The call came at two in the morning.
Marcus jerked awake, his spatial sense flaring instinctively, mapping his bedroom in the darkness. His phone was buzzing on the nightstand, the screen too bright in the dark room.
Wells.
"There is a situation," Wells said without preamble. "A metahuman is attacking the Central City Shopping Center. Multiple casualties reported. Police are on scene but unable to contain the threat."
Marcus was already out of bed, pulling on clothes. "What kind of metahuman?"
"Preliminary reports suggest some form of kinetic energy manipulation. The individual appears to be causing explosions with physical contact. The building is structurally compromised. If it collapses..." Wells didn't need to finish the sentence.
"I'm on my way."
Marcus opened a portal directly to the shopping center, or as close as he could get. He'd been there before, knew the layout well enough to target the parking lot. The portal opened in his bedroom, and he stepped through into chaos.
The shopping center was three stories of retail space, now partially collapsed. Smoke poured from shattered windows. People were screaming, running, trying to escape. Police had formed a perimeter, but they looked helpless, their weapons useless against someone who could cause explosions with a touch.
Marcus spotted the metahuman immediately. A woman, maybe forty, standing in the center of the parking lot. Her hands glowed with a sickly yellow light. Every time she touched something, a car, a light post, the ground itself, it exploded.
"Stay back!" she was screaming. "All of you, just stay back!"
She was terrified. Marcus could see it in her body language, in the way her hands shook. This wasn't a villain. This was someone who had lost control.
Someone like him.
Marcus approached slowly, hands raised. "Hey. It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you."
The woman spun toward him, her glowing hands coming up defensively. "I said stay back! I can't control it! I'll kill you!"
"I know what you're going through," Marcus said, still moving closer. "The particle accelerator explosion. It changed you. Gave you abilities you don't understand. I know because it happened to me too."
The woman's eyes widened. "You're... you're like me?"
"Yeah. I am." Marcus stopped about ten feet away. Close enough to talk, far enough to react if she lost control. "What's your name?"
"Sarah. Sarah Jennings." Her voice cracked. "I didn't mean to hurt anyone. I was just shopping, and then my hands started glowing, and everything I touched just... exploded. I tried to stop, tried to control it, but I can't!"
"It's okay. We can help you. There are people who understand what's happening to you, who can teach you to control your abilities." Marcus kept his voice calm, soothing. "But first, we need to get everyone to safety. Can you help me do that?"
Sarah looked at the burning building, at the people still trapped inside. "How? I can't touch anything without destroying it!"
"You don't have to touch anything. I can get them out. But I need you to stay calm, to not panic. Can you do that?"
Sarah nodded, tears streaming down her face. "I'll try."
Marcus turned toward the building. His spatial sense was already mapping the interior, feeling for pockets of space where people might be trapped. There. Second floor, northwest corner. Three people, maybe four, cut off by collapsed ceiling.
He opened a portal, large enough for a person to fit through. The other end opened in the space he'd sensed, right next to the trapped civilians.
"Go through!" he shouted to them. "It's safe, I promise!"
They hesitated for only a second before scrambling through the portal. Marcus held it stable, his head already starting to pound from the effort. One person. Two. Three. Four.
He sealed the portal and immediately opened another, targeting a different section of the building. More people trapped. More lives to save.
Portal after portal. Marcus lost count of how many he created, how many people he pulled from the burning building. His spatial sense was screaming at him, overloaded, but he pushed through the pain.
Just a few more. Just a few more and everyone would be safe.
The building groaned, a deep structural sound that made Marcus's blood run cold. It was going to collapse. Soon.
One more portal. Second floor, east side. Two people, an older man and a teenage girl. Marcus opened the portal right next to them, but the effort made his vision blur. He was at his limit.
The man and girl stumbled through. Marcus sealed the portal and immediately collapsed to his knees, gasping.
"Is that everyone?" Sarah was beside him, her glowing hands carefully held away from him. "Did you get everyone out?"
Marcus reached out with his spatial sense one more time, sweeping through the building. Empty. Everyone was out.
"Yeah," he managed. "Everyone's safe."
The building collapsed thirty seconds later, imploding in a cloud of dust and debris. If anyone had still been inside...
Marcus didn't let himself finish that thought.
Sarah was crying again, but this time with relief. "Thank you. Oh god, thank you. I thought I'd killed them all."
"You didn't," Marcus said, getting shakily to his feet. "You're okay. They're okay. Everyone's okay."
Police were approaching now, cautious but no longer hostile. An ambulance pulled up to take Sarah into custody, or protective custody, or whatever they did with metahumans who weren't actually criminals.
Marcus started to slip away, to open a portal and disappear before anyone could ask questions. But then he saw the news van.
And the camera pointed directly at him.
His blood went cold.
The reporter was already talking, gesturing toward him. "...unidentified individual who appears to have rescued multiple civilians using some kind of teleportation ability. This is the second confirmed metahuman sighting this week, and authorities are..."
Marcus opened a portal and stepped through before she could say anything else. He ended up back in his apartment, his heart racing.
They'd filmed him. Put him on the news. His face was probably already spreading across social media, people trying to figure out who he was.
His phone rang. His father.
"Marcus." Robert Chen's voice was tight with barely controlled panic. "Tell me that wasn't you on the news just now. Tell me you weren't at that shopping center."
Marcus closed his eyes. "Dad..."
"Jesus Christ. Marcus, what were you thinking? You were on camera! Everyone saw you!"
"People were dying. I had to help."
"You had to..." His father made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "You had to help. Of course you did. Because you're your mother's son, and she never could walk away from someone in trouble either."
Marcus's chest tightened. His mother had been a doctor, had died in a car accident responding to an emergency call when Marcus was twelve. He didn't talk about her much. It hurt too much.
"I'm coming over," his father said. "Don't go anywhere. Don't do anything. Just... just wait for me."
The call ended. Marcus sank onto his couch, his head in his hands.
He'd saved people tonight. Done something good. Something heroic.
So why did it feel like his life was falling apart?