“Whew…
finally done…”
Colin sat back, let the breath out slow, eyes tracing the dense scrawl covering the manuscript pages in front of him.
He gathered the sheets, tucked them into the drawer, and only then felt something loosen in his chest — like a stone had finally rolled off it.
Relief, mostly.
A thin, hollow edge underneath it too, the kind that comes after burning through everything you had left to give.
“That’s all I can do.
Rest’s up to whatever happens next.
Just — let this work.”
Quiet, mostly to himself.
He clicked off the desk lamp that had burned the whole afternoon and evening through, grabbed his coat and hat off the rack, pulled them on.
At the door, he paused.
Looked back over the office — the typesetting machine gone quiet, the empty chairs, the whole cramped little operation that had somehow become his.
Let out one last breath.
Turned.
Shut the door hard behind him.
If this didn’t work, tonight might be the last night this place ever saw him lock up.
“Wonder if the food’s any good in Hooverville…”
…
“…take a can of corned beef, mix it with canned pickled peas, gelatin, lemon juice, a splash of vinegar — simple, filling, and dare I say, delicious.
Easy enough for the whole family, and best of all, every ingredient’s cheap and sitting right there on your shelf already…”
Later that night, Colin sat at his desk, gnawing through hard bread smeared with carrot jam, half-listening to Betty Crocker’s Cooking School of the Air crackling out of the radio — the voice actress rattling off Depression-friendly recipes in a bright, chipper pitch that didn’t match the ingredients one bit.
Later generations would call this stretch of history radio’s Golden Age, and it wasn’t hard to see why.
Misery this widespread pushed people indoors, and any household that could scrape together a radio treated it like the finest entertainment money didn’t have to buy.
No cash for the pictures, no cash for a show downtown — but the radio ran free, day and night, and it filled the silence for anyone with nowhere else to be.
Programming exploded to match the demand.
Something for the old, something for housewives, something even for kids stuck home with nothing else to do.
Colin swallowed the last bite of bread, listening to a recipe that sounded worse with every ingredient named, then reached for his homemade lemon juice and drank it down in one go.
The lemon juice cut through the queasy churn in his stomach, tart and plain, just enough sweetness to make it bearable.
Colin rubbed his belly, reached over, and spun the radio dial.
Swing music flooded the room, bright and quick.
He cleaned off his plate to the rhythm of it, sat there a while longer, letting the music carry him somewhere past thought. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Lost track of the time completely — didn’t notice until a whole new set had cycled in — before the pull of sleep finally won out and he clicked the radio off.
“Whatever happens, happens.”
He killed the desk lamp, stretched out on the bed, murmured the words to himself once more before letting his eyes fall shut.
The pull came fast this time — that same invisible current dragging his consciousness down and under, green light closing around him from every direction.
…
“Hss…”
Colin’s eyes snapped open, back in the alley.
His hand found the wound on instinct, pressing down as he forced his body sideways, dragging himself up against the filthy brick wall behind him, breath rasping in and out.
“This is…
bad.
Really bad.”
He looked down at the damage, hand shaking as he lifted his shirt to check it by what little light made it into the alley.
Good news: the bleeding had stopped.
Something about crossing between the two Worlds seemed to buy him that much — enough of a buffer that he hadn’t simply bled out the second he landed back here.
Bad news: that buffer wasn’t healing anything.
Just stalling the inevitable.
Which meant the priority now was simple.
Get an ambulance.
Fast.
Does the Bugle even carry accident insurance for reporters?
The thought barely had time to form before the pain yanked him back to the moment.
Teeth gritted, he forced his blood-slick arm to move, patting down his jacket pocket, searching.
“…No.
No, no — you’re kidding me.”
His pocket came back empty, and whatever color remained in his face drained out along with it.
Those two junkies hadn’t just robbed him.
They’d taken his phone too.
This is actually going to kill me.
No room for second-guessing, not with his life bleeding out through a hole in his chest.
Colin clamped one hand over the wound, pushed off the wall, and forced his legs into something like walking, stumbling toward the mouth of the alley one shuffling step at a time.
Somebody.
Anybody.
A stranger with a phone and enough decency to make one call.
He kept moving, kept praying under his breath, closing the distance inch by agonizing inch. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
Footsteps.
Fast ones, coming from the far end of the alley.
Someone’s here.
Hope flared hot and sudden in his chest, and he called out before he could think better of it.
“Help!
Please — I’ve been shot, somebody help—”
The words died in his throat.
Because the two shapes rounding the corner weren’t strangers.
They were the same two men who’d put the bullet in him in the first place.
Seriously?
An encore?
“The fuck—”
Both men froze up just as hard as Colin did, staring at him standing upright when he should’ve been a corpse on the pavement.
Cursing broke the silence first, then hands went for waistbands, guns coming up fast, clearly set on finishing the job properly this time.
Wonder if getting shot again sends me back to the other World.
The thought cut through Colin’s head clean and calm, staring straight down two gun barrels that had already proven they meant business.
Gunfire cracked through the alley, muffled and flat.
The pain never came.
“What?!”
A wall of a man’s back filled Colin’s vision instead, planted between him and the shots.
“You good, pal?”
The man shifted his stance, feet grinding against the concrete where he’d dug in, and glanced back over one shoulder at Colin.
“Luke…
Luke Cage!”
“Power Man!”
Both muggers blurted the name out in the same breath, pure reflex.
“Since you already know who I am, let’s skip the part where you make this difficult.”
Luke Cage rolled his neck, a sharp crack echoing off the brick, mouth curling up at one corner as his gaze settled on the two men in front of him.
He hadn’t even moved yet.
Just standing there was enough to press down on both muggers like a physical weight, something instinctive screaming at them to run.
Panic won out over sense.
The gunman swung his barrel dead onto Luke Cage and emptied several rounds in a row, screaming through every shot.