Chapter Text
You don’t know what the sky is supposed to look like.
Not really.
You’ve seen pictures of it before. Old ones. Blurry ones. Half-rotted photographs pressed between the pages of books your father never let you keep for long. Diagrams with neat labels and careful arrows, all of which Father dismissed with a tight mouth and a colder voice.
“Inaccurate,” he’d say.
As if the sky itself had been misdrawn. As if the world above was only an old lie people kept repeating. But none of those pictures prepared you for this. Because the sky isn’t flat.
It isn’t a ceiling painted blue. It isn’t a picture. It isn’t a diagram. It isn’t something that can be folded into a book or explained away with Father’s clipped corrections.
It is endless.
It stretches above you in every direction, too wide for your eyes to understand, too open for your body to accept. There is no concrete pressing down over your head. No low hum of fluorescent lights. No water pipes trembling behind walls. No dull underground machinery breathing through vents like some sleeping animal.
There is nothing above you. Nothing but blue, llight and space.
Your chest rises too fast. Your breath comes sharp and uneven, catching in your throat like the air itself is different out here. Thinner. Cleaner. Alive in a way the bunker never was. It fills your lungs too quickly, cold and bright and strange, and your body doesn’t seem to know what to do with it.
The wind touches you.
Actually touches you.
Not recycled air from vents. Not the stale breath of sealed rooms and filtered systems. Real wind. It slips beneath the thin fabric of your hospital gown and raises bumps along your arms. It pushes your hair into your face. It smells like dirt and cut grass and smoke and hot pavement.
You lift one trembling hand toward the sun.
Sun.
You know the word. Father taught you the word. But knowing a word and standing beneath it are not the same thing.
Golden light bleeds between your fingers. It spills over your palm and paints your skin in warmth. You stare directly at it even though your eyes immediately burn, because some frantic, childish part of you needs to see it. Needs to prove that it is real. Your vision whites out at the edges. Tears gather. Your pupils fight to shrink against the brightness.
For one fragile second, you think it might be beautiful.
Then the world speaks. Not with sound. Well not at first.
A thought slides into your mind that does not belong to you.
Did I leave the stove on?
You flinch. Then another.
If he looks at her one more time, I swear….
And another.
Mom said I can’t have cookies before dinner, but she won’t know.
Then more. A dozen. A hundred. A thousand.
They do not come one at a time after that.
They come all at once.
Voices that aren’t voices slam into your skull from every direction. Murmurs, whispers, half-formed memories, fears, secrets, hunger, anger, annoyance, lust, panic. A woman thinking about what she’s making for dinner. A man wondering if he should cheat on his wife. A child planning to steal a cookie. Someone praying. Someone lying. Someone afraid of losing their job. Someone thinking about the strange girl standing in the street in a hospital gown.
All of them. Every mind. Every private, ugly, tender little thought.
They hit your brain like a bomb going off behind your eyes. A sharp ringing splits through your skull.
You gasp, but the sound comes out strangled.
Your knees buckle. Your hands fly to your temples, nails digging into your scalp as if you can claw the noise out. The pressure builds behind your eyes, beneath your teeth, at the base of your skull. It feels like your mind is swelling too large for your body. Like something invisible has pried you open and the world is pouring itself inside.
You curl inward, shaking.
“No…n-no, s-stop!”
But the thoughts keep coming.
They overlap until they are no longer words. They become heat. Static. Teeth. A living swarm pressing against the inside of your head.
Your mouth opens before you can stop it.
“Father is going to….he’s..he..”
You snap your jaw shut so hard your teeth click.
Father.
For one terrifying moment, the fear of him is stronger than the fear of anything else.
Your hand flies instinctively toward the back of your neck, searching for correction, punishment, restraint. Your fingers brush skin, hair, the thin collar of your gown.
Nothing…..
No hand closing around your arm. No command. No warning.
No Father.
Behind you, the door you were never supposed to open hangs crooked in its frame. Barely attached. Bent inward like it tried to hold something back and failed.
The sight of it makes your stomach hollow.
“Y-yeah?” you call weakly over your shoulder, voice small and trembling. “He’s not…”
The sentence dies when you look past the door.
Your house isn’t a house anymore.
It is a wound in the earth.
The place you have lived your entire life has been split open, gutted from beneath. Where walls and reinforced rooms and endless underground hallways used to be, there is only a massive crater torn into the neighborhood. Concrete slabs jut upward at impossible angles. Metal beams twist like broken bones. Wires spit weak sparks from the wreckage. Pipes hang open, dripping water into dust and ash. Smoke curls from the broken foundation in long, lazy ribbons.
The bunker is exposed.
Not hidden. Not safe. Not secret.
People are screaming now. Real screams. Audible screams.
They mix horribly with the mental ones, and your brain cannot separate them. Their mouths move, their thoughts shriek, and all of it folds together until the whole world becomes a single unbearable noise.
What is that?
Call someone!
Is she bleeding?
That thing came out of the ground!
Monster.
The word hits harder than the rest.
Monster?
You make a small, wounded sound and try to step forward.
Your hospital gown flutters around your legs. The wind bites at your bare skin. Your body is still hunched from the pain in your skull, one arm wrapped protectively around your middle while the other stays pressed to your head.
You take one shaky step. Except your foot doesn’t land. Your stomach drops.
“…Wait.”
The world tilts.
Your body pitches forward, but there is no ground beneath you to catch your weight. Panic punches the air out of your lungs. You flail, hair falling into your eyes, arms jerking out as though you can grab onto the wind itself.
The street shifts beneath you. Wait..no? Not shifts. It Lowers.
Driveways, lawns, parked cars, mailboxes, rooftops; they all stretch beneath you, smaller than they should be. Farther away than they should be.
You are not standing. You are floating.
Hovering several feet above the cracked pavement like gravity forgot how to hold you.
A strangled noise crawls out of your throat.
You try to force yourself down, but your body only wobbles in the air. Invisible pressure trembles around you. The loose ends of your hair drift upward. Dust and pebbles lift from the street beneath your dangling feet.
The voices spike again. People have seen. They are looking at you.
Every eye becomes another needle. Every thought becomes another blade.
She’s flying.
No, no, no, that’s not possible.
Get inside.
Don’t look at it.
Somebody do something.
You squeeze your eyes shut, shaking so badly your teeth chatter.
“I don’t…I don’t know how…”
Something cuts through the noise.
A rush of movement. coming at your head.
Your eyes snap open just in time to see a rake spinning toward you, metal teeth flashing in the sunlight. You jerk back with a cry as the rake misses your face by inches.
“You freak!” an older man shouts from his lawn. He is fat and red-faced, probably in his sixties, wearing a stained white wife beater and holding himself with the shaky courage of someone terrified enough to become cruel. “Get away from my house! Get away from my lawn!”
Behind him, his wife cowers near the porch steps, one hand pressed over her mouth. His fear is loud. So very loud. It punches through you before his words do.
Don’t let it near us. Don’t let it near the house. Don’t let it touch her.
You don’t understand. You didn’t touch anyone. You didn’t mean to scare anyone. You don’t even know where you are. The rake comes at you again, or maybe your panicked mind only thinks it does. Either way, your body reacts before your thoughts can catch up.
You throw out your hand.
“Stop!” It erupts from you in a violent invisible wave. The air bends.
The old man’s expression changes. Anger first. Then confusion. Then horror.
For one impossible heartbeat, he hangs there as though time itself has caught him by the spine.
Then his body comes apart. Not all at once. Not cleanly. It is worse than that.
A psychic pressure grips him from every direction and pulls. His skin splits. His bones separate with thick, wet cracks. Blood beads in the air like red rain refusing to fall. His organs lift from him in soft, terrible pieces, suspended in a halo of gore as though invisible hands are holding each part up for inspection.
The old man is everywhere. And he is still in your mind for half a second. A flash of terror. A flash of his wife’s name. A flash of regret so sharp it nearly becomes yours. Then nothing. Your hand trembles in front of you, fingers spread. You didn’t know. You didn’t know you could do that. You didn’t know anything inside you could be that strong. You pull your hand back as if burned.
The grip releases. What remains of him drops to the ground with a heavy, wet thud. Blood splashes across the grass. Across the pavement. Across the porch steps……Across his wife.
She stands frozen, drenched in red, her face slack with incomprehension. For a few seconds, she does not scream. She only blinks, slow and stunned, as if her mind has refused to accept what her eyes are showing her. Then she raises one shaking hand to her cheek.
Her fingers come away red. Her mouth opens. The scream that tears out of her is animal. It was raw and endless. It rips through the neighborhood and drags everyone else with it. Chaos explodes.
People scatter in every direction. Some run into houses. Some freeze. Some pull out phones with trembling hands. Someone vomits near a mailbox. Someone sobs. Someone shouts for police. Someone calls you a demon. Someone calls you a child. Someone calls you a weapon.
The thoughts become unbearable.
It killed him.
She killed him.
Run.
God help us.
Shoot it.
Don’t get close.
Monster monster monster monster!
“Stop!” you sob. Your voice cracks as you clap both hands over your ears, but it does nothing. The voices are not outside you. They are inside. Crawling through every crack in your mind. Piling on top of each other until you can’t tell where they end and you begin.
A rock hits your forehead. Pain bursts white across your vision. Your head snaps to the side. Warmth spills down your face. Blood runs from the gash at your hairline, sliding past your brow and into one eye.
You whimper as another object flies toward you. Then another. Someone throws a garden tool. Someone else throws a brick. A bottle shatters against the invisible pressure gathering around your body.
You lift both hands. “Please!” you cry, voice breaking apart. “Please stop! I said stop!”
Your eyes ignite. Not with normal light. With something unnatural.
A bright, terrible hue floods your irises, glowing from somewhere deep behind them. The air around you hums. The sound is low at first, almost like the bunker’s machinery, but then it grows sharper. Higher. Meaner.
A shield blooms around you.
Psychic energy curves over your body in a translucent sphere, rippling violet and blue at the edges. The next rock strikes it and disintegrates into dust. The brick hits and bounces back hard enough to crack the pavement. Each sob makes it expand. Each thought makes it flicker. Each scream makes it stronger. The street begins to tremble.
Cars groan as their tires lift from the ground. One by one, they rise. A sedan floats upward first, its alarm blaring as it tips sideways. Then a pickup truck. Then a minivan with a child’s car seat visible through the back window. Metal shrieks. Windshields fracture. Doors swing open and slam shut on their own.
Mailboxes rip from lawns. Street signs bend. Tree roots tear through the dirt with deep, snapping cracks. Houses begin to come apart. But they don’t explode. They dismantle brick by brick. Board by board. Nails screaming from wood. Windows bursting outward. Roof shingles peeling into the sky like black leaves. Gutters twist loose. Porch railings splinter. Power lines whip and spark overhead.
You curl in on yourself at the center of it all. Floating above the street in a storm you do not understand and cannot stop. Like the entire neighborhood has crawled inside your skull and is beating against the walls of your mind, begging to get out.
“Stop thinking,” you whisper.
But no one hears you or maybe everyone does. Because for one horrible second, all their thoughts turn toward you at once. But the pressure inside your head becomes unbearable.
Your shield flares as cars flip and as trees burst while the street cracks open beneath you.
You scream until your throat burns, until your voice becomes part of the psychic frequency tearing through the air. Blood pours down your face and tears follow after it. Beneath all the terror, beneath the screams, beneath the collapsing houses and shattering glass and thousands of minds clawing at yours, one small thought rises from the center of you.
Father…
Your fingers curl against your scalp.
I’m sorry.
High above the atmosphere, one of the Global Defense Agency’s surveillance satellites shifted course by less than a degree.
That was all it took.
The satellite’s lens rotated, refocused, and locked onto a quiet suburban neighborhood that was no longer quiet at all.
Inside the GDA command center, the room came alive at once.
Rows of monitors flickered from black to blue to live feed. Satellite imaging. Drone footage. Street cameras. Traffic cams. Local emergency dispatch maps. Thermal scans. Seismic readings. Every screen caught a different angle of the same impossible disaster.
A neighborhood tearing itself apart.
Cars hung in the air like toys caught in invisible strings. Roofs peeled from houses in jagged strips. Trees bent at the trunk before splitting apart completely, their roots ripping up through lawns and sidewalks. Power lines snapped and lashed wildly in the air, showering sparks over broken pavement.
At the center of it all, there was a storm with no weather.
Raw, pulsing pressure radiating outward in uneven waves.
The analysts saw it before they understood it. Numbers spiked across screens. Graphs distorted. Red warning boxes blinked over and over until nearly every station in the command center was screaming at them.
“Unknown energy signature detected—”
“Multiple civilian casualties confirmed—”
“Local police are en route, but dispatch is reporting structural collapse across three blocks—”
“Electromagnetic interference is killing the drone feed—”
“That’s not an earthquake. The ground movement is responding to the target.”
“Target?” another analyst snapped. “We don’t even know what the hell we’re looking at yet.”
“This isn’t a known villain attack,” someone said from the back row.
For half a second, the command center went tense in a way that had nothing to do with the alarms.
Then a single voice cut through the chaos.
“Get me a visual lock, Donald.”
Cecil Stedman stepped forward from the shadowed edge of the room, hands folded neatly behind his back, fixed on the largest monitor.
“Yes, sir.” Donald leaned toward his station, already issuing commands. “Camera Three, tighten the frame. Satellite overlay on my screen. Pull thermal and energy mapping to the left panel. I want eyes on the source.”
An analyst’s fingers flew across the keyboard.
The main screen stuttered. Switched angles. Zoomed.
The image sharpened through static.
A street came into focus first. Or what used to be a street. The asphalt had cracked open in long, branching fractures. Mailboxes and chunks of concrete drifted six feet off the ground, rotating slowly as if gravity had become optional.
The feed zoomed again.
A sedan floated sideways across the frame, its headlights flickering uselessly.
Then the camera passed it.
And found you…..
Your hospital gown whipped violently around your legs despite there being no visible wind. Blood ran from a gash on your forehead and trailed down the side of your face, mixing with tears on your cheeks. Your hands clutched at your head like you were trying to hold your skull together.
Around you, psychic energy pulsed in visible waves. It spilled out of you in unstable bursts, warping the air and bending light at the edges of your body. Every time your shoulders hitched with a sob, the neighborhood reacted.
Cecil’s expression did not change. But his eye narrowed slightly.
On the screen, your lips moved.
The audio was useless at first, buried beneath screams, alarms, static, and the terrible metallic groan of houses being pulled apart.
Donald adjusted the feed.
Your voice came through in broken pieces.
“Stop…please….stop thinking….stop..”
The analysts went quiet. For the first time since the feed came online, the command center wasn’t just looking at a threat. They were looking at a teen. A terrified one.
Cecil watched you curl into yourself as three mailboxes ripped loose from the ground and shot backward into a parked van.
“…Well,” he muttered. “That’s new.”
Donald’s face remained professional, but there was a stiffness in his jaw as he scanned the data. “Sir, we’ve been detecting energy anomalies in this area for weeks. Low-level at first. Easy to miss. Strange readings, but nothing actionable.”
Cecil didn’t look away from the screen. “Define strange.”
“Psychokinetic markers. Maybe psionic. Maybe something adjacent. We weren’t sure.” Donald pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. “The readings didn’t match any known metahuman profile. No Flaxan tech residue. No Martian signature. No magic markers we could confirm.”
“And now?”
Donald hesitated.
That alone made Cecil glance at him.
Donald lowered his voice slightly. “It got worse after the Guardians died.”
The room seemed to still be around that sentence.
Cecil stared at the screen.
On the feed, another wave burst from you. A row of parked cars shrieked as they lifted from the pavement and turned slowly in the air. People ran below them, screaming, tripping over each other, abandoning phones, shoes, bags, anything that slowed them down.
Cecil exhaled through his nose. “Of course it did.”
He shifted one hand from behind his back and slipped it into his coat pocket. With the other, he tapped the communication device in his ear.
“Invincible. Atom Eve. Rex.” His voice was calm, clipped, and impossible to argue with. “Respond.”
A beat passed.
Static crackled.
Then a young male voice came through, tense and breathless.
“Cecil? We’re here.”
Cecil’s eye stayed on the screen. “Where?”
“Two minutes out,” Invincible answered. “Maybe less. We can see the smoke from here.”
Another voice came through next. Atom Eve. “What are we flying into?”
Cecil watched as you screamed soundlessly on the monitor. The energy field around you flared so brightly that the camera had to auto-correct.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
Rex’s voice cut in, sharp and uneasy. “That doesn’t sound comforting.”
“It wasn’t supposed to.”
Cecil turned slightly toward the nearest analyst. “Status.”
The analyst swallowed, eyes darting across three monitors at once. “The girl appears to be the source. Energy output is unstable and increasing in pulses. It looks reactive, sir. The stronger the emotional stimulus, the stronger the event.”
“I can see that,” Cecil said flatly.
Another analyst spoke up. “Sir, we’re also reading localized gravitational distortion. Objects in her immediate radius are losing mass consistency.”
Donald looked over. “Not losing mass. She’s overriding their relationship to gravity.”
That made more heads turn.
Donald continued, voice careful. “The psionic field isn’t just moving things. It’s imposing intent onto the surrounding environment. If she panics, the environment responds like it’s panicking with her.”
Cecil’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
On the monitor, a brick struck the glowing barrier around you and burst into dust.
You flinched anyway.
The shield expanded as a house behind you groaned as its front wall folded inward.
Cecil tapped his earpiece again.
“Invincible, listen carefully. Unknown capability set. Confirmed telekinetic activity. Possible telepathy. Possible matter disruption. Possible gravity manipulation. And before anyone asks, no, we do not know the upper limit.”
“That’s a lot of possibles,” Invincible said.
“That’s why you’re going to proceed with caution.”
Atom Eve cut in. “Is she attacking people?”
Cecil watched the feed.
You were crying..floating in the middle of a collapsing street while the world screamed around you.
“No,” Cecil said after a moment. “I don’t think she knows what she’s doing.”
Rex scoffed, but there was less arrogance in it than usual. “Oh! Great. So we’re dealing with an accidental nuke in a hospital gown.” Cecil’s eyes hardened. “You’re dealing with a scared girl who might be able to turn you inside out if you startle her. So nobody plays hero. Nobody rushes in. Nobody throws the first punch.”
A pause.
Then Mark’s voice came back quieter.
“Understood.”
Cecil looked to Donald. “Evacuation radius?”
“Already expanding,” Donald said. “Local authorities are being redirected. GDA units are moving in from the south and west. We’re jamming civilian broadcasts within the incident zone, but phones are still leaking footage.”
“Contain it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And find me everything on that property. Owner records. Utility maps. Permits. Old satellite images. Anything underground. Anything missing. Anything sealed.”
Donald nodded once. “Already running.”
Cecil stared at the crater on the screen.
The broken doorway. The exposed concrete. The way the destruction seemed to have come from below before blooming outward.
This wasn’t a random emergence.
Someone had kept you down there and hidden you.
Someone had either built a cage around a weapon…Or raised a child inside one. Neither possibility improved his mood.
The feed zoomed closer.
Your eyes glowed through the blood and tears.
Cecil’s voice dropped into something colder.
“Invincible.”
“Yeah?”
“You make contact first. Slow. Open hands. No sudden moves. Keep your heart rate steady if you can.”
“My heart rate?”
“She may be reading minds. She may be reading fear. She may be reading intent. Until we know which, assume she can feel everything you’re bringing toward her.”
Another psychic pulse rolled across the screen.
The image distorted.
For a second, the camera feed warped around your body like reality itself was bending away from you.
Cecil watched, silent.
Then he gave the order.
“Proceed with caution. Unknown capability set. Civilian priority is containment and evacuation. Your priority is de-escalation.”
His eyes narrowed.
“And Invincible?”
“Yeah, Cecil?”
“Do not escalate.”
On the screen, you lifted your head.
For one brief second, through the satellite feed, through the static and smoke and impossible waves of energy, it almost looked like you were staring directly back at them.
The command center fell silent.
Then every monitor flickered at once.
“S-stop looking at m-me!”
Your voice cracked through the air, thin and broken beneath the groaning weight of everything floating around you.
The words were barely out of your mouth before your hand jerked upward.
You didn’t aim. You didn’t know there was anything to aim at. You only felt them. Eyes that weren’t eyes. Cold attention pressing against your skin from above, from street corners, from tiny black domes tucked beneath traffic lights and perched against rooftops. They weren’t thoughts, not exactly, but they felt close enough. Like holes in the world. Like something hidden and mechanical staring straight through you.
And you hated it. The psychic shield around you pulsed. Every camera in the area died at once. Street cams exploded in bursts of sparks. Drone feeds blacked out mid-frame. The satellite image warped violently, the picture stretching and folding around your trembling body before snapping into static.
Inside the GDA command center, every monitor went dark. Then the audio cut too. For one second, Cecil Stedman stared at a wall of dead screens.
No one spoke. Donald’s hands hovered over his keyboard. “Feeds are gone,” an analyst said, voice tight. “All of them. Local, drone, satellite—everything in the immediate radius just failed.”
Cecil’s expression remained unreadable. But his jaw moved once.
“She felt us watching.”
Donald turned slightly. “Sir?”
Cecil tapped his earpiece.
“Invincible. We’ve lost visual. You’re our eyes now.”
Static crackled.
Then Mark’s voice came through, tense but steady.
“Yeah. I see her.”
Mark landed at the edge of the ruined street hard enough to crack the pavement beneath his boots, but not hard enough to make the ground shake. He caught himself immediately, glancing down at the broken road before looking back toward you.
Cecil’s warning echoed in his ear.
Slow. Open hands. No sudden moves.
A few yards behind him, Atom Eve touched down near an overturned car, pink energy already glowing faintly around her hands, unhanding Rex who landed less gracefully beside her, one knee bending as he hit the pavement.
“Jesus,” Rex muttered, looking around.
He tried to sound like himself. Cocky. Annoyed. Ready with some dumb comment to make the whole thing feel less horrific. But his voice didn’t quite land right. There were houses split open like dollhouses. Cars hovering crookedly above lawns. Trees hanging upside down with their roots exposed to the sun. Power lines sparked and twitched overhead like live nerves.
Mark swallowed as Eve saw it too.
“She’s a teen,” she said quietly.
Rex glanced at her. “Yeah! A teen who just tore up three blocks.”
Eve shot him a look. “Rex.”
“What? I’m just saying…”
“Don’t.”
Mark’s voice cut across the ruined street before Rex could even finish raising his hands.
It wasn’t loud, not compared to the screaming civilians, the groan of twisting metal, or the low psychic hum vibrating through the pavement, but it was firm enough to make Rex freeze.
Mark didn’t look back at him. His eyes were fixed on you.
He had only been doing this for a couple of weeks.
A couple of weeks of flying around in a costume, trying to save people, trying to be useful, trying to act like he wasn’t still figuring out how to land without cracking sidewalks. A couple of weeks since the attack on the Guardians of the Globe had put his dad out of commission and left everyone else scrambling to fill the hole that disaster had torn open.
Mark was supposed to be ready for things like this. At least, that was what he kept telling himself. He was Invincible. He was Omni-Man’s son. He was supposed to know what to do when buildings fell and people screamed and something impossible happened in the middle of an ordinary neighborhood.
But he didn’t.
Not really.
He had fought aliens. He had taken hits. He had thrown punches. But this was different. You weren’t some monster bursting through a portal. You weren’t a villain monologuing in the street. You weren’t trying to rob a bank or take over the city or kill anyone on purpose.
You looked about his age. A teenager in a torn hospital gown, barefoot and bleeding, hovering above the cracked pavement like gravity had forgotten how to hold you. Your hair floated around your face in wild strands. Your hands were clamped over your ears. Your whole body trembled like you were cold, or hurt, or terrified enough to come apart.
Power spilled out of you in waves every time you sobbed, the street answered.
You looked scared. Scared in a way he understood more than he wanted to.
New powers. No control. Too much strength in a body that didn’t know what to do with it. He had his mom. His dad. Eve. Even Cecil, annoying as that was.
But you? You looked like you had nobody. Your head whipped toward him.
The movement was so sudden that the air around you snapped with it. The floating cars lurched violently in place. One sedan twisted sideways with a metallic shriek, its frame bending inward like soft plastic.
Mark froze.
For a second, all you saw through the blur of blood and tears was blue and yellow. A blocky uniform. Dark hair. A face that was trying very hard not to look afraid.
But he was afraid.
You could hear it.
Not in his voice but in his head.
She’s scared. The thought struck you harder than the sight of him did.
Your lips parted. Mark immediately lifted both hands, palms open, fingers spread.
“Hey,” he called out carefully.
His voice carried across the ruined street, soft but steady. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
The words reached your ears. His thoughts reached deeper.
Don’t rush her. Don’t scare her. Cecil said don’t escalate. She’s hurt. She’s scared. She’s just—
“Stop!” you cried.
Mark flinched.
The psychic barrier around you flashed.
A mailbox tore out of the ground and shot toward him like a missile.
Mark ducked just in time. It screamed past his head and embedded itself halfway into the side of a house behind him, wood and brick splintering around the impact.
Rex’s hands grasp around metal lit up on instinct.
Pink energy sparked faintly around Eve’s fingers too, but hers formed defensively, ready to shield instead of strike.
“Rex!” Eve snapped.
“I didn’t do anything!” Rex shot back, though his hands were still glowing.
“Then keep doing nothing!”
Rex’s mouth opened, probably with some sarcastic reply already loaded, but one look at you made him shut it again.
You curled tighter in the air, folding in on yourself until you looked painfully small at the center of all that destruction. Your breathing came too fast. Every inhale scraped against your throat. Every exhale broke into a sob.
“You’re too loud,” you whispered.
Mark heard it. His brows drew together. He took one slow step forward. The pavement cracked under his boot. You recoiled instantly. The shield around you expanded another foot with a sharp pulse, bending the air between you and him like heat over asphalt.
Mark stopped immediately.
“Okay,” he said, voice gentler. “Okay. I’ll stay right here.”
In his ear, Cecil’s voice crackled through the comm.
“Good. Keep her talking.”
Mark’s jaw tightened.
Cecil, shut up for like two seconds.
Your glowing eyes snapped toward his ear. Mark realized his mistake a second too late.
Your expression changed.
Confusion first. Then fear. Then betrayal, sharp and immediate, as if you had caught him hiding someone behind his back.
“There’s someone in your head.”
Mark went still.
Behind him, Eve’s face tightened. Her eyes flicked from you to Mark, then back again. She looked like she wanted to move closer, to put herself between you and him if she had to, but she didn’t. She forced herself to stay planted beside Rex, her hands low, her breathing controlled.
Don’t panic, Eve told herself. Don’t think anything threatening. Don’t picture attacking. Don’t picture trapping her. Just stay calm.
Her thoughts were softer than Rex’s. But you could still feel them brushing against the edges of your mind.
Rex looked between all three of you, suddenly much less confident.
“Wait, what?”
Mark raised his hands a little higher. “It’s just my comm,” he said quickly. “It’s not— It’s not in my head. It’s in my ear. It’s just someone talking to me. That’s all.”
“No.” Your voice shook. “No, he’s watching.”
Mark’s chest tightened.
“He was watching,” you said, and the words came faster now, spilling out of you with panic. “They were all watching. From above. From the walls. From the little black eyes. Just like Father.”
The psychic field shuddered. A stop sign bent backward.
Eve’s eyes widened slightly at the word.
Father.
Mark noticed too.
You pressed one hand to your face, fingers trembling as blood ran over your brow and down your cheek. You wiped at it furiously, only smearing red across your skin. Blood and tears clouded your vision, turning the world into streaks of color and light.
“You wanna take me back,” you choked out. “T-to the bunker. Because I messed up. Because I opened the door. But it’s not my fault.”
Your voice cracked.
“It was quiet down there.”
The street trembled beneath you.
“The bunker was so quiet.”
Your glowing eyes squeezed shut.
“But here!”
The last word broke into a sob.
“Here…it’s so bright and loud.”
The air bent outward.
Windows shattered down the block all at once.
Eve threw up both hands and formed a pink shield around herself and Rex as glass exploded from the nearest houses, raining down in glittering sheets. Mark didn’t move. A shard skipped across his cheek and bounced harmlessly off his skin.
“I’m looking at you because I want to help,” he said.
“Liar!” Your voice cracked like a whip.
A car alarm died mid-blare as the vehicle folded in on itself slightly, its metal frame groaning under invisible pressure.
“You want to take me back! I know you do!”
“No,” Mark said quickly. “No, I don’t.”
“You do!”
“I don’t even know where back is.”
Your expression faltered. Only for a second.
He floated a little closer, slow enough that his movement barely disturbed the dust around him. His hands stayed up. His palms stayed open. “See?” he said. “I don’t know about the bunker. I don’t know about your father. I don’t know what happened to you. I’m just trying to understand.”
You stared at him.
His voice was careful. But his thoughts were there too. Louder than his voice and less polished.
Please don’t freak out. Please don’t throw another car. She’s hurt. She’s bleeding. She’s hearing me. Oh God, can she hear this too? Okay, don’t think anything stupid. Don’t think anything stupid. Don’t-
Something brushed against his mind.
Mark’s breath caught. It wasn’t painful well not at first
It felt almost soft. Like fingertips pressing against a closed door. Small, invisible hands grabbing at the edges of his thoughts, trying to pull them open. Searching for the truth beneath the words. Searching for the lie you were sure had to be there.
Mark stiffened as a strange pressure bloomed behind his eyes.
“What?”
You tilted your head. Your glowing eyes narrowed, not in anger, but concentration.
“Mark Grayson,” you whispered.
His name left your mouth like you had found it written somewhere inside him.
Mark’s stomach dropped.
“Oh, that’s creepy,” Rex muttered. Eve elbowed him hard without looking away from you. You barely heard them. You were looking at Mark now. Not Invincible But..Mark.
You saw pieces of him in flashes you didn’t mean to take.
A bedroom.
A backpack dropped by a door.
A woman with kind eyes saying his name.
A father in a white and red suit standing tall enough to fill a room.
A lunch table.
School hallways.
A boy trying to be normal.
A boy trying to be a hero.
A boy who still looked to his father every time he didn’t know what to do.
Your expression twisted with confusion. “He’s a hero,” you whispered, though you weren’t sure if you were talking to Mark or yourself. You had wanted to be a hero once. Or maybe you had only wanted Father to call you good. Maybe those had become the same thing. But heroes saved people.Heroes didn’t rip apart neighborhoods. Heroes didn’t make women scream with their husband’s blood on their face. Your gaze flicked over the destruction around you. The floating cars. The broken homes. The smoke. The crater. The blood on your hands that wasn’t only yours.
A horrible thought opened inside you.
If Mark was the hero…
then you were the thing he had come to stop.
The villain.
Your breathing hitched.
Mark felt the pressure in his skull sharpen. He shook his head, trying to adjust to the sensation, trying not to panic at the fact that you were inside his mind. “Okay,” he said, voice strained but still gentle, “let’s not do that.”
You blinked. The connection snapped loose. Mark jerked back slightly, one hand flying halfway toward his head before he forced it down again.
You saw the flinch. You saw the way his eyes widened. You heard the thought before he could bury it.
She was in my head.
Your face crumpled.
“I’m sorry.” The words came out tiny. Almost lost beneath the psychic hum.
Mark’s expression softened despite himself.
But the damage was already done. Your own mind turned against you, loud and vicious.
You hurt him.
You scared him.
You shouldn’t have touched.
Father said never reach without permission.
Father said no one would forgive you if they knew what you were.
The shield around you flickered violently. You clutched your head again. “I’m sorry,” you repeated, louder this time. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to look. I didn’t mean to hear you. I can’t make it stop.”
Mark took another step, and this time he didn’t think about Cecil. He didn’t think about strategy. He didn’t think about what his dad would do.
His dad would probably know exactly how to handle this. Mark didn’t. So he did the only thing he could think to do. He told the truth.
“I know,” he said.
You shook your head quickly.
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re right,” he admitted. “I don’t. Not like that.”
That stopped you.
“I know what it’s like to suddenly be able to do things you couldn’t do before. I know what it’s like to break stuff without meaning to. I know what it’s like to feel like everyone expects you to know how to control it when you barely even understand what’s happening.”
You stared at him through the blood and tears. A sedan lowered several inches behind you. Mark noticed but didn’t look at it.
“So no,” he said quietly. “I don’t know exactly what this is like. But I know you’re scared.”
Your chin trembled.
“And I know you’re not trying to hurt anyone right now.”
The air around you buzzed.
“You don’t know that,” you whispered.
“I think I do.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Maybe.”
Mark gave the smallest, saddest smile. “I’m kind of new at this.”
Something in your expression shifted like the smallest crack in the panic.
“You’re… new?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Very.”
Rex muttered from behind him, “Painfully.”
“I’ve only been doing the hero thing for a few weeks,” he continued. “So if I sound like I know what I’m doing, I promise you, I absolutely do not.”
Despite everything, despite the blood on your face and the ringing in your skull and the ruined neighborhood beneath you, you stared at him like that was the strangest thing anyone had said all day.
“You’re bad at lying,” you whispered.
Mark huffed a tiny breath that almost could have been a laugh.
“Yeah. My mom says that too.”
Your eyes searched his face. Then, unwillingly, your mind brushed his again. Not deep this time.
Just enough to check.
Mom.
A kitchen table. A tired smile. A hand on his shoulder. Someone who worried when he came home bruised, but hugged him anyway. The softness of it hurt.
You recoiled from it with a quiet gasp.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You have a mother.” The words were barely audible.
“Yeah,” he said gently. “I do.”
Your mouth trembled. “I had Father.” The way you said it made Eve’s hands curl at her sides.
Not dad or pop or papa. Just Father. Like a title.
In his ear, Cecil’s voice returned, lower this time. “Invincible. Ask her name.”
Mark resisted the urge to close his eyes. Not now. Not with him gaining your trust and not with you watching every twitch, every thought, every betrayal. He kept his gaze on you.
“Can you tell me your name?”
You flinched as if the question itself had touched a bruise. For a moment, only the sirens answered.
Then you whispered, “(Y/N).”
Mark nodded slowly.
“(Y/N),” he repeated, careful with it. Like names mattered. Like yours was not just a label in a file or a subject number written on a clipboard. “Okay. Hi, (Y/N) .”
Your eyes shone brighter, but the cars around you stopped rising.
“I’m Mark,” he said, even though you already knew. “And I promise, I’m not here to take you back.”
Your lips parted. “You can’t promise that.”
Mark hesitated. You heard the hesitation and stiffened. He saw it and corrected himself before the panic could spike again.
“You’re right,” he said. “I can’t promise what everyone else will do but I can promise what I’m going to do.”
You stared at him. “And what are you going to do?” you asked.
Mark lowered himself slightly in the air until his boots touched the cracked pavement again. He stayed several yards away from your shield, hands still open.
“I’m going to stay right here,” he said, “and I’m going to help you make it quiet.” For a second, the whole ruined street seemed to inhale with you. Then, somewhere behind Mark, a civilian screamed.
The sound tore through your concentration.
Your head snapped toward it.
A woman was crawling out from beneath a half-collapsed porch, blood running down her arm, her thoughts shrieking louder than her voice.
It’s going to kill us.
It’s going to kill us all.
Your face went blank with horror. “No,” you whispered. The shield around you flared again as cars began to rise.
“(Y/N).”
You didn’t hear him.
Your eyes had gone distant again, fixed on something over his shoulder but not really seeing it. Your mind was too full. Too open. Too crowded with other people’s terror.
“No, no, no….” The words tumbled out of you in a broken whisper.
A minivan lifted from the street behind Mark, tires spinning uselessly in the air. Its alarm screamed once, twice, then warped into a low, dying groan as the metal frame began to bend under the pressure radiating from your body.
“(Y/N),” Mark tried again.
“I’m not…” Your voice cracked. “I’m not a monster…”
“I know.” The word came from Mark without hesitation.
Your eyes snapped back to him. For a second, the whole world seemed to pause with you. The psychic storm trembled. The floating cars jerked in place but didn’t fly forward. The shattered glass hanging in the air glittered around you like suspended rain. Even the shield pulsing inches from your body softened slightly, its bright edges dimming as you stared at him.
Mark took one careful step forward. The shield sparked inches from his chest. He could feel it pushing against him, warning him back. It wasn’t heat. It wasn’t electricity. It was pressure. A silent, invisible hand pressing against his ribs, telling him one more step might break something important.
He didn’t push through or touch it. He just stood there, hands open, breathing slow.
“I know,” he said again.
Your lower lip trembled. “You’re scared of me.”
Mark’s throat bobbed. He wanted to say no. Every heroic instinct in him wanted to say no, of course not, I’m not scared, everything is fine, you’re okay, I’m okay, nobody is afraid. But you would hear the lie before it even finished leaving his mouth. You would feel it so he told the truth.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “A little.”
Your face fell. The hurt in your expression hit him harder than the shield ever could have.
“But I’m still here.”
The storm shuddered. A mailbox dropped out of the air and clattered against the pavement.
Mark held your gaze. “And I’m not leaving.”
For a moment, you looked like you wanted to believe him. Your eyes were still glowing, but the light had gone watery around the edges. Blood streaked down the side of your face, dark and sticky against your skin. Your hands hovered near your chest, fingers curled inward like you were afraid of what they might do if you let them move.
“You promise?” you whispered.
Mark’s chest tightened.
Behind you, high above the broken street, Eve moved.
She had been circling wide for the last several seconds, her pink aura dimmed until it was barely a shimmer around her body. She kept low behind the broken roofline of a half-collapsed house, using the drifting debris and the chaos of the suspended cars to hide her approach.
She didn’t want to do this. Everything about you screamed scared. Not evil. Not cruel. Scared. But the sedan above the street was still rising. The power lines were still snapping. The houses were still coming apart one groaning beam at a time. There were civilians trapped nearby.
Eve could hear one of them crying beneath the collapsed porch behind Rex. In her ear, Cecil’s voice was quiet and cold. “Atom Eve, now.” Eve’s jaw tightened. Her fingers closed around the injector Donald had launched in through a GDA drone minutes earlier, before you had wiped the feeds. It was small, black, ugly, and clinical-looking, nothing like her powers, nothing like the bright pink constructs she preferred to use.
A sedative.
Strong enough, Cecil had said. Eve hated the uncertainty. She hated that Mark was the one looking you in the eyes. She hated that you had asked him to promise. Mark didn’t know she was behind you well not until he saw the flicker in your eyes. Not until your head tilted slightly, as if some part of you had felt another presence brush too close.
His stomach dropped.
“(Y/N)...”
Eve struck. She came in fast, but not like an attack. Not with a fist. Not with a blast. One arm wrapped around your shoulders from behind, firm enough to keep you from twisting away, while the other drove the injector against the side of your neck.
A sharp hiss followed.
Your eyes went wide.
For half a second, you didn’t understand.
Then you felt it sting. The foreign pressure beneath your skin as your breath caught.
The whole neighborhood reacted. The shield exploded outward but not with the full force it could have had. Not enough to finish tearing the street apart. The air slammed outward in a violent pulse. Glass burst from broken windows. Loose shingles ripped free from rooftops. The floating cars above the street lurched as if invisible strings had been yanked all at once. Power lines snapped and whipped against the sky, spitting sparks into the smoke-heavy air.
Eve gasped behind you, her arms tightening around your shoulders for one desperate second before the force threw her back. Mark moved before he thought.
One second he was standing in front of you. The next, he was flying forward as you fell.
Not like you had been floating before. Not weightless. Not suspended by fear and power and whatever terrible thing inside you had decided gravity was optional.
You fell like a person. Like a girl. Like someone whose body had finally remembered it was tired.
Your knees buckled first. Your head tipped forward. The glow in your eyes flickered wildly, bright enough to wash your face in pale, unnatural light before dimming at the edges.
Mark caught you before you hit the pavement. His arms closed around you carefully, one beneath your shoulders, the other bracing your back. He expected the shield to throw him off. Expected another blast. Expected your power to reject him on instinct.
It didn’t.
For the first time since he landed, there was no invisible wall between you and him. You collapsed against his chest, light and trembling and terribly human. Your fingers twisted weakly in the front of his uniform.
You tried to keep fighting. Some part of you still thought you were back in the bunker. Back under fluorescent lights. Back with Father’s hand on your shoulder and a command in your ear. Some part of you still thought if you stopped moving, stopped resisting, stopped proving you could be useful, then the door would lock again and never open.
“No,” you whispered.
It barely made it past your lips. Your hand lifted toward Mark’s face, but it shook too badly to reach him. Blood smeared across your palm. Your fingers curled in the air between you, searching for something to grab onto.
Your mind reached for his again, weaker this time. Not to pry. Not to steal. Just to know.
Just to check.
Just to find one thought that didn’t hate you. Mark felt it brush against him, softer than before. Fragile. Barely there. He looked down at you, eyes wide behind his mask.
“(Y/N)?”
Your gaze dragged up to his.
The world around you blurred. The sky was too bright. His uniform was too blue. The blood in your eye turned everything red at the edges. Behind him, houses leaned in broken silhouettes. Smoke curled above rooftops. Sirens wailed somewhere far away, though even that sound was starting to sink underwater.
Your lips parted.
“You said…”
Mark’s chest tightened.
Your voice was so small now. “You said you weren’t leaving.”
His face changed. Guilt struck through him so sharply you felt it even through the sedative dragging you under.
“I’m not,” he said quickly. “I’m right here.”
Your fingers clenched weakly against his suit. “You lied.”
“No,” he said, and his voice cracked around the edges. “No, I didn’t know she was going to do that. I swear, I didn’t know.”
You searched his face. Then his mind. He wasn’t lying. Someone had still come from behind you. Someone had still stuck a needle in your neck. Someone had still decided that the safest version of you was unconscious.
Just like him.
Your breathing hitched. The psychic field answered one last time. A low tremor rolled through the street. The cracked pavement split another inch beneath Mark’s boots. The cars still hanging above the road shuddered as if they might fall all at once. A streetlight bent backward, metal shrieking in protest.
Eve pushed herself up from the grass several yards away, one hand pressed to her ribs.
“Mark!” she called. “Get her calm!”
Rex looked between the floating cars and the unconscious civilians Eve had shielded earlier. “Or, you know, get her very sleepy very fast!”
He held you closer, not tight enough to trap you, but enough to keep you from slipping out of his arms.
“(Y/N),” he said softly. “Listen to me. You’re not going back there.”
Your eyes fluttered.
“I messed up,” you whispered.
“No.”
“I opened the door.”
“That’s not messing up.”
“I hurt people.”
Mark went still. He couldn’t lie. Not when you would feel the shape of it. Behind him, Eve’s expression pinched with worry. Rex, for once, said nothing. Mark looked down at you and forced himself to be honest.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “You did.”
Your face crumpled. The cars above the street dropped several inches.
Mark quickly continued.
“But I don’t think you meant to.”
A tear slipped from the corner of your eye and cut through the blood on your cheek.
“I didn’t.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t…”
The words faded into a broken sound. Your body sagged heavier in his arms.
The sedative was winning. You could feel yourself sinking. Not falling this time. Sinking. Down into a dark, soft place where the voices couldn’t follow as loudly. The neighborhood’s panic became muffled. Mark’s thoughts became distant. Eve’s guilt blurred into pink static. Rex’s fear became nothing more than a nervous pulse at the edge of your awareness.
For the first time since you opened the door, the world began to quiet.
But quiet scared you too. Quiet meant the bunker. Quiet meant locked rooms. Quiet meant Father standing just outside the glass, watching you with that unreadable expression.
Your fingers tightened weakly on Mark’s suit.
“Don’t…” you breathed.
Mark bent closer.
“What?”
Your mouth barely moved.
“Don’t take me back.”
His face hardened, not at you, but at the crater behind you. At the exposed concrete. At the torn metal and dangling wires. At the dark mouth of the bunker sitting open in the earth like something waiting to swallow you again.
“I won’t,” Mark said.
This time, the promise came out before he could think better of it.
In his ear, Cecil’s voice crackled.
“Invincible.”
Mark’s jaw tensed. He didn’t answer.
Cecil’s voice sharpened. “Invincible, do not make promises you are not authorized to keep.”
Mark looked down at you.
At the blood on your forehead. At the hospital gown. At the needle mark blooming angry and red against your neck. At the way your hand was still gripping him like he was the only solid thing left in the world.
His voice dropped.
“I’m keeping that one.”
For a moment, there was only static.
Then Cecil said, calm and cold, “Bring her in.”
Eve landed beside him, slower this time.
Her face was pale, her expression tight with something that looked too much like regret. She looked at you in Mark’s arms, then at the injector still clutched in her hand.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said quietly.
“I know.” Mark’s voice didn’t make either of them feel better.
Rex approached a few steps behind her, hands still raised like the street might decide to attack him personally.
“So, uh…” He glanced at you, then at the crater, then at the line of wrecked houses. “That went… about as bad as it possibly could while still technically working.”
Eve shot him a look.
“What?” Rex muttered. “I said technically.”
Mark finally looked at Eve.
“She thought we were taking her back.”
Eve’s face fell.
“I heard.”
Around them, the last pieces of debris began to fall. Not violently now. Slowly.
A brick dropped into a flower bed. A mailbox clattered onto the road. A car settled back onto its tires with a tired groan. Dust drifted through the air, glowing in the late afternoon sun.
The psychic hum was gone. The pressure was gone. The terrible, invisible weight that had wrapped itself around the neighborhood vanished so completely that its absence felt almost wrong.
Your head lolled against Mark’s shoulder. Your lashes fluttered once. Through the thick dark dragging you under, you heard one last thought.
Not yours.
Mark’s.
I’m sorry.
You wanted to tell him that sorry didn’t fix broken things. Father had taught you that. Sorry didn’t undo mistakes. Sorry didn’t clean blood from grass. Sorry didn’t bring people back. Sorry didn’t unlock doors. But your mouth wouldn’t work. Your body wouldn’t move. The sky above you blurred into blue. Mark adjusted his hold on you carefully, like he was afraid even unconscious you might break. Or maybe he was afraid the world had already broken you enough.
A black GDA transport descended beyond the ruined street, its engines kicking up dust and loose papers. Soldiers in dark tactical gear poured out before it fully touched down, weapons lowered but ready, their eyes fixed on you.
Mark turned his body slightly, shielding you from their view without thinking.
Eve noticed. So did Cecil, watching from a restored drone feed miles away. Donald stood beside him in the command center, silent.
On the monitor, the camera zoomed in on the crater. Deep inside the torn-open bunker, beneath the smoke and wreckage, something still had power.
A single red light blinked from within the dark.
Once.
Twice.
Then a distorted voice crackled through a damaged speaker buried somewhere under the rubble.
“002..report in?”
A beat passed
“....(Y/N)?..Answer me.”
The feed glitched. Cecil leaned forward.
The red light blinked again.
The voice returned, warped by static but unmistakably calm.
“You…were not ready.”
Then the screen cut to black.