The Final Hour

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

There was no time to recover my gun. Once Prince reached the top of the ladder, once he reached the grate, there was nothing to stop him from activating his device, charging those canisters, releasing the gas. I ran as I’d never run before, straining every muscle with the effort that sent me tearing across the platform at top speed.

I leapt for the ladder and started hauling myself up. If I was exhausted, if I was weak, if I was battered, I no longer felt it, any of it. I just felt the need to move, to climb, to go, to reach him, to stop him.

As fast as Prince climbed, I climbed faster. I closed the distance quickly. I saw his figure getting larger up above, framed against the shifting light of the signs and TV screens blinking down over us. The music played louder as I got closer to the surface, a happy rock tune making a bizarre jaunty counterpoint to our desperate chase.

Prince scrambled toward the lights and music and I scrambled after him.

At first, I don’t think he even knew I was there. I think he must’ve assumed the big thug below had taken care of me. Maybe he saw us go onto the tracks together and figured I was done for. I don’t know. But for the longest time, he didn’t even look down. He didn’t see me coming.

I kept scrambling up the ladder, my teeth gritted and bared. Higher and higher until the floor was practically invisible beneath me, a blur of shadows ten stories down.

Prince climbed and I climbed faster. I got closer and closer to him. Prince was now about five rungs from the top, moments from reaching the grate. Below I had come within two rungs of him.

I guess at that point, he sensed my presence because, finally, he looked down and saw me.

I was close enough to see his reaction even in the dim light. His normally cool, sophisticated expression changed completely as surprise made his eyes go wide. My guess must’ve been right: He must’ve thought I was dead. The sight of me there, right beneath him, clearly caught him totally off-guard.

He let go of the ladder with one hand. The hand went to his belt. A gun. If he had time to pull it, I’d be dead, an easy target. There was nowhere to duck or dodge on the ladder, and if I let go now, it was a long way down. It’d be a miracle to survive slamming into the platform from ten stories up.

Fear gave me the extra burst I needed to close the final gap between us. I came up under Prince’s feet. His body blocked the rungs above me. I grabbed the side of the ladder with one hand and grabbed his leg with the other. I pulled myself up another rung and another.

Prince cursed and tried to kick me off him. I lost my hold on his leg. I swung out over the abyss, still holding the ladder with one hand.

Prince drew his gun and pointed it down at me. I hauled myself upward and reached for him, wrapped my fingers around his wrist, twisting it. He tried to yank away, but I pulled myself up farther and got some leverage on him, pinned him against the ladder. I smacked his gun hand against the wall-once, twice, three times. Finally, he dropped the weapon. It went spinning down and down into the shadows.

Above me now, I could hear the voices of the New Year’s revelers. I could hear horns and noisemakers and people shouting, singing, and laughing. I could hear the live band as if it was right down the street. The glare of the jumbo TV and the blinking neon shone in my eyes. I caught a glimpse of a gigantic smiling face-some movie star on a billboard or something-grinning down at me through the grate.

Then Prince tore his arm free of my grasp and hammered blindly at my face with his fist. One blow struck me high on the head. It dazed me. But I wouldn’t let go; I wouldn’t back off. I grabbed his backpack and pulled myself up behind him. My feet lost their purchase on the ladder and dangled free. I clung to Prince’s pack with one hand, and to the outside of the ladder with the other. Prince tried to throw me off, twisting, hitting out with one hand.

Turning, he saw my hand on the ladder. He grabbed at it, started to pry my fingers loose. I could feel myself losing my grip. So I let go of the ladder and grabbed him.

Now I was holding on to Prince’s backpack with both hands, my feet dangling in the air. If I let go, if I lost my hold, I’d drop like a stone and he’d be free to release his poison into the city above me.

Using all that was left of my strength, I pulled myself up, climbing over him. I released his pack with one hand and grabbed him by the collar. I struggled to get a foothold on the ladder but couldn’t find a place, couldn’t get around his body. Prince meanwhile fought ferociously, trying to pry me off him with one hand, while clinging to the ladder with the other.

I continued to climb up Prince’s body until I could wrap my arm around his throat. I pulled the arm tight, choking him as he tried to pull away and thrashed his free hand around at me, trying to gouge my eyes.

An idea came to me now-so clear in the midst of that frantic fight, it was almost like a voice speaking quietly into my mind. Prince had one hand on the ladder as he tried to knock me off with the other. There’s a nerve in the back of the hand-I learned this in karate-Mike taught it to me. If you drill that nerve with a knuckle, just right, it causes a lot of pain, enough pain to break any hold. If I drilled the back of Prince’s hand with my knuckle, he would let go of the ladder and with my arm around his throat, I could pull him off. We would both go down, both fall to the platform below. We would both almost surely be killed, but the threat would be over, the city would be safe.

Here’s a funny thing. You’d think I’d be afraid. Of falling, I mean. Of dying most likely, down there in that abandoned station. But the reverse was true, weirdly enough. I’d been afraid all this time up till now, but now I wasn’t. Until this moment-until the moment I realized that I could end this-I’d been really terrified that I might fail, that I might do the wrong thing and get lost or killed or something and let Prince succeed with his plan and let Mike down. But now-now that fear was gone. I had him. I knew I had him. I knew it was over. There was nothing left but to deliver this final strike the way Mike taught me and bring Prince down with me to the ground.

Everybody dies, chucklehead. It’s the first rule of the game.

I wasn’t afraid.

One arm around Prince’s throat, I lifted my free hand, setting the knuckle for a piercing blow.

I did my best to live true, and whatever happens next, I’m gonna be fine.

I hesitated only half a second. The questions flashed through my mind: What about me? Have I done my best? Have I tried to live true? The questions came and images came-images of the people I knew. My parents. My friends. Beth-Beth, most of all. Would they be angry at me for leaving them? Would they understand? Would they know why I had done what I’d done?

All that in half a second. Then I drove the strike into the back of Prince’s hand.

He cried out and lost his hold on the ladder. I dragged him backward and we fell.

Prince let out a shriek. We tumbled over once in the shadowy air. I saw the lights of Times Square through the grate above me falling away. I heard the music of the world fading.

I was so committed to the fall, so ready to do what I had to do, that I almost didn’t think to snatch at the ladder as it went past.

But then I did. I reached out wildly. My fingers touched metal and I grabbed hold. I had a rung of the ladder. I dropped and held there, and the jolt nearly pulled my arm out of its socket. I lost my hold on Prince, but he clutched at my sleeve and caught it. I grabbed his wrist. The two of us dangled there far above the platform, me holding on to a ladder rung, Prince holding on to me. I tried to get my feet back on the ladder, but Prince’s weight was pulling me straight down, pulling my fingers off the rung so that I could not move.

I looked down at him, straining to keep my grip on the ladder, straining to keep my grip on him. He looked up at me, his eyes desperate, pleading.

“Drop the pack!” I shouted down at him.

He shouted a curse back at me, his eyes hot with rage and hatred.

His weight kept pulling me, pulling me. My fingers kept slipping off the ladder rung, little by little.

“Drop it, Prince, and I’ll try to pull you up!”

His answer was the same.

I was losing my grip. I couldn’t hold on to him any longer. I shook my head at him.

“No!” Prince shouted-a cry of pure terror.

But another second and I would fall. I let go of him, yanked my arm away. I grabbed hold of the ladder with both hands and clung on.

I saw Prince fall, turning in the air. He had time to scream out once more-then his body hit the platform far below.

It made an awful sound.