As the other Suits continued to gather around us, the old man slowly put his hand under the paper and onto Stevie’s phone. He began to stand up, but the small, stocky Suit raised his voice at him, “Don’t move! Give us the Ching and no one gets hurt!”

The old man acted oblivious and unafraid at the same time. Then the tall Suit turned to me and tried to reason, “If you give us the Ching, we’ll just leave and be on our way.” It was so cool they were calling Stevie’s phone by his last name.

I watched in surprise as the old man moved as quickly as a guy half his age. He stood up with Stevie’s phone in his hand and said, “You mean this Ching...thing?” Then a split second later he took the photo.

The flash was so bright that I thought I might never be able to see again. It felt like a searing, penetrating beam that went right through every part of my body. When I finally regained my sight, I noticed that everything in Rockefeller Center had stopped and the Suits stood frozen. It was like one of those commercials where people are dancing and then somebody snaps their fingers and everyone goes completely still.

As I looked around, I felt like I was floating above the park and watching the scene below me. Maybe this is what people saw when they died. Was I dead, too? Maybe a Suit had shot me, and I hadn’t even realized I had died.

And then, everything faded to black.

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