1952, Los Angeles.
A lot of thing have changed in five years.
People walk a little faster now. Talk a little louder. Pretend the world makes more sense than it does. But underneath it all, everything's tilted like we're living on the edge of something big that already happened, and no one knows what to do next.
Nowadays, it's always about Inheritors.
Doesn't matter where you are; the café on 4th Street, the barbershop with the cracked mirror, even the church down the block, someone's always got a story. A man who bent steel with his bare hands. A woman who floated out of a burning house carrying a child in each arm. A kid who made a car levitate just because he was scared.
Those Inheritors... sure are lucky.
I sit on the old couch my pop used to claim all the time in the living room when he was still alive. Nowadays, it's me who takes his spot. The radio's right in front of me. I slide my hand across the wood until I find the dial. The exact same place, same chip on the corner. My fingers rest on it, but I don't turn it. The silence stretches long between me and that radio, like two boxers circling each other, neither ready to make the first move.
If I do, it's just gonna be more of the same. Some glowing headline about another Inheritor doing something no one else can. Pulling wreckage off trapped miners. Walking into gunfire and coming out without a scratch. People cheering. Kids dreaming. They talk about them like saints. Like they're the next step of humanity. Maybe they're right. Maybe they're something better.
I don't hate them. Truth is, I admire them. They're human, just... different now. Something inside them changed. Something powerful. Something impossible.
But the day the sky caught fire, I didn't get any of that.
My name is Lawrence Edwards. Folks used to call me Law. I used to have a job. A home. A wife. I used to see. I used to be happy.
I was there, right there when it happened. The sky opened. The ships came. The world stood still. My wife was just across the street, eyes wide, mouth open. One of those lights, a purple light streak came down after the ships exploded, curved through the air and slammed into her. Right in the chest.
She dropped to the ground. I ran toward her, yelling her name. "Tessie!!.."
Then something big hit me. A piece of burning debris, jagged metal from one of those ships. As big as a whole car. Hit me square. Tore through my shoulder, half my chest. Everything went black.
They said it was a miracle I survived. That I was lucky to come out of it alive.
Funny thing about luck. Depends on what part you're looking at.
When I woke up, I couldn't see. Couldn't move much either. Burned across most of my upper body. My wife stayed for a while. Sat next to my hospital bed. Said all the things people say when they don't know what else to say.
Then, one day, she stopped coming.
She was an Inheritor now. Something bright. Something rare.
And I was... this.
A ghost wearing burned skin.
I don't go out much anymore. People don't look at me, not really. Some stare a second too long, then pretend they didn't. Kids whisper. Once, one called me "the melted man." That one stuck for a while. Sometimes I even say it to myself, under my breath. Like maybe if I own it, it'll hurt less.
So I stay inside. Safer that way.
The city moves without me now, all noise and neon, and I just let it.
But my mother, she never left. She cleans, cooks, sits with me, nags me like I'm still ten. If anyone remembers I'm still human, it's her.
I hear her now, coming down the hall in her slippers. The smell of toast and fried eggs trailing behind her.
"What are you doing?" she says as she walks in. "You're just gonna hold that radio all morning without turning it on?"
She sets the plate down gently in front of me, then sits across from me like she always does.
"Morning, Ma."
"Morning," she says. "Eat before it gets cold."
I pick up the toast. It's slightly burnt. Just how I like it.
"It's just gonna be another news story about Inheritors," I say, nodding toward the radio. "Same as yesterday. Same as every day."
"So what?" she says. "At least most of them are using their powers to help people."
I give a half-shrug, chewing slowly. She's always been like this, gentle in her words, sharp in her timing. She knows how to push just enough.
She's seen more loss than most, but she never lets it show. Not really.
She's been my only anchor since everything went sideways.
She talks a bit while I eat. I don't respond much, but she doesn't expect me to.
After a while, she pats my hand and stands up, heading back to the sink. I listen to the water run, the plates clinking, the hum of the refrigerator. I hear the soft creak of the chair after she leaves the room.
Then it's just me again.
Me and the radio.
And the silence that fills the space between us.
My fingertips find the dial once more. I turn it just enough to catch static, then back off again.
The hiss of it feels alive, like the world whispering secrets I'm not supposed to hear.
This is my routine now. Same couch. Same food. Same quiet apartment. My whole world in three rooms.
That day, the day the sky burned feels like it never really ended. Millions were given something beyond understanding. A gift. A power. A purpose.
And I was left with questions.
I still ask them sometimes, the same ones over and over, like maybe this time the answers will be different. Why me? Why her? Why did I survive when everything else inside me didn't? The questions circle like vultures. Never landing, never leaving.
But there's one question I never say out loud. The one that sits deepest in my chest.
It's quiet, like a whisper I only allow myself to hear when I'm alone.
Is there an Inheritor who could heal me?