[FREE | Reading Sample] TS - Chapter 0 - Alpha

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Today, we got something a bit different.

I'm fairly sick today, but I managed to finally finish up this Reading Sample for a potential new story, that I've been working on for the past few weeks.

To hopefully pre-empt some questions that might come up:

No, this will not replace TAS.

No, this will not replace ND.

No, it will not be a third novel alongside the other two anytime soon, as I'm maxed-out on energy/time capacity for writing with those.

Yes, it is something I'm considering as a third novel for the future, hence the Reading Sample.

No, I didn't write this today, as I'm sick. I just finished up the last few paragraphs and edited some parts to make it flow better. It was already 98% done.

Yes, consider this an early birthday gift of mine to y'all, as I'm turning 30 in around 5 1/2 hours. So... Wooho, I guess.

No, I will not tell you what TS means, but savvy ones will figure it out based on the chapter.

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Now, with all that out of the way, I ask that you go into this with an open mind and just take it for what it is.

I will not provide a genre-tag or anything of the sorts, as I want the writing to speak for itself.

Provide feedback either here or in the #other-novels discord channel for now. We do not have a TS-specific section in the discord yet and likely won't for a while.

I'm particularly looking for feedback on whether you are interested in a continuation based off of this initial Reading Sample, and specifically what parts got you really interested (if at all).

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14fswifjZo_B3oOOw-ROyBTVr3TNwz-Ez3e9JQVuFZ60/edit?usp=sharing

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Chapter 0 - Alpha

High-pitched ringing in my ears. Blurry vision. 

Half-dried tears of panic, sorrow, and fear mixed with the ashen concrete dust in the air was clinging to my face.

I couldn’t feel my arms, but I just had to keep going regardless.

‘One… Two… One… Two…’

Chest compressions. 

Keep the oxygen flowing into her brain to prevent permanent brain damage. 

Everything else could be fixed later.

‘How long have I been at this…?’

I couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter.

My fingers, wrists, and arms had long since lost all feeling from forcing my whole, meager bodyweight into every compression, but that was okay.

I just had to keep going until help arrived. Then everything would be okay.

‘One… Two… One… Two…’

Patchwork. Stitches. Pharmacist. Hygeia. Panacea. Isis… 

So many of them could—Any of them could fix this.

It was going to be okay.

She had said so herself, and she would never lie to me. She never had. She never would.

And she had specifically said it was going to be okay, so who was I to think otherwise.

My eyes were unfocused, only half-catching colors through the ashen cloud around us. Red and orange licks of flame were the only color breaking through—well, not quite.

‘One… Two… One… Two…’

Crimson was the other color.

The pool beneath me spread further and further with every compression.

‘Am I just pumping out her blood by doing this…? She’s going to bleed out like this, isn’t she…?’ The thought came slowly, but what else was I supposed to do?

The concrete slab that had once been the floor above us had fallen onto her lower half, completely smashed it, and separated her into two parts—if the part below the slab was even still anything that resembled a human.

‘I don’t think I’m supposed to see your organs like this…’ Another unbidden thought surfaced as my eyes drifted toward the surprisingly pink, sausage-like intestines in front of me. ‘How are you going to take part in the tournament if those are on the outside…? That’s not how humans work, you silly goose…’

A hysterical chuckle escaped my raw throat.

‘One… Two… One… Two… One… Two… One… Two…’

—

—

Hours earlier.

Staring out the window, bored out of my damn mind while listening to the Professor drone on about superhero law, ethics, and morals was, as usual, the only thing keeping me sane in the university classroom.

Not that there was much to see outside, given the campus had been built right in the middle of the business district of Haekoz. And considering it was the third-largest city on the whole damn Nova Terrae continent, that meant lots and lots of skyscrapers blocking the view in every direction.

So what was it that I was looking at? 

Nothing. 

A whole bunch of nothing, just letting my eyes unfocus and my thoughts drift, as was my usual state for most of every day in this miserable school.

‘Whoever came up with the idea of rote memorization being a hard-set requirement for success in life should be strung up, have their feet cut off and—’

“Triss, are you thinking about brutal murder again?” a whispered voice interrupted from my right. “I know that look on your face, you know?”

I slowly turned toward Sadie, hitting her with the strongest blank-faced expression I could muster—which wasn’t very hard, since that was my standard resting bitch face anyway.

“I don’t have a look like that.”

“But you were thinking about it, weren’t you?”

I cringed at the fact that she had me there—again. It was truly infuriating how Sadie always knew how to get one over on me, no matter what.

“Still don’t have a look…” I muttered, my voice losing the strength to really fight her claim halfway through the sentence.

Her giggle, hidden behind her hand so the Professor wouldn’t catch us talking in the middle of his lecture, made her wavy brown hair bounce, just like it always did. “Sure, if you say so, Princess.”

I rolled my eyes at that.

“Not a Princess either, you weirdo.”

Sadie had started calling me that over the last few months, just to piss me off.

And, naturally, it was working.

I had never been particularly great at controlling my temper when it came to her ribbing, but I couldn’t really hold it against her—I did the same thing to her all the time, after all.

And she was my best—and only real—friend, so I couldn’t exactly go nuclear on her every time she pissed me off. It was a damn miracle she had even stuck around all these years, when everyone else had rightly seen me for what I truly was: An unrepentant asshole.

Now, Princess? That one was, as mentioned, a relatively new development.

Sadie had really dug deep into my insecurities about food to come up with that one, equating me to some medieval princess or an old-money nepobaby just because I had very particular likes and dislikes.

‘So what if I don’t like most meat, barring the most expensive cuts…? And I do love chicken, which is quite literally the cheapest damn meat out there!’

It had all started simply because I hadn’t liked any of the seafood at the Nova Terrae Seaside Festival we had visited just a few months prior, barring the one king crab gratin she had won in a raffle—and it just so happened to be the most expensive item at the whole festival.

Not really a reason to call me a Princess now, was it?

“Yes, your majesty,” Sadie replied dutifully with a horrible, seated half-bow.

“It’s Royal Highness, actually. Majesty is only used for kings and que—” I stopped myself short, the horrifying realization of my instinctive correction hitting me square in the face as Sadie’s grin stretched wider, her green eyes sparkling with mirth. “Don’t even fucking—”

“But of course, your Royal Highness! This lowly peasant scum apologises profusely for using the wrong term of address! Please, have mercy, your most frightful and merciful of Royal Highnesses! It was merely a slip of the tongue by a nobody—a truest of peasants, verily!”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, Sadie’s giggles the only thing keeping me from losing my temper—I had always loved the way she laughed when she had to be quiet like this.

“I swear to god, Sadie, I will—”

“Miss Magnus, you seem particularly eager to have a conversation today. Why don’t you join us in ours and give us your take on the posed question of today’s discussion?” the Professor’s pointed words cut off my not-yet-spoken promise of pain and hellfire.

My head snapped up immediately, my eyes flicking to the large blackboard as I quickly read the words written there, reminding myself where I even was.

‘Right. Superhero Law & Ethics,’ I realized at once.

Now, while I had been spacing out and bullshitting with Sadie, it wasn’t like I could just stop hearing the constant droning of a university lecture hall. It was a steady stream of noise, fueled by the professor and the rest of my classmates, that I couldn’t really block out, so it got shoved into the part of my brain that didn’t actively try to be bored.

So I already had an answer prepared, since my natural inclination to know better than everyone else didn’t really allow me not to.

“Well, Professor Euan, when it comes to a Hero’s responsibilities in the eyes of the law, they aren’t required to provide immediate aid to every person they see, if there’s a larger loss of life or danger present.”

Everyone should have been able to follow that; it had been covered several times in previous lectures.

“Ethically however, leaving a mother to bleed out in front of her children might rub some people the wrong way, but really, would you all rather have another ten or twenty people die because the Hero had to help some soccer mom first? It only makes logical sense to prioritize stopping the Villain or Monster to prevent further loss of life first.”

That clearly rubbed some people the wrong way, as several hands shot up at once and quiet murmurs spread through the hall.

“Thank you, Miss Magnus,” the Professor replied, nodding as he added a note to the blackboard, writing down the legal basis for my argument—Paragraph Four, Section 7B of the Hero Code. “I would appreciate it if you were more forthcoming with your input in my class. Your participation is always of high quality, and there’s no reason for me to have to call on you specifically to hear your opinions.”

“Yes, Professor,” I replied dutifully, as I had so many times before.

I shot Sadie a scorching side-eye, since this was all undeniably her fault, which only seemed to make her even more giddy as she hid from the Professor’s view behind her tablet.

“Now, as Miss Magnus has rightfully pointed out, the law does indeed give Heroes carte blanche when it comes to responsibility for individual lives in a crisis situation. The Hero Code, as originally ratified by the One World Council of 1996 and still in its newest form as of three months ago, places the general greater good above that of individuals in just about every instance. This has been considered a legal necessity, to give Heroes the freedom to act in the best possible way during a crisis without the constant threat of lawsuits at every turn.”

He drew a long dividing line beneath the paragraph I had referenced, then slapped the lower part of the blackboard with his hand, the loud meat-on-blackboard clap echoing through the hall.

“Now, ethically? That’s where things become tricky, as Miss Magnus has also pointed out. And I can see quite a few of you would like to offer some counterarguments, so why don’t we start with… you, Mister Felt.”

I had to seriously hold back a groan, mostly because the hall had gone unusually quiet after the slap, and I knew it would echo through the whole damn room if I didn’t, when fucking Fabius got called on to argue against my earlier words.

“Perfect,” Sadie snickered from my right, and I instinctively stabbed her in the ribs with my index finger, earning a high-pitched squeak that made half the class turn to look at her, the Professor included.

“Sorry! Hiccups!” she blurted out at once, slinking lower in her seat to slip out of everyone’s line of sight.

Sadie shot me a look from the corner of her eye, equal parts mock-offended and annoyed, her lips twitching as if she was fighting a grin. She made a small, exaggerated rubbing motion over her ribs, then pointed two fingers at her eyes and back at me in a silent promise of revenge. 

I met it with the faintest smirk.

She had been utterly outmaneuvered. Outplayed, even. My clear intellectual supremacy had been proven once again, achieved through nothing but superior wit and guile.

But I didn’t even get a full second to enjoy it.

“Well, I personally think—” Fabius’ grating voice cut in, instantly souring my mood, echoing through the lecture hall as he straightened in his seat. “If I were a Hero, I’d obviously help the soccer mom in that situation. I mean, if a Hero can’t even protect a single mother, then what are they really good for? This whole ‘greater good’ thing just sounds like an excuse for—”

That was about where I stopped listening, which was already far longer than I should have bothered.

Fabius never had anything worthwhile to say, just about ever.

He was the most bootlicking, holier-than-thou white knight to ever walk the earth when it came to ethical opinions.

Still, Professor Euan knew that letting the moron speak his mind was a good way to spark discussion, since just about everyone else had a more qualified take than Fabius Felt—and they knew it.

I turned my head back toward the window, letting my eyes glaze over as the city blurred into meaningless shapes and colors once more. My thoughts drifted with it, detaching entirely from the lecture, the hall, and Fabius’ voice. The faint reflection of my neon-cyan coloured, shoulder-length hair—courtesy of one of Sadie’s dares a few months prior—and my bright amber eyes were the only splashes of color that really registered for the rest of the lecture.

I stayed like that, half-present at best, until the bell finally rang and mercifully ended my suffering. We filed out with the rest of the class once the bell rang, the usual shuffle of bodies filling the aisle. 

Grabbing my bag took all of two seconds—I just dropped my tablet into it, untouched and innocent of any notes whatsoever. Sadie slung her own bag over her shoulder with far more enthusiasm than the situation deserved, already talking as we stepped into the hall.

We walked through the corridors of Haekoz’ Central Minerva University, our voices blending into the low buzz of students moving around. 

She talked about her plans for the rest of the day. 

I talked about mine… Which was to say, absolutely nothing.

That answer annoyed her almost immediately.

“Oh come on,” she said, bumping my shoulder with hers. “You can’t seriously be planning to do nothing again, Triss.”

“I absolutely can,” I replied. “And I’m very good at it, thank you very much.”

That, apparently, was unacceptable.

By the time we reached the exit, she had already decided I was coming with her to the mall. 

She needed new sportswear for PE classes and the upcoming tournament, and since she was a complete sports freak—especially when it came to volleyball—this was naturally treated as a matter of great importance.

I put up some token resistance. Nothing heartfelt. Just enough to feel like I’d tried. 

I didn’t really want to say no, but I also didn’t feel like saying yes, as per usual.

Sadie, of course, saw right through that. 

The moment she offered to buy me ice cream, my resolve crumbled completely.

“Traitor,” I chastised my own stomach and brain, letting her win.

Plans finalized, I let her drag me across the parking lot to her car—an old red, mildly cube-shaped Volkswagen from somewhere around 2020, give or take a year or five. 

I had no idea what model it was, except that it wasn’t the new 2033 model that had just been announced like a week ago. 

But it was red, it had doors, and it ran—usually. 

That was the full extent of my automotive knowledge and the full extent of knowledge that was required to know that if I sat inside it, I would get to the place I wanted—or didn’t want—to be. 

She drove us toward the mall, humming to herself as if she’d already won something as she was wont to do, and I allowed myself a contented smile at that.

Seeing Sadie happy was one of the few things in life that were worth it, after all.

The mall we were heading towards sat just outside Haekoz’ business district, about twenty minutes from the university, and it was quite literally impossible to miss. 

It towered over everything around it, clearly designed to be the tallest thing in the area, and likely chosen to be placed outside the business district for that very reason. 

Huge glass facades caught and reflected the daylight, and right in the center stood a massive, golden-coloured statue of Immortal Phalanx, Haekoz’ pride and joy, local-grown Superhero, looming over the entrance like a challenge to anyone who dared ignore it.

“You think he’s actually immortal?” I asked absent-mindedly, nodding toward the giant statue we were slowly approaching as we followed the main street to the mall.

Sadie hummed in thought for a second, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, then shrugged. “Would be kinda shit if he was, wouldn’t it? Like, who even wants to live forever?”

I chuckled and nodded along. “True, true. Immortality’s more of a curse than a blessing and all that… But seriously, there’s gotta be a way to kill him, right?”

I didn’t need to look at Sadie to know she was rolling her eyes at me.

“You and your need to figure out how to kill things,” she said. “If I didn’t know your morbid ass better, I’d almost be worried you were planning to become a Supervillain with all those ‘hypotheticals’ and ‘thought experiments’ about murdering our Heroes and local guardians on a regular basis.”

“I do it for Villains and Monsters too,” I pointed out. If we were already listing my theoretical skills, it was only right to be thorough. “And you still haven’t answered the question.”

Sadie went quiet for a moment, which I immediately recognized as her actually thinking. 

She always fell into this strange, silent focus whenever she really considered something with that huge brain of hers.

My eyes drifted from the side of her face, taking in her sense of fashion and athletic build for what they were. 

I couldn’t really compare. 

Sports were too much hassle for me, and so was fashion. 

Things that shaped how other people saw me weren’t exactly high on my list of priorities, no matter how hard Sadie tried to change that.

Honestly though, I was fine with my average-ass, slightly underfed body. I was a lot paler than her lightly tanned skin, since I didn’t do outdoor sports like she did, but that was about the main difference between us in that regard.

So, really, we were basically the same person—aside from our hair, fashion sense, athleticism, social life, general outlook, and the fact that she knew how to drive a car. 

Which I also didn’t.

My eyes got hung up on her huge chest, as they so often did when I compared myself with her.

‘Well… almost the same person,’ I told myself, very deliberately not looking down at my own slightly-below-average chest. ‘And she’s wearing a damn sports bra, too…’

Some things in life just weren’t fair. I had accepted that a long time ago.

This was one of them.

“There absolutely is a way to kill him,” Sadie finally said. “If someone really tried, I mean. There’s no way there isn’t. Nothing’s truly immortal. Not even after the Convergence.”

She glanced up at the statue briefly. “Not a single Power has ever come close to real immortality. Not the ultra-durable types, not the self-healers, not even the hardcore regenerators. They all have limits. They all fail eventually. Somehow, somewhere.”

She snorted softly. “So yeah, I seriously doubt Immortal Phalanx lives up to the name. It’s way more likely it’s just marketing. The World Hero Association does that all the time.”

She kept talking, unsurprisingly warming to the subject matter—after all, who didn’t love theorizing about heroes and their powers? “Hero names are meant to do two things: Tell people what they roughly do, so relevant information spreads fast in an emergency—and scare the hell out of Villains. And what’s scarier than a muscle-bound Greek-soldier-looking guy who can hit like a top-tier Striker and is supposedly more immortal than the most top-tier Tanks and Brawlers?”

I nodded along, offering a “Not much.”

Her analysis was spot-on, in my opinion.

I’d thought about this more than just a few times myself. 

Something that was truly immortal just didn’t fit with how I saw the universe. 

Which meant Immortal Phalanx had to be mortal; there was no other option.

How you’d actually kill him, though? Yeah. No idea. 

And if I did know, I could probably retire forever by anonymously selling that information to Supervillains or Villain groups—right before getting murdered by their inevitable betrayal, or hunted down by the WHA for exposing their biggest trick.

And it wasn’t like Immortal Phalanx was the only so-called “immortal” Hero out there, either. 

There were seven, as far as the world knew. One on each continent. 

North America. South America. Europe. Africa. Asia. Australia. And, of course, Nova Terrae.

Almost like that distribution was intentional.

Logically speaking, it was obvious: What was more likely? That the Convergence and subsequent births and evolution had just happened to create an almost-immortal Hero on every single continent, nice and evenly spread out—or that the WHA was bullshitting the entire world about their capabilities?

I knew exactly where my money would go on the betting sites for that one.

Ultimately, the conversation tapered off after that, and we settled into a comfortable silence, humming along to the radio instead.

It was one of my favorite things about Sadie.

For all her habit of filling silence with words to try and drag me out of my shell, she could read the room better than anyone I had ever met. She always knew exactly when I just wanted to relax and listen to music for a bit—or stare into the void for an hour or two.

That brief moment of peace ended when we finally arrived at the mall.

‘Time to burn through my social battery making sure I don’t scream at random people walking too slowly in front of me…’

Sadie took point, as was her way, being the one who’d insisted on coming here in the first place. 

She dragged me through the crowds of people straight toward her favorite sportswear store. 

The large “SuperStretch” logo above the entrance, done in a sleek orange-and-black contrast, was definitely eye-catching.

Sadie shopped for her PE clothes while I spent most of the time on my phone, not particularly interested in buying anything for myself—not that I had the money for it anyway.

Sadie was one of the lucky ones with well-off parents. 

Not rich, exactly, but comfortable enough that their one and only daughter never had to worry about something as trivial as not having enough money for new PE clothes, even though she’d bought new ones just last year.

Me? I got to enjoy the fun side effects of a declining world economy, as late-stage capitalism continued to grind on.

You’d think a near-cataclysm like the Convergence—something that had almost wiped several continents off the map—would’ve pushed people to band together and become more united.

It hadn’t.

The ultra-rich had simply consolidated even more of the wealth they’d started hoarding back in the 2010s and 2020s. So now, in 2033, around forty years after the initial Appearance had brought Powers and Monsters to Earth’s doorstep, they were more influential and powerful than ever before.

“Truly, the joys of capitalism…” I muttered under my breath, which Sadie somehow still managed to hear, despite looking completely enthralled by the sports bra in her hands.

“Lamenting the state of the world again, Triss?” she half-joked, knowing full well this wasn’t really funny to me, so she kept the teasing light. “Nothing we can really do about it, unfortunately.”

“Heroes could. If they gave a single shit,” I shot back immediately.

This was well-trodden ground for us, and I really didn’t feel like getting into it again, but I couldn’t stop my blood from boiling at the thought.

“Rich fuckers are ruining the planet, and we’ve got literal Captain Planets running around doing fuck-all to stop them. What’s the point of having a Power if you’re not using it to actually do something useful for humanity? You can squash as many Incursions as you want, but you’ll never do more good than ripping one of those parasitic trillionaires in half.”

“Well, first of all, heroes aren’t allowed to use their Powers on non-Powereds without consent, so there’s problem number one,” Sadie replied logically, turning the bra in her hand and testing its flexibility on the side. “Second, heroes aren’t meant to go around killing people. That’s what makes them not supervillains, actually. And lastly—and I know this will come as a real shock to you—murder is illegal.” 

She put on a fake look of surprise for that last bit.

“Everything’s illegal except causing the deaths of millions in the pursuit of the imaginary green graph going up. I know,” I replied, leaning against one of the pillars and resting the back of my head on it, trying to cool my temper. “Haa… Listen, it’s not like I actually want them dead. But it’d sure help if anyone with even a shred of power—actual Power or political power—would stand up for the little guy even once. How hard is it to put a damn tax on those leeches so they don’t suck everything dry? Or some real regulation so they can’t just poison the planet for the sake of a line going up.”

I exhaled sharply feeling the fight leave me. “Murder’s obviously not the answer, but… fuck, what else is there? It’s been like this for over three decades, Sadie. I’m twenty-four now, and I don’t even know a world where this wasn’t the case. Is this really what I get to look forward to? Being a wage slave so some parasite at the top can own fourteen superyachts with anti-Monster tech and cruise oceans nobody else can even access?”

Sadie put the sports bra she’d been looking at back and stepped a little closer to me, giving me a look that was half serious, half pitying.

I didn’t mind the pity in her eyes. My outlook on life had never really deserved anything else.

“Listen, Triss. Isn’t that exactly why we’re studying Hero Law?” she asked, her voice kind and soothing in just the right way to drain the last bits of anger out of me.

“Yeah… So we can sue the shit out of them for not doing their jobs properly,” I replied with a sigh, echoing our battle-cry that had gotten us into the educational path we had chosen.

A smile spread across her face as she nodded. “That’s exactly right. And don’t forget it. Heroes can only be heroes because there are laws telling them what they can and can’t do. So if they start fucking around? We’ll be there to make them find out. And who knows—maybe we can even find loopholes in the current laws to push heroes into dealing with some of the longer-standing problems in the world, huh?”

A small smile finally broke through on my face too. I just couldn’t stay angry when Sadie was trying this hard to cheer me up, especially over something so… pointless. 

It wasn’t a new argument, and it wasn’t a new thing for me to be mad about.

But Sadie always knew exactly what to say to pull me out of my heavier moods.

It was what I loved her for, really.

“Speaking of studying,” Sadie shifted topics without missing a beat. “You really need to stop spacing out so much during lectures. You could crush every single class if you actually used your brain on things that didn’t involve getting mad about stuff you can’t change or thinking about murder. You let trash like Fabius get good grades instead of you. Why?”

“Haaa…” I let out a long breath, deflating a little. “I just don’t get how you can stay engaged through the fifteenth discussion of the same issues and hypotheticals. Especially with morons like Fabius talking out of their asses the whole time. ‘Well, I would’ve saved everyone,’ like, come the fuck on.”

Sadie laughed at my impression of Fabius’ grating voice.

“It’s easy if you just tune them out,” she said with a shrug that sent her hair bouncing. “You don’t really have to engage with what they’re saying, as long as you catch the general gist. And Professor Euan already likes you, so all you’d really need to do is speak up on your own once or twice. You didn’t used to be this broody, you know?”

I ran a hand through my hair, stalling while I tried to figure out how to answer that.

I truly hadn’t always been this broody.

But maybe that was just what living in a world with no real future for someone like me looked like. Once you were old enough to understand you were fucked no matter what you did, the broodiness just came with it, like a free refill.

“Just life, I guess,” was the best way I could put that grim thought into words.

Sadie sighed softly, clearly not convinced. 

“See, that right there? That defeatist crap is exactly why you keep failing things you have no business failing,” she said. “It’s like you get stuck in this negative spiral and just keep digging deeper into it, convincing yourself you’re already—”

A low rumble rolled through the base of my skull.

I frowned, my thoughts derailing as the vibration lingered for a split second too long. 

“Did you feel th—”

The world exploded.

A deafening crack tore through the mall as the roof gave way, concrete and steel collapsing in a violent, thunderous roar. Dust blasted through the air, swallowing everything in choking gray, and I was thrown hard against the pillar I’d been leaning on, my head hitting it hard. 

My ears rang instantly, a shrill, piercing noise drowning out everything else.

For a few seconds, I couldn’t tell what had happened. I couldn’t even tell where I was. 

Everything blurred together as my vision swam and my head throbbed furiously.

Then I tried to move.

White-hot pain tore through my left thigh, ripping a scream out of me as I only then realized a thick piece of rebar had punched straight through it, pinning me to the pillar I’d been leaning against. 

Blood was rapidly soaking into my jeans almost instantly.

My eyes widened in panic at the sight, and I immediately reached out for Sad—Where was Sadie?!

“Sadie—!” I tried to yell, adrenaline flooding in all at once.

I sucked in a lungful of dust instead and doubled over, coughing hard, my chest burning as I fought for air. I forced myself to try again, choking on the sound of her name as I searched the haze in front of me.

Sadie was simply gone.

Panic hit me like a physical thing. 

I tore my gaze through the dust, my heart hammering as I twisted and searched, refusing to accept what my eyes were telling me. 

She had been right there. Right in front of me. 

She couldn’t just be gone.

I yanked myself forward—and screamed. I barely registered the animal-like sound I made.

The rebar tore free of my thigh with a sickening pull, white-hot pain exploding up my leg and I nearly blacked out as I collapsed onto the floor, blood rapidly pouring from my leg. 

‘Don’t stop. Don’t stop.’

My hands shook as I forced myself to think. 

‘Pressure. You need pressure...!’ I crawled blindly, fingers scrabbling over fallen displays and scattered merchandise until my hands brushed against fabric. 

Sports bras. A whole rack of them, half-buried but still there.

I wrapped one around my thigh as tight as I could manage, teeth clenched hard enough my jaw ached and my teeth squeeked, then another on top of it, pulling until my vision sparkled and turned black. 

It hurt like nothing had ever done before, but the bleeding slowed. 

That was good enough. 

It had to be.

I pulled as many clothy-bits as I could get my hands on together and formed a seal over my nose and mouth to keep the majority of the dust out of my lungs.

Tears streamed down my face, cutting clean tracks through the dust and making my eyes burn. Every breath felt like fire, my lungs screaming as if I’d been sprinting for miles. 

I hacked and coughed, bending forward, then forced myself upright again.

“Sadie!” I yelled, ripping the cloth from my mouth for just a second. “Sadie!”

No answer.

I staggered forward, hands out, feeling my way through the thick haze. 

Shapes flickered at the edges of my vision—orange, red. 

Real flames, licking up from somewhere deeper in the store. 

‘Fire…!’

Fear clenched tight in my chest. 

Fire meant a time limit. Fire meant I couldn’t afford to be slow.

I tripped over something and hit the floor hard, pain flaring through my leg, but I pushed myself back up, wrapping more fabric over my mouth and nose. Every few steps I tore it away again just long enough to shout her name, my voice hoarse and cracking.

“Sadie! Please—say something!”

My voice broke at the last scream, desperation, panic and pain mixing into a volatile enough substance to keep me from properly projecting my voice.

She had to be here. She’d been right in fucking front of me just a moment ago!

I kept moving, coughing, stumbling, calling out into the smoke and dust, refusing to believe that the empty silence was the only answer I was going to get.

“Sadie!” I screamed again, ignoring my body’s frantic protests.

Finally, a sound answered me. Faint and wet. 

A quiet moan of pain that barely cut through the ringing in my ears.

My heart skipped, then slammed into overdrive.

“I’m here—hold on!” I staggered toward the sound, half-running, half-falling through the dust, until my foot caught on something soft instead of concrete. I nearly went down hard, catching myself at the last second as my hands brushed against fabric and skin.

Sadie.

She was lying on the ground, half-buried under chunks of rubble and broken slabs, her upper body twisted awkwardly, her face pale and coated in dust.

“Oh god—Sadie, hey, hey,” I babbled, dropping to my knees beside her. 

My hands moved on their own, shoving aside chunks of concrete, ripping at toppled-over clothing racks, anything I could get out of the way. 

“Talk to me! Are you hurt? Can you move?”

She stirred, eyes unfocused, a weak sound slipping from her throat. 

“I… I don’t think so,” she mumbled, voice distant, like she was talking through water. “Doesn’t really hurt… so I think I’m fine.”

Relief crashed into me so hard it almost made me dizzy. 

I laughed once, sharp and broken, and kept digging, hands shaking but desperate. “See? See, you’re fine. You’re fine. I’ve got you.”

Then my fingers slipped while trying to push off another round of concrete rubble.

They came away wet.

I froze.

Slowly, I looked down. 

Crimson coated my hands, too much of it, slick and shining even through the dust. 

My breath caught, my chest locking up as my eyes followed the trail downward.

There were no legs.

Sadie’s lower half—everything from just above the waist down—was gone. 

Completely crushed or simply sheared clean off by a slab of concrete so heavy it had turned bone and muscle into something completely unrecognizable. 

I couldn’t even tell where her legs should have been. 

Half her bowels had spilled free, pink and awful against the gray rubble, blood pooling fast, spreading outward in dark, unstoppable waves.

“No. No, no, no—”

Something inside me snapped. 

Time stopped making sense. 

The world narrowed to red and gray and her face.

I clawed at the rubble like an animal, screaming until my throat burned raw, ripping concrete and fabric away with bloody hands that couldn’t grip anymore. “Help! Please—Help! Somebody help me! Please!”

My voice broke, cracked apart, turned into sobs I couldn’t control. 

Tears poured down my face, mixing with dust and blood as I scraped uselessly at the debris, my hands slipping again and again, slick with her blood.

“I’ve got you Sadie, I’ve got you,” I sobbed, over and over, even as I knew I didn’t. 

“Please—someone—please—”

The words dissolved into screaming, then into choking cries as I kept digging, kept clawing, kept begging the universe to provide me with some kind of aid, even as the floor around us turned completely, horribly red.

Then the cloud of dust covering everything abruptly shifted.

A sudden gust of wind tore through the store, ripping the haze away in a violent rush and clearing my vision in an instant. Light flooded in through the shattered entrance, and there—hovering just above the ground—was a figure.

A hero.

He floated effortlessly, framed by the broken doorway, dressed in a bright green-and-yellow suit that looked almost obscene against all the gray and red. 

A sleek mask hid his face, but his eyes were visible.

His head turned and they locked onto mine. 

Hope slammed into my chest so hard it made me physically recoil.

“Help—!” I sobbed, my voice breaking apart. “Please—she’s hurt, she’s dying—please, you can help her, you can fix this, just—please!”

For one perfect, horrible moment, I believed it. He was here. He could save her.

His eyes stayed locked onto mine for several moments, then went towards Sadie just below me. Then they came back up to mine, and held for a while.

I wanted to scream at him to do something, to help me… But I couldn’t. 

Then… he turned. 

Just… turned away. And flew out of sight in the blink of an eye.

My brain refused to understand it at first. 

It lagged behind reality, struggling to catch up as the space where he’d been went empty again.

“No—”

Then it hit.

I screamed, the cry tearing out from the bottom of my very soul, crashing through my heart and rupturing every single part of me as it left me. I screamed until my throat physically tore open, until my vision swam, until the world narrowed down to one single, impossible question.

“COME BACK!” I howled. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING—COME BACK! PLEASE—IT’S YOUR FUCKING JOB! SHE NEEDS HELP! SAVE SADIE! SAVE HER!”

Why?
Why would he leave?
Why would he look at us and then leave?
What had Sadie ever done to deserve this?

He’d wasted time just staring at me. 

Time he could’ve used to help. To lift the slab. To stop the bleeding. To make it all okay. 

What was the point of that suit, those Powers, if this was what he did with them?!

My rage and panic twisted together into something feral—

“Don’t cry, Princess…”

Her voice was barely there.

It cut through me like a knife.

I snapped my gaze back to Sadie. 

Her eyes were half-lidded now, unfocused, but she was smiling. Somehow. 

One trembling hand reached up, brushing weakly against mine, her fingers moving in slow, soothing strokes.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’ll be fine. You’ll be okay too.”

“No,” I choked. “No, no, don’t—don’t say that. Stay with me. Please.”

She was comforting me.

Even now.

Despair hollowed me out as I realized the truth sinking in: She was dying. Right here. In my arms. 

And I had no idea how to stop it. 

No cheatsheet. No loophole. No clever retort, no answer. 

Nothing.

The only thing keeping me from shattering completely was her voice. 

So soft, so familiar. Always steady and caring.

“It’ll be okay, I promise,” she said again, quieter this time.

Sadie never lied to me.
She never had.
She never would.

So it had to be okay.

I shook her gently, tears streaming down my face. “Hey—hey, stay awake. Talk to me. Please, Sadie. Don’t leave me. Don’t—don’t do this.”

My throat burned. 

I tasted blood as I tried to continue to speak, my voice reduced to raw, broken sounds. 

Her eyes fluttered. Her breathing slowed.

“Please,” I begged, my forehead pressing to hers. “I need you. Stay with me. Just stay.”

Her eyes closed.

Her chest didn’t rise again.

My mind went blank.

“Sadie…?”

I shook her. Harder. 

“Sadie? Hey. Wake up. Wake up!”

Nothing.

Then panic, horror, dread and instinct mixed.

‘CPR. Oxygen. Keep oxygen moving to the brain.’

I climbed over her, hands planting on her chest, and pushed down with everything I had.

There was a wet, horrible crack as her ribs gave way beneath me, the sound shooting straight up my spine.

“One… Two… One… Two…”

It was going to be fine.

She had said so.

She promised.

—

At some point, emergency services arrived.

I was pulled away from Sadie by force, and they took her with them.

Someone asked if I was okay. 

I said I was. Sadie had said so. I had to be okay.

They treated my wounds, and my parents picked me up afterward.

They were overjoyed that I’d made it out of whatever had happened at the mall, but they knew right away that something was wrong.

They were good parents.

I didn’t sleep. Not that night. Not the next. Not the one after that.

A therapist talked to me at some point. They said it hadn’t been my fault.

I knew that.
I’d been powerless. I’d been useless. Of course it wasn’t my fault.
I couldn’t have been responsible even if I’d tried.

Empty platitudes. Useless.

I got a week off from university. Then it was back to the lecture hall.

Eyes on me. On the empty seat to my right.

Some people tried to talk to me, but I couldn’t understand a single word they said.

They understood. Of course they did. For another week. Maybe two.

Then I had to be normal again.
That was the statute of limitations for grief and shock.
Anything longer than that was an inconvenience to their lives, so that’s the time I’d have.

The university therapist talked to me. 

I told him I was okay. Because Sadie had said I would be. 

I didn’t feel okay, but that just meant I was wrong. I often was.

I’d learned to trust Sadie about these things.

Another week passed. I couldn’t remember a single second of it.

Faces, conversations, colors, day and night—everything blurred past without leaving a mark.

Then Jason called.

My mind managed a sliver of focus at that.

‘Right… Sadie’s boyfriend… I should’ve talked to him earlier…’

I answered.

“So you’re alive, huh?” he said, his voice raw and tight.

“Yes… I’m sorry for not—”

“Shut up. Just… shut your fucking mouth. I don’t want to hear it,” he cut in. “Tell me how. How did it happen? What happened? That’s all I need.”

I swallowed, trying to think back, but it was all a blur.

I didn’t like being talked to like this, but I couldn’t push back. 

He was grieving. He wasn’t okay.

“It happened so fast,” I tried to recount. “One moment we were shopping for a sports bra at SuperStretch, and… the next, everything was hell. I—I don’t know what happened.”

I should have known by now. From all the retellings. From the news loops on TV and radio, repeating the timeline and the numbers day and night.

But I didn’t. I still had no idea what had actually happened.

“Useless…” Jason said. “You’re fucking useless, Teresa. I just know you somehow got Sadie killed by being worthless. Did you even fucking try to help her? I always told her to stay away from you… It should have been you…”

The call went dead.

And something inside me finally, completely broke.

I couldn’t breathe. 

My lungs refused to work, air scraping uselessly at my throat without ever filling my chest. 

My vision blew out into harsh, blinding white, like someone had turned the world up too bright. I clutched at myself, nails digging into my face, drawing blood, but my body didn’t respond the way it was supposed to.

My mind unraveled.

Images slammed into me in rapid flashes, one after another, too fast to process. 

Three planets hung in a black void, orbiting in impossible patterns. 

Three suns burned above them, their light bleeding together into violent, vibrant colors that hurt to look at. 

Shapes overlapped, folded into themselves, scenes stacking on top of scenes until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began.

There were things moving in the gaps between the images. 

Indescribable shapes. Wrong shapes. 

Creatures that didn’t belong to any world I knew, watching from angles that didn’t exist, their presence pressing against my thoughts like fingernails against thin glass.

Then it all shifted, flipped and folded.

The visions changed. They felt closer now. 

Personal.

Bottles. Flasks. Injectors. Glass and metal, clean lines and sharp edges. Liquids in impossible colors swirled inside them—greens, violets, glowing blues that pulsed like they were alive. 

Grenades. Bombs. Devices meant to be thrown, meant to break things apart.

Bodies twisted and changed. Flesh reshaped itself, stretched and reformed, bones bending, skin hardening, dissolving, becoming something else entirely.

And then I saw it. 

I felt it immediately. The crowning jewel.

A green tablet. 

Shattered.

Its pieces scattered across the three planets, fragments glinting under the light of the three suns, embedded in soil and stone like seeds waiting to grow.

I gagged.

The world snapped back into place as I collapsed forward, retching violently onto myself and the bed. Acid burned my throat as vomit pooled on top and around me, my hands shaking as I tried to breathe again. 

It took long seconds before air finally forced its way into my lungs.

I stayed there, curled up, coughing and shaking, my head spinning as reality slowly settled back in.

Then it hit me.

‘A Convergence Vision…!’

I’d finally snapped. 

But the universe, in its infinite cruelty, had chosen this exact timing to answer my longstanding prayers and pleads. And in return, for its perverse amusement, it had given me the one thing I’d been asking for.

Power.

The realization sent a jolt through me. 

Excitement—real excitement—cut through the numb fog that had wrapped around me for weeks. I scrambled to my feet, not bothering to clean myself up or wipe my face, my heart racing as I rushed to the desk in my room.

I yanked open a drawer, grabbed a notebook, and flipped it open with trembling hands.

Words poured out of me as I started to write, ideas forming faster than I could keep up with, knowledge surfacing from somewhere deep and instinctive.

My Power was there, urging me to put its first message to me down on paper.

To teach me how to use it properly.

It didn’t take more than three seconds to write out the first part. I stopped and stared at what I’d written, the knowledge not sitting in my head as thoughts, but flowing through me, using me as a conduit.

[Blood Coagulant]: 1x Vial, 2x Egg, 1x Matchstick
Description: May be applied externally to any wound that can be fully covered to immediately stop the bleeding. May be drunk instead to convey enhanced natural coagulation for all subsequent wounds until the formulae runs out.

It took me a few seconds to understand what I was looking at.

“A fucking recipe,” I muttered, then flinched as my brain jolted with a faint shock. “No… not a recipe. A formulae. A formulae for a blood coagulant…”

I just stared at it for a long, silent minute—then vomited again, this time from pure, unadulterated anger at the universe.

And then I laughed.

And laughed.

And laughed.

And laughed…

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