Chapter Text
When you were a kid, you had been obsessed with the New York City subway system. You loved staring at the colorful maps. The metallic screech of the trains made the hair on your neck stand up. You used to chatter excitedly about what would happen if two of them accidentally went on the same track and crashed into each other.
You're a morbid kid, your mom used to say affectionately. Yep! You would agree (you had no idea what “morbid” meant).
Now you lived in the city full-time and found public transportation decidedly less magical.
Once, you watched a rat drag a pigeon down into the shady depths of a subway station. A whole pigeon.
So you were familiar with a certain level of shadiness on the subway. Usually just drunk people, or scam artists, or drunk scam artists. A fair amount of people who were homeless, too, but to be honest, they didn't bother you much. They kept to themselves, and seemed to respect that you did, too.
It was the drunk people you watched for. Drunk men, to be specific.
In general, you tried to keep your wits about you. You had pepper spray in one pocket and a knife in your purse, for whatever good it would do you. Your mom had given those to you, back when you had first moved out after college, along with the classic bright pink whistle. You hadn't used any of it, except the knife, once, which a friend had used to open beer bottles at a party. You had since lost the whistle, you weren't really sure where, but it was definitely around somewhere... Buried in the storage under your bed, perhaps, or in that drawer in your kitchen...
You were just thinking about that whistle again when you realized you had lost track of time. You weren't sure which stop you were at. You checked your phone – 1:30am – and tucked it away with a sigh. Burning the candle at both ends for the second time this week.
The subway slowed and came to a stop, and you groaned. According to the metallic announcer, you were about two stops past the point where you needed to get off and switch lines. Go figure. You stepped out onto the platform, crossed to the other side, and waited for the next train.
The place was almost completely empty, save for you and a group of well-dressed businessmen at the other end of the platform. It struck you first that they were wearing expensive suits - expensive enough that they didn't need to take the subway - and second that they were definitely not speaking English. Italian, maybe? It was a language you recognized, if only in pieces, but it was hard to hear so far away. Then that familiar screech of the subway was echoing through the tunnel, and you were watching for the incoming train. God, you couldn't wait to get home.
One of the men turned to leave, motioned with his hand, and a flash of green from his cufflinks brought your attention back to the group. His gaze suddenly met yours, a similar warm green, and you caught that the cufflinks were meant to match his eyes.
You caught this right as a slight figure behind him abruptly grabbed one of the men and shoved him, screaming, directly into the path of the train.
He hit the wall, fell onto the tracks, and you didn't see what happened next because you turned around and ran.