When the time came, I needed to be shuffled out of the hospital's back doors to avoid the press. Security was raised after Stumblebum's little visit, and while their confidence in me went up for having turned his escape plan down, their total paranoia only increased. The whole city was on edge after what had just happened, and it was reluctant to relax just yet.

Without any connection to the internet and only the hospital TV to entertain me, my curiosity eventually became unbearable. After a while, I did decide to use my power, but only to snoop around a little bit. I checked on different people in the hospital and saw what there was to see. Prayers could be heard, and some secrets picked up, but nothing that had direct consequences for me available, so it was all a big wash in the end.

Once my injuries were healed and I was feeling fresh as a daisy, they loaded me up in the armored van and we began our trip out of the city. I still had reservations about this whole thing, but I was gung-ho enough to put a smile on my face and meet the gazes of my escorts to the Rig. It was not every day you got to come face to face with the unpowered hero Corp, after all.

Everyone knew they were in the city, but their operations were almost completely invisible to the public. They were an implicit threat more than anything, keeping villains on their guard. Just because there wasn't a man or woman dressed in spandex on a given police patrol didn't mean that there wasn't still someone in their ranks who could put up a fight against a super. That's where the unpowered hero Corp came in.

Each one of them had seen at least one tour abroad and received as much special training as you could imagine. They were a collection of all the nation's top technic-heroes' works rolled into one. The bio-augmentation that had been done to them included massive doses of experimental chemicals, reinforcements to every major bone and organ groups, and cybernetical enhancements; and that was just what we knew about. They carried a rifle whose kickback would flatten a normal person, and whose caliber could punch a whole clean through all but the toughest of supers. They were the very definition of 'think-twice' for your average run-of-the-mill villain.

For my part, I had only ever caught glimpses of them before. Every now and then a cop would have a suspicious scar running up his neck or a more determined and grimmer aura than I expected. We had a slightly higher number of these unpowered heroes in New Marion, but that was due to the presence of the Potion Seller. A story for another time.

I had been assigned two such individuals as my escorts, and they were decked out in their full gear. On patrols you might find them blending in amongst the regular cops, but when there was no need for them to hide, they had a full suit of advanced armor and gadgets at their disposal. This included a black helmet that I had never seen before. It was made of a heavy metal, with only small slits for the eyes to see through. Most worryingly, as they wore it I saw no signs of an aura being emanated. It was as if the metal of the helmet was blocking my power's energy.

Now that was unexpected.

"Get buckled up please," one of them said, seeing me staring. "We want to get you to your destination as soon as possible."

I nodded. Though I had been working on my stutter in private these last couple days, it was still giving me trouble. I didn't know the first thing about speech therapy, but I suspected that what afflicted me was more a matter of psychological hesitation that anything. Not speaking out loud for three years had taken its toll.

The guard offered more information as the vehicle pulled out. "We've received credible threats against your life since the incident with Stumblebum, and the higher ups want you placed safely on the Rig as soon as possible. It’s a secure, untraceable location."

"Threats?" I asked, keeping it simple.

"Many villains came out in the ceasefire to help save the city, but there were a number of very notable exceptions who stayed back and let the casualties pile up. We believe that one such group may have been in contact with and encouraging the rampager before his attack, seeking to try and take control of the city in the aftermath and establish an occupied territory for themselves. With the notoriety you've garnered and the press release which stated your intent to join the heroes' forces, we've picked up chatter suggesting that they may be seeking to take you out before that ever happens. Partly as revenge, but partly also to pave the way for future efforts towards this occupation..."

There were only three villain-controlled territories in the whole United States. Other countries had many times that, but since we were the center of military police action in the world, it was seen as far more unacceptable for it to happen here. What that meant was that you had to be truly insane or insanely powerful to even think of attempting it. Most often it was both.

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Knowing people like that were out to get me... was not a comforting thought.

The second guard simply leaned in and stuck out his fist. "Headcase, right?" he said.

I took the fist-bump he was offering and spoke. "Yeah. That's me."

"I heard about what you did before. Don't let anybody shame you for it. A person like that Jayden guy deserved to be put down."

The first guard sighed. "You shouldn't tell him that, even if it is true. Remember psych-quarantine procedures."

My ears perked up at that, but I tried not to look too interested. I simply shook my head. "It was not... well thought out."

"In my two tours, we rarely took prisoners," the second guard said. "Over here they're a lot more anal about keeping it clean, but all that really matters is that you stopped the guy. Not even the public knows how much you did."

"Thank you, sir," I said. We had hit the highway now and started heading for the bay.

He continued. "You know I'm not kidding when I say that New Marion's downtown looked like a fucking warzone when I saw it yesterday. I was there in twenty-eighteen, and I was there for the Twister Twins, maybe a little before your time. But neither of them put a scratch on this."

"The news is being... cagey," I explained, measuring my words carefully to avoid stumbling. "What are the damages?"

The first guard, the sterner of the two, was quick to rattle off what he'd heard. "Roughly fifteen percent of the city was destroyed completely. Refugee tents are everywhere. Emergency Response can't keep up. The medical system is overwhelmed, and search and rescue has been going nonstop with very little success. A quarter of the city is without power and water, and it would be twice that if not for the distributed grid upgrades we received a few years back. All of this occurred in little over an hour."

"Fucking hell," I swore. Though I was proud that I did the right thing for once, next to the scale of the outcome it felt almost pointless. Knowing that the rampager had intended to give up anyway, and that I had not done much to change that, only identifying him and killing him for my own selfish purposes... well, it put a different perspective on things.

The van shook slightly, and I heard a rumble in the distance.

“What was that?” The driver said up front.

My two guards started talking into their radios, asking what had happened, and I began to look around as well. In the darkness of the van, it wasn't hard for me to tune out the input from my eyes and peer into psychic space. Though my friends here were little more than phantoms of weak signals, both colorless and blurry, the outside was still perfectly crisp and clear.

Off to the southeast, a patch of people had just gone from relaxed to terrified in an instant. All around them and on the road around us, their auras were signaling fear and attention rising, leading to only one conclusion in my mind.

A bomb had just gone off. And not a small one, either.

I looked to the guards expectantly, but they were checking their guns to make sure they were ready in case the next attack came our way. The more jovial of the two was now hardened in his tone as well. "We're not stopping. We're getting you to the holding tank and then we'll wait for new orders."

Again, I nodded, but my doubts were finally starting to creep in on my resolve. If there were villains planning to take over the entire city, what was I doing right now if I was leaving for an offshore evaluation facility?

My mind went back to the hospital, three years ago.

I had laid in bed, not saying a word as extended family and friends came by to tell me how sorry they were. I was so angry back then that I didn't trust myself to open my mouth and speak. I wouldn't even look at them, as I feared I might erupt over the smallest displays of kindness. I thought about hurting them with my power every time they said, 'it'll be okay'.

The resentment I felt for what had happened was so overwhelming that I couldn't face those who acknowledged it by trying to help me. I didn't want to be a hero or a victim, I just wanted for it not to have happened in the first place. That fear of what I might do, and refusal to take responsibility for my own place in the world was what had lead me to sneak away and cut all ties. I had given up on making choices for myself because I hated living with the consequences.

Now, with this hero program, was I doing it all again? That thought deeply unnerved me.

In the distance, I heard more bombs going off. One of my guards started cursing to himself, and he banged on the front of our cage. "Driver! Speed this thing up!" To me he looked back and said, "This is a fucking disaster. We’re not ready for another hit this soon."

Our transport sped along, but it couldn't turn on its sirens to clear the traffic which was only getting worse as people rushed home to be with their families. It was an unmarked black van on the outside, as it was supposed to carry us to a secret location where I would be loaded into a submersible vehicle. Reason being, the number of aquatic supers compared to aerial ones was not comparable, so the water was the safest place to travel by. None of that would matter if we got locked down in what was quickly becoming the worst disaster zone in the country.

This is too coordinated, I thought. They must be right. Someone knew about the rampager’s plan beforehand.

Using my inner sight, I watched the cars around us. There was one sedan trailing a few rows back whose passengers were not afraid, I noted. They were a calm green, much like Jayden had been. Every time we took a turn, they followed suit, and they continued to weave around traffic to draw closer to us. A bad feeling rose in the pit of my stomach, then.

The rampager was only the beginning, I realized. He was a petty person, but that made him a tool easily used by those with more ambition. New Marion had thought that the worst of her troubles were over, but that was clearly not true anymore. As of today, this city was no longer just some forgotten coastal sprawl. It was the epicenter of conflict in the entire country.

And we were in the middle of it.