The end of the day settled over Northbridge with its usual gray, heavy, polluted gloom.
I walked along, dragging my feet, my back slouched under the weight of my backpack and sheer exhaustion.
My healed shoulder still shot vague phantom jolts through me, and my bandaged wrist reminded me that physics was a cruel mistress.
I just wanted to get home, lock myself in my room, and forget the outside world even existed.
To save ten minutes, I took a shortcut that ran alongside the entrance of an abandoned underground parking garage.
The place reeked of urine and damp concrete.
BAM.
Oof.
The muffled sound made me stop dead.
It was the distinct noise of a shoe slamming into human ribs.
From the depths of the access ramp, a man’s voice, cracked with pain, called out for help.
I narrowed my eyes in the gloom.
Three punks in synthetic leather jackets were brutally beating a middle-aged man curled up on the ground.
My survival philosophy flashed in neon letters across my mind: Never get involved.
I spun on my heels, ready to slip away quietly and call the cops from an anonymous payphone.
It was the smart thing to do.
The human thing to do.
Except I wasn’t entirely human anymore.
My backpack began to vibrate with the violence of a chainsaw motor.
Before I could even rip it off, the symbiote registered the violence of the scene—or perhaps an old Pavlovian reflex inherited from the original Hope had just kicked in.
The zipper exploded.
The white-and-gold mass launched itself out like a rabid beast, wrapping around my waist, my torso, rushing up my neck in a fraction of a second.
No, no, no!
Let go of me!
The parasite didn’t care.
It forced me to face forward.
My legs stiffened, and I was literally dragged toward the alley by my own armor, my heels scraping pathetically against the asphalt.
I was being held hostage by my own clothes, panicking at the thought of walking straight into a slaughter.
Forced to intervene, and seeing that one of the guys was about to launch a kick into the victim’s skull, panic made me open my mouth.
“Hey! Stop!”
In my head, it was the wavering, terrified voice of a high schooler praying not to get stabbed.
But the mask sealed over my face wasn’t about to let that slide.
The polymer filtered my vocal cords.
What echoed through the underground parking garage was a deep, horrifying, metallic growl that literally rattled the water in the puddles around us.
The three attackers froze, their eyes wide, turning toward the garage entrance.
For two seconds, I actually believed it.
I was the great, the terrifying Hope.
Then, the fear drained from their faces, replaced by an amused confusion.
The real Hope was a six-foot-three mountain of a man, built like a Greek god, weighing at least two hundred and twenty pounds of pure muscle.
Standing before them was Owen Frey.
Five-foot-seven on a good day, shoulders slouched from anxiety, floating inside an armor that looked ten times too divine for my frail frame. Get faster updates on g.com.
The leader of the pack, a guy with a botched tribal tattoo on his neck, let out a fat laugh.
“What kind of dollar-store cosplay is this?” he spat, stepping forward.
“Did you get lost on your way to Comic-Con, shorty?”
The other two snickered and fanned out to encircle me.
They were convinced they were dealing with a harmless fanatic.
I wanted to back up, but the suit anchored my feet to the ground like concrete pillars.
“I’m gonna make you eat that cape, fake-hero,” the tattooed guy growled.
He cocked his arm and threw a massive right hook, aiming straight for my mask’s faceplate.
I instinctively closed my eyes, bracing for impact.
Suddenly, the world slowed down.
Bullet time kicked in.
The suit’s hyper-developed senses took over from my failing nervous system.
Before my brain even had time to formulate an order, my armored arm shot upward.
CLANG.
My open palm stopped the attacker’s fist dead—one-handed, without my body yielding a single millimeter.
The impact rang out through the underground garage as if the guy had just punched a solid titanium safe.
The thug’s face contorted, his eyes widening in agony as his knuckles shattered.
Panicked by how close this guy was, I just wanted to push him away.
I made a clumsy twisting motion to clear his arm from my personal space.
A simple schoolyard shove.
But the suit didn’t know moderation.
It magnified my movement with a terrifying kinetic surge.
CRAC.
The sound was gruesome.
The attacker’s arm twisted on itself, the bone snapping at an unnatural angle, nearly tearing the sleeve of his jacket.
The guy shrieked in sharp agony, his knees hitting the floor.
He collapsed, clutching his elbow, retching bile.
Behind my mask, I stood petrified, my breath stolen by the horror of my own strength.
“He broke Rico’s arm!” one of the other two yelled.
Ceding to panic, the second attacker plunged his hand into his pocket and whipped out a switchblade.
With a flick of his thumb, the blade snapped out.
He charged head-first with a primal scream, driving the steel straight into my stomach.
I let out an internal scream of terror.
I had seen it coming, but I hadn’t been able to dodge.
CLING.
The cheap metal blade shattered dead against the white polymer of my abdomen, without leaving so much as a scratch on the armor.
The tip of the blade ricocheted off the asphalt.
The attacker stopped, blinking, staring at the broken stub of a handle he was still holding with the stupidest look in the history of crime.
Survival instinct, fueled by pure dread, made me react.
I closed my eyes and swung a completely amateur punch.
The kind of pathetic haymaker you throw when you’ve never learned how to fight.
But my arm was a prisoner of the symbiote.
BAM.
My steel knuckles smashed into the center of the knife-wielding man’s face.
His nose was instantly pulverized in a spray of scarlet blood that splattered across the immaculate white of my forearm.
He was thrown backward and crashed onto his back, hands plastered over his ruined face.
“Holy shit! He broke my nose, the freaking psycho!” he howled, his nasal voice drowning in blood.
The third guy backed up until he hit a concrete pillar.
His gaze darted from Rico with his broken arm, to his buddy with his mashed nose, and finally to me.
The illusion of the dollar-store cosplay had shattered.
They realized they weren’t dealing with a teenager in tights, but a real Super—likely a psychopathic Vigilante who mangled people in alleys for fun.
“Let’s get out of here! Move!”
In a chaotic scramble, they got to their feet as best they could and ran for their lives, tripping through the puddles, abandoning their victim without a backward glance.
The parking garage fell silent again, disturbed only by my own ragged breathing echoing against the internal walls of my helmet.
I looked down at the middle-aged man still on the floor.
He was groaning, his face bruised and swollen.
As the adrenaline dipped slightly, a rush of relief washed over me.
I had scared off the bad guys.
I had helped someone.
I took a step toward him and leaned down, extending my white-and-gold gauntleted hand to help him up.
But when the man looked up at me, he didn’t see a savior.
He saw a towering armor, completely devoid of human features, its fist dripping with the fresh blood of his attackers.
His eyes widened in pure terror.
He scrambled backward on his butt, scraping against the ground in an instinctive recoil.
“Don’t touch me!” he screamed, his voice torn by a panic far greater than what he had felt facing the street thugs.
He stumbled to his feet and went limping off toward the streetlights, fleeing the very thing that had just saved his life.
I was left alone.
My hand extended into the void, hovering over a puddle of blood and dirty water.
The silence of the garage crushed me.
Sensing the threat was entirely gone, the white membrane abruptly liquefied and slipped beneath my skin in a freezing shiver, returning to hide within my metabolism.
The cold air hit my sweaty face.
My legs gave out instantly.
I fell to my knees on the greasy concrete, my chest heaving with painful gasps, my heart hammering wildly.
My hands shook uncontrollably.
I looked at my knuckles, human once more—frail and pale.
I thanked the heavens, the universe, and the void that I wasn’t hurt.
But deep down in my knotted gut, a visceral, unbreakable vow had just been forged.
I would never play the hero again.
It was a sick joke.
I wasn’t cut out for this; the violence was terrifying, uncontrollable.
And that man’s flight had just proven it to me with brutal clarity: even when I tried to do the right thing, the world only saw me as one more monster.