partly to savor the blessed subterranean coolness after the dusty exhaustion of the chase, partly to let his vision readjust. The light down here, not that it could properly be called bright, was nonetheless stronger than it had been in the ventilator, although a hundred and forty feet of darkness still separated them from the the north half of the tunnel where they'd made their home. It was obvious the tunnel had been at one time gas-lit: a couple of thin pipes for gas and steam ran down its length, though they were empty now. Resources were scarce and any accidental fire down here would be deadly, but too much darkness meant night terrors and boys too groggy and careless from lack of sleep; so they had compromised, and allowed three kerosene lanterns and four candles in glass jars scattered over the length of half a block, set carefully on flat bricks and cinderblocks and away from anything combustible.

Many of the boys were already clustered around one of the crates which served as a table, set where the brick walls abruptly changed to iron. There were a number of parcels piled on it; Jack saw that the packet he'd given to Blink had been added to the top.

"Hey, Jack!" It was Mush calling to him, not loudly as he—as any of them—would have done in the old days, but still at something close to normal speaking volume. After all, they were fairly deep underground, and reasonably safe here. "Where'd you find this?"

"Up around Fifty-Seventh." There were murmurs from around the room. It meant a hike of nearly four miles; might as well be forty, these days. Jack forestalled the questions with an upraised hand. "I don't want none of yous going 'til we sit down and plan it out. There ain't much there, and we almost didn't make it back."

"Race said you got chased."

"Thought I recognized one of 'em," Skittery spoke up, while Jack glanced about the room and did a mental headcount despite himself. "One of the Hoffman House guys."

...four sorting out the store of weapons: clubs and slingshots, brass knuckles and their tiny cache of firearms. Twenty-one others scattered throughout, mostly by the crates. He stepped to one side to better see beyond the tunnel's curve. Another five huddled among the blankets, piled at the far end where the tunnel ended, away from the lamps...

"You sure?" Race said.

"Didn't you see?"

"Too busy runnin'."

"They'se far outta their territory," Specs put in.

Race ran a hand through his dark hair, absently rubbing at the long knife scar that trailed from behind his left ear. "So were we."

...Thirty-one. Thirty-one was all that was left of them; and even then, six of the boys in here right now had not originally been one of their own.

Jack nodded to Dutchy and Race, who quickly began tearing into the packets and bags, cutting up the contents where needed, doling out the food the boys had managed to scrounge for the day. There wasn't much: stale crackers with the mold (mostly) scraped off; a small cache of nuts; two little baskets of withered green apples that Bailey, Dutchy, and Mush, beaming with pleasure, announced that they'd found in a cellar; and the packet Jack's group had brought back, containing dried beef. Another group had seen to it that the bottles and canteens had been filled from the pipes, and those were now being passed around.

He watched the boys claim their meager share of food; watched to make sure that a few took extra for those still on the blankets. As the last of the boys drifted away, some in clusters, some on their own, Race beckoned him over with a jerk of his head.

"I saved half the beef, like you said. And half the apples. They'se up on the shelf."

He slapped the other boy lightly on the shoulder. "Thanks, Race."

Race pushed a double portion over to him. "Go. Sit. You been runnin' more'n the most of us."

Someone tapped his arm. He turned to see Snitch, mouth half-full of beef. "Yeah, Snitch?"

"He..." the boy swallowed his mouthful, lowered his voice. "He ain't been eating again." He looked a little nervous, as though he were betraying a confidence. "Nothin' all day. I just thought you oughta know."

"Yeah." He moved away from them to squint into the darkness where the blankets were, searching for one silhouette wedged against the tunnel's walls. Returning, he traded a glance with Race, nudged Snitch in wordless thanks. "Yeah, all right."

Scooping up the small supper, he carried it over there, stepping past boys hungrily devouring their food. He crouched down before the silent figure, holding out a quarter-apple. "Hey."

David stared back at him, eyes hollow. He didn't respond, nor did he make a move to take the food.

Jack waved it a little. "C'mon. How often we get apples, huh?" David's gaze barely flickered. "Aw, I know it's a little dry, but it ain't so bad. Still green, even. Look."

He lifted David's hand, found a relatively clean patch on his own sleeve and wiped David's fingers on it, then closed his fingers around the wedge of fruit. David held onto it, more by reflex than by intent, but that was a start. Jack took a seat beside him. Laying out a small piece of waxed paper on the blanket between them, he piled the rest of their food on the makeshift plate.

He broke off a chunk of thick cracker, wrapped a thin strip of meat around it. With his first bite, the taste of the salty beef exploded on his tongue, reminding him just how hungry he was, how long it had been since he'd swiped a handful of nuts for breakfast just after dawn. His stomach rumbled as he did his best not to wolf down the rest of it, eating slowly instead, careful to catch every crumb.

Another glance at David told him the boy hadn't moved, was merely holding the apple listlessly. "C'mon, Davey." He refrained from trying to nudge a response from him—he'd learned the hard way that a little harmless shove was more than likely to make David simply let go of whatever he was holding. "Mush found 'em first, you know? You don't wanna make him feel bad that you ain't eatin' 'em, do ya? You know how Mush is." Cupping his hand beneath David's, he pushed it gently upward. He got halfway there before David pushed back, irritation and resistance sparking in his eyes.

That was better. It was something. Jack let up immediately, and after another moment, David completed the movement, taking a small bite of the fruit.

"Jack." Boots tossed him a canteen before going back to his own supper.

Jack shook it; a little more than half-full. "Another bite, Dave." David gave him something that was nearly a glare, but he did comply, eventually. Jack handed him the canteen, waited, and then took it back when David only gave a small shake of his head. "Yes, you do," Jack told him. He lifted the spout to David's lips, not above trapping his head against the iron wall behind him. "I'm tippin' it up, so drink it or wear it."

He made good on it, but did so carefully, watching David's throat to make sure he swallowed. When he figured David had drunk a reasonable amount, he let up, and took a drink himself. The water was flat but cool, and he had to check himself before he could gulp it all. They had a relatively convenient source, and they stored as much as possible down here, but fresh water was a precious commodity, and they could never have too much of it. On one or two days, it had been all they had.

He set about smashing almonds with a chunk of brick, noting out of the corner of his eye that the other boy was slowly finishing off the piece of apple. Picking out the largest bits of kernel, he set them in David's palm. David made to drop them atop the pile of remaining food, but Jack shook his head sharply. "No. Go on."

Blue eyes narrowed at him again, but David did not protest, and even, after another minute or two, took up a small strip of beef to chew on. Jack polished off his share and gently bullied his friend into doing likewise, though David seemed unable to choke down the last half-piece of cracker, even with the rest of the water from the canteen. Jack let it go for tonight. He hadn't had time this morning to see that David had gotten anything down—and apparently he hadn't—but this would do, for now. He wrapped the leftover piece in the waxed paper and got up to add it to one of the cast-iron pots placed high on the "shelf" they'd made with stacked crates, where they stored the bulk of their provisions. They'd had no problem with rats in the tunnel so far, and he wasn't about to start now.

He waited in line to rinse his hands in the bucket—it would be thrown out during the morning's ablutions—and brought back a scrap of damp rag for David.

Around him, most of the boys were starting to nod off. There was a general migration towards the sleeping end of the tunnel. Some boys preferred the far end beyond the tunnel's bend, where it suddenly ended in a reassuringly blank and solid-sounding cement wall. Some preferred sleeping closer to the lights instead; a few, like Jack—and he liked to think that David maybe accommodated him in this, never moving too far back into the tunnel—simply felt better just at the elbow of the curve, where one could keep an eye on both sides. Several boys still lingered in the lit part; he could see Blink and Bumlets engaged in animatedly telling some story, with Skittery, Race, and Mush in various stages of drowsy attendance. Specs, Bailey, and Digger extinguished all the lanterns, added another candle, and posted themselves just at the at the edge of the dark, ready for the night's first watch. The almost-perpetual sound of whetstone scraping against metal that had paused during the meal started up again.

When he returned to his spot, David still hadn't moved, his gaze still unfocused. Despite his apparent apathy, Jack knew he didn't sit idle all day; he'd spent it repairing and splicing the lengths of rope that the boys had managed to scavenge here and there. Rope was a necessity for hauling items, for lowering yourself into ruined sub-basements or climbing into the guts of second- and third-stories (there was rarely a need to go much higher), for defense, for fixing things. There was never enough to go around, or it wasn't strong enough, or long enough, and so David's ability to work with them had proved invaluable. Some of the younger boys, whom Jack had forbidden to go on the more dangerous scavenging raids, stayed in and learned from him. Oh, he didn't really teach them, they'd said. But they could watch him, and pick up the simpler techniques.

Jack reached over and picked up his right hand again, then the other, peering at the fingertips closely in the dim candlelight. David could work his fingers until they bled and never seem to care, or even notice. Calluses and even faint scars had already sprung up, but today there were only mild blisters among them. Satisfied, Jack handed him the dampened rag.

He pulled the knife in its sheath from his belt and set it within easy reach, next to the small metal box where David kept his fids and needle and twine, and nudged David's shoulder. "Tired?"

David's only response was to lie down and curl up, facing away from him. Jack shrugged and tossed a ragged wool blanket over him before wrapping himself in another. The iron walls offered good protection here, but they were damned cold.

Around him, the small band of survivors settled in for another long night.

Chapter Text

The sound that woke him was faint. He was not even sure if he'd heard it, but he knew better than to dismiss anything his senses told him. Three out of four times it could be nothing, but the fourth time might be everything.

There it was again. A low wordless sound from beside him. He propped himself up on an elbow, leaned over David's shoulder.

Nearby, someone else stirred. "Jack?" he heard Ten-Pin whisper.

"Shh. Just a bad dream, I think. Go back t'sleep."

The small boy obeyed, but David's head jerked back, almost striking Jack's elbow. "Ma...oh, Ma...I'm so..."

He could see David's eyes were still closed. He laid a hand on one wool-covered shoulder, shook it lightly. "Davey. Hey, Davey. 'S alright."

David only tossed his head again, one hand reaching out, fingers closing on nothing. Jack glanced behind himself, spotted Bumlets among the ones on watch; that meant it was sometime between two and five a.m. "Go back t'sleep, Dave." He touched the damp brow, was relieved to find no fever. "Easy, easy. Go t'sleep."

David's fingers scraped against the chipped brick floor, hard enough to break skin. Jack reached across him and caught his wrist before he could draw blood. Twisting against his grip, David gasped, "Let me go—let me go, I've got to go and find—"

Jack saw the glint of tears start out from under his lids. He shook him hard, once, then dropped to avoid the blow as David abruptly reversed his struggles and lashed out backhanded at him. "Dave!"

He felt the instant that David came awake, going from fight to absolute stillness in the space of a breath. He leaned over David's shoulder again, saw that the blue eyes were open now, staring straight ahead. Jack cautiously let go of his wrist.

"Dave?"

There was no response, nor did he really expect one.

"It's..." He swallowed. It's safe here, he wanted to say, but he knew that wasn't the root of it. "It's all right. Go t'sleep, huh?"

No answer, no movement. He reached over, laying his palm over David's eyes. He waited more than a full minute until he felt the downward brush of eyelashes before pulling away, then wrapped his arm around David's waist, hoping he'd relax enough to doze off again.

Hardly anyone else had stirred at the commotion, not even those on watch. Routine, Jack thought, or something like it.

Chapter Text

Most of the younger boys were still asleep at this early hour, but half a dozen of the older ones were clustered around what was referred to as "The Office"—two metal boxes with a sheet of metal laid across it, forming a crude desk. It was one of the few tabletops on which lanterns were allowed to be placed; they had two other upended metal bins, but those were smaller. The wooden crates which served as their other tables posed too great a risk of fire.

One of the few intact maps they'd found, the east edge singed off, was spread out over it. As usual, Dutchy was seated on a low box in front of the tattered page, the others crouched or kneeling beside him; to everyone's pleased surprise, he'd proved to have a good head for maps, for spotting patterns and movements. All of them had carried mental diagrams of the city for years; you couldn't sell a decent pape or find a meal or cross a part of town safely without knowing exactly where you were going. But the landscape changed so quickly these days, and the alliances and hazards with it, and they'd had to resort to paper maps to keep track of it all.

"We gotta start today," Jack said quietly. "It's practic'ly October."

October, and with it a new threat: the coming of winter.

Summer had fled all too quickly. When they'd first come here, at the start of the season, winter had seemed an eternity away. Day-to-day survival had been paramount then; long-term planning had been unthinkable, even impossible, like a heavy burden no one had had the stamina to pick up. If Jack were willing to admit it to himself, he'd say that a small, deep part of him had not truly expected to live long enough to see the winter. Not after Europe, not after Russia...

Three months. Three months ago, he'd had a roof over his head, and meals which, if not quite regular, at least were more or less probable. He'd had a job which, even if it often seemed as though it were headed nowhere, at least had some prospects if he played his cards right. At least had some chance of a future.

He'd had that. They'd all had.

No more. How strange to think that it was now barely one year since their triumph over Pulitzer and the World. What a fight it had been, to bring down the giants of the city. At times, it had seemed like nothing could possibly accomplish it; not without the street fights, the narrow escapes, the monumental task of uniting hundreds and thousands, the betrayals.

Who knew that all they really had to do was wait a few months, and it would have all come crashing down, farther than they could ever have wanted to imagine?

Dutchy swept a bit of dust off the map, and Jack turned his attention back to it. The abandoned subway tunnel they occupied was comfortably cool in summer, but they'd have to find a way to heat it in winter.

If it were just himself, Jack thought, if it were just himself and maybe a handful of the older boys, he might say to hell with heating it up. He'd slept in worse; for that matter, so had pretty much all of them, at one time or another. Nights spent in emptied packing-boxes or in doorways or over a street-vent, sometimes buried beneath a thin layer of straw. At least down here they'd be out of the direct reach of wind and snow. That ought to have been luxury enough. But he couldn't do it; couldn't open his mouth and ask these thirty boys to huddle here shivering for the entire dark length of winter with death hovering just outside their door; couldn't keep his mouth shut and simply let the ice steal up on them while the weeks crept on. Maybe he'd just gone soft, spoiled by the comforts of the Lodging House, with its good walls and running water and cotton sheets.

But maybe, just maybe, it meant something, too, to try to improve what little bit of life and shelter they had now. And none of them, in the few discussions they'd had so far over the "hows" of the matter, had ever tried to challenge the "why."

"I still say we try it," Skittery spoke up. "Just once."

"It" was the obvious plan: moving their quarters to the other end of the tunnel, close to the shaft and using it—naturally—for ventilation when they built fires for warmth.

"A small one, just to try," Specs added. He was standing behind Dutchy, hands working knots from the blond's shoulders. "We can see where the smoke goes. We keep it small, it can't hurt."

"We talked about this before," Jack said. He dabbed absently at the small nick on his chin, a fresh souvenir from that morning's bout with the razor. "Even if it works, that just gets us through...what? November? Then what?"

"If we keep the snow clear—" Skittery protested.

"Work in shifts." Specs again. "Keep an eye on things up top—"

Blink leaned forward. "Yous guys forgettin' the winter before last? Ain't no keeping up with that."

They remembered, of course. They all remembered. The great blizzard of February '99 had practically buried the entire East Coast for days. And the start of that winter...

It hadn't been long after the first snowstorm that season that the very block of buildings they were currently under had burned in terrific fashion. The whole lot of them had forgone sleep and poured out of the Lodging House to watch it with their own eyes, along with the massive crowds of spectators that had jammed the streets. It had been a real sight, flames shooting high into the night sky despite the huge winds and driving rain. Reporters staying late in their offices had had a great view of it. Papes had sold like hotcakes for days.

The collapsed Rogers, Peet building had been rebuilt after; they'd watched its construction every day, easily visible from the Square, growing again from the ground up to eight stories over the course of a year. Its grand re-opening, on the twenty-first of February, had been a triumph.

Four months later—three months ago—it had burned again, and this time, there would be no one left to put it back up.

It went without saying. Fire and destruction went without saying.

"We got another month before snow, we'll deal with it then," Skittery said. "Buy us some time."

"Single chimney's too dangerous, Skitts." Jack drummed his fingers on the desk. "It's our only way in and out. What'se we gonna do if we need to get out in a hurry and it's fulla smoke? Or if we need to get in?"

Race shook his head. "Sooner we find a new place, the better. Ain't none of us wants to try movin' in in the cold."

"Someone might get there 'fore us," Dutchy said.

This gave them all pause. It was too true. Competition for space was fierce; habitable places were scarce, and getting scarcer every day.

Jack opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, a thunderous boom shook the tunnel from above. Straight from somnolent stillness boys sprang up, some of the younger ones crying out, grabbing onto each other.

"It's them!" Ten-Pin's voice rose above the rest, high-pitched and thin. "It's the dragons!"

Chapter Text

There were some distinct disadvantages to being a newsie: the cold, the heat, the rain; the jacked-up prices, the low returns; the wondering if you were going to get to eat that day, or if you were going to wind up sleeping in the streets.

Then there was the fact that you knew the headlines inside and out, day after day. There was no getting away from it, not if you wanted to sell. The names, the places...the numbers. It was enough to keep you awake, some nights.

It had started in England.

In Rosebridge Colliery, near Liverpool, near Wigan, to be exact. Not that anyone had realized the significance of Rosebridge at the time. It was thought to be an isolated incident—terrible, to be sure, but not a harbinger. Not an omen.

At two thousand, four hundred and forty-eight feet, or perhaps only two thousand, four hundred and forty-five, depending on which paper you read, Rosebridge was the deepest mineshaft on the globe. A marvel of engineering, yes, but no one had thought much about it beyond that. Wigan was full of mineshafts, roughly a thousand of them within five miles of the center of town. What was one more, even if it were the farthest man had ever tunneled into the bedrock of the world?

On March fourth of this year, a massive explosion and fireball had ripped through the mine in the dead of night. It had taken fifty-one miners with it: nearly half of the mine's workers, and, save for a handful still at the surface, the entire back-shift who were underground at the time. These were the men who worked the mine from ten at night to four in the morning; the disaster had occurred shortly before two-thirty a.m.

In the ensuing chaos, some witnesses reported seeing a huge fiery shape, larger and faster than a locomotive, streaking out of the mineshaft and disappearing into the sky. The papers had carried the fantastic accounts, but no one truly believed them. Were not the men traumatized by the explosion, had not the lights been knocked out, were not the site and the sky pitch-dark?

Besides, what could have been in that shaft and still made it out?

It was written off as a giant plume of escaping material, and the explosion itself as due to a hidden chamber of natural gas. It had satisfied the colliery's owners, Messrs. William and Thomas Latham, who were, after all, sensible businessmen who understood the role of science and reason.

It had only made page five in the World—disasters were big news, English coal-mining towns were not; and the production of coal in general had not been unduly interrupted. Despite the lack of front-page status, it had made for snappy pitches and brisk sales, while back at the Lodging House newsies had nonetheless grumbled in newly-awakened indignation and sympathy over the miners' hazardous working conditions.

And then it had been more or less forgotten. Rosebridge had been temporarily shut down, and a wave of safety inspections had rippled through the nearby coalfields; but otherwise, the world moved on.

Seven weeks later, on the twenty-first of April, London had burned.

And that was when they realized that Rosebridge had only been the beginning.

Later, a few more incidents would come to light. The occasional unexplained night-time fire in a remote English farmstead, here and there during those seven quiet weeks, blamed on the uncommonly dry weather that year. No one could have possibly guessed that the dragons were merely biding their time.

The razing of London flew up and down the telegraph wires, and across the Atlantic on the submarine cables. Americans followed the ongoing story with horrified fascination. Newspapers vied with one another for sensational headlines—if the World and the Journal had been at each other's throats for a year and a half over the war in Cuba, that had been nothing compared to this. In truth they hadn't had to try very hard—newsies barely had to open their mouths to sell, and they went home every night with pockets full of change and bellies full of food.

No one knew for sure what the casualty rate was, as there were few bodies remaining to be found, and at any rate the attacks happened too quickly, one upon another before police and fire crews could be efficiently dispatched. Some papers said four hundred died per day; others said seven hundred.

The second week of the London attack brought with it a slight lifting of spirits as the British military, desperately redirecting its attention from its struggles with the Boers in South Africa, finally started to make some headway against the dragons, driving them half out of London. France, knowing that a narrow body of water was no deterrent to creatures like these, lined up a defense on her side of the Channel.

It was no use. The dragons merely streamed out elsewhere, easily evading land-based and sea-based weapons alike, gatlings and howitzers. Devourers of ash, they fed; they multiplied. The number of dead was now in the tens of thousands, and steadily rising.

No sooner did a newsie step out onto the street with his stack of papers than he was besieged by customers. Soon, you had to go back and pick up more copies of both the morning and evening editions. If you made fewer than four trips to the loading dock a day, you were running behind.

American tourists and ambassadors were ordered home, post-haste. Some even made it. Visitors from Europe were granted an indefinite stay—it was impossible to do otherwise. Teddy Roosevelt ("You Know, Jack's Roosevelt"), in the running for Vice-President alongside McKinley, advocated sending aid to Europe. Salisbury, Balfour, and later Loubet had made appeals. Ships of the U.S. Navy's North Atlantic Squadron were dispatched, sailing into God-knew-what.

France was hit at the start of the third week, then Belgium and the Netherlands. In Germany, the military attempted to literally fight fire with fire with their new Flammenwerfers—flamethrowers—only to find that the dragons were essentially resistant to normal flames. Incendiary, acid, and poison missiles were tried, in the hope that even hits in non-vital areas would have some effect, but the bottom line was that the dragons, for all their huge mass, were simply too fast in the air for successful strikes.

Refugees fled by ship to Spain, Africa, Iceland. Until the dragons apparently took notice, targeting vessels with sudden ferocity, immolating battleships and passenger boats alike and sending the population inland once again.

A few merchant and passenger ships made it home to U.S. shores in the first two weeks. The ocean crossing from Europe took an average of eight to ten days; these were the ones who had weighed anchor early. The lack of other arrivals in the following weeks was silent testament to what had befallen those who had waited too long to depart.

The trans-Atlantic telegraph lines began to fail. Western Union's two lines based in Penzance, England, were the first to go, the stations—or at least their operators—destroyed. The six lines based in Ireland went one by one. Newspapers, their overseas reports throttled down to the two operational lines left in France, began to fill their pages with more conjecture than facts, each more outlandish than the next, and the American public snapped them up. Brief afternoon editions started to appear; if you were smart, you got to the loading dock early for those. Rival newsies, too impatient to make the trip back for more papes, began to forcibly take them from the younger carriers. Jack started sending his boys out in groups for their own safety.

It was fact, though, that in the fourth week, Denmark, Switzerland, and Italy were overrun. Dragons were reported as far away as Morocco and Kursk, jumping countries, spreading out over the landmass of Europe and Asia faster than any storm or plague.

It was the last bit of reliable news before the final two lines, owned by the Anglo-American Telegraph and Compagnie Française in their brief monopoly on overseas communications, went down.

America, stunned by the sudden silence from abroad, could only wait, and speculate, and grieve. There was little else to do.

After all, it was half a world away.

Chapter Text

Amid the sudden commotion, Jack snatched up the lantern before it could be bounced off the metal desk. "Quiet, alla yous! Pipe down. Do you want 'em to hear?"

It worked: the volume fell almost instantaneously. He noted Racetrack, Specs, and several others moving amongst the younger boys, herding everyone into the iron-clad section of tunnel.

"Anyone out?" Jack called to Blink.

"No. Just at the front door—"

The prolonged shriek of tortured metal against asphalt sounded from up above, sending everyone ducking on instinct. Jack pictured the creature dragging the twisted hulk of a streetcar down Broadway like a cat batting at a toy.

A glance down the length of the tunnel showed nothing but a dim moving light. They had a clear line of sight from here through to the mouth of the shaft, but any true visibilty was easily swallowed up by the hundred and forty feet of intervening darkness. He took one look at Blink's anxious face and grabbed his arm with his free hand. "Bumlets, Skittery, you'se with us!" A huge metallic crash from aboveground—the dragon tipping something over—barely gave Jack and the others pause as they took off towards the faint glow of light at the far end.

They'd gone hardly more than half a dozen steps before they were met by the glow and the three boys carrying it, sprinting from the other direction. Jack huffed in relief at the sight of the guards who'd been posted at the shaft. At least no one had been outside, and so there'd been no guards up at the grating, either. "Everyone okay?"

"Yeah," Snoddy panted. His hands were steady on the Parker shotgun. Blink shouldered his way through to Mush and flung an arm about him, shaking him a little when Mush flashed him a half-grin.

Terrible scraping from overhead: the rasp of the dragon's claws and dragging wingtips as it moved about, the rattling of scales as the heavy, serpentine tail slithered over the ground. The sound seemed to reverberate right through the earth and brickwork and straight into their bones. Something smashed into something else just beyond them in the darkness, but now was not the time to find out. "Back. Now," Jack said, and they turned and made for the quarters, fairly skidding into the suddenly-crowded iron-clad area where the rest of them were crouching.

He and Mush set down their lanterns before joining them. "Wait it out," Snoddy was saying, his calm voice pitched to carry to the entire group. "Wait it out. Everybody sit tight."

Jack picked his way with some difficulty through the huddled figures to where Boots, with Ten-Pin and another young boy named Dime clinging to him, was just pulling back from checking on David. Jack dropped down beside him. In the darkness, it was hard to see David's face, but his skin was clammy to the touch and he seemed to be hardly breathing.

Soft wailing still echoed through the tunnel; there were old traumas that even new terrors could not stifle. He could see Racetrack with two of the kids in his arms, cajoling them to stay quiet.

"Shh," he could hear Dutchy murmuring, somewhere off to his left. "Fizzer, stay here. Puley, don't..."

No older than six, they were two of the youngest that the group had adopted, and the most prone to outright panic during attacks. Jack didn't want to think too deeply about why. They'd been found wandering the streets, spattered with blood not their own, and that had said more than enough.

"Fizzer, stay here—!" Specs lunged and caught the boy's ankle, pulling him back. Fizzer's sobs were quickly muffled as Specs gathered him up.

There was a series of other crashes, the percussion of heavy stone falling, now to their north. Jack took deep breaths, curled his fingers around the back of David's neck; found himself vaguely wishing for a cigarette to settle his nerves, just as quickly banished the thought. He could hear Specs and Dutchy give in and let Puley and Fizzer bury themselves hysterically beneath a mound of blankets.

More silence from above: the dragon waiting, listening. That was what dragons did, or had started doing now that people no longer swarmed the streets, free for the taking: tried to frighten their prey into breaking its cover, or giving itself away. More than once, they'd seen it happen, the beasts following the sounds of panicked screams, ruthlessly digging out their victims.

Not us, Jack thought fiercely.

Razor-sharp tips scraped ground again, the dragon turning a complete circle. Then a long, distinctive sound, both of its massive hindclaws gripping the cobblestones, before it launched itself into the air and away.

Chapter Text

"Hey, kid...you'se all right." Kneeling, Jack lifted Puley from the nest of blankets as Dutchy scooped them aside. The small body was drenched with sweat and shaking like a leaf. Beside them, Specs was excavating Fizzer from a similar heap.

He tried to hand Puley to Dutchy, but the kid was having none of it, burying his face into Jack's neck, fists clenched in Jack's shirt.

"Hey..." Jack lightened his tone. "You'se gettin' too big to carry, you know?"

"No!" Chipped nails dug into Jack's shoulders as Puley tightened his grip ferociously. Jack bit back a wince. Dutchy caught it anyway, and reached over to loosen the kid's fingers with what wasn't quite the ease of long practice, but was close enough.

There was a shout as Fizzer slipped from Specs' hold again, tumbling blindly into the backs of several of the older boys. One of them, nerves still on edge from the dragon's appearance, shoved back hard, sending the small boy stumbling into Mush.

"Knock it off, O'Dell," Specs snapped. "Kid's just scared."

"Yeah?" O'Dell growled, starting to rise. Stocky and brown-haired, he was one of the newer members of their group. One look at Fizzer's tear-stained face seemed to stay him, however, and Jack kept an eye on him as he subsided. "Watch where ya go next time, yeah?" he added, not unkindly.

Hefting Puley's weight a little higher on his shoulder, Jack stood and continued to make his way along the tunnel. They'd taken a quick headcount despite the fact that the attack had amounted to nothing more than a bad scare, but sometimes you just had to make the rounds. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Mush leading Fizzer over to the wall, pointing to one of the several small pictures tacked to it, distracting the boy with a question.

Aside from these two, no one else seemed particularly distressed now that the immediate danger had passed, not even the other younger ones who'd been so frightened just minutes ago. Street rats and gutter trash they might be, but resilience was in their very core, and Jack was damned proud of them for it.

He stopped next to Bumlets, who was examining the back of Snitch's upper arm. "You all right?" Jack asked.

"Scratched it." Snitch's voice was a little rueful. Clean water, while not plentiful, was a least available; soap was harder to find. He twisted, trying to see the welt, but the angle was awkward.

"Ain't bad," Bumlets pronounced. "Hardly broke skin. I think you'll live."

"Thanks, doc."

"Forget the arm," Jack said breathlessly. "How's the shirt?"

Snitch leaned back. "Lookin' better'n yours, Cowboy."

"That's 'cos you'se still dreaming." Jack stepped away and sank down at his usual spot, letting Puley lean against him. David was more or less as he'd been when Jack had left: pressed up against the wall, the two blankets Jack had wrapped around him now hanging loosely about his shoulders. The shivering had ebbed but not disappeared, the aftermath of too much adrenaline and too much enforced stillness.

Someone had set a small tin cup of water in front of him. It was only half-full, but Jack suspected it was untouched. He picked it up and wedged it against the wall where it wouldn't tip.

"Hey." He tried to catch David's eye, but David was staring past him, gaze focused on something beyond the mere eight feet of the tunnel's width. Jack shifted to sit next to him, clearing the passageway. Reaching out, he took David's left forearm, chafing it with his palms, trying to chase away the last of the shivers and draw David back to the present.

A slight commotion and a barrage of curious questions heralded Snoddy's return from the other end of the tunnel. Jack looked up. "Well?"

"It wasn't nothing down here," Snoddy said, "so me and Chopper went to have a look upstairs. The fence just around the corner's banged up pretty good. He bumped the carriage, too."

"Bad?" Jack asked. The cast-iron fence that ran around the perimeter of the park was no particular concern of theirs, but their entrance grate and drinking-fountain sat just inside it, and the carriage that had been upended over the grate served as both shelter and concealment. It blocked the rain and wind, and hopefully the eyes of any roving bands out there that scoured the streets looking for an easy raid.

"Nah. But we got lucky. If he bashed in the fence just a few feet over, it woulda come down right on us." Snoddy hefted his double-barrelled Parker into a more comfortable position in the crook of his elbow. "One of the boards in the water-hole came down, but it ain't too bad. Once we clear out the sand, we'll be fine."

"What about the carriage?" Mush said.

"'S okay. Just bumped it. Moved it a coupla inches."

They'd gotten lucky on both counts, then. A twisted iron fence or a displaced vehicle could've trapped them all inside, sealing the grating better than any lock. And they simply couldn't afford to lose the water-hole.

"Is he gone?" Ten-Pin piped up. Jack released David's left arm, reached across and took up his right instead. At the movement, David finally seemed to to register his presence, half-turning to look at him. He slumped a little against Jack's shoulder, easing his arm from the older boy's grip. Jack let him go. On his other shoulder, Puley had become a heavy sleeping weight.

"He's gone, all right," Snoddy said. "Not a whiff of fire, neither. Racetrack smoked more'n this boy did."

"Twenty-three skidoo," Boots muttered in Ten-Pin's ear.

Chapter Text

When the dragons struck New York, it was just after ten p.m. on the twenty-ninth of June.

Inside Miner's Bowery Theatre, it was a bright spring afternoon in El Paso.

Chester the Crooning Cowboy had just finished the first part of his act with a bow and a flourish, much to the audience's general approval. With a few flicks of his wrist, he coiled the lasso up neatly, beaming at the crowd's cheers and applause.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack could see David flip open his father's pocketwatch, grimace slightly, then snap it shut again. Slipping the watch back into his vest, David leaned over to him, shouting to be heard above the din. "I have to go!"

Jack added a piercing whistle to his applause for Chester, who had, in Jack's opinion, just risen to the rank of best rope-trick artist in the West—hell, probably in all of America. The man waved his broad-brimmed hat at him, and David rolled his eyes at Jack's grin. "Aw, Davey..."

Chester was calling for silence, aided by the small band off to one side of the stage who struck up a mournful tune, and David lowered his voice accordingly. "Do you want me to get another lecture from my father? I'm turning into a bad influence on Les, you're a bad influence..."

"Me?"

"O bury me not on the lone prairie..."

"Yes, you. Out half the night and who knows what else."

"These words came low and mournfully..."

"Wouldn't you wanna know."

"From the pallid lips of the youth who lay..."

"I don't."

"On his dying bed at the close of day..."

"But you'se gonna miss the next act, and then will you be sorry!"

"O bury me not on the lone prairie..."

"Yeah? Who's the next act?"

"Where the wild coyote will howl o'er me..."

"Dunno. Ow! What'd ya hit me for?"

"Where the buffalo roams the prairie sea..."

David only shook his head, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "'Night, Jack."

"O bury me not on the lone prairie..."

"'Night, Mouth."

"Happy birthday, Skittery."

"Thanks, Davey."

"See ya, Mouth."

"G'night, Mouth."

"It makes no difference, so I've been told...Where the body lies when life grows cold..."

"Psst! Jack! I heard they sings this song so much out West, they shoots you 'fore you can even open yer yap!"

"But grant, I pray, one wish to me..."

"Well, we's ain't out West now, is we? So shut up and lemme listen."

That settled the rest of them down some. Blink had pushed Mush from the row behind Jack into the vacated seat, setting off a little chain of audience-members climbing one seat forward; Jack, meanwhile, could hear David making his way quietly and politely out of the balcony crowd toward the door at the back. The Jacobses had agreed to let Les stay out this late tonight provided he remained at the well-lit Duane Street Lodging House and didn't go with the older boys to Miner's, and that David got him home before ten-thirty. Protestations from Les that he'd been to even Irving Hall before hadn't swayed his parents in the least. Fortunately, a life-or-death marbles competition had started up in the Lodging House just before they left for the show, and Les had been sufficiently distracted.

Over a dozen newsies were up in the balcony tonight. Medda had the rare night off, so they'd forgone the lengthy trek up to Irving and had settled for an easy walk to Miner's instead; the loss of their favorite headliner was a disappointment, but no reason not to go to a show. Skittery's alleged birthday was a good enough excuse. Tomorrow night, it might as well be someone else's.

Absently, Jack calculated the chances of their getting home before midnight, when the doors of the Lodging House would be shut and they'd have to bed down in the streets. This was only the fourth act of an eight-act show (the final act could pretty much be skipped without tears, but if you'd already paid to get in, you might as well get your money's worth), and it'd gotten off to a late start. Still, they'd probably be out of here by eleven-thirty, and downtown Bowery was conveniently near home besides. They'd make it, easy, nothing to worry about. If worst came to worst and the boys were disposed to dawdle, he could probably wheedle Kloppman into letting them in anyway...

Someone in the band hit a wrong note, probably the horn-player. Mush had found an apparently fascinating scrap of paper on the floor and was showing it to Blink. At Jack's other elbow, Race had given up all pretense at interest and was deeply into a game of tossing dice with the two boys—neither of them newsies—next to him.

Chester turned to glare at the band as they went off-key again, but when the players traded perplexed glances with each other, Jack sat up. The note had been flat and wrong, but it hadn't come from them. It wasn't until it sounded again—louder, this time, overlapped by a similar tone—that Jack identifed the source. Church bells.

There was shouting from downstairs. Chester and the band stumbled to a halt, and there was no mistaking it now—church bells up and down the street, clanging more urgently now, joined by others.

Everyone leaped to their feet in a babble of confusion and questions. There was a general push towards the doors, not out of panic, but curiosity.

He'd never heard the bells ring like that, not ever. Not at ten o'clock on a Friday night. The crowd poured through the lobby and out the doors.

Out here, the volume of the bells doubled and tripled, echoing from cobblestones and walls, sounding the alarm again and again. The Bowery's wide roadway was jammed, traffic held at a standstill by the mass of pedestrians. People were streaming out of the nearby theatres and drinking-houses to stand bewildered, shouting questions to each other.

There was no obvious sign of danger, which was the only thing keeping the crowd relatively calm. Most of the boys had stuck together and were now clustered around Jack; Race and Skittery both had a grip on the back of his shirt so that they wouldn't drift too far away. Jack wondered how far David had gotten. It couldn't be much; he'd just left, and the streets were now so blocked he'd be making slow progress, if any. He briefly thought about going after him, but how would you even find anyone in this horde?

The ringing slowly began to die away; first one church-tower, and then another. Shrill, distinctive whistles sounded from the south end of the street, coming closer. Jack stood on tip-toe, tried to see. Three Bulls on horseback were quickly cutting a path through the crowd. They stopped nearly a block away, blew on their silver whistles in repeated blasts, then the one in the lead climbed atop a stalled streetcar, raised a speaking-trumpet to his lips and bellowed for silence.

It took a few moments, but he got it. Everyone leaned forward, straining to hear.

Despite the speaking-trumpet, the policeman's voice was easily swallowed by the width and length of the street. Jack caught a few words here and there. "...Navy has engaged them...shore of Long Island...towards Brooklyn...has ordered...stay inside, find...brick or stone..."

Jack was already swiveling his head, trying to locate the nearest likely shelter.

"...dragons..."

He'd obviously left that word until the end, for no sooner had he pronounced it than a few screams rang out and the shoving began, people trying to flee in different directions. The whistles sounded again, the policemen pushing forward, presumably to repeat their message further up the street, but the crowd was already a sea of motion. Horses hitched to carts and carriages reared in panic and tried to bolt; even the Bulls were having a tough time keeping their own trained mounts under control.

Jack reached out and snagged Mush and Snoddy. "We'se going back!" he shouted to his boys. "Get to the Sun!" They weren't far from either Newspaper Row or the Lodging House, and Jack couldn't fathom running in any other direction. Duane Street had its share of wooden buildings; Newspaper Row loomed in his mind's eye like a stony cliff. The Sun's building, at a mere five stories, stood dwarfed by and nestled between the World and the Tribune, both of which towered over it at twice its height. Jack had no illusions about the lofty fortress that was the World; the tallest were often the first to come down. "You goes into the basement and you waits there! Break in if you hafta! I'se going to the Lodging House and get—"

"No!" Race tightened his grip on Jack's shirt, shook him. "We'se goin' with you! You can't get all the boys out by yourself!"

"But—"

"Jack—"

"Look!" a woman's voice screamed. "Look!"

All eyes jerked upwards, to the south-eastern sky.

Chapter Text

When Europe and Asia went silent, the newspapers did not lack for news.

Everywhere, the reverberations were felt. Investors with overseas interests found themselves bankrupt overnight. Luxury stores—Stern Bros., Macy's, and Siegel-Cooper chief among them—stepped up the prices on their imported goods to near-unattainable heights. California's vineyards were in sudden demand as the premier source of fine wines.

American owners of trans-Atlantic steamship lines, particularly the Red Star, saw their fortunes slowly collapse; although they did their best to route their passenger ships elsewhere and, due to the fact that no one felt safe journeying too far from American waters, shifted their focus to shoreline cruises. Foreign liners, unable to return to their home ports, floated uselessly at harbors up and down the coast. Arguments raged over whether homeless ships, like the mighty Kaiser Wilhelm (which, the papers were fond of pointing out, had won Germany the Blue Riband not two years ago), belonged to their captains or could be claimed by the government as abandoned property.

Foreign merchant ships faced the same problems, but for the most part the crews of those vessels managed to hoard their precious merchandise and sell them for outrageously inflated prices. American merchant lines, meanwhile, struggled to overcome the loss of both cargo and resources.

The Immigration Service processed stranded visitors with feverish speed. Richer tourists could afford to stay in the city's hotels; most of the the rest were funneled into the already-crowded Lower East Side to find someplace to live in the immigrant-heavy tenements. Meanwhile, Manhattan's primarily Irish and German immigrant population had plunged deeply into mourning, while the more extreme proponents of American nativism wasted no time noting with barely-veiled glee that at least the wave of immigration had come to a stop.

Hardly a day went by that the papers didn't report the disintegration of a business, or the skyrocket success of an entrepreneur who'd struck it rich by capitalizing on his possession of goods that no one else had, or the suicide of a company-owner who'd lost his entire life's savings. Two young Frenchwomen, beautifully-dressed and suddenly orphaned and homeless, threw themselves in dramatic fashion off the Brooklyn Bridge. The public continued to snap up any new developments. Newsies, grown used to the sudden selling boom, found their earnings only slightly reduced, although sales gradually began to dwindle again as late May and early June wore on and things began to settle into some sort of new routine.

New York, at the cusp of the twentieth century, was stronger now than even she had realized. The huge metropolis wobbled precariously but, despite all that was happening, did not slip as deeply back into the economic depression that she and the remainder of the nation had escaped just three years past.

It did not mean, however, that she was invincible.

Roosevelt and Mayor Van Wyck and Tammany Hall, ostensibly united for once, called for reinforcements; the F.D.N.Y. and N.Y.P.D. were hastily beefed up with new recruits. There was even talk of re-instating the volunteer brigade, but some things worked only so well in theory.

Also filling the news—despite the newspaper rivalry, the boys kept an eye out for Denton's articles, wired to the Sun from his latest assignment in D.C.—was the military, already spread thin by the recent war with Cuba and the ongoing Philippine Insurrection. The Navy was still scrambling to recover from the destruction of the North Atlantic Squadron in Europe. Even worse was the massive loss of troops in the Philippines; some had been pulled back before Asia had fallen, but not nearly enough; and now the War Department and the government fought over how best to distribute the remaining forces. Armed with outdated weapons—the World in particular decried the continued use of the clumsy black-powder Springfield rifles rather than the newer Krag-Jorgensens carried by the regular Army—the National Guard nonetheless prepared itself. Funds for revamped arms were pouring in, but it would take time. The largest hurdle was the lingering sense of disbelief. Over three thousand miles of water distance, broken only by relatively small landmasses like Greenland and Iceland, separated America from the scenes of devastation. Could it happen here? Could it really?

In the City herself, the Astor Battery and the local units of the National Guard—such as Manhattan's Squadron A and Twenty-second Regiment, and Brooklyn's Twenty-third—made ready their men and weaponry. New Yorkers soon became accustomed to the sight of their daily drills in the streets.

U.S. battleships patrolled the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, alert for any signs of attack.

Perhaps, in retrospect, that was a mistake. But no one could have done otherwise.

"Look!" a woman's voice screamed. "Look!"

All eyes jerked upwards, to the south-eastern sky.

From behind the buildings that lined the Bowery, the hanging cloud cover was suffused with a yellow-orange glow that threw the silhouettes of rooflines into sharp relief. It could have come from the next street over, or perhaps the next, but something told the eye that it was not so simple. It looked much farther away, and yet, somehow, it also looked not quite far enough.

It looked a lot like Brooklyn.

Spot, Jack thought numbly. Oh god—Spot and his newsies, they'd probably had no warning at all—

Clutching at arms and wrists and shirts, the boys moved more or less as a group down the street, forcing their way past the frightened mobs. A handcart had tipped over in the roadway, rolling apples and oranges suddenly turning into deadly objects underfoot, sending pedestrians down with startled cries. Jack hauled Skittery back upright before he could slip to his knees. The streetcars were attempting to move again, people trying to jump off while others tried to climb on, and those accidentally pushed onto the tracks pushed back doubly hard. Overhead, the el rumbled past with a sound like thunder.

He spotted an intersection up ahead, a little tributary of relative calm off the river turbulence of the Bowery. "Turn right up ahead! Turn right!"

He shoved and dragged the rest of them towards it, got them around the corner and into a tiny bit of breathing space. People still filled the smaller street, but at least the press of bodies was diminished. His stomach twisted as he did a quick headcount and came up three short.

Go back and look, or keep going before it was too late? Surely the missing boys would catch up with them sooner or later at the Lodging House or the Sun...but if they were hurt...

Toms had already let go of Chopper, a step away from diving back into the main thoroughfare. "I'se gotta find—"

Before Jack could open his mouth to send most of the group on ahead, Chopper let out a whoop, waving his arms wildly. He was joined immediately by Blink and Mush, and Jack looked up to see the missing Cork, Flick, and Snitch fighting their way over to them from the opposite curb.

An immense black shadow swept by overhead, with such incredible swiftness that for a second Jack was sure he must have hallucinated it in the confusion of the moment.

"What the hell was that?" Racetrack screamed.

Chopper and Toms reached out and yanked the returning three into the side-street. "Go on," Jack hollered, "Go—"

The relief was short-lived as the shadow made another pass, so low that the walls of the buildings around them kept them from seeing the entire shape. It wheeled with a sound like giant canvas sails snapping taut in the wind, turned to their right up the Bowery—

A blast of heat and light like nothing Jack had ever witnessed before roared from around the north corner. Jack didn't even wait to lean out and see what had happened just up the wide street; he shoved his boys onward, resorted to ramming several with his shoulder when they stood there, frozen. Horrified screaming echoed around them, mixed with the crack of burning timber.

"Keep running! Go!" There was no time now for respites. The boys kept moving, down one street and across another, ducking as flames sprang up one narrow alleyway to the left of them. Shouts and clanging preceded the fire-engines that rushed past them; the horses reared and shied, and the engines' bells rang impotently amid the frenzy. How many firemen could they carry, how much water could they pump? Enough to put out the Bowery? Enough to put out Brookyln?

They kept moving, always headed south and west. Jack breathed a silent prayer of thanks that whoever was up front knew where they were going.

It was when they got within four blocks of City Hall that Jack knew his plan would fail.

Chapter Text

It was when they got within four blocks of City Hall that Jack knew his plan would fail.

It was almost impassable. The huge open area of City Hall Park was bounded on the far side by Broadway—the main thoroughfare of the city, such a hazard to cross in the daytime, though it was generally more manageable at night. But now the church-bells had brought everyone out, and they must have packed even Broadway's imposing width, for the tide of the crowd spilled out even to where the boys were, several streets away. The crush only got worse the closer they drew.

Jack would never be able to take the entire House through it to the safety of Newspaper Row.

Most people were pushing their way east and north—Jack and his boys were going directly against the flow. East and north! Didn't they know? Didn't they know that Brooklyn, the Bowery, were on fire? The group's progress had slowed as they hit the near edge of the sidewalk, but the boys in the lead—whether Dutchy had lost his cap by accident or had taken it off deliberately, Jack could spot his fair hair up front—pushed on grimly anyway. They had to get to Duane. Possibly they were too late already; the boys there would have streamed out onto the streets along with everyone else when the bells had sounded, and perhaps they had already scattered.

Skittery jumped to the side without warning, pushing Jack and Toms along with him. A bicycle shot past just inches from them, then another. Cyclists whizzed along the streets, building up as much speed as they could and counting on pedestrians' own instincts of self-preservation to get out of their way. More often than not, people stepped into their paths out of sheer confusion, and the resulting collision only added to the chaos. Rifle barrels gleamed in the distance, National Guardsmen trying to herd the populace back into some sort of order.

Fresh screams and the snapping of bullets sounded up ahead, and not one but two dragons soared into view above them, wing-spans inconceivably wide, blotting out the sliver of new moon and the too-bright clouds. Electric light and firelight glinted off scales and claws and what might even have been one cold, dark eye. With a flick of their serpentine tails, they vanished beyond the rooftops.

To Jack's horror, they had come from the southwest.

They saw the smoke and flames long before they got there, but they ran for it anyway. No one blocked their path; despite the fact that three streets intersected here, the corner was almost completely deserted except for them, and it was terribly apparent why.

They skidded to a halt in disbelief. Nothing was left of the Lodging House or the adjoining two buildings but a red pit of fire. Large pieces of charred wood were scattered about the street, as though a giant hand had rooted through the ruins, tossing aside whatever it didn't choose. All seven stories had collapsed; even the words on the very top—"Home for Newsboys" boldly lettered on the once-pale roof, something they'd made a game of climbing just the right buildings to spot—were no longer remotely legible. The blaze was already dying down, more smoke than flame, obviously having burned for some time. Oh god, for how long?

Jack unthinkingly sprang forward, and was almost immediately grabbed from behind. He threw an elbow backwards, heard a grunt and flung himself out of the loosened grip, only to run straight into Mush.

"Jack, no!" Mush cried, seizing his shoulders. "Ain't nothing left in there!" His voice cracked, faltered. "Nothing!"

Jack stared at him for the space of several harsh breaths, then swallowed hard. He turned, momentarily at a loss. Behind him, boys were still clutching at each other; no longer because of any crowd that might separate them, but because they looked like they simply didn't know how to let go. Snitch was helping Snoddy back up to his feet.

Blink and Race were moving swiftly towards a group of figures a short distance away. Jack caught up with them, shock and relief flowing through him at the sight of four of the younger newsies, clad only in their trousers and under-shirts and their faces streaked with tears and soot, gathered around David.

"...are you sure?" David was saying. He was kneeling, hands on Ten-Pin's thin shoulders, looking like he was trying desperately not to shake the kid. "No back door, no other way?"

Ten-Pin could only shake his head.

"Dave?" Jack touched his back, and the rest of the older boys joined them, encircling the younger ones. Blink picked Dime up, and Dutchy and Specs were trying to determine if the other two were hurt.

David lowered his head for a moment. Jack saw his jaw clench before he deliberately relaxed his muscles and let Ten-Pin go. Dutchy quickly scooped up the kid.

"They heard the bells," David said, not getting up. His voice was strained, almost unrecognizable. "Most of them were sleeping, and they got up and went downstairs. These four and Itey were the first ones out the door, and the bells were still ringing when the—when the dragon came. Itey pushed them towards the alley and ran back inside—"

"No," Snitch moaned.

"—to warn—"

"No!"

Mush tried to get hold of Snitch, but he twisted violently away.

"And that's when..." David's voice dropped to a whisper. "That's when."

Jack stared at the wreck of the the Lodging House. It was beginning to smoulder, flakes of ash falling gently. Impossible to think that that twisted, blackened—flattened—heap could have once contained so much life.

Impossible. Over a hundred faces in that House, over a hundred souls. The image blurred, and for a moment he thought he'd forgotten how to even breathe.

David shuddered convulsively beneath his hand, and Jack wanted to say something, anything, but the words wouldn't come.

Cork's head snapped up. "Didja hear that?"

"What?"

"I heard it too," Toms said. He and Cork scrambled towards a darkened shopfront just beyond the burnt buldings.

Then Jack heard it as well—a high-pitched sound, like a muffled cry of fear—

"Hey!" Cork shouted.

The rest of them hurried over just in time to see Cork and Toms draw three more young boys out of the deeply recessed doorway. They, too, seemed upright and unhurt. Cork pulled the cap off one of them—

"Les!" David lunged forward and swept up his younger brother, burying his face in the boy's hair. "Oh god—Les—"

Jack reached out to pat the kid on the back, needing some tangible proof that he really was alive and well, but he stopped himself just before doing so. Family Jack might call them, but there was a time and a place for everything. This reunion was theirs, and he would not interrupt.

He knelt down instead in front of one of the other kids, a redheaded ten-year-old named Pocket. Unlike the four whom David had found, these three were fully dressed.

"Was you out somewheres?" Jack asked quietly.

Pocket met Jack's eyes nervously, then quickly glanced away.

"You can tell us, kid," Jack said. "We needs to know."

Pocket licked his lips. "We snuck out. Les said nobody was to know, 'cos he had to stay in. We...we wanted t'see where they found old man Beecham."

Jack nodded to himself. Two days ago, the body of a relatively wealthy clothes-merchant named Walter Beecham had been discovered floating just off a Hudson River pier belonging to the Lehigh Valley Railroad. An investigation had been opened, and newspapers eagerly speculated on whether it had been an accident, suicide, or murder. They wouldn't find out, now, Jack realized. They'd never find out.

The pier wasn't far from here, almost due west. A tempting short trip.

"...And we was coming back. The bells started ringin' and we sees the fire..." He trailed off.

"So you hid," Jack said.

Pocket nodded, scrubbing one scraped fist across his watering eyes in angry embarrassment. Racetrack crouched next to them, pulling a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket and wrapping it about the kid's hand. "Here."

David drew a deep breath and pulled away from Les just far enough to look into his face. "Why didn't you let us know you were here?"

"I wasn't s'posed to be out," Les sobbed. "I thought you'd be mad."

"Mad...!" David looked like he was struggling to find any suitable response, then gave up and hugged him close again.

The sound of returning footsteps made Jack look up. Renewed hope had sent the rest of the older boys scouring the street for any other survivors, but when Jack met their bleak expressions, he didn't even have to ask.

"We can't stay," Jack said, rising to his feet. Shouts and the clatter of hooves on cobblestones warned them and they sprang back to the curb just before a wagon, laden with adults and children and what looked like a jumble of possessions, hurtled around the corner and past them at full speed.

David took a few steps back, still holding Les. "I gotta get home—"

"I'se comin' with you." Jack held out a hand to stop him just for a moment. The ruins of the House loomed in his peripheral vision; he turned his head away, looked to the rest. "The Sun ain't no good. Takes too long to cross the Park, and you'se stuck out in the open the whole time."

"The Remington offices," Dutchy said.

Jack nodded. The building, owned by the typewriter-manufacturing company, stood on the near side of Broadway at Worth Street. It was just several blocks north and east of them. Five stories tall and fronted with marble, the middle of a row of three identical, adjoining buildings, it was well-shielded on either side. "Go. I'll be there soon's I can."

The boys slipped away.

Jack turned to David and Les. "C'mon."

Chapter Text

When Jack got back to the tunnel from his second run that night with Race and Toms and eight semi-crushed boxes of Uneeda biscuits, the news wasn't good.

"Pipes is running a little dry, Jack," Boots told him.

Jack tore off another narrow strip of handkerchief and began wrapping David's thumb before the blood could begin to bead up again. "How bad?"

"Took all day just to get twelve bottles and four canteens."

That there was still fresh water running in the city was something of a miracle. There were no working steam-pumps left to move the water, of course, and a month ago it seemed something had begun to block, at unpredictable intervals, most of the flow into Manhattan from the reservoirs upstate. But the city's mains had been laid out with an eye towards letting gravity do much of the work, so water still made its way, albeit sluggishly, through pipes from the reservoir in Central Park—and from whatever managed to trickle in from upstate—down through to the south end of Manhattan.

But just because water flowed didn't mean you could always get to it. Low water pressure meant that water rarely made it above basement-level pipes—although you could sometimes get lucky, the farther downtown you went—but basements were often flooded, whether by the bursting of these pipes or by rainwater, or by the rare but deadly sudden surge from upstream. The liquid that filled these spaces was almost guaranteed to turn out to be tainted by debris and sewage and, once in a while, bodies; you quickly learned not to even approach them if you were smart.

Pipes could be smashed open, but unless you did it carefully, you'd submerge your own source soon enough, or at the very least leave the floor covered in a layer of standing water, heaven for mosquitoes and other sources of disease.

And you never knew when a pipe would simply dry up. If the pressure dropped, if it developed a leak somewhere else, if a building went down between here and the mains...

But the entrance grating to their ventilation shaft was situated, by nothing but pure dumb luck, near the City Hall Park's drinking fountain. The fountain itself had long since been toppled, but no matter: there was no longer enough pressure to bring the water up to ground level. The boys had managed to dig a deep, narrow hole near the fountain—making sure to scatter the resulting mound of dirt, because it did no good to draw attention to yourself—and by dint of scraped knuckles and badly-stripped tools and no small amount of cursing, tapped into the pipe just enough to get a dribble of water that could be stopped up at will.

The pipe was a slender one, which meant the pressure didn't drop as much as it could have, but still they'd had to deepen the hole and re-open the pipe at successively lower spots as the weeks wore on.

Jack tied off the ends of the small make-shift bandage. "How much we got stored?"

"Enough for three days," Specs said. "Not counting what they brung in today."

"Four canteens and fourteen bottles yesterday?" Jack asked.

"Yeah. Same's the day before that."

Bringing in only twelve bottles in addition to the canteens meant they were breaking even on the drinking water. They weren't in danger of dying of thirst, but their reserves would dwindle...reserves that they needed for things other than drinking, like washing their food pots, and keeping injuries clean. And you could only store so much for so long, cool though the air was down in the tunnel.

"Can't go much lower," Boots said. "'Nother foot, maybe..."

"I ain't going any deeper," Pocket declared. "'S already twenty feet—"

"Thirteen feet," Specs murmured, without ire.

"—and it's all sand at the bottom. I don't care if you got planks up all around it. I read the papes. I know what happens when you dig in deep and it's all sand at the bottom."

"He's right, Jack," Boots said. "It caved in a little yesterday. Not much, and we scooped it right back out, but..."

"It ain't just the sand," Specs said. "I know the pipes is drying out, but you never know when they'll flood again. And if somebody's down there when it does..."

"All right," Jack said, "all right. Let me think." He turned to David. "Wanna walk?"

Not waiting for an answer, he lifted David's hand and set it on his own arm, then stood. Once in a while David simply let go and refused to follow, but this time he only hesitated before getting to his feet without protest.

"Want some company?" Racetrack asked.

"Yeah."

Race picked up a candle in a jar and they paced towards the south end of the tunnel. David trailed silently behind, fingers loosely gripping Jack's elbow.

"Been a dry coupla weeks," Race said. "Ain't a cloud in the sky."

"The Reservoir might be running low." Not that there was any way to truly find out. Manhattan boasted three reservoirs, only one of which was still in use. The other two, though taken out of service years ago, still held water which could conceivably be retrieved, but that wasn't the point. If the reservoirs were the obvious source of water for the city's remaining inhabitants, then it was obvious to the dragons, too.

Like lions at a watering-hole, dragons could always be found near the reservoirs. Not only had they appropriated the giant artificial lakes for their own use—in a case of supreme irony, it was their arrival that had halted the planned demolition of the reservoir in Bryant Park—but those people sufficiently foolish or desperate to dare a run for the water in the early days had also provided more than enough incentive for the dragons to stay. By sheer proximity, the smaller lakes at Central Park were likewise too risky to use as sources, but that didn't stop people from occasionally trying.

And yet the dragons did not foul their own drinking-water, nor did they allow anything else to, a curse and a blessing mixed for those survivors who tried to get their water from anywhere south of the Central Park Reservoir.

"Another month and we might have snow," Race said. "Won't be no problems then."

"And the water barons'll go bust."

They paused by one of the fire-buckets, which were set against the wall at intervals. Jack tapped it with his boot out of reflex, was rewarded with the low pinging sound of a full bucket and a slight shimmer reflected in the lamplight.

"We gotta find a new pipe," Jack continued, musing aloud. "We tell the boys to keep an eye out whenever they'se outside. Maybe send out a few of 'em to look, special."

"And we start saving up to buy," Racetrack said.

"Race—"

"I know you don't like it. Well, neither do I. But what choice do we got?"

"They'd just as soon rip you off as look at you."

"I know."

"And if they don't rob you, somebody else will."

"I know." Race sighed. He was quiet for a moment, then reached into his pocket and pulled out something which he turned and offered to David.

In his palm sat a small folding knife, its plain handle of dark wood set with two brass rivets. A long, deep scratch marred one side of it, but it was otherwise in one piece. David stared at it expressionlessly. Racetrack coughed.

"Found it today—the only one left that wasn't burned or bent or whatever." He waited patiently, then added, "Thought it might help with fixin' the ropes...you know."

Maybe it was the fact that Race spoke directly to David, not even once flashing an uncertain glance at Jack as most tended to do when David didn't respond immediately. Or maybe it was David's practical side responding to the simple usefulness of the tool. Either way, he let go of Jack and took the knife.

When he snapped it open and tilted it towards the dim light, Jack could see that the blade was a good one, sturdy but with a fine edge. The knife that David used now was thin and tended to dull easily when used to saw through heavy rope fibers. They had a couple of whetstones for the store of blades they'd collected, and no boy went out without an unsharpened one; but two whetstones were not nearly enough for all of them, and nothing beat having good-quality steel in the first place.

David closed the knife, then met Race's eyes briefly before blinking and looking away again.

Jack grinned. "Not bad, Race."

Race merely shrugged.

"Last ones in!" Mush called, jogging past them from the guard-post at the south end, where they could see boys climbing down, carrying bundles. Mush limped only slightly these days; by now, the break in his stride was no longer very noticeable unless you knew to look for it. As he got closer to the other end of the tunnel, it was obvious he repeated the message, as the rest began gathering in preparation for the evening meal.

"Eat first," Jack said. "We'll work it out after."

Chapter Text

"I found some mirrors," Dutchy announced after supper, "but they'se mostly broken."

Jack flicked excess water back in the tub and wiped his hands dry. "That's nice, Dutch," he said, a little doubtfully.

"Now find us a barber," Racetrack said.

"Or a tailor," Boots suggested.

"I want one of them nice hats with the feathers in it!"

"Get me some hair-ribbons!"

Dutchy merely rolled his eyes, waiting patiently. "You guys finished?"

"Just about," Race said. "If I don't get one of them pretty lace handkerchiefs I think I'm gonna cry."

Actually, Jack thought, a few mirrors wouldn't come amiss, provided they were intact. Those boys who needed to shaved as best they could in front of a shard of mirror propped up against the wall. Jack had insisted, and met with little protest; beards were just too hot and itchy, and far too much work to keep clean. For that reason hair was also kept short—well, that, and the fact that long hair could snag on anything in the event they needed to make a quick getaway, and it gave an opponent something terribly handy to grab hold of. And it caught fire all too easily. The only real hazard of getting your hair cut lay in entrusting the scissors to your so-called friends.

Dutchy bent to retrieve a burlap sack, from which he slid a stack of small, flat objects onto the back of a crate. Each round mirror was about the size of his hand, with delicate scrolling metalwork and jewel-toned enamels on the reverse side. Out of the five, three had fractures clean across their reflective surfaces.

"Ain't really my style," Blink sniffed, leaning an elbow against Mush's shoulder. "Skittery can have 'em."

"'Least mine won't crack when I look in it," Skittery shot back.

"That's 'cos it's cracked already."

Dutchy selected a mirror, picked up a lantern, and headed into the black shadows of the south half of the tunnel. Curious, Jack and several others followed, crowding close to the lantern's yellow glow. Dutchy stopped under the ventilator opening and climbed the makeshift steps to remove both the brass panel and the crate it rested on, passing them down to Specs to be set aside. Holding up the lantern to the dark opening, he stood for a few moments, apparently lost in thought.

Jack peered up at him. "Whatcha doing?"

"Figurin' the distance," came the distracted reply. He took two paces back, heel coming perilously close to the edge of the crate. Specs smacked his ankle until he moved his foot.

Snoddy had grabbed up his shotgun as soon as they'd started heading in this direction, and had looked increasingly uneasy since the mouth of the shaft was uncovered. When Dutchy started to pull himself into the ventilator, he spoke up. "You ain't going outside..."

"No." Dutchy's voice was slightly muffled by the masonry around him. He disappeared completely, abruptly cutting off most of the light to the boys waiting below and prompting a little wave of nonchalant shuffling closer to the crates. At a small scraping noise within, Snoddy shifted his grip on the Parker, but did not raise it.

Dutchy was back shortly, standing again on the topmost crate, upper half of his body still in the shaft. "Where'd I put that mirror?"

"Here."

He took the glass from Specs and held it up to the lantern, fiddled with it, blew out a pleased breath. "Yeah. All right. Uh, Jack? You want to take a look at this?"

Shrugging, Jack joined him on the crate as Dutchy lowered the lantern, plunging the ventilator into blackness.

"Go on, take a look."

"Ain't nothin' to see, Dutch."

"Yeah. Move over a bit." Jack made room in the narrow space and Dutchy raised the lantern to eye-level. Yellow illumination played across the rough walls of the shaft; at his feet, Jack sensed another ripple of movement from the gathered boys as their light-source began to dwindle again.

The lantern was a policeman's model, dented and heat-discolored but still serviceable, that they'd snatched from the front stoop of a burnt-out tenement block (of the policeman himself there had been no sign, but no one had dared look at the long smears of ash too closely). Through the front lens, the beam shone brightly, focused by the reflector set behind the wick; it was a favorite choice for the boys to carry during guard duty. But though the slope of the shaft was fairly gentle, there was a point beyond which the light refused to reach, defeated not just by distance but by the angle. A lantern could only be tilted so far before you inadvertently shut off the flame or ran the risk of spilling fuel.

"See the X?" Dutchy asked.

The shaft was featureless, as far as Jack could tell. "What X?"

Dutchy lifted the mirror, accidentally elbowing Jack in the chest—"Sorry," he mumbled—and placed it at the base of the lamp. "That X."

There was now a circle of light several feet farther up the ventilator, against one curved wall. A thin white cross, chalked into the masonry, sat within it.

"That X?"

"Yeah," Dutchy said. He flipped the mirror face-down, and the mark vanished, swallowed instantly by the darkness around it.

"Nice," Jack told him, and meant it this time. Returning Dutchy's shy grin, he ducked back out into the tunnel proper. "Snoddy, you'se gonna want to see this." He jumped down to the floor as Snoddy took his place.

"Well?" Blink asked.

"Dutchy's got a neat trick there. Maybe save you guys some climbin' when you'se on the night watch, if Snoddy thinks it'll work."

"Throwin' light with mirrors, huh?" Specs said. He had a hand clasped around Dutchy's ankle. "Could come in real useful for other things."

Snoddy muttered something to Dutchy, then dropped to one knee. "Try it now."

"Hey—!" Skittery shielded his eyes as sudden illumination struck him full in the face. Up on the crates, Dutchy still held the lantern within the shaft, but the mirror was now angled downward. The redirected light played halfway around the circle of boys, picking out ragged shirts and soot-smudged faces: the half-healed bruise above Blink's good eye, the long knife scar that trailed from behind Race's ear. Dutchy turned the glass away again.

Snoddy was nodding to himself. "Yeah. That'll do." He squinted up at the ventilator, beckoned to Dutchy. "C'mon. Let's see how far we gotta climb before we can get the front door lit up."

"Yeah," Jack said, "but you'se waitin' 'til we get back to the other end. You bums got the only lamp."

When they'd made their way back, Mush and Blink ventured into the lit part of the tunnel only long enough to snag another lantern and two mirrors, and set about trying to direct a beam of light around the corner of a shelf and onto the wall behind it. It attracted the attention of most of the rest, who pulled themselves from their nest of blankets and were soon gathered around them being as helpful as possible.

"You'se standin' too close—"

"—ain't gonna work, that light's too small—"

"Try steppin' to the left. No, no, the other left!"

"Turn it—"

"Quit gettin' that light in my face—"

"Quit gettin' your face in my light!"

"—a little better—"

"Try it again—"

"What if we get another lamp—"

A movement back at the crate where the rest of the mirrors lay caught Jack's eye, and he turned to see David standing beside the makeshift table. He had one of the mirrors in his hand, and was gazing silently into it.

Jack moved over to him, peered as unobtrusively as he could over his shoulder. The mirror was one of the broken ones. From his vantage point, Jack could only see David's right cheek and ear, reflected several times over in a grotesque pattern among the chips of glass. What could there possibly be to see in it?

He stepped aside, glanced again at David's face: tangled dark hair falling over blue eyes, hollow shadows beneath them, the tiny remnants of healed nicks on his chin—David shaved when prompted to, but never met his own gaze in the shaving-glass—and an expression that was never quite readable.

Jack reached over and picked up the remaining undamaged mirror and held it out, but David was already putting down his and walking away.

Chapter Text

Skittery paused in sharpening his knife to scrub one hand through his sleep-mussed hair and yawn hugely. "Well, you can forget anything near Schermerhorn Row, ain't no pipes we can use there. We was there yesterday, you can't hardly get in."

"You could still get in the building on the east corner two weeks ago." Blink stepped unceremoniously over him, tin cup in hand.

"Yeah, two weeks ago. The building on the east corner ain't there no more."

"Christ." Blink shook his head and crouched to offer the cup to Mush, who was still lying flat on his back, an arm across his eyes.

"That better be coffee," Mush said, not looking up.

Blink squinted into the cup, gave it an experimental shake. "Sorry." He brightened. "I can make it look like coffee if you want..."

Mush lifted his arm with a suppressed groan, blinking red-rimmed eyes at the brick ceiling. "Nooo..."

"You ain't lookin' so hot, Mush," Race told him.

"I'se fine—"

"Sure you is," Blink said. "That's why you sound like you swallowed a box of sand and your eyes look like you bathed 'em in whiskey."

Jack looked up from where he and Dutchy were studying the map. "He sick?"

"Nah, he ain't sick," Blink answered. "He just didn't get no sleep."

"What, none?"

"Fellas! I'se right here—"

"None. And no matter what, he's gonna say he's fine, so don't bother askin' him."

Mush sat up and tugged the cup of water from Blink's fingers, taking a small sip. Blink settled down next to him, casually hooked an elbow around his neck.

A single night of restlessness and Mush looked positively haggard, his usual easy smile more than a little strained. Jack found himself gloomily unsurprised. It wasn't the physical lack of sleep that did you in; it was what went on in your head while you weren't sleeping.

"Why didn't you wake me up, idiot?" Blink muttered, almost too low for Jack to catch. He didn't hear Mush's quiet reply, nor did he make any further attempt to listen in on what was, by now, an old argument.

He glanced at David; but David had his head down, consumed, even at this early hour, with cutting a burnt length from a coil of rope. Skittery's team had brought it back from the waterfront the day before. Despite the glinting of the new knife blade as David sawed with almost feverish intensity through the thick fibers, his face held no impatience or frustration, only absorption.

"...then we heard dogs down at the piers," Skittery said, "so we was outta there."

Low muttering greeted this revelation: dog packs were bad news.

"Speakin' of which, a bunch of guys moved into the Vanderbilt mansion up on Fifth Avenue," Bumlets said, conscientiously shoving his blankets back against the wall, out of the passageway.

"Which Vanderbilt mansion?" Race asked.

"Which...oh. The fancy white marble one...usedta have a pointy roof?"

"They friendly?" Jack asked.

"I wish," Snitch said, rolling over and joining the conversation. He'd been part of the same team as Bumlets yesterday. "They'se about ten of 'em, big men, like they was dockworkers or construction men. We didn't get real close."

Beside Jack, Dutchy quietly located the intersection on the map, pencilled in the number "10" and an "X." Jack nodded at him, and said, "Ain't that right near St. Patrick's?"

"And St. Thomas, and the Presbyterian," Race added, shaking his head. "That block is lousy with churches."

"Couldn't pay me to move in there," Skittery put in.

Jack narrowed his gaze at both Bumlets and Snitch. "What was you doin' there?"

"Well, uh..." Bumlets glanced at his teammate.

"Relax, Jack," Snitch said. "We saw the dragons leave, and figured we'se just gonna run in for a minute. You can find good stuff there, sometimes, 'cos hardly anyone else goes."

Jack leaned forward. "Yeah, that's 'cos they actually wanna come back with all their arms and legs on."

"We didn't stay." Bumlets' tone was soothing. "Soon's we saw them men, we took off."

"And if they wasn't there?" At their silence, Jack sighed. "I don't want you taking no chances like that, all right? It ain't worth it. I don't care if you brings back the Hope Diamond, it ain't worth it."

Bumlets nodded.

"I mean it, Snitch," Jack said.

Snitch's shoulders tightened, but he made no move. "All right." His voice was flat. Behind him, several of the boys exchanged glances.

Snoddy stepped over to them. "I think there's a cat outside," he said absently, breaking open his shotgun to check the ammunition.

"You ain't gonna shoot it, is ya?" Bumlets asked, faintly alarmed. Skittery tossed him the whetstone.

Snoddy laughed. "Nah. O'Dell and Chopper heard it last night, that's all." He slid both shells back in and closed the gun again, rested it in the crook of his elbow. "It ain't there now." He raised his voice. "We'se going upstairs, so line up if you'se comin'. Word of the day is 'Santiago'. Pass it on."

Boys pulled themselves to their feet, rubbing at faces and tugging on shirts, heading for the south end for a quick trip aboveground before breakfast. Blink was trying his best to look martyred, and not wholly succeeding; Mush had dozed off against his shoulder.

"Ease up, Dave," Jack murmured, as David parted the frayed ends with a particularly vicious yank. "Rope's already dead, I think."

Jack tugged at a ragged corner of his knife sheath, keeping half on eye on David to see that he finished the last bit of biscuit that was breakfast. The stitching on one side of the sheath would probably need to be reinforced soon; the threads were starting to come loose.

"...and you'se staying in today," Blink was saying. "Ain't that right, Cowboy?"

"I stayed in yesterday—"

Jack cut him off. "He's right, Mush."

"But—"

"No buts. You catch up on your rest, you goes out tomorrow. Go talk to Snoddy; tell him I said you'se pulling guard duty at home for half the day."

Mush sighed. "Okay, Jack."

"After you get some sleep."

"Yes, Jack."

Blink nudged his shoulder. "You didn't dream again just now, did you?"

"No." Mush slumped against the wall. "Just...last night, I kept seeing the Lodging House, you know?" He rubbed his arms, as though trying to fight off a chill. "Like I'd been there when...when it happened. I could see the kids makin' it out the door, and Ten-Pin was shoutin', and then...Itey, he—"

Jack shot him a warning look, feeling like a complete heel when Mush strickenly clamped his mouth shut, but it was too late. Snitch's eyes were already glazing over. As Jack watched, they slowly cleared, leaving nothing but a faint puzzlement.

"Who?" Snitch said.

Chapter Text

I really ought to take my own advice, Jack thought.

He was crouched behind the splintered counter of what had once been a dry-goods store. The sack he carried was bulging with hastily-folded armfuls of broadcloth—thin stuff, half-burnt, and covered in a film of dust, but reasonably untouched beneath that. And woven of wool, if the semi-legible label was anything to go by. Any fabric that could serve as blankets in a pinch was never passed up; blankets were not necessarily in short supply, but the means to keep them clean was, and so they'd forgone laundering in lieu of simply finding new bedclothes whenever possible.

His legs were starting to ache from having been in one position for so long. There was too much broken glass littering the floor for him to think about trying to kneel or sit. Tightening his fingers on the edge of the countertop, he braced his forearms against the side of it, trying to take some of the weight off his legs.

He kept up a mental count, determined not to let the seconds turn into apprehension-laced hours, calculating how much longer he had until Toms and Chopper had to turn and make for home.

The dragon was still there.

From his vantage point, barely peering over the scarred wooden surface, he could see the creature's hindclaws gripping its marble perch, and the line of one giant folded wing. He had no idea how long it had been there. He was sure he'd only come into the store a few minutes ago, and it had been nowhere in sight then.

So much for his own advice. This building stood within the shadow of Grace Church, and for all his warnings about staying away from church-heavy areas, look where he was now.

When the dragons had first struck the city, thousands had fled to churches to seek refuge. The massive citadels that were the larger church-buildings, with their marble facings and their vast spaces and their lofty arches, seemed to offer indefinable hope to the devout and the nonbelieving alike. Trinity Church, St. Peter's, the Judson Memorial...all of them took in the crowds that poured through their doors and huddled in their naves and pews, trusting in the material solidity of stone walls and in the intangible sanctity of holy ground, trusting that the churches would remain unshaken.

They had been half right.

The dragons did not bring down the cathedrals. They left mostly-untouched the altars and the transepts and the soaring vaulted ceilings. Mostly.

Mostly. What the dragons left untouched most of all were the spires, the steeples, the bell-towers.

Monstrous birds of prey, the dragons swiftly seized the highest perches. Tall but broad buildings, capable of supporting two dragons on their peaks at once, soon fell in the territorial battles that raged in the skies above the city. What survived were the narrow spires, structures like the Tribune building and Madison Square Garden. And the church towers.

For the thousands jammed inside, the churches themselves had become death-traps. Those who made frantic attempts to escape rarely made it past the glittering eyes of dragons on their own roofs. And as for the vast majority who stayed within...

Jack wiped his brow against his sleeve, kept one eye on the dragon and another on the sky. Just because there was one beast out there didn't mean there couldn't be another.

If the facade of this building hadn't been cracked open, he wouldn't be able to see the dragon from here. Part of the ceiling near the ruined front door had been torn away, revealing blue sky where there shouldn't have been any. This was, after all, only the ground floor.

He flexed the fingers of his right hand, winced as the long cut pulled open again. He'd left a smear of blood, despite wrapping his hand, on one of the jagged planks of heavy wood—probably a shelf—that formed part of the head-high tangle of debris that blocked the back door. Some of the smaller items—a cash register, a display table—had come away easily, but the larger ones were firmly wedged. He'd tried climbing over the obstruction, only to find that the back door apparently opened inward.

Someone—or rather, several someones, since there was no way a single person had been able to lift all those objects—had tried to barricade themselves in. He suppressed a shudder. They'd tried to barricade the back door, only to have something come in through the front—

The dragon lifted its wings suddenly, and even from here, two blocks away, Jack could hear its piercing hiss.

Oh god—

He ducked reflexively as a reptilian scream sounded, followed closely by a returned challenge, the shrill cries overlapping. Sharp pain shot through his left knee as it struck the floor, but he ignored it, ears straining to sort through the sounds of the uproar.

The dragon leapt into the air and out of Jack's line of sight, powerful downstroke of its wings almost like a physical force against his eardrums. More of the creatures' screams sounded, two giant shadows sweeping over streets and buildings at unbelievable speed, circling each other.

Dragons clashing in the air meant dragons distracted. Jack's gaze flicked to the front door, flicked back to the sky, even though he could no longer see the beasts, only the criss-crossing paths of darkness where they blotted out the sun.

He steeled himself, absently brushing fine glass fragments from his left knee. His hand came away slightly damp.

The chance was now. Waiting until the end of the fight would only bring the victor down to claim its roost, and the day was already growing late. It might not leave again until nightfall, and that was almost not worth thinking about.

A huge impact from above, rattling the foundations. An iron balustrade slammed to the pavement just outside, partially blocking the door, leaving only a three-foot gap near the ground. Something had landed, or been dropped, on the roof of what sounded like the adjoining building. Jack shook fallen dust from his hair, coughing a little. Experimentally, he hefted the full sack, and for once found himself grateful that the day's haul was light. Outside, only one shadow was moving.

Then with a crash of broken masonry the other shadow sprang up to meet the first. Shrieks rang and echoed, and Jack sucked in a deep breath and ran for it.

He was just sliding himself between the crumbling doorway and the fallen balustrade when the building shook again. Metal objects showered down—iron finials sheared from the roof, each of them a dagger as long as his forearm, plunging points-first. One clipped his arm and with a bang drove deep into a crack in the cobblestones, pinning his sleeve. Snatching his knife from his belt, he slashed through the fabric, squirmed through the gap, gained his feet and immediately veered left without stopping to look. He didn't need to. There was no mistaking where the dragons were.

One huge body spun off-balance into the side of a building across the street, brought to a halt by claws biting into brick. The sheer momentum threw loose masonry across the narrow roadway and Jack dove behind the skeleton of a carriage, hearing heavy pieces smack into the metal frame around him.

The second the missiles stopped falling, he was up and running again, darting through an alley and turning south.

He wasn't even aware he'd gone two blocks until a pair of figures jumped out in front of him. He shied and instinctively brought up the knife, until his eyes readjusted and he realized he was looking at Chopper and Toms.

"C'mon." Chopper grabbed the sack and slung it over his own shoulder. The dragons were still clearly visible, high in the sky three blocks away; the boys slipped along a side-street, hugging the walls.

"Thought you woulda been gone by now," Jack panted.

"What, an' show up at home without you?" Chopper cracked. But he sounded a little shaky.

Chapter Text

"All right, last one," Snoddy said. Jack gritted his teeth as the other boy readjusted his grip on his knee.

The curved shard of glass slid out, a sharp jolt of pain. Snoddy dropped it into the tin cup where it joined the smaller chips with an incongruously-cheery jingle. He tipped more water over Jack's knee, adding new crimson swirls to the already-reddened contents of the bucket beneath, then nodded when he could find no more glittering specks embedded in the flesh. Jack hissed as a quick splash of whiskey followed, the liquor burning like a hot poker despite being watered down. He pressed his undamaged left palm to the cuts, feeling the unpleasant thick wetness as fresh blood oozed from them.

The slashes were, thankfully, not deep, only numerous. Frankly, he'd had much worse before, although running at top speed for a mile and a quarter with glass still stuck in him hadn't particularly helped.

"No, cut it smaller—half that," he told Mush. "It's only bleeding in the middle."

Mush opened his mouth as if to protest, then shut it again.

"'S bleeding everywhere, Jack," Snoddy said mildly, absently wiping his stained fingers on his pantsleg.

"Yeah, well, it's only bad in the middle. The ones on the edges'll stop soon enough." He took the small piece of gauze Mush handed him, peeled his hand away, and slapped the dressing down in its place, holding it on tightly.

In the old days, he wouldn't have bothered with fancy things like gauze. Kloppman had kept a box of supplies behind his counter and insisted on their use, but it...well, it just wasn't done. You didn't ask Kloppman for the box unless you thought your finger would fall off or your liver was about to dissolve or perhaps your elbow actually bent the wrong way. Even before that, when he'd lived on the streets and had no kindly old man with cotton dressings and carbolic to turn to, he'd survived just fine.

...Kloppman with his old worn grey derby, and the box behind the counter...

But nowadays, they'd seen enough of festering lacerations and gangrene among the walking wounded on the streets to at least take some steps. They had a single medical bag's worth of supplies, snatched from the rubble of what had once been the German Dispensary ("'S a free clinic anyway," someone had half-hysterically said at the time). The use of well over half the bottles and instruments within remained a mystery, but that had been no reason not to salvage them.

"Did he really throw the other one into a building?" Pocket asked, his youthful voice bright with fascination.

"Yeah," Jack said. "And he left clawmarks on the brick wall thick as your arm."

"Did he burn 'im?"

Tin-Pin elbowed him. "Dragons don't burn other dragons, stupid."

"I ain't stupid." Pocket jabbed him back.

"Hey!" Blink snapped, stopping Ten-Pin mid-shove.

"He started it!" Pocket pointed out.

"Do I look like I care who started it?" Blink said. "No wrestling down here, and the two a' you know it."

The kids subsided readily. Jack waved them all away. "Go on now, this ain't a show. Don't yous have supper to eat or something?"

That got them moving, the wave of boys heading back towards the crate they'd all turned away from when Jack had limped into the lamplight some minutes earlier with blood soaking one trouser-leg. Jack slouched a little lower on the crate he currently occupied, leaned his head back against the brick wall behind him and let his eyes drift shut.

There was the rustling of paper sacks, the tearing open of packages and boxes.

"—found this old blue china bowl, lucky I looked under the sewing machine—"

"—so he tugs on the rope and says, 'Pull me up, boys,' and we hoist him outta the basement with his arms fulla—"

"I'se starvin'—"

"Is those peanuts?"

"—heard this barkin', ran like hell and barely got away from—"

Someone shook a paper bag, accompanied by small rattling noises.

"Hey, is that candy?"

"—gotta 'nother bag—"

"Get yer fingers outta it, I'll divvy it up—"

"Did we finish them apples?"

Jack cracked one eye open, glanced to his right down the length of the tunnel beyond the waiting boys, frowned a little. As always, there were a handful slumped against the walls or on the blankets, too tired or uncaring to clamor for supper or even to come watch Jack getting glass plucked from his knee. He watched Toms try to pull Flick to his feet, watched Flick yank his arm out of the other boy's grasp and push him off. Jack sat up a bit higher, but Toms seemed not to take offense, crouching down to speak with his friend. He got up again a few moments later, shaking his head.

Jack looked back at the group waiting for their food, found Skittery closest to him. "Hey, Skitts?"

"Yeah?"

Jack motioned with his head. "Bring some to Dave, willya? It don't matter if he don't want...if he ain't hungry. Just leave it there. I'll be over soon."

"Yeah, sure Jack. You need anything?"

"Nah. Just tell Race to save me some."

"For a bu—"

"Don't even start."

"Sorry, Jack," Skittery said, sounding not at all so.

He thought about asking Skittery to see if he couldn't get David to at least stop working, even if he wouldn't eat, but he let it go. He could still see the occasional flash of the knife as David sliced something apart with the blade-point. With the task half-finished, he wouldn't be easily drawn from it; even Jack's return had made no impact. One thing at a time, Jack decided.

"Jack! There's candy!"

"Huh?" When had he closed his eyes again?

"Ten-Pin, let 'im be," Race called.

The kid looked sheepish, but Jack sat up and rubbed his face. "Nah, 's okay. Gotta eat, anyway."

He started to rise, but Race waved him back down. "Sit."

"Ain't crippled, Race—"

Race's jaw tightened. "Sit."

He sank back down. "All right, all right."

Race stepped over to him, handed him a cup of water and his share of the food wrapped in a bit of cloth. As Jack let it fall open to reveal the meagre rations, Racetrack knelt, pulling a strip of clean fabric from his pocket. "Let go," Race told him, and Jack pulled his hand away with some difficulty from the blood-soaked pad of gauze, the edges already crusting over.

"So you was up at Broadway and 10th, huh?" Race asked conversationally, winding the strip around Jack's knee.

"Yeah." Both of his hands were smeared with red, the right one less so, now that the gash across it had stopped bleeding. He fished out the slice of apple, took a bite of the leathery flesh. It was more tart than sweet, seeming to settle uneasily in his stomach, but he wasn't about to complain.

"Did you get lost?"

"Lost?" He frowned. "Nah, I knew where we was." He found two pieces of licorice and three biscuits, went for the licorice first.

"We, huh?"

"Yeah, we. You'se asking a lotta questions tonight, Race."

Race smoothed down the edge of the gauze where it was getting wrinkled beneath the binding strip. "Well, so answer 'em."

Jack bit into a biscuit, perhaps a little harder than he needed to. "I knew," he said deliberately, "where I was, and I knew where Chopper was, and I knew where Toms was. At all times."

"Cute, Jack."

"They didn't get a scratch and I only tore up my knee. So I been hurt worse than this before, and you know it."

"You been hurt less than this before, too."

He swallowed the rest of the biscuit as Race carefully pulled the slack out of the makeshift bandage. "Spit it out, Race. What's eating you?"

Race's hands stilled, the knot half-tied, and he looked up to meet Jack's gaze. "Did you forget about Grace Church sitting right there? Did you think what would happen if the dragons got you?"

"Yeah. That's why I made the boys wait. They was three blocks away, I told 'em to head straight back here if I didn't come back in twenty minutes. They was fine—"

"No, they wasn't!" Race kept his voice low, nearly hissing the words. "Chopper told me what it was like, how they couldn't stop you—"

"The dragons didn't even know I was there!"

"You got lucky." Race shook his head and finished off the knot, sat back on his heels. "Pure dumb luck, Jack."

He started to rise, disregarding his knee's protest. "Maybe. But it worked, didn't it?"

Shooting to his feet, Race grabbed the front of his shirt, dark eyes snapping. "Damn it, Jack, I know you. I know you. First one in where it's dangerous, last one in when we'se getting home. What makes you so goddamned special?"

Jack took a half-step back against the crate, thrown off-balance by Race's unexpected fury. Around them, heads were beginning to turn. "I ain't never said I was somebody special—" he started.

"What do you think would've happened if you hadn't come back? You don't think they would've stayed, 'cos no matter what you told 'em they couldn't just up and leave you there? You don't think they would've tried to come in after you? What would've happened then? It ain't just about you."

He grabbed Race's sleeve and pushed back, as much out of frustration as his refusal to lose his footing, leaving a bright red streak along the other boy's arm. The cut across his palm had split again, but he ignored it. "You think deciding that was easy? You want to—"

"Damn it, Kelly, I—"

"Listen, Race. Day after day, what do you think—" He broke off at the sound of sudden murmurs, movement in his peripheral vision. Turning, he saw David rising to his feet, blank expression slowly giving way not to anger but to concern and determination, his eyes fixed on the sight of Jack's blood staining Race's shirt.

The knife was still gripped in his hand as he stepped closer. Every one of Jack's instincts told him that it was not deliberate, that David had only stood without thinking of setting down the knife. But he could not guarantee it. He could not prove it.

He darted a glance at Race, whose face had blanched. "Race—he don't mean—" But he pushed Race to one side anyway, stepped between him and David. "Dave, stay there. I ain't hurt."

He moved forward to intercept the younger boy, whose eyes flicked restlessly between Jack and the darkening splotch on Race's sleeve. Jack caught his right arm, taking care to do it with his uninjured left hand; felt the tautness of his muscles, pressed him back a little. "Look at me." He squeezed David's arm to keep his attention. "Look at me. I ain't hurt. Nobody hurt me."

David obeyed. He was breathing fast, but didn't try to wrench himself from Jack's grasp or push past him. After a long moment, some of the tension seemed to ebb from his frame, and he let himself be steered back towards their spot next to the wall.

Jack slid the knife out of unresisting fingers, flipped the blade shut and dropped it into his own pocket. By the time he got David to sit and turned to glance back over his shoulder, Race was already looking the other way.

Chapter Text

He started to head back towards Race, only to have David get to his feet again. "Dave, sit down. 'S all right."

He was met with blunt refusal and fingers seizing his sleeve. Stopped short, he turned and took hold of David's shoulders, doing his best not to leave red smudges on the fabric. "I need to talk to Race, all right? Just talk. I promise."

But David shook his head, agitation building in his eyes. Impulsively, Jack drew him close. He could feel the tremors that coursed through him, and it was then that he realized it was only sheer force of will that was keeping David from exploding into action, from doing—what, Jack didn't know. The folding-knife that sat in his pocket was an unambiguous weight.

"I promise," he repeated, but though David released his sleeve, there was no lessening of the strain in his body. "Davey..."

"Tomorrow." It was scarcely more than a breath, and for a moment, Jack was not even sure it had been spoken.

"What?"

David said nothing, looked away.

"Ask me again," Jack said firmly. "Ask me again, I didn't hear it."

When no reply was forthcoming, he set his jaw, dropped his hands from David's shoulders and took a deliberate step back. David's head snapped up, something akin to disbelief crossing his expression.

Jack backed away another step, wiping his palms dry on his trousers, watched David's fists clench and his eyes narrow. For the space of a half-dozen breaths David stood, unmoving. Though he could have easily closed the distance between them and physically kept Jack from leaving, he did not do so, and eventually his hands relaxed again. He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged.

Cursing himself inwardly, Jack took another step, then another, saw the last traces of anger seep from David's face, to be replaced by distress. And beneath it, a flash of emotion that looked very much like shame.

Jesus christ.

One word, Jack thought, I can't keep this up, any word, please...

Another step—

"Tomorrow," David whispered all but inaudibly, and it was solely because Jack was watching his lips that he even caught it, but it was more than enough.

He moved quickly back to David's side. "All right. All right." He pulled David to his shoulder, running his hands over the tense back, torn between guilt and elation that David had even spoken at all. "Tomorrow. Nothing 'til tomorrow."

From David he sensed nothing of relief or even interest in the fact that he had verbalized anything. There was only a strange sort of defeat. He did not return Jack's embrace, but he did not push Jack away.

"I cut me hand when I'se out," Jack murmured in his ear. "Racetrack didn't have nothing to do with it, you hear me? We was just talking. I swear."

Some part of him rooted in old habits still anticipated a nod or a question or any other response, but this was David, so Jack shut up and waited.

David's rapid breathing gradually eased, thudding heartbeat slowing against Jack's own ribs. Cautiously, Jack pushed him back, held him at arm's length. Though David made no move, Jack could see in the dulling of his eyes, as they faded back to their usual detachment, a withdrawal as clear as if he'd physically retreated into the shadows behind him.

Don't go, Jack almost told him, but he knew it would have made no difference at all.

At least he'd managed to persuade David to eat. No one disturbed or even stared at them in the meantime, though Jack was fully aware of the surreptitious looks cast in their direction.

While David picked listlessly at the biscuits, Jack looked up, intending to call one of the others over. Snoddy met his eyes almost immediately, and when Jack raised an eyebrow, joined them without hesitation.

At the look on Jack's face, Snoddy shrugged and said without apology, "If there's a fight going on, I gotta know about it."

Jack grinned ruefully, but his mirth was short-lived. "Yeah, I guess you do. Tell Race something for me, will you?"

"Sure, Jack."

"Tell him I'll talk to him tomorrow. It ain't that I don't want to, but now just ain't the time. Tell him...tell him I hope he ain't—" What? Furious? Mortally insulted? "I hope there ain't no hard feelings."

Snoddy nodded. "You got it." He glanced at David, but didn't say anything.

Jack shifted reflexively, then arrested the movement. "You don't gotta worry about Dave," Jack told him.

Snoddy met his gaze levelly. When he spoke, his voice was only neutral. "I ain't."

He answered just as neutrally. "I know."

He waited until Snoddy was halfway to delivering his message before he leaned over and said to David, "I gotta go clean up. I'll be right back, all right?"

David's eyes, so distant a heartbeat ago, snapped to Race. Jack deliberately blocked his line of sight, tilted his palms to show the ruddy blotches. "You don't want me sleepin' like this, do you?" It wasn't an entirely fair tactic, but Jack was rapidly running out of steam. David dropped his gaze, and didn't react when Jack got up.

When Jack got back, hands cleaned and one tattered pants-leg wrung as dry as possible below the knee, he was carrying the box of tools he'd retrieved from the lit part of the living quarters. David reached immediately for it. "'S late, Davey," Jack told him. "You been working all day."

It was merely a guess, but a likely one. David opened the box anyway, fingers restlessly pulling out the contents: three fids and a needle, and two small balls of twine. He hadn't, Jack noted, so much as touched the licorice, having pushed the pieces to the very corner of the blanket. Jack scooped them up without a word.

Stretching out on his back on the floor, he watched through half-closed eyes as David completely unwound and re-wound first one ball of twine, then the other, the movements quick and practiced despite the apparent purposelessness of the task. He sorted through the fids, lined them up, scattered them again.

Jack found himself staring with new unease at the row of slender wood and ivory spikes. When somebody had brought the first one back to the tunnel from the docks, it had been quickly tossed aside, deemed too flimsy to use as a weapon. The largest was no longer than a pen, and though they all tapered to a point, their tips were not particularly sharp. Knives did the job better if that was what you were looking for. But...

Without lifting his shoulders off the floor, Jack picked one up, rolled its polished length between his fingers. The ivory was slightly yellowed, darkening near the knobbed handle. He closed it experimentally in his fist, holding it in an underhanded grip, bracing the knob against his thumb and letting the point protrude beyond like a dagger.

Then again, what couldn't be used as a weapon?

He flicked his gaze to the right to meet David's startled expression, saw dismay beginning to well up in those eyes. Immediately, Jack set the fid down beside the others, grabbed a handful of David's shirt-hem instead, tugged lightly at it in a kind of wordless apology. "I ain't thinking that," Jack told him clearly, and it was true. "Not about you. I know you wouldn't do that, all right? But—" He broke off, fumbling for the words to explain. "They'se still spikes. It's just...it's a fact. So you gotta be careful, you understand? I want you to be real careful."

Say yes. Say yes, say yes...

He settled, however, for the hesitant nod he received. He let go of David's shirt, pulled the blanket over himself and tried to ignore the growling in his stomach that insisted that night's supper hadn't made even a dent in the ever-present hunger.

It was not until David had finished winding the smaller bundle of twine a second time and set everything back in the box, his hands now calm, that Jack finally let himself drift off. Not once had David indicated that he wanted the knife returned.

When Jack woke up some hours later, in the middle of the night, it was to find his arm gone slightly numb from David's sleeping weight against it.

Chapter Text

"—and that's the stupidest thing I ever heard, Jack."

They were standing facing each other in the closest thing the tunnel had to a corner, in the shadow of a tall stack of roped-together crates that formed a set of makeshift shelves. Jack leaned against the curved brick wall, doing his best not to make it obvious that he was favoring his left leg. Although there wasn't much point trying to keep things hidden, when it came to Race.

They both kept their voices low, and not only because it was still early morning.

"I do what I gotta do, to keep everybody upright and breathing. Ain't we lost enough already?"

Race gritted his teeth. "That's a low blow, and you know it."

"You don't like hearing it, I don't like saying it." Before Racetrack could retort, Jack softened his tone. "That don't stop it from being true."

"It don't mean you takes crazy chances, neither."

"I can't ask nobody else to."

Quiet voices and rustling drifted over to them, most of the rest of the boys beginning to stir: sounds of studious avoidance. Race blew out a breath. "That store yesterday could've been empty."

"Yeah," Jack said. "And then I wouldn't a' stayed. I would've been outta there before the dragon even came back."

Race shook his head sharply. "You don't know that."

"None of us knows nothin' before we go in anywheres, Race. I did it as safe as I could."

"'Cept for not going in at all."

"Damn it," Jack ground out, "we needed something for blankets. It's getting colder every day, or ain't you noticed? We don't got medicine, Race. We don't got a fire. We don't even got a vent to sleep over, or somebody's basement with a furnace we can sneak in and spend the night. That's all gone, you understand?"

"I know—"

"Somebody gets sick, what'se we gonna do?"

"I know it, all right? All I'm saying's we find another way—"

"Another way? I go back there today, the store would've been gone."

"We can't just go charging in—"

"We don't got time!"

Race's lip curled. "You in a hurry to die, Jack?"

"Pipe down," Jack hissed.

"Or what?" he spat. "I'se gonna get gutted in me sleep?"

Jack stared at him, only peripherally aware that his hands had balled into fists.

After a long moment, Race dropped his gaze. "Sorry," he muttered sullenly.

Jack flexed his fingers, forced his shoulders to relax. "Maybe we don't discuss this now."

There was a muted scrape as Race stomped a bootheel against the floor. He didn't look up to meet Jack's eyes, and his voice was hard. "Yeah."

It hadn't gone well. And now Race was outside with most of the rest of the boys, while Jack, confined to the close quarters of the tunnel, could only seethe with frustration and curse at the stiffened knee that had landed him with home duty for the day.

Seated on the bottom step of the crates, he pulled the Bowie knife yet again from its makeshift canvas sheath, tilted it to the remnants of noon light that came faintly through the ceiling portal of the ventilation shaft. Sporting a heavy, foot-long blade, it was easily twice the length of the one he usually carried. This one—he tested the wicked, curving edge lightly with a thumb, though he'd sharpened it just hours ago—was for guard duty only. Tucked into his belt on the other side was a letter opener, its sterling-silver plating worn in numerous spots, exposing the base metal beneath. With its ornate mother-of-pearl handle it appeared to be an incongruous companion to the Bowie, but its tip and top two inches had been honed to razor sharpness. It made an excellent thrusting weapon.

This morning he'd returned the pocketknife to David, and David had accepted it without a glimmer of emotion. He'd waited until after he'd finished talking with Race to do it, telling himself that it gave David another twenty minutes of sleep, or at least another twenty minutes of inactivity. Which was pretty much the same as rest, wasn't it? Not that he'd tried to tell David so. His brain had been smart for once, and had kept his mouth firmly shut.

From beside him now, Flick's scowling silence was a match for his own. Snoddy and Dutchy were at their post, up at the grate. Jack glanced down the length of the tunnel to the living quarters, gave a vague start of guilt when he found himself briefly wishing one of the boys would wander this way and stay for a bit so that he wouldn't be stuck with just Flick for company while the both of them stood guard.

It hadn't always been like this. He'd never known Flick very well, but whenever he chanced to think of him, it was invariably as part of a group of three: Flick, Toms, and Cork, with Chopper at times entering their orbit. They had neither been particularly quarrelsome nor picked-upon; they had generally stayed in the lower bunk-room, occupying themselves with dice or laughter-punctuated chat; they had been at the Theatre that fatal night, and so had made it out alive.

They'd done their share of the work when the group had moved into the subway tunnel. Toms and Chopper had proved to be handy with a slingshot; Flick and Cork knew their way around knives. They'd taken up residence near the lit end of the sleeping area, the three of them together as always, with their occasional fourth; had carved a new, if slightly lopsided, set of dice; conducted their chatting in whispers on those days when the entire group of boys crouched tense and waiting for raiders or dragons aboveground to pass them by. They'd still laughed, though much more quietly now: Flick taking Cork to task for the crooked dice, Toms grinningly sneaking from the store of pebble-markers when they weren't looking.

Then Cork had gone out on scavenging duty one day, and—

Jack found himself on his feet almost without realizing he'd gotten up. "I'se gonna take a walk down to the end."

Flick only grunted in reply.

Refusing to limp more than absolutely necessary, Jack made his way along the tunnel, heading for the lights of the north half.

Cork had gone out on scavenging duty one day, and had been brought back by his teammates, tightly wrapped in a torn brocaded curtain and so close to dead he might as well have been, with three bullets in him. Jack's jaw clenched at the memory. Blood soaking Toms' and Bumlets' hands and arms and shirts; blood smeared unthinkingly across Toms' brow, the thick smell of it everywhere. The shouting and the frantic gathering of cloths and blankets and water, all of it useless; no one sure where to press or how to hold or what to do about the terrible stain rapidly spreading onto the wool blankets beneath the wounded boy. Jack ordering Snitch to take Bumlets outside before he could throw up or pass out; Toms shaking and sobbing and begging his friend not to die. Cork, scarlet froth bubbling up at his darkening lips with every breath, not conscious enough to feel Toms' hand gripping his, only just conscious enough to whisper between the horrible racking, weakening coughs that oh jesus I think this is it, boys, I'se so very cold...

And Flick, returning home twenty minutes after, too late, too late...

He'd reached the edge of the living quarters. Jack shut his eyes for a moment, pressing the heel of one hand against them, before stepping forward into the lamplight.

Chapter Text

The sounds of low conversation stopped as he did so. "You all right, Jack?" Skittery asked.

He straightened, clearing his expression. "Sure."

At this time of day there were only three boys here besides David; those on scavenging duty rotated in loose shifts, one team catching their rest at home until another came in, each team making several runs a day. This group had just come in less than half an hour ago, and were lounging against the crates near the lanterns.

A little farther down, against the opposite wall and with a lamp beside him, David did not raise his head at Jack's appearance, but his hands paused for a moment in weaving the strands.

"You'se kiddin' me," O'Dell was saying. "They did that every morning?"

"Every morning," Boots said. "And every morning, Cowboy'd give 'em what for. Ain't that so, Jack?"

"Yeah? What'se I agreeing to?"

Boots grinned. "The Delancys."

"Oh, them. Yeah. They was sure persistent." He moved past them, towards David.

Skittery picked up the story. "After the strike was over, they laid low for about a week, then they got right stupid again and started it back up." There was a shredding sound as he pulled a long splinter from the edge of one of the crates. "A coupla hard-headed bastards. Nothin' ever stopped 'em, until..."

He trailed off.

David was more or less as Jack had left him that morning, bent over his work, his hands steady; if last night still preyed on his mind, he gave no sign of it. Jack touched the back of his collar before turning and heading down the tunnel, back to his post.

He got there just in time to catch quiet voices and sounds of movement up top. Flick sprang to his feet, knife already drawn, but Jack stopped him with a hand. Tilting his head back to look into the ventilation shaft, he could see the light at the other end flash four times in signal: boys of their own coming in.

Dime was the first one through, carrying unsealed bottles full of water in both small fists, followed by Puley and Fizzer, both of them wide-eyed, with two canteens each slung around their necks.

"Look," Dime beamed, "I got all four bottles down here at once, didn't spill a drop."

"Good for you, kid," Jack told him. "Didn't Specs come in with yous?"

Dime shrugged. "Dutchy's at the grate," he said, as though that explained everything. He turned towards the north end of the tunnel, took one step and stopped short.

Jack pushed himself away from the wall he'd been leaning against. Just because there were lanterns at both ends didn't mean the intervening hundred and forty feet of passageway wasn't swallowed in pitch blackness. "C'mon." He didn't offer to take their bottles and canteens, only accompanied them down the tunnel. Puley and Fizzer clung to his shirt in the dark. "Everythin' all right upstairs?"

"I saw a dragon—" Fizzer said.

"Two dragons—" Puley put in.

"They was far off," Dime said confidently, with the supreme wisdom an eight-year-old has over those who are merely six. "Puny as pigeons."

"No they wasn't!" Puley insisted.

"All right. Maybe they wasn't," Dime admitted. "But they wasn't gonna get you, they was over in Brooklyn. That's what Specs said. There's lotsa smoke over that way, too."

So what was new? Jack thought.

"An' more smoke uptown," Dime went on, "but it weren't even close to us."

"Did they see us?" Puley asked tremulously.

"Prob'ly not," Jack said. "Specs'd be down here in a second telling us if he thought so, huh?"

They were almost to the lamplight. Skittery was tracing something on one of the small maps tacked to the wall, brow creased in thought. He was singing quietly, and Jack recognized the military tune; as they got nearer, he could make out the words. "In Santiago Harbor, Sampson had 'em bottled tight..."

Boots and O'Dell joined in. "Hobson put the cork in, and we think he did it right..."

Dime trotted on ahead, glass clinking in time with his steps.

"And when they find they can't get out, they'll have ta stand and fight! When we march into Cu—"

O'Dell broke off as Dime passed him, and reached out an arm to pull the young boy from the center of the passage back to their side of the wall. "Watch where you walk, kid," he muttered.

Jack caught up with them. "What's that all about?"

O'Dell looked a little startled, and opened his mouth, but before he could get any words out Skittery spoke up. "Just being careful, Jack."

Jack flicked his gaze down the seemingly-innocuous tunnel, fixed Skittery with a look. "Uh-huh. There something I oughtta know?"

Skittery and Boots traded glances. "They'se just little kids," Skittery said.

"So I noticed—"

"I ain't!" Dime protested, but he was ignored.

"I mean, guys like us," Skittery continued, "we'se older, we can take care of ourselves..."

"We don't want to start no trouble, Jack," Boots said. "We leave a little space to walk around him, that's all, we don't do nothing to upset him—"

"'Him'?" Jack's jaw clenched. "David?"

Chapter Text

The look on both Boots' and Skittery's faces confirmed it: guilt, overlaid with resolve. O'Dell ducked his gaze.

"Jack..."

"You guys think that's funny? Race would never say—"

"Race ain't said nothing," Skittery declared. "But we ain't blind, neither."

"You think he'd hurt you?" Jack took a step forward. "You seriously think that?"

Dime's mouth was hanging open; he shut it belatedly and gave a frantic jerk of his head to the younger boys. They let go of Jack's shirt, and the three of them sidled cautiously away, staying to their side of the wall.

"'Course we don't—" Boots started.

"We know you'se close," Skittery said. "Hell, we like him, too. But he drew on one of us. Like him all you want, but that don't change the fact that he drew on one of us."

It was true, and Jack knew it. What was keeping their new way of life stable, what was keeping them able to go out and face death in the ruined city day after day and come back to dark and cramped quarters night after night, boiled down to one thing: trust. Trust that when you climbed into a crumbling building with your teammates they would watch your back; trust that everyone shared freely whatever food or supplies they recovered; trust that no-one sold them out to rival gangs or to the water barons. Trust that not one of them would turn against another. And Jack knew damn well what last evening had at the very least looked like. It was all true, and yet it didn't cool his anger any.

"You don't know shit what you'se talkin' about, Skittery."

"Maybe." Skittery's voice rose a little. "But I know I sleep maybe five feet from him at night. That's what I needs to know."

Jack's hand shot out and seized his collar, thrusting him back against the wall. "Is it? Look at him. He wouldn't lay a finger on nobody—"

"Jack!" Boots cut in. "Let him go."

Skittery made no attempt to wrench himself free; he seemed to be caught between retreating and snapping back. "I ain't making it up."

"'Course you ain't," Jack said. "And you know why?"

"I ain't—"

"'Cos it takes brains to make something up—"

"Open your eyes, Jack! We can't tell what he's thinkin' half the time and neither can you!"

"You'se saying he's thinkin' about walking up to you one day and slitting your throat? Is that what you'se saying?"

"Get off me!"

"Jack!" Boots tugged at his arm.

Jack shook him off. "I want to hear what Skittery's saying."

Skittery shoved against him, but it didn't break Jack's grip. "You don't want to hear what I gots to say now."

"Oh, I think I do."

"I ain't telling you again, Jack—get off me."

"Or what?" He was pushing it, he knew; but he couldn't seem to stop himself. Adrenaline was surging through his veins, and for the first time in a long time, he wasn't fighting entirely on the defensive, nor were his actions being dictated by an attack from dragons or raiders. This was his call, and he could put a halt to it, or he could let it loose—

Skittery struck out at him with a forearm, unwilling even now to bring fists into play. The blow glanced off Jack's chest. He hardly felt the pain, just the force of it, and a small part of him welcomed the motivation, the excuse.

Jack kept his hands clear of both the blades at his belt, but that was all. He had the advantage of weight and, with open space behind him, leverage; he threw himself forward, pinning Skittery against the wall, smacked his left palm into the brick not an inch from Skittery's head. "C'mon, Skitts. You can do better'n that."

"You'se a real bastard sometimes, Jack—"

"Come on."

Skittery caught him in the side, the blow an open-handed one. Jack yanked him forwards, slammed him into the wall again, hard.

He could hear yelps from the younger boys, but didn't spare them a glance, knowing they'd be smart enough to stay out of the way. Dodging the blow that Skittery threw at his chin, Jack stepped back just far enough to swing and jam his arm into the other boy's ribs, twice in rapid succession. Skittery grunted at the impact.

Jack gritted his teeth, breath coming fast. "That ain't all you got, is it—"

"That's enough." Snoddy's voice came from beside them.

Jack didn't take his eyes off Skittery, shook him roughly by his collar. "Stay outta this, Snoddy."

"That's enough." The barrel of the shotgun tapped Jack's leg, just above his bandaged knee. It was a warning, not a threat, but it was sufficient. Snoddy lowered his voice. "You want him to see you like this?"

He snarled and released Skittery, pushed the gun barrel aside. Only then did he look up beyond the small group to where David was.

David hadn't moved from his spot, had only half-risen to a crouch, one hand braced against the wall, both hands empty. But he was staring at Jack, at Skittery, at the knot of them standing clustered by the crates. His breathing was deep and rapid, his gaze unwavering. He looked ready to spring.

Jack made his way over to him, gently pressed him back down to a seat on the brick floor. The other boy subsided—not quite readily, but he did; and once down, stayed quiet.

"Jesus, Davey," Jack said softly.

Chapter Text

Jack straightened up, feeling tension pull at his shoulders. He could tell Snoddy had trailed him partway over to David, and now stood several feet behind him: not intruding, but not going away.

Speaking over his shoulder, not looking up to meet his gaze, Jack said, "If you'se down here now, then Specs is still at the grate with Dutchy?"

"He is."

"And Flick's still down at the steps?"

"Still is."

"He the one who called you over?"

"Yeah."

Jack raked fingers through his hair. "Yeah. Who made you Chief of Police, anyway?"

"You did."

He sighed, let his shoulders slump. "I know."

Snoddy stepped closer. "The boys is nervous, Jack. We got a right to be."

"'We,' huh?"

"Yeah, we. I live here, too."

"If you'se gonna start—"

"I ain't starting anything, Jack. I'se just sayin' what I see."

Jack rubbed his hands over his face. The tunnel walls felt as if they were closing in, suddenly too small—if it had ever been otherwise—to contain their collective apprehension, their fear, everything that even at the best of times boiled just beneath the surface these days. He couldn't hear much movement from the rest of the boys; couldn't tell if they were listening. "You don't know what you'se seeing."

"And you do?" Snoddy took another three paces towards him, and Jack turned quickly to step in front of David, arm raised in defense. Snoddy halted. "You ain't always thinking right when it comes to—"

"Don't tell me that."

"Not since that night," Snoddy said.

"Shut up."

"If it was anybody but h—"

"Shut up." He pulled in deep breaths, made himself relax; willed the beginnings of a pounding headache away. The other boys were still standing by the crates, but only the younger three openly stared, full bottles and canteens temporarily forgotten.

There was silence from Snoddy for a few moments, then he said, more quietly, "If the boys start getting spooked...They gets distracted, they'se liable to start making mistakes, or worse."

"We'se spooked every goddamned day."

"Not like this."

"You said last night you wasn't worried about Dave. You knew and I knew you wasn't happy, but you said it." His jaw tightened. "To my face."

"That's right," Snoddy said. He lowered his tone even more. "This ain't just about him."

"So what do you want me to do, huh?" Jack challenged. "Put guards on him?"

"No—"

"Soak him?" His voice rose. "Throw him out?"

David flinched; the sight of it leached Jack's anger from him in an instant, and he hastily reached down to touch his fingers to David's cheek.

"It ain't that way," Snoddy said. He paused, as though he were expecting to be interrupted, but when it didn't happen, he went on. "I wasn't lyin' last night. Nobody's gonna lay a hand on him. Nobody. This ain't like that."

Jack didn't reply, didn't lift his gaze from David's bowed head.

"Jack," Snoddy said, and he sounded a little less sure now, "d'you hear me? This ain't like that."

He looked up at Snoddy, at the shotgun in his hands, and the way it hung loosely in his grip, muzzle nearly touching the floor. Looked at Boots and O'Dell and Skittery, saw them exchange uncertain glances, watched Skittery massaging his bruised ribs in a manner that spoke more of regret than resentment. Saw the younger boys still standing where they were, simultaneously spellbound and distressed, but mostly just distressed.

If we can't even trust each other, then we're nothing.

Jack cleared his throat. "Yeah, I hear you."