The flight back wasn’t majestic in the slightest.
No uniform trajectory toward the setting sun, no heroic posing in the clouds.
I was a dislocated puppet, completely out of strength, guided by the sheer survival instinct of the thing serving as my second skin.
I reached the height of my window just as the sun was gently dipping over the street, bathing the neighborhood in a cold, late-day light.
I tried to brake, but my muscles refused to respond.
BAM.
I caught the window frame dead-on, smashing my skull for the umpteenth time that day.
I tumbled inside and crashed brutally onto my bedroom floorboards with the grace of a sack of potatoes.
The silence of the house enveloped me.
Nobody was home.
The adrenaline, which had kept me alive and conscious until now, plummeted all at once, leaving me shaking from head to toe.
I was winded, panting like a hunted beast on the cold hardwood floor.
And yet, despite the utter exhaustion, an insidious unease lingered at the back of my mind.
A stubborn sensation of cold.
As if a danger were watching me from afar, deep within the gray clouds of Northbridge.
I brought trembling hands to my face and pulled off the mask.
The white suit understood that the immediate danger was gone.
It retracted beneath my skin with a repulsive, organic sucking sound—a slimy schlouck that made me sick to my stomach.
I finally breathed the dusty air of my room.
A stream of warm, sticky blood slid from my chin and splattered onto the wooden floor, while another crust, already dry, pulled the skin across half my face.
Groaning pathetically, I stood up.
Every single inch of my body screamed in pain.
I dragged myself to the bathroom, leaning against the walls to keep from falling, and flipped on the harsh light above the sink.
The reflection in the mirror was terrifying.
I was physically destroyed.
“Nice look, man,” I whispered with a bitter laugh that split my lip open.
“The ‘ground meat’ style is very trendy this season.”
My face was battered, swollen like a balloon, and smeared with half-dried blood.
My nose, which I had felt shatter during the sixty-mile-per-hour impact, was straight.
No bones in my skull were caved in.
It was a miracle.
Or rather, the white parasite had acted as cellular cement at a terrifying speed.
However, the magic stopped at the bones.
My skin was in tatters.
Bruises of a near-black purple stretched across my chest, my neck, and my arms.
My nose was still bleeding slightly, and my muscles were so sore that the simple act of raising my arm to turn on the faucet drew tears from my eyes.
I splashed my face with cold water.
The water instantly turned red in the basin.
I raised my head.
I looked like a corpse, I was in dying pain, and I had just discovered that the world of heroes was nothing but a macabre theater run by psychopaths.
Yet, as my exhausted gaze locked with my own in the mirror, a slight smile stretched across my split lips.
Lily.
My little sister was out of harm’s way.
She was safe and sound.
I had done my job as a big brother.
The rest didn’t damn well matter anymore.
A few hours later.
I’ll spare you the poetic descriptions of my lonely convalescence.
Often in movies, this kind of post-traumatic scene unfolds under a black-and-white filter, with a soft piano melody playing while the hero stares melancholically out the window with a stylish bandage over his brow.
In reality, it’s neither soft, nor melancholy, nor stylish.
It’s just pathetic.
My mom and sister, accompanied by a few family relatives and neighbors, arrived later that evening, rattling the walls of the house as they slammed the front door shut.
My mom was in an indescribable state of panic.
Her eyes were red, her hair disheveled.
She rushed at me… and slapped me.
Not a little movie slap.
A real, terrified mother’s slap—the kind from someone who can’t reach her kid while the city is going down in flames and blood.
“Why the fuck weren’t you answering your phone?!” she screamed, her voice breaking, before grabbing me by the collar to crush me against her in an embrace that nearly broke my ribs (which pretty much already were).
It was at that exact microsecond that my brain reconnected.
Holy shit…
I left my backpack and my shattered phone in the filthy old alley behind the school when I put on the mask.
I had to improvise the lie of my life in a quarter of a second.
I stammered, my voice trembling, that I had been violently mugged by some junkies while trying to run toward Lily’s school.
I explained that, face bloody and without a phone, I had finally walked back home when I saw on the city’s giant screens that a Super—that fucking Zenith—had saved the day.
The bitter taste of that lie, of having to credit my sister’s rescue to that golden monster, made me want to throw up.
But my mom bought it.
Given the state of my face, it was the perfect alibi.
And after that… we cried.
A lot.
Like, a whole lot.
After Lily’s terrifying close call and my alleged assault, the pressure was far too heavy for normal humans.
There was nothing grandiose or heroic in our living room.
Just an exhausted mother, a broken big brother, and a traumatized little girl, sitting on the carpet, happy to find themselves alive.
I’m not going to lie to you just to save my ego: I have rarely cried as much in my life as I did that night.
All my stress, my terror of Grizzly, my horror at Zenith’s revelations, the dread of losing Lily… everything came pouring out in liquid form.
I was a pathetic puddle of snot and tears, clinging to my little sister’s sweater.
Yeah, it was totally gross on my part.
But at that moment, it was the only way to prove to my own body that I was still a human being.