I can’t remember any other time I’ve woken up so quickly or so suddenly, almost like I’ve just had a nightmare of getting shot in the head or something. My body feels heavy and lucid, like someone’s melted me down and put me back together with spit and tape. Where am I? I’m laying on the floor in a puddle of frigid black water that’s making my skin tingle deep, deep into the marrow. I groan as I get on all fours, my head pounding and body shaking. Then I puke, and I’ll save you the hassle of imagining that, because it’s not a pretty sight seeing your lunch dissolve into the puddle most of your body is still inside. I just got shot. I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head, then spit.

You just got shot in the head and died, Kacey.

I can wonder why I’m alive, why I’m able to sway onto my bare feet and then hunch over again, hands on my thighs as I dry heave once more, but there’s no point in that, because my gut is heaving and my throat keeps being burned by the bile rushing out of me. Shock. That’s why I’m puking. It happened after the Easy Mart explosion. It happened that one time when I accidentally, as a kid, tried to catch a bird and popped it. But…that’s not true. I got my powers when I was fourteen, like three years ago now. I didn’t grow up with powers, but I also remembered hiding the pigeon in the backyard, so spooked at my own tiny little bloody fingers that I had dug like a dog until the hole was deep enough to fit the remains of a crushed bird inside of it. A few rocks and it was gone.

I stare at my fingers, watch them tremble as water slides off them and drips onto the floor.

I’m wearing clothes, jeans and a t-shirt, the same few tattoos on my arms pockmarking my skin. It’s me, I think, because of course it’s me, but my head is pounding, aching like I’ve, well, I just said why my head would be aching right now, just like anyone’s would be if they got a .80 caliber dose of iron right between their eyes. But this is different. Not just any other headache. I’m tasting things and hearing voices, seeing flashes of light and people and places that I’ve never seen before. Then it stops. Halts so suddenly that all I can do is stare into nothing at all.

There’s a throne in front of me, and that’s the thing I’m left staring at.

It sits in the darkness, its large back facing me. What the hell? I think, taking a few steps forward, my feet pushing aside the icy water below me. It’s dark enough for the blackness of everything to infect the air, making it so hard to see I’ve got to squint. But the throne emits its own light. This kind of soft white glow that’s fighting against the shadows lurking around it. It isn’t sitting on the floor, though, but on a platform that’s being held up by heroes. Capes. I walk around the structure, looking at these statue-like people frozen in time. None of them are standing. They’re all crouched, squatting, a few on one knee, more than a dozen on both knees with their arms raised high above their heads. All gritting their teeth, and every single one of their faces is etched with excruciating pain.

The water, I realize, is seeping from their eyes. Trickling down their stony cheeks and onto the floor.

I can’t recognize any of them, but each one is in a costume, or has a cape that’s torn or shredded, littered with holes and torn to bits hanging off their shoulders. What the hell is going on? Last I checked Heaven exists.

But God doesn’t sit on a throne of weeping heroes, does he?

“Daughter of Guardian,” a voice says, making the water tremble. I flinch as the sound digs into my head, bouncing around a skull that’s way too sensitive right now. It’s the person on the throne speaking. The thing on it.

It sounds rude to say that, but the creature sat on the crude black and gold stone throne is just that, this thing with red and white flesh that’s burned and blistered right into its body. There’s a star on its chest, a symbol so large that the point of it stabs right through its jaw and comes out of the top of its head, pouring blood down its chest and dampening its entire body. It has no eyes and no nose, but a smile. A garish, wicked grin, because the top half of its face is hidden by a cowl. A cowl with no holes to see or to breathe, and it sits there, tilting its head very slowly at me, cracking its jaw open more as the pointed star digs deeper and deeper through its skull and its brain.

I step backward, a lump forming in the base of my throat. “What the fuck are you?” I whisper.

“You know me as you know yourself,” It says, its voice harsh and raspy, hollow like an echo.

“What…What does that mean?” I ask. “Are you saying you’re me?”

The creature doesn’t respond. The statues underneath it simply stand taller, making me have to look up a lot higher, craning my neck to see it. “Your time on Earth has come to an abrupt end. You have died in cold blood.”

My saliva suddenly turns bitter again, and I feel like I’m gonna puke. “So…that’s it? I’m dead. Forever?”

“Your cause was just, but your efforts were futile.”

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Thanks for the encouragement and the answer.

“What the hell are you?” I ask, shouting. “How long have you been watching me?”

And for the love of God, where the hell am I?

Then It chuckles, and I can feel it deep in my bones when it does. I itch all over, feeling sick. “Long before any part of you was conceived and came together, because you offer us all a unique opportunity to prosper, girl.”

“Yeah, and what’s that?” I say, trying to keep my voice from quaking.

“Life,” It says. I let the word hang in the silence, let it seep into the water freezing around my feet.

“Here’s a better one for you,” I say, my throat drying the more I speak. “Who the heck is ‘us?’”

It doesn’t respond again, as if the agony of having to speak with a star jammed through the meat and bone of Its jaw is keeping it from really opening its too-wide mouth to speak. Finally, it says, “I offer an opportunity.”

“You still haven’t answered anything I’ve said!”

“Do you wish to try again?”

I pause, staring at It, then ask, “Try what again?”

“Being a hero.” Its throne lowers, and each of the Capes underneath it are now on their knees, heads bowed because of the platform pressing them nearly to the floor. “Or you may remain here, a servant to those who will come after you. To the many who will accept a call you did not head. To those who raise a sword against injustice and will not buckle underneath the weight of your patriotic objective for Earth’s just cleansing. You will lend them your strength and your will, and those who bear the Star of Hope will cease to fear these Earthly monstrosities and rise above the finite binding chains the universe has so unjustly shackled upon you all. Heroes, bare witness!” His voice echoes through my mind, turning my thoughts to putty. “For your champion cowers.”

This is sounding like a load of crap.

But, on the other hand, I also don’t like being called a whimp.

“So,” I say, “you’re saying that you can give me another shot at life?”

“Yes.”

“Are you God or something?”

“Blasphemy, if he who watched were real.”

Alright, I guess. “I don’t even know what you are, or who ‘us’ is going to be, either. I mean, look at you.”

“You choose to lower your sword to strengthen those who will follow. Noble.”

The ground shakes, and all too quickly I say, “Wait! Wait. Okay. Before I make a decision, you’ve at least got to give me one answer, how about that? I mean, you’re a Cape, aren’t you? Or something like it. That’s fair.”

It doesn’t speak again, only nods once.

“You said you’ve been watching me for a while,” I say. “But…why give me another shot? Like, I’m really grateful for that and all, because I guess the shock is making it hard to accept that I…you know…but me? Why not Sundancer? Or Sky-Ripper? Valkyrie or Maximus? Heck, Patriot is right there! The world needs heroes like them.”

“Their time has long since concluded,” It says. “Another shall now take their place.”

I press a hand to my chest, my voice light with disbelief, and…a little bit of goodwill that’s warming me up inside. “What happens if I agree to whatever this is? You and whatever else is here gets to live inside me or what?”

“To explain will be futile. Your body rots. Your killers escape. You must decide now.”

I feel like making a decision like this so suddenly isn’t smart of me, but I’m impulsive, I know that much about myself, or else I wouldn’t have joined a band that plays gigs downtown just for the sake, or I wouldn’t have disobeyed dad’s orders to stay home tonight instead of trying to play superhero either. I also wouldn’t have even tried to force my body to get powers, because no, they didn’t come naturally to me the way Jade had gotten a series of intense headaches that landed her in the hospital for a month. I had done something stupid, and that was helping some kid get his balloon out from a tree. I know how that sounds, and know that it doesn’t really make all that much sense to you right now, but that had been the day that things changed. Things had only changed because I hadn’t thought about what was going to happen next. On the other hand, if I’d never helped that kid out, then I also wouldn’t have gotten my head blown into chunks by a bullet. But…ah, fuck it, why not? Death doesn’t sound fun.

Besides, I kinda want to prove to the powers that be that yeah, Guardian’s daughter can hold her own.

Or die trying, at least.

So I say, “Sure. Give me another shot at this. But…how do I know I’m not just gonna die again?”

The creature smiles wider, making blood seep out from between Its clenched teeth. “Embody justice. Doubt nothing. Bear the weight of responsibility, and do not buckle, for there is now nobody who stands in your way. No man, no creature, no god.” It raises its hand to its chest, a hand as large as my chest, and grasps onto the broken star on Its chest. Out of the five points that are meant to be there, just two of them are left—the one in his head, and the one it snaps free from the rest of the symbol. A crack so loud and sickening it’s kind of like he’s just broken apart his own bones, then it turns the point toward me, right at my chest. I step back reflexively, then watch as it blasts through the air toward me. “You will be light, and you will be peace. You will be their savior from the dying of the stars and the rot of the universe. They will find you, and you must make Them fear you.”

Then he lowered the glimmering shard of bone at me, and fired it right through my chest.