A few minutes before the S.R.B. breach teams blew the primary school’s doors open, the world was spinning at a completely different pace for a tiny fraction of humanity.
Hundreds of miles away from that bleak, gray suburb, the sun flooded a sumptuous penthouse perched atop a dizzying glass tower.
A man slowly emerged from the crumpled silk sheets of a king-size bed.
Around him, scattered across luxurious pillows, half a dozen conquests with model-like measurements were still asleep, exhausted by the night’s excesses.
The man sat on the edge of the mattress, stretching with the feline grace of a predator.
He had the appearance of a thirty-something man in his prime, at the peak of his splendor, though his perfect genetics blithely concealed his sixty-plus years.
He stood over six-foot-six and was literally built like a Greek god.
His long, orange mane fell over his sculpted shoulders, but what struck people the most—what froze anyone who caught his gaze—were his eyes.
The irises had nothing human about them; they radiated the incandescent, golden color of the sun at its zenith.
Groggy, massaging his temples with the typical hangover of a decadent star, he snapped his fingers.
“What time is it?” he asked in a deep voice that vibrated through the room.
One of the young women, startled awake, looked at the digital clock embedded in the marble and whispered the time to him in a timid voice.
He closed his eyes again and let out a deep, annoyed sigh.
“Dammit… I’m late for work. The agency is gonna have a fit again.”
With a mock-penitent air, he stood up.
He spread his arms wide in the middle of the bedroom, waiting obediently.
His conquests, knowing the routine by heart, rose like the handmaidens of a pharaoh.
With silent devotion, they came to dress him.
They adjusted onto his titanic body a sumptuous midnight-blue polymer suit, enhanced with armor plating and a majestic, bright orange cape.
This was Zenith.
The Golden Lion.
The nation’s “New Number One” since Hope’s death.
Once adorned with his divine attributes, Zenith took a step toward the balcony.
The immense floor-to-ceiling glass doors slid open automatically at his approach, letting in the high-altitude wind.
With a simple push-off from his tiptoes, without a word of goodbye, he took off.
A sonic boom shattered the business district’s morning silence, pulverizing a few empty champagne flutes on the penthouse coffee table in the process.
When he arrived above the gray sky of Northbridge, Zenith altered his trajectory.
Before entering the fray, he took care to slow down considerably.
He knew the playbook by heart: he had to give the 24-hour news helicopters and the paparazzi massed behind the security cordons enough time to focus their telephoto lenses.
He initiated a majestic descent, his cape flapping heroically in the wind, and landed with absolute grace in front of the police barricades.
Zenith offered the cameras his best profile, flashing an ultra-bright smile—simultaneously reassuring, determined, and engineered with a practiced, false humility.
He strode confidently toward the armored van serving as the crisis command center.
The rear door swung wide open.
Kendrick, a middle-aged S.R.B. agent, hurried out.
His uniform was soaked in sweat, his face contorted with anxiety.
He did not look like a man relieved to see the Number One arrive.
“Good morning, Mr. Zenith,” Kendrick stammered, practically apologizing for existing.
“Per the directives of Aegis, your agency, we were maintaining the perimeter and holding off on any action until your arrival to guarantee you exclusive intervention rights…”
Zenith kept his commercial smile, waving to the distant crowd, but his attention locked onto the trembling little man.
“However…” Kendrick swallowed, “the situation escalated. An anomaly breached the school. A Vigilante showed up and engaged the target. We had no choice—we just launched the assault a moment ago.”
To the cameras fifty yards away, Zenith still wore the face of a paragon of justice listening to a police report.
But up close, for Kendrick, the world grew dark.
Zenith’s solar eyes turned instantly to ice.
The human warmth vanished from his gaze, replaced by an abyss of contempt.
From his six-foot-six height, he looked down at the agent and his heavy-armor clad men exactly like one would look at a swarm of insects crawling near one’s shoe.
Without ever wiping away his public smile, Zenith leaned in slightly, bringing his lips to the agent’s ear.
“When Aegis gives you an order, Mr. Kendrick,” he whispered in a soft voice dripping with lethal venom, “you sit on your hands and you wait nicely until I arrive. The script didn’t account for any fucking ‘Vigilante’ stepping in.”
Kendrick opened his mouth to justify himself, but Zenith had already turned away.
With a sharp leap, pulverizing the asphalt beneath his boots, he shot upward and rocketed toward the primary school’s roof.
Zenith entered the building through the gaping hole left in the administration office’s ceiling.
He expected to have to throw some punches, to put on a show for the thermal cameras and drones filming from the outside.
But landing amidst the debris, he stopped dead.
The job was already done.
The fearsome Grizzly—the mercenary paid a fortune by Aegis to terrorize the country—lay on the floor.
His skull was bloody, embedded in the plaster, completely knocked out and pathetic.
The room was ravaged, bearing witness to unheard-of violence, but the day’s star had nothing to do with it.
Annoyed that an amateur had stolen his prime time, Zenith sighed in frustration.
He had to save appearances.
To make the scene look more “authentic,” he took care to deliberately crumple his own pristine cape and rubbed a block of dusty plaster against his blue chest piece, faking the stigmates of a fierce struggle.
Satisfied with his makeshift makeup, he exited through the broken window, flying out in full view of everyone while holding the vanquished monster at arm’s length.
He landed in the center of the security perimeter to the cheers of the crowd and the police.
Raising the bloody mercenary’s body like a hunting trophy, he adopted a deep, resonant voice, projected with flawless theatricality.
“Rest assured, everyone, the danger is averted!” he claimed, looking grim.
“The clash was fierce; this monster gave me a run for my money and rattled the very walls of this school, but the threat is definitively neutralized! Alas…”
He lowered his head, closing his eyes with a feigned sadness worthy of an Oscar.
“A civilian casualty is to be deplored. A brave teacher fell before my arrival. My heart, and that of the entire nation, bleeds for his family today.”
The illusion of compassion only lasted as long as the applause.
The moment he was safe from the lenses, in the secure alley behind the command vans, the mask slipped off.
Zenith hurled Grizzly’s heavy body onto the tarmac, discarding him with as much consideration as a trash bag filled with organic waste.
He spun around in one block and grabbed Kendrick by the strap of his body armor, lifting him off the ground.
Zenith’s menacing aura was, this time, entirely unfiltered.
“Listen to me well, you miserable little paper-pusher,” the Number One spat.
“You are going to keep this piece of garbage alive, hide him in a hole, and interrogate him about that fucking Vigilante. As for the kids in the classroom inside…”
His golden eyes flashed with a cruel light.
“Get a Rank-B Medium from the agency down here immediately. Wipe their memories, modify them, I don’t give a shit—just come up with a credible story. The public must never, ever know that a goddamn amateur did my job.”
Kendrick, his feet dangling in the void, on the verge of hyperventilation, nodded frantically.
“If I ever catch you disobeying my agency’s directives again, Kendrick, I will destroy you, your career, and everything you hold dear. Is that clear?”
Zenith dropped him roughly.
Kendrick collapsed to his knees, coughing hard enough to rip his lungs out.
Without a backward glance, Zenith took off in a flash.
He shot up vertically, stopping abruptly mid-flight several hundred feet in the air, floating above the city.
Far from any prying eyes, his perfect face finally contorted, twisted by a genuine, burning rage.
He activated his thermal vision, scanning the horizon for the signature of this “Vigilante.” But Northbridge’s thick gray clouds stepped in, forming a cold, impenetrable veil that blocked his view.
His prey had vanished into thin air.
Fists clenched until his knuckles turned white, looking like a god of war frustrated at being humiliated by a mortal, Zenith roared into the howling high-altitude winds:
“You fucking rat… You’re lucky the sky is covered. But I promise you… when I find you, I will slaughter you.”
The Golden Lion remained there, an incandescent silhouette cut out against the grayness of the skies—the promise of a terrifying, unstoppable, and absolute threat now looming over the shattered life of Owen Frey.