As days of planning, training, and horror passed, the mission finally came. Nightmares didn't disappear; they only grew. I readied my weapons — the knife and the gun Katara had taught me to use over the last month — kept them loaded and sharp. I watched the city through the window and it felt hopeless as always, but when I thought of meeting the heroes I clung to one desperate plan: get help for my parents, save them, and steal my freedom back.
I didn't notice Katara entering until she spoke. "What are you thinking, Lena?" she asked.
I jumped and turned, angry at being caught. I said nothing.
She set a black suitcase on my bed and told me to open it. Inside lay a suit: black and close-fitting, with a single green strip that pulsed like a living vein. It was beautiful. Saying it felt like a betrayal. Katara's face softened with pride. "Amazing, isn't it? David designed it for you. It won't rip when you use your power."
"Come on. Try it on. I won't look," she added, smiling.
I went to the bathroom and pulled the suit on. It fit like it was made for me. The green strip complimented my eyes; David had done real work. There was a hood at the back. When I stepped out, Katara grinned. "It really suits you, Lena."
I smiled back—only a little, sarcastic and hollow.
She fished something out of her pocket and threw me a mask. It looked like a redesigned gas mask: sleek, modern, with the same green motif. "Wear this on the mission," she said. "For your safety and ours."
She left the room with a small, satisfied tilt to her shoulders. I stood in front of the mirror and felt a childish shame: where once I'd dreamed of being a hero — the country's small hope — that dream had been smashed to pieces. A bitter, furious thing in me made my fist slam into the glass. The mirror exploded into shards. I breathed in the sting of broken glass and ash and lay back on the bed, a weight settling in my chest.
A red flash and the scream of the alarm cut the silence. It was time.
On the plane they moved with practiced ease. Their suits complimented them: David in black with gray strips, Katara in red, Medusa in yellow, Mike in blue. Mike patted my back with a grin. "Let's have fun," he said, and walked to the door.
As the plane climbed, Katara ran the plan again but changed the ending: instead of me and David escaping early, we would wait for the heroes so we could all leave together. David agreed. My stomach dropped — that meant a confrontation.
"Who'll respond?" I asked.
Katara paused. "Probably the Top One," she said. David added, "Top Two through Five are tied up elsewhere. This is the Top One's scene." I nodded. This was my first mission. "Make yourself worthy," Katara told me, then went to the cockpit.
When Katara announced our drop, my heart hammered. The plane door opened and the world rushed at us. David grabbed my hand. The fall was a scream and then a hush. He linked his power with mine; for a tense instant it felt like an invisible parachute held us, and we slid between buildings onto the festival route.
Lights blinked like constellations. People laughed, couples danced, children chased each other between stalls. The city smelled of frying food and damp plaster — ordinary life, fragile and bright. It hurts to look at.
David's nod came quickly: go. I walked into the center of the city where the crowd are walking endlessly, and the world leaned toward me. Cars braked and horns blared. A man shouted, "Hey! Get out of the road!" The swirl of faces pressed in. I raised my palms because I had to, because Katara had shown me the photograph of my parents as if their smiles were the only thing that mattered.
A small green light formed between my hands — a trick, a toy, a thing of beauty. Children reached up. Adults smiled. But when I fed it breath and fear, the light swelled. People stepped back, shouts rising. Someone pushed a child aside; a woman screamed. The pretty sphere grew into something monstrous — the size of a small car, glowing with an impossible, humming energy.
I hesitated. Why was I doing this? Then my parents' faces flooded me: their laughter, the softness of their hands. Don't let us die, I thought, and a tear escaped. I gave the power one more push.
The explosion tore the night open.
Green light and heat crashed outward. The sound was more than noise; it was a physical thing that shook the breath from my lungs. Bodies were thrown, banners shredded, lamps toppled. I tasted ash. I stayed on my knees and whispered the only words I had left: "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
As the smoke thinned, the plaza snapped into focus in terrible, terrible detail. Tears blurred everything—children keening above the bodies of their parents, a man whispering for help with a dying rasp, a building groaning as green flame ate its edges. The air tasted of ash and metal. My tears fell like a small, private river.
Then something white streaked toward me—fast, bright, like a shooting star. Instinct made me dodge. David slammed into my side, a wall of muscle and heat between me and whatever came from the dark. When we looked up together, the Top One team filled the space in a ripple of armor and light.
Hope flared in my chest. I could tell them. I could beg for help for my parents. I opened my mouth and the words died when I met their faces: not pity, not inquiry, but pure, white-hot rage. Every pair of eyes on that team held the same thing—anger so absolute I forgot the reason. The hope that had been a small fist in my throat collapsed. No one was going to save me. I had killed people.
I let myself cry until David's hands were on my shoulders, rough and urgent. "Get ready, Lena," he hissed. "Or you'll die."
His voice brought me back. I forced myself steady, found the knife at my hip, and held it to my forearm. The green answered like an animal recognizing its name—the blade flamed along the edge, a narrow, terrible green. The heroes blinked; one of them barked, "Shadow—who's that with you?"
Their stare pinned me. David dropped a grin that was more teeth than humor. "Our new member," he said coolly. "Like her?"
He moved like a magnet to the nearest shrapnel and metal—street signs, a toppled stall frame, scraps of iron—and his power wrenched them into a tumbling storm. Metal screamed and spun toward the heroes. Some dodged; others took metal to armor and flesh and went down in spasms of smoke and blood. David's chaos bought us space.
Something else watched from the edges, a presence folded into the alley shadows. I felt it before I heard it—danger like a held breath. David's shout cut through: "Nuc—duck!"
A white laser braided down from above. I dropped just in time; the beam nicked the stone where my head had been a heartbeat before. When I rolled up, one of the Top One members had broken free of the stagger and was closing on me, blade raised, eyes like a judge.
My hands tightened on the knife. I ran at her—and then, in the blink of a heartbeat, speed folded around me. I blinked and found myself at the crown of her head. My palms glowed; I shaped a small green orb and slammed it into her skull.
She twisted and the orb blew past—saved, it seemed, by reflex—but the blast clipped her arm, shredding muscle, and she howled. Blood painted her sleeve. I felt nothing but the raw, furious focus of movement and impact; the horror came later, slow and cold.
I tried to help David again, but Katara's hand closed on my shoulder like iron. She shook me and shouted, "Shadow, that's enough!" Her voice cut through the chaos.
David heard it and, with a muttered curse, called his metal back and drew a ragged retreat. The fallen heroes were down, some groaning, some barely breathing; the field was a mess of twisted metal and smoke. Katara dropped into the open and laughed, a sound that tasted like broken glass. "Is this the generation that will fight us today?" she jeered, voice loud enough that it echoed off ruined stalls. "What a disappointment."
Then—smooth, cruel—she stepped forward and gestured at me. "Meet our new member," she announced, voice loud and proud.
They looked at me as if I were both a threat and abomination. I could see hope in their faces collapsing into something worse: hatred, a wish that I would simply die for what I'd done. Katara strutted me to the front like a prize and asked them, sweet as poison, "Do you like her?"
The Top One's jaw worked. He spat a curse we didn't hear over the ringing in my ears. Katara finished the moment with a cold, biting line: "We'll meet again."
We left them there—shamed, wounded, furious—while we melted back into the city's fractured veins.
I stepped into the base exhausted and only wanted my bed, but the doors opened onto a crowd. Employees had gathered in the hall and erupted into cheers and applause — we were celebrities to them. For a moment, their faces blurred into something that looked like approval, like I'd done something good.
Katara stayed at my side. She leaned in and, almost to herself, whispered, "We will change this world and give them happiness." Then she turned and smiled at the crowd as the party began.
Medusa took the center and danced, spinning with a wild grace while Mike and David laughed and drank with the other employees. Katara sat beside me, nibbling snacks and watching the room. "You proved your usefulness to us, Lena," she said, pride softening her voice. Her eyes glinted the way people's eyes do when they picture a future already paid for.
I met her gaze and said plainly, "This isn't right." She didn't answer, she ignored me. She only watched Medusa twirl and shrugged, "Medusa always dances when the mission succeeds. It's her culture."
As I looked at Medusa she was beautiful, a brief bright thing in the middle of the noise. People pressed around her, clapping, smiling, drinking. Their joy felt obscene next to the day's wreckage.
As I looked at them,
The panic struck, and came back like a tide. I couldn't breathe. I immediately excused myself and fled to my room.
The door closed and I collapsed to the floor. Images slammed into me: the green light, the bodies, the way people had fallen. Tears tracked warm down my face; my heart thudded like a drum in my throat. I stumbled to the bathroom and scrubbed my face and hands until the water ran gray, trying to wash the day away. The blood and dust came off, but the child's cries, the dying man's voice, the sound of the plaza — none of that would rinse away. I scrubbed until my arms burned and my eyes stung. The images were still there, singed into me.
When the water ran cold and my hands shook, I crawled back to bed. Sleep took me like a sharp sleep — not peace, but as the heavy collapse of exhaustion. Even in dreams, the smoke lingered, the voices echoed.
And when the morning came, it didn't feel like a new day — only the next shadow waiting to swallow me whole.