On the screen in front of him, the various visual feeds linked to each modified drone spread throughout the district for tonight’s mission were being displayed. Most of them had gone completely black, no longer transmitting a signal.

But the boy wasn’t paying attention to any of that, eyes glazed over as his mind tried to come up with any explanation, any alternative, for what he feared—what he knew—had happened. His arms hung limply by his sides, and he slouched forward as the weight of the dark reality he now lived in began to settle on his shoulders.

He was a… no, he wasn’t a failure. That didn’t even begin to describe how useless he’d been this entire time. All the feelings he’d been pushing back while striving for competence and success the past few months came back in full force. He was nothing. Just nothing, not even a blip on the scale. He hadn’t made any meaningful difference in the end. Those countless improvements and upgrades only served to allow Jack Spencer to watch when his best friend faced certain death and got taken away.

His vision became blurry, salty drops of liquid streaming down his face, falling one by one and darkening his blue denim jeans with overflowing sorrow. He squeezed his eyes shut to cut off the flow of tears, uncaring of how it would look to anyone else. He was alone right now anyway. He’d come to the regular spot where he met up with Cyrus’ tech people, but had chosen to isolate himself from other people to conduct his first big mission as Gridlock. He didn’t like having other people in the room when he needed to be at peak focus.

He wanted to say he regretted that, but even at this point, he couldn’t delude himself into thinking it would’ve made a difference. All he could do was sit there and state ahead listlessly. Why… what… no, he couldn’t even come up with the right questions to fuel his own self-depreciation, that was how distraught he felt.

A numbness began to spread from his chest to the rest of his body, tingling every part of him with an ominous precursor to the pain he was sure would come eventually. But not now. The reality hadn’t fully sunk in yet. One foot was still stuck in the realm of denial, much as he would’ve wished his entire self was in that stage. Just aware enough to feel the impending dread of how much worse this was going to feel when he finally let himself process and accept everything.

At which point he almost slapped himself out of sheer disgust at his own thoughts.

“When did this become about me?” he asked the empty air. “Finn is fucking gone and all I can do is whine about how much it’s going to hurt?” He let out a mirthless chuckle, shaking his head. None of the thoughts his mind conjured were making much sense or maintaining coherence after he gave them more than a few seconds of attention. Jumbled up messes of memories long past and futures unfulfilled flitted through his mind’s eye, wearing away at the walls he’d raised around his heart.

The camera feeds kept relaying what they saw, yet he honestly couldn’t bring himself to care. As soon as he saw Lyra safe on the other side of the barrier, he’d turned away. Now, glancing at it again to distract himself, he idly noted Sphinx cradling a broken paw off to the side, somewhere behind Nar. Most of the other independents who’d participated had either fled or died, or in some unlucky cases, both.

Jack remained silent as the scene played out before his eyes. Moonflower showing up and knocking an increasingly hysterical Lyra out, Noor arriving, Cerese lowering the barrier, Viperia getting up but being easily defeated.

It was all rote after that; Noor secured the unconscious woman who must’ve been Viperia in human form, the Voyager took charge of her and took off with a team of specialized agents, and the civilian crowd behind the heroes started getting louder. Some other day, he would’ve been excited, but now he just watched dully as the strongest heroine in the megacity interacted with the public. Wait, was that Casey? Why was her nose bleeding? Eh, she would be fine, someone else could take care of it.

This turn of events was certainly something, he could acknowledge that. Sending this level of reinforcements all the way to A23G sent a message, indicating the threat they’d faced and that Central was taking this event seriously. Enough to send Noor herself.

Granted, she probably came here because the higher-ups wanted Noor to ensure Nar’s survival until he truly stepped into his power. But… it was convenient for them at least. Not that the other members of Noor’s team couldn’t have dealt with the Unbound villain, it was just more reassuring to know the situation was actually over. Or at least, it was reassuring to most. To Jack, it just told him he was going to have to live with his fuck-up for a long time.

What would’ve reassured him was if all this backup came in time instead of dragging their fucking feet until the worst case scenario came to pass. His knowledge base was expanding, and he could infer that they were caught in the middle of some political or organizational conflict between the government and the Wardell faction. From that perspective, Nar was also a point of interest considering his ties, which both sides must have known about.

Regardless, it didn’t concern Jack anymore, did it? Who did he think he was all this time? He was just a false king on a plastic throne, with power over a grand total of nothing. Protect Finn? Who was he kidding? He couldn’t even protect this goddamn drone system. Over half of them were destroyed, and they could fly.

Not to mention these were the latest versions, kitted out with minor tools like swiss army knives, flashlights, and other knick knacks like that gel bomb that had been useful exactly once tonight. And not even in the main battle.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Honestly, it was a surprise there were this many still around considering how shitty they were relative to the amount of work he’d put in. He half-expected one of the gathered heroes to snatch them out of the air or tell him to leave, but no such thing happened. He wasn’t the only tech hero in Apexia after all.

Assurances that he was alive had been sent to his family, leaving him alone with his thoughts. He sat a little straighter in an attempt to make his mental state match his Gridlock position. It didn’t work. He felt that clawing emptiness creeping closer and closer, carving a hole in his chest. Soon he wouldn’t be able to think, never mind watching anything.

Some of the Homeland forces on the monitor were getting into a verbal altercation of sorts with a few Aegis operatives that didn’t last more than three seconds before Noor intervened and put a stop to the entire thing. Seeing her handle herself that way must have given a lot of people in the crowd hope, because they started cheering.

Blinking slowly, Jack saw no reason to share their enthusiasm at the casual display of power and looked at another drone cam. This one was doing a fly-over of the section that Viperia had blown up. Not the entire district had been leveled, or he wouldn’t be in one piece right now. The explosion had been isolated to this area, and it was a wasteland.

It was essentially just a giant crater at first, except it was now deformed because Noor’s avatar had punched the reptilian shifter so hard it distorted the landscape, but not so hard that it affected any of the people who’d been teleported by the Voyager.

A weary breath left him. He thought about what he could’ve done differently, and came up empty. Short of figuring out Viperia’s molting technique earlier so he could warn Finn in time, nothing would have helped.

So what then…?

Never more so than in this moment had the path forward seemed so unclear, so vague and undefined and hard to grasp. His thoughts were spiraling. All he could think of was to look back at what brought him here.

An almost unthinking desire to stay with his friend? Arguably his only friend at the time? He wasn’t one for superficial friendships. It wasn’t until recently that he’d really started expanding his social circle, meaning it made sense that he would want to keep Finn close.

Aside from that, it definitely had to do with his own obsession with heroes in general, but that hardly seemed relevant right now. Not with this horrific, terrifying loss hanging over him, waiting to settle on him and tear him apart.

That interest in keeping Finn around had turned into them forming a small team, and the whole experience had been astounding in how new it felt. Then they were suddenly getting involved in increasing levels of danger, culminating in the meeting with Cyrus.

Going forward with that had been hard, almost impossible, since it seemed like the end for him when there were so many more competent people without powers to choose from. Yet they had gone for it. He saw now that having the right skills and tools could get you far.

The following period had been foundational for all of them, and here he was, seeing just how unprepared they had been. He wanted to be angry at Cyrus, go to his fucking estate and smash his face in, but he couldn’t find it in himself to summon that rage. Not right this second. Hopefully it’d come later. Better than this yawning pit in his stomach.

And Lyra. What was he going to do with her? What would he say? He knew how devoted she was to Finn, and she’d recently begun showing it more in the hopes that he would reciprocate. He’d started to, but that had been ripped away.

She… He didn’t know if she was ever going to recover from this. He didn’t know if he could do that himself. He felt lost, he admitted in the sanctity of his mind. Without Shade, he felt lost.

One of the drones seemed to plummet out of nowhere, catching his attention. Eyes bloodshot, he looked at its readout and saw the battery was in fact full, and it couldn’t have caused the fall.

The camera feed arrested a bit off the ground, then turned to a gauntleted hand steadying it to keep the person it belonged to in view. A female knight, blonde, scuffed armor, veil over her mouth.

“Hello?” Damsel spoke in a hoarse voice.

He sat there for a moment, surprised at the turn of events. Had she just leaped into the air to snatch up one of his drones? It seemed like it. What did she want?

…Did it matter what she wanted? Everything was over. They’d paid the ultimate price, and it was downhill from here. He could never go back to how life was before.

“Gridlock, are you there? I have come to ask you a question,” Damsel tried again.

Sighing, Jack flicked on his mic. “Y-yeah, I’m here,” he replied, clearing his throat to keep his voice from cracking. “What do you need?”

“Oh, that’s good. Hello, yes. The reinforcements from the central district are all busy, and the normal authorities won’t let me help with any of their temporary housing establishments. I wanted to go help with evacuation instead, but I don’t have any information. I was wondering if you could perhaps show me which survivors need me the most.” She glanced behind her. “This isn’t everyone.”

Of course they wouldn’t. They needed a heavy PR boost from this rescue, and they wanted Central’s iconic team at the helm when helping the victims and innocents displaced from their homes, otherwise Homeland would get too much good rep from this, public trust in the government would plummet, et cetera. He understood all of that. But was it his problem?

Then he registered Damsel’s tone and noticed that it sounded subdued. Hollow. At which point he remembered that Mistral was also dead. Gone for good. He wasn’t the only person suffering through loss. And here the girl was, jumping on the first opportunity to do good.

Jack closed his eyes for a long moment. “Yeah, I can send some drones to scout ahead for you. Just follow the one you're holding.”

He was going to do the same.

Anything to push away that awful void.