“Look, I can’t deal with this right now—”
“’It was a bus filled with kids, twenty seven of them,” Rio says gravely.
“Aw, man. I’m sorry. When did they die?”
“They didn’t. I saved them. I saved them all.”
And before it could sink in what Rio had done, lightning cracks above. Clouds gather in the once clear night sky and turn a macabre shade of crimson.
A plane above us has been halted in midflight. The man walking his dog a block away is on pause, as is the dog. Across the street, a lady stands at the kitchen window near a running faucet. Both she and the running water have been rendered motionless. Aside from us, every living thing is frozen.
Rio bows his head before his leader.
“I’m sorry,” Rio says.
His apology is drowned out by the earth-shattering sound of three cloaked figures parting the bloody sky as they descend wrathfully upon us…