The gunfire peters off as I mow down the last few Glass Spider. The final one explodes into a cloud of glass shards mid-leap as I back hand it. A quick scan of the battlefield and radio leaves me with a deep sense of relief. It’s over. We did it.

  I dismiss my sword and look to the sky. Smoke trails reach into the sky, their shadowy fingers testifying to the desperate battle. The rising sun turns the sky bloody, red light morphing a peaceful scene into a mirror of the viscera-covered streets.

  I turn back to the defensive line on East Houston, and the soldiers manning it look to me expectedly.

  “I think it’s over. We won.”

  A cry of victory, relief, and banished terror rips forth from hundreds, thousands of throats. It echoes out over the city, spreading all across New York City. Thousands of Guardsmen and civilian militia raise their fists and weapons to the sky. New York still stands. A second wave of monsters have crashed upon the rocks of the five boroughs and been found wanting.

  Though the hard part is over, there’s still more to do. A grim task lies ahead of us. Counting the dead, collecting the wounded, and saving those we can. While New York stands unbroken, it does not stand unscathed, and neither do the defenders. I see tear streaked faces, as people look to the sky and sob in relief.

  I prowl the streets with a group of first responders. Several apartment buildings collapsed during the battle, and we’re searching through the rubble for survivors. So far it’s been… grim. A Bunker Spider, the same kind I fought in the front of the White House, was killed here through the judicious use of cruise missiles and close air support. Command wasn’t sure everyone evacuated in time, and so we search in the vain hope of finding even one survivor.

  It’s grim work, searching among the ruins of broken homes. Entire lives crushed under concrete and shattered bricks. Family pictures, well worn toys, heirlooms and more become debris, garbage to be discarded. The destruction pales in comparison to the death, though.

  So far we’ve found nothing but corpses. The few who failed to evacuate and then survived the cruise missile strikes were hunted down and killed—murdered—by monsters small enough to slip in through the cracks in the piles of rubble. Each death is a brick in the monument to my failures. It surely scrapes the sky by now.

  I use every sensor available to me to hunt for those who may be still trapped under the rubble. Every cooling body I come across sends a jolt of both anger and despair through me. Both are ultimately fuel for the fire inside.

  A warm spot draws my attention. I point to it, lying deep under the remains of a collapsed apartment building.

  “There!”

  The firefighters and volunteers leap into action, crawling over the pile of rubble. I can do nothing but watch from the completely destroyed road. I’m little more than a camera and a witness, now. Too heavy to stand on the pile to pull debris away, and can’t reach the ones that need to be moved from where I can stand.

  At the very least I can point out which pieces of rubble can be moved or shifted without collapsing the whole thing.

  “There, that one. You can break it up if you’re careful.”

  Sledgehammers, circular saws, and crowbars begin their work. A child’s voice drifts out from the pile, too quiet for the rescuers to hear.

  “HELP! CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?!”

  “Chief!” I call out, and the Fire Chief in command of our little rescue party turns to me.

  “She’s alive! I can hear her!”

  He gives me a thumbs up and they all redouble their efforts. Soon, they make enough room for the smallest among us to wriggle in through the pile of rubble. She has to drop all of her gear and takes nothing but a tiny medkit and a flashlight.

  I can see the nervous tension among the rest of them. Not being able to see if she’s in trouble takes its toll on them. I can’t say that being able to see without the ability to assist is any better, though. I watch the EMT crawl deep into what remains of the collapsed apartment building. It takes her several minutes to finally make it to the little girl.

  I watch through the rubble as the EMT extracts her back out, having to climb backwards. It takes her a grueling thirty minutes, but she does it. Both her and the little girl breathe fresh air, and the child sobs, clinging to the EMT.

  The chief turns back to me, gesturing at the pile of rubble.

  “Anyone else?”

  I sadly shake my head.

  He nods and we move on.

  I lean against a Bradley, watching crowds of people walk across a bridge on their way to Long Island. Dozens of refugee camps are being set up there while New York is cleared. No one knows what kind of biohazards magic monsters leave behind, and no one is interested in finding out the hard way. Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear, or CBRN decontamination teams are sweeping building by building, block by block.

  They have a long task ahead of them, one I should probably be helping with, honestly. But I’ve just spent fourteen hours sweeping collapsed buildings, and I just need a minute. It’s been a rough day, hell, a rough week, and I really need to spend five minutes not looking at a corpse.

  Given capability of my sensor suite, it’s not really possible, though. That doesn’t count the internet connection, either. I can’t disconnect from it, to do so could mean I’d miss an alert. Some of the most important alerts came from social media posts. So I watch, seeing countless things I’d rather not.

  It’s a good thing I don’t need to sleep. I don’t think I could anymore.

  Being tied into the Internet like I am brings many advantages. I can rapidly collate information from hundreds if not thousands of different sources, making sure I’m always moving to where I need to be, and making sure command has the best possible information to make decisions with. The downside is that generally where I’m needed most is where people are dying.

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  I’ve seen thousands of people die today. Not counting the thousands more in Seoul a few days ago, either. And that’s just in two cities. I internally shudder, and unsuccessfully turn my thoughts away from the state of the greater world.

  Millions dead. Entire cities, entire countries razed to the ground.

  Watching tens of thousands of people flee from their homes, their lives, brings mixed feelings as well. Yes, they’re alive. But they’ve lost everything. Some of them, most of them, really, have lost family, friends, neighbors. Strangers you saw on the bus everyday on your way to work. Familiar faces that fill daily lives, gone forever.

  They say a single death is a tragedy, and thousands are a statistic. I don’t see how anyone could see any of this as nothing more than a statistic, a number on a spreadsheet somewhere. Not anyone human, anyway.

  My presence doesn’t go unnoticed, though, and I’m thankful for the interruption. Dozens of people glance at me before whispering amongst themselves. I’m too tired to truly listen to any of it, but my natural perceptiveness lets me catch snippets here and there. I even catch a few of them taking pictures.

  “…That’s the guy who stopped the Goliath on FDR…”

  “…watched him hold down a road by himself…”

  “…A cousin in the Guard said he broke a Metro-pede in half by stomping on it…”

  Nothing but rumors, hearsay, and stories from I-know-a-guy-who-knows-a-guy. I don’t think they’d be so reverent if they knew what actually happened. I collapsed apartment buildings, shattered roads, and destroyed peoples’ livelihoods just as often as I killed monsters.

  “…A real hero…”

  I mentally snort. Some hero. Whatever title they give me is assuredly unearned. To be a hero takes courage. How can I be courageous? There’s no instinctive, primal terror gripping my heart. I am neither mortal, nor the owner of a heart to be gripped by terror.

  Speaking of bravery, Kenny Chu comes on several of the news channels I’m idly watching. He’s been plastered across half the tv stations across the country for nearly a day straight. He might very well be one of the most famous men in the United States by now. Social media certainly thinks him to be a heart throb. Though, those same social media sites believe me a hero as well, so I guess their collective judgement is in doubt. What’s new, right?

  He holds a microphone next to an injured National Guardsman on a stretcher. I recognize him from the short time I spent at 2nd Ave.

  “Private Henderson, what can you tell us about the desperate defense you took part in it?”

  “Thank God for Mr. Ryans, that’s what!”

  Huh?

  “I’ll be real, Mr. Chu. We were fucked six ways to Sunday without him. The Goliath didn’t give a fuck about anything we had. We were ten seconds from calling in strikes on top of us it was so bad.”

  He looks grim.

  “That fucker shrugged off everything we had and beat a goddamn tank to death.”

  A cruel smile crawls across his face.

  “Tell you what, though. I ain’t never seen such a one-sided stomp once Mr. Ryans showed up. He kicked it right over and ripped its fucking guts out!”

  As Kenny goes to pull the mic away from him, Henderson grabs his wrist.

  “You’ll hear people who’ll bitch about a road he broke or a building he blew up. Honestly? Fuck those people. If you were down there on the streets, you know how it was. A small goddamn price to pay, and I mean that.”

  As he lets go of Kenny’s wrist, he pipes up one last time before laying back down.

  “Seth Ryans is a fucking hero and I will smack anyone who says otherwise!”

  Kenny moves off, looking for another interviewee.

  Me? A hero? Besides, I didn’t even kill the Goliath alone. I had tanks and IFVs helping me out. Not to mention everyone else holding back the rest of the tide while I spent too long tearing it apart.

  As Kenny walks around, a woman calls out to him.

  “Kenny Chu! Over here!”

  She looks exhausted, he sits next to her. She’s too weak to even sit up.

  “Who are you, Miss…?”

  “I’m Elizabeth Strentford. You want to hear about Seth Ryans?”

  “Absolutely! Many people are calling him America’s Greatest Hero! Everyone wants to know about the mysterious knight who saved the White House and was a key part in saving New York! What can you tell us?”

  Bullshit. Complete, utter, total, bullshit. If anyone’s a hero, it’s definitely Morgan. She’s got everything, the power, the personality, the intelligence. All I do is get people killed and break shit.

  “I’m an Empowered, capable of casting fire magic, even all that was worthless!”

  She lies back, eyes staring at nothing except bad memories.

  “No matter what I did, the Traffic-Mantids were too fast and too tough. Everything I had either slid off or missed. I couldn’t even scratch a single one. I watched him stomp through a dozen like they weren’t there.”

  She turns back to Kenny with haunted eyes.

  “A single one of those monsters could cut through an armored Humvee like a hot knife through butter. I don’t think he even noticed them scrabbling at him. They were like children play fighting.”

  “Did you get a chance to talk to him?”

  She tiredly shakes her head.

  “No, he was like lightning. He killed every monster he could get his hands on and was moving on the for next. It was crazy! One second, we’re up to our assholes in monsters and about ten seconds from being eaten alive. The next we’re standing around with nothing to do! I watched him back hand one in half!”

  She’s left panting for breath, and sweat glimmers her pale brow.

  As Kenny goes to leave her to rest, she weakly grabs at his dusty coat.

  “Henderson’s right! Seth Ryans is a hero! I’d be dead without him and anyone who has a problem with him, has a problem with me!”

  I change the channel to literally anything else. It hurts to be given a title I don’t deserve. Especially when there’s real heroes right there. Fuck, Kenny Chu just interviewed two of them! Why they’re giving me such a mantle, I don’t know. I watch as seemingly endless crowds of people make their way out of the city. Most of them glance at me, and I think I’ve finally parsed their strange looks.

  Is that… awe?

  I stand up, and hook back into the radio net. I move to join the nearest Search and Rescue team. I suppose if they’re going to give me the title of hero, I should at least try to earn it. The crowd parts around me.