Never before had Adam been so alone.

  For his entire sixteen years, he had been standing behind or beside someone. His life was defined by the people around him. Mostly his famous parents and extended family. Or the Wilds, when he traveled with them. None of them were here now. Here, on this journey, it was him, the road, and his unquiet thoughts.

  Miles and miles passed on his drive east. The airy scrublands of Colorado became the flat plains of Kansas. He could have found the nearest airport at any point and been to Beacon City in less than a day’s time. Why he didn’t, he didn’t really know. The journey across the country felt like the way he was supposed to do things. Maybe he wanted to see the world without someone else’s perspective for once. Maybe the silence and isolation was his punishment for having failed, or maybe it the only peace he had felt in months. Maybe he just wanted his own adventure, like the other Atlases were so well known for.

  So many times, he thought about contacting Annabelle. On the roadside he rested in the back of the van, legs dangling out of the open doors as he held his phone above his head. His finger hovered over her number. He typed messages just to delete them. He didn’t know what to say that would make anything better. She had been by his side unconditionally for it all, offering nothing but support, and he had let suspicion turn him against her. He could say he had let Abigail turn him against her, but she had barely done anything until she struck. Annabelle had a sense she was trouble. He should have listened. Things might never be good between them again. He probably didn’t deserve them to be good again. Now that he was away from her, his heart ached for her oversized smile, the stretchy gags she’d do to entertain him, her quiet contentment.

  Trying to be what his family thought he could be was tearing his life apart. He wanted to be unimportant again.

  At least he wasn’t in charge of saving the world.

  When he got tired, he found the nearest motel to sleep in. He could have stayed at luxury hotels, or the closest equivalent in America’s middle country, but he didn’t. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t want it either. His meals came from the hot trays of roadside convenience stores. His health-conscious mother would balk if she could see Adam stuffing his face with shaped processed chicken and pork in tubes and fried potatoes. He made a few stops at produce stands with her in mind.

  He wondered what Abigail could possibly do with the heart of the Invader overlord. The thought of her, a technopath, tinkering with that horrible thing gave him a dreadful feeling. She had said she wanted to “eat it.” Was that literal? He pictured her gnawing on the greasy, pulsing thing in some dark cave. She had also said the slumbering Invader was talking to her in some way. Must have been through her powers. The only faint hope he could consider was that she also had the ability to disable technology. Maybe she’d shut it down if things got too dangerous. If there was any such thing for her. It still boggled his mind that studious, stuffy Abigail was the villain Scavenger. What a mess. At least she had kept it out of Cyrus’s clutches. He assumed Null was after the same thing she was.

  As he traveled, he saw the country in a way he never had before, in his life of glass towers and airplane windows. What he saw intrigued him. As he sat in parking lots eating his food, he watched truckers pump gas, cops give each other shit from rolled-down windows, and others going about their lives. Packs of youths his age did skateboarding tricks or sat on stoops with drinks or just wandered around the small towns they were confined in. Those he watched the most. Their ratty clothes and busted cars and dangling smokes that might give them an early death. Was it wrong to envy them? To want, in some distant way, to not be important? He knew the answer. He had his life, and it wasn’t perfect, but it was his. And every mile he traveled led him back to his destiny.

  Too much watching made him feel like a voyeur. He was rich, and these folk were closer to poor, and it wasn’t his world to intrude upon. He always moved on after he finished eating and refueling.

  The eastern half of the country became greener and denser with civilization. He passed through more small towns than he could count. A few bigger cities too. The sun rose and set and rose again. He stopped counting the days closely. He stopped shaving. He thrifted clothes as he traveled. Soon, the boy that was Adam Atlas was obscured by stubby whiskers, disheveled hair, and secondhand flannel. He always kept his sunglasses on whenever it wasn’t pitch dark. Ignoring his supernatural eye was easier.

  Thalia called him on his wristwatch. He almost forgot he was wearing it. He carefully pulled over to the shoulder and answered.

  “Adam—” Thalia’s amber eyes widened, and she leaned in to the camera. “Jesus Christ, is that you?”

  “Yeah, it’s me,” Adam said. He cleared his throat. He hadn’t said much in a few days. “Adam, I mean. Not Jesus.”

  Thalia sighed in relief. “Good. I thought a grunge rocker killed you and stole your communicator to buy a new bass. What are you wearing? You opening a bar with pre-graffitied walls or something?”

  “Hey, you’re the one from the Northwest,” Adam said. He cracked a smile. It was good to hear from his best friend. He was glad to see she looked safe. She wasted no time telling him about things in Pacific City, from the subterrans raid to the riot and The Nest descending upon the school.

  “Sounds eventful. Everyone’s okay though?”

  “Yeah, we’re fine."

  "And Annabelle? I feel awful about how I left things with her."

  "She's... she's fine." Thalia sounded evasive. "I did my best to clear the air. I'll make sure no one bothers her. I’m calling ‘cause I’m worried about you, Adam. I heard all about the New Lords and Abigail. What are you still doing all alone out there? Where even are you?”

  “Ahh…” Adam looked out the window to the dense woods beside him. “I dunno, one of the I states? Or further? I’m most of the way.”

  “And you’re not on a plane because…?”

  He couldn’t find the words to explain his pilgrimage in a way that would make sense to her. “I don’t know. I’ll fly back west, okay?”

  Thalia judged him with narrowed eyes.

  “You’ve lost it. I’m coming to find you.”

  “No, no,” Adam insisted. “They need you for whatever’s coming next. This is my journey and it’s almost done. I can take care of myself.”

  Thalia watched him through the screen with concern. She twisted and scrunched her mouth, her way of coming to terms with things she didn’t like.

  “They’re my folks too. Beacon City’s my home too.”

  “I know they are. I’m not trying to keep you out of the loop,” Adam said. “It’s just… I need to do this. No more delays. No more waiting on other people to help. I need to do this.”

  He could see in her eyes she understood this. She turned away from the camera for a moment. She looked uncertain about saying something.

  “I… I love you, Adam.”

  There were two ways she could have meant the words. The childhood way of the past, of them innocently cuddling under blankets and swimming together and wrestling like siblings. Or the adult way of the future, now that they were growing into mature bodies and feeling mature feelings about the opposite sex. There wasn’t a way to know for sure which way she said the words. But he had a feeling based on her embarrassed hesitation.

  “I love you too, Thalia.”

  Not too long ago, exchanging those words with her would have been everything he wanted. Things were more complicated now. He did love her, but he wasn’t sure he meant the words in the same way she did. He did love and always would love Thalia. But his heart yearned only for Annabelle right now. His body ached to be in her arms again. The last thing he wanted to do was give Thalia false hope. But maybe things were done between him and Annabelle. Maybe Thalia was his future. Or maybe he needed some time to find himself alone. Either way, he had to talk with Annabelle first.

  “Come back to me safe, okay?” Thalia said. “Say hi to the family. Tell them to be in touch. And if you take much longer, I’m coming out there.”

  “Okay,” Adam said softly. “I’ll see you soon.”

  “See you, cowboy.”

  The call ended. He continued onward.

  Friday came. Others with more experience would have made the trip in less time, but Adam was still in his first year of navigating and driving. He considered it a miracle he had made it this far. Signs began to display the distance to Beacon City. He knew he was on the right track when the congestion started. In addition to being the world’s hub of superheroes, Beacon City was the largest metropolis on the east coast. Even so soon after the local apocalypse, a few million flocked to it every day. Maybe even more so after Invasion Day. Like the regrowth after a wildfire, destruction meant the opportunity for rebuilding.

  Half a day was lost waiting in the traffic that started miles away from the city. Adam didn’t mind too much. If this trip was teaching him anything, it was patience, and to appreciate the small things around him. He watched the homes of the neighborhoods surrounding the city creep by as vehicles inched forward. He had only ever left the city by air, or maybe a few times by boat. It was interesting to see the outskirts of his home city, and a little embarrassing to realize this was his first time ever even wondering what surrounded the metropolitan sprawl.

  He really, really needed to get out on his own more. His parents had done a great job teaching him humility and service, and hammering into him that he wasn’t better than anyone else just because of his birth. Good lessons in theory, but in practice he had never had to get his hands dirty actually helping anyone. Even Thalia’s family actually made her do the work of helping animals and the environment. Maybe that’s what Adam needed as an outlet. Real service. Not punching supervillains, but something he could work at and see the fruits of. Just like what Thalia had said, in her own way.

  Ahead, the skyscrapers of the city came into view well before he reached them. The skyline still wasn’t the same as it once was. Cranes worked at rebuilding tines of a jagged crown made up of buildings knocked down during the invasion. More than a few skeletons of towers still missing their outer facades. Part of the reason traffic was even worse than it used to be was from how badly the streets were torn up between rubble, blasts, and the sheer force of combat. Only recently was the city returning to a semblance of normalcy. Adam kept up with developments in the news.

  He avoided downtown and took an exit into the city’s closest neighborhood. Even just coming into the city proper, Beacon City was a forest of monoliths that at times squeezed the sky into a narrow strip directly above. It was enough to make Pacific City feel like a sleepy beach town.

  Adam navigated the grid, the city abustle with cabs, buses, and crowds of pedestrians. All of it was home to him. The bodegas, the street vendors, the shady parks. And the constant honking, of course. There was a certain sense of community that came from living in a hive like this place.

  He passed a street corner which was dominated by a twenty-foot statue of Miss Fifty, cast in bronze. Her name came from the fact that she was the most well-known patriotic superhero, and not from any sort of duplication power. Her costume was a bodice and skirt with leggings, of course in red, white and blue, though that couldn’t be seen in her shining metal counterpart. The Shield of Justice rested on her left forearm, while the Whip of Liberty sat curled at her right hip. Adam always thought it was a tad strange that a whip would be the weapon of liberty, but questioning patriotic superheroes in particular was always a losing prospect. Miss Fifty was one of the many devastating casualties of Invasion Day. She probably had a statue in a dozen places around the city. A small hill of fresh flowers heaped at the feet of this site, even nearly two years later.

  The statue wasn’t the only memorial he passed on his journey through the city home. Far from it. Beacon City was a community in grieving. Street names were newly dubbed with the names of heroes, either their costumed names or their civilian identities in the cases where those had been posthumously released. Murals abounded on just about every building surface available. Artistic renditions of Miss Fifty, Sentinel and Stargazer, Professor Aeon, Harrier, Mr. Noir, the White Owl, Uniheart, Smokeshow, Pistolero, and yet more Adam couldn’t name. He craned his head to take the larger-than-life depictions in fully. He had met a few of them through his family, most of them public events and fundraisers. Sentinel and Stargazer were of course the most exciting to a young boy. He wished he remembered meeting them better.

  Adam wondered how the current crop of BC superheroes was faring these days. Most of the big-league heroes died in the invasion, but not all, and of course new masks were being donned every day. There were new heroes too old to need a place like Rosewell, or those that didn’t trust BASTION. He wished them the best. Beacon City being the superhero hub also meant it was the most supervillain-ridden city in the world. Chaos reigned in the weeks following the invasion, but it looked like the city was healing well.

  He flowed through traffic, past neon-vested workers flipping construction signs, and eventually reached the base of Atlas Tower, a building noticeably wider and taller than its West Coast counterpart. Home. And just in time, too. He was really aching to get off his ass. Cameras he could hardly see scanned his face and recognized the van as family property. He pulled into the garage entrance of the tower. The door lowered behind him.

  The slam of his driver door echoed through the cavernous garage. Vehicles of every type lounged in wide parking spaces: luxury Europeans, classic muscles, limousines, street cruisers, common sedans, and more filled his family’s private fleet worth millions. Cousin Anette was the unofficial car collector and maintainer. Adam was surprised not to see her down here somewhere, elbows-deep in an engine or repainting a vehicle for the twentieth time. He didn’t check every corner and under every chassis for her, but usually the noise of her work was pretty easy to notice.

  Strange. Must really be all-hands, even months later. Adam shuddered to think of how ragged his sister and parents were now. They’d probably be moving like zombies, and look not far off. For the millionth time, he wondered what the exact nature of their project was. Beacon City looked well. No massive calamity hung overhead.

  He scanned himself in at the garage entrance, and the elevator opened for him. He stepped in and pressed floor 57. That was the landing for his core family’s sector of the building. The chrome doors closed, leaving him to stare at a warped reflection of himself. Damn, he really did look like he was starting a grunge band. Alexis was about to give him serious shit. It would be well-deserved, with how he had messed everything up. At least Atlas West was still operating in good condition. There had to be someone else who could take over and run things. They had plenty of spare cousins. Adam could focus fully on attending Rosewell and finding some work to do that would be fulfilling. His parents would just have to understand. They’d find a way together to get the Invader heart back. And they were going to answer just why the hell they were keeping an intact Invader in the basement without telling him.

  He entered into the main living space of his family’s home. After a few months in a dorm, nice as it was, the place was even grander than he remembered. Golden sunlight shone in from a wall of windows three stories tall, giving another angle to see the ongoing reconstruction of the city. The window curved around seamlessly behind the elevator, cradling the family seating area big enough for twenty. Different modules could rise out of the floor to transform the space, from a wide table to a massive flatscreen to a crackling fireplace. To the left out of the elevator was a space to display the Atlas family’s most valued personal treasures, most of them encased in glass displays; Alexander’s Atlas Gauntlet, the original peace treaty signed between the US and the Atlantean Kingdoms, and Deathmasque’s onyx mask were just a few pieces on display. Across the way was the kitchen, and beside that a hallway leading to various bedrooms, offices, and storerooms.

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  “Adrian! Amy!” Adam removed his outer layer and hung it up on the rack by the elevator as he called out to his younger siblings. It was well into the afternoon, past the time they should be home from school. He waited for their faces to appear at the railing, looking down on him before they rushed to the stairs to be the first to grapple his legs. He missed the twins most of all.

  “Don’t tell me mom and dad have you working in the lab too…”

  His ten-year-old siblings brought in on the family work while he was left out would just be the icing on the cake. They were both geniuses, though. He couldn’t fault the logic in using them. Still, the place was too eerie. He wasn’t sure what it was, but something gave him the feeling nothing in the place had been touched in weeks.

  Adam tried something else.

  “Aureus? Recognize: Adam Atlas.” Adam spoke to the family’s kinda-AI. Kinda in the sense that Aureus wasn’t truly sentient, but it was a very advanced system.

  “Adam Atlas, recognized,” a neutrally pleasant voice intoned from the corners of the room. “Welcome home, Adam.”

  “Thank you.” He walked around the living room, looking for signs of anyone. “Aureus, where is everyone?”

  “Please clarify, ‘everyone’?”

  “My mother, my father, my siblings, aunts, uncles… are they all down in the lab?”

  “Checking…” Adam waited. “None of your immediate family are currently within the lab space.”

  “Okay… well who is in the lab space?”

  “Checking… No one is currently occupying the lab space.”

  Strange. Maybe they were using the Foundation labs at the campus a few blocks away, but it seemed like a project they were keeping within the family. He couldn’t call them, couldn’t find them… what was going on?

  “Aureus, where is my nearest family member in this building?”

  “Checking… You, Adam, are currently the only Atlas family member registered within the building.”

  Adam put a hand on his forehead. He began to pace. “You’re telling me out of all fifty-something of us, no one is taking a shower, taking a nap, eating lunch, no one is doing anything in the building currently?”

  “Correct, besides you Adam.”

  Unbelievable. Atlas Tower was their home base. They had other places to stay, sure, but this was the family sanctuary. There was always someone holding down the fort, even during their most pressing matters. That was why they had labs built here on site. He asked a question he was afraid to hear the answer to.

  “Aureus, besides me, when was the last Atlas registered within the building?”

  “Checking… 43 days ago.”

  43… Something was disastrously wrong.

  He went to the closest terminal, built into an office space tucked away in an alcove by the kitchen. He logged in and accessed the family intranet. His heart thumped with panic. All of them gone. Wouldn’t he have heard something if there was some disaster? Atlas East should have at least contacted him. He clicked around on the family documents and bulletins. Looking for what, he didn’t know. Some clue, some emergency notice, something. Nothing immediately stuck out to him. He didn’t understand half the jargon. He cursed his own stupidity as he bashed his hand on the desktop.

  “Adam?” Aureus spoke. It wouldn’t have any details on their work, being essentially a disembodied butler, but Adam swiveled and heard out the program anyway.

  “Yes?”

  “There is a matter that requires attention. There is one unauthorized intruder within the premises. They are being held within a security cell. Normally I would not trouble a minor member of your family with this, but I cannot reach an adult as of recent. My food rations allocated to trespassers are running low. May I ask that you assist in contacting the authorities and allowing them entrance to take this intruder, or otherwise allocate additional rations?”

  Intruder…? That broke Adam out of his panicking spiral. He stood.

  “Where is the security cell?”

  Aureus led him vocally downstairs, to a floor that was mostly storage. Lights activated overhead to illuminate a plain hallway with thick doors lining the way. Halfway down was the apparent security cell, a feature which Adam didn’t even know they had. A windowless door was locked shut, a wall terminal with a screen beside it.

  Adam found the button with a camera on it. He pressed it, and the terminal screen became footage of the interior of the room. It was a small cell with a bed, toilet, and sink. There was indeed someone inside. A woman in costume sat on the floor, banging her head against the wall behind her. Her costume was a black bodysuit, unzipped down to her navel, with a black mask covering her eyes and forehead. The mask had eight round eyes and four decorative white fangs. A white wig covered her hair.

  Adam pressed a microphone button.

  “Holy shit, Dewdrop?”

  The costumed woman sat up like an electric current ran through her. She looked up at the camera and scrambled to her feet. She laced her hands together.

  “Oh, thank fuck! Someone’s finally here! Please let me out of here! I learned my lesson! Give me to the cops! I don’t care! I just want to see the sun!”

  Dewdrop, the vivacious and sultry spider-themed superthief of Beacon City, one of its most infamous criminals, was trapped here in his family’s web. His first thought was to be damn impressed at their security engineering. She was rarely caught. No one to let her out, because no one was here. If she was here for days or weeks, maybe she knew something more.

  In the few seconds Adam went silent, Dewdrop pounded on the walls underneath the camera desperately.

  “Hey! Hey! Don’t go quiet! I’m here! Which one of you is that? Abe? Archie? Uh… I wanna say there’s an Angel? Is that you Angel?”

  Adam pressed the microphone again. “It’s Adam.”

  Dewdrop’s mouth widened in surprise.

  “Adam! My favorite! How the hell are you? I haven’t seen you in forever!”

  “Yeah, since you kidnapped me when I was ten!” Adam reminded her sharply.

  She stepped back and waved it away. “Eh, I prefer to think of it as babysitting with a dynamically negotiated payrate. We had fun that day! I took you to the movies, remember? You weren’t even scared.”

  He had to admit begrudgingly, it wasn’t the worst kidnapping. He still didn’t appreciate it.

  “Hey Adam buddy, can you let me out of here?” Dewdrop asked sweetly. “I got caught red-handed, fair play. Your robots manhandled me into this cell. I don’t know what twisted game your family is playing keeping me in here for this long, but I’d like to come out now. Is this payback for the kidnapping? I mean babysitting?”

  “What do you know about what my family’s been up to recently?” Adam asked.

  Dewdrop shrugged. “As much as anyone knows, which isn’t much. Your family closed themselves off from the world. Made Atlas East autonomous. Nobody’s heard from them in months. So I thought I’d…”

  “Come steal from us?”

  “Do a wellness check!” Dewdrop insisted. “And maybe tip myself for being neighborly…”

  “So you haven’t seen or heard from anyone?” Adam confirmed.

  “No. No one.”

  Adam exhaled as he thought about what to do. He had to search the labs to find his family’s work. Easier said than done.

  “Adam! Adam Adam Adam,” Dewdrop tried to keep his attention. He could only imagine how stir-crazy she was by now. “Let me out buddy. You know I’m not gonna hurt you. I don’t have weapons. Also, don’t watch the footage of me being in here. Just delete it. I had to take my whole suit off every time I used the bathroom. Eventually I just started going naked for a few days. I did weird stuff, I’ll admit it. I’m not proud of it. Not things a boy like you should see. Not until you’re a man.”

  “Dewdrop, shut up!” He sighed. “I need to leave you here for a minute.”

  “No!” she begged. “What are you looking for? I can help.”

  “I’m not abandoning you. Just wait another minute.”

  He left the camera and microphone despite her whining protests.

  He returned to the elevator. The family lab was in levels -1 to -3. He tried pressing the button for -1.

  As he expected, pressing it triggered Aureus to speak up.

  “My apologies Adam, the Atlas Tower lab space is restricted for unaccompanied minors.”

  “I know. It’s important. Like you said, there are no adults around. Can you please make an exception? I need to find out what happened to my family.”

  “Pondering… unfortunately, no emergency protocols have been activated for me to allow an exemption.”

  Adam gripped the elevator railing and bent in frustration. All these miles, and he was stopped by a disembodied voice. He returned to Dewdrop’s cell.

  “Can you hack into the Tower’s systems?”

  She smiled up at the camera.

  Two minutes later, Adam leaned against the corner of the elevator while Dewdrop worked on the open control panel. She cracked a code on a holographic interface that projected from the sleeve of her suit.

  “So, you got a girlfriend?” Dewdrop asked as she worked.

  “Uh, I dunno… it’s complicated,” Adam said.

  Dewdrop bobbed her head. “I bet. My handsome little man. You must be an international bachelor by now.”

  “I’m not…!” he sighed and let it go.

  “Is it complicated with Thalia?”

  “Yes.”

  “I bet she’s growing up into a real tiger,” Dewdrop said.

  “She is.”

  Dewdrop’s screen went green as she finally cracked the code.

  “A-A-Adam,” Aureus’ voice came out fuzzy and halting. “There is an intruder in the system. P-p-please—”

  “I know, I’m sorry Auri,” Adam said. “It’s an emergency.”

  Dewdrop closed the panel. Adam hit floor 1 and -1.

  “Are you sure I can’t take a souvenir before I leave?” Dewdrop teased.

  “Don’t push it,” Adam said. They descended. “And you better forget those access codes, or I’ll put all that footage of you in that cell on the internet.”

  “You little pervert!” But Dewdrop was smiling. “Don’t worry, I’m done.”

  He dropped her off at the lobby. She turned and saluted him. “Hope you find them.” He didn’t respond. She probably got away with smuggling out something, somehow in that tight suit of hers. Now wasn’t the time or place to pat her down and check. He also wasn’t going to keep the footage. However…

  He tilted his head and watched her leave until the doors sealed. He could only do so much against his teenage instincts.

  The door opened again to a clean, stark hallway. It was similar in design to the labs at Atlas West. Adam himself had been down here only a few times before in his life. The Foundation labs he was more familiar with, but still, he found his way easily. He wasted no time jogging down the corridor, checking rooms for signs of life. Maybe Aureus was wrong somehow. The system wasn’t infallible.

  He checked each room that he passed. Each of the auxiliary lab rooms were empty. No signs of recent activity in whirring machines or anything of the sort. Everything was in a powered-down, inactive state.

  The main lab was at the end of the hall. The doors opened for him.

  Beyond a few rows of control panels, all of them empty, the main floor of the lab had been cleared to accommodate a mechanical construction. Adam craned his neck to take it all in. The top of the structure nearly touched the cavernous ceiling. Metal arches surrounded a raised central platform, sort of like a dais. The structure was clearly a prototype in the process of being worked on. Like vines on an overgrown jungle temple, thick wires and cables snaked out of open panels to connect to other machinery in the recesses of the room. The machine, whatever it was, didn’t seem active. Nothing in the room did. Adam kept a cautious eye on it while he went to a control station computer. There were sticky notes surrounding the edge of the screen on this one. He recognized his mother’s handwriting.

  He shook the mouse to wake the computer. The desktop brightened. It had the same intranet connection as all the others. But there was something else, in the corner. A folder. He clicked to open it.

  The folder opened to contain video files. Dozens. By their timestamps, most were under a minute. He knew his mother liked to record video progress of her work. This had to be her logs on whatever this device was. He clicked on a video near the beginning.

  The recording began with his mother standing and backing away from the camera. She stood against the wall behind Adam. Other family members bustled about on the periphery. Ada, his mother, was a small woman, with jet-black hair she kept in low pigtails at the back of her round head. Her lab coat and thick glasses gave her a professional bearing. He could tell just by her face that his mother was somber and tired.

  Ada cleared her throat and began speaking. “It’s day… 53 of our work. Adam has recently gone off to his new school. His strange mutation was as good an excuse as any to send him. The further away from this he is, the better.” She lowered her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Hopefully, if all goes well, this will be but a footnote in our family history. But in case it isn’t… someone needs to carry the torch. I have faith. In us, and in him.”

  She began getting into technicals. Adam closed the video and opened another further down, hoping for more layman’s terms. He compartmentalized his mother’s words about him.

  “Day 65,” a yet more tired Ada began. “The readings are paining a clearer picture. The Invaders, we believe, accomplished what they set out to do. They cut a hole in our reality. And it is not healing.” She absently chewed on the tip of a rubber-gloved finger, before finding the taste unpleasant. “We suspect, though cannot confirm, they mean to subsume our reality into theirs. The true invasion. A patient death. A larger threat than any Earth has ever dealt with before. BASTION cannot be trusted with this. Not with WATERSHED, or any other piece of it. It is too sprawling. There are forces at play…”

  Whatever thought she had, she didn’t finish. She refocused.

  “This is our mess to contain. The Dimensional Lens is coming along. If we can contain the anomaly, we can cauterize the reality bleed. Although, I’m not sure what that does for us in the long term…”

  Adam paused the video. He sunk back into the chair. He needed a moment to take it in. If he was understanding his mother right… if what she was saying was true…

  All this time, the question hung over their heads. When would the Invaders return? Apparently, they weren’t going to.

  Earth’s greatest heroes made a last stand and fell out of the sky for a puncture wound. A single thrust to make them bleed out. The Invaders didn’t return because they had done what they needed to do to win.

  His ears rung. He couldn’t find the spit to swallow. Nothing felt real.

  His hand moved slowly to close the video. He scrolled to the end. There had to be some clue as to what happened to his family. They had to have a solution.

  The first seconds of the final video were glitchy static. Colors danced across the screen as his mother again became visible. Pixels died and stuck to the visual.

  “Day Seventy-zzt.” The exact day was lost to auditory distortion. Afterimages of his mother trailed her nervous movement like digital ghosts. “Almost for— to record a log. Today’s the day. Power’s set to go. Frequency’s al—. Greenlight to see…-what we can see. Will update fu-ther af—”

  The quality of audio and video only degraded further with every second.

  Someone called to Ada from offscreen. Their words were lost. Ada bent down and ended the video.

  Adam’s arms dropped to his sides. He was silent for minutes. There were too many thoughts in his head to think. The screen went to sleep, leaving Adam staring at himself in the black glass. He finally took off his sunglasses. He looked at his bright blue eye. The reason he was still here, and his family was gone.

  He stood. His cheap sunglasses fell out of his fingers and clattered to the floor. Atlas Tower now felt like a tomb. His family was gone from some experiment to save the world, and he wasn’t even with them in their last moments. What was there to do now?

  He walked between the control panels to the main floor, to stand in front of the machine they had constructed. The thing his mother had called a Dimensional Lens. Was it finished when they tested it? Had it obliterated all of them? Was every last member of his family standing in this room when it went off? That seemed reckless, even for them.

  He stood in front of it, trying to discern any meaning or clue from it. There had to be something he could do. Some way to reverse what it had done.

  He stared at the empty space in between the constructed arches. He couldn’t help but think that his eye, that had appeared in time to save his cousin’s life, that gave him headaches when he was around WATERSHED, that saw the terrible potential in the Invader’s heart, had to be for something. What was it for? It couldn’t be a coincidence that he saw what others couldn’t.

  He willed it to activate, to do something. He pictured his family. His parents, Alexis, the twins, all of them. He summoned all of his will. He tried to feel the greatness that his father told him he had.

  He stared at the space in the lens. He clenched his eyes shut and opened them again.

  Nothing at first. And then space in front of him began to shimmer.

  He could have at first mistaken it for a trick of his brain. But no, it was there. Something was there. It unfolded in the space in front of him. He saw it with one eye, and didn’t with another. He reached out to touch it. The arches cradled a vision. It wavered like a mirage. It was… indescribable.

  He saw worlds. He didn’t know how, but he saw entire worlds swirling in a vortex. Vast deserts and jungles and multiple moons hanging in the sky, and more worlds beyond them. The scene shifted continuously. It zoomed out hundreds of miles. Worlds broke apart. They cracked, molten cores spilling like egg yolks. They fell into an impossibly wide, burning pit. A pit larger than a star. It was dark. It was alive. It was… beautiful.

  He reached out to touch the vision.

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  The sudden voice from behind startled him. He lowered his hand. His concentration broken, the vision dissipated like mist.

  Adam turned, nearly falling over in his haste. The voice wasn’t Dewdrop’s. It was male. Deep, and gruff. The man it belonged to stood at the entrance of the lab. He wore a patchy duster over stained clothes, and a wide-brimmed hat. The only part of his face Adam could see with it tilted downward was a grimy beard.

  His mind reeled. Because the man he was looking at was the beggar from Pacific City.

  The one he had given forty dollars to. Here, in his family’s secure lab in their tower, 3,000 miles away from where Adam had last seen him.

  “Wh-ho-who…”

  Adam still hadn’t formed a coherent question before the beggar crossed the floor of the lab to stand in front of him. He looked down on the teenage boy. He was tall, well over six feet. Most of his pockmarked, weatherbeaten face hid in shadow from the brim of his hat. Suspicious eyes looked down on Adam, scrutinizing him. The same way they had when the beggar had told Adam he was going to ruin the world.

  He snorted and stuck out a hand.

  “I never introduced myself. They call me Paradigm.”

  Oh. Paradigm.

  Wait. That actually meant something.

  The Paradigm? The only Paradigm Adam knew was the one everyone had heard of. One of Earth’s two current Planet-Class heroes. The illusive one who had appeared after Invasion Day, that no one really ever saw. His existence was only confirmed by BASTION. Some people thought he was just propaganda, so people believed they had more world-protectors watching over them than just Seraph.

  Paradigm was a homeless man that begged for money on a street corner of Pacific City. And he was just supposed to believe that. Of course. Adam sorted that into his working knowledge as quickly as his brain could without erupting into flames.

  He shook the man’s hand, not really sure why he was doing so. It left his palm greasy.

  “Why… why are you here?”

  The man who claimed to be Paradigm looked around the room. He was unimpressed. He scratched his broad belly underneath his thin wifebeater.

  “Been keeping an eye on you, on account of that thing you got stuck in your head.”

  “The thing…” Adam touched the side of his head next to his unnatural eye. “My eye? Why?”

  “You’re gonna need it,” Paradigm said. “You’re gonna use it to save your family. And also, all of Reality. And I’m gonna teach you how to use it.” He said it so casually, like telling Adam he'd need to practice driving.

  “My family? They’re alive?” Despite the rapidly unfolding insanity, he latched on to the vagrant’s words.

  “They're alive.” He turned and walked away. “I’m gonna go raid your kitchen. I need mentor fuel.”

  The lab doors closed behind him. Adam collapsed into the nearest chair.

  Not saving the world, then. Just his family. And all of Reality. If any of this was true, and he was seriously heeding the homeless person who had broken in.

  Apparently Adam now had his purpose.