The first thing people got wrong about superpowers was the noise.
In the movies, it was all sonic booms and zapping lasers and witty one-liners shouted over the din. The reality was a lot of wet sounds. The sound of a cinder block wall not so much exploding as unraveling into its component parts of dust and rebar, accompanied by the soft, terrible sigh of the air being displaced. The sound of a human body meeting the unyielding physics of a sedan's windshield wasn't a bang; it was a complex symphony of cracking glass, bending metal, and something that sounded like a bag of wet gravel being dropped from a great height.
Kyon Wilson heard it all from inside the Crestview Community Center, and he knew, with a cold certainty that settled in his gut like a shard of ice, that today was going to be utterly fucked.
He was supposed to be tutoring. That was the official, noble-sounding reason he was here every Tuesday and Thursday after school. The real reason was twenty dollars an hour under the table and the desperate need to get out of his grandmother's apartment, where the smell of simmering okra and the constant, low-grade anxiety of bills waiting to be paid clung to the walls like wallpaper.
"You're not focusing, Deon."
Deon, a thirteen-year-old with more swagger than sense, slumped further in his plastic chair, eyeing the pre-algebra worksheet like it had personally insulted his family. "Ain't nobody focusing with that noise out there, Kyon. Sounds like the whole block gettin' tore up."
He wasn't wrong. For the last ten minutes, the familiar sounds of Oakland—the distant wail of a siren, the bass thump of a passing car, the yelling of kids from the basketball courts—had been overwritten by something new. Something wrong.
"Probably just another construction crew messin' up the gas lines again," Kyon said, his voice tighter than he intended. He willed it to be true. "Now, if 'x' equals seven, what's 'y'?"
"Ain't no construction sound like that," Deon muttered, his eyes wide, fixed on the grimy window that looked out onto 85th Avenue. "That sound like… people. Screamin'."
The second thing people got wrong was the scale. The global news channels, the few that were still legit, talked about the cataclysms: the Titan of Brasília, the Siren's Cults, the cities turned to glass or ice or strange, non-Euclidean nightmares. They never talked about the Tuesday afternoon tragedies. The localized hells. A guy who could phase through matter deciding to rob a bank and accidentally leaving the tellers' internal organs on the wrong side of the vault door. A kid with pyrokinetic abilities having a bad acid trip and lighting up his entire apartment complex. These were the superpowered incidents that defined life for the 99.9% of people without powers. They were random, brutal, and close to home.
Ms. Clara, the septuagenarian who ran the center with an iron fist and a heart of gold, came out of her office, her face a mask of forced calm. "Alright, children. We're going to have an early day. Deon, Kyon, everyone. Bags. Now. We're going to the basement."
A collective, nervous murmur went through the dozen or so kids in the main room.
"The basement?" whined a little girl named Tamika. "It smells like old broccoli down there!"
"It smells like safety, child. Now move," Ms. Clara's voice brooked no argument. It was the same tone she'd used for forty years to command classrooms, and it still worked. Kids began shuffling, grabbing backpacks.
Kyon stood up, his chair scraping against the linoleum. His own heart was a frantic drum against his ribs. He looked out the window. Across the street, the 7-Eleven was… wrong. Its front wasn't shattered; it was… deconstructed. The Slurpee machine was a cascade of red syrup and crystalline shards, frozen in mid-air. A car was parked halfway through the front wall, its front end looking like it had been disassembled by a giant, careless child.
And then he saw the man.
He was tall, gaunt, wearing stained coveralls. He wasn't roaring or monologuing. He was weeping. Huge, shuddering sobs that wracked his frame. He staggered into the middle of the street, one hand pressed against his temple, the other held out, palm open.
A police cruiser, its lights flashing, screeched around the corner. Two officers leapt out, taking position behind their doors, service pistols drawn.
"Sir! Get down on the ground! Get down on the ground now!"
The weeping man looked at them, his expression one of pure, unadulterated agony. "I can't… I can't make it stop…" he wailed. His voice was high, frayed at the edges. "It all… it all just comes apart…"
He gestured vaguely towards the cruiser.
It didn't explode. It unfolded.
The hood crumpled inward like a soda can, then the doors peeled away, the windows delaminated into a cloud of glittering dust, the engine block simply fell onto the asphalt in a neat pile of components. The two officers stared, dumbfounded, at the perfectly disassembled skeleton of their vehicle.
"Breaker," Kyon whispered, the word a curse. He'd read about them on the fringe forums. Low-to-mid-tier metahumans who could disrupt molecular bonds. Most were barely strong enough to pop a lock. This one… this one was a walking WMD.
"Kyon! Now!" Ms. Clara barked, herding the last of the kids towards the basement door.
Kyon turned to follow, his mind racing. The basement. A concrete box. If that guy out there decided the community center was in his way, a basement would just be a mass grave with better insulation. They needed to run. They needed to get out the back, through the chain-link fence, into the alleyways.
Pop-pop-pop.
The cops were shooting.
The Breaker flinched as rounds whizzed past him. One struck him in the shoulder. Instead of a spray of blood, the area around the bullet hole simply… dissolved. His coveralls, his skin, his muscle, all unwove into a fine red and pink mist, leaving a perfectly clean, fist-sized hole straight through his body. He screamed, a sound of pure, existential terror, and clutched at the void in his shoulder.
He stumbled backward, his hand slapping against the front of the community center.
The effect was instantaneous and silent.
The brick facade didn't crack. It turned to powder, a fine red dust that billowed inward. The reinforced glass of the front door didn't shatter; it became a waterfall of sand-sized granules. The world was being erased, one touch at a time.
Screams erupted inside the center. The kids froze in terror. The air was thick with brick dust, choking and heavy.
"The back! Run to the back!" Kyon yelled, his voice cracking. He grabbed Deon and Tamika, shoving them towards the rear exit.
The Breaker was inside now. He staggered through the new, gaping hole where the wall had been, his tears cutting clean lines through the dust on his face. He looked at the children, his eyes wide with horror and a strange, desperate need.
"I'm sorry," he sobbed. "I just… I need it to stop. I need everything to stop."
He reached out a trembling hand towards a support column.
He's going to bring the whole roof down, Kyon thought, the idea cold and clear amidst the panic. We're all going to be buried here.
He saw Ms. Clara, standing her ground, trying to form a human shield between the Breaker and the cowering children. He saw Deon's face, frozen in a mask of terror. He saw the fine, shimmering wave of disintegration begin to radiate from the Breaker's fingertips as they brushed the concrete.
The third thing people got wrong was the feeling.
It wasn't a surge of adrenaline, a flash of light, a tingling in the spine. For Kyon, it was a slippage.
It was the feeling of the entire universe, every atom, every particle of light, every thought in every mind, screeching to a halt on a sheet of metaphysical ice. It was the sensation of being a single, conscious stitch in a frozen tapestry.
There was no sound. There was no light, not really. The world didn't turn grey; it became a museum diorama of itself, a hyper-realistic painting. The billowing brick dust hung in the air like a solid, rust-colored cloud. Ms. Clara was caught mid-stride, her mouth open in a silent shout. Deon was a statue of fear. A fly was motionless an inch from Kyon's face.
And the wave of disintegration from the Breaker's hand was frozen too, a beautiful, terrible shimmering halo of non-existence, halted just before it could consume the support column.
Kyon could move. He could breathe, though the air was thick, resistant, like wading through liquid glass. He looked down at his own hands. They looked the same.
What… what is this?
His heart wasn't pounding anymore. Or maybe it was, and the beats were just infinitely far apart. He couldn't tell. The silence was absolute, a pressure on his eardrums more deafening than any noise.
He took a step. It was work. The air pushed back. He moved towards the Breaker, his sneakers making no sound on the gritty floor. He walked through the suspended cloud of brick dust, the particles brushing against his skin like static.
He stood before the weeping man, now a grotesque statue of despair. The hole in his shoulder was a perfect, clean portal to the frozen street behind him. Kyon could see a cop, frozen in the act of diving for cover, his face a rictus of fear.
What was he supposed to do? He had… stopped time. He had stopped time.
The logic of it, the sheer impossible weight of it, threatened to crush his mind. This wasn't a low-tier power. This wasn't being bulletproof or strong. This was… editorial. This was fundamental.
He could leave. He could just walk out the back, into the frozen world, and leave them all here. He could survive.
He looked at Ms. Clara's face. He looked at Deon.
"Goddamn it," he whispered into the infinite silence. The words didn't travel; they just were.
He couldn't kill the Breaker. He didn't have a weapon, and the thought of trying to murder a statue made his stomach lurch. But he could move them. He had to get the kids out.
He reached for Tamika first. His hands slid under her arms. She was impossibly heavy, as if she were anchored to the fabric of reality itself. Lifting her was a monumental effort, his muscles screaming in protest. He half-carried, half-dragged her stiff, unyielding body towards the back door, each step a marathon. He laid her gently on the ground just outside the door, in the alleyway.
One down. Eleven to go. Plus Ms. Clara.
He went back for Deon. Then for the others. It was grueling, soul-crushing work. He was a janitor cleaning up a nightmare diorama. He lost track of how many trips he made, his body drenched in a sweat that felt cold and congealed in the timeless air. He moved through the frozen tableau of horror, past the Breaker, past the shimmering wave of death. He saved the little ones first, then the older kids.
Finally, only Ms. Clara and the Breaker were left inside.
He approached Ms. Clara. He tried to move her, but she was rooted. It was even harder than the children. It was as if her will, her determination to protect, had made her a more integral part of this frozen moment. Gritting his teeth, every fiber of his being burning, he managed to shift her, inch by agonizing inch, towards the back door.
His head was throbbing. A sharp, stabbing pain began behind his eyes, digging deep into his brain. A warm trickle of blood seeped from his left nostrel. He ignored it.
He got Ms. Clara outside, arranging her next to the huddle of motionless children.
He stood there, in the alley, looking at the fourteen people he had saved. They were safe. For this single, stretched-out moment, they were safe.
The pain in his head was a white-hot drill. He couldn't hold it. Whatever he was doing, he was at his limit.
He didn't know how to start time again. He just had to let go.
He took a deep breath of the thick, motionless air, and released his mental grip on the universe.
The world returned with a violent, concussive ROAR.
Sound, light, momentum, and chaos crashed back in all at once, a sensory tsunami that knocked Kyon to his knees. The screams of the children, which had been paused, now filled the alley. Ms. Clara stumbled forward, her shout finally finding its end. "—MOVE!"
The billowing dust cloud exploded outward. From inside the community center, there was a deep, groaning crunch as the support column, its structural integrity finally compromised by the Breaker's touch, gave way. The roof sagged, and a section of the ceiling collapsed inward with a thunderous crash.
The Breaker was still inside.
The children screamed louder, clutching at Ms. Clara, who stared in bewildered shock at the back door of the center, then down at the kids around her, then at Kyon on the ground.
"How… how did we…?" she stammered.
Kyon couldn't answer. He vomited onto the asphalt, his body shaking uncontrollably. The headache was blinding, and the coppery taste of blood was thick in his mouth and throat.
Deon was staring at him, his eyes wide with something beyond fear. Awe. "Kyon… you… you were in there. And then you were out here. And you moved us. You… flickered."
Before Kyon could even form a denial, a new sound cut through the chaos: the deep, percussive thump-thump-thump of heavy rotor blades. A shadow fell over the alley.
A GHDI VTOL transport, a sleek, gunmetal-grey beast of a aircraft, descended like a raptor, its downdraft whipping up a storm of dust and debris, forcing everyone to shield their eyes. It didn't land so much as hover, its ramp already lowering before it touched the ground.
Men and women in black, sealed body armor, carrying rifles that looked more like scientific instruments than firearms, poured out. They moved with a brutal, efficient grace that made the local cops look like mall security. They didn't yell. They didn't ask questions. They just secured.
Two of them immediately corralled the children and Ms. Clara, hustling them away from the collapsing building and towards a waiting armored personnel carrier that had rolled up, silent and menacing.
Kyon tried to get to his feet, but his legs wouldn't cooperate. He slumped against the alley wall, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a smear of blood and vomit.
A woman walked down the VTOL's ramp. She wasn't in heavy armor. She wore a tailored, dark-grey GHDI officer's uniform, her black hair pulled back in a severe bun that sharpened the angles of her face. She had the posture of a scalpel and eyes the color of a winter sky. She held a tablet in one hand, her gaze sweeping the scene, taking in the collapsed community center, the crying children, the bewildered old woman, and finally, coming to rest on Kyon.
She walked towards him, her boots making no sound on the rough asphalt. She stopped a few feet away, looking down at him. Her expression was utterly unreadable. There was no pity, no concern, no anger. It was the face of a mathematician looking at a complex and newly discovered variable.
One of the armored soldiers approached her. "Colonel Rostova. The Breaker is KIA. Crushed in the collapse. Civilian casualties… minimal. It's a miracle."
Colonel Valeria Rostova didn't take her eyes off Kyon. "There are no miracles, Sergeant. Only phenomena." Her voice was calm, clipped, and carried the faintest trace of an Eastern European accent.
She took a final look at her tablet, then knelt down in front of Kyon, bringing herself to his eye level. The move was not one of compassion, but of assessment.
"Kyon Wilson," she said. It wasn't a question. "Sixteen. Honor student. Tutors here part-time. Lives with his grandmother. No prior manifestations. Clean."
Kyon just stared at her, his breath hitching. How did she know all that?
She glanced at the blood trickling from his nose, then at the vomit on the ground. "Temporal manipulation. High-grade. The feedback is a bitch, isn't it? Nosebleeds, migraines, synaptic shock. And that was just a local stutter. Imagine what a full rewind would feel like."
Kyon found his voice, though it was a ragged thing. "I… I don't know what you're talking about."
Rostova almost smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. "Save it. I have fourteen eyewitnesses who were suddenly, impossibly, relocated from a disintegrating building to this alley. The physics of it are… problematic. Unless one introduces a localized causality suspension event." She tilted her head. "How long did it feel like for you? In the stop?"
The question was so direct, so specific, that it shattered his feeble denial. He looked away, towards the kids being loaded into the APC. Ms. Clara was arguing with a soldier, pointing back towards Kyon.
"I don't know," he whispered. "A long time."
Rostova nodded, as if he'd just confirmed a scientific hypothesis. "It always does." She stood up, brushing a non-existent speck of dust from her immaculate trousers. "The world is on fire, Kyon. You just demonstrated a capacity to, quite literally, tell the fire to stop burning. Do you understand what that means?"
He didn't. Not really. He understood he had a power. He didn't understand that he was now a resource. A weapon.
"It means I saved them," Kyon said, a flicker of defiance in his hollow voice.
"No," Rostova corrected him, her tone chillingly flat. "It means you created a statistically impossible outlier in a casualty projection model. You are an anomaly. And anomalies cannot be left to wander the streets." She turned to the sergeant. "Bag him. Standard protocol. No one talks to him. Not the locals, not the press, and especially not his grandmother. Not until he's been processed."
"Bag him?" Kyon said, panic finally cutting through the shock and exhaustion. "What does that mean? I didn't do anything wrong! I saved them!"
Two of the armored soldiers moved towards him. They weren't rough, but their grip was implacable as they hauled him to his feet.
"You exist, Kyon," Rostova said, turning back to her tablet as if he were already a solved equation. "In this world, that is no longer a neutral act. It is either a service or a threat. We will now determine which you are."
He struggled weakly, but it was useless. The headache pulsed behind his eyes, each throb a reminder of the cost. He looked over at Deon, who was being ushered into the APC. The boy's eyes met his, filled with a confusion that mirrored his own.
As the soldiers began to march him towards the waiting VTOL, its engines whining with a hungry pitch, Rostova spoke one last time, not even looking up from her screen.
"Welcome to the war, Asset."
The ramp of the VTOL closed behind him, sealing him in metallic darkness, the roar of the engines swallowing his protests whole. The first chapter of Kyon Wilson was over. The story of The Broken One had begun.