Chapter Text
She couldn't believe how long she had to stand here under the fucking heat. Blitzo didn't exactly give her a good description—"stake out the big shiny rectangles and tell which building our golden goose goes into."—as if Manhattan only had two rectangles and not a skyline full of mirrored obelisks trying to give her heatstroke.
If she were in her Hellhound form, this would probably be a lot easier, but her human form complained about everything: sun, sweat, gravity, men who wouldn't stop catcalling her. Her boots were already sticking to the pavement like they had abandonment issues. A cabbie screamed by and coughed black phlegm near to her ankles.
New York is disgusting.
Still, she'd done her part of the job. She clocked Adam—hard to miss a walking refrigerator with cheekbones—and the girl on his arm. They flowed with the noon crowd into the North Tower, and her phone rang like as if Blitzo knew.
"What." Loona answered, annoyance evident in her voice.
"Loony Toony! Status! Where's our Golden cash cow right now?"
"The tall one, right?" Loona grunted and snorted. "North Tower. Saw him going up the elevator."
"North Tower, got it! Love you, don't hang up on me—"
Loona hangs up on him.
Well, now she had an hour, maybe two to kill while waiting for them to do their damn job. Her stomach picked that exact moment to chew on itself. She'd skipped breakfast because Blitzo had yelled "time is money!" at 6 A.M. and then spent forty minutes picking a trench coat.
"What a great fucking day." she muttered sarcastically.
A breeze fought its way through the plaza and lost. Heat slapped her in the back of the knees. Her phone sat sweaty in her palm. Across the granite, tourists orbited a fountain like dumb moths. A security guard told a skateboarder to knock it off. Somewhere, a cab driver discovered an entirely new octave of profanity.
Then a smell hooked her by the nostrils and yanked.
Spice, smoke, something cumin-scorched and onion-sweet drifting across the plaza like a promise. Loona turned.
"Fresh Khlav Kalash! Get your Khlav Kalash!" A man pushing a dented red cart hunched by the fountain, umbrella sun-bleached, a hand-painted sign curling at the edges: Khlav Kalash.
Loona's phone buzzed in her palm. It was Blitzo. No doubt calling for some other bullshit reason. She has already done her part. She'd clocked the guy, clocked the building, and now her stomach was clocking her.
She declined the call with a thumb flick, shoved the phone into her back pocket, and walked toward the cart. It wasn't often she got to eat food from Earth so she was going to reward herself for her hard work.
Though with the smell emanating, maybe she should be trying something else instead.
"You uhhh, got anything else in there?" Loona asks, approaching the vendor.
"Only Khlav Kalash." He said, tapping the sign on his cart.
"Ugh, fine. Give me one bowl."
"No bowl." The vendor replies, reaching into his cart and pulling out a stick with a splintery wedge at one end and meat on the other. "Stick. Stick."
Loona took it, eyeing the glossy heap with suspicion. The heat radiated through the stick, the spices punched her sinuses, and her stomach made the kind of noise that gets you kicked out of libraries.
She took a bite.
Immediate regret.
It hit her tongue like hot mop water wrung through a gym sock—salt-sour, bitter, a weird metallic twang like someone had boiled pennies in chili oil. Her jaw paused mid-chew as every survival instinct screamed spit or die.
"Oh, geez! That's just awful!" She croaked.
She forced the bite down out of pure spite.
And then—slow as a fuse—the aftertaste bloomed. Smoke curled up the back of her throat, sweet onion caramel whispering over it, cumin settling into something warm and earthy. The heat evened out—less chemical fire, more campfire ember—until her tongue felt … cozy. A little citrus flickered at the edges. Her shoulders unclenched a fraction she would never admit.
Loona blinked, suspicious. Took a second, smaller bite—braced for the mop water—endured it … waited … there it was again: the glow, the savory-sweet drift, the spice resolving into something weirdly addictive.
"Okay." she muttered, grudging. "Maybe not so bad."
"We're hitting both!? But your rule about double-tapping—" Millie reminded him over the phone via loudspeaker.
"I know! Fuck!" Blitzo barked, interrupting her before slamming both palms on the yoke like he could scare the plane into figuring out the North Tower on its own. Warning chimes yodeled. Red lights blinking like Sinsmas lights.
His foolproof plan to hit Adam in whichever tower with both planes had just slammed face-first into a brick wall. Air-traffic squawk blurted in the headset: "American Eleven, say intentions—" then more static and panicked human screaming he did not care about.
"MY INTENTIONS ARE A HUNDRED-FUCKING-MILLION DOLLARS!" Blitzo howled, slapping random switches with the confidence of a drunk DJ. "Which tower is north, which one is fucking north!?"
"Sir!" Moxxie's voice was high, brittle.
"Don't you tone-police me in my own stolen sky-van, Mox!" Blitzo jabbed his phone, hit speaker. "Millie! You on? Tell me which shiny rectangle is the North one. The one with our golden paypig inside!"
Millie's voice blasted through the tiny speakers, pure tractor-shed thunder. "Ah BEEN on, Blitz! And how the hell should I know!? NORTH! Like the dang compass! Pick a tower already, Blitz!"
"I am picking!" He mashed his palms over his eyes like he could squeeze out wisdom. "Eeny—meeny—miney—FUCK!"
The control shook hard and the plane bucked.
"Sir!" Moxxie yelped, grabbing the yoke with both hands. "Please! There are hundreds of innocent people on this aircraft and in those buildings—"
"Here we fucking go again!" Blitzo bark-laughed, manic. "Enough with that innocent bullshit, Mox! Look at it this way, if they're bad, they go to Hell—yay us, new clients! If they're "innocent", they get the express elevator to Harp City and a free cloud. We're doing them a fucking favor!"
"BLITZ!" Millie's drawl went flat and lethal. "Pick. A. Tower. I'm circlin' the Harbor and my fuel gauge's givin' me the side eye. Are we hitting one or both!?"
"Sir— the TCAS— we're—" Moxxie's voice fluttered, white-knuckled on the yoke. "We're too low and too fast— Sir, please!"
"Shut up and let me cook!" Blitzo snarled, eyes wild.
Millie's on speaker, noise howling through her end. "Blitz! I'm burnin' daylight an' kerosene! You say the word or I'm pickin' for you!"
Blitzo squinted at the windshield like the towers would grow little labels. "North, south— which one's the Yankee and which one's the Dixie? Why do humans make two of the same big-ass tooth and not color-code that shit!?"
"Sir," Moxxie said, small and steady, "there are families on this plane. There are kids on this plane."
Blitzo jabbed a finger at him without looking. "There are bills on my desk. There are repos on my ass. Circle of fucking life, Simba!"
"BLITZ!" Millie's shouts.
"In a minute Mills!" Blitzo says, hanging up the phone before dialing Loona one more time. "Pick up! Pick up! Pick up!"
Finishing off the last bite, Loona let the skewer hang from her lips like a cigarette and checked her phone.
Blitzo. Again.
Decline.
She burped—long, echoing, unapologetic. A couple tourists glanced over; she stared back until they remembered an urgent appointment several states away.
"Now, what do you have to wash that awful taste out of my mouth?" Loona's phone buzzed again. She didn't even look—thumbed Decline, then jammed the ringer to silent.
"Mountain Dew or crab juice." The Vendor answers.
"Oh, geez!" Loona gagged, the mere suggestion of Mountain Dew made her tongue feel like it had been dipped in a car battery. "I'll take a crab juice."
HIS ONE HUNDRED FREAKING MILLION DOLLARS IS ON THE LINE!
SCREW HITTING ONE!
Blitzo jammed Millie's line back on speaker. "Mills! Put your bird into the other toothpick. You hear me? You take the one we're not taking."
"Copy that—wait, which one are you takin'?!" Millie shouted over jet howl.
Blitzo squinted at the city like it owed him rent. "Uh—the one on the left."
"Left from where, Blitz!?" Millie barked. "Yer left or my left? Harbor-left?"
"Millie," Moxxie pleaded, voice shaking, "please don't! We can abort—we can still turn for the river—"
"No aborts!" Blitzo slammed his palm on the yoke and bullied the nose toward the glittering rectangles. "Loona said North. We're goin' for the one that feels north-ish. You take its ugly twin."
Air traffic clawed into their headsets again—"American Eleven, turn right heading two-eight-zero immediately! Do not—" Blitzo flicked the volume down like a car commercial.
"Got it Blitz!" Millie excitedly replied before hanging up.
"Alright, piggy bank." Blitzo muttered, rolling his shoulders. "Time to crack."
He shoved the captain's limp loafer under the yoke, wedged the seatbelt around it, and yanked it tight until the plastic buckle squealed. The nose steadied, the twin towers sliding center-frame like a sight picture.
"Come on Mox! Time to dip!" Blitz popped the latches on his coat and dragged out Stolas's grimoire and quickly created a portal to Millie's plane.
"Coming in hot, Mills!" Blitzo whooped—and dove.
Moxxie was left alone with the screaming as he stood hesitantly at the portal's edge.
The cockpit door thudded—someone pounding, someone sobbing. A flight attendant's voice, ragged: "Please—please—what's happening—are you alright Captain!?"
Wind hissed. Alarms yammered. The tower grew, the windows resolving into squares, into offices, into people. His stomach turned over on itself. Never before had any of their jobs made Moxxie feel this way. But they've already come this far, there was no other choice.
He only simply assures himself that the ones that don't deserve this will enter Heaven and enjoy their afterlife, forgetting the trauma of now.
He jumps in.
The world was a still photograph—jazz glassed over mid-note, a waiter hovering with a bottle tilted, Lute's mouth half-open for a kiss.
Then the photograph tore.
Adam didn't register what he was seeing until the plane's nose vanished into the floors below—silent for a beat, like somebody had muted the world—then the sound arrived, a concussive roar that hit him chest-first and sent the entire floor into chaos.
Glass became hail. Tables became antelope—leaping, flipping, smashing. White linens turned into startled birds, then into burning flags. The floor bucked hard enough to stagger everyone. Jazz warped into a single screaming wire in his ears.
For a long second, everything moved in syrup: a waiter drifting sideways, bottle rotating end over end; a woman opening her mouth to pray, the word never making it out; Lute's chair skidding as if reconsidering gravity.
Adam's hearing returned as a wet hiss—sprinklers coughing to life—then a tidal wave of sound: sirens, shattering, the torn-metal groan of a wounded building, and beneath it all the human noise—sobbing, pleading and pure panic.
Then detail slammed back into place: Plaster, light fixtures, ductwork—an entire rib of the room—started to come down over a couple locked together by pure terror.
"MOVE!" Adam barked—voice cutting cleaner than the alarms.
They didn't. Terror had rooted them where they stood.
So Adam moved for them.
One stride kicked a toppled chair out of his way. Then next vaulted a broken banquette. He hit the couple like a tide, shoulder-checking them sideways with just enough force to tumble them clear without breaking them.
The ceiling let go.
He planted his feet, threw both hands up, and took the full weight. It hit like a car. His knees dipped. Tile shattered under his heels. Heat and grit cascaded over his shoulders. For a blink the world narrowed to the grind of steel against bone and the taste of copper.
"GO!" he roared at the couple, eyes never leaving the bucking beam.
They scrambled, half-crawling, half-dragged by each other, past his hip and into the smoke-streaked aisle already filled with fleeing people.
"Sir!" Lute calls out, racing towards Adam's side but Adam quickly stops her in her tracks.
Smoke belched from the torn ceiling like the building had started to breathe fire. Another section of ductwork sheared loose with a howl and slammed onto the slab already bent across Adam's forearms. The impact drove him down a few inches; tile cobwebbed under his heels.
He didn't let it fall.
Every tendon in his shoulders leapt like bowstrings. The beam shuddered, tried to roll; Adam caught it with a palm and set his back against a buckled column, teeth bared. Heat baked his face, grit ran into his eyes. He blinked it away.
"Lute! Check over there! I think I see someone!"
She pivoted mid-stride, following his gaze. Through a rip in the wall—a gash that opened the dining room to a service corridor—someone lay half in, half out: a busboy in a crooked vest, one leg twisted under a mangled rolling cart.
"I've got him." Lute slid on a spill of wine, hit her knees beside the kid before pulling him away from the impending falling danger.
Adam shouldered the weight higher, tendons cording up his neck. The beam grated against his palms like a grinding wheel; heat soaked through the steel and into his bones. He sucked a breath through teeth and—slowly, like lifting a coffin out of wet earth—heaved. Tile shattered under his heels. His shoulders screamed. Inch by inch the slab rolled, then thunked aside and stayed.
For a heartbeat he only heard blood in his ears. Then the room rushed back: alarms braying, sprinklers hissing useless mist into a furnace, people crying, hoping for a hero to hear their pleas.
Adam staggered toward Lute. She was already at the busboy, one knee in broken glass, her hand at his throat. His vest was soaked dark; his chest didn't move.
Lute's fingers pressed, waited, pressed again—jaw tight, eyes flint. She opened the boy's mouth, tilted his head, checked for breath, for anything, then looked up and met Adam's eyes.
A small, flat shake of her head.
"He's gone." she said. No tremor. No lie.
Adam dropped to a knee opposite her. He set his palm to the boy's sternum, felt for the drum of life that should have been there. Nothing but residual tremor from the building's hurt.
The kid couldn't have been more than nineteen—half-tucked shirt, a smear of chocolate on his cuff like he'd swiped a dessert on the way to a table. His lips were already losing their color.
But there was no time for mourning as another scream echoed from the far side of the restaurant—multiple screams, threading together into a rising, multi-throated panic.
The floor near the banquet room cracked like a thunderclap.
A whole section dropped a foot in an instant—tables, chairs, people tilting toward the breach. A man near the window flailed backwards, feet slipping on the marble now pitched at an angle. His arms pinwheeled—then the glass behind him burst, spider-webbed by the building's shifting bones.
He went weightless for half a heartbeat. His torso cleared the jagged hole.
Then a hand caught his wrist.
Adam.
A single-armed grab, biceps straining like steel cable, boots braced in the debris. The man dangled in the wind, sobbing, white-knuckled around Adam's arm like it was the last thing he'd ever touch.
"I got you!" Adam gritted through clenched teeth, hauling the man up, yanking him back over the sill like it was nothing but gravity and furniture between them. "Now RUN."
The man scrambled away on all fours, howling thanks through bloody lips. Adam didn't watch him go. Because from the sinkhole in the floor—layers of voices, stacked and slipping: "Help!" "Please!" "My wife—!" "I can't feel my legs—!"
Adam turned toward the sound and was about to unfurl his wings and dive in to help but Lute catches him from behind, arms trying their best to wrap themselves around his ribs, cheek pressed between his shoulder blades.
"Sir—don't!" Lute rasp, urgent.
Lute knew the moment Adam leapt into action, it was only a matter of time before Adam tosses all caution to the wind and reveal his status as an angel. Now more then ever, she needed to get him out of here and back to Heaven.
"Now is not the fucking time Lute!" Adam shouts, shaking her off.
For a moment, she stood there with her hands on him, stunned by the crack of it, stunned by the way his face had gone from warm summer to carved winter. Hearing the First Man curse and talk in such a tone was a rarity for anyone but Lucifer. The air around him went iron-cold. The softness left his face like a tide.
Then Lute moved again, because if she let that version of him take over in this moment, he'd lift the whole tower on his back or die trying.
"Sir, we need to leave! Now!" Lute's fingers dug into his shoulders. "Heaven rules are clear! We can't help or interfere with—"
"Screw Heaven Lute!" Adam yells in frustration, forcing his way forward. With every second he spends arguing with her, another person could have been saved. "There is only minutes, an hour at most, before this whole building collapses!"
"Sir, look at me!" Lute yanked him back again, harder. "Lady Sera—"
Adam cuts her off. "We're fucking helping! End of dis—"
The next word out of Adam's mouth never made it.
A sound bulldozed through the alarms—a new roar, deeper than the building's hurt, closer than thunder. It rolled in through the shattered panes and pressed every rib in the room.
Both of them turned to the windows.
The South Tower stood bright and ordinary for a final, impossible second. A white fuselage knifed into frame—too low, too fast, coming in on a line that made no sense for anything except death. The sun flashed along the cockpit, a blink of polished glass, and then the plane disappeared into the building.
A flower of orange and black slammed outward, petals of fire curling around torn steel. A ring of windows burst in a perfect instant and became a cloud of glittering knives. The shockwave hit the North Tower's glass a beat later; every pane in the restaurant shuddered and bowed, a thousand square feet of trembling.
For a moment, the fire across the way became the only thing in existence as it reflected in his eyes.
...
Helpless.
The word didn't arrive—it reappeared, old and sour as iron on the tongue.
He was reminded of an old pain many centuries ago, flying above while the world drowned below him. The fire in the South Tower became the flood again—water shouldering houses off their foundations, a horizon of rooftops and hands. Screams that went thin and then vanished under the rain.
He could have helped but a higher power didn't want him to and a snap of his wing prevented him from doing so.
It was justice to let them die, they said.
They were too far gone, they said.
Not this time.
By hook or by crook, Adam was going to help.
"Go back to Heaven or stay and help. Either way, I'm staying."
He shook Lute off—clean, decisive—and was already moving before the last word finished echoing. Lute for her part, quickly recovered and got to her feet.
"Then I'm staying too, Sir!"
"Good! Contact Aclima or Vaggie, tell her to get her sisters down here ASAP! With their help, we can save the people in both towers!"
Adam tore off the ruined linen from the nearest table, looped it twice around his forearms for grip, and sprinted straight at the buckled section where the floor had torn open. The edge crumbled under his boots—rebar showing like snapped ribs—and he jumped.
For a heartbeat he was nothing but breadth and will, free falling through the uncontrolled heat wafting around him. He hit a floor down—hard—rolled, and came up on one knee in a corridor half-eaten by fire.
"IF YOU CAN HEAR ME—ANSWER!" he shouted into the smoke.
"Here—!" a raw cry from the right. "Help!"
He dove toward it, shouldering through a sagging drywall seam into what had been a service nook. A woman lay pinned under a crosshatch of ductwork, one shin bent wrong, blood blooming through slacks. A man in a busboy's jacket was trying to lift the metal with his best effort.
"On three." Adam said, already under the weight. "You pull her free. One—two—now."
The duct groaned. Tendons leapt in his forearms; the linen smoked against hot steel. The busboy hauled; the woman slid free with a ragged sob. Adam eased the duct down so it didn't finish the job it had started.
"Mask." he told the busboy, tearing a strip of linen and soaking it under a hissing sprinkler. He tied it over the woman's mouth with hands that didn't shake. "Head for the stairwell!"
Lute watched as Adam quickly went to work. Right now, she COULD do what Adam asked her to do and contact Aclima or Vaggie. Her halo was warm against her palm in her pocket. One word to them and the Exorcists would be here in seconds.
...
But Adam isn't thinking straight. If she did what Adam asked her to do, there will be hell to pay afterwards.
These people aren't important.
Adam is.
She will protect him, even from himself.
SHE WILL GET HIM BACK TO HEAVEN!
"As of last month, a report from Emily has shown an uptick in new arrivals of Winners." Sera's tone was level, clipped; her quill hovered over the report. "Famines on Earth has also significantly reduced over the last decade. Humanity has—"
The doors blew open and a frantic St. Peter tumbled through them at speed. He quickly scanned the room before beelining straight for Sera.
"St. Peter? This is highly unusual." Sera raised an eyebrow. "Unless its urgent, you should—"
St. Peter cupped a hand to her ear, exhaustion evident and whispered into her ear.
...
The quill in Sera's hand snaps in two.