The smoke of the city, grimy and fragrant, curled around Gibreel Farishta's boots as he stepped out into the night. London, that ancient labyrinth, wore its winter coat: fog thick as milk, lamp posts slicing it with orange halos. His breath was a ghost ahead of him, vanishing into the freezing dark.
He could feel it tonight — the city's secret heartbeat.
It was faster than before.
Something had shifted.
Saladin Chamcha, across town, stirred restlessly in a rented room above a forgotten pub. His dreams had turned sour, thick with strange visions: faceless crowds, collapsing towers, wings tearing from his shoulders. Night after night, the same oily dread soaked into his sleep. He didn't dare speak of it aloud, not even to himself. To name a thing, he thought, was to give it strength.
Meanwhile, the papers spoke of little else but the crash: Flight AI-420, the impossible fall and the two survivors found amidst the burning wreckage. Survivors who spoke in riddles and woke screaming in languages nobody recognized.
Gibreel and Saladin had become walking myths in the eyes of the few who dared whisper about them.
But myths were dangerous things in a city built on silent bargains.
Tonight, Gibreel walked with no clear purpose, down side streets and into narrow alleys, the soles of his boots cracking thin films of ice. His mind was an echo chamber. Whispers curled at the edges of his sanity.
"You are not the man you were."
"Wings, remember the wings."
"Choose, Gibreel Farishta. Choose."
He jammed his hands deeper into the pockets of his long coat, pulling it tight around himself like armor. Ahead, at the edge of a square, a group of figures huddled around a barrel fire. Ragged coats, trembling hands; eyes glittering like wet stones in the firelight.
One of them turned as he passed and said, almost casually:
"The Prophet walks among us."
Gibreel flinched, heart hammering against his ribs.
He kept walking.
Faster now.
In another part of London, far more gilded, Saladin Chamcha stood before a mirror, inspecting the slow betrayal of his reflection. The horns had faded, but the memory of them lingered. His skin still crawled with the aftertaste of something bestial, something other.
"Assimilation," he told himself through gritted teeth. "That is salvation. Normalcy. Belonging."
But belonging was a brutal thing. It shaved edges, filed down bones, demanded the slaughter of all that made him peculiar, particular. It demanded he forget.
And Saladin Chamcha was very good at forgetting — or so he believed.
The phone rang, a shrill stab into the quiet. He answered without thinking.
A voice like static on the line:
"They are coming for you. Choose your shape wisely."
The line went dead.
He stood there, breathing hard, staring into the reflection of a man who was neither Englishman nor demon but some trembling hybrid in between.
---
Back on the streets, Gibreel's footsteps drew him to a place he had not intended to find: Brickhall Mosque, its arched windows black against the haze. He hesitated at the door, the stone cold under his palm.
Inside, prayers murmured into the fog, barely audible.
"They expect you," said a voice from behind him.
He turned.
An old man stood there, wrapped in tattered shawls, his eyes bottomless and knowing.
"You fell for a reason. Don't squander the fall."
Gibreel opened his mouth to ask — what fall? which reason? — but the old man had already slipped into the mist, leaving only a few swirling footprints behind.
Was he hallucinating?
Was this the fever of survival or some deeper calling?
He didn't know anymore.
He pushed open the door. Warmth and incense washed over him.
Rows of worshippers bowed in unison, a sea of devotion. And for a moment — just a heartbeat — Gibreel felt the weight lift off his shoulders. He was not alone here. Even if they didn't know his name, even if he didn't know theirs, something bound them all in the vaporous air.
But deep inside, under the comfort, a cold seed remained:
You are not what you were. You are not what they think you are.
The city whispered it.
The stones beneath his feet whispered it.
Even the broken moon, half visible through the mosque's stained-glass window, seemed to crook a mocking grin and murmur:
"Choose, Gibreel Farishta. Choose before they choose for you."
And so, standing there among strangers, bathed in warmth but frozen in fear, Gibreel made a vow he could not yet speak aloud:
He would find out who he was now — and what destiny had been stitched into his skin during the fall from the sky.