A storm sewer isn’t an ideal place for a meal, but, given the circumstances, it’ll have to do. Mateo and I sit next to each other, keeping our feet just shy of the tiny sliver of standing water. Lucky for us, it hasn’t rained in a few days. The pipe has a muted, sour smell that the ramen has little trouble overpowering.

Mateo supports his bowl on his knees, stirring at the ramen with a single chopstick held in his good hand like a knife. He hides his injured hand from me.

“Do you like it?” I ask. I haven’t even opened my own bowl.

“It’s good,” he says,

We’ve got to do something about his hand. But I don’t know where to take him. Paul can do some basic first aid, but he needs a medical facility. And it’s not like we can just waltz into one. I’m sure by now the city is in a frenzy. You don’t kick a hornet’s nest and expect silence. You don’t kill a cape and not expect the world to come after you.

“Where were you born?” I ask.

“Colombia.”

“Any family?”

“My papa,” he says.

“What happened?”

Mateo gives me a broken look, one that tells me I know the answer. His father is somewhere in that warehouse, that soup of death. Gone, far gone.

We sit in silence as I process that.

“You have to be fifty something by now,” Mateo says.

“I’m twenty-one,” I say, mentally adding the “as far as I know” bit. “I’m not Megajoule.”

“I saw your face. I know you.”

“Kid, you don’t know me,” I say.

“I grew up with posters of you.”

“That doesn’t mean you know me.”

Mateo shakes his good fist at me, furrowing his acne-pocked brow. “But I recognize you! I know who you are!” One of his black curls breaks free of the grease-ocean in his hair to dangle over his face.

“Okay, let’s follow this delusion to its natural end.” I wave my finger in the air like some shitty gentleman detective. “Suppose that I’m Megajoule. If you saw my face, you’d know that I can’t be a day older than twenty-two. How did I get so young?”

“Anti-aging cream,” Mateo offers, almost too fast. But shooting from the hip never wins duels.

“Anti-aging cream.” I let the word hang in the air so that the stink of that phrase will shame him. “I, Megajoule, the greatest hero in all of the Vanguard… no, the world… have been liberally applying anti-aging cream in the years since my supposed death and have moved to Houston to wear a mask and live in the Shells?”

Mateo frowns at me. “Wow, you’re an asshole.”

I blow a raspberry. “I’m not your Megajoule, kid. He’s dead. I just happen to have one of those faces, which you won’t be seeing again anyway.” I reassure myself that my mask is still there with a gentle tug at the bottom.

The truth is much more disappointing, Mateo. It’s not a secret weapon or the cure for the world’s ills. It’s a flaming bag of dog shit on your porch. You didn’t stumble onto the greatest hero, Mateo, you stumbled onto his shadow.

“Why did you save me?” Mateo asks.

“I don’t know. Wasn’t right to just leave you.”

“Is it right to lie to me, too?” He sets his ramen to the side and glares at me. “I don’t know why you’re trying to lie but it’s not even working. You look like him, you talk like him, you’re invincible like him. You’re Megajoule and you’re doing a shitty job of convincing me you’re not.”

“My, the bracelet coming off has done wonders for his attitude,” Megajoule whispers in my ear. “Maybe it’s time we give up the ghost.”

Would that I could, Mega. I lean my head against the wall of the sewer pipe and look up past the cement, into nothing. There’s no easy way around this. So many years concealing my identity only for my mask to slip off once because I had to fight my lunch where this kid can see. And now he can tell.

I suppose I should start with the easy part. I pull back the hood of my jacket, pull down my mask, and take off my goggles.

Mateo studies my face carefully. He doesn’t stand or move, just takes in my features.

“My name’s Gabe. I’m a clone. Of Megajoule.”

“Clone?” Mateo tilts his head. “Like, a copy?”

“Lilac made me and my brothers to take over for Megajoule in case he ever died.” That’s what I remember, anyway.

Mateo doesn’t seem to absorb all this right away. He wrinkles his brow, confused. “You mean, they just made a bunch of copies of Megajoule so they could replace him?”

“He was very important,” I say. “Too important to let die. But he did and none of us were ready to replace him when the time came.”

“That’s why things are the way they are,” Megajoule says. “That’s why everyone’s scared out of their minds. Better to burn it all away.”

As usual, I ignore Megajoule. “I wish there was more to it than that, kid, but now you know. I’m not even as strong as he was.”

“You said you had brothers,” Mateo says. “What happened to them?”

I return the look he gave me earlier, the one that says, ‘you know the answer.’ Gone, far gone.

Mateo nods. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise, Gabe.”

That’s reassuring, at least. I nod. I move the conversation forward: “What happened at that warehouse? What did Pandahead do to you?”

“He…” Mateo gives me this horrid look, one that pleads with me not to think he’s insane. A look I know so well that it hits me like a bullet. “He just… there was this shadow thing that he conjured. Like a wolf made of darkness or something.”

“Go on.”

“It looked at me and I saw my mother’s face and she was whispering things about how she killed our dog and how it was my fault.” Mateo’s voice cracks at the end. “My ma’s been dead for years. But there, in the warehouse, she was everywhere. She told me to kill her like she killed the dog. She told me to fight. I hid from her, instead. I couldn’t see anything until you.”

“Yikes,” Megajoule comments.

“I don’t know what he did, but that thing, it filled my head with horrible things.” Mateo squeezes his good fist.

“Why your mom?” I ask. “Did she really…”

“A few years back, my mom went mental. She killed the dog. Tried to fucking off me, too, said she was my guardian angel or some cryptic bullshit.” Mateo shrugs. “Pa got me out of there. Told me ma died.”

So, there’s nowhere for him to go back to. No one in Colombia to help him. Even getting back there would be hell: he’d be going through an active war zone, trying to squirm past the battlegrounds of demigod warlords.

“The one thing harder than getting into the Vanguard is getting out,” Megajoule whispers. “That’s why you can’t leave either, Gabe.”

Mateo continues his story, unable to hear Megajoule’s contributions. “One day some men broke into our apartment and went absolutely brutal on my pa and me. Put the bracelets on us and brought us to—”

“The warehouse?”

“No, stop interrupting. Brought us to a labor camp somewhere outside a Houston farm, growing shit for some wheatie company. Pa and I worked there for a few months.” Mateo shrugs the same way he did when he talked about his mom. Killing dogs, a few months of slavery, what’s the difference? Who am I to judge healthy processing techniques? King of them, I am not.

“One day, the guy arrives. Pandahead. I’d heard his name before but I’d expected this big strange dude, maybe a heavyweight with crazy powers? I dunno, you hear a name like that and you think someone huge, but he was small, tiny. I could look him in the eyes if he weren’t wearing his helmet.”

I cross my legs. Tiny. That’s a significant physical descriptor to go by. “What’d he do?”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Mateo is lost in the memory. “He said we were changing locations. Said anyone who fought would die. His men crammed us into trucks and brought us to the warehouse. We thought if enough of us…” His frown breaks into a grimace. “That’s when he did the thing.”

“Do you know why?” I ask.

“Why what? Why he used his power on us?”

“No, why he was changing locations.”

“Oh, nah. We thought maybe we were moving because capes were coming or something, but somebody else said they’d seen Pandahead meet with capes before. Some lady from Brazil who’d been with him a half a year longer than anyone else.” Mateo sniffles. “I don’t know anything else.”

One hell of a story. “Was there a gang?”

“I dunno,” Mateo says. “Pandahead had guys come and go all the time.”

“You don’t know what he was planning on doing with you? At all?” I ask.

Mateo shakes his head and shrugs again in that borderline mocking way only young teens can manage. “Just told you, I don’t.”

It’s not the bombshell I was hoping for to get me out of this mess, but it’s a start.

Mateo looks me up and down. “Man, you’re not even hurt.”

That’s not a question. “I’m not,” I agree.

“Dude, you said you were weaker than Megajoule. That guy shot you so much. He threw you across a church. It just made you stronger, didn’t it?” He stares, fervently.

“Okay, kid. Yeah, it made me stronger. Everything that hits me just fuels me. But you know what happens if I get too much? I set everything around me on fire.” To sell my point, I will some of my stock into my hand. My palm glows like lightbulb filaments. Tongues of fire lick my fingertips. “If I don’t keep that under control, I could kill everyone around me.” Maybe if I had his full power, maybe if I could channel it into other forms of energy besides thermal and kinetic, I’d be able to control it better and not hurt people.

Mateo looks at my hand, and instead of fear, there is inspiration in his eyes. “Maybe you’re not like him, but you’re still invincible.”

“Sure, I guess.” I don’t think I’m invincible. There are Affect powers out there, mental powers and the like, that can bypass my physical strength. “Are you done eating? We need to get you some help.”

“How?”

“Paul can help us,” I say. “I just have to convince him not to kill you.”

Mateo grimaces. “Then I guess I’m doomed, because you’re not very convincing, dude.”

#

Mateo riding on my back, I take the rooftops, carefully avoiding drones. They’re out in swarms tonight; after what I did, I’m not surprised. The people are out, too, I can sense them moving in greater than usual numbers through the Shells. The neighborhood capes must have gotten the alert. Lucky for me I know these streets better than they do. With Mateo as my backpack, I dart through the blind spots.

The scrapyard Paul and I call home is how I left it: a metal box of a house, wrapped up by a rusting corrugated steel wall threaded with barbed wire and draped with neon signs, pieces of metal, and scraps of paper, the debris of people’s lives dropped off for a few meager Vanguard credits. There’s no warm light shining through the windows, just the austere shine of fluorescent bulbs and halogen lamps. Dark warehouses and other junk lots line the street, half of them abandoned and half of them simply closed down for the night.

I vault over the fence and bring us down in the middle of the yard, touching down on mud and gravel. Pawpaw, my elderly golden retriever, rises from his place on the wooden stairs leading into the house. He wags his tail and takes a few ginger steps toward us. He’s a true scrapyard dog, a bit ragged at the edges, a sharpness to his eyes that only dogs that know the streets have. But he doesn’t bark. He’s a good boy.

I let Mateo off my back and make introductions between the dog and the boy. Mateo rubs Pawpaw’s head with one finger, hesitating to use his full hand. Pawpaw wags his tail and smiles the way only golden retrievers can.

“When we go in, let me do the talking.” I say.

Mateo zips his mouth shut with his good hand and then throws away an invisible key.

I chuckle. “Sure, that works.”

I open the door.

“Gabe! What in the brazen fuck did you do tonight?” Paul storms out of the kitchen. “Did you really…”

He trails off as he sees Mateo slinking behind me. Paul always looks like a ghoul, but the instant he sees the kid, it feels as though he dies right in front of me. His eyes widen, his cheeks pale. Not something you see often from an empath like him. “Gabe. What have you done?”

“This is Mateo,” I say, knowing a name won’t stop Paul from killing him if he feels he has to. “I saved him from that warehouse. The gang, Pandahead, they imprisoned him and almost killed him, but I—”

Paul slaps the counter. He twists toward me, his eyes wild. “I don’t care who he is! There’s only one fucking rule I gave you and that’s to never bring anyone here!”

“He was in danger.”

Paul’s jaw clenches, veins bulge in his temples. “Has he seen your face?”

“It was an accident.”

Paul groans.

Mateo shakes his head. “I won’t tell no one! I promised Gabe.”

“You. Me. Other room,” Paul says to me, snapping his fingers.

I join him in my bedroom. Even after all these years I still barely have any furnishings. Just my bed, a bunch of books, and a small cushion for Pawpaw that he never sleeps in.

“What the fuck, Gabe?” Paul jumps into one of his tirades, waggling his finger and stamping his feet. His eyes widen like he’s possessed. “What the fucking fuck? Are you kidding me? You’ve put us in serious shit!”

“He was enslaved, Paul. What did you want me to do, leave him in the warehouse? Danger Close would’ve killed him.”

“And so you went and killed Danger Close instead? You bring that kid into our home? Do you even know if he’s being tracked?”

“He was. Through a PK cuff. I got it off him.”

Paul scowls at me, retreating to the other side of the bedroom. “But you killed a cape. A fucking Houston Hero. We’re not going to be able to show our masks ever again. You’ll need to change your outfit, your whole MO! Fuck, we’ll be lucky if Thanh doesn’t kick us out of here. Did you even think of that?”

All the heat I have surges into my face, lighting up the room for a split second as I shout: “He was enslaved!” I shout. “I found him in a pile of bodies! You’re saying I should have abandoned him? Fuck you, old man. You knew about Pandahead, and you steered clear instead of protecting our neighbors!”

Paul stammers, scared enough that he almost reached out to shut off my power.

I wave my hand, turn from him, and fight the heat back down into my core. It feels like it always wants to slip out when I’m enraged.

Paul sighs. “It’s not my fucking job to protect our neighbors. It’s my job to keep you safe.”

“Well the capes sure as hell aren’t protecting them! Danger Close told me he was working with Pandahead!”

“So fucking what?” Paul crosses his arms and stares at me, curling his upper lip. “We both know the capes are shit. That ain’t news.”

Damn it, I just got my heat under control. It surges again, this time into my hands. “You’re telling me that after getting me out of the lab, after everything you sacrificed, you’re pissed at me for doing the same for someone else?”

Paul stammers. “I- You- That’s not-” He starts and stops a few times, but falls silent. I can’t always distinguish emotions, but I know whatever he’s feeling isn’t positive about himself. For an empath, he sure does let the mask drop a lot. Especially when it comes to me.

“You’re not angry enough about this,” I growl.

Paul’s face softens at that. He sighs and turns away from me, putting a hand on the wall. “You’re so angry all the time, kid. That some of it’s righteous is entirely by accident.”

“That’s rich,” I snap. “Coming from you.”

Paul shakes his head. “I should take some of that fire out of your belly…” But then he shakes his head. “Fine, no. I won’t stop you, Gabe. In the meantime, we got a kid out there that you dumped on our doorstep, so let’s go see what we can do to help him.”

We return to the living room, where Mateo pretends he wasn’t listening in on our epic shouting match. He pets Pawpaw with his good hand. Paul approaches the kid while I fume in the kitchen, still feeling like someone put screws in my temples.

Paul looks over the boy’s hand first. “Hand pretty messed up. From the cuff?”

“Had to pry it off with a piece of metal,” I manage through gritted teeth.

“Gonna be out of commission for a bit. You’re gonna want to rest as much as possible.” Paul sighs and kneels down. “You okay if I explore your Affect a little?”

Mateo looks to me, unsure. I nod, and so he settles back down, waiting for whatever Paul is going to do. Paul rolls up the sleeves of his shirt and the sleeve of Mateo’s broken hand. “Shit, these clothes are disgusting.”

“Sorry,” Mateo says.

“Don’t apologize to me,” Paul replies. “We’ll get you some clothes. You’ll fit into some of Gabe’s older stuff…” He eyes Mateo up and down, sizing him up, as he gently places a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “…Maybe.”

Mateo winces at Paul’s touch. He doesn’t say anything I can hear.

Paul sighs, closing his eyes. He always looks old, but never so worn as when he’s about to read someone’s Affect. The wrinkles on his face seem to deepen, his hair thins and whitens one shade more.

The kid closes his eyes, frowning, and grips the couch armchair with his good hand. Paul also frowns, reading the boy’s Affect for his power. “Lotta pain here.”

“Yeah, no shit,” I mutter.

“Hardlight manipulation. Welterweight engrams right now. You had a village believing in you, kid?” Paul asks.

“Er, sure. The other people Pandahead had around thought my power was pretty useful, I guess. I could light things up for them and even make basic tools with it.”

“If you get more engrams, you’ll probably be able to do even more with that. That’s a good power, son. Don’t spend all those engrams too quick, though.” Paul stands up, frowning at Mateo.

“What do you mean?” the kid asks.

“Engrams are like fuel,” Paul explains. “Or money. You spend them to use your power, essentially, although it’s a good deal more complicated than that. But I’d guess you’d need to be using your power constantly for a few weeks to even notice a dip in strength.”

“So he’s got a decent ability,” I muse.

“Which… makes sense.”

“Makes sense?” I ask, curious as to what he could mean.

“We’ll figure the rest of this out in the morning.” The old gargoyle rises to find his bed. “We’ve got a splint in the bathroom, that’ll do for his hand for now.”

I’m not going to let him leave without explaining that last bit. “Now hang on-”

Paul waves his hand at me, as if that’ll ward me off. “Tomorrow. I’m… I’m tired. I haven’t read anyone’s Affect like that in a good long while.”

“What if your thing flares up?” He’s right, it’s been a long time since he peered that deeply into someone’s head. The last time he did it, he spent the rest of the day shuffling around the house, wondering about the cats we don’t have, and asking me about one of Thanh’s jobs five or six times after I’d explained it to him. It’s some kind of advanced dementia that fades after a few days.

“Then it’ll flare up.” He slams the door to his bedroom.

One bandaged and splint-bound hand later, Mateo curls up in my bed. Pawpaw happily snuggles up against him. “You’ll be okay in here?” I ask, resolving myself to the couch for the rest of the night.

Mateo doesn’t nod, he only looks at me. I’m struck by how young he looks, and how old. He’s a tiny child in a dark bedroom too bare for someone his age. Or hell, even someone my age.

I sit down at the edge of the bed.

Mateo is on the verge of tears. His lip quivers.

“It’s okay to cry.”

And he cries. He sits up and grabs my arm, buries his face into my shoulder. He clings to me. I wrap one arm around his back and let him.

It’s not just me, here on the bed, or Mateo. We’re larger than the sum of our parts. It’s Megajoule and it’s my brothers. A solace between two kids that stretches beyond the moment.

“What would make you feel safe?”

Mateo sits up and wipes his eyes. He furrows his brow, thinking. After a heartbeat or two, he says, “We get Pandahead back for what he did. We get my pa justice.” He locks eyes with me.

There’s a part of me that’s absolutely on board. A little piece of me, not Megajoule, that is screaming in my mind to say yes.

“It is what you do best,” Megajoule agrees. “Detective, no. Avenger? Why, that’s practically why they made you. You’re a weapon and you’re letting yourself rust on these streets. I’m all for it.”

Mateo waits in fervent expectation of my answer. I can hear every part of him trembling, how fast his heart is beating, the blood racing through his veins. The humming of electricity through the house, the inexorable pull of gravity on the concrete and people. If I strain hard enough, I can even faintly hear the white noise of the Earth’s momentum through space.

It is a preordained symphony, marching to its logical conclusion. All the universe’s violent music has always been leading up to this moment, where I agree to hunt a murdering slaver.