Hardbingers

4

The Alarms are always silent, yet they never come alone. Pain is their devoted companion. This is why he dreads them. Icy blades stab his brain as lights strobe behind his squeezed lids. He feels the world tip beneath him and, though he instinctively reaches for the edges of his desk, he knows he's going to fall.

A scene leaps into view… an empty subway platform… smoke roiling from one of the tunnels… on the tiled wall: WEST 4th.

That fades to gray…

Then his inner vision lights with a street scene. He recognizes the New York Public Library in the background. A sudden burst of flame and flying debris obscures the building as a bus explodes.

More gray…

Then another subway with another smoking tunnel. He makes out 59TH ST on the wall.

Yet more gray…

Then a man standing in the center of the crowded main floor of Grand Central Station… the man explodes, the blast tearing those nearest to pieces, the ball bearings and nails and screws he embedded in his explosives dropping those farther away.

Gray…

And then a car midspan on the Brooklyn Bridge… it explodes…

Gray again… much longer than before…

And now half a dozen men in the front room of a shabby apartment… they are cramming bars of claylike material into the pockets of work vests… through the glass of the window behind them a bridge is visible over the roof of the building across the street.

And then the pain fades along with the light and the visions… and all becomes dark again.