“Hold still, please,” the paramedic said, giving me an unimpressed look through the hologram-like 3D projection in front of her eyes.

“Sorry,” I murmured. In my defence, the feeling of her power was really weird. Like some invisible strings were wiggling beneath the surface of my skin, probing at my nerves and leaving pins and needles in their wake. I’d like to meet the man who wouldn’t flinch with that on their face.

Still, I supposed it was a bit better than the dull throbbing my nose had been subjected to for the last ten minutes. It couldn’t do anything about the taste of my own blood lingering on my tongue, though.

“Could I get some water?” I asked, and one of the USHA officers hovering nearby gave a thumbs up and strode away, probably thankful to finally have something to do.

They’d arrived barely a few minutes after the train had stopped; apparently they’d been following alongside while other units raced to the next station to try and cut it off. Things had been hectic for a bit, but Slash was quickly hauled off and the five of us who’d confronted him were separated and led away to a hastily-emptied parking lot where the emergency services were in the midst of setting up their triage centre.

A part of me had assumed they’d want to question me right away, but instead they’d followed protocol, leading me straight to the medical tent and to the no-nonsense paramedic with the weird prickly touch. Her signal felt like vibrating moonlight. It was really weird. These things tended to be.

That they’d managed to set up a tent big enough to house a good twenty beds was impressive, and it wasn’t like they cut corners. I had my own bed behind a privacy curtain, and space enough that the USHA officers who’d escorted me here could linger to one side without feeling overbearing.

I’d been one of the first in, but judging by the ever-rising din of chatter and more and more machines beeping to life, things were starting to get crowded.

Worst of all was the excitement I was picking up among the people on other beds, in spite of their injuries. Heroes, they were saying, close enough to touch!

I so badly wanted to be outside right now, to see who had shown up, if nothing else. Maybe get some autographs if I was lucky.

Everything felt kind of surreal. Dream-like. I might have been tempted to pinch myself if I didn’t think the paramedic would get mad at me for moving.

I just couldn’t quite believe I’d done it. A dangerous villain was presumably on his way to prison where he couldn’t hurt anyone else, and that was because of me. At least partially. I wasn’t arrogant enough to think this was a solo effort or anything. In fact, I almost certainly would’ve been skewered on those razor-sharp black claws without the others’ help.

It felt like something had been lifted from my shoulders. A weight I hadn’t known was there. It wasn’t gone—I wasn’t convinced a thousand victories like this would get rid of it.

But it was lighter.

If I’d needed affirmation I was walking the right path, this was it.

“No sign of a concussion,” the paramedic said. Her fingertips ghosted over my skin, the tendrils of her pins-and-needles power vibrating my face. “Your nose is definitely broken, but I can coax it so it doesn’t end up crooked.”

“Got off lucky,” the remaining officer behind her said, a muscular black guy with a shaved head and striking golden eyes. He’d introduced himself and his partner, but it had gone over my head a bit while I was still running high on adrenaline. I felt like his name started with a B? I felt no signal from him, suggesting his eyes were natural, which was interesting.

“Very much so,” the paramedic agreed. “I hear the guy you took down wasn’t known for treating his enemies gently.”

“Well, I did this myself, to be fair,” I said.

The paramedic raised one dark eyebrow.

“Not on purpose,” I hastened to add. “I was just so focused on catching him that I didn’t have any hands free to break my fall.”

“So you decided to use your face instead,” she said.

“Not on purpose,” I repeated, feeling a little stupid now. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“Better than anyone could have hoped,” the officer said, his voice sombre. “When we got the call that a villain was attacking a train full of schoolkids, I thought I was going to have a very, very bad day. Only a handful of people injured? Miracle.”

His words should’ve been encouraging, but instead my stomach turned.

“Is the girl okay?” I asked.

“Don’t know yet.” The officer looked grim. Whether that was due to my change in tone or what he knew of the girl’s state, I had no idea. I hoped it was the former, but I wasn’t prone to optimism, given how life had gone in recent years. “She got whisked away by some superhero I didn’t recognise before our guys could get her halfway to the medical tent. From what I hear, they’re taking her to the ICU at Foresight Tower itself.”

My good mood evaporated, the high of victory dispersing like it was never there.

“I messed up,” I said.

The officer frowned and stood from where he’d been leaning against an empty bed, approaching. “Don’t do that to yourself, kid.”

I shook my head. “I was stalling, bantering with the villain while a girl was bleeding out on the ground. That’s not heroic.”

“Bantering?”

“I wanted to rile him up, hoping he’d be less focused that way so we could better get the jump on him when the moment came. Used what I read on his file to get in his head.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“His file?”

“On the USHA database.”

The officer’s eyebrows climbed. “Haven’t heard of many kids who read the dry-ass reports on there, let alone remember stuff from them.”

“It’s impressive,” the paramedic chimed in, focused on whatever she was doing with my nose, which I was trying to ignore.

“It’s not, really. Guy like me has to have some kind of edge.” I swallowed. “Knowledge is power, as they say. Figured I can be a better hero if I have as much info as possible. Then when it actually comes down to it, I break protocol. You’re supposed to prioritise retrieving any injured persons from the danger zone—”

“Only if you believe you can do so safely,” the paramedic cut in.

The second officer returned with my water, and the paramedic moved so I could get the plastic cup to my lips without disturbing her work.

I merely held it in my hands, unable to bring myself to take a sip.

The two officers exchanged a look, then the first let out a sigh.

“Think you’re up to telling us what happened, Emmett?” he asked, pulling out a voice recorder and placing it on the bed beside me.

I nodded.

I relayed my actions from the beginning, making sure to include my thought process. It only served to highlight to myself how poor my performance was.

Freezing up in the first place was unacceptable. From the very beginning, I should have been right behind Ashika, backing her up. I’d cost myself precious minutes in my pathetic panic. Minutes that meant a hell of a lot when someone had an open wound.

Knowing what I did about Slash, I would have been able to form a better plan, communicate things to Ashika so she could be in on it. Slash had caught her off guard and reset her charge, but if she’d known to be more wary of him, she might not have rushed in so fast. With a little longer to build up her strength, she might have been able to shrug off hits from his claws and overpower him.

But that was a useless hypothetical. The real problem was getting caught up in my emotions, riding the adrenaline and relying on that unexpected feeling of excitement to carry me through. An instinct that could have proved costly. Maybe it had. Didn’t know yet.

Heroes couldn’t afford to get lost in the moment like that. They had to be level-headed. Calm and collected. Ready for anything and prepared to do whatever it took at a moment’s notice. Distracting a villain with taunts and quips was all well and good when the stakes were lower, but not when there were lives on the line.

I was supposed to know better than that. Be better.

If that girl died, I didn’t know what I’d do.

My fists were clenched so hard my knuckles were popping by the time I was done recounting my version of events.

“I’ll be better next time,” I said, furious with myself. It wasn’t a revelation, but it felt like a new Aspect appeared in my soul anyway.

“Sounds like you did pretty well to me,” the second officer said. He’d reintroduced himself as Hawkins during my story, a slender man with tan skinned, curly brown hair, and kind eyes.

“You made mistakes,” the black officer—Officer Brady—said with a more neutral expression. “But that’s par for the course when you have no official training. Considering the circumstances, I doubt anyone’s gonna chew you out.”

“Well. Technically what you did is vigilantism and we’re legally obligated to give you a good telling off for it, but yeah, what Officer Brady said. No one will be willing to actually pursue any punishment for you.”

“Foresight City DA is probably the most sympathetic to superheroes in the country.”

“And you took down a villain, for crying out loud!” Officer Hawkins grinned at me. He moved to clap my shoulder, but a glare from the paramedic stopped him in place. “That guy had a bounty with USHA. You guys are gonna be flush with cash.”

I shook my head. “You need an officially recognised licence for that.”

“Bzzt.” Officer Hawkins crossed his arms in an X. “The money will be put in a trust until you’ve got your licence. Between you and me, kid? Someone as smart and brave as you is a sure thing for getting one. It’ll be like a nice graduation present from your past self.”

I smiled despite myself. The faith in me was nice, but I wondered if he’d still be singing that tune if he saw my Shimada Scale test ranking.

“You were on your way to Aegis, right? For the admissions exams?” Officer Brady asked.

“Yeah,” I said. Feeling was starting to return in my face, and my eyes were watering from the steadily growing stench of ammonia.

God, I hate hospitals.

“See? You’ll be a fine hero in no time, Emmett,” Officer Hawkins said, smiling.

“Maybe.”

“There’s no maybe about it,” the paramedic said. Her face was still covered, but her eyes gave away her smile. “You’re gonna go far. Trust me. Now brace yourself. Withdrawing my power can be uncomfortable.”

She tapped my face lightly, her signal cut out, and feeling rushed back to me in a torrent. The smell of ammonia hit me like a wall of acid, forcing its way into my sinuses and down my throat. I coughed and snorted, but to no avail. All I could do was sit and gasp in pain, probably looking like an utter lunatic to an outside observer.

Luckily, the sensation quickly subsided, leaving me in a cold sweat, feeling groggy.

“Uncomfortable,” I repeated. “Yeah, you could say that.”

She winced. “Sorry. Not a lot I can do about it.”

“What even is your power? If you don’t mind telling me, that is.”

“Manipulating living cells in a small area. And I mean really small. Measured in micrometres if I’m pushing myself. The life of a Level 3 D-rank. C’est la vie.”

I leaned forward. “But that doesn’t mean the area you can see within people is that small. Seemed like you were looking at my entire skull at once, or at least a big part of it. That’s gotta be good for diagnosis, right?”

The paramedic blinked. “That’s what I do more often than not, yes.”

“Good observation,” Officer Brady said. “A lot of people don’t bother to think about Aspects like that.”

I shrugged. “Like I said, I research a lot. Gotta keep up with the powerhouses somehow.”

“Hear, hear,” Officer Hawkins said. “If only more wannabe heroes were like you, Shaw.”

If more people were like me, there wouldn’t be any heroes at all.

I could only smile awkwardly.

Silence lingered for a moment, and the paramedic stood. “If there’s nothing else you guys need?”

“Is there anyone who might know how the girl—” I cut myself off as a new signal stormed into the tent. I froze in place, wide-eyed.

The signal was the most powerful I’d ever felt. It was overwhelming, to the point I couldn’t comprehend how someone’s power could be so vast. It was a raging storm, a hurricane, a tornado. Gargantuan waves crashed against behemothic rocks. Thunder rolled and boomed. It filled the space and drowned everything else out.

The paramedic opened her mouth to speak, concern furrowing her brows, but was cut off by the privacy curtain suddenly jerking aside. My heart leapt to my throat, half-expecting to see Slash standing there, powered up somehow and with murder in his eyes.

What I found instead was almost worse.

The cloak that covered him from shoulder to toe was a roiling ocean in the midst of a biblical storm, waves crashing together and sending spray high into the air. Monstrously large and yet impossibly small whirlpools spun above his shoulders, churning out massive torrents of water that curled around his body, feeding into the already absurd squall. His head was covered by an angry storm cloud, grey and foreboding. Only his eyes were visible, lightning flashing in his dark irises.

His gaze was fixed on me.

“I believe I can help you there, young man,” Tempest, the S-rank whose Level was so high he claimed to have lost count, said.