I muttered under my breath. "Of course. Why not me?"
As if the universe enjoyed proving me right, the terrified swarm of people all around me collapsed in eerie unison. It wasn't a gradual thing—one by one, like dominoes falling—it was everyone, dropping at the exact same second, like puppets whose strings had been cleanly severed. Limbs tangled. Screams choked mid-air. Faces slackened as bodies sprawled across the asphalt.
Even the girls I had been shielding in my arms went limp, their panicked grip loosening into nothing. Their breaths slowed, their eyelids fluttered closed, and they sagged against me with the same eerie synchronicity.
"...The hell?" I whispered, my voice sounding too loud in the sudden silence.
The city was never quiet, not New York. Even at midnight, there was always something—the blare of a horn, a faraway siren, the shuffle of hurried footsteps. But right now? Dead silence.
And then I noticed—no, felt—it.
