Jude woke up the next morning still in Iris' apartment. He didn’t often stay over due to Iris’ experiments with liquid rot, but she had asked him to stay, and so he had. Him staying also meant that Iris would take a break from running her experiments, which gave her body a much needed rest.
Before he even opened his eyes, he felt the heat of Iris’ body curled up against his. Iris was around 5’8’’, so she was relatively tall, and that also meant that her body covered more of his when they were together. Neither of them was wearing any clothes under the sheets, so he took his time to enjoy the peaceful morning before opening his eyes, an action that would invariably bring him back to the real world.
However, he was not ready for what he saw when he finally did open them.
When Jude opened his eyes, he saw a floating countdown in neon red in front of his face. It was around 9 a.m. on a Saturday, and the countdown was at 13 days 14 hours and 53 minutes, meaning that it must’ve started counting from when the day changed.
Iris and Jude had gone to bed early. They had tired each other out for most of the afternoon and evening, and Iris was also recuperating from her Mana Life training, so they didn’t even get out of bed for dinner. Instead, they agreed to have breakfast together that very morning before Jude left so that Iris could start training again.
“Shit,” Jude let out in an almost involuntary sigh. He knew exactly what those numbers meant.
Iris stirred with the sound of his voice. As an intern, she had already grown accustomed to being a light sleeper, and their time in the Fae forest had only cemented that behavior.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered while her body stretched against his, her eyes still closed.
“It’s… Can you open your eyes and tell me if you see anything in front of you?”
The request was odd, but Iris did what Jude asked. She opened her eyes, but the only thing she saw was his face in front of her.
“I don’t see anything different in your face,” she said. “It’s still yummy.”
“Ha-ha! Listen, we’ll get breakfast in a sec. I have something to tell you though. You don’t see it, but right now, I’m seeing a floating, red countdown. It’s set for two weeks from now.”
“You don’t think…?”
“Yeah. I think we are going back in two weeks.”
“Shit…” she echoed his words from before. “But why can you see that, and I can’t?”
“This is just conjecture, but I’m guessing it has to do with how I got in the tower in the first place. I don’t think what I got from that woman was just a tower pass. It seems like it has more functions.”
“That’s… cheating!” she pouted, but in truth, Iris was worried that whatever had assimilated itself to Jude would change him somehow. “Be careful.”
“You’re telling me that?! You never listen to my warnings.”
“I listen! I just… choose to not act on them,” she smiled a soft, mischievous smile at him. She was playing with him, and he knew that she took his warnings to heart.
“I’ll look into this later,” he continued. “Right now, however, we should get things ready. You could tell your dad so that he won’t worry.”
“I want to tell Angie.”
Jude took a deep breath, but he said, “OK. I just wish she wouldn’t tell Nathan, but it’s not something we can control right now.”
“Right…”
After they had told Nathan about the tower and about having powers, and after the powered unit from the military started doing press tours, Nathan changed. When before he had urged Angela to leave the city, now all he could think of was gaining power. Nathan had struggled most of his life as an aspiring professional dancer, and the thought of being better than everyone—stronger, faster—swirled in his mind until everything else fell to the background.
Despite Jude and Iris’ warnings of how dangerous the tower was, all Nathan could talk about was gaining his own powers and what kind of powers they would be.
The more he talked, the more Jude noticed the cracks of Nathan’s insecurities widening. He felt like if Nathan entered the tower, he might do the unthinkable to attain the power he sought.
Iris had started to dislike Nathan, but Angela still loved him very much, so he was still part of their lives.
“We need to keep him close,” she said somberly. “I don’t want Angie getting hurt because of him.”
There was an edge to her voice as she spoke that second sentence.
“Right. Let’s talk to everyone then. They can prepare, and maybe we can set up a way to meet them in the tower in case they get pulled.”
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“That would be good,” Iris responded and visibly relaxed at the idea of having Angela join them inside if she ever got pulled into the tower.
A few moments of quiet passed before Jude asked, “So, where do you want to eat?”
Without missing a beat, Iris turned to him and whispered in his ear, “In bed.”
It was another hour before they left the apartment to go to the diner where they had eaten the morning they had met on Christmas Day. It wasn’t as close to Iris’ apartment as they had originally intended to eat, but they had decided to stop by the convenience store after eating to talk to Iris’ dad.
Meanwhile, the neon red timer never disappeared. Instead, after Jude acknowledged it, it automatically moved to the periphery of his vision. He was able to see the world in front of him just fine, but the looming countdown was always there.
When they got to the diner, they sat down in a booth, and only after that did they notice that nearly everyone was staring at the TV near the corner of the bar. The news was on, and there was an image of the Crimson Tower on the screen with the word LIVE on the bottom right corner. The tower looked the same as always. However, just then, the newscast split the feed, and on the left corner of the screen, amateur footage taken from a drone above the NYC skyline from the previous night showed the tower glowing and releasing a blast of red light before returning to normal. The clock on the footage said midnight.
“That tracks with the timer I’m seeing,” Jude whispered.
“I guess we slept through it, but I suppose it’s the tower’s way of warning people to get ready.”
“So thoughtful…”
“I’m glad we know when it’ll happen,” Iris said. “Can you imagine the anxiety of knowing it’s all going to happen again but not knowing when? It would eat me up.”
“Hello! My name is Jude, Tower Timekeeper. Do you come here often, lovely lady?”
“Why yes, good sir! I met the most unusual gentleman in this very diner. Don’t tell anyone, but I believe he has wings.”
“A mutant!”
“An angel?”
They continued their silly conversation until a waitress finally stopped by the booth to grab their order. The waiting staff was just as distracted by the newscast on the TV as the guests. Looking around, some people seemed eager to go into the tower, but most people just looked afraid. Captain Brett Cooper had emphasized in his interviews that the vast majority of people had died in the tower. He didn’t give specifics because that would give other countries intelligence on America’s strength at that moment, but because of that, people knew that getting sucked into the tower, any tower, was most likely a death sentence.
Jude and Iris ate while attempting to create a sense of levity with their conversation, but the atmosphere at the diner was somber, so once they finished their meal, they left.
When they got to Mr. Lee’s grocery store, they saw the older man behind a shelf stocking items. One of his employees was behind the counter ringing people up. The boy looked like he was an upperclassman in high school. It seemed like he only worked there on weekends because of that.
“Hey, Kameron!” Iris greeted the boy.
“Iris! H-That’ll be $25, sir. Hi!”
The boy waved back at her. He seemed a bit flustered trying to juggle Iris’ presence at the convenience store and ringing out customers.
“Iris, let the boy work,” Mr. Lee said as he walked out from behind a shelf to meet his daughter.
“I’m letting him work! I just said hi,” she replied in protest.
“She used to watch Kameron when she was in high school. She didn’t always want to work at the store, so babysitting was a good change,” Mr. Lee told Jude.
“Oh!” Jude exclaimed.
“Angie and I did. It was a way for us to spend time with each other, and for her to be somewhere safe. To rest, y’know. Kameron was such an easy kid to take care of too.”
Jude didn’t know much of Angela’s story, but he knew she had grown up in a terrible home, so he understood that for Iris and Angela babysitting Kameron was an escape.
“Why are you two here?” Mr. Lee asked almost as if cutting off their tangential conversation.
“We need to talk, dad.”
“Not now,” he said. “Let’s do it tonight.”
It seemed to Jude that Mr. Lee knew what the conversation was going to be, and he was avoiding it as much as he could.
“OK,” Iris replied. “I’m calling Angie too, then. Better to say it once.”
A heavy weight seemed to press against the older man’s shoulders. Worry flashed over his face.
“We have time, dad. Don’t worry.”
“OK! OK…” Mr. Lee sighed. “I’m sorry. I saw the news…” he whispered to them.
“Yeah…” Jude replied. “We’ll explain everything tonight. Let’s just meet at my place. Say around 8:00 p.m.”
“That works. I have someone coming in for the night shift to help, so I can step out for a couple of hours.”
“That’s settled then! I’ll see you tonight then, dad,” Iris said and hugged him.
Mr. Lee responded with a tight hug, almost like he didn’t want to let her go.
As Jude and Iris were walking out of the store, Iris turned around and yelled, “Bye, Kameron!”
The boy instinctively waved at her, but in the process he threw the can of soda that he was ringing up. It landed somewhere between the shelves and exploded, but fortunately, neither the liquid nor the can hit anyone.
“IRIS!” Mr. Lee yelled behind them.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Lee,” they could hear Kameron apologizing. “I’ll clean this right up…”
The sound of Kameron’s voice faded as they walked away from the store. Iris laughed all the while, and Jude was once again reminded that she had a mischievous streak to her.