As the fall of gods is the rise of man, so the crash of cymbals is the silence of thunder. All great moments in the history of the world have been of the mighty and the weak together. And so, as the universe distills to its most essential elements, the improbable becomes the inevitable, and the unforeseeable becomes the foreshadowing of a new dawn. For some, this is just another day. For some, nothing has changed, nor ever will. However, for two people, the most unlikely to ever meet, this is the day the Earth stood still.
C-CRACK!
SCREEEECH!
"Jesus Christ, Mary!
...This is the day her best friend hit him with the car.
They had intended for it to be a normal night. Hell, neither of them never expected anything more. But even at eleven o'clock at night, the City that Never Sleeps is bound to surprise you.
Rose Gallagher was twenty-two and invincible. She'd served her twelve years in the American Public School (Prison) System, and rejoiced when she was accepted to the college of her dreams. Once that stupid roll of paper touched her palm, she stuck her middle finger in the air and headed for New York City. Of course, any usual girl fresh out of college (even NYU) would never break into Broadway Theatre so easily, but Rose wasn't any usual girl. She was a girl with talent.
So she found herself on June 10th, 2011, sitting in a bar a couple blocks from Times Square, screwing around with her theatre friends. Only a month and a half left until opening night of their production of Les MÃserables. She found herself getting just a bit too tipsy to drive, but she only noticed it after a bad group rendition of Do You Hear the People Sing. Instead of risking a stumble home, she called one of her roommates to come pick her up. That was it; the two of them were just going didn't expect a sudden storm. Or was it even a storm? Rose had no idea. There wasn't any rain, just clouds and really weirdly colored lightening.
"The hell is with that storm?" Mary, her roommate, leaned over the wheel to see better.
"I dunno, some freak electrical storm? Almost looks like an Aurora Borealis..." Rose's eyes followed the path of the colored lights and clouds, which seemed to be gathering as if in a whirlpool. Then, it was if some cosmic hand had released a tense rubber band. The inward spiral imploded in on itself, snapping the clouds and a wall of electric discharge downward in the blink of an eye. It wasn't as much an explosion as a lightning strike of massive proportions. The deafening sound it made seemed to split the air, and popped her eardrums. Rose quickly averted her eyes from the blinding white light; the hairs on her arms and on the back of her neck stood on end. The beam vanished as soon as it touched the ground, as quickly as the flash of a camera.
Then, standing in the middle of the street was a man. The car's headlights hit him, and his pale green eyes dilated in the sudden light.
"SHIT!" Mary screeched, slamming on the breaks. Just as the car came to a skidding halt, it hit the man square in the chest and sent him flying back.
"Jesus Christ, Mary!" Rose shouted, throwing the car door open. She ran around to the front of the SUV, where the guy they'd hit was flat on his back on the pavement. Mary quickly followed her.
"I swear to God, he was not there two-... seconds ago..." Mary trailed off as she saw him.
For one thing, he was tall; damn tall, with a lean frame. He had pale skin and dark hair, and maybe his hair had been slicked back, but now it was loose and tangled. His clothes were strange, but Rose was more concerned with the bloody tears in the fabric then what it looked like.
He looked like he'd just lost a fight. Multiple bruises covered his face, and his bottom lip was split. His clothes were singed around the edges of the tears, as if he'd been in the middle of a meteor shower. Some of the wounds, from what Rose could see, were old. Some of them had scabbed over, but they were nasty looking, like they hadn't been treated properly (or probably not at all, she figured). She almost got sick looking at the wounds, but she had seen much worse.
"God Almighty," Mary uttered, "Tell me I didn't—"
"You didn't," Rose said, "These bruises are yellowing, and some of his wounds are scabbing over. But we need to get him to the hospital." She quickly checked his pulse, then hefted one of his arms over her shoulder. "Help me get him in the car."
"Is he gonna die?!" Mary asked, trying not to freak out as she lifted his other arm over her shoulder.
"Not if we get him to a doctor. Quickly."
"Hell, can't we just call your brother?! We could be waiting hours in the ER...!"
"...Good point. I'll call Jonah."