“What is your name?” he asked the woman as he moved to free the next person.

She rubbed her wrist, gazing at the door as if she expected more spawn to pour in.

“Your name.” He repeated, moving to the third person. “They won’t hurt you anymore. Trust me. I killed them all.”

“Hayley,” she stammered. “Thanks for the help.”

“Don’t mention it.” Then mirroring something Submariner used to say, he added. “What was I to do when you all were in danger?”

That comment earned him some gestures of appreciation from the terrified captives.

“What the fuck was that?” Hayley asked, her waning fear giving way to an utter bafflement.

“I think they were zombies.” A young man offered his opinion.

Several of them agreed with the man’s statement.

Only after Jalen freed the last person did he move to the center of the room and request their attention. Then he pointed at the man who identified the spawn as zombies. “You were on the mark. They are zombies, yes. But of a demonic kind. We call them spawn. Do you have any idea what they planned to do with you all?”

As they exchanged terrified looks amongst each other in response to the demonic revelation, Prillon—still gripped in his hand—turned into a watch and wrapped himself around Jalen’s wrist.

Since the question he asked was purely rhetorical, meant to light a sense of dread amongst them, he continued. “They planned on turning you into one of their kind.”

An elderly woman asked. “But how?”

“By demonic means, of course. When a sufficient number of you had been collected, a demon was going to swing by, kill you all, and animate your corpses.”

“Blood of Jesus Christ!” The elderly woman performed the sign of the cross repeatedly.

“Now, you guys are the lucky ones, because I got to you before the demon. But like the dead spawn outside and so many others in the city, no one will get to them before they are turned.”

“Why are you telling us this?” Hayley said, slightly annoyed. “What would you have us do? We are not cops or soldiers or superheroes, even. We can’t do anything about it and I want to go home.”

Her comments garnered support amongst the vast majority of the gathering. They were tired, scared, and most importantly, they were angry.

“But you can,” he said, letting his gaze linger on everyone present. “I am not asking you to fight the spawn. No. What I want you to do is spread the news of what is actually happening in the city. In your workplace, your homes, your communities. Spread the word. Let people know that their city is infested with spawn and that the government is doing everything it can to hide that fact.”

That was all he needed to say to set everything in motion. As they prepared to leave, he moved over to Hayley.

“Do you have a phone?” he asked.

She nodded. “It should be somewhere in the gym. I dropped it when they attacked me.”

So he took an excursion into the gym floor, navigated past the bloody mess, found her phone on the ground next to a treadmill, retrieved it, and returned it to her.

“Now I want you to record the evidence outside,” he said.

She gulped, but nodded her head.

Afterward, as they exited the yoga room in a tight cluster, Hayley and a few others, who still had functioning phones, made recordings of the carnage in the gym room. Some threw up while most others gagged at the gruesome sight. The air was heavy with the metallic stench of blood.

In no time, they arrived on the ground floor, making their way through the hallway leading to the reception area, where a group of startled officers regarded them. Two officers had been inspecting the receptionist’s corpse with puzzled looks while another conversed with Dynamo, a superhero whom Jalen recognized as being mainly stationed in Hermosville. They all started when the messy survivors emerged. However, the conversing officer went above and beyond by drawing his pistol and pointing it at them.

Jalen couldn’t fault the officer if the man had encountered a spawn before, as the survivors looked disheveled and dirty. And judging from his shaky hands and darting eyes, Jalen figured the man had.

The survivors caught on to the officer’s fear, so Hayley and some others tried to reason with him and clarify the misunderstanding. Unfortunately, it seemed those efforts were falling on deaf ears.

Dynamo—clad in a black, long-sleeved tunic and pants, embroidered with red accented designs inspired by traditional Japanese patterns, which were tightly bound by winding straps on her waist and limbs—darted her arm out and pulled the officer’s arm down. “Stand down, officer.”

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“Goddammit!” the officer barked, backpedaling while still trying to swing his gun upward again. “With this many, if they rush us, we would be torn apart.”

“I said stand down, officer!” With a lightning-fast kick to his arm, she disarmed the officer and sent his gun skittering across the floor. Then Dynamo focused her cautious attention on the large group of unkempt humans who just graced her presence.

Jalen couldn’t exactly read her expression because she wore a red Japanese Oni mask with a chilling grin showcasing jagged teeth. But a glance at her gloved hand, which wrapped tightly around her Katana handle, told him her current state of mind.

So he stepped forward with his hands raised. “These people aren’t spawn, but survivors. Let them through and I’ll show you the real deal. Though I’ve dealt with them.”

“How can we believe you?” the terrified officer asked, glancing at his pistol, which lay about fifteen feet away. “The other ones talked too. Then I watched my partner’s face get ripped off. Right before my fucking eyes!”

“That is a valid question,” Dynamo said, turning to Jalen. “To verify your claims, I would like to test you all. If they can follow my complex instructions, you will be allowed to vacate the premises with the added benefit of medical assistance, as I see some of you are in great need.”

Every survivor agreed to her terms.

“Jump,” Dynamo commanded with a stern tone.

The loud thuds of thirty pairs of feet leaving the ground and landing echoed across the room.

“Clap,” Dynamo said, watching them closely. “Touch your nose. Touch your shoulder. Look to the left. Raise your right hand.”

Jalen shifted to the left and casually leaned against the only table in the room, folding his hands as he observed the procession. Dynamo glanced at him for a moment before returning to the synchronized dance she was conducting. After two minutes of mild exercise, the superhero was satisfied.

Dynamo said. “Now it is important that—”

“What of that guy?” The officer, gripped by fear, pointed at Jalen. “He didn’t obey your command. What if—”

“Officer.” Dynamo placed her hand on her Katana, her tone growing colder. “You will not interrupt me again. Is that understood?” Not waiting for his reply, she addressed the survivors. “It is important that you follow these next set of instructions. Do not speak of what happened here to anyone—your husbands, wives, not even your pets. It is vital that we keep these issues confidential to avoid hindering HAVEN’s efforts in apprehending the culprits.”

“Culprits?” Hayley huffed. “I’m sorry. Do you mean demons? Because I don’t think I heard you right.”

Several others shared her sentiments.

Dynamo tensed up. “Yes, we believe they are of demonic origin. Yes.”

“So, why are you telling us to remain silent?” Hayley asked. “With what tragically happened years ago not too far from here, wouldn’t it make more sense to let people know about the demons lurking in the city?”

“Damn right!” a man exclaimed. “No fucking chance am I keeping quiet when my brother and his family could become the demon’s next target.”

And like a raging storm, they expressed how they would do everything in their power to protect their loved ones and friends. Dynamo stared at Jalen longer now, her expression still shrouded behind the mask, before gearing her attention back on the angry crowd.

“You have to understand the ramifications of your actions,” Dynamo said, her voice rising with urgency. “Yes, you may succeed in protecting your loved ones, but the ensuing mass hysteria and riots caused by the news would make our jobs infinitely harder.”

“Mass hysteria? Riots?” Hayley echoed, incredulously. “Given the wave of death sweeping across the city, I’d say that response is more than justified.”

He smiled, watching how things were unfolding.

Almost defeated, Dynamo made one final attempt. “But if there are protests and riots, that also makes the demon’s acquisition of spawn easier. All you’d be doing is gathering a large amount of vulnerable people to be taken advantage of. The resources it would take to secure such gatherings would be astronomical.”

“At least the people will know the extent of the danger they are in,” the old woman said with finality.

Faced with a crowd hostile to her instructions, Dynamo had no other option than to let them leave. Some veered toward a waiting ambulance to be attended to while the majority left for their respective homes, the sunless sky laying witness to their journeys.

Dynamo asked that Jalen accompany her on her sweep through the building to verify his claims, then instructed the standing officers and some other reinforcements to form a perimeter around the fitness center. As his presence there with her seemed pointless, he surmised that she wanted something from him. So he watched her meticulously scan every room with one hand on her Katana and some long needles between the fingers of the other.

It was when they reached the men’s locker room that she finally voiced a question. “How did you know about the term ‘spawn’? Not even the local precinct is privy to that detail.”

She was checking the shower stalls individually while he thought of the best potential avenues to answer her question.

“Shouldn’t I be somewhere safe?” he asked. “After all, this building could still harbor some of them.”

“Somehow, I doubt that concerns you. Answer my question, Jalen Nkanga. I hope I pronounced your last name right.”

His eyes narrowed.

With the room cleared, she walked up to him, stopping a few meters short. He suddenly felt the hairs rising on his arms due to an effect originating from her. The surrounding air slowed to a crawl and filled with static.

What were her abilities, anyway?

It had been long since he paid attention to superheroes so attentively. But before he met Tanarion and was exposed to the world of gods and demons, Dynamo had just been starting out, a year-one rookie at the time, with energy-based powers, the specifics of which eluded him. It was her striking costume, which accentuated her shapely figure, that captured his attention and those of his peers in high school.

“So are you Mason’s contingency?” He asked. “The weapon designed by HAVEN to defeat me?”

Dynamo inched her masked head ever so close. “You don’t look so tough to me.”

Her needles were seconds from grazing his skin.

He smiled. “There is only one way to find out.”

“Will you answer the question, Mr. Nkanga?”

Looking directly at the eye lens of her red mask, he said. “I have a reliable source.”

“The same source that notified you of this location hours before I received my mission?”

He shrugged.

With her eyes still lingering, she rounded him and used the door.