Fear wasn't something you defeated. It was just data.
Adrian stared at his translucent Status Interface. Ultron. The Sokovia Accords. A purple titan who liked collecting shiny rocks to erase half the universe.
He was sitting on a mountain of future apocalypses, and right now, he didn't even have enough strength to survive a targeted raid.
"Panic is useless," he muttered, closing the screen. "Control is what keeps me alive."
Sophia was curled on the couch when he walked into the living room, an old thriller open on her stomach.
"You're doing the face again," she said, without looking up from her book.
"What face?"
"The 'silently having an existential crisis while glaring into space' face." She turned a page. "It's very distinct."
Adrian dropped onto the other end of the couch. "It's not a crisis. It's strategy."
"Right. So what's today's strategy? The DODC? The underground monster? Or the fact that your eyebrows look unfairly good now?"
"DODC," Adrian said. "I've been playing defense—dodging tails, ducking questions. But eventually, they'll connect the dots. I need to control the narrative."
Sophia set her book down, her expression turning serious. "You want to lie to a federal agency?"
"I want to give them a box to put me in," Adrian explained. "If I stay a ghost, they'll hunt me. But if I feed them a cover story—a survivor with Chitauri-energy mutations—they'll file me away. It's close enough to the truth that they won't look deeper."
Sophia raised an eyebrow. "And how do you plan on feeding a federal agency a fake file without them catching you?"
"...Working on that part."
That afternoon, Adrian went up to the rooftop garden.
He sat cross-legged among the surviving tomato plants, closing his eyes. It was time to test his passive perception.
He activated Cursed Energy Manipulation alongside the Six Eyes, letting his awareness bleed outward.
The physical world vanished, replaced by a visual overlay of violet energy.
Grief pooled like heavy oil near a hospital six blocks north.
Fear hummed like high-voltage electricity at a military checkpoint.
And deep beneath the concrete, right under a heavy iron manhole cover, a massive heat signature rested. Patient. Cold.
It isn't sleeping, Adrian realized, feeling the texture of the energy flow. It's dormant. It's waiting for a trigger.
Curious, he pushed his perception a fraction further, letting his awareness brush against the entity's outer edge.
The violet pulse flared.
[WARNING: TARGETED SENSORY FOCUS DETECTED BY SOURCE. WITHDRAW IMMEDIATELY.]
A suffocating, crushed-space pressure snapped back along the line of his perception.
Adrian's eyes flew open. He gasped for air, his heart hammering against his ribs. For a fraction of a second, that vast, ancient presence had turned its gaze directly at him.
Note to self: Don't poke the sleeping god.
He sat frozen, waiting. Below, the city continued its noisy, oblivious rhythm. Nothing followed him back.
A translucent screen flickered into view.
[ +5 EXP ]
[ CURRENT PROGRESS TO LEVEL 3: 97% ]
"Ninety-seven percent," he muttered, wiping cold sweat from his forehead. "And I got it by poking an ancient threat with a stick. Great strategy."
When he got back to the apartment, Sophia was waiting at the kitchen table. She slid a folded copy of the local paper toward him.
"Page six," she said softly. "Look."
Adrian picked it up.
UNEXPLAINED STRUCTURAL DAMAGE NEAR HAZARD ZONES.
EYEWITNESSES REPORT YOUNG MAN WITH STRIKING BLUE EYES.
It was vague, but it was public.
"They're finding pieces of me," Adrian said, setting the paper down. "DODC is one thing, but if this keeps spreading, someone bigger is going to show up."
"Then stop hiding," Sophia said, leaning across the table. "You said it yourself—control the narrative. Decide who finds what on your terms before someone else does it for you."
Adrian looked at her, the lingering adrenaline finally settling into sharp resolve.
"Yeah," he said. "You're right. It's time to make the first move."
Far below the city streets, deep in the dark, a pair of ancient eyes flickered in the deep.
The pressure faded back into silence. But it remembered the spark that touched it.