The automatic doors slid open, and the noise of the street flooded back in—car horns, distant sirens, the low rumble of the subway beneath their feet. Leon stepped out first, bags left behind at the clothing store for later pickup. Shiera followed close, her silver-gold hair catching the midday light in ways that made pedestrians stumble mid-step.
"Where to now?" She asked, her mismatched eyes scanning the crowded sidewalk with casual curiosity.
"Phones," Leon said, already walking. "We need phones."
"Phones." She tasted the word like it was foreign. "The little black rectangles everyone stares at?"
Leon glanced at her. "Yeah. Those."
He led them down the block, weaving through clusters of tourists and office workers on lunch breaks. A few blocks east, away from the higher-end shops, he spotted what he was looking for—a small electronics store wedged between a bodega and a laundromat. The kind of place that sold cheap prepaid phones and didn't ask questions.
The bell above the door jingled as they walked in. The guy behind the counter—middle-aged, tired eyes, chewing gum with mechanical indifference—looked up, did a double-take at Shiera, then quickly looked back down at his phone. New Yorkers learned fast not to stare too long at the strange things walking past them.
Leon headed straight for the display of prepaid phones. Basic models. No contracts, no credit checks, no paper trail. The kind of phones you bought when you didn't want anyone knowing your business.
He grabbed two—same model, black, unremarkable. Then he picked up two SIM cards from the rack beneath the display. Unlimited talk and text. Data, too. Enough to get by.
Shiera stood beside him, watching his hands move with quiet fascination. "These are the... devices?"
"Phones," Leon repeated, handing her one. "Hold this."
She took it carefully, turning it over in her pale fingers like it might bite her.
At the counter, the clerk rang everything up without a word. His eyes flickered to Shiera once, twice, then back to the register. Professional. Leon appreciated that.
"Two hundred thirty-eight," the guy said.
Leon pulled out cash—fresh bills from John's stash—and laid them on the counter. No card. No name. No record.
The clerk took the money, gave him the change, and slid the bag across the counter. "You need help setting those up?"
"No. Got it."
Leon grabbed the bag and walked out. Shiera followed.
Outside, he found a bench on the corner—worn wooden slats bolted to iron, the kind that had seen better decades. He sat down and pulled out one of the phones, tearing open the packaging with his teeth.
Shiera sat beside him, close enough that her arm brushed his. She watched his fingers work, peeling off plastic, slotting in the SIM card, pressing the power button until the screen glowed to life.
"This is..." She tilted her head, watching the boot-up animation cycle. "Strange."
"It's just a phone." Leon navigated through the setup screens, skipping everything optional, accepting the default settings. "You'll figure it out."
He handed her the first one, activated, ready, the home screen displaying a generic wallpaper of rolling hills. "That one's yours."
Shiera took it like it was made of glass. Her thumbs hovered over the screen, unsure where to land.
"Here." Leon leaned over, his shoulder pressing against hers, and guided her thumb to the screen. "Touch here to unlock. Then these are the apps. This one makes calls. This one sends messages. This one..." He paused, realizing he was about to explain the internet to a woman from medieval Westeros. "Actually, just don't press anything unless I show you first."
Shiera's lips curved. "You think I'll break it?"
"I think you'll accidentally summon something you shouldn't."
Younger version or not he didn't trust that woman.
Shiera laughed hearing that. "You know me so well already."
"I read enough about you," Leon replied shortly ignoring how she pressed against himself peeking over his shoulders what he did.
Leon finished setting up his own phone while Shiera continued turning hers over in her hands, occasionally tapping the screen and watching the icons shift. She reminded him of a cat examining a new toy—curious, cautious, ready to pounce if it moved the wrong way.
He saved his number into her contacts. Hers into his. Then he slipped the phone into his pocket and stood.
"Let's go. We still need to pick up the bags."
Shiera looked up at him from the bench, the phone cradled in her palms, the late morning light catching those her eyes. For a moment, she looked almost normal. Almost like a girl his age, figuring out a new gadget, sitting on a bench in New York City.
Then she smiled, and the illusion shattered.
"As you wish," she said.
Leon turned and started walking. Shiera rose and followed, phone clutched in her hand like a talisman, her silver-gold hair trailing behind her like a banner.
The automatic doors of the electronics store slid shut behind them, the bag of phones crinkling in Leon's grip. Shiera walked beside him, still turning her new phone over in her hands like it was a relic from some forgotten age. Her mismatched eyes flickered between the screen and the street ahead, trying to make sense of both.
Leon was about to head back toward the clothing store when he stopped.
His eyes landed on the grocery store across the street. Bright sign. Shopping carts lined up outside. People going in and out with bags full of food.
"We need food," he said, more to himself than to Shiera.
She looked up from her phone. "Food?"
"Yeah. Real food." He'd been surviving on pasta and cheap sandwiches for months. But now he had money. John's money. And John wasn't using it anymore. "I'm not living like that anymore."
He crossed the street without waiting for a response. Shiera followed, pocketing her phone.
Inside, the grocery store was a maze of bright colors and humming refrigerators. Leon grabbed a cart—one of the big ones, the kind with the wobbly wheel—and started pushing it down the first aisle.
He didn't hold back.
Pasta, but the good kind. Real sauce, not the cheap stuff in cans. Meat—actual meat, enough for several meals. Vegetables, because Shiera probably needed something other than carbs. Eggs. Milk. Butter. Cheese that cost more than his weekly budget used to be. Snacks. Drinks. Things he'd never bought for himself before, things he'd walked past a hundred times because he couldn't justify the cost.
Shiera trailed beside him, watching his hands move, watching him throw things into the cart like he was trying to fill a void. She didn't comment. Just observed, her mismatched eyes scanning the shelves with quiet curiosity, occasionally reaching out to touch a box or a bag like she was trying to understand what it was through texture alone.
Leon turned down the next aisle—the snack aisle, because why not, and stopped.
His hands tightened on the cart handle.
Ahead, standing in front of a display of imported chocolates and colorful candy boxes, was Visenya.