Present Day

  Lips firm, Pinn walked through southern Indus with his head down. Shame ran warm down his spine as the decrepit smells of the district washed over him. Once a bustling part of the city, now it was a miracle anyone stayed around. Tough to separate a man from his home, even after a tragedy like the Silent Scream. So some remained, holding on to what life they could find.

  South Indus area was the worst part of all of Hammerton. Broken and empty. What little population there was lacked protection and it was rumored that the black goggled criminals lived somewhere near the historic blast center, under a broken building. Broken buildings were in regular supply, so narrowing down a base was a needle in a rubble stack.

  Most police wouldn’t bother with an Indus call, assuming a call could go out to begin with. Muggings were common and Pinn was half convinced that the people living in his immediate vicinity were all squatters or people looking to prey on the weakest of the city. If Pinn had any less confidence in his abilities, he wouldn’t feel safe roaming on his own.

  Gritting his teeth, Pinn reminded himself why he was in the district to begin with. As much as he hated to admit it, Sami was getting to him. The young man’s constant visits and incessant optimism made him think that maybe he could re-adorn the white flame and not expect disaster. With his mother constantly encouraging him and a fellow Awakened telling him everything would turn out fine, he couldn’t help but consider, at least a little.

  Pinn came to a stop, eyes locked on the floor and lips trembling. Disaster wasn’t just a hypothetical. It had happened once before. And while it was theoretically avoidable, in practice the worst had already come. With that in mind, Pinn raised his gaze.

  A massive crater sat before him, just beyond a decaying chain-link fence covered in ribbons put up around it. The scar in the city was about thirty feet deep, but hundreds of feet wide, swallowing several square blocks in its radius. Just past the blast radius stood dozens of empty buildings, looking as though untouched for 12 years. A perfect bomb that stopped just after the radius of its explosion, but also not a bomb at all. The Silent Scream.

  Shakily, Pinn breathed in the scene remembering the moment everything went wrong. The shout of desperation, followed by everything losing control. Terror, destruction, and oppressive silence. Shivering, Pinn took it all in without looking away. This is what happened when he played around as Lightcrown. No one wanted that. What would it say about him if he risked it again? Now that he was older and had more powers to his name, what if it went even worse?

  Approaching the fence, Pinn ran his fingers over the thin ribbons tied to the metal. The closest thing to a memorial for the innocents caught up in the catastrophe. The worst part was that Pinn had no way of knowing who were the casualties of the blast and who were killed by the rampaging bots. How many more ribbons didn’t go up because there was no next-of-kin? Pinn’s hand lingered on a set of family names written in a child’s handwriting. That could have been Sami. Or any number of orphaned children.

  Lowering his head to the fence, Pinn allowed tears to race down his chin, mourning the loss of the people he would never meet. They didn’t deserve the death they received. Good people from a good part of town, destroyed by his mistake. Several minutes passed, Pinn remembering the loss. Both the people, and his childhood died here.

  Pulling away slowly, Pinn felt at his side, the memory bringing back echoes of pain. If he remembered correctly, the Silent Scream was the only time he was seriously injured. Maybe that was the trigger for loss of control. No, there were too many variables to narrow it to any one thing. The best course of action was to avoid using his power in strenuous situations. If he could help it, he should stop using them at all. But even in thinking that, he knew he would never go cold turkey.

  Turning his gaze to the space surrounding ground zero, it was no question why it was the worst of town. What the Silent Scream missed, a frenzied bot destroyed. The dilapidated buildings sagged, cars were denuded of metal and glass, and the stench from open holes in the road congealed into a burning smell. Yet some people insisted on living in the area.

  Heart heavy, Pinn turned away from his biggest regret and started the long walk back to Hammerton Central. He was on duty to get the food for Quinton to turn into pizza the next day at the shelter, and he wanted to support a small shop running out of Indus instead of a supermarket neighboring the shelter. Shops didn’t exist next to the crater, but he knew some people were still scraping by making a living in Indus and he wanted to support that cause.

  Stopping in confusion, Pinn shot a double-take to someone at the edge of his vision. There weren’t supposed to be “someone’s” around this close to the blast. And his clothes were clean, missing the telltale holes and sewing patches of Indus. Approaching cautiously, Pinn wondered what the newcomer could be up to.

  Enhancing his vision, Pinn saw the man was somewhat stout, wearing work boots and hints of acne. Moving patiently, he was smoothing out a piece of dirt on the wall of a building. Examining further, Pinn realized the entire building was covered in similar blocks of dirt. Like a giant container of putty was slapped around the exterior to replace the broken facade. Zooming out to take in the scene, Pinn saw the beauty in the work. The dirt man was filling in all the missing pieces, making it whole.

  The man glanced up at Pinn’s approach, then tensed. Like a swarm of eels, clay sprouted around him and encased him in protective armor, his stance challenging. Pinn fully understood the man’s distrust of a stranger on this side of the district. Pinn held up his hands placatingly and the man slackened his posture, but didn’t remove any of the armor.

  “Who are you?” the man asked.

  Pinn hesitated, wondering if the man could be trusted with his name. “You first.”

  “I’m Steve. I’m with HUE.” Opening a hole in the armor, Steve pulled an iridescent identification card and held it out to Pinn. It looked identical to the one Sami carried around so proudly. The tension spilled off.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “I’m Pinn. I’m with no one.”

  “No one? What are you doing on this side of town?” Steve asked suspiciously.

  Pinn stopped a few respectful feet away from Steve, marveling at the way the clay moved seamlessly with his body. “I haven’t visited the site in a few years. Thought it appropriate to pay some respect.”

  Steve nodded, eyes casting to the fence at the edge of view. “Are you Awakened? I can escort you back to Hammerton Central when I’m done here.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Pinn assured him. “But what exactly are you working on? Is this HUE work?”

  “Not quite HUE work. This was a call that came into HUE, sure, but not something that would be prioritized. But I couldn't just ignore them, so I came to deal with myself. A call about repairing some damage that was starting to worry the homeowner. I can’t do real repairs, but my clay is dense enough to be a decent stop gap.” Steve turned back to the building, smoothing out a clay corner and covering more cracks with dirt snaking perfectly into place.

  “I’ve read about you! You’re the one that goes around fixing places that get broken into? The article I read said you did it all for free.”

  Steve shrugged nonchalantly.

  “But then, how does HUE make any money off this work?”

  “This doesn’t help directly. We’re taking donations, mostly. Sure, the repairs help with reputation, but I can’t say ‘no’ to someone when I can do this with a flick of my finger.” Steve batted his finger on the side of the building and an extended block of clay opened into a long mouth.

  First confused, then amazed, Pinn realized Steve just created a gutter. “The way you talk, I think my parents would be big fans. Or, at least my Ma.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not much compared to the others at HUE. Excuse me one second.” Steve shed off his armor and left it in a pile on the ground as he moved to knock on the front door of the newly-filled building.

  Cracking open, Pinn saw a small woman peek her head out the opening, looking to Steve with awe. “It’s done already?”

  “It’ll hold for a couple months, but you really should get a handyman to fix this place. My fixes are temporary.”

  The woman wrung her hands, looking down in embarrassment. “And… If I cannot afford it in the next few months?”

  Steve kneeled down to her level, an encouraging smile on his face. “You call and I’ll be here for another fix-up.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes and she nodded earnestly. With a respectful nod, Steve rose to full height as the woman closed the door. Tears threatening his own eyes, Pinn suddenly filled with overwhelming respect for the Hero Unification Entity. Even if he couldn’t fix his own mistakes, he had hoped someone else would. With Steve and Sami in their ranks, he had little to criticize.

  “You’re doing great,” Pinn said.

  Steve chuckled. “You should see some of the kids I work with. They should be in high school, but they have bigger plans and ideas than any of the adults on the team. I’m heading back. You wanna walk with me?”

  Pinn took a last glance at the fence surrounding his regret. The way into the dark past. Then turned back to Steve and his simple, inviting posture. The promising future.

  “Thank you.” Pinn said sincerely, grateful for Steve to take the lead out of Indus.

  They took the next few blocks in silence, Pinn keeping an eye out for a marketplace he could enter as a customer. A couple times he saw the signage of a chain market, but they were ransacked and robbed of any food. Pinn wondered how much of the disrepair could be blamed on him the further he got from the blast zone. Was it all him, or were the people responsible at some point? Maybe these places were fine before the Awakening. He never made the effort to know.

  Steve stopped short and Pinn looked up to see a man in an oversized jacket standing ahead of them, eyes watching them warily. Suddenly, with a long smile, the newcomer dashed up to them, his body morphing. In three strides, his body grew massive thorns, like a giant rosebush sat right under his skin.

  “Your money or your lives,” he said, brandishing two dense, spiky fists a few feet away from Steve’s chin.

  “Stand back,” Steve told Pinn, holding a protective arm out.

  “Don’t mind me, I’ll be fine,” Pinn promised, preparing to protect Steve.

  “Money now!”

  “Do you know anything about the black goggles?” Steve asked.

  “You just forfeit your life with that stupid question.”

  Fists raised, the pokey man prepared to bludgeon. Without any visible cue, three vines of clay leaped from the earth and grabbed the man’s two arms and his throat, throwing his head skyward. With a cough, the man was pulled to his knees, his body leaning back until pinned on his back with his knees awkwardly positioned forward.

  “The black goggles?” Steve repeated, his voice more assertive.

  Panicked pupils racing between Steve and Pinn, the man closed his eyes and strained. Like an exploding porcupine, all the thorns on his body launched in every direction, deadly shrapnel flying like bullets. Instinctively, Steve brought up a wall of clay, stopping the fatal attack just shy of his own body. Then with wide eyes, he realized his wall wasn’t large enough to cover both him and Pinn. Body stiff, he turned to assess the damage.

  Pinn stood looking down in disappointment at the three new holes in his shirt. Skin unblemished, Pinn patted himself down, ridding tiny plant filings from his clothes.

  Steve blinked several times in shock. “You blocked it? I didn’t even hear you do anything!”

  “I told you I could take care of myself.”

  “Huh. Right. Are you interested in joining HUE?”

  “You’re not their first recruiter to try to bring me on board,” Pinn grinned slightly. “I’ll think about it.”

  The two turned back to the captive man on the ground. The thorns hadn’t grown back and Pinn was fairly confident he just used his last-ditch attack to no avail. Whimpering, he struggled against his clay bindings.

  “I don’t know anything about the Underground, I swear!”

  “You know a lot about their name for a group you don’t know anything about.” Steve said, towering over him. Then with a slight tilt of his head, he turned back to Pinn apologetically. “Sorry, can I just take care of…”

  “Do what you gotta do,” Pinn said with immediate understanding. “I’ll watch my own back from here.” He walked away with a wave.

  “Thanks.” Steve waved back gratefully. “It was good to meet you, Pinn. Hope to see you again!”

  With that, Pinn went to go find a shop on his own, feeling more ambivalent than ever. After witnessing the blast zone, he was so certain he would never return to a life of Lightcrown. Minutes later, he couldn’t help but let optimism take root in his mind.

  Still, he wanted the option to shut it all down. The day did nothing to shake his inclination toward locating the Antiserum.

  Once he had it, then he’d have to deal with the decision of whether or not to use it.

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