I didn’t sleep, but I felt more awake than I had in days, despite the exhaustion gnawing at my mind. Or maybe the mental breakdown counted as rest now. Everything had blurred together—one day fading into the next with no real distinction. Paul’s visit had been a rare interruption in this suffocating silence. His words still lingered, hanging over the room like a lifeline I couldn’t quite grasp. The tether I saw between us had vanished after an hour or two, leaving me wondering whether it was just another hallucination or part of my abilities.

I stared at the ceiling of the impersonal apartment. The cracks in the plaster were as familiar to me as the grotesque images that haunted my dreams. My thoughts kept wandering back to the moment of impact—the clash between Gravitas and Ms. Kai that shattered my world. Their battle, and the tremors that followed, echoed through my life even now. Every distant boom or crash from another meta fight pulled me back to that night, to Mel clinging to me as the building crumbled around us.

Her voice, once so soft and full of life, had been swallowed by the noise of destruction. Gone, like everything else.

I sat up slowly, rubbing my eyes. The visions weren’t going away. Every time I closed them, I was dragged back to that strange, otherworldly place—the writhing mass of tentacles, the countless eyes watching me. I saw my body decomposing in the mud, felt the weight of the decay. It had to mean something. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t just a dream. These images were too vivid, too real.

But what meaning could I pull from them? My life outside the window was just as chaotic. Metahumans tore through the city weekly, if not daily, battles raging like a constant storm. Was this the reality we were supposed to live with? Powers destroying the world while the rest of us just tried to survive?

I got out of bed, ignoring the ache in my body. Paul had been right—one day at a time, he’d said. But today, I couldn’t stay here. The walls were closing in on me, the visions pressing in every time I stopped moving. I needed air, space—anything to remind me that there was still a world beyond my nightmares.

Stepping outside felt like stepping into a cacophony of sound. The city hummed with life, but underneath that noise was an ever-present tension. I wrapped my coat tighter around me as I walked.

The air was heavy with the smell of smoke, and the faint tang of metal lingered in the wind—a reminder of the recent battles. Broken glass crunched beneath my boots, littering the sidewalks like confetti after a parade, but instead of celebration, the city wore a cloak of ruin. Scaffolding surrounded half-demolished buildings, the skeletal remains of what used to be homes and businesses. Graffiti covered the walls, some of it angry slogans decrying metahumans, others exalting them as gods. The duality of it all was sickening. Metahumans had become both saviours and destroyers, revered and hated in equal measure. I could feel the weight of their presence in every corner of the city, as if the buildings themselves groaned under the strain of their battles. Metahumans—people like me, I guess—were rare, but their influence was everywhere. Their battles left scars on the city, like the one in me.

The thought hit me with a new clarity: I was one of them now. Maybe not by choice, but by some cruel twist of fate. The destruction they caused, the way they ripped through cities and lives without a second thought—was that my future? Was I bound to leave my own trail of ruin?

I couldn’t stop thinking about how metahuman fights had become normalised, part of the city’s routine, like the changing of the seasons or the rising of the sun. People went about their lives, learning to duck when buildings collapsed or to avoid certain areas altogether because they knew a battle had taken place there recently. It was strange to me, this acceptance of chaos. The constant destruction should have sparked more outrage, more rebellion, but instead, it had fostered a numb kind of resilience. And now, I was a part of that cycle, tied to the very force I once despised. But there was no one to explain how to navigate this new life, no handbook for the newly empowered. How many others like me had awakened to this nightmare, unsure whether to join the ranks of heroes, villains, or remain unseen?

I kept my eyes on the ground, avoiding the gaze of the people around me. I didn’t trust anyone anymore. How could I, when the heroes who were supposed to protect had instead destroyed everything I cared about? Gravitas and Ms. Kai didn’t care about the collateral damage. Why should I care about them?

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Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if things would’ve been different had Mel and I lived somewhere else, somewhere far from the battles. If we had just been in another building that night, would we have survived? What if Mel was the one that survived instead? I wondered how Mel would’ve handled all of this. She had always been the stronger one, the one with boundless energy and optimism, the one who could brush off a bad day and find some beauty in the wreckage. Would she have stayed hopeful even after everything? Would she have found a way to turn this new reality into something livable, something less broken? Or maybe she would’ve hated it, too—hated the city, hated the metahumans, hated the way her life had been ripped apart. I could almost hear her voice, full of sarcastic wit, telling me to snap out of it, to stop moping and get on with things. But that voice was just another ghost in my mind now, a shadow of who she’d been.

I walked aimlessly, letting my feet carry me wherever. The city felt like it was constantly teetering on the edge of collapse, a fragile balance between chaos and rebuilding. I passed construction workers struggling to patch up a building that had been hit in the last fight. They worked tirelessly to repair what was broken, but what was the point? The city would just be torn apart again.

Eventually, my wandering brought me to the outskirts of the city, where the buildings were older, forgotten relics of a past life. Here, it was quiet. Peaceful, almost. The fights hadn’t reached this far yet. I sat on a rusted bench, watching the world move around me while my mind churned.

I looked down at my hands, turning them over slowly. These hands had taken a life—or given it, depending on how you looked at it. When I transferred my injury to Robert that night, I didn’t know what I was doing. It had happened so fast, like some primal instinct had kicked in. Since then, I hadn’t dared to use my power, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised I had to. What if I could stop someone else from dying? What if I could turn this curse into something useful?

But there was another thought, darker and more seductive. Why should I help anyone at all? The world had taken everything from me. Why shouldn’t I take something back?

I wasn’t a hero. I wasn’t even sure I was a good person. Before all this, I’d been ordinary—helping neighbours moving their furniture, serving drinks at the bar, living life quietly. I hadn’t been the type to stand up and fight for anything. But now, with this power, I wasn’t sure what kind of person I would become. Or if I was still a person at all.

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The next few weeks passed in a haze of practice and exhaustion. I wandered the city at night, finding quiet corners to test the boundaries of my ability. At first, it was instinctual—touching something or someone and seeing the tether forming. It wasn’t a conscious choice; it was something that welled up from deep inside me, like breathing.

The first time I tried to swap an injury deliberately, it left me breathless, my hands shaking uncontrollably. I transferred a small cut from my hand to a stray cat, watching with morbid fascination as the scrape disappeared from my skin and appeared on the cat’s paw. The cat limped away, confused but unharmed. It was a small victory, but it felt monumental.

Over time, I realised I could transfer more than just injuries. Pain, fatigue, even a fever—I could shift these things from myself to others. The power scared me. It felt like I was playing with forces I didn’t understand, forces that could easily spiral out of control if I wasn’t careful. There were moments my fingertips itched after stumbling into a passerby, as if I unconsciously wanted to use my power; to tug on the newly formed tether.

But with each experiment, I grew more confident. I learned the limits of my power, the delicate balance between giving and taking. I felt like I was teetering on the edge of something dangerous, something that could either save lives or destroy them.

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As the days passed, I found myself returning to the edges of the city, watching from the shadows as metahumans clashed. Heroes, villains—it didn’t matter anymore. They were all the same, tearing the world apart in the name of their own agendas. I stayed hidden, hands in my pockets, wondering if I should step in.

The fights I watched were brutal, savage displays of strength and chaos. Sometimes it was a hero, sometimes a villain, but in the end, it didn’t matter. They were all the same—unstoppable forces crashing through buildings, lives, and futures without a second thought. I wondered if they even saw the people running from their destruction. Did they know what it was like to be powerless? Did they care? I doubted it.

But I wasn’t like them. I didn’t want to be part of their chaos, but I couldn’t ignore it anymore. The world was falling apart, and I had a power that could make a difference, even if I didn’t know what that difference would be.

In the end, I made a choice. I wasn’t going to be a hero, and I wasn’t going to be a villain. I was going to survive. I was going to use my power to keep myself safe, to keep others from ending up like Mel.

I wasn’t sure what that made me—maybe something in between, something undefined. But it didn’t matter anymore. I had power, and it was time to use it.