Takeshi got up from the ground before Ophélia had finished pulling her hands away.
He said nothing. He assessed the distance between himself and her, the direction of the street, the available exits. The city remained empty, with no sound of cars, no people on the sidewalks, no movement in any of the building windows.
He ran north.
He heard Ophélia say his name behind him. Not urgently, but with the tone of someone expecting him to come back.
'I can't just stay still! There has to be some way out of this!'
Three blocks later, the angel appeared.
It stood in the street ahead of him, as though it had been waiting. The eye on its shoulder stared without orienting itself.
Takeshi turned east and searched for the inside of a building. The door to a shop was unlocked. He entered, crossed the empty space to the back, and climbed a service staircase to the second floor.
From the window, he saw the angel standing motionless in the street, the eye rotating slowly.
