I felt like I had swallowed a black hole.
Sitting at the small kitchen table, I was shoving my sixth slice of peanut butter toast down my throat with the frenzy of a shipwreck survivor.
My metabolism was screaming.
The symbiote didn’t leave a medical bill; it took its payment straight out of the hide—in calories.
I carefully lifted the collar of my T-shirt to inspect the damage.
The night before, my shoulder had been crushed by the backlash of my own blow.
This morning?
The muscles were perfectly stitched back together, the joint popped back into place.
The massive black bruise that had covered my side had already turned a greenish-yellow.
A miraculous recovery, straight out of a comic book.
Except in comic books, they never tell you that accelerated cellular regeneration makes you feel like you’ve been run through a meat grinder from the inside out.
I was riddled with divine soreness.
The front door opened with a familiar creak.
My mom, Elena, appeared in the doorway.
She was still wearing her wrinkled nurse’s scrubs, her features drawn by the exhaustion of yet another underpaid night shift.
She set her keys on the counter with the sluggishness of a zombie.
I hastily snapped my collar down to hide the remaining bruises and took a sip of orange juice, trying to look as innocent as possible for a guy who had just siphoned off half the week’s groceries.
“Raid the fridge at seven in the morning now, do we?” she sighed, sinking into the chair across from me, too tired to actually get angry.
“Teenage growth spurt, Mom,” I mumbled with my mouth full.
“My body’s demanding fuel for… for math class…”
She managed a weak smile, ruffled my hair with her hand, and grabbed the coffee pot.
“Leave some bread for your sister. And get moving, you’re going to be late.”
…
The atmosphere was electric, buzzing.
It felt like a high-voltage power line had snapped right in the middle of the courtyard.
Every single student had their nose glued to their phone.
The excited whispers formed an incessant hum echoing through the hallways.
The word “Hope” was on everyone’s lips.
The blurry video from last night was looping on every screen.
“Owen!”
A hand slammed down on my shoulder—thankfully, the left one.
Aamir emerged from the crowd, his face lit up by an ecstatic grin, his eyes gleaming with the excitement of a conspiracy theorist who had just found irrefutable proof.
“Man, tell me you saw the news!” he exclaimed, shoving his phone under my nose.
“Hope! He’s alive! I told you yesterday, that whole deadly clash thing was just a smoke screen!”
I looked at him with the flat expression of a guy being pitched a vacuum cleaner with no motor.
“Of course, Aamir. The most powerful and wealthiest hero on the planet decided to fake his own death just to make his grand, triumphant comeback… by smashing through trash cans in the Northbridge industrial district. It’s ironclad logic.”
“You have zero geopolitical vision, Frey! It’s a government setup, they hid him to protect him from—”
“Aamir!”
A shrill voice cut his theory short.
Three girls from the track team had just surrounded him.
“You said you’d help us review history before first period,” the tallest one pouted, tugging at his sleeve.
Natural charisma took back the wheel.
Aamir flashed me an apologetic wink, pocketed his phone, and let himself be swept away by his fan club with the ease of a pop star on tour.
I sighed, relieved to escape the interrogation.
But the real irony of the morning was waiting for me a little further down, by the lockers.
Sam Kodd was there.
He had the complexion of a sick turnip, purple bags under his eyes, and he stood slightly slouched, looking on the verge of a stomach flu.
His usual two goons shared the exact same dug-up-corpse look.
I stopped a few feet away, pretending to look for a book in my bag so I could eavesdrop.
“I swear, man,” Sam stammered to another football player, “we don’t remember jack shit. Total blackout. We woke up three blocks from Northbridge in an alley, sick as dogs. We must’ve eaten something spoiled, or maybe we got gassed by a factory leak.”
The other guy chuckled, clearly skeptical.
“Yeah, right, Sam. You guys just had a synchronized case of food poisoning, huh? Just admit you were drinking on a weeknight and ran into a wall.”
Owen smiled in the shadow of his locker.
I was savoring the moment.
Me, the asthmatic cockroach, had sent this human tank flying into the garbage at Mach 1 with a simple flick, and the poor guy was looking for gastric excuses.
It was the butterfly effect of justice.
Then, my smile slowly faded.
My internal sarcasm hit a wall of cold logic…
Wait…
Sam Kodd had an oversized ego.
If he had been thrashed by what he thought was a Super in a costume, he would have shouted it from the rooftops.
He would have invented an epic story where he held his ground against the great “Hope” before succumbing to divine strength.
He would never have made up a pathetic story about food poisoning and partial amnesia.
Unless he wasn’t making it up.
Unless he had truly forgotten.
A nasty shiver snaked up my spine.
I slammed my locker door shut.
Yesterday’s soreness was nothing compared to the trouble that had just begun.