Page 71 of Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World
“I do not! I’m just a big fan of his abs. And those dimples. And the way he…oh, I see what you’re doing. Stop that right now!”
Fine. Sooner or later, though, you’re going to have to think about what he’s done.
Cutting through the empty campus of the City College of New York, I veered west to Amsterdam Avenue. There were a few signs of life here, people hurrying along sidewalks or peering out of windows, even a couple of cars cruising along. There were looted storefronts, too, just like in Midtown, and empty bodegas picked clean of everything that wasn’t nailed down. A block from my apartment, I heard shouting coming closer and jogged the last hundred feet or so, slipping into my building and making sure the door was locked behind me. Abandoned mail and circulars littered the lobby floor, along with a plushie rabbit dropped by some fleeing child. I wondered if they would ever return.
When I let myself into the apartment, Amira was lying on the sofa, asleep. The blinds were drawn across the windows, leaving our home cloaked in gloom. When I turned on a lamp, Amira stirred and opened her eyes. “Colin?” she asked fuzzily.
“It’s me.”
“I’m so glad you’re home.” She sat up and ran her hands through her tangled curls. “Are you okay?”
“Not really, no.” With a long sigh, I sank onto the sofa next to her. “You?”
“I’m going stir-crazy.” Rubbing her eyes, she gave me a stern look. “You were supposed to be checking in.”
“I texted you a while ago. It didn’t go through?”
She reached for her phone on the coffee table. “Oh. I forgot I turned it off after the two hundredth emergency alert. Sorry.” Slumping back, she closed her eyes. “Between that and my parents calling every ten minutes, I needed a break.”
We stayed like that for a while, surrounded by the unnatural silence of a dying city, until Amira let out a faint gasp. “Colin, you’re hurt!” Her fingertips brushed against the ruined bow tie still knotted around my wrist, stiff with dried blood. More blood streaked my hand. “What happened?”
“It’s nothing,” I told her wearily.
“It doesn’t look like nothing. C’mon, let’s get this cleaned up.” She jumped up from the sofa and pulled me to my feet with gentle but inexorable insistence, then led me into the tiny bathroom. I stood at the sink as she carefully untied the bow tie and then muttered all kinds of exclamations over the thin, precise cut underneath. “We need to get you to a hospital.”
“It’s fine,” I responded. “Really. It barely hurts anymore.”
Shaking her head, she washed my wrist with warm water, sluicing away the blood until our sink was spattered with pale red. Then she swabbed the cut with hydrogen peroxide before smearing it with antiseptic cream and wrapping everything in a clean bandage.
“You should’ve gone to med school,” I told her at last, smiling faintly.
“You sound like my mother.” Her eyes met mine in the mirror.“How did this happen?” she finally asked. “Did someone attack you?”
Looking down at my bandaged wrist, I shook my head. “Not exactly.”
“If someone did this, we have to call the police.”
“No, we don’t. They have plenty to deal with right now. Besides, this is practically a paper cut.”
“It isn’t! You could have bled out!”
Meeting her gaze in the mirror, I thought for one uneasy moment that her reflection was watching me with a predatory gleam in its eyes. No, there were no haunts here, just my best friend—the only person I had left. I wanted desperately to tell her everything, to unburden myself and come clean about my job, the Thing, all of it. That was a terrible idea, though. So, instead, I told her the safest truth I had.
“Eric has been lying to me.”
Amira peered up into my face. “What do you mean? Lying about what?”
I made a helpless gesture. “Everything.”
“But I thought things were going so well.”
“They were, until—” My eyes prickled with unexpected tears and I had to stop.
“Oh, Colin.” Her arms wrapped around me in a fierce hug. “I’m sorry.”
Sniffling, I hugged her back. “I really thought he was the one,” I mumbled into her hair. “I had it all planned out, down to our tasteful midcentury modern decor and our two pugs.”
Releasing me, she stepped back and grabbed my uninjured arm. “Listen to me. The army or the president orsomeoneis going to stopwhat’s happening in the city, and then I’m going to find Eric and…I don’t know, beat him up.”
