Jude didn’t know how much time had passed when he woke up, but Iris had already come out of the shower. She was dressed in the clothes he’d given her, sitting next to him on the mattress with her back against the wall, completely focused on her phone.
“Anything interesting?” Jude asked, eyes barely open.
“Oh! You’re up!” she said and put her phone down to look at him. “I’ve been going over the news of the last month and reading messages. The hospital fired me. A month of no-shows in a crisis… There wasn’t much hope for anything else.”
“I’m sorry…”
“It’s OK. Explaining where I’ve been the last month would’ve been more complicated. Also… How do I put this? I’m kinda obsessed with magic now.”
“Who wouldn’t be? Especially when you are unusually adept at it like you!”
“I’m a genius! Mwahaha!”
Iris gave her best villainous laugh, but Jude simply shook his head.
“You should build your own lab in the basement, genius.”
“Maybe I will!” she replied, and in an act of protest to his indifference, gave his arm a small bite.
“Ouch! Should I start calling you Miss Lecter?”
“Om-nom-nom! You taste like fava beans! Where’s my Chianti?!” she asked and pretended to call for a waiter.
They teased each other like that for a while. It was the first time in a month they didn’t fear for their lives, so a sense of chaotic euphoria had taken over them. Had they not been waiting for Angela and Iris’ dad to return, they would have lost themselves to relief and proceed to undress each other.
Alas, it was not the time for that, so eventually, Jude asked, “So, what happened this past month?”
“Right! Gotta focus! The NY tower wasn’t the only one to appear. So far, another five towers have appeared around the world. There’s a blue tower in France, a green tower in Brazil, an orange tower in South Africa, a yellow tower in South Korea and a purple tower in Russia. They all appeared at the same time in highly populated areas. The Brazilian tower, for example, appeared off the coast of Copacabana beach, where people usually gather for the fireworks show. A lot of people drowned from the ensuing waves. That said, they all appeared at the same time as the NY tower, so the damage wasn’t as great as it could have been. We were the only ones to get a midnight show out of it.”
“How is each country handling it?”
“There’s not a lot of information there. We know our government is getting people out of the city by what dad told us. I think most countries are keeping a tight lid on any information related to their towers. We should know more soon, though. We can’t be the only ones to have cleared a stage. If every tower had a 30-day survival trial, the others should be coming out now as well.”
Jude took a moment to digest the information while Iris nuzzled up against his chest. She picked up her cellphone and continued to read the messages she had received over the past month. They remained that way until they heard a knock on the door.
Immediately, both of them jumped up. Iris’ dad should be coming back, but nobody had rung the intercom to be let in. Not wanting to take any chances, Jude put on his gloves, and Iris sat up on the mattress with a hand gripping the pommel of one of her daggers behind her back.
The knock came again, so they nodded at each other, and Jude moved to open the door. When he did, Jude saw the landlord beyond the threshold.
“Finally! Jude, is it? Or do you prefer Mr. Masters?”
“Jude is fine. How may I help you?”
“Right! I’m going to be taking an extended vacation,” the man replied. “So, don’t bother with trying to get a check through my door. Just add me on the pay app on your phone and pay me through that. Which reminds me, your rent is due.”
“Oh! Of course.”
“Why don’t we get it paid now. That way, you practice using the app as well.”
Jude took a deep breath at the landlord’s condescending tone and replied, “Sure.”
After he had transferred the money, the landlord said, “See! Nice and easy! Well, that’s all. Don’t forget to get those letters in your mailbox. It looks pretty full to me.”
“Have a nice day,” Jude said while closing the door, indicating that he was done with that conversation and the presence of the landlord near the apartment.
“You t—-”
SLAM!
“What an incredibly unpleasant man,” Iris said from behind him. “I almost wanted to slice him open so that he would shut up.”
“He’s an idiot, but he’s harmless. Also, we just found something out that will be to our benefit.”
“Oh, yeah? And what’s that?”
“He’s leaving. Extended vacation probably means he took the government deal to get out of town, otherwise he wouldn’t bother with the checks. He doesn’t want to receive them anymore because he doesn’t want to let people know his new address.”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Right… And how does that benefit us?”
“Aside from me not paying rent next month, there are probably a lot of abandoned apartments in the city. We could search for one of them and squat there. Completely off the grid. Aside from our phones…”
“We could definitely find something better than this, but I have a place too, y’know. I don’t live with my dad.” Iris said as she twirled around in place.
“This place is not that bad…”
“It’s not great.”
The teasing restarted, and they soon found themselves on the mattress making out. Neither of them tried to take things further since they knew someone else might show up at any moment, but they couldn’t keep away from each other any longer.
A few hours passed, and the sun was finally setting outside when the intercom on the wall rang. Jude walked up to it and pressed the receive button.
“It’s Mr. Lee!”
Jude opened the door of the building for Iris’ dad without saying a word, and Iris stood up from the mattress and started pacing the apartment.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’m just nervous. Angela was so sad and worried in her messages. Do you think she’ll be angry?”
“At you?”
“Yeah…”
“Not a chance. It wasn’t your fault you got dragged into that hellhole. I’m sure she’ll be glad that you are back.”
“Yeah. That makes sense…”
“It’ll be fine.”
There was a knock on the door, and as soon as Jude opened it, he saw the flash of a passing body running by him. It slammed against Iris, knocking her on the mattress. A second later, both Angela and Iris were crying while hugging each other.
“I told her that Iris was back and here when she got to the grocery store,” Mr. Lee told Jude. “She didn’t even let me explain the rest. She wanted to race here immediately. We only took this long because Angela had to get off work before she could meet me. Can you help me with the bags, son?”
“Of course!”
There were a few paper bags filled with groceries behind Mr. Lee., so Jude brought them in and set them on the stove.
It took about half an hour for Angela to settle down. Before she was ready to listen to them, she inspected Iris’ body to make sure Iris wasn’t hurt anywhere. At first, she didn’t know what to think. It had even crossed Angela’s mind that Jude had kidnapped Iris and brainwashed her, so Angela kept asking if Iris was OK and looked for any hint of a cry for help while at it. However, Mr. Lee was there with them and had even brought them groceries. She knew there was more to the story.
“OK. I’m ready. Tell me everything,” Angela announced while sitting up on the mattress, but still not letting go of Iris’ arm.
“It’s a long story, so let me get through it as much as I can, OK?”
It wasn’t Jude who answered Angela, but Iris, who was right next to her. Jude waved at Angela and said hi, but he felt that Iris should tell her everything like she had done to her dad. They were her family after all.
It took longer to get through the story with Angela, however. She kept interrupting Iris to ask questions, which Iris had already expected. She wanted all of the small details, while Iris’ dad had only wanted to know if his daughter was OK.
Jude, again, activated his wings when Iris asked him to prove to Angela that they had powers now, and by the end of the story, when Iris told her how many people had survived, Angela said, “There’s no way…”
“Yeah…”
“And you have to go back?”
“Probably. It’s not like I can control it.”
“But…”
“It’ll be OK, Angie. We’ll survive again.”
Angela was silent for a moment, but then she asked, “Do you think it could happen to me?”
Jude was the one who answered that question, “We don’t know. The tower might bring only those people who survived, or it might pull another hundred thousand people. If that’s the case, then yes.”
“That’s why we’re gonna give you all of the information we got, OK? If it happens to you, you have to come back,” Iris announced.
“And Nathan?” Angela asked.
Jude and Iris had talked about that already. They had decided to give Nathan the information as well. It was likely that the information of powered people existing in the world would come out eventually, if not from New York, then from somewhere else. They only needed Nathan to keep their secret, and Angela loved him. If she lost him to ignorance, they felt it would be their fault.
“We’ll tell him too,” Iris said. “People just can’t know WE have powers.”
“Right…” Angela replied somberly. “I’ll bring him over. I won’t even tell him this is your apartment, Jude.”
“Let’s do that tomorrow,” Jude said. “We haven’t had the chance to eat or rest yet.”
“Leave that to me,” Mr. Lee said.
Along with the groceries, Mr. Lee had also brought a large pot. He was in the middle of making some kind of stew with herbs, chicken and vegetables, and the smell was making everyone’s mouth water.
“Thanks, dad.”
When the food was ready, they all ate together on the mattress because Jude didn’t have a table or chairs in the apartment. They talked some more about what they would do in the next few days as they ate. Mr. Lee was going to bring Iris’ keys to her. They were in the purse that Angela had taken to him from the New Year’s party. Then, they would go over to Iris’ apartment, which wasn’t much bigger, but it was furnished, and work from there. They didn’t know when they would be brought over to the tower again, so they decided that they would wear their gear at all times and just put clothes over it. It was still winter, so they could walk around in long, heavy coats and it wouldn’t make a difference. As far as money went, both Iris and Jude had savings, and since they hadn’t spent a cent the previous month, they weren’t immediately hurting for it.
In the meantime, Iris would look for work at a lab, and Jude would try to apply for a position at the New York Public Library. Half of the population of New York was gone, and though there were people leaving the city, there were those who never saw themselves living anywhere else, and they needed help as well. In fact, it was likely that Iris could reapply to work at the hospital because they might be short on people, but that would mean having to explain where she had been the past month, and they weren’t sure it would be convincing enough.
It was a fact that the city’s mayor was incredibly stubborn. He had acquiesced to a militarized zone at Time Square, but he didn’t shut down any government buildings. To him, the city was still his, and he would continue to have it function.
The United States’ federal government had always had a contentious and difficult relationship with state and local governments. The military being there for the tower was one thing, but it would not take over the city. To its mayor, this was New York, one of the oldest cities in the country, and it would remain New York.