I could hear birds calling out somewhere beyond the fog. The sun had already begun to rise over the rooftops, casting gold across the silent town. Fog drifted low, curling around fences and porches like a lazy tide. It would've been an idyllic view of a suburban town, for a lack of one thing.
People.
No footsteps on the sidewalk. No distant hum of a car engine. No murmurs of morning radio from cracked windows.
I wasn't exactly an expert on Midwest work culture, but come on—there had to be at least one person heading out for a morning shift. Yet as we walked straight down the middle of the road, I strained my ears for any sign of life and got absolutely nothing.
"Hey," I said, "on go, scream as loud as you possibly can."
Neither twin even blinked at the strange request and just nodded.
I held my hand out. "Three… two… one."
"AHHH!"
Three voices tore through the quiet, echoing down empty suburban streets. It was loud enough to bounce between houses, carry across entire blocks. I snapped my gaze toward the windows—nothing. No curious face peeking through blinds. No grumbling old lady with a cane or a rolling pin stepping outside to yell at the noise.
We did it again. Walked further. Screamed again. Then a third time.
By the fourth scream, the answer was clear.
The town was empty.
No signs of rot, no boarded windows, no overgrown lawns. Everything looked recent and too lived-in. There was even a newspaper on someone's porch that couldn't have been more than a few days old.
That made it worse.
Could a parahuman have done this? I'd only read, what, a quarter of Worm before stopping? But even I remembered some powers got really weird.
Still didn't make this feel any better.
I could explore more. But the whole place gave off Resident Evil vibes now, so fuck that.
I walked to the biggest house nearby and, against all my law-abiding instincts, fired a shot straight through the front door. Shards of wood blew inward. The lock clattered against the tile.
"Devola, sweep the place. Grab any tools or machines you might need," I ordered as I stepped inside. "Popola, check the kitchen. Take whatever food you can find."
Both of them nodded and moved without question. Which somehow made me feel worse.
They followed me too easily. Like zealous soldiers, ready to please.
They moved in opposite directions, efficient and obedient, their loyalty unnervingly absolute. There was a strange tension in watching them carry out my commands so easily, as if my voice alone carried divine authority. That sort of blind reverence left a sour taste in my mouth, but I forced myself to shelve it. That was a crisis for future me to sort out—preferably in a situation that didn't feel like the intro to a horror movie.
I pushed deeper into the house while the twins began their sweep. The place was spacious—more so than I'd expected for a suburban home. Two bedrooms sat just off the main hallway, one on each side. A wide living room with clean furniture and a well-kept kitchen opened up at the end. It wasn't a mansion, but the layout suggested money. Maybe a custom renovation. The kind of comfort that came with upper-middle-class success.
I drifted toward one of the open doors and stepped inside, immediately met with posters that plastered nearly every inch of wall space. Bright colors, stylized fonts, and band logos I didn't recognize. It was cluttered with clothes, game boxes, and an old stereo—definitely a teenager's room. I crossed to the desk and glanced down at the calendar resting on its surface. March. The year printed in thick block letters: 2000.
That was earlier than I'd expected. A mixed blessing. I'd arrived ahead of major events, which meant I had breathing room before anything world-ending kicked off. But it also meant most of my knowledge was next to useless. Too many uncertainties, too many chances for the timeline to shift under my feet and render everything I remembered irrelevant.
I checked the drawers, scanned the shelves, and looked beneath the bed, hoping for anything out of place. Any clue that might explain the absolute silence outside. But the room was painfully ordinary. No sign of a struggle or even a hurried departure. Just normalcy, untouched.
Then, movement caught my attention through the window.
I stopped rummaging through the room when something outside caught my eye. The window overlooked the backyard, which bled into an open field, and in that field stood the first person I'd seen since arriving in this ghost town. From behind, all I could make out was a woman in a dark, tailored suit with a fedora perched on her head. The look was too polished, too deliberate, for a quiet suburb, and even I wasn't dense enough to miss what that probably meant.
Parahuman.
She crouched near a metal case, fingers moving with slow, precise rhythm as she retrieved and arranged objects from what looked like a toolkit. Bombs, traps, or maybe tinkertech—hard to say from this distance, but whatever it was, she worked like someone who'd done this a hundred times before.
I hesitated for a moment. The whole town was off, the kind of off that set nerves crawling. And now there was some shadowy, suit-wearing woman out here fiddling with gear in the backyard. It felt like the setup for something deeply unpleasant.
I conjured a hardlight chain and fired.
The construct shattered through the window in a flash of force, streaking toward her with the speed of a harpoon. The chain reacted to my will, splitting mid-flight and looping around her arms and torso, pinning them to her sides. She froze as the chain locked into place, bound and motionless.
I climbed through the broken window, boots landing lightly on the lawn, but kept my distance. Parahumans weren't exactly known for playing fair, and I wasn't interested in finding out her powers the hard way.
Up close, I could finally see her clearly. Pale skin, black hair pinned back. She was tall, poised, and unnervingly composed. The sharp lines of her black suit, white shirt, and tie gave her the look of someone from a covert agency, and the fedora added a strange kind of theatrical finish. For a second, her expression cracked—shock—but it vanished so fast I wondered if I imagined it.
"Nice day we're having, huh?" I tried for casual.
She raised a single eyebrow. No words. Just that perfect, arched look of disbelief. It said Really? louder than anything else could've.
"You wouldn't happen to know what's going on around here?" I asked, keeping my tone even.
Another non-answer. She shrugged slightly but kept her mouth shut. No twitch. No reaction.
Great. I had no idea how to interrogate someone.
"Look, miss…?"
"It's rude to ask someone's name without giving your own first," she said, interrupting cleanly.
I paused. Damn. "I'm… Bob."
I regretted it immediately. Couldn't sound faker. But I didn't know what powers she had, and if names were a trigger for some bullshit Thinker ability, better to keep mine under wraps.
"Hello, Bob," she said, tone so drenched in sarcasm it might as well have been dripping. "I'm… Peggy."
Did she just sass me? Was I getting mocked by my own captive?
I cleared my throat and pushed forward. "Nice to meet you, Peggy. So… you wouldn't happen to know what's going on, would you?" I gestured toward the silent homes behind me.
"Easter celebrations in Eagleton are quite devout," she said without blinking.
It was delivered with such a straight face that I had to double-check if she was serious. Her lips didn't twitch, but I heard the faintest breath of a snicker behind them.
This wasn't going anywhere. I didn't have it in me to go full interrogator, but maybe I could push just enough to shake her.
"If you're not gonna talk…" I clenched my hand slightly, tightening the hardlight chains with a hum.
She didn't even blink. "An experimental cluster of adaptive tinkertech nanomachines has broken loose. They killed and absorbed everyone in this town and are now planning to infect the rest of the United States."
I stared at her, stunned. "Wait—seriously? Just like that?"
I felt like a buffoon talking to this woman, which probably meant she had some type of thinker power.
"You're messing with me," I said, trying to keep the disbelief out of my voice.
"Yes," she replied, that smug calm never leaving her face.
Before I could press her further, something crashed inside the house.
I turned instinctively, just for a second.
By the time I looked back, the chains were already unraveling. She twisted like a contortionist, sliding through gaps that shouldn't have existed. One moment she was restrained—the next, she was free and flipping away, legs cutting through the air like a practiced acrobat.
I summoned another chain, cracked it forward, but she ducked and rolled under it without slowing. In a blink, she swept up her scattered tools, darted behind the house, and vanished.
I considered chasing her. I really did.
But the sounds coming from inside were louder now.
With a curse, I pivoted and ran toward the house. The twins were more important than some weird men in black bullshit.